Disclaimer: I'm not much of a Tolkien purist, and I kinda prefer Peter Jackson's version of the story. I just think it's a shame that the Jackson films stuck so rigidly to the book's ending, as it seemed to flatten a lot of his 'improvements'. Despite my messing around here though, these are obviously not my own characters – so go back and read the book/watch the films if you want something that is pure and good!

Author Notes: I've added in my OFC here (plus other OC as the plot requires), and there will be some bad language on display. Neither of these things are meant to be gratuitous or over-done, but people's perspectives on these things are obviously different so be warned. I've kinda written half of it, but I have a full plotline mapped out, so I want to get this written fairly quickly before I get busy again. Also, I may have to edit more 'suggestive' bits out, so if you want to see the whole thing, have a look on AO3 where I've originally posted this story.

Chapter One: Wish Upon a Mountain

Lightning flashed and illuminated the wild Fall night. The trees on the lakeshore – those still clinging to leaves – were thrashing on the sheets of rain that tore down at them, while thunder rolled across the landscape, emanating from a vast black space somewhere over the violent water before reverberating back off the tall, lonely peak that stood behind her, assaulting her ears in stereo.

It felt like she was witnessing the death groan of some fallen giant. Like the sky and the lake and the mountain were all coming together to witness and mourn its passing, and she was just left standing here, all alone and uninvited to the full proceedings, unsure even of what had happened – just left with a blank and uncomprehending sense of loss, that lingered sour in her mouth like the taste of the lake spray falling on her face.

Kili! Where are you? Where have you gone?

The elf turned her back on the crackling sky and the black lake, wondering if she could find any solace instead in the solitary mountain. It had been his home once, she supposed. And now it was his home forever: a huge, stone tomb to house everything that remained in this world of the one she had loved and lost, and there was nobody here left who cared except for the shrieking wind.

The mountain where they buried him, she thought sullenly.

It stood out now, against the sky, a perfect stone cone rising up from the plain, and she realised the lightning was closing in on it too. As a blue and yellow fork shot from the sky to aim at the Lonely Mountain's summit, Tauriel felt herself hold her breath, waiting for something she couldn't name to be released.

But the wind fell in a gust and the thunder cracked over her head, releasing nothing, and reluctantly she let her breath go, disappointed.

The lightning can't bring him back! He's dead. Nothing can bring him back now!

Tauriel cringed, and lowered her eyes to the pebbles at her feet. To her surprise, she saw she was walking in water - the wild waves were sending such flows up the shoreline, that small surges of lakewash were streaming over the shoreline stones, drowning them under a half inch of water.

I didn't even notice my feet were wet, how strange. So now the lake has joined up with the lightning and the wind against me...

Tauriel frowned, and looked up at the Lonely Mountain again, as the lightning flickered crazily. The stone mountain-top, high in the sky, being burned by the lightning, in the heavy rain.

All the elements are united here, the elf realised, in wonder.

She'd heard stories when she was very young about such elemental powers, of course. Her people had many stories about the seasons, the stars, and the weather systems that gave beauty and life to the physical world they inhabited: every event had its symbolic and magic correspondences.

But the union of the four elements was supposed to have a power all of its own. The legend said, that when the gods were angry (or sometimes very sad or even happy, depending on who told the story), they showed this to those that could read their signs by unifying the powers of the four castles in which they resided: the physical was united with the emotional with the combination of earth and water, and the intellectual was unified with the transcendental when air and fire combined. These dualities were common, and happened whenever the sea lapped upon the shore, or a flame twisted on the breeze. But the unification of three was rare and deliberate, and of four it marked something much more special.

It means the gods will grant you a wish! she thought, remembering the childish thrill she'd felt when she'd first heard the legend long ago.

But her heart hardened in scorn against the follies of her youth.

As if the gods care about Kili! They're the ones responsible for his death in the first place. Isn't it Vairë who weaves the rug of destiny? She could have used Her needle to stitch Kili a glorious destiny, instead of sticking it right through his heart!

Tauriel realised she was angry, as she watched the lightning swarm around the mountaintop turret.

And why shouldn't I be? she scowled, glaring up at Kili's mountain tomb. Our love was real. We could have had a great storyline together! We would have owed that rug! Our threads would have intertwined and been beautiful. So why was I even written into his story just as She pulled his life apart and snapped his thread?

The lightning struck the mountain again, and a colossal crash from breaking rock mingled with the thunder clap riding the wind and rain around her. Tauriel felt her red hair streaming in her face, and her green skirt raging around her, all billowing up towards the Lonely Mountain, as if the wind was trying to take her there. She closed her eyes.

I wish... she began, feeling like a stubborn child. I wish that Kili hadn't died. I wish that his brother Fili, and his uncle Thorin, hadn't died. I wish that they were all alive again, and that none of this had ever happened!

