Yes, I am back. And I do apologise. I have neglected this story far too long, but it has always been nagging me. Every now and then a review popped up in my email account, remembering me that there are people out there who like this story. Special thanks to Kili's Smile who reviewed ages ago, I know, but it gave me the much needed kick up the backside and I started writing again. It took a while to get there, but now that my characters and I are happily reunited, we are ready to rock.

XII. In which there is an argument

"That's all." Kili extracted the USB drive and put it on the table. "There is not one piece of useful information on it." He snorted. "I can't believe I wasted my time on this."

"They threatened to kill you! You heard what Narzug said. That the bullet was just the beginning. They plan to attack you again, and this time they will kill you. Just as they killed him."

"I heard what he said, and it's shite." He yawned.

"They murdered a man in front of a camera in cold blood. They threatened you. Your whole family, and you in particular. The black haired biker. You should take that seriously." Even to her own ears her voice sounded unpleasantly shrill. She took a deep breath and continued. "The strange voice… the eye… this leader of the Gundabad Gang, they obviously know of your uncle's plans to retake Erebor, and they are determined to stop him. There is no way he can stick to his plans now. You have to tell him."

Kili laughed. "Definitely not. Apart from the fact that he wouldn't listen to me, he would never cancel his plans, now that we have come so far. He has waited a long time for this moment, we all have. And we have sorted everything out. Nothing will go wrong. Everything has been going according to plan."

"It has? Getting shot was part of the plan then?"

He rolled his eyes. "It was stupidity. My own fault."

"That is going to make a wonderful epitaph."

"Tauriel." Kili took her hand in his and put his other on top. "Listen. It is not the first time we've been threatened, and it won't be the last. It is nothing to worry about."

"Nothing to… Are you crazy?"

She tried to free her hand but he kept it sandwiched in his.

"Please. I know it sounds weird but we are used to that. As long as I can remember they have been threatening to kill us. To spill our blood, to end our line, blah, blah, blah. But we're still here."

"Your father and your uncle Frerin are not." She knew that this was below the belt but she couldn't help it. He had to realise that this was serious.

The smile on his face crumbled. He let go of her hand and got up to pace the living room, suddenly agitated, and raked his fingers through his hair.

"What do you expect me to do? Tremble with fear? Run? Hide? I've done that all my life. Even when I was a little boy I knew that bad people were after us, trying to harm us. I knew I had to watch out for people following me. I knew I mustn't talk to anyone. I knew a phone call in the middle of the night meant we had to run. For years we never even bothered to unpack our bags. Can you imagine what it was like? Never going to a school longer than a few months, moving away in the middle of the night, never seeing your mates again, your girlfriend? When I was sixteen I had lived in about thirty different towns. I had never once been on a school trip but I could shoot a pistol and take on a grown man in a fist fight. We have been threatened so many times I lost count. So pardon me if I don't faint when some stupid orc vows to kill me."

She only realised how much his voice had risen when he stopped talking and hectically went through the pockets of his leather jacket that lay crumpled on the couch. A pack of cigarettes, a lighter, an angry puff of smoke.

He had never smoked in her flat before.

The fingers that lifted the cigarette to his lips trembled slightly. The crackling of the cigarette glow, hungrily consuming paper and tobacco, was the only sound in the silence that had fallen.

"I am sorry," Tauriel eventually said. Her throat was dry. "I had no idea. You must have been very lonely."

He shrugged without looking at her. "I had Fili."

She played with the drive in her fingers, wishing she would know what to say. But there were no words that could repair a broken childhood. Bring back his father. Or hers.

Eventually, Kili dropped the cigarette butt into his mug. He attempted a smile.

"I can imagine how scary that message must be to you. But we know how to deal with the Gundabad Gang."

She shook her head wearily. "Do not take it lightly. This wasn't an empty threat. They made Mitchell Narzug deliver it and chopped off his head before stuffing the recording into his mouth. They placed Narzug's head right on the Senator's desk. Clearly this was a message, a warning to stay away from you, because they want to deal with you themselves. Thranduil may want to throw you in the deepest dungeon, but they want you dead."

"They want to stop us," Kili agreed. "But they won't succeed. Thorin will take back Erebor, and then it will finally be normal lives for everyone of us."

He sat down again and nudged her slightly. "Come on, you promised not to freak out."

"I didn't promise."

"Yeah, right, you didn't. And I admit, watching someone being decapitated is not pretty. But you are Captain of the Elven Squad. You are about ten times tougher than anyone I know. Dwalin doesn't count." He grinned slightly. "Why are you so shaken?"

"Because they threatened you, and I don't want anything to happen to you. I care about you."

"Oh. You… care. Wow."

She felt herself blush. "You know what I mean. I like you."

"You like me," he said in a flat voice. „Hurray."

She exhaled her breath audibly. "I am not someone who dreams of matching Volvos and chocolate labs just because prince charming steps into my life. I am not a desperate romantic like you."

