Chapter 9: Divided


As delightful as it had been to see the enchanted realm of her distant kin, Tauriel was glad their visit to Lothlórien lasted no more than a sennight. A longer stay could not have given her anything greater than what she had already gained, a renewed hope that she and Kíli could find a way past their troubles. Now that they were leaving, they would have the time and the privacy to reconnect as they so desperately needed.

Tauriel could sense that Kíli, too, was glad to journey homewards again. They had been away over a year, and she knew he missed his family by now. In truth, she also missed them, for she already loved them as her own kin. And dear, patient Fíli delayed his wedding till their return. It would not be fair to make him wait much longer to be united to his beloved Sif.

And so despite their recent farewells, Tauriel and Kíli had both set out with cheerful spirits from the eastern bank of the Anduin, where the Galadhrim had brought them by boat. From there, they would travel north, between the river and the western border of Mirkwood, until they came to the forest path, which would lead them east to the Elvenking's fortress and then on to Erebor.

Despite her longing to resolve their troubles, Tauriel did not gather the courage to speak to Kíli until they were three days out from Lothlórien.

That evening, they made camp for the night in a grove of trees close along the bank of the Anduin, and after their meal, they sat shoulder to shoulder and watched the sunset blaze along the horizon. It had been one long, lovely moment; they'd barely spoken, but Kíli had held her hand, slowly massaging her fingers in his firm, gentle grasp. Tauriel could almost imagine they were as they had always been, with no disappointments between them. But much as she would have liked to believe their troubles would disappear as easily as they had come, she knew such was a foolish hope. The peaceful gardens of Lothlórien had granted them a much needed reprieve from their anxiety, but she and her husband must still resolve their misunderstandings together.

Tauriel's own thoughts regarding the possibility of children had not changed after what Galadriel had revealed. Indeed, the mirror's vision had confirmed what Tauriel already felt was true: she and Kíli were not meant to become parents together. Yet she had found peace knowing that she could base her choice on more than her fear alone: whatever power was responsible for what the mirror showed, she trusted such visions were guided by a wisdom greater than her own. Most of all, she had taken comfort in the elf queen's reassurance that it was not unusual for a husband and wife to struggle to understand each other. Tauriel's despair that she was losing Kíli had been relieved, replaced by the hope that with patient communication they could regain the intimacy, both in mind and body, that they had enjoyed before. And so, as uncertain as she still felt regarding how to begin, she promised herself that tonight she would speak as soon as the last sunlight had faded from the sky.

The darkness came all too soon, and then Tauriel realized how unfortunate it was to broach such an important, intimate topic while unable to see Kíli's face, and he unable to see hers. Yet she knew she could not put this discussion off any longer; each day they waited was a day of understanding and happiness lost.

So she coaxed the last ashes of their cook-fire back into flame before returning to kneel at Kíli's side.

"I'm sorry I've felt so distant from you, Kíli," she began, her heart fluttering with nervousness. "I know it's been hard for you. It has been for me, too."

He nodded in acknowledgement, though his eyes were kind, not accusatory.

"I want us to be close again; I truly do. It's just— I haven't been able to make love to you because you want us to create a child and..." She hesitated, still sorry to say it. "...I do not."

"I told you," he returned gently. "I don't need it to be about children. I just want to show you I love you."

"I know." She placed her hand over his. "But still you do want a child."

"Well, yes," he admitted. "But I don't see why that matters." There was the hint of a confused frown between his brows.

Tauriel brushed her thumb across the back of his hand. How could she say this without hurting him? "Maybe it would not seem this way to you because you're a dwarf, but I'm afraid our coupling would not be as...good if we didn't agree on this."

"We love each other. Isn't that the most important thing?"

"Yes, it is important! But being with you is not just a bodily pleasure; it is the delight of being joined to you in spirit as well. If you and I were divided on this one thing, I think my joy in you would be halved."

"Tauriel, do you think I only want physical satisfaction from you?" Kíli asked, his tone disbelieving and more than a little hurt.

"Of course not," she swiftly reassured him. "I just thought maybe... We're different, that's all. So perhaps something that matters to me doesn't matter to you."

"It matters to me that you are wholeheartedly interested in me, as I am in you."

"It's not that I desire our union any less than I did before."

"Oh?" It was evident that there had been doubt in his mind over this.

"Ah, meleth, I do not find you lacking, not in the least!" Tauriel trailed her fingers up over his forearm, then laid her palm against him in an expressive caress. "You are my hadhodeg, my wonderful dwarf. It's just, well..." It was difficult for her to put into words something that she felt more by instinct than by reason. "I cannot feel that I am truly offering myself to you if I withhold something you want. If I cannot accept the children you want to give me. I'm sorry, Kíli. Intimacy under such circumstances would be a...a reproach, not a delight."