At her back, the wind suddenly ceased, and Tauriel felt a momentary lull on the air around her, as the rain eased off. She waited for the crack of thunder to call her bluff as it blasted back into the mountain where her loved one's body lay cold and dead, but the thunder didn't sound. She waited a moment, but nothing came.

It seemed the storm had passed, or dissipated its energy at last. All she felt was a soft warm surge on the breeze as it blew down from the summit, bringing a sweet musky smell of charred stone and burnt moss into her face in reply to her prayers.

She realised she was soaked through, and thoroughly exhausted. She needed to sleep somewhere, but she couldn't be bothered walking upto the ruined remnants of Dale, where most of the Laketown refugees still lingered.

I'll just sleep under the trees, by the shore – it's fine now – the storm is over. It'll be cold, but the cold doesn't hurt me.

She staggered forward in her sodden clothes, and found a small hollow in the ground under a pair of old rowan trees. And as Tauriel curled up on herself for the night, she faced out to the lake, wanting somehow to keep her eye on the stormy water over night. But to her surprise, the lake surface was glassy smooth now, with hardly a ripple over it, and out across the lake a new crescent moon hung in the sky like a sly smile.

She shivered, and closed her eyes.

And sleep came for her quickly.

She became aware of it slowly.

There was a falling sensation.

Like falling asleep, but when she tried to jerk her body upright nothing changed. The blackness was still all around her, so she couldn't see anything to be sure she was falling, but she knew it was true.

She remembered the storm from earlier, and the lightning on the mountain, and the moon hanging in the sky above her as she closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but she couldn't remember beyond that.

So I must be still asleep then, and this is my dream. But why is there only the darkness?

Tauriel usually dreamed in colour. The elves had nice things to do and places to visit in their dreams: they didn't waste their night-time hours falling into bottomless pits.

Is this a bottomless pit? Isn't that an oxymoron?

Tauriel frowned, and she realised she could control her own body and feel her senses just as if she was awake.

This must be a lucid dream then. I should think of something nice and concentrate on it.

But already a picture of the black-haired dwarf with the sword through his heart was forming in her mind's eye, before she could try and push it away, and Tauriel felt her blood run cold as she thought she might have to relive it all physically again.

And yet she was falling still: no bad dreams came to her. She wasn't returned to the Ravenhill tower. She was falling deeper into the blackness, and so she tried to focus on something bland and comforting instead. Like her favourite trees back in Mirkwood.

But they didn't appear before her either.

So this isn't a lucid dream then, I can't go anywhere else. What is this?

In a flash she remembered her wish. The silly child's wish she'd made in the storm, the prayer she'd made on behalf of the burning mountain. And as she remembered, she suddenly had the strangest feeling that she was inside the mountain, falling into the very centre of the earth, falling so deep inside of it that she'd gone somewhere else and normal space was turning in on itself.

I'm not falling. Everything is folding inside out!

And as she became aware of what her senses were telling her, the feeling suddenly stopped.

The blackness had stopped: there was brilliant white light everywhere. It hurt her eyes to see it all, so she squeezed them tightly shut, but it didn't stop the light – she could feel it inside her head, shining through her eyelids as if they were made of glass. It was beautiful and warming, but somehow too strong for her elven mind to witness, and she felt an odd discomfort seep into her bones in the glare of the white.

"I'm sorry, I'll turn the glare down for you, my dear." She heard the words inside her head, melodic and feminine, and somehow she knew there was no real sound for her ears to hear.

Nevertheless, the whiteness receded slowly, and Tauriel was left standing in a cream coloured glow, in some vast, shimmering hallway, with high windows running the lengths of the walls beside her all the way to vanishing point in the distance. She turned around, admiring the view, trying to catch a glimpse out of the nearby windows but only able to make out copper clouds and a crimson sky... until she saw Them.

A tall, stern looking elf sat on a golden throne, holding a blue and green spinning globe. He raised an eyebrow to her in a cursory greeting, an aloof distain on his slender, bony features. Beside him, on a wooden bench, a pretty blonde woman with big, amber eyes smiled and waved. She was sat before a large loom, with the warp strung over the frame in delicate silver threads – and at the bottom of her loom, a moving, shifting, rotating pattern was formed from the weaving of her coloured, glowing weft. She held the ball of thread in her right hand, and it shone and pulsated with all the colours of the rainbow – plus a few other hues Tauriel couldn't even have named.

The woman stood up as Tauriel approached, and clapped her hands together in greeting. "This is my husband, Mandos, and I am Vairë. I weave the threads together, and Mandos... well, Mandos gives me the patterns." She smiled at Tauriel, and gestured to the scowling elf towering over her in the throne, but he just shrugged his shoulders dismissively.

