A little drabble (A REAL DRABBLE) for @rutobuka2, who’s sick atm ;O;! I hope this heals u a little bit:
Frodo woke with a whimper, turning his head from one side to the other and blinking his eyes open.
“Shh,” Thorin murmured. He gently stroked his hand over the tangled mess of Frodo’s dark curls – matted with sleep, and sweat from a newly broken fever. “I’m here, lad.”
The little hobbit nodded, pressing his face against Thorin’s chest, laying on top of him. When the boy had fallen sick to a vicious cold Thorin’s kind could withstand, he’d offered to look after him. He’d had, as he’d pointed out, his fair share of caring for sick pebbles with Fíli and Kíli over the years, and with Frodo waking every half hour or so, it would be good for someone to sit with him.
Frodo coughed miserably, it ending in a wet sneeze and a whine.
“’M still sick…” he said. “Dis is duh worst cold I eber had…”
“And with only ten long years under your beard, I can believe it,” Thorin replied, placing a cool cloth on Frodo’s forehead. “Here. Take a little of this.” He held the little wooden cup to Frodo’s lips. Inside was a cool chamomile tea, mixed with honey to hide the bitter willow bark, but Frodo only managed a few sips before turning his head away.
Still, a mouthful every so often was better than none. He ran his fingers over Frodo’s head again, handing him one of many handkerchiefs strewn around the bedroom. Frodo blew his nose and handed it back.
Thorin carefully put it aside and then wiped the cool cloth over Frodo’s face.
“Are you hungry? There’s a little summer soup, if you can manage it.”
“No,” Frodo sighed, closing his eyes and looking like the picture of misery. Bilbo had only grown worried about the illness when Frodo – already a little slip of a fauntling, pale and slender – had started refusing meals.
Thorin brushed Frodo’s curls back from his face.
“Are you sure? Not one mouthful?”
Frodo sighed heavily and, without opening his eyes, opened his mouth. Thorin made sure to pack the spoon with the vegetables in the soup, feeding the boy his single mouthful and not pushing for him to take more. He knew all to well that stuffing an unwell pebble – or fauntling – with food often led to a resurfacing.
“Good lad,” he said, feeling Frodo’s limbs getting heavier as the little boy drifted back to sleep.
“Can you sing a song…?” Frodo asked, voice almost inaudible. “Duh far ober one…”
“Of course,” Thorin said, resting his hand on Frodo’s little back and starting to sing.
Thorin (who had been turning the map around in his hands for the third time – was that the arrow that meant north? or was it a poorly-drawn road?) looked up at the sound of the cry. It was a small voice, and very frightened… and it was coming from somewhere roughly over his head.
“Please!” came the next word, and the terrified little quaver in that little voice spurred something instinctual in Thorin. This was a child’s voice, and it reached right down into his bones and caused him to move, even before he was aware of it.
“Where are you?” he said, spinning around upon the spot. The little copse was fairly isolated, and he had no idea how he had ended up there when he had meant to go to the Hobbit town. Unfortunately, this meant that the child could have been calling for hours without aid. So for once Thorin did not curse his own unreliable surface-direction. “Call out again!”
“I’m here, I’m up here!” cried the little one, and a small hand waved from one of the trees. “Please get me down, please! May left ever so long ago, she was meant to find me but she didn’t and now I’m stuck!”
“Stay where you are, and don’t wriggle about!” Thorin commanded, and he slung off his pack and cloak, throwing his sword onto the map to stop it blowing away. “I’ll climb up and get you. You must stay safe in the meanwhile, and not fall out. Can you tell me about your friend May as I climb?” There, that should keep the little one’s mind on something else rather than panicking blindly.
The child audibly swallowed a sob. Brave little thing. “Ummm May is older than me, and she has three brothers…”
“Aye?” Thorin grasped a handhold and began to haul himself into the tree. “And what are their names?”
“A-andwise,” the child sniffled. Thorin could hear them beginning to calm down as he drew nearer. “H-h-hamfast… and H-halfred.”
Shirelings had ridiculous names, thought Thorin privately, amused, and he reached for the next bough as a pair of small furred feet drew into view. “Are they all your friends?”
“Hamfast is, he’s nice, but Andwise takes everyone’s mushrooms because he is the biggest,” said the child, and then there came a gasp. “You’re a Dwarf!”
Thorin, aware of the twig-scratches and dirt in his beard and the leaves itching in his hair, gave the child a tight smile. Bracing himself between the tree-trunk and a branch, he inclined his head briefly. “At your service. Now, sling your arms around my neck. Quickly now!”
