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The Hobbit fic that was meant to be me just pairing Dori/Nori/Ori with everyone else ever, and ended up ... Um. Ended up pained and desperate and spanning the length of The Hobbit and up to the War of the Ring. I, ah, am not quite sure how that happened.
Title: Dulce Et Decorum Est
Rating: R
Fandom: The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings (movieverses)
Characters/Pairings: Dori, Nori, Ori, The Company, Bilbo, Gandalf. Dori/Dwalin, Nori/Fili, Nori/Oin, Nori/Gloin/Gloin's wife, Ori/Kili, on the romantic side. Dori & Thorin, Dori & Gandalf, Dori & Bombur, Nori & Bilbo, Ori & Bifur, Ori & Bofur, Ori & Balin, for friendship. All the brother and cousin and uncle sets, too.
Summary: Three brothers, twelve moments of caring and friendship and loss, from Ered Luin to the War of the Ring. Dori, Nori and Ori, the choices they made, the people they became, and the people they loved and lost.
Wordcount: 4517
Warnings/Notes: Four chapters, twelve parts, marked in bold. Canon compliant for BOTFA and the War of the Ring, so CHARACTER DEATHS. War, grief, loss, friendship, growing up, relationships, becoming who you are.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Title: Dulce Et Decorum Est
Rating: R
Fandom: The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings (movieverses)
Characters/Pairings: Dori, Nori, Ori, The Company, Bilbo, Gandalf. Dori/Dwalin, Nori/Fili, Nori/Oin, Nori/Gloin/Gloin's wife, Ori/Kili, on the romantic side. Dori & Thorin, Dori & Gandalf, Dori & Bombur, Nori & Bilbo, Ori & Bifur, Ori & Bofur, Ori & Balin, for friendship. All the brother and cousin and uncle sets, too.
Summary: Three brothers, twelve moments of caring and friendship and loss, from Ered Luin to the War of the Ring. Dori, Nori and Ori, the choices they made, the people they became, and the people they loved and lost.
Wordcount: 4517
Warnings/Notes: Four chapters, twelve parts, marked in bold. Canon compliant for BOTFA and the War of the Ring, so CHARACTER DEATHS. War, grief, loss, friendship, growing up, relationships, becoming who you are.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Ardent Children
"... You're the most gorgeous dwarf in Ered Luin," Dwalin decided breathlessly, sitting up with a long groan of something that might have been pain, if it weren't so thoroughly satisfied sounding.
Dori, lying stunned and heavy beside him, his hair flying loose from his braids to drift in pools of silver around his head, snorted faintly. "Aye," he agreed wryly. "And I'll bet you say that to all the dwarves who near break you in two in a bar fight, and then ..." He smirked, slow and lazy. "And then split you in two in another manner entirely."
Dwalin laughed, rough and ruined, and leaned down brush his lips over Dori's. Remembering that fight, the dwarf poised like a mobile mountain at its center, light and fluid as an avalanche. And, much more recently, remembering the feeling of that mountain bearing him up, and making him love every Mahal-cursed second of it.
"If there'd been any other dwarf who'd managed, you might be right," he agreed, grinning faintly as he leaned back. "But that's the thing, ain't it? That's the thing, right enough."
He leaned down, rough and sure and strangely gentle, his fingers tangling lightly in that silver hair. Dori blinked up at him, wary and hesitant and, beneath it, deeply, defiantly proud. The patriarch of a fallen family, who people laughed at behind his back, challenged to bar fights with a spat curse, and mocked for being strong enough to break them for it, each and every time. Dori looked up at him, so tired and so defiant, and for that second, that moment, Dwalin loved him as deeply as ever he'd loved anyone.
"You're the most impressive dwarf I've ever seen, Dori son of Vestri," Dwalin whispered roughly, molten silver in his lover's ear. "And never let anyone tell you different."
---
The sky was very blue, Nori noticed absently, while he lay flat on his back and waited for his ears to stop ringing. The healer, his supposed 'easy mark', loomed glowering over him, his staff a walking stick once more and not the lethal weapon it had turned out to be two seconds ago.
"Serves you right, laddie," Óin growled, glaring down at him. "I'm deaf, not stupid. And knives won't do you a blind bit of good if yer opponent has the reach on ye."
Nori wheezed something that might have been agreement, trying on a sheepish smile and flapping a hand vaguely up at him, and for some reason he softened at that, abruptly and completely, and held down a hand to help his gasping victim to his feet, only glaring a little bit at Nori's suspicious squint.
"You're good," the healer said, shortly. Brusque and surprisingly gentle. "You're very good, lad. But you've not the reach, and you've not the strength, and if someone ain't in range, you're sunk before you start." He paused, head tilted thoughtfully. And then he looked up, his eyes boring into Nori's, and smiled faintly, tapping his own ear. "There'll always be parts of you you can't change, lad. Parts that'll put you at a disadvantage. The trick is learning to work around 'em, aye?"
Nori blinked back at him, keeping very still beneath the other dwarf's hands. Feeling the rapidly blooming bruises on his ribs, remembering how he'd thought the older dwarf would be easy prey. Remembering how wrong he'd been.
"And how," he asked softly, "would you recommend going about that?"
Óin grinned at him, sudden and savage, and swooped in to press his lips to a stunned Nori's. To chuckle roughly as Nori took a moment to get over his shock, to realise that he wasn't being held, that he had a choice, and enthusiastically get with the programme.
"Well," the healer murmured, rough and knowing in Nori's ear. "For starters, I recommend getting your hands on a big stick."
---
Kíli was a prince. Ori knew that, he did, he knew what it meant and what he shouldn't do because of it. He tried to be a good dwarf, he really did, however difficult that proved to be when he came from the family he did. So he did know.
