To Fear the Sun

Bilbo spends the night after giving Bard the Arkenstone dreading the coming of the sun.

Warnings: Hints of bagginshield because I adore it, story is un-beta-read, spoilers for book/movie, hints of depression, dark thoughts, Bilbo is Kinda Fucked Up and Has Issues, one-shot, butchering of Where Things Are in Erebor

Morning is only a few hours away.

And everything is quiet.

Bilbo sits on a small balcony overlooking the treasure room – overlooking his dwarves – and watches the hallway beside him out of the corner of his eye, watching for the first hints of light to fall through, signaling the start of a new day.

His hands are trembling and he wishes he had a satchel of Old Toby. Something to calm his nerves.

But then again he doubts much of anything could calm the shaking in his hands and the ache in his heart.

He looks at his companions – scattered on the gold piles - and something inside him weeps. He wonders if this will be the last time he sees them.

-Thranduil's face softens just a bit as he looks down on the bedraggled hobbit. "He will never forget this, Hafling," he warns and Bilbo thinks he hears a hint of concern in that voice. "Dwarves do not forgive. And they never forget." And Bilbo closes his eyes because he knows, oh Eru, he knows-

Thorin would have seen all of them dead before he would have acquiesced to giving away some gold. He would have seen them slaughtered by the forces arrayed against them before he would give up some cursed pieces of yellow metal.

Bilbo could never allow that.

He knows that the other dwarves would have willingly followed Thorin to the slaughter, would willingly follow their mad King to die horrible, useless deaths in the defense of a pile of metal. They all of them knew that Thorin wasn't in his right mind, but they would have followed him anyway, Bilbo knows that like he knows the sky is blue.

He thinks he sees the first hint of light and something inside him spasms as he whips his head around to look down the hallway, but it is still as dark as ever.

He breathes unsteadily as he turns to look back at his-no, never his-dwarves.

Throughout this journey, these dwarves – dirty, ill-mannered, rude as could be, impossibly brave, funny, loyal – have somehow wormed their ways into his heart, burrowing deep under his skin and flesh and he can't get them out.

He thinks they might be the closest thing to family he has ever had since his mother and father died.

The Shire had always thought him strange. His relatives never cared much for him, never gave him smiles, cared for his welfare, taught him how to fight, shared stories of their home, and they'd never accepted him.

Not like the dwarves had (eventually) come to.

-the dwarves simply will not leave him alone as he recovers in Laketown, even though it's just from a minor cold caught from his adventures on the river. Dori hovers over him, and Oin watches over his health like a hawk and Dwalin and Bifur guard the door from anyone else who tries to trespass, like Fili and Kili who bring him food and Gloin, who generally talks way too loudly and has a tendency to wax rhapsodic about his Gimli. Bofur and Ori often keep him company and make sure he stays in bed, and Bombur makes him more soup than he could ever eat, Nori brings him fancy books purloined from the Master's home, and Balin tells him stories of Erebor at its greatest and he protests quite loudly that he doesn't need all the attention thank you kindly but secretly he adores every moment of it and wonders if this is what it means to have a family-

The trembling in his limbs grows and he tries not to think of what the morning will bring.

The dwarves are his friends, yes, but what is he compared to their King?

It occurs to him that he is one hobbit (albeit with a magic ring) versus thirteen dwarves. They could kill him very easily, he thinks with a morbid chuckle, and he'd never be able to fight them.

They could run their swords through his body, through his fragile, fragile neck and his head would hit the ground and his blood would stain the ground and Bilbo wonders if they would laugh at his body, at the body of the lowly, common thief who dared steal from them-

Bilbo cuts himself off and shudders at the direction his thoughts have taken. He tries not to think about how accurate his dark imaginings seem at the moment.

Thorin will not forgive him, despite all he had done for the exiled King, Bilbo knows. Not when the gold-lust has turned his sapphire eyes the color of obsidian. Not when he sees only gold, not the fact that the bodies of his companions, of his sister-sons, of himself, will be all that remains when Thranduil and Bard are done with Erebor and somebody had to enlighten him to that fact.

Bilbo cannot see Thorin die. He already watched his mother and father die and no, by Eru, he will not watch someone he loves perish again. He can't do it again.

Even though Thorin will hate him until the remaking of the world, Bilbo knows he had to do what he did.

-"I have never been so wrong," Thorin rasps and pulls him into a hug that burns through his bones like fire and he restrains every urge to melt into the embrace like a child-

"But you weren't," he whispers as he looks at the dwarf he wishes he could have called king (and many other names besides) and the dwarves who've become his family in all but blood. "You weren't wrong at all…"

He closes his eyes and weeps into his hands and he prays that morning will not come.