It was slow to start, and perhaps that was why it progressed so far before Fili truly understood what was happening. Perhaps - and perhaps it was not. For in those years after the battle, there was a peace that had not been known for many, many years in the northern reaches of Rhovanion. Peace because the Grey Mountains were clear of orcs, aye, but peace, too, between the Lonely Mountain and the Greenwood, peace between Erebor and the men of Esgaroth, peace between the King under the Mountain and the Lord of the Iron Hills. Oh, they were watchful, it was true - dwarves are always slow to trust in good fortune - but it was easy to think that nothing could strike at them there, in their mountain that they had won through the sweat of their brows and the blood in their veins. It was easy to think that if anything were to threaten them, they would have warning enough that it could never truly hurt them.

But warning they had, and they did not see it. Perhaps in the end it would have availed them nothing, even if they had.

After the battle, it seemed to the dwarves of Erebor that they had lost their king and his heirs both, in one day a destruction of all their hopes. But Thorin Oakenshield did not die, though he came perilously close, and when he woke, it was to sit by his nephews' bedside, not to visit them in their graves.

Fili was the more grievously wounded. Dwalin had snatched him from the battlefield before ever Thorin fell, had felt the flutter of a heartbeat under his skin when his brother and uncle had given him up for lost. Dwalin had staunched the bleeding from the wound in his back and borne him away before the last of the life in him could slip out through the tears in his skin. And yet, he had been sorely injured, both by the orcish blade and the fall, and Oin could say nothing of whether he would live or die, but the grim set of his face gave Thorin little to hope for.

Kili, Oin said, should wake, though whether he would be whole and sound once his wounds were healed was less certain. Gored through the belly, and a deep gash across his knee that had laid the bone open. But he was past the worst of it, and should wake - should have woken already - and so Thorin waited, waited for it to happen. But Kili followed his brother in all things. Thorin had always been glad of it, for alone, Kili was perilously cheerful, always sure that nothing could harm him, never stopping to think of the consequences. But he looked to his brother, always, always, and Fili, though he was quieter, though he spoke up less boldly and stepped out less recklessly, though he seemed always the more diffident, the less brightly coloured - Fili could rein his brother in with a twitch of his mouth and a raise of his eyebrow. Though it was Kili who proclaimed his mind for all to hear, it was Fili who led the way. And Thorin had been glad, glad that Fili had come first, glad that Kili always followed after. Glad, until this day, when Fili lay still and pale and would not wake, and Kili, who followed his brother in all things, lay silent beside him.

Thorin sat. He waited. He attended to what matters he could, with his energy still short and his body weak and his mind hopelessly distracted. He laid his seal to decrees, and administered justice, and made arrangements for the coming winter. But above all, at all moments, whatever else he was doing, he waited.

He waited.

Bilbo came to him on the fifth day. Not the first time, of course - the hobbit had been present when Thorin awoke, and had made himself indispensable in the days since, had worn the air of deference that was befitting their respective stations, and yet had not hesitated to make sure Thorin knew his mind at all times. Polite, he called himself. Oh yes, Thorin, we hobbits are very polite, you know. And yet, under that unfailing politeness was a remarkable will. And now, on this fifth day since Thorin had awoken, Bilbo came to him in his chamber, bowing as though he was truly one of Thorin's subjects, as though he had any intention of allowing himself to be bound by Thorin's decrees.

"Tauriel is here to see you," he said.

Thorin frowned and shook his head. "I do not know the name," he said.

"The elf," Bilbo replied. "She was captain of the guard in Mirkwood."

This had Thorin's frown turning to a scowl. "And why should Thranduil send his captain to seek an audience?" he said. "Does he think himself so fine that he cannot come himself, or at least send one of royal blood?"

"Oh, ah," Bilbo said, "it seems she is not captain any more. I'm not really sure what she is, now. But she comes of her own accord, Thorin. She wants to know about Kili."

Thorin could make no sense of this information. Why should an elf care about Kili? He remembered perhaps that they had spoken, in Mirkwood, Kili and the red-haired guard. But that had been many days ago - why then should this elf have the temerity to come and ask after his nephew? "Send her away," he said. "Tell her not to return unless her king wills it."

