Fili dabbed his brother's forehead with a damp cloth and sighed. It had been many hours since Oin had removed the severed warg's tooth from Kili's side and it was nearing midday. The sunrise had been a welcomed sight, for it brought an end to the longest night Fili could ever remember. The brothers usually experienced the rising sun together, as Kili often had too much energy to stay asleep for very long and Fili would be able to hear him moving about. Instead, that morning Fili told his brother about the sunrise.

"You should see it, Kee." He'd said, "The sun is so bright and beautiful this morning. Appearing over the trees on the mountain side as though it is rising straight from the forest itself." Kili had not stirred. He lay as still as he had for the last few hours. His eyes moved below his lids occasionally as though chasing a dream. Whatever he was dreaming, Fili hoped it was more pleasant than his reality.

"Fili." It was Thorin, walking towards him with a bowl in each hand. "I have brought you breakfast. It is left over soup. You didn't eat yours last night, you must be hungry."

"No." Fili said, monotone. He heard his uncle sigh.

"Please eat it. Or you'll make yourself sick. I already have one sick nephew, I do not wish to have another. Besides, what would Kili think when he wakes to find you half starved?" After a short pause Fili nodded and took the bowl, Thorin sat beside him. Once again the soup was warm in his hands, in fact there wasn't much temperature difference between the bowl and Kili's forehead. Fili breathed in the scent of the food and his stomach growled quietly. He hadn't noticed just how hungry he had been.

"Bilbo was right." He said, taking a spoonful of the broth in his mouth. It warmed his muscles instantly and brought alive all his senses. "It is good." Thorin smiled. He looked at his eldest nephew through the corner of his eye. Fili seemed so much older than he had the previous morning, although it had only been one day. His features were stony rather than cheerful as they usually were and his eyes were darker.

"I'm proud of you Fili. You did very well earlier." He said. Fili looked at him. "When Oin was working on Kili."

"What do you mean? I did nothing."

"Yes you did. You kept Kili calm, I'm sure that if you had not been there the whole process would have been far more difficult. You were strong for him, and he was strong in return."

"It was my duty to comfort him." Fili was about to take another spoonful of the soup but stopped and put the spoon back in the bowl. He looked sullenly at his brother. "He was in so much pain, it hurt me just to see." He sighed. "What will I do, uncle, if he doesn't wake up? How will I …?"

"No not think so negatively. He proved to us all what he was capable of when he killed those wargs. Five all by his own hand! If that does not prove to us how strong and capable he is then I do not know what will." Thorin leaned in closer to his youngest nephew, he could hear his rasped breaths. "I underestimated you Kili."

"He is a warrior, I always knew it. I'm am older than him yet he was able to keep up with me, always. He learnt how to use a sword with such speed you'd have thought he'd been clutching one when he was born. And the bow. I know of nobody who is as good a shot. A match for even the most highly skilled of elves." Bows were considered an elfish weapon, not one of a dwarf. Dwarves preferred swords and axes, but Kili had always longed for a bow and so Thorin had one made. There hadn't really been anyone to teach him, for not even Dwalin had really picked up a bow before. But Kili trained himself. Shooting at targets that he'd painted onto trees, shooting birds and squirrels and rabbits. It hadn't taken him long to get the perfect shot. A warrior, skilled with every weapon. "You hear me, Kili?" Fili said sternly to his sleeping brother. "You are a warrior. And warriors fight. So fight this fever and this injury and return to us."

"I am sure he will, Fili. I have never known him to quit, and I do not believe he will start now. Not when there is so much left." The two fell silent for some moments. And Thorin let his mind wander. He was proud of his nephews. He'd had plenty of times to tell them that, yet he hadn't. It took something as bad as this for him to realise that pride. In that moment, Thorin vowed to tell his young nephews more often how proud they made him. So that they never again felt useless.

Fili and Thorin ate the rest of their soup together, sat at Kili's side. Once both bowls had been eaten clean Thorin decided to leave his nephews alone again and to re-join the rest of the company. Fili couldn't deny that he had been grateful for his uncle's strong presence but now, with him gone, he could drop the façade that he had put up to hide how truly lost and desperate he was feeling. He stared at his brother's face, heart feeling heavy in his chest. He couldn't recall the last time Kili looked so sick and weak. He rarely ever got ill as a child and that continued as he grew up. Even on the rare occasion where he was sick, he never lay still. He would sneak out of the house and go to the woods ("the fresh air will do me good," he'd say with a mischievous wink.") He'd always been too impatient to lay around and wait to get better. But now, Fili supposed, he didn't have a choice.