A day or two passed like that. Bilbo avoided Thorin carefully, Thorin clearly not understanding why, but also not stepping up to Bilbo to resume their usual contact.

In the afternoon two days after his call with Bofur, he saw the book Thorin had lent from him lie on the counter. When he picked it up to put it back in the bookcase, a scrap of paper fell on the ground. He bent to pick it up and saw it was a message to him, scribbled down in clear, black letters:

Bilbo,

I know something's wrong.

You're avoiding me and I think I have the right to know why.

Come to the oak tree in the courtyard at five p.m.

There wasn't a name under it, but it was clear whom it was from. The handwriting, the commanding tone, the book it had fallen out of; everything screamed Thorin.

Absent-mindedly, Bilbo stroked the ink with his fingers. He was more important to Thorin than he'd thought, otherwise he'd never taken the effort. It wasn't a good idea to face Thorin again, he wasn't able to tell Thorin what was really going on anyway. But how could he ever refuse?

When he walked outside, Thorin was nowhere to be seen yet, and he got a little bit uncertain. Hesitantly, he sat down on the bench on which he'd called Bofur a few days ago and had taken the decision not to put any time or effort in him again. And look what he was doing now... in silence he cursed himself, but he couldn't possibly get up and walk away.

And then Thorin came out the back door, his hair lifted by the small breeze for a moment, and Bilbo's heart immediately started beating twice as fast.

With confident steps he strode towards him swiftly, and without greeting he sat down, nearly half a meter away.

Bilbo had the idea he should say something, but his voice didn't work. Nervously, he swiped his sweaty hands over the trousers of his bordeaux red uniform.

"So," Thorin interrupted the awkward silence. "I'm here."

"Yes," Bilbo said.

A thrush whistled and the silence stretched on.

"Are you going to tell me, or what?" Thorin asked in a not very reassuring tone.

"I don't know if I can," Bilbo said softly. "It's complicated."

Thorin's gaze seemed to soften a bit. "Well," he sighed. "Complicated things are always the hardest to tell. Especially if they're things you don't want to think about again."

Then Bilbo got an idea. "There are things you don't want to tell me, aren't there?" he asked, his heart hammering in his chest.

Thorin nodded.

"Do you still not want to talk about it?"

Thorin heaved a sigh again. "When I was fourteen, both my parents and my brother died," he started, without an introduction or a warning. "They died in a car-crash. From one moment on the other, I was an orphan, and my sister is a few years older than me, so she lived on her own already. I got moved from foster family to foster family, but nobody wanted to have me in their house for a long time. I was a difficult teenager. The loss of my family was something I could barely deal with, but I wasn't someone who showed that. I didn't like to talk. Instead, I became rebellious. It wasn't long before I ended up in the world of gangs. Wrong people, of course, but the only people who didn't show pity and who didn't care about my story and how I lost my family. It wasn't smart, of course, but it just happened – looking back, I realized it was a flight.

This one time, it went completely wrong. The police were after us, and that was the moment I realized I had to stop. My sister helped me with that. We didn't have much contact at the moment, but although I didn't know, she had always cared about me. She did everything she could to keep me out of trouble when the gang was arrested, and I was lucky enough to meet a very reasonable policeman. His name was Balin, We're still good friends. He took care that I didn't get a police record, because he believed in me, he said. My sister took me in. I was seventeen back then, she was twenty-four. That certainly wasn't an easy time, especially for her, but she never gave up on me. She gave me a life back, a perspective. She took care of me studying, of me getting back on track. I'm eternally grateful for that."

He was silent for a moment, and Bilbo didn't know what to say. Finally, he understood what made Thorin like this. It was grief, a kind of grief Bilbo couldn't even imagine.

"So now you know. Pity me, fear me... do whatever you can't keep yourself from," Thorin said, cynical.

Bilbo opened his mouth, but his voice didn't cooperate. "I'm not afraid," he managed to get out. "That'd be ridiculous. And given the fact that you don't want pity, I won't give it to you."

It was impossible to say what Thorin thought of his reaction.

"But you still owe me a story," he only said.