Note: Consider this the one and only way I could find of dealing with the trauma of the Battle of Five Armies. I cried for four hours during and after watching it. This is the only hope I could hold to - Mahal has them.

He does not know what is going to happen.

They seem to forget, these tiny, living sparks that flare and burn and light the world, that he does not know all things. Mahal would not wish for such a burden - and what does it say to how they have made him into their own image, that he now thinks of himself as Mahal and not Aule? The knowledge of all that is to come is better left to Illuvatar, whose mind holds all things, whose Song shaped the world and all that is yet to be. But Mahal saw glimpses of it in the Song, and knows enough to be content. All things will be remade, in time - and time is something he never lacks.

But as he watches his children prepare for battle - battle again, battle always and forevermore, until the world is broken - even Mahal wishes he could see all ends.

Yavanna will remind him a thousand times over that he is not meant to have favourites. She certainly does not. All green things are equally loved by her, and she delights in a sprig of moss as highly as the noblest oak tree. Mahal loves all of his children, of course, but he cannot pretend disinterest. Some of the Fathers went their own way so fast that he hardly felt he had time to teach them all they needed, and their descendants sometimes hardly know him when they come home.

Yavanna comes to him as he watches over them, and runs a gentle hand along his arm. It feels like wind on the mountainside.

"Things will be as they will be," she consoles him. "If they are to come home to you, then surely today is as good as any other."

He shakes his head. It must never be said that the stubbornness of Dwarves outstrips that of their Maker. "Do you not mourn for your trees, when they are cut down for the fires in the prime of their life? Let me weep for my children in this evil day."

She peers down with him, and then sighs, and looks at him with knowledge far greater than he would have wished to share. "I see - Durin's sons again. Will they never cease to trouble your heart?"

"Not until all Arda is remade," he assures her wryly. He is not meant to have favourites - but Durin and his line have ever been closest to his own heart. They are wild and arrogant and stubborn, ready for a fight when they ought to think, ready to dig deep and bury themselves close to his heart when they ought to spread far and wide. They have done more to help him repair the discord of Melkor than any others - but they have also done more to stir up his hidden monsters and attract them to themselves. They suffer and die and never, ever, give up. With a sigh, he stands, and shakes his head. There is much to prepare in his halls for this day. "After all, even Durin himself will not cease to return to this world. How are any of his descendants to find peace, when he himself cannot?"

She follows after him as he walks through his great hall, looking upon the preparations. He does not know how many will come home this day. It will be too many.

"Peace," she reminds him gently, as he looks out over poor little Erebor. She has suffered so greatly already, and today is not to ease her woes. The pains of her shattered halls echo in his bones, and he does not think they will ever get the stink of dragon and evil out of her breath. "Do not watch, husband, if it gives you pain. Allow yourself to rest. It has been so little time since Moria."

Azanulbizar is still a present pain in his heart, and he flinches away at the thought. Moria, indeed. She has not always been dark and foul. The smell of the burned Dwarves - his children, the flesh he had created - rising up to the skies is one that will never fade. If this day is Azanulbizar come again, he will not look on the world again for an age. Surely it cannot be - for how are the Dwarves meant to bear it?

"I made them too strong," he murmurs, and Yavanna gathers him into her arms and holds him as grief breaks over him - for what has been, and for what is to come. "I knew they would face such evil times. I wished them to be strong to endure. But I forgot to give them the capacity to bend without breaking. I taught them to forge and fight, and forgot to teach them how to have peace."

She kisses his brow when he pulls away, and he draws strength from the life in her eyes. She leaves him, then, and Mahal places himself in the gate of his halls, and watches, and waits. He must stand witness to the deaths of his children, to bear them safely home.

They fight so well that sometimes he forgets himself, and roars in delight. The foul creations, desecrations of the fairer races, smash themselves upon the lines of Dain's folk like water on the mighty stones of sea-cliffs, and are triumphant - but for too short a time. Their numbers are too few - always too few now, and shrinking more with every passing century. Illuvatar has known this all along, and Mahal is coming to understand it. They will not always challenge their adopted brethren. He reaches out with hands as gentle as he can make them, and catches them as they fall, and brings them home.

Dain's folk come as they always do, frightened and fighting, and he sets them in the midst of their companions. This usually goes best for the newly-arrived if they can be greeted by those they have loved who have passed on, and he leaves it to the older residents of his halls to make the newcomers welcome. He will come to all of them in time, and welcome them home. Now, a battle still rages, and he watches in increasing despair as the Dwarves fall, and Erebor seems certain to follow. She has been one of his fairest creations. If she becomes a bastion of evil again, so soon after ridding herself of her dragon, then even Khazad-Dum will seem a fair and kindly place.

