Title: Witnessed Twice
Fandom: The Hobbit
Rating: T
Length: 273
Content notes: Set in Erebor during the second Hobbit film.
Author notes: I don't often write with Balin in mind, so this is just some small practice writing with him.
Summary: In which Balin has witnessed the fall of two Kings Under the Mountain in his lifetime.



Before the arrival of Smaug and before the fall of Erebor, he had witnessed the transformation of King Thror. He had seen how greed had taken him over and twisted him from hardened yet kindly Dwarf King that his father had loyally followed into some unrecognizable creature ruled from the throne with Thror’s face as a mask.

He knows from their own private discussions that Thorin had watched closely with wide open eyes the transformation happening within his Grandfather into the Mad King Under the Mountain as the greed and lust for all things golden took his mind.

At least he had thought Thorin’s eyes were open to what they had all seen before the coming of the dragon, though they could not at the time do much for it. Not with Thror being suspicious of everyone’s movements within the Mountain towards the end.

In the case of Thorin, he wonders when the transformation had begun for him. Had it begun the moment he set foot inside the hidden doorway or begun the moment he found the hoard of Smaug in Erebor’s treasury? Or perhaps in Laketown?

Certainly not in Mirkwood or in the lands of the shapeshifter, Beorn, he doubts the change within his King would have begun so soon even then.

He has witnessed twice within his lifetime the emergence of the Mad King Under the Mountain and in either case did he know how to break the power that the gold had over its thrall.

What could anyone do to save Thorin from himself and power of the gold when they too could fall under the power of the gold?