Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They take Kíli first.

Of course they take him first, Fíli thinks, trying to ignore the sinkhole in his gut. Kíli is the young one, brash and reckless, with the temerity to speak with the elves as if they were equals, to threaten them even while they hold a dagger to his throat.

So of course the elves would take Kíli first, to prove a point, teach him a lesson. But they won’t kill him, Fíli thinks. They’ll rough him up, slap him around, curse at him a little in their squirrely elf-tongue, but they won’t kill him.

But as the hours pass—slowly, achingly—the sinking feeling in his stomach turns sour and sick, a dull and vague nausea that he can’t shake, no matter how much he rationalizes and tells himself that the elves are brutes but not barbarians.

It’s not until the next morning that they bring Kíli back—or so Fíli thinks; in truth, he’d lost all track of time when he’d fallen unwillingly asleep. Kíli’s cell is three cells over and half a level above Fíli’s, so Fíli can see him only by pressing his face right up against the bars, cursing and fighting hot prickling tears of relief. Kíli is nude, shivering, and shackled, but walking on his own, though he keeps his head down and won’t raise it, even when Fíli calls out to him.

Kíli looks small, flanked on either side by two towering elves, and it’s so wrong to see him this way that Fíli has to blink against the waves of disorientation. Kíli is tall for a dwarf; they both are, but Kíli especially, and king’s nephew or no, he’d taken more than his fair share of teasing as a youth. Elf-born, they’d called him; half-elf bastard, an insult almost beyond reckoning, and though Kíli had always grinned and shrugged it off, he slouched when other dwarves were around. It’s ridiculous—Kíli comes by his height honestly, and Thorin and Dwalin are both taller than Kíli —but children are mean and Kíli has always taken it to heart more than he should.

But now, next to the elves, Kíli just looks small and stocky, exactly like a dwarf ought to, and Fíli thinks he will tell him that, will make sure to remember and tell him that when he is next close enough to whisper it in his ear.

The elf guards say nothing when they push Kíli back into his cell. Fíli sees Kíli stumble in but hears no sound of a fall, so he guesses Kíli has caught himself against the wall. He waits until the guards leave before calling out Kíli’s name.

There’s no immediate answer.

“Kíli,” he calls, more urgently now, and his voice is joined by the others. “Kíli, are you all right?”

“I’m well,” comes Kíli’s answer, finally. He sounds normal, like himself, if tired. “Well enough.”

Fíli is nearly floored by the wave of relief that sweeps through him.

Dwalin calls from the cell next to him. “What did they want, lad? What did they ask you?”

Kíli’s quiet again. “Nothing,” he says after a long while. “They didn’t ask me anything.”

Dwalin snorts. He is nearly as suspicious of elves as Thorin. “They had you a full day.”

“They asked my name,” Kíli says irritably. His voice, when stressed, is a little hoarse after all. Fíli tries not to read anything into that. “They asked for your names, and from whence we came. They asked if there is food or drink I cannot tolerate, that will make me ill or swell my tongue. They asked which hand I favor. That is all they asked.”

“Did they say anything about Thorin?”

Kíli’s quiet for a minute. “No.”

Fíli wonders if Kíli even asked; on balance, he thinks Kíli would have, but he is afraid of the hoarseness in his brother’s voice; if despite his claims, his rough voice means that Kíli was in no position to ask anything at all. Fíli squeezes the bars of his cell helplessly, swallowing the urge to ask again if Kíli is all right. Kíli has already given his answer to that; truthful or not, he is unlikely to change his reply upon being asked a second time. Fíli wishes he could see him just the same, read the truth for himself.

“It makes no sense,” Balin is saying now, from a cell across the way. He sounds tired. They are all tired. “To keep you for so long and ask so few questions, and those so easily answered. Did they want to know nothing of our purpose? Nothing of our history?”

“No,” Kíli says.

Balin curses softly, an uncharacteristic lapse. “We have no quarrel with the elves at present,” he says. “If they are not holding Thorin and they do not care who we are, why hold us captive? The crime of trespass is a minor one, and we are weak and starving, no threat to them. And if they are holding Thorin, assuredly they know we are with him, whether he told them so or not, but then why ask Kíli nothing of import?”

No one answers for a moment. Kíli is the one to break the uncomfortable silence. “I think,” he says wearily, “that they just wanted to play.”

The answer puts a chill in the air, and the dwarves spend the next several hours quietly, only the occasional whisper breaking the silence. Kíli seems to have fallen asleep, or is pretending so he does not have to carry on conversation. Fíli dozes fitfully. They are all worrying, he is certain, about the same thing. What is the elves’ purpose? And, more urgently, who will the elves choose next?

But when the guards come again, they take no one but Kíli.

~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~

Kíli has been standing motionless for hours, shackled hand and foot, which he thinks is uncalled for, given how little threat he poses. He’s groggy and nauseated from spider venom; he hasn’t had a decent meal in weeks; and he’s been stripped of his weapons, his clothing, and his dignity. What do the elves suppose he can do to them? They are five and his is only one, and they are twice his height and armed.

He shifts his weight minutely from one leg to the other, and the elf nearest him twitches warningly. Kíli wonders what would happen if he were to move more than just a single muscle, but despite Dís’s concerns, he is not quite so reckless as to risk it. His ribs are still aching from the kick he’d gotten for being too slow to strip off his tunic and breeches, and his jaw throbs from the punch he’d earned for cursing at the elves too vehemently. With the cold clarity of hindsight, he’s come to realize he’s lucky elves don’t understand Khuzdul—if they had understood what he’d called them, he might have ended up with his jaw broken rather than bruised.

He feels the breath on his neck before he hears the she-elf approach. It’s unnerving, how silently they move when they want to. She stalks slowly around him, eying him up and down with an almost possessive interest. She is tall—they are all tall, but she seems tall even for an elf, though that could be simply because she is standing so near; he has never been this close to an elf before today—and she is thin, with fair skin and hair. Her eyes are a disconcerting blue, nearly iridescent. When she looks at him, he feels even more naked than lack of clothing can account for.

“Yes,” she says, right in his ear. “I think you’ll do nicely. What’s your name, little one?”

Kíli clenches his jaw and doesn’t answer—a momentary, futile rebellion—and she laughs. It sounds like broken wind chimes and sends shivers up his spine.

“Come now,” she says lightly, “if you don’t tell me, one of your brethren will, except I won’t ask them so nicely.”

He breathes through his nose once, then unclenches his jaw long enough to mutter, “Kíli.”

“Kíli,” she repeats, almost reverently. It makes his skin crawl to hear her twist her elf tongue around the syllables of his name. “So tall, for a dwarf, and so fair to look at. One would almost think you had elf blood in you.”

He clenches his jaw again, hard, and again she laughs. “That bothers you,” she says. “An old wound, I imagine, but not yet fully scabbed. Children can be so cruel, no matter the species.”

Kíli breathes in harshly, panicked. He has heard the stories, but not believed—can she read his thoughts? She will learn everything from him then, even if he can resist and keep quiet. He jerks back in horror, heart hammering, but she bends down, gripping his chin with long, cold fingers and turning his head from left to right and back again, then running one nail slowly down his cheek. It is almost tender. “I think not. They say you can tell the purity of a dwarf’s heritage by how fine his features are, so you, little one, must come from a very pure bloodline indeed.”

Kíli doesn’t answer. His heritage, pure or not, is none of her concern.

She straightens up to her full height and circles him again, stopping directly behind him. He stands motionless but on edge, anxiety quickening his breath. Without warning, she reaches around from behind and grips his member.

Kíli shudders. He is horrified and mortified in equal measure.

“Tell me,” the she-elf whispers, right in his ear, “is it true that dwarves do not partake of intimate relations outside of wedlock?”

She squeezes him, and he has to choke down bile.

“Because if so,” she says, “and if it is true as they say that there is only one female of your kind for every two males, then half of your males will never experience that particular pleasure.” She releases him and comes around to his front again. Kíli is shaken and nauseated, and can barely meet her gaze. “And you, little one? Are you wed? Have you ever lain with another?”

Kíli swallows. This is an intensely personal matter, not even spoken of between friends and certainly nothing to discuss with elves, but if he does not answer, he is terrified she will touch him again. “No,” he manages, humiliated. “I am not yet of age.”

She laughs again, discordant music in the air. “And yet you have easily passed the half-century mark,” she says. “Even for a dwarf, that is fully grown. It is funny how custom can triumph over our most bestial natures. Surely your body is ready, even if your people believe you are not.” She walks away a few paces, and Kíli breathes a bit easier.

The she-elf turns back and looks at him in calm assessment. “I will not lie to you, little Kíli. Your time with me will be largely spent in pain and suffering. You will have to learn to take your pleasure when it is offered.”

She bends her head to one of the elves standing guard. "Take him to the river and wash the dwarf stench off as best as you can.”

Chapter Text

You can only take so much before you break. This is true of anyone, Fíli knows. Everyone has a breaking point, and he thinks he has reached his.

Days have slid to weeks, and each day it is the same: In the morning, the elves come for Kíli. At night, they bring him back.

“I’m well enough,” is all he’ll ever admit to, when pressed, though it is obvious he is anything but.

Fíli thinks he might explode from fury. He thinks this must be how Thorin feels all the time, like anger is a separate living thing within him. It grows each day, gaining depth and intensity, crowding out rational thought even as sleep and food restore the strength to his body.

But it is a futile, pointless rage. Though the elves have begun setting them to work, they are guarded beyond the possibility of escape, and Kíli is never seen during the day when they are out. In time, even Thorin is returned to them unmarked, foul-tempered and brooding, but though his reappearance is a great relief to all the company, he has no more idea what is being done to Kíli than anyone else. Thorin rages and fumes and threatens, but the elves pay him no more regard than they do to Ori, and their interest in Kíli remains unknown.

Fíli has perfected the art of twisting his neck just so, to best see Kíli as he is returned to his cell each night. He memorizes every bruise and curses when he sees Kíli is limping. Kíli refuses to tell them anything, so Fíli must imagine everything, and these imaginary torments keep him awake long into the night.

“I will kill them for this,” he mutters one day, when the elves have them tending to the middens and are keeping a safe distance from the stinking refuse heap.

“Oh lad,” Bofur sighs, “we don’t even know what it is they’re doing to him.”

But Fíli knows, because he has imagined it.

One night, the elves return Kíli especially late, long after the sun has set, and Fíli only knows Kíli is back by the clanking of the shackles. Dwalin, in the cell next door, asks as he always does, “How are you, lad?”

Kíli’s answer is far too long in coming. “I’m well enough,” he says, but his voice sounds thick and clogged, like he is crying, or trying not to.

Fíli grips the bars of his cell in frustration and wonders how it can be that any crafted metal can withstand the heat of the rage flowing molten through his veins.

“Lad,” Dwalin says, but Kíli interrupts before Dwalin can offer any words of support or inspiration.

“I’m tired.” That, perhaps, is the first honest thing Kíli has said to any of them since they were taken. “I want to sleep.” Then he will not say another word.

Weeks turn over slowly. The work they do is mindless, and Fíli thinks the effort expended guarding them is not worth the return, but the labor grows steadily harder and the hours spent working steadily longer, until even the strongest of them returns to his cell at night exhausted. Perhaps that is the entire point. The elves seem to have no interest in killing them but neither any intent to set them free; maybe the tasks to which they are set are solely to keep them docile while the elves do whatever it is they are doing to Kíli.

The elves come for Kíli earlier in the morning and return him later at night. He speaks less and less until he is speaking not at all, and his sleep has become restless and troubled. He cries out, pleading not for help or rescue, but mercy, and this can mean nothing but that Kíli has given up on them, trusts them no longer to save him. And why should he trust them to rescue him, Fíli thinks with impotent fury, when they have failed so spectacularly at it?

And it is this at last, one night when Kíli’s cries are particularly wretched and do not end—when the grip of his nightmare is so strong that it seems he cannot wake—that breaks Fíli completely. He shouts and curses until he has made so much noise that even the elves cannot ignore him, and a guard comes, stone-faced, to stand outside his cell.

“Elves,” Fíli says, furiously. “I know there is no love lost between our people. But that,” he says, “is my brother. You understand the bonds of kin. You cannot tell me that you do not!”

The elf says nothing, though he does not leave. His eyes flicker up to Kíli’s cell, then back again to Fíli, and though his features are foreign, Fíli can read his unease.

“Please,” Fíli says desperately. He does not say, “I need to see him.” He does not say, “I can comfort him.” He says nothing but “please” because elves are not orcs, nor goblins, and though they may be twice a dwarf’s height with a heart half as large, they understand family.

Kíli cries out again, and this time the guard’s gaze wavers. He grimaces then unlocks Fíli’s cell and jerks him roughly up the stairs.

“Thank you,” Fíli breathes.

The guard’s mouth twists. “I am doing you no favors, dwarf,” he says flatly. “Once you have seen him, you may wish you hadn’t.” He thrusts Fíli into Kíli’s cell and locks the door. “Keep him quiet,” he says brusquely. “We find the noise grating.”

The elves keep the hallways dimly lit at all hours of the day. There is just enough light that Fíli can make out Kíli’s shape, a huddled mass on the floor. If he has heard the guard unlock his cell—if he is at all aware that Fíli is here with him—he shows no sign of it. Yet he is breathing too unevenly to be asleep. Perhaps he finally screamed himself awake, or perhaps it was Fíli’s own shouting that did the trick.

“Kíli,” Fíli says cautiously, approaching slowly. If Kíli is not fully awake, if he is caught in the grip of a nightmare still, it would not do to startle him and end up with a broken neck for his trouble. Very slowly, he places a gentle hand on Kíli’s back.

Kíli’s breath catches. He flinches, wrapping further in on himself, his face buried in his arms, his knees up to his chest.

“Nadad,” Fíli says softly. “I’m here.”

For several moments, he gets no response. Kíli’s back is all tense, knotted muscle under Fíli’s trembling fingers.

On the floor of the cell, there is a blanket, a rough weave, smelling of the forest. Elven-made, by the feel, an unexpected show of some small compassion on someone’s part. Though the night is tolerably warm by dwarvish standards, Fíli takes the blanket and places it gently over Kíli’s nude huddled body.

And then, finally, there is movement, a slight unfolding, and Kíli’s eyes peek up over his forearms. He stares dumbly at Fíli for a moment without recognition, before his brows knit together and his eyes widen.

“Brother,” he breathes, disbelieving.

It is all Fíli can do not to weep. Kíli looks lost and exhausted, dark shadows ringing his eyes and ugly bruises blossoming across his jaw and cheek. His hair is loose and wild. “I’m here,” Fíli repeats.

Kíli does not unfold himself further. He clutches at the blanket, and stares wildly around the cell before his gaze lands back on Fíli. “I’m dreaming,” he says, and breathes in unsteadily, eyes fluttering closed before he jerks them open again. “This is a dream.”

“It’s no dream. They let me in to see you.”

Kíli stares at him. In the dim light, his eyes look huge, the irises twice their normal size. He peers around the cell again before focusing back on Fíli, looking troubled. “At night I’m usually left alone. Are you an elf?”

“Brother,” Fíli says, choking. “It’s me.”

Kíli pulls away out of Fíli’s reach until he is sitting up with his back against the wall of the cell, grasping the blanket with shaking fingers. He stares at Fíli suspiciously. “Elves have mind magic. They make you see things.” He shivers, and grips the blanket tighter. “I have seen many things I did not wish to.”

“It’s me,” Fíli says. “The elves let me in to see you. You were screaming.”

“I scream all the time,” Kíli says, soft and weary. “No one comes.”

Fíli swallows and reaches for him, but Kíli just pushes farther back into the wall. He leans his head back and his eyes flutter closed; in another moment, he is sleeping. Though no more nightmares come, Fíli stays awake and watches him for the rest of the night.

~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~

They come for him early in the morning, before the sun rises. They used to come later, Fíli tells him, but Kíli doesn’t remember; his memories are jumbled and cloudy, and he’s losing track of time, days bleeding together and sometimes lost in their entirety after they are over.

Fíli tells him how long they’ve been there, counting the shallow marks he’s scratched into the wall of the cell. Kíli stares at the marks sometimes, trying to translate them into days and weeks, but he can’t figure out how the pale little scratches can be anything other than gouges in the wall. So many things confuse him now. Trying to concentrate makes his head ache.

Fíli tells him it’s all right, that it’s not important, but Kíli sees him staring sometimes, worried, and he feels shivery unease.

Each morning, they lead him from the cell through shadowy hallways and up ancient stairways of soft, burnished wood, out into the forest. The morning air is chilled but fresh and welcome; what light comes through the trees is soft; and his feet have grown calloused against the small pebbles and twigs littering the forest floor, so that all he feels is the earth warm against his skin. These few moments of silence are the most peaceful part of his day.

Today when they reach the tree with the broken double limb, they turn left, and he releases a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Turning right means another day spent in the she-elf’s chambers, and those are the worst of all. He doesn’t understand what it is she’s doing, but when she lays her hands on his body, the pain is unendurable, and it doesn’t matter how much he writhes and screams and pleads; she doesn’t stop until she is done.

Turning left at the tree means the day will be spent outside, which means there will be physical demands he cannot fully fathom and beatings when he cannot fully comply, but it also may mean a bath in the river and maybe a few minutes to sit and eat a meal in silence. These things feel like precious gifts. He has learned to be grateful for even the smallest mercies.

The elves speak to him in Sindarin and he’s slowly starting to understand it, even though he cannot yet wrap his tongue around the strangely slippery consonants or the airy, subtle vowels, and he is just beginning to grasp the intricate complexities of tone. Oddly, in this of all things, the elves are calm and patient; whatever it is they want from him, his ability to speak their tongue apparently holds low priority.

There is no bath today, but there is a meal: fresh honeyed bread, the sweet flesh of some strange fruit, and cold, clear water. They leave him alone to eat, and he has been fed enough of late that he can resist the urge to swallow it all in a single mouthful. Afterwards, he licks the honey from his fingers and turns his face to the sun.

The peace is short-lived. The she-elf appears and inquires of the guards whether he’s eaten, nodding in satisfaction at their answer. “Good,” she says in Common, gliding to him. “This would be less pleasant on an empty stomach.” She reaches for him and he cannot help but flinch back, for there is never anything at the end of her fingers but pain, but the elves behind him hold him still and there is no escape.

She touches him lightly, trailing her fingers across his forehead and down his cheek to his neck and then his chest. The pain he expects never materializes; though his skin tingles where she makes contact, it is nothing that can be called pain, not compared to what her touch usually delivers.

“Yes,” she breathes. “I think you’re ready.”

He dare not ask what it is that he is ready for, and he doubts in any event that she would answer. He used to ask, before he grew tired of the beatings and learned to keep quiet.

The she-elf retrieves a goblet from a hollow at the base of a tree. It is short and stout, with a wide rim, and it is filled to the top with a liquid. It reeks. His stomach turns, and he flinches back as she brings it to his lips.

She frowns. “If you will not drink it voluntarily, they will hold you down and I will force it down your throat.”

He knows this is true, but the stench from the liquid is foul, and he cannot bring himself to open his mouth for it, no matter how the slowly rising fury in her face makes him cringe. He will not beg for a reprieve from something so minor, but neither will he drink, even though he knows he will be punished for it, even though he knows later, she will make him wish he had given in.

She spits out something to the guards, and they pull him to the ground and hold him down. Rocks and sticks dig into his back as he struggles in futile desperation. “Dwarves,” the she-elf says, eyes flashing. “You believe stubbornness is a virtue. When has it ever brought your people anything but pain?” She crouches to the ground and grips his chin, her grip as cold and implacable as a vise. If she digs any deeper, he thinks wildly, she will shatter his jaw.

Then she has won, as he knew she would all along. He can’t remember now what he was thinking, fighting her. There is no point to it; there’s never been any point to it—she will always win, and all he has earned are more bruises and even more pain to come. The liquid in his throat is viscous and cloying. He chokes and coughs and fears he will vomit, but in the end, he doesn’t.

As soon as the goblet is empty, they leave him alone, and he curls into a ball, arms wrapped around his stomach. He feels sick already, strange and sweaty and itchy, like whatever she has forced into him is trying to claw its way back out.

“Bring him to me when it’s over,” she says coldly, and leaves him on the ground without another word.

Chapter Text

It becomes the best and worst moment of Fíli’s day, all at once, when the elves come to toss Kíli back in the cell, still alive, even if each day he’s less himself, less aware, less responsive. But even so, even though Fíli’s rage is slowly draining into hopelessness, it’s still better being together, even if all he can do is wrap Kíli in a blanket to cover his nakedness, or rub his back when the nightmares seize hold.

Kíli never speaks of his days, not even a word, except in his sleep: frantic, desperate whispers and mumbled pleas for mercy. Fíli is loath to imagine what the elves are doing that can have broken Kíli so thoroughly—it’s not the beatings; dwarves are sturdy and Kíli’s bruises are always superficial. Fíli has delivered worse himself, when they used to wrestle. It’s something else. Filthy elf magic, Fíli thinks sourly; potions and spells, or perhaps mind magic, infecting Kíli from within.

“Tell me,” Kíli says one night, when he’s roused himself from his stupor, curled around himself with his spine so bent, his chin is nearly to his ankles. He has not yet raised his head to look at Fíli; it’s rare, now, that he’ll meet Fíli’s eyes with his own. Some nights he won’t look at Fíli at all. “Tell me a story, Fíli. Tell me a story from when we were children.”

Fíli remembers when they were boys, both wild and reckless, running through Ered Luin, everyone’s favorites—well, maybe that part was rosy recollection, not quite the truth, but certainly they were looked on fondly by many. They had little enough money but they were young enough not to care. They always had enough to eat and enough wood to keep their little house warm; it didn’t matter that their plates were old and chipped, and their clothing worn and patched. Dwalin and Balin would come around and call them princes. To Kíli, this was the funniest thing ever and he’d laugh and laugh, so joyous a sound that when he stopped, Balin would tickle him until he squealed and laughed some more, and then it didn’t matter that they had no father or that their whole house had but two rooms.

The winter Kíli turned 20, he shot up like a weed, so much so that even Thorin, never the jolliest of uncles, couldn’t help but tease Dís, “Whatever it is you’re feeding him, sister, I think you’d better stop, or he’ll soon hit the ceiling.” Dís would frown, because it had been hard enough keeping their clothes presentable as it was, but Kíli seemed to be growing an inch every week, and there was only so much magic that could be worked with needle and thread. By springtime, their height difference was so small as to be not worth measuring. Fíli, fully five years older, found this almost insulting, but Kíli never held it against him—if anything, he wished he was shorter, and he’d taken to ducking his head a lot.

That was the year Kíli first picked up a bow. He was too tall for his age, and his arms were still thin like the little boy he was—even a wooden sword was too unwieldy. But he loved the bow and had a natural ability that impressed even Dwalin, who made the time every week to take Kíli out to the meadow and practice. Fíli would have been jealous at this special attention, except that he had no interest in learning the art of the bow, and he was just as happy—happier, if truth be told—to spend his time in the yard sparring with Thorin.

By the next summer, Kíli was two full inches taller than Fíli, tall enough that the other dwarflings were starting to tease. When Fíli talks about this, with Kíli huddled shivering on the floor of the cell, he leaves out the part about the teasing. He talks instead of how Kíli by this time was the best archer in the town, even though he wasn’t yet up to Thorin’s shoulder, how they’d celebrated when he entered the annual archery contest and took home the purse, meager though it was, and how Thorin took extra shifts at the forge just so he could buy Kíli a bow crafted especially for him.

“I started hunting with that bow,” Kíli mumbles, and Fíli murmurs agreement and runs his fingers through Kíli’s sweat-soaked hair. Still a child, Kíli would tag along on hunting expeditions, the lone dwarf among the Big Folk, nearly running just to keep up with their longer-legged stride. It led to more teasing from the other dwarflings—Fíli leaves this out of his story too—but the human hunters never teased, because every hunting party that took Kíli out brought back extra meat, and everyone would eat well afterwards.

“Do you remember,” Fíli asks, “the time you killed the deer and wanted to skin it yourself?” Kíli laughs a little, because he’d come home covered in blood and deer guts, staggering under the weight of more venison than their little family would ever be able to eat, and Dís couldn’t decide whether she was delighted with the meat or distraught at Kíli’s ruined clothing. They’d feasted for days, stocked away enough salted meat to last them through the winter, and sold the rest. Even after buying new clothing for Kíli—breeches that fit, for a change—they had money left over.

Life had gotten a little easier after that, with Fíli old enough to start taking shifts at the forge, and Kíli hunting regularly. They’d catch Dís humming sometimes, and even Thorin would occasionally sing after dinner, in front of the fire with a glass of ale in his hand.

“I used to like it when Thorin would sing,” Kíli says. Fíli goes quiet, remembering, and they sit silently until Kíli’s shaking stops and his breathing finally evens out into sleep.

~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~

“You see,” she says, “it’s not that bad.”

Kíli is huddled on the bed, shaking.

The she-elf goes to a wash basin and casually rinses her hands. “You must admit that was more pleasant than how we usually spend our days.”

Kíli doesn’t trust himself to speak. In this moment, he is more terrified of her than he has ever been, even at the worst of times, strapped down to the table and screaming. He is still dopey from whatever potion she forced down his throat—different herbs, this time, though no less foul—and his limbs are quivering, jellied.

The she-elf turns to look at him with a slight frown on her face. “I know the ways of dwarves are different than our own,” she says, “but surely that was not the first time you have reached completion.”

Kíli swallows hard, feeling sick. She is staring at him expectantly, waiting for his reply, and he has been too well trained to refuse to answer. “No,” he mutters.

Her face clears—she looks pleased—and she turns back to the wash basin. “Next time perhaps you will show me how you prefer it.”

Kíli jolts, horrified. Secrets such as that are reserved for a wife, not to be revealed except on one’s wedding night—not even the most irreverent, dishonorable dwarf would speak of such things to anyone else.

His dismay must be written across his face, because the she-elf rolls her eyes. “Come,” she says, “dwarves are not so different to elves as you claim.” She lays her hand upon his chest, where his heart still pounds. “You plead as desperately as any male, in the end.”

He flushes hot, because it is true; he remembers in searing clarity how he’d begged. But he had just wanted it to end, he thinks. He hopes. He hadn’t wanted her.

She keeps her hand to his chest, pressing down, and heat begins to swell under her fingertips. He stiffens and tries to pull away, but she presses him down to the bed with her other hand and starts murmuring nonsense under her breath.

