Tag: thrain

Do you have any new Parents!Thror and Hrera headcanons?

*heart eyes* OKAY YOU INSPIRED ME AND I WROTE A DRABBLE. Hope you enjoy!

…

The first week was a blur.

Hrera did not have an easy birth, and the first week was spent mostly watching her snap at healers (who only wished to check the stitching) and gingerly hobbling about. Cloths were wadded in her smallclothes and she carried her cushion like it was a shield. She actually swore, vociferously and at length, when in the watercloset the day after the birth. Thror, who was holding his son at the time (oh his son! His beautiful son, his heir!) looked up in alarm. “Dear?”

“Mind your own business,” Hrera grunted. slightly muffled by the door.

Thror decided not to inquire further. Diplomacy was the watchword of Kings, after all.

He returned his attention to the little one – not that he needed any prompting. His eyes drifted to the boy every three seconds or so. He could barely take his eyes from him. The baby was well-formed, the healers had said, and strong and hale. He had barely any hair on his little head, but a smattering on his cheeks and chin already. His face was slack in sleep, with the slightly-squashed, unfinished look of all newborns.

They hadn’t yet decided on a name. Hrera was all for a traditional Broadbeam name such as Thebur or Harur, but Thror was a bit on-the-fence about it. He preferred a family name: Fror, perhaps, or maybe Thrain. After all, this child was heir to a Longbeard crown.

Three days later (and after a couple of rousing… discussions) they had decided on “Torbor”. Longbeard enough to satisfy the more hidebound amongst his nobles, but Broadbeam enough for Hrera’s sensibilities.

She took to motherhood like a duck to the air – with some initial flapping, and a squawk or two. Feeding Torbor was not easy at first, as the baby had a tied tongue and could not suckle properly, and he damaged his mother in his efforts to nurse. Hrera underwent several days of utter agony. Eventually she nearly burst into tears at the sound of the thin, hungry wails soaring through their rooms. “Oh, no,” she whimpered, her eyes filling even though her face never crumpled. “No, not again!”

“Are you certain you will not give him to a wetnurse?” Thror asked anxiously. “My dear, I would not see you hurt yourself…”

“No. NO. I am his mother: I will feed him.” Hrera pulled herself up sharply in their bed and rubbed her eyes. Then she set her face in a look of such determination that Thror honestly would not have faced her upon any battlefield. “Give him here. If I have to be awake at this unearthly hour, I am at least not going to be the one traipsing over cold stone floors!”

Thror scurried to get the baby, and made a mental note to have carpets installed.

The Healers made a quick adjustment to the baby’s mouth the next day: a little snip, and the tongue-tie was gone. Upon bringing Torbor back to the breast, Hrera’s eyes widened. “Oh,” she said wonderingly. “It.. doesn’t hurt.”

“That’s as it should be,” said the Healer.

Thror smiled, and kissed the side of her head. “You are a wonder.”

She looked up at him from their child, a rare soft look on her face. “Yes,” she said with such gentleness, “yes, he is.”

Then the day came to present the baby to the court and the people. Hrera looked strange to Thror with her hair and beard once again elaborately braided and beaded. She had worn it plain and unbound for some time as she healed and adjusted to her new role as Torbor’s mother. Now, with her hair glittering with pearls and diamonds, her ears threaded with rubies, and her gown elaborately studded with tiny garnets no bigger than the tip of Torbor’s finger, she seemed as unchanged as the very stone itself. The past wonderful, painful, dizzying and secluded week seemed nearly a dream as they moved along the great high walkways – well, if not for the precious little bundle that dozed in Hrera’s arms. 

Then Hrera glanced at Thror through the corner of her eyes as they approached the thrones at a stately walk (the better to disguise her diminished-but-still-present hobble), and gave him a slow but solemn wink.

He had to fight to conceal his grin.

