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It took a while for Gandalf to piece the story together, and when he did he was quite tempted to turn Thorin, son of Thrain, son Thrör, into something revolting and his injuries be damned. It was just the sort of complicated mess of things that one could only trust a Dwarf and a hobbit to come up with.
“We were wed in all but proclamation.” The King Under the Mountain maintained from what had nearly been his deathbed. “She had no right to sign away her share of the treasure as if it were not in part mine.”
“If there was no statement of your state of wedded bliss, Thorin, precisely how was she to know of any claim you had on what she had rightfully earned during this adventure?” Gandalf countered, standing hunched over and ill-at-ease in the tent Thorin was yet to ill to be moved from.
Fili was the only of Durin’s line well enough to sit up and watch the proceedings going on across that cramped tent with interest, but this did not mean he was alone. Despite the bloody stump that now made an end of Kili’s leg just below his left knee and the bandages ringing it the younger of Thorin’s two heirs listened with interest. Neither of the two young dwarven warriors had gotten through the battle so well that they would be moving any time soon, but both had been lucky enough to escape with their wits and lives intact, as indeed had all of those twelve dwarves who had followed Thorin in his quest.
“We had lain together!” Thorin struggled to sit up, and as the pain in his gut and chest overwhelmed him he collapsed again, wheezing and glaring up at the wizard towering over him. “We had lain together, and she presented me the Arkenstone as a gift with love in front of the entire party. In those exact words.”
“May all that is holy and right preserve us from the nearsightedness of dwarves.” Gandalf huffed out and stood up straight, his hat pressing up against the cloth roof of the tent and leaving both the roof and the hat more ruffled for it. “Thorin Oakenshield, while I am willing to take you as an expert on the art of dwarven courtship and marriage may I ask what has led you to think you are equally universally versed in such things in the customs of Hobbits?”
Thorin’s glare, fierce and cruel, faltered momentarily. Anger kindled against one he loved and believed had wronged him deeply didn’t quench immediately, but the flames flickered enough to induce silence in the exhausted, injured warrior.
“You mean she didn’t know that she was Uncle’s Betrothed?” Fili – as would any dwarf – seemed rather shocked at this idea. “But they had-.”
“I am unfortunately very well aware of exactly what your Uncle and Miss Baggins have gotten up to on the latter part of this journey, Fili.” Gandalf sighed and finally knelt down beside the young dwarf, nudging him gently back down so that he was laying on his cot and properly taking his rest under the guise of checking the bindings and splints of Fili’s sorely broken arm. “What I am saying is that cohabitation is not a universal code for marriage.”
The dwarves seemed absolutely shocked to hear this news and Gandalf, ever the opportunist, took quick advantage of this to pounce.
“In fact, marriage is taken just as seriously amongst Hobbits as it is amongst Dwarves.” Gandalf went on more conversationally. “It is, in fact, unthinkable for a proper honorable Hobbit lass of decent heritage to, how shall we say, indulge before an exchange of vows. For, you see, that is what Hobbits require. Betrothals must be formally announced and met with a contract, and weddings are met with the same, however the contract must be signed by no fewer than two male relatives and two female relatives – both married no less than fifty-five years – and seven unimpeachable widows as witnesses. All in red ink, of course.”
“So they never…?” Kili asked weakly, looking quite boggled.
“Well, obviously, occasionally they do… allow things to proceed the official signing of the contract, as you might say.” Gandalf added almost offhandedly, fishing out his pipe. “However it is a matter of the greatest trust, you understand, because if a marriage doesn’t result, well, the reputation and honor of the hobbit-woman in question is tainted forever.”
Thorin looked visibly shaken, and Gandalf chose that moment to pull up a stool and sit down and light his pipe. Kili and Fili were themselves more than content to stare at their uncle breathlessly, awaiting some response to this new information, before their injuries – and the herbs Gandalf had slipped into the water they’d been given earlier – combined to put them back to sleep. When, after two bowlfuls, Thorin had yet to speak, Gandalf got up and left the stubborn king to his thoughts and went instead in search of Thranduil to speak of matters more grave – if less dear to him – than the fate of Bibla Baggins’ honor.
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It took months for Thorin’s body to heal, and the time only served to deepen the wounds he’d carved in his own heart. Actions which in the eyes he’d looked with at the time seemed full of righteous wrath and honorable hurt now seemed foolish.
Yes, there was some thought that the roots of Hobbits had lain with Dwarves. They had many similiarities. First and most obvious was in size, for while Dwarves were larger and more robust halflings were certainly closer to dwarven-folk in size and shape than were Men. Moreover, what had lent strength to the dwarven theory that hobbits had once been some relative of theirs long removed was that hobbits and dwarves could still share blood and bear healthy children. Children who were, in fact, so inclined to take after their dwarven parents in blood that there was no need for the Dwarven parent’s line to be considered broken.
