The weeks that follow the discovery of the letter are tense. The ease between Nori and Dwalin which had built over the weeks of travel does not vanish entirely, but it is strained and made worse by the fact that the longer they stay in the same room the more Nori finds old habits from the time she spent in a relationship with him beginning to sneak in. Breakfast is a morning buffet and without thinking there are mornings where she gets downstairs first and makes Dwalin a plate, other days she reaches over to pluck something that she knows he does not like from his meal. There are other things, silly things that come with being in a relationship with someone for a while and she knows that it baffles Dwalin that she is aware of these little preferences when he has not mentioned them to anyone. Her frustration at her own absent behaviour makes her short tempered and waspish, even as she drags Kíli away from his brother and Dwalin into the city so that she can make sure he keeps in practice while the two of them keep an eye out for any retaliation from Ordan, who seems to have slunk off somewhere. Her contacts in the local guild tell her that he has vanished, with his apprentice appearing alone at the guild several mornings in a row.

Fíli, as should have been expected, manages to track Hela down not long after Nori and Kíli begin to do their own thing. The older prince had managed to find work in a blacksmith's three mornings a week to bring in a little extra coin and keep himself entertained. Hela happened to come into that same workshop one morning looking for a new blade to replace one which had been broken. Apparently, Fíli's interest in her had not been passing or dulled by almost a year of separation and the same could be said for her. Nori and Kíli set themselves to looking into Hela and her family; much to Fíli's irritation and Kíli's glee, which fades when it turns out that Hela and her family are precisely who they have always claimed to be.

"Why don't you like her?" Nori asks Kíli one evening when the two of them are working a tavern.

"It's not that I don't like her," he replies, "it's just… I don't even really know how to explain it. She's there and he seems to forget that I am." Nori gives him an amused grin. "What?"

"Your brother would probably accuse you of something similar when Briar was around," she informs him, fingers dipping into the purse of a drunk dwarf who shoulders past them.

"I wasn't that bad," Kíli disagrees, taking a swig from his tankard as he watches the room carefully.

"We all are at your age," Nori shakes her head. "It happens. You've had him to yourself for sixty-five years, kid, you weren't going to be able to do that forever. Let him have this, first love is usually a disappointment anyway."

"Like yours was?" Kíli asks.

"Big enough that I decided I wasn't going to do it again," Nori shrugs it off, taking a drink from her tankard. "Until I did it by accident anyway."

"You think she'll hurt him?" Kíli frowns.

"Hope she won't," Nori shakes her head. "Your brother doesn't deserve that. Neither of you do. Tell you what," she gets to her feet, "spend the afternoon with her and Fíli this week, get to know her." Kíli pulls a face. "Think of it like extra training in making nice with people you don't want to," Nori adds, "how else are you supposed to get their secrets out of them? They aren't all stupid enough to write it down in a handy letter."

"Why are you and Dwalin still arguing about that?" Kíli asks, following her out. "It doesn't matter at the moment."

"Because Dwalin is your uncle's guard dog," Nori mutters, adding mentally that she was always the hunting dog, something that goes with the title of Wolf in many ways. "His instinct is to protect you and your family. Which goes against our instincts to find the threat and quietly eliminate it if possible." Kíli tilts his head. "This isn't something that can be handled. Quietly or otherwise," she pulls him away from the crowds and into an alley outside. "A small number of us would never be able to get close to him unless he allowed it. He keeps himself surrounded. A slightly larger group might get close, but I don't think for a moment they would succeed. Not if he's lasted this long. It would take an army and whether we like it or not, your uncle doesn't have one of those."

"What's the point in knowing about it if we aren't going to do anything about it?" Kíli demands.

"Because knowing about it means that we can keep an eye on it," Nori replies. "We can watch for news of him, see when his habits change and where he's based himself. We can look for weaknesses and blindspots and make sure that your uncle doesn't do anything stupid like charge straight at him without proper back up, or spring a trap and get himself killed." She takes a breath to stop herself from revealing more than she should. "More often than I would like our job is to watch and gather all the pieces so that we can put them together and let other people handle the problem and take the glory."

Kíli pulls a face, then sighs and follows her back to the boarding house.

