The whispers started early.

Whenever his back was turned, whenever he was lost in a throng of people he heard them. He would whirl around, eyes searching for the owner of the voice but he never caught them. Anonymity made them bold. It evoked their cruelty when they were sure they would never be found out.

"Maybe he will look more like a dwarf when his beard sprouts…if it ever does."

"If he loves the tree shaggers enough to pick up their weapons perhaps he should go live with them."

"Surely that is no heir of Durin."

The barbs lodged under his skin, burrowing ever deeper, hurting him when he didn't expect it. They tore at him when he was still, when a moment was left open and his mind wandered. He learned to cover up the evidence beneath an armor of chatter and boundless energy. He hid the winces behind bright smiles.

But like any child sometimes the hurt ran too deep and he couldn't hide it away. It overflowed and spilled out and made him want to hide away where no one could see him because empty spaces couldn't judge a dwarf who didn't fit in.

He had gone missing one day on a break from Balin's lessons. When he didn't return a frantic Fíli ran home to tell his mother who sent word to the forge. While Dís and Fíli waited at their home Thorin and Dwalin set out to find the youngster, and it was his uncle that found him hours later with his ear pressed to the smooth stone, eyes closed as he listened. His tears had long since dried but they had traced tracks down his cheeks that he hadn't thought to wipe away.

"Kíli, what are you doing? Is this where you've been? You've had us all worried sick!" his uncle scolded.

"Shhhh!"

"Kíli." Thorin's voice held all the warning he usually needed to use with his nephews but this time he was completely ignored. He bent to grab the boy's arm. "Kíli!"

"Stop, be quiet! I'm listening!"

His youngest nephew was rarely quiet, and rarely stopped long enough to do anything least of all listen. This was unusual and Thorin knew it. With a sigh and a creak in his joints that he liked to pretend wasn't there he stretched out alongside Kíli and pressed his own ear to the ground.

He waited.

And heard nothing.

"Kíli, what are we listening for?" he asked, and he wasn't prepared for the pitiful sniffle his nephew gave. The boy was just barely thirty, still very much a youngster, and he screwed his eyes shut as tears tried to escape again.

Thorin knew what the others said. He knew that Kíli was the brunt of many unkind rumors and words. While he was fiercely protective of his nephews, he could only defend them against those who dared speak or act in his presence and they had long since learned never to speak ill of Kíli in front of him. They were not stupid enough to invoke the wrath of Thorin Oakenshield. Especially not when it came to his family.

He reached out and swiped at the tears with his thumb. "Lad, what are we listening for?" he repeated.

"Singing."

"Singing?"

Kíli nods, cheek scraping against the stone. "They others say a real dwarf can hear the stone singing," he said softly. "I need to hear it singing."

His voice was so wistful, so full of longing that Thorin felt his heart clench. He sat up and pulled his nephew into a hug. "Kíli, it's not something you'll hear with your face pressed against the stone. It's more like a feeling, a connection to the mountains and the stone. You'll feel it in your bones, in your heart. It's something that will shift within your very core. It will be a feeling you won't doubt, and you won't forget. Do you understand?"

Kíli had regarded his uncle with solemn eyes. "I understand."

Thorin wouldn't realize until many long years later that understanding didn't offer Kíli the comfort or assurances he had thought it did.

As he grew older he saw the effort those closest to him put forth to try to empathize, but it wasn't something they could understand, it wasn't something they could feel from the outside looking in. As much as they might try, and as much as he might love them for it, they would never know what it was like to be him. They would never carry the weight of a stigma and the harsh reactions it brought with it.

Fíli was a fierce protector, always ready to back his brother up with words or action. He was calm, a cool head under pressure, and loyal without a doubt. He was also respected, and while he was just a prince to a king with no kingdom he possessed an air of royalty few questioned. In that respect he took after their mother. Dís was well loved and often it was under her guidance that rifts between their people did not grow larger. People respected her, admired her. She was a princess in every meaning of the word and the people never doubted it. They never doubted she had been carved from the same stone as Durin himself.