It was just ... so very hard to remember that, sometimes. When they were curled in the hayloft at the stables, with Kíli's long hair soft as paper beneath his fingers, and the prince's eyes grinning bright and happy up at him. When Kíli came to him in a blind temper, not his brother, and spilled out his woes to Ori and no-one else. When no-one in all of Ered Luin knew of the longing in Kíli's voice when he spoke of watching Rangers, the sound of the bowstring and the arc of the arrows, but Ori did. Ori knew. When no-one knew save him, it was so hard ... to remember that there were things he shouldn't do.
Like ask his disreputable elder brother a small favour, tiny favour. Like ask Nori, who didn't care about princes or traditions or what anyone thought of him, to help Ori do something he really, really shouldn't do.
"... What is this?" Kíli whispered softly. Hoarsely, almost fearfully, turning the bow over in his hands while Ori hugged one of his favourite books to his chest, and tried not to hyperventilate. "Ori? Ori, what is this?"
"It's ... it's a gift," Ori tried, stuttering faintly at the look in Kíli's eyes. "Because ... because we can be anything we want to be." Holding his book close, his dreams of being a scribe, and meeting the wild, longing look in his prince's eyes. "Kíli. I think ... I think we can be anything we want. If ... if we try?"
And Kíli looked at him, and Kíli smiled at him, and Kíli kissed him, sudden and rushed and sweet as stolen apples, and quite suddenly Ori really didn't care about all those things he shouldn't do.
Not when, for the first time, he truly thought he could be anything he wanted.
Some Desperate Glory
"... Do you think you are the only one who knows what it's like?" Dori asked, softly. Watching Thorin where he stood, stiff and rigid with fury, away from the Company he'd gathered. What little there was of it. Dori asked him, smooth as diamond and maybe as sharp, while Thorin spun to face him, and Dori's fury, his pain, found its outlet. "Do you think you are the only dwarf who knows what it is to be the leader of a fallen family? Do you think you are the only one who looks at all he has lost, all his people, his family have lost, and burns to gain it back for them? Do you?"
Thorin stared at him, stunned and furious, wild-eyed where he turned at bay. Distantly, somewhere in the back of his head, Dori knew what he was doing, what he was daring, the wrongness of it and the cost. He had no right, maybe. He, of all dwarves, had no right. But he remembered Dwalin, standing beside his brother as he watched his king stalk away. He remembered Nori, defiantly unashamed, and Ori, trying so hard to be the same. And for some reason, right here and now, Dori didn't care.
"It doesn't matter how small they are," he went on, his voice distant to his own ears, strangely calm while his heart quivered inside him. "Or how few. What matters is what they will do for you, and what you owe them because of it. And, my king?" He snarled it, spat it out. "My king, you owe them better."
Thorin broke. Suddenly, all at once, like a mountainside giving way. The king broke before him, and Dori, after a moment's shock, caught him. Held him, this trembling scion of a fallen family, through the blind shudders of a suddenly familiar pain. Thorin broke and Dori, helpless against the failure that dogged them both, bore him up as best he could.
"We will give them a home," Dori whispered, soft and ragged, and pressed his lips to his king's temple. "Our families. We will win them back a home."
Or, he thought softly, and with surprisingly little regret, we will die trying.
---
Fíli moved like a dancer. Not an elven dancer, smooth and fluid and stupidly, impossibly graceful. No, Nori thought, watching the prince unashamedly, Fíli moved like someone somewhere was playing a reel just for him, all bounce and power, excitement and control. Fíli moved like the flash of knives or the beat of boots on the stone, and Nori, with Óin snorting softly at him from across the campfire, found that ... delightful.
But risky, oh yes. So very risky. Not because of Dwalin, who lurked in his protégé's shadow with a glower. If it all came to it, Nori could throw Dori in the guardsdwarf's path, and hope it distracted him long enough. Not even because of his uncle, or his brother, because Nori's own brothers had them covered too.
Fíli was risky because Fíli had watched Nori watching him, and Fíli had found it exciting. Fíli had found it amusing, Fíli had thought it a fine game indeed. And that, as nothing else, was dangerous. Nori knew that well.
"You're no Dwalin son of Fundin," Nori warned softly, the flash of his knives matching the ones in the prince's hands, the flash of his grin returned equally in kind. Smiling dangerously as they paced each other beneath the trees. "And I'm neither of my brothers, prince of mine."
Fíli grinned, short and dark and oh so knowing, his pain like the gleam of his blade as he lunged forward to pin Nori to a tree. Nori, eyes dark with his own grin and his own knowing, let him.
"What if I don't care what we're not," Fíli whispered, his voice soft and laughing, the beaded tips of his braids brushing Nori's cheeks. "What if all I want ... is what we could be?"
And Nori thought about that, and Nori liked that, and Nori shimmied like an eel to reverse their positions, pinning his prince to the tree in turn, and matching their grins like knives in the shelter of a foreign forest.
"That," Nori murmured roughly, "I could live with."
---
Ori's hands hadn't stopped shaking yet. They'd made camp hours ago, left the Goblin Town and the Misty Mountains and the Carrock behind hours before that. It was over, all of it, and had been for hours now. But his hands ... even still, his hands would not stop shaking.
Someone sat down beside him. Carefully, quietly, and Ori glanced their way, ready to tell his brothers to leave him be a while longer, or maybe Kíli, to go look after his family. But it wasn't any of them, who sat beside him. It wasn't any of them who'd thought to come.
Bifur looked down at him, his eyes gentle and kind despite the blood still in his hair, and Ori was ashamed to admit that he gaped a little bit.
{It's always hard,} the dwarf signed carefully. Almost hesitantly, as he watched Ori, as if waiting for Ori to tell him it was none of his business, to tell him to go away.
"... What is?" Ori asked, soft and tired, because suddenly he didn't want anyone to go away, not ever again. "What's hard?"
Bifur looked away, a strange expression flickering in his eyes, a pain and a darkness and a wild regret. Bifur looked away, and when he looked back, his eyes were tired too, and the axe in his head seemed larger than it had before.
