A/N: I'm posting two chapters today, this being the first one. They were orginally one endlessly long chapter, but for the sake of readability I decided to split it into two. Some sweet moments here - hope you enjoy.
Chapter 10
Kíli stared at the flames as they hissed, and licked, and cracked, consuming the wood he had just placed inside the fireplace hungrily, quickly, and completely. He could feel their heat against his skin, but it seemed as if their warmth could not reach any deeper than that, for on the inside he felt frozen and empty.
Minutes ago – or had it been longer than that aready? – he had felt that small flame which had once resided in his chest rear its head again, ignited by the spark of Tauriel's soft touch against his hand and her words – longed for and yet unexpected – in his ear. Briefly it had seemed that there was indeed a light that might guide him from the darkness which surrounded him. With him at her side, and she at his, might they not be able to conquer all of their grief, their heartache, and make a life out of the rubble of their shared existence?
Yes!, an old, familiar voice inside his head had exclaimed. What are you waiting for, you fool?
Quickly, though, that new but so very powerful, sinister being which had recently taken up residence in both his mind and his soul had swooped in and had smothered that happy, hopeful flame with its agony, its despair, its guilt. He who had failed everyone he cared about did not deserve such happiness and if, despite that, he were to strive for it, both he and Tauriel would be punished with more sorrow, more strife, more death.
He had been too much of a coward to look her in the eye when he had given her to understand that right now he could not give her what she was asking of him. He knew that when faced with the pain he knew he was causing her, he might falter in his resolution. If he was honest with himself, every part of him was desperately seeking for a reason to give into her persuasive arguments and to simply drop all of his defenses and find comfort in her arms. And so he had avoided looking at her altogether and had fled the scene, no doubt leaving her behind with an aching heart.
With his elbows resting on his knees, Kíli buried his face in his palms, barely succeeding at suppressing a tortured groan. This was not at all how he had envisioned things to progress between Tauriel and himself when they had still been on their way to Mirkwood. But of course he should have known that what was between them would not simply fade away unnoticed and give way to an easy, uncomplicated friendship. He could not have taken into account the fact that they would be spending an awful lot of time alone together, for he had not known that then. Still, he should neither have underestimated the depth of their feelings nor the effect that they had on each other.
And now… well, now everything was in a bloody big mess and he had no idea how they would be able to go on from here. It felt that no matter what he did, he could only make things much, much more painful for either of them.
Since the moment that he had seen Fíli fall back at Ravenhill, missing his brother had become such a constant in his life that he did not even take explicit notice of the feeling anymore. Now, however, he acutely longed for Fíli's presence at his side, for his counsel and advice. For Fíli had always been better at sorting out not just his own feelings, but also those of his younger brother. Where Kíli was hotheaded and passionate, Fíli had been reasonable and perceptive, thereby balancing his brother's tendency to get himself in trouble and more than once saving him from a fair amount of heartache.
With slightly painful clarity, Kíli remembered the first time he had been in love. Or rather, the first time he had believed himself in love, for he knew from his recent acquaintance with a certain elf-maid that, until now, he had not even experienced an approximation of actual love for a woman, but had merely been infatuated with the idea of finding another person to love, to covet, to cherish. Be that as it may, the memory of his first – failed – attempt at finding romantic love was a quite powerful one still.
Her name had been Sassa and she had been the daughter of a blacksmith, a fearsome dwarf who had more than once (and very convincingly) threatened to break several of Kíli's bones for sneaking into his workshop to get his hands on the weapons he was crafting. Kíli had been quite young then, not yet of age by dwarven standards, and while he had already been trained in the art of armed fighting, he had not yet been allowed to carry a weapon of his own. Because of this circumstance, any opportunity to try out a nice sword or a good, heavy axe had been quite welcome to him.
Over time, Kíli had not even really heard the blacksmith's threats anymore, too busy had he been basking in the smiles that his lovely daughter was sending in his direction and the way her eyes sparkled with laughter each time that Kíli had once again managed to send her father's blood boiling. Sassa's hair had been raven-black and her skin pale and creamy, her still rather slight figure promising to develop the exact curves and proportions dwarves usually looked for in their women.
