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A/N: That one where hobbits have liberal ideas of marriage, and polyandry is a thing. Pairing Bilbo/Company, or at least she thinks so.
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Billa unrolled the contract, scanning its contents with ease.
"I, the undersigned, [referred to hereinafter as Burglar,] agree to travel to the Lonely Mountain, path to be determined by Thorin Oakenshield, who has a right to alter the course of the journey at his so choosing..."
Her breath caught and a flattered flush colored her cheeks. "Oh my," she muttered.
Billa had never been one to believe in such romantic notions as an adventure coming to sweep her off her feet... yet that was exactly what was happening to her right now. Her Took cousins would be so jealous.
She eyed the ramble of dwarves invading her kitchen critically. They weren't bad looking, as far as she could tell, and it wasn't like she was getting any better offers in the Shire.
The wording was very old fashioned, but presumably dwarves lived much longer than hobbits, so their information of hobbit culture was likely out of date. That explained why only Thorin's nephews were present in the contract... unless they simply didn't have large clans. She wondered if it would be rude to ask this soon in their relationship.
Quickly, before she could change her mind, the hobbit woman signed her name across the contract's dotted line. She wondered if the dwarves were the kind of folk who would want to hold a ceremony to commemorate the occasion, but thought it unlikely as they planned to leave in the morning.
Oh well. She could always unpack her mother's white dress at another time. Perhaps she could mention it after the quest to the leader of the company. Or rather to her company now that she had agreed to sign the contract.
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Billa took special care to learn about each member of her company, as she would be spending much of the foreseeable future among them.
Balin usually hung by the leader's side to give advice, so Billa tentative labeled him as second in command in the company's dynamics. His brother Dwalin obviously was the main fighter and protector. Billa made a point to speak especially kindly to him. A protector was, after all, the one most likely to be lost when trouble occurred. She wanted him to understand her appreciation of his selflessness.
Gloin was wed with a son, and Billa supposed he only joined the company so his brother Oin would not be left alone. Such things were not unheard of when journeying together. She mentally planned how best to introduce herself to Gloin's wife after the company had finished with the adventure. Perhaps they could meet for tea, or did dwarves have other customs for such occasions?
When Billa discovered Kili and Fili's young age, she flushed, and asked blatantly how their uncle had allowed them to join the company. The boys had grinned cheekily at her, saying something about them being of age, no matter how much their mother or uncle complained.
Billa decided the boys had only joined because Thorin didn't want to leave them alone. She supposed she could understand, though having known that she was traveling with the dwarven equivalent of tweens would have been nice to know before she sighed the contract.
Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur presented a family dynamic Billa was more familiar with, as they were cousins to each other. Bifur couldn't speak more than garbled ancient dwarvish, but Bombur often sympathized with Billa's plights.
Bofur was her favorite. They often would be found close together by the fire chuckling about something or other, his fingers stealthily twined with hers. Billa found his attempts at secrecy amusing, but supposed that if the other dwarves knew about her less than impartial affection, it would lead to unwanted complications.
After Bofur came Dori, who often helped Billa onto her pony, or helped carry her on occasion. She could very much appreciate his strong arms, and thought his doting on his brothers Nori and Ori was adorable. He would make a wonderful parent one day.
The thief and scribe presented their own puzzles of interest for Billa to crack. Ori warmed up to her after she revealed her extensive knowledge of calligraphy and maps. That led to many hours pouring over the sections of his large tomb she was permitted to read, giggling like excitable school girls. Nori was ticklish.
Thorin was gruff, and rebuffed any attempt she made to speak with him, despite his position s company leader. The hobbit mollified her ire by remind herself that the king-in-exile was occupied with the dragon business and watching out for the other company members. Such stress surely took a took a toll on one's mind.
Only after she had stood between him and Azog did the king finally begin to regard her with companionable affection.
Billa flushed when he hugged her, to flustered to even stutter out how it was her duty to defend him. They were her company, after all.
Much later, after the dragon had been slain and the mountain successfully defended from a hoard of angry goblins, the hobbit thought she could finally settle down with her company at the end of such a long adventure.
What better way to celebrate their new happiness, then by sharing the little secret she'd bee hiding for the past few weeks.
It didn't go quite the way she expected.
"What?" Bofur shouted, while Bifur fainted dead away. His voice echoed around the hall, attracting the attention of just about every dwarf in Erebor.
