AN: Here's the last of it. Thanks to those who read it and especially to those who reviewed.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hobbit. My characters seem to own themselves.

It took me three weeks to wake up after that, but after I woke up and after I had chastised Thorin for beating himself up over everything, things settled down. We talked and came to an understanding. I would marry him, and he would leave the heart of the mountain alone. He was amazed when he saw the little chamber. The large stone still shimmered with light. He brought down Bofur, Bifur, and a few more stone workers to open the chamber up a bit more and make it a place of beauty instead of a hole in the ground. They left the heart of the mountain alone, but they set up a bench where people could sit and admire it. I did ask what happened to his mithril shirt and was finally able to pry out of him an amazing story of interracial cooperation. When Thranduil offered to fit me with armor, Thorin gave him the mithril shirt and all but begged him to have it put in with my armor in such a way that I wouldn't notice. Thranduil agreed, and he didn't even ask for a bribe. Things turned out ok, but I did make him squirm when I told him if it ever happened again, he'd better hope there was a wizard around to bring me back to life, because I'll never stop healing him.

Gandalf and Bilbo stayed for the wedding, which I really appreciated, especially since they had to wait until Thorin's sister Dis could get here from the Blue Mountains. They brought home the dwarves of Erebor, and it was so moving to see so many cry when they first entered the mountain. I was really glad we'd been able to neaten up the place and properly bury the dead before they came. The wedding was entirely too much of an affair of state for my taste, but it was beautiful. All the leaders of the surrounding area were there to congratulate us, although Thranduil did look a bit sour. I was just glad to have another woman to talk to. Dis helped me with my clothes and accessories, and wrapped me in a ceremonial sheet or something so that Thorin could come in and do my hair. He wove in his beads as well as one of the Durin beads we'd found. It was a beautiful day, but I was just glad that Thorin was finally all mine.

Life in Erebor settled down. Thorin put all of the Company to tasks that best suited them, except Bilbo who insisted he had to go home to the Shire. I warned him of the ring before he left. He looked ill when I told him it's darkness was worse than the darkness that drove Thorin mad and kept the land around Erebor blighted. He agreed to talk to Gandalf about it on the way home, but I figured we'd better visit soon to make sure it had gotten taken care of.

The rest of the Company stayed. Thorin and Fili spent most of their time on royal business, while Kili became a diplomat for us to the elves. He and Tauriel made a match of it within a year and wound up going back and forth between Erebor and wherever we needed them. I'd had to have a few serious conversations with Thorin to get him to loosen up about it, but in the end he decided keeping his nephew was more important than getting rid of the elf. He grew to like her in time, though it helped that they had an adorable little dwelf girl within a year of getting married.

Balin was of course Thorin's chief adviser and leader of the council, and Dwalin was Thorin's captain of the guard. Ori found the library, and Thorin put him in charge of it. It was a good thing he wasn't as shy as when we started the trip, because he had a whole staff assigned to him. They started by cleaning things up and organizing, but their next task would be copying everything down to preserve it. Bombur was put in charge of the kitchens, and worked with our suppliers among the men and elves. Oin was our resident healer and in charge of the infirmary. He also took care of all medical supplies.

Nori became the spymaster, keeping an ear on the heartbeat of Erebor. He saved us from a hostile takeover less than a year into our marriage. There had been a few who saw Erebor as still weak and put their own people in among the regular immigrants to try to take us down from within. Thanks to Nori, they failed miserably and no one tried again. He helped keep the crime rate low, too. Dori became Thorin's majordomo, who took care of keeping us civilized and helping us not insult visitors unless we meant to. Bofur and Bifur were put in charge of the mines and keeping the Heart of the Mountain stable and secure. Thorin put Gloin in charge of the treasury, which we moved to a few caverns farther down beneath the mountain. He also organized it so coins were separate from objects and sorted as to what they were made out of. Thorin was so awesome! He gave anything that looked like it came from Dale back to Bard.

