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Fili is twelve and Kili is nine when they fight the tide.
Kili gets lost in the waves, in the seafoam.
Fili swims to him, lets the ocean pull him under, lets the water burn his eyes as he tries to look for his brother, lets it enter his lungs as he screams Kili’s name.
Fili is twelve and Kili is nine when he loses him. When the ocean takes Kili's last breath and Fili holds onto his cold cheeks, tries to breathe life back into his pale lips.
Fili is twelve when rain pours against his shoulders, against his suit that is too big in the arms, against the solid oak of his brothers coffin.
Fili is twelve when he is racked with nightmares, with whispers in the dark and his brother’s voice shouting his name.
Fili is fifteen when he decides to become a doctor, decides that if he couldn’t save Kili then maybe he can save someone else. That maybe if he saves enough lives then there will be forgiveness.
Fili is twenty three when he is offered a residency at the best hospital in England.
Fili is twenty five when he takes a job away from England, away from Earth.
If Fili agrees to board the spacecraft as the vessels doctor then he doesn’t tell anyone it is because at least up there, between the stars, he is away from the ocean, away from water and the way the waves seem to hold his brother’s dying screams.
Even in his dreams he’s fighting waves, fighting saltwater lungs.
No one mentions the ghost knotted in Fili’s spine, how his hands are always graveyard reaching.
There is an A.I. sitting on one of the beds on the ship, his back open to reveal wires and circuit boards.
Fili stops to look at the long brown hair down to the A.I.’s shoulders, his tanned skin and angular features.
“What’s going on?” Fili asks to the assistant reaching into the circuit board.
“We’ve had a lot of problems with this A.I., keeps overriding his own programming. We’re gonna wipe it and send it in for scraps.”
The A.I. looks up at Fili with sorrow filled brown eyes and all of a sudden Fili is a child again and Kili is standing in front of him with scraped knees and tear filled eyes.
“Wait, wait, let me take him as an assistant. He can help with files and things like that. I’ll need it with a crew this big. I’ll just reset him if it becomes too much of a problem, I don’t mind the extra work.” Fili is holding onto the assistants wrist pulling it back from the A.I.
“I don’t see why not,” she takes her hand away from Fili and wipes it on her scrubs.
“Thank you,” he nods to her and closes the opening on the A.I.
The A.I. turns to look at him.
“Am I to work with you?”
“Yes.” Fili won't look him in the eyes again, refuses to get lost in their depths.
“What would you like me to call you?” The machine tilts its head and smiles.
“Doctor...you can call me Fili.”
“Doctor Fili, a pleasure.” The AI holds his hand out.
Fili hesitates and then takes it. “Just Fili will do, and what shall I call you?”
“I don’t have a name, but my number is 2941.”
“Don’t have a name. Would you like one?” Fili knows where he is heading with this and he feels it may be dangerous but he can’t stop the growing feeling in his chest.
“I’ve always wanted one, never told anyone that.” The droid quirks his lips to one side and Fili takes a deep breath trying to slow his fast beating heart.
“What if I call you Kili?” The name feels like grains of salt against his throat.
“Kili! I like it, it sounds like your name.” Kili grins widely at him as he swings his legs off the side of the bed and jumps up to walk around the room.
“Yeah, I like it too,” Fili whispers to himself.
When he looks at Kili, this A.I., he tries not to notice the taste of saltwater behind his teeth.
“What is the ocean like?” Kili asks him, his hands on his knees as he leans in close to Fili.
Fili stops typing and looks at Kili, really looks at him and thinks that his thick eyebrows and sculpted jaw, that the slight crook at the end of his nose could have all belonged to his brother.
“It’s an unforgiving thing.” Fili turns away from the eyes looking into his and back to his computer screen.
“The ocean has feelings?” Kili moves closer now, crowding Fili’s space and Fili is grateful that the A.I. can’t breathe because it already feels like all the oxygen is gone from the room.
“The ocean is vengeful, it takes and takes and takes, it wears down the earth, corrodes rocks. Nothing is ever enough for it.”
Kili nods his head in understanding.
“Did the ocean take something from you?”
Every inhale he takes, every time he says ‘Kili’, it feels like drowning.
He fills him with memories of Kili, tells him of their childhood. Tells him that he’s certain if Kili were still here today that he’s afraid he wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.
Kili feels a sadness at the memories, a sadness at the lack of pumping blood, at the transmissions and communications happening inside of him instead of a beating heart.
“Maybe in another universe you saved him. I know about the multiverse theory, I was programmed with every theory. In another one he is with you.” Kili smiles gently at Fili, hoping that his words cheer the blonde up.
Fili pulls a tight smile.
But it’s not this universe, it’s not now.
“If you think about it, it’s like we’re sailing right now.”
