Fili and Kili had been arguing about something all day. Bilbo hadn't been paying much attention to it - he'd learned it was better not to - but he noticed out of the corner of his eye when they appealed to Balin. Balin either refused to mediate or didn't know the answer, and the boys fell back to ride beside Bilbo.

"Bilbo, where do hobbits come from?" Kili asked.

Oh, dear. Surely they should be asking their uncle about this. And shouldn't they know by now anyway?

Then again, he'd heard rumors that there weren't any dwarf women and they simply sprung from stone. He wasn't sure how the whole brothers thing would work if that were true, but it was just possible they honestly didn't know. He took a deep breath, mind working frantically. "Well, you see, when two hobbits love each other very much - "

Kili choked. Fili burst out into helpless laughter.

"Not like that!" he choked out. "He meant, where did the first hobbits come from?"

"Oh." Bilbo could feel his cheeks redden.

Then his stomach dropped. Oh, dear. He wished that they had been asking about . . . the other thing.

"We don't talk about that," he said firmly, and he urged his pony forward.

He just knew that Fili and Kili were looking at each other. They weren't going to let this go.

Well, that was too bad. He might not be as strictly respectable as he once was, but he wasn't completely insane. Some things were meant for hobbit ears alone, and to be honest, even the hobbits might be better off forgetting.

Bilbo took a few deep breaths outside the troll cave. That could have gone a lot worse, but it could have gone a lot better too.

Nori clapped him on the back. "Fili and Kili told me what happened. Your technique wasn't bad. Just bad luck, really. You'll do much better at burgling next time."

Bilbo snorted. "Technique? There wasn't any technique to that. I'm just small and quiet, like every hobbit was made to be."

"Made by who?" Kili said from behind him.

Bilbo jumped.

"Whom," Balin corrected as he walked out of the cave. "Made by whom." He looked at Bilbo expectantly.

Bilbo took advantage of Thorin's order to move out to avoid answering the question.

Fili and Kili plopped down on either side of him at the elves' feast.

"Terribly rude of the elves to serve you your own cousins," Fili said, shaking his head.

Bilbo looked down at the lettuce in front of him. "Beg pardon?"

"Well, you were both made by Yavanna, weren't you?" Kili reasoned. "So that means - "

"No," Bilbo said firmly. "Even if the first part of that supposition was true, no."

"So Yavanna didn't make you?" Fili asked.

Bilbo sighed. Surely there couldn't be any harm in answering this question, at least. "Yavanna made plants. Do I look like a plant to you?"

"No," Kili admitted. "So which of the Valar was it? Or was it Eru himself?"

"There's no shame in being made by one of the Valar," Fili put in. "The dwarves were made by Mahal. We won't think less of you for it."

Hah. Bilbo knew better than that. He started eating determinedly.

Kili thankfully changed the subject. "How much can hobbits eat, anyway?"

"Seven meals a day when we can get them," Bilbo said, seizing on the subject change.

Fili whistled. "I don't think even Bombur could eat that much."

"Made to be hungry, eh?" Kili asked, nodding wisely.

Bilbo forced himself to roll his eyes and leaned forward to talk to Ori, who sat across from him.

No need to tell the dwarves that they were right.

"I've got it!" Kili cheered. He was far too enthusiastic for this early in the morning, particularly considering the rain that was pounding down.

"Got what?" Bilbo asked wearily.

"Hobbits are a crossbreed, aren't they?"

Horrified fascination forced him to ask, "Between what?"

"Well, you liked the elves, and you get along with us alright - "

"See where your uncle's standing and then decide if you want to finish that sentence," Bilbo interrupted.

He might have just let Kili continue under that impression - he wasn't entirely wrong - but he didn't think the other dwarves would have taken to it well.

Surely the two boys would have to give up eventually, wouldn't they?

The ominous crack of thunder overhead didn't reassure him much.

That ring - that ring -

Oh, dear. He should probably tell Gandalf about this, except - Well. Gandalf was one of the Istari, wasn't he? And the wizard was taking far too much interest in Bilbo as it was.

Besides, he'd probably try to take the ring, and Bilbo couldn't allow that. A hobbit with a ring such as this wasn't ideal, but the idea of a corrupted Istari didn't bear contemplating.

No, he'd just take this back to the Shire with him. He could show the Thain when he got back.

If he got back. He still had to face a dragon, and, more ominously, two very curious young dwarves.

Erebor was very beautiful, he had to admit, and it was nice to be underground again. It was almost like a very large, very drafty smial.

"You seem to be doing well underground, Master Baggins," Fili commented. It was the lightest comment that had been made in days, and it clearly took an effort.

Bilbo fiddled with the Arkenstone in his pocket. "Well, I do have some Harfoot blood on my Baggins side," he said absently.

A flicker of the old curiosity lit up Fili's eyes. "Harfoot?" he asked.

Well, this couldn't hurt, surely. "There are three types of hobbits," he told Fili. "Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides. We've all pretty much blended together at this point, but everyone knows the Tooks are more Fallohide than anything, and the Baggins have a bit of Harfoot blood."

"What's the difference?"

Bilbo shrugged. "The Fallohides are taller, slimmer. The Harfoots are shorter and thicker. The Stoors are in between."

"So like elves, dwarves, and men," Fili deduced.

