A/N: Just a set of connected drabbles that have been gathering dust in my drive for far too long. Angst aplenty: consider yourself warned.
"Who is this person you pledged yourself to? Thorin Oakenshield?"
The pain pulled through his chest like a splinter. Bilbo had thought that he was over his king's death. He really had. It had been months, after all. Besides, his relationship with Thorin had never been the most amicable anyway.
He shouldn't be standing here, eyes filling with tears, utterly unable to say a word.
Gandalf had understood. They had spoken of other things, like the grand history of Middle Earth and the poetry of the Elves. Not dwarves, of course. Nothing ever to do with dwarves. Hearing the name of the dwarf Bilbo had followed into the literal maw of a dragon for the first time since he'd left the Lonely Mountain spoken so irreverently…
That's when he realized that none of these hobbits, these dear hobbits that had known everything about him and his entire family for his whole life, understood anything. They couldn't comprehend the madness that drove people to war, or the loss that comes from seeing friends hacked to pieces in front of you, or the fierce love that drove someone to do the impossible. They had no idea how sheltered, how protected they were, and how much strangers had sacrificed in order for them to live in peace and plenty. They couldn't possibly understand how quaint the small hills of the Shire were compared to the cruel majesty of the Lonely Mountain, or how insignificant their petty quarrels were in the larger scheme of kingdoms.
Bilbo's downturned eyes caught on the rune etched into his door. The gouges were still easily distinguishable, even though the green paint had faded over the last year. Ori had relented when his elders would not and had taught him how to read a bit of Khuzdul, the dwarves' secret language. Bilbo thought the markings were random scratches when he left: now he understood them to mean "G for Gandalf".
"If you do come back, you will never be the same."
Bilbo had known he would have to sacrifice much for the wizard's adventure. His home and the comfort it provided, his reputation, his friends, possibly even his very life. He didn't realize that he had sacrificed himself. The Bilbo of Bag End who'd left so many months ago was as dead as Smaug, but none of his old friends knew it.