Though Morwinyon had decided that Kíli would be in charge of the child's father-name, she had stipulations.

"Not Durin," she said. "And nobody had better try to name it after my father either."

The fact that she was still having this conversation while in labor would, she hoped, impress upon Kíli how important she found these parameters.

He seemed much less impressed than she would have hoped.

"And no portents," Morwinyon continued. "None of this 'glint in the dark' nonsense I was stuck with."

"You like your name," Kíli said, though he sounded strained.

Morwinyon thought irritably that she was the one in labor, and should therefore be the strained one. Kíli seemed to sense her frustration - or perhaps he only reacted to how hard she gripped his hand.

"I like it better than my other name," she retorted as Dis said something Morwinyon was sure was very important but that she could not quite absorb through another wave of pain.

Whatever Kíli said was lost too - Morwiynon lost track of time and individual events. Everything blurred together in a haze of pain and Dis' calm voice. Somewhere Dis explained to her that Morwinyon was not dilating but was still trying to give birth anyway, and something about trying something that would be painful but would save at least the child, because at this rate Dis was sure neither of them would survive.

Morwinyon remembered clearly saying, "A dragon did not kill me, and Azog and Bolg did not kill me, and I will be damned if my own child does," and Dis barking a laugh.

Morwinyon was nearly certain she passed out. Probably it was a mercy, for when she was finally aware of her surroundings her body hurt much less than it had for ten months.

"Everyone should do surgery on elves," Dis said. She was holding a bundle in her arms. "They heal up fast, when their bodies aren't putting everything into keeping babies alive."

"Never again," Morwinyon said. "But since I am here already, I would hold the child."

Kíli laughed from her other side, the sound a breath away from hysteria. "Which one?" he asked as she turned to look at him.

Kíli also held a bundle. His began to shriek, and was echoed by the one in Dis' arms.

There were two? Morwinyon gave up making sense of anything and said, "Both."

"Angion," Kíli said as Dis handed Morwinyon one baby. The little boy stopped shrieking, but he did keep frowning. Morwinyon traced a finger between his brows and smiled, proud of herself, before she held out an arm for her other child.

"Tauriel," he said firmly, passing the little girl over. Tauriel Morwinyonien (what a name. Maybe she could get away with leaving out a syllable. How would the boy be styled? Angion Fílien?) blinked up at her mother, mouth still open but no sound emerging. She closed it and squinted suspiciously up at Morwinyon.

"Hello," Morwinyon murmured in Sindarin. Kíli had badgered her for remedial lessons, which was how he had known how to name Angion as he had. "I am going to be a good parent, I hope you realize. I had at least one good example."

Angion sighed, unimpressed, and appeared to doze off again. Tauriel, after a moment, seemed almost to shrug and did the same.

Tauriel blinked her eyes open to beauty. She squinted, though the light was not too harsh. It was, in fact, perfect, lending a soft glow to the quiet copse of trees she found herself in.

Suspicion set in immediately. This was the Greenwood, as it had been in her youth, but it was not anything like this now: now it was Mirkwood, and quiet, beautiful copses of trees were near nonexistent - not to mention how certain she was that when she had last opened her eyes, she was on a cold grey mountaintop.

Welcome, Tauriel, a quiet voice said, the whisper of a night breeze wrapped around the snapping crack of a bonfire.

"Welcome where?" she asked, spinning. No one stood behind her, or to either side. "Show yourself!"

I am doing my best, the voice said, sounding vaguely apologetic. You have come to the halls of Mandos, to rest in peace.

"I do not have time for that," Tauriel said before the rest of the information registered. "No. Send me back."

What do you have to go back to? Mandos inquired. You have been banished from your home. Kíli is dead. Will the dwarves accept you?

"Morwinyon will make them," Tauriel retorted, and started for the edge of the trees. They seemed to go on forever, now, no longer a copse. She stopped and looked up, searching for the stars that would lead her east.

The constellations were different. Tauriel supposed she should have expected that.

Morwinyon will join you here, Mandos pointed out.

"Not soon, if I have anything to say about it. If you will not send me back, at least give me directions east. I can find a boat."

Can you sail? he asked, sounding curious.

"I will figure it out."

You will capsize in a day and return here.

"I will swim," Tauriel said nonsensically, beginning to walk again. She knew there was something wrong. She had left something unfinished, or just undone. Why had she been exiled? Why did she need the dwarves to accept her?

Here you leave aside cares, Mandos said. Here you do not need to worry.

"You have never raised a child like Morwinyon," Tauriel said. "Worry is constant."

Stay, he said. Rest.

"No," she snapped, shoving aside a suddenly larger branch. "Morwinyon needs me, and I will go."

Are all silvan so stubborn as you?

"There are few as stubborn as I," Tauriel told the Valar, and with her next step the trees wavered, stone showing through.

Thank goodness for that, she thought she heard Mandos mutter as she opened her eyes to sharp pain in the side of her head and aching, cold joints.

Then she remembered, and it was not her joints or head that hurt the worst.

Later, after she scoured the area for some sign of Morwinyon, some hint of her, or her body, or Kíli's body, Thranduil found her beside Fíli. She had one hand over his wound, as if she could heal it still, and the other fisted in his necklace, as if that would help anything.

"You could not find her either," he said.