"So, does this mean you think you'll never be able to be intimate with me again?" he asked miserably.

"No, Kíli! I couldn't bear that. I want us to be able to love as we have before. But before we can, I—" She paused, knowing this was going to be very hard for him to hear. "I need you to accept that we are not meant to have a child."

"But we don't know that, Taur!" he burst out.

"We know enough to say it is dangerous and unlikely. All the warnings we've been given—I believe they're meant to show us we must let go of our wish for a babe."

"Since we've been in Lórien, we've only been told good things." He took her hand and squeezed it. "If you have so much energy, so much life in you, don't you think that must mean you may bear new life, too? Especially since our union is the reason you're different. Amrâlimê, you don't need to be afraid." Kíli gazed at her with tender encouragement, and Tauriel felt undeserving of the faith she was being forced to dash.

"What Galadriel told us is beautiful," she conceded. "And surely it does explain how we have been so happy in one another. But bearing children is the one matter in which our differences cannot make us stronger. Remember the risks Saruman warned us of!" After hearing of the babe's death in Hobbiton, Tauriel had known that those risks were far too real to be dismissed.

"Damn the wizard! He's neither an elf nor a dwarf himself, so what can he really know about whether we're suited to each other? I trust the Lady on this more than him." Kíli laughed sharply. "She didn't all but call me an orc, either." At this remembered insult, his eyes flashed in the firelight.

"Oh, my love, I am very sorry, but you must forget that," Tauriel soothed. "He could not have meant it as you took it. "

"Maybe not," Kíli grumbled. "At least with Gandalf, you feel the kindness under his harsh words."

"Kíli, I need to tell you one more thing, the last reason I am sure we will not produce a child." Tauriel paused, afraid he might be disappointed that she had kept this information from him. "During our stay in Lothlórien, the Lady Galadriel gave me the chance to look in her enchanted mirror. Its magic can show things of the past or the future."

"And what did you see?" Kíli's eyes widened, in eagerness or perhaps apprehension.

"A future that might have been, had you never come back to me. I saw you married to Audha. She gave birth to your son."

To her surprise, Kíli was neither disappointed nor jealous as she had expected; he seemed merely confused. "But what does that have to do with us, Tauriel?" he asked with a dismissive shake of his head. "I didn't marry her. What the vision showed you—it will never happen."

"Don't you see?" But of course he didn't, when the message was not one he wanted. "That is the life in which you might have had children. With a dwarf woman, but not with me."

Those last words were unexpectedly painful to speak, even though she had faced the idea for some time. She could still remember when she and Kíli had first spoken together of children in those golden days following their wedding; they had both been so happy and sure of that beautiful future, and now, relinquishing that dream hurt a very great deal.

"Kíli, I know this is not what we hoped for. But I have pondered very long on the vision's meaning and this is all I can make of it. Why else would the mirror show me that lost future, unless it is to teach us that what I saw—all of it—is truly impossible now?"

"I don't need a vision to tell me I could have made a child with Audha!" Kíli insisted, sounding somewhat annoyed. "Of course I could have. And, Tauriel, I would have, if I'd married her. We'd have been expected to produce heirs." He pressed his eyes closed briefly, as if blanking that unwelcome thought from his mind; then meeting Tauriel's gaze, he said earnestly, "The mirror hasn't shown us anything we didn't know, so why should it change what we want? Unless you don't want..."

"I do want your child!" Tauriel cried, pained that he could think otherwise. "But it may be impossible for us. And even if it is possible to conceive, I cannot will to create a child if it will die before it has even seen the world."

"We don't know it would die!" Kíli shot back. "And even given that chance— Everything dies. Tauriel, I'm going to die one day! If we had a child, at least you would have someone after me!"

"Kíli! How could you?" Tauriel drew back her hand from him, her whole body shaking with hurt and anger. "I have never held your mortality against you. But do you think I've forgotten? Do you think I don't know I'll lose you?"

She looked away, too furious to say anything more. Kíli was incredibly unfair to use his own eventual death in argument against her, and worse, he reminded her how she betrayed him by denying him the only means by which he might truly cheat that fate: his offspring.

"Tauriel, I'm sorry," Kíli blurted. "I didn't mean it like that. I just meant death is the fate of all mortals. You couldn't spare our child that, no matter what." He put his hands on her shoulders. "Please, you must take the chance to live, for us and for any children we could have."

Tauriel shook off his touch. "Why cannot you let this go? Am I not enough for you?"

"Yes, Tauriel, but—"

Looking sharply to him again, she demanded, "Or am I a failure if I cannot give you a son, as even a loveless dwarven bride surely would have?"