The heat grows sharp and burns, while the she-elf goes pale and bright, glowing. He pants shallowly, gasping, trying to squirm away from the blistering heat, but she holds him there easily and so all he can do is lie there and wait for her to finish. This is better than the table, at least; the bed is soft and yielding, and she is exploring, not seeking to punish. The pain is manageable—though there is part of him that knows he might have screamed from it before he’d learned that even agony has levels of intensity, and that what he once would have considered unbearable could in fact be borne.

The heat fades as she blinks her eyes open, looking dreamy. “You are doing so well, little one. Better than I had hoped.”

She rises to her feet, patting him tenderly on the head before crossing to the door. “You may stay here tonight. Tomorrow, I think, we will try something new.”

Chapter Text

Weeks drag into months. The elves feed them adequately, if not plentifully, and treat them for injuries and illness. Their labor is dull but allows them out into fresh air and gives them a chance to exercise their muscles so they do not waste away from captivity. They are allowed to speak freely to each other, so they cannot even complain of isolation. On the whole, in fact, Fíli thinks they cannot complain too much. Elves in dwarvish captivity would likely fare far worse.

But no one knows what the elves are doing to Kíli, and this puts a perpetual damper on their already gloomy spirits. Fíli is the only one who ever sees him, and even then, their hours together grow steadily shorter as the weeks stretch on. The elves have started keeping him overnight regularly. If Kíli knows why, he doesn’t say, and Fíli has grown reluctant to ask.

“I think I heard him today,” Ori says one afternoon, when they have all been brought back stumbling to their cells, exhausted. “Kíli. I think I heard him.” He is quiet, but that is nothing unusual; Ori has always been quiet, and they are all quiet now.

Fíli jolts upright from he’d been collapsed against the wall. “Where?” They haven’t seen Kíli for three days. This is the longest the elves have ever kept him, and Fíli has been out of his head with fear.

“I was down by the river,” Ori says. “My tunic had gotten filthy, so they were letting me wash it. I heard—it was from a little down the river, past the bend, I couldn’t see anyone. I’m not even sure it was him. It was just—I heard Common. The elves don’t speak it among themselves, and I don’t think there are any other prisoners here.”

This is true. They are alone in their captivity. “What did he say?” Fíli asks. “Could you hear him? How did he sound?”

Ori is quiet for a long time. When he speaks, it is reluctantly, as if he’s regretful for saying anything in the first place. “I’m not even sure it was him, Fíli.”

“Ori.” Fíli is desperate. “What did he say?”

Ori sighs. “He was apologizing to someone. He said he was sorry. He said it over and over, that he was sorry, that he wouldn’t do it again.” He breathes once, in and out. “He kept apologizing. That’s all I heard him say.”

The tone of his voice gives the lie to his words. Ori is a horrible liar, unlike his trickster thief of a brother. “What else?” Fíli asks.

Ori is quiet again, for too long, and then he finally says, in an uncomfortable rush, “He started screaming. The elves were just talking to each other the whole time like nothing was happening, but Kíli was screaming, and I—I don’t think the elves even cared, and I wanted to—if I had been free, I would have—but there were guards, there are always guards, what could I do?” He sighs again. “At least we know he’s still alive.”

Thorin grunts. “If they wanted him dead, they’d have killed him already.”

This too is true, but it is precious little comfort. Fíli has always known the elves have been torturing Kíli, that has been obvious from the beginning, but to know that Kíli screams and there is nothing they can do—that he screams and the elves don’t even care—it is unbearable. But then Fíli thinks that his pain is far less than anything Kíli is enduring, and he flushes hot with shame for daring to feel even a minute of pity for himself.

The elves bring Kíli back late that evening, but he will not speak, not even whisper. He won’t touch the food that has been left for him; when Fíli tries to convince him to at least drink some water, Kíli throws the mug away so quickly that it shatters on the floor, and he spends the rest of the night huddled against the wall wrapped in the blanket, scratching fretfully at his skin and flinching every time Fíli moves.

Fíli feels terrified and useless both until he remembers the songs Thorin used to sing in front of the fireplace, how Kíli would sit transfixed, drowsy and wondering. He knows Kíli’s favorite, though he remembers the melody better than the words, which is something of a pity since he can hardly carry a tune. He croons it softly under his breath anyway and is rewarded when Kíli relaxes and finally falls into a fitful sleep. Fíli will ask Thorin to remind him of the words tomorrow, he thinks, and settles down himself as close to his brother as he thinks Kíli will be able to bear.

Days pass. They do not grow better.

Then comes the night they bring Kíli back and throw him in to the cell, and he catches himself against the wall where he perches unsteadily upright for just a moment, eyes wide and unfocused, confused, gaze sliding drunkenly all around the cell, dim and uncomprehending, as if he’s never been here before and doesn’t recognize anything, not even Fíli, crouched low and careful at his feet to catch him if he falls. He doesn’t fall, not really; he slides down the wall instead, fingers splayed against the rough surface as he drops, and there is something wrong with his hands, something different, something off. Kíli’s hands have always been strong, fingers short and wide, dwarvish and beautiful, their mother’s hands, but now his fingers look thin, stretched out, like a child’s before adulthood put meat and muscle on them.

The light is so dim, Fíli is sure he’s imagining it, and by then Kíli has slipped all the way to the floor, shaking, and his arms are wrapped around his legs, hands gripping his forearms so tightly that Fíli can’t see his fingers anymore anyway. Fíli creeps closer, carefully; he knows he has to move slowly and quietly if he wants any hope of coaxing a word out of his brother.

Kíli is mumbling to himself, whispering something, and for a minute, Fíli’s hopeful, but then he gets close enough to hear and it’s all nonsense—incomprehensible drunken ravings, even though there is no trace of wine on his breath, just a strange foreign smell, spices and herbs and other scents Fíli has no names for. The words are wrong just like Kíli’s hands, not short and strong and dwarvish, but thin and stretched out, eerie and alien, liquid syllables slipping lightly into the air and vanishing before Fíli can make any sense of them.

Fíli scuttles back across the cell, trembling. “Nadad,” he whispers, “what are they doing to you?”

He gets no answer.

~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~

When they bring him to the clearing, it’s all Kíli can do not to retch. He remembers when days spent outdoors were the good ones. Now he fears the days they turn left at the tree with the broken double branch as much as the days they turn right. This means he fears every day, since those are the only choices—left, to agony and terror, or right, to agony and debasement. He hasn’t worked out which is worse.

The sickly sour scent of herbs clogs his nose and closes his throat, and his stomach muscles clench involuntarily in dread. He doesn’t think he’s recovered yet from the last time; he has been itching everywhere, inside where he can’t scratch, and he aches all the time. It is agony.

“We’re going to remake you,” the she-elf had said once, early on, when he still had strength to resist and they had to hold him down to force the foul potion down his throat. “From the inside out.” Her voice had been neither particularly cruel, nor particularly gentle, just simply matter-of-fact, and that had been worse than if she’d showed any emotion at all. Then she’d stroked his hair, patted his cheek as if he’d been a fretful babe. “Although mostly from the inside. I think we’ll leave the outside alone, pretty one.”

They force him to his knees, and she places the goblet in front of him.

Time was, he’d have made a smart remark, and gotten himself smacked across the face for his troubles. But he’s long past that now. There’s nothing to be gained except for more pain, and he’s tired of pain.

“Kíli,” she murmurs, voice like a caress of maggots. “Drink, little one.” When he doesn’t move, she wraps his hands around the goblet, lifts it to his mouth. He shudders as the stench hits him.

“Drink,” she says, and he does, because there is no other choice.

She leaves him when she’s certain he’s swallowed it all and will not vomit it back up, and that is the only bright spot of his day. He gets so sick from the herbs now that the elves no longer make him do anything else, once he’s drunk it. They will wait for him to stop shaking and convulsing, and then they will take him back to his cell. It will be a long wait. The sun is high in the sky. He won’t be able to walk again, he knows, until long after it has set.

He has a little while before confusion clouds his mind and he spends it breathing quietly, eyes closed, trying to pretend he is at peace and alone. The latter isn’t so hard to do. None of the elves talk to him except for her; most of the time, they won’t even look at him. They touch him only when they have to, and he senses their revulsion every time they come near. Like he’s filth, refuse.

Kíli can’t disagree with them. He’s tainted. He knows this. He sighs and tries to push the thought away because it isn’t peaceful, but then the first cramp seizes hold and it’s too late for peace.

When they bring him back to the cell at night, Fíli is there. Sometimes that’s enough to make him weep; he’s been stretched past the limit of his endurance, and there are days he’s just not strong enough to hold back the tears.

He doesn’t cry tonight. He’d done all his crying in the clearing, and now he’s just drained. All he really wants is to sleep, but that will not come for hours yet, not until his head clears and the itching eases.

“Kíli,” Fíli says, soft and gentle, like a devotion. It’s a relief to hear his name properly pronounced, not flavored with an elvish tang. It make him feel a bit like a dwarf still, even though as the days pass, he loses more and more of that part of himself. It’s being replaced, he thinks, though he doesn’t know with what. “Nadad.”

He’s soothed, briefly, but then Fíli places a hand on his back and Kíli jumps and flinches away, heart hammering. No one touches him gently except for the she-elf, and when she does—the things she does to him, the things she makes him do— they’re unnatural, perverse. He lives in fear that she will be proven right, that the day will come that he doesn’t get sick from her touch, that he will even start to crave it. It hasn’t happened yet. Not quite. But he is beginning to think that it might.

“Kíli,” Fíli says again, tense and frightened, so Kíli tries to reassure him, but the herbs have robbed him of speech, and what comes out is garbled nonsense he cannot even understand himself.

Fíli sighs and sits back, looking helpless and worried, and all Kíli can do is wrap himself in the blanket and hide. If only he bends and twists hard enough, he thinks, he can disappear within himself altogether, and then Fíli will never need to know what he’s become.

Chapter Text

It’s like this every night, now. The elves bring Kíli back late, long past sunset, and he’s always like this, hardly conscious, stumbling drunk except not drunk. There are herbs, Oín says darkly, with properties only the elves know, that can be refined and distilled to a fine form, that can make a dwarf like this, half out of his head. And, he says ominously, some of those herbs can make a dwarf sick with craving, so sick he’ll do anything to get more. Trick, steal, or even kill another dwarf.

Not, he adds, that Kíli is like to do any of those things. Kíli is strong. And maybe those herbs don’t really exist. They say a lot of things about elves and their magic; Oín thinks a lot of it is rubbish.

Fíli doesn’t know anything about elvish herbs and magic, nor does he want to, except if it’s herbs making Kíli like this, sick in the head, barely able to string two words together and even those all elvish nonsense. Kíli’s seeing things that aren’t there, hearing voices that aren’t real, scratching his skin as if he’s covered with red oak rash.

But after a few hours it wears off and Kíli comes to himself again. It’s usually slow, or occasionally all of a sudden like a shock of cold water, but either way, he’s always blessedly back to himself. Then Kíli will talk, words tumbling out one after the other like he can’t get them out fast enough, like he’s desperate to speak even though he’s not saying anything of import.

He never says what they’re doing to him or who it is that takes him, whether it’s the same elf every day, even whether it’s one or many. He speaks of nothing at all that matters except to say, when pressed, that’s he’s fine, he’s well enough, and is Fíli eating? Are they giving them enough food and water? How are the others faring? And, incidentally, Fíli stinks, and don’t the elves ever let them bathe?

Fíli is about to take heated whispered offense at that, except it is true; he knows he stinks, of dirt and sweat and strange elven spices that flavor their meals. But realizing that he stinks isn’t half as strange as realizing that Kíli doesn’t—Kíli smells only of the herbs they’re giving him. Underneath that, he smells of nothing: not dirt nor sweat nor blood; not the earth or the rocks or the mountains; he doesn’t smell of dwarf at all.

“Do they let you bathe, then?” Fíli asks. He knows he is skirting too close to territory Kíli will not discuss, so he is not surprised when Kíli’s face closes off and goes tight.

“They keep me clean enough,” is all he says, and Fíli knows better by now than to ask, “Clean enough for what?”

Instead, he says mildly, “Your hair is getting long,” and he means nothing by it except to mark the passage of time, but Kíli’s face grows impossibly tighter, and he throws himself back against the wall, as far away from Fíli as he can get in the small space that is their cell.

“They like it long,” he says. He inhales once, slow and trembling, and the exhale is nothing more than a sob trying to masquerade as breath.

“Kíli—” Fíli says, strangled, all the things he thinks he is not allowed to say crowded up against each other in his throat. This strange dance they are doing exhausts and terrifies him. Until they left on this journey, he had spent scarcely a full day apart from his brother since his birth, but they have now spent days and days apart, days of which Fíli knows nothing at all except that sometimes Kíli spends them screaming. What that has done to his brother, how he has changed, Fíli can’t even begin to guess.

~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~

He has nightmares. Kíli knows this because sometimes he wakes himself screaming. Other times he jolts to consciousness with his heart pounding but the scream still buried in his throat. That’s better, he thinks, because then he’s only keeping Fíli awake. He wishes he could keep himself from screaming, but that sort of control is long gone.

In his more fretful, self-pitying moments, Kíli resents the nightmares more than anything else he must endure, because his days are so awful he feels he is owed a little respite in his dreams. It seems unnecessarily cruel that he needs to relive his days during the few hours at night when he is left mercifully alone.

This night, he wakes with his scream still reverberating off the walls. He is covered with sticky foul-smelling sweat, and his dream is still vivid, freshly-painted horror. He’s too drained even to sob.

Fíli whispers his name into the blanketing darkness.

“I’m fine,” he says tiredly, pleased when the words come out comprehensibly. Lately, he finds himself more often than not speaking in Sindarin, of which he knows Fíli understands not a word, and he resents that the elves are taking away even his ability to speak with his brother.

Around them it is all nighttime quiet, save for mysterious, distant animal sounds and the soft susurration of the elven guards making their rounds through the dungeon. From his kin, there is nothing but the noise of their breathing, deep and even, feigning sleep. Kíli knows they’re awake; they must be. He heard himself scream, and no dwarf could sleep through that, no matter how tired. But they pretend to sleep, and he pretends he doesn’t realize they are pretending because, really, what could they say to each other? He doesn’t know much of how they spend their days, and he hopes they know nothing of how he spends his. There is nothing they could say to each other except for lies and false promises of escape or rescue.

But it is lonely, all this pretending.

In the dark, he hears a rustle of fabric, Fíli reaching out to touch him before catching himself and checking the motion. Kíli is grateful for this small mercy. He responds to touch now in the most inappropriate of ways, and thinks he might lose what little is left of his sanity if it were his brother who –well. Fíli is no fool, and although he doesn’t understand why, he knows better now than to touch Kíli anymore.

That is lonely too.

~

“Well,” the she-elf says. Kíli, heart still pounding, thinks it is very strange that he still does not know what her name is. “You’re certainly exceeding my expectations in this area.” She is half-dressed and languid, the soft rise of one milk-white breast exposed where her gown has fallen away. Kíli swallows and looks away.

“Oh, come,” she says, laughing and settling down deeper among the rumpled and stained coverlet, fingers trailing lightly over his still-sweaty skin. “You can say you didn’t enjoy it, but the evidence suggests otherwise.”

Kíli flinches. “That my body reacts,” he mutters, “does not mean I enjoy it.”

The elf waves her hand lightly through the air. “It’s true that any physical reaction can be obtained with the right combination of herbs and minerals, and I do have great knowledge in this area. But I’m afraid, dear one, that you’ve nothing to blame this reaction on but yourself.”

“You made me drink a potion,” he grits out.

“It was tea, little one,” she says lightly. “Tea, with a small tincture of a certain Mirkwood tree. To lower your inhibitions, nothing more. It astounds me how stubborn you dwarves can be.”

Her fingers roam possessively over his chest, and Kíli wishes for the thousandth time for any sort of clothing. Across the room, a pair of elves stand impassive guard. What, he wonders, do they think of this? They still do not acknowledge him, none of them, and yet they stand there and watch as the female and he … he shies away from thinking what it is, exactly, that they do. Perhaps it is nothing to the elves, one of their own laying with a dwarf. Perhaps they do not feel any need for privacy nor feel any shame. He has heard tales of the elves and their appetites. He’d always thought them exaggerated, but he is no longer so certain.

She is watching him, thinking. All things considered, this is less unpleasant than her usual, more intrusive manner of examination. “I wonder,” she muses, and trails her fingers over the arch of his nose, traces the line of his cheekbone. “Perhaps you have elf blood in you after all.”

Kíli grimaces, and she laughs. “It is not an insult, little one. Nor any great compliment.”

“I am no part elf,” he says flatly.

“How do you know?” she asks. “Surely you have heard the tale of Durin and Eómiel.” She waits, brows arched in what appears to be genuine surprise. “No? It is well known among my folk, the tale of the great dwarf king and his elf lover. They met in battle at Elseboth, when he saved her from dragon fire, and she stayed with him for three centuries.” She laughs again. “The legends say he gave her jewels of color and clarity like nothing the elves had ever seen. They say he built her a great tower, reaching high to the clouds. And they say she stayed with him not for any of that, for she had no need nor want of material things, but because of his skill in the bed chamber.”

Kíli is disgusted. “My people tell no such story. It is elf nonsense. Nothing more.”

“All myth,” she says, “has basis in fact. They say Durin was exceptionally handsome, and Eómiel the fairest in all the land. Is it so difficult to imagine that they were lovers? Elf-blood runs true for generations. Perhaps the great line of Durin is not so pure as you imagine it to be.”

He grits his teeth. “You sully his name.”

“Oh,” she says, laughing. “Such a temper you have. I am only teasing. Dwarves and elves cannot breed, no matter much fun it might be to try. If such an offspring could be bred, I’d have no need for you.”

His heart twists uneasily at her words, for he still knows not what she intends for him, but that the beatings have stopped and the frequency and potency of the herb-laced potions have increased. She stretches and rises to her feet, heedless of the way her gown has fallen open, revealing all the most private parts of her body. She trills something to the guards. One nods slightly and disappears into the corridor. “You shouldn’t complain, little one,” she says. “This whole process is so dreary, you and I both deserve a little pleasure every now and again.”

Pleasure is not exactly how Kíli would describe it, though he is at a loss for any more suitable description. The momentary absence of misery is not pleasure, but he isn’t certain the she-elf understands the distinction.

The guard has returned with a basin of water and a cloth, and the she-elf is languorously washing up. “You will make a lady dwarf a fine husband one day, Kíli.”

He shudders. Just the thought makes him ill. He would not—could not—ever take a wife now. He is far too young to have ever given it any serious thought as of yet, but to think that he could ever approach a dam now, after this—no! He will never bring himself close enough to touch a lady ever again. And even if he would … well. The odds that he will ever get the chance are too slim to be reckoned. “Do me the courtesy,” he says, “of not pretending that I will emerge from this in any suitable state to marry.”

She pauses in her ablutions, and turns to face him, brow furrowed. “Nothing is writ in stone, little one.” She crosses the room, kneels down on the coverlet, and begins to wipe him clean of sweat and everything else. “There are certain moments in time that are destined, events that must happen, but the how and why of any one of them cannot be foretold. The parts each of us will play cannot be known in advance, not even for the greatest of elves, dwarves, and men, and certainly not for lesser beings such as you or me.”

He shuts his eyes so he does not need to look at her face, projecting a compassion he is not sure is feigned and is therefore all the harder to tolerate. The water on his chest is warm and soothing, and this he lets himself enjoy, even if only for a moment. “Perhaps your part is not foretold,” he says. “I think my fate is sealed.”

“No,” she says sharply. “Your fate is not sealed until the last breath has left your body. No creature’s is.”

She seems genuinely irritated, so he desists. He has learned the price of making her cross. “Perhaps.”

“It is true,” she says. “It is truth. As surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, the future will bring us things we do not expect and cannot control. And so long as there is uncertainty, so long as there is doubt, there is the possibility of change.”

Kíli would like to believe this, but the inescapable truth he knows is that the only change he is likely to undergo is the one she is forcing upon him, with all her herbs and potions and magic.

Chapter Text

Days, now. Kíli has been gone for days, near a fortnight. The elves have never held him so long, never even half so long. The first few days, Fíli was worried, but not unduly. The elves have kept Fíli overnight before, for two or three days often, once for four. But they have always returned Kíli to the cell, and he has never been very much worse for wear. Tired and quiet and irrational from herbs, yes, but never very injured, still himself after some time to sleep and recover his senses.

But now it has been days that none of the dwarves have seen Kíli, nor heard him, not even in passing. Fíli has passed frantic, passed enraged, and is settling into a numb disbelief and mute acceptance. Kíli is dead, he thinks. He must be. Whatever it is that the elves have been doing to him has finally proven too much. They’ve killed him.

He’s not the only one who thinks so. He hears Dori and Nori whispering quietly to each other, sees Oín and Gloín trading glances as they work. Even Ori has taken to staring at Fíli from the corner of his eye, gaze shifting away uneasily when caught.

Thorin manages to position himself next to Fíli as they work chopping wood, far into the depths of the forest. The trees are black and twisted here, covered in stinking webs and dying, good for nothing but kindling. It is dark and depressing work in a dark and depressing part of the woods, and Fíli feels a chill even though the labor is hard enough to make him sweat.

“No word of your brother?” Thorin asks quietly between one swing of the axe and the next.

Fíli dares not stop chopping, but he risks a sideways glance at his uncle. “None. The guards will tell me nothing, though I have pleaded with them.”

Thorin grimaces. The next few hits of his axe are violent, shattering the twisted wood into splinters. “I would have thought,” he grinds out, “that even elves would have the simple decency to inform us if they had killed–“ He slams the axe down again, and it slices right through the tree trunk and wedges into the earth below, wrenched out of Thorin’s grasp. He stands there shuddering. “It cannot be borne, that his last days should have been in this foul place, in agony.” For a moment, he sounds lost and as broken as the wood at their feet. “He was just a boy.”

Fíli has gone stone cold, because he has not yet said it aloud, has not given voice to the dark nameless dread that has infected his every waking moment, as if saying it will give it truth and form. “We do not know,” he says dully. “We cannot be sure. They have not—they have not come to take another.” They have discussed it countless times and all agree that when the elves finish with Kíli they will surely come for another dwarf; or, if no other dwarf is suitable, they will either kill the lot of them or let them go. No other outcome has ever seemed possible.

Thorin has pulled his axe free and is back to splintering the wood, each blow more forceful than the last, as if they have not already spent the better part of a day doing this. He is stripped to his breeches and covered in sweat, and if he tries, Fíli can pretend for a moment that they are back in Ered Luin and Thorin is chopping wood to stockpile against the coming winter months. Dís would be inside, stewing vegetables, and Kíli would be off doing something stupid and irresponsible.

Fíli’s eyes sting from more than sweat.

“I will ask to speak to Thranduil,” Thorin says, his voice leaden. “I would ask him as one king to another to tell me if he has killed my sister-son. It is not so much to ask, I think.” He chops in vicious silence for several more minutes, until the tree is all in splinters and there is no target left for his fury. Then he staggers back and collapses to the ground, axe dropping again from his fingers. “I shall carry the blame for this to the end of my days, that I ever agreed to let you accompany me in my folly. Both of you should have remained at home. You would have been safe there.”

Safe. After so long in Mirkwood, Fíli had thought they were safe, for some meaning of that word. But now, with nothing left of Kíli but the herb-scent soaked into the elvish blanket crumpled on the floor of their cell, Fíli curses himself for ever being stupid enough to believe there was any safety to be had here at all.

~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~

Kíli has lost track of how many days and nights he’s spent locked away, separated from his kinfolk and ignored by the elves. By the time the guards drag him to see the she-elf, he is dizzy with hunger and crazed from thirst. He doesn’t know what exactly he did to deserve such punishment, but he would swear on the beard of his mother to never do it again, if only they’d give him some water. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, as soon as the elves have dropped him on the floor. He doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for, but it doesn’t matter. He’s sorry for everything he’s ever done. “I’m sorry.”

The she-elf sighs, soft and sad. “Oh, my little one. It is I who am sorry.” She kneels down next to him and lifts his chin with one delicate finger. She is clean and soft and smells of the forest, and Kíli wants to throw himself in her arms and weep, though he knows he has no tears left.

“I wish I could promise you that this will not hurt,” she whispers, “that all the pain you’ve suffered so far, you’ve somehow stored as a reserve against this, and so you will not feel anything. But that would be a lie, and I will not lie to you.”

Her words are hardly comprehensible. He has only one thought. “I’m thirsty.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry it was necessary to bring you to such a state. But in a little while, it will all be over, all the pain, and you will feel glorious. You will be glorious.” She rises to her feet and reaches for a goblet another elf is holding. “Here,” she says, tilting the goblet to his lips. “Drink.”

The smell of herbs is stronger than ever, but it is no matter, because it is liquid. He would drink poison to slake his thirst. Kíli grabs the cup from her fingers and swallows down every drop within. He thrusts it back blindly and begs, “More.”

It is only a few minutes later, after five full goblets have somewhat eased his thirst, that the convulsions start. After, there is a long period of gray and white, blinding bursts of pain, dim flashes of awareness. Every time, it is a welcome relief to sink back to unawareness.

Eventually, he wakes to some sort of clarity. His first thought is that he is not in very much pain. His second thought is that this is a relief. A recollection of agony skitters around the edges of his mind, unmoored and dangerous, as if thinking on it too hard could resurrect its essence, bring a renewal of suffering. His last time awake was brief and terrible.

He lies still for a little while in slow, careful assessment. Lack of agony notwithstanding, he feels awful: hot and cold and dizzy, nauseated and shaky and weak. His thoughts feel slow and thick. He is afraid, he realizes, to open his eyes. Last time he did, he saw his flesh melting off his bones. Whether that was real or a fever dream, he is not ready to ascertain.

There is a murmur of voice somewhere just inside the threshold of his awareness. Elven voices, soft notes soaring and falling in pretty melody, like a lullaby. Though the voices are soft and light, they still ring uncomfortably loudly in his ears. He hears his name several times, but the rest is beyond him; understanding Sindarin is a skill he has learned too recently, one that requires a concentration he cannot at present muster.

“Kíli,” he hears, close now. It’s the she-elf, her voice like liquid, warm and honeyed. She is speaking very, very quietly, less than a whisper. Fingers ghost along his forehead, barely a touch. “Still fevered,” she says, “but less so, I think.” Then she lays something on his forehead: a cloth, soft and cool. It is bliss, something familiar and understandable in a world he can’t at present comprehend . “Rest now, dear one.” Her fingers touch his forehead again; there is pressure and warmth but no pain, and he sinks gratefully back into the dark.

Chapter Text

Kíli wakes again to more Sindarin murmurs. He thinks he could understand them now if he wanted, but he’s feeling mulish and irritable; he thinks hard to himself in Khuzdul so as to prevent accidental comprehension.