But then he feels her torn open, and even in the chaos of battle, he sets his focus on the heart of things - and there is young Thorin of Erebor, charging out into the melee, and Mahal's heart is broken.

Thorin and his kin have long been on his mind. He has watched every step of their quest, and done what little he was able to help them along their way - and when they woke up Erebor, letting her sing once more, he had sung back in gladness, feeling some of the darkness lift from the world with the death of the foul worm Smaug. But Thorin is unwell, and Mahal cannot remake his mind without breaking it in the process, and he will not do so. It has always been for his children to determine their own fates, with little he can do to alter events. They are part of a greater song than he knows how to sing, and all have their own parts to play. Thorin's part has been dark for so long.

He sinks down in his great chair, burying his face in his hands as he feels them charge forward. He should never have allowed himself to take such interest in this little cluster of Dwarves. They were too close to his heart, and they were charging out with all the courage and strength he had given them, and with none of the wisdom that he ought to have taught. They're so small, so young. He has put children in a place of war, and now they reproach him with every step forward they charge.

He might have to bring them all home today.

The first death comes as a shock to him. Mahal swears, a deep and resounding oath that shakes the earth around him, and drags his hands down his face. He has walked the world since the shaping of Arda, but now he is beginning to feel old, as though his bones are cracking and crumbling like the very rocks his hands created. This one was not meant to die.

He reaches out to take up his golden child, and brings him home faster than mortal thought - and Fili, who ought to have been King Under the Mountain in his own right, is caught up in the arms of his Maker.

Fili comes home quiet and shocked - stunned, perhaps, past the ability to speak. His death had been brutal; the force of it still rang through Mahal like the tolling of a great bell, solemn and accusing. The damage is undone in an instant, the pain banished, but Fili just stares at him. He is wound as tight as a spring, as if poised on the edge, waiting for the worst to happen. Sometimes it takes them a while to realise that it already has.

"Welcome home," Mahal says. He gentles his voice as best he can, and hopes the tragedy he feels forming below them will not take the shape he already feels. Fili was meant to have led them all, when Thorin had finally fulfilled his own death-wish, and there was sorrow in every stone of Erebor, now, for the prince she had lost. Erebor would have been the crown jewel of the Dwarves for a thousand years.

"I died," Fili says, and it is as much a question as a statement. Mahal nods, and wraps his arms a little tighter around the lad.

"You did. I am sorry." There was nothing he could have done to prevent it, but Fili does not need to hear that now.

"My brother?"

He heaves a sigh, old as worlds, and shakes his great head.

"He is not here."

Fili closes his eyes in relief, letting a deep breath ease from him - his final breath. "If he lives, I do not find I mind too much. Thorin and Kili will look after one another."

"And now you are home." This is the best he can offer. Sometimes, this is all they have waited for. "Here, you may wait with your ancestors until the end. There will be no more death, no more warfare. We will see the world remade."

"But he will live?" Fili pushes back, setting himself firmly on his feet, and crosses his arms. "Kili has to survive this!"

Mahal closes his eyes and looks out onto the world, where all around the bodies of his children are watering Yavanna's green, growing things with the blood that is so precious to him. There fell Fili, who should not have died - and there stands his brother, looking as though his whole world has fallen apart before his eyes. Kili - dark, brilliant Kili, who shines like mithril - draws no breath for what seems like ages of the world. And then, like an arrow fired from a bowstring, he is off in a mounting fury that could tear worlds apart. He throws himself into battle like a berserker, with no care for his own survival, and then Mahal knows.

He opens his eyes and looks upon Fili, and shakes his head. "He will be home soon."

Fili falls to his knees in despair, closing his eyes. "Please," he begs. "Aren't you the Maker? How can you bear to see this happen? He doesn't deserve this. Save him!"

"Oh, my child," Mahal murmurs. He places one great hand on Fili's golden head in a semblance of comfort, and reaches the other out to the bloodied fields of Erebor.

Of all the things that Mahal had made, living and dead, he had often thought that Kili was one of the brightest. His light does not flare and vanish, but fades slowly in an obscene parody of a peaceful death. He takes the boy up in his hand as he dies, and bears him home, and Mahal's great old heart is broken.

