Chapter Text
For more than fifty years they had been happy, and Thorin had long been confident that Bilbo should always return to him; but as Bilbo’s one hundred eleventh year approached, he worried. Bilbo would not grieve, only say eleventy-eleven was a goodly age for a hobbit. Bilbo was very old for a hobbit; it was true; and Thorin was no young dwarf, but he could feel that day of Bilbo’s warning ever looming. One day when Bilbo left him, he would come back grievously injured; likely, it would be the day of his death. And then that day came.
When Bilbo disappeared at breakfast, Thorin sat across from him. One moment, they laughed together; the next, the chair across from him was empty. Thorin sat still for a moment, then hurried to call for Oin’s successor. If Bilbo could be saved when he returned, it would be better to have a healer standing by. But Bilbo returned after only minutes, and the page had not yet returned with the healer. As Thorin had remembered, he bled alarmingly from the nose and his ears, and he could not stand.
“Bilbo!” Thorin cried, and ran to hold him up.
“Not—the end—“ Bilbo said, and smiled at him. “My Thorin.” And then he died.
Thorin knew not what he did in those next days of mourning. He did not care for the throne of his people, but left it all to Fili. Some days he spent in their rooms and would not leave their bed. Those were the bad days. On better days he walked out to the high archery range, where Bilbo had come to him on the last day of his life. It was seldom used; as ever, dwarves cared more for their axes than for bows. It was perhaps a month later when Thorin stood at the range, looking down across the valley. As always, he wished that Bilbo were there; and then he was, as he had been at about eighty, when his hair had finally gone entirely white.
“My Thorin,” he said. “You have always been prone to this despondency. Do you still mourn me?” Thorin only clasped him in his arms.
“You died,” was all he could say.
“Thorin?” Bilbo asked.
“You knew,” Thorin accused gently. “You knew and you did not tell me.”
“Oh,” said Bilbo. “That was cruel. Well. I shall try.” Thorin laughed through his tears.
“I think perhaps you did try, and I was a fool who did not understand you,” he said. “My Bilbo.”
“This is the first time, then, since my death?” Bilbo guessed. Thorin nodded into his hair.
“I can tell you this much, Thorin Oakenshield: you are not shut of me yet. You have told me yourself; our fates are tied. I plan to be with you until your death, as you have been with me until mine.” Then Bilbo kissed him, as Thorin’s heart lifted to the heights of the mountain.
And as he promised, he was with Thorin at the end. Fili and Kili cried by his deathbed, he knew, and their children; but Bilbo held his hand, and he was content to have it so. From the beginning to the end, Bilbo had been with him; and if sometimes he had gone, he had always come back; and he was here now. It was a strange magic that had tied them together, and at times he had thought it a curse; but it was a gift—a gift to have had his Bilbo by his side.
“Now is the end,” he managed to tell Bilbo. Bilbo kissed his brow.
“It is not the end,” he replied. “I will see you again soon.”