True Insanity

Thorin watched the search for the Arkenstone with sharp eyes and clenched fists. Little progress had been made, of course, due to the size of the horde, but he refused to let this be an excuse. Without the stone, he had little claim to his throne, besides the blood that pulsed through his veins. It was the King's jewel after all. He would have it. To make matters worse, it wouldn't be lost if the burglar hadn't let it slip through his fingers. He had heard Bilbo mentioned glimpsing it, but not pursuing the gem to protect himself from the great dragon. Another excuse he would not allow to be used. The hobbit had one job, and he had failed to complete it. And now, the rest of the Company had to pick up the halfling's slack. The king's lip curled.

Still, the great feeling of being within his kingdom filled every pore of his body. Each step he took was greeted with the crush of coins beneath his feet. Each breath he took was full of the metallic scent of treasure. Each way he looked he saw his new favorite color: gold. There was a war between each part of his heart on what to feel, how to react, but one thing stayed certain. His priorities here were to get the Arkenstone and protect the horde inside the mountain. At the moment both of these goals were distracted from as he kept his eyes intently fixed on Nori, who was shuffling through a chalice of various jewelry pieces. Thorin was sure that every time he blinked or turned his head the thief was slipping something into his pocket, but had yet to catch him in the act yet. As much as he deeply desired to ban the dwarf from assisting with the search, they needed all the hands and eyes they could utilize.

Which brought him to an entirely different issue, one that was chewing at the back of his mind like a termite in wood. The Company was down two perfectly good dwarves. Two pairs of eyes and hands were wasting their time and energy on something less important than the task at hand. Thorin himself could hardly believe that Fili would decide to stay and help the healer instead of searching through the city he was born to inherit. Oin was less obligated to help with the search, though it still peeved the king. This frustration was nothing compared to the anger he felt at the dwarf they were tending to, however. If you could just…

He paused as he caught something in the corner of his eye, near the bedrooms that lined the second level. It wasn't much: just a flash of fur and dark blonde hair, but in it the dwarven leader saw an entirely different sign while the door to the bedroom in the far corner of the level opened and closed. It was as if he forgot how to breathe. "Keep looking," Thorin growled to his subjects, before he swept from the hall. His heart was hammering so hard within his chest that he feared it might crack his ribs. Up the staircase he went, the hurried pace of his steps replicating the rate of thoughts that crossed his mind. The bedroom in the corner of the second level had a view of the throne room, and if he remembered correctly a large balcony outside that overlooked Dale and the lake. It had been a view that had made him desperately happy as a child, but had made another dwarfling even more elated. The king approached the door with trembling fingers. If it was what he thought…His fingers graced the cool bronze embellishment on the front of the entrance. His own had been in gold, while Dis' had been marked in silver. Memories flooded past his eyes like the river in Mirkwood.

"Don't be such a stick in the mud Thorin! You deserve a break from being stuck-up every once in a while."

"You've finally mastered the brooding face of a king. I think that makes you fit to rule."

"You remember brother, the door to my room will always be open, especially to you."

The voice came from times he had tried to forget because of the lump that rose in his throat and stab that he felt in his stomach. His hands held still on the door for a moment. "The door to my room is always open," the king muttered to himself, and finally pushed it in.

It had seen better days. The dust coated almost everything. Cobwebs decorated the walls and furniture like thick white drapes. The large bed was still pressed against one wall opposite the large window, which indeed did open to a balcony. The sheets were just as they had been left all those years ago. The bed was perfectly made. The wardrobe, though white with the debris of lost memories, was still as fine as it had been left. Thorin could feel his eyes welling up with tears. Of the rooms that he had seen within Erebor, most of them had sustained heavy damage from the dragon. His childhood bedroom, along with his sister's had been half caved in. Those had been on the other side of the level, however, closer to the throne. This was as close to immaculate as the estate could get. The dwarf turned, and mounted on the wall, along with the torches was a sight that made his face grow hot and blood run cold.

