Moments of Slashy Goodness

Title: Under the Mountain's Shadow
Fandom: The Hobbit (Jackson movies)
Pairing: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Rating: Teen
Wordcount: 4694
Tags: Pre-Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Canon Divergence, Post-Smaug, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Loneliness, Finding Home, Quiet Romance, Bilbo Needs a Hug, People Being Nice, Getting Together, Communication, The Mountain Remembers


Summary:

The road between the camp and Erebor becomes so familiar that Bilbo scarcely notices how lonely it has become. It takes an ancient mountain—and one quiet conversation—for someone to remember that he is more than a messenger.


AO3 - Under the Mountain's Shadow

The road between the camp and Erebor soon became so familiar that Bilbo crossed it almost without thought. Morning after morning his feet found the same winding path through the valley, climbing steadily towards the great gates beneath the Mountain's shadow before carrying him home again as evening settled over the plain. Little altered from one day to the next. The wind still came down from the higher slopes carrying the resinous scent of pine. Ravens circled lazily against the pale sky. Grass bent beneath the same restless breeze, and the Mountain itself remained exactly as it had always been: vast, patient and indifferent to the concerns of those who walked beneath it.

Stone, Bilbo had begun to suspect, possessed a longer memory than any living creature. It had watched kingdoms rise and fall without altering so much as a single line upon its face. Dragons came. Kings returned. Armies gathered beneath its walls. Still the Mountain endured, carrying each new age as lightly as dust upon its shoulders.

Dust had always gathered in Erebor. It settled upon forgotten ledges beyond the reach of even the most diligent hands, drifted quietly into empty chambers, and softened carvings whose makers' names had long since passed from memory. Unease behaved much the same way. No one noticed its arrival. It simply accumulated, little by little, until one morning every conversation seemed to carry some trace of it.

Bilbo often found himself thinking of Durin's Day.

Not because he wished to return to it—there had been fear enough in those hours—but because hope had seemed so much simpler then. He could still picture Thorin standing before the hidden door, speaking not of treasure but of home; of fathers and grandfathers, of halls filled once more with laughter, of a people restored to themselves. The words had kindled something that reached beyond gold or kingdoms, and Bilbo, against all expectation, had found himself believing every one of them.

Those memories belonged to another season now. They had been worn thin beneath negotiations that never seemed to end, beneath whispered arguments carried from one camp to another, and beneath the quiet assumption that, somehow, a single hobbit might succeed where kings, princes and wizards had failed.

Everyone wanted something of him.

Bard sought reason.

Thranduil sought compromise.

Gandalf sought peace.

Even the Company, who asked more gently than the others, looked towards him whenever voices began to rise, as though kindness were an endless well from which one might draw without consequence.

It struck Bilbo, not for the first time, that people admired generosity most when it spared them the necessity of offering any themselves.

The thought accompanied him as faithfully as his own shadow.

There were mornings when he crossed the valley without exchanging more than a handful of words before the great gates opened to admit him. No one walked beside him. Messengers hurried in one direction or another, dwarves passed carrying ledgers and reports, soldiers exchanged curt nods before returning to their duties, but the road itself belonged to Bilbo alone. Sometimes, in those quieter moments, his thoughts wandered unexpectedly towards the Shire. He would find himself wondering whether the roses outside Bag End had flowered, whether the Party Tree cast the same broad patch of shade across the Hill, whether the kettle still sang quite so cheerfully upon its hook.

The thoughts never lingered.

By the time Erebor's gates closed behind him there was always another disagreement waiting to be untangled.

Within the Mountain the air remained cool even beneath the warmth of the afternoon sun. Hammer blows echoed through distant halls where craftsmen had returned to work at last, yet the sound lacked the easy confidence Bilbo remembered from the stories Balin had once told beside the fire. Messages passed swiftly from hand to hand. Faces remained solemn. Conversations ceased as he approached, only to resume in quieter tones once he had gone by.

The kingdom had been reclaimed, and Smaug was dead. Gold once more caught the light in chamber after chamber, but it seemed to Bilbo that warmth had proved rather harder to recover than treasure. Least of all where Thorin was concerned.

