AN: So this story has about fourteen followers so far but I'm 50k into the draft of this story sooo… let me know what plot points or areas you want this story to venture into as your voice will most definitely be heard.
Chapter 2 - Regrets
Bungo Baggins welcomed the dwarfling into their home before he passed in the spring.
Bilbo found himself head of his own household with a child who wasn't even a hobbit.
Yet the dwarfling became Bilbo's entire world and he could not imagine a life without his son.
Fíli was shy at first, but soon he almost never left Bilbo's side. Asking for stories, songs, and games that Bilbo was all too happy to share with him.
Bilbo wanted to give his son everything, including the desire to reconnect him to his people in Ered Luin as Bilbo refused to conclude that the actions of Fíli's kidnapper were representative of all the dwarves of the Blue Mountains. Unfortunately, there was nothing preventing the dwarrow from taking his child from him. Bilbo wouldn't give Fíli up to anyone who wasn't immediate family, who wouldn't love him as much as Bilbo did.
Perhaps that was true of the elves as well, but they had no reason to separate him from Fíli, not even on principle.
The dwarves did.
A hobbit with a dwarfling, an outsider with one of their children?
Hobbits were no strangers to wariness of other races.
Having now lots of experiences with other races, Bilbo wasn't even convinced they were wrong to be wary.
But Fíli had been kidnapped and abused by a dwarf. Bilbo could not in good conscience bring his son back to them and simply trust he would reach his family.
A family that hopefully hadn't been the ones guilty of this plot in the first place.
Bilbo sighed, rocking the sleeping child against his chest, he couldn't let him go, not until Fíli was old enough to protect himself.
To choose for himself.
Until then, Bilbo would protect Fíli and raise him as best he was able.
oOo
It was Fíli's birthday, and being only five years apart, Kíli had not, in any way, been able to let go of the death of his brother.
Fíli's death had been the most personally devastating event of Thorin's own life even if the dragon had done his people more harm.
Thorin hadn't thought that things could get worse than being forced to flee Moria.
He had been wrong.
Thorin had been called King Under the Mountain, which was a laughable joke.
The dwarves of Erebor, those of them who had survived the Dragon and Moria had splintered. As the years passed, many tracked backwards, toward the Iron Hills to be among their own kind again even if the Iron Hill and Erebor dwarves had wildly different cultures, they were still dwarves.
The same was true for those who ventured toward the sea and the respite of the Blue Mountains.
Others took to the road and never settled at all.
Ered Luin was not doing well with the influx in their population from Erebor. With a spattering of human settlements to the east and the Shire beyond, luxuries were not well enough to sustain Thorin's people.
The elves in the shadow of the Misty Mountains were much the same, caring more for the waterfalls than finery. To the immediate east beyond that?
The Rohanian were struggling as well. In truth, the only place where their most skilled workers could find any large commissions was in Gondor.
Even then, Thorin's people had nothing to craft from, no gold ores, and barely any iron resources. Which meant travel to Gondor was impractical and setting up any sort of perminate resident there would not be welcome. Dain had sent word that the current Steward of Gondor, while having a fine enough head for military matters, was also paranoid in the extreme. Relations between them and the Rohirrim were strained and any other race was treated with such hostile suspicion as to be not worth the journey.
They biggest profit came from the sea, sailors who needed repairs on ships, compasses, sails, and oddities that his people had never before needed to create. But such work was seasonal and best suited to those who worked with wood.
Frerin and Kíli turned out to be excellent at such things.
Thorin had to work in human settlements and make horseshoes, so many forsaken horseshoes, day in and day out.
And Thorin was one of the luckier ones in having transferable skills. Having been a thriving people for a thousand years, being homeless wanderers was…
There weren't really words for what they were.
Dís who was more jeweller than smith ended up staying in the mountains to manage court.
She hated it, and she used her unrestrained power to ensure any dwarvish lord who sought too much personal gain or slowed down the court with petty complaints received the full dose of disdain only a dwarrowdame could in part.
