He felt the token in the palm of his hand, enticingly cold to his fevered body yet stirring up agony deep within him as his fingertips brushed across the engravings of a promise he felt his body couldn't bear to keep.
With uncoordinated fingers, he managed to drop the stone onto the surface of which his body lay and pushed the unwelcome reminder of failure out of his reach. He closed his eyes and waited for the thunk of the token as it dropped against the floor of Bard's home, but it never came.
"Kili," a voice he knew better than his own called from somewhere above him as the bed dipped down on one side, "Mother wouldn't be pleased if you lost this." Fingers wrapped around his hand and turned it so that he could accept something unwillingly, and he jerked violently at the slick, cool surface of the token being placed in his hand once more.
"Easy, brother," Fili said, and as he'd done all of his life, he guided Kili back to where the rest of world needed him to be by folding his younger brother's fingers back around the stone.
"Don't want it," Kili argued, protesting at his brother's direction despite how lost he felt, and fumbled with the strength of a dwarfling to free himself of a fate of shattered promises.
"It wasn't given to you because you desired it, Kili."
The youngest Son of Durin made an effort to rid himself of the darkness he concealed himself in at the strict tone in Fili's voice and had it not been for long locks of gold his freshly opened eyes gazed upon, his blurry vision would have encouraged the fear that Thorin was somehow standing over him with the rigorous demeanor of a king.
"Her desires, I...I do not wish to fulfill." Kili sunk down into the sheets as his chest took up the same motion with a struggled release of air. "I cannot go back to her for she will know the truth of me."
Fili's calloused hand found his brother's hair as if he was reassuring Kili that goblins weren't under his bed again and any trace of Thorin that appeared before had suddenly vanished from his first heir. "And what exactly is it that you think Mother doesn't know?"
It was soft, teasingly so, and Kili could not help but grin impishly as if he held a brilliant secret of his own. "Haven't you figured it out for yourself?"
"Not in the slightest," Fili replied, calling upon his years of practice at keeping a deadpan expression on his face in order to explore his own mischievous side. "She thinks of you as a dwarfling, a reckless one at that, always getting into trouble. I-" the eldest prince stopped abruptly in his diversionary teasing as Kili lost his breath to a great wave of pain expressed in an uncomfortable squirm. Waiting as he always did, he remained still and calm so that his younger brother could find him with chaotic desperation. Kili's fingers groped at Fili's hand with an intention unknown to the older dwarf as their hands were already linked, but when the token dropped from between their hands lost and forgotten like the sound of it hitting the bedsheets, Kili's hand grasped Fili's tightly one last time and didn't let go again.
Relieved of the obstruction, Kili sighed as his fevered palm soaked the chill from the palm of his brother and blinked sluggishly. "I...I'm not...reckless."
"Still trying to ignore your vocabulary lessons I see, even after you've somehow managed to finish your schooling," Fili countered as he searched for Oin across the home of the Bowman. Upon receiving a slight negative shake of the head, Fili quickly turned his attention back to his brother in hopes of maintaining determined faith. "If you're not reckless, then please enlighten me as to how you've managed this recent plight of ours."
Admission tasted horrid on his tongue as he spoke. "I am...selfish."
Fili's brow furrowed before he could ever register doing so. "Foolish suits you better, but fevered comes more quickly to mind." He took up a cloth and wiped the sweat from his brother's frustratedly wrinkled forehead.
"Fili," the youngest Son of Durin whined and waited until the dwarf he called upon became immobile once more as their gazes met. "I...I have no memories of Father. I cannot see his face to compare it to my own. I only see a picture of pieces made from the stories you, Mother, Uncle, and anyone else who knew him have told me. That is how he will always be."
"Kili-"
"No. No, when we were younger I wished I could have remembered him, just one little memory to call my own so that his absence would not be so hard to bear, but this journey...I realize it is much easier to feel a loss when you cannot remember what it is that is missing. I do not wish to feel loss as Uncle has, as Mother has, or...as you have."
"But you wish more upon us instead?" Fili questioned, and for some reason Kili couldn't quite understand his voice was not angry, not even the slightest as if Kili was simply telling a lie.
"No! By Aulë, I do not!" Kili cried, grimacing with a desperate twist to be understood even if he could not make sense of himself.
Fili pushed him back down to the small comforts of soaked sheets with an empathetic smile. "Then you are not selfish."
The youngest blinked, swallowed hard against the emotion he wished to ignore, and silently pleaded for his brother to be accepting of what they both now understood he truly was.
Fili squeezed his hand tighter and brought their connected limbs to rest over his heart, his grin deepening in only the way a brother's could. "You are scared, Kili." He said, but laughed softly at the ashamed face of his brother. "Do not act as though I've never seen you frightened. How many years have I checked for goblins under your bed? Would like for me to check for them now?"