For it was a simple reality that dwarven women were a rare and precious commodity. Not all married and those that did were as fiercely possessed and possessive that they took but one spouse in their life. So, though the long memory of dwarves could not produce an instance of it happening in the past two dozen or so generations of dwarves, Thorin had been well-aware that he could take Bibla Baggins for a wife and still sire children to continue the line of Durin.
He’d simply gone about it like some hill-born fool and nothing like the prince he’d been raised to be. What would his grandfather say to him now to have seen his idiocy? Had his childhood tutors not warned him to pay less attention to his sword studies and more to diplomacy? How many times at his father’s knee had he seen Thror or Thrain greet the men of Dale in the common tongue with human gestures rather than simply translating dwarven ways into the speech of Men?
Now in hindsight?
When Bibla had placed the Arkenstone in his hand, newly recovered and with its starlike lights shining in her eyes, he had taken it as the best of marriage gifts. She who had helped him regain his home and throne now set in his hand the symbol of both. His line would endure through their union and children and she was flaunting it to him in a way that dwarven maidens would swoon over for centuries to come, or so he’d thought at least.
What he’d taken as a gesture of supreme confidence now seemed instead to be a gesture of hope and perhaps a plea. For if what the Wizard said was true then she had had no assurance of honorable marriage from him at all; he had not spoken to her of it, had he? No, he had merely assumed she would know.
As he had assumed that – knowing that they were wed – she would know that all their possessions and powers were joined now. Which meant that the large share of the golden hoard of his people she claimed was as much his as hers. This in turn meant that when she’d offered her share to Bard the Bowman, to split with that cursed elven king, she had been denying their bond. That she had been denying him when she fought back to his arrogant claim that she had no right to do so by naming all she’d done on the quest.
It had seemed then that Bibla had been throwing his affections into his face, and casting his love back into his teeth. That there was no marriage and whatever fleshy union they had shared was nothing more. That he, Thorin, Thrain’s son, was a rejected dwarf, cast aside after he’d offered love.
His pride had rebelled and his heart had broken so he had accepted the deal and granted the Man the gold that Bibla would have brought back into his people’s hands through their union… and cast Bibla away in retaliation for her doing the same to him.
Her eyes at that moment haunted him. Pleading first and worried, then that flash of raw pain that he did not understand and infuriated him in his own jilted suffering. Followed by the same stubborn pride he’d seen in the light of those burning trees as she saved his life for what had been the first time but what had not been the last. Then later, in the skinchanger’s house when he had pushed her into that darkened corner and granted them the scant privacy of spreading his furs over them both as he took her on the floor…
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“The mountain prospers.” Balin offered, a hand on his shoulder. “As do your heirs. Fili will make a fine king some day.”
“Aye, but an unwilling one.” Thorin shook his head, pride warring with pain as he watched Fili fulfill the duties Thorin had laid upon his shoulder’s for the day. “Neither he nor Kili ever wanted the throne, though they would both do it honor.”
“True.” Balin replied, and because he was a brave soul even amongst dwarves and also Thrain’s closest friend and cousin, went on. “Then again, I had often believed that of all their reasons for affection for the Halfling it started with the hope that she would spare them the need to fill your shoes one day.”
Thorin’s hands turned white on the newly rebuilt battlements of the great gate of Erebor, but he allowed the truth to flow with a nod. He’d refused to speak of their burglar since the wizard had given word that Bibla had not been seen since the height of the battle. Nor had she been recovered amongst the dead, his heart whispered back, but what did that matter to him? Dead or fled he’d cast aside a treasure worth more than gold or any jewel and now how could he expect her to return to him? He told Balin as such and trusted that that would be the end of it; Balin had often counseled him in his youth, before his pride was all that held their people together and kept them fed, to be more humble. Now at least he could say he was trying.
“You’re not wrong, my King.” Balin replied, staring off over the hills with the same pained expression that always touched his face when he thought of his own wife and sons; lost in dragon’s fire so long ago. “However if this quest has taught us nothing then it has shown us that treasures - whether stolen, lost, or cast aside – never return themselves anyway; they must be sought and retaken.”
The wind – light and soft and nothing like a hurricane and doom – brushed over the bannerless parapet beside them and Thorin turned to gaze out over the desolation of smaug and the soft touches of green that could now be seen. Once winter had come and passed and spring returned Thorin felt that the last of the blackened and twisted grasses and low trees would fall and be covered by new growth. It seemed to mock his loneliness and the very real chance…
“What I search for – should I search for it?” Thorin forced himself to voice what he did not want to acknowledge. “It could well be beyond any’s reach now.”
“Aye, laddie,” Balin’s voice was soft with old sorrow. “nobody will you find who understands that better than I, but of all the things in life you have been you have never been a coward.”
The king’s head jerked around to stare down at the shorter dwarf and his forked white beard. Balin returned the gaze with the same level wisdom he’d greeted and impatient young dwarven princling’s appeals to be released from his history lessons to join Balin’s younger brother in games of martial skill.