Kili comes home fighting and screaming, unwilling to accept any constrain. He struggles against his Maker, flinging himself away and into a fighting stance as soon as Mahal lets him go.

"Where is Fili?" he roars, his voice cracking. He is desperation itself; he is fire and rage. "Where is my brother?"

Kili was meant to live, Mahal thinks sadly. He was meant to struggle and triumph and breathe joy and fury and despair out with every breath, brightening the world. He should have lived to see the better days ahead.

"Kili!"

They crash together in the middle of his halls, dropping to their knees with limbs and useless armor and hair entwined until even their Maker cannot fully tell where one begins and the other ends. They have lost one another, and then been reunited. He had never made them to be apart.

"You idiot!" Fili is roaring, clutching Kili close. "Were you even thinking at all? How could you have gotten yourself killed so fast?"

Kili chokes out a laugh, or a sob, and buries his face in Fili's chest. "You died! Of course I wasn't thinking!"

"You were supposed to go on! Lead them! Look after Thorin and Bilbo!" Fili shakes him, and finally Kili looks up. The fire in his eyes would have stopped an army.

"Not without my brother."

Fili nods slowly, because here is a thing that he understands, and he sighs. "Mother always did say you were reckless."

"It was never supposed to be like this," Kili muses. He clutches his brother's forearm tight, and bows his head over it. "We weren't supposed to go alone."

Fili smiles at that - no pain now, no shadow of doubt on him, and lifts Kili's head until their foreheads are pressed together. "Then be grateful, oh my brother, that our parting was a short one."

It is a thing both strange and wondrous that here, in his own halls, Mahal has found himself comforted in his sorrow by the very children responsible for it. But sorrow is still upon them, and he bows his head and reaches out again, and again, and again, and brings his children home.

He hesitates, near the end, when he sees the beloved face that waits for him next.

Thorin, at least, has not died alone. He has found a measure of peace, here at his end, and Mahal waits until he is certain the time has come before he carries him home - but then hesitates. Thorin will find no small measure of his kin here, awaiting his arrival with the impatience that seems a common failing in his children. He will be welcomed by his father and grandfather, by his brother and countless of the Dwarves who have fought and died beside him, this day and in the long decades before. But there is one place where Thorin must go first.

When he brings Thorin into his halls, the lad knows him at once, and looks on him with such sorrow that Mahal is taken aback.

"I have failed you," Thorin murmurs. He bows his head. "I have brought shame and death upon those who followed me. I am not fit to enter your halls."

Mahal laughs, then, in love for this most contradictory of his children. He sees to his wounds and then kisses his brow, looking upon him with delight.

"Welcome home, young Thorin," he says, setting him upon the gilded floor of his hall. "May you be at peace."

"Thorin?" Fili is upon him at once, grief and wonder intermingled on his face. "Has everyone been lost, then? Is it over?"

"No, Fili," Thorin murmurs, gathering the lad to him in a dangerously tight embrace. "The Mountain is saved - or it shall be. It is no thanks to my hand, but I am glad of it." He pulls back to press his hands to either side of Fili's face, beaming at him. "You fought well. I was proud to fight along side you today, and to accompany you on this last adventure. We must hope now that your brother is fit to the task ahead of him. It will be no easy matter to settle the wounds of this day, and he is still so young." Worry races across his face again. "I was left in much the same position when I was young myself, and I was not fit to the task."

"Uncle," Fili murmurs, and shakes his head sadly. Mahal watches in sorrow as Thorin understands, and his face falls again. He turns slowly, as if unwilling to face what is behind him.

"Oh, Kili," he whispers. Kili shrugs a little, and then there are no more words. They cling together in silence, mending wounds that even Mahal cannot repair, and he mourns with them for what has been lost.

There will be singing later, and reunions between long-parted brothers, and such feasting and drinking as they have never imagined. There will be rest for the weary, and peace for broken hearts, and work to be done - aye, work indeed, for the Remaking of Arda would come upon them sooner than might be thought, and the Dwarves will have work enough to satisfy the deepest desires of their hearts to create in their Maker's image. There will be joy again, for all of his children, and it will shine out all the more because they have passed through the darkness to reach it.

For now, Mahal leaves them alone to their reunion, and goes to find the rest of his newly-arrived children. He will have many hearts to ease and fears to calm. And he will have words with his wife, for it seems to the wisdom of Mahal that young Bilbo Baggins, who is indeed one of Yavanna's creatures, may perhaps need to be watched over with the rest of the children of Mahal, and brought home safe in the end.