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“Can I take the bars down, now? You promise not to be angry?”

Thorin looked up through the wooden branches that held him in, a darkness spreading around him from his discontent; Dis had often told him off for that habit, for letting his emotions get the better of him and spread around him in ominous shadows. More than once she had taken a broom and pretended to sweep at them in order to lighten his mood, but right now there was nothing he would rather do than let them spread as a visible sign of his annoyance, particularly as they seemed to upset his captor greatly, if the way he shot them rather concerned looks was any indication.

“I promise no such thing.”

The little God gave him a sorrowful frown, and to his intense displeasure Thorin found himself feeling a little remorseful. His captor certainly seemed to have an impressive knack for making Thorin feel guilty, despite the fact that he was the one who had been brought here against his will.

He was really rather annoyed at that.

“Alright,” he relented, finally, as the God’s expression grew even more pitiful. “Fine, if you insist.”

He looked stunned, for a brief moment, as if he had not expected Thorin to actually agree, before a small smile crept across his face; with a wave of his hand the tall, winding branches of olive wood retracted, pulling back into the trunks of the gnarled trees surrounding him in the grove. Thorin had been in the pseudo-cage for two days now, and was rather glad to see the back of it, for all that he rather suspected that he still wouldn’t be able to leave the tall walls of the garden that surrounded them.

“I’m really glad I don’t have to do that anymore,” the other God said, with another half-smile. “Company really isn’t that satisfying when you have to keep them locked up just to get it.”

Thorin quirked an eyebrow at him, a little amused despite himself, before catching on and schooling his face back into one of utter contempt.

The little God’s shoulder’s slumped again, and something painful twisted in Thorin’s chest at the sight.

Thorin was angry.

He was really, really angry.

And he still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened.

As far as he could tell, he had been kidnapped, which in itself made this week more than a little unusual as weeks went, but as he was the God of Death, the King of the Underworld, and undisputed Lord of all those whose souls had passed beyond the veil of life, you will understand his bemusement at the situation; it was often difficult enough to get people to talk to him without stuttering or sweating nervously, let alone have them go as far out of their way as kidnapping in order to spend time with him.

It had started ten days ago, when Thorin had been descending from the heights of Mount Olympus to his own realm; it was a rare occurrence when the King of all the Gods summoned him from his own Halls, and he had been in a poor mood, rather resenting the imposition on his busy schedule – as well as at the King’s belief that he could order Thorin around as if he were some inconsequential demi-God. The dead, he had reminded Thror when he had remarked upon Thorin’s rather gloomy countenance, wait for no one, and there would be a rather extensive line of people waiting outside of his Halls for processing when he returned: as well as that, it really was nothing to do with Thror whether he was glaring or not, thank you very much.

The reply to this rather curt answer was a reminder that Thorin had not in fact taken a day off work in the five centuries since the Gods had first ascended Olympus, and to have another cup of wine and shut up with his moaning.

“There’s nothing quite like a family reunion, is there?” Frerin had commented idly as he had made sure to top up everyone’s wine cups.

Dwalin had snorted, and nudged Thorin, which hadn’t particularly improved his mood.

So when he had finally been allowed to leave, he had not precisely been in the best of spirits, having spent several days in the company of people that rather irritated him, despite the fact that he loved them fiercely (there was a reason that he hadn’t complained when the dominions of Earth had been divided up and he had been left with the one that involved minimal contact with the outside world), and knowing full well that he was about to return to a colossal pile of work had left him a little distracted. Or at least, that was his version of events: there was no way in Hell (and he really thought that he knew a thing or two about that) that he was going to admit that a damn harvest god had managed to sneak up on him.

The last thing he remembered he had been descending a rather narrow pass, and squinting up into the bright sunshine, a little unfamiliar after so many years spent parted from it, before a darting shadow to the side of the path had caught his attention; he had looked, a little curious, but he had been distracted by a familiar flower, white petals standing out against the brown-grey of the mountainside.

It was star shaped, a little pale and odd looking in the bright light of day, as Thorin was far used to seeing it grow in the unchanging shadows in the Underworld; he had not expected to see it here, innocuous and fragile against the rock.

He had paused, and bent to look at it, and that had really been his mistake, right there.

Never trust flowers. He’d learnt that lesson now.

It had smelt more potent than the ones he was used to, and he was half convinced that it had grown upwards towards him, as if inviting him to come closer. His head had swum as he had straightened up again, blinking a little blearily as his vision had started to go grey around the edges. He remembered frowning, and reaching for a hand to steady herself against a tall rock. There had been the flicking shadow again, as if some swift-footed person had darted just out of sight once more.

He vaguely remembered looking around himself, and after that? Well.

It had gone dark, for what had felt like rather a long time.

The next thing he knew he was waking up surrounded by olive branches in a walled garden humming with bees and brimming with colourful fruits, all of which seemed to be growing at once, despite the fact that several of them were out of season entirely, and others certainly should not have been growing in this climate.

Thorin had raised an eyebrow at that.

Pumpkins spilled from long, winding vines, below abundant apple trees and besides delicate spring flowers, their white bell-shaped blooms hanging low with their size; crocuses spread their petals to the sun alongside fig trees so heavy with fruit that the boughs drooped nearly to the grass; just a little further on a golden field of corn waved merrily in a light breeze that brought the slightly bitter scent of a pipeweed that someone had recently been smoking.

It was wholesome, and bright, and beautiful.

Thorin had glared, entirely unimpressed with the entire place.

But what cage could hold the God of Death, what bars could stand between Thorin and his freedom?

His sword was forged by the great Smith Lord himself, from the ashes of a star; his arms were strong enough to use it to cleave limbs from monsters far larger than he, and its edge was keen enough to cut through the very thread of a life.

Wood was nothing, compared to that. He might have laughed, had he not been quite so annoyed; he had set to work instead.

But his blade had had no impact on the trees whose branches were woven around him- for all that he sliced and hacked at the wood it did not even begin to scar, let alone break. He had glared down at his blade as if it was its fault, though it had served him well in many battles in the past; before he had even had a chance to decide on another course of action, a voice had interrupted him.

“No, no, no!” it had called out, from somewhere behind him; Thorin had spun around, shadows pooling around his feet threateningly, creeping up along the boughs of the trees but somehow unable to pass beyond their boundary. “No, no, that won’t do at all!”

He had summoned his deepest, most intimidating voice as his eyes raked a long line of rosebushes.

“Who dares entrap me?” he had intoned, a little impressed at the way that it managed to roll across even this open, large space.

“Oh, um,” came the voice again, and all of a sudden a rather small deity had appeared from behind a cherry tree. “That would be me. And please leave my trees alone, they’re very old and you won’t get past them, besides. My parents grew them.”

Thorin’s sword did not waver from its position in front of him.

“Who in the name of all the Gods are you?”

The God – for the way that the tall grass blades had reached for him and the sunlight dappled against his skin certainly proved that he was not of mortal make – shifted from one foot to the other, rubbing the back of his head a little uncomfortably. He was smaller than any other God Thorin had seen before, shorter and more slender than any of his own kin, though round and soft in his middle. He might have been mistaken for one of the spirits that inhabited glades or springs were it not for his height; the naiads and dryads that regularly bothered the other Gods were rather irritatingly tall. Thorin found himself gritting his teeth at the thought of the last time he had been forced to engage with Thranduil at the unintentional reminder as he faced this new foe.

“Oh, um, I’m sorry,” the God had said, before dropping into a short bow. “Bilbo, at your service.”

The name was not familiar, but then the God of Death had very little to with the deities of the earth and nature, their dominion rarely crossing over: it had been decades since he had even cause to see one, let alone talk to one. His eyes darted across the various plants and trees around them again, searching for some other trap, some further explanation for his inprisonment.

“Why am I here?”

Bilbo had begun to wring his hands, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth.

“Um, well, that is, I thought-“

Thorin had let out a low noise of irritation, and Bilbo had taken an involuntary step backwards. 

“I, um. Are you hungry?”

Then it had been Thorin’s turn to shift a little in his cage, moving closer to the bars, as if he would be able to reach through and grab the other, though nearer to the boundary he could now feel the low hum of an old power drawn deep from within the earth that would ensure that he would not be able to.