Of course, now that the winter had begun, the court was now his responsibility.
Thorin sighed, staring up at his ceiling as his mind swirled with any way he could improve his people's condition.
At least he had managed to secure a few contracts for wedding bands and jewellery gifts for Dís, it wasn't much, but it was still a small profit she could make from her own craft.
Thorin didn't flinch when his door cracked open. He knew that small shadow and merely pulled back the covers in welcome.
Kíli crept into his room, burying himself into Thorin's side after what he knew to be yet another nightmare. Kíli typically went to his mother but Thorin wasn't home often nowadays, so in the winter Kíli went to him.
Thorin was glad to be able to offer such shelter still, it made him feel not entirely useless.
Still, the tears that fell onto his chest just about broke his heart as he gathered the dwarfling closer.
"I miss him too," Thorin whispered.
Kíli clung to him and mumbled something into his coat.
Thorin's heart twisted painfully, "He was your brother, you loved him and he loved you. That's all that matters."
"I couldn't save him," Kíli said.
Thorin held him closer, "It was not your fault, dearest Kíli. It was my duty to protect you all. It was I who failed you."
Kíli shook his head, "Don't leave? Uncle Thorin, please don't leave again."
Thorin hushed him, looking up at the ceiling feeling lost.
He knew his sister blamed herself, but the past could not be changed and they still had Kíli. Their dearest Kíli. It was all he had to hold onto.
There was a knock on his door.
Whoever it was, didn't wait to be welcomed in, two familiar forms entered.
Thorin sighed, "I suppose it's one of those nights."
Kíli looked up, "Amad?"
Dís pulled back the covers, followed by Frerin, the three of them cuddled around their youngest prince.
Kíli, for his part, did his best to cling to all of them.
For once Mahal was with them as the nightmares passed them.
oOo
Death was an unwelcome guest in Hobbiton, one who took more than was ever meant to be given. For the first time since the borders had been settled without contestment, families were broken beyond repair. Where hobbits were extremely particular about their family trees, when the snow melted an uncommon amount of fauntlings found themselves without parents.
While it seemed quite the jest to the Big Folk that hobbits ate seven meals a day, it wasn't something they did out of gluttony. No, much like hummingbirds needing to eat nearly constantly to fuel themselves, so did hobbits. Their bodies burned through energy stores and difficult winters proved why fat hobbits were so valued.
The hobbits who ate well to gain weight despite working beneath the sun, saw the end of winter. Whereas most of their thinner hobbits and their sickly didn't make it through.
There was also the sad truth that starving hobbits are not at their wisest. As many died to hunger as were killed by the predators that had roamed their lands, catching those who ventured outside their hobbit holes.
Such as it was, they had lost some fauntlings but mostly adults as the fauntlings were always prioritised and worried over. Of those who were orphaned, most found their extended families, but others?
Some were too young to know their family trees, knowing their parents only as mom and dad.
And yes, should these things be documented, of course. But reporting to the Thain had fallen out of style and families had been forced to burn some of their books in hopes of lighting sodden logs in their dwindling stoves.
Fíli Baggins was assumed by those in Buckland to be directly related to Bilbo as those in the Shire believed Fíli related to Drogo, some cousin or other.
For three years, any oddities of Fíli's were ignored in favour of him being the heir to Bag End and thus a desirable hobbit to be in the good graces of.
If Fíli was stronger than most nor his feet not particularly hairy, it was ignored for the quality of his blue eyes and the golden shade of his hair that everyone insisted matched the Thain's hair when he was young.
Bilbo didn't know an extraordinarily a lot about dwarves, but he knew they valued their hair. So Bilbo never cut it short, trimming it to shoulder length and tying it back in a ponytail, sometimes with little braids, sometimes with one big one. He also grew out his own hair in solidarity which Fíli in turn took great pleasure in weaving flowers into his curly braids.
