Title: uair amháin

Summary: A might-have-been tale had Kili survived. From the perspective of Bard's eldest daughter whom is suddenly the daughter of the king of Dale. It is no longer the simple yearning of a peasant girl, neither the courtship of two kingdoms, but the dabbling in forbidden love. Of duty and loyalty, rebellion and kin: a longwinded, slightly off-beat two-shot-plus-epilogue.

Rater: K+ for…nothing really, sort-of dark themes at worse

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hobbit, neither Tolkien's nor Peter Jackson's

Author's Note: This is an alternate ending, mind you, not a sequel to milis agus searbh. But please, please, ever-so-pretty please check out milis agus searbh on my profile. It is an exploration of the bittersweet taste of youth's first love and loss.

Eventually Kili/Sigrid – who don't have a couple name yet, unless it's kigrid or maybe sigri

The Scene: Takes place two and a half years after the Battle of the Five Armies in which Kili survived along with Thorin but Fili perished. Erebor is now reclaimed and Kili is second heir of the line of Durin. Sigrid parted ways with him because she is nothing more than a daughter of a ferryman and vagabond – except she isn't, not anymore. The people have made her father king of Dale and they call her princess. It is early spring.

The title is in Gaelic and so is Sigrid's lullaby

uair amháin

(Once)

Chapter One – Not at Home:

There was a twang of a bow, a hiss of air, and before she had a chance to duck or even scream, an arrow embedded itself in the tree by her head, hitting the bark with a dull thump.

She turned to face her attacker, forgetting that it would perhaps be better to run. There was no one there. Her heart beat a rhythm against her ribs. Her hands went cold.

She thought of monsters – orcs that haunted her dreams, but in reality thought that a dwarf guard was more likely.

"Who are you whom trespasses upon the realm of the King Under the Mountain?" said a voice. She peered into the thicket of trees and undergrowth, finding her voice was lost in her throat. Leaves were undisturbed by anything but a breath of wind, hissing and winding its arms through the wood. She could still detect no royal guard, but knew she had a readied bow trained for her head.

"I meant no harm, my lord," she said, finding her voice at last and raising her hands to shoulder height. "I come from Dale. I had not meant to trespass. I knew not I had passed your border."

Rustling leaves and the parting of branches and a stocky figure emerged from the brush, clothed in a dark cloak and hood that hid his face. He shouldered his bow, still cautious but marginally lowering his guard.

"You are but a girl," said he, his voice was deep, tipped with wariness. "You are –" He stopped as though his voice had been severed sharply with a knife. "But surely you are –" He threw his hood away from his face.

Her heart faltered against her ribs. She thought for a moment she was going to faint. Surely it could not be – what demon had lead him there, led her there – She dropped to her knees in fluid habit.

"My lord, forgive me, I had not known –" It was not his proper title. She had been drilled with the proper names that etiquette required. She knew what she was supposed to say but she somehow couldn't. It meant speaking his name. Kili, sister's son of Thorin, King Under the Mountain, son of Thrain, son of Thror. He was little changed, but his whiskers had gotten heavier.

She could not bring herself to look at his face. She stared at the dirt and twigs at his feet.

"My lady," said he, "there is nothing to forgive, Sigrid daughter of Bard, decedent of Girion, Lord of Dale." Her eyes flickered upward at his voice and she was astonished to see that he too had dropped to one knee on the forest floor.

He rose and stowed his bow to its quiver on his back. He took a step forward, extending his hand. She rose quickly before he could reach her, conscious that it was improper and against etiquette, but conscious also that she could not touch his hand.

"But what brings you here, my lady?" he asked. "It is not safe for a girl of your stature to wander these lands unaccompanied. Where are your maids, your guards –?"

"In Dale," she said, "unaware of my absence."

A shadow of something that might have once been called a smile flitted across his lips. "You might ask me the same question, and I would give the same answer. In Erebor, unaware of their sire's leave."

Sigrid knew not what to say. The last time she had seen him she had been skulking in the corner of a tent, been shooed away from his prone body by a woman who said she was his mother and more fit to tend her wounded than Sigrid. He had been nearly out of his mind with pain and fever – grief – unaware of her presence. Sigrid had left and not looked back. She had heard tell from stranger's lips of his brother's passing, his uncle's rein, his princeship of Erebor.

"You have grown," he said against the backdrop of the fluttering leave and twitter of birds, the exhale of the wind. "More beautiful than I remember, my lady."

Sigrid became aware that her cheeks were glowing warm. She was a woman now, twenty summers in only months. She could not properly recall her shape and contours when she had first met him, but perhaps it was true. Perhaps she was more beautiful. She had never thought of herself as becoming, perhaps only a charitable pretty. She was not accustomed to be so baldly complimented by young men.

Her father was beginning to drop hints of courtship.