Kíli had not known much about this girl, this lovely creature, but he had not needed to, the brightness of her smile and the warmth in her eyes sufficient to convince his adolescent heart that they were meant to be and that he would never love another. Just as fierce as his adoration of Sassa had been his despair when he had found out from her friend – who also happened to be a distant cousin of his – that her affections where directed at someone else.
That the one he himself had been so utterly taken with should not even spare him so much as a thought had come as a complete shock to his still very young soul and he had responded in the manner that most youths would – namely by turning his hurt pride and sadness into anger at everything and everyone around him, including himself. He had already been on the brink of doing something very, very stupid and, more so, dangerous when Fíli had found him.
A mile or two north of their village, a deep ravine had cut through the woods, its walls steep and rocky and in most places impassable. When you would trail along the edge of this seemingly bottomless abyss for another mile or so, there had been an old, threadbare rope bridge leading across to the other side. Neither Fíli nor Kíli or anyone else they had ever spoken to had known who had originally built this bridge. It had not been dwarves; that much they had been able to tell from the design of the bridge.
Before either of the two brothers had been born, young dwarves had used the bridge as an opportunity to prove their courage to each other. After a very tragic, unnecessary death, though, even the most reckless of young dwarves had refrained from such ventures and the bridge had become forgotten by most. At least until the day when Kíli, fuelled by the sting of rejection and a bottle of wine he had stolen from his mother's kitchen, had decided to take on the challenge of crossing the bridge as so many had done before him.
Kíli cringed at the memory, for while he had done many reckless things in his life, this had been by far the most useless, selfish one. He was convinced that, had Fíli not found and stopped him in time, his bones would today be rotting at the bottom of the ravine. As it was, his older brother had come to him in his time of need – as he always had when Kíli had needed him at his side.
Fíli had consoled Kíli, had taken that bottle away from him and had listened to his ramblings about that girl whom Kíli thought he loved. Most importantly, though, he had taken Kíli's heartache seriously and had not attempted to play down the depth of his younger brother's despair. Hearing himself talk about his feelings, however, Kíli himself had eventually begun to doubt their authenticity. If he and Sassa where truly meant for each other, why was there not a single thing that he could with certainty say about her except that she was beautiful?
They had sat there, overlooking the ravine for a long time and when they had risen to return to their village, the storm that had raged inside Kíli's soul before had calmed and he had found himself laughing at his brother's jokes once more and making plans for the future which did not revolve about Sassa and her pretty smile. Those plans had of course been put on temporary hold by the punishment he had received from his mother for stealing the bottle of wine and making her worry about him all day. But Kíli had not minded that so very much, the knowing grin that his brother had flashed him from across the room reminding him that while this might not exactly be the greatest day in his life, the experience had deepened the bond that they shared, had brought them closer together still.
It had been many, many years later, when the smile of the blacksmith's daughter had been barely more than a shadow upon his memory, that Kíli had learned by accident that the one that she had preferred to him had in fact been no other than Fíli himself. And while his adolescent self would probably have been mortified and angered by this fact, his more mature self had been able to appreciate and admire the selfless loyalty with which Fíli had navigated this situation at such a young age. Other brothers might have been driven apart by the trials and tribulations of adolescent love, but Fíli, by putting his brother's well-being above his own, had actually fortified their bond.
Kíli had never mentioned the subject to his brother and now he felt that maybe he should have, that he should have let Fíli know that this and the many other sacrifices he had made for Kíli's sake had not gone unnoticed. But of course it was too late now and so all that remained for Kíli was to hope that Fíli had died knowing how much he had loved him and that for all of his life he had tried his best to be as good a brother to Fíli as he had been to him.
