Archive of Our Own ^beta

Both men stand frozen in place, chests heaving with exertion and weapons at the ready, waiting, eyes glued to the slain orc’s chest.

Neither know how much time has passed before Thorin closes his eyes and lets out a deep sigh, wincing as the pain in his foot becomes increasingly obnoxious as the adrenaline from the fight wears off. Shifting his weight off it slightly, he glances around the clearing by the river. Seeing and hearing nothing, Thorin’s gaze finally settles on the Elvenking. The Elvenking who for some reason, somehow, rushed in just as Azog was about to skewer Thorin like meat on a spit and threw the orc off him. 

Thorin had watched, dumbstruck and disbelieving as the two exchanged a handful of blows before Thranduil’s swords cleanly and efficiently slashed the side of Azog’s throat before the orc could sink his knife arm into Thranduil’s momentarily unguarded side.

How and why Thranduil was here, alone, Thorin couldn’t even begin to piece together. But he is quickly distracted from his confusion by the slight sway in the elf’s posture. It is as though the force of each breath rocks the man’s entire frame. His eyes are on Azog’s still form, though his gaze is unfocused, and every so often a slight tremble shakes the twin longswords held firmly in his grasp at his sides.

“Been a while since you’ve taken leave of your throne room?” Thorin asks, his mocking tone edging much too close to concern for his liking.

The sound of his voice seems to break Thranduil from whatever trance he's in. As the elf turns his head toward Thorin, the sudden movement causes his tenuous grasp on balance to fail, and he stumbles backward, almost catching himself before landing hard on his side.

Fuck. Can I not? Just catch? A fucking break?

Thorin glances around the clearing once, twice more, before limping closer toward the fallen elf. 

“Are you injured?” he ventures, mentally excusing the alarm in his tone as owing to the fact that he is also injured and without aid should a threat emerge from the surroundings. Not alarm for Thranduil’s well-being of all things. Of course not.

“I’m fine,” Thranduil pants, still somehow managing to level Thorin with an icy glare that feels significantly less threatening, not for lack of intensity, but due to how the Elvenking has to look up at Thorin as he raises himself weakly on shaking arms. He attempts and fails to right himself before his strength fails him and he clumsily slumps back to sit where he had fallen.

“Right,” Thorin muses breathlessly, limping steadily over to his side, “and should your life depend on it, you would be ‘fine’ holding off an orc or two?”. To emphasize his point, Thorin brings his blade to Thranduil’s shoulder, gently resting its tip atop his pauldron.

Thranduil flinches almost imperceptibly at the proximity of the sword to his neck before he sweeps his gaze around the clearing as if Thorin’s mention of orcs would summon them. With heaving breaths, he glances up toward the sword and then the dwarf wielding it.

Despite his current position, Thranduil meets and holds Thorin’s gaze with the same intensity as always. 

Thorin would never admit it, but he is impressed. He begins to smirk, before his eyes notice the patch of wet black that is steadily growing on the Elvenking’s side, under his armpit and just above his breastplate. Now that he's looking, he notes the matching patch of what couldn’t be anything but blood growing to stain the arm of his undertunic.

“You’re bleeding,” Thorin states dumbly, posture unchanged and sword still inches from the Elvenking’s throat.

Thranduil scoffs, lost for words. He can’t entirely convince himself this isn’t some act on Thorin’s part intended to make Thranduil look away momentarily so as to make slitting his throat all the more humiliating. Eventually, he glances down to where the dwarf’s gaze is locked to his wounded side before returning his eyes to Thorin’s face as Thorin does the same.

He waits.

“You’re injured,” Thorin states.

“Yes?” Thranduil hisses, honestly having no patience for Thorin in the first place, but somehow finding he has even less now as he finds himself sprawled out, bleeding onto the ice of a frozen river, alone, in pain, miles away from his people, the fate of his son unknown, with said dwarf’s sword Still. Held. At. His. Throat. With a sneer, he brushes the sword from his shoulder and brings himself to his knees, intending to once again attempt to rise to his feet.

He manages to get one foot underneath him, but when he shifts his weight and moves to rise to his feet, the world lurches and his strength fails him, sending him crashing back to the ice. Suddenly, all he can hear is the rush of blood in his ears, his vision blurring and darkening. Despite his fading consciousness, he can still clearly feel the hand that settles under his head, preventing it from cracking violently into the ice. In a futile effort to defend himself, he wills his arm to move, to strike out at whoever was surely moving to grip his hair and cut his head from his body. He manages only to weakly grab hold of his assailant’s wrist before everything goes dark and his life is left quite literally in the hands of another.

When the Elvenking falls, trying and failing yet again to get to his feet, Thorin moves without thinking, dropping his sword and diving forward to keep the man’s head from hitting the ice.

He succeedes, likely bruising his knees to Mordor and back in the process, and finds himself sitting on the ice with Thranduil’s head inches from his lap. He watches as the elf’s unfocused eyes flutter before his gaze widens unmistakably in fear. He feels a hand knock clumsily into his wrist, and watches long pale fingers barely manage to wrap feather light around it before falling limply into his lap. Alongside the elf's head. Which was also in his lap.

Bringing his eyes back to Thranduil’s face, his growing realization that Thranduil has just lost consciousness is confirmed. Cursing his momentary stupor, he whips around to look at the surrounding land, desperately hoping for allies to appear out of thin air, long-held resentment toward the King be damned.

He knows there’s no way he can carry Thranduil, not for lack of strength, but for the basic fact that the man is physically larger than he is. Lithe as he looks, Thranduil is by no means thin. Dead weight is heavy. Long limbs are cumbersome. Thorin’s current injury to his foot and exhaustion from fighting for his life make the already impossible task entirely out of the question.

He just barely stifles the thoughtless urge to call out himself when he hears the crunch of approaching footsteps on snow and a voice he knows shout his name breathlessly. Out of thin air, Bilbo fucking Baggins appears suddenly in his field of vision, running toward him, sword in hand, not six feet from where Thorin sits now, crouched over the fallen form of a man he gladly would have run through this morning.