"Your sister, little Tilda, how does she bode?" His voice was perhaps gruffer than she remembered. Something in his face had gone grim. He smiled but no light met his eyes. But perhaps it was only the flitting shadows of the wood.

"Tilda is well, my lord," said Sigrid.

"And your brother, Bain?"

"Bain also fares well," said Sigrid. "He has grown to be a strong man. Unlike my father in some ways but a proud heir nonetheless."

"And you," he prompted. "How does nobility become you?"

Sigrid felt her stomach twisting in astonishment and confusion. She was not yet fully conscious that this was really happening, not but a dream spawned from restless sleep. Or madness.

"I am well, my lord," she said, her lips moving of their own accord.

"It used to be Kili," he said. "Sigrid."

"You were a traveling dwarf then, my lord. I was a peasant girl and daughter of a ferryman. You were not the heir to a throne, nor was I the daughter of a king of men."

"Yes," said he slowly. "much has changed since then, hasn't it?" It may have been phrased as a question but Sigrid knew it was not. His voice was laced with sorrow, something that told of bitterness.

"And you, my lord," she said hastily. "But how are you?"

The shadow again passed his face. Her heart twisted and she immediately wished she could withdraw the words of her tongue. His brother dead – the kindly, fair-haired dwarf whom had begged her please, bring his brother something for the pain –

"I am well, my lady," he said at last.

"Even your voice has changed," it was almost as if he had not meant to say it. Perhaps his lips, too, sometimes spoke out of turn.

She looked at him and perhaps a bit of her puzzlement showed from her eyes for he continued hastily, "You speak so formally now…. Your voice is so clear."

"Duty calls for it, my lord," Sigrid said, feeling uncomfortable in turn. She hadn't realized it was so noticeable. She had abandoned her slurred speech and peasant accents early on, conscious that they were unbefitting for a king's daughter.

"Yes, I suppose it does," he said. "Duty calls for much."

"Yes, my lord." She wished to leave. This pounding in her chest and rush of her blood was making her lightheaded. She could barely breathe for the familiarity in his eyes, his face, and his voice. She had never thought she'd see him again, had never wanted to – only in the fevered recess of her dreams had she allowed her mind to fly to places she could not go in body or waking thought.

"What were you doing out here?" he asked, raising a hand to indicate the wood, the trees, the shadows lingering among their branches.

"Taking a walk," Sigrid said quickly. "I hadna realized I'd strayed so far." Had not. She had not realized it.

"The trees are a comfort," he said, as if he understood her.

"Yes, my lord."

"Please, Sigrid, don't," he said suddenly. There was something in his voice that tasted of bridled passion. "We might have been friends, had things not come about the way they did. Please, let us not be so formal."

Another flicker of a smile. Something darkened in his eyes that made Sigrid's stomach stumble. She was suddenly pointedly aware that she was alone in a wood with a young man – a young man that Sigrid had once thought – but Sigrid had only been a child then…. But it was a situation entirely new for her.

"Tisn't proper," she whispered.

"It isn't not proper, Sigrid," he answered. "We aren't only that traveling dwarf or peasant girl anymore. I am an heir of Durin," he spoke as if the words gave him physical pain. But it was come and gone before she could properly notice it. "You are the daughter of a king. We belong to two kingdoms that have lived in peaceful cohabitation centuries before and centuries to the future. There's no reason why we cannot be friends."

"That may be so," Sigrid's cheeks were burning, a phenomenon that she had not been able to be rid of since she was a little girl. She was uncomfortable aware her face was flushed red and could only hope the shadow of the trees might hide it. "But – but I am still – and you, you are –" She trailed away, not knowing what she had begun to say in the first place.

He was smiling now almost in earnest. "You don't mind if I call you Sigrid, do you?"

"Ney, my lord," she whispered, barely opening her lips. "You may do as you will."

"And you will call me Kili?" he said.

"If you will," she breathed, mystified as to how her voice managed to creep up her throat.

"Good," he said. "Come with me to Erebor, I will show you what we have done. I don't suspect you've seen anything more than ruins of our kingdom."

"I – I can't," Sigrid said, unconsciously faltering backwards as he took a step toward her, hand extended. "They will be wondering where I have gotten to. It is a long way back and I should hasten if I do not want to be missed."

"Then come with me so that I might lend you a pony, give you an escort –"

"Ney," she shook her head. It was hard to talk, hard to breathe, hard to think. "I – they will ask questions if they realize I'd been gone. I – I do this often and would rather they stay ignorant." Her cheeks were flaming furiously.

He laughed shortly, a sound that was neither easy nor merry, but shaded with a tone of bitterness, even though he appeared to be quite light-hearted.

"Let me walk with you, then," he said. "I'll lend you the protection of my bow."

"The woods are safe. I should not wish to impose."