Two days later Fili sat upon the throne of Erebor as regent with Kili standing beside him; still slightly unsteady on the steel and gold prosthetic that Thorin’s own hands had fastened his sister-son, but unable to be pried from his brother’s side. On Fili’s other side Balin stood a soft smile on his face. As the great gates of Erebor swung open – not yet restored, but now at least steady and whole – Thorin Oakenshield and a slightly reduced company of dwarves marched west.
A day later a moth landed upon the brim of a battered and pointy gray hat and a wizard sighed in relief.
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The warm and comfortable hole in the ground in Hobbiton did not contain Miss Bibla Baggins. Instead Thorin and his company saw a strange – and grim-looking – hobbit woman and what appeared to be her rotund and pretentious husband in residence. As there had been a slight disagreement as to choice of roads to take at the last crossroads it was Bofur who made this discovery. He Ori, and Nori had taken the one way while Thorin and Dwalin had taken the other.
The news they had was painful for the grim-looking hobbit woman primly informed them – and, really, if these were any example Bibla had been a very laid-back hobbit when they had met her – that Miss Bibla Baggins had never returned from her “adventure” and that Bag End was now the residence of the Sackville-Bagginses. She said so with a hint of derision no less that didn’t leave Bofur the least bit sorry for the fact that Nori had made a bit free with the hateful hobbit-woman’s silver.
It was a cruel blow to deliver to Thorin, whose life had been so full of cruel blows, and no member of the party voiced a complaint when instead of taking road and inn on their journey back Thorin wanted to go directly overland and save time. He had nothing left to call to him except his home and his Kingdom. None of the others had the heart to try and convince him otherwise, so why protest? They had no reason to be in the Shire anyway, and by turning directly southwest from Hobbiton they would get to the Blue Mountains faster to escort the next wave of their people home.
As the more rolling hills of Hobbiton gave way to the rangier hills and clumps of wilder trees that filled the land of Tookborough it was their misfortune to come across a stream that was too swollen with rain for their ponies to easily cross. Going along the edge of a spate of woods they crossed a quaint footbridge and over a turnrow or two before coming around a hill to see one of the now familiar round doors, this one freshly painted a familiar green. Though Thorin turned his head from the warm golden glow of the windows in the dim evening light Bofur cleared his throat and presented the fact that they did need to resupply soon and hobbits offered fairer value for their produce than the Men who lived in tiny settlements dotted along the wilderness that stood between the Shire and the Blue Mountains.
Dwarven thrift won out, as it was bound to, and the King Underneath the Mountain grunted his permission and turned their party towards the light. Thorin gestured Bofur towards the green door with a nod and looked over his shoulder at the more distant glints of candlelit glass he saw there. A line of wilder hills in the near distance were so dotted with these glows that he took it to mean that he was near the greatest building or settlements of hobbits he’d seen yet and some part of his mind dredged up Bilba talking about her kin, the Tooks, and their ancestral home near here.
At Bofur’s polite knock on the door Thorin’s heart ached and he sincerely wished for nothing so much as a quick flight from this torturous place; he and his people would go around the Shire and its taunting comforts on their way back to Erebor and hang the extra time.
“Come in, Rosemary, it’s unlocked!” A familiar voice yelled, sweet and tired sounding the chill early winter light of the sickle moon. “Just don’t expect me to get up!”
Bofur barely had time to get out of the way before his king had shoved past him and swung the round, green, door open.
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Bilba was exhausted in a way that no fight with an orc or warg or goblin had never left her. Twenty months – 600 days by the Hobbit calendar – was the expected gestation for a female hobbit. It was a rather simple thing, and one did not expect complications from it. Big families were a daily sight all over the Shire on either side of the river, and Bilba came from good sturdy stock on both sides; Took and Baggins. That was just the way of things. Babies were made in the usual fashion – inside marriage of course – and baked the proscribed amount of time in their mother’s belly, and then somewhere between 19 and 20 months a little hobbit lad or lass entered the world. Any problems with the process were most unusual and remarked upon for many days by the local matrons who would have – of course – been called upon to assist in the birth.
Bilba had not enjoyed the heart appetite and expectant glow she’d expected though. She’d attributed it at first to the way in which she’d found out she was pregnant. Unmarried and with a loving but harsh Dwarven King as the father, and no offer of marriage ever mentioned was a bad way to discover you were with child. When you added to that the arrogance of the dwarf in question very nearly guaranteeing his death in the face of allies and enemies’ temper alike, well, she’d been in a horrible frame of mind to realize she was with child.
Then there was the reality that no marriage offer would ever come. She’d been cast out over claiming what she’d earned anyway and… Bibla didn’t care to go over it again. It only reminded her of her own foolishness into rushing into battle – invisible or not – while with child. Thankfully she’d been uninjured, though for quite a bit she’d worried that the battle itself might lend some explanation to her condition.
For from the time she’d started to visibly increase – which almost directly coincided with the weeks before her return to the shire – she’d been more horrendously sick than she had ever been in her life. No dainty, no matter how sweet or desired, could stir her appetite – and unthought of thing for a hobbit! – and no food, no matter how bland, could be prevented from coming up as often as it stayed down.