{The first time they come for you,} he said, the gestures carefully controlled, carefully unshaking. {The first time ... you become something else to stop them.}
Something snapped inside Ori, a wild, tearing thing, and before he really understood what was happening, he was crying, he was nearly choking on his sobs, and Bifur's arms were around him. The other dwarf picked him up, crushing him close against his chest, and cradled Ori as the sobs tore through him.
"It's alright," Bifur murmured, in broken Khuzdul. "It's alright, it will be alright. You just have to make sure ..." A hard swallow, the chest Ori leaned on shaking in its turn, and Ori fell silent, Ori fell still, and then ...
"Just make sure," Bifur told him softly, "that the other thing is never all you become."
The Old Lie
They found each other at the Healing Tents. All of them, in the end. All of them that remained. Bifur, still bloodied and wild-eyed, standing guard over his cousins. Glóin, watching over his brother as Óin struggled to help save who could be saved. Balin and Dwalin, wounded between them, leaning against each other as if they were the only real things left. Watching over fallen princes, and all that had been left of their line.
Bilbo, standing watch too. Over Thorin, and Fíli, and Kíli. Laying together, never to be parted again.
It was Gandalf Dori found himself standing beside. After he had held his brothers close, crushed them to him, and then let them go. Nori, to stand beside Glóin and help Óin where he could. Ori, to smile for Bofur, to read to him and Bombur and help subtly calm their cousin as he stood panting above them. They didn't, any of them, look at the bodies. Dori knew why, they all knew why, they all forgave each other the reasons. None of them looked at what they had lost, and Dori found himself standing beside the wizard who'd led them, and decried them, and in the end, despite it all, fought to save them.
The wizard, he noticed distantly, who had his arm in a sling. The wizard who had, it seemed, been hurt alongside them, no less than any of them.
For a moment, one brief, absurd moment, it was almost funny.
"There's no-one safe, is there?" Dori asked him softly. While Gandalf looked wearily over at him, pain and grief in those ancient eyes, and smiled soft and crooked for the wild humour in Dori's own expression. "Not even wizards. Or ... or kings."
"... No," Gandalf agreed softly, and suddenly his spare hand was resting soft and heavy on Dori's shoulder. Suddenly he was there, warm and heavy and ancient as the very mountains, holding Dori up as his grief broke open. "Not even kings or wizards are safe." Soft, with eyes that had seen ... so very much. "There's not much of anyone, Dori, who can count themselves safe from all things."
And in its way, Dori thought, his nose buried in the wizard's robe ... in its way, that was oddly comforting.
---
Bilbo sat on parapet above the battlefield. Such a tiny figure, Nori thought, looking up from the bottom of the stair. So tiny and frail, sitting on the stone where Thorin had almost thrown him to his death, overlooking the field where the king had met his own. The hobbit had always been small. Fussy and plump in his little hole. And then, later, fierce and defiant, singing challenges to all who came for him, dancing on silent feet around threats too big to understand how dangerous he was. Yes. Bilbo had always been small.
But never, Nori thought softly, with an odd sort of pain in his chest, so small as he seemed now.
"It doesn't seem right," Bilbo said quietly, where he say with his arms wrapped around his knees. Hearing Nori on the stairs, as no-one else ever had. "Does it?" He smiled, or something that tried to be a smile. "It's not right, that kings should die, and the thief who robbed him should live."
Nori closed his eyes. Leaning on the parapet beside the hobbit, beside his friend, and hearing the echoes of ... so many things. It's not right, who lives and who dies. It's not right, when you mean so much less than them. It's not right, when you're not worth it.
Maybe I'm not interested in what we're not, Fíli whispered, the prince's voice warm and laughing in his memory. Maybe I care about what we could be.
"Mahal," Nori whispered, stung and pained to the ghosts in the air. "Mahal, oh Mahal." He reached out, blind and desperate, and gathered Bilbo close, pulled the small, chilled body into his arms. Tried, so very desperately, not to think of other, more permanent chills.
"It's not right," he agreed, to the friend held close against him. "It's not right, and it's not fair. But sometimes ... sometimes you can't change things. Sometimes you just ... have to work around them." He smiled into Bilbo's curls. Or something that tried to be a smile. "Maybe that's why it's us. Because we're thieves. And thieves ... are good at working around things."
Bilbo laughed. Hoarse and wet, his small hands tight around Nori's arm. "Then here's to us," he said, and Nori held him tight against the sound of it. "Here's to thieves in high places!"
... Yes, Nori thought. And here's to the kings who fall below them.
---
Bifur had fallen asleep at last. Had fallen still long enough for Ori to carefully clean the blood from his beard, fallen still long enough to sit down and let Ori gently redo the braids through it. They hadn't mentioned, either of them, the wildness still in Bifur's eyes, or the way Ori's hands hadn't shaken. They hadn't mentioned that, and slowly, after a short while, Bifur had slipped sideways, and fallen quietly asleep beneath Ori's hands.
"... Alright, lad?" a voice asked softly, from the door of the tent. Warm and careful, knowing. Ori turned, and met Bofur's eyes, and thought about it.
"No," he decided, after a second. Finding a smile from somewhere, soft and tremulous. "No, I really don't think I am."
Bofur smiled back, as soft and as crooked, and came forward into the tent to stand behind Ori, to rest his hand on Ori's shoulder and look down at his cousin. Something strange in his face, something old and wistful and fond. Gentle, Ori thought. Something very gentle.
"It won't always be this way, you know," the miner said quietly. Still watching Bifur, not really looking at Ori at all. "It won't always be like this. Not all battles, and dying, and trying to put people back together."
"... Won't it?" Ori asked, looking up at him. Not harshly, nor sadly. Curiously, instead. Mild and tired and too exhausted to be pained. Ori looked up at the other dwarf, the sturdy, cheerful strength of him, and for some reason ... for some reason, found himself hoping.