Bilbo stood in the doorway. Unfailingly polite, hobbits were. And yet, this one had a way of making his mind known.

"And why should I not send her away?" Thorin asked at last, exasperated by Bilbo's silent disapproval. "What is she to me? Or to Kili, for that matter?"

"Well, I rather think," Bilbo began, "I rather think they - well they liked each other, didn't they? They were always smiling at each other, even when he was in prison and she was the jailer. And she was the one who was with him when he was injured. She brought him down from Ravenhill. She only wants to know how he fares, Thorin. Don't you think it would be kind to speak to her?"

Thorin rose to his feet. His nephews lay in the next chamber, still unto death. And here, this elf - this elf who had smiled at Kili when she was his jailer, this elf who came here without invitation - and here, this elf, who Thorin had given barely a thought to, but who, it seemed, had beguiled his young, foolish nephew while Thorin himself had his thoughts turned elsewhere - this elf, whose face he could not even remember, waited for him to tell her personally of the wounds Kili had suffered.

"Aye," he said. "I will speak to her."

She was young, Thorin saw when he entered into the chamber where she had been left to wait. He remembered, now, the smallest glimpses - a flash of red hair from the corner of his eye, a conversation at the other end of their jail whose words he had not cared to listen to. So little impression had this elf made, and yet, if Bilbo spoke the truth, she had opened a trap for his foolish nephew and he had fallen in without a second thought. Elves were ever treacherous.

"Your majesty," she said as he entered, bowing her head and lowering her eyes with a grace that no dwarf ever showed. "I thank you for agreeing to speak with me."

"Perhaps you will not, when you have heard what I have to say," Thorin replied.

She raised her head, then, this elf - the name Bilbo had uttered had already slipped from his mind - and face, already pale, blanched further. "He is not dead?" she said.

Her features were fine, but expressive in a way that was not common for elves, and Thorin saw now how she could so easily have turned the head of his thoughtless, foolish nephew, who loved and hated with everything he was, who wore his feelings upon his skin where most dwarves tucked them deep away lest they be too easily injured. And yet, he was not deceived, nor could he be swayed from his path.

"He is well enough," he said. "But he does not wish to see you."

The elf stood firm, her back straight, her jaw set. The stance of a soldier. Now she understood: Thorin was not her friend. He was her enemy.

"Can he not come and tell me that himself, if he is better?" she asked. Her tone was careful, respectful. And yet her eyes were forthright, appraising. This elf, who had beguiled his nephew.

"He does not care to," Thorin said.

She waited, the elf, for something more. But he did not speak, and at last she nodded.

"Then will you give him something from me?" she asked. She held out her hand and uncurled her fingers. On her palm lay a runestone, smooth and round, glowing with the secretive colours that Mahal had woven into the very rock from which it was hewn. Thorin knew it well: it had once belonged to his sister.

"Aye," Thorin said, speaking nothing of the fury that boiled in his heart at the sight of his sister's gift lying in the hand of this elf. "I am sure he will want this returned to him." And he took the stone, and gestured to the door. "I will make sure you go safe on your journey," he said. "I will escort you to the bounds of my kingdom."

She bowed her head. "My thanks, your majesty," she said. There was nothing in her tone or her face to suggest she was anything but sincere, and yet Thorin knew without doubt that her heart raged against him. And that was as it should be. He had spoiled whatever plans she had with regard to his nephew, and he would see that she had not the chance to make any further attempts on Kili's affections. Rage she might, but she would not win, not in his kingdom, not with his own flesh and blood.

When she had gone, he stood at the boundary stone and curled his fingers around the smooth stone in his pocket. Perhaps he could not protect his nephew from the sleep that had dragged him into its endless embrace, but this: this he could do for him.

Fili was the more grievously wounded - and yet also the first to wake, gasping a breath into his lungs as if he had thought he would never have the chance again. Thorin took him by the hand, fixing his eyes on that face that he had feared might remain still and pale until the remaking of the world. It was a grimace that Fili wore now, and yet Thorin would take the worst scowl over the empty serenity of those long, silent days.

