Many thanks to my husband for his input, and to suilven for her encouragement and support!
It was impossible to sleep. Kili could tell the other dwarves were as wide awake as he was from the lack of the usual chorus of snores. Bundled here together in Bard's small flat, not knowing what the morning would bring them or how they would escape from this island town in the middle of the lake, had everyone nervous and on edge.
Kili shifted, sitting up so he could see out the window more easily, and set his teeth against the cry of pain that wanted to come out as he moved his leg. Whether the wound was merely infected, or the orc arrow had put some kind of poison in his blood, it was getting worse every minute, or so it seemed to him. But there was no time for an arrow wound to slow the group down; they were in enough trouble without his injury to consider. So he wasn't about to say anything, not even to Fili.
A cloud moved outside, revealing a few stars, so faint he had to strain to see them. From his pocket, he took the black runestone, turning it over and over in his hands as he stared out the window.
An arm jostled his elbow as Fili, next to him, shifted restlessly on the thin pallet. "Hey."
"Hey."
"You all right?"
"Good enough." There was no need for Kili to tell his brother how his leg hurt, or how worried he was that it wasn't going to heal. It was understood between them that it didn't matter—only the mission did, and Kili wasn't about to let an orc arrow make him the cause of Thorin and the rest of the company being delayed, or possibly failing.
Fili grunted and laid his head back down again. He could sleep, if any of them could. He'd always been able to turn off the problems at hand as soon as he'd closed his eyes. Kili had never had that knack, lying awake even on a good night long after his brother was lost in dreams.
Of course, Kili had always been lost in dreams of his own without having to fall asleep to find them. He found his dreams on the hillsides and in the night sky and far under the ground where the gleam of gold shone in the black seam of the rocks.
His thumb rubbed over the runes in the stone and he thought of his mother and the shine of tears in her eyes as she had hugged them both good-bye, pressing the runestones into their hands as she urged them to remember who they were and where they came from … and to come back as soon as ever they could. What would she think if she could see them now, packed into this little room together, bedraggled and stripped of most of their belongings by elves? If she could see the way the flesh was greying around his knee, feel the fever that rose in him? If, he whispered in his heart, she could know the impossible things he was dreaming as he gazed out at the stars?
Another face came into mind, replacing his mother's graying hair and sharp features with lustrous brown locks and a delicate face that somehow had been familiar to his eyes from the first moment. He'd been drawn to the quickness of her movements and the easy skill with which she wielded her bow, and to the flash of humour in her face when they spoke to each other. He'd found himself wanting to see that face again, and had somehow not been surprised when she sought him out, sitting there next to his cell and talking for hours. The other elves had looked at the dwarves the way the spiders had, with a hunger to destroy, as though they were dinner, but she … she had wondered. She had been curious. She had been drawn to them in spite of herself, and she had sat and talked with him, and for the first time Kili had felt his soul truly touch that of another person.
He blushed at the romantic illusion, clenching his hand around the runestone and looking away from the stars with their seductive beauty. It was foolish to dream of someone returning a love that could never, never be.
Balin rolled over at his feet, jostling Kili's leg. He barely managed to stifle the scream of pain that seemed to well up from the core of him. A moan escaped him despite his best efforts, and he looked quickly around to see if anyone had heard the sound. If Thorin knew how bad it was … but Thorin mustn't know. As long as life was left in him, Kili would follow his uncle and see this journey through if he could possibly manage it. This would be his life's work now that love had found him in the most impossible way—he could never go home again and settle down with a dwarven woman when he had felt the magic of Tauriel's eyes upon him.
The throbbing pain that traveled from his knee upward was a reminder that going home was unlikely to be an option, anyway. So what did it matter if he gazed at the stars and dreamed of a woman who might as well live on them, so inaccessible was she? It was to be his last dream, and he couldn't think of a better one.