They are good lads and their mother, my sister, will surely kill me for a second time for taking them with me on my quest when it is finally her time to seek the Halls of Mahal. If there is one thing I have learned since Erebor fell to the dragon is that you can only control that which is within your grasp. The tesseract will return us or not according to its whim. That is something we cannot control. How we see this world and live our lives while here is something we can control.