13

Fíli had barely heard a word of the exchange between the rest of the company and Beorn. His whole brain had gone numb – it felt like his body was shutting down, only to be filled with an incessant buzzing that seemed to be a pathetic substitute for the emptiness that he felt. He barely noticed Oin and Gloin help him up off the floor and guide him into Beorn's house, before dropping him into a chair at the dining table that was the same height as he was.

"I only have two spare beds," Beorn said to Thorin. "If you plan on sleeping, which, assuming that everything you've told me is true, you are, then all I can offer you is the floor."

"We're quite used to sleeping on the floor," Thorin replied. "We are immensely grateful for your hospitality, and if there's anything we can do to repay you – "

"I'm going out tomorrow morning to see if your story's true," Beorn cut off Thorin. "I might be able to catch a stray orc and force the truth out of it. Should be fun."

Not for the first time, Thorin worried slightly about who Gandalf chose to trust. Beorn seemed... brutal. He treated his enemies much like orcs would, and though he hated the whole species, he couldn't help but draw comparisons between Beorn and orcs, and for the first time, he felt something – a fleeting spark of... he wouldn't call it pity, the race had condemned itself too far for him to feel that, but his hatred for orcs seemed to soften slightly, if only for a moment. To change the subject, he asked Beorn about something of great importance to himself and the rest of the company.

"Do you mind if we use your pantry?"

-:-

It was some fifteen minutes later that Bofur was handing out bowls of stew to his companions, all of whom were seated around the table. Nobody was really saying much, though whether out of exhaustion or thinking about the night's events, Bofur couldn't tell.

Fíli was staring at the space just in front of the table, tears silently streaming down his face. Bofur put a bowl down on the table in front of him, making sure it was directly in his line of sight, praying that somehow, Fíli would see it and forget his grief, if only momentarily, as it was eclipsed with the realisation of just how hungry he was.

But Fíli ignored it just as much as he had done the table. For all the attention he gave it, the bowl might not have been there at all.

Sighing with defeat, he put his own bowl down at the last remaining space, sitting down next to Bombur, who shrugged and tilted his head slightly. Nobody quite knew what to say, filling their mouths with food as opposed to empty meaningless words that wouldn't compensate for the huge oversight that they had all committed. None of them had realised that it had been Kíli the goblins held prisoner in the Misty Mountains, a connection so blindingly obvious now that they wondered how they hadn't seen it before, and because of that, they all felt partially responsible for his fate.

But it hadn't been any of the company sitting there who had cut Azog's arm. Fíli could try and convince himself as much as he wanted that Azog was the guilty one, and yet he would never succeed. It had been Kíli who had made Azog drop him off the cliff. Azog had been right. Kíli had left him willingly. Kíli had left his brother knowing what it would do to him. And that abandonment was something he found very hard to forgive.

"Why would he do that?" Fíli choked out, his voice coming out as little more than a breathy, high-pitched croak. "Why would he just leave me... alone?"

He didn't notice the dark looks cast around the table, as the company struggled to find an answer.

"He did it for me, didn't he?"

"Fíli..." Fíli looked up at his uncle, his eyes meeting with Thorin's with an unspoken, heartbreaking plea – all he was asking was for Thorin to deny what he had just said. Thorin paused for a moment, before trying to change the subject. "Fíli, you should eat something. I promise, you'll feel better for it."

Fíli gave an almost imperceptible start as he looked down, his eyes falling on the stew as though he had only just seen it.

"I'm not hungry."

"Well, that's a lie and we all know it."

Fíli lifted the spoon, but his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't even lower it to the bowl. It felt so heavy in his hands. It was absurd – an hour ago he had been holding a sword to Azog's chest, a sword that he was going to drive into Azog's heart, with ease, and now he had been so sapped of strength by crippling loss that he could barely lift a spoon. It fell to the bowl with a clatter, and Fíli fell back against his chair, tilting his head backwards. He would not lose whatever control he had left.

Rough hands hauled him out of his chair, before guiding him into another room. He barely registered his surprise at the fact that his legs were supporting his weight, before he tripped on the threshold of the next room. And that was all it took to send him over the edge.

-:-

"Kíli, for the last time, there are no orcs hiding under your bed."

It was the middle of the night, and, once again, Kíli had woken up in tears, screaming about how the monsters were going to eat him, and that this was the night that they were going to get them, and yes, he knew that he said that every night, but this time was different. He had actually felt them clawing at his blanket, dragging it away. And the fact that should a gang of orcs have been hiding under his bed, and had been for a while now, and they hadn't attacked him, or dragged him away, or indeed done anything at all to him, did nothing to comfort the six-year-old dwarfling. Fíli wouldn't have minded this so much, had it not been for the fact that they had gone through the same routine every night, consistently, for the past three months.

