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They found Thranduil in the battlefield among heaps and heaps of orc corpses. He was barely alive and grievously wounded, already feverish when they brought him to the healer’s tent. The losses during the battle had been high and elves, dwarves and humans worked together to keep the death toll from rising. Winter was approaching fast as well and for the moment they all lived in tents or hastily patched up houses in Dale. A few dwarves searched Erebor for anything useful but most of the mountain halls were too unstable to live inside them right now.
Kili was there when they brought him in. Between almost dying of Morgul poison, the flight from the burning Laketown to the battle his leg hadn’t had time to heal and the elven healers had put him under strict bed rest if he ever wanted to use his leg again.
The sudden commotion attracted his attention and he sat up to see what was happening. Two elves carried Thranduil inside followed by Tauriel and Legolas. When she saw Kili she gave him a tight smile before turning back to her king.
“Prince Legolas, please step aside”, one of the healers said and Tauriel pulled an unwilling Legolas back. He tried to shake her grip off but she said, quietly but intently, “There is nothing you can do.” And pulled him back further.
“I cannot simply stand here and do nothing”, Legolas said helplessly.
“Then don’t”, Tauriel replied. “Do what your father would’ve done. Lead our people, help the others. We have all fought and bled together, now we can mend together, old wounds and new ones.” With those words she gently pushed him out of the tent. “I’ll find you as soon as there’s news about your father.” She sighed and looked so defeated, so tired that it made Kili’s heart ache.
When she saw that he was still watching her, she came to him. “How are you?”
“I’ll be fine”, Kili assured her and patted the edge of the cot. “But you should sit down for a moment. Are you injured?”
Tauriel shook her head and sat down. She needed a break but so did everyone else. With winter approaching fast and so little shelter and less food going around, the battlefield needed to be cleared fast. She had thought that her years fighting the spiders and occasional orc raiding party had prepared her but she had been wrong. A battle was different, worse and war had to be even worse.
Kili slipped his hand between hers and squeezed. They could hear strangled moans and cries from the edge of the tent where the healers were taking care of Thranduil. Kili understood why Tauriel had sent Legolas away. If it was Thorin he wouldn’t want to witness this either.
“Did your friends all make it?” Tauriel asked.
“Yeah, we were lucky”, Kili answered. “I got the worst of it. What about yours?”
Tauriel shook her head. “More than half of our army are dead. Twenty of my watch are dead and four more may not make it.” She looked towards Thranduil’s cot. “I thought he was a coward but now I think he had the right idea.”
“We won only because all of fought, that has to count for something, right?” Kili couldn’t imagine how she felt. He remembered the fear gripping his heart when he had been unable to find Fili after the battle but Tauriel had to feel a thousand times worse.
“It’s not as much of a comfort as I would’ve thought it’d be”, she replied.
A low growling sound like thunder broke the tired silence between them. Tauriel was back on her feet in an instant. “Stay here”, she told him as she quickly went outside.
Black clouds had gathered and ash, not snow, was blazing over the battlefield but she could feel no wind. And when she instinctively tried to shield her eyes with her hand she saw that the ash flakes passed right through her.
A tall man in a grey robe was quickly walking towards her with a deeply concerned look on her face. Legolas was with him, as well as Bard and Thorin.
“Mithrandir!” She called him. “What is happening?”
“Thranduil, is he here?” He asked, ignoring her question.
She nodded and followed him inside with the others. The healers had undressed Thranduil to treat his wounds and she could see the truly horrific wounds he had suffered. His whole torso was wrapped in bandages but part of it looked wrong as if it had given in and a burn wound spread from the left half of his face downwards until it disappeared beneath the bandages. There were bruises littering his skin and gashes in his arms and legs. But there were also scars that she had never noticed before.
She could feel Legolas’ hand tighten painfully where he gripped her arm as he saw his father.
“His fever, how bad is it?” Gandalf asked one of the healers.
“Worse than I had hoped. Maybe if he had been found earlier but he was already burning up when he came here. I cannot tell you how long it will last, days, possibly a week.”
