"Are you Mister Boggins?"

Bilbo's standing outside his classroom on the first morning of the school year, greeting his students with smiles and friendly waves. He knows most of them already; he taught preschool last year and was moved up with his students to kindergarten. He's eternally grateful for the transfer—after all, as fun as glorified babysitting can be...he's looking forward to teaching letters and numbers and things of proper substance.

But this little boy, all dark hair and big eyes and toothy grin, is a new face. "I am," he replies to the boy's question, smiling warmly and ignoring the butchering of his name. After all, children hardly care about pronunciation, and Bilbo expects that any correction he attempts will fall on deaf ears. "And what's your name?"

"Kíli!" he says proudly, holding tight to the dark-haired man next to him and swinging his arm. "An' this is my Unca Thorin!"

Bilbo nods, acknowledging this Thorin with a quick smile. "There isn't any trouble with his enrollment, is there?" the taller man asks; his voice is a deep baritone, and he looks at Bilbo with a sharp crease in his brow as he continues, "We only arrived two weeks ago, and the office gave us some trouble..."

"Not that I'm aware of," Bilbo says, shaking his head and mentally running through his class roster. Kíli Durin, if he remembers correctly, has just as much of a right to be there as any other. "If there is, I'll take care of it. You won't need to worry."

"It's much appreciated," Thorin says, and though he does not smile there is a certain relief in his eyes as he turns to his nephew, crouching down to be at his eye level. "I have to go to work now—I'll see you tonight, okay?"

"Okay!" Kíli flings his arms around Thorin's neck and hugs him tight for a moment. "Do good work!"

Thorin smiles, then—it looks strange, almost painful, on his face—and ruffles the boy's hair lightly as he stands up. Then, with one last nod to Bilbo, he's disappeared down the hall.

"Well, why don't you run inside and meet your classmates?" Bilbo suggests to Kíli, who is bouncing on the balls of his feet, staring curiously at his surroundings. "We still have a few minutes until the bell rings."

"Kay!" And with a flurry of dark hair and little feet, he has dashed around Bilbo's legs and run full-speed into the classroom. Bilbo sighs and shakes his head, smiling a bit. Though most of his students already know each other, he has no doubt that Kíli will fit in just fine.

(Or, at the very least, he figures the boy will just run circles around them until they decide to include him in whatever game they're playing.)

Bilbo chuckles to himself as the bell eventually rings and he lets himself into his classroom, doing a quick headcount to find that all sixteen of his students are present. The girls have separated themselves from the boys, but that's not surprising; after all, one of them informed Bilbo solemnly last year that boys had cooties, and if she touched one, then she would get sick and die forever.

(When he asked her whether he had cooties, she had looked highly affronted and proclaimed that he was being silly, and Mister Baggins can't have cooties because he's not a boy! He's a Mister Baggins!)

But regardless, Kíli has seated himself easily at one of the tables with three other boys and is already immersed in a loud, spirited discussion about whether Batman is better than Spiderman. It isn't immediately clear which side is winning (do children's arguments ever come to a conclusion?) but Bilbo knows it will have to be postponed until recess.

He calls the class to order quickly, and they all turn in their seats, staring up at him as he begins talking about all the things they're going to learn this year. Their eyes are bright and they look eager to start, so he sets them loose with their crayons and paper after his introduction. Kíli—a little marauder, apparently—has poured a liberal amount of glue on his hands before Bilbo can stop him, and he's rubbing them together to dry it by the time Bilbo's grabbed the glue bottle away.

"I'm sticky!" he announces happily, holding up his hands, which now look like a pair of strange, iced doughnuts. Bilbo sighs.

"Yes you are, Kíli, but that's not what glue is for. It's for when we work on our art projects, all right? You don't put it on your hands."

The boy nods, though his grin does not dim and he sets about picking off the pieces of dried glue. Bilbo sighs again and pulls him away to a sink in the corner as the others start on their first assignment—a drawing of their family.

"S'rry, Mister Boggins!" Kíli chirps when he's finished, giving him a winning (and utterly adorable, Bilbo will admit to himself) smile before bounding back to his table. Bilbo rubs the bridge of his nose for a moment before returning to supervise.

At the very least, this will be an interesting year.

.

.

(It starts out as any other night in early summer. Dís puts her young sons to bed, and then falls asleep herself, across the hall.)