Of course, with the letter comes the renewal of Nori's nightmares. It is one thing to know, academically, that Azog is still out there waiting. It is another entirely to have confirmation that others knew about it before the quest in her hand. The letter she holds had not been addressed to Ordan, it was likely to have been taken from the pocket of some high level functionary or another. The Lord of Labamgarel Zarrakh wrote this, that he knew and refused aid to Thorin in Nori's last life makes her irrationally angry. This letter should have gone to Dáin, so either it never reached him in her first life, or he knew and made the same decision she and Dwalin are arguing about making and did not see fit to warn Thorin. Knowing all this, putting together all the little pieces that simply did not make sense the last time, brings the terrible images of Fíli and Kíli's bodies to mind as she sleeps.

She dreams of them demanding answers from her, wanting to know why she missed this the first time. Dwalin wakes her nearly every time, even going as far as to get the lads their own room for a week so that they can both get a night of unbroken sleep. The lack of sleep is getting to all of them, but the wide and concerned eyes of the two boys makes it harder for Nori to settle when woken. Dwalin does not press for information, although Nori tells him that she believes the orc which led the attack that took everything from her once was Azog. It is plausible enough with what they now know and his suspicions about her past, but his understanding care does not make her lash out less.

Instead the fighting between them seems to get worse. More often than not she has no idea what they are actually arguing about, only that she is yelling at him or he is shouting at her. They are in one another's faces, sometimes so close that her fingers itch to grab his beard and drag him in for a kiss, Sometimes she thinks she sees the same temptation in his eyes as well. But after the argument is over, when one or other has thrown their hands up in disgust and walked away, Nori finds herself more relaxed. Occasionally they go further, and the two find a practice ring somewhere to turn hard words into blows instead, and those times Nori finds it harder still not to take advantage of the times where one of them pins the other. Given how much she knows about Dwalin's style of fighting it is only a surprise to him that she succeeds where so many others so often fail.

It is inevitable, then, as the nightmares ease and the moments in the practice ring become friendly competition that one afternoon Nori gives in to the temptation to kiss him as she pins him to the ground. She expects him to push her away, he should. She does not want him to, but she knows that he should, and he does not. Instead his fingers tangle into the coiled braids she has been wearing for the last several months, strong and tight and dragging her closer still. He should push her away, he should because if they continue this they will only hurt one another again and again, but she wants to risk it. She has to risk it because being alone is not enough and brief things with people like Asger or Nila and her husband are not enough. She could have had this once, why should she have to give it up for a second time?

She does not fight when he rolls her, does not fight when his hips shift. She wants this, has needed it since she fell into her own past and no matter how bad of an idea it is, she is going to take it.

"And… nope," Kíli says as he carefully shuts the door to the private training room again. "I'm going to need new eyes. Maybe a new brain…" he shakes his head and shudders. "I think Nori will be fine with not knowing where we're going," he tells his brother quickly.

"She never has been before," Fíli says dubiously.

"If she doesn't kill me for interrupting that, Dwalin will," he insists. "It's your funeral."

"Let's just go for that picnic with Hela," Fíli agrees after a moment of thought.

They make their way through town quickly, stopping briefly at the market to buy some bread, meat and cheese. Then they head for the fountain where they are supposed to meet Hela. Kíli is actually sort of starting to like her now that he has been spending more time with her. She is not the sort he could see himself courting, Hela tends towards being a little more serious and not quite as outgoing as either him or his brother, but she seems right for Fíli in her own way. Part of him still hopes Fíli is not serious about her, not out of any dislike for her and more because she ticks a few too many of those boxes on that list of Thorin's. Kíli has never forgotten that list, even over a decade later, and he dislikes the idea that Fíli might be getting to know Hela better out of some sense of duty to his uncle and a lost throne than because he wants to.

Not that Fíli has ever given any indication of that, and Kíli likes to think he knows his brother better than anyone. The one he is more unsure of is Hela.

"I can't believe your mother and uncle let you and Fíli do caravan duty together," Hela comments after they have eaten and are relaxing together in one of the crystal gardens.

"She didn't," Fíli says before Kíli can come up with a reply. "Kíli snuck out one night and by the time Nori caught up with him he was already signed on with a caravan. I was only supposed to go as far as Bree and see if we could find word of him. When we did and found out he was committed to coming here Dwalin and I signed on to make sure he comes back home."

