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Some call it a red string.
For others it is a Mark on the body or a name imprinted upon your skin, or even a symbol, called a Flower, Heart-lode, the Link.
Whatever it is, it exists throughout time and spans beyond the understanding of even the Ishtari, bringing about events and causing people to unite in the ways best befitting them.
This, Gandalf the Grey had never quite understood, not until he opened his eyes after the darkness had taken him.
Life weighed heavily upon his newly empowered shoulders, but the new White Wizard had no time to ponder the thoughts of a life now gone. It was not for several more months that his mind would begin to sink heavily in the depths of his guilt and regret, for while he had brought some together, he had, albeit unknowingly, ripped others apart even as he brought them to meet. He should have know then- or at the very least it ought to have occurred to him- that the night that Thorin first stepped into the smial of Bilbo Baggins, such a thing could have happened.
He could never apologize to Bilbo Baggins enough, for now he could see what he could not before- the effect his actions had upon the very soul of a being.
Even Frodo’s burden seemed light in the face of what injury he had cause to Bilbo Baggins of the Shire, nearly eighty years ago. For now he could see the connection- snapped and frayed, it’s formerly vibrant color gone and faded into a dull grey. It was the grey of a true bond, the deepest of them all, broken before it had had time to grow. And if he looked for too long he could see just how it had broken.
The death of Thorin had weighed heavily upon him then, and weighed even more terribly upon him now. He could only hope that the Undying Lands would heal both Uncle and Nephew in time, though the faded grey would forever haunt him as a reminder that even his deepest and best working had consequences.