Chapter Text
“No. No, no, no, no. Don’t you leave me, Thorin, you’re not allowed to leave me,” Bilbo pleaded, frantic hands scooping snow and small chunks of ice onto Thorin’s wounds, hoping against hope that just as it stopped the river from flowing so would it stop Thorin’s precious blood from doing the same.
“Wake up, Thorin!”
A sharp slap to a bearded cheek made the dwarf King’s eyes flutter, his breath catching before falling into a shallow rhythm.
“Stay with me you confounded dwarf. I didn’t traipse across all of Middle Earth just for you to die on me now. How am I to enjoy my books and my armchair, when I know you’re not enjoying those blastedly hard rocks and dizzying heights of your own home?” Bilbo prattled on.
The flow of red was slowing, Bilbo could only hope it was due to the cold and not through a lack of it. Keeping up a steady stream of chatter, the hobbit continued to pile snow and ice onto Thorin’s wound, his blood tacky hands having long since lost all feeling.
-x-
“Breathe, mellon nin, breathe,” Tauriel coaxed, as she frantically tore a strip of fabric from her tunic to bind Kíli’s wound.
“Tau-riel,” Kíli gasped, “It h-hurts.”
“I know, just breathe for me,” Tauriel’s voice was almost unnaturally calm, even for her, as she tried to soothe the dwarf before her. Carefully moving him to secure her makeshift bandage.
Bending over his prone form, Tauriel brushed strands of hair from Kíli’s eyes with careful fingers, pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead, “I will get you to safety,” she promised, breath warm against his chilled skin, “just breathe for me, mellon nin, breathe and hold on.”
Kíli could only whimper as he was swept into deceptively strong arms, and, in a flurry of long red hair, carried from the ruins of Raven Hill.
-x-
The world was indistinct.
Hazy and oddly bright.
Cold.
He was so cold.
A movement.
Barely a twitch.
His leg, perhaps?
Heat shot through him.
Like a poker freshly drawn from the fire.
Red and so very painful.
A barely there gasp escaped dry, chapped lips.
The world rolled into unforgiving darkness.
-x-
“Bilbo!”
Dwalin staggered across the uneven ground, his expression stricken as he took in the sight of the hobbit and his King.
“Bilbo, is he…?”
“Not yet,” Bilbo choked out, barely sparing a glance to the dwarf who’d dropped to his knees beside him.
“The battle is coming to an end, we have a chance to save him.”
“I-I can’t carry him.”
“You won’t have to, laddie, look.”
Turning watery eyes to the sky, an almost hysterical laugh escaped Bilbo’s lips.
“Thorin, Thorin look. The Eagles are here, they’re coming, Thorin. Thorin!”
Another slap to the cheek and Thorin’s lashes fluttered. It was enough, for Bilbo it had to be enough.
-x-
“We’re almost there, so very close,” Tauriel promised, the healing tents spanned the horizon. Long legs picked up the pace, feet sure even on the bloody quagmire the battlefield had become.
Kíli groaned, breath panting out in his pain.
“Just breathe and all will be well,” Tauriel promised, ignoring the darkening bruises on Kíli’s throat, the blood soaking the makeshift bandage. Her eyes, her archer’s focus, trained on the tents before them, growing in size as her long legs swallowed the distance.
-x-
Floating.
He was floating.
Somewhere between the unforgiving darkness and the now murky light.
Floating though there was stone against his back.
Cold stone.
He was so very cold.
But the cold tempered the burning poker.
Cooling it to a brittle metal.
Breath stuttered from freezing lungs.
He did not want to feel the metal crumble and break.
-x-
“Come,” Dwalin said, voice gruff as he led Bilbo away from the rocky outcrop they’d found themselves on, watching the Eagle carrying the dwarf King away from them.
Bilbo merely nodded, following where the heavy hand on his shoulder led him. It was the most compliant Dwalin had ever seen him, and it worried the dwarf greatly.
“You did what you could,” Dwalin tried to comfort, “Oin will see to him now, patch him up the best they can to keep him from Mahal’s Halls for a while longer.”
“There was so much blood though, Dwalin. So much…” Bilbo trailed off, eyes looking at his own blood stained hands.
“The line of Durin is not so easily broken, remember that, Bilbo. It takes more than a bit of blood loss to bring us down,” Dwalin hoped Bilbo couldn’t hear the worry and unease underlining his words.