This close, he could see her wide brown eyes grow even wider with trepidation. He took a breath and gentled his voice as much as he could. This was a hobbit-child, not a Dwarfling, after all. “Come now. I shall not harm you, young one. You are as safe with me as you are in your mother’s arms. My name is Thorin. What is your name?”
“Bell,” came the faltering reply, “I’m Bell Goodchild.”
“A beautiful name,” said Thorin, and he gave them a smile.
Slowly and tremulously, the child smiled back.
“And are you a girlchild or boychild?”
“M’a girl,” she said, and stared at his beard for a long moment, before she met his eyes again. “I want to go home,” she nearly whispered.
Me too, child. Me too. “We will get you down from here, Bell, and you will go home. But you must be brave,” Thorin said, as softly as he could. “Reach out and touch my shoulder. There, now. Not so hard.”
Her little fingers patted at the leather and fur of his greatcoat, and he nodded his head. “Keep your balance, but see if you can reach around to my neck. I would carry you, but I fear I will need both my hands to get us down from here.”
She cautiously slid her tiny hand around, and then he felt the birdlike skittering pressure of little fingers at his neck. “Your hair is funny,” she said, with the blunt amazement of all children.
“Ah, that is as Dwarf-hair should be, Miss Goodchild. It will not bite you, my word of honour upon it!”
She giggled a little damply, and then slid her other tiny arm around his neck. “You talk funny.”
Small arms clasped around his neck and a wriggly little body laid trustingly against his own woke memories of Fili and Kili that Thorin had long treasured, and he leaned his cheek against Bell’s soft curly head for a snap second, revisiting those days. Ah, but Bell was tinier than Fili or Kili had ever been, and her hair was as soft and curly as combed floss. “Hold on tightly now, and shift your weight onto me,” he directed her, and she clutched frantically at him as she slid from her branch and into his arms. “Good. Now, don’t let go and don’t look down! We shall be upon the ground before you know it.”
She pressed her face into his furs, and nodded.
Thorin began to climb down again. His arms were shaking from being suspended from branches for so long, the muscles beginning to knot. He ignored it and focused on carefully placing his hands and feet, trying not to jostle the child.
At last he was able to drop the last few feet onto the leaf-litter beneath the copse, and Bell sucked in a huge breath and hugged him tightly. “Thank you, thank you Mr. Thorin,” she sobbed, and he patted her back carefully. She was utterly tiny: his hands could span all the way around her little ribs. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Shhh, there now,” he soothed, and brushed back her hair with his palm. “Do you need to let it out and cry?”
She did seem rather tearful still, but she shook her head nevertheless. “It’s getting so dark, I just want t’ go home,” she said, and sniffled some more. “Can you come too?”
Thorin set her on the ground, and patted her curly head. “I am afraid I have a pressing matter to attend to, otherwise I should have loved to dine with you and your family.”
She sighed. “Oh. But I want t’ do something to say thank you. Mama says it is a nice thing to do.”
Suddenly, the map thrown aside on the ground caught the corner of Thorin’s eye. He cleared his throat. “Actually, there is one thing…”
It’s an awkward and slow process, relearning how to be someone’s son, someone’s child. Dain doesn’t always remember that he has that support, and he often forges ahead alone, independent and stubborn, as he has done for over two hundred years.
It takes a whispered word in his ear from Fris, of all people, for Dain to look behind him and see the love and hesitant hope in his parents’ eyes.
Daeris loves to braid his hair, so unlike her own. She hums as she sits him down and brushes it and brushes it until it gleams like polished copper, and then she carefully braids it back into his accustomed style. When he bends to kiss her whiskery cheek in thanks, he is struck by the memory of her blood splashed across her face, pooling upon skin that already turned waxy and loose in death.
He swallows down the sudden surge of bile and squeezes her hands. “Thank you, Amad,” he says, and tries to wipe the image from his mind.
Nain walks upon winged feet these days, nearly exploding from pride for his mighty son. He often just beams at Dain, his face softening and creasing in astonishment and joy, and when Dain rolls his eyes Nain will shrug and laugh and say that it is his right to be a foolish old man. Besides, is Dain any better when it comes to his own boy?
That’s different, Dain will sniff, and Nain will chuckle. It is a little stilted, a little forced. Their affection does not come naturally, not yet – but it feels as though one day it could.
It is when Nain turns to one side to talk to someone, or when he flops down into a chair – hells, even when he stretches – that the terrible memory resurfaces. That angle of his head. It is only the angle of his head, Dain tells himself sternly, and washes his face and stares into his own eyes in the mirror. They look bruised.