His fever seems to have abated, and he’s simply achy like he’s recovered from a long illness. He wonders only briefly how long it truly was, but in the end it hardly matters. He’s long since lost all track of time. He doesn’t think it’s been a complete turn of the seasons since they came to Mirkwood, but then again, he’s lost countless nights to herbs and potions and perversion. Perhaps it’s been years.

His body throbs, but he doesn’t mind too much. In a way it’s welcome. He still remembers the vision of melting flesh, but surely only flesh and blood and bone could ache this much. His leg twitches, and a sharp stab of pain shoots up from his groin to his chest.

“Kíli?” It’s the she-elf. He must have moaned, though he doesn’t remember it. There is a soft rustling of fabric, and gentle fingers brush his hair off his forehead. She has been so very gentle with him. It confuses him how much he craves it. “Wake up, dearest. Open your eyes.”

And because he can never refuse her anything, not any more, he does.

She smiles brilliantly at him, skin glowing elf-white, incandescent. “You have been asleep a long time. How do you feel?”

“Sore,” he says honestly. He gave up lying to her so long ago, he no longer even remembers clearly how it had felt to have untruth as an option.

“Well,” she says, “I suppose that’s to be expected.” She is sitting very close to him. She looks blurry, shimmering, like her skin is made of the beating wings of a thousand fluttering insects. Her scent, this close, is similarly, senselessly iridescent. He has to fight the urge to touch her, run his fingers through her hair, gleaming like molten sunlight, or taste the sparkle of her smile. He swallows hard and coughs against the dryness of his throat.

“Oh,” she says. “Of course. You must be very thirsty.”

Kíli is, with a sudden, thorough desperation.

“Sit up,” she says. “I’ll get you some water.”

He struggles up, disoriented by waves of dizziness at every movement. The world is still slightly out of focus, colors too bright, the light too strong for his eyes. Everything seems out of proportion, especially the she-elf, who returns to his side and offers him a goblet.

It’s a small cup, dwarf-sized, beautifully engraved and encrusted with jewels, fine enough that Thrór himself would not have been insulted to hold it. It feels heavy in his fingers as he lifts it to his mouth and greedily drinks the cool, clear water within. For a change, there are no herbs. The water tastes better than the finest wine.

“Slowly,” she says, but her voice is amused. When the goblet is empty, she reaches to take it back from him, and that is when he notices that it fits as well within her hand as within his. Blinking, he stares at her hand wrapped around the goblet’s intricate stem, then stares at his own hand, next to hers.

She rests her other hand on his, twining them together. Her fingers, thin and elegant, do not quite cover his. He stares, not blinking, as he struggles to understand. His hands are larger than hers.

She tilts her head and smiles softly, and he flinches back from her eyes, level with his own. “Miraculous,” she says, “is it not?”

“You,” Kíli says hoarsely, staring, as if looking deeper could change the truth in front of him, transform it into something comprehensible. “I … we are of a height.”

“In truth,” she says, “I think you may well be taller than me. We shall see for certain when you are able to stand. I had not predicted such, but perhaps I should have. You were very tall, for a dwarf.”

Were, he thinks. You were very tall, for a dwarf. He’s dazed and dully horrified. “It is not possible.” But it is possible, obviously, it has happened, or else he is still lost in a fever dream. And so that was what all the herbs were for, and the potions, and the terrible, searing pain. He knew they were changing him; he just never guessed to what end. He stares at his hand laced with hers, his fingers too long and thin, and feels sick in a way that has nothing to do with any physical infirmity. “Am I an elf now?”

She laughs lightly, honestly amused. “Oh, no, dear one. I could not do that, even if I could bring all the magic in the world to bear. And I would not. We have plenty of elves.”

“Then what?” he asks. His heart has recovered from its lethargy and is beating frantically in his chest; it’s impossible to breathe. Kíli has only ever felt this way once before, going into his first battle, shaking so hard with terror he could hardly hold his sword. But Fíli had been at his side then, eased him through it, and suddenly he wants his brother with a keening childish desperation.

“You’re still a dwarf,” the she-elf says. “We could not take that from you. Elves are more … malleable, I suppose. I could shape an elf to any form I wanted, given time. Even humans are not so tightly bound to themselves. But dwarves are different. You are solid, like the rocks and earth. I can change the outside, but your inner core remains true.”

This is very little comfort. “On the outside, then,” he says. “What have you done?”

“Very little, in truth.” She shrugs delicately. “You look much the same to me.” She cocks her head to one side and examines him critically, runs a finger lightly across his jaw. “Though smoother skinned.”

Kíli starts, sickened, and runs his fingers hesitantly across his chin. He finds no trace of a beard. He breathes deeply, head ringing, childish taunts echoing in his ears. Half-elf, the dwarflings had said, and now he thinks they weren’t being cruel; they were simply being prophetic.

At her insistence, he manages to stand, even manages to walk, though every step still brings waves of disorienting nausea. He stumbles across the room and back again, solely because she asks. The elf guards are there by the door, and there is something different in the way they look at him now, something new. Discomfort, perhaps, at this dwarf-become-elf, or maybe even acceptance where before there was none. He cannot read their expressions well enough to be certain.

“Slowly,” the she-elf says. “Your legs are longer now.” Which is true, of course, but makes his eyes sting nonetheless.

Another few steps and he is back at the bed. “I need to sit for a minute,” he says, and she inclines her head gracefully, granting wordless permission. He sits, then falls back, and covers his eyes with his arms, blocking out all light. In darkness, he can pretend he is asleep and might still wake up unchanged.

“Leave us,” the she-elf says, and a moment later there is the quiet click of the door closing. The guards have left, and it is just the two of them.

The bed dips as she sits down next to him. “Just wait,” she says softly. “Soon, you will adjust, and everyone will see who you have become. They will all see who you really are.”

He breathes shallowly. He’d never wanted to be anyone else. Well, maybe someone who wasn’t quite so tall, maybe a little hairier, a little less ugly. But Kíli always wanted to be a dwarf. He doesn’t know what he is, now.

“Don’t be sad,” she says. Her voice is very soft, whispered right in his ear. “I told you. You’re going to be glorious. Stronger than any elf, faster than any dwarf. The best of both of us, you see?”

“I never wanted to be faster,” Kíli says.

“No,” she says. “But you will learn to like it. I promise. Just as you have learned to like other things.” She runs her fingers down his chest and he catches his breath, her scent suddenly overwhelming.

He stiffens and swells, warmth spreading swiftly through him. He wants in a way he has never wanted before, desire surging hot and urgent in his blood with no potion this time to blame it on. He is dizzy again but it has nothing to do with walking.

He reaches for her without thinking, and it is so easy in this new body to hold her by her wrists, flip her over and lie between her legs, so quickly full and ready. They still have not given him any clothes, and she wears so very little. Her skin touching his makes him shiver, and she is limned in light.

She’s looking up at him with eyes wide and dark and hungry, and her scent takes on a new tang. She looks eager, shimmering skin now flushed and heated, chest heaving prettily. He can hear her heart pounding as quickly as his own.

He wants to take her so badly he aches, and it makes him feels strange and alien. “You said inside I hadn’t changed.”

“You haven’t.” Her breath is fast and hot against his chest and she writhes a little underneath him. He grows impossibly harder.

“No sane dwarf would want this,” he says. “You have changed me or I’ve gone crazy.”

“Believe what you will,” she breathes. She twists again underneath him and that is … oh … he bites back a groan. “We’re not so different as all that, dear one.”

And then her robe falls away as she wraps her legs around him, and he can no longer resist.

~

It takes near a full day to burn out this incomprehensible, unwelcome desire. Intimacy is a rare and precious thing for dwarves, always treasured, never squandered. This mindless rutting is abomination; Kíli feels filthy just remembering some of the things he has done, some of the ways in which she—he shudders, and twists his thoughts away.

“Is that how it is for elves all the time?” he asks sourly. Blessedly, the sight of the she-elf’s uncovered breasts is stirring no further passion.

She laughs, and runs a cloth over his chest. He is smooth and hairless, now, childlike, which makes the contemplation of all that they’ve just done even more nauseating. “No,” she says. “I’m afraid not.”

“So it will not always be this way for me?”

She studies his face thoughtfully, still absently cleaning his body. It takes longer now that there is more of him to wash. “There is no way to be certain, but I suspect not. Elves partake of intimacy at will, not just for breeding, but we are long-lived. There is rarely any urgency.”

He draws a ragged breath. Urgency is all he can remember of the past day, the need to take, and take again. “Then why,” he says, “why do you lay with me, if you do not feel the same need?”

“Oh,” she says lightly, dipping the cloth over his most sensitive parts. He clenches his jaw and wills himself not to react again. “Well. I am very old, Kíli. When you are as old as me, you will understand the thrill that novelty brings. And,” she ducks her head, looks at him from under tilted lashes, “you are very vigorous.”

He swallows hard and looks away. He is not proud of his lack of any restraint, but at the time, he could not think, could only touch, and taste, and feel.

She rises to her feet and stretches languorously. He’s taken with the gentle curve of her hips, the soft swell of her belly as she leans over. Then he frowns, wondering. “It is not possible … that is to say, now that I am like this, I could not … we could not …”

She raises an eyebrow. “Bear children? Little elflings? Is that what you want, dear one?”

“No,” he spits out. “NO. That would be–”

“Abomination?” she sighs. “You use that word far too easily. But no, I will not be bearing any of your children. I have told you, you are still a dwarf in your deepest essence. There is no magic that can change that. Should you have children someday, they will be as fully dwarf as if you and I had never met.”

“I shall not be fathering any children,” he says flatly.

She frowns, but it is not in anger. “I have not taken that ability from you.”

“Be that as it may, lady dwarves are few, and they may have their pick of suitors. Even before, I was too tall, too fine-featured. It would not have been easy to win a wife. But now?” He gestures at himself. “No.”

She tilts her head and looks genuinely puzzled. “But you are a prince, are you not?”

“A prince in a line exiled, with no kingdom. It means little.” In truth, it meant little before. But now, with how he looks, with what he has done, being a prince means nothing at all.

“As I have told you before, nothing is set in stone.” She reaches for a bundle of cloth on her dressing table and brings it over to him. “Well, my exiled prince,” she says, smiling, “this is for you.” She looks genuinely happy, even excited. “It has been all but finished for weeks, but the tailors were awaiting final measurements.” She thrusts the bundle in his lap. It is soft and luxurious, melting beneath his fingers, cloth that seems to breathe with a life all its own. “Go on,” she says. “I cannot wait to see you.”

He dresses silently, remembering all the times he’d wished for clothing. Now he would give anything to still be naked and still a dwarf. The cloth feels strange against his skin, but he cannot be sure whether that is the fault of the elven weave, his new skin, or the fact that it has been so long since he’s worn clothing of any sort.

“Now that the process is complete,” she says, “you will of course need many more garments to wear. We shall keep the tailors very busy. You are much broader than an elf. Everything must be custom fit. They will be delighted. ” She crosses to her wardrobe and peers inside. “I shall have to make room for your things.”

Kíli goes still, his fingers fumbling at the buttons of the tunic. He swallows. “Am I to live here with you?”

“Of course,” she says, turning back to him and smiling. “There is no need for you to spend any further time in the cells.”

Something of his feelings must have shown on his face, because she frowns, her expression beginning to turn stormy. “You are unhappy with this arrangement?”

He is not so addled that he will risk answering anything but “no,” and quickly. But he stares at her for another minute and says, “I did not like the dungeons. But I would not lie to you. To see my brother was important to me.”

She nods, her expression thoughtful. “It appears the reverse is equally true. Your brother and uncle have been very persistent in demanding information from Thranduil these past weeks, though I convinced him to say nothing. They think you dead.”

Kíli considers for a moment how much easier it would be if he were, or even if they only thought so mistakenly. But then he thinks of Thorin, already full with hatred for Thranduil and elves in general, and how little provocation it would take to tip him towards war. The Company is but a handful of dwarves, but for a war against their enemies, ones who had captured and tortured and killed a prince of the line of Durin, Thorin could raise thousands. Would the elves, fearing exactly that, find it more prudent to simply eliminate the threat? It is not so very far-fetched, Kíli thinks, shivering.

And Fíli—to let him believe Kíli dead—that would be easier for Kíli, perhaps, but he is certain Fíli would not find it so. In Fíli’s place, he would want to know his brother was alive.

“Now that it is done,” he says steadily, “will Thranduil tell them I still live?”

“Perhaps. Thranduil bears no more love for your uncle than your uncle does for him. I don’t doubt he takes a certain pleasure from knowing Thorin suffers so. It would amuse him to send them hence, thinking you had died.”

It would not amuse him if Thorin returned with an army bent on destroying the forest, Kíli thinks. But it matters little unless the dwarves are set free. “Will he release them?”

The she-elf shrugs. “I believe so, though I cannot say when. I have his ear at times, but know not his mind. I think it unlikely he will slaughter them outright, having kept them for so long, and to keep them here indefinitely wastes resources that could be better used.” Then her face goes coy, almost playful, and she pulls him close enough that her breath brushes his ear. “You know they suffer, thinking you dead. What would you give, to let them know you still live?” she asks. “How important is it to you that you be the one to tell them?”

Chapter Text

It has been a full turn of the moon since Kíli was last seen. Mirkwood is gripped by a bitter cold, and everything seems dark and dead. The spiders grow in strength and number, and the elves can often not be bothered putting the dwarves to work. They do not even regularly assign elves to guard the dungeon, and there are days now that no one comes to the dwarves at all but to bring them food and drink. They are all irritable and dispirited from their long confinement and forced inaction. The only thing they can do is talk and they do so constantly, free at least from worry that anyone will overhear.

“I think they might let us go,” Ori says hopefully. “They have no need to keep us here any longer. We have long since missed our chance on Durin’s Day.”

Thorin growls. Their long captivity has been hardest on him, and Kíli’s likely death weighs heavily on his mind, Fíli knows. On the few occasions they have been let out to bathe or do some bit of work, he has been thin and distant.

“Kíli said he never told them about the secret entrance,” Fíli says. “They don’t know we’ve missed a chance that comes but once a year.”

Balin hums. “I suspect Ori’s right. Something has changed. They do not even pretend to need us for work any longer. If they meant to kill us they’d have done it long since, and they can hardly be holding us hostage; there is no one to pay a ransom. I think perhaps they’ve gotten what they want from us.”

That being Kíli, Fíli thinks, though no one will any longer dare to speak his name.

Night falls and brings with it near darkness. With no guards posted to keep watch, the elves keep the dungeon only very dimly lit. Fíli tries to sleep, but his dreams are restless and uneasy. He thinks he hears Kíli’s voice but he cannot understand the words, and it makes him mournful. He wonders if Kíli is speaking from Mandos' halls; if he has wisdom to pass on, or words of comfort.

“Fíli,” the dream-Kíli says. “Wake up.”

Fíli does not want to wake up, for if he can only hear Kíli’s voice in his dreams, he will sleep as long as possible.

“Fíli,” he hears, urgent and insistent. “Nadad, wake up!”

Fíli stirs and blinks and strains to see, but the torches in the hallways are too far away and too dim to provide any illumination. He’s half-asleep, and mutters blearily, “Kíli?”

He hears a soft swear and a sigh of relief. “You would not waken. I have only a little time.”

Fíli is fully awake in an instant, heart pounding in wild relief. This is no dream. This is no dream. “Where are you?”

“I am here,” Kíli says, and Fíli feels a touch brush quickly against his shoulder, leaning up against the bars of his cell.

“You,” Fíli says, befuddled. “You are outside the cell?”

“For just a few moments.” Kíli’s voice sounds peculiar, low and rough. “I made her promise, if I was good, that I could come. Then I was very, very good.” He breathes, a little raggedy. “It was worth it. I have missed you. You look well, brother.”

Fíli wishes he could say the same, but he can’t see how Kíli looks. He can’t see anything at all, no matter how he strains. He settles instead for sticking his fingers through the bars and after a minute, Kíli’s fingers touch his. Fíli savors the touch; the last time he saw Kíli, he could not tolerate even this much contact. “Brother,” he manages, “I thought you were dead.”

Kíli sighs and settles, his head coming to rest against the bars. Fíli strokes his hair the way he used to when he was little and the nightmares came, but Kíli’s hair is sleek and smooth now, elvish. Fíli feels a twinge of pain. Kíli’s hair was always his most dwarvish feature, thick and wavy; their mother spent hours fighting it to a truce, braiding it into submission. Now it slips through Fíli’s fingers like silk. Fíli swallows down bile at the soft, unnatural feel, and wonders what else of Kíli the elves have changed to suit their whims, remembers with a chill Kíli’s fingers splayed long and strange against the cell wall. And he wonders whose idea it was, that Kíli should come tonight under the cover of darkness.

“Not dead,” Kíli says, but his voice is dull and lifeless.

Fíli feels anger rising in his throat. “What have they done to you?”

Kíli sighs again, and moves away. Fíli feels the loss of physical contact like the severing of a limb. “I told you once,” he says, “they wanted to play. It seems I make a good plaything.” He laughs a little bitterly. “If they let you out, you must leave. Don’t look for me, don’t try to rescue me. Just leave, and don’t look back.”

Fíli grunts. “They’re not going to let us go.”

Kíli swears. “They might. They will. They have to. They have what they want, it’s done, they don’t need you anymore.”

“What they want,” Fíli says. “You mean they have you.”

“Mahal,” Kíli says irritably, “You will never change. Please. If Thranduil relents, then—just get out and don’t look back. Go to Erebor if you want, go back home, go anywhere. But leave Mirkwood, and don’t come back.”

Fíli stays very, very calm. “I am not leaving you.”

“You have to. They won’t let me go.”

“Then I will stay until they do. Kíli-“

“No! Fíli, you don’t understand.“ Kíli’s voice is harsh and frustrated, and still odd. Off. “I will not go with you. I wouldn’t even if I could.”

Fíli counts, breath by breath, until his pulse is restored to something normal. On the other side of the bars, there is complete silence. “Brother,” he says carefully, “I don’t know what they have done to you, but it doesn’t matter-“

“It does,” Kíli says flatly. He shifts and fabric rustles. Fíli’s momentarily confused before he realizes the obvious: Kíli is wearing clothing. Fíli almost can’t comprehend it, the elves kept Kíli without clothing for so long. He reaches through the bars again and his fingers brush over cloth, soft and smooth—like Kíli’s hair—elven, and wrong. “I didn’t want you to go, thinking I was dead,” Kíli says. “I was afraid if you thought that, you’d come back and do something stupid. Or Thorin would, even if you wouldn’t.”

Fair point, Fíli knows. But he thinks he’ll probably do something stupid anyway, if he has to leave here without his brother, no matter what the elves have done to him.

~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~

The she-elf is waiting for him as he returns from the cells. A meal is set for two on the dining table and candlelight shimmers in the night air. “Well?” she asks, stretching languidly. Her thin robe is barely decent. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come back.”

Kíli frowns, jaw clenched. “It was only a few minutes,” he said. “Not long enough.”

“Long enough to see he fares well,” she says carelessly. “As do they all.”

“He is too thin.”

She shrugs delicately. “It seems our food does not agree with them particularly. But they do not starve. And once they leave, they will be free to eat as much meat and cheese and drink as much ale as they care for. The humans in Laketown are fond of such things. Their lives are short; they have hardly enough time to poison their bodies before they die.” She nods to the chair across the table. “Sit, dear one.”

He sits. The plate in front of him is piled high with fresh cut vegetables and neatly sliced fruits, ringed with bowls of honey and nectar and bread still warm from the ovens. He hasn’t eaten all day and he’s starving, but he waits for her nod before taking any food. He has been very well trained.

“Did you tell him he will have to leave you behind?” she asks, as he is slathering a piece of bread with honey.

“Yes.” He focuses on the honey. He is still clumsy with his larger hands and makes a mess. “He didn’t take it well.”

She smiles, and looks at him fondly as he fails to wipe honey from his fingers. It makes his stomach twist, the way she looks at him; like a pet, or a toy. “I can’t say I blame him. I would not want to leave you behind either. Have you any other siblings?”

His stomach twists again, harder. “No.”

“I didn’t think so, or you would have mentioned it by now.” She waves a hand in the air, sketching a picture of no concern. “Well, dwarves are used to dealing with loss. And he will have your uncle and other kin to comfort him.”

“As I will have you,” he says, because it’s what she wants to hear. And that he is happy here; that he understands how lucky he is to have been given this gift, this chance; that he is happy too that he will live a double or even triple lifetime now; but never that it is unbearable that he will outlive all his friends and family; that it is impossible to abide the fact that he will never see them again.

“Oh,” she says, shaking her head. “You’ve got honey all over.” He is so well trained by now that his body reacts to even that, just the slight lilt in her voice, the way she tilts her head and looks at him out of the corner of her eyes. She is hungry again, but not for bread, and he wonders why she ever bothered giving him clothing, since he wears it so infrequently.

~

“So this is your experiment.” The elf-prince is circling Kíli slowly, looking him up and down. “It appears your theories were correct, Lady Alwyn.”

Kíli startles for a moment. He has been here for so very long and never learned the she-elf’s name. It is strange to think she has one, that she can be encompassed in a few small syllables.

“I was fortunate,” she says, but despite her words, she is full of pride and boastful. “He was an excellent subject. Young and hale and spirited.”

“And tall,” says the prince blandly. “For a dwarf.” He is still circling.

Kíli forces himself to keep his eyes on the ground. It is disconcerting still to look eye-to-eye with an elf, and he is unfamiliar anyway with elf protocol, of how to deal with elf royalty.

The elf-prince steps back. “Does he speak?”

Kíli flicks a glance at the she-elf—Alwyn. She nods her head at him, granting permission with an amused twist of her mouth.

“Yes,” Kíli says.

“Good.” The prince turns to Alwyn. “Then I would speak to him. Alone.” A flicker of irritation shoots across Alwyn’s face, and he adds with an arch of his eyebrow, “By your leave.”

Her lips tight, Alwyn says, “As you wish.”

The prince is silent for a moment after she leaves, and then he settles into a chair, and waves a hand to indicate that Kíli should do the same. “I am Legolas,” he says mildly. “Son of Thranduil and Prince of Mirkwood. And you are Kíli, nephew to Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thrór, King Under the Mountain.”

“Yes,” Kíli says cautiously.

“So it seems that you are also a prince,” Legolas says. “We may have much in common.”

Kíli frowns. “Being a prince among my people carries little weight.”

“As I said,” Legolas says. “We may have much in common.” He is silent for a moment, considering. “My father,” he says, “disapproves of your uncle’s quest.”

“My uncle’s quest is none of your father’s concern.”

“It is everyone’s concern. You would risk awakening Smaug simply to reclaim your gold.”

“To reclaim our home,” Kíli says hotly.

“To reclaim your home,” Legolas concedes, “and your gold.” He contemplates Kíli again. “You do not look much like an elf.”

“I do not look much like a dwarf.” His eyes drop to his hands, fingers long and drawn and still strange.

“It is true, but then again you did not look so very much like a dwarf before,” Legolas says thoughtfully. “You were too tall, too thin, and had not much of a beard. How old are you?”

Kíli feels himself flushing. “I am old enough. My beard was slow to come in.” He resists the urge to rub at his chin. “It never will now, I suppose.”

“No,” Legolas says. “I suppose not. I am sorry.” He sounds like he might mean it, but in a distant sort of way, as one expresses regret for a wrong of someone else’s doing. “It is always easier to agree to things in the abstract, and Lady Alwyn is very old. I do not know the ways of your kind, but among ours, respect must be paid to those to whom it is due, even by our kings. Lady Alwyn requested a dwarf, and my father agreed, but–I do not think he gave much consideration to your wishes.”

If anyone had given any consideration whatsoever to his wishes, Kíli thinks, he would have remained unchanged, but he does not say anything. Still, his jaw tightens. When he looks up, Legolas will not meet his eyes, but rises to his feet. “They tell me you are an archer. That is not so very common among dwarves.”

“Not so very uncommon,” Kíli says, though in truth, dwarven archers are rare. “I showed ability as a child. My uncle is skilled, and encouraged my interest. I had some lessons from one who knew well enough to teach, but mostly I was self-taught.”

“It’s a solitary pursuit,” Legolas says, and his eyes are keen and understanding, like he knows just why Kíli might have preferred to spend long hours alone practicing with a bow. “Though it needn’t be. Have you tested your skills yet?” Now that you have changed, he doesn’t say, but it is obvious.

“No. She—that is, the Lady Alwyn—she keeps me to herself.”

Legolas raises an eyebrow, smirking just a little. “Indeed,” he says. “We have all heard how she keeps you.”

Kíli flushes again. “That is not of my choice.”

Legolas frowns, seeming truly discomfited for the first time, but nods to the door. “Come. We are close enough in height. I have a bow that might suit you. I am curious to see how you fare with it.”

~

Kíli snaps the bow.

Legolas raises an eyebrow. “I see Lady Alwyn was not exaggerating as to your strength.”

Kíli is staring at the pieces of the bow, one in either hand, disconcerted. “That has never happened before.”

Legolas coughs. “It was an old bow. Perhaps the wood had weakened.” He hands Kíli another, cautiously. “This was my father’s once. Can you try not to break it?”

“I wasn’t trying to break the first.” He is petulant and more than a little off-balance, slowly floundering his way through the afternoon. It has been months since he has had to speak with anyone but Fili or the she-elf, and he feels like he’s lost the skill of conversing, words coming slowly, his tongue thick and stumbling.

Legolas seems to have no expectations of him but that he participate in light conversation, and Legolas did not know him before, so cannot compare his new self to his old. It is altogether more pleasant than any time spent with the she-elf, and—if he is honest with himself—more relaxing than spending time with Fili, now that he must hide every part of who he is.

Kíli takes the second bow, holding it gingerly as he nocks an arrow, and settles into position. His vantage point is off; the distance to the ground too great, the bow held out too far in front of him with his new, longer arms. But he breathes and finds a focal point, letting his body settle, adjusting to his new proportions and remembering—Fíli always preferred the sword, but Kíli’s first choice weapon has ever been the bow.

With a soft exhale, he releases the arrow. It flies straight and true, hits the target and tears through, landing somewhere in the forest.

Legolas quirks a smile at him. “Nice shot.”

“Fíli always says I could shoot the twitch off a rabbit,” Kíli says without thinking.

Legolas is lining up his own shot. He stands straight and tall, all coiled power and grace. “Fíli. Is that your brother?”

“Yes.” Kíli doesn’t particularly want to talk about Fíli.

Legolas’s shot slips through the hole Kíli’s arrow left, and a second arrow flies on its heels. “He was very vocal, along with your uncle.” Legolas glances at Kíli for a moment before he nocks another arrow. “Has he seen you of late?”