(The wretched old apartment building they call home seems just as it does every night.)

.

.

He's always made it a habit to check into his students before assigning any sort of personal project. He doesn't want to ask someone without a mother to make a Mother's Day card, after all, or unwittingly ask someone whose family isn't so well-off to bring something for the class.

Kíli, it seems, falls into both categories.

While this is a school in a better neighborhood, generally known to be safer and to provide a better education (and to be slightly more expensive for it, unfortunately), some of the families are more wealthy than others. Several—Kíli's included, apparently—send their children there to know they will be safe and cared for during the day, even if it means spending a little more of the money they may not have much of. Though the boy is clearly fed adequately and well-loved, Kíli's backpack, lunchbox, and clothing have all seen previous owners and are rather worn. He eats every bit of food in his lunch, and stares hard at his classmates if they throw any of theirs away...

(It breaks Bilbo's heart to see that this boy has had to learn to be grateful for any food he comes across. He's so young.)

And when Bilbo asks after his parents, the office comes up with some fresh-looking paperwork that labels Thorin Oakenshield as Kíli's—and his brother's—only guardian. Unca Thorin. The tired-looking man with close-cropped hair and beard who had dropped the boy off on his first day of school. Only occasionally is he able to pick up his nephews at three o'clock. More often than not, Bilbo brings the boy to latchkey, where he either runs to the snack table or goes gallivanting off with the other children, playing a game Bilbo can't hope to understand.

(The paperwork is new; Kíli began living with his uncle just this past summer. He makes a mental note to not bring up mothers or fathers in class, in case the boy either doesn't know what happened or doesn't want to talk about it.)

But despite his family situation, despite the way his life is not as rose-tinted as others', Kíli never fails to walk into the classroom with a huge grin on his face, greeting Bilbo cheerfully (he still calls him Mister Boggins, and Bilbo has resigned himself to this with only a small amount of chagrin) before bolting off to sit with his friends. The boy is a never-ending fount of questions, some of which Bilbo has never thought of himself; Kíli's eyes stare up at him with such trust that when Bilbo finds himself unable to answer, he feels almost guilty. Every time this happens, the boy's face crumples into a thoughtful frown (not one of annoyance, though, which Bilbo finds astonishing coming from someone so small), and he clearly tries to work the answer out for himself.

He wonders vaguely if he's always like this, a perpetually charged battery that never stops running. He feels vaguely sympathetic for Thorin Oakenshield and Kíli's older brother if his suspicions are true.

The first month of school passes uneventfully; Kíli has easily been accepted by the other students, and Bilbo has even caught some of the girls staring at him with puppy-love crushes clear on their faces. He always has to choke down a laugh when he sees (for even the girl who proclaimed her fear of contracting cooties doesn't seem to worry about accidentally touching his hand at every opportunity) and does his best to divert their attentions away. He doesn't need any heartbroken five year olds in his classroom, thank you very much. Rambunctious children are more than enough.

(But as the weeks go on, Bilbo fails to convince himself that Kíli is not worming his way into his heart like no other student ever has.)

.

.

(Kíli wakes to a burning heat outside their bedroom door and a blaring alarm. Fíli wakes to his screams.)

(Dís cannot reach them, for the hallway is engulfed in flames.)

.

.

It's early October when it happens.

The children are discussing their families during break time, and while Kíli goes on and on about the virtue of his brother and uncle, the other boys seem more interested in why he doesn't talk about his mother and father.

Before Bilbo can stop them (Kíli would object at any other time—stubborn, independent child that he is—but here? now?), one of the other boys tilts his head and asks in the unique, innocent voice of a child—"What about your Mama and Papa?"

Kíli's face seems to freeze, the smile slowly fading as he processes the question. The other boys only lean in eagerly, waiting for an answer, oblivious to the way they have upset their friend. Bilbo intervenes then, walking up to their table and smiling down at the boys. "Kíli has a mother and a father just like all of you," he assures them, and the dark-haired boy's head snaps toward him in astonishment. "They're just in a special place right now, so he can't see them anymore. But they love him very much."

The other boys' eyes are hugely wide, and Bilbo glances at Kíli to make sure he has not overstepped his bounds. (After all, he doesn't know this for sure. All he knows is that the boy lives with his uncle.) But there's something like a desperate thank you in those round, dark eyes, and Bilbo knows he has made the right decision here. "But," he continues conspiratorially, crouching down closer and making them all lean in with big, expectant eyes, "I know for a fact that his uncle and brother are just as wonderful as he says they are."

