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At first it was a bird, a small brown sparrow, then a deer, eyes bright and intelligent, then a raven, wings wide and strong. As Fili grew older, his daemon – Kili – kept shifting. The young prince didn’t mind, shifting so much was normal before coming of age. Having his daemon by his side was the only thing that mattered, the form Kili might take didn’t change that in the least, even though it was easier to sleep snuggled with a dog or cat rather than a bird.
Since Fili was born, Kili had been the other half of his soul. Part of him even more than flesh and bones. They came to this world together and together they would leave. Kili was Fili’s best friend, the constant support to the kid (then boy and then young man) who would be king one day. It was Kili who nuzzled Fili when he was sad, when the longing for a father he had never really known became too strong, when the loneliness of being the only heir became too heavy on his shoulders. It was Kili who shared the jokes and the pranks. Always Kili.
“Your daemon is your soul and your heart, Fili. Never forget that”, Thorin would say.
More than once Fili had found himself wondering what it would have been like if Kili were a dwarf like him. What would it be like to hold Kili’s hand? They were silly thoughts, Fili knew that, but still sometimes they would creep on him and Kili would sense them and scoot closer, his tiny head resting over Fili’s heart.
Then the day the young prince came of age dawned on them.
Fili woke up to the feeling of something oddly heavy sprawled on top of him. Slowly he blinked his eyes open only to be greeted by an unruly mass of brown hair. Panic began to take hold of him as Fili started to wonder where his daemon was. As he reached through the bond that tied him with Kili, though, he found no trace of distress or fear. Kili was asleep, it seemed. Fili frowned and pushed himself up on his elbows to take a better look at the thing that was currently crushing him.
It was a young dwarf, skin tanned and a small, almost familiar smile on his lips.
“K-Kili?”
Fili knew it was absurd to even think about it.
Dwarflings were taught about daemons since they were old enough to understand. Balin had explained everything about souls and hearts to a very young Fili. The little prince would sit on a wooden bench in Erebor’s library, feet not even reaching the floor yet, with Kili curled up in his lap, listening to the old dwarf.
Daemons existed for every race on Earth, Balin said. Mahal had chosen for the world to be like that, to make the living beings that inhabited it balanced, just like himself. It was something men, dwarves and elves had in common, but there were differences too. Rumors had it that it wasn’t uncommon for elves’ daemons to take the semblances of other elves. Among dwarves, though, it was unheard of.
The boy on his chest kept sleeping and Fili prodded at his bond with Kili again. Kili is that you? Wake up. The brown-haired dwarf stirred, one hand curling in the front of Fili’s nightgown. Kili’s voice resounded clear in the young prince’s mind. What’s wrong, Fee?
Fili’s heart was beating like a war drum. “Y-you need to wake up and look at me.”
The golden-haired prince held his breath as the other dwarf blinked his eyes open and pushed himself up.
“Fili, why are you so scared?”
The dwarf’s – Kili’s – voice was so soft and rich. Fili instantly liked the sound of it, despite the confusion and worry clouding his mind.
“Y-you really don’t know, Kee?”
Kili shook his head, his worry starting to crawl up their shared bond. Fili did the first thing that came to his mind to calm down his daemon. He reached for him with trembling fingers and took hold of a stray strand of brown hair, pulling gently. Kili’s eyes – the same color of his father’s eyes, Fili noted – widened.
“Is that…is that mine?”
Fili nodded, his hand moving to cup Kili’s face. Despite the fear for what had happened to Kili – to them – overnight, it felt good to touch his other half like that, to see his lips part at the contact.
“What happened?”, Kili asked.
“I don’t…I don’t know.”
Kili chewed on his lower lip and slowly shifted to move by Fili’s side. It was then that Fili realized that his daemon was stark naked, his skin warm and unblemished – unlike Fili’s own, with its many tiny scars gained on the training ground. The young prince hurriedly put some distance between himself and the other dwarf, his cheeks aflame. It was cold without Kili’s body pressed against his, but Fili forcefully pushed the thought aside.
“We have to talk to Uncle about this.”
Kili nodded, still taken with studying his new body. “I am…I am like you, Fee.”
Fili looked at Kili, his eyes alight with wonder, and those small secret thoughts about his daemon being a dwarf just like him filled his mind.
“Mahal...we did this.”
Kili frowned. “That is absurd, Fee.”
Fili slid out of bed and started pacing around the room. “It is not. We desired for you to be a dwarf, just like me. We…”
The warmth of Kili’s hand around his wrist came as a shock. It was so solid and real, so different from a paw. They looked at each other in silence, their bond buzzing with repressed energy. Kili’s voice was low when he spoke, almost a whisper.