“What? You attempt to entrap me further?”

Everyone knew that to accept the food of a God in their domain meant to be forced to remain with them forever: for a moment he almost believed that Bilbo had not quite remembered that, that he had made the offer out of genuine good will: there had been a flicker of shock across his eyes, but then the small God was folding his arms, a scowl stealing across his face, darkening the dappling gold that continued to dance across his skin for a moment.

“Well, there is no need to be quite so rude, you know, I was only trying to be a polite host.”

Thorin had finally lowered his blade, though he certainly did not sheath it.

“Hosts do not normally keep their guests in a cage, Little God.”

Bilbo had stuck his nose in the air, tapping a foot against the ground.

“Well, I’ve never met anyone quite so unpleasant,” he muttered, as he turned on his heel and left Thorin alone again.

That had been the first time Thorin had met Bilbo, and it had been a long day and night before he had reappeared outside the cage; Thorin had watched the sky darken as his Fili drew his chariot across the day, cloaking the lands of the world in the night, far away from him. He had wondered if they knew that he had disappeared yet, and for that matter, how long he had been gone – he could have been asleep for days, or weeks even.

The thought was oddly discomforting. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spent so long away from his own Halls.

He had stood, that night, remaining on guard, not looking up at a night sky that he had not seen in decades, for all that there had been a small part of him that had longed to watch the stars.

 “Now,” the God had said when he had eventually reappeared the next day, long after the sun had reached its zenith in the sky. “I know we didn’t get off to the best of beginnings-”

He had broken off when he looked at Thorin properly.

“My goodness, did you even sit down last night? No, of course you didn’t, I- oh, I am sorry about all this you know, really not the best of introductions was it, of course you don’t trust me, I-”

“Why am I here?” Thorin had cut across, effectively silencing the other’s babbling.

Bilbo had blinked, and then rubbed at his forehead with the heel of his palm.

“Well, I rather thought- no, of course. It’s… a long story, really. Listen, I know that you won’t eat anything, but would you at least like a little water?”

Thorin had let out a low, exasperated noise, but the rather earnest expression on Bilbo’s face seemed to dull his temper, though only a little.  

“I would like you to release me.”

Bilbo had slumped down onto the flat surface of a nearby rock, his chin in his hands.

“I’m very sorry, but I… soon. Soon, I promise. This is just temporary.”

They had stared at each other for a long, slow moment, before Thorin had relented, finally sheathing his sword again. There was very little reason to trust this God, and yet there was something about how obviously upset he was by Thorin’s discomfort that made him do so, just a little, though he was well aware that trusting his kidnapper was a rather foolish thing to do, and that Dis would no doubt swat him around the back of the head when she heard about it.

But he did just seem so very sincere in his apologies.

“Water,” he relented, finally, and Bilbo had perked up, pulling a water skin from his belt.

“Some of my kin can create springs from nothing, you know,” he had said conversationally as he stood, and began to cover the short space between them. “I never quite got the knack for it, though. More the tomatoes and roses kind of God, I’m afraid.”

He reached the bars, and reached through without any problem, for all that Thorin himself seemed unable to do so; quicker than any mortal could have managed, Thorin seized hold of his wrist, surprisingly small in his hand, pulling him flush against the wooden cage.

“Little God,” he had growled, his face as close to the thrum of old power in the boughs of his trap as he dared. Bilbo did not try to pull away from him, did not struggle or try to retract his arm; he had seemed to realise that there was no way he could, and did not feel the need to try.

Instead, Bilbo had just looked up at him, the corner of his mouth quirked slightly as if he knew something that Thorin did not, his gaze lit with some impossible combination of amusement and expectation at Thorin’s actions. It almost made him feel a little foolish, for just a moment, and certainly left him feeling disconcerted. He could feel the warmth of Bilbo’s breath against his own skin, could hear the hitch in it as Thorin squeezed, just a little harder, but to his surprise there was no fear in the eyes that stared back at him, nothing but an unspoken resignation and that almost made Thorin regret grabbing a hold of him, no doubt confirming all the mutters about just how peculiar the Lord of Underworld was, how unfit he had become for living company, spending so many long and lonely hours amongst the dead.

And then Bilbo had smiled, properly, and leant a little closer against the bars, as if there was nowhere in the world that he would rather be than here.

It had stolen whatever Thorin had intended to say – or yell – next clear from his mind.

How long had it been since a stranger had looked at him that way, since someone had stared at him with a frank and open curiosity, rather than suspicion? Since someone had seemed to want to spend time with him, be around him, other than his siblings (and even they couldn’t help but shift a little uncomfortably when the shadows of his Halls gathered about them for too long). For all that death was a natural and inevitable force, one that the deities and spirits of the world were immune to, he somehow always found himself on the end of fear, and now…

Now a little God was smiling at him, and his thumb was stroking at the underside of Thorin’s wrist, gently, soothingly.

Bilbo’s eyes were somewhere between gold and green, and the tip of his tongue darted out to wet his lower lip, and-

Thorin let go of his wrist abruptly, almost as if it burnt him.

Bilbo could have stepped smartly back, then.

If anything, he seemed to press closer, flush against the bars of Thorin’s cage.

“Look,” Bilbo said, a little breathlessly, and Thorin had to physically restrain himself from moving away from the bars himself, from showing any kind of weakness. Instead he glanced down at his hand, following the line of Bilbo’s gaze, his face pulling into a frown.

He had thought that it was perhaps some divine trick of sunlight playing across Bilbo’s skin, before, but now that same gold, dappled light was moving across his palm, as if it had kissed his skin when he had touched the other God’s arm. Already it was fading, but without quite meaning to he ran a finger across that light.

“See?” Bilbo said, and there was an odd yearning in his voice.

Thorin looked up at him, then, their gazes catching and holding for the longest of moments.

Bilbo was pulling his lower lip between his teeth again, as if holding himself back from saying something further. Thorin swallowed, and by the time he looked back down at his hand, the light was gone.

He dropped his arm, then, and turned away, and would say no more to Bilbo that day.

Something in his chest hurt, and he could not put a finger on exactly what it was.

He had rested, that night, though fitfully, his face pressed against grass far softer than any he had felt before, and the next day Bilbo had offered to take down the walls of his cage.

“Where is this place?” he asked, his voice quieter now than it had been before, the shadows on the ground retracting slightly around him. Bilbo smiled at him, and Thorin looked away.

“These are my gardens,” he said, with no small amount of pride. “Everything here I grew myself, you know.”

“You are a harvest god, then,” Thorin had muttered, and though he had not quite meant for it to be out loud Bilbo still perked up a little, and had taken half a step closer, nodding.

“I am Belladonna’s son,” he said, with a note of pride, and Thorin could not blame him; even he had heard of Belladonna. A smile quirked at the corner of his mouth despite himself – no doubt everyone would too know the name of her son, once they learnt that he had been the one of kidnap the God of Death. He almost said so, too, but restrained himself at the last moment. His eyes instead followed the line of the tall wall that ran the perimeter of the gardens, some distance away but still visible, as much briar and thorn as they were stone, and stifled a sigh.

“I suppose you will not allow me to leave here.”

Bilbo shook his head, and then Thorin’s sword was at his throat, pricking his skin hard enough to draw a thin line of ichor, the blood of the Gods, far stronger than that of any mortal. Bilbo swallowed against the blade, but turned his chin up to face Thorin, his gaze firm even as Thorin tightened his hold on Bilbo’s arm, keeping him in place.

“I could force you to release me, Little God.”

It was a futile gesture; Bilbo was as immortal as he himself was, and if he was being honest with himself, Thorin was not sure how he would go about hurting the other, or even if he really wanted to.

That thought made the pain in his chest return, twisting bitterly.

But Bilbo just nodded in reply, his hand reaching towards Thorin’s face as if to touch his cheek; he let Bilbo go as swiftly as he had grabbed hold of him, stepping back and out of reach.

He tried to ignore Bilbo’s low noise of disappointment.

“My Lord,” he began, and Thorin sighed, not entirely sure where his anger had gone, already seeping out of his bones as if the earth herself were drawing it out of him; he turned his glare instead to the grass, which was still bending in Bilbo’s direction, brushing up the bare skin of his calves.

