Thorin smiled gently as he looked at the hobbit on the floor. Even though he looked nearly the same as he had before they had traveled together, Thorin hadn't expected the same response. He had thought that Bilbo was beyond fainting in the hall, but he didn't suppose that he could blame him. He had just knelt to lift the hobbit and move him to his bed to allow him to wake on his own when the sound of running footsteps reached his ears.

"You'll never guess what I just saw," he heard the excited voice of a young man call as the distinct sound of hobbit feet on the stone steps outside accompanied him. Thorin felt his heart constrict in his chest. He wasn't sure how much time had passed since Erebor had been reclaimed, but he supposed that it made sense that Bilbo had moved on and acquired a family.

"Uncle Bilbo!"Frodo cried at the sight of his uncle on the ground with a large dwarf leaning over him. He knew that Bilbo often entertained dwarves, but he had never found him like this before. And he had never seen this particular dwarf.

"Who are you? What happened here?" Frodo demanded. Like Bilbo, he knew that it was rude to demand answers like that, but he also couldn't care less. The dwarf was in his home and Bilbo was not able to make proper introductions.

Despite himself, Thorin smiled. The young hobbit had called Bilbo "Uncle" not "Father." He was his nephew. Composing himself he stood and faced the newest addition fully.

"Thorin Oakenshield," he replied with a shallow bow, "At your service." He was a little hurt when the hobbit showed no sign of recognition at his name. Had Bilbo never spoken of him? "As to what happened," he continued. "Your uncle was a bit surprised to see me and fainted. This is not the first time he has had this reaction. He will be fine shortly."

"Uncle Bilbo fainted?" Frodo asked incredulously. He had known his uncle his entire life and not once had he seen the older hobbit faint. Not even when Frodo had leapt out of the woods at him in an attempt to startle him. All that had happened that time was Frodo getting walloped with the walking stick Bilbo carried.

"Yes, Master . . ." Thorin gestured with his hand for the hobbit to supply his name. He disliked being at the disadvantage of not knowing with whom he was speaking.

"Frodo," the hobbit supplied. "Frodo Baggins."

"Master Frodo," Thorin said with a nod. "Yes, your uncle did faint. If you will aid me, I believe that we should move him to somewhere more comfortable than the floor to recover himself." Frodo nodded warily. Even though the dwarf had asked for help, all he had really meant was for Frodo to open Bilbo's door. Though the hobbit had grown more stout than he had been when they had first met, he had remained slighter than most hobbits and Thorin could easily lift him.

Once they had him tucked back into bed, Frodo turned anxiously to the dwarf. "Um," he said rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and fingering his suspenders with the other. "I'm not very good at this. Uncle usually takes care of entertaining guests. Would you like something to eat? Maybe some tea?"

"I would greatly appreciate food," Thorin said smiling gently down on the flustered hobbit. Even if he wasn't Bilbo's son, they were very similar. Or maybe being easily flustered was a hobbit trait and not singular to Bilbo.

"However, I would rather have something a bit stronger than tea, if that is all right," Thorin continued. "It has already been a difficult day and I do not foresee it becoming easier before it is through."

"We have ale," Frodo offered with a sigh before leading the dwarf to Bilbo's kitchen. Thorin followed him, surprised by how little Bilbo's home had changed over the years—much like the hobbit himself.

"So," Thorin said trying to find something to talk about rather than allow them to sit in the uncomfortable silence that surrounded them, "you are Bilbo's nephew? I was unaware that he had siblings."

"He doesn't," Frodo explained also glad for a topic. "I am actually his cousin. My father was his second cousin on his father's side and my mother was his first cousin on his mother's side. So I am his first and second cousin once removed either way."

Thorin closed his eyes trying to wrap his head around what he had just been told. Hobbit genealogies were nearly as confusing as dwarven ones and the terms they used were more confusing. "Then why do you call him "Uncle"?" Thorin asked, focusing on something that should be easier to answer.

With a smile and a shrug that was reminiscent of Bilbo when Thorin had asked him a question that he thought was unneeded, Frodo said, "Because he is so much older than I am. I can't just go around calling him "Cousin Bilbo", can I?" Thorin shook his head and looked at the tankard of ale in front of him with a sigh before he downed the whole thing in one go. This was going to be a very difficult day indeed.

ooOO88OOoo

Bilbo groaned as he stretched feeling slightly surprised at the soft mattress under him. The last thing he remembered, he had fainted in the front hall. He shook his head sadly as he admonished himself for being surprised. Of course he was in bed. It had to have been a dream. Thorin was dead and nothing was going to change that. He was not going to be walking up to the door of Bag End and demanding entry. That was absurd.

As was falling asleep in one's day clothes. Bilbo sighed as he saw what he was wearing in bed. He was old but he was not that old. He should have known better than to crawl into bed fully clothed! Well, there was nothing to be done for it now except to get up and resume the business of planning that blasted party.

He wondered at the soreness of his shoulder as he grasped the handle of his door and made a mental note to talk to someone about getting a new mattress in as that one was obviously inadequate before he remembered that soon it would not matter. He would be gone. He sighed again as he heard Frodo's voice in the kitchen. He sincerely hoped that he was talking either to himself or the Gamgee boy, he really was not feeling up to visitors today.

"Frodo, my lad," Bilbo called, feeling that it would be best to announce his presence than to walk in on what might be a private conversation. "You will never believe the dream I had. . ." Bilbo trailed off as he rounded the corner and saw the back of whomever was in the kitchen with Frodo.

"I must still be asleep," he mumbled as he looked at the same back that he had followed across Middle Earth. He would know it anywhere. But there was no way that Thorin could be sitting in his kitchen. He felt light headed once more.

