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“—my mother, of course, died soon afterwards.”
Thorin paused mid-motion, whetstone in one hand and Orcrist in the other.
It was the fourth day they were spending in the safety of Beorn’s homestead. The members of the company were outside in the garden enjoying the fresh air. It was a far cry from the comforting scents of home, the halls of stone deep in the mountain, but anything was preferable to the stench of the Misty Mountains and the burning trees, wargs, and their riders. Even if they had been confined to the barn that would have been preferable to the last few days.
What was important was that they were safe here. Nothing would dare chase them across the borders of Beorn’s home, not even Azog. They had plenty of food and the lack of meat was more than compensated for with mead and bread.
Óin was able to gather healing herbs as well as other ingredients for the journey still ahead of them, some of which he had forced Thorin to drink and chew to help him recover from his injuries. They numbed the pain and made it easier for him to move around, but not even downing a tankard of mead afterwards banished the foul taste from his tongue. It still lingered now, hours after Óin had made Thorin drink another one of his concoctions and even after Thorin had eaten dinner shortly after that.
As they had done every evening since arriving here and coming to an agreement with their host, the thirteen dwarves and their hobbit had migrated outside, smoking their pipes, sparring, tending to their gear as Thorin was currently doing, or simply resting. And, as with every of those evenings, Thorin was listening to whatever conversation Bilbo was involved in.
Most of the time, he wasn’t listening to what the hobbit was saying but rather listening to his voice, so different from a dwarf’s, light and lovely, just as the hobbit from whose lips it emerged. Thorin lowered his head and let his hair fall into his face so no one could see him blush.
Ever since Bilbo had stood between him and his certain death, Thorin had finally given up on trying to fight the affection he felt for the hobbit. It had been a useless endeavour anyway, but the dwarves of Durin’s line were stubborn and Thorin was a prime example of that. After Bilbo had proven his courage yet again—the first time having been his quick thinking with the trolls—and faced Azog with his little dagger, however, Thorin had stopped fighting the inevitable.
The discrepancy between what Bilbo had just said and his nonchalant, matter-of-fact intonation made Thorin start paying attention to the conversation itself.
Thankfully, Ori seemed to share his surprise and also offered some context. “What do you mean, ‘of course’ your mother died shortly after your father?”
From the ill-disguised looks some of the others exchanged, Thorin wasn’t the only one listening in on the conversation.
Bilbo did not seem to notice. “Well, they were soul mates,” he said, as if that explained anything.
Maybe it would have, had Thorin heard everything said until he had started paying closer attention, but judging by Ori’s frown that did not seem to be the case. “What does that have to do with how quickly your mother died after your father’s death?”
“I thought we had established that what we call soul mates you know as ‘Ones’?” Bilbo asked. He was frowning a little now, too.
Thorin startled. The hand holding the whetstone jerked with a shrill, piercing sound. A few of the other dwarves looked his direction. He waved them off. Their interest in Bilbo and Ori’s conversation was greater than Thorin’s simple mishap, so they left him in peace to consider what Bilbo had just said.
Hobbits had Ones?
This was the first time Thorin heard that fact and it filled him with two diametrically opposed feelings, a little bit of hope but primarily, dominantly, almost overwhelmingly, there was despair.
If hobbits had Ones, ‘soul mates’, did Bilbo have one, too? Did he know who it was? While it was not impossible for a dwarf’s One or Ones to belong to a different race, such cases were rare. Was it the same for hobbits? Or, even worse, could only hobbits be ‘soul mates’?
Before Thorin could descend too deeply into these fears, Ori said, “Yes, we have, but I don’t understand what being soul mates has to do with your parents dying shortly after one another.”
“When the Green Lady takes souls and binds them together,” Bilbo said, “they are entwined so tightly that the death of one means the death of all of them.”
There was an uproar as the others stopped acting like they weren’t eavesdropping and started shouting loud enough to make Thorin’s ears ring. Even with his more than plentiful experience parsing what was said when dozens of people were yelling at the same time, Thorin struggled with understanding anything being said now.