“What does Thranduil have to do with what’s going on outside?” Thorin asked impatiently.
“He is connected to the land and the land to him”, Gandalf said. “What you saw happening were his memories of Mordor.”
“But this isn’t Mirkwood”, Kili threw in.
“Before the dwarves came the forest spread much further east than it does now”; Bard said. When the dwarves looked surprised he added, “Do you know nothing of your own history?”
Neither Kili nor Thorin got around to answering because suddenly Thranduil appeared in the room, next to a previously unoccupied cot.
“You need to drink”, Thranduil said to the woman on the cot who held an uncanny resemblance to Tauriel. “Your daughter needs you.”
“I am tired”, she replied. She looked gaunt and sickly.
“It is not like you to give up my friend.” Thranduil insistently held the cup to her lips.
She circled his wrist with her hand. “Promise me Tauriel will be looked after. Promise me she won’t have to join her father’s people under the Noldor witch.”
Thranduil tenderly pushed a strand from her sweaty forehead. “I will care for her as if she’s my own until you get better. But you must get better.”
Tauriel pressed her hands to her mouth and Legolas rested his hands on her shoulders as if to support her. The scene changed, the woman was dead and Thranduil cried over her, begging her to wake up.
“I thought elves cannot become sick”, Kili asked quietly.
“That was not a normal sickness”, Legolas told him, his arms still around Tauriel. “It came from Mordor with foul winds.”
“The Great Plague”, Thorin said. “My grandfather told me about it. He said a third of our people died and there was nothing anyone could do.”
Suddenly the scene changed again and instead of Tauriel’s mother it was Legolas who lay on the bed, just a child and looking just as sick as Tauriel’s mother had.
“It hurts, father.”
“I know”, Thranduil shifted so his son could rest against his chest. “Try to sleep, Legolas. You will feel better soon.” He stroked Legolas’ hair reassuringly, singing softly under his breath. There were tears running down his cheeks and he looked as if he was drowning.
Legolas choked. “I didn’t...I wasn’t...my father sent me away. I was never ill.”
“It is not just your father’s memories that will manifest but everything he holds in his subconscious, his greatest fears, his best and worst memories, everything until he gets better”, Gandalf said. “Some will play out here, others will be witnessed on a larger scale like those of Mordor. These visions are affected by who’s near him. Therefore I believe it would be best if someone stayed near him that doesn’t have a close personal bond with him.”
“I can do it”, Kili said.
Everyone looked at him.
“Thranduil doesn’t know me and with my leg I’m not much help anyway.”
“I’m not going to let my father be watched by a dwarf”, Legolas objected immediately.
“Kili can be trusted”, Tauriel said.
/
A roar let everything tremble and suddenly a dragon appeared, long and agile with intelligent, malicious eyes and it spewed fire everywhere. The flames burned everything in its path, wood, stone and metal. Nothing could protect the elves and men and dwarves against their pain and death. A scream pierced the air, inhuman, as Thranduil ripped his melting helmet off but it was too late. A part of the metal had already sunken into his face and as he pulled it away his flesh followed. Blood ran over his cheek and down his neck and he retched at the stink of burned meat and death.
No one in camp slept that night. Thranduil’s memories of the Nirnaeth Arnedoiad as Gandalf had called it didn’t stop there. Not only dragons appeared but also other creatures, orcs taller than Azog and strong enough to rip people apart with their hands, beasts made of fire and smoke, wolves as large as bears and winged monsters that precipitated onto the soldiers below to pierce their skin and drink their blood.
Kili refused to feel frightened. It wasn’t real, he reminded himself. None of that was real. Instead he focused on his work as he changed Thranduil’s bandages. Fortunately none of his wounds looked infected but the fever still hadn’t gone down, if anything it was growing worse.
/
“Here is your payment”, the elf said. He was tall, taller than anyone else Kili had ever seen. His name was Thingol, Gandalf would tell him later, the king of Doriath where Thranduil had grown up.