Bilbo was reluctant to travel, Fíli's apparent fear of travelling didn't inspire him to venture far, not even in the height of summer.
This was true of most hobbits in those days. And the winter that followed the Fell Winter was filled with anxiety despite its mildness. Bilbo still had nightmares of killing the dwarf who murdered his mother.
Fíli still had night terrors about his uncles, his father, his mother, and his older brother being murdered.
Most nights they hid from them together, Bilbo telling him stories of grand elves and silly hobbits.
Was Bilbo too young to be a parent, yes, but there were too many broken families with too many mouths to feed for any real fuss to be made.
Besides, Bilbo wouldn't be the first hobbit to become a father before his majority, nor was Fíli an infant for others to be overly concerned about.
For a time, they were both accepted by all save for the Sackville-Bagginses who were resentful of the new inheritor of Bag End.
Now that the third winter after the Fell had come and gone, Bilbo was beginning to look forward, hesitantly, to the future.
Fíli was a bright lad who soaked up histories, played a marvellous fiddle, and was a great artist. He was shy, but a few of the neighbour's lads called him friend and the lasses fawned over Fíli's strong form.
Still, when a familiar knock sounded on the door, Bilbo was of half a mind to throw the vase water at his overly tall guest.
Swinging open the door he glared up at the elf.
Glorfindel with hair a brighter shade of yellow-gold than Fíli's wheat-gold looked abashed as he bowed.
"Where have you been?" Bilbo demanded.
"In the Greenwood, trouble arose and the touch of evil looks to find shelter beneath its canopies."
"It's been three years ," Bilbo all but whined, voice breaking on the last.
Glorfindel knelt and pulled Bilbo into a hug. "Forgive me, my child, words cannot express my sorrow that they were taken from you so soon."
Bilbo hugged him back, feeling a great weight lifted off his shoulders that he wasn't alone in this anymore. Sure, he had extended family, but he hadn't dared to share with them the horrors he'd endured for fear of suspicion falling on Fíli.
Because it would not be taken well if the Shire learned that their finest healer, Belladonna Took-Baggins, had been murdered by a dwarf.
Finally, Bilbo pulled back, gesturing Glorfindel in for tea.
After tea had been poured and they had settled by the fire, the elf lord's long legs stretched out before him, Bilbo asked, "Who told you?"
"News reached Rivendell only a few weeks ago when the Rangers informed us that the Shire's healer and her love had been returned to the soil," Glorfindel said. "Elrond wished to come himself but he has a new ward. I've come with an invitation to stay in our halls whenever and however long you like."
Bilbo sipped his tea, "I too have a son who is too young to travel with."
Glorfindel's expression lit up, "You've married? I heard of no invitations to your wedding."
"I'm not married, and I suppose he is my ward but I see him as my own. Some days, it feels like he's the only reason to get out of bed in the morning."
Expression fallen, the elf asked, "The Fell Winter seems to have taken many from the Shire."
Bilbo sighed, "It has, but my mother died neither from the weather nor hunger."
Glorfindel went very still, and the look in his eyes was enough to send a shiver through Bilbo. This elf was so full of life, love, and laughter, that it was a frightful thing indeed to see his wrath rise.
"Who?" Glorfindel demanded, tone flat as a frozen lake.
"A dwarf, I know not his name as I avenged my mother before he could say much."
Glorfindel took his hand, "Oh, Bilbo."
"I didn't tell anyone. I know how hard things have been for dwarves in this age, but I admit, I'm afraid to send enquiries to Ered Luin to discover why…" He took a breath before finishing lamely, "Why."
"I've never heard of a dwarf robbing a hobbit on the road," Glorfindel said.
"It wasn't–"
"Da?"
They both turned to see little Fíli lingering in the hall.
Bilbo didn't have many guests and the way the dwarfling looked up at the fully grown elf with trepidation scared the hobbit.