But Bilbo said nothing more, that strange stilting silence forcing its way between them once again.

The garden was bright, and it was beautiful, and he wasn’t sure if it was the sunlight, the situation, or the strange recollection of golden light playing across his skin, but Thorin felt rather suddenly like surrendering, giving in entirely to this whole situation and just sitting down in the shade of that tree, and closing his eyes.

“You promised not to be angry,” he said eventually, quietly, the words making the blade prick a little harder against his skin.

“I do not keep promises to those to kidnap me,” he replied, his anger holding his voice firm and displeased.

Bilbo glanced away, but not quickly enough to hide his obvious disappointment.

“You still have not told me why I am here, Little God.” Thorin’s voice was quieter now, and perhaps not as hard as it had been before.

Bilbo’s face screwed up, and he looked at the ground; when he looked back up at Thorin, his expression was schooled back into something neutral, but there was still some strange sort of sadness about his eyes, the sight of which Thorin could not quite forget.

“I thought you would know, I-” he broke off, with a sigh. “Soon, my Lord. I’ll tell you soon.”

The days passed slowly.

Bilbo came to him some days, and other days he did not; Thorin did not know what the God did on those days that he not appear, and nor did he ever ask. At first he kept a distance from Thorin when he came, from the brooding shadows that poured from him and spread in dark, unimpressed tendrils across the grass, only occasionally sending a butterfly in his direction with a wave of his fingers to flutter around Thorin’s head.

Thorin had swatted at it, the first time, but the action had only led to more and more butterflies landing on him, until his shoulders and hair had been entirely covered by the brightly coloured insects, and Bilbo had been laughing despite Thorin’s glare.

He didn’t try to bat them away anymore, just let them settle about him whenever Bilbo decided to send them his way, their jewelled wings gentle against his cheek.

“Must you?” he complained in a hard voice one evening, when one particularly friendly insect perched on his nose and refused to move, even when Thorin had tried to dislodge it with a finger.

Bilbo had just smiled, and glanced down at the ground around them; where before Thorin’s shadows had been spreading as he had stared at the leaves in the trees above him and worried about the work that was no doubt piling up at home without him, now they had all but gone as his attention had been caught by the butterfly and trying to shift it.

Bilbo had shrugged, and turned back to the flower he was coaxing open, the strange golden light under his skin shimmering contentedly.

Soon enough Bilbo began to come more often, and for longer when he did; not long after, they actually began to talk a little.

“What do you like to do?” Bilbo asked one evening, as the sun sat low in the sky.

Thorin quirked an eyebrow at him, his mouth pulling into a questioning line.

“I mean,” Bilbo continued, “When you’re not working, when you’re not dealing with the… dead. What kind of things do you do?”

Thorin’s hand fisted in the grass, but he resisted the urge to pull it up by its roots. He’d done that once before, and Bilbo had been more than a little upset at him for it.

“I… read.” He’d answered, eventually, and Bilbo perked up.

“Oh, really? What kind of things do you like to read?”

The tomes of the Dead, Thorin did not say. The Words of Fate. The great books of all that has been and will be. The weighty scripture of death, in all its sombre and necessary glory.

He shrugged. “The usual.”

Bilbo had nodded, and looked down at his hands when it had become obvious that Thorin was not going to say anymore. He looked a little resigned, a familiar expression now, and despite himself Thorin felt a little disappointed at that.

Days turned into weeks, and the garden continued to bloom around him.

“How did you get me here?” Thorin asked one morning, as a bird hopped down from a branch into Bilbo’s hand, ruffling its feathers imperiously before beginning to preen itself.

Bilbo glanced at him, and then back down at his hands.

“Well, I’m good at growing flowers.”

Thorin cocked an eyebrow.

“And where did you learn to grow ones that could knock a God unconscious?”

Bilbo bit his lip to hold back his smile, and despite himself Thorin found his attention caught by the way his teeth dragged across the skin of his lip, a little distracted by the sight.

“My mother,” he replied, and there was a long moment of silence, before all of a sudden Thorin started laughing.

His hand was across his mouth, but he found that he couldn’t stop; it only grew worse as Bilbo stared at him in surprise, his sides starting to hurt a little as the small God’s eyes grew almost comically wide. When was the last time he had laughed, like this? A century, two? He could barely remember.

He stopped almost suddenly when he felt a light pressure on his wrist; Bilbo touch was barely there, one hand still cradling the preening bird, and he flinched a little as he thought to pull away his arm, only at the last moment resisting.

Bilbo was staring at him, and Thorin tilted his head a little in a silent question.

“I’ve not heard you laugh before.”

Thorin snorted, one eyebrow raising slightly as he rubbed at his cheek, slightly sore from laughing for so long.

“I suppose it isn’t something that I do all that often.”

Bilbo shrugged, and pulled Thorin’s arm closer, the long sleeves of his dark robes keeping their skin from touching. Thorin’s hand fell open as Bilbo turned his arm, his palm upwards to the sky; shifting a little closer, Bilbo moved his own hand next to Thorin’s, and blew, gently.

The bird cocked his head as his plumage was ruffled, and with a short chirp hopped from Bilbo’s into Thorin’s hand, instead.

“My father used to say that laughter was good for the grass,” Bilbo said, as he stroked the bird with one finger; his voice was quiet and soft, his eyes fixed on the bird.

Thorin made an unconvinced noise in the back of his throat, and Bilbo shot him an unimpressed look, the corner of his mouth twisting into a half smile.

“You have a lot of grass, in the Underworld, do you?”

It was a struggle to keep an answering smile from his face.

He spent many days simply sitting, and as time passed he thought less about how he might escape these walls, and more and more about very little indeed, resting his eyes against the sunlight and watching the stars, instead. Sometimes he thought about his Halls, about the responsibilities that he was abandoning by remaining here, by not trying harder to escape; sometimes he thought of his kin, and how they must be wondering where he was, and what had happened to him – no doubt Fili and Kili would be roaming the countryside searching for him day and night, loyal boys that they were, and by this point Dis would be starting to scowl and stomp her feet as each day dawned without his return. 

And yet, he could not bring himself to be annoyed. It was odd, really: he spent most of his life sitting on a throne and feeling deeply impatient with everyone around him, be they divine or dead, and yet he was unable to summon anything but the faintest heat of temper right now. Oh, he was angry at Bilbo still, but it lacked the sharpness that he was used to, the bitterness, and it seemed to fade with each passing day; he wondered sometimes, when he looked down at the Little God, if it was some effect of this place, of the strange softness to the breeze and the warmth that seemed to seep from the very soil itself.

He thought that he could feel it, through the soles of his shoes, as if the very ground here were sacred. Bilbo padded bare-foot through the grass, and occasionally, he wondered if he should, too.

There were constellations in the sky that he had never seen, that had not been there since last he had walked the surface; the great and glorious deeds of men whose stories he had never taken the time to learn were painted above him, and now he finally found himself with the time to look. He lay in the grass one night, the air cool and sweet around him, the smell of night-blooming flowers in the air relaxing him.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

He hadn’t jumped, though he had not been expecting the voice; this was the first time Bilbo had come to him by night, and he had half-wondered whether he bedded down among the roots of his plants when the sun was cast from the sky, or turned into a tree like the nature Gods of old during the dark hours. But when he looked over Bilbo looked the same as ever, the light that played under his skin perhaps a little more silver in the dark, the shadows cast across his face by the moon starker than in the day.

Thorin found himself speaking without really meaning to.

“All these men,” he said, casting a hand up at the sky from where he was lying, propped up against a low rock. “All these men have walked through my Halls. I have met them all.”

Bilbo nodded, and slowly lowered himself to the ground beside Thorin, his knees tucked up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them.

“And yet I do not know their stories.” He wondered if Bilbo had heard the hitch in his voice, or if it was simply his imagination. “I did not know the greatness that a mortal life can achieve.”