Vairë turned to Tauriel conspiratorially. "I understand there was some problem with my tapestry? You wished that I had done something else?"

Tauriel eyed the woman cautiously. This couldn't be real. She couldn't actually be having a conversation with the Valar gods of all creation! It must be in her head. Maybe all the crying and grief she'd felt the last few days had finally taken its toll on her.

I'll just play along with the dream, and then it will all go away and I can wake up and tend to some more of the battle-wounded and make myself useful again...

Tauriel cleared her throat, wondering why it was necessary to tell a god what she was thinking. Weren't they all supposed to be omnipotent? Was this one just humouring her?

"My lady, I am... aggrieved... that you chose to use your threads to kill the one that I love. I think it was a bad design decision, and it will spoil your rug."

The blonde woman's smile became more fixed. "Tapestry, my dear. It's a World Tapestry." She exchanged a glance with her seated husband, but Tauriel couldn't guess at what it meant. She hoped she hadn't offended either of them already.

The woman sighed, her smile gone. "Look, I know why you're here. People – all sorts of people – come here all the time! They tell me I've missed a stitch here, or used the wrong thread there – so that the sweetheart they wanted has got eyes for the wrong person. Or the well paid job that should have been theirs has been given to some other idiot. And it's a mistake. It's my mistake! It happens all the time. People can't deal with rejection." The blonde rolled her eyes. "They can't deal with someone saying No to them!"

Tauriel glanced back and forth between the two deities, wondering if it would be rude to interrupt.

"Your grace, my lady, I'm not here because I cannot accept rejection. I... wasn't actually rejected. You must know of whom I speak?"

The blonde woman nodded once, her amber eyes sparkling. "You love the dwarf Kili, son of Dis." She cast her eyes over the bright tapestry on her loom, frowning slightly. "He was killed in battle by the pale orc three days ago. Along with his brother and uncle." Her eyes lingered on her tapestry, reading something in the threads. "You wished that I undo this part of the stitching, to bring them back." She raised her eyes to Tauriel, amused. "Very well, my dear. Tell me why I should do such a thing?"

Tauriel swallowed, wondering how she could convince a deity who knew everything that there was something she had somehow overlooked.

"My lady, I feel an exciting possibility was missed when Kili died. We were in love, we could have married – we could have had children together. Our children could have united our peoples! We could have raised a family to use as an example to the world! That togetherness is better than – "

But the blonde's merry laughter cut her off. "Oh my dear, that's a new one!" She fixed Tauriel with what seemed to be a genuine grin. "Do you think that, given your peoples' history, that that is even a remotely likely happening?" She laughed again.

Tauriel was confused. If she was the Weaver of the Threads, couldn't she make it so? Wasn't it her call? So why was she laughing like it was a big joke to think that the stupid war between the elves and dwarves was an inevitability? She could take that glowing ball and make it so whenever she liked!

"My lady, I beg your pardon, but isn't it up to you how you weave the tapestry? You could make the future be anything you like!"

Vairë gestured to her husband, as he eyed up their proceedings coldly from atop his throne. "It's actually him that gives me the designs, my dear – and he gets them from his brother. It's not my plan."

Tauriel eyed the chilly-eyed Mandos, wondering how to appeal to his good side. "Is Kili with you now, my lord? Is he here somewhere?"

The elf-lord grunted. "He's here all right. They're all here – the dead. They're all around us, even now." He shut his eyes dramatically, tilting his head back as if listening to something far off. "He's crying out for you, Tauriel. He's been pining for you for the past three days!" He glared over at his wife, and she looked troubled.

"That can't be right, he should have lost all memory of the living pastures after three days!"

Mandos grimaced. "I know! But I don't care. That's why I sent for her – I want his incessant pining to stop. Just redesign the three-days, and get him out of my Hall, will you?!"

Vairë scowled back at her husband, a look that didn't sit so well on her fine featured face. "I'm sorry, my dear!" She gazed back at Tauriel, her look apologetic.

The red-haired elf swallowed, wondering what the deity had decided she was sorry about.

But the goddess turned back to her tapestry, and studied something carefully. "It could be done, in a way. But not just for your Kili – that's not the way it works. I could send you back – back to before he died, right back to his fight with Azog, and with your memory intact as well – and you could try your luck at saving him this time. But there will be a price for it. And maybe a cost too?"

Tauriel nodded, hope rising in her heart all of a sudden. "What price? What cost? What do you mean?"

The goddess looked serious. "I need something of power, something that represents life, in order to reverse the tapestry and unweave what has occurred for the last three days! Do you know how much energy it takes to bind this world together?"

Tauriel shook her head. She really had no idea.