While he sat there, staring into the embers, the house around Kíli appeared quite busy – a stark contrast to the lonely hours of the night before. As it was customary for Elves they barely made a sound as they moved about, but Kíli could nevertheless sense their presence, heard a soft rustling of fabric somewhere behind him or felt a pair of eyes linger on his turned back more than once. He thought about offering his help with whatever it was that they were doing, but found that he simply lacked the energy to move at all, much less to deal with the often queer ways of Elves – Tauriel not included, of course.
When he finally surfaced from a mixture of sleep and daydreams of the past, the Swallow's Nest had gone quiet. Suppressing a groan he pushed himself off the floor, his muscles stiff from sitting on hard wood for so long. His wound also stung quite a bit and he grudgingly admitted to himself that he would need to ask Tauriel to tend to it eventually. How he was however supposed to face her after what had transpired between them this morning, he had no idea.
He silently walked through the house, glancing into abandoned rooms. The house was nice, he had to admit, its interior much less aloof than he would have expected of an Elven home after his visit to both Rivendell and Thranduil's royal caverns. The furniture was sparse but comfortable and almost every surface was adorned with a selection of books, a pot of herbs or an unfamiliar plant, some needlework or half-finished project. You could see that the house's owners had truly lived here, their traces visible everywhere.
It was also evident though, Kíli noticed, that new life was finding its way into the Swallow's Nest. On a table in the kitchen he saw baskets full of fruit, vegetables and other food. Sacks containing nuts, grains, and flour sat on the counter, waiting to be stowed away. The windows at the front of the house stood open, letting in cool air but also rays of sunshine – the cold and misty morning had given way to a beautiful winter's day. Making his way towards the back of the house, Kíli saw that in one of the smaller rooms a narrow bed had been equipped with pillows, furs and woolen blankets – for his own use, he supposed.
A splashing sound drew his attention and, following it, he found what was clearly a type of bathroom with a large wooden tub that reminded Kíli a little bit of an oversized barrel at its far end. As everywhere in the house, herbs lined the window sills, tabletops and shelves, their fresh smell entering his nostrils and making him feel oddly calm. The sound he had heard had been created by a bucket of steaming water Tauriel was currently emptying into the bathtub. She was wearing a simple gown of an unsettlingly fine fabric which flowed freely about her legs, revealing bare ankles and feet underneath. Her hair was quite undone and the endlessly long locks tumbled freely down her shoulders, the tips of some strands wet from where they had touched the water's surface.
Her sight entranced him, but at the same time he was utterly mortified at walking in on her and disturbing her privacy and he made to retreat silently. He did not succeed, of course, for she had noticed him already and turned to face him. She smiled a little hesitantly, clearly as uncertain as he was himself about how they should act around one another after what each of them had revealed to the other that morning. Kíli noticed her crossing her arms in front of her body self-consciously, which in turn caused the flush that had already begun to creep over his face to deepen.
"I'm sorry," he said, wondering how many times he had said those words to her in the last few days. "I will go and let you take your bath."
She held up a hand. "No," she said, "don't go." Gesturing towards the steaming tub, she added, "It's for you. I already had mine."
"Oh," was all Kíli managed to say, his cursed mind conjuring up images of Tauriel's long, slender limps stretched out in that tub. He shook himself. "Thank you," he said, and tried his best to smile at her and look her in the eye while he did so. He did not entirely succeed in either, his smile feeling like a grimace on his face and his gaze not quite making it past her chin.
Still, her answering smile was warm. "Take your time," she said as she floated past him. "And call for me should you need more hot water. There is still some left in the kettle."
A little perplexed still, Kíli watched her vanish through the doorway. He turned to glance at the bathtub a little skeptically, but then he shrugged inwardly and slowly began to remove his clothing, taking care not to put too much strain on his wound. He was in desperate need of a bath anyway, so why decline this unexpected opportunity?
As he stepped into the tub he was unable to stop a sigh from escaping his lips when the warmth of the water permeated every cell of his body, helping his tense muscles relax. Sitting down and leaning back against the edge of the tub, he watched as the water rinsed grime and dirt off his skin and half wished that it might do the same for his memories, might cleanse his soul of the many gruesome things he had seen.
