A/N:
NB: I'VE UPDATED TWO CHAPTERS TODAY - I suggest that you read the fifteenth chapter before this one.
Day Seven
Oin's potions made Thorin fall asleep soon after Dwalin had left the tent, and he slept peacefully well into evening without dreaming – without hearing the echoes of his nephews' pained screams in his nightmares – which meant that he was able to actually rest. Even though neither Bilbo nor Thorin were aware of this, Thorin's fever broked down around the same time as Bilbo collapsed in the wagon, and Oin hummed, satisfied, as he noticed Thorin's improved condition, although Thorin, of course, didn't know that either, sleeping as he was.
When Thorin came to, hours later, darkness had fallen, and someone had been by to take Dwalin's mattress away. Bombur and Dori were in the tent with him, sitting by his bedside, talking quietly together. As soon as they noticed that he had awakened, Bombur gave him water and Dori began to fuss as was so characteristic of him, arranging and re-arranging the blankets around Thorin's legs until Thorin – dizzy from all Dori's movements – asked him to stop.
"How do you feel?" asked Dori, still eyeing Thorin's blankets critically, after Thorin had satisfied his thirst and both Bombur and Dori had reclaimed their seats.
"Fine," he said curtly, even though that wasn't quite true. The looks Dori and Bombur gave him told clearly that neither one believed his word, and Thorin decided to change the subject before any further inquiries could be made.
Thorin wanted to ask after Bilbo, as well as his nephews, but at the same time he couldn't find the courage to voice the questions – what if the answers wouldn't be to his liking, what if Bilbo or one of his boys' condition had worsened?
What if one of them had succumbed to their wounds?
"Give me a report," Thorin thus said, hoping to get answers without having to directly ask for them.
Bombur exchanged a bemused glance with Dori.
"Um, on what, exactly, my lord?" wondered Dori, needlessly formal as ever.
"Do you expect me to write reports on your behalf?" said Thorin gruffly. "Give me a report on anything worth reporting; tell me if anything worth reporting happened while I was asleep."
"Oh, well," said Bombur slowly, furrowing his brow as if in thought. "Something worth reporting did, indeed, happen."
"And that is something we shouldn't be talking about," cut in Dori, giving Bombur a warning look. "We shouldn't excite him, Bombur – he needs to rest. You shouldn't have even mentioned... the news, Oin told us not to."
Bombur looked from Thorin to Dori.
"Don't you think he has the right to know?"
"It's for his own good, Bombur. Oin specifically told us not to tell him."
"Tell me what, exactly?" demanded Thorin. "What has happened? Are-" my sister-sons all right "-elves causing us trouble?"
"Not more than usually, as far as I know," said Bombur, rubbing his neck awkwardly. "Perhaps... Perhaps Dori is right, perhaps I shouldn't have said anything – if we told you the... news, Thorin, you would want to leave your bed, and you do need your rest so perhaps you should just forget that I said anything."
"Perhaps I could, in theory," agreed Thorin, "but first you need to tell me what it is that you would expect me to forget. "
Dori pursed his lips, while Bombur let out a resigned sigh.
"If we tell you," he said, "do you promise to stay in bed and not try to get up?"
"If the matter isn't urgent," said Thorin slowly, "and doesn't require my immediate attention, yes. Otherwise, no."
Dori and Bombur looked at each other. Judging from their displeased expressions, neither one was satisfied with the answer, although they both must have known it was all Thorin would give them. With yet another resigned sigh, Bombur turned to look at Thorin and said,
"Very well then. I'll tell you, but you must consider the matter carefully before you even try to leave the bed. This may sound urgent to you, but I assure you that it isn't as everything is under control. You need your rest, Thorin, and we are only concerned for your health when we ask you to look after yourself."
"Yes, yes," said Thorin in his impatient manner. "Now, tell me the news if you will. Is my kingdom under threat? Or has something happened to-" he swallowed hard and forced himself to finish the question, "or has something happened to Bilbo – his condition is still improving, isn't it?"
Dori and Bombur exchanged a glance. Dori's eye began to twitch.
"Well," said Bombur, clearing his throat. "This is actually about your nephews, this time. You see, Fili has regained consciousness."
"He woke up two hours ago," Dori hastened to add. "And this is definitely all that we should be reporting to you, Your Highness. Nothing else worth reporting has happened, nothing at all, nothing, not a single thing."
