After dinner, Elrond, Gandalf, Thorin, and Balin withdrew to speak privately. The others began to return to wherever the dwarves were being kept, but Kili and Sylven slipped off together down a staircase, with no real direction in mind and neither having to prod the other to follow. They moved the wooded areas and over paths of woven rock all in silence, each contemplating the situation. She could tell for certain, now, that Kili was beginning to grasp the enormity of the task before him.

"You need to show him your skills with healing." Kili said, breaking the delicate web of silence they'd been neutering. "He needs to see you'd be useful."

Sylven raised a brow. When Kili say her doubt, he frowned. "What?"

She spoke slowly, carefully, maneuvering her words like a captain in treacherous shallows. "I think Thorin is a man who sees only what he wants to see."

He was shaking his head before she finished. "You don't know him like I do – there's nothing he wouldn't do to protect us. If you proved you could be the one to save one of us… he'd have no choice. He's not an unreasonable man, Sylven. He's just… set in his ways."

Sylven stopped short, turning to Kili sharply. "Where are you all going."

"Erebor."

There was no pause, no moment of calculation where he tried to decide on if she was worthy of the answer. He watched her, waiting for a reaction. She did her best to keep her face still as her mind shrieked violently into action, trying to process. Oh course she knew of Erebor – who hadn't heard of the mighty dwarven kingdom, stolen by a dragon who breathed fire hot enough to melt the very mountain the kingdom resided in. Smaug, the Terrible. The name sent shivers down anyone's spine. There was no way to save a man who was burned to the bone.

It fell into place then – sons of Durin, so many dwarves, a wizard. She'd known the task had to be important, but this… this was an expanse of danger too massive to be imagined. A dragon – that was what lay at the end of Kili's journey. Teeth made to crack bones and breath that ignited the air.

"You're frightened." She blinked, coming back to herself as Kili took her hands in his. She opened her mouth to argue, but he was right. Frightened hardly seemed to cover the first moments of understanding. Kili stroked his fingers over the backs of her hands. "Please, don't be frightened."

He needed to hear her speak the lie. He needed her to pretend to be brave, to create an illusion where her own character fell flat. The way he was staring at her – frozen in anticipation of her next words.

How could she give him the truth? How could she deny him anything he asked of her?

"Surprised – I'm surprised." She was, actually. But her shock came more at how honest she sounded. "Erebor… Thorin is King Under the Mountain? And that makes you…"

"Fili is his heir." Kili said quickly, laughing nervously. "Do I look like a prince to you? Here, you should sit."

He guided her over to a stone bench under the dripping branches of a willow tree. She was grateful for the darkness, which allowed her to hide her true feelings as well as move close to him. He was still holding her hands, working his thumb across the length of her fingers. His hands were much softer than she'd expected – used to gripping a sword, yes, but the gloves he wore for archery had shielded them from most of the damage. She focused on the comfort having him to herself brought, using it to combat the sheer numbing fear trying to swallow her up.

"You really think he'll listen?" She asked.

Kili nodded, smirking slightly. "I'm his favorite."

She laughed, and it felt glorious. "That's a terrible thing to say!"

"I'm endeavouring to be honest with you." He teased, but that did little to cloak the seriousness of the statement. "There's nothing I wouldn't tell you."

"Why do you want me to come?"

It wasn't the question he'd expected. His face tightened in concentration as he took his time assembling his response. "Because whenever you're absent, it's like I can't… I can't breathe. I can't think – at least about anything other than where you are and what you're doing. The idea of leaving you here – it's like leaving half of myself to the mercy of the elves. I won't leave you – not when I don't think you're safe."

"You think about what I'm doing," she bit her lip to keep from laughing. She had to hold onto the humor to keep from swooning at his words. "Even when I went to bathe in the creek?"

They both laughed.

"Especially then."

"How ungallant of you."

"And now you know why Fili's heir."

"And I thought it was because he's eldest."

"That and he has an incredible beard."

She snickered, freeing one of her hands to reach out, running her fingertips down his cheek. "I like yours better."

He closed his eyes, pressing his face into her hand. "More of the absence of one."

"It's perfect."

His eyes flickered open mischievously. "Did you just call me perfect?"

"I said you have perfect facial hair – there's a difference, even regarding dwarves."

"But you do think I'm perfect, don't you?" He turned his face to nuzzle against her hand as she rested it on his cheek to run her thumb over the prickly stubble. She breathed in sharply as his lips grazed over the skin of her palm. "I think you are."

"Oh, you're fairly adequate."

