Okay, I admit leaving you guys with the last chapter was a little cruel lol But here's the next one x

All sound was swallowed up, and silence prevailed, leaving me deaf to whatever chaos surrounded me. My vision darkened around the edges, tunnelled until Kili was the only thing I could see.

"Kili?" I whispered.

His face was ashen, pale and slack, eyes unseeing and staring at nothing. My fingers ghosted over the skin of his cheek, smearing the spots of red into bloody streaks. He did not react to the touch, did not move, did not blink, did not breathe.

That wasn't right. This was wrong, wrong, wrong. Kili was fine. Kili does not die here. I was as certain of that as I was of the gravity keeping me grounded to the skin of this planet. Kili couldn't die. I wouldn't let him.

With shaking unsure limbs, I sat back up, my focus zeroing in on Kili's chest. Even the bleeding had slowed, now nothing more than a trickle.

His heart.

I needed to help his heart.

Then he would get better, and everything would be fine again. I just needed to get his heartbeat going. Keep it beating. I'd do it forever if I had to.

I crossed my hands together and brought them down onto his chest. I pushed against his unrelenting sternum. Again and again and again. A disorganised rhythm held together by sheer willpower alone, by my urgency to keep going, to never stop.

But no heartbeat penetrated the thick curtain of silence that fell around me, no gasp of breath or fluttering of eyelids. Just a hollow, empty nothing.

The silence was worse. Worse than the screaming and the crying and the pain. It was a swirling vortex of a black hole sucking in all light, all sound, all hope.

I would take the screams, as torturous as they were. Let them hold me captive in their agony, locked forever in torment, if that meant he was still breathing.

It wasn't working. The CPR wasn't working. I stopped compressions and hit out at Kili's chest with a bloodied fist. Again and again and again.

"Wake up!" I screamed, the words lacerating my throat.

I clawed at my own chest with broken fingernails. It seared. It burned. It hurt. Hurt so much more than anything else I had ever encountered. Even when I thought I lost him the first time and it felt like my sternum was split in two leaving my heart an exposed, frayed thing because at least then I knew he lived. There was hope he'd succeed and live a good life. But now…

It felt like something had shattered irreparably. Fractured and lost, with no hope of mending.

"Leah, stop please. He's gone!" Fili grabbed my fist in his own before I could bring it down for another blow.

He was wrong. He had to be. There was no world without Kili in it. He should know that.

Fili tried to repeat the words, and I shook my head, refusing to listen "He's not gone. He can't be. He can't."

He can't be gone because I loved him. I loved him so much it threatened to consume me, and I had not told him, never uttered the words. The world would never be right unless he heard them. It would be forever tilted and off balance and wrong. He had to know. He had to.

I tore my hand from Fili's grip and threw myself back at Kili. "I love you, Kili. Did you hear that? I love you. I need you to come back so I can tell you," I shook him. Demanding him, the world, anything that would listen. "Come back to me please! Come back! Come back! Come back!".

Several hands reached around me, my arms, my waist. They all tried to pull me backwards, pull me away.

"No!" I fought against all of them, not caring when my elbow made contact with someone's eye or when my head shot back into someone's nose. They dropped me unceremoniously and I threw myself back over Kili, gripping his shirt with a shaking white-knuckled grip.

This was my fault. Without me here this would never have happened. I was supposed to keep him safe and save him from this fate, not hasten his doom. That was my job. My only job. Keep him safe, keep him protected, keep him alive.

And I was not going to fail.

A blazing, scorching certainty tore its way through my body, and I knew. I would bring him back. I would keep my promise.

The feeling gathered in my chest, burning like a sun next to my butchered heart, and then it burst. An explosion of swirling power rushed to my hands and set them alight. That same white glow that turned flesh into stone bled through, except this time it was not blasting anyone away.

Something instinctive and innate took over my body, smoothing my torrent of tormented thoughts until it was barely a whisper. I placed my hands over the wound and a strange, raw power began pouring out of my hands. It rushed into the torn skin and snaked beneath the surface, flowing and flowing like a burst dam of light. The light spread beneath Kili's skin like blood in a vein, travelling the length of his body until he glowed from within.

With a shock, I realised that I could feel him as if his body were my own. The way the muscles felt, stretched over bones, the way his organs sat in his torso. I could feel where his lung had collapsed around the arrow, its shape disfigured and wrong. I don't know how but I willed the cells to reform. To regrow and knit back together.

