It had seemed like such a good idea. He had felt full of energy and life, and nothing had seemed better than the long trek to Erebor, the privations of the journey forgotten, the joy and the camaraderie and the glorious victories grown fresher in memory with every year. Cold nights forgotten, hunger an irrelevance, and fear something that another hobbit had felt.
There had also been love. He had not forgotten love.
Not forgotten, but the memories had grown almost dim, his long possession of the ring had driven that emotion away. Wearing the ring not only rendered him invisible, at first it had dulled the raw ache, then silenced the deep grief, and finally faded and softened the memories when they came, until he was almost able to forget. He had put it on when he couldn't sleep, and when all he had wanted to do was sleep, and when the world had seemed too big and empty and cruel.
But he had given the ring to Frodo, and walked foolishly and wonderfully out his front door, with anticipation and something like hope in his heart. He was ready now, he thought, to think of love, and to remember. Surely there was enough time between then and now to visit those places, to linger over paths and valleys where love had yet bloomed amidst horror and danger.
He tried. He tried very hard, sitting under the shelter of a hanging rock trying to recall rough hands and a strong warm embrace. Meandering down a riverside path he screwed his eyes closed trying to conjure his voice and the precise way he used to speak, and in the process almost treated himself to a ducking. Try as he might, he couldn't quite shake it, the grey veil the ring had drawn. He'd thought it a gift, once, but now it was a curse, when he so wanted to remember.
Bilbo was afraid that his life was drawing to an end, and he would die without being able to truly remember Thorin's face.
One morning he stepped into the warm light and soft breezes of Rivendell and it was like the sun coming through the clouds. The veil was penetrated, dissipated, vanished by whatever virtue lived in the valley. He felt more wholesome than he had in years, lighter of spirit and cleaner of mind. For the first time in decades he was free of the influence of the ring.
And the memories came, as fresh and as clear as if they had been wrapped carefully in paper, as carefully as any treasure Bilbo had ever wrapped and stored away in a cupboard or a tea-chest.
Thorin's face. His rare smile and rarer laughter. His beard, so long and tangled, his eyes so blue under glowering brows. His mouth, his arms, his hands and his love. Most of all his love, like nothing Bilbo had known before or since. Kisses under the stars, huddled warmth in desolate spaces, genuine help and care and support and hope, and anguish and pain, and he remembered crying 'til his eyes were red and his voice was hoarse, the long and lonely journey home, the comfort of the ring, the nights before he realised its power to make him forget...
And now Frodo was here, and from the expression on his face Bilbo knew he had grown old, the years had caught up, and the anguish that had been beaten back for so many years had taken its own toll. He had fallen asleep with the mithril shirt clutched tight to him for a week, and had cried so many tears over it that, had it been iron, it would have been a heap of rust by the end.
Seeing Frodo helped. He hadn't thought he would ever love again, 'til Frodo, a different love of course, a fatherly protective affection that had carried him through the years. Having Frodo near was a comfort, and on a whim he decided he would give him the mail shirt. He would join these two great loves of his, and pass the gift of his passionately devoted lover to his vibrant warmhearted nephew. There was no chance of Bilbo reaching Erebor now, anyway, nor even Mirkwood.
With the best of intentions it had still been hard. He had forgotten himself for a moment over the ring, forgetting its strange attraction. And Frodo had gone. Bilbo was alone again. Oh, not alone, there were elves, and the chance to speak to Gloin had been wonderful, a blessed chance to reminisce, to remember and to heal. Gloin had done his mourning long ago, and stories of Thorin and their adventures came easy to him.
The night after Frodo left Bilbo fell asleep alone, feeling like an empty husk, but closer to peace.
He had heard the Lord Elrond speaking of the grey ships. He was going to Valinor, to see his wife Celebrian again, to leave this land forever to men and their wars and their lusts for power and gain. Every day he was in argument with his daughter Arwen over it, entreating her not to stay and marry her human lover, but to bear her love across the seas, where her memory of him would last forever.
It was a notion Bilbo admired, to keep your love pure and never mar it with pain and death, and loss and ending. He did not interfere, but there was a part of him that wanted to take Arwen by the hands and shake her, to tell her all he knew of grief. To implore her just as Elrond did not to suffer as he had. But he couldn't do it. There was a younger voice in his head also, a voice that cried "Love! Love every moment, love every instant, never stop loving and take all pain as payment for what you've had!"
He determined one day that there would be a place for him on one of the grey ships. He would carry his memory of Thorin forever to the Undying Lands, and their love would never be dimmed. The memory of Thorin Oakenshield, King Under The Mountain, buried with the Arkenstone, mourned by all who knew him, and loved by a hobbit, would live on in the world forever.
Bilbo fell asleep for the first time in months with a smile on his face.