Finally, they arrived before the thrones and turned to view their people, clustered around the great chamber in their thousands. Hrera handed Thror the baby, and he held the tiny boy up before the assembled, wrapped in dark blue cloth embroidered with their dual lineage. “I present to you,” Thror said, in his most carrying voice, “our child! I declare them fit and healthy before the eyes of Dwarves and Mahal. I give you Tor-”

“Thrain,” Hrera said suddenly.

Thror paused in mid-declaim, thrown off his stride. He gave his wife a wide-eyed look. “Dear? Are…”

“Yes, I’m certain,” she said, and gave him a warm, private little smile. “Go on, tell them.”

He had to smile helplessly back at her. “I’m reasonably sure you just told them for me,” he said, as dryly as he could under the circumstances.

She laughed, low and fond, even as the cheering rose from the crowd and rang until it shook the very roots of the Mountain.

So what do Fili and Kili’s family in the halls think of them? They never met any of their grandparents or great-grandparents when they were alive, after all.

Tillis and Var are utterly in love with them. They’d forgive them anything. Ever. They laugh at their pranks, sigh fondly at their mischief. Tillis fusses over Fili and tries to lessen his self-appointed guardianship and responsibilities, and Var jokes and tussles about with Kili.

Hrera huffs quite a bit. She pretends utter horror over Kili’s hair, but actually adores getting her paws on him and combing it. It’s such fine hair, why does he never take decent care of it? He’s nearly as bad as that Gimli. Such disarray. Tch.

She is hugely proud of both of them, but will not take any of their ‘nonsense’ as she calls it. She is not above resorting to bribes to get them to behave around her (Broadbeam Dumpling Soup, oh yes!). Now and then she wonders how stern, steely-eyed Dis ever produced such ruffians – and then she glances at merry-faced, laughing Vili, and wonders no more.

Thror is a constant but unobtrusive presence for both the boys. They were very apprehensive at first: Thror is a mighty figure, and everything he did, both the good and the bad, changed the face of the world forever. But this quiet, self-deprecating Dwarrow with the sad eyes isn’t quite what they were expecting. Thror provides a quiet haven for them. He loves them dearly, and wishes he could have seen them grow up, grow old.

Frerin – well <3. Frerin at first resents the heck out of them. He waited so long for his brother, so so long. And these two Dwarrows (and Thorin turns to them before he turns to Frerin, that is unfair) are who Thorin thinks of before anyone else. They are taller than him, and older than him, and will not call him uncle. He doesn’t know where he fits in. He doesn’t know his role for a long time. This time is investigated in more depth in Twelve Months and Fifty Years.

Eventually, as we see, Frerin connects with his brother again. He finds his place in Thorin’s life (death?) again. And he discovers that he and Fili have a lot more in common than their similar looks. Fili becomes a mentor and a sounding-board for Frerin, and Frerin becomes Fili’s ‘little uncle’. Frerin will eventually find a connection with Kili as well.

Fris is carefully mothering of the lads. When she looks at them, she sees her little girl, her Dis, her sweet sparrow. She sees Dis in the set of Fili’s chin, in the flash of Kili’s dark eyes. She is careful not to usurp that place, however. She (Fris is an instrument-maker) brings her lap-harp or her gittern along when they drag out their fiddles, and they play together. She makes sure that Fili eats, and that Kili does not sulk (Fris is good at stopping people from sulking – plenty of practice!).

Thrain, on his good days, is an amused observer of the boys. He comments now and then, but doesn’t really step in to chastise them or curtail their antics. He leaves that to Thorin or Hrera. He finds them hilarious. He’s warm and totally nonjudgmental, and so the boys both find it very easy to confide in him – to complain, or to speak about difficult things. Thrain is a good listener, and will always put down his tools and get out a jug of ale to sit with them as they whine or exclaim or groan.

Taking inspiration from your previous ask- How did the family in the halls cope with thorin and his quest? (Particularly the hobbity bits and the going mad and dying bits) idk if you’ve answered this before. Also ur amazing and I love your writting.

Badly. 