"Now, Bilbo, no more of that," Thorin barked. The familiar tone grounded Bilbo and he managed to fight back the darkness, though he did have to sit down. "We will never get anywhere if you keep swooning at the sight of me."

"I do not swoon!" Bilbo snapped back his temper rising at the fact that his hallucination was making fun of him.

"It looked like a swoon to me," Thorin teased glad that Bilbo was showing a bit of the fire he had come to love about him. He had been worried that time had extinguished it. "I know that my presence is overwhelming, however—"

"It was not a swoon," Bilbo said rising to approach the dwarf stopping when he was within inches of the other. Even if he was a hallucination his words still angered the hobbit. "I swear, Thorin Oakenshield, you are the most conceited dwarf I have ever met in my life! And that is saying something. I don't care if you are a king, a little humility would do you some good!"

"He's a king?" Frodo asked dropping the roll he had been buttering. He was shocked. He knew that Bilbo knew many important people, but a king? And sitting at their little table in Bag End drinking ale and chatting with him? He paled even more as he realized what he had first said to the king. He had been so rude!

"My apologies, Your Majesty," Frodo said standing to bow to the dwarf at the table. "I apologize for my rudeness at our meeting."

"Oh," Bilbo shushed gesturing at his nephew impatiently. "I doubt you could have said anything too bad. Dwarven manners are different that hobbit manners."

"Much less difficult to remember," Thorin muttered, his eyes twinkling as he rehashed an old argument between him and the ex-burglar. "You just have to show deference to the right people. None of this foolishness about which fork to eat what dish with."

"Table manners are not foolish!" Bilbo retorted though Thorin ignored him and turned to Frodo instead.

"And do not worry, Frodo," he said with a sad smile. "I was a king. But no more. I am simply a dwarf now."

"Did you abdicate?" Frodo asked. He couldn't see how you could have been a king but be one no longer. Also he could not see the dwarf in front of him abdicating a throne.

"Something like that," Thorin replied his eyes taking a haunted look as he remembered his own death. "But it is no matter now. The throne had passed to the next in line and I am free to live out the remainder of my life as I will."

"What remainder of your life?" Bilbo demanded, tears in his eyes. "You didn't abdicate. You died. I saw them bury you! I mourned you! How . . . how are you here? I held you as you died. I saw your body. How? And if you were alive all this time why did you never come to see me? Sixty years, Thorin. It's been sixty years."

Bilbo paused before he continued, his voice now choked with emotion, "Does Dís know? What about the rest of them? Did everyone but me know that you are still alive? I suppose that would make sense. Why should we tell the hobbit that the great Thorin Oakenshield is still alive? He wouldn't care anyway."

"Now Bilbo," Thorin began his eyes begging the enraged hobbit to understand, "that is not what happened. I would never have done that to you. I know this is hard to believe—"

"No?!" Bilbo spat sarcastically. "It's perfectly easy to believe. Dead dwarves come back to life and sit in my kitchen every day! I had lunch with Fíli just yesterday."

"Enough!" Thorin roared at the reminder of his own nephew's death on his foolish quest. He may as well have killed the boy himself. At his anger, Bilbo sobered a bit, though he still glared at the dwarf he had ceased speaking. "Enough. If you will just listen I will try to explain what has happened. Do you think I like this situation? I died. And led others to their death in the process. I have not been in hiding. No one else knows that I live. How could I go to my sister after I led both her sons to their deaths? Of course Dís doesn't know."

He paused to shake his head and regain his composure before he continued. The thought of his sister and her loss through his actions almost brought him to tears. No matter what he and Bilbo had shared, dwarves did not mourn in public, not as he wished to anyway.

"Use your brain, Bilbo Baggins," Thorin said sadly. "If I was still alive without having died in the middle, I would be 255 years old. I would most likely be dead from old age. Do I look changed?"

Bilbo started at his words and looked more closely at the dwarf. He had not thought it odd initially that Thorin looked just as Bilbo remembered him, but when Thorin did the math for him, it made no sense. There was no more grey in his hair than there had been the last time he had seen him, no more lines on his face. He was the same.

"How?" Bilbo asked once more.

"The valar have granted us another chance," Thorin said. "I think they were amused by the fact that a dwarf loved a hobbit and that a hobbit would mourn a dwarf for sixty years and wanted to see what would happen if we were placed together once more. I do not care for their reasons. They gave me the choice and I took it."

"The valar gave you new life?" Bilbo asked skeptically. He had never heard of them doing anything like that before. The only thing that came close was their granting Elrond and Elros the ability to choose their own destinies. But he hadn't heard of them intervening in the lives of ordinary mortals and their last interference at all had been Ages ago. This was beyond the pale and he again decided that he must be dreaming.

"Not exactly," Thorin replied glad that Bilbo had stopped yelling for now. "They actually transported my consciousness through time and returned it to the body I had just before my death. I will be permitted to live out the lifespan that I should have had if I had not died."

"Frodo, be a good lad and fetch me an ale in the largest glass you can find," Bilbo said wearily, sitting next to Thorin and holding his head in his hands. "This makes no sense, you know?" Bilbo said glancing at Thorin out of the corner of his eye.

The dwarf sighed. "I know," he replied before he cast a wan smile at the hobbit. "But if we now have a chance to be happy should we question it?" Bilbo shook his head and rubbed at a worn spot on the table.

"And to think," he said with a small tentative smile, "just this morning I was worried about organizing a party."

ooOO88OOoo

There we are all, a new chapter out in a timely manner. I hope you enjoyed it and would love to hear what you think (even if you hated it).

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Stickdonkeys