Chapter Text
Kili had never thought that he would ever get used to the silence of the world around them. After all, it made no sense to him that after being surrounded by the noise that came from day to day living in a big city he would ever become accustomed to the silence of the world once it ended.
Once society and the life they had known was destroyed.
Now, when there was a lack of quiet around them, it meant that there was usually trouble. At least if it was noise that wasn’t of their own making.
He turned his head against the seat to look at Fili as he drove. Fili had pulled his hair back in a ponytail so that his hair would keep out of his face while they were on the move.
They were lucky that they had been able to find a still working car two states ago and that they knew how to siphon gas out of other vehicles without killing themselves. He had taught Fili and so far, his older brother hadn’t bothered to ask him how he knew that trick. Then again, they had bigger things to worry about than what kinds of activities he had been up to while Fili was away at school.
Kili once again thanked every deity he had ever studied that Fili had been on vacation at home when the disaster hit. He would have gone out of his damn mind or died if he had lost his brother. It was enough that it had been a near thing in that when he fell ill he had been too weak and then too unconscious to go out looking for his brother. The nightmares he had about Fili dying and how he died had tortured him because he hadn’t been able to fight off the illness to wake up from them.
His brother later told him that he had thought his mind had been broken from everything because he didn’t speak for a week after he regained consciousness. He had never seen Fili look so haggard and completely scared as he had when he had finally opened his eyes to look into the blue ones of his brother.
Fili didn’t ask about the nightmares, but Kili knew that it wasn’t because he didn’t care about them. He knew his brother and he knew that he was aware that something haunted him in a deeper way than the world ending had.
He had lost everything in his world except for the most important treasure in his life and as long as he still had Fili with him, he would be able to cling to life and what was left of his sanity for a little bit longer.
His sanity that he wasn’t even sure he had a firm grasp on most days. The things he had seen since waking up to find that all but a small population of the people in the world were dead had him sometimes convinced that he was in a nightmare of his own making. Sometimes he thought that this was all something he had dreamed up because his own mind was torturing him for the things he had wanted or done before all of this happened.
“Stop it.”
The voice was gravelly and Kili opened eyes he didn’t realize he had closed to flick them over again to see that his brother was now looking at him. There was a crease in the middle of his forehead that was a sign of the concern he was feeling right now.
“Stop what?” Kili knew that he sounded confused and that was because he was confused. He pulled back to lean against his door, not sure what he had done to upset his brother. Fili was the one thing he had left and if he lost him, he didn’t think that he would want to go on.
There had been so much blood and pain behind his eyes. Fire and the flash of something--
“You’re letting your mind fuck with you again.”
Kili hunched his shoulders and looked away. “Sorry.”
“Kee, don’t. I’m not upset with you. You can’t help what your brain does to you now any more than you did before the world went to hell.” He reached over with his free hand and grabbed one of Kili’s hands. “This shit, it’s real. The world ended and almost everyone died. You almost died, for a little while there, I thought you were going to. We’re alive and somehow, we’re going to stay alive. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Kili.”
“I can’t always --”
“I know. That’s not your fault, Kee. It never has been no matter what other people used to tell you.” Fili looked back through the windshield. “We should probably find a place to sleep for the night. The sun will be going down soon and we need to make sure we have food, as well.”
Kili nodded. “I can hunt if we need me to. There’s still woods around or if we hit another farm that works, too.”
“We can also keep raiding stores and houses around where we hole up for the night.”
“All right. We should still be able to do that in the bigger places for a little while, but we do need meat. Our bodies require it for survival.”
Fili didn’t like letting Kili disappear to hunt them some kind of animal to eat. He didn’t like letting him out of his sight when he had come so close to losing him when all of the chaos started. He preferred that they do raids while there was still food readily available. They were mostly finding canned goods and non-perishables since the power grids had failed some time ago, but that was fine with him. They could make do on things like that for quite awhle. He liked having meat when Kili hunted but with Kili struggling today to keep his mind in the present, he didn’t want to chance something happening to him when he was out of his sight.