"Years ago we showed up at your father's house and did not ask whether or not we could impose," his voice was tired and etched with sorrow, but again masked by the almost smile set on his lips. "Please, it's the least I can do."

He might have taken it for a pondering pause, but in truth Sigrid could not work her throat. "If you will," she said finally.

"Hush," she whispered, words flying from her lips unbidden. She placed a damp rag on his forehead. She recalled him days before in her house, fevered from a poisoned orc wound. She had done the same thing then. He had been yelling, nearly out of his mind with pain then, too.

Just as it had then, his hand flew out, flailing wildly in his delirium and pain. Her fingers caught his. She eased his arm to his side and allowed his fingers to entwine around her palm tightly, squeezing her hand until it hurt and she no longer had feeling in her fingertips. She did not pull away.

Her throat was clogged from tears. Her ears rang from his screams. He was much worse now than he had been then. He'd been pierced by sword and arrow, lost so much blood. Sigrid's skirt was drenched through from kneeling at his bedside, stained red.

"Ye willna die. Ye canna die…" she spoke but she could not hear her own words over the volume of his yells. She could not hear the orders of the dwarf surgeon working beside her, nor hear her own thoughts pounding through her head.

She became aware that words were coming up her throat, but she could not discern what they were. Hours might have passed and his yelling quieted and her voice slipped gently into her ears, a lullaby often sung to Tilda when she had woken crying from a nightmare:

"Codladh anois, leanbh ciúin

Ná caoin, ná bíodh imní ort

Tá tú sábháilte, tá tú anseo

I mo lámha, ná caoin."

She recalled the words in her mother's voice, a voice not heard for many years, when Sigrid had been a child younger than Tilda. Sigrid's voice was nothing like her mother's, which had been soothing and gentle, like a bubbling brook. Sigrid's voice was coarse and broken. She had never been able to carry a tune.

A hand touched her shoulder and Sigrid looked up. Another dwarf stood behind her, a dwarf with no beard but was obviously much older than Kili. Sigrid realized it was a woman. There were wrinkles of sorrow on her forehead and around her eyes. Soft, almost transparent fuzz covered her upper lip and jaw. Side whiskers the color of muted brown touched by gray were braided carefully over her jaw bone. Her hair was dark despite the salting of white, swept careless away from her face. She might have look regal, had it not been for sorrow and weariness etched onto her every line and angle.

Sigrid's voice was lost in her throat. The woman's eyes were darkened by mourning but kind, her voice gentle as she eased Sigrid to the side.

"My brother will live. It is time I tend my son. Go child, this is a mother's place."

Sigrid moved by compulsion, as if the woman's voice was somehow an enchantment. She forgot her hand was entwined in Kili's and he groaned as she tugged away. The dwarf woman – his mother – dropped to her knees and gently eased Sigrid's fingers away, her own taking their place.

Sigrid retreated until her back hit the wall of the tent. The woman – Kili's mother – wetted a rag and placed it on her son's forehead. She took up her own song, something that Sigrid had never heard before, something out of the folds of time and in the dwarves' own tongue.

Sigrid thought of the elf, the one with the blond hair, the one who had come to fight off the orcs at the house along with his kinswomen. She had stumbled upon him among the rows of dead. Sigrid had been there to search for Kili, because he had not been found yet. The elf had been kneeling by the still body of his kinswoman, the same with the auburn hair. He had been muttering beneath his breath, just audible against the whistle of the wind, something that sounded like a prayer or a song or an enchantment, a salutation of grief without tears, a sealing of the dead –

But no, Kili was not going to die. This was not – this was not his mother's farewell. She was not –

Sigrid felt bile rise in her throat and suddenly she was outside. She could feel the cold air penetrating her sodden skirts, whipping against her hair and eyes as she ran away. She could not look back. She would not stand there to watch him die, to watch his mother bid him final leave….

When she returned to the town, to the makeshift tent they had raised in stead of their dragon-fire ruined cabin, Tilda had screamed.

"Your hurt! Sigrid, your legs!"

Sigrid had looked down to see her dress stained dark brown from Kili's blood. Suddenly she was on her knees and Tilda was in her arms.

"Hush, Tilda. I'm alrigh'. I amna' hurt. 'Tisna' my blood."

She ran her fingers through her little sister's hair. Tilda was shaking. Sigrid's words came back to her, whispered before she'd departed to tend the wounded:

"I'll be back. I'll be fine. You stay with Bain. I won' be but a little while."

"Please, don'."

"I'll come back. I will. I promise, I will."

And Kili's voice came to her.

"You're too young a' die."

"I won't die."

And Sigrid was gently easing her sister's arms from around her neck.

"I hav'a wash, Tilda. I'll be righ' back."

"Sigrid, Da?"

"He's alrigh'."