At first, there was a certain astonished horror, mingled with unspoken hope: it is a suicidal undertaking! Thirteen and a hobbit! Against Smaug the Tremendous! But also: could it be Thorin that succeeds where we all failed? Could our people finally come home? But after Erebor was reclaimed, hope slowly dwindled and crumbled into ashes. 

Thror raged – a lot. Hrera was the only one to brave that storm. He raged at Thranduil, he raged at Thorin, he raged at Gandalf – and he raged at himself. Thror is even more wracked with guilt than Thorin is. He is slowly healing, but his levels of self-hatred are still pretty dire. Eventually he could not watch Thorin standing spellbound in the treasury any longer. His whole heart was screaming.

Thrain was sorrowful. He loves his children: Thrain is a good and attentive and loving dad. It was the desire to recapture Erebor that had led him to set off on his own, only to be captured and tortured. He couldn’t bear the idea of Thorin, his firstborn, his brave son, going through such horrors in search of the same dream. So he was full of desperation and grief as he watched it all play out. Eventually, it all became too near and he had to retreat as well.

Fris was worried. Constantly worried. She doesn’t do ‘worried’ very well. She much prefers to act, to comfort. The utter helplessness of watching is agony to her. She bit her nails down to the quick. She cried into Thrain’s beard in their bed. She held Frerin close and kissed his face wordlessly. 

Hrera watched with stony face and anguished eyes, and never said what she was thinking. If she braided her family’s hair and beards a bit more often and with a suspicious glimmer in her eyes, nobody objected – or dared to comment on it. 

Frerin saw everything. He spent hour after hour, day after day in the starpool. His face grew wan and his eyes grew huge, and he never spoke above a hoarse whisper – but he never left his brother’s side, not even for a moment. 

The hobbity bits I have answered here.

Thank you, Nonnie! I am so glad you enjoy it! Awwww, you are amazing too! *blush*

how did thrain’s family feel watching him be tortured for years and years? or could they not see it through the starpool because sauron’s magic was obscuring it?

Gimlin-zaram cannot always be directed. Thorin and Fris have a discussion about it, and it is mentioned a few times elsewhere in the fic. Sometimes the pool cannot show you what you wish to see (I suspect dark magic, yes) or sometimes it takes you elsewhere – like it did in Chapter 35. It is sometimes gentle, bathing you in starry warmth. It is sometimes harsh, blinding and as fierce as a supernova. It’s capricious. 

Fris discovered her husband’s ordeal after he arrived in the Halls. She was horror-struck and grieved beyond words. Frerin was frantic and terrified. Thror nearly howled himself hoarse in a renewed storm of grief and guilt. 

Hrera bitterly wept in private, and then she put on her business face and smoothed down her dress. Then she went and combed her son’s thick hair, humming her old Broadbeam songs and touching his face with trembling, tender fingers. 

Thrain still carries deep wounds. He prefers quiet, fine-detail work these days, the better to help him concentrate on the now. He has bad days where he dissociates, where he thinks everything around him is not real but is just another torturous vision dreamed up by Sauron. He has crying moments, and quiet moments, and frightened episodes that lead to lashing out. Fris stands by him in these terrible moments (which are growing fewer and further apart as the stasis of the Halls works its cool healing upon Thrain’s scarred soul), and has learned to draw him back. She wraps him warmly (he was never warm, never), and leaves a cup of fragrant tea – liberally doctored – nearby, to perfume the air. She plays her harp, and sings. She rubs his feet and hands. She breathes his Dark-name in his ear. 

I just realized something: Thror’s father and brother died to a cold-drake. CAN YOU IMAGINE the psychological effect when he came out of the gold-madness post-Smaug and realized that HIS BELOVED WIFE AND SISTER-IN-LAW, NOT TO MENTION COUNTLESS OTHERS, are now dead? And that he will think it’s HIS FAULT?! And then he gets to WATCH his son and grandson try to reclaim his homeland and DIE for it?! And he gets to see his sweet little baby Thorin lose his mind TOO? (Dammit, now I’ve made myself cry.)

