Chapter Text
The next morning, Thorin headed eagerly into the library, Bilbo at his heels. Bofur had given them strict instructions on how to handle any books they touched - clean, dry hands, unless the book was badly damaged - and how to record them. They were to take pictures before and after anything they touched and not remove anything permanently from its location.
Just recording the names of the books would be a lifetime of work. Thorin couldn’t wait to get started.
“Try and keep an eye out for anything that explains what actually happened here,” Bofur remarked as he led them in the library. “We want to know how they lived, of course, but what made them leave as well.”
“Census records?” Thorin suggested.
“Newspapers?” Bilbo added, and Bofur chuckled.
“You find an intact newspaper in here and I’ll eat my hat,” Bofur said, grinning.
Bilbo smiled back with an expression that suggested that there would be hat-eating in Bofur’s future, but didn’t otherwise reply.
Thorin shone his torch around the library, trying to take it in as his memory of it from his first visit was a little blurry. Other than the thick layer of dust, it was almost as if all the dwarves who’d worked there had simply gone home for the day - there were even still books open on the desks in front of them.
Some of the stone desks and benches had started to crumble, but most of the architecture had stayed firm. Thorin wasn’t sure exactly what condition the books would be in when they started searching, but they weren’t exposed to the elements, so as long as they’d not been affected by too many pests he was optimistic that they would be able to study them.
“Are you sure you can’t remember what happened here?” Thorin asked, and Bilbo shook his head, staring around him with a small frown.
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “When the actual evacuation happened I wasn’t in any state to take it in.”
“We’ve found no bodies lying around, no sign of goblin invasion,” Thorin mused to himself, taking pictures of the dusty desks. “I can’t help but wonder where the dwarves who lived here went after they fled.”
Bilbo helped him take photos of the library for a while, and when they eventually stopped for a break, he said, “so, the runes?”
Thorin pulled out his notebook, and Bilbo laughed softly. “I should have known you’d be prepared. I told you that rune magic is the mastery of true names,” he said slowly, pouring himself some tea from the thermos he’d pulled from somewhere, “but that’s not all there is to it. You need to learn how to inscribe, evoke and command what you want the rune to do.”
Thorin nodded, making notes. “The dwarves of old had special tools to carve their runes,” Bilbo continued. “Unless you are making moon-runes or mythril runes, that’s not necessary. All you need is something to write with and your mind to make it real. Rip a page out of your notebook and write the rune for fire.”
Thorin did so. Nothing happened. Bilbo nodded. “Do it again, but picture a fire in your mind. Think of it burning as you write the rune, think about what fire means. Then say it out loud as you write it.”
Thorin tried, picturing flames in his mind, writing runes over and over again until his hand burned, until he felt like he was burning with it, and then he cried out “ursu!”
The page set alight, and Thorin snatched his hand away quickly. He looked over at Bilbo, a smile on his lips, and blinked. Through the small blaze and the brief smoke, Bilbo’s halfling form wavered. He looked bigger, so much bigger, though his eyes didn’t seem to want to take it in before the paper burned to nothing, and Bilbo was a hobbit again.
“You’re a natural,” Bilbo said, beaming with pride. “I knew you would be.”
The realisation that he’d used a rune for magic, that he’d be able to prove that his father’s theory had been correct all along made him tremble in suppressed excitement. He knew it. He’d always known it, and he was right.
“Show me something else,” Thorin demanded, and Bilbo laughed.
---
The last of summer melted away, and the return of autumn meant the return of Thorin’s teaching duties.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not, with how much publicity the university was receiving from Thorin’s contributions on the dig, the history department were flexible with Thorin’s teaching duties, allowing him Fridays off so that he could return to the excavation every weekend.
He was still busy teaching, however. His classes had filled up beyond whatever he could have possibly expected, and there was demand for more classes in dwarven history from even non-dwarven students and most of his fellow professors were both overwhelmed and delighted by this development.
On his first day back on campus, before his first class even started, he opened his door to find Ori sitting outside, his colleague Dori’s youngest brother, and by far his best student.
“Please, sir, teach me magic,” he said, his eyes wild and wide. “I know you can. I always believed it.”
