SQUEAL! Thank you sooo much for all my reviews, favourites and follows, I had no idea how popular this story would be! Agh! Thank you all for making my day!

A quick note on ages: I have changed some hobbit ages (ie the children) but Kíli's literal age (56) is cannon with these years. His equivalent age – about 8 still in the chapter – is just drawn from ONE INTERPRETATION of dwarven ageing, the one that fits best for this story :P

I'm sorry if the hobbits last chapter seemed a bit too violent :L

Read. Enjoy. Review.

Chapter Three # Arrows and Flames #

"That doesn't count!"

"I think you'll find that it does count and I won our bet." Bilbo protested smugly. "I hit something; therefore you have to do the washing up for a week."

Not actually caring in the slightest whether or not he actually did have to wash up, Kíli desperately tried to keep a straight face as he replied. "Bilbo, shooting your own foot does not count as hitting something."

"Is my foot a thing?" Bilbo raised an eyebrow.

Kíli scoffed. "That's just-"

"Is my foot a thing?" Bilbo repeated.

"Yes, it is." Kíli sighed dutifully.

"Then I hit something." Bilbo declared with playful pride.

"Alright, alright! You win." Kíli laughed, before looking at the tiny wound on Bilbo's foot. "Are you sure that you aren't hurt?"

"I've told you that I'm alright, Kíli." Bilbo smiled.

"You'd think that after a month you could actually hit something." Kíli's taunt was all the more teasing for his serious tone. "Other than your foot."

Bilbo gave an offended little cough. "I think that you-" He broke off with a groan.

"What's wrong?" Kíli took a little step closer to Bilbo, though his friend had tried to assure him many times since the previous night that no one in the Shire would physically hurt him.

"It's Otho Sackville-Baggins!" Bilbo groaned, before his eyes lit up and he grinned. "Run!"

"Run?" Kíli frowned, and Bilbo grabbed his hand with a cheeky laugh, dragging him into a full on sprint.

"Run!"

Otho, a rather unpleasant looking chap of Bilbo's age scowled as they surged forward.

"Bilbo Baggins! What do you think you're-"

Splat!

When Bilbo leapt into a muddy puddle by his cousin's feet at full speed, showering the finely dressed hobbit in filth Kíli laughed so hard that it was a wonder that he was still running.

"Bilbo!" Otho yelled in irritation as they fled.

They ran until Kíli's little legs started to wobble, and then they collapsed happily onto the soft grass of a nearby meadow.

"Why did you so that?" Kíli gasped as he regained his breath.

"Otho's a horrible fellow." Bilbo shuddered dramatically, a sly smile on his face. "Always pinching my things and preaching about family honour and being grown up. He deserved it."

Kíli leant against Bilbo's side, quickly catching his breath. "Race you home?"

Bilbo laughed breathlessly. "We're still miles away, Kíli."

"I'm a dwarfling, not a little hobbit, I can take it!" Kíli half protested, half pleaded. "Please!"

"Alright." Bilbo laughed. "Three, two, one!"

They scrambled back to their feet and ran with the joy fuelled adrenalin that accompany such moments of spontaneous play. Though Kíli was fast, with great stamina for his size and age, Bilbo was a lot faster and a lot stronger, and he noticed when the dwarfling started to slow.

With a cheeky grin he swung the dwarfling up onto his back as if he were no heavier than a hobbit child. Kíli's laugh was all he needed to spurn him on to run until they reached Bag End. Even Bilbo was panting as they tumbled through the front door.

"We won!" Kíli gasped.

"Against who?" Bilbo panted, bending over.

Kíli shrugged, sighing happily. "Alright, you won again! Thank you for taking me out, Bilbo."

"You are most welcome." Bilbo smiled, taking in a deep breath.

The next day they walked down to the Tooks' house for dinner, and Kíli instantly disappeared to play with the two children, allowing the more adult side of Bilbo to emerge to talk to his cousin.

