As soon as the last bandage was back in place, Balin stood. He looked speculatively at Kíli and Thorin for a moment before picking up the pot and heading back to camp.

"Get him dressed and on his feet, Kíli," he called over his shoulder. "When you're done, you two start moving. I'll tell the rest to pack up and we'll catch up to you." Kíli blinked at the coolness of Balin's tone. As the older dwarf stalked off, he realized that after he came back with supplies he never said a single word to his uncle.

"Balin, I . . . I can't—" Kíli tried to protest his ability to get his uncle to his feet. Kíli could barely get himself to his feet, let alone another person that couldn't do much on their own. But Balin paid him no mind and kept walking as though Kíli had said nothing. It seemed that he wanted nothing more than to put as much distance between himself and Thorin as he could.

"What was that about?" Kíli muttered.

"I have no idea," Thorin replied looking at his shirt with a grimace and wondering if it would truly be so dreadful for him to go without. It wasn't as if he wasn't mostly covered anyway. There were enough bandages there to nearly cover his entire torso and it wasn't as if the shirt would provide any kind of protection against injury. At that thought, all he could think was that he was thankful that all Fíli had removed before he walked away was the braids. He had still wore the mail the last time Thorin had seen him.

"If I have to wear clothing so do you, Uncle," Kíli said with a laugh seeing the dark glare that Thorin was leveling at the blue cloth. "I like this situation no more than you do."

"Your mother didn't have to sew your shirt to your pants this time, did she?" Thorin asked with a smile as he remember Kíli's 'clothing-is-bad' phase as a child and Dís' creative solution to her son stripping off clothing everywhere he went.

"No," Kíli said a bright smile on his face as he tried to shrug only to stop with a wince as it pulled his wounds. "She did threaten to though. Something about the embarrassment she would feel if I became a 'naked princling running wild through the woods without braids like an animal bringing shame to the line of Durin.' Her words, not mine. I see nothing wrong with a bit of nudity." Thorin snorted at Kíli's statement. He well knew that Kíli and modesty were not synonymous.

"Are there any societal mores you do approve of, little one?" Thorin asked with a laugh.

"Not really," Kíli replied. "You know I don't really like ceremony." Thorin nodded, saddened by the fact that Kíli really had no choice in the matter. Just as Fíli hadn't. They couldn't change the circumstances of their birth or their appearances. Sensing the change in his uncle's mood, Kíli changed the subject.

"So . . . let's get that shirt on you, shall we?" Kíli said, with a sigh. "I may as well have done one of the things Balin told me to. Don't want to be a complete failure after all."

"You're not a failure," Thorin snapped, thinking of what Fíli had said a bit ago.

"I know," Kíli replied, his tone revealing his shock at his uncle's vehemence. "It was a joke, Uncle."

"It wasn't funny, Kíli!" Thorin snarled.

"I'm sorry," Kíli whispered looking at his uncle in confusion. He'd joked about being a failure before and his uncle had never gotten angry with him for it. Said he wasn't a failure, of course, but never gotten angry about it. Even his reaction to the bit about the nighttime orc raid hadn't been this bad.

"Uncle?" Kíli asked cautiously. Thorin turned to him with pain-filled blue eyes and Kíli had to swallow to control himself. Somehow what he had said had hurt his uncle deeply. He wasn't sure how. He knew now that words could hurt but it had been so little; was his uncle truly so fragile?

"I really am sorry," Kíli repeated. "Do you . . . do you forgive me?" In that moment, Kíli looked so much like he had years ago when he was pleading for forgiveness that Thorin couldn't resist him, especially since it wasn't truly Kíli that he was angry with: it was himself for allowing Fíli to believe that he was a failure and never realizing that he had done it.

"There's nothing to forgive, little one," Thorin replied gripping Kíli's hand with his own. "Now, let's try to do as we were told. Though for issuing orders to us like that I should go naked just to spite him." Kíli laughed again, his moods shifting like quicksilver and the hurt disappearing in seconds just as it always had.

"What of your reputation, Uncle?" Kíli asked as he slipped the shirt over Thorin's arms as carefully as he could.

"I'm not sure that my reputation can be sullied any more than it already has, Kíli," Thorin said sadly, all trace of good humor gone. "Not after . . . Not since . . ." Kíli wanted to tell Thorin that he was wrong and that everything would be fine and that no one thought any less of him for the whole situation, but he couldn't. His uncle had erred. Greatly. And everyone knew. Instead he offered him what comfort he could.

"Nothing's changed for most of the company, Uncle," Kíli said quietly, unable to look at his uncle as he admitted that he knew the truth. He no longer wanted to rage at Thorin but that didn't stop him from feeling sad and disappointed in all of them—himself included— for failing Fíli as they had.