Bilbo put down his teacup and held his arms wide.
Fíli didn't wait for further encouragement before his feet pounded the wood to jump into Bilbo's arms.
Soon enough Fíli would outgrow Bilbo, but for now and perhaps for a decade more, he would remain his little Fíli.
"Glorfindel, this is my son, Fíli Baggins, Fíli, this is my dearest friend Glorfindel, the Lord of Golden Flowers."
Fíli clung to Bilbo but peeked up at the elf who smiled at him warmly.
"It's wonderful to meet you, Fíli." Glorfindel gave no indication of knowing what his son was.
"You're an elf?" Fíli asked.
"I am," Glorfindel said. "I was just inviting you and your da to come to my home in Rivendell."
Bilbo glared at the meddling elf, holding Fíli a bit tighter as the fauntling shuddered with fear, "I don't want to back. Please don't take me away?"
Glorfindell frowned, "I wouldn't take you anywhere you wouldn't want to go, young Fíli. Least of all taking you from your father."
Fíli just shook his head.
"Fíli was taken from the Blue Mountains," Bilbo explained. "The dwarf who stole my mother took his family as well."
And I have no way to confirm that without putting him and myself in danger, went unspoke but heard.
Glorfindel's lips thinned, and he inclined his head in understanding.
"Master Fíli, please look at me," Glorfindel said as he went to kneel before Bilbo's seat.
Fíli looked up at him with palpable reservation.
Glorfindel placed a hand over his own heart, his hair spilling around his shoulders like spun gold in the firelight, "Bilbo is family to me, which means you are my kin as well."
"But I'm a dwarf," Fíli whispered.
"Rare are the friendships between dwarves and elves in this age," Glorfindel said. "But once made, such bonds are blessed by the stars themselves. I pledge to you, Fíli, son of Bilbo, son of Belladonna, the same loyalty and affection that I would hold for my own children."
Fíli stared at him for a long moment before bowing his head in acknowledgement.
Slowly, with clear intention, Glorfindel lowered his head so that elf, hobbit, and dwarfling rested their foreheads against each other. He whispered in Sindarin a word whose true meaning meant a promise of love.
Love unlooked for but cherished beyond reason.
Such was the nature of their language that even unknown, some portion of it would always be understood.
Fíli reached up to hug the elf and Bilbo felt his heart fill to bursting.
Family was about so much more than blood.
oOo
They woke early the next morning, the dwarfling not stirring even as the sun crested the hills.
Glorfindel was furious, beyond furious.
While he had long been fond of hobbits, Belladonna had been especially dear to him. She was the first mortal in age he had allowed himself to open his heart to, knowing that such a daughter would only bring him heartbreak.
And little Bilbo whose destiny shimmered like mithril beneath the sunlight, a son who had taken his heart without his knowing it.
But Belladonna had been stolen from them far too soon and Glorfindel despised that Bilbo had been forced to spill blood before he had even reached his majority.
"Glorfindel?"
He turned to look at his little hobbit, "I regret failing you, Bilbo. I regret it more than I can say."
Bilbo shook his head and humbled him once again, "I know that time is different for you, that years can pass as days. I know that when I am old and those same years are rushing past you you will remember her forever as she was when I've forgotten the shade of eye colour and the sound of her voice when she sings. You are here, and I would rather you be here than for you to keep away, knowing you cannot be other than you are."
Glorfindel let out a long breath, his heart shuddering as Bilbo echoed those of a love he had lost long ago. "I will visit more often, dwarflings age more slowly than hobbits, but I don't wish to miss it."
"The Shire doesn't know," Bilbo divulged as he prepared a travel bag for him with scones and jarred jams and honey. "I don't know if it's right, but rumours are dangerous things, and I can't– I will not let the wrong people find him."
Glorfindel fisted his hands, "Fíli has told you nothing of his past?"