"As if I wouldn't go home,"Kíli scoffs, lifting his nearly empty tankard and pretending to take a long drink. "It's just dull there, is all."

"Your mother must be frantic," Hela observes sympathetically.

"Dwalin and I sent her a letter letting her know," Fíli assures her. "She was upset when we found out that idiot was gone though."

"I thought she would be relieved personally," Kíli's reply comes out a little bit more caustically than he intends on, but then he knows that his next sentence will make it sound like a long held resentment. In some ways it is. "After all, her useless, lazy, craftless, layabout son has gone off into the world to make his own way as best he can."

Fíli blanches at that, the slightly sick expression on his face reminding Kíli of overheard conversations both before and after Nori took him on as an apprentice. They had alternated between despair at Kíli's lack of craft and anguish that the craft that had made itself known is so much less honourable than they would have liked.

"You don't really believe she thinks that!" Hela exclaims.

"She's as good as said it more than once," Kíli shrugs it off, the opinion hurting less now that he has seen what his craft can allow him to do for his family. And, frankly, travelling the caravans gives him an excuse to poke into things.

"I can hardly believe it," Hela frowns, "your mother always seems so…"

"Kind?" Fíli suggests. "Gracious?"

"Yes," Hela admits.

"That's her public face," Kíli pretends to take another long drink, it was one of the first things Nori taught him how to do on the road and he knows that Fíli and Hela think he is much deeper into his cups than just one beer at this point.

"Which doesn't mean that she isn't," Fíli adds. "It just means that those outside the family don't generally see her frustration with the rest of us. Uncle included."

"The focus of her frustration these days," Kíli sighs, "being my lack of craft." He looks at her over the rim of the tankard and sees a soft look of pity mingled horror on her face. "But," he adds as he takes a breath, "we are not here to talk about my admittedly difficult relationship with my mother, or my lack of craft."

"What's that like?" Hela asks. "I always wonder but I've never found anyone to tell me."

"There are more of us than you think," Kíli says softly, choosing to answer the question by explaining how he felt not being able to hone his craft, rather than avoiding it as he knows some might prefer him to. "Some don't have a craft, some can't afford the apprenticeship and others are forbidden to pursue it by their parents for one ludicrous reason or another. There are plenty of jobs to be done that require neither craft nor calling and plenty eager enough to avoid doing them to pay others for it. So, there's work enough for the craftless, but not the satisfaction." He has never even fully explained this to Fíli, not wanting to put this burden on his brother. "It's like being… empty I guess. We're taught that Mahal makes us all for some purpose, and people like you and Fíli know what that is. Those of us who don't," he bows his head. "Those of us who don't are often told that we're meant for servitude or an early death, or just that we're evidence that not even Mahal can create flawlessly all of the time. I don't know, I don't believe any of that. I just think our crafts are something unattainable. For all I know I was meant to craft mithril, but until we work out what Mahal meant for us, because He must have meant something, it's just an empty hole inside you. You try to fill it with joy in other things; friends, laughter, love, drink, but it just gets bigger. It's not like people tell you it will be, it's fleeting and you end up flitting from craft to craft and one distraction to another to try and find something to dedicate your life to that you can live with doing. I'm a middling blacksmith. I can make nails and horseshoes as well as any other, I can make arrowheads enough for my purposes. But there's no life in it for me. I can use it to pay my way, I can find peace in hunting and a good fight is always fun. But filling that empty place? So far travelling last year with Nori, and this year with the caravan is the closest I've come. So maybe that's where my future is."

"I had no idea," Fíli is the one who speaks when Kíli is done. "Why didn't you ever tell me? I would have fought harder with our mother and uncle for you if you had."

"It's my burden," Kíli points out. "And you have enough of your own without mine too."

"I'm your brother," Fíli insists.

"And it goes both ways," he sets the tankard aside. "Sometimes, nadad, you need to be protected from your need to solve everything and protect everyone. Even me."

A.N: I finished Kili! He's on my deviantart (Artemis-Desari, seriously if you see that name anywhere it's going to be me) Also, Nori and Dwalin are in all the trouble. All of it. How dare they skip my whole timetable like that... Not that I think anyone is really complaining here.