Bilbo made a low noise, something desperate and restrained, and Thorin finally tore his eyes from the sky to look at him. He wasn’t quite sure in the dark, but he thought that he could see a slight flush of a blush across his face. Thorin’s armour was abandoned on the grass beside him, too uncomfortable to wear whilst reclining, and Bilbo reached for the bare skin of his forearm, usually covered by fabric and vambraces. It was hard not to pull away, but once again he managed to remain in place; Bilbo’s hand rested against his skin, and Thorin watched as that same play of light spread across his arm from Bilbo’s touch.

“Why does it do that?” Thorin asked, quietly.

“Why do the rocks move around you when your rage becomes too great to contain, my Lord?” Bilbo replied, as the light began to make delicate patterns over Thorin’s skin. “Why can your blade cut through the threads of mortal life?” He shrugged, and he did not move his hand. “It is not my place to question how or why we are what we are. All I know is this: seeds need warmth to sprout, and plants need care to grow, and fruit needs light to ripen, and so that is what I am.”

“Warmth, and care, and light,” Thorin repeated, and then he pulled away from Bilbo’s touch. “You are a funny thing, Little God.”

Bilbo did not move to catch Thorin’s hand again, but neither did he shift any further away.

“All things need them, my Lord. From the smallest seed to the strongest God.”

Thorin laughed, and it was a peculiar, hollow sound.

“You do not believe me?” Bilbo asked, sounding neither upset nor annoyed.

Thorin shook his head in reply.

Bilbo said nothing, but there was a small smile on his face, the curve of his mouth softening the shadows of night.

He stayed until the dawn, that time, close enough to Thorin that he could feel the warmth of the smaller God even though they were not touching; they did not speak, simply watched the stars unfold above them, an endless sky of stories still to be read.

As the weeks passed Thorin’s thoughts turned once more to leaving, though he seemed unable to stir the desire to try. He did not roam far from the grove that he had woken in, though he was careful to remain out of reach of the twisting branches of the olive trees, just in case they tried to capture him once more. He thought on occasion to strike out for those walls, and now and again he did, but every time they seemed to grow no closer, no matter how long he strode through the wildflowers and fruit trees.

It might have been the fourth or fifth time that he tried that he found himself completely lost, wandering aimlessly in any direction that he could in the hopes of finding his way back to some place that he recognized, in the hopes of finding someone that might direct him back to the grove- and then he paused.

If he had come across another in these vast and unending gardens, found another soul in among the cyprus trees and the scent of wild garlic, he would have called them over, and-

He wouldn’t have asked them how to get out. He would have asked them how to get back.

Thorin didn’t quite notice where he was walking after realising that; he stopped looking for landmarks and just let his feet lead him as he tried very hard not to think about anything at all, trusting that there was nothing in these gardens that he needed to be on his guard against. The sun was much lower in the sky when he was snapped out of his thoughts by the sound of distant water, and he followed that for a time, only now noticing the thirst that was joining the hollow ache of hunger that grew worse with each passing day; Gods did not need food as mortals did, but they still hungered, and it had been many weeks since he had been brought here now.

He followed the sound of the brook, the happy sound of bubbling water somewhere nearby that merged with a second sound as he drew closer; it was a voice, light in the air, and he instinctively ducked behind a tree as he realised, not wanting to be seen.

After a long moment, when no exclamation rang out telling him that he’d been spotted, Thorin glanced cautiously out from behind the trunk, the bark coarse against his hand.

There was Bilbo, and perhaps another day he would have simply strode over, or turned to leave, to find his own way back to the grove, but instead he found himself pausing, and waiting, and watching.

For a moment Thorin thought that Bilbo was standing on the water itself, before he realised that it was only just deep enough to lap around his feet, and not any higher; the water caught the light in bands of silver and gold, flickering as the sunlight caught in the leaves above them.

He still wasn’t entirely sure what colour Bilbo’s hair was, but right then, as he bent down to reach for something in the water, it didn’t really seem to matter what colour it was, because for just a moment, it looked like every colour Thorin had ever known, catching the reflected light from the stream in its curls.

Bilbo’s fingers were trailing in the brook, the water splashing up his wrists and dripping, slowly, down his forearms; the heavy white fabric of his robes was already damp, hanging oddly about his legs as if he had only just risen from kneeling, trailing thin streams of water down the curve of his calves.

Thorin wasn’t entirely sure why he was still stood here, watching.

He swallowed, and it was a little painful, as if there was something heavy in his throat.

Bilbo was singing as he coaxed small plants growing at the water’s edge to grow, tiny green leaves lifting themselves up from where they had been sagging limply into the stream. Each leaf was gently touched by a careful fingertip, lifting itself up from the water afterwards, looking all the brighter for it. Thorin watched as Bilbo smiled contentedly as tiny white buds appeared across the plant, running a damp hand through his hair; a drip of water traced its way down the curve of his cheek, and Thorin had to look away.

It would be very easy, he found himself thinking, to walk over there, to trace that line of water with his knuckle, to follow its path underneath Bilbo’s chin and down his throat, to feel the movement as Bilbo swallowed, to find the line of his collarbones and-

He turned on his heel and left before he had a chance to complete that thought.

It took him hours to find his way back to the grove, and even then it was only when a small bird landed on his shoulder and pecked at his ear every time he tried to turn in a way that it didn’t like that he managed. He would have been more annoyed at it, except for the fact that it did get him back to the grove, when he was quite certain that it would have taken him far longer. He strapped the armour that he hadn’t worn in days back on, and sat uncomfortably against a tree for the rest of the day and the night, his eyes on the horizon and his sword in his lap, waiting, perhaps, for some attack that never came.

The next day brought Bilbo again, with fresh water and a bright smile; he didn’t say much when he caught sight of Thorin’s armour and defensive position, but he did sit a little further away than usual, just out of arms reach. 

“You left the grove yesterday,” Bilbo said, idly, some time later as he traced the outline of a flower with his fingertip. He was splayed out in the grass, on his front, his head propped up on the palm of his other hand. “Why?”

Thorin’s eyebrows rose, his shoulders tensing.

“I was not aware that I was not allowed to.”

Bilbo half rolled in the grass on to his back, sitting up quickly, his face pulling into a frown.

“No, no!” he replied, quickly. “That wasn’t what I meant at all! And I know you’ve left before, but you’d never gone that far, and-”

“You saw me?”

Bilbo blinked, and shook his head quickly.

“Oh, no! But these are my gardens, you know. The trees tell me these things.”

Thorin let out a short huff of amusement, shaking his head, but there was something about the gentle way that Bilbo spoke that seemed to relax the tension across his shoulders, the strange knot of fear that he didn’t understand that had taken residence up in his chest.

“Of course they do.”

Bilbo looked down at his hands, and Thorin shifted a little, uncomfortable.

“I was looking to see if I could reach the walls,” he admitted, quietly. “At least, at first. Then… then I was just walking.”

Bilbo leant forward a little at that, his lips parting, just a little.

“Would you-” he started, before pulling his upper lip between his teeth for a moment. “Would you like to see it?”

Thorin’s head turned to one side slightly.

“Your gardens?”

The lands of a God were sacred, private. There were rooms in his own Halls no person had ever seen before, great libraries for none but himself; Bilbo had brought him to his gardens, but had never offered to show him what was in them. He wondered, for a moment, if the Little God had ever shown anyone, before now. The thought that he might have made something hot and tight flare across chest.

Bilbo nodded, and then glanced quickly down at the ground.

“If you want, of course.”

Thorin swallowed.

“I would.”

“You created this?”

By his side Bilbo bounced on the balls of his feet, his hands behind his back and his skin practically glowing with pride. He made a low hum of agreement, and Thorin shook his head a little in disbelief.

The great valley stretched out before him, shallow but long and wide, a broad river running down the centre of it a band of metallic reflection in the afternoon light. A haze of trees followed the line of it, the green-grey of grasses and the shadow of great rocks breaking through here and there; it was wilder than the grove and the meadows they had come from, rawer somehow with its bare rock and twisting trees, the rush of the water and the bright sunlight. If the orchards and vegetables were one side of Bilbo, then this must be the other: a wilder and freer nature to a soft and wholesome God. It was not what he had expected.

“I thought you were a harvest God,” he said, quietly, and Bilbo shrugged.

“I am. Among other things.”

The corner of Thorin’s mouth drew up despite himself. “Other things?”

Bilbo nodded. “Trees, too. And other plants. All things that grow. The harvest is my main dominion, though.”