And when he says this, Kíli's face breaks into his largest smile yet.

.

.

(Dís screams for her sons, and Fíli must pull his brother away when he tries to open the bedroom door. He is young still, but he knows this much.)

(They are on the fifth floor, too high for them to jump from the window. The elder remembers his lessons from school and barricades the cracks around the door with their threadbare sheets.)

.

.

After the school day is over, Bilbo finds himself drawn to the images still plastered proudly on one of his many bulletin boards—sixteen drawings of sixteen happy families. One has half a dozen children; another has just two members and what looks to be a yapping puppy.

But the one that draws his eye depicts a little boy with dark hair, a blond child only slightly larger than his brother, and a grown man with a beard.

And in the background is an angel with long, dark hair, smiling over all three of them.

.

.

(The firefighters arrive, but Dís' room is ablaze. When they reach her, she is already gone.)

(Across the hall, they find two small boys curled near the window, screaming and shaking and holding on to each other with an iron grip.)

(They will not let go.)

.

.

The quarterly fire drill comes around, as it always does, and Bilbo thinks little of it. His classroom is right next to the nearest emergency exit doors, so it will only be a simple act of explaining the idea to his students, and then leading them outside into the brisk October wind when the alarm sounds.

It should be so easy.

He explains the purpose of the drill to them, and those who are paying attention nod seriously. Kíli, though, is off in his own little world, pulling dried glue from his hands again (Bilbo could have sworn he put all the glue bottles out of reach) and humming to himself. Bilbo sighs. At the very least, the shock of the loud, shrill alarm should teach him not to ignore his teacher.

He goes on with his lesson as usual (they've progressed through the alphabet, now, and are working on writing simple words) because that is what he's supposed to do, to make this as realistic as possible. He knows the alarm is set to go off at thirteen minutes past eleven, but he is to act normally until the beeping fills the room...in case there is a real fire someday, and the children need to be able to react as quickly as possible when they are unprepared.

(It's a bit morbid, he thinks, but he'd rather have his students be ready for a fire that never comes than not know what to do when their lives are in danger.)

He's just setting down the dry-erase marker when the alarm in the corner starts screaming.

His students rise immediately, some covering their ears and whimpering at the noise but all making their way to the door. "Hold hands! Make a line!" Bilbo calls over the noise, pleased when they follow his instructions within seconds. Some of them shove their shoulders up toward their ears in an attempt to block the noise, and Bilbo resolves to get them outside as quickly as possible. After all, this isn't exactly fun for him, either.

He does a quick headcount to make sure they're all in line—and comes up one short. He glances over the classroom, his confusion turning quickly into terror as he sees every chair empty. He glances over his students again (maybe he counted wrong—he had to have counted wrong), but there are still only fifteen little faces, staring up at him in confusion and impatience.

One more glance tells him who is missing...

And listening a second longer tells him that the alarm isn't the only thing that is screaming.

"Kíli?" he calls, his voice cracking though he desperately tries to hide it. He casts his gaze across the room again, hoping irrationally that he has simply missed the boy as he sits in his chair, grinning impishly at them all...but he cannot see Kíli anywhere.

He hesitates by the door for a moment—if this weren't the first fire drill of the year, he might tell the other students to head out the emergency exit without him (which is also what he should do if the threat were real), but they don't know where they're going, and it seems that the other kindergarten class is already nearly outside, unable to help. He doesn't have a choice.

"Stay here for a moment," he instructs the line leader, a little girl with brown pigtails. Her eyes are huge as she nods up at him, and Bilbo takes off across the room to Kíli's table, looking desperately around for him. "Kíli, where are you? There's no need to be scared, it's just a drill—"

The boy does not answer him, but his cries continue as the siren wails on. Eventually, Bilbo is able to pinpoint the source of the screams: the coat hooks near Kíli's desk, barely filled with light jackets and backpacks. Somehow, the boy has wedged himself in between the wall and one of the empty shoe cubbies; he's curled into himself, eyes tightly shut, covering his head and screaming his throat hoarse. Bilbo swoops down on him quickly, hands hovering as he tries to ascertain what is wrong.