He looked up at her, sulking. "Fairly adequate?"

She felt something, a pull somewhere in her chest. "You're everything. And I don't want to leave you either. But if it does happen, if we don't have a choice… promise me I'll see you again. No heroics, no carelessness… if I have to watch you go I need to know you'll come back."

It was asking a great deal. Fighting not for glory, fighting for survival, fringed on cowardice. It won you no songs, earned you little profit… It could mean losing someone so that you wouldn't risk your own person. It was dishonorable, and it wasn't in him. She knew it wasn't. But she needed this untruth now – she needed words to light the abyss that would devour her when he was gone.

"I swear. If we are separated, I will always find you."

She lowered her head, pressing her forehead to his. They sat like that until time lost its hold, and long after that. They stirred only when there came the low call of something in thick dwarvish, the sound carrying through the town. Sylven only made out Kili's name, the rest was gibberish.

Kili sighed heavily. "Bifur."

"What is that in his head?" She remembered the strange shape protruding from the man's hairline.

"Axe." Kili said, as if it were an uninteresting trait. He looked passed her, through the leaves trying to make out Bifur, growing closer judging by his voice. "Thorin's back – they've figured out the map, we're supposed to gather."

"He's yelling that for all the elves to hear?" She quirked a brow.

"Not exactly, but Thorin wasn't leaving the Lord of Rivendell's presence until he'd unlocked the secrets of the map." Kili stood reluctantly, and Sylven let her hand move away from his cheek. "I'll take you back to your room first."

"You shouldn't keep him waiting." She reasoned. "I'll be fine."

He seemed unconvinced, but didn't press the issue. "I'll talk to him – I'll make him understand."

"I know." She told him, giving his hand a squeeze. "Hurry, before Bifur wakes up the entirety of Rivendell."

He glanced over at her, then in a swift sweeping motion he leaned down, placed a hand where the back of her jaw and neck met, and kissed her. She breathed in sharply, painfully unprepared, both for the action and reaction. His lips were warm, and oddly gentle for the boldness of their presence. His smell washed over her, he taste made her head spin. She'd been thrust from any level of emotion she'd known before, and she surrendered herself to lay smashed in the arms of rapture. Somehow their hands had come free, and hers explored his hair eagerly, snaring in an attempt to hold him in this moment forever as their kiss turned into something desperate, hungry.

It was Kili who had the sense to move back, both of them panting in attempt to pacify their burning lungs. He stayed close enough that she didn't have to let him go, and tilted his head as he memorised every detail of her face.

Bifur sounded dangerously close, and so grudgingly she slid her hands out of his hair. "You have a meeting to attend?"

"Meeting?" He murmured. "What meeting."

"Go." She pushed her hands against him gently. "He'll be angry if your late."

Kili gave her a quick peck of a kiss, and it took every part of her to keep from following his lips as he stood tall. "Goodnight."

"Night." She watched him slip away, pushing the branches out of his path before dashing up the steps and out of sight. Only then did she allow herself to slump against the balustrade at her back, bringing her legs up to her chest and hugging them. She sat a long time in the shadow, grinning to herself. She lifted a hand to touch her lips, then giggling like a giddy fool she stood and scuttled back the way they'd come, returning to the home she'd been given in the world that was fresh and new.

She lay on a bed of grass, the dress the elves had given her draped around her as the dirt leaked cold into her skin. The sky above had unleashed it's stars upon the world, and though there was no snow her breath steamed as if winter had come. She pulled her body tighter, trying to fight away the chill.

There came a boom and then a crack! She sat up, looking around in alarm. She was on the plains they'd run across fleeing the orcs, but the yellow grass had turned velvety green. In the dark of the night, though, it was a swirling black mass. One of the trees nearby had been uprooted, and she could smell the rich soil. She stood, walking towards it with her bare feet. She hesitated as she faced the wall of roots, and then reached a hand out to run her fingers over the green splintered ends where they'd been torn from their twins in the ground.

She walked down the length of the trunk, staring at the massive gouges in the wood from what looked like claw marks.

From behind her came a low rumble, like the growl of a hundred wargs and just as terrible. Her back seared with heat, not from fire but from the mere presence of creature behind. She turned, and found she stood in the doorway of a massive chamber. From floor to ceiling there were mountains of jewels and gold, such as to make the trolls treasure petty. But still there came the rumble.

"Sylven no!"

She turned and found herself falling, falling into a pit without end. Kili's scream echoed all around her, he begged her to come back, but there was no stopping her plummet into oblivion.