“And how is that?”
“Among a sea of stars.” Kili turns and grins at Fili who would laugh at the irony of it all but he thinks his life was written to be a tragedy. That the one good thing that has happened to him in years would be so curious about the world, about water, and all the shades that it holds.
“Fili, can I ask something of you?"
“Anything,” and Fili knows that he means it.
They’re in their room, Kili slowly approaching Fili with hesitant steps. Suddenly he seems to make up his mind and moves faster, squares his shoulders and stands straight in front of Fili.
“Will you kiss me?” Kili asks in one quick animated breath.
Fili takes a small step back but Kili moves forward.
“Why?”
“Because, because I want to know . I want to know how it feels.” Kili talks with his hands, moves his shoulders and it's enough to cause Fili to forget what he really is.
“Do you think it will you make more human?”
“Maybe? I do think it will help me understand you more.”
And Fili really can deny him nothing.
He is moving quickly, pushing Kili back against the wall, his hands cupping Kili’s face. His lips hover for a moment, enough to create want.
He kisses Kili, kisses him like it’s his last night alive. Kisses him like it’s his Kili here in his place instead, that this is something, someone different. He kisses Kili like he’s a eulogy, like he’s a burial ground of redemption.
He pulls back and looks at Kili’s wide set eyes, his dilated pupils and he lets himself believe.
“How did that make you feel?”
“Alive.” Kili whispers and for the first time since he was twelve Fili can say the same thing.
That night he lets Kili climb into bed with him and Kili lets Fili trail kisses between his collarbones.
“I had a dream last night after we went to sleep.”
Fili looks at Kili puzzled. “A dream?”
“Yes! There were moving images and everything felt so real, you were there with me.” Kili leans on his elbows and looks up at Fili with a smile.
“What were we doing?”
“We were at the ocean. We were standing in the sand letting the water touch our feet and when the waves pulled back I had to hold onto you because it felt like I was moving. It was a strange feeling.”
Fili swallows, chokes down bubbling grief. “It does that, the ocean, makes you feel like you’re moving when you’re not. Your first dream was very accurate.”
“I hope I dream more and I hope that you’re in all of them.”
“You saved me.”
“What?” Fili asks startles as he turns around to see Kili standing in the doorway, his fingers moving quickly against each other as he thinks. Fili flashes back to his Kili, his brother and his small fingers and how they always waved like bird wings and for a moment Fili lets himself believe.
“You saved me. They were going to wipe my programming and use me for scraps but you saved me.” Kili takes a step closer to Fili then stops, his hands running against each other then his sides.
“I,”
“-you did. You saved me and it may not mean a lot to you but it means a lot to me.”
There’s a small part of Fili that wants to say that these feelings that Kili has aren’t real but he knows that isn’t true. He has seen the way Kili fights against his programing, the humanity that sends electric shocks through his circuit boards.
It’s in the way that Kili is curious, how he asks about the earth. In how he bites his bottom lip when he’s thinking. It’s how he says if he could be anything he would be a bird because it has a certain kind of freedom to it. It’s how he says he likes the shape of arrow heads because they’re symmetrical and can imagine them soaring through the air. It’s in how he trips over his feet at times, the heavy exhale he has when he’s bored, the way his face lights up when Fili enters the room.
They are all things that are not a part of his programming and so Fili lets them both have this.
“How do I know if I love something?” Kili asks just as Fili is starting to fall asleep. He opens his eyes and pulls Kili by the waist closer to him.
“I don’t think that I know.” Fili says quietly as he closes his eyes.
“Yes you do, that’s why I’m asking.”
“What makes you think that I do?” Fili keeps his eyes shut but puts a smile on his lips as Kili lays his head on Fili’s chest.
“Because you loved him, the other me, the one you named me after.” There is sorrow in Kili’s voice and Fili is grateful Kili cannot see him, can’t see his watering eyes.
Maybe Fili was meant to love the things that destroy him.
“Do you ever regret naming me after him?”
Fili doesn’t stop to think about it.
“That is one thing I have never regretted.”
He means it.
“I love you. I don’t care what you say but I do. It feels like lightning inside of me. I would talk about veins and a heart and how I can’t seem to sleep at night and I know I don’t have the organs, I get that, trust me everyone is always reminding me but why do I feel this way Fili? Why when I look at you I think ‘if I could look at that face and nothing else I would be so happy’. Why would I think that when I’m not supposed to even feel? So try to tell me this isn’t real, because it is and I feel it every day.”
“I can’t tell you that you don’t feel those things, because I do believe you Kili, I do. I love you, I don’t know when it happened but you just sort of crashed into me.”
It’s funny, Fili thinks, how all of this works. Fate or destiny or just life. That he never thought he would welcome the feeling of being pulled under.