The world dimmed around me. Each breath was an agony I drew no relief from. I gave all I could. Whatever power was flowing through me, I gave it everything. My arms started to shake, barely keeping me upright as I leaned over his chest. Both my power and energy were waning. I knew it was only a matter of time before I would lose my grip on this world and freefall into the dark depths of unconsciousness. But I gritted my teeth and carried on.

The hole in Kili's chest began to glow brighter. Strands of skin reformed until it looked like there was never a wound there. Magic then wrapped around his heart, pulsing, begging it to restart.

It squeezed once, twice.

Kili shot up with a gasp, and I surrendered to darkness.

Kili (Outside Rivendell)

He had seen the arrow aimed at her and a fear unlike any other had taken him by the throat and forced him to act. Kili couldn't lose her. Not again. So he had taken her place, pushed her away as far as he could and took the hit.

He didn't feel it at first. The arrow. Only a powerful blow and the death of breath in his lungs. The shock of it drowned out any pain until he laid eyes upon it sticking, obscenely, out of his chest. His hands reached up. To pull it out, to hold it in, he did not know. Blood, deep red, warm and wet, flowed between his fingers and dripped onto the grass below.

And then reality caught up with the rest of him and brought the pain with it.

Like a fire burning a course through his body, scorching everything in its wake until he was certain he resembled a pyre. Air refused to be pulled into his lungs as he strained to breathe. He barely felt himself being dragged backwards like a lame horse pulled from the road. The pain was too great to register much else.

Falling, however, he did feel. It knocked the arrow and sent raw, biting agony cascading through his body. He couldn't move, couldn't talk. People moved around him but his vision darkened. His eyes finally zeroed in on something on his right. A face. A beautiful, sad face.

Leah. He wanted to reach for her. She was the only thing he could see or concentrate on through the pain. He never told her what she meant to him. What he had carved into the bracelet. He never told her he loved her.

Kili tried to form the words, desperate for her to know, to see, to understand. But his body no longer listened to him and that alone felt like he was breaking into pieces. He tried again, she had to know, but a roar escaped his body instead. The pain was unyielding. Pulling. Tearing, yanking. Breath could no longer get into his body. No matter how hard he tried, air would not fill his lungs.

His vision disappeared completely, drowning out even Leah's face.

Then the pain itself started to fade. Washed away like the tide of the sea. His consciousness drifted off with it. Bit by bit, until he was no more.

Kili (Mahal's Halls)

When he opened his eyes again, the world was no longer the same. Gone was the claustrophobic darkness of the cave, in its stead was a shining sky. White, like pure starlight, hanging high above him. It should have hurt his eyes, blinded him to look upon it. Yet it didn't. It yielded only a solid comfort, like a blanket placed over you by a doting parent. Keeping you warm. Keeping you safe.

The overwhelming pain ceased as if it was never there. His breath flowed in and out of his body freely, swirling into his lungs and out again, bringing with it a sweet relief. There was no fear anymore. Where it had been all-consuming, a terror unlike any other, he now felt a blissful calm.

But that felt wrong. A falsity forced upon him. He should not feel calm right now. He had to get back.

The sensations of his body finally came back to him and he climbed to his feet. Even that movement was fluid, effortless. Kili risked a glance down to his chest, scared at what he would find. Would it be mangled yet bloodless, like he was a walking corpse? But instead, he found nothing. Not even a drop of blood marred his shirt. He frantically grabbed at the edges of his collar, tugging and exposing the skin below.

Smooth, unblemished and unmarked. He probed the area and felt no resistance, no odd texture, just his skin. But something else pulled at his mind, something different, something wrong. Kili pressed harder and finally realised what had disturbed him.

His heart was dormant, no longer beating a regular rhythm in his chest. A sensation he barely acknowledged in life, yet startlingly obvious in its absence.

Kili was dead.

Truly dead.

Kili swung his head around, trying to get a grip on his surroundings. The ground below him was white, with a cloud of fog skimming its surface. But it wasn't cold or wet, it flowed around his skin comfortingly, like a gentle caress.

Sounds arose from somewhere behind him. Happy raucous laughter. Singing and music. Kili spun around and came face to face with a doorway, so vast it must have spanned a mile wide. The architecture was complex, made up of geometric shapes that slotted into one another almost seamlessly. Something only the best of dwarven architects could even fathom. A veil of light danced across the surface of the doorway, pearlescent and shimmering. A barrier from the outside to the inside. One would have to pass through it in order to enter the halls.