"Desperate?" He shook his head, and a stray lock danced on his nose. „I am not desperate. I know that loving someone doesn't make you weaker. It makes you stronger. How do you think we survived all those years? Because we had each other. Because we had friends and allies we could rely on. Everybody needs someone."

She watched the rebellious strand of hair that he unsuccessfully tried to tame with his fingers. Damn. She cared more about him than was good for her.

"You think by avoiding others you cannot get hurt?" Kili asked softly. "You are wrong, love. You will get hurt just like the rest of us. You just won't have anyone to stand by you."

His young face, pale with tiredness, was serious. There was the shadow of a stubble on his chin, and the circles under his eyes looked like bruises. He had worked nearly the whole night to crack the drive, and she hadn't even thanked him. Some of the tightness inside of her started to uncurl. He had been trying to help, had wanted to soothe her, and she had lashed out at him like she always did when someone came close to tearing down her walls.

Thranduil's face came into her mind when he had told her that her parents had been killed by orcs. That his wife had been with them, and that she was dead. She remembered thinking that he looked dead as well. She remembered him telling her that she had to be brave.

"It's not me I'm worried about. Even I can't protect you if you don't take a threat like this seriously."

"Protect me?" Kili's lips twitched. "Because you… like… me? Or because of what happened to your parents?"

Damn. Could he read minds?

"What happened to my parents is long ago and none of your business."

"No need to bite my head off. I merely wanted to help." He shrugged. "You had that look on your face."

"What look?"

"My mum gets it when something reminds her of our father. So utterly lost."

He looked lost himself. Tauriel bit her lip. What was wrong with her? She had turned on him, had most likely hurt him, and that was the last thing she wanted.

"I am sorry. I don't know how to behave in a situation like this. I don't know how to say those things. I am not good with emotions."

"Not good?" His eyebrows shot up. "You are lousy."

She heard her teeth snap shut.

"I am sorry I can't be what you want," she said icily. And was surprised that what was meant to be a snarky remark was the truth. She was sorry. For once she would have liked not to be the world's biggest failure when it came to relationships. Not to be a coward who backed out before things started to get too complicated. Or too intimate. Which was one and the same, really.

Kili looked at her, his gaze intense.

"You are exactly what I want," he said, his voice so dark and serious it made her skin tingle. Tauriel drew a nervous breath. And then Kili's mouth stretched into an impossibly wide smile.

"And I am your prince charming."

X

"Really?" Legolas asked. "That hacker of yours managed to get a video message out of this? Maybe we should hire him. Our own IT-people are useless. I have so many errors on my computer lately, and they just cannot make the thing function properly again. Do you think your hacker could look into our system?"

"You want to hire a hacker? You? Mr. Righteous himself?"

He grinned. "It seems, I already have. What does the message say?"

"See for yourself." She inserted the USB drive and pressed the key to play the message. Mitchell Narzug appeared on the screen, his smile arrogant, his black hair slicked back, just like she remembered him. To know what was going to happen in a few minutes; to know that his body – and head – were stowed away in the mortuary, made her feel queasy.

When the dark figure behind Narzug appeared, she watched Legolas from the corner of her eyes. He didn't even blink when the sword went through Narzug's neck like butter and the orc's head slowly tilted to the side before falling to the floor followed by a gush of blood that splattered onto the camera's lens.

The mechanical voice, the fiery eye, silence.

Legolas was still looking at the screen.

"The Durinsons'," he said softly. "It all comes down to them again. Why are they so important?"

"What do you mean?"

"Whoever is behind this wanted to make sure that we don't interfere. I wonder what is so special about Thorin Oakenshield that his enemies take such a great effort to mark him and his family as their targets. Yes, he wants to take back Erebor. But he is only one man with very few followers. Not even the brightest nor bravest, I dare say. Their chances to succeed are close to zero. So why are the Gundabad Gang and their mysterious leader so afraid of him?" He turned round to look at her. "We need to question Thorin Durinson. Find him. Or find that annoying nephew of his. Maybe the dwarf will tell you where his uncle is hiding, if you flutter your lashes at him a little." Legolas smiled but it did not reach his eyes. "He has a crush on you."

"Stop calling him a dwarf."

Legolas raised one eyebrow. "Don't tell me he managed to ensnare you with his daredevil behaviour and his bright smile. He is a Durinson, Tauriel. He cannot be trusted, just like his uncle. If you get involved with him, I guarantee you will get hurt."

She was already hurting, she thought.

She hadn't slept well, although Kili's arm had held her close and his body had warmed hers, just like in all those nights before. But she couldn't relax in his embrace. When she had closed her eyes she had seen a black figure raising a sword and cutting off Mitchell Narzug's head. She had listened to his oily voice in her head: Next time, we will finish him off. He dies first. And she had been afraid. Truly afraid that she wouldn't be able to stop them. What if they harmed Kili? What if they killed him? Why couldn't he see that he was in danger?

