I cannot believe how great the response to this story has been, thank you so, so much for all the reviews, follows and favourites! This is a quick update before my internet is turned off, so I've only proof read it once. Hopefully it's okay :)

Anyway, this is the last child:Kíli chapter and it moves a little quickly, so sorry if it feel rushed (I hope it doesn't) I just wanted to show Kíli growing up a bit plus a little foreshadowing.

I hope you like it.

Read. Enjoy. Review.

Chapter Four # Growing Up #

It did not bother Kíli that he was a dwarf living among hobbits.

It did not bother Kíli that his friends did not like war games. It did not bother Kíli that he was the only child within a twelve mile radius who was so obsessed with archery. It did not bother Kíli that he looked different, especially his straight hair, rounded ears and small (occasionally booted) feet. It did not bother Kíli that he had to work extra hard to sneak up on people properly. It did not bother Kíli that he spent so much time up a tree or in a bush.

However, there was something that bothered Kíli greatly, or more appropriately two somethings.

Growing up and marriage.

As a dwarf, he aged slower than his hobbit friends. At first it was barely noticeable, and when Esme, Saradoc and Paladin began to grow out of their childhood games, he just adapted with them.

By the time the first decade had passed, however, Kíli still felt as though he was in his mid-tweens, but his friends all felt very differently.

Ten years after Kíli arrived in the Shire, Paladin got married to a hobbit lass named Eglantine Banks and had a little daughter called Pearl. Though it was a little strange for Kíli having his childhood friend grown-up enough to marry while he still felt like a child, Paladin had always seemed older than him, so he adapted fairly quickly and easily.

However, two years after that, something happened that he could not adapt to so easily.

A sixty eight year old Kíli scowled as he strung another arrow, firing at the target painted onto an old oak tree.

"Stupid…stupid…stupid!" he muttered angrily as he loosed arrow after arrow.

"Kíli?" The twinge of amusement in Bilbo's voice irritated the already annoyed Kíli further.

"What?" he snarled, without even bothering to look around.

"Don't take that tone with me." Bilbo scolded mildly.

"I'm sorry." Kíli grumbled.

"So you should be."

Kíli rolled his eyes and went to grab another arrow, but to his surprise, his quiver had vanished. Looking up, he saw Bilbo raising an eyebrow at him, quiver in hand.

"Can I have my quiver back? Please?" Kíli grimaced.

"Kíli, what's wrong?"

Kíli sighed, recognising that he would not be shooting anything until Bilbo had a satisfactory explanation. He flopped onto the floor and put his head in his hands.

"Everything's different now."

"You mean Saradoc and Esme-"

"Don't say it!" Kíli protested, and Bilbo laughed.

"You're acting like a child." The forty one year old hobbit sat down next to the young dwarf.

"Maybe that's because I still am!" Kíli yelled angrily, leaping to his feet, and Bilbo frowned, taken aback in the violence in Kíli's tone.

Then the hobbit stood up, crossing his arms. "How old are you, Kíli?"

"I don't know." Kíli replied scornfully. "I don't remember."

It was Bilbo's turn to roll his eyes. "Kíli Baggins…"

Kíli could not help the tiny little smile that crept across his cheeks at the mention of his full name. A few months after living at Bag End, the villagers had started to refer to him as Kíli Baggins, and soon even Bilbo was doing the same, but the sense of belonging that accompanied the name still warmed his heart each time he heard it over a decade later.

"There we go." Bilbo said triumphantly, noticing the very same smile.

"I just…I feel as though I'm being left behind again, Bilbo." Kíli admitted quietly, his head hanging down.

Bilbo's face fell. "Again?"

Kíli swallowed, looking at his guardian. "Whoever…whoever they were, my…my family, they never came…and…"

"Kíli, Esme and Saradoc are not going anywhere; they aren't going to leave you behind." Bilbo promised, looking pointedly at the target on the tree. "They're just growing up a little quicker is all."

"They're getting married. To each other." Kíli spat out the words as if they tasted like lemons and Bilbo laughed.

"Do you have any idea how afraid they were that you would react like this?"

"What do you mean?" Kíli frowned.

"They spoke to me yesterday, before they told you. They said that they were worried that you would feel awkward about it." Bilbo nodded knowingly and Kíli's stomach churned.

"They told you before they told me?" he managed to stammer, the uncontrollable feelings of abandonment and incongruity swelled in his chest.

Bilbo paused, seemingly aware that Kíli was so upset. "Kíli, didn't they ask you to be their Best Man?"

"Well, yes, but what does that have to do with anything?" Kíli frowned, turning to look at Bilbo whose eyes were bulging out of his head.

"What does it have to do with anything?" Bilbo cried. "I explained this to you last year, Kíli. For a hobbit couple with brothers between them – in this case Paladin Took or Barney Brandybuck – if they chose someone outside of their family to fulfil the role of Best Man, it ties them into their family all but legally. It's not just an honour, Kíli. They're both calling you their brother."