And so her pregnancy proceeded. Not wanting to sentence her future child – a prince or princess unwanted by his king and a baby rejected by a father who didn’t even know it existed – to the stares and harshness of Hobbiton Bibla had come to a hard decision. She’d quietly sold Bag End under the table to her relations, retaining only those things too precious to her to let go. Her lawyers – equally happy to save what little reputation she had left – had gone along with it and staged an “estate” sale in which all the things she’d wanted were already “spoken for”.
Availing herself of an almost forgotten Hobbit custom – though one still known of as it was of too good a use to be forgotten entirely - Bibla Baggins was quietly declared dead without any paperwork actually surfacing to support it at the exact same time Bibla Took took up residence in a nice, snug little hole near the Great Smials in Tookborough. Tookborough was in and of itself a less stringent place than Hobbiton and did not look as askance at an unwed expectant mother as other places would. Beyond that, though, it was politely ignored that she’d once had another name and Bibla was simply described as “a widowed cousin returned from Bree”. If none of the expected suitors showed up to court a rich, comely, fertile young widow, well, that was to be expected when her dead husband was all smoke and fancy.
After losing the dwarf she’d loved and any respect and affection he might have for her, however, and facing dragons and orcs and all manner of terrifying things Bibla could honestly say she didn’t care a white for propriety. Saving her child from future gossip and wrapping him or her in the strong protection of Took clannishness was her goal and that achieved she settled down as happily as she could to wait for her baby to come.
And wait, and wait, it turned out.
Six hundred and twenty days pregnant Bibla had finally given into the worry that had gripped the apprentice midwife and maid she’d hired to live in with her after the second time she awoke on her floor from a faint. The baby was strong enough to leave her feeling bruised and battered, thank goodness, but it just… wasn’t coming. She was sitting in the her favorite armchair in her smaller-but-still-pleasant sitting room with her feet propped up on a stool and turning this very real problem over in her mind when a sharp rap came at her door.
Believing it to be Rosemary Took – for her maid/midwife was also her second cousin, once removed – Bibla did what was natural and yelled for her to let herself in. She hadn’t felt up to answering her own door for a good month as it was and she wasn’t even sure if she COULD get out of a comfortable armchair without help these days.
The sight of Thorin Oakenshield, in his furs and with his gray-streaked black hair standing silhouetted against the moon in her doorway, however, made her sincerely wish that she’d put her ring in her pocket instead of locking it away in an envelope in her trunk.
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“You,” If Thorin’s heart had stopped beating in strangled hope at the sound of her voice, at the sight of her – hair honey colored and limned in firelight – set it scrambling at the pace of one of Radagast’s hares. “Bibla, you’re with child!”
Considering that the woman he yet considered his wife – rejected or not Thorin had every ounce of possessiveness every expected of any Dwarven king – looked as though she were hiding a large melon underneath her shift and dressing gown it was a very logical conclusion to reach.
“What are you doing here?!” Bibla demanded at the same time, and Thorin’s heart ached as her face twisted from hope and longing – unless he was merely imagining the latter – into fear. Worse, he watched what little color she had – when had she gotten so pale? – drain as one of her small round hands pressed against the mound of her stomach and the other scrambled for purchase on her armchair as she tried – and failed – to rise from it.
“How could you not have told me?!” Thorin had not meant to start this – had not meant to find her and meet her with more harsh words, but he had never been good at sweet speech and his temper was what it was. “You’re with child! My child!”
“How could I have told you?!” Bibla replied, her voice as harsh with accusation as his and this time she managed to heave herself out of the chair and stand. “If you’ll recall, your majesty, I was told that I would return to your sight under pain of death!”
Thorin felt his face heat at the truth of her words, but it was what she said next that drew a flinch from him when so much injury and indignity in his long life had not.
“Though I suppose that is a handy way of disposing of royal bastards!” Bibla got the final word in with ringing authority and somewhere on the front step Dwalin cringed as Ori, Bofur, and Nori hummed in sympathy for their king.
“That is-,” Thorin didn’t actually know what he was going to say to deflect that blatant untruth – no dwarf was ever born a bastard for marriage and promise came with action not just contract and oath! – but his efforts were forestalled rather tidily anyway.
It was very hard to argue with someone who’d just fainted into your arms after all.
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Bibla awoke as she had off and on for the last twenty-plus months; laying on her bed with her head flat on the feather tick and her feet propped up on the pillows that should have been behind her head. A fit of the vapors, lovely. Hopefully she’d imagined…
At that point Bibla finally opened her eyes and became aware of several things.
First of all, she was awake, tucked into bed in her baggy maternity shift, and second of all, she was not at all mistaken about the reappearance of dwarves on her front step. In fact she could hear Thorin’s voice – and Dwalin’s and Nori’s – raised in her living room as she spoke. Not to mention Rosemary’s, and wasn’t waking up to the sound of Thorin Oakenshield trying to moderate his temper while simultaneously reasoning with a Took lass in the worst part of her tweens just the sweetest thing she’d heard in years?