“Atkât!” Thorin shouted.
The requested silence descended on the company, broken only by the buzzing of Beorn’s enormous bees and the rustling of leaves in the wind.
Then Balin asked, “Are you saying that when a hobbit dies, their One or soul mate dies with them?” One of his hands was resting on a seemingly random spot on his chest, though all familiar with him or those who had seen him take it out before knew that he kept the beads of his deceased husband in a satchel attached to a chain made of mithril there, which he rarely took off.
“Why, yes,” Bilbo replied. “We say that soul mates are like the flowers of the lus leth-aon, which is known in Westron as the twinflower, even though more than two people can share a soul bond. The lus leth-aon has two bell-shaped flowers growing from one stem, just as soul mates are two or more souls sharing one life. When one dies, their soul mate or mates follow them to the Green Pastures soon after.”
He looked around, noting all the shocked expressions, and said, “Given your reactions, I take it that the same is not true of dwarven Ones?”
“Mahal, no!” and variations thereof came from several mouths.
“They just die like that?” Ori asked, clutching his notebook close. “How horrible!”
There were agreeing murmurs.
Bilbo brushed his fingers over the empty buttonholes of his coat, as Thorin had seen him do often, only that then there had still been buttons to fidget with. Had Thorin been a woodcarver, he would have made new buttons for him. A thought for later, when he could talk to the ‘Urs. “So when a dwarf dies, their One just has to… keep going without them?” Bilbo asked.
“Aye,” Balin said. His voice and expression were sad, the grief only numbed and not healed even after more than a hundred years. “My One died when Smaug attacked.”
“Oh,” Bilbo said and put a hand on his chest, right above where his heart was. “That’s horrible! I’m so sorry, Balin, I can’t imagine… When my parents died, the pain and sorrow were so heavy on my heart I sometimes found it difficult to keep on living, but at least I knew my mother did not have to live without my father for long and that they were together in the Green Pastures. It has to be so much worse for you or any other dwarf who has lost their One or Ones.”
“The pain and sorrow are heavy on my heart,” Balin agreed, his eyes still sad but a smile on his face. “However, I take comfort in the knowledge that one day I will meet Yngvi again in the Halls of our Maker, just as your parents were reunited in Kaminzabdûna’s Fields.”
“Umhûdizu tadaizd ku’ adrûthîzd, Mahal,” 1 the dwarves murmured, the traditional words for those who mourned. Bilbo, too, lowered his head, the dwarves’ tone enough to convey the meaning of the Khuzdul words. Thorin saw his lips move but did not hear him speak; perhaps he was also murmuring a prayer.
The respectful moment of silence ended when Kíli spoke. “So, wait, if soul mates die when one of them passes away, what happens to any children they might have?” he asked.
“Not all soul bonds are romantic,” Bilbo said. “Just as there are different kinds of love, there are different kinds of soul bonds. My gardener, Holman Greenhand, has a soul bond of càirdeas with two other hobbits, for example. To answer your question, Kíli, if the parents of a child die before they turn thirty-three, they are taken in by family. Members of a clan usually live close to each other, if not in the same smial as is the case in Tookland, and are closely intertwined.”
“Is that why hobbit families are so big?” Dori asked. “With this high of a risk of the parents dying before their children have reached maturity, then there needs to be a large support network able to take over child-rearing.”
“The risk isn’t high,” Bilbo said. “There are a few deaths due to accidents or illnesses every year, of course, but most hobbits die of old age, long after their children have reached maturity. We do not fight battles and the Green Lady protects the Shire, so there have only been a handful of times in our recorded history that hobbits have died a violent or gruesome death, as was the case during our Wandering Days, our battle against the goblins, and the unnatural dark winters.” He tapped his chin with a finger, humming thoughtfully. “I suppose there could be a relation between the size of our families and soul bonds, but I wouldn’t know if that is ‘the’ reason, if there is even a singular explanation and not several.”