Relief clouded Tilda's eyes with tears. "Wha' about the dwarves, Sigrid? Fili and Kili, Bofur and Oin. Are they alrigh', too?"

"I dunna know, Tilda." And Sigrid's voice almost broke. She breathed deeply, trying to ease the pressure in her throat.

"Le' me come with ye," said Tilda.

Sigrid almost said no, stay with Bain, but Tilda's eyes were shining and she was trembling, perhaps with cold, and she was so afraid and Sigrid had already left her too many times before, and Sigrid, too, was trembling.

"Aye, Tilda, come with me."

They went to a nook off the lake, where it bled into a stream and collected into a little pool. They had always gone there to bathe. Woman brought their children there to wash and their clothes. It was a private corner, surrounded by trees where no one would trespass, not today. Not when all the woman were still at the battlefield, tending the wounded and dead, and the children were left frightened in the skeletal remains of their houses.

Sigrid broke the ice at the surface. The water was frigid. It made her fingers ache and knuckles bleed in stripes. She washed her skirt but the stain would not come out. She kneaded it with her fingers and ice but the blood – Kili's blood – hung to the threads. She saw that her legs, too, dripped with red and she submerged them into the water.

Her skin was flushed with gooseflesh. Her shoulders shook. She scrubbed and batted at her flesh, turning red from the cold so that she could no longer tell the difference from the blood and her skin.

The blood would not come out. She scrape at her skin, her fingernails leaving traces of their own. She emerged herself fully in the pool, thrashing against the creeping, sticky warm that was the blood.

"Sigrid…" said Tilda's voice.

She took off her cloak and wetted it, using it as a rag to scrub her legs. Now it was between her fingers, hot and sticky and wouldn't go away….

Tilda's arms were around her again. Sigrid became aware that tears were running down her cheeks.

"Hush, Sigrid. Don'. You're alrigh'. Don' cry…."

Sigrid's shoulders were shaking. Her whole body was shaking, naked sitting on the edge of a frozen pool. Slowly Sigrid realized that it was the water between her fingers and running down her legs, not blood. Her skin was red from cold but not blood. She pulled her legs up to her chest and Tilda wrapped her arms around her. Tilda's body was warm. Tilda was trembling but perhaps that was only Sigrid.

"Come," said Tilda's voice softly in Sigrid's ear. "Put on your cloak. Le's ge' home and ge' ye warm."

"Sigrid?" Tilda was almost thirteen summers now. She'd grown to be almost Sigrid's height. Tilda could sing like a lark, and very often did, in the castle's corridors and about the castle's grounds, in the village and in the wood, making a spectacle of herself.

Sigrid turned for her chamber's doorway, turning to Tilda's room that lay on the other side of the corridor.

"Aye, Tilda?"

"Where've you been? I was looking for you and couldna' find you. I asked Hengrin where you were as well and she didn't know." Tilda's eyes swam with concern. Another, hidden part of her might have said I was worried. I wish you wouldn't leave me like that. Not like the dragon, or after the battle –

"I was on a walk, Tilda. Naught to worry about."

"Your face is flushed. Have you caught fever?" Sigrid was used to Tilda's uncanny knack of noticing things rather not noticed and giving them a voice. Usually it was irksome, today Sigrid almost smiled.

She put a hand, unusually cool and trembling, to her cheek, unusually warm. "Am I?" she asked. That was not a valid question. Sigrid only asked important questions to which answers were important.

"Where've you been off to?" Tilda demanded, eyes narrowing slightly in suspicion.

"The west wood," said Sigrid.

"Near the mountain?" said Tilda.

"Aye."

The corner of Tilda's lips turned up slightly. Sigrid felt a moment of panicked misgiving rise in her stomach before shooing it away. There was nothing odd in Sigrid's behavior – nothing shameful in her conduct, besides. She and him – they had merely talked. There was nothing wrong in that. Nothing that boded – nothing at all.

"What did you want me for, Tilda?" said Sigrid.

"Come braid my hair. Hengrin does it so roughly, it hurts." Sigrid did smile then, and walked readily to Tilda's chamber.

"Some sit at my feet," she bid, perching herself on Tilda's bed. It had been odd at first, each having their own bed and bed chambers when they had been so used to living in a one-room cottage. Tilda had used to sneak into Sigrid's and climb under the blanket with her when the night was dark and reaching, cold and lonely.

Sigrid had never minded the company, even if Tilda's elbows were sharp and she stole all the blankets. But at least Tilda had always done that. Sigrid had been used it, for it was familiar – unlike the gaping castle hallways, never-ending winding corridors, and unrecognizable man whom sat on the thrown, crown on his head and eyes unlike her father's.

It had been one year and a bit more since Tilda had last come into Sigrid's bed chamber in the lonely recess of the night. Sigrid missed it.

