Chapter Text
Dori was sick.
Dori was sick, and both his brothers knew it.
“I can talk to Balin,” little Ori offered, his brown eyes wide and worried. “I’m sure he’d help.”
“No. We don-” Dori this time, his words interrupted by a long coughing fit that shook his sturdy frame and intensified the flush of color in his otherwise pale face.
Nori took advantage of the lull to get a word in edgewise, “If you think he could get some of that brew of Oin’s the nobles have been using-”
Dori’s voice was rough, but firm (the stubborn cuss), when he growled, “We don’t take charity!”
“And we don’t have money!” Nori growled right back, but Dori couldn’t be persuaded and of course, of course, Ori listened and promised not to go to his tutor or the princes.
Of course he did.
And once Ori made a promise, he always clung to it like a pointy-nosed little burr.
Illness was extremely rare among dwarves. They were strong and hardy folk, who didn’t go down with the sniffles every five minutes like Men did; this was due in part, of course, to the stone in their blood and the fact that they lived safely ensconced in mountains and not out in the elements. It was a well-known fact that there’d been more illness in their decades on the road than back in Erebor.
Rarely, however, illness did catch and spread through even their strong bodies, and this one had been raging for over a month. There hadn’t been a lot of deaths – just a handful, miners mostly, who went to work ill and collapsed on the job. But there’d been enough.
There’d been enough.
Oin, eldest of the sons of Groin and cousin to their prince, was the chief healer of the royal family and other assorted nobles. He was considered something of a genius when it came to mixing potions and poultices, and there was a special tea he made for any of the nobility who became ill that had kept every single one of the useless richies alive and well. It was expensive to make, or so the richies said. Nori wasn’t sure he believed it. More likely, they were hoarding it just in case this illness of the chest didn’t blow over, and they were in danger for an extended period of time. Diseases always hit the old hardest, and a lot of the nobles were old, indeed. Old and useless compared to shift leaders and guild assistants of comparable age.
Well, he thought viciously as he thought of Dori forcing himself out of bed to go to the shop, because unlike some dwarves, his family could starve from a day of work missed, we’ll see about that.
Nori knew how to move around the mountain unseen. His profession – and it was a profession, no matter what Dori grumbled, even as he set food in front of their baby brother that came through Nori’s efforts (Dori wouldn’t eat it himself but even his fussy, pedantic elder brother wasn’t above anything that put food in Ori’s bottomless pit of a stomach) – was one of cleverness and stealth. He had both in rich supply.
Which was why he’d only been caught and arrested three times in a career spanning several decades.
Now, he entered through the back of Oin’s apothecary in broad daylight, slinking along the wall and quietly picking the lock on the main door. Robbing inside the mountain was no small feat, but Oin’s apothecary was near the market area, situated on a quiet hall reserved for nobility and with an unheard-of total of three entrances.
It’s not really stealing, Nori thought as he slipped through the door, if you desperately need it.
There’d been a time when he had to remind himself of this daily. Those days were long past now.
There were bottles and canisters throughout the back workroom, and Nori could hear voices through the heavy curtain leading to the main room. He couldn’t quite make out the words – sometimes he missed the days when everyone lived in ramshackle shacks clinging to the side of the mountain – but he held a sharp ear out for any indication that one of the richies on the other side was coming closer.
Oin labeled his bottles, which was a relief, but his handwriting was atrocious and some of the titles didn’t make much sense. Nori snarled under his breath as he shuffled through the remedies in search of one with a name that suggested it was for those horrible, hacking coughs that kept them all up the night before – Dori coughing, Nori lying awake in the dark with a frightened Ori along his side as they listened to the wet rattling sounds.
He was tired.
So tired that it could almost be an excuse that the curtain dividing the workroom from the front swept aside without his knowledge. But it couldn’t, not really, because lives were at stake and now-
Nori froze when he heard the slide of boot against stone. Then his head snapped to the side, and his hand to the dagger of his belt.