For a while he allowed himself to simply soak in the water. In addition to some soap which had caused a certain amount of soft white foam to cover the water's surface, Tauriel had added several herbs, he noticed, and he supposed that they were somehow advancing the relaxing effect of the bath, their smell spicy and pleasant without clouding his senses too much. He ran both hands across his face, washing away blood, and sweat, and tears. With a frown he realized that he should probably also wash his hair.
He reached for a small, empty bowl that sat on a shelf next to the tub and, filling it with water, slowly poured it over his head. The task of getting his hair properly wet was a laborious one though, since raising his arms above the level of his shoulders caused his wound to ache quite a bit, making it hard to breathe. When he was finished he glanced at the bar of soap Tauriel had left on the tub's rim, but decided that he would need to take a little break before he could begin lathering his now thoroughly wet locks, his head spinning a little from putting too much strain on his shoulder and chest.
With a tired sigh he leaned back against the edge of the tub. He was not sure if maybe he had passed out for a few seconds when suddenly he was startled by the appearance of a shadow at his shoulder. He blinked in surprise and looked up to see Tauriel reach for the bar of soap. He made to sit up, but she stilled him with a feather-light touch against his wet shoulder.
"Rest," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Let me help you."
Mesmerized, Kíli watched her as she gently rubbed the bar of soap between her palms before putting it aside and proceeding to kneel down behind him. Hesitantly at first but then more confidently with each passing second she began to knead the soap into his scalp and his hair, strand by strand. Kíli dared not move, partly out of fear that the tiniest movement on his part might cause the foam on the water's surface to shift, exposing more of himself than he was currently willing to reveal. Also, he was afraid that he might disrupt the odd peace of the moment, a tiny island of solace in a sea of constant strife and sorrow.
Kíli could have forever sat there with Tauriel's slender fingers working their way across his head, but eventually she was finished with her task and he heard rather than saw her place a bucket or larger bowl of some sort below his head so that it caught the water that was dripping from his hair. With the smaller bowl he had used before she started to rinse the soap from his hair. All of this she did in complete silence and when she was done Kíli desperately tried to think of something to say to her, but once again found that words failed him.
For what seemed like a long time, Tauriel remained in her position behind him and Kíli supposed that she, too, was looking for words that might somehow ease the tension brought by their conversation this very morning. Like himself, though, she appeared unable address the many unspoken issues between them. Kíli dared not move and for several minutes the only sound in the room was produced by the water still dripping from his hair and into the bowl on the ground.
Eventually Tauriel shifted and from the corner of his eye Kíli saw her reach for a towel. Gently she began to squeeze the water from his hair. The towel was warm for some reason and as the soft fabric touched his head, Kíli felt goosebumps erupt all over his body. He had not noticed until now that the water inside the bath had slowly been getting cold, too mesmerized had he been by the feeling of Tauriel's hands in his hair.
When she was finished with the towel, she moved around to the side of the tub. With a quick glance at the water's surface, Kíli assured himself that soapy foam still concealed most of his body. Nevertheless, he could feel heat rise in his cheeks from having Tauriel so close to himself with so little between them in terms of physical barriers. At least, he noticed, she had exchanged that alluring dress from before for more substantial clothing, closely resembling the garments she had been wearing when they had first met.
It was hard to tell in the slightly dim light entering through the relatively small window, but he thought that Tauriel's cheeks, too, were covered in a slight blush. Still kneeling next to the tub, her gaze was studiously fixed on the wound on his upper body. Kíli remained very still when she reached out and gently touched his injured skin. As she increased her pressure, he could however not suppress a sharp hiss.
Tauriel sat back on her heels, her expression not entirely happy. "The tissue has become slightly inflamed," she said. She bit her lip. "This is my fault. I should have had a look at it right away when we arrived here."
"No," Kíli hurried to object, "please don't think that. I'm the one who should have taken better care of myself. But I did not even really think about it since last night, to be honest."
