Author's note: That_Elf_Girl asked for this scene from Thorin's perspective, an idea that proved unexpectedly fruitful. Thanks for the request!


Thorin is woken by a sound of hard, insistent blows upon echoing stone. The hour is very early, not yet morning: this he knows by a dwarf's instinct, rather than from any external sign (there is none, under the mountain).

The noise—someone beating on a door nearby, Thorin realizes now—ceases as he pushes out of bed and goes to his own door, already anticipating what might threaten the security of Erebor. Orcs breaking through the closed-up worm tunnels? A warg pack ravaging the valley? The Elvenking, recent alliances forgotten, besieging them anew?

Thorin steps into the hall, already drawing breath to growl a demand to the guard, who has unaccountably woken a prince before his king.

There is no guard, no messenger. Only the stranger elf woman, crumpled at Kíli's feet and weeping as though her heart were breaking.

Thorin stares at her, not quite sure what he is seeing. This woman—Tauriel—has dwelt here at Kíli's invitation since the battle a month ago. Kíli adores her, that has been clear enough, but what she means by staying, Thorin has never been sure. Her manners are so foreign and reserved, and she remains inscrutable to him. If Kíli were to ask his uncle's advice—which he does not—Thorin would warn him not to set too much hope on the affection of an exile and an immortal, a woman whose need for a dwarf is surely only temporary.

"What has happened?" Thorin demands, his vision of an enemy at the gates rapidly giving way to some other urgent, though shapeless, notion of calamity within the mountain itself. Tauriel would not be here at this hour without reason.

Kíli looks up from her disheveled copper head, apparently noticing his uncle for the first time. Fíli, too, has opened his own door and stands peering at his brother and the elf.

"It's nothing to worry you. She only needs me," Kíli tells them.

This is apparently explanation enough for Fíli, who nods in sleepy recognition and disappears back to bed.

Yet Thorin stands watching them, still seeking what Fíli has seen so easily.

Tauriel's distress is real; Thorin can see that clearly enough. She has come here, careless of the inconvenience and impropriety of the hour, seeking the comfort only one person can give her. Under Kíli's hands, she has soothed as readily as a frightened child in a parent's arms, and Thorin can no longer doubt there is a true connection between her and his nephew.

Her arms wound about Kíli and her head pressed to his heart, Tauriel holds him as if he is the one thing anchoring her in this moment; as if the world, with all its shocks and uncertainties, would be all too much to bear without him. This is not the poised elven outsider, cool and controlled and incomprehensible, that Thorin has always seen. She is simply a woman, vulnerable and real and very much in love with Kíli.

Thorin no longer wonders why she stays here, in this mountain among strangers. Oddly and yet truly enough, this is where she belongs.

Kíli is right; they need only each other. "I trust you to handle this appropriately," Thorin pronounces, the words in Khuzdul and the message meant for Kíli alone: they are free to find their comfort in one another, provided that they remain within the bounds of propriety, which in this particular context means Kíli is barred from inviting her to his bed.

From his brief flicker of a smile as he nods, Kíli appears to catch Thorin's intent.

Satisfied, Thorin leaves them then, and with the very odd feeling that tonight has both revealed and resolved some crucial flaw in Erebor's wellbeing, he returns to bed.