But not Kíli. He took after his father, and his mother would tell him that was no ill thing. He barely remembered him, for all that he had died when he was still very young, but his mother had bit back her grief to tell him about the man he so closely resembled when the world rested heavy on his young shoulders.

"You share the same spirit, the same love of life," she had told him once, when he had returned from playing sporting a bloody nose and tears in his eyes when the others told him he was too scrawny to be anything other than the spawn of an elf. "And you have his smile. It's a beautiful smile, my little bird."

He had buried his face against her shoulder and she told him the story of how they'd met, how he had won her over with his laugh and his honor.

"He was simple only in that he was not troubled by the burdens of ruling. He could work the stone like no one I had ever seen and he loved you boys more than anything."

But love had not saved him in the end. It hadn't prevented him from going off to war. And even though no one ever said it Kíli knew that his father had never been a strong fighter. He had been raised in the mines. He could wield a pickax with deadly effect but pickaxes were no match for the swords, maces, and bows the enemy used. He had not returned from Azanulbizar.

His family was a strong foundation, but they did not understand him. He had never expected to meet someone who might.

Until he'd met Bilbo.

It wasn't as if he knew the hobbit's life story. In fact, he knew very little about him. Bilbo had told him about hobbits in general and had offered some small insight into his parents, but beyond that his past was a mystery. Still, he seemed to be something of a kindred spirit.

"Are you alright, Master Baggins?"

It is midday and the carrock still seems to loom above them; it had taken a lot longer to descend then they had expected, even though they had been walking for hours now. Gandalf agrees with Balin that a short rest won't hurt anything and an assurance to Thorin that they will still make it to his friend's home before sundown is all it takes for him to call a stop to their march.

The hobbit looks up at him, exhaustion coloring the skin below his eyes purple. "Back to Master Baggins, are we?"

Kíli drops down next to him. "Bilbo."

"I'm alright. And how are you? Were you injured at all?"

Kíli shakes his head. "Nothing but a few scrapes."

He's rewarded with a laugh. "You're like a cat. Always landing on your feet then."

"A cat?" Kíli scoffs, but there's a grin on his face. "I am far more noble than a cat!"

Bilbo regards him with mock severity. "If you think a cat is anything but noble you haven't lived with one," he replies. "They think they rule the household and everyone and everything, and they live to be pleased. My father had this scrap of a cat that loved only him. Orange as flames and with a temper to put an ogre to shame. He was a monster, but I never told my father that. He loved the furry beast. They are smarter; smarter than people give them credit for and they are self-sufficient. There is more to them than meets the eye." He murmurs the last part so softly Kíli almost doesn't hear him. Bilbo's fingers drum against his leg as he falls into silence for a long moment before he looks up at him. "But they always seem to escape trouble with ease..." Bilbo finds a scratch on Kíli's palm and grips the dwarf's wrist to look at it. When he seems to assure himself it's nothing to worry about he smiles up at Kíli. "As do you."

The young dwarf is silent for a long moment as he contemplates the hobbit's words. Was Bilbo just describing a cat? Or was he describing what he'd seen in him? He opens his mouth to ask and then shuts it again and he knows Bilbo sees him, but he doesn't ask.

"Alright then, if I'm a cat what are you?" he asks instead.

"Well I suppose if you ask anyone that's ever known me they'd say I'm a mouse," Bilbo concedes. "They would say I'm timid and mild-mannered; that I hide away in my home and do only what everyone expects—or at least I did up until now."

"And what do you say?"

Bilbo wrings his hands. "Well I do live in a hole in the ground," he finally concedes and he smiles up at him.

Kíli knows a diversion when he sees one. "It was a very nice hole in the ground," he replies, and he knows it's the right answer when Bilbo smiles.

He likes making Bilbo smile.