"What do you mean?" Thorin demanded sharply letting out a hiss as Kíli pulled his shirt over his head and straightened it.

"They knew," Kíli whispered. "They . . . they've always known."

"Who's 'they', Kíli? And what have they always known?" Thorin asked.

"I don't really know," the young heir replied. "I know that Balin and Dwalin always knew, so that probably means that Óin and Glóin did too. And Dwalin said that Mother knows. I don't know who else. But I think it was really only news to me."

"What was news, lad?" Thorin demanded, his stomach sinking as he realized what Kíli was talking about and praying to the Maker that he was wrong.

"You and Fíli," Kíli replied simply. "I think I was the only one that didn't know. Well, maybe Bilbo didn't."

"You weren't," Thorin whispered looking away. "I wasn't aware of my behavior either. I want you to know . . . I would never have done that on purpose. I do love your brother. As much as I love you and your mother. The three of you are all I have."

"Then why did you do it?" Kíli asked firmly. "If you love him like you love me why didn't you show him like you showed me?" Thorin was silent for a time and Kíli began to realize that he had just asked a very rude question.

"I'm sorry," Kíli said. "You don't have to answer that, Uncle. You don't have to explain yourself to me. I shouldn't have asked."

"No," Thorin agreed. "I don't have to; but I will." He paused and took as deep a breath as he could before he looked at Kíli and prayed that this conversation went better with him than it had his brother. He couldn't lose Kíli again. Not so soon. Not after he'd lost Fíli and Dís. But he also didn't want to hide his mistakes from his nephew.

"My excuse isn't a good one," Thorin said, staring into Kíli's eyes—Dís's eyes, Frerin's eyes—as he confessed his greatest failing of his family. "It's not even an adequate one. I daresay it's not even a paltry one." Thorin paused again. "I've already told Fíli this and he found it less than comforting. I fear what you'll think of me when you know the truth as well but . . . I can't bring myself to lie to you, Kíli. Even by omission."

"The reason that I was never as warm to your brother as I am to you is because Fíli looks too much like my brother," Thorin replied. "It was cruel and stupid of me."

"That doesn't make sense, Uncle," Kíli replied. "Why would Fíli looking like your brother make you dislike him. I'd think that as much as you miss him it would make you like him more. I just look like Mother. You see her all the time."

"You're missing the point, lad," Thorin sighed shaking his head sadly. It shouldn't have mattered which of them looked like which of his siblings. He should have been able to love them as themselves rather than mix them up in the troubles of his past based on who they looked like. "It was hard because I killed my brother. I'm the reason he's dead. "

"No," Kíli said shaking his head with a look of confused disgust on his face. "Mother said he was killed by orcs at the Battle of Azanulbizar. Orcs killed him. Not you."

"The orcs may have done the deed but I made it easier for them, Kíli," Thorin said before he gave a sad laugh. "You and I are too much alike, little one. We're both stubborn, arrogant, rash. Kíli, the look on Fíli's face when you said what you did in the caves, do you remember it?"

"I keep trying not to," Kíli replied sadly. "Maybe if I don't think about it I can forget it. He . . . he was so hurt. So . . ."

"You'll never be able to forget it, lad," Thorin said, his voice little more than a whisper. "It's been more than a hundred years and I can still remember the look on my brother's face when I said nearly the same thing to him. I called him a coward for not wanting to charge into battle against orcs as a child. I told him that he wasn't my brother. That he wasn't worthy of his place in the succession and that even if he did ever get the chance to rule he would fail to be able to rally the people behind him. Then I . . . I told him I never wanted to see him again." Thorin sighed, tears clinging to his lashes as he admitted everything that he had done to his brother to his nephew.

Kíli watched in shock as his uncle cried. He'd never seen Thorin cry before. Once more he felt that he was seeing something that he wasn't meant to.

"I . . . I never did, Kíli," Thorin said once he felt he was able, though his voice was still choked with unshed tears. "Not alive anyway. He died that day and I never got to tell him that I hadn't meant it. I didn't mean any of what I said. I was . . . scared—no, not scared, terrified. But I had no way out of the situation and here was my brother, my sweet, foolish baby brother, telling me to run to Father and Grandfather and demand as their heir that they stop the battle. I couldn't do it. They wouldn't have stopped, even if I'd asked and . . . and I was afraid they would think less of me if I did. So I didn't."

"I wanted to, but I didn't," Thorin sighed. "Instead, I lashed out at the one person I shouldn't have. I wanted to rage at my father and grandfather, ask the questions of them that Frerin asked of me. I wanted to ask why they thought we needed to retake Khazad-dûm. . . but I didn't. Instead, I raged at Frerin for suggesting it in the first place. I cursed him for suggesting what was best for our people. What was right. I drove him away from me and it resulted in his death."