Heaving herself unsteadily out of bed and forsaking her slippers as a tripping risk with what her balance was she made her way to the doorway between the kitchen and her bedroom. There she was faced with a realization. Dwarves and their taste for revenge might not be as incompressible as all that after all. Because the sight of Rosemary – a petite and curvy little beauty of a hobbit with golden ringlets, grass green eyes, and the temperament of a badger with the itch – was currently being held back from assaulting the King Under the Mountain only by Dwalin and Nori’s grip on her arms. Bofur and Ori both were sitting on the floor by the door into the living room, each holding a hand over their head and looking rather shaken.
The reason for this was fairly obvious as Dwalin was sporting a developing bruise of respectable proportions on the side of his bald head and a sizable chunk of firewood lay abandoned at Rosemary’s feet. Clearly lumber was the weapon of choice for a half-trained midwife defending her cousin/patient/employer.
“Rosemary, stop that this instant, Dwalin, Nori, put my cousin down.” Bibla ordered, misliking how her voice shook. “And watch your shins.”
If the last warning was a touch too late to prevent the King Under the Mountain from receiving a leathery, rock hard hobbit-heel to said shin, just above his boots, well, Bibla didn’t think she or Rosemary could be blamed. Besides, it warmed her heart considerably when her young cousin scrambled past the dwarven warriors with impressive agility and took up a post in front of her larger cousin.
“Are you all right?” Rosemary demanded at the exact same moment Thorin reached and bodily picked up the girl and returned her to Dwalin’s grinning grip.
Only years for experience as a warrior, Bibla reflected, saved Balin’s brother from similar kicking, and he still got slapped somewhere in the process before Bibla waved a sharp hand at Thorin and, for once, he stepped aside and let her pass. Even if he hovered annoyingly behind her.
“Rosemary, I mean it, stop.” Bibla’s next statement came with a more satisfying strength, even if her legs were starting to feel like jelly left out too long in the sun. “These are my friends,” perhaps not entirely the truth, “and I don’t want them kicked.”
Or rather the only one she’d wanted kicked had already been taken care of; not that Thorin had probably felt the blow much or cared.
“Are you fellows alright?” Bibla ignored the tall dwarf standing behind her for a moment, one hand out to hold herself aloft on the kitchen mantle and the other pressed against her belly where the child within had woken up and decided to upset her balance with an impromptu game of football.
“Just fine, Bibla.” Bofur was the first to say, his usual welcoming smile on his face.
“Yes, are you?” Orí asked, his concern genuine.
“I’m alright.” Bibla answered automatically.
“You very well are not.” Rosemary interrupted from where Dwalin had now set her on the ground in front of him with only one hand on the young hobbitess’ shoulder. “You fainted again, didn’t you?”
“Apparently.” Bibla shrugged. “Rosemary, I need you to go back to your mother’s house for a bit and-.”
“The only place I’m going is directly to the Thrain!” Rosemary, bless her, glared at the dwarves as though she weren’t the least bit afraid even though her hands were shaking. “They have no call to burst in upon a woman in her home and – and – do whatever it was they were doing!”
“I was seeing to the care of my wife and child.” Thorin shot back, and Bibla wanted to either scream or cry or just fall backwards into the relief of it when she felt one of those hard, strong arms that he so undone her in the wilds come around her shoulders to support her. “I have more right to be here than anyone.”
Then the content of his statement sunk in and Bibla felt her jaw practically unhinge itself.
“You’re what?” The very pregnant hobbit demanded, turning too quickly. She would have surely fallen entirely and the room swam a bit as it was, even with Thorin’s hands framing her shoulders and supporting her. “I most sincerely do not recall any such thing as a marriage between us, Thorin Oakenshild, let alone even something as simple as an offer!”
“Not even an offer?” Rosemary sounded equally scandalized and impressed, as the young often will. “My goodness you did have an adventure, didn’t you?”
Bibla waved a hand at the girl behind her back, and glared up at the Dwarven King. Thorin, for perhaps the first time in his life, had the grace to look sheepish.
“Bibla, there has been a misunderstanding.” The King Under the Mountain said gravely and Bibla Baggins-Took did the only thing she could under such circumstances.
She burst into tears.
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Bibla safely tucked into bed beside him and her cousin safely locked in the kitchen brewing some foul-smelling tea that he was assured was a necessary aspect of midwifery, Thorin could finally rest at some ease. Bibla had forgiven him and acknowledged him as her husband and father of the child she carried. Durin’s line was secure and his honor returned to him. Though what the rigors of a hobbit wedding were he did not know and expected to be exasperated by before he was done as Bibla had insisted that he owed her at least a proper ceremony after everything she’d been through on his behalf. He could hardly argue the point.
“The babe doesn’t lie well, does it?” Thorin allowed himself to ask, one hand resting on the reassuringly hard kicks of his future son or daughter and the other wrapped around one of Bibla’s hands.
