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It’s time.
But Bilbo isn’t ready to leave, not yet. Not before he sees this view one last time, the way the sun awakens behind the blur of mountains ahead. The way the colour of the sky swells, light seeping in from all directions.
He’s already set to go, Gandalf awaits him in Dale. But he’d insisted on staying, on a distant hilltop where the lake sits still below him. The lake is a parallel world underneath a surface of water, virtually the same as this one, but distorted and almost wrong.
Thorin is beside him. Only now does Bilbo really process this, his presence, the thought of him being there. They’re together, but he doesn’t want to look at him. He’s afraid to, despite straining to get over it since Thorin had joined him here. He describes the lake again, stretching outwards, the shape of its bank arching. He describes Thorin without looking, like remembering a face from a dream, but it’s not enough.
The urge to see him again is a dull, subterranean ache, but he can’t. It’s hard to look at Thorin again without remembering the way he’d seized him by the collar. Threatening to throw him off the rampart. It crushes his heart that he’s too weak to forget it, for this moment he’d like to blot out the memory from his mind. Just one short spell of amnesia.
Thorin’s voice shatters the silence. “Take care on the journey, Master Burglar.”
Bilbo swallows a lump in his throat, and only manages a hum.
The world seems to urge him to say something, because nothing moves. Dale seems inactive, despite the people taking refuge there. The cloud is one single thread drifting through the sky, lumbering along.
“Are you angry at me?” Thorin asks.
“No. I don’t know.” Bilbo suddenly has so much to say, like a faucet running water. “I suppose I was. And… not when you tried to kill me, funnily enough. Not really. I was only ever… truly angry, when you told me those things. That the treasure was ours. That the other dwarves were plotting against you, and that it was you and me, against everyone and everything else.”
He’s talking, talking too much. The words just come out.
“I was angry that your words had that power over me.” That particular sentence makes him choke up. “I wish I could have saved you then. I know deep down you wanted me to.”
“That was never your responsibility,” Thorin says, quietly.
Bilbo manages a wan smile. “I was your burglar. You felt like my responsibility many times, actually. You needed saving quite often.”
A cold breeze whips past them, reaffirming their distance but also assuring the safety of their transient conjunction. He strains himself to look at Thorin again, for the first time in days. He gets to remember his face, his gaze tender and gentle. He’s thankful that he can look at him this time and stay rooted in the present.
“I’m not angry at you, I think,” Bilbo says. “Not anymore. Right now, I’m just looking at the lake. It’s like there’s another world underneath it. Inaccessible, but there for us to have a little look.”
“Yes,” Thorin says. “If we visited a beach, maybe we could have a better look.”
“We could,” Bilbo says contemplatively. “You know what I find interesting, Thorin?”
“What?”
“In all my years of living, I’ve only swum a few times. I remember every time I did. First, when I was a boy. I think eleven or twelve. My parents brought me to the river and I taught myself how to swim. It’s easy when you know how to use your legs. Then, again, when I was a little older. I was somewhat clueless at first, but I still remembered it by heart.”
Bilbo cradles the acorn in his hand, small and delicate, easily lost. His fingertips trace the texture, the shell itself smooth, bumpy at the cupule. “I didn’t swim again for a long time, after my mother died. I don’t know. I didn’t do a lot of the things I used to, after she was gone. I forgot how. I suppose I wanted to forget at the time.”
Thorin responds, “I understand how that feels.”
“The first time I met the water of a river after that was when we were escaping the elves in Mirkwood. When I fell into the rapids without a barrel.”
He chuckles. “Oh, yes. You’d forgotten about yourself. As you often do.”
“I had.” Bilbo smiles. “But… I still remembered how to swim. So many years, and I remembered. It became instinct. Some things stick with you, even if they’re long gone. You remember exactly who you were, the things you used to do, even when you feel you’ve changed. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same person I was before I lost my mother, but I still see him sometimes. I see him when I’m with you. And I think… when I plant the acorn, I will remember you. When I eat, I will think of when you all barged into my home and threw your own dinner. Just like how I will remember how to swim, every time I’m in water.”
They look at each other, smiling, reminiscing the many months they spent together. It’s relieving to look back on those things, able to laugh about it now. Some of the moments did blur in time, merging and joining into one unit, but the emotions remain their own intricacies, frozen as still pictures.