"No!"

"Maybe the mirror was wrong, and you really would have been happy with Audha and her babe!" Tauriel was half astonished to hear those words leave her mouth, but even so, she found she did not wish them back: they truly expressed her fears.

"That's not true," Kíli returned, his tone as heated as her own.

"Then you may prove it by never mentioning any of this again," Tauriel said vehemently.

She rose and stalked blindly away along the dark, tree-fringed riverbank, hot tears already streaming down her cheeks.


Kíli sprang up to go after her, then stopped himself. How could anything he said possibly get through to her? If she thought he wanted a life with Audha or any other woman rather than with her, she was clearly not seeing sense.

He gave a low, inarticulate growl. How could she believe such a thing of him? He had nearly been destroyed by a broken heart when he had been parted from her before; did she not believe him constant now? Didn't she know he loved her regardless of whether she could give him a child? He had pressed the matter because he knew she had wanted a child, too; and he could not bear to see her give up hope when there seemed more reason to hope than ever. But if she could deny hope and even deny his love—

Kíli did not know what to think. Something had gone far more wrong between them than he understood how to remedy.

Emotions he could not name flared hot in his chest, and Kíli felt he must move or burst. Snatching his shortsword from among the rest of his gear—Thorin had drilled him never to leave camp unarmed and the habit held even in the midst of his turmoil—he strode off in the direction opposite from the way Tauriel had gone.

It was dark beyond the ring of firelight, and more than once, Kíli nearly tripped over alder tree roots before his eyes fully adjusted to the change. He was moving downstream, the water to his right visible by the occasional glint of starlight on its surface. There was no moon tonight.

What was wrong with Tauriel that she thought some image of Audha with a babe meant that she herself would be denied one? The two possibilities were absolutely unrelated! If she had seen Fíli with Audha instead—and there had been a time when the crown prince was expected to marry the Blacklock maid—would Tauriel have supposed that meant Fíli and Sif would never have a child once they were married? Such an interpretation was no more justified than the one Tauriel gave now.

Kíli stubbed his toe on a rock and snarled out a curse.

Was Tauriel's damned unreasonableness about this whole subject a female thing or an elvish thing, anyway? Oh, he could understand how she would be troubled by the thought of losing a babe that she had borne within her own body, but did she think that as a father, he wouldn't feel equally responsible, equally bound to the fate of their child? Of course he hated the thought of losing a babe, but to let that fear stop them from trying for children at all would be a far worse loss.

A branch slapped him in the face, but he kept pressing forward along the gloomy riverbank.

Or as an elf, did Tauriel find it impossible to face the idea of losing someone she loved? If so, she had been very foolish to marry him. And who knew, anyway, if their children—Mahal provide that they ever did have any!—might not be immortal, after all, like Elrond and his half-elven kin? It wasn't a certainty, by any means, but neither was the death of a babe in childbirth or the impossibility of conceiving at all! Yet Tauriel would accept the evil before the good.

A betrayal, yes, that's what this was: a wound that Kíli felt all the more deeply because she had first struck it to herself by abandoning her courage and her hope, by forgetting how much he loved her—

Kíli blundered down a small decline where a creek flowed into the river, and then he froze. There, drawn up along the pebbled banks were two crude rafts made of tree trunks. These had surely not been here when he and Tauriel passed this way earlier, looking for a place to camp. There were no human settlements for miles yet, and even if there had been, no men would be traveling at this time of night. Besides, those violently hewn trunks, with leaves and branches still attached in some places, could be the work of only one creature: orcs.

As if in response to Kíli's thought, two shadows emerged from behind the nearest raft, about five yards away. Hunched shapes straightened, resolving into tall, bandy figures in jagged armor, one carrying a crooked sword, the other a bearded battle axe.

Two, he could surely take two, but from the size of the rafts, there were likely a dozen more about here somewhere. How many had he passed, unseen, in the dark? Surely they'd been drawn to this spot by the campfire. Would any of them have made it further upriver yet, past the camp to where his wife had gone?

Raising his sword, Kíli charged forward, hoping to gain what little advantage he could by a swift offense. If he could dispatch these two quickly, he might have a chance to evade the rest and work his way back to Tauriel.

The first orc parried his blow with its sword and stumbled back—despite Kíli's shorter height, he was still the stronger of the two. Kíli's next few strikes were more easily blocked, but this was what he wanted: to engage the enemy closely, so that the second orc would be forced to give them some leeway and watch carefully for an opening lest his attack harm his comrade.

Kíli feinted low, drawing his opponent's sword down. When the orc returned with the expected upward cut, Kíli lunged under the orc's left side and then spun upwards, one knee against the ground, to drive his sword up into the unprotected armpit left open by the orc's two-handed swing.