Which was true. He had been much too wrapped up in his own grief and their shared heartache to stop and assess his physical condition. Regardless of that fact, he did not feel all that poorly anyway. But from the frown on Tauriel's face he could tell that she was not even really listening to him. She had risen from the ground as was now gathering a couple of items from a set of shelves across the room.
"Finish your bath," she said, "and then come see me immediately." Before Kíli could attempt to make eye contact with her and insist that she was in no way to blame for any worsening of his condition, she had crossed the room and was headed for the door. When she passed the pile of his discarded clothes, however, she paused. "Elhadron has brought new things for you to wear – they should fit you better than the ones the healers dressed you in at Dale. I shall leave them by the door."
And with that she was gone. Kíli could not quite decide whether he was sad or glad that this surreal, almost painfully intimate moment between them had come to such an abrupt ending. He told himself to be glad, for after all he had gone to great lengths this very morning in order to convince Tauriel that they should not be together in that way. And still he was unable to deny that he would have given practically anything to feel her hands on his bare skin once more, to experience the thrill of being so close to her as he lay there, the evidence of what her touch was doing to him barely concealed by a few soapy bubbles.
Rubbing his palms across his face a couple of times, he exhaled, willing the thoughts that were running wild in his head to ebb away. Denying both his heart and his soul their deepest desire by forbidding himself from being with Tauriel was one thing – living with the enormous amounts of unresolved tension that existed between them another. All he could do, it seemed, was to hope that this tension would not one day drive one of them – or both, more likely – to do something they might come to regret later.
Then again, how could you ever regret anything pertaining to this beautiful being?, a devious voice piped up inside Kíli's head.
He groaned in frustration and firmly pushed himself into an upright position, causing some of the water inside the tub to spill onto the floor. He was done torturing himself for the moment. Drying himself off with the towel Tauriel had left behind, he quickly fetched the pile of clothes she had promised him.
A quick examination of the garments he had been provided with told him that this was rather a selection of clothes than just one outfit. In all likelihood Elhadron and his men had been unsure what would fit him and so they had left it to him to choose. Kíli appreciated the gesture, even though a cursory glance was enough to realize that these clothes were quite different from what he was accustomed to. The fabrics were much finer, thinner, the decorative elements very sparse and delicate. He held up a shirt and frowned at how slim it appeared.
The shiver running down his damp, bare back was what quickly made him forget his vanity and choose a couple of garments. He donned a pale grey shirt with a slightly odd v-shaped neckline but did not bother doing it all the way up since he knew Tauriel would want to dress his wound soon anyway. Over it he pulled a woolen vest of an almost black, slightly bluish shade, which almost reached down to his knees. There were matching trousers to go with the tunic and he was surprised how comfortably they fit him despite their formfitting look that would take much getting used to. They were too long, of course, but he figured that it would be no problem to shorten them. For now he simply rolled up the legs.
There were other items such as a coat which Kíli hoped was warmer than it looked, a belt, gloves, a few spare shirts and tunics, socks, and something that Kíli supposed was the Elven version of undergarments. He snorted and put the pile of clothes aside for now. A pair of boots had been sitting next to it at the entrance to the bathroom, but he was not sure about them. They looked comfortable, but altogether too soft and not very warm. He decided to stick with his own, sturdy footwear for the time being.
He was quite glad that there was no mirror in the room or anywhere else in the house that he was aware of for surely he looked completely ridiculous. A dwarf dressed as an elf. He could almost hear his brethren explode with laughter. With a slight pang in his chest he remembered that they would never see him like this – a fact he should be grateful for, but still the reality of the decision he had made had the potential to overwhelm him at every step he took.
Pushing those thoughts away for now, Kíli composed himself and finally exited the room in search of Tauriel. A part of him would have preferred to keep his distance until he had sorted through his feelings about their intimate moment during his bath, but for one thing Tauriel had been quite insistent that he should come find her and also that particular force inside of him that he had come to associate with her kept driving him towards her, no matter if he wanted to or not.