That was downplaying it, just a little; he had expected more pumpkins, more pretty vines and ripening fruit; he had not been prepared for this expanse of wilderness, this unknown quantity. The grove was peaceful, in its own way, with its soft grass and the pleasant smell of flowers and pipeweed blowing on a gentle breeze from some yet-unfound place nearby, and Thorin did not doubt for a moment that most people would find it more soothing that he had done, for all that it had calmed him to rest there. But this? This raw nature, untamed and unspoken for, looking for all the world as if no mortal foot had ever stepped there before, this seemed to sing to him.

It looked like a place carved by neither man nor God, but by some great primordial force, from long before they had come to be. There was a strength there, of a solitary but unyielding kind, a sense that time would pass it by forever. No force would wear down these rocks, no hand would break this peace; it took him a moment to realise that that was how he felt about his own dominion, too. Just as nothing could change death, somehow he knew that nothing could change this place, either, apart from the small God who had created it.

He wanted to rest in the shadows cast by those rocks, he wanted to spread his own shadows about the place, to merge them with the trees and the slow course of the river. He wanted to belong here.

“You undersold yourself,” Thorin said, more to himself than to Bilbo, who quirked an eyebrow.

“Or perhaps you just underestimated me.”

Thorin huffed a quiet laugh as Bilbo began to pad down a narrow path into the valley proper. The great walls that surrounded these gardens were still visible on all sides, as close as they had ever been despite the size of the place, and he wondered for a moment just how far Bilbo could stretch his domain, just how extensive his lands were: were they like Thorin’s own, ever growing and ever reaching, containing all that he could ever dream of?

They were more similar, perhaps, than he had first realised.

He tried to ignore that thought, and turned his gaze from Bilbo to the valley again.

He wondered what it would be like, to wander under through that wild forest, under the twisting boughs of trees as old as he himself, trees that had weathered time and grown strong in the dominion of the God. Would the moss be soft under his feet, if he walked barefoot, or would loose twigs and flaked bark bite into his skin? Would there be flowers down there, neat lilacs and spring blooms resting tidily as they had been around the grove, or would dog roses spill over the rocks in disordered vines, would asphodel flowers grow in the shadows that the great trees cast? Would the water in the river taste sweet if he cast himself into it, or would it be cold enough to chill his bones, to steal his breath from his body?

Would the rest of Bilbo’s skin be as soft as his hand had been if Thorin reached to touch it whilst they walked under the canopy of leaves, would the light play across every part of Thorin’s body if he pressed Bilbo close to him beside the river?

The call of a bird of prey in the sky caught his attention; he looked up, but the sunlight blinded him for a moment.

He closed his eyes against it, and relaxed into the warmth of it.

Warmth, and care, and light, he said to himself, and couldn’t quite stop the smile that crept across his face.

He must have been stood there for some time, though he did not realise it; Bilbo had paused on the pathway ahead of him, waiting for Thorin to follow him, waiting for Thorin to join him, and Thorin only realised when Bilbo called back to him.

“Are you coming, my Lord?” Bilbo asked, half-turning back towards Thorin.

That gentle play of light was brighter than it had ever been on his skin, his eyes filled with laughter, his smile warm and open. It was all Thorin could do not to take a step back from him, to contain the strange blend of fear and excitement that was building in his chest and not to let it overwhelm him. He wanted to run backwards, away; he wanted to run forwards, and closer. He didn’t know what to do, or how to feel, but as Bilbo continued to watch him, his head tilted slightly to one side, he found himself leaning forwards, something he had no name for pulling him along.

There was more to the Little God than he had ever realised.

“Thorin,” he said, quietly. ”My name is Thorin, Little God.”

Bilbo’s mouth opened, just a little, before it broke out into a small smile.

“Alright,” he replied. “Are you coming, Thorin?”

He nodded, and took one hesitant step in Bilbo’s direction.

“I’m coming,” he replied, and Bilbo’s answering smile was brighter than anything he had ever known.

When Bilbo reached to touch his wrist, as they drew level with each other, he did not pull away.

“You’re going to have to let my brother go eventually, you know.”

Bilbo jumped, spinning on his heel; there, lounging against the open gates of his garden, was Frerin. He relaxed a little, and Frerin grinned.

“Can I come in?” he asked, waving at the open arch above him. Bilbo nodded, his shoulders slumping slightly, and Frerin took a cautious step through, his smile growing wider once he was inside.

“Are you here for him, then?” Bilbo asked, and Frerin laughed.

“Not at all,” Frerin replied, vines sprouting from the ground as he walked, curling up a near-by fig tree. “I have to say, I think this is all wonderful.”

Bilbo blinked, and reached for Frerin’s vines: they curled happily up his arms, the small bunches of grapes growing and ripening under his hands.

“I kidnapped your brother,” he said, a little cautiously, “and you think it is wonderful?”

Frerin nodded, quirking one eyebrow at Bilbo’s disbelieving tone.

“Oh yes, I’m sure you’ve been utterly horrible to him whilst he’s been here.”

Bilbo ducked his head, stroking a grape with his hands before letting them go again with a sigh.

“Then why are you here?”

Frerin smiled at the grapes, plucking one off and popping it into his mouth with a small smile.

“Very nice,” Frerin commented. “I mean, I prefer them once they’re wine, but still. No one ever gets them quite as sweet as you do.”

Bilbo snorted. “Flatterer.”

“And as for your previous question, I’m here with a message. Not mine, of course, I’m staying way out of this whole situation, but the family thought you’d be a little more receptive to me than to the rest of them.”

Bilbo nodded; Frerin was the God of wine and grapes, of ecstasy. Though he and Frerin were hardly the same, they had crossed paths before, normally around the time of the grape harvest, and the Gods must have known that Bilbo was rarely willing to invite anyone that he did not know into his gardens.

“They originally wanted to come full force, you know,” Frerin commented, leaning idly against a tree. “The whole party of us, here together, but I thought that you might not appreciate that many people that you didn’t know arriving at your door all at once.”

Bilbo grinned, huffing a small laugh.

“You’ve got that right.”

They stood in silence for a little longer, Frerin’s vines spreading slowly out around them; Bilbo quirked a smile at the sight, so different and yet at the same time so similar to the way that Thorin’s shadows unfurled around him. He’d met Thorin’s sister once, too, and remembered the way that water had pooled around her feet wherever she walked. Perhaps it was a family trait?

“So, why did they send you here?”

Frerin laughed, tossing another grape up into the air and catching it in his mouth.

“Oh, they want me to tell you to let Thorin go.”

“But… you don’t want me to?”

Frerin shrugged.

“You are going to have to, sooner or later, not in the least because things are getting a little hectic down in the Underworld by all accounts – Thorin didn’t exactly get a chance to leave anyone else in charge, you know. But, I don’t think you’d be keeping him here if you could see that you were making him unhappy.”

He fixed Bilbo with a sudden, firm stare, one that was so like his brother’s in intensity that Bilbo leaned back, a little.

“You’re not, are you?”

Bilbo shook his head; for all that Thorin had not come here of his own free will, for all that he had not initially been… pleased, by the situation, he didn’t seem unhappy here.

Frerin nodded, appeased, and then his face was back to its usual grin.

“Good.”

Bilbo shifted.

“What are they all saying, out there?”

Frerin shrugged.

“That you’ve gone mad – Mad Old Bilbo, that’s what they’re calling you now, you know – or that you are after something, though no one really knows what that would be. For the most part, they’re just a little amused – Gandalf thinks this is excellent sport, I’m not entirely sure that he didn’t delay the news reaching us for a few days, you know. Kili keeps going out with his dogs to try and track Thorin down, but I think he just keeps getting distracted by hunting, anyway. But Dis is stomping her feet, and you know what happens when she does that.”

Frerin shrugged, and shot Bilbo another reassuring smile. “Earthquakes all around. Lots of floods, too. She’s starting to wear down Thror now, at any rate, so sooner or later you’re going to be forced to let him go.”

Bilbo looked down at the ground, where one fine tendril of Frerin’s vines had wrapped comfortingly around his ankle.

“Are people getting hurt because of me?”

Frerin sighed.