From what Thorin had heard, hobbit pregnancies were much easier on the birthing parent than pregnancies among dwarves. Children were a blessing, even rarer in Ered Luin than they had been in Erebor. Thorin’s parents had been considered lucky for their three children; Bombur and his wife Jóvór, who had birthed five children, even more so, yet even that was nothing compared to the twelve children of Bilbo’s grandfather, Gerontius Took. Hobbits were said to be as fertile as their fields and gardens.
“It doesn’t happen often, but it is possible for a dwarf’s One or Ones to not also be a dwarf or dwarves,” Ori said. “Can hobbits form soul bonds with other races, too?”
If hobbits only formed soul bonds with other hobbits, then unless Bilbo had a bond like his gardener, there was no way he could ever come to love Thorin. Even if Bilbo’s soul bond was non-romantic, surely he would not want to live so far away from his soul mate or mates, just as no dwarf would willingly live apart from their One or Ones? As Tharkûn had made it clear, few hobbits other than Bilbo would have joined the Quest, so the chances for Bilbo’s soul mate or mates to leave behind the Shire—and consequently for Bilbo to stay in Erebor—were so low they might as well have been zero.
If Bilbo even knew his soul mate or mates already. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe once he had fulfilled his duties as the Company’s burglar, Bilbo would return to the Shire where he could search for them.
Thorin tried not to make it too obvious that he was awaiting Bilbo’s answer with the desperation of a person searching for water after days spent wandering through the deserts of Far Harad. He must not have done a good job of hiding his fears or maybe Dwalin just knew him too well. Deeply ingrained habits made Thorin briefly look away from Bilbo when he noticed movement from the corner of his eyes.
Once he saw he had Thorin’s attention, Dwalin waggled his eyebrows at him and signed in Iglishmêk, ‘Wither-beard’.2 Thorin made a rude gesture in his direction and looked away again.
The seconds it took Bilbo to respond to Ori’s question felt like they lasted as long as the exodus that had brought the survivors of Erebor to Ered Luin.
“Yes, we can,” Bilbo said.
Thorin let out a quiet sigh of relief. He only noticed now that his fingers were wrapped around the handle of his sword so tightly that his hand was shaking a little. He forced himself to unclench his fingers and sheathe Orcrist.
There was hope.
Thank Mahal, there was hope.
“There is even a legend among other families that the soul mate of one of my Took ancestors was a fairy,” Bilbo said with a chuckle. “Supposedly he has been living in the Old Forest with his fairy wife for the last centuries.”
“Is she keeping him alive with fairy magic?” Fíli asked.
Bilbo laughed. It was one of the most beautiful sounds Thorin had ever heard in his life, more beautiful even than the Akmâthu Azsâlul’abad, the Song of the Lonely Mountain. “First of all, no one knows if that tale is actually true or just something other families say to disparage the Tooks. If it is true, then there would be no need for her to keep him alive with magic. Remember, the lives of soul mates are intertwined. The Took ancestor will live for as long as the fairy does.”
Thorin’s breath caught in his throat. He sat up and stared at Bilbo, half convinced that his ears had played a cruel joke on him or that he had hallucinated that last sentence.
“Are you saying that when a hobbit has a soul mate from another race, then their lifespan shortens or lengthens to match their soul mate’s?” Glóin sounded disbelieving and sceptical. “Is that also the stuff of legends or is it actually true?” Some of the others were nodding along, clearly wondering the same thing.
Thorin sat frozen, his heart pounding so fast in his chest that it was a wonder no one could hear it.
“That one is actually true,” Bilbo said. “Hobbits, as you know, typically live between eighty and a hundred years, but potentially more. My maternal grandfather died at the age of 130 and my grandmother at the age of 120 shortly after him. When there have been soul bonds between hobbits and Men, the hobbits shared the life spans of their soul mates. There was also a hobbit in Michel Delving whose soul mate was a dwarf. That was long before I was born, but apparently they were much older than my grandfather when they died together with their soul mate.”
