elfmaidens:

HANDS TOO SMALL TO HOLD IT (Bilbo and Thorin survive: all is not forgiven)

“If this is victory, then our hands are too small to hold it.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien

                              In the end, he leaves you. 
    There are nights spent, of course, where they tried to play at what they were before. Sharing a bed, but rarely sleeping. Thorin stares at the ceiling; Bilbo stays at the desk composing something. Elegies, he says. For whom he does not say. 
    (When Bilbo does sleep, he nightmares of hanging from the ramparts above the vast, starless dark of the mountain. Sometimes Thorin reaches for him, attempts to rouse him: Bilbo always flinches awake and bats him away, almost snarling.) 
    The morning comes. He takes Sting, and a small chest of gold: but refuses the mithril. I am glad to have shared in your perils, Bilbo tells him at the gate, his speech halted, careful. (He does not add and in your heart. He is not glad for that, after all) Though I regret it must end bitterly. 
    And he turns. Leaves. The love he had for Thorin is buried in winter, nearly a year after the quest began. For a long time, Thorin stands at the gates. He does not feel the cold.
                                  (He leaves you. Doesn’t everyone, in the end?)

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