Thorin took a deep breath, surprised at how moved he was by this. He’d shown his runic magic off, of course, mostly to his nephews and sister (although the sight of it pained Dis, which pained him) and once to the press. But to hear it from someone who believed in him before he had proof of his theories was something else.
“Of course I will,” he assured him, and Ori beamed.
Thorin’s own magic lessons were continuing onwards, of course, both on site and off. Bilbo wasn’t restricted by location, he could simply appear wherever Thorin was, although he was scrupulous in never turning up unexpectedly. Thorin always received a text before he arrived, although Thorin didn’t like thinking too hard about that as he knew for a fact that Bilbo didn’t have a phone.
But Thorin had to admit, he had come to enjoy Bilbo’s company, beyond their conversations about runes and history. Bilbo was witty, observant, and a good conversationalist. The more time they spent together, the harder it was for Thorin to remember why he had been so wary. He’d even started to think of Bilbo as a friend, though he wasn’t entirely sure what friendship would mean to something like Bilbo.
One afternoon, as Thorin and Bilbo were alone in the ancient library, alternating between cataloguing a bookshelf that promised some interesting perspectives on the early settlement of the mountain and practising the kind of protection runes that were inscribed on the front door, Bilbo tilted his head curiously and called out to Bofur, who was in the corridor outside.
Bofur peered around the doorway, a small frown of confusion on his face. “Everything alright in here, lads?”
“Yes, of course,” Bilbo replied easily, closing the notebook Thorin had been practising in with a deliberate snap. “Just a little reminder about the crack in the centre of the fallen pillar you were about to excavate around - it’s likely to snap when the rubble that supports it is gone.”
Bofur blinked, a confused look in his eye until the strangeness of Bilbo’s statement seemed to fade away. “Course, I hadn't forgotten! Ta for the reminder, Bilbo.”
He ducked out of the room again, and Thorin could hear him calling out for more supporting scaffold to be placed around the pillar, and he turned back to Bilbo in confusion, sitting across from him on the worn stone table and bench they’d worked so hard to clear from dust and debris.
Bilbo opened the book again and started scanning the pages of Thorin’s meticulously written runes.
“How did you know that the pillar had a crack in it?” he asked slowly.
Bilbo gave him a very eloquent look. “Really, Thorin? You already know that I’m not limited to just the eyes you can see, how do you think I knew?”
“What would have happened if you hadn’t said anything?” Thorin asked slowly, his blood running cold. He could hear Fili and Kili's excited chatter in the hallway.
Bilbo shook his head. “It didn’t happen though, did it? No use worrying about spilt milk, as they say.”
“Why would you say anything?” Thorin frowned at him as if Bilbo was a book that he was trying to read, but his polite halfling expression gave nothing away. “What would it matter to you if that pillar fell? This entire city fell, and you watched.”
“May I remind you that when the city fell, I was trapped in a book and trying to not scream,” Bilbo replied snippily. He looked back down at his book and deliberately turned a page, only to let out an exaggerated sigh when Thorin didn’t turn his focus away. “Would it have upset you if the pillar fell, Thorin?”
“Obviously,” Thorin said impatiently. “My nephews are out there! But what does that have to do with anything?”
Bilbo rolled his eyes upwards. “Do I really need to spell it out for you? I did it for you.”
Thorin cleared his throat, unsure of how to process that statement, all of his earlier ire forgotten. “I… thank you, Bilbo.”
Bilbo waved his apology away. “You still have a lot of work to do mastering this protection rune, that’s where you should be focusing your energy.”
Thorin pulled his notebook back across the table agreeably enough, sensing that Bilbo didn’t want to discuss it further. He couldn’t help but wonder if the pink flush across Bilbo’s face - embarrassment? Annoyance? He couldn’t tell - was an unconscious reaction or a deliberate choice Bilbo was making.
It wasn’t until much later, when he was lying awake in his sleeping bag, turning runes over in his head, it occurred to him to wonder what Bilbo meant about his eyes, how many he actually had, how far he could see.
