She says nothing for a long time, watching the negotiations with a sharp eye and hands clasped behind her back. It is not going well. Thorin, Son of Durin, has passed thorough the halls of Mandos, his heir Fili having taken the throne and the Arkenstone, and claimed the loyalty of the Seven Dwarf Kingdoms; though not, apparently, to the relief of everyone. Bard keeps his requests to the minimum of only what was needed for the people of Dale to rebuild the city. Dain requested that the people of the Ironhills be given a place within Erebor. Thranduil makes lengthy recommendations, condemns the reign of Durin's Folk, demands the White Gems as recompense for the deaths of his people and his time. All is given, with gratitude and the grace of royalty. But it is trade which stems the flow of friendship.
Dale will not sever the Mirkwood bond, the allowances the Elves give for them to hunt and roam freely across their borders too precious, and the Elven King will not see the Dwarves prosper on what he perceives as the backs of his people's dead. You have taken the Mountain, your halls are bleeding with gold, buy your own paths.
Kili sits to the right of his brother, head almost in his hands. Were it not for her presence in the shadowed corner, his eyes drifting now and then to her concealed figure, he might have fallen asleep when Bard threatened to leave all together. The shouts become louder, more insistent, angrier as Dain scoffs at Thranduil's demands and the elf grows indignant at Bard's suggestion of open trade with both Mirkwood and Erebor. Rolling his eyes, he shoots her a tiny grin and shakes his head. Tauriel has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
"We have given you what you desire, Lord Elf, I see no reason for more hatred to breed between our people. Let us have peace and prosper side by side." Fili's voice echoes in the hall, cutting across Dain and Bard's increasing bickering and Kili's smile. They are not weak men, not shallow or arrogant, but they are proud and bitterness grows in the most patient ways. Thranduil freezes, face hardening, and her amusement dies. She knows that look. Remembers the fierceness of it, six hundred years of life and the fire in the King's eyes has always stayed with her from the first moment she saw it - when the Queen was told to be missing, dead, in the dungeons of Gundabad.
"Peace? No, Master Dwarf, peace was never an option." He stands in a swift movement, with a grace few have ever emulated; when he sweeps past her, she moves to follow, a sorry look spared for Kili, but Thranduil stops her with a raised hand. "And where do you think you are going?"
Tauriel blanks, a frown creasing her brow and her gaze flitting to the Dwarves and Bard, the blush of embrassment creeping up her spine as Balin enters the chamber and takes in the scene from Fili's side. "With you, Your Grace." As an Elf, she does not stutter, but the surprise behind it is clear. Thranduil makes a noise, high and cold, something that might have been a laugh and yet no mirth he holds.
"I think not." He does not look at her. His words slice through the hall, through her gut. "I would not see you in my Kingdom for all the gold under this mountain - my sentiment has always given me pause to care for you as kin, but you have shown how worthy you find it. Reward love with humiliation. Trust with disloyalty. Position with disobedience. It is the Dwarves you have pledged allegiance to; I leave it for them to decide where your fate will take you. Tauriel of the Woodland Realm, I name you Edledhron. Never return to my borders."
Silence fills the chamber as a sharp sorrow fills her heart in the wake of Thranduil's words.
Edledhron. One who is in exile. She can never return to the brilliant woods, the thick canvas above with its deep shine, the starlight splitting between the branches. She will never walk the path of Mirkwood again. Never stride the banks of the river, Legolas at her back and a bow in her hand; she will never celebrate Mereth Nuin Giliath with her people. Pain lances so suddenly it takes her breath; her hand jerks out, palm finding cold stone to keep her upright. It must look like nothing to a Man, to a Dwarf, the barely there shake in her knees, but her entire focus is keeping on her feet. She thinks of her mother, her father, both dead before their time. Death is such a rare occurrence for Elves, only coming through blade and battle. Neither sickness nor poison nor age touching even the weakest of their kind. They do not wither. She will live for centuries more and without a home? What will she do? Where would she go? Erebor was no place for an Elf.
The scrape of a stone chair against polished marble yanks her from her reverie. Through the blurred glaze of burning unshed tears, she finds Kili is on his feet, mouth open in an unspoken apology The others look up at her with similar expressions, except Dain, who merely glares at the table with a clenched jaw. They offer her pity. She does not want it.
"Excuse me." She bats at the single tear midway down her cheek and spins, striding out of the chamber. Towards where, she isn't sure, but she cannot stay with them, suffocating on their sad looks and the unbridled, open affection Kili wears. She loves him, she knows it now, but in the shadow of humiliation, banishment, she cannot stand the goodness within him. Stumbling (for her, anyway) she moves swiftly through the halls without real purpose, taking random turns whenever she happens upon someone coming past. A few send worried glances - not at the obvious upset, but at the idea of an Elf wandering without escort. She cares not for the gossiping of Dwarves. Slender fingertips find a door and she shoves it, stopping short as she finds herself on a ledge, overlooking the gates and the city at the foot of the mountain.
Dale is a beautiful sight from so high. With the sun hugging the horizon, its corridors are alight with gold and crimson, the stone true and sturdy, despite the still obvious signs of Smaug and his destruction. But it is not the branches of the Greenland, not the light of her lands, not the woods she has loved for all her long life.
"Amazing, isn't it?" a familiar voice says, breaking her gaze once more. Kili steps out into the dying light as it travels along the stone and comes to a stop next to her, his runestone playing between his fingers. "The view, I mean. I doubt there's anywhere else you might find one like it."