Her fingers wound through Tilda's soft hair, twisting it into plates. Tilda's head rested between Sigrid's knees as Sigrid had used to sit with her mother. Tilda was too young to remember such things.

"I hear the elves singing sometimes at night," Tilda said. "They cannot really be so far away as Bain says they are."

"It's their magic, Tilda," said Sigrid, "Or else only your dreams."

"Tisn't any dream," said Tilda.

"Well then, you know things echo across the lake. Perhaps they make merry on the distant shore."

"Aye," said Tilda. "When is Da coming home?"

"When his business has been concluded, Tilda, and concluded well." Their father was off with his company to a distant kingdom, to negotiate and discuss trade relations, things Sigrid did not rightly understand despite her tutors drilling. There was much involved in setting up a kingdom. And for a kingdom not yet three years old much remained to do.

"Perhaps he will bring you a consort?" said Tilda. "He talks of binding us to Framsburg, perhaps through marriage between you and the Lord's son –"

"Hush, Tilda," said Sigrid, "Tisn't any of your mind."

"Would you marry him?" Tilda continued. "The Lord's son? If Da should request it?"

Sigrid's fingers stumbled in their winding of Tilda's hair. She thought of her father and politics and all she did not understand and strangely, a stocky young dwarf whom had shot an arrow into a tree by her head only hours before….

"He would ask me beforehand," she said, her lips moving of their own accord because of course it was true. "He would not spring such a request before first discussing it with me."

"Then what would you decide?" Tilda continued. "If it should be your choice, would you say yes? To bind our realms – it would be something of a duty, would it not?"

Sigrid's hand slipped the end of Tilda's braid into a ribbon. She pulled it tight and Tilda squirmed. "You know nothing of such things, Tilda. Hold your tongue."

It was mid-winter after the battle and Sigrid had been buying fish at the market. Some of the town had been rebuilt but snow and cold had impeded progress. Sickness was beginning to set in.

"Ye should not be here, Sigrid," the old woman had greeted her. "Your father is above us now. Your family is royalty. Ye are not fit for petty errands like this."

"I dunna' mind it, Hengrin. I've always come to ye."

"Have ye not heard the talk, child? The people speak of making your father king – king of Dale, Sigrid. Ye shall be a princess among these people."

"I am no princess, Hengrin," her cheeks had gone warm, even against the bighting chill of winter's breath. "I dunna' wish for alms."

"Ye come from noble stock, Sigrid. Whether or not ye ask, ye shall receive it."

Sigrid's words tumbled off her tongue, "I am merely a peasant girl, not fit for great halls –"

"But ye'll have greater halls than the Master's nevertheless. A castle, Sigrid. The elder one from Dale. We'll rebuild it and it shall become your own. Ye'll see, child. Ye'll see."

Sigrid had brushed aside the woman's tidings with a smile, which hid the turmoil wakened in her heart. "Ye'll have a' come to tend us then, Hengrin. Me and Tilda, won' ye?"

Hengrin had laughed, her shriveled face crumpling until her eyes disappeared among the folds of transparent flesh. "If ye wish, your majesty. But ye'll have a' learn a' talk proper if ever ye be a daughter of a king, Sigrid."

Sigrid had not thought it possible then, when her father had only been elected Master of Lake-Town. But it turned out Hengrin's words had been touched by fate, and Sigrid had learned to speak properly. He – Kili, his name was Kili and he wished for her to call him Kili, and there was nothing improper about any of it – had pointed it out to her just that morning.

"Sigrid," said his voice, and she started, even though somewhere in the back of her mind she had hoped – expected it, even. She turned to see him again emerge from the shadows of the trees. His bow was slung on his back, left in its quiver, his hood already thrown back from his head.

She opened her mouth to issue some greeting but discovered she had not thought what to say.

"Did you wander too far again?" he asked. Perhaps there was more a smile in his voice this time, but she could not rightly tell because beneath the undulations and accents of his words there was an unrecognizable lilt – something she had heard in others before, other mourners.

Her heart felt as if someone had wrung it out, and she gathered her breath. "I lose track of where I am going," she said. "There's something about the trees."

"I've been in other woods where it is worse," he said, and incongruently his voice fell further into sorrow. "I am glad of the work your father and the elven king are planning, of the repairing of the path in Mirkwood."

"Aye," said Sigrid, not knowing how the conversation had been led there.

"Thorin still doesn't like elves, much," he remarked.

Sigrid opened her mouth again to say something but again found herself at a loss for what to say.

"Your uncle," she started and then rectified quickly, "The King Under the Mountain, Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, he has done much with my father. The world is looking a brighter place for their armistice."

"Is it?" said he, lifting his head to stare through the trees above him, as if to check that the sky, in fact, had brightened. "The world is a big place to brightened by two kingdoms."