“If I...I would be glad to stop shifting and remain like this, Fee.”
“But…”
Kili’s gaze turned serious, his chocolate eyes glinting in the half-light of the room.
“I mean it. I could be by your side so much better in this form. I could fight alongside with you, I could…”
He entwined his fingers with the prince’s. Fili lowered his gaze from Kili’s eyes to their joined hands and something warm sloshed around in his heart. It felt so right. If Mahal had chosen this fate for them, then there must be a reason for it and they could face it together.
*
It didn’t go well, just as Fili had dreaded. His Uncle almost stumbled off his chair as he and Kili entered the room, eyes wide and hands on the hilt of his omnipresent sword. “Who is that?”, the king had all but barked. Fili instinctively moved in front of his daemon, sensing the wave of distress and fear burning hot through their bond. Thorin’s daemon, a lynx named Frerin, padded around Kili, recognizing him and gently nuzzling his nose against his hand. Thorin seemed to relax a bit at that and listened to Fili’s explanation. His gaze grew darker with every word, though, and when Fili had finished recounting the morning discovery, the king proceeded to drag the two young dwarves down halls and corridors to Balin’s quarters.
The old dwarf literally gasped when he heard Kili’s voice for the first time. Of course, he didn’t have a proper explanation to give. He frowned and prodded at the two of them, especially Kili, but all he came up with was a mumbled “this is very strange, indeed”, and he didn’t sound so certain when he told Thorin that Kili might yet shift into another form. He did warn them, though: people in Erebor weren’t used to such oddities. They wouldn’t see a dwarf and his daemon, they would see two dwarves both without a daemon. Fili shivered down to the marrow of his bones: a life without your soul was a cursed one and to imagine that people might think that about him and Kili made him sick.
*
“I don’t want to fall asleep.”
Fili shifted to lie on his side and look at Kili. “Why is that?”
Kili opened and closed his mouth, his cheeks dusted a pretty pink even though his eyes had a determined look to them.
“I don’t want to shift during the night.”
The young prince imagined a life with Kili stuck in the current form and he instinctively reached for his daemon’s hand, squeezing gently.
“I don’t want you to shift either. But...it is going to be difficult, Kee.”
“As long as I have you, I don’t care.”
That night Fili fell asleep with Kili’s strong arms wrapped around him.
*
“Ya look like brothers.”
Brothers. Fili had always wished his mother had given him a brother and if he stopped to think about it, who better than Kili, who shared his soul?
Fili looked at Kili and then back at Dwalin. The warrior grinned down at them, seemingly unfazed by their odd predicament.
“Now that he is a lad he’s gotta train with you.”
Kili grinned broadly at that. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”
“You did?”, FIli was surprised, he had never heard his daemon voice such thoughts. Kili shrugged.
“It always seemed kinda cool.”
“Alright, then. But careful not to get hurt.”
“I’ll show you hurt, Fee.”
*
“I told you not to overdo it. You never listen.”
Kili huffed and tried to keep still as Fili applied salve to his blistered hands. It turned out holding a sword was much more work than he had expected. Watching Fili as he trained over the years, it had seemed easy, almost effortless. It was a bitch, instead, and the salve stung. Kili tried to focus on Fili’s touches and not on the pain.
It felt weird to have his other half touch him like that, skin on skin. Even though they had been part of the same whole since they were born, Kili felt so much closer to Fili now. Maybe that was by Dwalin’s words had resounded so strongly within him.
“Fee…”
Azure eyes looked up at him and Kili felt his heart thump a bit faster.
“Do you...do you think we could...would you want me as your brother?”
Kili held his breath as Fili processed his request, emotions shifting on his face. The prince’s voice was soft when he spoke.
“You’ve always been even more than a brother, Kee.”
Fili barely managed to save the pot of salve from crushing to the ground as Kili hugged him fiercely.
*
As time slipped by, it became clear that Kili had stopped shifting when Fili had become of age. To Fili it quickly became normal to spar with Kili, to feel his hand around his, to bathe with him. Soon enough it became normal to seek the contact, the warmth, that only Kili’s body seemed to be able to give him.
As for Kili, everything felt brighter since he had found his final form. It fitted him in ways no form had before, it allowed him to feel Fili in so many new ways. Sure, the gazes they had to endure hurt. He was proud of who and what he was, he was proud to be by Fili’s side, but the majority of dwarves in Erebor didn’t understand.They were scared, they called them names, Kili had heard them. He had tried not show how much it affected him, but Fili and he were tied so deeply and so strongly that it was no use. Fili would always be able to guess what was going on in Kili’s heart, and sometimes that was a curse. Kili wasn’t able to protect Fili from his worries, he couldn’t protect Fili from the feelings that were beginning to grow inside of him either.