"My nephew," he whispered, hardly remembering how to use his voice. His own injuries prevented him from leaning to press his forehead against Fili's, and so he was forced to content himself with a hand on his nephew's cheek, to feel the warmth of life below his skin.

Fili stared up at him, gasping. His eyes were unfocussed. And then they were not, and he tried to reach up, to grasp at Thorin, though his arm had no strength in it. Fear was on his face, and his mouth moved, though no sound was heard.

"What is it?" Thorin asked. "What ails you?"

But when Fili's lips moved again, it became clear, and Thorin took his hand from Fili's and placed both hands on his nephew's face, turning his head gently so that he could see Kili lying in the bed beside him.

"He is there," Thorin said. "He is not dead. Perhaps now you have awakened, he will follow you."

Fili stared, his shaking hand inching across the gap between Kili and himself. Thorin took it up in his own, and laid it upon Kili's chest, so that Fili could feel the heart beat, slow but true. He had pressed his own hand there often enough in the days since he woke. He understood.

"Kili," Fili whispered. "Wake up."

But Kili did not.

It is one thing to survive terrible wounds; it is another to recover from them. Many days it took, Fili and Thorin both, and many times they rose too fast and worked too hard and found themselves failed by their own bodies. Unaccustomed to frailty, Thorin grew grim and short of temper. Fili, though, found his frustration at his own shortcomings less important than his frustration at his brother. For the days passed, and Kili's wounds healed by slow degrees, and yet still he did not wake.

"He did not even hit his head," he said one day, when Oin once again found himself unable to explain why Kili did not open his eyes. "You told me that, did you not? It was a belly wound, a leg wound. Not his head."

"Aye, I said that," Oin replied. "But the mind is not as simple as the body, lad. He doesn't want to wake, that's all I can think. There's nothing else it could be."

"That cannot be," Fili replied. Kili, Fili's brother, who flung himself from his bed every day in pursuit of whatever the world could offer him. Kili, who suffered from excess of enthusiasm but never laziness. Kili, who could never bear to lie abed even when he was young and sick and had not the strength to rise. No, it could not be, it was something else.

"He is bewitched," Thorin said. He sat at Kili's bedside, pale and glowering. Fili knew why, knew what he saw: Kili's wounds were healing, but he was wasting away. They fed him as much as they could, but a few mouthfuls of broth a day could not sustain a grown dwarf, even one who did nothing but lie still. He was thin, thinner than Fili had ever seen him, and Fili knew, with a dread that he had not felt in his life before, not even when he felt the blade of Azog the man-killer pierce his skin, that if Kili did not wake soon, he would never wake at all.

"Nonsense," Oin cried. "By who? Who would bewitch him?"

"The elf," Thorin said. "The red-haired elf. She was with him. She brought him to you."

"She helped us," Fili said. "When he was ill, in Laketown. She helped us." He stared at his brother, the gaunt arms, the hollow cheeks. "Who will help us now?" he asked.

But Thorin did not answer.

And so it came to pass that one night, weeks after the battle that had not taken their lives, Fili could no longer bear this dread that lay upon him and poisoned all his days and nights. For weeks he had begged his brother, had whispered to him at night and pleaded with him by day. Wake up, he had said. Wake up, wake up. But Kili only lay, stubborn and silent and not the brother Fili loved, too pale, too still, too quiet. Until a night when Fili found himself alone and overwhelmed, and he seized his brother by the shoulders and shook him. No gentle touch, this, but a furious, desperate jerking that had Kili's head rolling on his neck as though he were made of rags.

"Wake up," Fili said. "Wake up. Wake up. Wake up wake up wake up wake up."

Kili's head rolled on his neck, his arms trembled and shook at his sides, and it was a moment and more than a moment before Fili, in his grief, realised that their trembling was not only due to his violent shaking of his brother, before he understood that the twitching and jerking of Kili's fingers meant something different, something else. He stopped, his hands still clenched on his brother's shoulders, and stared.

Kili's fingers twitched. And he opened his eyes.

"Kili?" Fili whispered, his breath caught in his throat. "Kili?"

Kili blinked up at him for a long, blank moment. Then his fingers twitched again.

