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shirefantasies · 7 months ago

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Roots Running Deep- Balin x F!Witch!Reader

This is a request by @that-teen2003! I didn’t post it with the ask just to save some spoilers for y’all 😉 I realized a little late that I flip flopped one detail a bit but I hope you still like it 🙋🏻‍♀️ thank you so much for this request, it ended up being one of my favorite things I’ve made here ever 🥺

Warnings: suggestive jokes, canon typical violence, some angst

“Why do you keep venturing out into the woods, eh, brother? If I didn’t know any better I’d say it was some sort of tryst,” Dwalin caught his brother on his way out, punctuating his teasing with a wink.

“What exactly are you insinuating, then?” Balin crosses his arms, raising an eyebrow.

“Come on, you can’t be collecting herbs every other day, for stars’ sake! But if you’re meeting out in the woods, she must be quite ugly! What is it, no teeth? Beard a different color than the rest of her hair? Or is it that she isn’t dwarrow at all?”

Involuntary Balin winced, bringing first the widening of eyes and then the quirking of triumphant lip to his younger sibling’s face. “By my beard, you must be joking! How tall is she? Must like the way she picks you up and-”

“For goodness’s sakes, would you stop that?” It was rare for the elder son of Fundin to snap, but when his love was threatened in any way it was as easy an expenditure as taking a breath. “We’ve done nothing of the sort. I’ll not have you taking shots at the honor of one so fair. This is no Blue Mountain barmaid we’re talking about.”

Chuckling deeply, Dwalin shook his mohawked head. "Well, how did you meet, anyway? Someone from Dale, no doubt?"

"If she was from Dale, I would meet her more often in Dale," Balin reasoned, lifting his favorite mahogany-toned coat from their shared home's hook and pulling it on by the sleeve, "if you must know, she has a cottage in the woods. I met her through Oin. She helped him secure a fine stock of herbs, and I accompanied him on his return there."

Uncharacteristically softening, Dwalin's voice came so quiet Balin practically had to cross the room again just to hear him. "Is she your One?"

If he could see himself, Balin was sure he'd have looked a fool the way the twinkle leapt into his eye and the smile arched across his face. But he cared little. "Aye," was all he had to say before disappearing out the door.

You awaited him at the brookside just as you promised, dressed in a gorgeous gown of green, the perfect shade to bring out what of your skin could be seem, and with flowers crowning your head. Long sleeves flowing, you waved a hand at the dark-haired dwarf with a grin bright as the sun. How could it be that a gift of the earth like this, all but a daughter of Yavanna, be his? Poetry, truly, as Balin remembered the depictions of the tall, dark woman in green standing aside his people’s fiery-haired creator as his wife. Would you, then, stand beside him someday? Could you?

Flowers sprung at your bare feet as you crossed into the grass, extending your arms to him. You breathed his name like a promise, a hand raising to caress his cheek in greeting. Leaning into the warmth of your touch, Balin lets your name fall from his lips, his hands falling to your waist to pull you against him.

"Doing some gardening, my love?" You smile down at him.

"Not today," he shakes his head, "just wanted to see you."

"Oh? I better find something more entertaining than my trees," you joked.

"What are you doing with your trees?"

"A bit of grafting. Trying to see how many fruits I can get on one tree."

"How many are you up to now?"

You grin. "Care for a climb?"

Balin's hair is soft beneath your fingers as they card through the sunkissed dark brown. He rests lightly against your right shoulder carefully as he can while maintaining balance on the branch you pulled yourselves onto. His eyelids flutter shut in contentment, but your heightened senses feel some unrest in him.

“You feel tense. What is wrong?”

At your words, you really feel the muscles of his back twinge against your chest. He inhales, exhales palpably.

“The king,” he replies quietly, “Thror’s love of gold, we fear, has corrupted his mind. His son and grandson have taken up many kingdom affairs already. It weighs heavy upon us all. I admire you. So unlike us in that regard. No need for the material possessions that drive us dwarves crazy. Just living here amongst your plants.”

“They are all I need,” you reply, giving pause as your hand traces down his cheek, “well, almost…”

With that, you gently rotate him, turning to connect your lips with his and feel him smile against you.

“You’ve been at that for hours, brother.”

"Because," Balin replies, tone patient and slow as he places another of the series of miniscule gems he cut, "it must be perfect. Wouldn't you want yours to be?"

"'Course. Just can hardly believe all this before you introduce her. She coming to live under the mountain?"

"That I do not know. It might not be good for her.” Balin sighs ruefully, voice going quiet. “Might not be good for anybody.”

Smoke. Fire. The sounds of screams as people pour from the mountain and the city at its foot alike. The dwarves have feared for the king, unaware of greater looming threats upon their horizon for who knows how long. And now the world has made good upon its punishment, raining shadow, flame, theft upon Erebor and undoing centuries of culture and livelihood. There is no use fighting, not with a fire drake, a beast with scales as shields and boundless conflagration at a single breath.

They need to run. Leave all that is held and loved behind if they wish to live, have any hope of preserving what once was. Memory, art, family, the beloved strength and endurance known to all dwarves. Reduced now to running or dying.

The prince himself had grabbed Balin, taken him by the arm and pulled him away from the flame just in time, yet they could still feel the searing heat in the air; still they perspire beneath it as they barrel into the king's hall. Thror hardly will part with a single piece of his massive fortune, so he must be dragged to safety beneath the arms of his kin as the great calamity Smaug makes straight for the royal hall.

Heart hammering, Balin drowns out all thought as his legs pump again and again, focus only on cover, safety. As the woods come into view, or as he should say what is left of them, the adrenaline haze begins its fade and the mental clouds part to reveal you. Were you safe? Were your trees, your wards, your... Shakily Balin reaches a hand into his pocket, entire body deflating with the exhale of relief he gives. The bead is there, safe and sound. But would you understand?