Fili regaining his consciousness was the greatest news Thorin could have gotten, under the circumstances, and he had thrown covers off him – while Dori continued his blabbering – before he even realized he was doing so, and attempted to get up before neither Dori nor Bombur came to their senses and began to protest.
"Why wasn't I informed the minute it happened?" demanded Thorin, hastening to put his boots on, cutting Dori's blabbering off. "How is Fili? Is someone with him and Kili now? Have they been asking for me? You should have awakened me! How can you even say that this isn't urgent! What if it was one of your children, Bombur? Or one of your brothers, Dori?"
They were standing now, the three of them. Dori tried to guide Thorin back to bed, insistently, but Thorin shrugged his hands off him even more insistently, ignoring the pain in his torso and the dizziness he felt.
"I should have been there the moment Fili woke up," Thorin chided himself, reaching for his shirt. "My boys needed me."
"And you needed your rest, Thorin," tried Bombur, "and you still do. Fili is as fine as can be expected, and while he did ask for you, he understood just as well that you shouldn't have been awakened."
"Besides," said Dori, "Oin is with them, they're under good care."
It was clear to them all that nothing either Bombur or Dori could say would manage to keep Thorin from going to see his nephews, and so, after a while, Bombur and Dori abandoned their useless task of trying to keep Thorin confined to bed. Instead, they came to a conclusion that it would be more constructive of them to aid Thorin rather than have him strain himself when trying to do all on his own, and so they assisted him in getting dressed, and used a wheelchair to push him out of the tent and into Fili and Kili's tent.
Unsurprisingly, Oin wasn't glad at all to see Thorin out of bed, but he wasn't as much of a fool that he would have tried to step in between him and his nephews now that Thorin was in the said nephews' tent.
Disappointingly, Fili was asleep again, but Kili was awake with a book in his lap, propped up against the bed post with the help of several pillows. (If Thorin hadn't been as focused on his nephews as he was, he might have noticed the few words Oin exchanged subtly with Bombur and Dori in Iglishmek, "This should keep him distracted until Balin and Dwalin come back with Bilbo.")
When Oin guided Thorin to sit into the chair between Fili and Kili's beds and made him comfortable in his nest of pillows and blankets, Kili and Thorin offered each other a nod in greeting. As soon as Oin had led Dori and Bombur away in order to give the Durins some privacy, Kili gave his uncle a bright grin, closing his book.
"Fili ate porridge," he said with such pride that one might have thought that Fili had found a stone comparable – in beauty as well as worth – to Arkenstone itself (the thought of Arkenstone made Thorin wince internally, but now was not the time to dwell on guilt and so he did his best to push such feelings away).
Thorin studied his older nephew, taking in the slight pallor of his skin, his calm features, the fact that someone had recently washed and braided his fair hair. Fili's breathing was steady, his chest rose and fell in the slow rhythm of one that was sleeping. Thorin couldn't resist putting a gentle hand on Fili's chest on top of the blanket to feel the movement himself, to feel for himself that Fili was breathing in all actuality.
When he finally found his voice again, it was hoarse with emotion.
"Did he?"
"Almost the whole bowl full," confirmed Kili, happily. "Nothing wrong with his appetite, my brother's stomach still has no bottom – some things don't change, it seems."
The news delighted and relieved Thorin more than a news of any a found precious stone ever could, of that he was certain, and he tucked a loose strand of hair behind Fili's ear like he had sometimes done when the lad had still been a dwarfling.
"That's good," he said quietly, perhaps more to himself than to Kili. "If only I had been here to see it."
Thorin allowed his fingers to linger on Fili's soft hair. Usually he wasn't one for such displays of affection, but now the act didn't feel awkward at all – he found it quite soothing to pet Fili's hair and so he kept doing it.
"He asked after you, too," Kili told him, "wished you were here, but Oin told us that you needed your rest."
"To Mordor with my rest," grumbled Thorin. "I should have been here with you and your brother. Did Fili say anything else when he was awake? Did he know where he was? Was he in pain?"
"Oin gave him something for the pain, and he was coherent, after a bit of initial confusion. He asked what I had been up to while he had been occupied with resting, and I told him that mostly I'd just waited for him to wake up. He gave a chuckle at that, Thorin, an actual chuckle."