"Kíli, listen to me—"

But he doesn't seem to be able to hear him at all; if anything, he only curls tighter, back into the corner. Bilbo can see tears streaming down his cheeks...and after a moment, the screams start to form words.

"Fee! Fee! Mama...!"

Bilbo remembers the dark-haired angel in the boy's family portrait, and his stomach drops to somewhere near his knees.

"Kíli, you're safe," Bilbo says, trying to sound reassuring even as the siren continues wailing and the child's cries only increase in volume. "There's no danger here. We're only practicing...nobody's going to get hurt..."

After another moment, while Kíli does not acknowledge Bilbo's presence and his other students shift restlessly by the door, Bilbo sighs and collects Kíli up into his arms, standing with little difficulty. (The boy is so small...) "All right, let's go," he says, and his voice is reasonably steady as he instructs the line leader to grab a hold of his jacket and follow him outside.

Kíli never stops screaming.

.

.

(The men carry Kíli and Fíli outside with some difficulty, for they still will not release their grip on each other.)

(Both boys are uninjured, but the paramedics insist on looking them over. Kíli starts screaming again when the building begins to collapse.)

("Mama! Mama!")

.

.

Bilbo has tried everything he can think of to calm the boy down. The fire alarm blares out even across the grounds, though it's not quite as deafening here, where it's allowed to dissipate into the open air...and Bilbo knows it's only a matter of time before the office shuts it off. Most of the school seems to be outside, now, after all.

His other students are hovering a few feet away, looking terrified as Bilbo is still unable to elicit a response from the boy. His mind flies through explanations for this strange, uncharacteristic behavior, but he comes up with nothing that makes any sense. Kíli is loud and excitable and fearless, in the classroom; he has never shown any loss of control like this...

A few other teachers have come, drawn by Kíli's cries...but he is no more consoled, and though the boy seems to have screamed himself hoarse, his hysterical sobs make it clear that he is no more calm than he was in the classroom.

Bilbo does not know what to do.

The second kindergarten teacher flees back into the school, saying something about calling the boy's parents, and Bilbo feels a twisting in his gut that says this has something to do with his mother. Kíli doesn't have parents, but he has an uncle...and surely, Mister Oakenshield will know how to console his nephew. (If he doesn't, Bilbo doesn't know what any of them will be able to do.)

He's convinced Kíli to uncurl himself, out on the grass, but his hands are still grasping at his own arms, leaving scratch marks on his skin despite Bilbo's best attempts to hold him down. The boy is keeping up a desperate stream of begging, for his brother and mother and uncle, and Bilbo doesn't know how to answer, doesn't know what to say, because he's nearly certain now that the boy's mother is—

Suddenly, shouting from several yards away reaches his ears over the roaring of the alarms and Kíli's sobs, and he turns to look as a little blond boy breaks free from a woman whom he recognizes as a second-grade teacher. The child's face is white and he looks about to cry himself, but he tears through his teacher's grasping hands and rushes straight for Bilbo and Kíli, pushing the former aside unceremoniously and falling over the latter.

"Kíli! Kíli! You gotta calm down, it's okay—"

By some miracle the boy seems to hear him, and he looks up at the other child with wide, tear-filled eyes. "Fee?"

It's his brother, of course it's his brother—and the sight of one of those he was so desperate to see seems to calm the boy at last. "Yeah, it's me," Fee—Fíli, Bilbo corrects himself—has tears in his eyes, and Bilbo can see his hands shaking, but he's clearly trying to be strong for his little brother. "You gotta be quiet, okay? It's—"

"But Mama's in there! We gotta save Mama!" Kíli cries, his voice rising hysterically again. Though he stares over Fíli's shoulder toward the school, Bilbo has the sudden, unsettling feeling that he's not really looking at it at all. "Mama's sleeping, we gotta wake her up and—"

Fíli's shoulders go stiff, and his grip on his brother tightens noticeably as he glances over his shoulder as well. "Kíli...Mama's not in there. That isn't her apartment, remember? This is our school."

"But there was the big noise! Like—like when—" Kíli's voice chokes off, and he shakes his brother, as if willing him to understand. "Unca Thorin said Mama's sleeping so she can be an angel, but we gotta wake her up now!"