Bard moved to Dale, and many of the people of Laketown went with him. One of the master's cronies tried to set himself up as Lord of Laketown, but Bard recommended one of his friends, who'd been one of the only guards with honor. With Bard's support, he took charge and threw out the malcontents. They headed for Gondor, saying they'd be back with an army. Two weeks later, we heard they'd run afoul of the spiders of Mirkwood. The elves were making progress on taking the forest back and returning its former greatness with the help of Radagast, but they hadn't gotten everything yet. It helped that part of what Gandalf had been doing while he was away from us was taking care of the necromancer in Dol Goldur. The elves had actually asked for help to take the old fortress apart stone by stone. With the influx of dwarves from the Blue Mountains, we had enough to send about a hundred dwarves to help out.

It was almost a year and a half into our marriage that I became pregnant. I figured it out when I suddenly really started craving all things cheese. I even asked Bombur to smother my meat and bread in cheese. Dis eyed me strangely, but after I developed an extreme dislike of anything with tomatoes in it, she took me aside and asked where I was on my monthly cycle. I realized I was really late, and she hustled me off to Oin. He confirmed that I was indeed pregnant. I told Thorin, but I didn't have to tell anyone else, because it had spread through the mountain like dragon fire. That night was a great feast. Thorin kept trying to feed me delicacies and staring at me dreamily.

He tried to keep me wrapped in pillows for the next nine months, but I wasn't having any of that. I felt totally fine. The only morning sickness I experienced was one day where I forgot to eat until after noon, and it went away after I grabbed lunch in the kitchen. The last month really slowed me down, though, to the point that I just started flying everywhere instead of walking. I waddled like a duck when I tried to walk. It was also in my last month of pregnancy that I learned a dark truth about dwarf society. Back in the world I came from, people would be taking bets on the gender of the baby and fretting over whether to get blue or pink clothes, but when I asked Thorin what he thought the baby would be, he said that it was almost definitely a boy. It turns out that there are at least three male dwarves to every female.

They don't talk about it much because it's just an accepted part of life, but very few dwarf men ever get married. I thought about it and realized that they were a dying race. Perhaps it wasn't so bad before Erebor fell, but there were very few dwarf women left. I had thought they'd just chosen not to move, but it turns out there weren't that many to move in the first place. I thought about it for days, and finally flew down to the chamber of the Heart of the Mountain. I sat staring into it and finally managed to connect with it. I tried calling to the Valar, and to my surprise, they came. They were still indistinct, but the brightest one stepped forward and said gently, "You succeeded in saving the line of Durin, so you wish to ask for one more gift?" "Yes," I replied. "I wish the ratio of male to females born among the dwarves wasn't so lopsided. I'd like it if every dwarf could find a partner and know the joy of children, but if that's not possible, I at least want enough girl children to be born that they can survive as a race." He looked around at the others, and they nodded one by one. He finally nodded, too, and said, "It will be done." He seemed to smile and said, "You have a very kind heart." Then I was back to the heart chamber. I smiled to myself and flew back up. The rest of the month just seemed to drag. Finally, it was time.

The baby picked a doozy of a time, too. It was the third annual celebration of taking back Erebor. The men and elves were there, with Bard and his family and Thranduil and Legolas at the high table with us. When I felt the first few pains, I thought maybe I'd had a few too many cheese puffs. It wasn't until a really sharp one that had me doubled over the table that Thorin noticed. He had me whisked off to Oin's domain before I could say ouch. Twenty hours of hard labor later, and we finally had a beautiful baby boy. Thorin came in and hugged me gently, then held him softly. We had decided on a name over a month previous, but after looking him over, Thorin got a peculiar look on his face and said, "His name is Durin." Well, if that didn't just set the cat among the canaries. There was some legend, bladdy-bladdy-blah. I ignored them and just took my baby back and held him. Whatever he'd been in a past life, he was my baby now.

And that's about caught us up with the present day. Thorin and I have been married twenty years, and we've had three children, Durin, Frerin, and Karin. Durin looked just like his dad, But Frerin and Karin took after me in coloring. They both had my golden hair, although the blue eyes could have come from either of us. Durin and Frerin were both adorable babies, but little Karin was the first one to take her daddy's heart in her hands. It's been a chore to keep him from spoiling her rotten. Durin is seventeen, Frerin is fifteen, and Karin is only ten. They're developing at a dwarven rate, though, so they're all still pretty little. They're big enough to travel, though. We haven't heard from Bilbo in awhile, so we're going to go see him. I'm still worried about that ring. The tale of our adventure is done, though, as well as the addendum, so if anything's going on with him, that will be another story.