Kíli considers his words carefully. “I have seen him, but only at night. He doesn’t know what—what has happened. I think that’s best.” Legolas looks at him with an inscrutable expression, and Kíli sighs. “He will not understand. None of them will. They will be angry. When—if—your father releases them, I don’t want them to do something stupid.”

Legolas puts his bow down. “Why should they? Lady Alwyn says she has made you better than any dwarf. Better even than an elf. They should be pleased.”

Kíli scowls, and lines up another shot, loosing his arrow with such force it knocks the target to the ground. “Dwarves do not like elves, nor think like them. To see me like this—she might as well have turned me into an orc, for all that they will accept it.”

Chapter Text

Along with the decreased interest in the dwarves has come a slight relaxing of their stringent captivity; they are permitted now to attend to their cleansing without attendants, all of them held hostage for each other’s good behavior and searched when they leave the dungeon and then again when they return. Fíli is of equal measure grateful for this small freedom and embarrassed that the elves perceive them to be so little of a threat. If they were so inclined, he thinks they could coordinate efforts to build an impressive armory of sticks and stones, but that is hardly enough to strike fear in the heart of the elves.

The sun is shining, but it is cool, and Fíli shivers in his damp clothing. His breeches and tunic were so stiff and filthy he could not face putting them back on, so he stayed an extra few minutes washing out the worst of the grime, though he fears that with one more washing, they may disintegrate altogether. Now he is clean but soggy, and his breeches chafe uncomfortably with every step. He is making his way back to the dungeon when he hears a commotion some little distance away: cheers and catcalls, shouting and grunting and sometimes a clanging of swords. Some sort of competition then, and from the sound of it not very different from those of the dwarves or those of men.

He’s intrigued, and in no special rush to get back to his gloomy cell, surrounded by the endless chatter of other frustrated, irritable, smelly dwarves. He has a little time yet, he thinks, before the elves will mark his absence as being unduly long, so he makes his way cautiously toward the noise, being as unobtrusive as possible. Ahead in a clearing, two elves are battling with swords. The surrounding crowd looks no different from any audience to any sporting match Fíli has ever attended—they are drinking and trading wagers, pointing and hooting. It’s the first time Fíli has seen the elves thus relaxed, and, for once, they seem not so very different from dwarves.

The battling elves look evenly matched. One is a light-haired elf, tall and very confident, obviously highly skilled. Fíli is reasonably certain he is the prince, Thranduil’s son. Fíli had heard that he favors the bow, but from what Fíli can see, he is more than competent with a sword. His opponent is dark-haired and much stockier than the prince, but clearly less skilled with the sword. Despite his lesser skill, he is obviously the stronger of the two, relying on the brute force of his strokes to wear the prince down.

Fíli creeps closer still, careful to stay out of sight. If the elves were not so wholly intent on the fight, they would certainly have noticed him, but everyone’s eyes are focused on the combatants. Even Thranduil himself, he sees. The two sparring elves circle each other, cautious and wary, but not with any intent to do serious harm. More than play, less than battle. Perhaps some sort of exhibition for the king, who is watching his son with something resembling a scowl—the only expression Fíli has ever seen him wear.

A few steps farther is as close as he dares approach. The two elves thrust and feint and turn, and suddenly Fíli sees.

He staggers, blinking hard. It cannot be. It cannot. But his eyes are as sharp as ever, and he is close enough now that there is no doubt. The prince’s dark-haired opponent, as tall as an elf but as broad as a dwarf, hacking with a sword in that stupid way of his because he always preferred to practice with a bow, is Kíli.

Fíli watches, frozen. Kíli’s expression is fierce and grim; the prince’s, concentrated but thoughtful. It does not look like the prince—Legolas is his name, Fíli thinks—is exerting himself overmuch, but he is not relaxed, either. Kíli looks as displeased with sparring as ever, and his movements are awkward and ill-timed, sometimes too quick and sometimes too slow, as if he can’t quite get his body to do his bidding. He seems impatient and irritable as he strikes again and again at the prince’s sword. Fíli’s gut clenches, for there can be no doubt that is Kíli—Fíli has sparred countless times with his brother, is too intimately familiar with that look of exasperation as a match extends past Kíli’s limited patience for swordplay. He would ever grow rash and aggressive at the end, in a rush to be done and free again to do anything else at all.

With one particularly ferocious snarl, Kíli knocks the sword out of the prince’s hands and kicks him to the ground. He stops then, and Fíli can see his hands shaking.

Legolas flows to his feet with alien grace. He is grinning, and he says something to Kíli in Sindarin. Fíli can only recognize the language, not make any sense of it, but Kíli frowns and answers back in the same language, which should not be as surprising as it is. Over the months of their captivity, Kíli’s speech had turned more and more frequently to Sindarin; now that he looks like an elf it makes sense he would speak like one too. But sensible or no, Fíli’s heart sinks just a fraction further, and he understands finally why Kíli was so insistent that he would not be leaving Mirkwood.

Another elf glides over to Kíli. A female, to judge by the bumps and curves. She smiles widely at him and links her arm with his, stroking him possessively while she flutes something quick and liquid at Thranduil, who spouts equally incomprehensible nonsense back at her. They spend a few moments parrying back and forth, with Kíli standing silent and stone-faced at her side.

Jolting to life, Fíli stumbles out of the bushes and back to the path, hurrying to the dungeon, thoughts whirling. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s told the other dwarves that Kíli lives, something they were all undeniably happy to hear, especially Thorin. But he cannot tell them this; they would not be able to grasp it. And if they did, if they truly understood what had happened—Fíli is afraid to imagine how they might react.

~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~

Kíli has never given much thought to torture, but if he had, he’d have said the first day would be the worst, because one wouldn’t know what to expect.

It turns out he would have been wrong, because there can be mercy in not knowing what to expect. When the reality is worse than anything the brain can conjure, ignorance is a little bit of a blessing.

Kíli had figured this out on his third day with Alwyn—still the she-elf to him back then. His first day in her chambers he had not quite been able to believe what was happening even as it was happening. The elves had healing magic, everyone knew that, but what wasn’t known, or at least wasn’t known to him, was that they could take that same magic and twist it, rip you apart from the inside without leaving so much as a mark on the outside, and then heal you up and start all over.

His resolve not to scream had lasted five minutes past the point when he’d already begun screaming, when the pain was so overwhelming and so unreal that he didn’t even realize the horrible noises he was hearing were coming from his own throat. Thorin wouldn’t scream, he’d thought, shuddering, but then the she-elf put her hands on him again and he’d changed his mind, because of course Thorin would be screaming, anyone would be screaming, there wasn’t any way not to scream. He’d screamed until he couldn’t scream any more, and then she healed his throat so he could keep screaming for longer.

He’d gone into the second day thinking it couldn’t possibly be as bad as the first, that he must have misremembered, that sleep had fogged his mind, magnified the memories until they were too bright and sharp. It was only when she’d touched him again that he’d realized the only thing sleep had done was to rest his throat and give him new strength to buck and strain against the chains holding him down.

So it was the third day that it had all became real, when the first sight of the door to the chamber was enough to make him pant like a scared rabbit, when he was already swallowing a scream before they’d done anything but strap him down. On the third day, he’d known exactly how bad it was going to be, and that there was nothing he could say or do that would make a difference, and that’s when he thinks he started to break.

Clearly that had been the whole point, Kíli thinks now, lying in the soft bed with Alwyn asleep next to him. They had never asked him any questions or demanded any information, because the only thing they’d needed was for him to break, so that they could rebuild his head before they rebuilt his body. And it had worked without a doubt, for he is lying in her bed next to her, and she sleeps deeply, with no fear even though there are weapons in the room Kíli could use if he wanted. But he has been conditioned like an animal; just the thought of raising a hand to her makes his heart race, like he is still strapped down and screaming.

He’s always known in some way that this can be done, that men and dwarves and all sentient creatures can be trained just like dumb animals and house-pets. He’s seen slaves rescued from the goblin pits, afraid of their own shadow in the sun, some whose minds have been so twisted that they seek to escape freedom and return to their masters because of the fear of what will happen if they get caught. He understands that all mortal minds can break and that this has happened to him; he knows too that every day and night he stays with Alwyn is just more evidence that he is shattered beyond repair, that he can no longer trust in his own sanity.

He turns then to face the wall, the soft moonlight just enough to make out the shape of the sword he’d used for sparring, and tries to imagine himself slipping out of bed, taking the sword and thrusting it down among the covers. But it’s useless, hopeless; the memory of pain sweeps up and fills him entire, Alwyn’s voice promising surcease if he yields, delivering more pain when he resists, and he can’t, he can’t.

His breath catches then, not quite a sob, but it’s enough that Alwyn stirs, raises her head to look at him with heavy-lidded eyes. She never remarks on his nightmares, though she is often extra-solicitous afterwards; she looks at him now in the same way, as if he’s a child who needs soothing. “Poor Kíli,” she whispers. “Always thinking.” The worst part is that when she strokes his cheek, he is soothed.

Because she’s awake, she takes her pleasure with him. Kíli is tired and sore from sparring with the prince, but his body responds readily enough to the attention, and it would be a lie to say that he does not look forward to the release. She knows by now exactly how to make him best react, and while there are times she can be very cold and cruel, there are also times when she can be almost tender, when she takes the time to ensure his pleasure along with her own. Perversely, her tenderness on this particular night makes him angry and he gets more than a little rough, pinning her wrists tight enough to bruise, marking her neck with his teeth and her hips where he grips her. She responds eagerly in kind; in the end it is the farthest thing from lovemaking he can imagine. She is reckless and wild. He thinks the pretty curses she’s uttering in Sindarin are the most honest things to ever fall from her lips.

She sleeps easily when they’re done, loose-limbed and hair wanton across the pillows, but Kíli is awake and unsettled. They both smell of sex and sweat; it makes his stomach turn.

He rises and grabs a cloak, slipping out from the chamber, nodding uneasily at the elves who stand guard in this part of the forest. They ignore him. He finds his way down to the stream and washes up in the fresh water, shivering a little but desperate to cleanse himself. He rinses off and rinses off again. It doesn’t seem to help. He still feels filthy.

“Can’t sleep?” The voice at his shoulder makes him jump. Damn elves and their sneaky, padding feet.

It’s the prince, one eyebrow raised, out doing Mahal-knows-what. He eyes rake up and down Kíli’s naked body, assessing, and his amused expression fades to a scowl at the many bruises. “Were you injured today while we sparred? You should have said something. We have healers.”

“I’ve no wish for your healers,” Kíli says tightly. He’s had all he ever wants of elves and their healing magic. “The bruises will heal on their own.”

Legolas is still frowning. He grips Kíli’s arm and twists it, hissing at the scratches running down the inside of his arm. “That is no sparring injury.”

Kíli wrenches his arm away. “That too will heal.”

Legolas is silent for a moment, then one eyebrow arches high and he grins knowingly. “I hope you gave back as good as you got.”

Kíli flushes hot. If Alwyn had been a dwarf, her bruises would last for days, and everyone would know what they—what he had done. It would not be tolerated, not when there were so few women; any dwarf treating a maiden like that would be severely punished. Beaten, at the very least, castrated, even, if not killed outright. Realization makes him dizzy and sends him to his knees.

After a minute, Legolas crouches down next to him. “Kíli.” He touches Kíli’s shoulder, gently, and leaves it there even through Kíli’s automatic flinch. All traces of amusement are gone; he now sounds hesitant and concerned. “I know dwarvish ways are different than ours.”

“Very,” Kíli grits out.

“But you should not–” Legolas pauses, and breathes, brow wrinkled. “You do not need to, to just accept what she does, if you do not like it.”

Kíli laughs, and it sounds loud and harsh and vile to his own ears. “If I do not like it?” he repeats. “What does it matter, what I like and don’t like?” He waves his arm around, sweeping in the river and the forest and Legolas and everything elven, all at once. “This is all there is for me,” he says, angry and bitter. “I can’t ever go home again, and I’ve no great desire to go out and see the world in this form, even if she would let me leave. So it doesn’t matter what I like. I’ll speak your cursed tongue, and I’ll eat your cursed food, and I will give your lady whatever it is she wants, no matter how depraved, because I have no other choice.”

The clearing is silent for a long moment after Kíli’s outburst, and when Legolas finally speaks, his voice is very quiet. “You truly believe you cannot go home?”

“Like this?” Kíli shakes his head, suddenly very tired. “They’d kill me. Exile me, at least. Not just for how I look, but for … for what I’ve done. Things I’ve–” He grimaces. “Better my mother thinks I died here, than she should know what I’ve become.”

“But none of this was your fault,” Legolas says, brow creased in confusion. “You did not consent. Surely your kin will not hold you accountable for things over which you had no control.”

Kíli shrugs wearily. “As you said, our ways are different than yours.” He rises to his feet to finish up his washing, careful around the many tender spots.

Legolas watches as Kíli’s washes, but his attention is matter-of-fact, not prurient; he shows no particular interest in Kíli’s body other than to catalog the many small injuries latticed across Kíli’s skin. When Kíli has finished and slipped on his robe, Legolas asks, as if it is no great matter, “When did you last speak with your kin?”

Kíli is trying to clip his hair into some semblance of order. “Last week,” he says, “I think.” Days and nights have blurred together in his mind of late, and he is only just beginning to understand the complex elvish calendar. “Lady Alwyn let me visit Fíli for a little while.”

“You don’t need her permission, you know. You have the freedom to go where you will.” Legolas’s mouth twists briefly. “Within reason.”

Kíli goes motionless. It is true that guards no longer stand watch at Alwyn’s chambers, and none of the elves seem to pay his comings and goings very much attention at all. But it has not occurred to him that he could just go where he wishes when he wishes. The thought of seeing Fíli tonight, after he has done what he has done, is terrifying—he doesn’t think there is a river large enough in all the world to wash the shame off, and he is afraid Fíli will sense it on him—but seeing his brother is also something he desperately craves; for a little while, in the dark, he can talk to Fíli and forget.

Finally, Kíli tilts his head. “Then by your leave,” he says politely, “I will pay a visit to my brother.”

Legolas nods, but calls out as Kíli walks away. “If you are willing, I would spar with you again. It has been some time since I have faced an opponent willing to kick me to the ground.”

Kíli stops and turns back. The prince is standing by the river’s edge, head cocked, looking at Kíli with a curiously pleased expression on his face, as if Kíli is a new and interesting creature who has crossed his path for the first time. And in a way, Kíli supposes, that is the truth. “I will be happy to spar with you again, my lord,” he says with a bob of his head. “It will be a great pleasure indeed to kick you to the ground as many times as you like.”

Point scored, Kíli smiles to himself as the prince’s cheerful laughter follows him all the way down the path.

Chapter Text

Fíli is sleeping only lightly when Kíli’s whisper wakes him. It’s the middle of the night, and the dark surrounds him like a blanket. Fíli scrambles to the front of the cell and pokes his fingers through the bars, searching. He’s rewarded with a touch of Kíli’s fingers, swift and hesitant, quickly withdrawn. Knowing what he now knows, Kíli’s new reluctance to touch makes more sense to Fíli; fleeting contact isn’t enough to sense the size and shape of a hand, or a head.

Fíli’s been in a daze all day after seeing Kíli and the elf prince spar. He didn’t say a word to anyone else, but kept going over it in his mind, around and around in circles, Kíli of a size with the elves, beardless, speaking their tongue. And there had been that elf female, looking at him with pride and possession written in glance, and she had touched Kíli, let her fingers run over his arm, through his too-straight hair, like he was a pet or a plaything. Kíli hadn’t done anything about it at all but close his eyes briefly and clench his jaw, accepting it as if it was his due.

“You look thin, brother,” Kíli says, as if there is nothing going on at all, but the words sound foreign on his tongue, syllables following one after the other too swiftly, consonants muted. He sounds, Fíli thinks, like an elf speaking to a dwarf.

Fíli shudders. “Kíli.”

“Are you not eating? I know they feed you.”

“I’m eating enough,” he lies. Then, “Kíli-“

Kíli ignores him. “You’ve lost half a stone at least. It does your appearance no favors. When you get home-“

“Kíli.” Kíli falls quiet at the insistence in Fíli’s voice, waiting. Fíli leans forward again, rests his forehead against the bars where he knows Kíli’s head is resting on the other side. It is late, and he hears no noise from any of the other cells, but he whispers anyway, quietly enough so that no one can overhear. “I saw you today.”

Kíli inhales, sharp and swift and panicked.

“I was washing up, I heard fighting, and I saw you.”

“No,” Kíli whispers, either in plea or denial.

“What did they do?” Fíli asks. His voice, he notes, sounds oddly calm, perhaps in counterpoint to the panic he can feel bleeding into the cell from the other side of the bars. “Kíli, nadad, tell me. What did they do to you?”

Kíli is breathing fast, but then he sighs and settles. “If you saw,” he says dully, “then you already know.”

“I don’t know anything,” Fíli says. “How is such a thing even possible?” He is remembering now: all those days apart, all of Kíli’s screaming and begging for mercy that never came; all those nights when Kíli was dumped back in the cell stinking of herbs and irrational, crying out in Khuzdul and Common and in the end even slipping into Sindarin; Kíli’s fingers stretched too long and narrow, hair too straight, body gone wisp-thin and smooth; all of that was just preparation for this, and it’s impossible but it’s happened nonetheless, and there is no point in asking how.

“Elf magic,” Kíli says. It sounds like a curse.

“Was it her?” He feels Kíli stiffen. “The she-elf, today, when you were fighting, I saw her. Was she the one who did this?” It must be, he thinks. There could be no other explanation for the way she’d looked at Kíli, touched him like she’d owned him, like she’d made him.

“Yes,” Kíli says. There’s an odd note to his voice that Fíli can’t place, some emotion Fíli can’t identify.

“Why?”

Kíli mutters something that sounds like a swear word, but Fíli doesn’t understand it. It sounds elven. So Kíli even curses like them now. “To create some kind of blended creature,” Kíli says. “An elf with dwarf traits, or a dwarf with elf traits. I’m stronger than they are and faster than you.”

Fíli slumps back. “So you are part elf now?”

“I don’t know what I am,” Kíli says. He sounds tired and bewildered. “The elves, people say they are calm, measured.” He sighs. “I do not feel that way.”

Fíli wishes he could touch him, but Kíli has moved away from the bars, so he asks instead the question that has been circling in his head all day. “Can she change you back?”

Kíli is quiet for a long time, just breathing slowly, in and out. “I don’t know,” he eventually answers. “It’s just … Fíli, it hurt. It hurt so much, for so long. I don’t know if I could do that again.” His voice has dropped. He is embarrassed, Fíli guesses, at showing weakness. “Anyway, she’d never agree to it. This is what she wanted. She’s used to getting what she wants.” That odd note in his voice is back. It is something other than anger, but less than grief. Fíli remembers the way the she-elf ran her fingers up Kíli’s arm, the way he’d stiffened, but also—he’d leaned in, Fíli thinks. She’d touched him, in that private, possessive way, out in public, where anyone could see—she’d touched him and he’d leaned into it.

Fíli cannot bear to think of what that means. Because he was already afraid of how Thorin and the others would react to how Kíli looks, without having to fear how they will react to what Kíli might have done, things they will not be able to accept.

He will not wonder, he decides. Unless Kíli tells him something, he will assume there is nothing to tell.

~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~

Kíli makes his way back to Alwyn’s chambers, unsettled. Can she change you back? Fíli had asked; Kíli has no idea, but the truth of it is that the thought has never occurred to him. He never thought to ask, not once, never even let himself wish for that, and what does that mean, that the one thing he wants above all, he has never even dreamed about?

That he’s a coward, perhaps; that the process of change had been so long and painful that he’s simply too afraid to go through it again. Or that he’s more broken than he’s thought, not even to let himself dream.

Or maybe—he thinks with shame, as he enters the chamber and Alwyn is there, soft and sensual in sleep, and lust flickers through him—maybe everything she’d predicted has come to pass. Maybe he’s come to crave her so much that he cannot bear the thought of changing back, if it means losing her.

She stirs and stretches languidly, frowning when she realizes he is not in the bed. Her eyes flutter open and she sees him across the room changing from his robe into day clothing—he is still so very pleased to have clothing—and her mouth draws tight with irritation. Her expression sets his heart pounding in apprehension, and he wonders dimly how it can be that there is any part of him that wants to touch her at all, when just a glance can send him spiraling into panic.

He knows what to do when she is like this, has learned by now how to sometimes deflect her rage. She is angry only that he was not with her when she woke, as if he’s had the temerity to forget she owns him and that he has no place but beside her. It is easy, then, to show her he has forgotten nothing, so very easy to sink to his knees by the bed, bow his head under her hands, and gaze at her from under lowered lashes. She will take him or she will not, but it does not matter so long as she knows he is hers to take. His obedience is all she asks for, and it is a simple thing to give it to her, for he no longer remembers how to disobey.

This time it seems his show of submission is enough, and he breathes a little easier when she settles for briefly running her fingers through his hair, teasing out the knots. “Your hair is still so thick,” she murmurs thoughtfully. “No elf would know what to do with hair like this.”

“No dwarf has ever known either,” he says ruefully. “It was my mother’s bane, always wild and knotted. She would ever tell me I looked like a heathen.”

Alwyn’s mouth quirks up in half a smile. “And did you?”

“Oh, I suppose.” Kíli settles down onto his heels, still kneeling, but no longer bowed in obeisance. Alwyn looks beautifully morning-soft, hair mussed, eyes still half-closed against the light. Her hand has settled onto his shoulder, where she twists her fingers absently through the ends of his hair. Kíli resists the instinctive urge to pull away. “Even toddlers learn to sit still for braids, but there was always something else I would rather be doing. Mother learned the art of catching me on my way out the door to shove a clasp in, hold the worst of it out of my face. I never could be bothered.”

“And are braids so important to your people, then?” She sounds genuinely curious, interested. She is like this sometimes, eager and interested to learn, and he has been well-trained to respond to this mood, too.

“They are,” he says. “As a prince, I should have been properly braided every time I left the house. In royal plaits, no less – they are far more complex. To do them properly can take hours.”

Alwyn laughs, delighted. “I do not imagine you would have sat for that.”

“Not even once. But to be fair, even Thorin does not wear them. They are impractical unless you have a team of hairdressers at your disposal.”

“Some day,” she says, “you will have to show me.”

He grimaces. “I cannot manage anything more difficult than a simple daily working plait.” He picks at his hair in distaste. “I do not think my hair would hold anything else anyway. It has lost all of its curl.”

“Then we shall have to create new braids just for you,” she says, “if your hair will hold neither a dwarfish braid nor an elven one.” She rises to her feet and he rises too, following her to her wardrobe to help her dress, assistance she does not need but relishes nonetheless. “I spoke with Thranduil yesterday, after you sparred with Legolas.” She had sent him away to bathe immediately after the public exhibition ended – she says he sweats like a dwarf, and will not abide it; he thinks he has bathed more since arriving here than in his entire life before this. He had not seen her again until she had returned to her chambers for dinner, and she had not then been in the mood for anything as sedate as conversation.

“What had he to say?” Kíli is apprehensive. Thranduil holds his fate in his hands, along with the fates of the rest of the dwarves. He had not seemed especially happy during the sparring, but perhaps that was just because Kíli had disarmed his son. It is too bad, Kíli thinks, that it is not Legolas who is king, as he seems an altogether more cheerful and rational sort of elf, grinning even when sprawled upon the ground.

“He was quite satisfied,” Alwyn says, preening. “And impressed you managed to disarm Legolas.”

“Legolas was not trying altogether too hard.”

“No, but still, that you disarmed him was extraordinary. I have never seen him lose his sword thus. You are stronger even than I thought you would be.” She trails her fingers over his arms, tracing the muscles there, and smiles. “I said you would be glorious. Was I not right?”

He knows better than to disagree, and settles for a nod, which feels less dishonest. “Did you ask of my brethren?”

“I did,” she says, “as I promised I would. It is as we thought; he intends to release them by the turning of the next moon, but first he will speak with Thorin. He has concessions he will require.”

Kíli frowns, for he does not think Thorin will be of a mind to negotiate with the elf-king, but perhaps months of captivity will have left him hungry enough for freedom to agree, if what Thranduil asks is not so unreasonable.

“He will ask for a pledge that Thorin will not move against Erebor,” Alwyn says. “And that you should stay to bind Thorin to his word. What else he may ask for, I do not know.” She turns to face him, eyes aglow. “There shall be a great feast to celebrate the accord when it is reached, and I shall dress you in the best finery our tailors can craft. And we shall create proper braids for you as well, my love, and I shall gift you with a silver clasp to tie them.”

She shall dress him like a doll, Kíli thinks. A puppet. But he has been ruined for anything else, anyway. So if staying here with Alwyn is the price to be paid for his brother’s freedom—for all their freedom—it is well worth the paying of it.

Chapter Text

The elves are throwing them a goodbye party, as if the past half a year hasn’t happened, as if they have been guests all this time and not prisoners. They have even been supplied with new traveling clothes, made of leather softer and suppler than anything in Fíli’s experience. The dwarves pretend that they’re not impressed; they don’t bother pretending to be grateful. Their confiscated personal items—largely their weapons—will be returned once they have been escorted to the edge of Mirkwood, a precaution Fíli suspects is largely for show.

“If they’ve nicked my axes,” Dwalin grumbles threateningly, but he doesn’t finish his sentence. Really, Fíli thinks, there is no plausible way he could end it. A threat against the elves is wintry bluster. They’re all thin and weak and dispirited: no real sort of threat.

They are, however, all recently bathed and groomed, hair and beards neatly braided. Presentable, perhaps to help the elves believe their own fiction that they have been hosting guests, Fíli thinks, or perhaps it is to encourage dwarves to behave in a civilized manner at the celebration.

Fíli has never seen a dwarf inhibited by clean clothing and neat braids, but he hopes they will be able to play-act their way through dinner, though no one is in the mood for a party, not even Bombur. They are all irritable and anxious, wanting nothing more than to be on their way and out of this cursed forest as soon as possible. But the elves have insisted, and there is no way to change Thranduil’s mind. “It is midwinter,” he had told Thorin, calm and imperious. “Tonight we will feast, and then tomorrow you may leave.”

Thorin, recounting the conversation to the rest of the company, had not looked at Fíli once. It is clear by this that Kíli had been right; when they leave, they will be leaving Kíli behind. Fíli would protest, but his uncle’s expression brooks no disagreement, and Fíli knows Kíli has no intention of leaving anyway, so there is little point to arguing.