It was a great bow, tethered to the wall with spiders' homes, but still as majestic as it always had been. The curve of the bow had been specially carved to perfectly match the hands of its master. The string had been carefully adjusted every morning. The great leader remembered watching its owner meticulously polish it day after day. It was the pride and joy of the dwarf who had resided in the room. Truly skilled and gifted dwarven archers were few and far between, as most of them favored swords and axes. This mighty weapon had belonged to one of the greats. Thorin reached up just to touch it, when he heard a disturbance behind him. Whirling around, he stopped dead in his tracks when he glimpsed the catalyst of the noise.

The other dwarf's face was in the shadows as he stood in the arched doorway that opened onto the balcony. The light behind him obscured most of his basic features, but the hair as fine as gold still glowed in the same way it had up until the last day it saw the day. He was wearing a great fur robe over wide shoulders, garb that Thorin recognized as that of nobility. "Frerin," he breathed.

"Uncle?" A voice that he did not expect escaped the form of the dwarf he had so easily mistaken for the little brother he had lost on the battlefield. Fili stepped through the doorway and into better light. His different nose, lips, and eyes came into view, shattering the image that the king had of his sibling only seconds before. He felt as if he was collapsing from inside out. For the most brief of moments he had truly believed that his deceased brother was standing before him, in the room he had left behind when Smaug had torn their lives away from them. "Uncle, are you okay?" Thorin wanted to shake his head, to tell his nephew that he was perfectly fine, but instead his slid down the wall into sitting position. Fili rushed forward to help him, but his uncle raised a hand.

"I'm fine," he assured, breathing hard. He blinked several times. The mountain was beginning to get to him. "You just…you just look so much like him." The gold-haired prince knelt down beside his kin, looking worried.

"Like Uncle Frerin?" The heir asked. Thorin nodded. "This was his room, wasn't it?" He nodded again. "I could tell. Because of the…" His nephew gestured awkwardly to the great bow that hung from the wall. Still, he refused to say the word. For once, the king completely understood why. This was not a topic he liked to so often dwell on.

"Why are you wearing that?" he demanded of the younger dwarf, and motioned to the fur robe that had helped trick him in the first place. Whatever moment of peace the two had was shattered by the thought he turned into words. Fili gave his uncle a hand, helping him to get to his feet.

"My shirt from Laketown got covered in blood," the prince began, and upon seeing the shocked expression on his king's face quickly added. "Not mine. Kili's. This was the only clothing we could find in the near vicinity to make sure I had something to wear."

Thorin accepted the answer, before questioning him once again. "What are you doing here?" His nephew brushed the dust off his palms by dusting them on the fur.

"Oin sent me looking for a dagger. I've checked every room on this floor. I got what he wanted, though." From within his clothing, Fili drew out a short silver dagger, embellished with small dark blue stones and an emerald directly at the hilt. The corner of Thorin's mouth twitched.

"What does Oin need a dagger for?" he scowled. The slight breeze that entered from the open balcony door disturbed the dust slightly, and it now swirled around their feet like mist. His brother's look-alike bit his lip.

"He didn't tell me, exactly. We need all the supplies we can get. He still hasn't figured out what's wrong with Kili-" The heir was quickly interrupted by his relative's cold and forced laugh.

"Hasn't Oin realized what's going on here?" he chuckled. Fili's bright eyes widened, and he looked confused.

"Well, he knows the symptoms. Bouts of pain. Loss of skin coloration. Weakness. A fever that continues to raise in temperature despite our best efforts," the younger dwarf explained. Thorin looked at the cracked ceiling for a moment.

"None of that is relevant in this situation. There is one thing wrong with that dwarf and there is nothing we can do to fix it." The dwarf he had helped to raise seemed to be more baffled the more his uncle spoke.

"What is it? Why can't it be fixed?" The false amusement Thorin wore toppled from his brooding face.