It was only now he had the leisure to realize that though her fingers were swollen and her stomach the same, her face was thinner than it had been on all but the worst stretches of their journey and her skin as pale as he’d noticed before. It was… troubling. Dwarven pregnancies were not easy, but despite the many irritations faced by dwarven women both they and the children they produced were more often hardy than not. Hobbits families were five times the size of dwarves on average, though, and he did not know how that could be if problems were common.
“No, no, the baby’s fine.” Bibla assured him quickly, smiling with the proud warmth of a new mother and for the first time Thorin allowed himself a rush of pride.
He’d done this. He’d put Durin’s heir in her belly and laid her in his bed and called her wife. She was his and their child was as well. If to be born in the Shire rather than Erebor then it was his own fault and perhaps the next babe would rest more easily with her. That was often the way of mothers, to have more difficulty with the first.
“And you?” Thorin asked, somewhat more assured. What did he know of midwifery, especially of the hobbit-kind?
Bibla didn’t answer for a while, and sighed softly when she did.
“I’ve been a bit under the weather, but it will be fine.” Bibla put enough stress on the last word to turn his blood cold, and she sounded… so tired. “I just need a bit more rest.”
“Aye.” Thorin nodded, his throat almost closing before he firmly took the fear by the throat and made his decision, “Of course… Rest then, I need to talk to Dwalin about stocking your pantry properly, as we’re likely to be here a while. You and the child will need all your strength to return to the Lonely Mountain with us.”
At Bibla’s smile Thorin thanked his fathers and their father’s for their mercy. She would come with him, she was glad to come with him. Pressing a kiss to her cheek and holding her until she slept he slipped out of the bed and the room only when he was sure Bibla wouldn’t wake up.
He found Orí knitting and Bofur mending his hat; both had come to some understanding with Bibla’s kin/midwife. Dwalin was slowly nursing a pint of beer, his dark eyes fixed contemplatively on the comely rear end that Rosemary Took was showing off as she replenished the kitchen hearth and carefully measured out the foul smelling herb dust into five different small cups and poured hot water from a kettle into the first.
“That is medicinal.” Thorin stated, standing at the end of the kitchen table and staring down at the stripling girl.
While better disposed to them now than before she tilted her chin up and met his gaze with primness that was familiar enough to instill her insubordinate behavior from earlier with just a hint of grace in Thorin’s eyes.
“Yes,” Rosemary Took answered, “have you perchance preformed a lot of midwifery under your mountain, Master… Dwarf.”
At which point Thorin realized that in the process of being attacked – not very well at all in form, but certainly with impressive stealth – and then accused of all manner of things by the girl they had neglected to introduce themselves or be introduced by Bibla.
“Thorin Oakenshield,” He left off his father’s names in hopes of getting to a point sooner. “at your service.”
It still grated a bit, to offer himself at anyone’s service, however not all of his grandfather’s scant lessons in diplomacy had bounced off his skull like a poorly made arrow off a steel shield.
“Rosemary Took,” He got a reluctant curtsey in return, “a delight and pleasure.”
Dwalin dared to grin at the sass, Thorin just let it pass and nodded imperiously down at the cups and stood firmly in the way of the girl taking any of them into Bibla’s room until he got his answer. As fitting in the life he’d lived, he got a question instead.
“How long are dwarven women with child?” The girl asked, putting the cup down and worrying her lip.
Thorin had to pause and think, but, fortunately Orí had been close to his mother and had the answer more ready than his king did.
“For twenty-four months.” Orí offered and they both watched the hobbit girl pale under her cloud of curls.
“That is around 700 days.” Thorin corrected, translating their calendar in case it didn’t match up with whatever system was used in the Shire.
“Oh dear.” The hobbit lass sat down, her eyes trailing to the cups and her lips pressing together until the bottom slipped between her teeth to be worried. “That is… well, it is an explanation.”
“If what?” Thorin demanded. “What is wrong with my wife and child?”
“Oh, the baby’s fine!” The girl rushed to assure him, and perhaps the harsh way in which he spoke actually had done him a favor for once, because suspicion melted into consolation in her green eyes instantly and she stood up to offer him an awkward pat on the arm. “The baby is very strong, and feels quite large. You see… that’s the problem.”
“Hobbits,” Rosemary explained, brushing one foot’s toes over the golden curls coating the other foot’s top. “are only pregnant for around six-hundred days. Bibla’s past-due… and, well, it’s been a hard pregnancy from that start. She hasn’t eaten well and she’s had the vapors a lot. Now, well, now…”
Thorin stepped forward and the girl rushed on at a whisper.
“Bibla’s… the baby’s getting very large. I’m afraid that if it gets any larger she won’t be able to pass it through her hips and deliver it.” The girl dried her hands nervously in her apron. “If that happens she’ll die, and the baby too if we don’t cut for it.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind Thorin heard the wind howling and the roar of flames. The smell of ash and the loss of family… Was his line cursed for some long forgotten or hidden sin?
