In the end, with Lairë's permission, they did collapse the cave entrances.

"Burning would be better," she said grimly, before Fili sent her and Kili out. They might have to move quickly once the place started to collapse, and not even she argued that she could move as would be needed.

Fili hadn't asked how many of the elves she had known, but she said anyway, just as grimly, her voice still gravelly, "They were all brave. Even the ones that broke - they were brave."

"I believe you."

She nodded and let Kili support her on the way out.

"We're just taking her?" Hofsa asked. Kili had started referring to Lairë with female pronouns after hearing her name and the rest of them had followed suit.

"Sorry, were you going to leave her here?" Fili replied. "I don't hate anybody that much."

Hofsa had acknowledged the point.

Now they camped some distance from the tunnel opening they had used. Fili had planned to keep going even if they had to carry the elf between a few of them - she wasn't heavy - but one look at Lairë in the light had changed his mind. She had stubbornly kept up for three miles, but he had called a halt when he looked back and saw her nearly bent double to brace herself against Kili.

In firelight she looked even worse, and Fili realized no one had offered her food. He dug in his pack for an apple - Tauriel didn't like most of his travel rations, and anyway he wasn't sure they would be good for Lairë's stomach anyway after all that time - but Kili, once again, beat him to it, hauling a piece of lembas from an inner pocket and handing her a small piece.

Lairë took it carefully with her left hand - her only hand - and nibbled.

"What did they feed you?" Fili asked, though he realized he didn't really want to know.

"Not a great deal," Lairë replied. "I can live long without food or water, but they gave me some. They did not want me to die."

"Why?" Kili asked.

She shrugged. The motion was grotesque. She went to put the lembas down and hesitated, looking for a relatively clean place to put it, and Kili took it back from her. She picked up the waterskin and took a sip - the motion of her throat was disturbingly visible when she swallowed. "They liked to see how I would try to escape, I think."

"More than the others?"

She made an odd sort of 'tch' noise that set her coughing again. "Not more," she managed finally. "More creative, maybe. They thought my hand amusing. I am ashamed to say I stopped, after a while."

"You cut your own hand off," Hofsa said flatly.

Lairë shrugged again. "There were fewer guards that day. They left a knife on the table. It seemed a good idea at the time."

She took another sip of water as the dwarves absorbed that information.

"Anybody would stop after that didn't work," Kili said.

Lairë waved the waterskin, splashing a little. She looked down at the drops on her hand for a moment before she replied, "That did not stop me. I do not remember what did."

"There is a stream not far from here," Hofsa offered after a long moment where they all contemplated that. "You can clean up a little."

Lairë stood, steadier even after that little bit of food and water, and gestured for Hofsa to lead the way.

"Elves," somebody muttered, but it wasn't particularly venomous so Fili let it go.

"What language were you speaking before?" he asked Kili.

"Oh, that," Kili said, shifting uncomfortably. "Morwinyon knows Quenya. I picked some up."

"That's, what, the royal language?"

Kili snorted. "A scholar's language really, Morwinyon says, or for really old elves."

"Are you a scholar or a really old elf?" Fili asked, amused.

"She taught the Dunedain children, if you must know," Kili said, turning his nose up. "The clans think it's important."

Fili grinned at him and leaned against his shoulder. Kili leaned back against him, and they watched the fire until Lairë and Hofsa returned, Lairë wrapped in a blanket.

Lairë was as improved as a bath could make her. Her hair was still a matted mass of tangles, but she had contrived to tie it away from her face and into a messy bundle at the back of her head, which made sense - Hofsa wouldn't have wanted to do anything as intimate as brushing or cutting or helping to wash the hair of someone she didn't know.

Fili relaxed. He hadn't realized he was tense, but something about being able to see Lairë's face was reassuring. She had a deep purple scar across the bridge of her nose, over her right eyelid and brow and trailing to her hairline, but the eye itself seemed uninjured. Clean, her skin was pale, and it probably would be even if she got some sun. Now it had a greyish tone. Her hair was pitch black if her eyebrows were anything to go by, though the hair wasn't as clean as the rest of her, and her eyes were nearly the same color, with no extra eyelid crease.

