She often wonders what their lives would have been like had her lover not died. Not so very different, she suspected, but she could dream. Thranduil would still have banished her, and she seriously doubted that Kíli's uncle would have let her stay in Erebor. Kíli might have left and gone with her, but he would have missed his brother and uncle. It would have been cruel to separate them. Mind you, had it only been Kíli that survived, or even if it had only been Fíli that died, the dwarf prince would almost certainly have gone with her. Tauriel always mentally slapped herself for thinking such horrible things about Kíli's family. Her childrens' family.

After the Battle of the Five Armies, Tauriel had gone back to Mirkwood with the other elves carrying a heavy heart. She had not had long with Kíli, but she knew that she would never find one to love such as he again. What she did not know was that she carried something of him with her. It would be a full two months before she would discover it.

It was Legolas that spotted that something was wrong first. She was slower than normal, and when they were trekking through the trees and stopped to rest, she woke up early to throw up the previous night's dinner. He had insisted that they go straight back and that she see a healer, and who was she to argue with a prince?

You would have done it before, said the little voice at the back of her mind. She knew that this was true, but she refused to admit how run down and miserable she was since that awful battle.

The healer had told her what she had known in her heart was true, that she was expecting a child. Elves had no problem with illegitimate children, unless it came to the inheritance of titles. When one is a part of a race of practically immortal beings, one must choose very carefully whom one wishes to spend the rest of one's life with, and as a result, there is a lot of what I suppose could be called experimentation, and these things happened. An elfling born out of wedlock would be treated no differently than any other child, nor would the parents (or parent, if the father never came forward). Tauriel was not worried about that part of it. No matter how accepting of illegitimate children the elves were, they would never accept a child that was half dwarf.

The healer was full of smiles for her, but Tauriel's were put on, and only Legolas knew it. He knew full well whose child this was, and his father's hatred of dwarves had tainted the prince's heart enough that he was fully capable of turning on his best friend and telling the king of the child's parentage. After that, Tauriel was exiled from her home, and forced to wander.

After several weeks of walking, she eventually settled in Dale, which was undergoing massive reconstruction works. It was so very painful, being so near to where Kíli should be, knowing that all that lay of him in that mountain now was a slowly decaying body inside a stone tomb, so cold and devoid of all light. Tauriel usually tried to stop herself from allowing her mind to travel down such dangerous paths. Usually, but not always, and that is not to say that her attempts at stopping herself always worked, either.

Tauriel managed to procure employment in an apothecary as a healer, and assistant to the very elderly healer already there, who really ought to have retired years ago. He was a kind man, and was happy to have her stay in the rooms above his shop, which he did not stay in, since he lived with his family in a larger house a little ways down the road. They invited her over for tea at least once a week, usually more, and fussed over her no end. The youngest in the family, a girl of about nineteen, and rather keen to be married and had children of her own, followed the elf around like a lost puppy, and was quick to offer her services as a babysitter once the child was born.

News of an elvish healer in Dale travelled fast, and soon people came from far and wide with more serious ills and injuries that a human healer could do nothing for. Sometimes a dwarf on his way (or her way, for indeed, there were more female dwarves than males willing to traipse through and admit that elves were more skilled in the area of medicine than dwarves) to the Lonely Mountain. Tauriel and old Robert (for that was the apothecary's name) were run off their feet caring for the people of Dale and beyond.

Tauriel knew nothing of childbearing among dwarves, but she knew that as an elf, she should be able to work right up until the end of her pregnancy. Of course, she would take several months when the child was born, both to recover - the actual process of labour can be quite hard for elves and dwarves both she knew that much - and to care for the child, but she fully intended to keep on working. Elves carry their children for a full year before giving birth, but there was something at the back of her mind about dwarves carrying for slightly longer, and she worried that this would have an effect. What if her child was born too early because her body had decided it was time for the child to greet the world, but its dwarven heritage said otherwise? Or the other way round; what if she carried the child for too long? What if the child had all sorts of health problems because of its differing parents? There were so many what-ifs and what-might-have-beens running through her head in the evenings when she had little to do that she usually went to sleep with a splitting headache.