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WHY DOES THE WORLD HATE THE LINE OF DURIN OH MY FUCKING GOD

Hey Dets, during the time of the quest, did any of the then dead dwarves realise that Bilbo was Thorin’s One, the same way that most of the Company observed and guessed? Thror and Thrain don’t seem to have known, but did Fris or Frerin or anyone else perhaps wonder about it as they watched the Company move towards Erebor?

Ah 🙂

Yes, as you’ve gathered, Thror and Thrain didn’t figure it out. But Frerin definitely did. Even though it hurt him (and Frerin doesn’t deal very well with his own pain, only with other people’s) he watched the whole sorry story unfold. Thror and Thrain had to leave when Thorin fell under the gold’s spell (too much, too painful, too close, my son, my grandson, not you, not you, not again, no no no – ) but Frerin stayed. Frerin saw. Young, clever, immature Frerin knew long before Thorin did. He knows his brother, after all. 

Fris is an inconstant watcher. She is more likely to care for people one-on-one, where she can speak to them and care for them. She is very good at comforting those she loves, and watching people suffer at a distance is not something she can handle very well. She knew Thorin cared for Bilbo, but not to the extent that he did.

Vili visits Dis every morning without fail. Not in one hundred and forty years has he missed a sunrise. He now and then stopped in on his boys as well, and he noticed a thing or two that puzzled him – particularly after the Carrock. But there were so many more pressing things for him to consider, really. His boys’ safety and survival (and later, Kili’s immediate attachment to this strange Elven captain) occupied most of his thoughts.

Hrera spotted it immediately. She knows what it is to dislike a person on sight, and through time and circumstances come to love the very things that had once seemed so obnoxious and ridiculous. She knew the minute Thorin swung down from a ledge upon the Misty Mountains to rescue his ‘useless burglar’. After all, how many times did she rail against her allotted husband, only to choose him for herself in the end?

speaking of partying in mahal’s halls, i wonder if you have any thoughts to share about what happens to dwarrows from, say, rival clans or who have feuds when they get there? or maybe not even on such a big scale, but perhaps just dwarves who haven’t been each other’s biggest fans in life, or who for some reason or another don’t really want to spend time in each other’s company, ymris them etc? are there corners of the halls they can expand into or seclude themselves in? is everything communal?

balinisballin:

aviva0017:

determamfidd:

Ahhhh, no actually! I have answered this somewhere, but no – not everything is communal. The Halls expand, and expand, and expand. There are private kitchens, family kitchens, small living quarters and large ones. There are communal forges and singular ones, depending on the nature of the Dwarf in question.

Yes, there are Dwarves who bear grudges! But life in the Halls is not true life, unfortunately – everyone is held in this holding pattern, and change is TREMENDOUSLY hard to implement. Ori and Bifur have spent eighty years growing closer, and it is only now that they are moving towards a more intimate relationship. Frerin and Fili and lived side-by-side for equally as long, and only now is Fili beginning to understand his younger uncle and to take him under his wing. Thorin has spent all this time in self-recrimination and doubt and guilt, and he is finally moving past it. 

Those Dwarves with serious grudges against one another (oh hi there, Nori’s ‘business associates’) would be fighting that soporific, cold, timeless and endless feeling that pervades the Halls. They are beautiful, but they are not a place of life. 

Oh god the list of people in the Halls that Nori is actively avoiding has got to be long indeed XD

this makes me a bit sad, tho the thought of noris business associates~ is hilarious indeed

This is exactly why he is trying to needle, trick, flatter, bribe or inveigle Thrain (he of the impressive scowl and fearsome beard and super-high status) into his dealings 😀

Those Who Stay – poplitealqueen (Isimun) – The Hobbit – All Media Types, TOLKIEN J. R. R. – Works [Archive of Our Own]

poplitealqueen:

So HEY PEEPS. Remember that little Dain fic I posted a while back? Meet it’s prequel sister. IT’S TOTALLY 100% FLUFF!