Bofur met his eyes. Bofur looked down at him, and smiled, slow and steady and sure as the dawn breaking. "No," he said, and there was nothing in it that brooked an argument. "It won't. You know why?"
He smiled, warm and deep as the mountain's core. "Because we're home now. And we'll make bloody sure of it"
Pro Patria Mori
Dori focused furiously. He settled his weight into the stone of the floor, drawing the mountain up along his legs, knotting his hands in heavy wool and pouring every formidable ounce of strength he possessed into the effort. He centered himself on the stone, and heaved.
And may as well, he thought desperately, gasping with effort, have tried to pull the mountain itself up by the roots. Sweet Mahal, but it was no use. The weight poised against him could not be moved, not even by one so strong as he.
"It's ... It's no good," he rasped at last, letting go his grip and watching Bombur subside back into the bed behind him. "I'm sorry, my friend. It's no good."
Bombur looked up at him. Red-faced, ruddy with strain and, perhaps, with a touch of shame. Or perhaps not, Dori thought. Bombur, after all they had been through, had laid shame down behind him years since, and not looked back.
"It's alright," Bombur told him, almost gently. "Dori. It's alright." He smiled, soft and crooked. "I think we all knew I would not be standing to fight this one more battle. Didn't we?"
Dori leaned forward, resting his trembling arms on his knees. He bowed his head, unable to answer.
"You should go," Bombur told him, very gently. "Dwalin is waiting for you, and the others. The Easterlings will be here soon. And I don't think we fought so hard, all those years ago, only to lose Erebor now?"
Dori looked at him, finally. Ignoring the twinge in his heart at Dwalin's name, ignoring the soft, warm knowing in Bombur's eyes. Focusing, instead, on the friend before him, aged and planted in the mountain's heart, unable now to move from her. Bombur, he thought, would fall if Erebor fell. No sooner, no later. And that ... that might not be the worst way to go.
"... You're right," he said at last. Trying a smile, just for Bombur. Just for his friend. "You're right. We're not losing her now." He grinned, the old, strong thing, from when he'd been a younger and more powerful dwarf. "Try to leave some food for us, won't you? We'll have Sauron's armies broken by dinner."
Bombur laughed, deep and rolling as the mountain, and clapped a heavy hand on Dori's shoulder. "You know," he said cheerfully, "my friend, I do not doubt you!"
Dori thought, then, of Dwalin. Of what Dwalin had said to him, all those years ago. Of what Dwalin had said to him last night. My friend, Bombur said, I do not doubt you.
And neither, Dori thought, would he doubt himself. Not anymore. Not ever again.
---
Nori stood at the window in Glóin's apartments, looking out into the night. Not a very dark night, of course. The camp fires of the besieging army spread out beyond the wall, lighting the sky red above them. There hadn't been a truly dark night in days.
This night, though, his thoughts weren't with the army camped beneath them. Nor even with the Fellowship, fighting somewhere distant to the south, another war and another Company gone to fight it. The two dwarves behind him, possibly their thoughts were there, with their son, but not Nori's.
His thoughts were to the west, in mountains fallen silent, and the brothers lost there. His thoughts ... were in Moria.
"Your brother taught me how to fight, you know," he said, abruptly and almost absently. They fell silent behind him, their stares heavy on the back of his neck. Should he turn to look at them, he knew there would be sympathy, and pain, in their expressions. They knew it wasn't only Glóin's brother he was thinking of.
"... Yes," Glóin murmured, quietly. "I knew that." He chuckled, rough and only a little desperate. "Óin used to complain mightily about you. His revenge, he told me, for having to listen to me talk about my son." A pause, while he smiled a father's smile. Nori knew, without even turning to look. "Of course, he's deaf. It wasn't like he actually had to listen."
Nori smiled, faintly. "But he did," he opinioned, softly, his eyes soft as they watched the distant west. "He did, didn't he?"
Glóin paused, for a moment. And then, softly, gruffly, he agreed. "Aye," he said, low and strong. "Aye, he did at that."
A hand touched Nori's back, light and careful, and he turned to face her. Glóin's wife, and Óin's sister-in-law, and Gimli's mother, who had watched almost all that she loved march west and south, as once she had watched her husband march east. A dwarf who had seen more of her family march off to war than Nori ever had.
"Come," she said softly, while her husband came up behind her. Bracketing Nori softly between them, pulling his eyes away from distant mountains, where Ori lay, and Óin, and Balin brother of Dwalin. And Gimli, somewhere to the south, as lost for the moment. "Come with us," she told him gently, and Nori let them lead him inside.
Thieves in high places, he thought. Stealing time they did not have, in memory of lives that they hoped were not lost. But this night, Mahal take him, this night, he was going to let them teach him, and hope he had the strength to forget.
---
Ori leaned back against the cool marble behind him, his hands calm and still on the book he clutched to his chest. His dream, he thought softly, almost distantly. He'd wanted, ever and always, to be a scribe. Well, now he was one. Now he was ...
"You know," he said softly, to the stone behind him, and the dwarf that rested there. "I used to think I could be anything I wanted to be. That anyone could. I even told a prince the same, as though I had the right." He smiled, softly, the pain blunted by time. "I'm not sure he should have listened to me. But that's not for me to decide, maybe."
The stone was silent behind him. Well, it would be. The dwarves around him were silent too, only once looking uneasily his way, before deciding that even had he fallen insane now, it could do them no more harm. Not here. Not anymore.
"I'm not really a warrior," Ori confided softly. To Balin, behind him. Or to Kíli, sleeping beneath another stone inside another mountain. "Bifur told me. He said I would become one, if I had to. I just ... had to make sure that it wasn't the only thing I became. Because there were other things. Like family, and homes, and books. And Bofur agreed, Bofur said I had to build something, and I think maybe that's why I'm here. I think maybe ... maybe that's why I came with you."
Balin, who'd led them here. To retake the oldest of their homes, as they had retaken Erebor before it. To build, and never stop building. Balin, who had believed.