Kíli sat in silence for a moment, taking in the fact that his uncle had made the same mistake that he did. His uncle had also disowned his brother. His uncle had betrayed his own brother. But there was one difference in their situation: Fíli wasn't dead yet. But if he had died . . . Kíli could see where his uncle was coming from. If Fíli had died because of Kíli's words . . . he never would have been able to forgive himself. He shuddered to think what would have happened if one of his sons had looked anything like his brother and with their father being a blonde it was possible and blue eyes did run in the family. If that had happened. . . Kíli wasn't sure that he could live with it.

Thorin watched Kíli's face carefully as he digested what he had just been told preparing himself for the moment that hatred filled his nephew's eyes and Kíli stormed off as Fíli had done just a bit before. It never came. Instead, Kíli looked at him with what almost looked like pity. It was a look that he had seen on Dís' face before but never Kíli's.

"You didn't kill him," Kíli finally said, his brown eyes soft. "Even if you hadn't said that, he might have died, Uncle. You said he was a child," Kíli paused to snort. "None of us here are . . . well, I am. But I'm nearly and adult and that's not the point. Anyway, we're all adults and we're running from orcs. They probably would have killed him anyway and you too trying to protect him."

Thorin's mouth opened in shock that that was what Kíli would choose to say now. Thorin shook his head. He'd heard the same argument before. Dís always said the same thing when this topic came up.

"You sound like your mother. Did she tell you to say that?" Thorin asked with a sad smile. He wouldn't have put it past his sister to tell one of her sons to tell him that if this came up on the quest.

"No," Kíli replied. "We've never discussed this, Uncle. This is the first I've heard of it."

"It's not like it matters," Thorin whispered. "Regardless of who killed him, Frerin is dead and Fíli . . . I can never apologize enough to erase what I did. I can never make it up to him." Kíli was quiet for a moment as he tried to think of how to say what he wanted to without hurting his uncle before deciding that had just needed to say it.

"There's one difference, Uncle," Kíli eventually said, swallowing before he could finish as Thorin's blue eyes bored into him. "Fíli's not dead. He's still alive. If you try then . . . maybe . . ." he trailed off with a small shrug and an awkward half-smile, unwilling to say that Fíli would forgive their uncle.

"Sometimes I forget just how young you still are," Thorin replied, his tone gentle. Kíli waited for an explanation but none came. He was just about to ask for one when their private conversation was interrupted by the company. Balin took one look at the two of them still where he had left them and raised an eyebrow at Kíli.

"I couldn't get him up," Kíli replied. "I can barely get me up." Balin nodded, feeling shame was through him that he had forgotten about Kíli's own injuries and making a mental note to see to them at the next rest stop.

"It's alright, lad," Balin said. "We'll get him up." Despite his words, Balin made no move towards Thorin even when Dori was already at the king's side. Dori looked up, waiting for someone else to come help him but none was coming. Bofur looked torn between helping and not overstepping himself, but the others just looked uncomfortable and Thorin's cousins looked nearly hostile.

"Do you think you can get to your feet with just my help, Thorin?" Dori asked quietly his words just for the King. "I don't think we'll be getting any more help. They seem . . . unsettled."

"I can try," Thorin replied, having sensed the same discontent that Dori was, before trying to fold his legs under him so that he could get to his feet without the use of his arms. It was rapidly clear that this was not going to work. Dori may have been strong, but Thorin was heavy and too weak to be much help in the process. Just as Dori was about to insist that one of the other's help him, a flash of gold beside him caught his attention.

"Switch sides with me," Fíli ordered. "I can help but I need to be able to use my left hand." Dori nodded and did as he was told. Through the combined efforts of Fíli, Dori and Thorin, the king was on his feet once more. Even once he was on his feet, Thorin clung to them for a moment, resting his head on Fíli's shoulder and trying to prepare himself to move. Through it all, Fíli's face remained blank, though his jaw clinched when Thorin clung to him in a parody of an embrace. After what felt like an eternity to the blonde heir, Thorin released him and stood on his own power.

"Thank you," the king said, looking at Dori first before his eyes landed on Fíli. The sight of his nephew hurt him. With his hair pulled back like Kíli's, Thorin could see a resemblance between Fíli and Dís that he had never known was there but more than that, with his hair styled more like Víli's, Fíli looked just like his father. He didn't resemble Frerin, not truly. There were similarities, but those were just the common features that Dís had shared with their brother. Thorin didn't know how he'd never seen it before. Fíli didn't look like Frerin. Other than the blonde hair, he was a mix of Víli and Dís, just as he should have been. Frerin wasn't there, just the features that were uniquely Fíli.

"Thank you, Fíli," Thorin said again, a bit disturbed by the passionless non-expression on Fíli's face. He didn't know what it meant. He'd never seen anything so cold on Fíli's face before. There was always some twinkle of mischief, some sign of life. Not this blankness. He didn't understand it.