“Bilbo, you are a God. Everything you do affects the lives of mortals in one way or another.”

His hands clenched into fists by his side, and he looked back up at Frerin, a note of desperation in his voice.

“I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, I just saw him, and I- I didn’t plan anything, I just couldn’t stop myself, and-”

“Hey, hey,” Frerin said, reaching for Bilbo, taking hold of him by the shoulder. “Dis won’t do anything too drastic as long as you give him up before the year is out. She’s protective, but she’s not an idiot: she knows that you won’t hurt him. What’s he been doing, anyway? Did you need to put him in a cage?”

Bilbo’s smile was a little weak, but it was real.

“Only for the first couple of days.”

Frerin’s eyebrows rose.

“Since then, he’s just been… resting. We talk, sometimes, and he watches the stars. He sings, sometimes, when he doesn’t know that I am close by. His voice is…” Bilbo trailed off when he caught sight of Frerin’s expression. “What?”

Frerin made a strange, half-choking noise. “I haven’t heard my brother sing in five hundred years.”

Bilbo wasn’t sure entirely what to say to that – if there even was anything to say to that – so instead he said nothing, and pulled a fig from the tree, twisting the stem off it and taking a bite. It was sweet and soft, and he managed to distract himself quite thoroughly for all of about ten seconds with the taste of it.

“Well,” Frerin said suddenly, pushing himself away from the tree he had been leaning against with a short, contented noise. “Everything seems in order here, you seem to have everything under control.”

Bilbo laughed ruefully, and Frerin ruffled his hair as he passed him.

Bilbo span on his heel, following him.

“Why aren’t you angry at me?”

But Frerin just laughed.

“I probably should be, shouldn’t I? You’ve kidnapped by brother and are keeping him prisoner in your gardens, apparently against his will.”

Bilbo nodded, and Frerin patted his face gently, laughing a little as he drew his hand away, the faintest touch of the glow of the smaller God’s skin playing across his fingers for a moment.

“But you love him, and I think he deserves a chance to have that, you know?”

“I, I didn’t-”

“Oh,” Frerin replied, as he strode through the archway, tossing his reply over his shoulder along with a final, bright smile. “I know you didn’t say that, but come on, Bilbo. Why else would he be here?”

And then he disappeared, leaving Bilbo behind with a half-smile, and a vivid blush.

“Do you want to leave?”

Thorin hadn’t even heard Bilbo approach: his head jerked up, his eyes opening quickly at the sound of his voice. But his pleasure at seeing the Little God diminished somewhat when he saw the expression on his face, anxious and unsure. He seemed to struggle to meet Thorin’s eye, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his palm.

“What?” Thorin answered, not entirely convinced that he hadn’t misheard.

Bilbo sighed.

“I mean, from here. I know I kidnapped you, that I’m keeping you here… do you want to leave?”

Thorin stared at him, for a long, slow moment.

“I-” he cut himself off, unsure of how to answer. “Why are you asking me this?”

He shifted, just a little, and glanced at the ground beside him. Bilbo took the cue, sitting down near to Thorin and resting his chin on his knees, drawn up to his chest.

“I spoke to your brother today.”

Thorin exhaled; that was not what he had been expecting.

“He wanted to know that you were okay.”

Thorin nodded.

“And I am.”

Bilbo looked up at him in surprise. “You are?”

Thorin nodded again, and Bilbo looked back down at the ground.

He lifted his arm, and hesitated for a moment before resting his hand on the back on Bilbo’s neck, his fingers half-caught in the curls of his hair, warm underneath his skin. Bilbo didn’t move, but his shoulders seemed to relax a little under the touch. He buried his head in his arms, and shifted slightly closer.

“Do you want to leave?” he asked again, his voice muffled in his arms.

Thorin didn’t know what to say.

Yes.

I want to go back because there is work for me to do and too many responsibilities for me to abandon.

I want to leave because my family will be worried and no doubt kicking up a fuss.

I want to escape on principle, because I’m still a little annoyed that I let myself get kidnapped.

No.

I want to stay because- well.

I want to stay because I haven’t felt this calm in centuries. I want to stay because I want to spend more nights reading the stories in the stars. I want to stay because I want you to show me what else you can create, what else there is here, how else I might have underestimated you. I want to stay because I want to see how often I can make you laugh, and what you look like when you sleep, if you sleep.

I want to stay.

In the end he just shrugged.

“There isn’t much point in thinking about it,” he said quietly. “I’m here now.”

It wasn’t quite an answer, but it was the closest to one that he thought he could manage right now. Bilbo looked up again, and moved a little closer. He seemed to understand what Thorin was saying and what he wasn’t saying, and the soft affection in his eyes made Thorin feel just a little warm.

“Thank you,” Bilbo replied, his voice relieved. 

He sounded a little less upset now, but Thorin still couldn’t bring himself to take his hand back.

“I will have to let you go soon, though,” Bilbo continued, and Thorin’s hand tightened despite himself. “Even though I don’t really want to.”

Thorin nodded, and couldn’t really explain why he felt disappointed.

Across the mortal plane, earthquakes grew worse.

Great waves overturned ships, and raced along the shore in anger.

On his throne, on Mount Olympus, the King of the Gods grew less and less able to ignore the anger in his Granddaughter’s words.

Frerin returned several times, with no better news for Bilbo.

Several weeks later Thorin saw an apple fall from a tree.

That in itself wasn’t so unusual, as sometimes the trees simply grew too laden with their fruit to hold it anymore, but when he glanced down at it he saw that it was turning brown.

One apple didn’t mean anything, but it was the first thing that he had seen in this garden that wasn’t perfectly ripe. There was a small patch of mould near the stem, and he looked at it with some trepidation. The breeze had been a little cooler the last couple of nights, now that he thought about it, though he had not really noticed it at the time.

The apple was dying.

After that, he began looking a little closer at the garden.

Though the boughs of the trees remained the same as they ever had, their leaves were drooping, some beginning to discolour in places. The grass was drier under his feet, the earth cooler when he lay upon it at night, as if that warmth that it had radiated before was starting to wane, was slowly slipping away. Fruit fell from bough and vine against the earth, no longer as perfect as it had been when Thorin had first arrived; the birds whose noise had once bothered him seemed fewer and fewer, and those that remained seemed more content to sit in their nests and stare balefully around them than to scratch at the earth.

Vines were withering, and the nights grew colder; soon he could no longer smell the scent of the night-blooming flowers, and when he went to look at them he found that their petals were slowly dropping from them, settling in drifts about the garden, small piles of colour picked up by the breeze, which seemed to grow stronger with each passing day.

More days passed, and things grew steadily worse; Bilbo looked a little paler, the colour in his skin fading a little each time Thorin saw him. The sun still shone down, but it lacked the warmth that it once had, and seemed weaker somehow, watery.

Mists began to rise in the mornings, settling in around him so that some days he had to shake himself to rid his hair of drops of moisture that had settled whilst he stared at the sky. It made the bright colours seem greyer than they were, as if the mists themselves were bleeding those colours right out of the gardens.

The butterflies, there one day, were gone the next. For all that they had annoyed him, Thorin found himself missing them once they were not there to flutter aimlessly around his face and shoulders.

Clouds began to form; they did not break, but rather hung heavy across the sky, low and unsettling.

He went one afternoon to look over the valley that Bilbo had taken him to. The mists of the morning had still not quite dissipated, cloaking the trees with an eerie should, but even through them he could see that the treetops were turning brown and red and yellow; it was beautiful, in its own way, but it felt wrong when he remembered how it had looked the first time that Bilbo had taken him there.

Bilbo just sighed when Thorin asked him about it all, and told him that soon it would be time for him to leave.

One morning he rose to find that faint patterns of frost had traced their way across the leaves, as delicate as spider-silk, and just as beautiful; they made patterns across stems, and the grass under his feet felt oddly spindly, making a crisp noise as Thorin strode from the glade. The frost was gone as soon as the sun rose high enough to touch it, but it had been there, none the less.

That morning, for the first time, Thorin went to find Bilbo.

It took him longer than he had thought it might, and when he did he found him in a place that he had never seen before, for all that Bilbo had taken to showing him around his gardens since he had expressed an interest in seeing more.