Sylven sat up sharply in bed, gasping and clawing at the air. She knew at once she'd been screaming, her throat was raw. The chemise plastered to her skin, slick with sweat. Sylven scrambled out of the bed, and fled to the night air coming from the balcony. She leaned against a pillar and slid to the bottom, shivering and clutching her knees as she tried to make herself very small. She could still hear him screaming.

She took a bath to clean the salt from her skin, then dawned the dress and moved into the central room. She went over to the bookshelf, but each one she selected was written in long drifting letters she could make neither heads of tale of. She walked around restless, her feet bare.

With a hiss she gave up and went out her door, following the path and beginning to wander again. It must have been late still – it accounted for her energy. Her body had become accustom to being awake in the night and sleeping by day, and without the exhaustion of the entire day hike she had nothing to weigh her mind down. She found herself passing the bench she and Kili had shared before several times before she realized she was looking for him. It was silly – the dwarves would be asleep, surely. But she needed to be certain. She went back to the courtyard, then entered the building she had seen Lindir guide them into before.

She could hear the pop and creak of a fire, and followed it to find a few of the dwarves still awake. Most were little hunched shapes on their bedrolls, but Balin, Ori, and Fili were still awake. Upon further inspection, Sylven realized the firewood had carvings in it. Furniture.

Three dwarves awake, but four bedrolls vacant.

Sylven slipped back the way she'd come, resuming her hunt. It was the smell of pipeweed, in the end, that led her to him.

Kili sat alone in a grove at the bottom of a wide set of stairs, where the trees blocked out the night sky. He ran the mouthpiece of his pipe back and forth over his lower lip as he stared ahead vaccantly. He didn't hear her approach, but stirred as she sat beside him. "Couldn't sleep?"

She shook her head tucking her dress around her feet. "What did Thorin learn?"

"That we've not the time we thought we did." Kili sounded grave. "Gandalf is in some meeting – the elves mean to try and stop us. We'll have to leave before dawn."

Quiet, but for the rush of water and the thrum of insects. Sylven bundled her courage, and asked, "Did you speak to him?"

"He says you will not come with us." Kili's voice was strained. "He says I'm being selfish, that our quest is no place for a woman – skilled or not. He says taking you with us would get you killed."

Sylven sighed, lying back in the grass. "Perhaps we are selfish."

"I don't believe that." Kili watched her over his shoulder. "You could help us – and I'd never let anything happen to you."

The canopy above stirred, whispering in amusement at the mortals and their troubles below. Perhaps Thorin was right. She wasn't even a qualified medical professional, there were an infinite list of things she didn't know. There were poisons she'd forgotten cures for, mushrooms that looked like their medicinal cousins but could kill those who ingested them. Wounds she could clean and bandage, but what good was she when a limb had to be hacked off or a belly wound judged? What place did she have, amongst royalty and heroes?

"Sylven?"

She realized she'd been quiet for some time. Kili lay down beside her, on his side and propping his head up with an arm so he could watch her. "Tell me what you're thinking about."

"I'm thinking about what I'll do when you leave."

He took a drag of the pipe, filtering the smoke out from his lips slowly so it drifted. Sylven watched, then felt a small illumination of past happiness again. She sat up, facing him, and opened her hand. "Teach me how to smoke a pipe."

"What?" He laughed, moving his out of reach.

She leaned over him, snatching it as she brushed against him. He cleared his throat as she brought her prize in front, examining the glowing bed of red tinged leaves. "I just breathe in?"

"More or less." He confessed. "I don't think you'll like it."

She lifted her nose snoodily in the air, placing the end into her mouth and inhailing deeply – too deeply. She let out a wheezing cough, spluttering and puttering out smoke as she coughed, covering her mouth with an elbow as her lung erupted in outrage at the intrusive cloud. Kili burst out laughing, rolling onto his back. She made a face, then shoved the pipe back at him. "That must be the grossest offense to my senses they've I've ever had to suffer!"

"You didn't have to do anything." He pointed out, sitting up and leaning on one arm still, plucking his pipe out of her fingers, keeping his face close. "You looked like a cracked chimney."

She leaned in, kissing him gently before she replied, "An attractive cow, a cracked chimney, you do know how to turn a girl's head."

He teased her lips with his. "Come with me."

"I can't."

"I don't care what my uncle says."

"This is Thorin's quest."

"And you could help him with it."

"He wouldn't let me."

Kili's eyelids lowered as he leaned against her. "Come with me."

"When do you leave?"

He opened his eyes to gauge the world. "There are a few hours yet."

"Good." She pressed her lips against his.