There was much murmuring as the others considered this new information. None of them had ever heard of a hobbit who lived for as long as they did, not even rumours. Had the dwarven soul mate hidden their One from all other dwarves? But why would they have done that? Any animosity or distrust would have disappeared the moment the hobbit explained what soul mates were.
Ones were sacred, each chosen by Mahal as the other half, third, or more of a dwarf’s soul. Thorin had wondered why Mahal had chosen Bilbo as his One, but he trusted his Maker and had come to be thankful beyond words for this gift.
“All this talk of soul mates and Ones, but we have yet to ask the most important question,” Bofur said, grinning from one flap of his hat to the other. “Do you have a soul mate, Bilbo?”
Thorin held his breath. A band of orcs could have jumped out from between the trees to attack them and still all Thorin would have had eyes for was Bilbo.
The moment of truth had finally come. Was Thorin’s love doomed or was there hope?
It was only because Thorin was staring at Bilbo that he saw the hobbit’s gaze briefly flicker towards him. Their eyes met for a moment, Bilbo’s a beautiful brown with hints of amber to match the season. The hobbit quickly looked away again, but not quickly enough to hide his blush from Thorin.
Thorin’s heart skipped a beat. Could it be…?
“In the Shire it is considered very rude to ask that,” Bilbo said, which was not an answer. “Then again, it is also considered very rude to—how did you put it?—blunt a hobbit’s knives and bend their forks.”
The distraction worked, just as Bilbo must have planned.
Bofur was the first to start belting out, “Blunt the knives, bend the forks!”
“Smash the bottles and burn the corks!” Nori immediately joined in.
“Chip the glasses and crack the plates!” Fíli and Kíli sang at the same time.
“That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates!” the others shouted, laughing and using whatever they had at hand to accompany the song with ‘music’.
Only Thorin and Bilbo remained silent.
Thorin was watching Bilbo, who was smiling and tapping along with a foot. Bilbo kept throwing quick glances in Thorin’s direction and whenever their eyes met, the hobbit blushed again, a beautiful pink like rose quartz.
---------
Azog’s blade was coming ever closer inch by inch. Thorin’s arms were trembling from trying to stop its descent with his sword.
It was only a matter of time before blood loss from the wound in Thorin’s foot and the exertion would become too much. Only a matter of time before Azog continued what he had started with Fíli’s death.
‘Mahal, Fíli, I am so sorry, irakdashat,3 it is my fault you are dead, it is my fault, I never should have allowed you and your brother to join this quest, it is my fault—’
He had to kill Azog. He had to kill Azog before he or his spawn could kill Kíli too. He had to kill Azog and avenge Fíli’s death.
‘My fault, my fault, my fault—’
Thorin lacked the strength to push Azog’s blade aside. The moment Thorin tried to turn his sword against him, the orc’s blade would find its target.
A wild, desperate idea shot through Thorin’s head. If he pulled his sword aside and let Azog’s blade pierce his chest, Thorin could take what seconds battle-haze and fury gave him and strike true with his sword. If that was what it took to finally kill Azog, then Thorin would gladly trade Azog’s death for his life—
And then Thorin remembered that it was not only his life that he would be trading.
“When the Green Lady takes two or more souls and binds them together, they are entwined so tightly that the death of one means the death of all of them.”
Bilbo.
After finally gathering the courage to confess his love, Thorin had found out that Bilbo loved him, too, and that he was Bilbo’s soul mate.
If Thorin died here to Azog’s blade, Bilbo would die, too.
He did not deserve to hold Bilbo’s life in his hands. Hands that should only ever have touched Bilbo with love had wrapped around the hobbit’s throat, had almost killed Bilbo more directly than the soul bond when Thorin threatened to throw him off the ramparts.
His lust for the gold of his forefathers and his weakness had already cost Fíli’s life. Thorin would carry that shame for the rest of his existence, be that here in Kitinkâmin4 or Mahal’s Halls. Should Bilbo’s blood come to sully his hands as well, Thorin would exile his soul to Taznân, the Void beyond the world where Udash5 dwelled, for all eternity.