Bilbo cursed his distracted mind. "Vaguely," he said waving a hand. "But unlike dwarves, Harfoots can't grow beards."

Fili rubbed his own short beard thoughtfully. "And what's a dwarf without a beard?" he asked wryly.

Bilbo smiled weakly and tried very hard to look like he didn't know the answer.

Bilbo sat between two stone graves and tried not to look over at the third. He'd pay his respects to Thorin shortly. First, he had a story to tell two young princes while he was still alone down here. They deserved more than that, but this was all he could give them.

"There's a reason I never told you," he said quietly. "It's the first thing every hobbit child learns. I know you must have thought me terribly naive at first, but none of us are so stupid as to think that we'd last long if this story got out. We aren't much good in a straight out fight. We weren't made for that." He laughed bitterly. The ring felt very warm in his pocket.

"You were right, Kili. We are a cross between dwarves and elves. Men, too. Only you were wrong at the same time, because by the time the Harfoots and Fallohides and Stoors intermarried, we weren't anything but hobbits anymore." He had to stop and look around nervously before he could say the next part. The instinct for secrecy ran too deep. "Everyone knows that a long time ago, Morgoth corrupted some of the elves to make the first orcs. He wasn't happy with the orcs, though. They inspire terror, but they aren't exactly very subtle, are they? He wanted something small. Something quiet. Something that was fair to look at and with a monstrous appetite. So he captured a few men, a few elves, a few dwarves . . . I'll tell you what a dwarf without a beard is: a cursed one. But," he rallied, "Morgoth made a mistake. Men aren't bound to any fate but one of their own choosing, and dwarves - Well, I hardly need to tell you how stubborn a dwarf can be. And no elf can bear to be outdone by mere mortals." He shrugged. "We wouldn't do what he wanted. We were hobbits, and we were quite determined to have a will of our own. He tried to destroy us, of course, but he'd done too good a job of making us hard to find when we didn't want to be found. We migrated until we found the Shire."

The ring felt very much like it was seething. Bilbo patted it absently. Its whispers felt odd in his mind. Half familiar, as his maker's apprentice tried to appeal to the hobbit's ingrained compliant side. Half laughable, as the rest of him pushed against it firmly.

"You can understand why I didn't tell you, I hope. I couldn't take the risk you wouldn't understand. We're not evil beings, hobbits, and we're no more under the Dark's thumb than you are. We can't help how we came to be, but it doesn't exactly encourage trust, does it?"

He sighed. "So there you are. That's where hobbits came from. Mandos only knows where we're going, though. What do you think? Undying lands like the elves? Beyond Middle Earth like men? To nothing, like those without fëar?" He stood and let his hands rest on the stone beds. "Personally," he said quietly, "I'm hoping for Mahal's halls, but I'm not sure I've got enough Harfoot in me for that. I don't suppose you could put in a good word for me? Thorin, too. He's King Under the Mountain. His word's got to count for something." Was King Under the Mountain, he supposed, but he wasn't quite ready to shift tenses yet.

It was a foolish thought, anyway. Perhaps the first Harfoots had ended up in Mahal's halls, but surely by now the hobbits were as deserted by the Valar as the orcs. They might not be evil, but they had been corrupted. And as for a good word - ha! There was a good reason he'd only dared tell their tombs. If he'd told them while they were still alive, there would have been no chance of him living to see the Shire again, and the only thing that could have saved the Shire from burning was Thorin's abysmal sense of direction.

Of course, Gandalf hadn't purged them from the land yet, but none of them were entirely sure how much the wizard knew.

Maybe they wouldn't have turned on you, part of him whispered. Maybe they would have been impressed that your people wouldn't obey Morgoth or Sauron.

Bilbo assumed that this part of him was either still desperately naive or that it was the ring attempting to get him killed so that it could get itself a more malleable bearer.

He walked over to Thorin's tomb and waited beside it for a moment. He had to push back tears. It seemed like that was all he was doing lately. Tears for a leader that had fought so hard and so long for his people. Tears for three lives cut too short.

Tears for friends unlike any he'd ever known. Friends he wouldn't have risked for anything.

"I am truly sorry, Thorin," he whispered. "I never blamed you for any of it. I understood." Oh, how he'd understood. "I would have deserved it if you'd killed me, you know, but since you seemed to think you owed me a favor, I don't suppose I could ask you for the same favor I asked your nephews, could I? I do try to be good, you know. We all do. We none of us want to end up like poor Gollum." He swallowed down the thickness in his throat. "We're never quite good enough," as the three graves proved, "but we do try. So very hard." He nodded once and forced himself to walk away. The Thain would need to hear about this. All of it.

"So that's what you kept pestering our burglar about," Thorin said.

Fili and Kili shuffled guiltily.

Thorin sighed. In life, he likely would have been angry. He had seen too much of the damage orcs could do, that any sort of corruption could do, to believe that hobbits could overcome their origins.

But if he could overcome the gold sickness with all his flaws, how could he think less of Master Baggins?

Besides - the other Valar might not be ready to accept hobbits into the Undying Lands or to wherever men went, but Mahal loved his creations far too much to abandon them no matter what evil befell them, and since from the start none of the other Valar would claim them, he considered them all his.

Mahal had always delighted in hobbit stubbornness and had long ago decided there was room for both races in his halls.

A/N: Credit due to Tolkien Gateway for helping me fact check.