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When the messenger from Mordor arrives on his doorstep, and utters the name Bilbo Baggins, Thorin's heart all but stops. It's a name he hasn't heard spoken much of late, but it's one he'll never forget.
He tells the messenger nothing, even as he makes preparations to leave for the Shire immediately.
Glóin offers to go in stead. By rights, he ought to send Glóin. He is King. He has obligations. But his obligations to Bilbo Baggins are even greater – for without Bilbo, he would not be King at all.
It is, in the end, to Imladris he goes.
Bilbo is old – but they all are, now. Old and worn, with their best years behind them, and the darkest now ahead.
They sit and smoke, and Bilbo laughs as freely as he used to, and Thorin sees the lines melt away from his face and forgets the years that have fallen empty between them. He doesn't have the heart to mention the messenger from Mordor. He sees in Bilbo that same, impossible being that walked away from his comfy home and hearth to slay a dragon, and refused more than a pittance of treasure in return. He is so incongruous to Thorin, and yet Thorin knows he would be nothing without him.
It's brief – like a beam of sunlight breaking through the clouds. Bilbo's nephew is here - recovering, though he had lain near death.
"There is to be a council," Bilbo says, enigmatically. "And I hope, when all is said and done, that you will find it within you to forgive me once again."
Thorin's heart constricts impossibly tight for the second time, and he thinks, faintly, that after everything, Bilbo Baggins will be the death of him.
And it all comes tumbling out – the Ring, the Ring he had been so grateful for, that had pulled them from the dungeons of the Elvenking, and saved Bilbo's life time and time again, the Ring he had asked no questions of, was the Ring of Sauron.
It all came tumbling down like a house of cards.
Courage, they say, can be found in unlikely places. The most unlikely place of all, is old, tiny Bilbo – so impossibly fragile – insisting that he'd begun the business so he'd best finish it.
He'd sworn it before, but he swears it again now. He will die for Bilbo Baggins. He will lead his army out against all the hosts of Mordor, and he will fight until every last Dwarf under his command lies slain, to protect Bilbo and his home.
It is penance. For Bilbo has given him everything, and he does not forget what he owes.