Mahal's halls, he realised.

The place where dwarven souls go to rest when they leave the world behind them. When they die.

Kili had been protecting Leah and paid for it with his life. It was a decision he would make a million times over, in any world, any lifetime. But the reality of it was crushing, desolate and painful. Leah would live but he would never see her again. A sob ripped its way out of his throat, the foreign feeling of calm no longer winning out.

And what of his family? He had promised his Amad he would come home. That he would bring them all home. She had lost him once and it had crushed her, he never wanted to do that to her again.

And Thorin and Fili. How was he supposed to save them? His brother and uncle couldn't die as he had. They needed to live.

Kili gripped the shirt over his chest for something to hold onto. His knuckles went white with how tight he held on. He did not know what to do. He did not want to take that final step into the beyond, to fully leave the world behind. It was too much. Too much. He wasn't ready. There was a sense of vulnerability as he gazed upon Mahal's halls. It was like he was a child again, gazing out into an unknown world.

The veil shifted. A shadow appeared from the other side, starting off huge yet faint, spanning the whole height of the doorway before shrinking and deepening in colour. Something was getting closer. It continued to shrink until the shadow was person-sized. Then from behind the veil stepped a dwarf, still in his prime. His hair was deep gold, and he had a smile that never left his face. A dwarf that looked like Fili, only older.

"Adad?" he cried, barely getting the word out.

Was it truly him?

With tears still falling down his face, he raced forward, crashing into his Adad's arms. It was really him. He even smelled the same. Kili clung to him as a lost child would. So scared that if he let him go, he would disappear. His adad's arms wrapped around him. Fingers threaded into his hair and he felt a kiss on his forehead.

"I'm so proud of you azaghâlithûh," Vali said into his hair, "I love you, Kili."

Over the years, Kili was devastated to find out that he could no longer recall what his Adad sounded like. The tone and timbre had been lost in the murkiness of time past, each remembrance more diminished from the last. So hearing his voice after all this time was like finding water in a desert. It made him sob harder.

"I love you too, Adad," Kili straightened up so that he could lay his forehead against his adad's. Vali's eyes gazed back at him, so filled with love. The same colour as his own. With a start, he realised that he now stood taller than his adad. Vali had died when he was so young he never thought it possible that he could grow bigger than him.

"I'm sorry," he cried "I failed!"

"You did no such thing, my boy," Vali reached for Kili's face, wiping the tears away. "You saved your One."

"But I was supposed to save all of them," Kili grabbed his adad's hands where they rested on his face.

"And you will."

"What?" Kili's brow furrowed. The sudden confusion stopped any more tears from forming.

"Your story does not end here, my boy," Vali stroked Kili's cheek "There is still more to tell."

But he was dead. The halls of Mahal were right in front of him. There was no way back. Vali removed his hands from his son's face and reached into his pocket. He took one of Kili's hands and pressed something into his palm, closing Kili's fist around it.

"These are for you," said Vali "I want you to tell your One how you feel. Just lean in and kiss her. Don't look back."

Vali was speaking quickly as if he was running out of time.

"And I need you to tell Fili that I'm so proud of him. He needs to stop thinking that he failed to protect his family. He's done more than I ever could have hoped for."

"But–"

"Tell your mother that I love her. She is my Kurdel, and she always will be," Vali started to step backwards, edging closer to the veil.

"Adad, I don't know what you mean. I can't do any of those things. I'm dead!"

"Not if she has anything to say about it."

"Who?"

Then he saw it. A pair of arms made out of pure light. They wrapped around him as if hugging him from behind. The hands settled over his heart and emitted a blinding glow. He could feel a strange pulse in his heart. Once. Twice.

And then the arms pulled.

They pulled him backwards, straight through the clouded floor, into the unknown below.

Kili (Outside Rivendell)

It was not a slow rising. Kili crashed back into life with enough force he jolted violently, lungs spasming. The bright white sky had disappeared, replaced by roughened dark stone. He had to blink several times to make sense of it. Then the faces of the company swam into view, hovering, crowding, gasping and crying.

What are they crying for? His mind was still muffled and out of focus, his emotions were blunted around the edges. Something flickered at the back of his mind, poised on the tip of his tongue. Something terrible. Something important. Something–

Thorin wrapped his arms around Kili's chest and brought him into a crushing hug. He was shaking, Kili noted, like Thorin was in the aftermath of some great calamity. The display of vulnerability from his stone-faced uncle almost scared him.