Can he see me now? Thorin wondered to himself, with a shiver of something that wasn’t entirely fear. And then, what does he actually look like?
---
“Are you one of the Valar?” Thorin asked bluntly one evening as they sat together in the dining hall long after everyone else had gone to bed, his pen hovering over a page of complex inscriptions, and Bilbo laughed so long and hard that Thorin stopped being slightly annoyed at his reaction and started to laugh too, just at the absurdity of the conversation.
“I am not, though I think maybe I should be flattered you think so,” Bilbo said at last, taking a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and dabbing at his eyes. “No, I was ancient when those children first sang this world into being. I’m not from here,” he said, spreading his arms out to encompass Thorin’s living room, and presumably everything else outside it. “I’m from… Beyond. Elsewhere. Outside.”
“How old are you?” Thorin asked, a slow creeping dread replacing his earlier laughter. “And Outside what?”
“As old as the dark between the first stars,” Bilbo replied promptly. “And Outside of everything you understand as being real. I can’t explain it any better, I’m afraid.”
“I must seem like a child to you,” Thorin mused aloud, more shaken by his words than he liked to admit. “Or like nothing at all.”
“No,” Bilbo said, reaching over the table to pat his hand. “In a thousand worlds and lifetimes, I’ve never met anyone like you.”
Thorin found himself replaying that touch, those words, for a long time.
Autumn came and went, and the winter snows started. Although the inside of the mountain was not exposed to the elements, it was too cold to camp outside, and would soon be too dangerous to traverse the hidden stairs up and down in the bitter cold. The crew hadn’t yet reached the main door - they were moving slowly, room by room, corridor by corridor, and were still many levels above where the great door stood closed and locked. As much as no one wanted to admit it, they needed to leave the mountain until the snow melted.
On his last trip before the excavations resumed in spring, Thorin wrote runes of closing and protection into the hidden door, and it obligingly locked itself tightly closed.
“You’ll be able to open it again, won’t you?” Bofur said nervously, and Thorin nodded. He had no doubts at all. Bofur nodded, as reluctant as Thorin was to leave, but slowly headed down the long steps again. They’d put ropes along the outside edge to make it safer, but soon it would be impossible to climb at all.
“I have nothing left to teach you,” Bilbo said as he stood next to him, and although his tone was proudly fond, his expression was sad, and with a jolt, Thorin realised what he was going to say.
“You’re leaving,” he said, surprised at how hurt he felt at just the thought of it.
“Yes,” Bilbo agreed. “I have already stayed for longer than I intended. I had good company, after all.” He shot a warm little glance up at Thorin, then away again. “But I still haven’t yet fully recovered from my captivity, and to do that, I need to go home, be in my true form for a while.”
“You never said you were in pain,” Thorin said sharply, looking him up and down as if he were expecting to see blood.
Bilbo waved a hand, dismissing his concern. “Pain is overstating it. It’s more like… wearing shoes that are too small for too long. There’s no cure until you take them off.” He laughed a little at his own analogy, wiggling his bare halfling toes, but Thorin didn’t.
It was ridiculous, feeling this conflicted about Bilbo leaving. He liked Bilbo, he could admit it now, but as he kept on saying, he wasn’t mortal. Thorin would die of old age, and Bilbo would continue onwards like nothing had changed. Did Thorin really expect him to stay forever? Apparently he did. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“When are you leaving?” he asked numbly.
Bilbo looked surprised. “You’re the only one I have to say goodbye to,” he pointed out softly. “Everyone else will forget me as soon as I go.”
“But not me,” Thorin pressed urgently, and Bilbo shook his head, eyes wide and surprised.
“Not unless you want to,” he replied. “Do you want to?”
Thorin shook his head, words failing him. Bilbo smiled warmly and held out his hand. “Goodbye, then, Thorin. Thank you for freeing me. I hope that you get everything you deserve going forward.”
Thorin shook his head, didn’t take his hand. “Come over to mine for dinner this evening,” he said instead. “A proper goodbye.”
Bilbo drew his hand back slowly, a soft, surprised expression on his face. “I’ve never had a proper goodbye,” he said, voice small and wondering. “I’d like that.”
