Chapter Text
He wakes to darkness and a body full of lead.
He doesn’t remember where he is or how he got there.
He tries to move and his heavy body doesn’t cooperate.
He wants to scream and yell.
He wishes for blue skies and gold hair.
I’m so sorry, Fee.
—
His first memory he can vividly remember is a hug.
It’s a little awkward and maybe too tight, but it’s warm and loving and he remembers the playful wiggle at the end.
He was three. Fili was six.
Fili was made of stocky limbs, a grin that was missing half its teeth, and wild curly hair in varying shades of blond.
His mom always said they were day and night.
Where Fili was steady and golden, he was dark and mercurial.
Never alike but always the same.
He never understood what people meant when they complained about their siblings.
Fili was his sun.
Occasionally haughty, bossy, and burned him if him if he stayed in his light for too long, but he also provided a constant light and warmth that asked for nothing in return.
They always spent their summers together at their uncle’s house that sat on a little farm in lower Appalachia.
The land was filled with apple orchards, the trees made of tall limbs and gnarling bark.
“Fee, I can’t get down!”
“You can jump down Kee, the tree isn’t that high. I’ll catch you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, Kee. I’ll always catch you.”
They’re brothers and best friends.
As they got older, he never became ‘the kid brother’, Fili wanting to include him on everything.
When Fili’s friends complained it was always the same response.
“Either Kili comes, or I don’t.”
When he’s fourteen he realizes that he’s gay.
He comes out to Fili in angered embarrassment.
Fag. Queer. Flamer. Pussy.
“Don’t you dare call yourself that, Kili.”
Fili looks wild and livid, not at him but some unseen aggressor.
Fili tells him vehemently to be proud of who he is and there are people all over the country like him fighting for their rights.
Gay Pride, Fili tells him proudly showing a rainbow colored bandana.
It isn’t something to be proud of, he tells himself.
He’s wrong, and dirty, and a freak.
It’s bad enough that he’s attracted to men.
His coup de gras, the killing blow, is he’s never looked at a girl or another guy the way he looks at Fili.
The shame is more than he can bare and he tries to push his brother away.
The climax is a fight about him slacking in school work.
“You’ve failed three tests in the past month?”
“I’m not smart like you, Fili! It’s hard!”
“Well if it’s difficult come to me! You know I’m always here to help, I know you’re suddenly too cool to talk to your big brother but I’m always here. And you are smart, Kee, just in different ways.”
“Like what? My talents in making everyone angry?”
“Kili…”
“Being a general disappointment?”
“You know that isn’t true.”
“That art isn’t going to take you anywhere, Killian,” he mimics his uncle, puffing out his chest and deepening his voice.
“Kee, he doesn’t understand. You’re a brilliant artist.”
The compliment doesn’t slow his fire.
“Not to mention being the embarrassingly dumb little brother of the great Philip Durinssen, failing out of sch-”
Lips silence his own.
He blinks looking at Fili who gently pulls his lips away.
“Kili, shut up.”
His bangs fall in his eyes, he knows he’s gaping.
Fili stands quickly.
“God, I’m sorry, Kee. I-I shouldn’t have.”
His hands move too slowly; like he’s stuck in molasses.
“No, Fili!”
Fili freezes in the doorway.
“Don’t leave me, Fee.”
Fili tells their mom that night he’s leaving after he graduates.
—
When he makes it through the next fog of darkness he feels a bit more aware.
He tries to move his body, but feels it still uncooperative.
Baby steps, he tells himself.
He starts at the top of his head and tries to focus.
There is a relaxed softness, there isn’t a strain against his skull and it isn’t uncomfortable.
Pillow, I’m resting against a pillow.
He figures this is a good place to start.
Clearly out of the field and somewhere nice.
God, it feels like years since he’s actually laid on a pillow and not his fatigues balled up with the stench of sweat and blood filling his nose.
He works down the pores of his face and feels a material where his eyes are.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. No I can’t be blind. No I refuse to accept that. I have to see Fili. I have to tell him. I have to see and tell him so many things. I want to read, I want to paint, I want to see his face just one more time. Please just once more. I have to tell-
He feels his lungs seize and refuse to inhale, there is a prick and coolness spreads as his lungs open.
The darkness morphs into blue eyes and a dimpled grin and maybe he can breathe again.
—
When Fili first leaves for college he’s angry.
Not at Fili necessarily, but the world in general.
He wants to follow, so desperately to follow.
Fili goes away to some big school in New York, he tells him his degree is going to make a difference in the world.
He just wants Fili to stay in his.
Fili leaves with too long hair and the chubby body of a teenager, and comes back with a stubble covered defined jaw and the stocky muscularness of their dad.
He still thinks his hair is too long.
Their conversations change from talking about The Rolling Stones and Buck Rogers to Betrand Russell and western imperialism.
He doesn’t like this change, he just wants Fili to be Fili.
“The world is falling apart Kili, and it’s our fault.”
“Uncle says that’s not true. Communism is going to take over the world, it’s our job to stop it.”
