Tag: yours faithfully

Last Words

I got tagged by @poplitealqueen! Heya Miss Pop, ilu!

Cite the final line of five of your fics – your favorites, or the most recent ones. Tag five writers who should do this next.

urrgrhblurrrrgh okay here I go – and I am terrible and always give, like, a paragraph rather than a line for these sorts of things. Take it as proof that I am incapable of being succinct!

I tag @notanightlight, @lesbiankiliel, @elenothar, @avelera and @themarchrabbit! Hey all, do it if you want to!

1. Dain Ironfoot of the Line of Durin, son of Nain, hero of Azanulbizar and Lord of the Iron Hills, picked up his mail with a reluctant sigh. Rifling through the sketches of new mining proposals and trade tariffs, he came across a neat white envelope with Bilbo’s writing upon the front.

Opening it, he scanned the contents.

And began to roar with laughter. (Hearts Will As Hearts Must)

2. It is Hulk’s place, Hulk and Bruce’s. They can fill it with their rage and their joy and their freedom, and nothing will ever stop them. Nothing can ever stop them. They are together.

They are not alone.

Hulk leaps again, and Bruce says, there! Let’s see how fast we can run!

Bruce is good at running. Bruce always runs. But Bruce has stopped now.

It could be an experiment?

Hulk is good at experiments. Hulk runs.

Tony flies beside him, and it is good.

They are together, and they are broken, but they are free.

It is good, good, good. (Irreconcilable Differences)

3. Raising his sticky hand, Legolas looked at it for a moment with a distant sort of puzzlement.

Then he said, “now we need another bath.”

Gimli, loose and wrecked and sated, stared at him. 

Then he began to chuckle.“I do not think I have the energy to show off for you a second time!” (Snowmelt)

4. T.A. 2941

King Pompous Git Under the Dungheap,

We’re half a day away: we’ve run all day and night for three days. We have supplies and water and food.

I’m nearly there, so close now.

Keep a watch towards the East. I’m planning my best entrance yet.

Dáin (Yours Faithfully)

5 is under a cut, bc slight-sorta spoilers…ish 🙂 

5. “Oh, passably, passably,” Bilbo said, smiling, and he tugged at one of the plaits in Thorin’s neatly braided, silky beard, long enough to tuck into his belt and then some. “Well, you look more the part these days.”

“You never did, however,” Thorin teased him back, and flipped some pages idly. There were illustrations, some so accurate it was uncomfortable, and others very fanciful. If only Smaug had been so harmless and docile-looking as that!

Something caught his eye. “Ah. And do you stand by that?”

“What’s that?” Bilbo had been absently threading his fingers through Thorin’s beard, humming to himself as Thorin perused the book. “Oh! Oh, well. Indeed. Yes, not a bad ending, as endings go. And it’s true enough, even if it was rather delayed in the execution.”

“And they lived happily ever after, to the end of their days,” Thorin read aloud.

THE END.

(Sansukh – draft ending number one billionty and eleven, AND STILL SUBJECT TO CHANGE)

The evolution of Dáin Ironfoot appreciation AKA how I realized that I have another good, enduring ginger to love

yol-ande:

Hobbit: Oooh, I like him!

Sansûkh: I love him.

Endurance: Oh. Oh no. He is my type.

Yours Faithfully: *whimpers pitifully oh my gods WHY*

@determamfidd

*gasps softly*

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

*falls over, grinning like a loon*

THANK YOU SO SO MUUUUCH ❤

I made the horrible mistake of trying to reread Yours, Faithfully for the umpteenth time and have started crying. damn it. in order to cheer myself up, I am now imagining Petal, the pig, trying to sit on literally every dwarf in the Iron Hills like a puppy, squishing a lil’ Stonehelm, much to Thira’s dismay.

*HUGS AND HUGS* 

I am so sorry – and also sorta not sorry bc I am actually stupidly stupidly fond of Yours Faithfully, like, it is in my fave top 3 of everything I’ve ever written and alkdsjhgflajhsdfa you re-read it and I am dancing in my seat *hugs some more*

Petal absolutely, positively would. She is the Prettiest. 

I just had a kind of sad thought about Dain. Imagine how much guilt he felt when Thorin, Fili, and Kili died. He did everything he could, it wasn’t reasonable for him to send anyone on Thorin’s quest and he came to help at Erebor as soon as he could, but still. His family is dead again, and he was powerless to stop it. And guilt isn’t always rational, so perhaps he blames himself, like Gimli did, for not going along on the quest even if he couldn’t send any of his people.

Heya Nonnie. Read ‘Yours Faithfully.’ I totally went through all of this, and yeah. 

Dain loves his family. But in all the talk of how important Thorin, Fili and Kili are to him, I feel that the guilt would be compounded by something far, far heavier. 

The lives he is charged with protecting. 

If we take the movie stuff as the way things went, then Dain originally said no to the Quest. (in the books? Dain doesn’t even know about the Quest until a raven turns up, ordering him to march to Erebor. Because it was a secret mission. SECRET MISSION.)

I don’t think he would feel guilty about not going on the Quest, tbh. If it hasn’t escaped everybody’s notice, only 13 Dwarves and a Hobbit went on the Quest. 

I don’t see it acknowledged much, but everyone, including every. single. Dwarf. in the Blue Mountains, where Thorin LIVED, said no. 13 Dwarves ONLY. Everyone fucking said no. EVERYONE SAID NO. Everyone. Every. One. It was lunacy. It was generally agreed to be lunacy. Thrain disappeared on this Quest. It was known to be hopeless. Dain is not the only one who said, ‘what the actual fuck, GUYS NO.’