“That’s what the tea is for.” Rosemary explained, looking nervous. “It’s to make her labor pains start.”
Relief washed over him.
“Does it work?” Dwalin demanded for his king.
“Almost always.” The little nip of a thing assured them and gestured nervously behind Thorin. “Can I go give it to her now.”
Thorin carried the tray in himself.
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“I don’t feel any different.” Bibla complained as she suffered the indignity of spreading her legs and letting her young cousin fish around underneath her skirt and in her nether regions for information as to any progress that might have been made.
Bibla caught Thorin’s wrist before the dwarf could voice his outrage at this invasion of his territory and was rather pleased when a hint of chagrin for his jealousy’s ridiculous lurked underneath his usual surly exterior.
“That’s because nothing’s changed.” Rosemary’s head popped back into view along with her hands as she smoothed down Bibla’s shift and Thorin took the blankets from Bibla’s cousin’s hands and covered his wife himself.
Bibla silently exalted at that title, but she’d be snookered if she let him know that until he’d given her a ring and put the flowered wreath in her hair just as he out to have done months ago. She was just glad he’d be putting the ring on her finger in the Shire; here she needn’t worry he’d put some robin’s egg sized diamond in the thing and leave her with a tired wrist for the rest of her life.
“Nothing?” Bibla didn’t hide her nervousness.
“No.” Rosemary sounded genuinely distressed. “I don’t understand why not, either, I gave you as much as I can give you. I mean, you should be in labor now!”
“Maybe it’s just going to take some more time!” Orí’s voice suggested hopefully from where he was eavesdropping outside the door.
“Maybe this prince is going to be as stubborn as the last one.” A mutter suspiciously like Dwalin was heard as well.
Nori and Bofur, having more sense than either of the others, weren’t heard to comment.
“We’ll wait a bit.” Rosemary agreed nervously. “Then, well, then I’ll go see if mother will come, if nothing else happens.”
And Bibla decided to be content with that.
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Dawn came and Bibla slept as comfortably as she could, but nothing had changed in her condition. Her cousin and midwife left to speak with her mother, who was accounted a more experienced midwife, and Thorin went out to do something lest he lose his mind. He was chopping wood – water needed to be kept boiled, just in case, and he would not see them run out – with a sincere wish that he had an enemy’s neck to put Orcist to rather than a hobbit’s wood-axe in his hand when he blinked and saw Rosemary scampering back up the hill.
“Well?” Thorin demanded.
He was not surprised to see Orí’s head pop out of the front window; his companions were as concerned for Bibla as he was. Or at least as close as was allowed by nature. She was his wife.
“No-one will come.” Rosemary looked close to either tears, in Thorin’s less than experienced eyes when it came to the expressions of young females of any race, let alone hobbits, or close to picking up another cudgel and looking for an unsuspecting dwarf to smack with it. “They say she’s not married and she got herself into this so she can get herself out.”
“Where exactly do these wise women live?” Thorin demanded, forgetting for a moment that one of them was this one’s mother, only to receive a scathing look in return.
“There are only five of you and dozens of dozens of Bibla’s angry relatives about.” The girl pointed out. “Can we not court trouble? The last thing she needs is more stress and worry!”
Thorin put away the strong urge to put this child over his knee and nodded at the reality of at least the last statement. He had no compunction about teaching these relatives of Bibla’s – who were self-righteous enough to be angry on her honor’s account and not decent enough to be helpful in her need – a thing or two about real family honor. That said, Bibla’s condition was not something he would risk worsening for anything.
“Then what will you do?” Thorin demanded, not bothering to open the door for the lass and watching as she ducked underneath Dwalin’s outstretched arm without another thought. That might have amused him in another situation, as might the increasing number of lecherous looks that his friend was directing at the girls’ oblivious back.
“I don’t know.” Rosemary finally sat down, looking back through the open doorway at Bibla’s sleeping form and ringing her hands. “The only other thing I have to give her that I know will absolutely start her labor – and she needs to labor soon, I felt the baby this morning and it’s definitely as large as it should get – but-.”
“It’s dangerous.” Thorin finished, his mouth going dry.
“Yes.” The girl’s curls bobbed with the force of her nodding. “Blood-root syrup and it thins the blood, and you’re never supposed to give it to someone who has been having the vapors. Also, it’s bad if she ends up being a bleeder… Not that Tooks ever do, but Baggins’ sometimes do, if only rarely. How strongly to dwarven women bleed when they deliver.”
Thorin winced, his mind driven with images of bloody battle and death, but he had to shake his head. He didn’t know. Neither did any other member of their party.
“Is there any way you can make it less… potent?” Bofur asked.
“I could give it to her raw.” Rosemary worried her lip with her teeth again and Thorin resisted the urge to reach down and stop her the way he had done when Fili had refused to give up finger-sucking at an age well past it being acceptable. “When it’s raw the part of it that makes you bleed isn’t as strong – the syrup making seems to make it stronger – anyway, it’s better to induce labor raw and causes less bleeding.”