"I'm pregnant," Billa said, wondering why he was making such a big deal about it.
"If I knew that, I would never have let you onto the battle field!" he yelled, before bodily dragging her from the hall to the designated hospital suite. Some still needed attention after the battle, but the stubborn dwarf managed to find Billa an empty room, complete with a warm fireplace and bed, which he shoved her into.
"I'm not an invalid," she grumbled. "And I don't need to lay down, it was my arm that got hurt in the fight, not my feet." Still at the dwarf's frantic expression, she remained laying against the pillows, muttering something about overreacting males.
Bofur, who had been hissing something to the doctor in frantic Kuzudul, turned back to the hobbit and clutched her hand tightly.
"I promise we'll get through this," he said with forced calm, as the medic took her pulse. "I'll - I'll do whatever I need to to save your honor-"
"What about my honor?" she frowned, as she was asked to take several deep breaths.
Suddenly, Ori, Dori, and Nori shoved into the room, each trying to push the other aside while shouting frantically.
The doctor threw up his hands in disgust, before leaving. He had limb-less soldiers to look after, not overreacting darrows.
"Billa, I just heard about-!"
"I know I'm the-!"
"- marry you of course to-!"
Bofur glowered at them from his place by Billa's bedside. "What are you doing here? Can't you see she needs her rest?"
"The baby's mine!" the Ri brothers cried in unison, before freezing and staring at each other.
"What? No, I'm the father," The hat wearing dwarf said.
"You can't be!" Dori blustered. "I'm-"
"Come off it, it's mine!" Nori cut him off. "You don't have to cover for me. I'll take responsibility for this."
Ori's face was cherry red. "But I'm the one who..." he trailed off and his flush deepened.
"Wait, you say it's yours? Can't be, it's mine!"
"What? No!"
"If not than whose is it?"
Billa didn't understand why the dwarves were raising such a ruckus. "It's Thorin's, of course." She said, smartly cutting through the arguing males with ease. "He's the leader of the company."
"What?" cried Bofur, distraught. "Thorin too?"
The hobbit arched her brows imperiously. "Well we all did sigh a marriage contract."
The dwarves stared at her dumbfounded. Billa sighed.
Raising a family on the road was difficult at the best of times, she explained, made infinitely more so when everything was so much larger than you. The hobbits who fled westward across Middle Earth before settling down in the shire learned this lesson the hard way.
How was a lass meant to cope when the father of her children presumably got eaten by a warg? If she remarried, and her first husband reappeared right as rain, if slightly battered from his adventure, who was responsible for the children she bore with the second husband? What were the two men's relation with the mother of their children? To each other? Who was her legal husband?
Hobbits were very good at surviving otherwise seemingly unsurvivable circumstances, most of the time anyway. Thus, through necessity, they became rather liberal with the idea of marriage.
Families became centered around a lady hobbit, her husband, and however many other lads wished to become contractually accepted into the family. To simplify things as time went on, a female would wed herself to an entire clan. Legally a child belonged to the head husband in name, though all men in the family were considered equally the father.
Phrases like 'journeying together' or 'walking a changing path' were traditional in a marriage contract, echoing back to the dangerous necessity of such large families. Thus many of the tales Belladonna, Billa's mother, told of her adventures were often misinterpreted by other hobbits, prompting rumors that she was wed to not only several Rangers, but the prince of Rohan.
Billa's parent's were also odd in only having one child. Belladonna created something of a scandal when she openly showed distain for the other male members of the Baggin's family. Bungo had catered to his wife's odd monogamous preferences by building her Bag End, so she wouldn't have to be near the other stuffy Baggins's.
This caused some interesting legal ramifications after the couple's death, as no one could decide whether the Baggins or Took family had ownership of the house, and thus a duty to look after young Billa. Said hobbit lass vocally proclaimed herself able to manage alone, thank you very much. The only one who kept butting into her business was Lobella Sackville-Baggins, but that small war was a story for another time.
The important thing was that Billa recognized Thorin as the legal father of whatever children she had with the rest of the family, and why was everyone giving her such odd looks after her explanation?
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Everything outside of a controlled radius around Billa's bed was full of yelling, finger pointing, and many stammering conversations, full of awkward blushes and lack of eye contact.
The hobbit shrugged and left the dwarves to it. Best to let the men settle these things amongst themselves, or so said the age old Shire proverb.
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