"His family was slaughtered in front of him," Bilbo said, words fierce with protective fury. "I know only that his brother was named Kíli."
"Does he know why it happened?"
"No, but I think he was unconscious for most of the way to the Shire. His head wound was dreadful, I didn't let him sleep for longer than two hours for a week."
Glorfindel shook his head, "It is not uncommon for dwarves to come to blows with one another, but it is almost unheard of for them to target their own women and children. It is not done."
"How afraid should I be?" Bilbo asked.
"The Rangers are more cautious than they were," Glorfindel said. "And after I speak with Elrond, I believe we can add more elves to their numbers."
"But?" Bilbo prompted.
"You cannot hide what he is from the Shire folk forever, and it will do him more harm then good."
"I don't want to give him back to his people. If I knew he would be safe, I'd take him to the Iron Hills and raise him there. But I don't think I would be welcome and I couldn't leave him with strangers. Dwarves are more secretive than elves."
"Especially, in this age," Glorfindel agreed. "I will go to Ered Luin and request an audience with their King. He should know his own people, and if nothing else, I imagine he would like to know what happened to a dwarfling in his care."
"Not to mention nearly declaring war on Hobbiton."
That caught Glorfindel by surprise and he raised a brow, "I would not like to see your people go to war."
"My mother was the Thain's favourite daughter. If it came to light that the dwarves sent not so much as a formal apology, trade to the Blue Mountains and any of their allies would be severed."
Glorfindel tilted his head, "How much do they rely on the Shire's harvests?"
"The majority of us are farmers," Bilbo explained. "And we only need one fourth of what we grow. The dwarves, as far as I know, grow next to nothing of their own. Even if they could go without as many greens, if the human settlements they trade with more immediately were also cut off from them…"
Glorfindel suppressed a malicious smile. He had never hated dwarves, cursed their stubbornness at times, but never hated them until now, when they had taken one of his daughters and orphaned two of his sons.
"But I won't do that," Bilbo said. "I will not make more innocents suffer for these tragedies."
Glorfindel's heart softened and he brushed a hand over Bilbo's golden brown hair that had grown surprisingly long in the way of elves, "If only all the peoples of this world were so generous and wise."
"There would be less wars," Bilbo said.
Glorfindel laughed, dropping to his knees to pull the little hobbit into another hug, "I am so proud of you. I will stay longer when I return this way."
"I'll hold you to it," Bilbo said, holding on tight. "You owe my son stories."
Glorfindel heard the fear in that sentence that the dwarves might still have a rightful claim on Fíli and that Glorfindel would return to take him away.
He needn't have worried.
Perhaps, if Glorfindel had sent a letter ahead of himself, he would have been greeted at the gates of Ered Luin with less hostility.
But he doubted it.
He didn't dismount as the gates were shut for the night and the guards on the ramparts chose to shout down at him as if he was a beggar at their door.
"Get lost, elf!"
Glorfindel sighed and called back, "I am a Lord of Rivendell, I request an audience with your king."
"Denied!" another guard shouted.
Glorfindel bit back a growl, his mount dancing below him as his body tensed. "I request an audience with King Thorin Oakenshield!"
"Why?" the first guard shouted.
"A dwarf from Ered Luin has murdered my daughter," Glorfindel shouted, his temper rising for the indignity of this moment and the ignorance of these people.
"It was deserved!" the second declared even as his partner on the watch swore at him in Khuzdel.
But Glorfindel had had enough. He was not a hobbit to forgive an insult such as this. These guards might have no political power, they might be poor representatives for their people, but if the guards had no respect for their own lords to even pass a message then Oakenshield's rule was doomed.
Oakenshield was either a weak king who inspired neither loyalty or respect or a cruel one that his dwarves in his command could be so flippant in the face of a foreign ambassador.
"If you will not grant my request for audience then you will pass along this message, that Ered Luin has renounced any goodwill Rivendell had held for them. You will come to regret this night."