Kíli blinked at Bilbo, feeling a little dizzy. "Really?"

"Yes, really." Bilbo nodded in earnest. "They're still your best friends, Kíli, even if they're a little bit more grown up than you. And they're trying very hard not to leave you behind."

Kíli smiled wryly. "I suppose so…"

"Why is it stranger than Paladin and Eglantine having a baby last year?" Bilbo handed Kíli back his quiver.

Smiling and calmly stringing another arrow, Kíli shrugged. "Because Paladin was always older than me. In a way."

"No, the fact that you fell in love with baby Pearl the moment you saw her has nothing to do with it whatsoever." Bilbo rolled his eyes.

"Well, that too." Kíli grinned. Bilbo always knew how to make him feel better, whether he wanted to feel better or not, and the twanging of the bowstring was just as therapeutic for the young dwarf.

Kíli loved his bow. In the years he had spent in the Shire, Adalgrim had introduced Kíli to each and every one of the Took masters of archery, and he had become better than each and every one of them. His one connection to his past had become his greatest skill.

It had also become his greatest escape from life, the world and the universe, and the thing he retreated to whenever he was lost. He very rarely wanted solitude, but when he did his ever gentle guardian was more than happy to grant it to him.

"I'll see you at around dinnertime, I suppose?"

"You know me too well." Kíli all but felt the twinkle in his own eyes as Bilbo left him in peace.

By the time that he returned home, Kíli was back to his usual bouncy self, and Bilbo assumed that the young dwarf's insecurities had buried themselves once more. He had worries about Kíli potentially developing abandonment issues, but the young dwarf always seemed so happy that Bilbo could never dwell on it for long.

When the day came when Saradoc Brandybuck married Esmeralda Took, no one looked as proud of the young bride and groom as Kíli did. No one smiled as widely Kíli, no one danced as enthusiastically. No one laughed as joyfully as Kíli did, and no one was nearly as merry. Though it did initially cause some to wonder just how much Bilbo had let Kíli drink, the hobbit himself just assumed that Kíli had finally realised that no one was leaving him behind.

At least, he did until he was woken in the night by a heart wrenching scream.

"They're going to kill me!"

Bilbo leapt out of bed, the alcohol he had consumed spinning the world as he stumbled down the hall. "Kíli?"

A scream was his only reply, but when he burst clumsily into Kíli's room the attackers his ward was fighting were either invisible or imaginary, and even in his drunken state he was inclined to believe the later.

"Kíli, Kíli, it's alright!" he struggled not to slur his words, shaking Kíli's shoulders quickly to wake him from whatever nightmare grasped him so tightly.

Kíli's horror-filled brown eyes flew open and he gasped. "B-Bilbo, don't!"

"Don't what?" Bilbo frowned, and the terror began to ebb away from Kíli's eyes.

"You're not…you're not…oh!" Kíli whimpered, throwing himself into Bilbo's arms with a muffled sob.

Shock froze Bilbo momentarily at the desperate action. Kíli had not had a nightmare for over nine years, not one that had made him scream bloody murder, and he had not flung himself at Bilbo like that in over five years – though he claimed to still be a child he tried very hard to be tough and strong, his stubborn dwarven nature shining through his gentle upbringing. Bilbo was very insistent that Kíli remain in touch with his dwarven nature and did not try to become a hobbit. The boy had enough identity problems without worrying about his race as well.

"Kíli, what happened?" Bilbo whispered, fully aware that the dream must have more than just shaken his young companion.

"You were…you were trying to kill me." Kíli mumbled into Bilbo's shoulder and the hobbit froze.

"What?"

"You were…you wanted…you were going to stab me, you wanted me dead!" Kíli sobbed, and once again Bilbo was struck by how awful the dream must have been. "And you weren't alone, they all wanted to kill me, no one wanted me!"

"No one is going to hurt you, Kíli." Bilbo promised, gently stroking Kíli's tangled brown hair.

"You can't promise that!" Kíli keened desperately. "You can't!"

"I can, and I will! No one is going to hurt you; and I could certainly never hurt you, Kíli." Bilbo soothed. "I'm here."

"Of course you could hurt me!" Kíli sobbed, pushing Bilbo's arms away and scrambling across the bed.

Confused, Bilbo stared at Kíli's distraught face and the shadows that the moonlight cast upon it.

"I'm not family, Bilbo, I'm nothing to you!"

"Kíli?" Bilbo felt nauseous, but he did not think that it was the alcohol. "You are family, Kíli, you're…"

"I'm what, Bilbo?" The young dwarf demanded wildly. "I'm not your brother, not your son! I'm not even your cousin!"