When she did not answer, he said, "Come away, Tauriel."

"No," she said. She had said no to Mandos. Saying no to Thranduil was nothing.

She had already said no to Thranduil, come to think of it.

"Tauriel," he said, a hint of bite in the tone, but he did not sound as he did when he was angry.

"I thought I could save one of them," she said. She had thought she could save Morwinyon, but she would have settled for Fíli, she would have, just one. Mandos, she thought furiously, you could have warned me.

Thranduil sat beside her, settling carefully, close enough that she could feel that he still shook.

"Why does this hurt so much?" she demanded. "I will see Morwinyon again someday - I might have seen her sooner - and I did not know Fíli, not really, and Kíli - why does it hurt? How do you stand it?"

"I stand it poorly," he said, with the wry lilt she remembered from a childhood that had been absent of parents but had a king who had cared for all of his people generally and the little orphan girl specifically. Thranduil had thought her impertinence amusing then, and had always been on her side, and had not stinted with absently offered affection or easy encouragement. Laeriel had been the more reserved of the two.

But then Laeriel had gone, and Tauriel had only almost found her, and Morwinyon had needed Tauriel more than Thranduil had liked.

Tauriel slid Fíli's necklace from its place, releasing the body entirely so she could wrap the necklace around her wrist. Thranduil did not comment, though he watched the string of gems with hungry eyes.

"I was wrong, I think," he said. "When I told you your feelings were not real. Because I was angry. Because I was - am - afraid. You were right about that too. But you have always loved recklessly, and wholeheartedly, and often. You love my children - perhaps even me still, a little. I should have known you could love a dwarf or two."

He reached out, slowly, still with that little tremor in his hands, and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and did not touch the string of gems around her wrist. "So, Tauriel. You ask me why it hurts so much? It is because it was real."

He did not try to apologize, but he sat with her until the dwarves came to bear Fíli and Thorin away, and he did not offer insult to Dwalin when the dwarf stopped before Tauriel.

"I saw the girl," Dwalin said, voice rough and even deeper than usual. "Before Thorin - before. After, I didn't see her again."

He hesitated, eying them both when they said nothing, but finally he walked away.

It was Bilbo who arrived with the other half of the gemstone string, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.

"Everyone's very sorry," he said. "For your loss."

"Oh," said Thranduil helplessly, staring down at the string in his hands.

"This was longer," he said when he had untangled it, but he did not sound accusing. He sounded lost.

"Morwinyon broke it," Bilbo said. "She promised not to take any of them from the mountain, but she said she had to give Fíli something."

Thranduil found the broken end, nearly indistinguishable from the other but for the slightest twist of the last link in the already nearly invisible chain. "Of course she did," he said. "This was her mother's, you know."

"I know," Bilbo said, fidgeting. Tauriel watched the byplay, too tired to reassure Bilbo and not quite ready to forgive Thranduil.

"She cried when it was lost," the king continued. "I do not think I had seen her cry since Gil-Galad's death, but then, he gave it to her. They took it, and they kept it, and then they took and kept my daughter too."

Neither Tauriel nor Bilbo had anything to say to that that Thranduil would listen to.

"Leave me," Thranduil ordered.

Tauriel got to her feet to follow Bilbo, and had taken a few steps when Thranduil said, "Tauriel. Your banishment is lifted. You may come home if you choose."

Tauriel did not want to thank him for fixing something that he should not have done in the first place, but when she looked back Thranduil sat still, face buried in his hands, the ends of the strand of jewelry glimmering through his fingers and the spill of it across his lap glinting, sliding slowly across his knee towards the ground.

She did not thank him, but she did say, "Maybe."

Legolas had taken his leave of Tauriel earlier, citing a mission from his father. She had hugged him and bid him farewell with some relief - Legolas was not very good at sympathy. He wanted to fix things, and there was nothing here that he could fix.

Now she sat in the tombs under the mountain, wishing for stars but keeping her vigil. The dwarves had not begrudged her request: she thought they might consider her in some way to have been promised to Kíli. They were not in the most technical sense correct, but she felt as if they were.

So she watched his and Morwinyon's family, as she could not watch him and Morwinyon, and frowned when she heard a noise.

Were there rats in Erebor? Tauriel unslung her bow.

The noise came again.

It was inside the tomb. Fíli's, to be exact. Tauriel stared at it.

Again.

It sounded, she realized, as if someone was stuck and trying to get out.

She thought of Laeriel, and how Tauriel herself had called on Varda and Nienna and Mandos earlier, and scrambled for the lid of the stone covered coffin.

She shoved, someone else did too, and the slid a half-inch off, which at least meant there would be air. Tauriel braced her feet and shoved. An inch now.

Tauriel did not know how long it took, but Fíli looked up at her, wild-eyed, and asked something in Khuzdul with a vehemence that she assumed meant that the phrase included profanity.

She dragged him out and made him lay on the ground, fighting off the heavy ceremonial armor they had dressed him in sos he could inspect his wound.

There was only a handprint-shaped burn, and it looked weeks healed.

Fíli asked the question again, and she shook her head. "I do not speak Khuzdul," she reminded him.

"Am I not dead?" he asked in westron.

Tauriel could not help it. She laughed.

Author's Notes: "Only one?" I took that as a challenge. Have a happy(ish) ending, and keep an eye out for the sequel!