A/N: I hope that this brings forth ALL THE FEELS. I'm not even sorry. But here's a tissue, should you need it. =)
This is somewhat Kiliel, but nothing outside of what PJ included in canon.
The sun is rising, and every beam is no gentler than the shaft of a spear. For to Tauriel, morning light chases away all dreams, both good and ill, and reveals in all its cruel clarity the tragedy of their hard-won triumphs.
He has not returned.
And so she walks, pretending that there is some other answer, but the silent sorrow descends on her like a wave, because she has found them and there is no other answer.
They are in each other's arms.
It has been hours since their passing; she sees the silver drops of dew gathered like the diamonds they might have worn as princes across their pale brows. Their faces are still and proud and empty.
Black shafted arrows pierce Fili's mail, making the angry slash across his left cheek look like a mere scratch. And Kili—but she can barely bring herself to look at Kili, who seems both older and younger at once, and whose side is rent with a wound larger than her hand.
She watches a tear trace his cheek as she stoops over him, and her heart stops with unfounded hope—but beats again in despair as she realizes that it is her own.
"Lass, please, come away," someone says beside her, and the tear-choked tone cannot be cheerful Bofur's, but it is.
"Another moment, I beg you," she whispers, and is surprised when he nods quickly and turns to give her the privacy of goodbye, before she remembers that he was there…there when Kili wondered if she could have loved him.
Could she?
Her moment is nearly past. She kneels beside them and wonders if wondering is but a waste of memory.
Between their rough young hands, clasped hard together, she finds their mother's gift, and she lifts the rune stone to her broken lips, knowing not else how to honor them. That it is cold to her touch seems to hurt her more than anything.
They were warriors. They were brothers. And he can never now be hers.
With a hand that six hundred years of training fail to keep from trembling, she cards her fingers through the strands of Kili's dark hair, which is matted with his and his brother's blood.
His ready, reckless smile will never sparkle behind his dark eyes again.
Not in this world.
She hopes that he walks not in the starlight that was ever too cold for his warm heart, but that he has found the radiance of his fire-moon, which in its glow might mirror that dear, dead smile.
Yet it matters not—for in whichever light he wanders now, in whatever land, he is far, far away from her.