Fili had always been the other half of Kili’s world, it was inevitable after all. It was the same for every dwarf and his or her daemon, Kili knew that. But for him Fili had always been something more - not just a part of his soul. Fili was the treasure Kili wanted to worship and protect and the more time he spent in his dwarf form, the more he dreamed about sharing something different with Fili. The worst part was keeping his feelings locked where the prince couldn’t reach them.
Daemons didn’t fall in love with their halves. There were no songs about it, no legend that told such stories. Kili couldn’t even imagine how people would react. What if they wanted to separate him from Fili, condemning them both to a life of shadows and cold emptiness? He would never let that happen to his golden Fili. He was too precious, too luminous and he deserved all the happiness and someone who could love him openly by his side.
That’s why Kili pushed all his love at the bottom of his heart and held his head high under spiteful gazes, to make Fili proud of his loyal daemon. To be by his love’s side in the only way he knew how.
*
Fili noticed it soon enough, the coldness was not easy to miss, nor the way Kili had pulled up a wall around his thoughts. It had never happened before and it hurt in a way Fili had never thought possible, a dull and constant ache settling deep at the centre of his bones. The stronger the bond between a dwarf and his daemon was, the harder it was to be apart.
The first time Kili spent a couple of hours wandering on his own, a faint shadow at the corner of Fili’s consciousness, the prince had risked to faint at least twice during his training. Kili must have sensed it, because he rushed back in a hurry. He didn’t give any explanation, though, and shielded his heart when Fili softly sent his enquiry down their bond.
*
“Is it...is it possible for a daemon to grow tired of his half?”
Thorin leaned towards him, a hand coming to rest on his nephew’s knee, Frerin sitting close to him.
“There is no such thing, Fili. The bond is one that lasts a lifetime and even more. But why are you asking me this? What happened?”
Fili sighed, feeling so young and small under his Uncle’s worried gaze.
“It’s just…”
“Look, surely being in this form isn’t easy for Kili. I imagine it takes a while to adjust.”
“But, Uncle, he told me he was happy to be a dwarf like me, he…”
Thorin nodded, his hand finding its way to Frerin’s head, scratching behind his ears.
“Talk to him, Fili. That’s the only advice I can give you. And don’t forget you’re two halves of the same whole. Nothing will ever break that.”
*
Kee, where are you?
A faint buzzing echoed down the bond and Fili focused on that, letting it guide him down halls and across bulwarks. The sun was setting over Erebor, painting the Lonely Mountain pink and orange. Kili used to love sunsets and dawns with a fierce passion - The world gets painted by light, Fee. Isn’t that amazing?. Fili kept walking, his heart thumping along an old and loved rhythm.
He found Kili hidden under the old pine on the eastern side of the mountain. He was polishing his arrows - he developed a passion for the bow since he had started training a few months back - a look of concentration on his face. It never ceased to hit Fili, how beautiful Kili was in this form. Long hair, handsome face and nimble fingers. He knew those thoughts weren’t appropriate: Kili was his daemon and the closest thing he had to a brother. But he couldn’t prevent them from growing stronger every single day.
“You found me.” Kili didn’t even need to lift his gaze and that, at least, made Fili smile. It was something that nothing and no one could take away from them.
“Yeah.”
The prince walked up to his daemon and sat down. Kili didn’t protest and he took that as a small victory.
“I miss you, you know?”
Kili’s practiced movements stopped.
“I know.”
“Then...why are you doing this?”. Fili held his breath, afraid of the answer that might come. Kili didn’t speak out loud, his voice echoed soft inside Fili’s head.
Because I need to protect you.
Fili blinked. “Protect me from what?”
Kili finally lifted his gaze and looked straight at him. “From me.”
“I don’t understand, Kee. Why would you think…”
The arrows cluttered to the the ground, but Fili barely had the time to register what was happening. All of sudden Kili is in his space, his breath warm on Fili’s lips, his eyes so big and deep.
Do you really want to know, brother?
Fili nodded, heart lodged in his throat. Kili’s lips were slightly chapped, but soft nonetheless, his hands sinking in the golden mass of Fili’s hair. Fili’s senses went on overdrive, the beating of his heart drowned by the whistling joy erupting through his and Kili’s connection.
Before then Fili had only kissed twice - the first was a lass and the second a lad - but nothing could prepare him for what kissing Kili felt like. With them there had been only lips pressing against each other. With his daemon, Fili could swear the whole universe had collapsed in the space between their dancing tongues. As he pulled Kili closer, the young prince was finally sure that Mahal had made them for each other: two halves of the same, inseparable whole.