He paused for a moment beneath one of the great archways, resting his hand against the cool stone as dwarves hurried around him. The rock beneath his fingertips had endured the passing of generations. Somewhere within its depths water still followed channels carved long before any king had claimed these halls, indifferent alike to dragons, crowns and grief. How small, he thought, all their quarrels must appear to something so old, and yet even the smallest quarrels had a way of leaving deep wounds.

There had been a time when merely catching sight of Thorin across the camp had steadied him. During the darkest stretches of the journey there had always been the comfort of familiar rituals: a place made beside the fire without invitation, maps spread across worn blankets beneath the evening stars, the quiet certainty that whatever dangers waited beyond the next ridge they would meet them together. Nothing tangible had been promised between them, yet companionship had grown almost unnoticed, taking root in shared glances and unspoken understanding.

Those memories remained untouched.

It was the present that had altered.

Now every meeting seemed to begin with caution. Words were measured before they were spoken. Silences lasted longer than either of them intended, and Bilbo would leave wondering not what had been said but what had gone unsaid between them.

Hope, he reflected, was a remarkably stubborn thing.

By the time he was admitted to the King's chambers, the afternoon light had begun to slant through the high windows, turning veins of gold within the stone to quiet fire. Maps lay spread across a broad table, held flat beneath carved weights of iron and crystal, while reports stood stacked in orderly piles that spoke of hours spent wrestling with problems no parchment seemed capable of solving.

Thorin scarcely looked up.

His attention remained upon the documents before him, one hand resting against the edge of the table as though the Mountain itself demanded constant vigilance. Weariness had settled about him almost imperceptibly over recent weeks. It showed not in weakness but in the unyielding set of his shoulders, in the lines that now lingered between his brows even when he believed himself alone.

For a moment Bilbo said nothing.

He watched instead.

There had once been an ease in simply standing beside Thorin, a quiet certainty that required neither conversation nor explanation. Looking at him now brought no such comfort. Beneath the frustration, beneath every disagreement and every sharp word spoken in anger, affection endured with stubborn persistence, and perhaps that was the cruellest part of all.

"You have come from Bard."

The words rested between them with all the weight of habit. It was neither accusation nor welcome, merely the conclusion Thorin had reached before Bilbo had spoken a single word. Yet something in the silence that followed seemed to give him pause. His eyes, which had so often remained fixed upon maps, reports and ledgers of late, lingered upon Bilbo instead, and the certainty faded almost as quickly as it had appeared.

Only then did he seem to notice the dust upon Bilbo's travelling coat, the weariness that no amount of sleep had managed to soften, and the peculiar stillness of someone who had spent too many days carrying burdens that belonged to other people.

Something within Bilbo yielded.

Not dramatically, nor all at once. Stone did not split because of a single winter, and hearts, he suspected, seldom did either. They simply endured until one small weight too many found the fault that had been waiting all along.

"Bard wants me upon his side," he said quietly. "Thranduil would rather I stood with him. Your nephews hope I can persuade you. Gandalf expects me somewhere between the three."

He stopped, rubbing absently at his brow as though he might ease away the ache gathering there.

"Has it occurred to any of you that I may not wish to belong to any side at all?"

The chamber grew very still.

Somewhere beyond its walls hammers continued their steady work, the blows echoing through distant halls in a rhythm as old as Erebor itself. The Mountain carried the sound without judgement. It had heard triumph and mourning before. It would hear them again.

For a moment Bilbo wondered whether he had said too much.

Then Thorin looked at him.

Not through him, as he had done these past weeks while thoughts of kingdoms and treaties clouded every conversation. Not at the messenger who arrived each morning from the valley below. Simply at Bilbo.

It was there in the slight easing of his shoulders, in the way his expression altered before he seemed aware of it himself. Whatever answer he had expected had vanished, replaced instead by the uncomfortable understanding that he had overlooked something standing directly before him.

"What do you mean?" Thorin asked.

Bilbo gave a tired laugh that surprised even himself.