Azog pushed down his blade another inch and then another.
Thorin tried to think of a way out of this situation, anything that would let him—let Bilbo—survive. Had any of the others, one of Dáin’s dwarves, or even one of the Men of Laketown been here, they could have helped him. He would have been thankful even for a damned elf, their bow, and their certain aim.
A wild, desperate idea shot through Thorin’s head, maybe even wilder than the previous one.
Bilbo was nearby. Thorin thought he had caught a flash of dirty honey-coloured hair, finally almost long enough for braids, while fighting Azog on the ice. Hobbits had keen eyes and keen ears. Even if that last one had not been the case, Bilbo had teased them about the loudness of dwarvish voices often enough. If there was anything near Bilbo, heavy enough to do some damage but not heavy enough to throw off his aim, then maybe…
With a grunt Thorin gathered what strength remained in his body and pushed Azog’s blade up a few inches. The orc’s face was twisted into a cruel, savage snarl, a bloodthirsty grin that mocked Thorin’s feeble attempts to fight against him. All Thorin had accomplished was buying himself more time—himself and Bilbo.
“M’anam!” Thorin shouted at the top of his lungs. The Hobbitish word echoed from the cliff and stones.
It was one of the terms in Bilbo’s ancestral tongue that he had taught Thorin two days before they left Beorn’s home. They had spent every waking moment in each other’s company. Thorin remembered the first time Bilbo had called him m’anam as if it had been yesterday.
“Once we are in Erebor and the seven-times cursed dragon is gone,” Thorin had said, “I can finally give you all the gemstones, jewellery, and works of exemplary craftsmanship that you deserve.”
“I have no need for those things,” Bilbo had answered with a smile and laugh like bells, “all I need is a roof above my head, a hearth, a kitchen, and you, m’anam.”
Thorin had asked him, then, what that last word meant, as “unless someone has taught you Khuzdul already and you just said someone or something ‘is being kissed now’, that must have been in Hobbitish.”
“M’anam,” Bilbo had repeated, voice soft and a faint blush on his cheeks, "means ‘my soul’.”
“M’anam!” Thorin shouted once more, hoping that Bilbo was still nearby, that he was hidden from Azog’s filth with his little magic ring, that he was safe. “Conkers!”
Azog said something in his foul tongue. Thorin did not need to speak it to know that the orc had just mocked and taunted him.
‘Mahal, please let Bilbo be nearby, let Bilbo be save, let him understand what my plan is, please, Mahal, please.’
Azog pushed his blade down further. The tip was almost touching Thorin’s chest now.
Mahal, please.
There was a sharp whooshing sound, as of something cutting through the air.
Then an object the size of Thorin’s fist hit the side of Azog’s head.
The orc roared in anger and looked away from Thorin, up towards the broken stairs from whence, Thorin assumed, the projectile had come. Azog’s blade-arm halted.
Thorin did not hesitate. He rolled to the side, out of the path of Azog’s blade. By the time Azog turned towards him again, Thorin had already thrust his sword right into the orc’s chest. Black blood gushed from the wound when Thorin pulled Orcrist out again so he could swing it sidewards, right through Azog’s neck.
The orc’s head tumbled off the monstrous white shoulders and fell to the ground. A moment later, so did the rest of Azog’s body.
The Defiler was dead. Thorin had avenged his grandfather and nephew.
He sunk down to his knees. The battle-haze that had sustained him until now ebbed away and left pain in its wake. All the aches, all the injuries he had received from the moment he and the rest of the company had burst through the gates of Erebor onto the battlefield. His foot would need to be wrapped soon before he lost so much blood he passed out. Thorin did not have the energy to do that. He did not have the energy to do anything other than looking up and searching for Bilbo.
The hobbit was nowhere to be seen. Was he wearing his ring again? Was he hiding from Thorin? It would only be right after what Thorin had tried to do to him. Just because he had saved Thorin now did not mean that he forgave him. Bilbo should not forgive him. Maybe it had simply been self-preservation.