Sigrid felt her face burn. She suddenly felt like a child. She wondered what she was doing there, what he was doing there and whether or not it was only to humor her whims. She prepared to hasten away.

"I'm sorry, Sigrid," he said gently. She could tell he was looking at her again, but did not raise her head to meet his eye. "I didn't mean anything by it. To me the world still seems dark." And as if he was shaking something off, "But it is unfair of me to lift my burdens to your shoulders."

"Come," she said abruptly, her tongue back to its habit. "It is dark because we linger in the shadow of the wood. Let us go where there is more light."

Perhaps he smiled. She still didn't look to his face. She turned and thrust aside the branches. She heard him follow her and felt something leap suddenly in her chest, something she couldn't place but made her throat close in. Something like the preceding of tears, yet not at all.

She wished for not the first time that Dale was not so far from the lake. She missed the town, and its docks, and its water. She missed the smell of the lake and the glint of sun off its surface. It was half-a-day's journey to its shores now. But still, she had been in this wood often and she'd become accustomed with its nooks and winding trails.

The bubbling of a brook grew in the distance. Sigrid breathed and her nostrils filled with the musty sent of moss and damp. She always felt comfortable near water, like home.

They broke into a clearing made by the stream. There was a thin trail of sky above them, peeking out from the parting of the tree's branches. Sunlight filtered downward in glistening stripes.

Water burbled over rocks and tree roots. Sigrid perched herself on a large stone by the water.

"Tis lighter here," he said, leaning with his back against the tree and staring at the stream. Sigrid was glad his eyes were finally off of her.

"We'd reach the lake if we followed it," Sigrid said, casting her arm down the stream to show which direction she indicated, even though he did not look up to see her do so. "I've never been because it's too far now, but I can't tell where else the water comes from."

"Perhaps it runs all the way to the Iron Hills," he said.

"Perhaps."

"Truly how do you fair?" he suddenly asked gently. "There's something in your voice…. You sound sad."

Sigrid swallowed. "But there is something in your voice also," she said. She was looking at him although she couldn't remember making the decision to do so, or to even speak.

He continued to stare at the running stream. "Is there?"

"Aye," she continued. "You –" she didn't understand. It was not her place. She did not know him. "You sound heavy – something that was not there when I met you before. You –"

"There are other things, as well, gone from when we last met." He spoke almost sharply. Sigrid's voice caught in her throat and she looked back to the stream.

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice coming from far away. "I have changed. It's strange; I don't notice it myself."

"You –" again she was speaking and she did not know why, how, "It is only natural. I – I know about your brother." It was not her place. Not her place. "It is only natural that you should grieve. You – you were very close. It is hard, I know…." But she didn't know. She didn't know why she was still speaking.

"Yes," he said. "You too have felt loss." She heard his feet crunch on the rock and dirt. She realized he was approaching her and kept her eyes carefully trained on the water. "I remember that you spoke of your mother."

"Yes – but that was long ago. I have known her dead longer than alive. She – she is like a dream, something I grieve for no longer."

"You might still grieve for something you never truly had," he said. "I never rightly met my father yet I sometimes still grieve his absence." He added almost bitterly, "and what poor substitute I had for his presence."

"You uncle?" Not her place. But the words had already leapt from her throat. This was not merely a conversation between friends, but the disrespect to a king of a different race, perhaps treason.

He didn't answer.

She felt panic ripple in her stomach. "I am sorry. I should not –"

"No," he said slowly. "It's alright. You correct, Thorin has been a poor substitute as a father."

"He is a king," she said. Thoughts she had only thought in half of her – a more coldly calculating part of her that spoke reason in the face of passion – leapt to mind. "Duty sometimes calls for unpleasant things. The abandonment of your family, perhaps, when the question comes to it. He does not mean to leave you, Kili."

His name fell from her lips without thinking. She barely noticed she had said it. She was too caught up in the notion that half of her still thought as Kili did, that a father was meant to be there. She was surprised that a prince of dwarves might feel the same way.

"You are wise," he said softly, his voice bubbling over her ears as the sound of the water did. "Of course, it is duty that calls for it. Duty in the place of love, as always."

Something tightened her chest and her mouth had opened once again before she could stop it. Her heart was beating to fiercely to make space to think. "Maybe not always."

"Sigrid?"

"Bain!" she cried, and ran to embrace her brother. "You have returned early. Is father here also?"

"Ney. I've ridden on ahead. How have ye and Tilda faired in our absence?"

"Well, and you?"

"Well."

"Aye, and you have grown another foot besides." She smiled as she surveyed her brother, so tall and strapping and old, almost fully a man. The skin of childhood had molted so quickly. It seemed only yesterday Sigrid had been tending he and Tilda by the docks. He was so like their father in looks, except that his eyes glistened with merriment and good-joy. She remembered that belonged to their mother.