Bilbo glances over his shoulder, sees fifteen children hovering and not understanding, and knows this conversation isn't for any of their ears. The other teacher has returned from the office, and the fire alarm has ceased, but neither of the boys' expressions has relaxed in the slightest. Bilbo glances toward his co-worker, who nods slightly; Mister Oakenshield is on his way. He nods as well, and jerks his head toward the rest of his students. They shouldn't be here.

She gets the message quickly and herds the other children off toward her own class, leaving Bilbo alone on the ground next to Kíli and Fíli, who are still shaking and crying and holding onto each other like they will never let go. "Uncle Thorin told you," Fíli says, his voice wavering dangerously as he fights the tears forming in his eyes. "Mama's not waking up anymore. She's gonna be an angel forever. That's why we gotta live with him instead."

"She can't sleep forever!" he insists, his eyes wider than Bilbo has ever seen them and almost begging his brother to say this is all a joke. "She's gonna come back so she can make us dinner and tuck us into bed and play with us and—"

But Fíli's head is shaking, and tears are falling down his cheeks, and his grip on his little brother looks painful, and both Kíli and Bilbo can read the truth written out so plainly in his eyes.

Finally, horror fills his face, and Kíli seems to understand.

.

.

(Thorin arrives not ten minutes later, fresh from the night shift, horrified and pleading for any news of his family.)

(He is led to the curb, where two small boys share a blanket and look far too alone. And then he understands, even as the crushing denial weighs on his heart.)

(He will never see his little sister again.)

.

.

Thorin Oakenshield arrives not long after everyone has been dismissed back to their classes. His face is ashen as he approaches the office, where Bilbo is sitting with both Kíli and Fíli; the boys are wrapped in the softest blanket the nurse has to offer, eating small bars of chocolate. It's a futile gesture in the wake of such tragedy, but both boys bite into it heartily, as if they aren't able to eat it often. (Bilbo is reminded yet again of just how much these boys are forced to live without.)

"Fíli? Kíli? Are you all right?" Oakenshield sweeps in when he sees his nephews, sizing up both of them quickly and seeming immensely relieved to find them uninjured. "I wasn't told what happened, just that you were screaming..."

After a beat of silence, in which neither boy seems willing to speak up, Bilbo clears his throat. "We—ah—we just had the first fire drill of the year."

Oakenshield's eyes widen in understanding, and Bilbo is glad he doesn't need to say any more; the man drops to his knees before his nephews, pulling them into a tight embrace. They latch onto him without a second thought, burying their faces into his shoulders and holding onto him tightly, as if never planning to let go. "It's over now," he murmurs into Kíli's hair, stroking his head with a gentleness Bilbo would not have thought possible from the large man. "You're both safe...nobody will ever let you get hurt again."

Fíli lets out a sob (though he obviously tries to hide it) and clutches his uncle ever-tighter; Kíli is silent now, when he was not before, but Bilbo is surprised that Oakenshield is not having trouble breathing. Kíli's grip around his neck looks painfully strong, after all.

He knows he shouldn't be here...not during this emotional scene. He doesn't know exactly what has happened to this small, broken family (though he can hazard a guess), and it's not his business to know. Surely, the wounds are fresh, and asking questions will only rip them open again. He does not dare.

"Mister Boggins?" Kíli asks, his voice trembling as he looks up to see Bilbo heading for the door. "Where're you going?"

"Back to class," he says, smiling gently down at this little student who has so easily stolen his heart. "You go home with Fíli and Uncle Thorin, okay? I'll see you tomorrow, if you want."

Kíli only stares at him for a moment (those wide brown eyes that have seen far too much) before nodding slowly, dipping his head back into his uncle's neck. Fíli watches him, eyes as wide as his brother's, as he makes his way toward the hallway, but Oakenshield stops him with a quiet "Mister Baggins."

Bilbo turns bemusedly to watch the man stand up, cradling one boy in each arm. Thorin inclines his head, and there is the smallest of grateful smiles on his face; if Bilbo sees tears glistening in his eyes, he would never mention it.

"Thank you. For looking after them when I could not."

A swell of pride that he has never felt in all his years of teaching bubbles within him, and Bilbo can't help but smile back.

"You are always welcome."

.

.

(It will be hard, Thorin knows. It will be hard—near-impossible—for any of them to move past Dís' death.)

(But he knows they must...if not for his sake, then for theirs.)

(After all, family is all they have left.)