Chapter Text
It doesn't rain.
Sun cruelly shines down on them, burns through their clothes and their skin until it reaches their bones and stars gnawing at the marrow.
It doesn't rain. It feels like it should. It always rains at funerals, Bilbo thinks.
But it doesn't.
The empty in Dwalin's chest feels so deep it is making him drown, and in fact he is drowning: in the light, in the smell of freshly-dug dirt, of wood, of rock and stone and skies and green, summer screaming its full, burning, excruciating passion. He is drowning in the not really real not really here yet notion that they're dead.
Fili and Kili and Thorin.
All dead.
He stares as the coffin gets lowered. He stares and swallows past the lump in his throat, and Dis clutches his hand, and all of a sudden his vision is blurring.
He buries his face in his hands and then he leans against the steering wheel. He tries to control his breathing.
Dwalin MacFundin's chest heaves with the sobs he hid in his car to cry, and he tells himself that this is better, easier, less complicated than staring at walls and wondering why?
Why him why them why everything?
He pulls his head up and the breath he takes is the most pathetic wail, as he swallows down the tears and knows his eyes are red, and Dwalin curses, and he presses a hand over his mouth, and it does nothing.
There's a small rap on the passenger side's window. Dwalin wills his head to turn.
Thranduil is peering into his car. He sighs and patiently waits for MacFundin to take deep gulping breaths to calm himself enough to lower the window.
Greenleaf clears his throat.
"I uh. I wanted to give you these."
He shows Dwalin a chain. Dwalin stares at it. Thranduil seems extremely uncomfortable, and for a split second fears Dwalin will say nothing and just drive away.
MacFundin outstretches his hand.
Thranduil is more than happy to hand over what he's holding. Dwalin runs a thumb over the dog tags, over Thorin's name (Thorin Charles Oakenshield). He sniffles. It is a childish sound, like an eight year old boy who's just had a temper tantrum.
"Thank you," he croaks.
"There's. There's really no need. I thought about giving them to his sister but a friend of yours told me you'd... you'd need them."
Dwalin looks up from the tags and meets Rebecca's gaze, who's standing a few feet away from the car. She smiles at him, and her quivering lips betray everything there is to show. Luckily, she's too far for Dwalin to really see her. But she knows he knows she spoke to Thranduil: and that's all that matters.
I am trying to forgive him for dragging Fili down with him with all my might. This is proof.
Thranduil buries his hands in his pockets.
"I'm sorry about what happened," he says, uncomfortable but honest. "No one deserves to die that way."
Dwalin slips the dog tags on around his neck, under his shirt: the metal is cool against his chest and for a second his heart constricts so tight he is perfectly, perfectly sure it will stop beating. It doesn't, of course, because life is unfair.
"Thank you," he says again.
All Thranduil does is nod, and then he pulls back as Dwalin rolls the window back up. Greenleaf stares at MacFundin for a few seconds and then slips his sunglasses on. He walks and then takes the bus home.
It doesn't rain.
He thinks it should.
TEN MONTHS LATER
Bilbo sighs. He stares at his reflection in the entryway mirror and then just shrugs, takes his jacket off and hangs it up on the back of a chair.
He quietly tiptoes across the living room and peers into his guest room now permanent second bedroom, careful not to make too much noise.
A small boy with jet-black hair is sleeping, curled up under a cover, clutching a teddy bear. He wrinkles his nose in his dreaming and then shifts to the side, kicking the cover off his legs. Bilbo smiles, fixes it again, and then quietly shuts the door again.
He opens the kitchen window and lights himself a cigarette, leaning out so the smoke doesn't get in the house. The evening smells of the beginning of summer.
It's almost been a year.
"Uncle Bilbo?" a tiny voice calls out from the room.
"I'll be right there Frodo, darling." Bilbo calls back. He stubs out the cigarette, readies a preemptive anti-nightmare glass of water, and suddenly realises that for the past three months he hasn't had any nightmares, he hasn't woken up shaking, he hasn't dreamt of Kili's splattered brains and Fili's abused skull, he hasn't heard the wet, desperate sound Thorin made as blood flooded out of his body.
He hasn't felt a gun pressed to his temple.
And so he smiles, and the smile fills his chest with birdsong, so unusual, and joy, golden coated and golden shining. He shuts the window and readies his best soothing fairytale-teller voice.
Outside, it starts to rain.
the end