Disclaimer: I am soooooo not worthy of Tolkien, and I bid him humble apologies for even daring to trespass upon his Middle Earth. Don't own the Jackson Hobbit movies either, but Muse seems to think if he can play with it, so can I.
Author's Note: If, perchance, any of my Tin Man readers has decided to follow me here – yes, I know, I have every intention of getting back to A Perfect Life. Muse is just a little…distracted at the moment. And in a story devouring mood (of The Hobbit and Sherlock to be exact, oh nom nom nom). I will try to redirect her soonish. Hobbit fandom, if I offend…well, no worries, I don't think I'll be staying here long…
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There was no saving Thorin Oakenshield. From the moment he set forth on his quest, nay, from the moment Smaug entered the mountain, the exiled prince was doomed, for he was not the kind that could leave sleeping dragons lie. Not when they rested in the stolen halls of his forefathers, not though he had succeeded in rebuilding his people's future from the ashes of their past. It would never be enough. His life had been burning away from the day the dragon came down from the north, the sands of his time fading ever faster the closer he got to Erebor.
For his fate was sealed with the turning of a key, the door to the Lonely Mountain leading only to the inevitable fall of an honourable dwarf to pride and the madness in his blood.
And yet keeping Thorin from the mountain would not have preserved him, either. Resigning himself to a life in the Blue Mountains, caged but alive in the halls of the elven king, failing to solve the riddle of the moon runes...any path that left his homeland in sight but forever out of reach of his people was a failure that would fester in his soul, leaving his heart and spirit to wither and rot. An end that, no matter how much longer delayed, would be so much crueler to the would-be King Under the Mountain.
So it is that his burglar eventually comes to understand that there never was a way, either by action or inaction, to keep Death's hand back from the dwarven prince, any more than he could prevent a battle with that last desperate throw of the Arkenstone. Spared then from remorse, Bilbo is left only with the haunting regret for the life he could not steal back, never realizing he saved Thorin the only way anyone could. By buying enough time for a lost dwarf to remember himself - allowing him to die in the presence of a loyal and willing heart, and in the arms of a friend.