When he answered it was with disgust and venom. "He was raised by Thranduil, king of Mirkwood." It was time for Fili's face to fall, though his settled in one of frustration rather than one of hatred.

"I should have known you would answer like that. You don't understand," he accused. The king raised an eyebrow: a challenge.

"And you are ignoring what is directly in front of you," Thorin shot back. Fili rubbed his temples with his forefingers, and closed his eyes. The gesture reminded the leader of his sister, as it was a gesture she frequently did when in his presence.

"I don't want to hear your paranoid theories. They have no grounds," the blonde dwarf whined.

"No grounds?" His kin practically shouted. "You don't find any of this suspicious? Kili rejected us in Laketown, and claimed he would need time to think about where he was going. He then alleges to be attacked by a wild and singular orc who strikes him with a sword that brings back his ability to feel pain. When your brother comes to he says he climbed into a boat and pushed off onto the lake, only to wash up on the shores of the mountain he said he had no desire to go to with a visibly sealed wound and foggy memories of the events that put him here. Do you really believe all that?" Fili began pacing the room, his head shaking with every step. Thorin wished he would just listen, realize that the truth did not reside in the words of his brother and were instead being told to him at that very moment.

"So what do you think he's doing here? What's Kili's 'grand scheme?'" The prince argued in a mocking tone, making wild hand gestures and exasperated facial expressions. It somehow didn't bother the king too much. He would convince him yet.

"The illness is ploy meant to shield him from blame. He is using it as an excuse to get access the gems that Thranduil wants to get his hands on, and maybe more, to take them back to the kingdom he is truly loyal to." For a moment, Thorin thought that he had caused some sort of suspicion to arise in his nephew, but instead watched as Fili dropped his face into his hands.

"I can't do this again," the prince begged in a muffled voice. When he let his fingers drag off his skin, the king could see the smallest of tear trails under the blonde dwarf's eyes. "I can't listen to you question Kili like you did that night. You never could just trust him, could you? He was always doing something. Even before his birthday he thought you didn't like him. He was terrified to disappoint, but even more to please you. Why can't you, why couldn't you just let him be?" The King Under the Mountain hardened like stone.

"You know more than anyone that I regret the things I did that day," he murmured. This too failed to subdue Fili. He kept becoming wilder and wilder, as fifty years of unspoken words escaped his lips.

"You say that," he blamed, "yet here you are again, doing the same thing, assuming the worst of the situation. It's happening all over again and you don't even realize that you are driving him back into the snow!" By the end of his accusation, the prince was shouting. Thorin wanted to say that it stung, that he felt the pain of what his kin was raving. He wanted to say so, but knew that it wouldn't be the truth. He felt nothing.

"This is nothing like what happened then," the leader snarled. Fili was panting with anger, the most out of control Thorin had seen his nephew in years.

"Really? Kili's sick, the winter is brewing, one of your brother's bows is here, and you won't listen to reason! It's the same! They say that true insanity is completing the same action over and over again and expecting different results. If that's true then you are mad." The disgust in the fair-haired dwarf's words was less painful than it was insulting. Thorin let them hang in the air while he stared at the heir to his newly reclaimed throne, critical and unfeeling. He saw the slightest glimmer of fear in the dwarf's face, an emotion that was usually only present when some sort of danger was present.

"After you bring back the dagger to Oin," he whispered in a measured tone, flawless on the outside but fatal within, "I want you to go and assist the rest of your comrades in the search for the Arkenstone. It doesn't take two fully capable dwarves to tend to one person." Fili didn't move, and stood frozen where he had stopped. "And if you don't do as I say, so help me I will see that Kili is thrown from this kingdom and back to the forest where he belongs. Now be gone." Again, his nephew stayed in place, the slight twitching in his fingers the only movement. "I said be gone!" The king exploded. The younger dwarf flinched.

"Of course." Fili ducked his head and rushed by his uncle back out into the hallway. Thorin waited until the door swung shut before he slammed both fists into the wall, a guttural shout escaping from his throat.