The orc collapsed, almost bearing Kíli down with it. Hot blood flowed down Kíli's arm, and his fingers nearly slipped off the sword haft as he tried to pull the blade loose. For one heart-stopping moment, Kíli thought he would be trapped, disarmed, under a dying orc. Then the sword wrenched free, and he stumbled backwards.

The second orc advanced on him, battle axe held reversed so that the blunt knob behind the blade would strike him like a club.

Shit. This would be the more challenging of the two. All this orc had to do was hook Kíli's sword with the long, lower crescent of the axe blade and then flick the weapon right out of his grasp. And with the orc's superior reach, it could easily disarm Kíli before he'd even gotten in the first blow. If Kíli was to have a chance, he would have to end this quickly. Thankfully, being unarmored did give him the advantage of speed and agility.

Kíli gave back a few steps, drawing his opponent forward with a show of being afraid. As the bigger fighter strode forward, Kíli skipped nimbly to the side and then dived behind the orc's ankles, slicing behind its knee as he did so. It yelped in pain and stumbled. Rolling to his feet, Kíli gave one swift chop right between neck and shoulder, and the orc fell, senseless.

He stood still, chest heaving as he wiped blood from his eyes with his sleeve. What was happening? And where was Tauriel? He had to find her before any orcs did!

Just as he gathered himself to dash back towards camp, he heard the rattle of river stones behind him. Spinning around, he found himself face to face with three more orcs.

The central orc, who sported the ceremonial scars of a chieftain on face and upper body, gave a wicked smirk, and then with almost lazy deliberateness, aimed a heavy stroke of his longsword right at Kíli's chest. As Kíli blocked the blow, the outer two orcs lunged forward and each grasped an arm.

Kíli gasped in pain as his elbows were wrenched behind him, and his sword clattered to the ground.

The lead orc stared down at him triumphantly. "I've been waiting for you, dwarf prince," he sneered.

Bloody hell. If they knew who he was, they would know about Tauriel and would be looking for her! But now Kíli's only chance to aid her was to warn her.

He drew a deep breath and bellowed, "Tauriel! Tauriel! Or—"

The chieftain silenced him with a heavy blow to the gut, and Kíli sagged forward, choking for air.

Mahal, please, look after her, Kíli prayed silently as his vision swam. I love her.

"Your little elf bitch won't be a problem." The orc's tone was amused.

Kíli tried to growl in return, but breathless as he was, the sound came out as a pathetic groan, earning him a harsh laugh. He dragged his head up and glared at the big orc.

"It's been a while since I've killed an elf," the chieftain said with a predatory grimace. His teeth were sharp, like those of a wolf or a warg.

Kíli lashed out with his legs, just missing his antagonist. One of his captors gave his arm a particularly sharp twist, and he fell still with a whimper. If they broke his arm, he wouldn't be able to fight if he ever did find a chance to escape.

"That's right; save it and mebbe ye'll live longer," one of the orcs at his back hissed.

The other chuckled in Kíli's ear, an awful, rattling sound. "What makes ye think he'll want to?" it asked, drawing an answering laugh from its companion. "Then again, dwarves are so fuckin' stubborn, he'll prob'ly hang on just ta spite us. Think of the sport we'll have," it finished with a menacing drawl.

Kíli's stomach dropped. So this was revenge; they meant to make him pay for his part in the long wars between their two kinds. Oh, Valar, somehow he had to get out of this...

"I suppose you'd know all about how to live longer," Kíli rasped. "You ran away at the Battle of Five to save your skins."

It was only a guess, but a right one, it seemed.

"Why, you sodding little—"

"At least when I die, I'll be looking you in the face. Can't say I expect to recognize yours, though, 'cept maybe from behind," Kíli continued, his voice stronger now.

Snarling, the orc at his right swung round, presumably to offer Kíli the look he'd asked for. As his captor shifted, Kíli twisted his arm free. Lifting his foot, he drew the knife inside his boot—worn there at Fíli's insistence—and drove it up between the armored plates on the orc's chest. Freed on one side, he could now turn and aim a kick at the kneecap of the orc to his left.

It grunted and swayed slightly, its grip loosening for a split second. Yet before Kíli could take this opportunity, he felt a sharp pain at the back of his head, and then nothing.


Author's note:

Well, things certainly took an unexpected turn for the worse! But don't fear; no matter what happens, this story will have a happy ending!

As always, thanks to my fantastic beta reader, That Elf Girl.

Also, it's my birthday today, so it's entirely possible Grignar is just kidnapping Kíli as a present for me... Let's just hope Kíli likes frozen margaritas. :p