“Six o’clock?” Thorin checked, and Bilbo smiled and nodded before vanishing again.
Thorin shook his head, a fond reluctant smile on his face as he started the long climb back down.
---
That evening, Bilbo arrived at exactly six, wearing a fancier suit than normal and holding a bottle of wine.
He didn’t need to eat, Thorin had already learned, but he enjoyed it. Sometimes Thorin wondered if he’d taken on a halfling appetite along with his form.
Thorin was a decent, if not spectacular, cook and he’d prepared the one recipe he knew very well indeed, a traditional dwarven stew that had been his father’s speciality, to which Bilbo tucked into with every sign of appreciation.
Sooner than he’d like, the stew was eaten and the wine was drunk. The conversation had flowed easily between them, although there was an undercurrent of sadness too - Thorin didn’t like to think that this was the last conversation they would ever share.
He didn’t know exactly when he’d gone from fearing Bilbo to fearing missing him, but it weighed heavily on him even as he forced a smile when Bilbo eventually, reluctantly stood.
“Are you sure there’s nothing else I can give you to repay you?” Bilbo asked. “I can still arrange fortune and fame before I go!”
Thorin shook his head. “Between my classes having a waiting list and the book tour I’m being forced to go on next year by the university, I already have more fame than I know what to do with,” he said. “And I’ve got plenty of fortune, if you count all the funding I’m getting.”
Bilbo laughed a little. “It’s all more than deserved, Thorin.”
He took a deep breath, the question he’d most been wondering about on the tip of his tongue. Bilbo looked at him, seeing his hesitation, and nodded encouragingly.
“Can I see your true form before you go?” he asked, and immediately felt ridiculous. But every glimpse of Bilbo’s true form, every inconsistent shadow or impression of size played on his mind and he wanted, no needed, to know the truth. It was more than simple curiosity although Thorin couldn’t quite explain the reason behind his obsession, even to himself.
He wanted to see, if just once, if only for a moment.
Bilbo looked very uncertain. “I exist in more dimensions than your eyes can comprehend, Thorin. I don’t think it’s a particularly good idea. I'm sorry.”
“Just a glimpse, then, a hint, a shadow, anything,” Thorin said, knowing he sounded desperate and not caring. “Something so that I can know you as you truly are.”
“You already know me better than anybody in this world, living or dead,” Bilbo murmured quietly to him, taking both his hands in his. “In any world, even. But if you truly want this”-
“I do,” Thorin interjected, heart racing with anticipation.
- “Then I suppose a tiny peek won’t hurt.” Bilbo urged him backwards into the dining chair he’d recently vacated. “Close your eyes.”
“Bilbo…” Thorin objected.
“You won’t need them,” Bilbo assured him. “Close them, just for a moment.”
Thorin closed his eyes. The first thing he noticed was the silence. The ticking of his kitchen clock, the beating of his heart, the television he hadn’t turned off in the other room, all faded away to nothing. The silence was so profound he could taste it on his tongue. He started to tremble despite himself.
Despite his closed eyes, he could see an impression of Bilbo’s face in front of him, and he smiled, before his familiar halfling features unfolded before his eyes into something beyond words, something beautiful and horrifying and perfect and awful and squirming and grasping and dancing. It went on forever, as vast as a dying star and just as bright, and behind or in front or within him there was something else moving, something as enormous as Bilbo, and Thorin came to realise in a jolting shock that there were more things like Bilbo out there. So many more, and if they looked they would see him -
A vein throbbed in his forehead. In the midst of everything he could see, he could still make out the familiar gleam of Bilbo’s bright eyes, and he stared fixedly at them, like they could guide him back from wherever he’d gone. He raised one hand, as heavy as a mountain, and dragged the thing that was Bilbo towards him, pressing his lips to where his mouth had once been, before it was replaced by the writhing mass of vine-like tendrils that was in front of him, grasping for connection like a drowning man for a lifeline.
He felt as gasp of something that wasn’t breath against his lips, and his mind slipped into darkness.
He didn’t know when he’d fallen from the chair, or when Bilbo had gathered him up and put him to bed, but when he next had full awareness of himself, Bilbo was talking like he’d been talking for a while.
