As in the last chapter, this is a continuation of Svelta slowly learning her past through her newly unblocked memory. Also as before I left out a lot of long-winded injury scenes to keep this nice and short and not fifty chapters long, only including what I deemed important. Enjoy!
Swallowing, Svelta glanced from one brother to the other before pointing with her finger towards the door. She could not handle dealing with these two while trying to deal with her past. They were like brothers to her, watching out for her the last ten years. She could not stand to deal with them fighting when she had her own demons to handle.
"Svelta we're sorry!" Kili cried as Fili propelled the two of them out the door. But upon the threshold Fili looked back, "I'm sorry little sister. I wanted to protect you. I have failed you instead." And he hung his head and left before Svelta could call him back.
Grimacing, Svelta settled in for another memory to find its way back into existence as she shut her eyes and her ears to the troubles of her waking world.
Svelta spent the next several hours coming in and out of sleep, writing down each of her turmoils as she returned to the waking world. With each fitful sleep she relived how each of the scars that adorned her body came to be. When she had come to be with the dwarves ten years prior, she had been confused why her body had been covered in little white marks. But upon seeing Fili and Kili without their tunics on one time when going swimming and seeing the two boys' chests devoid of the marks on her body, she had realized the marks were unnatural and had covered them up. No one besides her had ever seen them, no one knew they were there. Sure the brothers had asked her to go swimming with them over the years, they had noticed that she never shed clothes in the prescense of others, they had noticed that she was never devoid of clothing covering her from head to toe. But they hadn't questioned it. They had respected her choices. No one knew the better. Until now.
At one point, Svelta began to sob, unable to control the hurricane of emotions within her. A knock at the door interrupted her sobbing. Svelta glanced up as it opened to see Fili. His eyes shown with fear as he asked gently, "Do you want me to hold you? Like I did those years ago? When I chased away the nightmares and the bad dreams and all your fears?"
Svelta nodded, and Fili, her big brother in all ways except blood, came and held her, laying in the bed next to her, cradling him to her. He began to sing a dwarven lullaby, and Svelta fell asleep again, this time dreaming of far happier memories.
Svelta stood with her big brother in a glen, the two of them sweaty and laughing in the hot air. Her brother raised his sword once more. "Again!"
"But we have spared all day! I am sore and surely after training for years, I must be good enough now for your liking!"
"We spare again!" he replied with a laugh. He had trained her, trained her in using a sword, in using twin dagger blades to fight, and in using a bow and arrow. For years the two spared and trained, competing to see if she could ever surpass him. They trained long and hard, their play time and bonding time was all training. One day she would be captain of the guard, her brother had promised that when he was king he would make her his captain, and she needed to be fit enough to be a captain. Snarling Svelta lunged forward and another spare was struck up.
At the end of it, the two were laughing and her brother suggested they go for a swim. On the walk over Svelta turned to him asking, "Will I really need to train like this for the next several thousand years?"
Her brother replied with a chuckle, "If we engrain it in you enough, it will be second hand memory, and you will be able to do it without even remembering how to do it. Even if you were to not spare for the next thousand years, not train in the least bit, some parts you would remember and without retraining would be able to do again in combat. We train until you get to the point where you remember everything, not just some things, after forgetting everything, because it is engrained in your muscle. Then, and only then, can you stop training."
Svelta nodded pleasantly. "I will be a good captian of the guard for you brother, I will make you proud." They smiled at each other before she added, "Until then though, as merely your sister and you being not the king, I can still beat you to the river!" And with that she took off running.
Svelta smiled, realizing now why she hadn't had too much trouble picking up on things from Kili and Fili when training. But before she could fully wake up to record the good memory, she was pulled further into it, just as things got hairy.
There was an orc waiting at the river. Snarling, Svelta's brother jumped in front of her, shielding her from the creature.
"So it's true!" the orc crowed. "There is a half breed here. And under the king's protection no less! She is not safe for long little prince."
Svelta could not understand the black tongue of the orcs, but her older brother could he snarled back in their foul language, "Do not lay a finger on her, or you and your companions won't have fingers to lay, or heads for that matter."
The orc laughed and left, and Svelta and her brother didn't go swimming that day.
Svelta woke shaking, only to realize she was being held and she took comfort from it. Crying, she curled up into his strong arms, knowing that at least one older brother was there to protect her.
As she sat up and began to record the memory in her memory journal, Kili crept back into the room. Upon putting down the journal, she realized he was there and held out her arms for him, accepting his hug and apology for earlier, glad that he was with her. Without thinking, she kissed him on the cheek. And then she was thinking, and embarrassed. Swallowing, she hid her blushing face by casting her eyes downward, Kili doing the same before boldly lifting up her face and returning the favor, on the mouth. Shocked, Svelta jumped backwards, only to double over with the pain it brought from jostling her bad arm. The elves had done wonders and the pain was next to nothing, barely perceptible except when she jarred the arm as she just had. Grimacing she remembered the elves saying the muscle she would have to exercise but that besides that the bone was good as new and she could start retraining once she was ready to do so.