"I mean..." He drew a slow breath before lowering himself into the nearest chair. The movement carried with it a weariness that seemed to settle into every bone. "...that I am tired."

Not because it was untrue, but because he could not remember the last time he had spoken honestly about himself.

"I am tired of carrying messages," he continued, his gaze settling upon the worn flagstones beneath his feet. "Tired of arguments that never seem to end. Tired of being expected to mend things I never broke."

He rested his forearms upon his knees, studying the grain of the ancient stone as though it might offer some wiser answer than he possessed.

"It seems," he said after a time, "that everyone remembers what I can do for them. Fewer remember that I am simply... Bilbo."

The words lingered in the chamber long after he had finished speaking.

Outside, the Mountain remained unchanged.

Its walls had witnessed fathers bury sons, kings abandon kingdoms and dragons claim halls that had stood for centuries before their coming. Against such histories the troubles of a single season must surely appear no more enduring than passing weather. Yet it occurred to Bilbo that even mountains bore their scars. Time did not spare stone; it merely altered it more slowly.

When Thorin spoke again, his voice had lost something of its hardness. "What is it that you want?"

Bilbo looked up. No one had asked him that, and the question itself seemed almost impossible to answer.

Since leaving the Shire he had been asked to steal, to bargain, to comfort, to encourage, to persuade and, more often than not, to stand between those determined not to hear one another. Somewhere along the road he had ceased to think of himself except in terms of what usefulness he might provide next.

He searched for an answer and discovered, to his surprise, that it had been waiting all along.

"I should like everyone to stop trying to kill each other."

For the first time in many days the corner of Thorin's mouth lifted.

"A difficult request."

Despite himself, Bilbo smiled.

"I am a hobbit," he replied. "We have a fondness for difficult things. Gardening, relatives... impossible conversations."

The laugh that escaped Thorin was brief, almost reluctant, yet unmistakably real. It disappeared as quickly as it had come, but not before altering something in the room that neither of them could quite have named.

Perhaps it was only that silence no longer felt like another argument waiting to begin.

They spoke for some time after that.

No great revelation emerged from the conversation. Neither abandoned their convictions, nor did old grievances suddenly dissolve beneath kind words. Kingdoms were seldom repaired in an afternoon, and the wounds left by fear, pride and grief demanded more patience than either of them yet possessed.

Yet the conversation wandered, almost without intention, beyond treaties and demands. They spoke of the Company. Of Balin's stubborn optimism. Of Bombur's determination that the kitchens should one day rival those of the Blue Mountains. Of Fili and Kili, who still found reasons to laugh despite everything that surrounded them.

Ordinary things.

Bilbo had not realised how greatly he had missed them.

When at last he rose to leave, the light beyond the high windows had begun to soften towards evening, laying long bands of gold across the stone floor. Dust drifted lazily through those shafts of sunlight, rising and falling upon currents too gentle to feel.

Nothing beyond the chamber had altered.

The armies still waited in the valley.

Messengers would still arrive with fresh demands before morning.

The Mountain would wake tomorrow beneath the same long shadow it had cast for centuries.

And yet, as Bilbo made his way back through Erebor's echoing halls, it seemed to him that the burden he carried no longer rested quite so heavily upon his shoulders.

Not because the world had changed.

Because, for the first time in many days, someone had remembered to see the hobbit before the messenger.