"I thought you lost," Thorin said.

Lost? I haven't gone anywhere.

Thorin leaned back, and Fili quickly took his place, his face crumpled and crying.

"Kili, you're alive?" Fili crushed his forehead against Kili.

Alive?

His brother's tears dripped onto his own cheeks, mingling with whatever liquid he felt there. When Fili pulled away, a smear of red coated his cheek. Blood. Why was there blood?

The answer stampeded over Kili's mind and threw him over the edge of a cliff. A rush of panic and fear swooped through his organs, and it felt like he was in freefall.

Kili had died.

He saw Mahal's Halls.

He saw his Adad!

Kili reached for his chest and came back bloodied. But it was old blood, barely warm. The wound was gone, leaving only a puckered white mark in its absence as if it was years old rather than minutes. It didn't make sense. Though he almost cried out when the beat of his heart hit against his splayed fingertips. Alive. He was alive.

Though that was not all he felt. Another sensation had joined the space within his chest. A separate pulse that beat out of sync with his own, as if it belonged to someone else. It was a slow, thready rhythm against the thunder of Kili's heart. If he concentrated hard enough on that foreign feeling, he could almost feel a line leading away from him. Intangible and invisible and connected to someone on his right.

"Leah?"

Leah was splayed prostrate across the dirt-covered floor. Eyes closed, skin pale, mouth slack. She was splattered in blood almost from head to toe, coating her face, her hands, her shirt. For one twisted and sickening beat, he thought her dead. In his desperation, his mind tugged on that incorporeal tether, and Leah reacted. An almost imperceptible twitch and the second heartbeat in his chest jumped in response.

Leah was alive, but he had no idea what had happened to her. Or why their hearts were somehow intrinsically, impossibly bound together.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked Oin and Gandalf.

Gandalf kneeled next to her, a soft glow emanating from his staff as he waved it over her body. Oin propped her head up and checked if she was still breathing. She gave no resistance as her body was moved about.

"Magical exhaustion," Gandalf concluded

Magic? What magic had Leah done?

"She brought you back, my dear boy," Gandalf said to Kili's unvoiced question.

"How?" He looked down on Leah in a brand new light. Leah had saved him?

"The magic she displayed earlier is not only a destructive force but also a healing one. " Kili remembered that blast of power, the rush of it as it exploded through the clearing. That had healed him? "However, Leah is young and untrained and pushed way more than she should. She will need rest and help from the elves if she is to recover."

Kili flinched and tried to scramble to his feet "What are we waiting for? We need to move."

His ascent was hindered by a strong hand on his shoulder, keeping him grounded. "By Durin's beard, lad, give us a minute to mourn your death. We're not made of stone, you know."

Kili was almost surprised to note the tears in Dwalin's eyes. He had never known the stalwart dwarf–even more serious than uncle at times–ever to show such outward displays of emotion. It warmed him a little to know he meant something.

He was also surprised to note a burgeoning bruise forming across Dwalin's nose, purpling under his eyes. Kili did not recall Dwalin getting hit by the orcs, yet something must have happened.

Kili covered Dwalin's hand and squeezed. "I'm alive, Dwalin. Truly. The time to mourn me shall be way in our future. I assure you."

"It had better be, or I'll kill you myself," Dwalin pressed his forehead into Kili's before straightening up and hauling him to his feet.

There was no lingering shake of weakness in his limbs. They were steadfast and stable below him. In fact, he felt no pain at all, not even the general aches from a prolonged stay outdoors. The twinge in his back from sleeping on the hard, unforgiving ground had all but vanished.

The reach of whatever magic Leah possessed was astounding.

"The path to Imladris lies this way, I believe," Gandalf said, pointing to a gap in the walls. "We should follow it quickly."

Thorin's jaw tightened. "Was that your plan all along? To throw us at the elves' feet without me knowing?"

Gandalf straightened up "Whether that is true or not, are you really going to deny your company aid just for your stubborn pride?"

Thorin held Gandalf's level stare with a hard one of his own before closing his eyes and sighing down his nose. "Of course not."

He strode over to Leah with sure steps and, with no hesitation, hoisted her body into the air. Her arm hung limp, nearly dragging across the floor, and her head lolled against Thorin's chest. She gave no indication she was even aware of the movement.

"Uncle, let me," Kili said.

"No. Not until we have you checked over. I won't risk it."