"Fili, just go do it." Dis encouraged with a pleading smile from where she sat patching up her children's clothes.
"But it's silly." Her oldest son complained.
"I can remember doing the same thing for you when you were younger." She countered with a light chuckle.
"Yes, younger. Much younger than Kili is now."
"He's still a child, Fili. If he wants to be afraid of goblins under the bed, then let him be."
"You only allow it, because you use it against him." Fili protested with a knowing smirk.
"In what way?" She asked, and it was much in the same way Kili feigned innocence at times.
Fili cleared his throat to distort his voice in order to mimic his mother's. "Kili, if there really is goblins under your bed, you better eat all of your vegetables, because they ward off goblins."
Dis laughed heartily at the memory of tucking Kili in one night and finding vegetables from the garden surrounding him under the sheets.
"Fili!" a small voice squeaked from down the hall and Dis quietened before giving her oldest son a pleading look.
"Mother, please-" Fili began, but she cut him off while dropping her stitching in her lap.
"Think of it this way. One day he'll be afraid of things you know are really there and those fears won't be chased away by simply lifting up the edge of his blanket."
Fili blinked at her, but she could see the notion sinking in.
"So just promise me one thing, Fili..."
"The only goblin around my bed is you," Kili huffed, craning his body into the sheets as another wave of pain rolled out from the arrow wound in his leg. He clenched his teeth painstakingly so to ride it out, but this one seemed to crest forever and left him in a writhing mess underneath worried hands and atop disarrayed sheets.
"Kili!" His brother's voice cut through the sound of blood rushing in his ears and he tried to desperately to cling to it. He felt something grind between his fist and begged Aulë to let it be Fili.
Fili felt the bones in his hand grind under the pressure of Kili's clenched hand, but would only register the pain once his hand was free. Instead, he only recognized the grip for what it was and tried to reign his brother back in from where he had strayed. "Kili, please! Calm down!"
Oin appeared on the opposite side of the bed, concerned healer hands roaming over Kili's ill body, but the prince groaned and attempted to roll away from the unwanted touch.
"F-Fili," the bedridden dwarf begged, knowing he didn't have to explain.
"Oin," Fili called with a slight stutter of his own, though his was due to hesitation. "I've got him, please..." he trailed off, not agreeing with his brother, but wanting to be able to give him some kind of comfort, "don't ...don't touch him."
Oin caught his gaze with a knowing and sympathetic blink before backing away, but instead of leaving, he walked over to Fili and placed a hand on his shoulder, the healer in him unable to just do nothing. Fili welcomed it, took comfort in the soft notion of friendship during the hardship of his family.
But Kili nearly screamed in agony as more pain coursed through his poisoned veins, and Fili felt Oin's hand disappear even though it remained. The first heir of Thorin leaned down to collect what he could of his squirming brother to hold him against his chest and began talking to him once more, providing Kili with something calm and stationary in an otherwise disorderly world.
"Do you remember the promise you made to Mother?"
Kili groaned loudly, but did not respond.
"Kili, listen to me. Do you remember the promise you made to her?" Fili urged once more, blindly feeling around for the abandoned token in the sheets until he held it in his hand that wasn't being crushed. He maneuvered himself in order to reach Kili's other hand and placed the token between his trembling fingers. Pushing his younger brother's index finger across the engraving, he asked again, "Do you remember?"
"Y-yes," Kili whispered, turning his head away from Fili's chest enough to look down and see the token in his hand.
"What was it?"
"To..to return to her."
Kili's breath hitched and Fili hugged him tighter. "Do you know where she got the token?"
"No."
Running his own finger along the markings, the older prince swallowed thickly. "I made it."
"You? But-"
"It's to remind me of my promise, too." Fili explained as he once again curled both their hands around the token. Kili resisted at first, but suddenly sagged against his brother as his body appeared to escape the bindings of pain for a moment for ever how brief it lasted.
"What's your promise?" Kili asked as he stared at his brother's fingers over his own.
The youngest dwarf began to wonder if pain would engulf him again before he received an answer as the sound of his brother's heart seemed to match his own in his ears in the silence that lingered. Concern for his brother brought his head up to look at him, but Fili only smiled down at him like he did all those years ago after making sure the underside of his bed was clear.
"To always check under your bed for goblins, no matter how old you get."
As Fili hugged his frightened brother closer, desperately trying to starve off the fears that their mother had warned him about all those years ago, he felt Kili relax against him as if he hadn't a fear in the world, as if Fili had simply lifted the edge of his blanket to an empty space underneath the bed.