"When will father be back?"

"Another week more, perhaps a bit less if the roads are clear. What have you been doing these days?"

Sigrid answered, "Not much," and allowed herself a secret smile when her back was turned, ignoring the pulse of guilt in her heart. She chided herself that she and Kili were friends, just friends, ambassadors of two kingdoms and nothing ill besides.

"Here," said his voice in her ear, "Like this." Sigrid felt goose bumps erupt down her arms and back as his hand came to rest on her own, guiding her arm and the bow she held.

"Aim a bit higher than where you want the arrow to hit," he said. His voice was very close. He was very close. His scent was filling her nostrils, making it hard to breathe. He smelt warm and a little musty, something like the dark earth beneath trees. But it didn't matter because he was so close.

His arm was around her shoulder, his head beside hers, his fingers on the back of her fist. Her mind flew back to the time on the docks, right after the dragon and before the battle. He had been this close then, too.

"Take a deep breath." She couldn't. "Be calm." Perhaps he could feel her trembling. "Pull back gently. Let the feathers brush your cheek." His hair was blowing against her neck. "Breathe again and – release." The arrow slipped from her fingers and flew through the air. It missed the tree she had been aiming at, scraping marginally against the bark and deflecting wildly off to be lost among the underbrush.

"I'm sorry," she said automatically.

"Naught to worry." She saw that he was smiling. "It wasn't too bad for a first try." He left to retrieve the arrow and when he returned he asked her if she wanted to try again.

She could still feel his warmth on her side where he had stood, guiding her arm.

"If ye'll help me," she said, "yes."

Sigrid realized she was smiling, and that she had been for some time.

"Sigrid?"

"Aye, Tilda?"

"Where are you going?"

"Nowhere, Tilda. Just for a walk."

"To the wood?"

"…Perhaps. 'Tis naught to worry about."

"Da wouldna' like it."

"I'm safe, Tilda. There's nothing dangerous in these parts. I like to get out by myself, nothing more."

"By yourself?"

Sigrid felt her smile slip the rest of the way from her lips. "Tilda, 'tis naught to worry about. What's brought this on?"

"Sigrid, I know you've gone out before. I never said anything to Da because I knew that it was naught to worry about. But now ye go out every day. Is – is it a boy, Sigrid?"

"Tis none of your affair."

"Don' get angry, please! I – be careful, Sigrid. Don' become involved in something that might get ye hurt."

"Tis not a boy, Tilda. He's a man, and ye don' understand."

"He – he isna someone who would hurt you?"

"Ney, Tilda, I promise. He's kind and gentle and would never hurt me. Please do not mention anything to Bain, or to Da. For one, it is not what you think. It is not anything like that. We are – just friends, Tilda, I give ye my word."

"Be careful, Sigrid." Again the unspoken words that almost made Sigrid stop and turn around. Do not leave me like the mother I never knew. Do not leave me like Da.

"I will, Tilda." A swift kiss to her sister's forehead and then Sigrid was going out the door, back to the wood, back to Kili, away….

"I am young," said Sigrid, looking at the dirt, rocks, and twigs beneath her feet.

"We are not so different in age," he answered her.

"But you are still not so young as I am, Kili," she said. "You are a warrior among your people. You – you have always belonged to nobility, and I – I am still only a child."

"I'm only seventy-eight," he said with a shrug.

It was enough for Sigrid to look up. She felt her jaw drop open and her voice spill out uncalled for, "You – you are older than my father!"

He was smiling at her, eyes glowing in a way that she couldn't remember seeing before. "We age differently than men, Sigrid. I'm still little more than a lad myself, among my people."

Sigrid was quiet for a long moment. She was thinking about what he had told her. He was many years older than her father. She had never imagined that, even though she chided herself because she should have known. She had heard that dwarves aged differently than men, and lived much longer. But he – Kili had always seemed so youthful….

She now realized that he should out last her. She would be dead long before he followed. She frowned, and wondered why it seemed to matter so much.

"Sometimes I wish my father had not been made king," Sigrid could not pinpoint the exact moment Kili had gone from friend to confident. It seemed to have happened seamlessly and swiftly, something frightening if Sigrid thought about it. Frightening but enticing, strange yet exciting, always changing, hiding danger. But she could not stop. She did not want to stop it. "It was so much simple, living in the town, away from all this. He – he has changed."

"I wish something of the same thing," Kili answered her, sitting quietly on the rock beside her, by the stream again and surrounded by the budding trees. "I wish Thorin had never thought to reclaim the mountain. We might have been without a home, but we were happy."

Something in his voice told Sigrid that he spoke not of he and Thorin as the we.

"You blame your uncle?" she whispered, staring at his profile because he stared at the water. She was glad. She did not want to meet his eyes, yet something in his face prevented her from looking away.