The pregnancy lasted thirteen months, and was harder than it should have been. In the last month, Tauriel suffered with tremendous back-aches, and the nausea that had plagued her in the early days of her pregnancy returned with a vengeance. The baby kicked her insides to pieces, and she was certain that her intestines were black and blue. She had to stop working, partially at Robert's insistence, but she drew the line at him inviting her to stay with them. She may have been overdue by elf standards, but she still wanted that little bit of independence. She agreed to be check up on each day, and to let one of Robert's family stay with her each night. Sometimes his wife, sometimes one of his daughters or daughters-in-law, and sometimes one of his older grandchildren (he had a truly massive family).

It was a long and stressful (not to mention painful) last month, and it seemed to be an awfully long time until she began to carry lower down, indicating an impending labour. This terrified the young elf. As I have said before, elvish births are very difficult, and Tauriel had been present at the birth of a friend's daughter, and had seen first hand how painful it would be. She dearly wished for that friend to be with her for this.

It was the middle of a cold November when Tauriel woke up with a deep-seated throbbing pain in her lower abdomen, and her legs, sheets, and night-clothes soaked with her waters. She called out for Cora (Robert's eldest daughter, who, thankfully, had some experience as a midwife), who rushed in to her and saw the mess. She examined Tauriel, before running down the road for some help.

After hours of intense pain like nothing she'd ever felt before, Tauriel saw the two women attending the birth exchange worried looks, and her blood ran cold.

"What's wrong?" she asked, filled with terror now. "Tell me, what's wrong with my baby?"

Cora turned to her and gave her a sad look. "We think your baby's breached," she said, and was rewarded with a confused expression. "It means that baby's the wrong way round; he's got his head up the top and his feet facing downwards. We're going to try and turn him from the outside, but it is risky, and it will hurt."

"Just do it." Cora nodded, and the two women began to press harshly on Tauriel's stomach, towards the top, trying to push the baby the right way round from the outside. It was painful, and Tauriel thought she might pass out a few times, but, finally, Cora turned and said that he was the right way round, and that she was nine and a half centimeters dilated; nearly there.

It was another hour before she felt the urge to push, and Cora checked her when she said this, and gave her the go ahead to start pushing. It felt as though her nether regions were being torn apart, and every muscle in her body ached as she bore down, forcing her child from her body. After what seemed like hours, but was, in fact, about ten minutes, the silence was pierced as Tauriel and Kílis' baby took its first breaths, and wept for the loss of the safety and comfort of the womb.

"A girl!" said Cora, grinning at her friend.

Tauriel laughed. She had not laughed properly in so long. She had been nearly certain it would be a boy. The baby was pressed gently into her waiting arms, and she took in every detail of her baby, committing every little detail to memory. She was the image of her father; dark hair and eyes, and with his colouring, too. There was little of her mother in her, with the exception of her gently pointed ears and her long, graceful digits. She was perfect in every possible way.

"Míli," she said, her voice thick. "Her name is Míli."

Cora was about to check for the afterbirth when another pain, like those from before, and the other midwife quickly took Míli from her mother's arms and placed her in the cot that had been by the window for months, now, while Cora took out a bizarre sort of ear trumpet, which she pressed to Tauriel's still swollen stomach.

"There's another baby."

Tauriel could have wept over her exhaustion, but this child came much faster than Míli, had. When Tauriel felt the little form leave her body, there was no cry, and the midwives didn't even look at her.

"Come on, little one," said Cora, and Tauriel could see her rubbing a tiny, unmoving infant lying on its front on the bloody sheets. "Come on, don't give up." Tauriel could have wept, but after what seemed like an age of silence, the little baby gave a cry that rivalled its sister's in volume.

"A boy."

"Kíli. For his father."

Fin