A Shot in the Dark

When he opens his eyes again, he finds himself in his old bed in his old home in his old body. Is this death? Or a trick of magic? Either way, Bilbo recognizes a second chance when he sees one, and this time his adventure with Thorin is going to go a bit differently.

This story contains the following: foul language, violence, very brief hint of domestic violence, indirect suicidal attempts, and mention of character death.

Excerpt

When he opened his eyes, it was to the sight of a familiar ceiling in a familiar home.

When he sat up, he found himself in his old room. It was not the room that he had left behind in Bag End as a withering old Hobbit…and condemning Frodo with the fate of that damn ring, his mind viciously reminded him-but a room from a lifetime ago. It was a room that he had changed thoroughly with a passion fueled by the stubborn Baggins determination to outrun painful memories.

It was the room he had before he left for Erebor.

Is this a cruel jest of magic, or the afterlife? he wondered, staring with an open mouth at his surroundings. When he had last closed his eyes, he had been on a boat on his way to the Undying Lands. So this was certainly not what he had been expecting to see after waking up from his nap in his cabin.

Eru could not be so cruel as to cast him into a place that reminded him of what was long lost, right…?

When his eyes fell upon the full-length mirror-his mother’s mirror that Frodo accidently cracked forty years ago-he very nearly fell out of his bed. For what he saw in it was not the familiar wrinkled face he had grown to know, but a young one that he had nearly forgotten.