“Can you get it raw, then?” Thorin demanded, looking outside the window at the gray shades of winter and feeling his stomach clench.
“Is it out of season?” Bofur asked as Nori asked, “Does it grow near?”
“No, but it grows a few days fast walk from here and outside of the Shire.” The girl looked close to tears. “It’s over the Brandywine, though in the high hills to the north-east of the Old Forest, but we can’t go there now.”
“Why not?” Several dwarven voices demanded at once and Thorin’s mind turned to new enemies to be acquired in whatever lord of men or other beings that stood in his way.
“It’s winter,” Rosemary Took explained, “there will be wolves in the hills.”
Thorin felt a great weight lift from his shoulders and raised his eyes over the child’s head to meet Dwalin’s sudden grin. A nod later and Rosemary Took had been bundled into her cloak and gloves, her herb basket in hand and a small pack on her back as the dwarves – all save their king – were ordered by royal command to take another unwilling hobbit lass on a – much smaller scale – adventure.
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Bibla felt wretched for it, but she’d felt wretched for a lot of things for months. As it was, watching Thorin, in all his pride, attempt to weight on her hand and foot was funny. Besides, after all the worry he’d put her through after the battle when, unable to see him truly, she’d had to wait invisible by his bedside until the healers had finally said he and his nephews would live she couldn’t help feeling he deserved a little worry.
Now if only she’d figured out how to come around to that without being miserable and terrified all on her own…
Finding out what he’d done with Rosemary had been a strain. Not only the worry of it – they had had no leave to abduct any of her little cousins off into the wilderness without even a by-your-leave! – but the fight that had resulted with Thorin had been… difficult. Yelling left her short of breath and she was far too bulky to outmaneuver him. Nor did trying to physically shove off his hands and his concerned attempts to help; she had neither the strength nor the balance for it now and it distressed them both anyway.
“I think it will be a boy.” Bibla mused, her eyes half closed as she sat upright in bed, propped against her husband – not that she was given him that name yet out loud! – and enjoying the feel of his hand smoothing over her stomach. “He’s far too stubbon for a girl.”
“Unless he takes after his mother.” Thorin replied and Bibla smacked one of his hands in retaliation.
He caught her hand and pulled her fingers up to kiss them. Thankfully this time he didn’t try and turn the gesture into an excuse to talk about the grand jewels he was going to drape her in. Dwarven pillow-talk still left a great deal to be desired. Then again, so did her tact, he’d not been happy when she’d compared his attempts at better-late-than-never wooing to a friendly audit…
“You’ll be fine.” Thorin had taken to commenting, almost at random.
“Yes, dear.” Bibla had taken to responding blandly, recalling her mother once saying that nothing annoyed Bibla’s father quite the same way as that response.
Startlingly enough Bungo Baggins did have at least one thing in common with his dwarven son-in-law. Thorin’s scowl deeped and his beard twitched every time she did it.
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The midwife arrived eight days after she’d departed. Dwalin was in the lead, looking satisfied and with five fresh wolf-pelts hanging from his saddlehorn. The other Dwarves had much the same in the way of prizes, though not in the same number. Surprisingly, the hobbit lass had one as well, if it was somewhat smaller than the others’ were.
Thorin thanked Aule that they’d come home with more than wolfskins, though, and four hours after they arrived Bibla’s birthing pains began. Twenty minutes before that a knock sounded at their door and a familiar tall silhouette appeared, gray hat and blue and silver scarf in clear evidence as Gandalf the Gray appeared at the last and most crucial moment.
Thorin had seen the worst of battle wounds and received no few bad ones in his time, but never had he seen something like this. Bibla did bleed and scream in pain. She clung to his hands with strength like he hadn’t seen before and her hair was plastered to her head with sweat. In the end their child would not turn as it aught and as the young midwife wrung her hands unsure of what to do Gandalf knelt and apparently talked their baby into turning head down for his mother’s convenience.
Her hips elevated and packed with linens and Thorin’s own arms bloody to the elbows Bibla lay back with their newborn son in her arms and watched in terrified pride as she nursed his heir. Washed and with only a couple slashes of blood on her skirt – her apron was a loss- Rosemary lay asleep in Bibla’s armchair in the living room and the Wizard sat off in a corner with his pipe lit and glowing in the night.
Dwalin, Nori, Ori, and Bofur rose as Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, walked silently into the darkened kitchen of the hobbit hole and all bowed at once and Bofur pulled off his hat in silent awe as the dwarves stared into a face long-lost but familiar to all dwarves.
“I bring before you my son,” Thorin intoned in Dwarven, words crafted by long tradition tripping off his tongue with an ease he did not feel strong enough to voice in light of his long fears and Bibla’s still fragile health. “Son of Thorin, Grandson of Thrain, Great-grandson of Thror… I give you Durin.”
And a baby, not aware yet that he was born once again into a world he’d seen before, squirmed in his wrappings and settled against his father’s chest to the sound of dwarven song.