Fíli wonders what Thranduil has said to make Thorin agree to leave Kíli behind; if he knew of the changes Kíli has undergone, Thorin would doubtless be readier to agree to this course, but Fíli does not think Thorin is aware—Fíli doubts that Thorin could manage in that case to be so civil to the elves as he has been so far this day, strained and forced though his politeness has been. Fíli is even less certain as to the other dwarves’ reactions to the changes, and for that reason, Fíli has not told them what he knows. He knows Kíli would prefer it if he did not. If Kíli had his way, the other dwarves would leave the forest believing he’d died here. And perhaps, in a way, that is true.

“What should I have done?” Thorin says angrily, frustration bleeding through every syllable. He had pulled Fíli aside, along with Dwalin and Balin, and they sit now all in a huddle. He seethes with liquid anger, but when he looks at Fíli, his eyes are shadowed with guilt. “Thranduil would not be swayed. I am loath to leave Kíli here, but what good are we to him trapped in the dungeons? What good have we been to him these many months?”

Balin harrumphs. “We would need far more than a dozen dwarves to act against Thranduil. It would take time to gather a force and attempt a rescue.”

Thorin does not answer, but looks at Fíli again, his eyes filled with that same shadowy guilt.

“The longer we leave the lad here,” Dwalin mutters darkly, “the more likely he will turn against us. Thranduil would dearly love to count a Durin heir as an elf-friend.”

Fíli cannot let this stand. “Kíli is no elf-friend. Do not forget that they tortured him.”

“Aye,” Dwalin says gravely. “And now they have stopped. And they have released him from the cells, and feed and clothe him, and give him some freedom to go where he will. You have told us these things yourself. This is how prisoners are broken, Fíli, and loyalties reshaped. The elves are no fools.”

Thorin curses fluently. Fíli has rarely heard him so unguarded, though Dwalin and Balin do not flinch, and so Fíli wonders if perhaps Thorin has been holding his language in check all these years out of respect for Dís. “I asked to see him, to speak with him myself, so that I might ascertain his mind, so I might explain … But Thranduil–” The way he says the name is like a curse itself. “–said only that we might see Kíli tonight at the feast, if Kíli wished, but that he would not force him to speak with us.”

Dwalin grunts. “You see,” he says, “it has already begun.” Fíli wants to protest, but then the music starts and it is too loud for any quiet conversation to continue.

The party turns quickly loud and raucous, almost dwarf-like, though the elves have a peculiar insistence on using utensils to eat, even for meat still attached to the bone. The dwarves have a table to themselves. They eat, but do not drink at Thorin’s insistence. He does not trust elvish spirits, and would have them keep their wits about them. The elves show no such restraint, singing and feasting and drinking freely. It is not so very long before Fíli can see signs of intoxication among the elves—drunk is drunk, no matter the species.

There’s muttering to his left. Fíli wrenches his attention back to the dwarves to find them whispering, heads bent together furtively. Balin sounds dismayed, Dwalin disgusted, Ori horrified. Nori is smirking. Fíli cranes his head to see what they’re looking at, and … oh. He flinches and turns hastily away.

“She’s not wearing any clothes,” Ori whispers.

“Bah,” Dwalin grunts. “Elvish perversion. I’ve heard tales.”

Dori slaps his hands over Ori’s eyes and makes him turn around, but next to him, Gloín starts choking. Fíli follows his gaze and … oh. He feels himself flush. “There’s three of them,” Bombur says breathlessly, eyebrows up near to his hairline.

Fíli hastily averts his gaze, but there is no safe place to look. All around the room, elves are disrobing, coming together, in groups of two or three or four or … Fíli doesn’t even want to guess how many are in that group.

Thorin curses so profanely, Fíli’s ears go red. His uncle rises and the other dwarves follow hastily, none of them willing to meet each other’s eyes, but less willing to look at the debauchery around them. “Out,” Thorin orders, and they all follow to the door and out of the great hall as quickly as they can, eyes fixed firmly to the ground. But then Thorin stops in his tracks so fast, Dwalin slams into him from behind.

“What’s-“ Dwalin says, but then he curses and falls silent. Fíli already knows what he’s going to see before he lifts his head.

Thorin’s face is thunderous. “What sorcery is this?”

It’s the she-elf, walking slowly towards them, and next to her, his arm linked through hers, is Kíli. He is dressed in party finery, soft leather and pale cloth, and his hair has been combed to a fine sheen and tied back in the elven style. When he sees them, his face goes tight and miserable.

“Oh,” the she-elf says. She looks delighted. “Kíli, look, it’s your kin. Leaving the party already?” She laughs, light and glittery. “But the moon’s hardly risen. You’ll miss all the fun.”

Thorin is mute and furious, glaring at the she-elf and Kíli in turn. “How can this be?” he demands. “What have you done?”

The she-elf frowns. “Show some respect, little one.” Her voice is cold steel, biting, but then an instant later she smiles, anger gone as if it never was. Fíli shivers. She turns to Kíli and runs her fingers down his cheek. “Don’t you think he’s glorious?”

Kíli says nothing, but he’s gone very pale and his eyes are filled with fear. Of the she-elf? Fíli wonders. Or of Thorin?

“Now,” the she-elf says, looking them over. “One of you must be Fíli. Kíli has told me much about you.” She circles them, and on instinct they huddle together defensively. “Is it you?” she asks, stopping at Thorin and gazing thoughtfully. “You look very much alike. But no. Fíli is closer in age. You, I think, have seen many more years.” She circles around again, stops at Ori and bends down to peer at him. “Young enough,” she says, straightening, nose wrinkled, “but I think it is not you either. You could not be of the same bloodline, not with features like that.”

A few more steps and she stops directly in front of Fíli. “Yes,” she says warmly, “you must certainly be the brother. You are nearly as fine as he is.” She reaches to touch Fíli’s hair and he jerks back, revolted.

She sighs and withdraws. “Dwarves,” she sighs. “So tiresome. It’s all perversion, abomination, filth, until you get them into the bed chamber.” Kíli lets out a soft moan of despair, jaw and fists clenched, and an answering murmur runs through the dwarves. The she-elf doesn’t seem to notice or care. She bends down close to Fíli’s ear. “What do you think, little one? Have you as much talent in the intimate arts as your brother? It is a feast night, after all, and nothing is forbidden. Shall I take you back with us and find out?”

She glances briefly back at Kíli and smiles, but her look is alien and strange, predatory. “He calls for you, little one, when he is dreaming. I think he would enjoy having a playmate.”

Fíli jerks back, heart pounding, because she cannot mean … it would be unthinkable …

“No!” Kíli’s voice is hoarse and frantic. “Please, my lady, you cannot say such things.”

She whips around, eyes narrowed. “Do you presume to tell me what I can and cannot do?”

“No,” Kíli whispers. His face is deathly pale and he backs away. He’s terrified. “I didn’t mean-“

“You are ashamed,” she says icily. “Of who you have become, of what you’ve done. It offends your dwarvish sensitivities. Shall I tell them, then, and spare you the pain of doing it yourself? Shall I tell them how you comport yourself in bed? How you rut and sweat and beg for release? Of all the things you have done to me and let me do to you?”

“Silence!” Thorin roars. He is as angry as Fíli has ever seen him, groping for a sword that has not yet been returned to him. Behind him, the other dwarves are huddled together, muttering under their breath. None of them will look at Kíli, who is plastered against the wall, looking sick. “We do not speak of such things.”

“No, of course you don’t,” the she-elf says, rolling her eyes. “It is a wonder that your species manages to breed at all.” Her cold gaze sweeps across the dwarves, coming to rest on Fíli again. “And yet,” she says, “it is not so terrible an idea, to give Kíli a companion. Otherwise, he will be the only one of his kind here.” She circles. “I would happily have settled for one, but perhaps two will do as well, and who better than the brother?”

Fíli’s vision goes funny and gray, and there is a strange kind of roaring in his ears, but Kíli is there next to him, a solid reassuring presence; of course Kíli is there, Kíli has always been there, and no amount of elf magic and herbs and torture could change this simple truth.

“Don’t touch him,” Kíli says. His voice is shaking and he looks half-crazed, but he is moving in front of Fíli, blocking him. “Don’t come near him. I’ll kill you if you touch him.”

For a moment, the she-elf looks startled, but then her eyes narrow and she just looks furious. “Do you think you could kill me, dear one?” In the flickering lamp light that illuminates the hall, she suddenly looks very, very old, like time itself. “Have you forgotten?” Her hands flex, like claws. Kíli shudders violently, and Fíli remembers all the cries for mercy that never came.

“I remember,” Kíli says, trembling but resolute. “I remember everything. And I will stay with you until the end of time and you can punish me in any way you like but you will not touch my brother.”

The other dwarves are gathering around them now, closing in ranks, and though they have no weapons, there are still twelve of them, and that is more than enough to take down one elf. Even, Fíli thinks, a very old and very powerful elf who can make magic with her hands.

“Lady Alwyn,” comes a voice, steel cloaked with pleasantry. “I see you have met the rest of the dwarves.”

“Prince Legolas,” she replies tightly. “Yes. Kíli was just introducing me to his kin.”

Legolas looks amused. “Was he, now?” He quirks an eyebrow at Kíli, who is still trembling and pale and blocking Fíli from the she-elf. “You do not look very festive, my friend. Perhaps some fresh air would suit you.”

Kíli nods jerkily. “I would speak with my brother, if you please, my lord.”

“Of course,” Legolas says. “You may speak with all your kin, if you like. I do not think they found the feast to their taste.” There is the slightest hint of laughter in his voice. Fíli thinks he knows exactly why the dwarves decamped from the hall, and wonders again at elf customs, that such a thing should be funny. “There is fresh fruit and meat in the kitchen, if you would like to picnic by the river.” He turns to the she-elf, and nods politely, though his gaze has turned chilly. “Lady Alwyn, if you would do me the honor of escorting me back to the feast?”

Her mouth tight, she nods once and accepts his arm, practiced enough at diplomacy to pretend to be pleased at entering the party on the arm of the prince rather than her … whatever Kíli is. Her look at Kíli as she leaves is inscrutable; there is anger there, certainly, but something else too: hunger, and something that might be approval or a strange sort of affection. Fíli remembers the strange way Kíli spoke of her; also the way he leaned in and pulled away from her at the sparring match. If Kíli’s feelings towards her are confused and conflicted, it seems hers are no less so towards him. It can happen thus to prisoners and wardens, Fíli knows, to develop feelings for each other that cannot be so easily understood or disentangled.

Kíli relaxes minutely when she is gone, but he still will not meet anyone’s eyes, and says only, “The kitchens are this way,” before setting off, long legs covering distance quickly so that the dwarves have to hurry to keep up.

Thorin lets the others lead and falls back to Fíli, Balin and Dwalin at his side. “Fíli,” Thorin says, conveying fury even in a whisper, “did you know about this?”

And that answers that question as to whether Thorin had known himself. “I knew he’d been changed,” Fíli says cautiously. “Physically, that is. I saw him once, a few weeks ago, sparring with the prince.”

“Weeks,” Thorin growls under his breath. “You have known for weeks, yet you did not think to mention it?”

“Kíli begged me not to,” Fíli says helplessly. Thorin glares at him, irate, and Fíli looks down at the ground. He should have told Thorin, should have told them all, but Kíli is his brother still, and he’d been through so much pain; it seemed the least thing that he could do, to honor his brother’s wish for silence, to keep it private for as long as he could.

“What of the rest?” Dwalin asks, glowering. “What she said–“

“We don’t know it’s true,” Balin interrupts. “Just the word of an elf.”

Dwalin grunts dismissively. “He didn’t deny it.”

Fíli feels cold, because that is damning beyond all else, and it is far worse than he had let himself consider; if true, it changes everything. Any sane dwarf would instantly have denied such a suggestion—would have denied it even if it were true. It would be hard enough for Kíli to come home looking as he does, tall and thin and strange, but if there was any truth to the she-elf’s words, if Kíli had lain with her, if anyone ever found out …

Fíli shivers, trying to imagine how other dwarves would react to this knowledge, and fails. Such a thing is beyond belief, beyond even the most depraved imagining. It would not be tolerated, Thorin’s heir or no.

They have reached the kitchens and Kíli exchanges words with the elves working there, Sindarin words slipping fluently from his lips as he gathers food and drink. The elves eye the dwarves curiously, and eye Kíli more curiously still, but show no overt sign of disgust or disrespect as they put together a massive basket, packing plates and utensils along with the food. Fíli frowns, because if this were a dwarf kitchen, the reception would be far different, and the only steel would be swords held at Kíli’s throat.

“This way,” Kíli says, hefting the basket and setting off again so quickly that after a moment Bofur taps his arm and says, “Have pity, laddie. Our legs are not as long as yours and we’ve had no good opportunities to stretch them of late.”

Kíli startles at the touch on his arm, but slows down. “Sorry,” he says, flushing. “I still forget.”

He leads them more slowly to a clearing, gently lit with paper lanterns. It is deserted, though in the distance, Fíli can hear rustling fabric and a few breathy sighs.

“Cursed elves,” Gloín mutters uncomfortably. “Can’t even find a proper bedchamber to do their business.”

“This is the best we will be able to do on a feast night,” Kíli says awkwardly. “They will—they do not feel the same need for privacy, and they are fond of the open air and starlight. I do not think any will come into the clearing if we are here.”

They have already eaten at the feast, but this is simpler fare, more to their taste, not a green leaf in sight, and also, they are dwarves, and they have been held captive for months. Though the elves never starved them, they are all far thinner than when they set out on this quest. So they eat again, though this is no raucous dwarf gathering, here in this strange place, with Kíli the not-elf-yet-no-longer-dwarf in their midst. Not a one of them is eager to break the silence.

They concentrate on their food for a while, and Fíli watches the other dwarves watching Kíli, and wonders what will happen.

On the ground, hunched over, Kíli looks less outsized than when he stands, towering over them. But up close, the changes the elves have wrought are more obvious, and Fíli understands why Kíli only ever visited the cells at night. He has no trace of a beard, not even a toddler’s stubble, and his strangely smooth skin has a peculiar sheen to it. His hair shines too and has turned fine as silk; there is no way now it could hold a dwarvish braid. He looks as if he’s been re-cast, melted down and poured into an elf mold. It suits him maybe a little too well.

Thorin is the one to finally break the excruciating silence. “Nephew,” he says stiffly, “I wish to apologize.”

Kíli looks up from the food he is not eating. “For what, Uncle?”

Thorin looks grim. “For allowing this to befall you. Had we known–“

“You could have done nothing.” Kíli’s voice is flat, deadened. “There is nothing anyone could have done. Least of all any of you, locked up in your cells. This was foretold from the first moment she saw me and decided I would suit her purpose.”

Ori raises his hand. Slow in speech, a little thick, perhaps, he has never learned to mind his tongue. “Why did she turn you into an elf?”

Kíli scowls at him. “She didn’t turn me into an elf.”

“You look like an elf.”

“I’m not an elf.”

“But you look like an elf,” Ori insists, and Fíli’s insides twist, just a little in remembrance: Kíli at 40, all coltish, gangly adolescence, with arms and legs too long and thin and a bow strapped perpetually to his back. The itinerant dwarves come to Ered Luin to trade had stared and whispered and pointed, until in the end Thorin had broken someone’s arm and someone else’s nose in defense of his sister’s honor and his nephew’s heritage.

Fíli has never needed any proof that the universe was cruel; death and despair were all around for dwarves and men and elves and all the world’s other creatures, and the best you could do was snatch the bits of happiness you were allowed and hold them to your chest as tight as you could. But there seemed a particular kind of vindictiveness in this, as if the Maker was being especially petty and spiteful, inflicting this change on the one dwarf who would have given anything in the world to look less like an elf.

“Does it hurt?” Nori asks, and Kíli says, “Not anymore,” which is the most acknowledgement he’ll give, Fíli thinks, probably the most he’ll ever say about it, not that what he says or holds within matters, nor can change the truth of what he endured. They all heard him scream. But there’s still a relief to knowing that his physical pain, at least, is over.

The dwarves have begun to pepper Kíli with questions now, and at least they are talking to him, even though they heard the she-elf’s accusations and his failure to deny them. It’s like a stay of execution, Fíli thinks morosely, granted only because they’ve all borne unwilling witness to his painful transformation, even if they’d not known at the time what it was they were witnessing. Other dwarves would not be so kind, or so willing to converse with one so tainted.

So they ask their questions one after the other, and Kíli answers readily enough; no, he doesn’t need to shave to keep his skin so smooth; no he can’t walk silently like an elf, he’s still a lumbering klutz; yes, some things are different, his tastes have changed, he likes fruits and vegetables now, and his other senses are considerably heightened; yes, of course he needs to bathe, elves like their baths warm and frequent, with plenty of wealwithu in the water.

“You speak their language now,” Thorin interjects gruffly after the Sindarin word slips smoothly into the conversation.

Kíli gnaws at his lip then ducks his head in a nod. “They made me learn it,” he says, and it should be nothing; dwarves speak Khuzdul and Common and all the languages of the places they live, but Kíli’s eyes look bleak and haunted, and Fíli remembers nights in the cell, Kíli dazed and sick from herbs, whispering nonsense words over and over until his voice gave out.

The question has skated too close to uncomfortable territory, and most of the dwarves slip away back to the food, but Fíli will not leave Kíli’s side, and Thorin has settled across from him like stone, Dwalin looming over his shoulder. Dwalin, not the oldest of the dwarves, but the most steeped in tradition, the one who’d clung hardest to the old ways, even after the mountain had fallen and the old ways were no longer relevant.

Dwalin is not quite glaring at Kíli, but his look is not especially friendly. Fíli’s hackles rise, and he wishes momentarily for his sword, though, in truth, Kíli is twice Dwalin’s size and probably needs no protecting. He disarmed Legolas, after all. “Lad,” Dwalin says gruffly, “I do not want to pry, but we must know.”

Kíli goes very still and desperately pale, his eyes flicking around the clearing like he’s looking for escape.

“I’ll not hurt you,” Dwalin says, but the grim tone of his voice is less than reassuring.

“You already know,” Kíli says finally, voice shaking. “What is the point to speaking it aloud?”

Dwalin grunts and his jaw clenches. Thorin’s glare at the warrior is unfriendly; he schools his expression to something resembling neutral before he turns his attention back to Kíli. “If you say she was lying,” he says carefully, “there is no one who would dispute your word.”

Kíli’s face goes blank, and he freezes into stillness so complete it is unnerving, a lack of movement no dwarf could ever hope to achieve. “If I returned to Ered Luin,” he says finally, “they would have me up before the Council. They would have no choice.”

Thorin does not answer for a moment, and when he does speak, it is as if he is selecting his words one at time, saying exactly what he means and no more. “Your size and form would likely be excused. As to the rest, you would be believed, if you took the oath. There would be no cursed elves there to dispute your word and spread their lies.”

“And if they were not lies?” Kíli will not meet their eyes, not even when Dwalin grumbles at him in warning. “If it were truth, everything she said? If she had trained me like a dog, so I could not defy nor resist? What would the Council say then?”

Thorin’s mouth sets tight and hard, and Dwalin frowns ferociously.

“You would have me lie,” Kíli says. He sounds more resigned than angry. “Lie to the Council, lie to my mother, lie to everyone.”

“I’d have you spare your mother,” Thorin says. “And I do not ask you to lie, only to make sure you are properly remembering the truth.” He leans forward, reaching out, but stops short of touching. “Fíli has told us of the herbs, how they made you see things that weren’t there. Your memories are not to be trusted. She could have been poisoning your mind with her foul words all this time, made you think you had partaken in vile acts that you would never–“ He does touch Kíli then, resting his hand lightly on Kíli’s knee. “I have known you from the moment of your birth. You are my sister-son, and dearer to me than I can express. I know you, and I know you would never betray our most sacred beliefs.”

Kíli looks at him dully, then shifts his eyes away as if he can no longer bear it. “And you, Mister Dwalin? You would agree to this? That I should live again among dwarves, when at any moment a Mirkwood elf might come and …” He pauses, and twists his mouth in disgust, “spread more lies?”

Dwalin looks as angry as Fíli has ever seen him, though the anger does not seem to be aimed at Kíli. Not directly. “In truth,” he says stiffly, “I think you would not be very welcome by the dwarves of Ered Luin, but–” He breathes. “Your mother would be happy to see you.”

Even like this, he does not say, but there is no need. Aversion is painfully apparent in the tension of his body. Fíli resents it on Kíli’s behalf, but he understands it nonetheless. He loves Kíli with a depth he cannot measure, but even so, it is hard to look at his brother like this, though it grows easier with repetition—it would be easier still if Kíli would only smile. He would look more like himself.

Kíli sighs wearily. “I think one large lie is better than many small ones. Just tell them I died here. You can make it heroic, if you think that will sit better.”

Thorin grunts and looks unhappy. Dwalin scowls ferociously and crosses his arms. Fíli has an uncomfortable moment where he thinks that Dwalin has always ever preferred the truth no matter how uncomfortable, and if that means Kíli must die here so that they could say so honestly, then that might be an acceptable outcome. Then he blinks, and looks at the misery writ on Dwalin’s face, and the feeling passes.

“We must all think this through,” Fíli says. “Come, brother. Walk with me.”

Kíli looks at him gratefully and rises to his feet with an easy grace that sits well on his new body. Fíli has to steel himself not to shy away, disconcerted by the fact that his head comes up only to Kíli’s shoulder. Behind him, he hears Thorin and Dwalin fall to arguing in furious whispers. “The law is clear,” he hears Dwalin growl fiercely; Thorin’s reply is pointed and vulgar and leaves Fíli oddly cheered.

“Thorin would not blame you,” Fíli says as they step onto a path cut into the wood and lit by more of the flickering paper lanterns. “He would not hold you responsible. Not–” He pauses, takes a breath, and a step. “–not under the circumstances.”

“That I was forced, you mean.”

Fíli nods uneasily. Kíli’s voice had been utterly flat.

“You were coerced. You had been tortured, we all heard, no one could blame you.”

“When she wanted to punish me,” Kíli says, words clipped and tight and precise, “and physical torture was not enough, she would give me a potion. It made me want. I couldn’t think or speak. Only–” He clears his throat. “But when she was at her most cruel, she would skip the potion. And then I had nothing to blame it on but myself.”

“Kíli-“

“I’m not proud of it, brother, but it is the truth. And there is a part of me that even understands how she could so easily accomplish it.” He sighs. “When you have been hurting for so long, you grasp at any comfort at all. Even the worst depravity can be accepted, if it feels good enough when everything else feels so bad.”

They stop by the stream, and the only sound is the rushing water.

Kíli takes a deep breath, staring at the flickering reflection of party lanterns glittering in the water. “This talk of my return is academic, brother, as is the question of whether Thorin will hold me to blame. You already know I am not leaving with you.”

Fíli nods dully.

“It is too late to complete the quest this year; Durin’s Day is long since past. But even if Thorin returns to Ered Luin now, Thranduil cannot trust Thorin not to try again next year, or the year after.”

Fíli stares at him blankly, tracing the almost-familiar curve of Kíli’s jaw, so pale and strangely smooth. “That is Thranduil’s excuse for keeping you. You are to be held hostage against an attempt on Erebor.” This is it, then, that had Thorin so guilty whenever he looked at Fíli; not that Kíli was to be left behind, but that he was to be left behind as a sacrifice for Thorin alone.

“Lady Alwyn will never let me go. And Thranduil needs a way to guarantee that Thorin will not attempt to reclaim the mountain on his own. It is to both their benefit that I remain a guest in Mirkwood.” There is only the slightest sardonic emphasis on guest.

“But not your benefit.”

“That is of no concern. It cannot be. Fíli, you have been here for months. There is no escape. Thranduil will keep you in the cells forever if he must, until Thorin is so old and weak that he no longer poses any threat. But if I stay, he will give you food, return your weapons, and grant you safe passage to the edge of the forest.”

“But …” Fíli is bewildered. All these things have been granted, he knows this. “But why, then, did Thorin and Dwalin talk of your return to Ered Luin, and the Council?”

“They did not,” Kíli says, “until I myself raised it.” Fíli realizes with a start that this is true; there had been no talk of rescue except before the feast, before they had heard the filth spill from the she-elf’s lips. He scowls and turns to his brother, but Kíli is still staring blindly at the water. “I mentioned Ered Luin just to hear how they would react. To find out for certain that return was hopeless.”

They circle their way slowly back to the clearing. The stars sparkle like diamonds in the cold winter sky. Fíli feels the biting chill even through the heavy leathers the elves provided. He wonders that Kíli, in his light party clothes, does not even appear to notice.

Thorin is still speaking with Dwalin, and Balin has joined them now. They are all frowning, and their expressions make Fíli’s stomach turn. The rest of the dwarves are milling about uncomfortably; when Fíli and Kíli walk into the clearing, the dwarves glance at them uneasily then look away. Thorin has told the rest of the company that Kíli is not coming with them, Fíli guesses, and tries not to think how much easier that will be for everyone. Almost everyone.

“It’s all right,” Kíli murmurs. “Fíli, it’s all right. I realized long ago this is how it would end. There’s no other way it can.”

Chapter Text

Morning has dawned, chill and bright. The noise from the feast faded but a few hours ago, and every once in a while, a disheveled elf makes his way through the clearing, slow and stumbling and squinting at the sun. The dwarves find it highly amusing. “I thought they couldn’t get drunk,” Bombur whispers. He is picking through the scanty remains of last night’s picnic.

“Why shouldn’t they?” Bofur whispers back. “They may be immortal, but their blood’s the same red as any other creature. Well, except for orcs.”

“They’ll never get drunk on any but elf spirits,” Balin says with authority. “But they say the treaty of Lithlomen would never have been signed had not King Mêlrohil been drunk to near-blindness on his own wine.”

Everyone laughs, snickering at the poor elf who is staggering through the clearing, fancy party clothes askew and possibly inside out.

Fíli is sorting supplies without paying much attention to the less-than-kind laughter around him. He has no idea what has made it into his pack already, though by the weight of it, the pack now holds several large boulders.

Dwalin comes up beside him, and Fíli stiffens, just a little. “Don’t say it’s all for the best,” he mutters. “This is not best.”

Dwalin grunts unhappily. “I would not presume.”

Blindly, Fíli throws some more bundles into his pack. He thinks they might be that funny elf bread that the Rangers are always going on about. “I cannot conceive of a worse outcome to any cursed quest than this. What am I to tell our mother?”

“Kíli would have you say he died.”

“Kíli,” Fíli says sourly, “is not exactly in his right mind. And I would not lie to my mother. Not about this, not while there is still yet hope that he may return home some day.”

Dwalin is loudly silent.

Fíli curses. “You don’t think he will ever come home.”