Dain’s people have already been butchered once answering the call of the Elder Line of Durin. (Azanulbizar, the angst that keeps on angsting). The reason Dain’s folk are in the Iron Hills in the first place? THE DRAGON OF THE GREY MOUNTAINS. Yeaaaaah. He tries to protect them, bc he is a good Lord. It’s his duty to care for them. First and foremost, that is the role of a leader. 

y’know, I’ve never seen much sympathy for the folk of the Iron Hills. Expected to die, nothing but faceless cannon fodder in most stories (if they haven’t been villainised and warped beyond reason ofc) – their lives and stories seem to be worth nothing. They’re nothing. Nobody cares for them. Their lives are nothing. Their sacrifices are nothing, and nobody seems to notice that they turn up, fight, die. Turn up. Fight. Die. Die. Die. For homes that aren’t theirs. 

Dain loves his family. 

Dain is also a good Lord. He loves his people. Their lives matter to him. Their sacrifices matter to him. He will not order them to their certain death… not again. Not again. 

For gems and gold and mighty halls, the great will bid us roam,
And each time we obey their call we pray that we’ll come home.

Soon the drums will sound again, and out we’ll walk like cattle,
The Lordly need that iron blood for watering their battle.

But then Thorin orders him. And he goes, of course he goes. Dain’s family is important as well, so off he goes, out they march. To fight. To die. Nobody from the Blue Mountains does a damn thing except benefit, but Dain sends his folk out to fight. To die. For Thorin, for his cousin and King. To win Thorin’s home and crown back for him.

Again.

And it doesn’t even work.

How heavy are those deaths? His people, their lives, loyal soldiers who go out to die, over and over again? His people, those who share his home and his life, those under his protection and in his care? His duty?

Amongst all the letters that Dain left for his son, he also left instructions for him to “write to his namesake,” and, after Thorin 2’s death, Dain left his son instructions on how to find Thorin’s letters to him, as some of them contained the best bits of wisdom he could pass down to his son.

Thorin Stonehelm passed his hand over the thick, crackling paper. It was stiff and crumbling with age, the letters faded in places.

These were the words of his great cousin, his namesake, hidden in his father’s rooms for long, long years. They had been secreted in bundles inside an empty barrel of the hellishly strong Rhûnic wine. His father hadn’t ever thrown the barrel out. Thorin had always wondered why.

His father had seemed hewn from the hard red rock of the Iron Hills, fierce and unchanging and larger-than-life, but here in these pages a young Dwarf was brought to life. A young Dwarf – just a child – sorrowing, unsure, grieving, adjusting. Dáin Ironfoot, King and Lord and hero, had been a figure of legend.

Dáin-the-father had been a silly, merry, irreverent old fellow with more secrets than hairs in his beard.

Here was Dáin the Dwarf, whom few people had ever seen.

Teasing words and careless affection leaped from every fragile page. Orc-breath, Ironheaded Imbecile, Boorish Peasant, dearest cousin, thank you thank you…

And the other, the one his father had clung to like a piece of driftwood in a stormy sea? Thorin’s own namesake and his personal hero, for most of his life? He was far more than mighty deeds and a hard-won crown. He was not just a titan of history, not just a name in a song. Here was a careworn leader, a struggling brother, a worried uncle, a loving cousin… he was real here. A real person, a friend.

He had breathed, and cried, and fought, and danced, and roared, and laughed. He had been frustrated and afraid and annoyed and tired and sad… and full of such joy. Such hope.

He had been so very real.

The next words were less faded, the letters etched deeper, as though Oakenshield had been struggling not to tear the page in his agitation.

You are only forty-four. Do not be so hard on yourself. Mahal’s beard, you were only thirty-two at the time! You had a right to your sadness after losing both your parents and your foot. It is not your fault that Gren is an unscrupulous old snake.

It sounds as though this deal with Rhûn is costing you more than you wish to admit. Do not suffer for our sake, Dáin. That solves nothing. I will not stand by while others suffer for me. Not now, not ever again.

Hammerfoot sounds ridiculous. Ironfoot sounds far better. Use Ironfoot. Dwalin and Glóin agree with me.

Thorin put down the letter he was holding and stared at the wall for a moment. He had not wept for his father.

Perhaps he should.

(And then he wondered if one day, people would forget that Thorin Stonehelm was also more than a crown.)

I was re-reading Yours, Faithfully (again, for the umpteenth time, it is so good, you deserve all the kudos for it) and. Well. Gloin gleefully and mockingly throwing a “funeral” for Dwalin’s hair once he has finally gone bald. Balin gives a speech. Would almost be moving, if Gloin and Dis could stop snickering so loudly throughout the entire thing. Dwalin threatens to kill them all afterwards, until they get him drunk on Hobbit ale.

lkjfh;ashdfgaljshdfgsjhasldkfjhasldhfa oh god, THANK you. I am sorta proud of that work, actually, it’s in my top 3 favourites of everything I’ve ever written. *wibbles* so happy that you like it and that you find it worth re-reading!

AHHHHH A FUNERAL FOR DWALIN’S HAIR BAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh, poor Dwalin. And there’s Thorin and Gloin and Oin, looking like overgrown yaks, all laughing at him. I’d be drinking too, Dwalin! 

What with all these pig-related asks, I have to wonder: how did Dain asking for his first pig go? How did his parents take baby!Dain’s widdle wide-eyed adoration of pigs? Did they previously ride pigs pre-Dain? Exactly when did Dain realize that pork and ham and bacon = pigs and decide NO I AM NOT EATING THAT PIGS ARE FRIENDS NOT FOOD?

All of these answers and MORE are contained in the side-fic Yours Faithfully, Nonnie!

(well, most of these answers, heheh)