“... my fault. You wanted to know me, and I wanted to be known by you. It was stupid of me, reckless, risking your mind, your perfect, remarkable mind. When I was trapped, you know, there were minds that I could speak to, like candle flames in the darkness, but your mind was like a burning beacon, guiding me to freedom. I’ve grown so very fond of you Thorin, so much so that it makes me unwise. Please, come back to me.”
“I’m here,” he mumbled. His voice was thick, like he’d been screaming. There was wetness on his pillow, like he’d been crying. One of Bilbo’s hands was covering his eyes, and the other was stroking his hair, like he could gather up Thorin’s unspooled consciousness and give it back to him.
“I’m sorry,” Bilbo said, sounding wretched. It sounded like he’d been crying too.
“I’m not,” Thorin answered after a long moment of consideration. “You’re beautiful. Terrible too, but beautiful. Only poetry could do you justice and I don’t have the words.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Poetry or madness, or both.”
Bilbo laughed shakily. “That’s not what I expected you to say.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t expect you to kiss me, either.”
Thorin managed to peel an eye open. Bilbo was touching his lips in something like wonder.
“You’re still leaving?” Thorin asked after a while and Bilbo nodded, more fervently than before.
“It’s safer for you if I do,” Bilbo said, cheeks turning pink. Thorin idly wondered how his true form was reacting. He still wanted to know even has his mind shied away from the memory of it. “I forget myself, when I’m with you. I could really hurt you next time.”
“You wouldn’t,” Thorin told him, completely sure. “Not on purpose.”
“Not on purpose,” Bilbo agreed, “but hurt is still hurt, even if I don't mean it. You showed me that.”
Thorin considered this for a while. Bilbo’s hand continued moving in his hair, slow and soothing. The horror of what he’d seen started fading, but the awe remained. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was something Bilbo was doing, or if it was simply his own mind protecting itself.
“There are more things like you,” he whispered, and Bilbo made a humming noise again.
“Not really like me,” he said carefully. “They have no interest in mortals and we should keep it that way. Best to forget about them. Thinking about them might make them notice you.”
“I won’t ever forget.” He started shivering hard.
“You will,” Bilbo promised. “When you wake up, you’ll only remember what you want to remember. The rest will be nothing more than a bad dream.”
“I’ll remember you, but you’ll be gone.” Thorin turned his head so that it was pressing into Bilbo’s leg. Bilbo’s grip on his hair tightened for a moment.
“Not forever,” he replied at last. “I can still speak to you in dreams, now and then, if you would like me to.”
“Yes,” Thorin breathed. “I’d like that.”
“Then go to sleep,” Bilbo soothed. “When you wake, everything will be alright again.”
They were quiet for a long time. When Thorin felt his eyes closing, he forced them open, not wanting to find Bilbo gone.
“I have your book,” he confessed. “I’ve had it all along.”
“I know,” Bilbo answered, some of the sadness leaving his voice. “You are many wonderful things, my dear, but a good liar is not one of them.”
“It’s yours,” Thorin managed before he truly fell asleep. “Take it, when you go.”
When he woke, his mind was still and quiet. The memory of Bilbo’s true form wasn’t quite there - he could remember how vast it was, how bright, but nothing else - and Bilbo wasn’t beside him. The bed was cold, and Thorin felt a curious grief build up inside him.
He wasn’t ready to say goodbye. He’d barely begun to understand what exactly Bilbo meant to him, and now he was gone.
He was tempted to lie in bed for a while longer, mulling over his loss, when his stomach made itself known to him, and he pushed himself upwards with a sigh. When he sat up, something fell from his chest to the bed. It was the book, still small and blue, but now the pages weren’t empty.
Inside was a series of runes, so many they almost overlapped, twisting in front of his eyes like they were shy. They were words he didn’t know, but still he got the impression of what they meant.
A smile touched his lips, and his sadness lessened a touch.
Bilbo had left him with his true name.
---
A couple of days after Bilbo left, Thorin found himself sitting across from Balin in their usual pub, a glass of wine untouched before him. His mind still felt delicate, but being in a familar location surrounded by people was grounding him in a way his empty home could not.