Dwalin speaks slowly, seeming to choose his words with uncharacteristic care. “I think he recognizes the truth of his circumstances better than you. He would not be welcome among the dwarves, even if all that had changed was his form. A dwarf the size of an elf is not natural. People would be uncomfortable, even if they did not know–” he breathes, shortly, “–the rest.”

Yet Kíli can stay here with no fear for his safety, where he is so readily accepted that the she-elf can happily take him to her bed, and no one will think twice of it. Fíli fumes at the injustice. There is so much bad blood between dwarves and elves, millennia of distrust; that the elves seem to be able to deal with it better just makes Fíli angrier. He jerks the cords of his pack, pulling it closed with undue violence. “Thorin would have him lie about that, too.”

“Thorin is blind where you boys are concerned. Kíli is right. One lie is better than many.” He shuffles his feet, uncharacteristically awkward. “He’ll not be alone here.”

“That the she-elf may have some affection for him does not make this any better,” Fíli growls.

Dwalin sounds as if he’s in pain, words dragged reluctantly from his lips. “I think he has come to accept her attentions. At least, he is willing to accept them, if it buys us passage out of forest.”

“You make him sound like one of the whores of men,” Fíli hisses furiously. “He is not.” He grabs his pack, which is certainly too heavy for him to carry any great distance, and shoulders it. “I must speak with Thorin.”

His uncle is standing apart from the other dwarves. In contrast to their almost frantic action, he’s standing still and quiet, lost in thought, occasionally twitching to life to check some item within his pack before slipping to stillness once again. Fíli watches him for a minute, just long enough to see his eyes slide briefly to where Kíli is standing at the edge of the clearing, but his gaze slides away again so quickly that Fíli isn’t sure it wasn’t just his imagination.

“Uncle,” he says. “I would have a word with you.”

Thorin smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Are you all packed, Fíli?”

Fíli drops his bag at his feet. “I’m over-packed. The elves have given us enough of that cursed bread to feed all of Ered Luin for a year.”

“It’s better than starving,” Thorin says, “and less than they owe us, for having kept us here so long.”

Fíli breathes, and clenches his fists. “Kíli says he is to be held hostage here as bond against you, so that you do not attempt to reclaim Erebor.”

Thorin nods, slow and unhappy. “Such was Thranduil’s bargain. He is old and sly. He says he offers Kíli refuge and that is true, in a way. I did not understand before, but now … even if I could arrange his safe passage back to Ered Luin, I could not guarantee his safety thereafter.” He looks older than his years and very tired. “Dwalin has the right of it, you know. Kíli is of Durin’s line, but that would grant him precious little protection outside this forest.”

“We can protect him,” Fíli says stubbornly. “I can protect him.”

“Against the Ironfists? Their prejudices run deeper than our own. And they are not the most unyielding of our kind.”

This is true, Fíli knows. The children of Aulë are slow to change, like the stone from whence they sprang. The old ways hold sway in dwarf lands with far more power than among men or elves. Yet it is intolerable to think that Kíli should be more welcome among the elves than among his own kin. “But we cannot leave him here.” He feels if he says it enough times, Thorin will start to see, will finally begin to understand.

“I do not see we have any choice,” Thorin says. “Nor I do not see Kíli protesting with any vigor. He is accepting this with more grace than you are.”

“He is a self-sacrificing idiot,” Fíli says, exasperated, ignoring the implied rebuke in Thorin’s words. “And what of the she-elf?”

Thorin’s eyes go dark and cloudy. “I would not speak of her.”

“And I would have you swallow your distaste for a moment,” Fíli grinds out, “as I am not sure you understand the full truth of Kíli’s circumstances.”

“I understand more than you, boy,” Thorin growls.

“Then understand this,” Fíli says, cold and brutal. “What you think you know, whatever she said has happened, if we leave, it will still happen.”

~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~

Between all the cheerful chatter, the dwarves are bustling around, checking and rechecking their supplies. They are so very noisy; Kíli’s forgotten just how noisy they can be. Elves are quieter, their words weighted with all the meaning limitless life can impart to even the simplest thought. Their actions are thoughtful and deliberate. No one would ever accuse an elf of bustling.

He himself is quieter too now, Kíli thinks, though his reasons are somewhat different. He stands apart, trying to memorize each face without staring at anyone long enough for their eyes to meet. Fíli and Thorin had an urgent whispered conversation a little while before and had then disappeared and are yet to return. Kíli assumes, without immodesty, that he was somehow the subject of the conversation, but he is carefully not thinking about it too deeply. There is little hope that any words between his brother and uncle can change the outcome of the day.

There’s a soft rustle at his side. Legolas has appeared from nowhere, as usual. “Good morning,” he says lightly. “They’re very noisy.”

Kíli takes a quick look at the prince. Though his hair and clothing look as perfectly composed as ever, he is squinting in the early morning sunlight, and there is a crease of discomfort in his forehead. Kíli fights a smile. “I would not have expected you to drink to excess, my lord.”

“Did I drink?” Legolas asks. “I don’t remember much after the third dance. Oh, yes. Aelfir and Wynwyth invented a game. I think it involved coin and dice and wine. I might have won. Or lost. I’m not certain the outcome would have been different in either case.”

“I would have you spar with me later, my lord,” Kíli says, grinning.

Legolas goes pale. Paler. “I don’t think that would be wise. Perhaps some archery. The bow is very quiet.”

“And have you shoot me with an arrow?” Kíli says. “I think not. At least if we spar, I know you’ll never get near me. Though I admit it might get noisy with all that clanging.”

Legolas swallows and looks a little sick, while Kíli laughs quietly to himself.

They watch the dwarves for a few minutes. Piles of supplies are stacked haphazardly at their feet: clothing and bandages, bedrolls and blankets, food and drink and more food and drink. All their weapons are here for their inspection too, cleaned and sharpened and polished, though yet under the watchful gaze of the members of the Guard who will be accompanying them to the edge of the woods.

“Are you all right?” Legolas asks without looking. The words float quickly into the air and hang there, suspended. Sindarin is a graceful language, full of lilting vowels and soft, voiceless consonants. It slips and glides like a living thing. Kíli understands it and can speak it with passable competency, but he thinks he will never sound like an elf, that his speech will always be too full of the crunch and rumble of Khuzdul.

“I’m well enough, my lord,” Kíli says.

“Stop calling me ‘my lord,’ ” Legolas says irritably. “Or I shall have to start returning the favor, Prince Kíli, and it shall quickly grow very tiresome for the both of us.”

“As you wish,” Kíli says, managing to swallow the honorific in the nick of time.

Legolas turns his head—slowly—to look at him, gazing at him in thoughtful contemplation. “There’s no need to lie to me, you realize,” he says. “Lie to them if you think it will make it easier for them to leave. But I know what this is costing you.”

“I think,” Kíli says carefully, “that you truly do not.”

Legolas shifts uncomfortably. “This is not forever,” he says. “Your life is long now. You will not spend the entirety of it here.”

“My life is long,” Kíli agrees, “but theirs is not. They will age and die, and I will still be here.”

Legolas frowns. “Do not take this the wrong way–“ Kíli’s interprets Legolas’s words and tone to mean, I’m about to be utterly offensive. “–but Lady Alwyn will assuredly lose interest in you eventually.”

“Your father will not,” Kíli says mildly. “So long as Thorin lives, Thranduil will keep me here.”

“That is true,” Legolas concedes. “But when Alwyn’s attention wanes, I think you will find the situation more tolerable.”

“Perhaps,” Kíli says, though in truth he doesn’t know. As much as he once despised Alwyn, as much as he still fears her, he has also come to depend on her in a way he can’t articulate, and the things she whispers to him in the dark make him feel wanted and necessary in a way he never was in Ered Luin. “Sometimes she is very tender.”

Legolas looks at him curiously. “I would not have expected a dwarf to enjoy tenderness.”

Kíli laughs, just a little. “I think,” he says, “that you do not know very much of dwarves, my lord.”

“No,” Legolas says thoughtfully. “Perhaps not.” Then he scowls and shoves Kíli lightly with his shoulder. “And don’t call me ‘my lord.’ ”

They watch the dwarves some more. Thorin and Fíli have returned, and Kíli catches their eyes on him more than once. A headache is forming between his eyes, and he rubs at his forehead irritably. It is mid-morning, and he is suddenly eager for the dwarves to be gone already; the anticipation of having to watch them leave is dreadful, sickening. Like ripping a bandage off a still healing wound, it would be better if separation were done quickly. This slow peel is agony in every inch. Once they are gone, he thinks, he will be able to breathe again.

He might have made a noise, because Legolas shifts his attention to Kíli once again, rubbing at his neck and ducking with a wince out of the way of an errant beam of sunlight. “Elvish feasts are legendary,” he says, with regard to nothing whatsoever. “Not so often discussed is the cleanup that must follow.”

“You do not mean to tell me that the Prince of Mirkwood sweeps the floors,” Kíli says dryly.

Legolas looks affronted. “No, though I would, and gladly, if my father were to ask it of me. But –“ His voice dips down, quietly conspiratorial, “it will be many hours yet before the hall is clean. As a child, I would often take the opportunity to recover some of the leftover confections before they were discarded. The bakers do not make ithrim cakes except on formal feast days, and they are more than tolerable, even a day old.”

“As a child,” Kíli repeats with some amusement. The prince looks ageless. He could be 50 years old or 500. Kíli is not sure, anyway, what childhood is to an elf. He has not seen any elflings in the forest; perhaps they are hatched full grown. “How old are you?”

“Older than you,” Legolas says archly, “but then again, you are not so very old either. Not yet even of age among your people.”

“No,” Kíli admits, scowling. “Not quite.”

“Then still young enough to plunder the party hall later,” Legolas says cheerfully. “You and I shall stuff ourselves with leftover ithrim cakes and drink whatever wine we may find, until my head no longer pounds quite so very much.”

“You,” Kíli says thoughtfully, “are a very strange prince indeed. Could you not ask for fresh cakes and wine?”

“That would hardly be any fun at all.”

Kíli does not need cakes, ithrim or otherwise, but he thinks the wine will be welcome, once his brethren leave. Legolas knows this—for all his light talk and mischievous grins, he is no fool.

Chapter Text

The dwarves are all set to leave, but Thranduil has called for a meeting in the great hall; for what purpose, Kíli doesn’t know. He’d thought everything was already decided, everything done but for the leaving. He suspects it is no coincidence that the meeting was suddenly arranged after Thorin and Fíli had disappeared from the clearing in the early morning, especially when it is revealed that they are the only two other dwarves in attendance. Of the elves, Legolas is present, reclining indolently against a wall, and also Lady Alwyn, who shoots Kíli a glance he cannot decipher. Thranduil sits on his throne, looking abundantly imperial.

When no one is looking, Legolas winks at Kíli. Legolas, Kíli is quickly coming to realize, is going to be a very bad influence, which will make for an interesting change, as for most of his life it has been Kíli playing that role.

Thranduil nods regally at Thorin, who nods stiffly back. “Is your company ready to depart?”

“But for the settlement of this matter,” Thorin answers tightly, “yes.”

“Then, since I am sure you are as eager to leave these woods as I am eager to have you out of them, let us not delay. Prince Kíli,” Thranduil says, strangely formal, for he has never seen fit to acknowledge Kíli’s royal status before, “I fear I have been remiss. As a prince of your people, I owed you the courtesy of conversation, at the very least."

Kíli is not at all sure what he is expected to say. “I am sure,” he says carefully, “that you have many more important matters to attend to.”

“Indeed,” Thranduil says. “Nonetheless, I have had a lengthy discussion with your uncle, and it seems I have done you a significant disservice.”

As little as he knew what to say before, Kíli has less idea what he is to say now, except he thinks that laughter would be inappropriate, as would a recitation of the dozens of wrongs that leap easily to mind. However, as the seconds drag on, it becomes clear that he is expected to say something. The best he can do is stammer, “I bear no grudge against you, my lord.” Which is not entirely true, but Thranduil is not Alwyn, and Kíli thinks this small lie is eminently preferable to any truth he might utter instead.

Thranduil purses his lips, as if he is well aware that Kíli is being less than fully honest. “I do not refer to the changes Lady Alwyn has wrought, though I know you did not desire them, and that the process was long and arduous.”

For a moment, Kíli is back on his knees, sensibility dulled by herbs, Alwyn’s hands on his head, and there is nothing but hot, white pain. “Yes,” he says hoarsely. “It was.”

“For what it is worth,” Thranduil says stiffly, “I had been led to believe it would be a shorter, simpler matter.” His gaze slides to Alwyn.

She frowns prettily, looking petulant. “Such a thing has never before been attempted. I did advise you that there was no way to predict its course, my lord.”

Thranduil waves his hand dismissively. “It is of no concern to me at present. The change was successful, and the prince seems none the worse for it.”

Fíli’s eyes go round and outraged, but Thorin’s hand on his arm keeps him silent.

Thranduil settles back further on his throne, hands clasped loosely together. “However, it appears we have inadvertently done you a different ill.”

Kíli swallows, hoping against hope this is not going where he suspects it is going. This is a conversation he would choose to have never; certainly not in front of his uncle and brother. Bad enough that he’d done what he’d done, worse that he’d had to do it in front of a disinterested audience of guards, but were they now going to make him talk about it publicly as well? Elvish cruelty truly knew no bounds.

Thranduil appears regally oblivious to his discomfort. “Among our kind, the sharing of physical pleasure carries no great import, unless the act is to create a child. Life is long, and pleasure fleeting. We take our pleasure when and where we will, with no shame attached to the act or its participants. Yet I am now come to understand that this is not the same for dwarves.”

Heat flares high in Kíli’s cheeks. Across the room, he sees Legolas staring at him curiously, one eyebrow raised. Is it truly possible, he wonders, that the elves simply do not know? “No, my lord,” he mutters. “It is not the same for us.”

“I see.” Thranduil frowns. “You are a curious folk indeed.” He continues to stare at Kíli for another moment, deep in thought. “Your stay among us may be lengthy,” he says at last. “And it seems my son has developed an unaccountable affection for you. Though I cannot grant you freedom to leave, I would not have you suffer unduly, not least because Legolas will never let me hear the end of it.”

Across the room, Legolas grins and flashes him some sort of hand sign that—if it means the same thing it does in iglishmêk—is cheerfully vulgar.

Thranduil is either unaware of Legolas’ antics or deliberately ignoring his son. “Lady Alwyn. I understand that it was desirable to have Prince Kíli close by your side during treatment. However, since your work has been concluded, and since he is now a guest of the throne, I think it best if he is granted his own residence.”

She starts at that, and looks deeply, genuinely displeased. “I would continue to keep him close, my lord. There may yet be ill effects. It has been but two moons since the treatments ended.”

“Not to fear,” Legolas announces sunnily. “I volunteer to keep a close watch on our guest. I assure you, if he suffers from some sort of fit, you shall be the first to know.”

Kíli cannot help but splutter. “Have you any reason to believe I shall suffer some sort of fit?”

“None in particular, but that you shall likely claim such when I defeat you next time we spar.”

“If I recall correctly, it was your skinny rear on the ground last time we sparred.”

“Bah. I was not trying. You distracted me with the way you were waving the sword around like a lumbering lehíethlim. For all I know, that was some sort of fit.”

“Hênin,” Thranduil mutters. He looks exasperated for the first time in Kíli’s experience and—for only an instant—more like a parent than a king. “Legolas, while I am pleased you have at last found a playmate who is your equal in maturity, I would like to conclude this matter sometime before the solstice.”

“Apologies, Father,” Legolas says. He does not look especially sorry, and winks at Kíli so that Thranduil cannot see. “There are several open chambers in the royal residence halls that should be suitable.”

”Close to yours, I presume,” Thranduil says dryly.

“As it happens,” Legolas answers, his expression alarmingly disarming. “But I was quite sincere. I will keep an eye on Kíli to make sure he suffers no ill effects from Lady Alwyn’s treatments. And as you have noted, he is a prince among his own kind; chambers in the royal residence seem entirely appropriate. I am sure he is used to a certain level of comfort.”

Kíli thinks back to the two-room wood-thatched house he grew up in, the single bedroom where he slept, crammed with Fíli in a bed that grew smaller and smaller every year, Dís and Thorin’s beds flush against opposite walls, with hardly enough room to walk in between. He remembers too the tiny wooden table where they took their meals, too small for four, but they’d force themselves to fit around it anyway; Kíli sitting where the two deepest scratches marred the surface, Fíli pressed up hard on his right, Dís warm on his left, Thorin on the other side doling out the food, a slight frown on his face the nights they were making do with thin soup or just grains. Rough sheets, worn clothing, but so much light and warmth and laughter that nothing else ever mattered. He thinks of all the rooms he’s seen in this place, and that the only one that ever held any comfort for him was his cell in the dungeon at night, small and cramped, with Fíli pressed up warm against his side, telling stories of home.

But he can’t say any of this, because Fíli and Thorin are here, and Thorin looks numb but Fíli looks shattered, and this is hard enough for them as it is. So all he says is, “That is very generous, thank you,” because no one needs to know how sick Kíli is at the thought of staying here, and that luxurious chambers will never ease that pain.

Fíli is whispering urgently into Thorin’s ear. Thorin for his part is scowling, but he clears his throat and speaks. “And what of the sh- the Lady Alwyn? We require assurances that Kíli will no longer be forced to–“ and he pauses here, nearly stumbling over his words, but he is King Under the Mountain, and does not stammer “–endure her attentions.” His face is as red as Kíli has ever seen it.

Thranduil gives a minute nod of his head. “Kíli need not visit her chambers, save that he desires to.”

Fíli snorts. Kíli wishes he were as sure as his brother that he would never willingly visit Alwyn’s bed. But that is his secret and shame to bear, that Alwyn had been right in the end; familiarity had dulled the horror, and he knows now the fire of lust and is not sure it can be so easily quenched. It has been months since Alwyn needed a potion to ensure he would respond to her, and not once since the change has he needed more than the slimmest invitation to her bed. He does not like her and still fears her but there is part of him that desires her nonetheless, and that is something that, be there any grace in the world, his brother and uncle will never learn.

Legolas, though, is eyeing him thoughtfully, and even Alwyn’s sideways gaze is full of a deeper comprehension than Fíli or Thorin possesses. For this, Kíli is thankful. There is only so much, after all, that dwarf tolerance can bear.

~

The walk through the woods is slow and plodding, or so it seems, the dwarves laden with bursting packs and very nearly full to bursting on rich food and strong ale. Then too, their legs are shorter, and Kíli forces himself to slow down every time he senses Fíli at his side, hurrying just to keep pace.

For all that he is walking slowly, Kíli’s heart is hammering in his chest. He feels sick and dizzy with every step that brings them closer to the border of the forest, when the dwarves will go one way and he will turn around and go another. Although he’s known all along it was going to end this way, now that it is actually happening, he can’t quite comprehend that it is ending this way.

Legolas is quiet and thoughtful, walking so lightly over the uneven forest floor that Kíli cannot hear him, though he is but a few paces off to the side. Nominally, he is there as a guard, to ensure that Kíli does not flee his role as hostage, but they could have sent anyone for that; Legolas is there, Kíli thinks, because he doesn’t want Kíli to have to make the long walk back through the forest with only the sullen Forest Guard for company, and not just for fear of spiders. Kíli is more than a little grateful for this small kindness; he is beginning to realize how very fortunate he has been to have caught the elf prince’s interest and spurred his sympathies.

He catches himself staring at the other dwarves when they are not looking, trying to memorize their features, and wrenches his focus away with effort. He refuses to think he will not see them again, but he is pragmatic enough to realize that it may be a long, long time before any reunion comes to pass. The elves, immortal and nearly ageless, do not have the same sense of the slip and glide of time as dwarves—to them, a decade or two or three is but a breath; the many months the dwarves spent locked in cells, less than a heartbeat. Much of the animosity between dwarves and elves arises from this simple truth, Kíli thinks; nothing is urgent to the elves, and so to them, the dwarves must seem a frantic, hurrying lot, living and dying like mayflies.

Kíli supposes that Thranduil and the elves cannot truly comprehend what they ask of him. What, to them, is a decade or century apart from kin and home? They may understand with their heads, he supposes, but he doubts they can feel it in their hearts.

He sighs quietly, and Legolas takes a step forward so they stand abreast as they walk. “I’ve been thinking,” Legolas says without preamble.

Kíli manages to smile, and it’s only half fake. “Should I be worried?”

Legolas ignores him and continues on. “Elves will happily share their beds with any willing two-legged creature, and among men, it is said, even the number of legs is not so important so long as the creature is willing.”

On Kíli’s other side, Fíli grunts. “Are these matters all you elves ever think of?”

“No,” Legolas says. He does not seem to have taken any offense. “But it is curious.” He’s quiet for only a minute. “And I feel I must apologize to you, Kíli, for until but a little while ago, I did not truly understand the wrong we have done you.”

They walk forward for a moment more. As they near the edge of the forest the treetops thin, and sunlight dapples the path in front of them. “I cannot think of any way to say this that is not insensitive to what you endured,” Legolas says. “But I think as much as we do not understand you, you do not understand us. For elves partaking of physical pleasure is no more remarkable than drinking a fine wine or eating a good meal. It is part of life, freely taken, freely shared. I do not think …” He stops talking and frowns fiercely. “I really cannot think of any way to say this that you will not misunderstand.”

“Use small words,” Kíli answers lightly.

Legolas rolls his eyes. “With regard to Lady Alwyn and her treatment of you. None of us are under any pretense that you willingly partook of her experiment. None of us believe you would have sought the changes she inflicted on you, nor that it was easy to endure. Every elf within the wood heard you screaming. There was nowhere to hide from it.”

Kíli swallows hard and tries to breathe. Fíli’s hand comes to rest on his arm, a familiar gentle pressure, and that helps.

“But that she took you to her bed–“ He glances quickly at Fíli, who is quietly choking, before continuing, “you must understand, I believe she truly could not have comprehended the hurt she was inflicting when she did so.”

“I told her,” Kíli says tightly. “I told her no. I begged her not to make me–“ Want it. He keeps that to himself.

“Of course,” Legolas says. “But she would not have grasped that you meant it. She thinks—we all think—that pleasure is better than pain. Please understand that I am not in any way apologizing for her actions. I do not condone any of what she did, and I did not agree with my father when he agreed to it, but understand that until today—until just now—I thought the worst she did to you was change your body. No elf could grasp that anything else she did would have been worse.”

Kíli is silent, unable to find any words with which to express his swirling, shifting emotions. “She was not unaware of my unwillingness,” he says finally. “Forcing me to debase myself was part of her campaign to break my will.”

Legolas nods uncomfortably. “I understand. She claimed that it was necessary—that your total obedience was essential for the magic to work. I know not whether she was lying.”

Kíli prefers to think she was not lying, that she was not being cruel for the sake of being cruel, but that she had some larger purpose in mind, but he guesses that it is impossible to know now. His memories cannot be trusted, and he suspects her own motivations would not be so easy for her to remember either. She had been genuinely displeased at Thranduil’s decision to give Kíli his own quarters, and that is not solely because that largely removes Kíli from her control.

She had been alone for a very long time, she told him once. She had been so pleased to have him share her chambers. Whatever her motives had once been, he is reasonably certain that by the end, at least part of her affection for him was genuine.

He cannot say any of this aloud. “I do not think I can be so quick to forgive her,” he says. “But I will not hold her actions against any of you.”

“I suppose that is all we can ask of you,” Legolas says.

Chapter Text

Fíli feels numb. The sunlight is breaking through the treetops more and more with each passing step, the edge of the forest surely nearly upon them. Kíli has grown progressively more quiet and withdrawn. The elf-prince is close at his side, casting him repeated worried glances. For all that Fíli dislikes and distrusts the elves, Fíli is glad that Kíli will have this one with him. Of all the elves, he is the only one who seems to have any genuine interest in Kíli’s welfare, and the only one who—possibly—has some inkling of the wrongs that have been done him.

It’s hard, Fíli knows, to truly see the world from another’s eyes. Elves, he thinks, must have their own taboos; there is something to do with ears, he knows, so strong and laden with meaning that a single accidental touch once started a war, and it mattered not that the touch was entirely innocent. Actions taken with honest intent can be perceived as foul if they cut across an unknown barrier.

Fíli is willing to concede that the slowly dawning regret Legolas expresses is sincere, that the horror he evinces now is true, that he had no inkling that Alwyn’s attentions would be seen as untoward, that lowering Kíli’s inhibitions through potions and the sheer force of familiarity would not, in the end, make his actions any less anathema to himself or his kin. Legolas would not have understood—might still not understand—that Kíli might forever view himself tainted for tolerating something so profane.

As if he knows what dark thoughts Fíli is thinking, Kíli missteps and nearly stumbles over a root. Fíli reaches out a hand to steady him but Legolas is already at his elbow to catch him. Fíli is regretful and envious. He has to trust this strange tall thin prince now, because soon Legolas will be the only one left to take care of Kíli, and that thought is only acceptable if Legolas can be trusted to do it right and well.

“I will not tell Mother you died,” Fíli says into the silence. He says it very firmly. This is a topic they have not broached since Kíli first mentioned it, but time is running short. “I will not do it, so do not ask it of me.”

Kíli doesn’t argue but to say, “It might be easier for her to accept that than that I am this.”

Fíli walks a little farther. The heavy pack already digs into his shoulders. He is weakened now. “Lies do not age well.”

“Then tell her what you think best,” Kíli says. “I leave it to your judgment. I do not suppose I will ever see her again in any case.” His voice is quiet and strangled, heartbroken, and Legolas gives him another worried look. The grief on Kíli’s face is horrible, unbearable. Fíli wants to scream because this quest was supposed to end in glory or death, the former preferable to the latter, but either would be preferable to this.

“She might come,” Fíli offers. He can imagine it with very little effort. Dís, daughter of Thrain, son of Thrór, fire in her eyes and her heart, crossing mountains and valleys, facing goblins and trolls and even stubborn elvish kings, all for her son.

Kíli shakes his head sharply. “She could not come alone. And I think … I think there would be few dwarves willing to risk Mirkwood simply to permit her to pay me a visit, especially if they knew what I have become. Nor do I think they would be very welcome here.” He looks sideways at Legolas, who grimaces uncomfortably and looks away. The enmity between dwarves and elves runs deep on both sides, hotter and fresher for the dwarves, but nonetheless slow and simmering for elves. It was no accident they were taken into captivity on sight.

“I would return,” Fíli says firmly. “I would bring her myself. And I would defy Thranduil to turn us away. He must have had a mother once.” He squints at Legolas, suddenly uncertain. He doesn’t actually know how elves are birthed. “Right?”

“Indeed,” Legolas say lightly. “Though I never met her. I understand she was quite tall and rather fearsome. But,” he adds, “I believe he loved her very much. You might be permitted to return, Prince Fíli, with your mother at your side. But I do not believe a band of armed dwarves would be any more welcome in these lands in the future than you were when you first arrived here.”