The day was cold, but bright. Frost hung to the long dead plants the way a mother would to a lost child. The sun peeked out from its place behind the sheet of thick gray clouds. He wore a large knit scarf and sheepskin coat, shaking the chill from his bones as he knocked on the small door of the little dwarven cottage that sat in the large collection of similar houses at the edge of the Blue Mountains. He could hear the excitement brewing from inside the house, an exuberant voice shouting at the other two residents of the home. "He's here! He's here!"

He was greeted by a warm draft from the inside of the house, and his sister standing in the door. She wore a simply dark green dress with an apron on over it. Both her hands and clothes were spattered with flour, yet she had also managed to keep it out of her thick and wavy dark hair and the delicate beard that graced her chin. "Are you sure that you should be late for the forge again?" she questioned, one eyebrow raised. "If I was paid for every time you were late for work then you wouldn't have your job anymore."

"Come on, Dis. It's not everyday your nephew turns twenty," he snorted. His sister smirked.

"I thought you were just coming over for dinner." He shook his head.

"I have something to give to him first." Dis narrowed her eyes, inspecting his face.

"Fine. But be aware, he might cry from excitement," she warned. He laughed again. What a time it had been when he used to laugh in such a carefree manner. The brink of disaster, and everything was well on the surface. His sister swung the door open further so he could step inside the doorway. He obliged, scraping his wet shoes on the front step before doing so. "Kili!" she called into the house. "Uncle Thorin's here to-"

"Uncle Thorin!" The tiny dwarfling scampered from around the corner, bouncing up and down with glee. Dis moved out of the way as her brother enveloped her son in a gigantic hug, having to kneel on the ground to do so.

"Happy Birthday!" the blacksmith congratulated, ruffling Kili's hair. The child was positively glowing. "How old are you now?"

"Twenty!" his nephew squealed. Thorin feigned deep thought.

"Twenty? Well then, this is a very important birthday for you, isn't it?" It was so easy for him to put on a fake cheery smile and be the happy uncle when he was around his nephews. Other times he found himself consumed by anger and darkness. There would be none of that this day. Kili nodded vigorously. "And I suppose that this means I should have something very important to give you." Thorin fished into one pocket and pulled out a delicate chain necklace. It was rather plain, besides one embellishment: a single bead. Kili's eyes grew as wide as saucers.

"What is it?" the child asked.

"It's your birthday present," his uncle explained, holding up the bead so it was more easily seen. "Your name is engraved there. See? And underneath it is your birthday. And below that is your status as the heir to the throne of Durin." Kili stared at it in awe.

"Can I wear it?" he gasped. Thorin guffawed.

"Of course. Why do you think I put it on a chain?" Carefully and delicately, he pulled the necklace down over the child's bed head, and left it so it hung properly.

"Thank you!" Kili shouted, hugging his uncle again. "I'll never take it off."

Thorin felt the very same necklace, a small weight, pressing against his leg through his pocket.

"They say that true insanity is completing the same action over and over again and expecting different results," Fili had said. Sure, this might have been true, but if it was, then it didn't apply to Thorin's decisions this time.

He had loved Kili far more when he drove him out in the blizzard. It was the difference in situations that made him sane. Or so he thought.

Hey everyone! Thanks for reading. Sorry this chapter didn't get posted sooner, but my Internet has been down, and I was unable to put it up. I hope you enjoyed the most recent chapter of this little story of mine. The struggle with writing sick Thorin is so real! I tried to play up the paranoia and irritability in this chapter more than anything else, and sincerely hope that it worked. If you are really enjoying this story, make sure to favorite it so it can be shared with other readers. If you want to be informed of when I post the next chapter (and I promise this next one is going to be a fun one. And by fun I mean angsty as Hell) then please follow this story. And, as always, I love getting feedback from you guys. It's a great motivator and will probably make me get chapters out quicker and more consistently. Write a review telling me your critiques, predictions, theories, and comments. Until next time…