His head had wrenched to the side, lolling and loose, the angle obscene and stomach-twisting to see. A grotesque parody, a broken doll. The sturdy Iron Hills mail he wore protected him from being decapitated… but it could not stop his spine from snapping beneath Azog’s powerful hands.
The angle of his head…
Dain splashes more water onto his face and grips the edge of the water-basin tightly. You are no longer that scared and angry child, he tells himself, and tries to force his knees to cooperate. He feels light-headed. You are safe now, protected from all evil, and Mahal himself watches over us. You are safe. Nain is safe. Daeris is safe. The last scion of Azog’s line is dead, and your family is safe.
And he steps back out to smile and laugh with his father, to let his mother brush and bind his hair, and he forges ahead. Independent as always, enduring what he must. In time, the flashbacks will subside. Not yet. Not yet. There is always the angle of Nain’s head.
But Dain hopes so, nevertheless. It feels as though one day they could.
They hadn’t been courting? If courting was the right word… well, whatever it was, they hadn’t been doing it for long.
Bomfris didn’t know what to make of him. If she had thought of him at all, before (and wasn’t it odd, that the war had turned everything into ‘before’ and ‘after’) she had assumed that he’d be rather like his father. Dangerously smart, assured, irreverent and humorous. But above all – confident.
He wasn’t. Not at all.
He stammered when he lost his train of thought. He sought her approval (a new sensation – nobody had ever wanted her approval so badly before) continually. He wasn’t confident at all, though he tried hard to don the mannerisms of a Dwarf who was. It was as though he had some impossible ideal in his mind, one that he could never live up to. He would bite at his lip. He fidgeted.
Oh, but he was clever, and brave, and ridiculously handsome. He was a tremendous warrior and a loyal, kind soul, and a good person. She wanted to shake him sometimes, to tell him that he was enough, just as he was. That even though he stood in the shadow of giants, he still cast such a wonderful bright light of his own.
Thorin was carefully sorting through the mess on her head, his fingers gentle and fumbling as he carded the comb through her wind-snarled hair. “Can I,” he began, and stopped.
She glanced back at him. It’s unfair that he’s so pretty, sniped her mind, and she smacked the thought away. “Mmmm?”
“Can I, uh.” He cleared his throat. “I’d like to give you our braid…?”
She frowned at him as the words rearranged themselves into garbled nonsense, and tried to force them to make sense. “What?”
His gaze dropped. Oh, she supposed that was… rather abrupt. “No, wait. I’m sorry – I didn’t quite – can you say it again? I think I misheard.”
He bit his lip. Again. He should stop that, her mind whispered. He’s got me to do that for him, now. She smacked her inner voice rather more firmly, and tried to concentrate as he managed to mumble, “Can I. Would you like, that is… uh. Our braid? My braid?”
The word ‘braid’ came out sounding a lot more like ‘brund’.
She stared a bit uselessly at him. So, so pretty, her mind cooed. Then she blurted, “yes! I mean, yes please. All right? But not where Tuac can peck at it; she’s always ruining my hair, and…”
She trailed off at the look of awed gladness that stole over his face, and knew that her own face was probably ridiculously sappy. “Thank you,” he said, and bent to kiss her on the cheek.
He missed, and got her in the eye.
“Unngh!”
“Bomfris, sorry, sorry – I am so sorry, I didn’t think you’d move just then, I am so-”
And he REALLY needs to stop apologising for everything! Cross now, she grabbed him by the plait in his beard and yanked him down for a further, more thorough kiss. She liked this part. The kissing part, that was.
The noise that escaped him was something along the lines of: “Ummf!” His arms hovered, outstretched awkwardly at his sides like a hopping raven’s, the fingers widespread in his surprise. Bomfris pulled back and gave him a pointed look.
“You can touch me,” she said, eyebrows raised.
He gingerly settled his hands on her waist, and then his gaze flickered up to her face. As if for her approval.
She rolled her eyes. “Better. And that’s a yes. To the braid.”
He blinked at her.
She realised she was still holding onto his beard, and hastily let go as though her hand was burning. “Oh! Oh, I am s-”
“No,” he said,
oh so gently, and lifted her hand again to his face. Her fingers felt strange and clumsy settling there, and she watched them thread through the thick rusty hair on his cheeks as though they weren’t connected to her. His eyes then glittered with a spark of humour. “No, you can touch me.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Ha, ha.”
He grinned at her, and she used her hand on his (far, far too pretty) face to yank him back down for a better kiss.
Aw Yiss 