"You're not dead," he said, his voice barely there, a hoarse thread. He stared at Fili, and then tried to turn his head, but seemed not to have the strength. "Am I dead?"

Fili, who had with every passing day felt more of his own strength return to him, now dropped his head as all of it slipped away again. He dropped his head and pressed it against his Kili's chest, feeling the beat of his Kili's heart against his forehead.

"No, my brother," he said, his throat choked with the magnitude of his relief. "You are not dead. You are not dead."

Kili, it seemed, tried to embrace him. But his arms had not the power, and at last, he reached up and grasped at one of Fili's braids, holding it with a feeble grip that nonetheless tugged and pulled against Fili's scalp until tears rose to his eyes.

He let them come.

Kili was weak in a way he had not been since he was barely out of infancy. He could not rise from the bed, could barely lift his arms or head. His cheeks were hollow, eyes shadowed, his hair lank and greasy. But he was not dead.

"Food," Oin declared as soon as he arrived. "Food is what he needs now." And he glared at Kili. "Stubborn lad, why you could not wake before you were skin and bone, I've no idea."

Kili stared back, but seemed to comprehend little of what Oin said. It seemed to Fili that he was barely clinging to wakefulness, his fingers lax in Fili's grip.

"Do not sleep yet, my brother," Fili murmured. He felt half-awake himself, exhaustion dragging at him, his injuries still not forgotten and weeks of worry and sleepless nights hanging from him like a stoneweight. "Oin says you must eat."

"I'm not hungry," Kili whispered. Although he had drunk some water, his voice still seemed worn to nothing, as though its long disuse had led to it slipping away entirely.

"You will eat," Thorin said. He stood in the doorway, as he had since he sent Bilbo to fetch some broth. His eyes had not left Kili since first he was roused from sleep by Fili's quiet sobs. Kili, though, seemed far less aware of Thorin, and now he turned his head sluggishly and stared for long, slow seconds before looking back at Fili.

"It's Thorin," he whispered. "It's Uncle Thorin."

"Yes," Fili said, smiling with a determination he hoped did not show on his face. "He's very glad you're awake at last."

Kili blinked slowly. "Am I awake?" he asked.

Fili closed his eyes and swallowed his fear. Kili was not dead, and that was all that mattered. He was confused, certainly, but it could come as no surprise. He had barely eaten for weeks. He would be better when he had eaten. Surely he would be better.

"Well, here we are!" came a new voice, and Fili lifted his head to see Bilbo bustling in with an air of most emphatic cheerfulness about him. Behind him came Bombur, carrying an entire cauldron of broth.

"I didn't know how much you would want," he explained, setting the cauldron down. "He's naught but bones, after all."

"It's not something that can be so easily reversed," Oin said. But he took up the bowl that Bombur held out to him and sat on the bed, holding out a spoonful of broth to Kili. "Eat, lad," he said.

Kili's eyes drifted to Oin's face, and then to the spoon. "I'm not hungry," he whispered. "You can have my share."

"Kili," Fili said, "you must eat."

Kili was silent for long enough that Fili found himself checking to see he was still awake. At last, though, his eyes drifted back to Fili. "I'm tired," he whispered.

Thorin left his place in the doorway, then, and took up the spoon and the bowl from Oin. "You will eat," he said. Here was a dwarf who had cowed men and orcs both with the mere force of his scowl, and now he turned all this redoubtable power onto his nephew. "You will eat, or I will know why."

Kili seemed briefly startled, as though he had forgotten that Thorin was in the room at all. But when once the awareness of his uncle had returned to him, so the awareness of what it meant that his uncle should frown so seemed to return with it, and he opened his mouth meekly, and accepted the spoonful of broth, and swallowed seemingly with little difficulty. But when he had taken two spoonfuls, his face changed, and the dazed blankness that was the only expression he had worn since he awoke dissolved into a grimace of pain.

"Oh," he whispered.

"What is it?" Fili asked, leaning forward until he was reminded by the ache in his back that he was not yet healed himself. "Kili?"

Kili turned despairing eyes upon him. "I'm hungry," he whispered. "I'm so h- I'm so - Fili, Fili, I-"

"Then eat," Fili said, turning his brother's face back towards Thorin. "Then eat, my brother."