-x-
Tauriel entered the first tent she reached.
Healers of all races rushed about tending to those that they could help, comforting those they could not.
“I need help!” she cried, the bundle in her arms limp but breathing. Kíli had lost the battle to stay awake mere footsteps from the tents.
“Here!”
Tauriel followed a fellow elf to an empty cot, lowering her friend to it’s scratchy sheets.
“Help him,” she pleaded, stepping back as the elf set to work, slicing away the sodden bandage and cutting into Kíli’s clothing to reveal the wound, still sluggishly oozing blood.
Tauriel stepped back, practically huddled against the side of the tent as she watched. Orders were shouted out and the subsequent flurry of activity around the cot made it next to impossible for her to even catch a glimpse of Kíli.
“Are you hurt?” a gruff voice suddenly asked causing Tauriel to blink and look down at the dark haired dwarf in confusion.
“Are you hurt?” he asked again, gesturing to her bloodstained tunic.
“No,” she answered, “A few cuts and bruises, nothing more. Others have more need of you than I.”
With a nod of his head, the dwarf was off again, barking out orders as another wounded dwarf was carried in.
-x-
Lashes fluttered on pale cheeks.
Their delicate weight too much to bear.
Such a burden denying him the comfort of the waning light around him.
Everything was dark and cold.
But the cold was seeping away.
Leaving a heaviness in its wake.
A creeping numbness.
-x-
Bilbo sat on a wooden crate outside of Thorin’s tent, staring blindly at it’s opening, fists opening and closing in the tattered fabric of his jacket.
They’d brought him water to wash his hands in and a healer to tend the wound on his temple. Dori had scrounged up some cram, but it sat like ash upon his tongue.
Oin had not yet left the King’s tent, hours had passed since Bilbo had taken up his post on the crate, and Oin had not left the tent.
The sun was kissing the horizon when Bofur came to him, a battered steaming mug in hand.
“Here,” he said, “Something to keep you warm during your vigil.”
Frozen, cramping fingers curled around the warm mug as Bofur coaxed him to drink. It was some form of soup, though Bilbo would be hard pressed to say what was in it. But it was warm and filled his belly.
-x-
“We’ve done all we can,” the elf said, wiping his bloody hands on a piece of cloth.
“His chances?” Tauriel asked, crouching by the cot to take Kíli’s cool hand into her own.
“Fair enough, as long as infection doesn’t set in too heavily and we can keep him still while his body knits itself back together.”
“Thank you. Do you think you could get a message to one of Thorin Oakenshield’s Company that Kíli lives?” she asked, looking up at the elf next to her, hands still trying to rub some warmth into Kíli’s.
“I can certainly try,” the elf said with a nod, heading to the tent opening to call out to those less injured dwarves passing.
-x-
The moon was rising in the sky when Oin finally emerged from Thorin’s tent to find most of the Company gathered around Bilbo on his wooden crate. The healer’s tired eyes taking in bandages, bruises and expectant faces.
“The King will live, Mahal willing,” he declared, watching everyone sag in relief, before asking “Is everyone accounted for? Their wounds tended?”
“As far as we know,” Bofur offered, “Bifur’s getting his head checked out after a bit of a mishap with his axe, Kíli’s with that elf of his, on bed rest for now till the healers say otherwise, and Dori’s off fussing over Ori, got a bit of a sprained wrist the lad did.”
“And what of Fíli?” Oin asked, adjusting his hearing trumpet in case he’d missed the part about the oldest prince.
“He…” here Bofur stuttered to a stop, a frown dragging his brows down as he tried to recall where the prince was.
“He fell,” Bilbo gasped out, turning stricken eyes to Dwalin, “He…Azog, he dropped him and, oh Green Lady, we left him. We…we were so focused on Thorin that we left him.”
“Where?” Oin demanded, he may be tired and worn, but he was a healer and would not rest till all his charges were accounted for.
“R-raven Hill,” Dwalin answered, blood draining from his face, bringing his tattoos into stark relief. “I didn’t even think to check if he still breathed, after the wound Azog inflicted and the fall, I just assumed he was gone and turned my thoughts to Thorin.”
“Well turn them back again!” Oin snapped, marching in the direction of the battlefield once more. He held little hope for the lad’s survival but until he was faced with a body he would run on the assumption that there was breath within him yet.