"Thorin? No, I do not blame Thorin. I blame myself."

She opened her mouth to speak but she realized she had no words.

Kili continued. "Fili always protected me. He stayed behind in Lake-Town for me. He – he jumped in to save me after I went in for Thorin. He – perhaps he would have lived if I had not. I often wonder if there was anything that could have been done. I should have protected him as he did all the years for me."

"Kili – please don't," her voice caught in her throat and he turned to look at her, dark eyes seething with some inward passion, swimming with sorrow – with things she did not understand.

His lips moved and voice wound through her ears. "I am not a king, Sigrid. I have no right to be heir to Thorin. Fili – Fili should have lived."

Sigrid had never been superstitious as some of the other women of the town had been. Mostly it was because her father did not hold with such nonsense. But now as she sat in the shadow bathed wood with Kili, she could not help feeling something. A shudder in the wind, something in his eye, his voice. Perhaps it was the ghost of his brother.

"Kili," she began. "I do not pretend to know your grief – your guilt. I – I have no words that would be anything but empty sympathy. I – for what little use it is worth I am glad it was you who lived. Should your brother have lived also it would have been – but your life should not be offered in exchange for his. You – are not interchangeable, nor a bargaining chip…."

She knew she had gone too far. She expected Kili's eyes to go cold, to spit at her that she was indeed ignorant of such things.

But nothing changed in his face. His eyes were heavy and sorrowful as ever. There was a pause in which the wind breathed around them and then he kissed her.

His lips were warm against hers. His fingers bushed her neck. His whiskers scratched her cheeks. Her stomach contracted, almost as if the half of her that breathed common sense, that told her she was a child, and a child of men no less, almost as if that part of her screamed for her to pull away.

But the other part of her asked why not.

It was as if she was back on the dock, younger than she was now and bidding him farewell before he joined his uncle. She had been afraid it was going to be the last time she would see him, and had hoped that he might kiss her then but – but his brother had stepped up and interrupted them and she had run….

Kili pulled abruptly away. Sigrid realized she had not been breathing, knew not for how long, but drew a shuddering breath. She toppled forward because Kili had jumped up from his perch, was backing away from her and looked almost horrified.

"I am sorry, Sigrid. I had no cause to do that. I meant nothing – I beg your forgiveness. I had not –"

"It is alright," her voice did not sound like her voice at all, but as though someone spoke far away, or an echo across the lake rebounding off the mountains. "Do not worry – I – I do not mind…."

"No, Sigrid," he said sharply. Sigrid's feet faltered and she discovered she had risen from her seat and was approaching him. "I do not wish to – to lead you on. I had not meant to do that. I do not wish to hurt you…."

"Ye could never hurt me, Kili," said the someone using Sigrid's voice. "Ye are kind and gentle and I – I…."

"Please, Sigrid, do not continue. You know not who I am. I do not ask for your love, because I cannot return it. I cannot love, not anymore."

"Your brother is dead. Let him hinder you no more."

"It is not only my brother. There – I cannot love again, not after her."

"The elf?" the someone who was using Sigrid's voice sounded brutally fierce. Tears stung her eyes. Sigrid could recall her clearly, willowy and tall, auburn hair and a voice that wove spells…but she was dead also. The male elf had knelt beside her on the battlefield. She had been found near Kili, as though she had died defending him –

Kili's silence bid Sigrid the truth.

And suddenly tears were streaming down her cheeks, blurring Kili from her sight. Sigrid was not a girl who cried. Tears were weak; she was strong, did not cry….

"But she is dead, as well. Please, do not hold yourself in bondage. Do not –"

Sigrid had not meant for this to happen. She had not meant to think of love. Love was not a choice. Love was not possible. She a human and he a dwarf, royalty among their kin – it was not possible.

"Hush, Sigrid. Do not cry."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I had not meant to. I should not –"

"But it was me," another flicker of a smile, insincere and laced with sorrow. "I started it, didn't I?"

"I do not blame you," she said. She wiped her eyes on the back of her hands. "I should leave."

"Please don't," he said. "Not because of me."

His hand was on her arm, the heat making her skin rise as though with cold.

"Forgive me?" he said, eyes glistening among the shadow on his face.

"Forgive me." she said in answer, and felt her lip quirk upward even for the aching in her chest. She wondered if the she-elf had haunted Kili's dreams as he had done hers.

To be continued.

Author's Note: I have posted this story against my better judgment. It started out as a miniscule, kindling idea that I ill-thought could make a chaptered story. I ran out of inspiration a few days in and was left with a title and a scattering of conversation and scenario pieces. I jumbled them all up together because I wanted to have some sort of final product. This was what I got. I don't like it but hopefully some of you will.

Expect one more, much darker chapter that may-or-may-not end unhappily and an epilogue.