A Shot in the Dark (Thilbo - Bagginshield)

Chapter 23

Nori had never considered himself a particularly good Dwarf.

He didn't think of himself as evil incarnated, of course, but he was also aware that he had made a lot of fucked up choices in his life. Some of them he didn't regret because he really didn't see anything wrong with them. Stealing to provide food for his family was justified as far as he was concerned; anyone who said otherwise could try going hungry for a few damn days, and then come back and talk to him. It was the same way with killing. He didn't like to kill—who the hell did besides Orcs and Men? —but he wouldn't hesitate to defend himself either. He tried his best not to kill, but sometimes it was inevitable in a fight.

But there were also some choices that he was... less than proud of.

Stealing to feed his baby brother was one thing he could justify in his head. But cheating people out of their money? Selling stolen goods on the streets and moving shit through a city for corrupted lords? Fuck, even Nori could admit that he screwed up. He knew he could write a book with his list of crimes and sins. He could probably even turn it into a swashbuckling tale and make a profit off of it too. Ori wasn't the only one in the family who could write, after all. He was just the only brother passionate about it.

Nori knew that what he did was sometimes morally wrong. Dori had failed to be a decent parent to him in many ways—and despite what his brother thought, Nori really didn't hold a grudge against him for it because a child couldn't raise another child—but he did manage to teach his brothers about morals. He had taught them to know the difference between right and wrong, and to live by a code of honor no matter what. So, he couldn't claim not to know any better because he really did.

Unfortunately for Dori, the world was not so easily black and white. It was sometimes muggy and gray and there was no good outcome no matter where you looked. Nori had tried his best to do what was right, but he knew he faltered and screwed up. Sometimes he even chose the easy way over the right one because being noble and honorable didn't mean shit when you're dead.

Nori knew his crimes and accepted that Dori would never quite look at him the way he did when they were children, but it was all worth it because it was him who put food on the table whenever Dori lost his job. It was thanks to his dirty hands that Ori was able to go to school and that Dori was able to keep his house. He was the one who paid for the healers when their ma was dying, and it was him who ensured that Ori survived it.

Nori knew he would go to his grave without ever regretting his deeds because every single damn one of them had been made for his brothers.

Dori would never—could never—understand his line of thinking, but he could see that Bilbo did. The Hobbit so easily risked everything he had just to keep their company alive and safe. At first he was amused by the blunt little kitten—and Bilbo would always be a kitten to him because only a kitten would snarl and hiss at someone thrice his damn size—and his unapologetic methods. But somewhere along the way, between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood, Nori found himself growing attached to the Hobbit. He found the fussy way he worried cute and his obliviousness charming. Somehow the kitten managed to dig his claws under his skin and into his heart.

When he finally realized he cared about the Hobbit, he also came to the realization that said Hobbit had zero self-preservation. Bilbo was quite possibly the stupidest son-of-a-bitch he had ever met in his life. He recklessly threw himself into danger at every turn and failed to realize that he was not, in fact, immortal. He walked around and acted as if he was the size of a troll instead of a sprout, and how he ever made it to fifty was a damn mystery that Nori knew would haunt him for the rest of his life. All in all, the burglar needed looking after, and the thief was determined to see that he got it one way or another.