Thorin may not have, but Kíli had. And to see it now terrified him. He'd only ever seen it once before but he still remembered it. This was Fíli's 'I'm furious with you but I'm not going to yell because it won't do any good anyway' expression. The one time Kíli had seen it before had been when they were children and another boy, Dorin, had said something horrible about Kíli's parentage and their mother's supposed lack of discretion in bedfellows. One moment Fíli had been smiling and the next . . . he'd worn the same expression he did now. Fíli had said nothing to the boy but the next day at weapon's practice, Dwalin had had to drag him off the boy. Kíli had thought that his brother had killed Dorin but then he had stirred. Dorin didn't come back to practice for over a week. Fíli had been severely punished for nearly killing another student—he refused to tell their mother why he had done it and forbade Kíli from doing so, as he said it would hurt her more to know—and Kíli had never seen Fíli make that face ever again until this day. And now he was making it at their uncle.

But then Fíli spoke and Kíli's worry for his uncle was pushed away in his shock at what his brother said.

"You're welcome, Thorin," Fíli said before turning and beginning to walk down the mountain once more.

"Fíli!" Kíli squeaked. He couldn't believe what his brother had just done. "Fíli?" He made to go after his brother and demand an explanation but was stopped by a hand on his wrist. He looked back to see Thorin looking at him with sad blue eyes.

"It's alright, lad. Let him go," Thorin said, though the breathless of his voice was caused by more than just the pain of his wounds. He was both shocked and pained by what Fíli had called him but could see where the lad was coming from. He truly had no claim to kinship with Fíli. Not after what he had done.

"But—" Kíli protested, looking at his brother's retreating back before looking back at his uncle with a small noise in his throat.

"At least he's speaking to me," Thorin continued, offering Kíli a sad smile. "It's more than I deserve." Kíli stared at his uncle incredulously. The rest of the company were just as shocked as Kíli and Bilbo and Bofur were wondering if they were the only ones that heard the anger and pain and hint of threat in Fíli's words.

They weren't, but Balin, Dwalin Óin and Glóin were more preoccupied with Thorin's statement that Fíli's threat—as they felt that Fíli might just be justified in anything he wanted to do to Thorin after what the king had said to him. They had taken Thorin's statement to Kíli as a statement of guilt. They took it to mean that Thorin had said to Fíli what Dwalin had said he had.

ooOO88OOoo

There we are all, new chapter up. I would love to know what you thought of it!

Thank you to those of you that reviewed!

Anybody: I'm glad that you are back as well :) And it look like your one week without the internet was well timed :) I spent a week too busy to write due to school :) And yep. All over and they went swimmingly :) And yep. Thorin is his own biggest enemy at the moment. That and his wounds. And as painful as it is, you are right in saying that it is necessary. For him to even begin to make amends he has to realize exactly what he's done (just like Kili) And no, he's only human (dwarvish?) he can't keep a cool, level head all the time. I would almost argue that he is more fragile than his heirs. Thorin ... he's got issues that even he doesn't realize are there just yet. And you are totally right. If he's not whole, he can't possiably try to fix anyone else. And Kili has made GREAT progress. He now knows what he's capable of even if he's not quite sure how to control it just yet. And he now has some self-control but as we'll see soon, it's not perfect. He learned many things that he needed while tending to Thorin and some that he hasn't even realized he learned yet. And yes, sometimes and honest, "I'm sorry" is the best thing but sometimes... it's not enough. :( And chapter 28 ... Poor Fíli :( And I'm sorry that I made you cry but thank you so much for the compliment! And Fili does need to talk. And you're right. Fili doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't want to burden anyone else with his problems and this includes Bilbo. And Fili totally does. His mental state and paranoia right now, combined with his anger and the feeling of being betrayed ... it is dangerous to both himself and others. If he doesn't handle this correctly, Fíli could be lost forever to the dark side :( And that is totally Bilbo's appeal as well. He is not part of this. He wasn't there for the betrayal and had nothing to do with any of it. If Fili talks to anyone, Bilbo would be a good choice. Now we just have to hope that Fili will talk to Bilbo. And Dwalin ... he did. He just jumped right in and didn't take a look at just how upset Fili was and how he felt about himself before deciding that Thorin had to have done it. And yeah... by spreading the gossip, Dwalin has opened up a whole new world of problems. It would have actually been better had he just confronted Thorin about it in the first place rather than talking behind his back and turning the others against him. And that is the best summary of this that I have ever heard! I love that "all of them are victims and yet all of them have guilt" Brilliant! That is totally what I was going for! No one has clean hands in this! And I am very glad that you are still enjoying this and hopefully we will read one another again soon :)

That's all for now, folks. Again, I would love to hear what you thought!

Stickdonkeys.