Gondor, she thinks. She has gone to the very tip of Minas Tirith and looked down at the Pellenor Fields and sighed. There are many sights of this world worth seeing, but she says nothing, only gives a small nod. Kili seems to absorb her melancholy, looking up at her as his hand reaches out to tentatively brush her fingertips, much in the same way as they did in Bard's home when she healed him. What Grace has given me, let it pass to him. Let him be spared. Let him return to me. She feels the weight of it now, his warmth sinking to her bones, across her skin. She gives in, unable to hold her stoicism, and let's their fingers twine.
"I am alone." It falls like stone between them. "I have forsaken my people and for what?" She is almost talking to herself, angry and full of a frustration she has never felt before; instantly regrets her words when his hand flinches in hers.
"You regret your decision to follow - the Company." To follow me, he does not say but the sentiment remains. She shakes her head.
"No. It was my choice and given the chance, I would do nothing differently." And still, there is the bitter thought - a lifetime spent in the light of Thranduil, given as payment for the love of a Dwarf and all without the knowledge of whether it was real or simply a passing intimacy. He was her light in the darkness, a blade in the shadows ready to protect her, she felt him as keenly as she would an extension of herself. Tauriel would not send him away nor part with him on any order but his own.
"We love but once, pledge ourselves to another for an entire lifetime and it is not freely given. Our souls are bound to it and if lost, we can choose to endure - as Thranduil does, as Elrond Halfelven has - or we fade. Some sail into the West and leave the shores of Middle Earth. Others cannot stand the pain and search for an end in the tip of an Orc blade; you Dwarves mourn with celebration, exhault in a life lived. But we feel sorrow and do not relinquish it easily. It makes us a cold people in appearance perhaps, yet it is only our passion, our fierce love, which makes us so. I do not regret following you, Kili. Never think it. But I loved the Mirkwood, the people, my King and yes, though you are loathe to hear it, Legolas too. And I will never see them again. I have traded one love for another. I cannot quite find if it was the right decision yet."
Kili is silent for a long time, frozen on the spot, so much so that he does not try to stop her when she sinks to her knees at the end of the ledge, her fingers slipping from his slowly. There is a song on the tip of his tongue about a crying Elf-maid and her beauty in a Green Lake, but now is not the time. After a drawn out pause, he finally shuffles towards her, sitting down too and for once they are on equal footing. He finds her hand again and holds it between his own.
"What does your heart tell you?" He asks, her hand somehow so tiny in between his own. She almost smiles and as the sun dies beneath the horizon, she turns to look at him.
"That I could suffer a thousand exiles and it would not compare to the pain of losing you." Something flits across her face, as though she can taste the loss on her tongue and immediately hates it; it must motivate her, because her free hand comes up to his face, thumb tracing the curve of his jaw, the bristles of his beard the strangest sensation.
And when she sweeps and presses her lips to his, he cannot think of what he had intended to say. It takes less than a moment to react, returning her kiss, deepening it and being incredibly satisfied at the surprised gasp she lets escape, her hand slipping from his jaw to his tunic and curling into the material. He wraps an arm around her and vows then to never let her go. His brother might not be convinced of their loyalty to one another, but this moment feels more real than any battle, any brew, anything he's ever felt. He would wager that given how tightly she clings to him, she feels much of the same. Breaking away, he presses a kiss to her knuckles and smiles warmly.
"I could build you a house in the trees, if you'd like," he says quietly, thumbs brushing over her skin in small circles, as though she were the most precious thing in the world.
She laughs, almost, and leans in to set her cheek against his shoulder. "Perhaps. I do not think your brother would care for me to drag you out of the mountains." She sighs sadly into the crook of his neck, fighting true tears and deep sorrow. "I will miss the Woodland."
"You will not always be gone. I believe you will see it again before the end of all things." Thick fingertips wind through her hair, the strands untangling under his light touch, and as he thinks about kissing her again, the stone door behind them moves, footsteps skittering to a soft halt. Tauriel picks her head up much to his dismay, but does not drop his hand, and turns to their intruder - a rather flustered looking Balin, a Dwarf she did not recognise but thought might be named Haman following closely behind. He was shorter than the old warrior, with an intricately braided, bright orange beard, and his face was still sharp with youth; his eyes locked on the Elf and did not stray, his look guarded and suspicious. Not all who came upon her were as the Company: accepting, even displaying a begrudging respect. Most still held a deep distrust, one that did not fade in the wake of the battle.
"Kili," Balin stutters, the surprise at their closeness evident, "You're needed below. Something about 'bloody arrows' or the sort." The younger Dwarf nods and stands, disentangling himself from her with a sorry look. After a moment's hesitation, he bends and kisses the top of her head, murmuring that he will not be long, and follows after Haman into the mountain. Balin, however, does not leave. Does not speak, either, until she looks up at him from the ledge.
"Not thinking of shuffling off, are you? Put a mighty amount of effort in staying alive this past month, I'd hate for it to end so messily." It is a good jest and well meant; there is a gentleness in his gaze that softens her heart to the old warrior. A small smile coaxes at the corner of her mouth and she shakes her head, declining to say anything else. He seems to take it as a sign that she will not be shoving herself off the cliff any time soon and turns to leave. Pausing only to say, "You are welcome here, Lady Elf. We Dwarves know a thing or two about losing our home - we would not begrudge you a place beneath the mountain." And then he is gone, before she can absorb the weight of his words.