Title: grief to refrain
Fandom: The Hobbit
Rating: General Audiences
Pairing: Bilbo Baggins/ Thorin Okenshield
Length: 188
Summary: Thorin lies, still as the stone his head is made of.

 

The room is not overly grand, but there is a stillness to it, an emptiness and hush that occurs otherwise only in collections of writing large enough to be called a library. Bilbo finds little comfort in the comparison.

Dwarrow do not convalesce like hobbits do. Not ones as severely injured as the King Under the Mountain, nor his first and second heir. They are not tucked into bed, with extra pillows and honeyed tea, nor are there any windows to be flung wide. Thorin is under the mountain in fact as well as name, deep in what the what part of the Company isn't busy rushing from mineshaft to thronehall call the roots. Bilbo has his own opinions on the growing that rock does, but he's spent long enough in the company of dwarrow not to speak it. Not in their healing halls, at least.

The rooms are cleared of dust, the metal threading the walls polished to a high shine. Bilbo had found and dragged in the chair himself, to sit beside the bed.

Thorin breathes, if slowly. And he heals, though Bilbo cannot see it.