“God, you’re such a dumb kid sometimes, Kili. You don’t even get it. Our country is killing its own people for profit, how could you even think this is okay when our dad died in Korea? Fighting in a war we weren’t even supposed to be in! Uncle is lying to you, Kee. There is nothing patriotic or glorious about war. It’s just a never ending cycle of death.”
He gets angry at Fili after that and they barely talk for about a year which isn’t too hard when he’s never home.
He’s almost out of high school when he sees Fili on the television at some rally in Washington DC, spitting venom in the face of a cop.
Peace signs on his cheeks, a handmade shirt that reads ‘STOP USA WAR MACHINE’, and his hair a mess of braids and beads.
He watches his brother beaten by batons and carried away in handcuffs.
Mom cries.
Uncle is a stern silence, muttering something about a communist disgrace.
He just wants to be with his brother again.
They don’t talk about Fili much anymore.
—
He isn’t too sure how many days have gone by.
Hell maybe even weeks have gone by, he isn’t too sure.
When he finally accepts his blindness, his head starts to feel like it’s in a fishbowl.
Sounds return in a muffled distant way but he feels like he could cry the first time he hears heels on tile.
He tries to play his game he started where he starts at the top of his head and works down.
He usually loses consciousness by the time he hits his chest so he wastes no time trying again.
He’s seen some of the guys who have been hurt in the war.
Missing limbs and faces.
He hopes that isn’t him.
The feeling of tears start again when he feels all the way down to his fingertips.
Thank fucking God. I have fingers. I can’t move them but goddamnit they’re there. I can hold him again. I’ll hold onto him and never let go. What I’d do to run them through his hair right now.
Sleep steals him moments later back into the endless black abyss.
—
He calls Fili on a pay phone outside the Army recruiter’s office.
“Hey, it’s Philip.”
“Fee, it’s Kili.”
“Kee! What’s up?”
He can almost hear the dimples.
“Not much, just haven’t talked to you for a while.”
The lie rolls off his tongue easier than he thought.
“Yeah, I haven’t been home much. Did a sit-in Central Park for almost a week, Kili! It was amazing. How is school, you’re graduating in a couple months right?”
He pauses.
“Ah, I guess that’s why I called. I dropped out.”
“You dropped out?! Oh man, does Thorin know? He’ll kill you, Kee.”
“He knows…he’s uhm…supporting my choice.”
“Your choice? You aren’t dropping out to work in the fucking coal mines are you? Jesus, Kili that’s how all those guys have cancer now!”
They’re both puffing on cigarettes but the irony is lost on them in that moment.
“No, Fee. I’m not going to work in the coal mines.”
He hugs the phone a little tighter.
“Killian, what’s going on?”
He swallows the lump in his throat.
“I’m going to Vietnam.”
There is the most eerie silence he’s ever heard and will never forget.
“Please say you’re joking, Kili.”
His voice is low and husky, sending a chill up his spine.
“I leave next week. Please don’t be mad, Fee.”
There is a bitter scoff.
“Men are dying to not be drafted into this fucking war, Kili. Risking their lives and families so they don’t have to be a part of this bullshit, and you’re fucking volunteering.”
“Uncle thinks it will be good for me.”
“Of course he does! He is a hawk like the rest of them! He doesn’t care if you live or die so this idea of American democracy can infest the whole world. It’s bullshit, Kili, and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I tried to keep you informed Kili, God how could you let him brainwash you into thinking this?”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have if you had stayed.”
“Is this what this is about, Kili? You want to piss me off so you join a pointless war?”
It did sound kind of ridiculous when he said it aloud.
“You’ve always been so smart, Fili. You know what you want and what you’re going to do with your life. I don’t. I have nothing going for me, this is my best choice. I can make a career in the military.”
“You don’t have nothing, Kee. God, you have mom, you have art, you have me.”
Kili wipes away hot tears.
“Had. I had you. Then you left me. You left me all alone when I needed you most, Fee.”
“Please don’t do this, Kili. I’m sorry for everything just, God…don’t go.”
“I signed already.”
“You signed your own death certificate, Kee.”
“You don’t know that.”
Fili is silent.
“Will you come see me before I leave, Fee?”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
“I gotta go, Kee.”
“Of course you do.”
“Be safe, okay?”
“Yeah.”
“I love you, Kili.”
He nods even though he can’t see.
“Yeah, I know. Bye.”
He hangs up quickly pushing tears away from his cheeks.
—
He feels himself being sat up.
He doesn’t know how long afterwards but he hears muffled voices and hands on his head.
He wants to yell and jerk away.
It feels like they are ripping off his skin.
He stays frozen as a fuzzy light appears in front of him.
Not blind. Okay. I can’t see, but not blind.
Brighter lights shine in his eyes, stinging liquid poured in them.
He wants to scream and hit the bastard hurting him.
He must have made a noise because there is a soft palm on his cheek.
“-kay, Private Durins-“
He still hears like he is trapped in a fishbowl.
He just wants to know what happened.
Is Fili there?
There is another familiar prick in his arm.
Before the lights fade back to black, returning to his own private nightmare, he gets the farthest he ever has in his own game.
Chest, torso…huh, I can’t feel my legs.