"Well, not as much energy as it takes to pull the threads apart, that's for sure!" Vairë thought for a moment, weighing up some options. "I will need some of your life force, my dear. Not so much – you will still live to see the next age, if you take care of yourself in battle – but you will cease to be a true immortal, and this is the price you pay now."

Tauriel considered. It seemed fair enough. What was the use of a few extra centuries when she was all alone, without the one she loved? "I see... but what is the cost?"

Vairë smiled darkly. "The cost comes later. Who can say what it will be now? The tapestry is not finished."

Something in her words caused a sense of unease to awaken in Tauriel. What was she doing? Trying to rewrite history? Surely, by any reckoning this could only be a terrible idea! What if she changed things, and what happened was even worse? It would all be her fault!

How can things be any worse? What difference does my foreknowledge make to anything else?

Tauriel closed her eyes, trying to think through the implications of this. But she knew in her heart that she would accept Vairë's terms – both of these deities knew it too. She just couldn't turn down the chance to be with Kili again.

But what about the others? Fili was already dead when the fighting started – if she accepted these terms, then he could not be saved. The thought made her sad somehow. She liked Kili's easygoing, blond sidekick – he'd saved Kili's life and shown himself to be nothing but devoted and loyal to his younger brother – to the point of maybe even accepting her and Kili's feelings for each other. And what about Thorin? While it was true that life without him around might be a bit... easier for her, she knew Kili loved the older dwarf. How could he be happy without his brother and his uncle? Could she really serve him up the lifetime of grief he would suffer on behalf of their deaths?

She cleared her throat. "I need longer, Vairë. I need to go back to before Kili's fight with Azog! I need to save Fili too. What about another ten minutes?"

Vairë raised her eyebrow sceptically. "You do realise that more things will change in the world the further back I have to unpick my threads? And that means the price – and the cost – will rise!"

Tauriel nodded. "I understand that. I will pay whatever the price is, and the cost..."

"Will not necessarily be yours to pay!" said Vairë sharply. Now Tauriel knew she'd pissed off this goddess.

But Vairë was thinking, despite her frown. "For ten minutes – I can do it... but the price you pay is your entire elven life. When you go back, you will live as a mortal. You will live no longer than a common woman, Tauriel. Not even as long as Kili! Is that what you really want?" Her bright amber eyes shone with a sly malevolence, and Tauriel felt suddenly as out of her depth as a child trying to walk on the surface of the ocean.

"My lady, my grace, I do really want this! I thank you both for hearing my request, and granting my wish! I promise –"

"Hush now," Vairë interrupted. "We haven't granted you anything yet." She turned slowly to her husband, and nodded to him. "The final decision belongs to Mandos, as always."

Tauriel raised her eyes to meet the steely, grey gaze of the Lord of the Halls, not able to hide the desperation on her face. "And what say you, my lord?"

Mandos shut his eyes, weariness on his face. "Just do it Vairë. My brother's plans will not be damaged by this change, not in the long run."

His beautiful wife frowned intently at her psychedelic tapestry again, divining some future cause and effect in the shifting, throbbing patterns that drifted across the weft she'd stitched together. "There is one more thing, I'm afraid..." she began. "There needs to be balance in the threads, or the pattern will fail. And if the pattern fails... all life will fail." She looked up, straight into Tauriel's green eyes. "You can have your ten minutes, but it means that Azog and his forces will lose ten minutes."

Tauriel blinked, not understanding, but Vairë anticipated her look of confusion, and continued. "After they have made their afternoon camp, I will hold their threads steady behind the warp. In effect, it will mean the orc forces are held up for ten minutes on your timeline. As if they are asleep, my dear. For balance."

So now I'll have twenty minutes to save Kili and his family!

The red-haired elf smiled to herself. Maybe she could do this, after all. Maybe she really could save him!

She looked up, and saw the beautiful, blonde goddess looking over at her with a curious expression of sympathy, as if she felt bad on behalf of the young elf . But it was the expression on Mandos' face that chilled her.

He was grinning at her. A wide, toothy leer, devoid of any real warmth, with a trace of malice at the corners of his mouth.

The Lord of the Halls stared at her with his piercing grey eyes."It seems you got your wish then, elf. I hope it's worth the cost that shall be paid."

And as Tauriel watched, fixed into position and somehow hypnotised by his flinty gaze, the rest of the room began to darken. First to orange, then to red, then to purple, and back to black again. But as the vision of the hall, and the crimson clouds, and the blonde woman faded from view, the two grey eyes of Mandos stayed fixed firmly in front of her, becoming larger and brighter, until she realised she was falling into them, and the world in front of her eyes became a grey haze, occluding everything and blanketing her thoughts like a wet mist...