I own nothing. Not even a Gandalf fridge magnet anymore as I seem to have lost it :(
To me, he was...
Everything.
He was everything. He meant everything.
And he was gone.
In a distant Kingdom many leagues away they would sing of him. In merriment of his great triumph, in sadness of his loss. They would tell of him in their stories and he would pass into legend. His tale would be remembered, his name forever spoken, but he would be forgot...because he was so much more than those songs and books could ever tell. He was, he was...
He was courage and strength and weakness, a reason to go on. A reason do what a hobbit would never be expected to do, be more than ever expected to be...even if in the end it hadn't been enough. He was someone to give up the world for, and Bilbo might well have done, if it were only his to give.
In a distant Kingdom, oh so far away where stories were told, it had ended.
In a small town where a hobbit lived and no one had the slightest inkling that the one who had meant everything was gone or even that he had ever existed, it had begun.
So much had happened since the start. So much had been said and done and so much had not. It had meant so much at the time and yet, here, once it was over, it was like nothing had happened at all. Here they didn't know. They never would. They would never understand what he was, Bilbo himself couldn't begin to explain it.
How could Bilbo tell them that something in the world was missing, had left behind a gap that would never be completely filled, that's emptiness would ache even when memory began to fade and fail? How could he tell them that too much had changed, that he couldn't be what he once was?
He had gone there and back again, but he had not come back the same as when he had left. He had lost things he had never dreamt he would gain.
When something that has come to mean everything is taken from you, it is as if the Sun has dimmed. Things that you once rejoiced in no longer seem so wonderful, beautiful things no longer look as fine. Things you treasured begin to lose their worth and it becomes harder and harder just to feel warm.
Smiles take more effort than they once did, and though time may pass you will never completely forget. Some hurts go too deep, some losses leave voids too great, sometimes one just can't go back...But that was okay, Bilbo would say, given time to reason. It was okay that he couldn't go back, okay that he was not the same. It hurt, true. It hurt so much, but the people who gave him the strange looks, whose muttered disapproval followed his steps – he owed nothing to them.
He had lived enough and loved enough to have lost, and that loss would always be there, it would always hurt, but such was the way of life. With time the rawness of it all would heal over and the scar would become just another part of him.
He would find other things that he would come to love and treasure and he would learn to smile again. There would be so much more to be and to do. One doesn't have to forget, doesn't have an obligation to ever feel whole or unchanged. Only the obligation to oneself to live life as one wishes.
For now at least, Bilbo simply wished to watch the trees grow...and to dream of a merrier world.
.