 

~~~~~ 

The days that followed brought little outward change. Messengers still climbed the road between the encampments and Erebor, councils still gathered, voices still rose and fell behind closed doors, and each morning the Mountain opened its gates upon another day that seemed destined to resemble the last. Yet Bilbo had lived long enough to understand that the most important changes rarely announced themselves. They were noticed only afterwards, when the world had quietly rearranged itself around them. From a distance nothing had altered. The valley lay beneath the same broad sweep of sky, the banners of Men, Elves and Dwarves stirred in the same uncertain wind, and ravens continued to wheel above the heights as though the affairs of kingdoms merited only passing curiosity.

The first change came so quietly that he almost failed to notice it. Bard had intercepted him upon the road as he approached the gates, greeting him with the easy courtesy Bilbo had always liked in him before producing yet another carefully considered proposal that, if Bilbo would only be so kind, might perhaps persuade Thorin towards compromise.

Bilbo had opened his mouth to answer when the great gates shifted. Stone groaned against stone, the sound rolling through the valley like distant thunder, and Thorin himself stepped out into the afternoon light. He crossed the remaining distance without haste, not with the measured authority of a king attending negotiations but with the quiet certainty of someone who had decided there were conversations another ought no longer be asked to carry.

"If Bard has words for me," he said, inclining his head with all the courtesy due another ruler, "they should be spoken to me."

There was no challenge in his voice.

Only fact.

Bilbo stood where he was, strangely uncertain what to do with hands that, for once, held neither messages nor expectations.

The conversation that followed belonged to kings.

He found himself almost absurdly grateful for that.

He wandered a little way from the gates while they spoke, following a narrow path that climbed towards one of the lower terraces overlooking the valley. Grass had begun to force its way between cracks in the old stone, reclaiming places that years of abandonment had surrendered to weather and silence. Small white flowers nodded gently in the breeze, unnoticed by everyone except, perhaps, the ravens.

Life, Bilbo reflected, possessed an inconvenient habit of continuing.

It neither sought permission nor paused for sorrow.

By the time he returned, Bard and Thorin had already parted.

Neither looked especially pleased.

Neither looked especially angry.

For reasons he could not entirely explain, Bilbo counted that as progress.

There were other moments.

Small enough that anyone watching might have dismissed them altogether.

When tempers frayed during a council, Thorin answered accusations before anyone had the chance to glance towards Bilbo.

When disagreements threatened to wander into familiar circles, he refused, with unfailing politeness, to let another message be passed through the Company's burglar.

Once, Gandalf caught Bilbo halfway across the great hall, a folded letter already in hand.

"I wonder if—"

"No," Thorin said from somewhere behind them.

The word was calm enough that it scarcely interrupted the conversation.

Bilbo turned.

Thorin had scarcely broken stride.

"If it concerns me, I shall hear it myself."

Gandalf regarded him for a long moment over the rim of his staff.

Then, almost imperceptibly, the old wizard smiled.

"As you wish."

Nothing more was said.

The letter never reached Bilbo's hands.

That evening he found himself walking back through Erebor with nothing to carry.

The sensation felt oddly unfamiliar.

He had become so accustomed to measuring each day by the burdens entrusted to him that their absence left him strangely unsteady, as though someone had quietly removed a pack he had forgotten he was wearing.

The Mountain seemed different now. Not because it had changed—mountains did not change for the convenience of those who dwelt beneath them—but because Bilbo had. Its echoes no longer pressed quite so heavily against the silence. Hammer blows rang more clearly through the halls, laughter travelled further than before, and somewhere deep below hidden streams continued their endless passage through the living rock, patient as they had always been, wearing pathways no eye would ever witness until generations had passed.

Perhaps healing, Bilbo thought, resembled that.

Not sudden.

Not obvious.

Simply the slow, persistent work of time finding every hidden fracture.

~~~~~ 

Healing, Bilbo discovered, was not always accompanied by triumph.

More often it arrived unnoticed, concealed within the ordinary business of the day until one paused long enough to realise that something once painful no longer demanded quite so much attention.

The councils continued.

There were still maps spread across long tables, disagreements over stores and boundaries, old grievances given fresh voices by those who feared compromise more than conflict. Bilbo attended many of them out of habit rather than necessity, slipping quietly into whatever chair remained unoccupied and listening while others argued over matters that seemed forever to hover just beyond resolution.

No one asked him to intervene.

At first he found the silence unsettling.

More than once he caught himself preparing an answer before remembering that no question had been put to him. His hands, so long accustomed to carrying letters, maps or carefully chosen words between one camp and another, now rested idle upon the polished arms of his chair.

He had forgotten what it was to possess an afternoon that belonged only to himself.