He’d never forgive himself or handle it at all well if Kili was hurt or worse because he was trying to take care of him.
Sometimes, when they drove like this and the car was full of a comfortable silence, both thought back to how the world was before the Virus took everyone. Back before there were endless roads of cars and dead bodies in most of the places they were forced to camp out in. Back when there were radio stations, satellite tv, internet connections and phone service. Back before they weren’t sure if they were going to survive into the next day or not. Back when even if things didn’t always make sense, they would find a way to get through them and put all of the pieces together.
Back when there were reasons that they could point to in order to keep themselves in better check.
Only now, now when they had been alone and hadn’t seen another living human being in at least two months, they both started thinking and wondering why they let so many of the laws and thoughts of old rule them today. Today when any day or moment could quite literally be their last.
The Virus had swept through the world without warning and in the days before communications broke down, there had been plenty of blame to go around. Some governments blamed each other, saying it was an act of war. Except, that made no sense to people because it was happening everywhere. At least, that was what the brothers had gained separately in their minds from watching the news and the internet in the days when it had all began.
After blaming it as an act of war, the blame turned to places closer to home. In the States, it quickly became the popular idea that their current government had used the military to do this to them. That also made very little sense to the Durin brothers since the Virus didn’t spare the government leaders and apparently very few of the military leaders, either.
When the deaths started piling up, it became less about blame and more about panic and then trying to survive.
Fili didn’t think that they would ever find out the truth of what caused the Virus -- even if he really wanted answers as to why his life had been destroyed. His life hadn’t always been easy, but it had made a certain kind of sense and it was his. To have it all taken away by forces beyond his control was something that he still had a hard time wrapping his mind around.
As for Kili… well, he still wasn’t sure exactly what went on in his brother’s mind about all of this. He held him close to him as they slept and he comforted him through his nightmares, but he didn’t press and he didn’t ask too many questions. All of his life, Kili had been pressured and questioned and placed into categories and Fili wasn’t going to be guilty of doing the same thing to him.
Thinking about Kili made him give his brother another glance out of the corner of his eye and his heart lurched a little when he saw the tension in his jaw. That usually meant that something was pulling at his mind, again, or that he was thinking too deeply about things that upset him and that he was afraid to share with him.
“You should play something,” Fili suggested, relieved when Kili turned and looked at him. “Pull your guitar up front and play something. It would probably help us both relax.”
“I don’t want to impede your driving, Fee.”
The quiet voice made it hard for Fili not to tighten his hands on the steering wheel. Not for the first time in his young life he wanted to punch the members of their family for making Kili question doing the things he was good at and loved to do. He wanted to punch them for the tone of voice that said his brother was having one of those many moments where he doubted himself or was afraid to bother anyone.
“You won’t impede my driving, Kee, I promise.” He managed to give his younger brother a smile. “Play for me?”
It was a dirty trick, but one that often worked well. Fili knew that Kili would do almost anything to please him and make him happy. Fili didn’t like feeling he was manipulating and controlling his brother -- too many people had done that all of his life -- but in times like these, he would do anything to give him some security.
Maybe that was one good thing about the apocalypse: it gave Kili the freedom he had never had before. If he could help him heal, then Fili might decide that losing everything and falling into hell was worth it after all.
It took a few more moments of Kili trying to read his face and Fili trying to silently encourage him, before Kili finally turned in his seat to lean over to the back seat. He carefully opened up the guitar case and then gently pulled his guitar into the front seat. His hands gently caressed the instrument before he started playing one of his favorite songs by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
“If I leave here tomorrow… would you still remember me? For I must be traveling on now… ‘Cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see...”
Fili always liked watching and listening to his brother play. It was something that he threw himself into completely and it was when he was playing that his inner demons didn’t seem to have sway on him.
As the first few strains of music filled the car, Fili let his hands relax again and let his thoughts wander back to all that had happened to bring them to the point they were at now.