Tag: nain

Thorin and Frerin are giving Dain more of the tour of the Halls and they decide to stop for a pint at one of the many bars. Dain is surprised to find Thrain, Fris, Nain, and Daeris already there. It turns out this place is famous for afterlife!dwarf karaoke. Fris and Daeris are an award-winning combo, and Nain and Thrain are there to cheer and hold flowers. Frerin is proud, Thorin is resigned/amused.

AAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA Fris and Daeris doing the ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ bwaaaaaaaa

(Fili and Kili are banned. The bar is run by Borin. He Does Not Forget.)

Dain would immediately request the Dwarven equivalent of Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ and proceed to roar it with great sentiment – and with the whole audience roaring along, ofc.

Question time. What is Nain’s craft specialty? You never mentioned it. Daeris is a swords woman (swordsdwarrowdam?) But we never really see what Nain does beyond being a lord.

*hunts through notes* i know it’s here somewhere…

AHA – welp, okay, here’s what I was thinking: Nain took on the leadership of the Iron Hills after Gror died. He was foremost a warrior, and that served as his craft… but his true calling was composition.

Not song-crafting, no, though that was part of what he loved to do… Nain’s passion was the intricate weaving of many voices and many instruments together. He wrote the equivalent of symphonic music – the more complicated, the happier he was – most of which never got played, as the less-wealthy Hills did not have the great Drums and Guildhalls of Erebor. What was played, however, and quite a lot, were his arrangements of Rhunic and Iron Hills music… including travelling songs.

(He was pulled away from his keyboard a LOT in order to go sign this or that, and occasionally doodled little snatches and phrases in the margins of important documents. Which annoyed the hell out him later when he couldn’t find it!!!)

IT’S [cue liberty bell march] HEADCANONPALOOZA PART TEN!

OH OUCH @ THAT DAIN HC. OUCH. OUUUUCH i love it

And my own Duchess has a bit of a foot fetish herself! She rubs her head against feet and shoes obsessively. It makes getting up a little tricky sometimes, because you’re just. Um. Okay, kitty, you do you.

AAAAH OMFG OF COURSE, GIMIZH IS TOTALLY PONYO *sings* Gimizh, gimizh gimizh, child of Erebor, tiny little Dwarfling, the terror we adore!

Oh! I love the practice-piercings idea too – does anybody remember those magnetic earrings that were around a gigazillion years ago? I bet Dwarves make use of stuff like that!

(omg everybody, I just got back from swimming with my Dwarfling…and my inbox has asploded again! I love you all, tremendously. But pretty pretty please can we maybe scale it back to one headcanon per person per day? I would like to give them all more time, you see!)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 

Now I’m thinking about Nain and Daeris talking with Vili and Fris, and Dain with Thorin and Fili and Kili -trying to figure out ways to make the reconnect with their parents/son easier and less awkward. It helps a little, both in terms of suggestions and knowing that other people have faced the same problem.

Oh my god, Fris and Thrain would be the PERFECT people to talk to about this. Fris is just so emotionally intelligent and competent, and Thrain has learned (the hard way) not to be impatient. So he knows not to push people, to let things unfold at their own pace and to give people an undemanding space.

I bet Vili went to them as well, for advice… and yeah, Nain and Daeris would probably have a quiet word with them as well.

And yeah, I think Dain and Thorin and the lads would probably have a beer or two together, and Fili would tell them how it felt to realise that he looked like his father and like Frerin. How he was both happy to have Vili back, and angry that he died and left them in the first place. And Kili will tell them how hard it was to begin calling Vili ‘Dad’, and how both of them still look to Thorin for approval instead of their father. How Fili often accompanies Vili on his visits to Erebor each morning. The day Vili showed Kili how to carve runestones.  

And Thorin will take a sip of his drink to hide the emotion in his eyes (it doesn’t work) – and Dain will grumble that it’s just so hard to let them help, he’s not a Dwarfling anymore and he’s been standing on his own feet… uh, foot… for centuries, and it feels.. wrong. And Thorin will latch onto the change of topic gratefully and laugh, and tell Dain that he should be grateful he does not have Queen Hrera for a grandmother. She still treats Thorin like he is all of twenty-two years old.

So angsty moment … Dain is now in the Halls … does he have flashbacks for the first little while spending time with his dad about how his dad died?

It takes him by surprise on occasion.

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.