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i’M KIDDING NO IT ISN’T.

I CANNOT APOLOGIZE ENOUGH

*crawls under a rock with a plush piggie* READ THIS.

Those Who Stay – poplitealqueen (Isimun) – The Hobbit – All Media Types, TOLKIEN J. R. R. – Works [Archive of Our Own]

I think that maybe that most of the people who “heard” the One Ring, like fili and kili and nori, would go and have a quiet chat w/Thror or Thrain. Because how did they deal with one of those for decades?

Ahhhh I’m really really glad you asked actually! I’ve put MASSES of thought into that particular aspect. Okay, I’m paraphrasing a bit from canon here, but this is where the whole ‘hearing the One Ring’ stuff came from, and how Thrain and Thror were able to bear their ring without going totally postal. 

The Dwarf-rings did not have the same effect as the other Rings of Power. They have no voice, only malevolent magic. 

When Aule made the Dwarves he made them knowing that Melkor was still about, still twisting things into unrecognisable evil – and so he made them incredibly resistant in every way. When Sauron made and gifted the Seven to the Dwarves, he actually fucked up a bit. 

The Dwarves do not lightly accept another’s rule over their own will. They are WAY too tough. No Dwarf-Lord ever became a wraith the way that the Kings of Men did. They retained their form and their own mastery. The Seven didn’t even turn them invisible. And so the Rings got handed down generation after generation, and Sauron had expended all that power and effort for nothing.

But. 

Instead of making their wills subject to Sauron, the Seven Rings encouraged covetous behaviour in their bearers. They could make whatever the Dwarves mined grow manyfold. They became eager for dominion. Huge treasure-hoards built up around the Rings, which in turn attracted dragons. (Sound familiar?)

Sauron got pissed off about his failure to corrupt the Dwarves, though, and so he tried to gather the Seven back to himself (tantrum, much). Four of the Seven were eaten by dragons, and three he managed to get back eventually. The last one, the Ring of Durin, he took from Thrain in Dol Guldur. These three rings are the prizes he offers to Dain in return for information on Bilbo Baggins (and Dain basically does the equivalent of ‘hold music’ while he gets Elrond’s advice). 

So that’s what Thrain and Thror both experienced. It would have felt like their own thoughts, and it would only be in hindsight that they could see how far from themselves they roamed. But the One is a different beast altogether. 

Throughout the fic, I’m having the One Ring grow in power as Sauron’s strength waxes. It remains mostly dormant while with Bilbo (we don’t see it growing heavier as swiftly as it does with Frodo – Bilbo has no chain-scar on his neck), and wakens more and more on the journey.

When Bilbo first gives it away it does not have the power to tempt Thorin. He looks at it lying on Bag End’s steps where Bilbo dropped it – and nothing happens. It only has the power to attract the living, and even then it is not the irresistible force it becomes. 

By the time it reaches Rauros, it has begun to weigh on Frodo – and it has the power to tempt the desperate. Boromir falls.

By the time it is in the Dead Marshes, it can feel its Master’s nearness and has grown in power. It casts about, and finds the dead. Thorin and Kili hear it. It seeks to sow discord and fear, and it succeeds. It also seeks Thorin’s Gift – can you imagine how useful that would be, to Sauron?  

By the time they reach Cirith Ungol, it has become even more potent. Yikes. 

Definitely, they should all go have a good natter. I think Thror would be the best bet for advice, and Thrain would be the best bet for comfort. Thror is pretty bald and blunt about what happened: he will not allow himself any pity, it’s one of the ways he indulges that terrible guilt of his (SNAP OUT OF IT THROR, jeez, if Thorin can do it). He’d be up-front and matter-of-fact and understanding, though. Thrain would probably not want to talk about it, but he would be the one who gives the massive bear-hug and hot drink and blanket and corner in his forge to hide in.

Good lord, this answer meandered everywhere: sorry Nonnie!