"No!" Kíli protested, not exactly appreciating the fact that his suspicions were being completely ignored. "No, Fíli! I'm telling you that they're there!"

"Would you like me to check for you?" Fíli offered testily.

There was a soft sniff, followed by a rustle as Kíli wrapped his blankets firmly around him, pressing his back against the wall, the protection offered by the thin sheet of fabric incomparable to anything else in Kíli's eyes, save for his mother, brother and uncle. Fíli knew the answer to his question, but wanted to delay that moment as much as possible. It was inevitable – he would get out of bed, he would light a candle, he would look under his brother's bed, he would ascertain the fact that there were no orcs or trolls or wargs or balrogs or whatever monster had featured in Kíli's nightmares that night, he would offer to show Kíli this, Kíli would deny, too afraid to face the underside of his bed, he would blow the candle out, and he would spend the next twenty minutes trying to get back to sleep. The routine was the same every night. But he was so comfortable...

With an annoyed groan, the eleven-year-old pushed back the covers, and carried out the now-annoyingly-well-practised routine.

"Like I said, there is absolutely nothing under here to worry about," Fíli said exasperatedly.

"Are... Are you sure?"

"Come and see for yourself."

What Fíli had meant to say was 'would you like to come and see for yourself?' but due to his exasperation and the fact that he had said the same thing so many nights before, he cut through several unnecessary words and didn't bother with the questioning tone. The result of this was that it came out as less of an offer and more of a command.

Kíli fractionally eased himself away from the wall. He very cautiously slipped out of his bed, before tentatively crouching down next to Fíli to look under the bed.

Sure enough, there were no orcs.

"Oh..." Fíli covered his smirk at the embarrassed tone Kíli used. "They must have gone."

"They ran away when they heard me coming," Fíli grinned. "They're terrified of me, you understand."

"Oh..."

Fíli straightened up.

"I was so scared that they were going to take me away..."

"Kíli," Fíli said seriously. "I promise you, I won't ever let any orcs take you, or hurt you, or do anything bad to you. I'll die before I let anything happen to you. I'll protect you, no matter what happens."

"Promise?"

Fíli nodded, meeting his brother's eyes. "Now can we please go back to bed?"

Kíli looked remarkably relieved as he crawled under his blanket again as Fíli blew out the candle. There was a moment of silence after Fíli got back into his own bed, swearing that he would be more careful about what stories he allowed Dwalin to tell Kíli, but as he rolled over, Kíli spoke again.

"Fíli?"

"Hm?"

"Can I sleep in your – "

"Absolutely not."

-:-

Fíli made absolutely no attempt to break his fall. Thorin caught him just before he hit the ground, pulling him inside the room and shutting the door. Fíli stopped caring about anything except his incomprehensible failure. He had failed to protect his brother from his childhood nightmares, which he had promised to do. He lost control, sobbing uncontrollably as Thorin half-dragged, half-carried Fíli over to where a blanket and pillow had been laid out on the floor. Fíli clutched weakly at his uncle.

"It's all my fault..." he sobbed. "I shouldn't have let him go... I promised I would never leave him..."

Thorin pulled Fíli into a tight embrace, as Fíli buried his head in his shoulder. For a second, he was sixteen years old again, losing his father all over again, clutching to the closest thing that he had for a substitute as the walls of his world came crashing down, leaving him buried amongst the wreckage.

"It's all right," Thorin breathed, unable to keep his own emotions in check as tears cut tracks through the grime that streaked his face. "It wasn't your fault..."

"He was my brother! He was everything to me!"

"I know..."

"Why would he do that to me?" Fíli asked, and Thorin heard not only the grief but the hurt in his nephew's voice. "He knew what it would do to me, so why did he do it?"

But Thorin had been asking himself the same question, and had come up with no answer. He dared not think about what Kíli must have endured at Azog's hands for him to force somebody to drop him off a cliff. Kíli had always been the most optimistic person in the company, one of the only ones who had really believed that they had a chance at retaking Erebor, as opposed to deluding himself like most of the rest of them, and to see his spirit so broken that he had seen no other option than to throw away his life like that so needlessly... It made no sense.

"I don't know, Fíli," Thorin finally breathed. "I really don't know..."

A/N: Thank you as always for all the lovely reviews! So I was originally going to do the this chapter and the next chapter as one really long one, but I might have gotten a little carried away with Fíli's excessive sadness (sorry about that). So next chapter we might actually get somewhere in plot-terms! Also, sorry about the wait, full-time school has started, and that basically means that I now have no life.