"Are you threatening war?" the first guard asked, his voice breaking.
"No," Glorfindel said, a coldness entering his being. "But when you come for our aid, you will be received as beggars at the door."
The second dwarf shot an arrow at him which Glorfindel knocked away with his blade.
Any chance of him following up with a letter, any chance that Glorfindel would allow Bilbo near these people or return his Fíli to them perished in that action.
This night would be regretted by all.
oOo
Thorin looked up, startled as his office door was banged open. Dwalin dragged two of his guardsmen behind him by their collars and threw them on the floor before Thorin's desk.
Balin rose from his seat, "Brother?"
Dwalin shook his head, his face red with fury, he was so angry he couldn't immediately speak. He kicked one of the guards.
That guard whimpered, curling in on himself, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry," Dwalin seethed. "You nearly started a war, and the best you can do is sorry!"
Balin's expression went dark, "What happened?"
Thorin felt the headache building.
The other guard said, "An elf came to the gate last night."
Thorin already hated whatever was about to be said.
Especially, given Dwalin's expression that indicated they might owe an elf an apology.
"Why?" Thorin asked, voice low.
"To request an audience with you," the guard whimpered.
"And you chose not to relay this message," Balin said, tone flat belying his own rising anger.
"Where was he from?" Thorin asked.
"Rivendell," the moron responded. "He said he was a lord from Rivendell."
Thorin sighed, he hated elves, like most dwarrow from Erebor, he hated elves, but that didn't translate as a desire to make enemies out of the ones they had no conflict with.
Dwalin stomped on the second guards kidney causing the dwarf to squawk. Dwalin's voice grew darker with every syllable, "Speak before being stripped of your position becomes the least of your worries."
"He accused a dwarf of murdering his daughter."
The silence in the room was resounding.
Thorin slammed a fist against his desk and swore, "Did they declare war?"
"No," the first guard said. "He said that there would be no goodwill from Rivendell and that if we needed their help we would be treated like beggars at their door."
Thorin despised that phrasing, but he also hadn't lost a daughter to a cold-blooded murder.
"Take them away, they are to be imprisoned, working in the lowest mines until word is returned from Rivendell. Until then, they will toil before their final fates are decided," Thorin instructed. "Dwalin, find out who and when an elf woman was murdered."
"Did the lord give a name?" Balin asked as more guards came in to drag the other two away.
They had the minimal sense to go quietly.
"Glorfindel," Dwalin said.
Balin went ashen, leaning against his own desk for support.
"I know that name," Thorin muttered. "He's one of the older ones, isn't he?"
"The Lord of Golden Flowers," Balin murmured. "He's Twice Born. He was mortally wounded after slaying a Balrog. Where his first body was buried grew golden flowers, but he was reborn in Valinor before returned to Middle Earth. Some say his powers are equal to that of a wizard."
Thorin dropped his head into his hands, "Mahal save us."
Balin began muttering about letters and a council was called regarding the incident.
No one was able to find any information about an elf slain by a dwarf.
Messages were sent to the Iron Hills and Dain's people could not find so much as a rumour of it.
With nothing to show for their efforts, they could only request that Lord Glorfindel provide any information to aid their investigation.
But all they received from the Lord of Golden Flowers was a warning that elves had been added to the Ranger's patrol of the western roads and entrance to Hobbiton would be strictly monitored.
If any dwarf refused to state their identity and business with the hobbits they would be met with hostile force.
This sent Balin into a panic.
"What?" Thorin demanded. "They're just halflings, we have no ill will toward them. I don't think anyone does."
Balin looked sick, "The Shire produces most of the food west of the Misty mountains. If the elves cut off trade between us or our allies surrounding the Blue Mountains, no amount of coin would get us through the winter."
Thorin hated elves, he truly did.
oOo
AN: Thank you for the feedback, it already spurred an extra chapter! I have about 50k written though none of it edited, so anything you want added, what fits, I can include :D