"Adalgrim, what do you know about shooting?"

The old Took turned to look at Bilbo with interest. "Is this about Kíli's little bow?"

"Yes." Bilbo nodded. "I took him up to the woods yesterday to practise his shooting again and he's amazing, a complete natural, but I couldn't help him. Even after watching him and trying to help all this time, when I tried to shoot one arrow and all I did was shoot my own foot!"

Adalgrim chuckled. "Is that so? Well, I know a little, most of us Tooks do, as I'm sure you know. Saying that, I'm not the best with the old bow and arrow. You'd be better off talking to someone like Adelard."

"I'm not sure that Kíli needs to be introduced to anyone else at the moment." Bilbo said quietly, and Adalgrim nodded sympathetically.

"Well, I can take the lad out now and again, if you'd like."

Bilbo smiled, his young face lighting up. "I'm sure Kíli would like that very much."

Adalgrim sighed heavily. "Bilbo, lad, we asked you to dinner for a reason."

Surprised by Adalgrim's grave tone, Bilbo stood up. "Oh?"

Daisy walked into the room, closing the door behind her. "They're hunting for will-o-the-wisps in the garden; they'll be occupied for a while." She said softly.

"What's wrong?" Bilbo worried and Daisy sighed.

"Now, you know me Bilbo, and you know that I don't like to assume things, and I definitely don't like to publicise my thoughts unless I know that they are true, or at least the most likely explanation."

"I know..." Bilbo nodded, wondering where exactly she was going with this.

"I noticed something, when you first brought Kíli onto our dining room table, when I dressed that awful bash on his head. I didn't want to say anything because it was neither my business nor my place to do so, but I mentioned it to Adalgrim last night when he told me about the incident in the market. We decided that you ought to know, especially now that it's clear Kíli is not going anywhere."

"What on earth are you talking about?" Bilbo frowned.

Daisy took a deep breath. "I don't think that Kíli hit his head by accident, Bilbo. The wound was too uniform; it looked like he had been hit on the head by a hammer…or at least something like it."

"What?" Bilbo whispered.

"She thinks that someone hit him on purpose." Adalgrim paraphrased.

"What?" Bilbo repeated, shock chilling his bones.

"The shape of the wound made it obvious, Bilbo. It wasn't an accident." Daisy murmured apologetically and Bilbo suddenly felt a little ill.

"You mean to say that someone hit Kíli on the head with a, a weapon?" Bilbo cried, looking out of the window to check on the little boy, who was wrestling playfully with Paladin while Esme clapped.

Daisy glanced out of the same window. "I think so, yes."

"The coward probably threw him into the river to be rid of him." Adalgrim growled darkly.

A horrific image burst into Bilbo's mind, an image where a figure wrought in shadow brought down a hammer onto the head of a screaming Kíli, before tossing the innocent little boy's body into the river. Realisation dawned in his mind and he choked.

"Wh-why? Why would someone try to kill Kíli, he's just a child!"

"It's not our place to speculate." Daisy murmured sadly.

Dozens of scenarios, each as disturbing as the next, sprung from Bilbo's imagination as he tried to wrap his head around the idea that someone had intentionally smashed his little Kíli on the head and dropped him into the river to die.

"Doesn't bear thinking about, does it?" Adalgrim sighed, and Bilbo shook his head.

He remained quiet all through dinner, haunted by the knowledge that an unknown foe had tried to dispose of the laughing boy across the table. Luckily, Daisy was not quite so tongue tied, and as Kíli ate with the table manners of any hobbit child she looked on with pride.

"What was all this I was hearing about some half-witted fools giving you grief up in the market the other day Kíli?" she asked in a fuss as she dished him up an extra helping of mashed potatoes.

The dwarfling blushed. "They…um…"

"They'll come around." Daisy smiled.

"Do you think so?" Kíli looked up at her hopefully and the hobbit woman laughed.

