Author's Notes (A/N)
My respects to John Tolkien, Peter Jackson and Co. Please look far far away into the West as I now use your ideas for my own ends.
The key players are: Tauriel, Kili, Fili and Bard.
The supporting players are: Bran (OC), Bard's Captain of the Dale Guard, Thorin, Sigrid, Bain, Tilda, Dís and Dáin.
The Nine Circles of Hell as described by Dante Alighieri: Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here, First Circle (Limbo), Second Circle (Lust), Third Circle (Gluttony), Fourth Circle (Greed), Fifth Circle (Wrath), Sixth Circle (Heresy), Seventh Circle (Violence), Eighth Circle (Fraud), Ninth Circle (Treachery) and the Centre of Hell.
This story begins about two seasons after the end of Peter Jackson's version of the The Hobbit's BOTFA.
Author's universe. Non canon. Tim Burton influenced. No sex.
Kili and Thorin fought honourably and died. Fili survived.
It is expected that Fili will soon be crowned the next King Under the Mountain.
In Dale, Bard has become the reluctant King of his people.
Beta Reader Phish Tacko, thank you for your help and inspiration.
Chapter 1
Tauriel was shivering when she awoke.
She lifted her head from where it rested in the mud and looked at the dead lands surrounding her. The Desolation of Smaug was nothing but dirt, scattered rock, dead grass, and the whistling of a dry wind. The vise-like grip of anger twisted her intestines, followed by sadness. How could she keep failing like this? What kept knocking her back down when she had every right to go up amongst the stars?
For a while, she thought she had been getting closer to the Great White above, and now she was back where she had started, on Middle Earth, face-planted in the muck. Her ears were so cold that they ached. She pushed to her feet, wiped the black muck off her clothes, and hobbled in the direction of her temporary home of Dale.
Dale, a city of men, was as cold and grey as it was every morning of late. Despite the poor light, the neglected towers, homes, and ruins had gone from haunted caves into something resembling a town. The rusted gates had been opened to welcome the wider world, though no one ever came. Behind the wall, families of the race of men were moving about, appearing safe, fed and as contented as beings could be in those dark times.
Tauriel drew closer to the gates and nodded to the two guards who were dressed in a mismatch of Lake-town armour and rags. They chose to ignore the city's only resident elf. It was the nature of all beings to be wary of an outsider, especially one that only wore black for mourning, was as thin and pale as a corpse, had the flat voice of a killer, and seemed to do a lot of sleepwalking.
A shadow moved across her face and Tauriel rested her hands on the knives sheathed at her hips. A bull of a man stood blocking her way. His enormous stature told her that he was a fighter, and judging by his heavy breathing and the sickly-sweet smell of his flesh, he had a weakness for spending his winnings on drink.
"We don't want your kind around here, witch!" the man bellowed. His voice carried the words out to the early risers nearby. People slowed to see what was happening. The guards at the gates were grinning. She had become their morning prey.
Tauriel rolled her shoulders back, hearing her joints click. If she had to fight him, she would be on doing it her own. No one would come to an outsider's aid, and there was no childhood friend who followed her like a shadow. No selfish father figure to break her bow. There was only her, and she was fine with that.
"I am an elf, as you well know," she warned in her softest voice. "Which means I can hear the filth you consume as food and drink burn a hole through your stomach as you stand here. A witch cannot do that."
"You're a witch!" he bellowed, making a young girl nearby flinch. She dumped the contents of her chamber pot on the ground and fled back inside of her home, pulling the door shut behind her with a bang.
"You're a witch," the man repeated, his pitch rising. "And you're a liar. I've seen you creeping out towards the mountain at night, chanting spells to curse us. You and your pointy ears should be burned alive!"
"Burned alive…" She sighed. "If I were truly a witch, I would escape the fire and turn you into a dragon just so I could watch this city's King put an arrow through you."
"You making fun of me?" He reached forward to grab her with one meaty hand.
In a fraction of a second, Tauriel rammed a fist into his stomach, then thrust the other to his nose. With her leg muscles straining in the cold, she sent one low kick into the back of his legs, followed by the threat of her knife to make him lose balance. He keeled over like a troll caught in a foot trap.
As he crashed onto the paved walkway, one grey-haired observer roared with laughter. Tauriel gave him brief glance as she massaged her calf muscles. Kicking with frozen legs had hurt. "Thank you, Bran. Kind of you to step in and help your fellow man not to make a fool of himself."
"Why would I want to help when I can sit back and watch an elf take down a man twice her size?" said the Captain of the Dale Guard. Bran was thin, having lost a lot of the muscle from his youth. His clothes hung off him like folds of skin.