The dwarf shook his head. “We demand a different payment. We have made this so we will keep it.” He held a beautiful necklace with a glowing jewel in its middle in his hand.
“The Nauglamir is not yours and neither is the Silmaril. Take your payment and leave.”
“You will give it to us, peacefully or not we don’t care”, the dwarf replied angrily.
“You dare to threaten me in my own halls where I invited you as my guests?”
“We will take what is ours”, the dwarf said and then he and two others drew their axes and slew the Thingol where he stood. Like robbers they fled immediately, taking the Nauglamir with them.
/
He saw Thorin die, engulfed in flames or starving but always in graphic details, as if it had happened, as if Thranduil had watched it happen.
“I don’t understand why he would fear my death”, Thorin said when Kili told him about it.
“You were friends, weren’t you? Before Smaug I mean.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Not for Thranduil. I guess sixty years don’t mean much to him.”
“Perhaps”, Thorin trailed off, his eyes distant as if he looked at something far away.
/
One morning he woke up to find the tent splattered with blood and Thranduil surrounded by heaps of corpses.
It was just an illusion he told himself as he waded to through blood than ran knee deep over the ground. The real Thranduil lay still on his cot as always but a much younger version kneeled on the floor, holding onto another elf who was almost unrecognisable because of how much her body was maimed.
“Nana”, he heard Thranduil sob. “Nana.” As he held her body in his arms, rocking softly back- and forwards.
Suddenly the scene changed to a battlefield overrun with orcs and an elf with long silver hair just like Thranduil, was being torn apart by them alive. They were biting chunks out of him as if he was a feast and Thranduil’s screams rang through the air as he tried in vain to reach him. “Ada! ADA!!!”
Scene after scene followed and Kili felt sick as he watched how Thranduil’s loved ones had died one after the other. Something told him that these were memories and not fears. Most of them were elves but some were humans and even one or two of them dwarves.
Thingol appeared again, being butchered by dwarves their eyes gleaming with greed. Mablung’s body cradled in Thranduil’s lap when he found him dead in front of an open door, almost completely hacked apart by axes. Nimloth and Dior, dying at the hands of other elves, tall and dark haired, so that their children would have time to escape. Elured and Elurin being taken and left to starve. Elwing, the Silmaril around her neck, jumping from a cliff when she was cornered by the same dark haired elves as before. Thranduil’s mother dying in the same battle and his father’s ashen face when they found her.
His father’s death appeared a second time as well but this time it was as if all the atrocities of the battle of Mordor played out at once.
The long way back with only a third of his people remaining and the tentative smile of a fellow soldier promising hope only to lose her to the orcs barely a year after their son was born.
A dwarf, Thrain, asking for refuge and friendship only to die of old age 200 years later with Thranduil at his side.
/
Even without him here Kili saw Legolas die a hundred times: in battle or from sickness, as a stillborn babe and by orcs, through the whip of a balrog or mauled by a fell beast. He saw him die by fire and water, through a stray arrow or an infected cut so minor no one had paid attention to it before it had been too late.
Like in the first memory he had witnessed, Legolas turned in Thranduil’s worst moments even when he hadn’t been there: hacked apart by dwarves in halls of Menegroth, eaten alive by orcs in Mordor, burnt in Smaug’s fire.
“I cannot go back”, Thranduil’s eyes were redrimmed from crying and he sounded close to a panic attack. “I cannot.”
“I know”, a women said. She was the same soldier who had given him an encouraging smile when he had led the surviving Mirkwood elves back home. “I know, love”, she repeated as she stroked his face. “You won’t have to. I will lead the army while you stay here to take care of our people and our son.”
“I cannot ask that of you.”
“You’re not asking. A king needs to relegate and a husband needs to heed the wishes of his wife”, she added jokingly. “And perhaps the dwarves will be finished with repairing my necklace when I’m back.”
Thranduil drew her into his arms. “Be careful.”