She was Noldorin, then, like Morwinyon. She looked, in fact, a great deal like his wife: Fili grimaced at the idea that his memory was failing him. It was fine, he consoled himself. He would see Morwinyon soon, and the differences would be obvious.

Really old elves, Kili had said. How old did Lairë have to be, to have gone to Mirkwood with Morwinyon's mother?

He bent to add another log to the fire - really they shouldn't risk keeping it going, with orcs all over, but it was small and Lairë had made a tiny sound when the warmth of it had reached her - and felt a sudden sharp line of pressure against his neck as he was yanked to one side. His necklace, he realized, even as he snapped his hand up to grab the hand holding it. It must have fallen from the neck of his shirt.

The hand was Lairë's. She ignored his grip on her wrist and hissed, "Where did you get these?"

Fili held up his other hand to fend off the many suddenly bared weapons pointed in Lairë's direction. She ignored them. He could see her jaw working.

"It was a gift," he said. The gems dug into the sides of his neck as well as the back, and the chain felt as if it might soon break skin if it hadn't already. It did not escape his notice that Lairë said these when he said it. She did not think of it as a necklace, he supposed.

"A gift," she spat. "Who gifted you the jewels of the Greenwood's queen? Who gifted you gems given to her by Gil-Galad himself?"

"My wife," he told her, keeping his voice calm and steady. "They were her mother's. And later Tauriel of Mirkwood, who raised her, gave them to me again. I am told it is elvish custom. Was I told incorrectly?"

Lairë's grip loosened and he pulled away, keeping a grip on her wrist so she didn't fall over. She said, "You lie. I know Thranduil - we are Doriathrin. Morwinyon would not marry a dwarf."

"And yet," Fili said, gesturing to himself and the necklace. "If I have offended, or done something incorrectly, I'd like to know, but this is mine. It is my marriage gift."

"If you say Tauriel did something wrong I won't believe you," Kili added, chin jutted stubbornly out.

Fili rolled his eyes but otherwise held his peace.

"No," Lairë said finally, wrist limp in his grip. "You were not told incorrectly. I only - it is a shock. If Morwinyon gave them to you, they are yours. How she reclaimed them from Erebor -"

"Blatant theft," Fili confessed. "Are any more strangling attempts forthcoming?"

"No," Lairë said. "You may release me."

Fili did, and settled back. Slowly the other dwarves relaxed, stowing their weapons before rolling out bedrolls.

"You'll want something more than a blanket to wear," Kili said.

"I have worn worse."

"Yes," Fili said. "We saw. Here, somebody hand me another blanket and a sewing kit."

"I can sew," Lairë began, but stopped and looked down at her severed wrist. "I could sew."

"You will again, if you want to," Fili said, already threading a needle. "Right now probably isn't the best time to re-learn."

Kili and Lairë sat watching him for a time. It was a strange audience, admittedly, but he was too glad to have Kili there to make jokes about it.

"Morwinyon sews," Kili said abruptly, and Fili and Lairë looked at him. "I mean, everybody in the camps does. Our mother and Tari and Nion not as much - they're in the forges - but Morwinyon and I, we did our share."

"You aren't in the forges?" Fili asked, at the same time Lairë said, in dubious tones, "Tari?"

"My daughter," Fili told her before Kili could answer either of them, feeling a quick swell of pride and anxiety both.

"I'm busy," Kili told Fili with a sniff.

"And Morwinyon?" Lairë asked. Fili remembered the Noldor who followed Morwinyon at Erebor over her father and her brother and shrugged at Kili.

"She stays busy always," Kili said. "She teaches the children - I told you that, Fili - and rides with the scouts and meets with Alia and the other clan leaders. She even learned a little of the forge, when Mother taught the twins."

"She's still the same then," Fili said, relieved.

"No," Kili said slowly, looking into the fire. "No, she - well, we both grew up, I think."

Nobody said anything else as Fili made a rough dress for Lairë.