Bilbo's intoxicated brain muddled his thoughts a little, but he could think clearly enough to decisively declare. "You are my Kíli. My dwarf."

"What?" Kíli half sobbed, confusion shining in his tear filled eyes.

"Your name is Kíli Baggins." Bilbo made his voice quiet but firm. "And you are my dwarf. There's not a conventional word to describe what all this is, because we're both very odd."

His attempt at a joke fell short as Kíli gave another muffled sob.

Regretfully, Bilbo soothed. "Don't cry, Kíli. You're more important to me than any of my cousins. And if you want to be my 'son', you can be."

"Wh-what?" Kíli stammered in shock, tears streaming down his face.

Trying to keep his tone matter-of-fact, Bilbo babbled on. "I certainly love you enough. You can be my son if you want, on the condition that you still call me Bilbo. If you called me 'father' I would feel very old."

The sudden glimmer of hope in Kíli's eyes was washed away with a fresh set of tears. "How drunk are you, Bilbo?"

Not bothering to contest Kíli's accusation, Bilbo smiled. "I'm sober enough to know what I am saying. I'll say exactly the same thing in the morning, you know."

Scrubbing the tears from his cheeks, Kíli relaxed a little. "Bilbo?"

"Yes?"

"Do you mean it, or are you just saying that to make me feel better?"

Bilbo laughed lightly at the suspicion shrouding Kíli's tone. "I mean it, I promise."

Suddenly the slightly drunk and very tired hobbit found himself being crushed in a huge bear hug from a shaking young dwarf.

"Whatever you dreamt, it wasn't real." He murmured, hugging Kíli back tightly.

Kíli mumbled something Bilbo could not hear into the hobbit's shoulder.

"What was that?"

"Felt real!" Kíli trembled as he replied, and Bilbo shifted slightly so that he could hug the young dwarf more tightly, while still being able to breathe.

"Well it wasn't!" He felt, more than saw, Kíli's nod, and he softened his tone. "What happened, Kíli, in your dream?"

Kíli swallowed. "Everyone was trying to kill me...You, Saradoc, the Tooks...and the dwarves, the ones I used to dream about, the ones in the sketchbook. The...the oldest one, the grown dwarf..." Pausing, Kíli shuddered. "He...he had a shield, a shield made of solid oak, and he was hitting me with it, over and over again..."

Bilbo froze, remembering Daisy's suspicions that the dwarfling had been attacked. Could the dwarf from Kíli's dreams be his attacker?

"There was...he had a name."

"A name?" Bilbo asked, a little surprised.

Kíli nodded. "I doubt it is really his name, if he even exists, but in the dream he was called Thorin, and he was my uncle."

Bilbo's head started to spin. He had never told Kíli that Daisy suspected that the wound was inflicted on purpose, but on the darkest nights in winters past he had wondered if Kíli's family had attacked him themselves. It would explain why no one had come.

"Bilbo?"

"Oh, yes?" Bilbo jumped.

"I'm sorry, Bilbo..."

"Whatever for?" Bilbo's sharpening mind began to rerun the evening in his head as he tried to think of a disaster that Kíli could have caused.

"For screaming." Kíli pulled away from Bilbo gently, his cheeks burning in shame. "I'm too old to be waking you up when I have a nightmare."

Bilbo shook his head. "I'm glad that you did. You're far too young to have an identity crisis."

Kíli gave a watery laugh. "Thank you, Bilbo."

"You're very, very welcome." Bilbo yawned. "But if I don't go to sleep now, I won't get up until tea time tomorrow."

Kíli laughed again. "Goodnight Bilbo, I love you."

"I love you, too."

And so it was that Kíli Baggins grew up in the Shire.

His life was peaceful and happy, though he regularly felt insecure and out of place. The lack of memory took its toll over the years and he grew increasingly restless, but the peace of the Shire was good for the young dwarf, and by the time he reached the age of seventy seven, he had decided exactly what he would do.

As soon as he turned eighty, he and Bilbo would travel north to the Blue Mountains to try and discover where he came from. He would maybe spend a little time with the dwarves, but then he would return to the Shire when Bilbo's homesickness grew too fierce, which he had very little doubt that it would.

He would also continue the work he had started in the smithy. Though Bilbo had assured him that he did not need to work, Kíli enjoyed the labour, and he was so naturally gifted that the hobbit smith masters occasionally came to him for advice.

Kíli decided that he and Bilbo would go on a few adventures every now and again, to explore and see the world in all its famed glory. As long as he had Bilbo, his friends and the Shire, the aching part of Kíli's soul yearning to know of his past was easily dealt with.

His name was Kíli Baggins, and the Shire was his home.

Next chapter, we will meet the company :) I hope you didn't find that too rushed, I hope you liked it, I've written most of the next chapter so the update should be soon :) Also, I'm more pleased with the next chapter than I am with this one :)