But Kili felt fine. More than fine. He was perfectly capable of carrying Leah and any distance put between them sent his anxiety skyrocketing. His fists twitched and clenched in a bid to stop himself from reaching out. But his right one held something more than the skin of his palm. Something solid and rounded rested there. Kili's eyebrows drew together.

Thorin took Kili's confused silence as acquiescence and turned to the rest of the company "Come on. We need to move quickly."

Then Thorin was moving, his feet quick as if he was not carrying anything at all. The rest of the dwarves were quick on his heels. Fili and Balin stayed back to keep Kili steady. A helping hand on each shoulder, but he did not feel hindered in any way.

Kili uncurled his hand and looked down. In the middle of his palm sat two small, cylindrical objects. They were unlike any metal he had ever seen, bright silver and shining with the same pearlescent hue as the veil had. The outside was carved with intricate runes that indicated their true purpose.

Courting beads.

This was the gift his adad had given him, somehow following him back to the world of the living. He felt his throat grow tight at the sentiment.

"What's that, Kili?" Fili asked.

Kili tucked the beads safely into his pocket. "I will tell you later. I promise," he coughed, voice thick. Everything happened so fast, he needed time to think. To reflect. To understand his own oversized feelings on the matter first.

Fili took his words with a solemn nod and guided him down the stone corridor.

With Gandalf leading the way, they soon came to a cave opening. Below them stretched the legendary elven city of Rivendell. The buildings were constructed in a winding valley with a fast-flowing river cutting through the centre. No one had time to bask in its beauty, though. They were too busy forging a path down the hillside to get to the valley below.

They reached the bottom and came to an elven bridge. Gandalf led the way, beckoning towards the elves at the end of the gangway.

"Mithrandir," said a brunette elf that was descending down the stairs.

"Ah Lindir, we need your help." said Gandalf "Where is Lord Elrond?"

Lindir looked at Gandalf with concern. "Lord Elrond's scouting party is coming in now."

Lindir pointed behind the company to where several horses had started to gallop towards them. Everyone closed ranks. Keeping Bilbo and Leah in the centre. The horses rode around the group, herding them tighter together before finally settling down. A tall, regal elf climbed down from his horse and made his way to the front of the group.

"Gandalf," greeted the elf.

"Lord Elrond, we must hurry. A member of our company has grown dangerously weak," implored Gandalf.

Elrond's smile dropped, and he was immediately serious. "Whom?"

The dwarves parted so that Thorin could step out, Leah still in his arms. The reaction from the elves was one of shock and revulsion. To see one of their own unconscious and covered in blood would do that.

Elrond was quick to submit orders in that strange, flowing elven language. The elves around him jumped into action with incredible speed and took Leah straight from his uncle's arms. The dwarves protested at the idea of being separated from her, Kili was the most vocal, but Gandalf informed them that it was necessary.

It did not feel necessary to Kili. It felt like a catastrophe.

Though it did not take long for Kili himself to be brought into the fold. The blood on his shirt was enough to alarm the healers and have him brought before them. He was to be poked and prodded to see how he fared. Unfortunately, Leah was being treated in another room, so Kili could not see her. He wanted to search for her, but the healers would not allow him to leave.

It pained him to be so far away from Leah. What if something bad happened? He could not live with himself if she had given her life just to save him. Even if he had done the same for her.

Fili, thankfully, stayed with him so he didn't have to face the elven healers alone. They spoke in their own tongue around him, leaving him clueless to their meaning. Sometimes the elves seemed like they were looking through him rather than at him, staring into his very soul. He heard the sharp inhale of breath when they first did so. Though they did not inform him what was so shocking.

"Oh Kili, I nearly lost you again," Fili said once the healers had given him a clean bill of health. "I failed you again."

"No, Fili, you did not fail at anything," Fili looked up into Kili's eyes.

Kili's throat felt tight. "I saw Adad," a single tear fell from Kili's eye at the memory.

"You did?" Fili's voice was astonished.

"I did," he nodded. "He told me to tell you that he was so proud of you. And that you have never failed him or me."

Fili's face crumpled at the words, "He said that? That he was proud of me?"

Kili nodded, tears brimming his eyes at seeing his brother cry. He leaned his forehead against Fili's. "He also gave me something."

"Gave you something?"

Kili reached into his pocket and withdrew the beads.

"Courting beads?" a surprised laugh fell out of Fili's mouth. "Now you have no excuse not to tell her."

See everythings fiiiiiine

Kurdel- Heart of all hearts

azaghâlithûh- My young warrior