It had to be the same necklace Kili had watched Thorin throw around carelessly in the depths of his gold sickness. The same necklace his grandfather had refused to give back because of the same illness. Just like the dwarves in the first age that had refused to give back the Nauglamir. Suddenly Kili understood why Thranduil would go to war to retrieve this one necklace.
“Bring it here”, he told Thorin when he came to visit him.
“I will not give away Erebor’s best asset for the upcoming trade negotiations”, Thorin argued.
“I don’t care. We need to give it back. It was never ours to keep in the first place and you know it.”
“Thranduil – “Thorin started but Kili didn’t let him finish.
“I don’t care”, he repeated. “This is supposed to be a new start for all of us, Erebor, Dale, Laketown, and Mirkwood. We need to make new alliances and giving back the necklace would be a good start.”
Thorin looked at him as if he was seeing Kili with new eyes. “Perhaps you are right.”
“And you should let Fili do the negotiations. There’s too much bad blood between you and the elves”, Kili added. When Thorin still looked at him as if he was seeing him for the first time, he asked, “What?”
“You’ve grown up very quickly during this journey.” He sounded proud.
“It’s just...seeing so many of Thranduil’s worst memories being caused by small misunderstandings and pride, I thought maybe we can do better this time around.”
Thorin clasped his shoulder. “And thanks to you, maybe we will.”
/
Kili was changing Thranduil’s bandages when he opened his eyes and they were clear instead of glazed by the fever. “Legolas?”
“He’s fine”, Kili reassured him. “I should get him. And the healers – “
But Thranduil stopped him with a surprisingly strong grip on his arm. “How much did you see?” He asked.
“Most of it. The others saw a few things as well but mostly it’s just me.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing. Why would I tell them anything? It’s none of their concern.”
“You know what I fear. You can use it to your advantage.”
Kili shook his head. “I would never do that. I know dwarves haven’t left the best impression on you but I’m not Naugladur or my grandfather or even my uncle. And I think you’re very brave and a great king for putting your people first.”
Thranduil looked at him as if he couldn’t understand. “That is what you took away from all of this?”
“Mordor...those weren’t fears, were they?”
“And if they weren’t?” Thranduil asked harshly. “Don’t dare to pity me, dwarf.”
“I admire you.”
The way Kili said it, honestly, without hidden derision or ridicule, made Thranduil look up sharply.
“You lived through all of that and yet you’re still here, you still fight. And despite being insanely protective of your people you have enough compassion to help others like the Lakemen or the forest people.”
It was overwhelming. The knowledge that there was someone else who knew everything and yet didn’t condemn him for it was too much. Thranduil pressed his hand over his mouth but that didn’t stop his shoulders from shaking or his eyes from crying.
“I’m so sorry!” Kili said, taken aback by his reaction. “Did I say something wrong?”
Thranduil shook his head. He wiped the tears from his cheeks, suddenly ashamed of his weakness but Kili’s hands touched his shoulders tenderly. “I wish had seen some of your good memories, too.”
“And why is that?”
“They must be pretty powerful. And it seems a little one-sided, doesn’t it?”
“What does?”
“That I know so much about you when you have no clue who I am.”
“Are you offering to share your deepest fears and darkest memories with me, Kili Thorin’s Heir?”
Kili shook his head, fighting a smile and losing. “I don’t think any of us needs more bad memories right now. But I could tell you some happy ones if you want. However if you’d rather be left alone, I understand that. Just...I’m here if you need me.”
“I’d rather not be alone.” Thranduil lay back down. “Tell me about Lindon”, he asked when Kili sat at the edge of his bed. “I haven’t seen it for a long time.”
“Do you want to hear about the Grey Havens?”
Thranduil shook his head. “Tell me about the sound of waves and if the gulls still try to steal your food. Describe the colour of the water where the sea meets the river and how often you can make pebbles jump on the surface on a windless day.”
“Funny you should mention that because Fili – “ Thranduil let Kili’s voice wash over him, the happy tone more important than the actual content although he still listened to his story with half-closed eyes and the next one and the next one until he fell asleep.