She thought about how she had chickened out of the bedroom this morning. She had been telling herself that she didn't want to wake Kili who really needed to get some sleep, but who had she been kidding? She had been extra careful not to wake him because she dreaded talking to him after last night. She had no idea what to say. She had recapitulated their argument over and over again, had mused about what he had told her. What she had said in return. She had said she liked him. Liked. She was such an idiot.

Legolas glanced at her but did not say anything. Instead he replayed the message.

"The rings of power are under our master's command", Narzug's oily voice said. Legolas pressed the pause button, his lips silently repeating the words. Then he shook his head. "Impossible."

She stared at him. "You know what he was talking about? Have you ever heard of something called the rings of power?"

"I always thought it was a mere myth. Decades ago there was a secret society operating in Middle Earth, dedicated to the welfare of the people. Each member, so the story goes, was given a ring of power. The most valuable of those rings, the master ring, if you like, was in the possession of the society's leader. Lord Sauron."

"You are kidding. Sauron? As in head-of-Mordor-Incorporated-Sauron?"

"The same. Unsurprisingly, he took advantage of his position. It was not the prospering of the people he had in mind but his own. He used his power over the ring bearers and forced them to do his bidding. Corruption and oppression became the secret society's second nature, and it fell apart some years later. The heads of the sections, however, kept their rings. No one knows who used to have one, no one knows who is still loyal to Sauron. If he calls upon the ring bearers now, who knows how many of them will answer." He took the drive and put it into his pocket. "The Senator must see this."

She grabbed her jacket. "Let's go."

Legolas shook his head. "No. You go and find Thorin Durinson."

"But…"

"It wasn't a request."

Legolas very rarely pulled rank, and when he did there was no way of talking him out of it. So she nodded and set off, but when she approached the parking lot where her car was waiting, she changed her mind and entered the garage instead. Among the few confiscated vehicles she quickly found the Ducati, its side marred by long scratches where it had slid over the asphalt.

Her detectives had located it on their search for the party of Thorin Durinson. They had found it next to a derelict boat house, not far from where the three abandoned speed boats had been hidden in the bushes on the embankment. The traces of blood inside the boathouse had confirmed that Killian Durinson, who had escaped the police chase on said bike, had been injured. Tauriel remembered their colleagues discussing the probable whereabouts of Killian Durinson, who, judging by the amount of blood and the remains of an amateurishly performed surgery, must have been seriously wounded and in need of medical attention. Listening to their speculations, reading their reports and reporting to Thranduil that – despite thorough investigations at each hospital and doctor's surgery in Middle Earth – the young man seemed to have been swallowed by the earth, had been like running the gauntlet for her. She had been living in constant fear that she would be exposed, that someone would find out that Kili was hiding in her flat.

Thranduil would have fired her on the spot. And if he found out what she was about to do now, he wouldn't be pleased either, but she didn't care. Returning the bike to its owner had long been overdue. There had been no legal basis to keep it anyway, once the case had been closed. The Senator himself had made it very clear that his officers should no longer waste their time trying to find the orcs who had stolen some speed boats to chase the Durinsons on the Anduin. He had stressed that no one had been injured in the chase and that Killian Durinson had most likely injured himself when he had slid over the street after breaking roughly a thousand speed limits. Mitchell Narzug had been set free after this, all his belongings had been returned to him. Only Thranduil's obsession with everything that had to do with the Durinsons had made him instruct his officers to keep the motorcycle confiscated until further notice.

Kili had asked at one point if there was anything she could do, and when she had told him no, he had not asked again. He deserved better, she thought. She had done a lot of thinking since last night.

Rejoining him with his bike was one way of saying what she couldn't say with words. More importantly, it was the right thing to do; she had allowed Thranduil's personal vendetta to interfere with police work for much too long.

It was strange, she thought, how differently she saw things now. Although she hadn't agreed with some of Thranduil's orders in the past, it had never occurred to her not to obey, even if she had to take Maalox for days. Now she was surprised how easy it actually was to follow her own judgement for a change. She would not trace Thorin Durinson, she decided as she signed the papers and ordered a mechanic to deliver the Scrambler right to her front door. Most likely it was a waste of time anyway. Even if she managed to dig him up; the man would never talk. No, Thorin Oakenshield was the least promising candidate to shed some light on this obscure mess that involved headless corpses, lost rings of power, and a death-threat to the man she – what was the l-word again?

She had to take another approach to the matter if she wanted to find out the reason why the Durinsons were being mercilessly hunted by those orcs. She was sure that Mitchell Narzug's head and the death-threat were just the tip of the iceberg. She had to talk to that funny little lawyer again. Baggins. Or Boggins? She wondered why she couldn't remember his name properly. Usually she was good with names, with faces. Having a good memory was part of her job after all. But that little man had something about him that made her forget him instantly. As if he could make himself invisible. Which, of course, was a stupid thought. He was a forgettable person, that was all.