And Kili ate, spoonful after spoonful, his hand twitching and writhing in Fili's as if, had he only the strength, he would have wrested the bowl from Thorin and swallowed it down in one great gulp. But he had not the strength, and after less than half of the bowl was gone, Oin raised a hand and called a halt.

"No more for now," he said. "We can't have it coming back up."

Thorin set the bowl aside, and Kili made a noise of great grief and tried to sit up, failing before he had even lifted his head from the pillow.

"But," he whispered, "but please, but please-"

"Kili," Thorin said, placing a hand on Kili's chest, and he spoke with a gentleness such as he rarely employed. "You may eat again soon."

"Very soon," Oin said. "Every hour, five or six mouthfuls. That's how we'll get you well, lad. There are no swift remedies for what you have done to yourself."

Kili let out a sigh, and his fingers tightened around Fili's.

"Hush, brother," Fili murmured to him. "We will get you well. We will get you well."

And for the first time since he awoke and found himself alone, he truly let himself believe it.

It was not something so easily reversed, this starvation that Kili had suffered. Nor, indeed, was the fear that had lived in Fili's heart those many quiet days easily buried and forgotten, even when the colour began to return to his brother's cheeks and he was able to sit up without dizziness or nausea. Rarely were they separated in those first days after Kili woke, and since Kili could not move from the bed, this meant that Fili rarely left their bedroom, either. There was little to say between them, and little strength to say it with. But there was much to do: every hour Kili had to eat, and Fili took it upon himself to know exactly what and exactly when, to wake his brother from silent, pale sleep and feed him exactly the amount Oin advised, and not a drop more, to harden his heart against Kili's breathless pleas. Perhaps it was a dreary task, and then, perhaps Fili was pleased to have a reason to wake his brother, to shake him out of his silence and stillness - for Kili had never been silent and still, neither asleep nor awake, and every time he slipped back into slumber, a small voice in Fili's heart nagged at him, saying he is gone again, he is gone and this time he will not come back.

It was on the fourth day that Thorin sent Fili to sleep in his bedroom. Protestations there were in plenty, but Thorin would not be moved, and, once he had promise faithfully to feed Kili when it was necessary to do so, Fili could invent no more excuses to remain at his brother's side, and was forced at last to stumble away. He slept before ever his head hit the pillow, and Thorin, who had followed him to assure himself that his orders would be carried out, covered him with a blanket and blew out the lamp before returning to his other nephew to find him awake.

"Thorin," he said, his voice still a shadow of its former self. "Fili-?"

"Asleep," Thorin said.

Kili nodded. "Good," he replied. "I think he's falling ill. He looks so pale."

"Not ill," Thorin said. "Only tired. He does not let himself rest."

"Oh," Kili said, staring at the ceiling with a weary frown. "I didn't know. I rest all the time."

"And that is why he does not," Thorin said. But he saw how this drew worry to Kili's face, and sought a new subject of conversation. "Oin tells me you are eating stew now."

Stew, it seemed, held little interest for Kili. He stared still upwards, as if he saw something in the shadows above that Thorin could not. "I thought he was dead," he said. "I saw him fall. I don't- remember the battle, not really. I remember him falling. I was sure he was dead."

"Aye," Thorin said. He remembered it, too, that certainty that he had lost his nephew, that desperate fear that he hid from himself with a torrent of fury. "But he is strong. You are both strong."

"I don't remember how I-" Kili said, and then turned to frown at Thorin. "Azog?"

"Dead," Thorin said. "He could not stand against my blade."

"And the other?" Kili asked. "There was another, was there not?"

"Aye, another, and just as dead as the first," Thorin replied. "By your hand, if they tell it true."

Kili's frown deepened, and he returned his gaze to the ceiling. "Not me," he said. "I don't think - no. But - I thought she was there. Maybe I dreamed it."

"You did not," Thorin said. He took from his pocket the stone the red-headed elf-woman had given to him, and held it out to his nephew. Best he know now, so that this foolishness could be more quickly forgotten. "Take this."

Kili raised a hand - still weak, beset with tremors - and took the stone, turning it over in his fingers. "Tauriel," he murmured.

