III.
It is the day we leave Lake-town. We had arrived like burglars, sneaking in the shadows … but we depart like celebrated heroes.
Somehow, the gilded fanfare and raucous cheers in the air seem hollow and meaningless to me as we approach the boat that will bear us away … because Kili is sick, very sick. His face is deathly pale; he's forcing himself to walk when he can only limp ahead painfully.
It was that Orc arrow that struck him when we escaped the Elf-king's halls – we had not expected it to be so gravely poisoned.
Thorin stops him from entering the boat that would sail us to Erebor – "Not you," he says, and Kili's face falls. I see despair begin to fill his eyes as he protests, and he shoots a desperate glance at me – a slow, cold fury builds in my veins.
I persuade, I insist, I plead with Thorin – "I will carry him if I must!" – but Thorin is adamant; and Kili stands desolately on the dock, too weak to resist.
If he doesn't go, I won't go.
I move to leave the boat and return to the dock, to my brother's side.
Thorin bars my way. "One day, when you are King, you will understand," he says, and my heart immediately grows heavy.
King. That title seemed so far away to me, now – even though I knew I was Thorin's heir, I couldn't see myself yet on the Throne of Erebor, ruling a grand kingdom of gold and iron and stone that I have never seen.
Thorin had filled our childhoods with stories of the old kingdom, and he said, you are Princes; you would be heirs to the greatest treasures of Middle-Earth. But those stories seem so far away now, from a different time. They seem like empty fairytales, when I had spent the whole of my solid life on the road – riding across mountains and valleys and through muddy roads in the rain, with Kili always not too far behind me.
I remember what our mother told us, when we left our home in the Blue Mountains so long ago: "Take care of him, Fili, keep him safe. He doesn't know it, but he needs you. You both need each other."
My place is with my brother.
Thorin relents. I can see, in one glance, that I have disappointed him.
But at that moment, I do not care. Thankfully, Oin and Bofur have stayed with us – and as the day wanes on and the boat grows ever more distant in the horizon, we search the town for a way to save my brother.