Thorin blinked and Bilbo was suddenly right next to him. Either Thorin had blacked out for a moment or Bilbo had just taken off his ring. It did not matter which option was the truth. What mattered was that Bilbo was here.
“Thorin!” Bilbo said. Hands Thorin had thought would never touch him again prodded along his chest, as if checking that Azog’s blade had not pierced him after all. “Thorin, oh, Thorin.” There was blood on Bilbo’s face, running down from a wound on his forehead. There were tears in his eyes, bright blue for winter.
“Bilbo,” Thorin rasped out. He tried to lift an arm, but Bilbo pushed it down.
“Lie still,” the hobbit said, something of that familiar scolding tone to his voice underneath the worry. “Don’t move. Are you badly injured?”
“A few cuts, a few bruises. Azog pierced my foot with his blade. He would have done the same with my chest had you not come to my aid,” Thorin said.
Ignoring Bilbo’s command to stay still, Thorin put a hand on Bilbo’s arm. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Bilbo. There are no excuses for what I tried to do, nothing I could say to make up for my words and my deeds at the Gate. I do not deserve your forgiveness—”
Bilbo placed one of his hands right over Thorin’s. Its warmth felt like the heat of a fireplace after a long day of work in the mines and seemed to sink through Thorin’s clothes into his skin and aching muscles. “Whether you feel deserving of it or not,” Bilbo said, “you have my forgiveness.”
“You shouldn’t forgive me. You—”
“I forgave you immediately,” Bilbo cut him off. “You were sick, Thorin. Your words and deeds were not your own.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Thorin said. “Had I been strong enough to withstand the curse in my blood, had I been less arrogant and self-assured, then the gold-sickness could not have crept up on me. Countless Men, elves, and dwarves have lost their lives today because of me. Fíli is dead because of me—”
“Fíli still lives,” Bilbo interrupted him.
All breath was knocked out of Thorin’s lungs. “What?” he asked, disbelieving, yet hope was blossoming in his chest. “But I saw him, he fell—”
“Before I followed after you and Azog,” Bilbo explained, “I heard Dwalin say that he could feel Fíli’s pulse. He was just picking Fíli up as I lost sight of them.”
Tears were prickling in Thorin’s eyes. He closed them for a moment, so overwhelmed by the whirlwind of emotions coursing through his body that he couldn’t formulate even a single complete thought.
Fíli was still alive.
‘Thank you, Mahal. Thank you.’
With Dwalin there for Fíli, there was no doubt that Thorin’s nephew had made it to the healing tents as quickly as possible. Dwalin would not have let anything or anyone get between himself and his charge. He would have fought an entire army by himself if necessary.
“I would have deserved death for getting him killed,” Thorin eventually said. “I would have deserved death for hurting you. I tried to kill you, Bilbo.”
“There is nothing you could say to change my mind, m’anam,” Bilbo said.
Thorin had thought he would never hear Bilbo call him that ever again. He lost his battle with the tears. “Kurdelê,” Thorin breathed out, “my heart, my soul, murbelê. I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I did not deserve your aid and yet here I am, alive through your hands.” Thorin turned his hand so he could lace their fingers together. “I love you.”
“I love you,” Bilbo said. He leaned down and brought their foreheads together. “I never stopped loving you.”
Thorin closed his eyes. For a moment he forgot about the aches of his body and heart. For a moment time stood still; there was no battle, no armies, no red blood spilled on white snow and ice. For a moment all he felt was Bilbo’s forehead resting against his and Bilbo’s hand in his own. Then Thorin sighed softly and the tension he had been carrying since they left Laketown seemed to seep down into the ground he was lying on.
And in the healing tents, his youngest nephew was holding the hand of his brother with one hand and the hand of an elf with the other, both princes injured but alive thanks to the members of their company and the elf, who had helped save Fíli’s life just as she had saved that of the dwarf she loved.
Just as Bilbo had saved the life of his Soul.