“Then we shall come without armed dwarves.” But that is easier said than done. The trip from Ered Luin is long and hard, and hardly safe. Fíli has no enemies that he knows of, but he is the heir to the throne of Durin, and that makes him a target for more than just goblins and orcs. With Kíli here at his side, it is easy to make foolhardy promises, but back in the safety of home, reason and sensibility might necessarily stay his feet. And who is to say, really, how Dís would feel? She was raised with the old ways too, and sometimes hews to them more strictly than Thorin. Fíli would not bring her here without telling her the full truth, but he knows too that such truth might be too much for her to accept.

Fíli thinks perhaps Kíli understands how empty Fíli’s words really are, for he doesn’t reply, except to say, “I should have written a letter for you to take to her. But I didn’t know what you were going to tell her and I didn’t know what to say, but that I loved her.”

“She knows that, brother,” Fíli says. “But I will make sure to tell her again.”

“I would hear of your mother some time, if you would tell me,” Legolas says quietly. “I never knew mine.”

“Later, perhaps,” Kíli says. “After we have had wine.”

“And ithrim cakes.”

“Yes, and your damnable cakes.”

If Legolas was trying to lighten the somber mood, he’s failed. Kíli falls quiet again, and though the silence is fraught and awkward, even Legolas seems loath to break it this time. The daylight grows ever stronger, and Fíli can see Kíli sneaking looks at the other dwarves, long and slow and full. His gaze lingers longest on Thorin, who among all the dwarves Kíli resembles most. The Durin line is strong in Kíli, an irony not lost on Fíli, who, though Thorin’s heir by virtue of birth order, is very much more his father’s son in look and temperament.

While Kíli studies the other dwarves, Fíli studies his brother. This is his first real chance in months to see Kíli up close in the light of day. By touch in the dark and in flickering torchlight, Kíli had looked strange and exotic, but in the sunlight he looks more subtly different. No one would ever mistake him for an elf born. For all the teasing Kíli suffered as a child, now, grown taller and thinner and finer, standing next to Legolas, he looks more like a dwarf than he ever has.

But even so, no one would think him a natural dwarf, either, and it is more than his abnormal height and strangely smooth skin and glossy, sleek hair. He moves with an odd sort of grace, but twitches almost birdlike at odd sounds in the forest. He is quiet and contemplative, still in a way that is foreign to the dwarves, though there is no way to know whether that is due to the changes he underwent or the torture he suffered during the process. Kíli has always been strong, stoic and tolerant of pain in a way Fíli never managed—to Fíli’s unending shame as a child when he couldn’t stifle the tears his younger brother never shed—but Alwyn had taken Kíli away and Kíli, who never complained and never cried, had screamed and wept.

That sort of pain, enduring and inescapable, changes people in ways that cannot be predicted, nor maybe even understood. If he had the time, Fíli would pick and pull and prod, question and search, until he would unravel all the fragile newly woven threads that make up this new version of his brother. He would find the changes pain and fear and separation had wrought, and study them until he knew this new Kíli as well as the old. But time is a luxury they have not been gifted with, so Fíli will have to leave unenlightened. More unsettling than the simple thought of leaving Kíli behind is leaving Kíli behind changed in ways that Fíli cannot fathom.

“Where will you go next?” Kíli asks finally.

“Thorin hasn’t told me,” Fíli admits. That was almost certainly an attempt to prevent this very conversation. Thorin loves Kíli utterly and deeply, but he is also acutely suspicious of the elves, and it cannot be overlooked how much Kíli now resembles those oldest of enemies, at least on the outside. Worse is that Thorin cannot judge exactly how much Kíli has changed on the inside, and in this, the poison spewed by the she-elf helps not at all; most incriminatory is Kíli’s failure to refute her accusations. Thorin trusts Kíli, but no dwarf would rely on another dwarf who would willingly bed an elf; this is an old, old prejudice, beyond all rationality and common sense.

Kíli’s position as hostage also complicates things beyond estimation: he will be living here with the elves, in the royal chambers, with an elf-prince as confidante, eating elf food, drinking elf wine, even speaking the elf tongue. There is no way of knowing how he will emerge from that, how ten or twenty or fifty years living among the elves will change his opinion of them and also of his dwarf kin, of whom the elves will certainly speak nothing but ill. He would not be the first captive to gain sympathy for his captors; it has happened to others under circumstances far worse than this, and it would be foolish to think that Kíli will be immune, when it has, according to all evidence, already happened with the she-elf.

Following his thoughts down this path leaves Fíli sullen and depressed, even as the dense growth of the forest gives way to a sun-dappled meadow. The dwarves blink and shade their eyes, squinting at the mountains in the distance. They have been so long in the forest, Fíli thinks they have all forgotten what it feels like to have the sun on their backs.

“Esgaroth lies to the east,” Legolas says. “Follow the river until you reach the town. It is not a lengthy walk. You should find refuge there. Dwarves from the Iron Hills will sometimes come into town to trade, and I think their relations with men are amicable enough.”

“They are kin,” Thorin grumbles. Fíli tries to recalls Dáin, Lord of the Iron Hills, but he has not seen him in many years, and he remembers little more than a gruff voice and a round, bulbous nose.

Legolas nods then shifts uncomfortably, eyes flickering to Kíli before resting back on Thorin. “Thranduil bade me remind you of your promise to stay away from Erebor,” he says formally, “and implores you to remember that your nephew’s life secures your pledge.”

“I shall not forget,” Thorin growls, and he will not, Fíli knows this. But Fíli also knows that the call of the mountain is strong, and there are other dwarves not bound by blood to Kíli who might be more willing to let Thorin’s second heir lose his life as sacrifice if it means retaking their home and reclaiming their gold. He wonders if Thranduil knows this, and, if so, if he cares at all, or if Kíli is nothing more to him than a convenient pawn, easily discarded if his value fades.

“Uncle,” Kíli says, and his voice is trembling, though he is undoubtedly trying hard to control it, “I am so sorry.”

Thorin stares at him mutely, words trapped behind too-tight lips, and for an instant Fíli is afraid that Thorin will say something profoundly stupid, lash out in anger or resentment or blame for the bitter ending to this lifelong quest. Thorin is ever speaking first and thinking second, but Fíli could not bear it if the last words between his uncle and his brother are harsh and unforgiving. Fíli is so convinced that Thorin will speak to wound that he is already leaning forward to shield his brother from further hurt, as if he could stop with his fists lacerations of the soul from words let fly too swiftly.

But Thorin’s eyes are soft and there is something liquid glimmering in the corner, and if he cannot speak it is not because he cannot find words to express his anger or disappointment, it is because he cannot find words at all. Thorin has ever been strict with them, mercurial and hard to please, with a quicksilver temper and expectations of behavior and accomplishment beyond those of even the most unreasonable dwarf. But he is also fiercely possessive and loyal, and he did, after all, break bones to defend against slights to his nephew.

“Do not apologize,” Thorin says gruffly. “If there is any fault to be had here, it is mine. I have failed you utterly.”

Kíli appears to be taken aback as Fíli feels. “You did not do this to me.”

“You should never have been here in the first place.” Thorin looks morose and defeated. “We were ill-prepared for this journey. I have no one to blame but myself.”

Kíli looks stricken. “You hold no blame in this, Uncle. Please do not –“ He stops, and looks around desperately at the entire company, “none of you should think I hold you in any way accountable.”

“Words are easy,” Thorin says. “Truth is harder.”

“It is truth. It was none of your doing. You couldn’t have stopped it.”

“Had she changed you in a day, lad, then—maybe so,” Thorin says reluctantly. “But it was months that she had you, working her magic on you, and what good were we to you then? When your mother asks what we did to help you, what answer should I give her but the truth, that we did nothing?”

“What could you have done?” Kíli says explosively. “You were locked away. Do not forget, Uncle, I spent most of my nights in those cells alongside you. There was no escaping.”

“But during the days,” Thorin says. “When we bathed, when we worked–“

“No,” Kíli says. His eyes flash darkly. He’s furious. “You do not get to claim this for yourself. She did this to me, and because of it, I am useless to you now, except that by staying here you and Fíli may have your freedom to go and live. So you will go and live, Uncle, and you will not spend your life choked with regret over something which was not within your power to prevent or control.”

Thorin steps back a half-pace in the face of Kíli’s fury. “Kíli-“

“No, you cannot do this. You cannot. Do you not understand that it is more than I can bear, to be this, and to lose you, and Fíli, and Mother and everyone and everything? If all that you are becomes guilt, then it is not worth it, none of it is worth it–“

Kíli’s fury has turned to anguish and Fíli’s own fears and regrets are clogging his throat so that he cannot speak, nor even breathe, and his limbs move slowly like new-formed ice when Kíli crashes to his knees. But Thorin is there to catch him, and for a moment, with Kíli curled up to half his size, it is easy to pretend that Thorin is still the bigger one.

Thorin is speaking quietly into Kíli’s hair, rubbing his back as if he were still a child. Fíli cannot hear whatever words Thorin whispers, but Kíli’s shaking slowly stops, and his eyes when he finally raises them, are red-rimmed but dry. “I will try,” Kíli says, and Fíli doesn’t know what promise Thorin has extracted from him, but that it has given Kíli some purpose, and for that, Fíli is glad.

When they rise to their feet, it is newly jarring to see Kíli towering over Thorin. It seems to make no one more uncomfortable than Kíli himself, and he steps back so that he is standing next to Legolas again, at equal height. But his eyes track to Fíli, mournful, and Fíli shakes with realization that the moment has arrived when they will take their leave.

“I regret that we are taking your nephew and brother from you,” Legolas says solemnly. “Had I any choice in the matter, I would not. But I do promise you that I will look after him as if he were my own kin.”

At this, Fíli feels a throb of resentment. Who is this elf-prince to speak of Kíli as something like kin? It is the elves who have done this to him, and the elves who are separating him from his family and brethren. But then resentment fades in between one heartbeat and the next, and a reluctant gratitude takes its place, for how can he begrudge Kíli one friend here? Without Legolas, Kíli would be all alone amongst the elves, with none but Lady Alwyn for company.

“I shall hold you to your promise,” Thorin replies. His eyes are dark as coal.

Legolas nods politely and then catches Fíli’s eyes, gazing at him intently for a long moment. It is unnerving to have that pale blue stare focused on him, almost as if the prince is trying to speak without words. But if the prince has that particular mind magic, he cannot make it work on Fíli, who gets nothing from the stare but intensity. Legolas blinks then, and smiles. “It is as my father said,” he offers lightly. “It has been a long time since I had a suitable playmate. Most of the elves here are too old and too set in their ways, content to gaze at the stars and dream of times long ago. It can be quite dull.”

“I can assure you,” Fíli manages, as if this were not goodbye. “Life with Kíli will never be dull.”

“I will strive to keep it interesting for him as well,” Legolas says with a glee that is not altogether obviously feigned, and he throws an arm familiarly around Kíli’s shoulders. If the elf’s cheer is forced, Fíli finds he does not mind, if it eases the deadened look in Kíli’s eyes. “I shall introduce you to the Captain of the Guard, Kíli. I think you’ll like her. She excels at all manner of dice games, and will be a most patient weapons tutor. No,” he says, in reply to Kíli’s irritated grunt, “do not tell me you do not need one. Remember I have seen you with a sword.”

Thorin looks annoyed, and Fíli doesn’t blame him. Legolas is—innocently, perhaps, or perhaps not—implying that there was some fault with Kíli’s sword training, and Thorin is quite naturally taking that as a personal indictment, perhaps as an indictment of dwarven ability in general. The truth of the matter is more complex, of course; Kíli had never shown particular interest or inclination in learning the finer points of swordsmanship, so much so that the joke in Ered Luin was that Dwalin lost his hair from pulling it out during Kíli’s sparring lessons, but Kíli never shirked his training and can defend himself well enough with the blade, even if he lacks any grace or finesse. He’s also the finest archer Ered Luin has ever seen, can drop a rabbit with a hunting knife from 100 paces, and once saved Fíli’s life with an impeccably aimed toss of an old, rusty throwing axe.

“What need has he for a sword?” Fíli asks, throat tight. “If he is to be a hostage?”

Legolas looks honestly surprised at the question. “Hostage, not prisoner. He will be expected to take his turn defending the forest, as are we all. There are spiders to hunt, and they are not always so courteous as to stay a proper distance away so that they may be easily shot with an arrow.”

“And if he has a sword,” Fíli continues implacably, “and freedom to roam the forest, what guarantee do you have that he will not one day simply leave?”

Legolas blinks. “We have his word,” he says, “as a prince of your people. You would not break your word, would you, Kíli?”

“No,” Kíli says, looking very irritated. “I would not. Fíli, let us say our goodbyes in private.” He grabs Fíli’s hand, squeezing so tightly it’s painful, and tugs him none-too-gently away. Behind them, Fíli sees Thorin engage in urgent conversation with the elf prince.

“Do not make this more difficult for me, brother,” Kíli says, when they are far enough away no one can hear. “I am only here on their sufferance.”

Fíli thinks how absurd that is, even as he is flexing his fingers to get some feeling back. “They are keeping you here against your will.”

“Yes,” Kíli says, with no little exasperation, “in the royal residence, with some freedom to do as I wish. Would you prefer they keep me locked away in the dungeon for the next several decades? Because I, for one, would not. I have spent more than enough time already in their cells, as have you and Thorin and everyone else. If staying here buys you freedom, then that is a price I’m willing to pay. Especially now.” He waves at his body, a long, ambiguous sweep of his arm. “Look at me, Fíli. What am I? What will people see, when they look at me? I know what it is to be a dwarf, but very little about being an elf—even a part-elf. I need to learn, and I cannot think of a better place for that but here.”

Fíli growls and looks away, because he doesn’t want to see Kíli’s face, all set in stone and quiet conviction. “You have always been unbearably stubborn.”

“I learned well from you and Thorin.” He touches Fíli’s arm, gently. “Do not think that just because I am willing to stay I will not miss you. There is part of me that wishes –“

He does not finish, and turns away guiltily when Fíli looks at him. “Wishes what?”

“That you would stay too.” Fíli swallows, throat clogged with guilt, but Kíli’s face goes tight and pale and he shakes his head furiously before Fíli can speak. “I don’t expect you to. I wouldn’t let you stay even if you wanted. You belong at Thorin’s side.”

“I belong at your side,” Fíli says furiously. “You’re my brother.”

“And he is your uncle and king. You’re the heir. Your duty to him exceeds your duty to me.” Kíli sits down and pulls Fíli down too. Seated, the difference in their heights is less noticeable, and it feels almost normal to lean against each other, shoulder to shoulder. He leans close and speaks softly in Khuzdul, though the language is not made for whispers, and they are neither of them as comfortable in it as they should be. “If Thorin feels he must retake Erebor, you should support him. Don’t let my presence here stop you.”

Only Kíli’s arm around his shoulders prevents Fíli from jerking backwards in shock. “We would not–“ he breathes.

“You must,” Kíli says. “If my life must be forfeit, then so be it. But I do not think Thranduil will be so quick to kill me. There is something he wants within the mountain.”

“Are you willing to risk your life on your intuition?”

“I would risk it for far less, for Thorin’s sake,” Kíli says. “And for our people to reclaim their home.”

Fíli closes his eyes and leans forward so their foreheads touch. “You ever were an idiot, brother.” He breathes in Kíli’s scent, exotic now but still Kíli, underneath. “I do not think Thorin will be so hasty to reclaim Erebor. This quest has been disastrous from start to finish.”

“Time may change his perspective,” Kíli says simply, then pulls him close and hugs him tight. Fíli tries not to imagine this being the last time he will hug his brother because it cannot be. “I will write if they let me, though I am not sure how quickly messages will travel.”

“I look forward to it,” Fíli says, then wrenches himself to his feet. “We must go. We have a good distance to cover before the sun sets.”

There is no good or easy way to say goodbye, but the dwarves have been waiting for months to leave the forest, and it is well past midday. Kíli looks stricken, but also jittery and restless. It will be easier for him, Fíli thinks, once they have all gone, and there is no longer hope of any other outcome but the one which has come to pass.

Legolas has reattached himself to Kíli’s side. “I had quite an interesting conversation with your uncle,” he says in a low voice. He is not quite hovering, but at the same time, not quite not hovering. Fíli hears him only because he is close enough that he is at risk of hovering himself, a habit he broke long ago, but one in which he’s indulging himself one last time out of soppy sentimentality.

Kíli drags his eyes away from the dwarves to look at the elf. “Should I be apologizing on his behalf?”

“No.” Legolas seems amused, though perhaps it is more at Kíli than Thorin. “He does not trust my father.”

“I do not trust your father either,” Kíli says; quite sensibly, Fíli thinks.

Legolas quirks an odd little grin. “Oddly, Thorin appears to trust me.”

“I don’t think he trusts any elf,” Kíli says, disagreeing without venom. “Especially of Thranduil’s line.”

Legolas shrugs briefly, an economical shift of muscle that barely stretches the fabric of his tunic. “Nonetheless, he tasked me with your safety, and promised dire consequences if ill should befall you or–” and here his mouth quirked “–you are forced to engage in any further elvish perversion.”

Kíli flushes, red leaping easily to his paler, hairless cheeks. “I hope you are misquoting him.”

“Those were not his exact words, no,” Legolas said. “But I believe I have captured his sentiment.”

Kíli nods once, face still flushed. “He is not keen to leave me here.”

“He does not seem especially keen to take you with him,” Legolas says. Although Fíli is mostly certain Legolas was not intending to be cruel, he nonetheless feels his hands curl into fists, but he does not move nor say anything. This is not his battle to fight.

Kíli seems disinclined to fight any battles on his own behalf. He just looks drawn and tired. “No, he is not that, either.”

“Kíli.” Bofur, pack already on his back, has dared approached. Bifur and Bombur trail just a few steps behind.

Kíli musters a smile and a nod. “I’m going to miss that hat most of all, I think.”

“I would leave it,” Bofur says, “but I think the elves would little care for it.”

“It would not suit me half as well as you,” Kíli says diplomatically. “It sits better on your head, Mister Bofur.”

Bofur grins widely. “Fortunately, I’ve got something else for you.” He rustles around in a pocket and pulls out a small, whittled piece of wood. It’s a tiny dwarf, hefting a tiny axe. “So you don’t forget where you came from, laddie.”

Kíli blinks, and blinks again, as if there’s something in his eye, reaching out hesitantly to take the toy.

“It moves,” Bofur says cheerfully. “Bop his head, and he’ll swing the axe down. She’s sharp, too. Mind you don’t cut yourself.”

“I’ll be very careful,” Kíli says. “Thank you.”

Oín and Gloín bustle up, Gloín rummaging in his pack. He pulls out a small leather pouch. “Good dwarf tobacco,” he says, shoving it at Kíli. “None of that weak elvish leaf. Makes a proper pipe, it does.”

“And a tincture,” Oín says, thrusting a small bottle into Kíli’s hands. “If that old cough reappears. They say elvish medicine is magic but what do they know of dwarf maladies?”

Kíli thanks both of them, eyes wet, and is soon surrounded by Ori, Nori and Dori. Fíli cannot even imagine with these brothers will have for Kíli, but he suspects it will have been stolen from someone, somewhere. He takes the opportunity to pull Legolas aside. The elf, for his part, steps aside willingly enough, though his eyes are wary.

“We must seem very cruel to you,” Fíli says, “leaving Kíli behind.”

“I’ll admit,” Legolas says slowly, “I was surprised Thorin agreed so readily to the idea. From the way you protested when Kíli was—when he was with Lady Alwyn, I did not expect your company to so easily leave without him.” He gazes at Fíli shrewdly. “It is because he has been changed.”

“You do not understand our ways. Dwarves are creatures of stone. We are not meant for change. It is not well tolerated. To your people, he is a curiosity. To ours—at least, to some—he is abomination.”

Legolas frowns. “The elves,” he says presently, “would never find fault with one who was changed against his will.”

“Then in this, you are the better race,” Fíli says. “But for our part, dwarves would never attempt to change anyone in such a matter, and certainly not for sport.”

“Then in that, I suppose,” Legolas concedes, “it is the dwarves that are the better race. Our lives are long, and sometimes dull. I think the longest lived among us find it too easy to forget that lesser beings are not here solely for their amusement.”

“Lesser beings,” Fíli says flatly.

“Any other than an elf.” Legolas has the grace to look a little embarrassed. “Those are not my words, nor my thoughts. But many of the Eldar consider themselves above any mortal creature, and not bound by their rules or conventions.”

“You do not share those beliefs?”

“No. Perhaps I am just too young.”

Fíli wonders briefly how old the prince actually is. He is not skilled at discerning much from the elves’ appearance. Truth be told, he can hardly tell the males from the females, and age is that much harder to reckon. Thranduil himself looked not so very much older to him than his son, though rumor had it that he was nearly as old as Lord Elrond himself. Fíli studies Legolas for a moment, considering. Legolas looks bemused at the close attention, but doesn’t back away.

“Kíli doesn’t look so much like you after all,” Fíli says, finally. “Nor like a man.”

“He looks,” Legolas says, “like a rather large dwarf. Well. Less hairy, I suppose.”

“He was not over-gifted with hair before,” Fíli says. “My uncle—I understand what he asked of you, and why.”

Legolas nods. “As do I. Though I fear the rest of my people will find it hard to comprehend that Thorin felt it necessary to ask. The customs surrounding the treatment of hostages are time-bound. Kíli is in no danger here, so long as your uncle keeps to his word.”

“He will keep it,” Fíli says. “Though he is not the only dwarf interested in Erebor.”

Legolas shrugs again. “My father will not hold Kíli responsible for the behavior of any other dwarf. It is only Thorin who has promised his word.”

Fíli nods, and looks again to his brother, deep now in soft conversation with Dwalin, who looks regretful and uncomfortable both. “I would ask you a favor too, my lord.”

“Never has another elf seen such a day as this,” Legolas says, raising an eyebrow. “It is one dwarvish request after another. What service can I do for you, Prince Fíli?”

Fíli takes a deep breath for fortitude. “I would have you help Kíli accept that he is no longer fully a dwarf,” he says. “Do not let him hew too tightly to our customs.”

Legolas goes utterly still. “You surprise me,” he says finally. “Your uncle suggested quite the opposite.”

“My uncle would have Kíli remember always that he is a prince of the line of Durin,” Fíli says. “But that title meant little before and its value is even less to Kíli now. He will never be king, even if I die with no heirs of my own. Our people are stubborn and proud and they cling to their traditions—I do not know that they will ever accept him at all, and certainly not to rule. If he is to live his life here among you, I would not have him live it alone.”

Legolas turns down his mouth in a small frown. “I cannot keep my word to your uncle and make an entirely opposite promise to you.”

Fíli scuffs at the ground. “I do not think Thorin would want Kíli to be needlessly discontent.”

“I am not so sure,” Legolas says mildly. “Regardless, I think the choice will belong ultimately to Kíli.”

“I would have you remind him of that, too.”

Legolas nods somberly, but then he grins, eyes twinkling. “Should he threaten to indulge himself too much in his dwarvish nature, I promise to put an immediate halt to it.”

“Fíli, it’s time to go.” Thorin’s voice breaks into their conversation. Fíli looks up to see his uncle standing nearby, pack hoisted on his back, weapons once again in his possession, and the rest of the dwarves falling into line behind him. Kíli is standing frozen in place, clutching all the little things the other dwarves had pulled out of their packs, his jaw clenched so tight, Fíli imagines he could grind a diamond into dust between his teeth.

Fíli jolts forward, throwing himself into Kíli’s arms one last time. “I don’t have anything to leave you with,” he says brokenly.

“I don’t need anything to remember you by,” Kíli says, dropping to his knees so they can embrace more fully. “I will carry you with me always, nadad.”

“As I will do you.” Fíli lets the hug last long past the time it would have grown awkward had the circumstances been different, then rises slowly to his feet and shoulders his pack. “It will be easier when we’re gone,” he whispers.

“That’s what I keep telling myself,” Kíli says. “But I’m not sure I really believe it.”

Fíli takes one long, last look, and turns resolutely around. He is a prince of the line of Durin, and he will not cry in front of his uncle and his brethren and the coldly disinterested stares of the elven Forest Guard. But inside, his heart is breaking and he knows he will never feel whole again.

Chapter Text

The Last Homely House East of the Sea looks unchanged, which Fíli supposes is not surprising. Twenty years is not so very long to dwarves; to elves, he imagines, it is hardly enough time to mark its passing. The morning is bright and warm, but he is cranky and tired of traveling. “Remind me again why we have been summoned here?”

To his left, riding stately and demure on a large, difficult pony, Dís sighs. “This ill-temper does not wear well, Fíli.”

Fíli apologizes, feeling as thoroughly chastened as if he were a dwarfling again. Behind them, Dwalin snickers quietly to himself, and Fíli glances at him crossly. His irritation at having to leave Ered Luin in the height of summer—and to forfeit two or three hefty commissions—has not faded over two weeks of travel. Nor has his mood been improved by his mother and Dwalin making moon eyes at each other behind his back the length of the journey.

“It is simply that I still fail to understand why we must attend,” he says. “The elves are welcome to their festivals. There’s no need for us to partake in them.”

His mother speaks with care and infinite patience. “This is special. The feast of mellamidrien comes but once every three centuries. Thrór himself sent a delegation to the last one. All the Free People of Middle Earth will be represented.”

“Dáin is sending representatives from the Iron Hills,” Fíli grumbles. “That should be more than enough dwarves for them. It’s not as if the elves like us very much.”

“Fíli,” Dís says. “We are come on Thorin’s behalf. Please try to play the part of the heir to Durin’s throne. It is only for a few days.”

“A week,” Dwalin coughs, though he subsides when Fíli glares at him.

They are greeted cordially when they cross the great bridge, far more cordially than 20 years earlier, when they had arrived bedraggled and exhausted only to be surrounded by an elvish hunting party, armed and astride horses. “Do you remember,” Fíli murmurs softly, and Dwalin nods, and says, “Aye.”

Lord Elrond himself comes to greet them. He looks exactly as Fíli remembers him, tall and regal and coolly otherworldly. His diadem glints silver in the sun; Fíli wonders if it’s mithril. If so, it would be worth more than all the wealth of Ered Luin combined. “Prince Fíli,” Elrond welcomes, sounding almost warm. “Lord Dwalin. And you must certainly be Lady Dís! Your resemblance to your brother is remarkable.”

Dís nods her head a fraction, polite and genteel. “Lord Elrond. It is a pleasure and an honor to meet you.”

“I am delighted you could make the journey and celebrate this occasion with us. Come. We have rooms prepared. You can wash and rest within.”