Kili drew breath and then he began to blabber in that quick manner he got whenever he was particularly excited, "Then I told him how Ori went against Lord Dain, but Fili almost didn't believe it – not that I can fault him for that, because I hardly believe it even though I was there – well, here, technically, in this very tent – to witness it all. Ori didn't like it when Fili didn't believe it and so he left the tent in one of his 'silent huffs' and he hasn't been back since. I think he's still mad at us, and I'm sorry about that, of course, as was Fili, and that's why we tried to-"
"Dain," Thorin interrupted Kili, giving his nephew such a severe look that Kili's eyes widened and his mouth snapped closed.
Kili must have sensed the way his uncle's mood had suddenly darkened – at the mention of Dain – for he stayed silent the entire time it took for Thorin to gather his thoughts.
"After all Balin and I have taught you, Kili," Thorin finally spoke, still petting Fili's hair, "you still would have signed a contract without reading it, just because Dain promised you practise fields."
The admonishment – and the audible disappointment in Thorin's voice – made Kili wince.
"I-" he said, "I would have read it before even considering signing it. I... would have."
Grunting, unimpressed, Thorin withdrew his hand from Fili's hair and fished the unsigned contract out of his pocket, unfolding it – the parchment was a reminder of how close he had come to losing Kili for the second time in a matter of days, and he wasn't yet ready to let it go, he kept it with him on his person. Now he put the contract in front of Kili and pointed a finger at the line on the bottom of the contract – or rather, he pointed at the spot of ink there was on the line at the bottom of the contract.
"If you weren't planning on signing this," said Thorin, giving the contract a tap with his finger, "then why does it look like someone snatched it from you at the last moment, just as you had begun to write your name on it? Why is there a spot of ink here, I wonder? How did that come to be?"
Kili shifted, visibly uncomfortable.
"It dropped there by accident," he insisted quietly, apparently unable to meet his uncle's searching gaze. "I... I would have read the contract before signing it."
Thorin pulled the contract away and folded it again, putting it back to his pocket. He resumed stroking Fili's hair before he spoke again, doing his best to keep his voice low for his sleeping nephew's sake.
"Had Ori not prevented you from signing it," he said, giving Kili a stern look, "you would now be a member of Dain's household. I would no longer get to call you my heir, for you wouldn't be my heir – you would be Dain's."
Kili swallowed hard and opened his mouth as if to say something, but Thorin wasn't yet done.
"Did you ever pause to think what you were doing, boy? Did you think at all? Are you thinking now? Is there ever anything in your mind but pretty lasses, merrymaking, and food?"
Of course there was more to Kili's thoughts than that, and Thorin would have been the first to declare so had someone spoke to or of Kili like Thorin himself was now doing. It was fear – I almost lost you. – that was making Thorin's words harsher than necessary, unfair, even cruel. He blamed himself for not protecting his sister's sons better – he blamed himself for having failed them – and, as sometimes happened when Thorin got upset, he now said all the wrong things, putting blame where it shouldn't have been placed, and showed too little of his true feelings. He berated Kili, calling him a foolish boy, ignoring all the little words Kili tried to put in to defend himself.
By the time Thorin was finished, Kili was clenching his fists and hanging his head in shame. Upon noticing what he had done – upon realizing how much he had upset Kili – Thorin's first instinct was to apologize, but – he reluctantly reminded himself – he had been right to reprimand the lad, harsh though he had been when doing it: Kili should have known better, Kili shouldn't have let Dain manipulate him like he had, and this needed to be a reminder for him, too, this needed to be a lesson.
Thorin sighed. He wished that Bilbo had been there in Fili and Kili's tent with him – Bilbo would have known how to fix this, he would have given Thorin wise advice and offered them all words of comfort.
Little did Thorin know that Bilbo was no longer resting under Oin's care in his own tent, nor did he ever once suspect that Bilbo wasn't even in the camp of dwarves anymore.
Since Bilbo wasn't there with him, Thorin was now left to his own devices.
"None of that now," he said to Kili, not unkindly, when Kili's lower lip gave a bit of a tremble. "What is done, is done. We will learn from this and, the next time, we shall thus be wiser."
Kili bit his trembling lip and gave a terse nod.
"I'm sorry," he said in a hoarse voice. "For disappointing you, as well as for not thinking my actions through. You have taught me better, Uncle. I shouldn't have forgotten my lessons as I momentarily did. I won't disappoint you thusly again."
"I know you will try your very hardest not to," offered Thorin because Kili – a warrior of age though he now was – was still immature and reckless in many ways, and Thorin didn't think it unlikely that Kili would, one day, do something foolish and rash again – Thorin could only hope that Kili's foolishness would then have no lasting, irreversible effects.