There were sounds, outside the door. Sounds, echoing down distant corridors towards their chamber, and suddenly, there was no more time, and no more choice.
Ori stood. Hearing the other dwarves stand around him. Ignoring them, just for the moment, as he leaned over the cold marble of Balin's tomb, and rested his hand across the name engraved there.
"I'm not a warrior," Ori son of Vestri said softly, to the dwarves lying still behind him. "Bifur told me never to let it be the only thing I was. And it wasn't. It never was. But I think ... that it will be the last thing that I am. And that ... might not be the worst fate, that a dwarf could meet."
He smiled, soft and gentle, and leaned down to brush his lips over Balin's tomb. One last touch before the end, with someone who had seen all that he had been. And then he stood, and he turned, and as the door broke open there was, at the last, a sort of smile upon his face.
He had been, he thought, everything he had wanted to be.
And in the end, that was good enough.
A/N: The title and chapter titles are from the Wilfred Owen poem Dulce Et Decorum Est, of which the key verse is: "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest; To children ardent for some desperate glory; The old Lie: Dulce Et Decorum Est; Pro Patria Mori."
Ardent Children
"... You're the most gorgeous dwarf in Ered Luin," Dwalin decided breathlessly, sitting up with a long groan of something that might have been pain, if it weren't so thoroughly satisfied sounding.
Dori, lying stunned and heavy beside him, his hair flying loose from his braids to drift in pools of silver around his head, snorted faintly. "Aye," he agreed wryly. "And I'll bet you say that to all the dwarves who near break you in two in a bar fight, and then ..." He smirked, slow and lazy. "And then split you in two in another manner entirely."
Dwalin laughed, rough and ruined, and leaned down brush his lips over Dori's. Remembering that fight, the dwarf poised like a mobile mountain at its center, light and fluid as an avalanche. And, much more recently, remembering the feeling of that mountain bearing him up, and making him love every Mahal-cursed second of it.
"If there'd been any other dwarf who'd managed, you might be right," he agreed, grinning faintly as he leaned back. "But that's the thing, ain't it? That's the thing, right enough."
He leaned down, rough and sure and strangely gentle, his fingers tangling lightly in that silver hair. Dori blinked up at him, wary and hesitant and, beneath it, deeply, defiantly proud. The patriarch of a fallen family, who people laughed at behind his back, challenged to bar fights with a spat curse, and mocked for being strong enough to break them for it, each and every time. Dori looked up at him, so tired and so defiant, and for that second, that moment, Dwalin loved him as deeply as ever he'd loved anyone.
"You're the most impressive dwarf I've ever seen, Dori son of Vestri," Dwalin whispered roughly, molten silver in his lover's ear. "And never let anyone tell you different."
---
The sky was very blue, Nori noticed absently, while he lay flat on his back and waited for his ears to stop ringing. The healer, his supposed 'easy mark', loomed glowering over him, his staff a walking stick once more and not the lethal weapon it had turned out to be two seconds ago.
"Serves you right, laddie," Óin growled, glaring down at him. "I'm deaf, not stupid. And knives won't do you a blind bit of good if yer opponent has the reach on ye."
Nori wheezed something that might have been agreement, trying on a sheepish smile and flapping a hand vaguely up at him, and for some reason he softened at that, abruptly and completely, and held down a hand to help his gasping victim to his feet, only glaring a little bit at Nori's suspicious squint.
"You're good," the healer said, shortly. Brusque and surprisingly gentle. "You're very good, lad. But you've not the reach, and you've not the strength, and if someone ain't in range, you're sunk before you start." He paused, head tilted thoughtfully. And then he looked up, his eyes boring into Nori's, and smiled faintly, tapping his own ear. "There'll always be parts of you you can't change, lad. Parts that'll put you at a disadvantage. The trick is learning to work around 'em, aye?"
Nori blinked back at him, keeping very still beneath the other dwarf's hands. Feeling the rapidly blooming bruises on his ribs, remembering how he'd thought the older dwarf would be easy prey. Remembering how wrong he'd been.
"And how," he asked softly, "would you recommend going about that?"
Óin grinned at him, sudden and savage, and swooped in to press his lips to a stunned Nori's. To chuckle roughly as Nori took a moment to get over his shock, to realise that he wasn't being held, that he had a choice, and enthusiastically get with the programme.
"Well," the healer murmured, rough and knowing in Nori's ear. "For starters, I recommend getting your hands on a big stick."
---
Kíli was a prince. Ori knew that, he did, he knew what it meant and what he shouldn't do because of it. He tried to be a good dwarf, he really did, however difficult that proved to be when he came from the family he did. So he did know.
It was just ... so very hard to remember that, sometimes. When they were curled in the hayloft at the stables, with Kíli's long hair soft as paper beneath his fingers, and the prince's eyes grinning bright and happy up at him. When Kíli came to him in a blind temper, not his brother, and spilled out his woes to Ori and no-one else. When no-one in all of Ered Luin knew of the longing in Kíli's voice when he spoke of watching Rangers, the sound of the bowstring and the arc of the arrows, but Ori did. Ori knew. When no-one knew save him, it was so hard ... to remember that there were things he shouldn't do.
Like ask his disreputable elder brother a small favour, tiny favour. Like ask Nori, who didn't care about princes or traditions or what anyone thought of him, to help Ori do something he really, really shouldn't do.
"... What is this?" Kíli whispered softly. Hoarsely, almost fearfully, turning the bow over in his hands while Ori hugged one of his favourite books to his chest, and tried not to hyperventilate. "Ori? Ori, what is this?"
"It's ... it's a gift," Ori tried, stuttering faintly at the look in Kíli's eyes. "Because ... because we can be anything we want to be." Holding his book close, his dreams of being a scribe, and meeting the wild, longing look in his prince's eyes. "Kíli. I think ... I think we can be anything we want. If ... if we try?"