He was in another glade, not dissimilar to the one that he had been captured in, though a little smaller, where the trees had woven their branches into a low sling, wide and sturdy, for a person to lie in. He had often wondered how Bilbo rested, whether he bedded down with his flowers or lay in his meadows of wild growing grasses, and now he knew: he was borne by the trees themselves, the stiff bark worn smooth and soft by so many years of use. It was padded here and there with moss, and for a moment Thorin wondered what it would be like to stretch out on something like that, perhaps with one of his great furs thrown over him, or with a body by his side to share warmth with.

Bilbo hopped down when he saw Thorin approaching, offering him a half-smile in greeting, one hand rubbing distractedly at his shoulder.

“Good morning,” he said, as polite as ever, but his eyes were wandering over the shrivelled fruit on the tree behind Thorin, a small and frustrated frown pulling at his face.

“Are you alright?” Thorin asked, after a long moment, and Bilbo nodded, though his eyes were still a little distant.

He wasn’t entirely sure what came over him, but before he could stop himself his arms were around the smaller God, wrapping around his back and holding him against his chest; Bilbo’s forehead was against his neck, pressed close, fitting with a worrying sense of rightness that Thorin could not even begin to explain. Slowly, the other God’s arms slipped around his back, holding him just as close, and Thorin found himself letting out a long, quiet sigh, his body relaxing into the embrace as he tightened his hold, just a little.

Something brushed his arm; something else drifted across his line of vision, another thing landed on his arm. He reached, brushing it off, not quite letting go of Bilbo in order to do so. It was crisp and rough under his fingers, and it rustled with a harsh crackle as he pushed it away.

“What is that?” Thorin asked, quietly, and Bilbo began to shake in his arms; it could have been laughter, and it could have been grief – Thorin was not entirely sure.

“Leaves,” Bilbo replied, his voice muffled against Thorin’s skin; he could feel the word against his neck, the way that Bilbo’s mouth formed the words, the shape of it and the curve of his lower lip, and something twisted, deep and irreparable, in his chest, suddenly and clearly overwhelming him with the knowledge that he would not be the same, not after this.

Around them more leaves fell in the sudden breeze, dry and brown and dead.

“You never told me why you took me,” Thorin asked, on his final day, when Bilbo came to him with the news that he would have to leave. Bilbo turned tired eyes up at him, and there was something reserved about the line of his mouth that made Thorin want to run his thumb along it, as if he could brush away that sadness.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Bilbo replied, and Thorin shook his head slowly.

Bilbo laughed, and shook his head.

“Because I saw you,” he said, looking at Thorin properly for the first time in days. “I saw you, and I knew.”

Thorin’s throat felt dry, his eyes oddly hot, as he shook his head.

“Knew what?”

Bilbo bit his lip, as if trying to decide how best to answer, before he seemed to give in entirely, some steeled resolve settling across him.

He rose up on his tip-toes for a moment, one hand on Thorin’s shoulder as he leant close, and then he was kissing him, gentle and sure as his other hand steadied himself against Thorin’s chest. His mouth was cool against Thorin’s, pressing just for a moment before he sank back down again.

He took a step backwards.

“That I love you,” he replied, and then he was gone, disappearing into the trees, so quickly that he might never have been there.

His brother and sister arrived the next day, both of them looking at him a little curiously as they came across him in the glade, propped up underneath a pomegranate tree, watching clouds roll across the sky; it looked like it might storm, later, though he would be the first to admit that he understood little about the weather.

“Brother?” Dis asked, her hands folded across her chest but her face concerned. “Are you alright?”

Frerin was watching him rather carefully, eyes roving over Thorin’s face as if searching for something.

Thorin nodded.

“I am quite well, sister,” he replied, rising to his feet. “Where is… where is the Little God?”

Frerin blinked.

“Bilbo, you mean?” he asked, and Thorin nodded.

“He let us in,” Dis replied brusquely, her hands brushing briefly across Thorin’s shoulders as if checking for some unseen injury. “He wished you well, and asked your forgiveness for… this.”

She waved her hand around her, as if encompassing the entire garden, and something must have shown on Thorin’s face for her hand froze in mid-air and her expression seemed to soften, the small pool of saltwater around her bare feet rippling slightly.

“Oh, brother,” she said, more of a sigh than anything else.

But Thorin just shook his head, and she did not press any further, simply looked around them.

“I expected,” she said again, a little hesitantly now, “to find you in a cage.”

Thorin huffed a short laugh.

“He let me out of the cage after only a couple of days.”

Frerin was frowning, and Dis made a low, guilty noise.

“He was not… what I had expected, from your kidnapper.”

“I told you,” Frerin muttered, looking around him in a rather worried way, a similar frown furrowing his forehead as the one that Bilbo had worn for the last few days, and Thorin was forced to remind himself that for all Frerin’s normal cheer, he too was a harvest God, in his own way: no wonder he would be so disquieted by the slow withering of the garden.

“A funny little thing,” Dis continued, bending to pick a fallen leaf from the ground, her voice a little distracted now. “I wonder why he glows like that.”

“Plants need warmth, and care, and light,” Thorin intoned, without quite meaning to speak. The words brought back a strange, bitter-sweet feeling, and he had to look away from his siblings as he continued. “And so that is what he is; warmth, and care, and light.”

He bit his lip, hard enough to taste blood.

They walked out of the garden in silence, and Thorin couldn’t help but look around himself one last time, at how different it had all been since last he was here, at the dying fruits and browning leaves, rustling discontentedly in the chill air. And now the walls were actually getting closer, for the first time, growing taller and more impressive the closer that he came, looming above him as they drew up to an open, arched gateway, beyond which the rest of the world – and his freedom – waited.

And yet still, he paused.

“Did he say anything else?” Thorin found himself asking, looking behind him.

Frerin shook his head. The vines that usually grew from about his feet whenever he paused seemed tentative, unwilling to come from above the ground, now, and there was the silver of frost crackling around the shallow edges of the pool surrounding Dis. Thorin’s own shadows seemed darker than ever, spreading further, reaching for the familiar touch of his siblings; the three of them stood like that for a moment, under the archway, staring back out at the dying garden behind them.

“One moment,” Thorin said.

Frerin and Dis watched him pad quietly over to a tree, running a hand along one, low bough.

He turned his back to them, the broad stretch of his shoulders shifting as he reached to pluck something from the branches.

The fruit was brown, too sweet and overripe now, laced with the unpleasantly dusty aftertaste of mould. He still took a second bite, and then a third, chewing it almost aggressively as his eyes searched the gardens for some sign- for any sign- of the other God.

He stared at his siblings next, as if daring them to say anything, but no word of protest came from them, and after a moment, he went back to them.

Frerin was shaking his head in disbelief, but there was a wry amusement in Dis’ eyes as her brother drew level with them again.

“Why did you do that?” she asked, and Thorin scowled as he placed the half-eaten fruit with unexpected gentleness on the ground, right in the centre of the arch.

“Because,” Thorin said, as he straightened. “Because he had the nerve to fall in love with me, to kiss me, and then not say goodbye.”

Dis had to raise a hand to cover her mouth.

“Indeed,” she said, trying and failing to keep the amusement out of her voice. “How very dare he.”

“And what about you, brother?” Frerin asked to Thorin’s back as they left the gardens. “Did you dare fall in love, as well?”

Thorin did not reply, but the way that his shadows stretched behind him, clinging to the gateway for as long as they could, was answer enough.

For the first time in all their long years, the Gods lived through a winter, and it was the greatest and worst of winters that would ever be.

When Thorin returned to the Underworld, it was to find chaos, and a rather frantic series of souls who had not been properly registered. Thror had been so unimpressed with the chaos that his unintentional absence had caused that he had banned Thorin’s return, even though he had eaten the fruits of Bilbo’s domain and by all divine law should have been allowed to return; the King of the Gods barred his way regardless, and ordered him to return to his duties.

Thorin settled back in, and took up his work again.

If there was one thing that he could have faith in, he thought to himself whenever his mind drifted back to summer breezes and night skies, it was the Little God’s patience.

And so he waited, as the winter got worse.

