Work Text:
There was a hush upon the mountain.
Not the hush of snow, nor the hush of sleep, but the deep, uneasy silence of a battlefield after the cries have ceased. Clouds hung low above the spires of Erebor, bruised and slow-moving, like beasts made weary by sorrow. Smoke rose in thin tendrils from the wreckage below, curling among the frostbitten stones and broken blades.
Among the dead, one stirred.
He lay upon a slope of scree, half-buried by gravel and the blood of friend and foe. His armour was cracked across the chest, a splintered blackened thing, and his bow lay shattered beside him. A deep gash cut across his brow, and his breath came slow, too slow. But it came.
Kíli, son of Dís, heir of Durin, lived.
Not even he knew it, not at first. His mind wandered through fog, caught between dark and darker, and the smell of fire, of iron and snow, lingered in his senses. Once, in the stillness, he thought he heard his brother’s voice — or perhaps only the echo of his own grief.
Time passed. Minutes or hours — it mattered not. None came for him. The Dwarves mourned their fallen, and the Elves returned to their silent woods. In the counting of the dead, one young prince was forgotten.
But she remembered.
Tauriel had wandered far from the city gates, farther than any healer or soldier thought wise. Grief guided her feet. She walked alone across the battlefield not to search for the living, but to find some remnant of him — a clasp, a blade, a lock of dark hair.
And so it was she found him — by accident or by fate, she never knew. The wind shifted. A raven called out. And there he was.
She fell to her knees, the world rushing back in a single, sharp gasp. Her fingers hovered just above his cheek, trembling.
He was cold.
But not cold as stone.
“Galad i vaethor…” she whispered — a prayer more than a name, though her voice broke before she could finish.
She pressed her hand to his chest. A heartbeat, faint, defiant. Her throat clenched.
He was alive.
They did not carry him to Erebor. She dared not. There was no safety there for her, nor welcome. And for him — who knew what politics stirred behind Dáin Ironfoot’s new-forged crown?
So she bore him east, with strength she did not know she possessed. Through ash, and snow, and silence. Over the lake’s edge, where men still rebuilt their homes with tired hands and wary eyes. There, in a ruined watchtower above a half-frozen stream, she made her refuge.
And there, in the days that followed, he began to wake.
His dreams were fevered things — filled with flame and shadows, and the feeling of falling. Of reaching for something he could never grasp. Sometimes he murmured in Khuzdul. Once, her name passed his lips like the wind: Tauriel…
She said nothing, only sat beside him through the long watches of the night, her fingers wrapped around the hilt of her knife. Guarding. Waiting.
When at last his eyes opened — clear and full of pain — he looked at her as though seeing a ghost.
“You’re…” he rasped, his voice barely more than breath. “I thought—”
“I know,” she said softly.
They said nothing more, not for a long while. The wind creaked in the timbers. Below, water moved beneath ice.
But something had changed.
Neither of them knew what path lay ahead — not in the world of Men, nor Elves, nor Dwarves. But for the first time since the sun fell on the battlefield, hope stirred.
A fragile thing. Like a green shoot pressing up through stone.
But alive.
He slept again before long, as the body does when it is weary of pain. Tauriel remained by his side, tending the small hearth, melting snow for water, steeping herbs whose names she had learned long ago from her mother and from those who remembered Yavanna’s kindness.
The tower was little more than a ruin — a hollowed shell of Dúnedain stone, forgotten even by the birds. Moss grew thick along the inner wall, and ivy clung to the broken edges of the stair. Yet here she had found a kind of shelter: high enough to see the lake in its long thawing, far enough to be beneath notice.
She moved with quiet purpose, the weight of her exile pressing lighter here, though never truly gone. Exile, perhaps, is not a place one flees but a name one is given — and Tauriel had been given hers in silence.
She worked as she had done in many long years of battle: methodically. Bandages washed and rewrapped. Fever watched. Blade sharpened. Her bow hung untouched above the mantle, the string worn near through.
But in the stillness between her tasks, she watched him.
There was something strange — and painful — in seeing Kíli live again. She had already wept for him. She had whispered farewell with the weight of all things unsaid. To find him breathing now, broken but unbowed, was like witnessing a dream she did not dare enter fully.
In the night, she sang softly in the old tongue — lullabies of Greenwood, remembered from years when her hair was not yet braided in the warrior’s fashion. Her voice, though low, soothed the cold stone walls.
“Na lû e-govaned vîn, anno nin dîr, tôl a chuil…”
At times, she thought he listened, even in sleep.
He woke again on the fifth day.
This time, his gaze lingered longer. He looked not through her, but at her.
“You—” His voice was hoarse, uncertain. “You stayed.”
Tauriel turned from the hearth and nodded. “Yes.”
A beat passed between them.
“I thought you would have gone back. To the forest.”
“There is no place for me in the forest,” she said, and though her voice was steady, something in her chest tightened.
Kíli blinked, trying to sit. A wince caught his breath. She moved to steady him, her hands firm but gentle beneath his shoulders.
“You should rest,” she said. “Your ribs—”
“How long have I been here?”
“Five days. You slept most of them.”
He took this in with a frown, then glanced toward the ruined archway, where light spilled across the stone floor.
“Where are we?”
“An old watchtower. I don’t think it has a name anymore. We are east of the mountain. The Lake is below us.”
He leaned back, brow furrowed. “And Erebor?”
“Dáin rules now,” she said carefully. “The dead are mourned.”
There was silence.
“Thorin?” he asked, though he already knew.
She bowed her head.
He swallowed, eyes closed. “And Fíli?”
Her hand was already on his. She had not meant to do it, but it was there, warm, anchoring him. He did not pull away.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He nodded once, a sharp, small motion, as though pain had lodged deep in his bones.
“I saw him fall,” Kíli murmured. “I… I tried to reach him. But Azog—”
His jaw clenched, and his hand gripped hers with surprising strength.
“I remember the cold,” he said, barely above a whisper. “And then I saw your face.”
“I thought you were gone,” she said, her voice cracking in spite of herself.
His eyes met hers. “So did I.”
The fire popped. Outside, the wind turned.
Kíli studied her then, truly studied her, as though seeing something he had not dared believe. Her braid had come half-loose. Her tunic was torn near the hem. There was dirt on her hands, and soot at her cheekbone.
“You carried me,” he said.
She looked away.
“You saved my life.”
“I could not do otherwise,” she said, a flush rising to her cheeks.
“Still,” he said softly, “you did.”
The tower was quiet again. A quiet not of mourning, but of something newly born — not joy, not yet, but the faint beginning of it. The raw edge of a future not yet spoken aloud.
He leaned his head back against the stone wall. “What happens now?”
She did not answer right away. Her hand withdrew from his.
When she stood, she crossed to the narrow ledge and looked down at the valley, where smoke from the rebuilt town of Dale rose in thin ribbons. Somewhere below, bells chimed — faint and far.
“I do not know,” she said. “But I will not leave you.”
He closed his eyes.
And this time, when sleep came, it did not drag him under like a weight. It came like rest — uncertain, but welcome.