After a sorely needed bath and a meal—with a respectable amount of meat, if still too many leaves—Fíli takes leave of his mother and attempts to track down the forge. One of his blades has been nicked and needs sharpening.

“Prince Fíli,” he hears. He turns to find Elrond approaching.

“Just Fíli is fine,” he says. “Not even dwarves use my title outside of the most formal occasion.”

“As you wish.” Elrond falls into step beside Fíli, hands clasped loosely behind his back. “I was pleased you could attend the festival. I feared you might still hold some resentment from your last visit. I know you bear the elves no goodwill.”

“I have my reasons,” Fíli replies. He hopes his voice is neutral.

“Indeed,” Elrond says. “I am familiar with what took place in Mirkwood. For what it is worth, I would not have condoned such a thing here in Rivendell, but the Silvan elves live by their own rules and do not answer to us.” He casts a look down at Fíli. It is full of unexpected compassion. “Have you seen your brother since?”

Fíli scowls. He has little appetite to discuss this with an elf, of all creatures. “No,” he says shortly. “The journey back to Ered Luin was difficult, and the years since have not been easy. We have corresponded a few times, but we have not been able to make the journey to Mirkwood, and Thranduil will not permit Kíli to travel to the Blue Hills.”

“And if he did permit it?” Elrond asks. “Would Prince Kíli be welcome there?”

“He would not be killed on sight,” Fíli says curtly. He keeps walking, fruitlessly irritated that no matter how quickly he walks, Elrond’s stride, matching him, seems slow and easy. “He would not be welcomed by many, but it is unlikely he would face prosecution. The Council has larger problems at hand in these times.”

Elrond nods thoughtfully. “As do we all. For what it is worth, your brother has been the topic of many a discussion among my people. Most disapprove of Thranduil’s decision to let Lady Alwyn proceed with her work. They liken it to Melkor’s creation of the orcs.”

Fíli cannot disagree. “And those who do not disapprove?”

“They are a small minority. They believe the creation of a superior warrior is a worthy end that justifies the means.”

Fíli laughs. “A superior warrior. Kíli?”

“I have not had the opportunity to witness it myself, but they say he is unbeatable in single combat, though his swordsmaster despairs of his footwork.”

“That sounds like Kíli,” Fíli admits, though he is fairly stunned to hear his brother described as unbeatable at anything to do with a sword. “His footwork has ever been sloppy.”

“It matters little, if he can shatter an opponent’s blade with a single blow. Times are troubled. Dark forces begin to rise. His strength may be needed ere long.” They walk in silence for a few moments, each lost in thought, and then Elrond says, “I have heard that your brother has many friends in Mirkwood. He is well liked by the elves there.”

“He was well liked among the dwarves,” Fíli says. “He is quite likeable.”

“He has accomplished a task many thought impossible. He has brought Prince Legolas somewhat to heel.”

Fíli stops at this, and casts an incredulous glance at the elf. “Kíli did?”

“So they say.”

“Then Lady Alwyn’s magic changed him more than I guessed.”

“Perhaps,” Elrond says with a small smile. “Or perhaps your uncle trained him better than you knew. He is, I have heard, well aware of what behavior is appropriate to his station. Knowledge that, to his father’s chagrin, Legolas somehow failed to obtain.”

Fíli finds himself returning Elrond’s smile, just a bit. “It is hard for me to conceive of Kíli taming anyone’s behavior.”

“I confess I have my doubts Legolas is truly tamed,” Elrond says. “I think perhaps it would be more accurate to say he has become better at acting the part of a prince when required.”

“We were well drilled for life in court,” Fíli says, “even though we had no great expectations of ever living thus. Thorin will be pleased to know that Kíli retains at least some of what he has been taught. Though I cannot guess how closely Thranduil’s kingdom compares to the halls of Erebor.”

“Charm and good comportment are well received in any court. And I am told your brother bears his situation with uncommon grace. He does the line of Durin proud.”

“Mother will be most pleased to hear it.” They walk the rambling pathway for a few moments. Fíli is aware of Elrond’s thoughtful gaze. The elf is calm, but expectant. He is waiting for a question. Fíli thinks there can be but one, and asks it. “Will any Mirkwood elves be attending the festival?”

Elrond nods. “Indeed. We are expecting many. Relations are cordial enough among us, if not entirely warm. They would not fail to attend such an event as this.”

Fíli nods. “Then surely some amongst them will know my brother.”

“Surely so,” Elrond agrees.

“I would speak with them, if I might. Any news of Kíli will be welcome.”

“I am sure they would be delighted to speak with you. Most will not arrive until the morning, but there are a few who have arrived early.” He looks up at the sun, as if to judge the time of day, and says, “I think you will be able to find them at the archery range. My sons are with them—I do not believe you met them when you were last here. There is a competition in progress.” He bends down, and speaks softly, as if imparting a great secret. “I know not how it is among dwarves, but among the elves, at such a gathering as this, there is always a competition taking place.”

Fíli laughs. “Dwarves do not need the excuse of a gathering to hold a competition.”

Elrond straightens up with a smile, and dips his head to the right. “Then I shall leave you to find them. If you follow that path down for a few moments, it will lead you to the range. I imagine you will hear them before you see them.”

“Many thanks,” Fíli says, and bows. Elrond takes his leave, and Fíli walks quickly down the path. He would ordinarily be in no great hurry to speak with elves, but the thought of hearing news of Kíli is enticing enough to hurry his stride.

Elrond is proven correct when the sounds of sport reach Fíli’s ears after only a few minutes. Fíli cannot tell how many elves there are, but their voices are loud and cheerful, shouting and hooting and laughing. There is a steady swish of arrows and a repetitive thudding as they hit their targets one after the other. After each arrow hits home, there is more hooting and jeering, and an occasional whistle of approval. A friendly competition then, Fíli thinks, so they should not mind overmuch if he disturbs them.

He rounds the bend and sees the group from behind, in a row, shooting with a lazy ease. They are quite far away from the targets, and there are arrows scattered everywhere. Three dark-haired elves stand all in a row, and next to them a blond, and last a red-haired she-elf, if the slight curve of her hips is any indication.

The blond takes a shot and—though it appears to Fíli to go to the center of the target—throws up his arms in disgust, to the good-natured twittering of his brethren. They chirp something at him and he growls something back, turning around to grab an arrow from the ground, and that is when Fíli finally sees his face.

It is Legolas. Of course it is Legolas, Fíli thinks, and Elrond is a devious son of a she-elf, but he breaks into a light run and calls the elf’s name, never so happy in all his life to see a pair of stupidly pointy ears.

Legolas straightens and stares at him, a wide smile breaking across his face as he shouts out, “Fíli!”

The other elves turn around then, dropping their bows, and—Fíli’s heart stops for a long moment, and he stumbles, nearly falling, before he is running outright, and the broadest of the elves—only it is not an elf, not an elf at all, Elrond you scheming pointy-eared bastard—is running towards him too, and he is caught up in a hug that threatens to squeeze all the air from his lungs, and Kíli is laughing into his hair as he swings him around and around and around.

“Brother!” Kíli says breathlessly. “I did not expect you to be here.”

“Nor I you,” Fíli says. He cannot stop grinning. “How is it that Thranduil has let you leave Mirkwood?”

Kíli shrugs, eyes bright and shining. He has set Fíli on his feet, but clings to his shoulder still. “I have some freedom to travel, so long as my wardens are with me.”

“Father is glad to see us go,” Legolas throws in. He is standing just off to the side, his arm familiarly around the red-haired she-elf, grinning broadly. He reaches out a hand to clasp Fíli’s forearm, and grips it tightly. “I think he fears we will burn the forest down if we stay too long within its borders.”

“You must admit his fears are not entirely unfounded,” the she-elf says, but there is no sting to her words and she is smiling fondly at Kíli.

Legolas scoffs. “That was just the one time,” and Fíli’s heart swells as Legolas and Kíli both burst into bright, cheerful laughter.

~

Dinner is strange and wondrous. Kíli talks ceaselessly, and if he occasionally slips into Sindarin when addressing Legolas and the she-elf—Tauriel, Thranduil’s erstwhile Captain of the Guard, of late on semi-permanent duty keeping rein on Legolas and Kíli—Fíli can forgive it. And if every story starts and ends with Legolas—though sometimes, it is Legolas and Tauriel, who seems less of a warden and more of a co-conspirator—Fíli can forgive that, too. Because Kíli is here, and he is healthy and whole, and he has grown comfortable with himself in a way Fíli had never let himself dare to hope.

Dís is sitting next to Kíli, and it is as if she cannot get enough of looking at him, so long does she just sit and stare. Dwalin is on Dís’s other side and he stares as well, but his gaze is thoughtful and cautious, not friendly but neither hostile, taking seriously his responsibility to stand in for his king.

Kíli looks exactly as Fíli remembers; two decades have not aged him a day, and that is bittersweet, because in that same time Fíli has become a proper adult, past his first century and carrying all the attendant responsibilities. Though he is still young by dwarfish standards, he feels the weight of age settling on his shoulders.

Elrond’s sons are across the table: El-someone and El-someone else—Fíli thinks the elves have more than a little nerve making fun of rhyming dwarf names. The twins, it seems, have known Kíli for almost all the time he has lived in Mirkwood, for they travel frequently across Middle Earth, often stopping in Thranduil’s realm, “to kill a few spiders when we’re bored,” one of them says with a laugh. Fíli has no idea which it was—he cannot tell them apart at all. They contribute occasionally to the lively conversation, mostly tales to embarrass Legolas and make Kíli look good in comparison, which Dís, at least, fully appreciates. Legolas accepts this blatant favoritism with petulant ill-humor, and takes to throwing pieces of fruit at the Els when no one is looking. It is a very dwarvish dinner, Fíli thinks, even though no one has stepped up on the table once.

“Tell me all,” Kíli insists when he has momentarily run out of stories, turning to Dís. “Tell me everything I have missed,” but Dís only smiles and pats his arm, fingers lingering fondly.

“I will let your brother fill your head with gossip,” she says. “I would much rather hear about you.”

“Oh,” Legolas says, tossing a roll at Kíli’s head. Kíli bats it away lazily without even looking. “Tell them about the time we snuck into the Master’s palace in Laketown and he caught us in the wine cellar.”

“Caught you in the wine cellar,” Kíli corrects, and then he proceeds to tell the entire story, which is, in fact, quite funny. Fíli just sits back in his chair and listens, and his cheeks hurt from smiling.

~

“But are you happy?” Fíli asks again, many hours later, after Dís has finally excused herself to go to bed, Dwalin at her heels—oh, how Kíli’s eyes had gone wide and round with surprise at that! The elves have taken their merrymaking elsewhere, and it is just Fíli and Kíli now, sitting at the table among the scattered remains of dinner, pleasantly numbed with good food and strong ale. Kíli swirls the ale in his mug. “I am more than content,” he says. “It is a good life, in most of its moments.”

“But not the life you were meant to have,” Fíli says, perhaps more than a little drunk, and certainly more than a little maudlin. If he squints, the shadows on Kíli’s face look a little like a beard, and if he angles his head just so, it is easy to miss how tall Kíli is.

Kíli shakes his head. “Who is to say what life I was meant to have? Perhaps this was what I was fated for all along.”

Fíli shakes his head right back. “No. I cannot believe that. You are of Durin’s line. You were not meant to live in the forest with the elves.”

“Neither was I meant to live under a mountain,” Kíli says easily, and this is a painful truth they have both known all along. Dwarves are creatures of stone and ore, but Kíli was born in the green valleys at the foot of Ered Luin, and he never could suffer being kept away from open sky and open spaces. Even had they retaken Erebor, Kíli would not have lasted long within its caverns.

“Do you think you could come home now?” Fíli asks. “Had Thorin but known you would be here, he would never have stayed away. He will be very upset to have missed you.”

Kíli frowns. “I do not know. Thranduil’s freedoms are tightly granted. Legolas would come regardless of his father’s wishes, of that I have no doubt, but Tauriel—she has become a good friend, Fíli. I would not place her in such a position, were Thranduil to say no.”

“Would he say no? He gave you leave to travel here. He must have known there would be other dwarves in attendance.”

“He expected a delegation from the Iron Hills,” Kíli said. “He did not fear that I would flee to them. Quite the opposite; he was greatly concerned for my safety. We have met some dwarves in our travels. They have not been unduly welcoming.” He toys with his ale, staring into the depths of the mug. “Legolas insisted I would be safe within an elvish conclave, and Thranduil eventually came to agree. I think Elladan and Elrohir played some small part in that, though I know not whether they were aware you would be here. It would not surprise me if they had. They are as devious as their father, though sometimes less subtle about it.”

“I am not talking of any dwarfish settlement; I am speaking of Ered Luin. You grew up there. You would be in no danger within its confines.”

“Safe is not the same as welcome.” Kíli sighs and drains his ale. “Still, it might be pleasant. There are places I have mentioned to Legolas and Tauriel, that I would like to show them–“

“Do you never go anywhere without them?” Fíli means nothing more than what he says, but Kíli looks at him sharply nonetheless, a challenge lurking somewhere in his eyes.

“Legolas attends me always,” he says steadily. “Tauriel accompanies us as she chooses or not, unless Thranduil deems her presence necessary to ensure my safety.” His voice goes soft and chilly. “I have lived with elves for two decades. They accept me where dwarves would not. I need not defend myself to you.”

Fíli holds his hands up, palms out. “You misunderstand me, brother. I make no presumptions, nor would I cast judgment.” He fiddles with his own ale, running his fingers up and down the handle of the mug, tracing the delicate carvings etched into the wood. “It is simply that I was worried you would be alone; it is a great relief to me that you have not been.”

“I have not been alone,” Kíli says, still cautious, though his voice has warmed to some small degree. “But you do not look relieved, nadad.”

Fíli finds his mouth twisting into a grin at the endearment. “I am relieved. It is just that I am also envious. It should have been me by your side these many years. We were not meant to be separated thus.”

“No,” Kíli agrees. “I often wished you had been able to stay. There were many occasions I felt your loss very keenly.” He grows pensive then, almost sad for a moment, but then straightens up and forces a smile. “Let us discuss happier things. I hear you have been courting.”

Fíli flushes. “Thorin insists I sire the next heir.”

Kíli pokes him. “I trust you are not averse to marriage.”

“No, I have known for many years that this would be expected of me, and Léamig is very fair to look at, and expert with a sword. A match would be more than tolerable.” He drops his voice. “I confess I have let Thorin think I am reluctant to wed. He has become very conciliatory on other matters in exchange. Léamig knows, and is happy to play along. Don’t tell Mother.”

“I would not dream of it,” Kíli laughs. “If you were to wed, Thranduil could hardly refuse to allow me to attend the ceremony, if the passage is still safe.” He grows contemplative then, and very serious. “There are dark things rising. I know not whether news has reached Ered Luin, but there have been attempts these last few years to reclaim Erebor.”

Fíli nods. “We have heard the rumors.”

“Without access to the hidden door, all must enter through the main gate. There have been three attempts, but no survivors.” Kíli frowns. “And thus we have our confirmation that Smaug lives still.”

“We have heard that, too.”

Kíli leans forward, eyes dark and intent. “And what says Thorin? He has made no attempt on Erebor himself.”

“He would not,” Fíli says, startled that Kíli would suggest it. “Not while you were still in Mirkwood. You know this.”

Kíli shrugs. “It was not beyond the realm of possibility that he would decide the mountain was more important than the life of his elf-changed nephew, though I confess I am glad he did not. Still, it is one thing to let the mountain lie fallow when there are no other serious contenders to take the prize; quite another to leave it be when others try to claim it.”

Fíli considers carefully what to say. “There have been discussions,” he admits eventually. “Nothing further.”

Kíli sits back, nodding. “There have been discussions within Mirkwood as well. If Smaug can be vanquished, I think Thranduil would prefer an ally on the throne of Erebor when the fighting ends.”

“That is a very large ‘if,’ nadad.”

Kíli grins back at him. “I am happy to leave that part of the matter to greater minds than yours or mine.”

“And will those great minds also conceive a way in which Thorin and Thranduil will call themselves allies?”

“That may fall to you, brother. Thranduil will likely need little convincing. He has offered Thorin his cooperation once before, and that was before he got to know how loyal, trustworthy, and charming the heirs of Durin can be.”

Fíli laughs. “I see your sense of modesty has grown outsize with the rest of you.”

There is a chuckle from behind them. “If he has a sense of modesty, I’ve yet to discern it.” Legolas ambles to their table, and eases gracefully into the chair next to Kíli’s, reaching for his mug of ale and making a disgruntled face to find it empty. “You have an entire week for talking. You need not do it all tonight. The hour grows late.”

Kíli slides a different mug across the table to the elf. “Where is Tauriel?”

Legolas is drinking, muscles in his throat working smoothly as he swallows. “The twins are showing her their swords,” he says mildly, with such a straight face that Fíli wonders if the words mean no more than they seem. “I do not expect her back for some time.” He glances at them both. “Your mother is quite disarming. Had it been she in charge of your company when you crossed the woods, you might not have ended up in my father’s cells at all.”

“I expect we’d have ended up there anyway, but probably stayed longer. Her temper is worse than Thorin’s,” Kíli says, looking all at once both more sober and more relaxed now that Legolas has returned to his side. Legolas attends me always, Kíli had said, and Fíli had dared to wonder briefly if Kíli meant more by it than simple fact, but in truth, it is a question—one of many—that he does not really wish answered. Kíli’s life was once known to him nearly in its entirety, the time they spent apart never stretching longer than could be counted by one turn of the hourglass, but now they have spent years apart, and that time can never be fully recounted nor recovered. Kíli has changed but Fíli has changed too; what has not changed is that all Fíli has ever wished is for Kíli to be happy. And Fíli has seen Kíli at the range laughing with the elves, and at dinner telling silly stories and batting food away mid-air, and now slipping ale to Legolas without either even taking note of it. So Fíli knows that Kíli is happy, and whatever form that happiness takes is acceptable; Fíli does not need to know any more about it than that.

A half-eaten roll hits him in the forehead. Legolas snickers. “You are a child,” Kíli tells him, but his eyes are warm and affectionate. He turns back to Fíli. “So, Mother and Dwalin … they are wed?”

“It is very recent. The letter will probably be waiting for you when you return to Mirkwood,” Fíli says. “It happened very quickly. You know Mother has little patience for waiting. Once Dwalin worked his nerve up to court her, it was only weeks before they decided to marry. They showed up at the forge that same day and insisted Thorin marry them right then and there. He had to cut the ceremony short because he had left an iron in the fire.”

Kíli draws his eyebrows together. “Do you call him Da?”

Fíli throws the half-eaten roll at Kíli, but Kíli has excellent reflexes and what Fíli suspects are many years of practice deflecting airborne foodstuffs, so the roll comes nowhere near him. “No,” Fíli says sourly. “I am just grateful I have been living with Thorin these past few months. It was horrible enough listening to them coo at each other all the way here.”

Kíli nods slowly, forehead crinkled. “So that makes him our stepfather. I can’t imagine which of us is more discomfited by the fact. Did you see him staring? I had my steak knife out throughout the meal.”

Legolas looks up from where he is tearing a napkin into bits, with fastidious attention. “I thought it might have been indigestion. Or perhaps his natural expression. I have never seen him wear anything but a scowl.” He finishes his napkin and starts on another, building his piles of small linen squares. “The twins were quite concerned. Did you see, they had their daggers to hand the whole time.”

Fíli stares mutely between the two of them for a moment. “Dwalin would never hurt you,” he manages eventually.

“He would never succeed,” Legolas answers sharply. He tears the napkin in his hands so violently, it shreds.

Kíli murmurs something in fluid Sindarin, running his fingers briefly over Legolas’s twitching hand, and Legolas breathes hard once then nods, rising to his feet in one smooth, graceful movement. “I’m to bed,” he says. “Tomorrow will be a long day.” He places a hand on Kíli’s shoulder and squeezes gently. “Don’t stay up too late talking. Haldir arrives tomorrow, and if we lose to him at the range, he will brag about it for the next century and be utterly intolerable.”

Kíli scowls. “He’s intolerable already.”

“Which is why we cannot lose to him,” Legolas says, then bows politely to Fíli and takes his leave.

Fíli stares after him thoughtfully. “He is quite protective.”

“He is,” Kíli agrees. “At times it can be a little overwhelming, but mostly I am glad for it.” He will not look at Fíli, and his eyes go vague and distant. “I had some bad days in the beginning, and worse nights. They are far fewer now, but—” He shakes himself a little and breathes deeply. “He helps me through them.”

“That was once my responsibility,” Fíli says, wistful and regretting deeply those times he could not be there. “Protecting you.”

“You held it far longer than you should,” Kíli says. “I was ever the baby brother to you, long after I’d grown.” He reaches out, and though it is strange to Fíli to have his hand so thoroughly enveloped by his brother’s, the grasp is warm and familiar—and there on Kíli’s thumb is the scar from their great play-battle against the dwarrow-orcs of Mordor, and on his pinky the thin white line from where he came too close to Thorin’s forge the time they snuck in unattended; Kíli’s hands are different, true, but now Fíli can see that they are also still the same.

Fíli pulls his fingers free reluctantly, and rises slowly. “Much as it pains me to admit it, I think Legolas was right. We must both to bed, or else the sun shall rise on us again, and we will be good for nothing. I am sure Mother will wish to breakfast with you and watch you at the range as well. But you must promise to beat the elves.”

Kíli looks at him strangely. “You are aware, are you not, how old the twins are?”

“Well, no,” Fíli admits. “But surely they cannot be so very much older-“

“Thousands of years older, brother. I would not wager on my chances, should they choose to seriously compete. Mostly they take pity on me so I do not grow too disheartened.”

“They take good care of you then,” Fíli says as they walk up the path towards the guest quarters.

“They do,” Kíli agrees. “You should not worry about me, brother. I am quite well looked after.”

Fíli nods. “So it seems. I shall see you in the morning, nadad.”

“I look forward to it,” Kíli says, and drops a quick kiss on Fíli’s forehead before drifting silently away. Fíli watches him disappear into the night and smiles to himself, feeling warmer and more content than he has been in many years. Even in an elvish compound, with Kíli here, he feels at home.

~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~Kíli~Fíli~

The week passes far too swiftly, and before Kíli realizes it, he is watching Fíli’s pony ride away, next to Dís and Dwalin. Fíli keeps turning around and waving and Kíli waves back feeling a bit of a fool, but not fool enough to stop.

Legolas is standing by his side as always, waving too. “It sounds like the wedding will be a grand affair,” he says. “And it is the first royal wedding for your people in years. Father must let us attend. I’ve never been to a dwarf wedding. We shall have to get new tunics made.”

“You leap ahead of yourself. Fíli and Léamig are not yet even officially betrothed.”

Legolas snorts. “According to your brother, perhaps. But your mother is already planning the dinner menu. I’ve convinced her to serve ithrim cakes, though we shall have to send the ingredients on ahead.”

“I think,” Kíli says warily, “that you spent far too much time this week talking to my mother.”

“My friend,” Legolas says, “you have no idea.” He grins like a bit of a lunatic and Kíli sighs, wondering exactly how many embarrassing childhood stories his mother has seen fit to impart. The ride back to Mirkwood—indeed, the next decade—promises to be excruciating.

They wave a little longer, until even their eyes cannot make out the ponies in the distance, then they turn and walk back up the path. “Dwalin shook my hand,” Kíli says. “And said I would be welcome in his home.”

“That’s a change,” Legolas says. “And good news indeed.”

“I think he was afraid I’d turned into an elf after all these years with you,” Kíli says. “He told me he was pleased to see that I still had a dwarfish heart.”

“Well,” Legolas says, “actually, you don’t really-“

Kili scowls and hits him in the shoulder. “He wasn’t speaking of my actual heart, pechannas.”

Legolas frowns. “I think I preferred it when you called me ‘my lord.’ ” They walk a little further, Legolas uncharacteristically silent. He finally ventures, “I am pleased that he has come to grips with your appearance, mellon-nin. But what about Alwyn’s claims? I thought that was the larger taint.”

Kíli shrugs. “He did not raise the subject, nor did I, but I suppose he has made some peace with it. He would not have invited me to his home otherwise. Perhaps he chooses to believe Alwyn was lying, or perhaps he chooses to ignore it altogether.” And also to ignore, Kíli thinks, the question of how he has spent the many nights since.

“Perhaps he has truly come to accept it,” Legolas says. “He has had 20 years to reach peace with it, after all.”

“That is not very long, even by dwarfish standards. If he has come to accept it, it is more than the simple passage of time can account for.”

“That might be your brother’s influence. He seems far more tolerant than the rest of your brethren, at least where you are concerned.”

Kíli nods. “He has a large heart.”

“And he loves you very deeply.”

“As I do him.”

Legolas stops walking, and halts Kíli’s steps with a hand on his arm. “You did not tell them of Lady Alwyn’s offer.”

Kíli stares at him for a moment, blinking slowly. “No.”

“I offer no judgment. It is just that I thought you might discuss it with them, take the opportunity to obtain their counsel.”

“No. They never need know. I am sure they would prefer to believe I have no contact with her whatsoever. I will outlive them by centuries, regardless. I can make my decision after they are gone.”

“As you will,” Legolas says with a shrug. “I will not press you on this. You already know my opinion on the matter.”

“Indeed,” Kíli says. “You have only shared it with me a dozen times this week alone.”

“You exaggerate,” Legolas says. “It is only that most sane creatures would not pass up a chance at near-immortality.”

“There have been elves who have turned it down, as you well know,” Kíli says. “And I thought you said you were not going to press me on it.”

“So I did,” Legolas sighs, and falls silent. They resume walking and soon reach the stables. Tauriel is already there loading the horses, which is a significantly more difficult chore than when they left Mirkwood. Their packs are quite a bit heavier now, filled with exotic spices and food and drink and crafts from all corners of the known world. Elrohir and Elladan are lazing on a bench in the corner, throwing acorns at each other’s heads.

Elrohir yelps after a particularly stinging blow. Legolas snorts, Tauriel sighs in exasperation, and Kíli cannot help but laugh.

“I am glad to see you smile,” Legolas says. “I feared you would be in a sour mood today after your family left.”

“No,” Kíli says. “For I know now I shall see them again.”

“You are fairly certain my father will let us travel to Ered Luin.”

“I am quite sure I can convince him. I can be extraordinarily stubborn.”

“If you said ‘hard-headed,’ ” Legolas says, picking up a discarded acorn and taking careful aim, “I would certainly have to agree.”

“You should expect no less.” Kíli bats the acorn away and grins. “You forget, I am a dwarf. I am hewn from stone.”

~Fin~