Bilbo sees Thorin again, happier than ever. Even when he isn’t smiling, his eyes betray his desire for anonymity. There’s a glimmer in them, and in the warm sunrise, the blue of his irises is rich and full of hope. Bilbo needed just that assurance before looking away again.
“I am glad you were able to see him again,” Thorin says. “I sometimes think of the person I was before we lost Erebor. I try to find him again, I do try. But… it’s difficult.”
“You did,” Bilbo says. “When you got out of that sickness.”
“It was your words, your influence.”
“I was gone. You found him within yourself. He never left. I can speak to you, say things, but ultimately it’s you who made that choice.” He smiles. “I’m relieved you did.”
Thorin rests his palm against the rocky ground, closing their distance just a little. “Thank you. For believing in me.”
“I want to say I’ll miss this, but maybe miss is the wrong word.” Bilbo looks outwards into the sky. “Because I won’t miss a lot of it. The times we were in danger, the times I feared for my life. For yours. The times I was afraid I’d lose you.
“But I will be happy to look back on this. I am happy to have gone with you and the other dwarves. I am happy to have known Fíli and Kíli, Balin and Bofur. People in our lives come and go. They don’t stay in the end. But we can be happy that they were there at some point, to help us grow. To learn things, to have new experiences.” He doesn’t glance back at Thorin. “I’m happy I knew you. And I’m happy you knew me.”
“Knew.” Thorin utters a low, breathless chuckle. “It would be funny, if this was the last time we ever spoke to each other.”
Bilbo says nothing to this, despite Thorin’s conspicuous waiting for him to. Any kind of response, verbal or not. It doesn’t come. It’s enough to make his own chest tighten. “It’s a beautiful sight. The lake.”
“It is,” Thorin says. Bilbo knows he’s looking at him, hopeless.
It’s been too long, Gandalf is waiting now, and only wizards may make their own timing. Bilbo can’t be late. He checks for his things, patting down his coat to his trousers’ pockets.
“May I embrace you, one last time?” Thorin asks, his voice low.
“No,” Bilbo says.
Thorin makes a low sound, almost an oh but not quite.
“If you did, I’ll never leave.” His voice is empty, yet full of every emotion he’s trying to keep contained. Hot air rising, something seismic.
“Wait.” Thorin inches a little closer again. “One more thing, Bilbo.”
“Yes?”
“I, um…” It’s one of the only times he’s heard Thorin trip over his words. Only this time, they both know exactly what he wants to say. “Never mind. It’s all right.”
Bilbo almost looks at him, but he catches himself. The time for that, the grace period, is over.
The silence is louder than any battle, even if the air is still and the world pauses for this last moment. Finality, the idea of it, is deafening to his ears. But it’s such a calm morning, a beautiful rousing of the sun in the sky. This moment is almost perfect, but it isn’t. It’s brokenly stagnant.
Bilbo is still staring at the lake, he hasn’t really taken his eyes off of it. Times like this, his thoughts read like the lines of a poem, arranged into neat stanzas, decorated with metaphors, and obvious, hidden meaning underneath. Maybe, in that world beneath the water’s surface, he stays with Thorin, or Thorin goes with him to the Shire. Maybe they’re happy together, maybe they aren’t having this conversation.
He leaves without a goodbye, a final turn of his head, one last glance into the world he’s leaving behind. In his periphery, Thorin is still. He would like to make one more acknowledgement, one last anything, but nothing more is left to say. Whatever might come after is an excess; a breaking point.
Life awaits him, like it always has, the quiet morning after an eternal night.
And so he goes, trudging out of this perilous territory of regret, to catch up with that endless current.
—
Thorin watches after him, the way he gradually shrinks further and further into the distance. He watches until Bilbo disappears into Dale, the words he wanted to say forever crowded in his throat. Bilbo is closer to moving on than he is, and he would be a bad person to impede that progress.
He thought he would cry. Now, he realises he doesn’t have it in him. Not yet. He will mourn this later, once the feeling really sets in. The apathy now is mercy.
One more minute-long glance at the lake, a minute lasting a lifetime, and he swallows those words, standing up, making his way back into the mountain.