And Kíli looked at him, and Kíli smiled at him, and Kíli kissed him, sudden and rushed and sweet as stolen apples, and quite suddenly Ori really didn't care about all those things he shouldn't do.
Not when, for the first time, he truly thought he could be anything he wanted.
Some Desperate Glory
"... Do you think you are the only one who knows what it's like?" Dori asked, softly. Watching Thorin where he stood, stiff and rigid with fury, away from the Company he'd gathered. What little there was of it. Dori asked him, smooth as diamond and maybe as sharp, while Thorin spun to face him, and Dori's fury, his pain, found its outlet. "Do you think you are the only dwarf who knows what it is to be the leader of a fallen family? Do you think you are the only one who looks at all he has lost, all his people, his family have lost, and burns to gain it back for them? Do you?"
Thorin stared at him, stunned and furious, wild-eyed where he turned at bay. Distantly, somewhere in the back of his head, Dori knew what he was doing, what he was daring, the wrongness of it and the cost. He had no right, maybe. He, of all dwarves, had no right. But he remembered Dwalin, standing beside his brother as he watched his king stalk away. He remembered Nori, defiantly unashamed, and Ori, trying so hard to be the same. And for some reason, right here and now, Dori didn't care.
"It doesn't matter how small they are," he went on, his voice distant to his own ears, strangely calm while his heart quivered inside him. "Or how few. What matters is what they will do for you, and what you owe them because of it. And, my king?" He snarled it, spat it out. "My king, you owe them better."
Thorin broke. Suddenly, all at once, like a mountainside giving way. The king broke before him, and Dori, after a moment's shock, caught him. Held him, this trembling scion of a fallen family, through the blind shudders of a suddenly familiar pain. Thorin broke and Dori, helpless against the failure that dogged them both, bore him up as best he could.
"We will give them a home," Dori whispered, soft and ragged, and pressed his lips to his king's temple. "Our families. We will win them back a home."
Or, he thought softly, and with surprisingly little regret, we will die trying.
---
Fíli moved like a dancer. Not an elven dancer, smooth and fluid and stupidly, impossibly graceful. No, Nori thought, watching the prince unashamedly, Fíli moved like someone somewhere was playing a reel just for him, all bounce and power, excitement and control. Fíli moved like the flash of knives or the beat of boots on the stone, and Nori, with Óin snorting softly at him from across the campfire, found that ... delightful.
But risky, oh yes. So very risky. Not because of Dwalin, who lurked in his protégé's shadow with a glower. If it all came to it, Nori could throw Dori in the guardsdwarf's path, and hope it distracted him long enough. Not even because of his uncle, or his brother, because Nori's own brothers had them covered too.
Fíli was risky because Fíli had watched Nori watching him, and Fíli had found it exciting. Fíli had found it amusing, Fíli had thought it a fine game indeed. And that, as nothing else, was dangerous. Nori knew that well.
"You're no Dwalin son of Fundin," Nori warned softly, the flash of his knives matching the ones in the prince's hands, the flash of his grin returned equally in kind. Smiling dangerously as they paced each other beneath the trees. "And I'm neither of my brothers, prince of mine."
Fíli grinned, short and dark and oh so knowing, his pain like the gleam of his blade as he lunged forward to pin Nori to a tree. Nori, eyes dark with his own grin and his own knowing, let him.
"What if I don't care what we're not," Fíli whispered, his voice soft and laughing, the beaded tips of his braids brushing Nori's cheeks. "What if all I want ... is what we could be?"
And Nori thought about that, and Nori liked that, and Nori shimmied like an eel to reverse their positions, pinning his prince to the tree in turn, and matching their grins like knives in the shelter of a foreign forest.
"That," Nori murmured roughly, "I could live with."
---
Ori's hands hadn't stopped shaking yet. They'd made camp hours ago, left the Goblin Town and the Misty Mountains and the Carrock behind hours before that. It was over, all of it, and had been for hours now. But his hands ... even still, his hands would not stop shaking.
Someone sat down beside him. Carefully, quietly, and Ori glanced their way, ready to tell his brothers to leave him be a while longer, or maybe Kíli, to go look after his family. But it wasn't any of them, who sat beside him. It wasn't any of them who'd thought to come.
Bifur looked down at him, his eyes gentle and kind despite the blood still in his hair, and Ori was ashamed to admit that he gaped a little bit.
{It's always hard,} the dwarf signed carefully. Almost hesitantly, as he watched Ori, as if waiting for Ori to tell him it was none of his business, to tell him to go away.
"... What is?" Ori asked, soft and tired, because suddenly he didn't want anyone to go away, not ever again. "What's hard?"
Bifur looked away, a strange expression flickering in his eyes, a pain and a darkness and a wild regret. Bifur looked away, and when he looked back, his eyes were tired too, and the axe in his head seemed larger than it had before.
{The first time they come for you,} he said, the gestures carefully controlled, carefully unshaking. {The first time ... you become something else to stop them.}
Something snapped inside Ori, a wild, tearing thing, and before he really understood what was happening, he was crying, he was nearly choking on his sobs, and Bifur's arms were around him. The other dwarf picked him up, crushing him close against his chest, and cradled Ori as the sobs tore through him.
"It's alright," Bifur murmured, in broken Khuzdul. "It's alright, it will be alright. You just have to make sure ..." A hard swallow, the chest Ori leaned on shaking in its turn, and Ori fell silent, Ori fell still, and then ...
"Just make sure," Bifur told him softly, "that the other thing is never all you become."
The Old Lie
They found each other at the Healing Tents. All of them, in the end. All of them that remained. Bifur, still bloodied and wild-eyed, standing guard over his cousins. Glóin, watching over his brother as Óin struggled to help save who could be saved. Balin and Dwalin, wounded between them, leaning against each other as if they were the only real things left. Watching over fallen princes, and all that had been left of their line.
Bilbo, standing watch too. Over Thorin, and Fíli, and Kíli. Laying together, never to be parted again.