"I know so, Kíli."

Though Daisy was right, it almost took a tragedy for the residents of Hobbiton to trust Kíli.

When Bell Goodchild, Rosa's older sister was to be thrown an enormous party for her twenty eighth birthday, the party was shaping up to be the biggest event of the year as it coincided with Midsummer's Eve and her engagement to Hamfast Gamgee.

Days before the party, Rosa gave her mother an ultimatum when she found Kíli and Bilbo were not among the three hundred odd guests, but when they were invited, the child became furious upon discovering that her parents had no plans on getting presents for the dwarf.

Even after her older sister sorted everything out, Rosa was still fuming, and by the time the party was in full swing she had had another fight with her mother, climbed to the top of a nearby tree and was refusing to come down.

Kíli was the one to climb up to her, partly because he was the only one she did not throw a stick at when he tried.

"Rosa? What's wrong?"

"Pride and prejudice." She muttered bitterly, folding her arms with a pout.

Saddened but a little warmed that sympathy for him caused his friend pain, Kíli smiled. "Come and dance, Rosa. It's a party, have some fun!"

"No!" she pouted, shaking her head with a dramatic humph.

Kíli's smile deepened. He had come to know the little group pretty well, and he could read the ten year old girl like a book. "Come down and play with us, please."

"No…"

"Please?" Kíli wheedled, knowing that in a matter of seconds he would get his way.

"Well-"

Bang!

The two children squealed in delight as fireworks burst across the horizon and they clapped enthusiastically.

They were no fireworks of Gandalf's, but neither child had any knowledge of the wizard's existence, so it mattered little to them. They just laughed at whooped as the bright lights illuminated night sky.

"Look out!" someone screamed suddenly, and the whizzing of a newly lit firework had the party diving for cover.

Kíli and Rosa screamed as the rocket smashed into the base of the tree, the explosion thrusting flames up to the branches beneath them.

Suddenly everyone was screaming, and assigning blame to some clumsy idiot named Ferdinand, and the world erupted in chaos.

As Rosa wailed for her mother, only one name came from Kíli's lips.

"Bilbo!"

The young hobbit in question was staring up in utter terror. "Kíli… Just hold on! No, no, Kíli hold on!"

"Bilbo, help us!" Kíli felt terror seizing his heart as the flames leapt closer, and he clutched at Rosa's arm.

He could hear the screams and cries of the other hobbits, but suddenly he could not hear Bilbo, and he squinted down through the fire below him desperately.

"Bilbo? Bilbo, don't leave me, please! Bilbo, where are you, please?" his heart beat so hard and so fast that he thought it would burst free of his chest, and he realised that the thought of Bilbo leaving him was just as terrifying as the thought of burning to death.

"Kíli!" Rosa squealed, clutching at him. "What do we do?"

The dwarfling let out a pitiful mixture of a wail and a scream and held onto her arm tightly.

"Kíli, what do we do?" the girl repeated, and a loud cracking sound broke into his consciousness.

Kíli gasped in horror and his entire body froze.

Rosa tugged on his shirt with a wail. "The branch is breaking, what do we do?"

What he wanted to do was to cry until someone came and saved him, but that just would not do. A voice swam into Kíli's head, a voice he did not recognise but a deep voice that sounded strangely… familiar.

Be brave, Kíli, take a leap of faith.

The flames began to lick at their feet and Kíli looked at Rosa and swallowed. "We jump."

"We what?" Rosa shrieked, clutching Kíli's tunic desperately.

"Hold onto me." Kíli ordered, wrapping her arms around his neck and wrapped his legs around hers so that he would not land on them. "Hold on tight."

The strange voice returned. That's my little prince.

Rosa sobbed, and Kíli took a deep breath. Then he kicked back and launched away from the tree, falling backwards through the air and smashing onto the ground below on his back.

An incredible agony exploded across his back, arms and legs as quickly and violently as the fireworks and he closed his eyes against the pain.