“Are you alright, Thorin?” Balin asked, his voice careful and concerned.
“Of course,” Thorin replied, although it felt like a lie.
Balin’s expression indicated that it sounded like one too. “After you’ve worked so hard,” he began, “and proved all your detractors wrong so magnificently, I thought you’d be, well, happier.”
For a moment, Thorin thought about telling the whole truth, but the truth would only cause Balin to worry more, specifically about him, because the truth was so unbelievable.
“I met someone,” he said instead, because he found that he did want to talk about Bilbo, if only a little. The weight of missing him and the weight of his forgotten vision were all tangled up together and he didn’t know how to unpick the knots in his mind.
Balin’s eyes widened in surprise. Obviously he hadn’t expected Thorin to say that. He leaned forward, trying to hide his eagerness. “Someone?” he prompted.
“A… visiting professor,” Thorin replied. He was a terrible liar, but the backstory Bilbo had tried to invent for himself on their first meeting was easy enough to adapt. “We spent quite a bit of time together, discussing my book, but he had to leave.”
“Where does he live?” Balin asked lightly. “The moon? Thorin, just because we have our heads in the past doesn’t mean we actually live in the Third Age. There are cars, trains, phones, and plenty of other ways to stay in touch.”
Thorin almost smiled at Balin’s words. “I know,” he replied. “It’s just complicated. And I barely know him.”
“All relationships are complicated, especially to start," Balin replied. “You’ve spent your entire life in pursuit of your theory,” Balin pointed out gently. “Perhaps it’s time to focus on your personal life for a while. You deserve good things, Thorin.”
“Maybe,” Thorin said, already feeling lighter. It wasn’t normal, what he’d found, what he wanted, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe something good would come of them, after all.
Balin stood and clapped a hand on Thorin’s shoulder. “My round, I think,” he grinned, surprisingly impishly. “Then I want to hear all about your mysterious professor.”
“Maybe not all,” Thorin demurred, taking a sip of his wine, and Balin laughed, not knowing how much Thorin meant that.
---
Winter wore on.
Thorin taught his classes, demonstrated runic magic, and wrote his book. Occasionally he had interviews where he stressed all along that his father had been correct, he’d simply made an intuitive leap of logic that he’d not been able to fully explain at the time.
None of his detractors made any attempt at a counter argument. Some of them published retractions of their previous criticisms. It was academic revenge at its finest, and Thorin found a fierce sort of satisfaction in that.
He met up with his nephews and others from the team, to talk about what they’d already found and the first steps they’d take in the spring. None of them ever mentioned Bilbo. They’d truly forgotten him, leaving Thorin alone with his memories.
The first time Bilbo appeared in his dream, Thorin couldn’t help but notice that he seemed better. He was still carefully in his halfling form, but it looked healthier, more vital, and Thorin realised for the first time how much of his discomfort Bilbo had hid from him.
They walked through the dream city in a comfortable silence. Bilbo squeezed his hand tightly just before he woke.
The next few dreams - not every night, perhaps once a week - they started talking again. About Thorin’s work, about Bilbo’s library. About everything they could think of, anything that crossed their minds.
After a few more dreams, Bilbo gave him a farewell kiss. He kissed like he’d only ever read about it before, like he wasn’t used to having lips, but Thorin didn’t mind at all.
His mind grew stronger, his runes easier to craft. He was almost perfectly content.
Every night before he slept, Thorin would read the little blue book, trying to figure out Bilbo’s true name. It was as complicated as Bilbo was himself, and it was two years before he was confident enough in his understanding to try his theory.
Years of dream talks and dream kisses. Years of excavation with years yet to go, years of seeing magic grow among dwarves once more, before Thorin tried a ritual of his own.
The runes he crafted were not a summons, but an invitation. The book he shaped into a doorway, not a prison.
He spoke Bilbo’s true name, and felt the universe quiver for a moment.
Bilbo stepped through a doorway made of light, and took Thorin’s hands in his own.
“I’m back,” he said with a smile that Thorin bent down and kissed.