It felt, he realised, rather like returning to a familiar room after many years away. Nothing had altered, yet everything seemed strangely unfamiliar.

The Mountain noticed no such uncertainty.

Its halls continued their patient work. Hammers rang from distant forges. Masons measured broken stone against newly quarried blocks. Somewhere deeper still, beyond the places Bilbo had ever walked, water sang quietly through hidden channels worn smooth by centuries of persistence. The sound was seldom loud enough to hear outright, yet there were moments, when conversation faltered, that it seemed to rise through the rock itself, a reminder that Erebor possessed a life beyond kings and councils.

Stone, Bilbo thought, understood patience better than any living creature.

He found himself lingering more often than before.

Sometimes he wandered without destination, following broad corridors until they gave way to smaller passages where the walls still bore the marks of tools laid down decades before Smaug's coming. Dust lay undisturbed upon forgotten shelves. Half-finished carvings waited exactly as they had been abandoned, as though the craftsmen responsible had merely stepped away for their midday meal and intended to return before evening.

The years between seemed almost impossible to imagine.

Life resumed itself in curious ways.

Not by beginning again, but by continuing where it had once been interrupted.

He wondered whether people healed in much the same fashion.

One afternoon, after another council that had produced considerably more words than progress, Bilbo found himself alone in a chamber overlooking the eastern galleries. Sunlight poured through the high windows, warming the stone beneath his feet until it held the heat like a late summer wall in the Shire. The room was empty save for a long table scattered with abandoned reports and a handful of chairs standing where their occupants had left them in search of fresh arguments elsewhere.

The quiet settled around him with unexpected gentleness.

He had not realised quite how weary he remained.

Not the sharp exhaustion born of sleepless nights or difficult journeys, but the slower, deeper weariness that lingered after weeks spent carrying responsibilities never intended to be his own. It clung to him stubbornly, woven so thoroughly into the fabric of each day that he scarcely recognised it until stillness gave it leave to make itself known.

With a small sigh he lowered himself into the nearest chair.

Only for a moment, he told himself.

The reports could wait.

The next meeting could surely begin without a hobbit.

Beyond the window the valley stretched away beneath the Mountain, its colours softened beneath the hazy warmth of afternoon. Tiny figures moved between the encampments like insects crossing open ground, each convinced of the importance of their destination. From such a height the banners seemed smaller than Bilbo remembered, the divisions between one people and another less distinct than they appeared upon the valley floor.

Distance, he reflected, possessed a kindness all its own.

It reminded one how small even the fiercest quarrels became when measured against the passing of years.

His eyes drifted closed.

Not with any intention of sleeping.