It was Gandalf Dori found himself standing beside. After he had held his brothers close, crushed them to him, and then let them go. Nori, to stand beside Glóin and help Óin where he could. Ori, to smile for Bofur, to read to him and Bombur and help subtly calm their cousin as he stood panting above them. They didn't, any of them, look at the bodies. Dori knew why, they all knew why, they all forgave each other the reasons. None of them looked at what they had lost, and Dori found himself standing beside the wizard who'd led them, and decried them, and in the end, despite it all, fought to save them.
The wizard, he noticed distantly, who had his arm in a sling. The wizard who had, it seemed, been hurt alongside them, no less than any of them.
For a moment, one brief, absurd moment, it was almost funny.
"There's no-one safe, is there?" Dori asked him softly. While Gandalf looked wearily over at him, pain and grief in those ancient eyes, and smiled soft and crooked for the wild humour in Dori's own expression. "Not even wizards. Or ... or kings."
"... No," Gandalf agreed softly, and suddenly his spare hand was resting soft and heavy on Dori's shoulder. Suddenly he was there, warm and heavy and ancient as the very mountains, holding Dori up as his grief broke open. "Not even kings or wizards are safe." Soft, with eyes that had seen ... so very much. "There's not much of anyone, Dori, who can count themselves safe from all things."
And in its way, Dori thought, his nose buried in the wizard's robe ... in its way, that was oddly comforting.
---
Bilbo sat on parapet above the battlefield. Such a tiny figure, Nori thought, looking up from the bottom of the stair. So tiny and frail, sitting on the stone where Thorin had almost thrown him to his death, overlooking the field where the king had met his own. The hobbit had always been small. Fussy and plump in his little hole. And then, later, fierce and defiant, singing challenges to all who came for him, dancing on silent feet around threats too big to understand how dangerous he was. Yes. Bilbo had always been small.
But never, Nori thought softly, with an odd sort of pain in his chest, so small as he seemed now.
"It doesn't seem right," Bilbo said quietly, where he say with his arms wrapped around his knees. Hearing Nori on the stairs, as no-one else ever had. "Does it?" He smiled, or something that tried to be a smile. "It's not right, that kings should die, and the thief who robbed him should live."
Nori closed his eyes. Leaning on the parapet beside the hobbit, beside his friend, and hearing the echoes of ... so many things. It's not right, who lives and who dies. It's not right, when you mean so much less than them. It's not right, when you're not worth it.
Maybe I'm not interested in what we're not, Fíli whispered, the prince's voice warm and laughing in his memory. Maybe I care about what we could be.
"Mahal," Nori whispered, stung and pained to the ghosts in the air. "Mahal, oh Mahal." He reached out, blind and desperate, and gathered Bilbo close, pulled the small, chilled body into his arms. Tried, so very desperately, not to think of other, more permanent chills.
"It's not right," he agreed, to the friend held close against him. "It's not right, and it's not fair. But sometimes ... sometimes you can't change things. Sometimes you just ... have to work around them." He smiled into Bilbo's curls. Or something that tried to be a smile. "Maybe that's why it's us. Because we're thieves. And thieves ... are good at working around things."
Bilbo laughed. Hoarse and wet, his small hands tight around Nori's arm. "Then here's to us," he said, and Nori held him tight against the sound of it. "Here's to thieves in high places!"
... Yes, Nori thought. And here's to the kings who fall below them.
---
Bifur had fallen asleep at last. Had fallen still long enough for Ori to carefully clean the blood from his beard, fallen still long enough to sit down and let Ori gently redo the braids through it. They hadn't mentioned, either of them, the wildness still in Bifur's eyes, or the way Ori's hands hadn't shaken. They hadn't mentioned that, and slowly, after a short while, Bifur had slipped sideways, and fallen quietly asleep beneath Ori's hands.
"... Alright, lad?" a voice asked softly, from the door of the tent. Warm and careful, knowing. Ori turned, and met Bofur's eyes, and thought about it.
"No," he decided, after a second. Finding a smile from somewhere, soft and tremulous. "No, I really don't think I am."
Bofur smiled back, as soft and as crooked, and came forward into the tent to stand behind Ori, to rest his hand on Ori's shoulder and look down at his cousin. Something strange in his face, something old and wistful and fond. Gentle, Ori thought. Something very gentle.
"It won't always be this way, you know," the miner said quietly. Still watching Bifur, not really looking at Ori at all. "It won't always be like this. Not all battles, and dying, and trying to put people back together."
"... Won't it?" Ori asked, looking up at him. Not harshly, nor sadly. Curiously, instead. Mild and tired and too exhausted to be pained. Ori looked up at the other dwarf, the sturdy, cheerful strength of him, and for some reason ... for some reason, found himself hoping.
Bofur met his eyes. Bofur looked down at him, and smiled, slow and steady and sure as the dawn breaking. "No," he said, and there was nothing in it that brooked an argument. "It won't. You know why?"
He smiled, warm and deep as the mountain's core. "Because we're home now. And we'll make bloody sure of it"
Pro Patria Mori
Dori focused furiously. He settled his weight into the stone of the floor, drawing the mountain up along his legs, knotting his hands in heavy wool and pouring every formidable ounce of strength he possessed into the effort. He centered himself on the stone, and heaved.
And may as well, he thought desperately, gasping with effort, have tried to pull the mountain itself up by the roots. Sweet Mahal, but it was no use. The weight poised against him could not be moved, not even by one so strong as he.
"It's ... It's no good," he rasped at last, letting go his grip and watching Bombur subside back into the bed behind him. "I'm sorry, my friend. It's no good."
Bombur looked up at him. Red-faced, ruddy with strain and, perhaps, with a touch of shame. Or perhaps not, Dori thought. Bombur, after all they had been through, had laid shame down behind him years since, and not looked back.
"It's alright," Bombur told him, almost gently. "Dori. It's alright." He smiled, soft and crooked. "I think we all knew I would not be standing to fight this one more battle. Didn't we?"