No more words could be exchanged between the uncle and the nephew, for just then – just as suddenly as unexpectedly – the tent flaps were swiped aside in a rather aggressive manner and a breath of cold evening air was let in. With the honed reflexes of an experienced warrior, Thorin was up on his feet and standing – weaponless, slightly dizzy, and shivering after having abandoned his nest of blankets – in a protective stance between his nephews and the tent's entrance before he had even seen who it was that had forced their way into Fili and Kili's tent uninvited.
It was but moments later that he had to crane his neck to meet the gaze of Gandalf the Grey who towered over his shorter form but an inch from him, for it had, indeed, been Gandalf who had entered the tent in such a forceful manner, Balin, Gloin, and Bofur hot on his heels. Oin, Dori, and Bombur who had been conversing quietly in the back of the tent had fallen silent when Gandalf had entered the tent and they now stepped closer, eyeing Gandalf and the three dwarves questioningly, while Gandalf stared down at Thorin.
"Gandalf!" Kili greeted the wizard, sounding delighted. "So nice to see you. Where have you been?"
Gandalf offered Kili a look much kinder than he had ever given Thorin – Gandalf was quite fond of Fili and Kili, that was one thing Thorin did like about him – before focusing his attention on Thorin again without answering Kili's inquiry.
"Is the madness so deeply ingrained in you, Thorin Oakenshield," he spoke, "that you would see a friend beheaded for something he did to save you and your kin?"
Thorin winced as guilt flooded his mind in merciless waves. It wasn't difficult to see why Gandalf was there: someone must have told him that Dain had almost beheaded Bilbo "on the order of Thorin", and Gandalf was now here to let Thorin know what he thought of the matter.
The thought of Bilbo's execution had made Thorin sick and he still shivered when thinking of what almost had happened – how Bilbo had almost been beheaded by his order – but Thorin hadn't thought before what Gandalf might have done had Bilbo actually been beheaded by the dwarves, accidentally or not. Now, though, he could clearly see that it would have been nothing pleasant: The wizard's eyes were blazing, his usually calm features were twisted in anger. His attention was focused fully on Thorin, or so it appeared, and he glowered at Thorin in such a manner that Thorin had to use all his willpower to be able to meet the gaze.
"I give you my word that I want no harm to come to Bilbo Baggins," swore Thorin. "All that happened after the battle was a misunderstanding of the worst kind, and it is my intention to beg for Bilbo's forgiveness for it once he is well enough to grant me his audience. I swear to you that the madness has left me, my mind is clear of golden fog once more."
"Indeed?" Gandalf didn't sound convinced, but his gaze turned unreadable and he studied Thorin as if searching for something.
It was Kili that spoke next.
"'Well enough to grant an audience' – no-one told me that Bilbo had been injured," he said, sounding upset. "And what does Thorin mean, 'all that happened after the battle'? What have you not told me?"
"Everything shall be explained to you later, Kili," promised Balin, "but now is not the time for that. Thorin, we must speak with you at once."
"No," cut in Oin. "If your matter isn't urgent, you can bother Thorin and his boys later. My patients need their rest."
Giving Gandalf, Bofur, Balin, and Gloin each a poignant look, Oin grasped Thorin by the arm and began to lead him back to the chair.
"Our matter is urgent indeed," said Bofur apologetically. "We do need to talk with Thorin sooner rather than later."
"But you heard Oin, Bofur," Kili put in. "Uncle needs his rest, and I'm sure Fili would want him to be here when he wakes up. Mister Balin, can't you and Mister Dwalin deal with this 'urgent matter' on your own?"
"I'm afraid not, Kili, as Dwalin can't currently do much," said Balin and there was something so off about Balin's voice that Thorin was instantly concerned. He halted on his tracks and turned slowly to look at Balin. Something tightened in Balin's features at this and Balin cleared his throat, evading Thorin's gaze, looking suddenly quite uncomfortable. Trepidation came over Thorin – surely nothing had happened to Dwalin, to his dearest friend, his firmest support column?
"Where is Dwalin, Balin?" he asked warily, glancing at Gloin and Bofur as if assessing whether one of them could give him the answers to his questions. "And why do you say he can't 'currently do much'?"
Balin never got the chance to answer, for it was Gloin who then cried out, "Because Thranduil is holding Dwalin hostage!"
A/N: The next chapter will be up tomorrow.
Thanks again for your support!