Simply to rest them for the space of a single breath.

~~~~~ 

Sleep did not leave him all at once.

It receded slowly, like mist lifting from the valley as morning gathered itself beyond the eastern slopes. At first there was only warmth, unexpected beneath the cool breath of the Mountain, and the faint, familiar rhythm of hammers sounding somewhere far below. The blows came unhurriedly, each one echoing through the stone until it seemed less like labour than the steady heartbeat of Erebor itself.

Bilbo remained where he was, reluctant to disturb whatever gentle place sleep had left him in. For a little while he could not remember where he had drifted off. The council chamber had altered with the evening light, the bright afternoon giving way to amber and shadow, dust turning briefly to gold before disappearing into the gathering dusk. Only then did he become aware that he was not alone. Warmth rested lightly across his hand.

Bilbo lowered his gaze and found Thorin seated beside him. Not across the table, surrounded by maps and reports, nor standing over him with some fresh concern to be settled before nightfall. Simply beside him, his chair drawn close enough that their shoulders almost touched. One broad hand rested over Bilbo's where it lay upon the carved arm of the chair, the gesture so natural that it seemed almost impossible to imagine it having begun at any particular moment.

Bilbo did not move.

There was something infinitely fragile about the quiet they occupied together, as though even the smallest interruption might scatter it.

He wondered how long Thorin had been there.

Long enough, perhaps, to know that Bilbo had needed sleep more than conversation.

Long enough to choose not to wake him.

The thought settled within him with a gentleness that surprised him.

So much of the past weeks had been spent answering demands. Every road he walked had seemed to end with someone asking him for another favour, another message, another attempt to bridge distances that were never his to cross. Even kindness had come burdened with expectation.

This asked nothing.

It simply remained.

Thorin's thumb moved almost imperceptibly against the back of Bilbo's hand.

Whether the movement had been intended or made unconsciously, Bilbo could not have said.

It was enough.

As though sensing the subtle shift beside him, Thorin lifted his head. Their eyes met, neither hurried nor uncertain now, but held by the easy silence that had once belonged to them upon lonely watches beside the campfire.

"I did not mean to wake you," Thorin said quietly.

"You didn't."

His own voice sounded rough with sleep.

"I only opened my eyes."

Something very like amusement flickered across Thorin's face before fading once more into that thoughtful stillness Bilbo had always liked best.

"You were exhausted."

"I may have been."

"Aye."

The answer carried no reproach.

Only quiet certainty.

Bilbo looked towards the windows where the valley stretched beyond the Mountain. Evening had softened the encampments until the separate banners blurred into little more than patches of colour against the land. At such a distance it was impossible to tell where one kingdom ended, and another began.

"It seems rather foolish from up here," he murmured.

"What does?"

"All of it."

He gestured vaguely towards the valley below.

"The arguments. The borders. Everyone so determined to be right that they've forgotten what they hoped to save in the first place."

For a long moment Thorin said nothing.

Then he followed Bilbo's gaze.

"The Mountain has stood here a very long time," he said. "Long before I was born. Long before my grandfather."

"And it will stand long after us."

"It will."

Neither found the thought especially sad.

There was comfort in it.

Stone endured because it did not hurry.

Perhaps people demanded too much of themselves by expecting every wound to heal before the next sunrise.

Without thinking, Bilbo turned his hand beneath Thorin's until their fingers rested naturally together.

He felt the smallest hesitation.

Not reluctance.

Wonder.

As though neither of them had imagined the other might reach first.

Then Thorin's fingers closed gently around his own.

There was nothing possessive in the gesture.

Nothing dramatic.

Only recognition.

Bilbo smiled before he realised he was doing so.

Thorin answered with one of those rare smiles that seemed always to begin in his eyes, quiet enough to escape anyone who was not already looking.

Outside, evening settled over the valley.

The first lamps were beginning to appear in the camps below; tiny points of light scattered across the growing darkness. Somewhere beneath them, messengers would still be carrying reports from one commander to another. Tomorrow would almost certainly bring fresh disagreements. The councils would meet again. Decisions would remain difficult. Nothing of consequence had truly been resolved.

Yet Bilbo found that certainty no longer weighed quite so heavily upon him.

The Mountain had taught him something, though he suspected it had never intended to teach at all.

Stone did not resist every storm.

It endured them.

Perhaps that was all any of them could hope to do.

After a while Thorin rose, though he did not immediately let go of Bilbo's hand.

"There will be supper soon."

"So there will."

"I imagine Bombur has already begun wondering where we've disappeared to."

Bilbo laughed softly.

"I should hate to disappoint him."

"That," Thorin replied, his smile deepening by the smallest degree, "would be a greater danger than any army waiting beyond the gates."

They left the chamber together.

The corridors of Erebor echoed around them as they had echoed for centuries, carrying footsteps that would one day be forgotten, just as they had carried countless others before. The Mountain neither mourned nor celebrated those who passed through its halls. It simply remembered.

Bilbo paused once before the great doors that looked out across the valley.

The shadow of the Mountain stretched far across the land beneath the last light of evening, reaching towards every camp without favour or distinction.

He had crossed that valley each day believing himself caught between opposing sides.

Only now did he understand that he had never truly belonged to any of them.

With that thought resting quietly where weariness had so long lived, Bilbo turned from the doors and followed Thorin deeper into the Mountain.

For the first time since they had stood together before the hidden door on Durin's Day, Erebor no longer felt like a kingdom waiting to be reclaimed.

It felt, quietly and without ceremony, like the beginning of home.