She straightened up. "I will keep that in mind the next time I see you trying to keep the peace."
"Now, don't get snippy with an elder," he scolded, happily ignorant of the fact that she was older than he by at least a hundred years. "It's not my fault you prefer the Desolation of Smaug to your bed made of feather and cloth."
"I do not know what you mean," she lied.
"Yes, you do, but to show you that I am a kind old man and have no hard feelings, you can buy me breakfast," he decided. With a smug expression, he gestured in the direction of the heart of the city.
She sighed. "Very well, but I get to pick the breakfast. You'll pick something like spider legs."
He rubbed his stomach. "Roasted spider legs are nice and crispy after being fried. It's not my fault you have a weak stomach."
They both made their way to the food markets, a place as busy and disorganised as a new ants' nest. Tauriel approached a market table and raised an apple to her nose. It smelled of her old home. No apple would ever taste better than those from Mirkwood.
She picked half a dozen for herself and tossed one to Bran after she'd paid. "Now, out with it. Tell me what is bothering you."
"What do you mean?" He examined the fruit and took a loud crunching bite.
"I mean that you do not come to find me unless something is wrong, and I do not mean breakfast. Are the guards getting lazy again, or is there another new setback with the rebuilding of the homes?" The sooner she knew, the sooner she could get to work.
Though she had no official capacity in Dale, Tauriel worked with Bard and his men to rebuild Dale in exchange for food and lodgings. That covered everything from cleaning the soot off walls to showing Bran how to train and lead his men. When they weren't calling her a witch, some men were calling her a mercenary, though a true mercenary would be asking three times more than what she did.
"The King wants to see you. A royal visitor came through our gates this morning." said Bran. "A small one."
"Good morning," interrupted a strange man hauling a sack of potatoes nearby. He lifted the sack onto a makeshift stall table and let it drop with a thump. Lifting his hood, he gave Bran and Tauriel a tiny smirk in greeting.
Tauriel recognised the face and groaned inwardly. "Again?"
The man was Bard the Bowman, Dragon Slayer and King of Dale, disguised in his old peasant garb of beige and browns, and trading potatoes. He'd been disguising himself as a peasant a great deal since becoming King. The clothes allowed him to forgo the responsibilities he considered unimportant. Tauriel had yet to convince him otherwise.
"Your Highness." Bran bowed deeply, threatening to overbalance.
"None of that." Bard waved Bran's greeting away and scratched at the stubble on his chin. "Would you two be willing to discuss city matters with an ordinary man today? The King's rooms are stifling on a day like this."
Bran grumbled under his breath, but pulled up a couple of crates to the stall table nevertheless. No doubt he was feeling the cold as much as Tauriel was. Stifling would had been welcome, though she drew the line at being burned alive for fools.
"Are those apples from Greenwood Forest?" Bard asked, nodding to Tauriel's breakfast.
She tossed one into his waiting, calloused hands.
"It can only be Thranduil's." He confirmed, turning the fruit in his hands and tapping it with the pads of his fingers. "Strange, I now miss the simple work of smuggling his goods."
"Simple?" Tauriel snatched the apple back. "You had a dragon problem, remember? Besides, your free time would be better spent performing your duties as King."
Bard leaned closer. The smirk had reappeared in the corners of his dark eyes. "Tauriel."
"Yes?" She stopped waving the apple at him long enough to glare at him.
"You've got dirt on your face. Have you been sleepwalking again?"
Bran clicked his tongue.
Tauriel wiped at her face. Her hand came back grimy. "If you will not listen to me, Bard, then at least turn your thoughts to the visitor Bran tells me arrived this morning."
Bard inspected his potatoes. "Very well. You, Tauriel, not I, have a royal visitor from Under the Mountain to see you. I have put him in the one guest room that has a ceiling."
Her chest tightened. A visitor from Under the Mountain could only mean a dwarf. "To see me? Why not you? Is it not official business?"
"He says it is a personal matter. It is the dwarf named Fili. I believe you met him as I did when Lake-town was in its last days."
So, it was not just any dwarf that had come to see her. Fili was here in Dale. He had finally come to seek her out after the death of his brother. "I remember him."
"He arrived in ill temper and full of demands. The state of the room with one ceiling upset him, so I sent him to the kitchen. You should find him there still."
Tauriel gave him a blank look and turned away. She would meet her visitor armed. Fili could be here for anything: justice, revenge, answers she didn't have, or even for comfort. Grief was as unpredictable and painful as an elf falling in love with a dwarf, or at least she had found it to be that way.