Mahal has surely blessed him, for as he wanders the woods, knowing the others will be after them soon, he finds a scrap of parchment, a pen with enough for the briefest message to leave at the foot of your tree, your glorious creation of many fruits.

The others all but yank him out of the woods and call him mad. The parchment, tear-stained and opened with your name, reads in Balin’s ever-steady hand:

We are so different, you and I, but fate is fate. Be it Mahal’s will or perhaps even Yavanna’s, I will be back for you. My heart breaks that I can’t braid it in myself, but if you’ll still wed me please wear this gift I made for you. I can only imagine how beautiful it shall look in your hair or wherever you choose to keep it.

I love you. I will never stop.

Balin

And with that he is forced to run into the chaos again, to witness his kinsman and the men he called neighbors flung like petty dolls by a great thrashing beast, bodies rent in two as though they are mere straw. Straw, however, does not bleed.

Mahal help them all.

The cracking of branches alerts you to the potential intruders, diverting your attention from the little patch of fire lilies you’ve been watering.

Fire lilies. Like little sunbursts they are, and yet still after all these years, several decades in fact, something about their intensity brought a recess of your mind back to the day of the drake’s attack. Smaug took everything from the people of Erebor, but from you as well.

Loneliness, after all, is the greatest curse of your long years, your many lives of men and women passing as seasons, all you know withering away like flowers in winter.

The love you had cultivated all those years ago, nourishing with every book Balin read you and every stroke of the bushy hair he somehow kept impossibly soft, every word of botany the dwarf learned for you and every healing herb you demonstrated and gifted to his people, is still in full bloom, though the sight of the lilies thorns your chest with questions that never quiet. Is Balin still alive? Had he even survived the attack, your head will evilly inquire, given his frequent proximity to the throne room, the great hall of kings that you know the dragon has taken to?

Guilt also. As the massacre took place, you had gone to the far edge of your woods, focusing every drop of magic in you upon sealing them, protecting them. Making them a safe place first anyone seeking refuge there. And yet you had seen no one, not a single survivor braving your grounds. So the loneliness drags on. What a waste of your power, you let yourself think sometimes, save for the wards that still remain to this day.

Train of your dress dragging at your feet, you keep walking past the lilies, sigh as you reenter the domain of your great steadfast trees.

You must confess that the tree you carved your sign, even if it was your child of seven fruits, in was of less significance to you before the day of blood and fire. Flame and screams and steel and all the things you understood least. That night is when you found it, after all: laying at its roots had been a hastily torn scrap scrawled with words that rent your heart and poured hours of tears from your eyes. And the bead, oh, the bead, possibly the last work of Balin’s hand. You could not bear anyone but your beloved braiding it onto you, thus it hangs from the thin chain about your neck, swinging above your heart. Yes, your tree of seven fruits had simply been an experiment then, and now and forever it is a memory.

Shaking the ache from your chest, you steady your feet and raise your hands, approaching the area from which the alerting sound had come. A young dwarf in brown bursts from the brush, screaming about a witch and aiming a slingshot at you. Shaking, he does not fire, his light brown eyes meeting the sadness in yours, the weight of memories and his words alike.

Your head snaps up as more heads pop forth, first a doting older one you can tell is the boy’s brother, then a more handsome golden-haired figure and one that has your mouth agape.

“Balin?”

You rush to him, feel his hands grope for yours and kneel down, crumpling into his chest. It is him, for no illusion can be so strong and cruel a ruse as to bear his scent, to hold you and run his thumb over the back of your hand in the same manner. His hair is white now, pure as snow, but the earnest, hopeful wisdom in his dark eyes has not aged a single year. The way he whispers your name like it answers his every prayer, even when his voice quavers, remains and it shatters your chest and builds it right back up.

“It must break your heart to see me like this.”

A single warm tear escapes your right eye as you shake your head, words failing you in favor of a smile half crumpled by your tears. In response you take his hands again, this time holding them for just a moment before you raise them to his bead upon your chain.

Finally your voice returns, shaky as it may be. “I never took it off. Not a single day. Your letter…”

This time it is Balin’s turn to part his lips in surprise. “You cannot mean that.”

“I can and I do. Balin, my life is nothing if it is spent alone. My heart was fractured that day, tucked unknowingly in your coat, but I knew not if I had buried it. Never again am I taking that chance. Let me have the honor of being bound to you. Please.”

Balin’s eyes dart thoughtfully between your joined hands, his stroking over yours once more, your eyes, the gaze that pours so much love into him it’s enough to make a grown dwarf cry, and finally your bead, the tiny emerald chips he’d set by hand so many years ago still glistening with all the love and care he’d placed into them. You hadn’t simply worn it, you’d cared for it.

Again he speaks your name, the finest music you’ve ever heard, and you cannot wait to hear him say it again and again. “You know that what I said is true. Still is. If you will have this old fool of course he’ll have you. May I?”

Nodding, you turn around, letting his aged but still quite nimble fingers undo your chain as you settle yourself onto the grass. The other dwarves swarm you, the younger and more indignant-looking ones quite literally buzzing around you. A taller one with tattoos across his shaven head holds them back with a stern look and the raise of a knuckle-dustered hand.

“Have you never listened to a word he said? A tale he told? My brother has been waiting far too long for this moment. Let him have it.”

At that, you broke completely, bursting into a near-delirious smile and interrupting your beloved’s work upon your hair with your lips upon his, half surprised by his passion and half blind to all but the taste of love upon your lips once more, white roses blooming in a circle around your seated forms.

Signs of love most pure.

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