Kili's voice stuttered as he spoke, "We, we will just, go get some dinner, I think, right, right Fili? We will, we will bring some back for you, wait, wait here." And with a nod he was gone, Fili sheepishly grinning as he followed.
Svelta sat down again. Utterly surprised at what she had done and what the response had been. She had acted boldly, she had acted out of turn, she had acted wrongly. Swallowing thickly, she glanced at the door, wondering if she had more feelings for the dwarf, more than that of brotherly love. She wondered if she would have even considered this had he not kissed her back. Her kiss could have been taken merely as something of care and sibling affection. But it wasn't, it was taken for more. Did she want more? She didn't know and thought to consider it. Then something darker gripped her heart, and she wondered if Kili would feel the same for her once he knew her lineage, once he knew the dwarf he thought he loved wasn't quite dwarf after all.
Wondering if her thoughts would let her stew on this or if they would conjure up another memory, she laid back on the bed, steeping her fingers, and closed her eyes.
The pale orc realized she wasn't reacting like she should anymore to his tortures and his experiments weren't giving the results he wanted. Finally he grinned, knowing she carried for some of the younger subjects they had taken over the couple of months she had been here. He had watched her care for them when the returned from being tortured. So the pale orc tried something new. A new experiment he thought. He would bring Svelta out, bind her to a pillar, and then slowly torture one of the halfbreeds she cared about in front of her. But this didn't work, so he started killing them in front of her. Any that she had shown sympathy, empathy, had condoled, any that had received any emotion from her, were slowly tortured and killed before her. But she did not beg, she did not scream, she merely cried and held strong, knowing that eventually her pain would be over.
An orc entered the room again, pointing his finger at Svelta, "Again?" she whispered, but not loud enough for even the person next to her to hear. She had gotten a knack of being quite so as not to be noticed, but recently she had been experimented and tortured more and more. The orc unchained her and she followed it out to find the pale orc standing beside a couple of goblins.
One goblin screeched, "This is the wench you wish to give the great goblin king? She would not last a day!"
The pale orc replied, causing the goblin to smile, "You withstand torture dearie? You can keep coming back for more? The great goblin king does love torturing. My does he love the screams."
Svelta woke, breathing hard, but unable to stay awake once again returned to that of the nightmare world her memories came from. Mustering to escape them as she did, it was not enough and darkness of impeding memories sucked her back in.
"Sire, this is the pale orc's new gift to you. He apologized that the others keep dying so fast but hope this one suits your fancy. He promises that she can withstand torture and so will last longer."
The goblin king laughed from atop his throne. "Put her to the test"
Svelta dreamt of many a torture from the goblin king. Breaking of bones, whipped into submission, had knives and the likes stuck into her, anything the goblin king could think of. But through the torture of the pale orc, Svelta had learned not to scream. But not screaming made the pain and torture worse and more frequent. The great goblin king enjoyed screaming. He enjoyed hearing the sound of pain from hopeless humans fallen beyond misery and despair. But Svelta, she did not scream.
The goblin king must have complained to the pale orc that while he could torture his new gift endlessly, she did not scream. The orc supplied several new playthings for the goblin. The goblin king tried using them to make her scream, once she got close to one, once she was attached and felt something for he tried to use them to make her scream as he had been promised she had the most delightful scream. But nothing worked, the great goblin king didn't get his scream.
Svelta was panting from the last bout of torture, not having screamed or made any noise, when the goblin king decreed, "Send her away, she does not scream, she is of little use to me. Release her into the mountains, see how long this one lasts."
And so the goblins had taken her, shoving harshly, until she was unceremoniously dumped outside the goblin tunnel entrance, to wander the mountains alone, injured and without food or water. Svelta broke down then, crying in a heap, trying to get over having spent the better half of the year in the goblin kings possession.
A man, tall and old, arrived, dressed in robes and walking with a long pointy hat on his head. "My dear, I am Gandalf, may I be of any assistance?"
Svelta hissed, the barely audible sound all that she could make anymore, having shut down her ability to make any other noise to keep herself safe.
But Gandalf figured out who she was and murmured to her, "My dear, I will get you home safe, do not worry. I will get you back to a place where you belong."
Svelta woke, heart racing to find Balin at the end of the bed. "Lassie, get up. We are leaving, and as ill as you may be, the group won't leave you behind, so get packed quick and we will be on our way."
A lot of dividing lines in there, I realize, maybe I didn't need them all. Sorry! Now that all of that is out of the way, the story can progress more and the company can leave Rivendell! We follow their adventure in the next chapter. Would love to hear your thoughts! Hope the KilixOC isn't too slow for anyone, I felt like it was pretty even flowing, not to rushed all the sudden they are in love like some stories, but it is still in there. Thank you again to all who followed and favorited! Enjoy your last few days of 2014 and I will see all of you beautiful readers in 2015!
