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Bag End did not feel like a place that had been lived in.
It felt like a place that had been left behind.
The door opened easily beneath Bilbo’s hand, as though it had been waiting for him alone, patient and unchanged. Inside, everything was exactly where it should be. The coat by the peg. The polished wood. The faint, familiar scent of tea leaves and time.
It should have been comforting.
Instead, it felt like stepping into a story that had forgotten him.
“I’m home,” Bilbo said, because he did not know what else to do with the silence.
It did not answer.
For a moment, he stood there, listening.
Waiting.
Because some stubborn, foolish part of him expected—
A voice.
Low. Steady. Certain.
“You took your time, Master Baggins.”
Bilbo’s breath caught.
The words did not come.
Of course they didn’t.
The quiet stretched, thin and unyielding, until it snapped something small and fragile inside his chest.
He closed the door carefully, as though gentleness might keep the world from breaking further.
—
The Shire was too soft for grief.
It had no sharp edges, no jagged stone to brace against. Everything here was green and golden and fine, as though nothing terrible had ever happened, as though nothing could.
Bilbo tried to move through it the way he used to.
Tea at the proper hour. Bread baked just so. A walk down the lane where the trees arched overhead like kind, familiar guardians.
But the quiet followed him everywhere.
And it was wrong.
Because quiet, he had learned, was never truly quiet.
Not on the road. Not by the fire.
There had always been something beneath it. The shift of armor. The murmur of voices. The steady, grounding presence of someone who would not let the dark take hold completely.
Here, there was nothing beneath it.
Just absence.
He missed them.
He missed Fíli’s brightness, like sunlight catching on steel.
He missed Kíli’s laughter, quick and alive, always spilling over into everything.
But Thorin—
Bilbo stopped walking.
The name alone was enough to unravel him.
Thorin was not laughter. Not light.
Thorin was everything. A presence. A gravity that pulled everything into orbit without asking.
And now—
Now there was nothing where that gravity had been.
Just empty sky.
—
That night, Bilbo did not bother pretending he would sleep.
He lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to the hollow quiet of his own home.
His hand slipped into his pocket.
The ring was there.
It always was.
His fingers curled around it, and for a moment, the world seemed to tilt.
The air felt thinner. Sharper.
As though there were a door just slightly ajar, waiting.
He could step through it.
Leave the quiet behind.
Leave the empty chairs and untouched cups and the echo of a voice he would never hear again.
Disappear.
Bilbo’s breath trembled.
Because for one terrible moment, he wanted to.
Not out of courage. Not out of curiosity.
Out of exhaustion.
“I could just disappear,” he whispered into the dark. “Couldn’t I?”
The ring lay silent, warm against his skin.
It did not answer.
It didn’t have to.
Bilbo squeezed his eyes shut.
“And then what?” he said, voice breaking. “Where would that take me?”
Not to Thorin.
Never to Thorin.
The truth of it landed, heavy and absolute.
No magic, no clever trick, no hidden path would lead him back to that voice, that presence, that unspoken understanding that had grown, slow and unexpected, between them.
Gone meant gone.
Bilbo’s hand shook as he pulled it from his pocket, as though the ring had suddenly grown too heavy to bear.
“I would rather stay and remember you,” he whispered, the words raw. “Even if it hurts.”
He pressed the ring back into his pocket like sealing something away.
Not gone.
But contained for now.
—
He did not open the backpack for days.
He knew what was inside.
He knew what waited there, folded carefully, carrying more meaning than he had ever asked for.
When he finally lifted the lid, it felt less like opening something and more like surrendering.
The mithril caught the light immediately.
Soft. Silver. Unyielding.
Bilbo stared at it for a long time before touching it, as though it might vanish if he moved too quickly.
“You shouldn’t have given me this,” he said quietly.
His voice sounded too loud in the room.
Too small for what it was trying to hold.
Carefully, he lifted the coat.
It weighed almost nothing.
And yet it dragged at him like an anchor.
A memory rose, unbidden and mercilessly clear—
Thorin placing it in his hands.
Not as a king to a subject. Not as payment.
As something… deliberate.
As though he had seen Bilbo. Truly seen him. And chosen, in that moment, to leave something behind that would not fade.
Bilbo’s throat tightened.
“I didn’t understand,” he said, fingers clutching the fine links. “Not then.”
He drew it closer, pressing it against his chest as though it might bridge the distance between what was and what had been.
“I thought there would be more time.”
The words broke apart as they left him.
“I thought I could—” His breath hitched. “I thought you would come back so I could tell you—”
Tell you what?
That I would have followed you a to the ends of the middle earth, if you had asked?
Bilbo’s knees gave way, and he sank to the floor, the mithril clutched tightly in his hands.
“I would give it back,” he whispered, the desperation in his voice quiet but absolute. “All of it. Every coin, every story, every step—I would give it back if it meant you were still—”
Alive.
The word stayed lodged in his chest, too sharp to speak.
Silence filled the space instead.
But this silence was not empty.
It was full.
Full of everything he would never say. Everything he would never hear.
Bilbo bowed his head, shoulders trembling.
“I didn’t get to say goodbye,” he choked. “You didn’t either.”
That was the cruelest part.
Not just that Thorin was gone.
But that the story had ended mid-sentence.
—
That evening, he set the table.
One cup.
He hesitated.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
Fourteen in total.
His hands shook as he placed them, each one a quiet acknowledgment of something that refused to be erased.
Bilbo stopped at the last cup.
His fingers lingered on it longer than the others.
“Thorin,” he said softly.
The name settled into the room like something sacred.
He lit a candle and placed it in the center.
The flame flickered, catching faintly on the mithril hanging where he could see it from the table.
Bilbo sat down.
The chairs remained empty.
But the silence… changed.
Not gone.
Never gone.
But no longer unbearable.
His hand brushed his pocket once more. The ring rested there, quiet, waiting, a shadow curled into gold.
It would always be with him.
But so would this.
Bilbo looked at the cups, at the small, steady flame between them, and let out a slow, fragile breath.
"I would have gone with you," he said, barely above a whisper. "I would have died with you."
The candle burned.
The room gave no reply.
But the words remained anyway.
—