There was no cold deep enough to freeze Dis’ oceans, but she felt the chill of the rivers that flowed into her down to her bones, bringing the ice and snow from the mountains with them. She huddled in the deepest parts of her oceans when she could, where the heat of the earth still warmed the water a little.

Frerin was a little better off, he remarked to Dis idly when she did leave her watery kingdom to see her brothers and sons, though he still looked a little miserable.

“No grapes,” he told her, wrapping furs more snugly around himself. A God could not freeze to death, just as they could not starve, but that did not mean that those more suited to warmer climates would not find the temperature unpleasant, and Frerin was finding out that he was certainly a God of that ilk. “But mortals seem to be drinking a lot more wine, so there is that, at least.”

Fili did not seem particularly bothered by the season at first; in fact, he seemed to actually quite enjoy having to raise the sun later in the morning than usual. He spent his days as he had ever did, playing his lyre and issuing prophecies, but as the winter wore on and more and more desperate mortals asked him for news of its ending, even he became morose.

Kili too, grew more weary of the winter as it stretched onward, no longer able to take his dogs out to hunt, as the snow covered all the scents; though tracks would have been easy to follow, it seemed that most animals had simply gone into hibernation, and many a day he returned from the woods with nothing but a morose expression to show for the day.

“It’s boring,” he muttered to Fili. “Everyone is miserable and there is nothing to do.”

Gods do not pray; what is the point, when there is only themselves who can hear? But if they could have, they would have prayed for the winter to end.

The mortals who came to Thorin’s Halls that season had taken to calling it the Great Winter, mumbling to themselves that perhaps it would never end.

Soon even the naiads and dryads began to complain, Thranduil even stalking up Olympus to entreat Thror personally to relent to Thorin, and it was the personal opinion of most divine forces that that was what had really pushed him over the edge and forced his hand – it was well known that Thror could only tolerate Thranduil’s company for a very short length of a time, and it seemed that him and his elk had taken up residence in the Halls of the King of the Gods, refusing to leave until he gave in.

And so one day, just when it seemed the winter would never relent, Thror finally did.

“Fine,” he barked from his throne. “Fine! Tell that idiot Grandson of mine he can go. For half of the year, and no more, and you can tell him that if he hadn’t eaten that damned fruit I wouldn’t be letting him go at all!”

Nori, messenger God of travellers and thieves, nodded, and darted out of Olympus as quickly as his winged sandals could carry him, to take the news to the Lord of the Underworld.

Thorin had had long months to prepare this time, to make sure that his underlings knew what they were doing and that they would be able to continue processing the constant stream of the dead that made their way down to his Halls in his absence. He left with the contented knowledge that things would be well taken care of in his absence, though he was still slightly concerned about letting Fili and Kili get involved - he couldn’t help but think that he was going to end up regretting that one.

But still, when he left his Halls this time, it was with a feeling of leaving a heavy burden behind, his feet light as he made his way through the wastes of winter to the garden once more.

The archway was still open, but brambles had started to creep across it, the thorns scratching at him as he pushed through them to the garden again.

And then he paused.

There, on the ground, was his half-eaten fruit, unspoiled by time and untouched by the snow; it sat in a perfect ring of grass where he had left it, as if…

As if it had been waiting.

Around him, the garden seemed to breathe.

He glanced up, at the sky, where the clouds were slowly clearing, and then knelt.

Thorin brushed the snow from the ground and placed his palm to the earth, searching once more for that warmth; and there it was, faint but still present, as if all it was waiting for was the Little God to bring it out once more. Perhaps that was all that winter really was, he thought to himself as he straightened, brushing snow from his knees; the earth falling into sleep but always on the cusp of waking, just waiting for the right person to wake it again.

Perhaps that was how he had been, before he had bent to look at an out-of-place asphodel flower, not so long ago.

He kicked off his shoes, and unbuckled his armour, leaving them in a pile in the roots of a tree.

As he walked through the garden, the snow slowly began to melt; his feet were cold at first, but soon began to warm as the clouds parted, the sunlight growing a little stronger again. The gaping scars of earth that the thaw revealed seemed stark at first, but the longer he walked, the more they began to fill again with a new growth of grass, thin stems pushing up through the dirt with insistently.  The trees seemed to shake their blankets of frost, and the wind gentled; several plants, looking rather sorry for themselves, seemed to perk up as he passed, but he paid them little mind – he knew that it was not him that they were searching for.

And there was the grove he had first been trapped in, looking much the same but for the leaves still missing from the tree – and was he wrong, or was that a bud appearing on a branch, tightly furled but ready to grow?

A bird perched close, and trilled out a sweet call in the still air.

Then the brook, where he had hid behind a tree and watched Bilbo sing, watched his hair light from the reflected water, and the pathway where he had realised that he wanted to stay.

The valley, next, mists rising from it like steam now that the sun was getting warmer again, the sluggish path of the river picking up pace from the melting snow. It still called to him, that valley, and for a moment he was tempted to descend into it, but he knew that the Little God would not be there, and so he passed the path by, padding on barefoot through meadow and past thespring, not knowing entirely where he was going, but knowing that the garden would get him to where he needed to be in the end.

And then, finally, he was there again, in Bilbo’s own grove, where the hammock of branches still rested, cradling the Little God in their boughs, holding him up from growing grass.

Thorin took a step into the clearing, and spring flowers pushed through the ground at his arrival.

A butterfly landed on his hair, and he laughed aloud, the sound ringing in the quiet, deep and a little unsure.

The figure turned, shifting the blanket of dried leaves that had covered him during the long winter.

His skin seemed to brighten as his eyes opened and caught sight of Thorin, and he felt that same twisting awareness of his heart deep in his chest; it still hurt, just a little, but in a warm and familiar way now that he was starting to appreciate.

“Hello, Little God,” Thorin said, coming closer. 

Bilbo stared at him, for a long, slow moment.

“I didn’t know if I would ever see you again,” Bilbo said, quietly, but the corners of his mouth were already turning up into a smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners, warm and sure.

“Half the year,” Thorin told him, and he wondered if the joy beating at the inside of his ribcage was coming across in his voice, or if he still sounded cold. “I only ate half the fruit, and I still have work to do.”

Bilbo nodded, standing, brushing the debris of leaves off him; they drifted to the ground, soon disappearing as the new grass grew taller.

“I missed you,” Bilbo said, and Thorin raised an eyebrow.

“I can tell,” he replied, casting a wry eye around the glade, where even now the last vestiges of the winter were still visible, though whilst he had not been looking more leaves had appeared, shiny and new.

“Oh, hush,” Bilbo said, his eyes not quite leaving Thorin’s face, his voice light. “I’ve been waiting months for you now, don’t go ruining it.”

Thorin was smiling properly then, and he didn’t bother trying to hide it; he reached instead for Bilbo, his hands finding his shoulders and drawing him closer before cupping his face, his thumbs tracing Bilbo’s cheekbones.

“If you really want,” he said, his voice quiet; he could feel Bilbo’s breath, warm against his skin. “I can come back every year.”

Bilbo shook his head, and for a moment Thorin’s chest constricted in concern, but then he realised that Bilbo was laughing, in disbelief or happiness or some mixture of both.

“You’re an idiot,” he told him, and that was certainly love in his voice, love and affection and joy.

Then he was kissing Thorin again, his mouth warm and pressing and sure, the glow under his skin brightening as Thorin’s arms fell around him, holding him close.

Around them, the garden woke.

Winter thawed.

Spring had come.

At the end of long summers, the God of Death returns to his Halls, and Bilbo sees the harvest through before retiring to his glade, letting the longing of winter settle around him once more. The cold winds blow and the plants burrow down into the earth, their roots waiting patiently for the end of the season, for the winter always does end; the Lord of the Underworld leaves his Kingdom once more and returns, and as he steps through the archway and takes off his armour spring arrives, and the world awakens once more.

Come in the winter to the realm of the immortals and you’ll find the harvest God sleeping, tucked away beneath his layer of autumn leaves.

Come in the spring and you’ll find him stretched out contentedly on top of the Lord of Death, gold light playing across both their skin as he braids flowers into Thorin’s hair.

Come in the summer, and you’ll find them once more slicing a fruit into two, sharing it between them, for the promise of another year to come.