Dori leaned forward, resting his trembling arms on his knees. He bowed his head, unable to answer.
"You should go," Bombur told him, very gently. "Dwalin is waiting for you, and the others. The Easterlings will be here soon. And I don't think we fought so hard, all those years ago, only to lose Erebor now?"
Dori looked at him, finally. Ignoring the twinge in his heart at Dwalin's name, ignoring the soft, warm knowing in Bombur's eyes. Focusing, instead, on the friend before him, aged and planted in the mountain's heart, unable now to move from her. Bombur, he thought, would fall if Erebor fell. No sooner, no later. And that ... that might not be the worst way to go.
"... You're right," he said at last. Trying a smile, just for Bombur. Just for his friend. "You're right. We're not losing her now." He grinned, the old, strong thing, from when he'd been a younger and more powerful dwarf. "Try to leave some food for us, won't you? We'll have Sauron's armies broken by dinner."
Bombur laughed, deep and rolling as the mountain, and clapped a heavy hand on Dori's shoulder. "You know," he said cheerfully, "my friend, I do not doubt you!"
Dori thought, then, of Dwalin. Of what Dwalin had said to him, all those years ago. Of what Dwalin had said to him last night. My friend, Bombur said, I do not doubt you.
And neither, Dori thought, would he doubt himself. Not anymore. Not ever again.
---
Nori stood at the window in Glóin's apartments, looking out into the night. Not a very dark night, of course. The camp fires of the besieging army spread out beyond the wall, lighting the sky red above them. There hadn't been a truly dark night in days.
This night, though, his thoughts weren't with the army camped beneath them. Nor even with the Fellowship, fighting somewhere distant to the south, another war and another Company gone to fight it. The two dwarves behind him, possibly their thoughts were there, with their son, but not Nori's.
His thoughts were to the west, in mountains fallen silent, and the brothers lost there. His thoughts ... were in Moria.
"Your brother taught me how to fight, you know," he said, abruptly and almost absently. They fell silent behind him, their stares heavy on the back of his neck. Should he turn to look at them, he knew there would be sympathy, and pain, in their expressions. They knew it wasn't only Glóin's brother he was thinking of.
"... Yes," Glóin murmured, quietly. "I knew that." He chuckled, rough and only a little desperate. "Óin used to complain mightily about you. His revenge, he told me, for having to listen to me talk about my son." A pause, while he smiled a father's smile. Nori knew, without even turning to look. "Of course, he's deaf. It wasn't like he actually had to listen."
Nori smiled, faintly. "But he did," he opinioned, softly, his eyes soft as they watched the distant west. "He did, didn't he?"
Glóin paused, for a moment. And then, softly, gruffly, he agreed. "Aye," he said, low and strong. "Aye, he did at that."
A hand touched Nori's back, light and careful, and he turned to face her. Glóin's wife, and Óin's sister-in-law, and Gimli's mother, who had watched almost all that she loved march west and south, as once she had watched her husband march east. A dwarf who had seen more of her family march off to war than Nori ever had.
"Come," she said softly, while her husband came up behind her. Bracketing Nori softly between them, pulling his eyes away from distant mountains, where Ori lay, and Óin, and Balin brother of Dwalin. And Gimli, somewhere to the south, as lost for the moment. "Come with us," she told him gently, and Nori let them lead him inside.
Thieves in high places, he thought. Stealing time they did not have, in memory of lives that they hoped were not lost. But this night, Mahal take him, this night, he was going to let them teach him, and hope he had the strength to forget.
---
Ori leaned back against the cool marble behind him, his hands calm and still on the book he clutched to his chest. His dream, he thought softly, almost distantly. He'd wanted, ever and always, to be a scribe. Well, now he was one. Now he was ...
"You know," he said softly, to the stone behind him, and the dwarf that rested there. "I used to think I could be anything I wanted to be. That anyone could. I even told a prince the same, as though I had the right." He smiled, softly, the pain blunted by time. "I'm not sure he should have listened to me. But that's not for me to decide, maybe."
The stone was silent behind him. Well, it would be. The dwarves around him were silent too, only once looking uneasily his way, before deciding that even had he fallen insane now, it could do them no more harm. Not here. Not anymore.
"I'm not really a warrior," Ori confided softly. To Balin, behind him. Or to Kíli, sleeping beneath another stone inside another mountain. "Bifur told me. He said I would become one, if I had to. I just ... had to make sure that it wasn't the only thing I became. Because there were other things. Like family, and homes, and books. And Bofur agreed, Bofur said I had to build something, and I think maybe that's why I'm here. I think maybe ... maybe that's why I came with you."
Balin, who'd led them here. To retake the oldest of their homes, as they had retaken Erebor before it. To build, and never stop building. Balin, who had believed.
There were sounds, outside the door. Sounds, echoing down distant corridors towards their chamber, and suddenly, there was no more time, and no more choice.
Ori stood. Hearing the other dwarves stand around him. Ignoring them, just for the moment, as he leaned over the cold marble of Balin's tomb, and rested his hand across the name engraved there.
"I'm not a warrior," Ori son of Vestri said softly, to the dwarves lying still behind him. "Bifur told me never to let it be the only thing I was. And it wasn't. It never was. But I think ... that it will be the last thing that I am. And that ... might not be the worst fate, that a dwarf could meet."
He smiled, soft and gentle, and leaned down to brush his lips over Balin's tomb. One last touch before the end, with someone who had seen all that he had been. And then he stood, and he turned, and as the door broke open there was, at the last, a sort of smile upon his face.
He had been, he thought, everything he had wanted to be.
And in the end, that was good enough.
A/N: The title and chapter titles are from the Wilfred Owen poem Dulce Et Decorum Est, of which the key verse is: "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest; To children ardent for some desperate glory; The old Lie: Dulce Et Decorum Est; Pro Patria Mori."