He felt Rosa push up off of him with a frightened whisper. "Kíli?"

Moaning softly in response, Kíli twitched. He could hear Rosa's mother wailing and the shocked and frightened murmurs of the watching hobbits, but once again a single voice pierced his conscience.

"Get out of the way; get out of my way, Kíli, Kíli!"

Forcing his eyes to open, Kíli looked up at Bilbo's terrified face. "B…Bilbo…"

"Oh, Kíli…" Bilbo looked as if he were about to be sick. "Are you alright, are you hurt?"

"Yes…" Kíli whimpered tearfully. "Hurts…"

"Help, Daisy, somebody!" Bilbo cried, grabbing Kíli's hand gently.

"Rosa?" Kíli murmured, wincing. "She…alright?"

"I'm fine, Kíli, I had a soft landing." The little girl murmured from a safe position in her mother's arms.

Daisy Took was over in a second, and soon Kíli was surrounded by healers and being carried back to Bag End. The only thing he could concentrate on, however, were the mutters of the witnesses.

"Did you see that?"

"He saved her life…"

"…put himself in danger…"

"Saved her life!"

"…thank goodness…."

"Saved her life!"

Kíli smiled softly, leaning against Bilbo's chest as he was carried back home. For a few hours he was surrounded by healers and nosy hobbits, but finally they left him in peace.

Kíli yawned as Bilbo tucked him into bed.

"Well that's quite enough excitement for a decade or two, don't you think?"

Kíli giggled sleepily, snuggling down under the covers.

"You scared me today, Kíli." Bilbo said quietly.

"I'm sorry." Kíli mumbled dutifully, blinking up at Bilbo innocently.

"You also made me very proud. You were very brave." Bilbo murmured genuinely.

"Really?" Kíli's eyes widened and Bilbo gave a quiet chuckle.

He could hear the smile on the hobbit's face. "Really. Goodnight, Kíli."

"G'night Bilbo." Kíli yawned, smiling contentedly as he slipped into a world of dreams.

Closing the door to Kíli's room, Bilbo shuddered.

Six months.

Kíli had been with him for six months, and already he was dearer to Bilbo than any of his numerous cousins. In just one awful moment, he had nearly lost his dwarf, his Kíli…

However, Kíli's selfless actions were recognised by everyone who had witnessed them, and the observers were quick to spread the word –

Kíli, the strange young dwarf living with Mr Bilbo Baggins, was now to be trusted and accepted by the Shirefolk.

It was that simple.

At first, Kíli was even more wary of the townsfolk when they began smiling at him and slipping him treats, but soon he started to revel in the attention, becoming as confident as Saradoc, Paladin and Esme. The four children would often be seen playing in and around the market, with or without a gang of other children, and the troublemakers were viewed as pesky but lovable rogues.

Running through green fields and up trees barefoot is not the usual life of a dwarfling, and many dwarf mothers would tut and say that it was unhealthy and risky to allow a child to live the peaceful and open life that Kíli led, but for more than ten years Kíli flourished in the Shire.

It was not until his twelfth year in Bag End that the cracks began to show…

I hope you enjoyed that chapter :)

There will probably be one to two more chapters of the child Kíli story arch BUT I write with many a flashback, so even when the next part of the tale (cough cough quest cough cough) comes into play you will still have some child Kíli if that's cool with everyone ;)

In answer to some reviews, I do plan on explaining how Kíli arrived in the river (obviously) and we will see things from Fíli's perspective, but not just yet :P

I struggled a bit with Bilbo's character as I wanted to show him in that awkward I'm-not-an-adult-but-have-to-be-sometimes-even-tho ugh-other-times-I-run-around-like-a-five-year-old time of life but I worry I just made him seem bipolar. Is he in character? Do tell me so I can fix it if he's not :)

This story has had the best response ever to any of my little fics so I hope that was enough for you, and not too dramatic or anti-climactic….