A boy stood between the separated fabric of the curtain, small, fair-haired, and unmistakable.
Mahal’s balls, Nori cursed internally, even as he slowly removed his hand from the hilt. Threatening the prince’s heir apparent was a crime that carried the death penalty, not a few weeks in the well-appointed jail deep in the mountain as petty thievery might.
Stealing was better. He could go to jail for stealing. But who would take care of Ori, when Dori was so ill?
Something sick rose in his chest as he met the startled blue eyes of a boy just barely Ori’s senior.
Nori knew of Fíli, son of Dis, of course. Everyone did; she kept her sons visible, letting them go out and about in the markets instead of hiding them away as Dori claimed Thrain had done when he was a child in Erebor. He was a laughing, friendly lad, confident to the point of arrogance, but kind. Nori knew he was kind because he helped the elderly in the market, because he kept a sharp eye on his little brother, because he treated a lowly merchant’s boy as a friend instead of an interloper when his revered master took Ori on.
Maybe, maybe there’s a way out of this.
Nori opened his mouth to speak.
The lad held up a hand and Nori, more fool he, obeyed the silent command.
Fíli studied him.
The conflict was there in his young face: confusion, then dawning realization, then a fierce downturn of eyebrows that slowly released as his blue gaze swept over Nori’s hands. They were so like the eyes of his uncle, their prince-who-was-king, and so like his cousin Dwalin, who Nori knew only through extremely unpleasant circumstances, that Nori felt pinned in place for a moment. The fierce scowl finally gave way to the brow unknitting, and another shock of surprise.
He knows who I am, Nori thought, and he felt a stab of fear for his baby brother and a welling of guilt for even considering using Ori’s name to get out of this.
The prince’s suddenly intense eyes wavered a moment, flickered nervously around the room, and then settled, with a strange, adult intensity, on Nori’s.
He didn’t say anything.
He took one step forward, two, letting the curtain fall shut beside him.
Then he raised one hand (a small, delicate lad to come from such a tall family), and lightly touched a single tin. His gaze never left Nori’s, something challenging there.
Nori wondered who the challenge was for. He fancied it wasn’t him.
Fíli didn’t nod. He didn’t indicate he’d seen anything at all. He simply picked up a green bottle and turned on one heel with a strange sort of arrogant grace so typical of the royal line, and disappeared through the curtain.
Nori grabbed the tin and ran.
~~~~
Dori was feeling better when Ori came home the next day, carrying a basket so heavy that carting it about made him pant for air. Nori chuckled as he took it. “How many times did you have to stop and rest on the way home?” he asked the weedy lad.
Ori shot him a dirty look. “Never,” he said proudly, but the fingers on his right hand twitched and gave away the fib, as they invariably did. The lad was lucky Dori didn’t know that tell as well as Nori did.
Nori didn’t call him on it. He knew a little something about being a stubborn pain in the ass, himself. He peered in the basket instead. “What’s all this then?”
“It’s for Dori.” Ori pushed on tiptoe to look in as well. “Kíli gave it to me,” he said, because Dori wasn’t here to remind him to always say Prince Kíli, Ori. “It has some red meat and a special tea in it, and some other stuff. He said his mother put a note in there.” Ori scratched the side of his nose. “I don’t know how he knew Dori was sick, but he was really worried. He said he’d ask Mr. Oin to come, if we wanted, but I told him Dori doesn’t like seeing healers.” He frowned and wiggled a bit. “I didn’t want to tell him Dori would say no even if Mr. Oin came, because we couldn’t pay him.”
Nori reached out and stroked a hand over Ori’s head, like he had when his brother was little. He looked at that earnest , narrow face, thinking of blue eyes instead of brown, of playful young princes and never-smiling kings, and how one might someday become the other. “That was a good way to handle it,” he assured his brother. “Come on, let’s see what we can cook up.”