"Aye, that was her name that gave it," said Thorin.

Kili's eyes grew large in his head. "You spoke to her?"

"I did," Thorin replied.

"And - you are not angry?"

"There is no sense being angry now," Thorin said. "The thing is done, and forgotten. Your mother's stone is returned, and I think that you will not so easily part with it again." And here he fixed Kili with a look that was stern and gentle in equal measure, for he could not but forgive his nephew his foolishness when it had been so amply punished by fortune.

"Forgotten," Kili echoed, all but whispering the word. "Then there was no message? She did not wish to speak to me?"

"You slept still," Thorin said. "And perhaps it seemed to her that the stone was message enough."

Kili's fingers curled around the stone, his hand falling back to land on the bed. He blinked once, and again.

"Yes," he said. "It is message enough."

Slowly the days of winter passed, and with them passed Fili's pain, and Kili's weakness, until spring found them all but recovered, standing on their own two feet and no longer excused their duties, though they left their heavier weapons to the side of the sparring ring. And duties they had in plenty, for the mountain grew every day more alive, more alike to how it had been in the days before the dragon came, but still there were many miles to go, many steps to take. There were days when neither saw the other until evening, a thing that once might have been unimaginable and yet now was unavoidable.

And yet, still there was time for leisure, if only snatched in the spaces between, and as the days grew longer and the snow began to creep silently back up the mountain, leaving rivulets of clear cold water and freshly sprouting jewel-green grass in its wake, Kili's steps were ever drawn to the mountain slopes, under the great blue dome of the sky. It was there that Fili found him in late June, sprawled amongst the glowing flowers of summer, watching something far below them where the River Running wound its silver road to the Long Lake.

"There you are," Fili said, dropping to sit beside his brother. "I've been looking everywhere."

"If you'd looked everywhere, you'd have found me," Kili said.

"I did find you," Fili replied. It was an old game of theirs, and yet never ceased to be fresh. Kili laughed, and leaned back on his elbows on the steep slope. But still he stared out over the plains of Dale, and his smile was not as bright as was usual for him.

"We had an adventure," he said, after some moments of silence. "A real one."

"We did, at that," Fili said. "Hard won it was, too."

"You almost died," Kili said. He shivered a little, though the sun was warm and the sky deep and blue and cloudless.

"Not just me," Fili said. "And not just once." For he still had not forgotten the way his brother writhed and howled in Bard's house above the lake, how close he had come to death then, before ever they set foot in their mountain.

Perhaps Kili was remembering the same thing, for his smile faded and he sat up, pressing his fingers into the grass. "Do you ever think about the people we met?" he said. "Beorn and Radagast and - do you ever wonder what they're doing?"

"Aye, sometimes," Fili said, though he knew where his brother's thoughts lay, and it was not with Beorn or Radagast. "I hope they are happy, and wish us well."

A silence grew between them, until at last Kili spoke again. "I thought she would tell me herself," he said. "I thought - I know I was asleep for a long time, but I thought there was something. That she would at least tell me herself."

"Perhaps she thought it would be easier for both of you if she did not," Fili said.

"Perhaps," Kili said. He plucked a buttercup from the grass and tore it, petal by petal, until naught was left but the green stem, headless and rootless.

"There will be another for you, brother," Fili said. "Shorter, and with more hair on her face."

Kili snorted, and then he leaned forward, eyes narrowing against the light. "Do you see that?" he said.

Fili turned to look, and saw a caravan, wagons and horses and some afoot, drawing into view along the road that led to the Great Gate.

"I've been watching them for an hour," Kili said. "I think-" And here he leaned further, as if those few inches closer could make the features of the travellers clearer. "It is," he whispered. "Fili, Fili! It's mother!"

"Mother," Fili breathed, and then he found himself hauled to his feet by his laughing brother, and they were running, running to meet their mother who they had not seen for a year and more.

So it was that Dis, daughter of Thrain, son of Thror came at last to the Lonely Mountain, and if there had been peace and cheerfulness before, now it was doubled and tripled. And perhaps that is why no-one heeded the warnings until the danger was already upon them.

Perhaps it would not have availed them if they had.