A/N: For VleRoux, who encourages all my Hobbit feels. Movie canon, set during Desolation of Smaug.
It was easier for them, in a way, because neither of them had ever known the lost mountain kingdom. Kili and his brother were born long after the flight from Erebor. At least, it felt long to Kili, but he was still very young, as his elders were fond of reminding him. He knew the tales, of course, as did all dwarves. His mother told him it was important to keep the memory of Erebor alive, if only because he and Fili were of the line of Durin and would have been princes under the mountain if not for Smaug.
Kili had seen old dead eyes rekindle and tears fall when the stories were told; stories of the glory of golden halls, of fire and woe. Yet to him the tales were tales. He would never feel the loss of their ancestral homeland as keenly as the survivors, no matter how vivid their stories and recollections. He had been raised in the Blue Mountains; that was home, wasn't it? Like the other young dwarves, he didn't have eyes hollowed by fire or souls emptied by loss.
Yet somehow that feeling of loss followed in his blood. It would never be the fierce ache of longing that drove his mother to tears when she thought she was alone, or his uncle into the wilds in search of Kili's grandfather, but it was there, in the woods, in the mines. No matter how familiar he felt, there was always that little hollow place in the pit of his stomach that whispered that he did not belong and that he never would.
Kili never thought the quest to reclaim the mountain would occur within his lifetime. Erebor was overrun; Smaug invincible. But when his uncle Thorin called, speaking of wizards and burglars and more alive than Kili had ever seen him, he and Fili came. It would be a merry adventure, he told Fili, finally seeing more than bits and pieces of the world beyond the Blue Mountains.
He had no memory of their father, but Uncle Thorin had been a consistent, if not constant, presence in their lives. His many journeys had taken him far beyond the mountains, and after a few tankards of ale he would regale his nephews with wondrous tales of distant lands. Never did he discourage Kili's interest in the decidedly non-dwarven art of archery, commenting only that it was a useful and welcome skill (both for defense and for keeping them all fed) when grumbles that it was unbecoming of an heir of Durin to study such an elven weapon reached his ears.
Kili did not mind the rumblings of old dwarves. Fili was the elder brother and thus the real heir; as a second son, he was thankful to avoid the responsibility. Fili had to behave himself, lest his actions reflect poorly on the king.
The weight of that hollow crown of Erebor lay heavily indeed upon their uncle. Thorin was a king without a kingdom, a pauper king. Despite this, he kept the respect of his people (if no one else) through the flight from Smaug and the difficult years to follow. He turned his royal hand to forge and less noble work to provide for his family and his subjects, as Kili's mother often reminded him during the lean times. Kili knew the light in Thorin's eyes had died with the betrayal of Thranduil (he had heard the tale many times), only to briefly rekindle when rumor of his father, Kili's long-lost grandfather, reached his ears. He used to dash off in the slender hope of finding Thrain, only to come limping home dead-eyed and despondent months later, with even the antics of his two growing nephews unable to make him smile.
As the quest dragged on and Thorin became more brooding and desperate, Kili began to worry. He saw the growing mania in Thorin's eyes and he wondered if all the gold in Erebor would be enough to fill the void in his uncle's soul, or the glory of the Arkenstone great enough to fill the hole in his heart.
Fire burned through him now, searing outward from the wound in his leg. On some level, he was aware of Bofur and Oin bustling around him and of Fili hovering worriedly nearby. Their human host clattered something on a table. His head swam, and Kili closed his eyes and tried to breathe through stuttering lungs. The air seemed to scorch through them as if blown from a forge.
He didn't like Laketown, all sprawled out on icy water and built up on tenuous wooden pilings. The wood quaked and quivered underfoot, lacking the solid connection to the earth that Thranduil's dungeons had provided. Maybe it was his bad leg. Maybe not. It wasn't a bad wound. It wasn't. He'd had worse.
(Kili blamed the unstable wood for losing his footing in the armory. Dwarves were made to have two boots on the ground. He knew it wasn't true.)
The little (little? They were taller than he) girl-children watched him with wide eyes while Oin pulled on the dressings over the blackening wound near his knee. He should smile. Instead Kili swallowed his cries and clutched without thought at his brother's sleeve, the hem of his coat, any part of Fili he could reach as the burning pain became an agony that set his all limbs to trembling.
The king their uncle was leaving him desolate on the dock. He didn't look back, not even for his own kin. Not with the mountain so near. But an orc fell through the ceiling and Kili was fighting or falling on the shivering wood. Maybe both. His good leg hit something solid and moving and his back hit something hard.
Someone was screaming amid the splinters and chaos and Kili realized it was him. The poison flames licked over his body while he writhed under many hands, howling, trying to get free. His skin blistered and blackened under their fingers. Only his brother's voice whispered through the din. Fili tried to comfort him while their uncle sailed away, but he was falling, falling through the hole in Thorin's heart into shadow and flame.
Pure, brilliant light pierced the shadow and the path the arrow had taken through his thigh. He gasped and screamed hoarsely through this fresh agony, struggling against the white-hot brand pressed to his torn flesh. The light flowed into the wound, pouring molten through his hollow veins and scalding clear the deadly darkness. His cleansed limbs loosened and stopped their shaking; confining hands soon fell away.
Slowly, his senses returned to him, and Kili began to trickle back from the void. A soft, sweet scent of herbs he didn't recognize mingling with orc blood. Nuts (nuts?) clacking hollowly under his head. The pucker of his sweat-soaked skin drying in the chill air. He opened his eyes.
She was there, chanting words he did not understand, haloed in the same bright white light. He blinked with confusion. She could not be there; she did not belong there, not in Laketown, not with him. The chanting ceased, the light filling his body drained away, leaving Kili trembling again with exhaustion and sudden weakness. But Tauriel remained, a little diminished now that the light had gone. He reached out for her even though she was far, far away, and though Kili knew it could not be her, his fingers brushed warm, solid flesh. His weary heart soared as her hand closed around his own, and together, they pulled him back from that lonely void.