Chapter Four

Kili was caught in the midst of the worst nightmare of his life. He was stuck on the freezing slopes of Ravenhill, helpless to get to Tauriel as Bolg battered her into pieces. He could do nothing but listen to her sharp cries as she was pushed back toward the edge of the cliff.

And when the tide turned and Bolg focused on him, Tauriel was too broken to reach him before Bolg plunged a blade into his gut. They stared at each other across the frozen abyss, and he died unable to reach her.

He wanted the nightmare to go away. The thought of them both dying up there on Ravenhill, unable to reach each other, was agonizing.

Over and over this loop played in his mind. Is this death, he wondered, or have I just gone mad?

Finally, finally, a light pierced through the darkness of his mind. The voice was oh-so-faint at first, but he reached for it, yearned for it, and when he found it, he found Tauriel. She stood over him, bathed in light. Her words were Elvish—he was going to have to convince her to teach it to him—but they were beautiful, and they had the power to calm his agony and bring him back from the brink of death.

They were in Bard's home in Lake-town, and when he felt her fingers curl lightly around his, he thought that he had nearly everything he had ever wanted.

The images faded, but Tauriel's voice continued on, and he found himself back in Mirkwood's dungeons. Tauriel was just there on the other side of the bars, holding his rune stone up to the light. She'd surprised him by giving it back to him, and when their fingers brushed it had sparked something in him. He had believed, in that moment, that there was more to their story together than bars and locked doors.

She had accepted his rune stone when he gave it to her after Lake-town, and he'd told her it was a promise. Their story was not over. Bolg would not be the end of them. He would banish the Orc scum from his mind, and he would make it back to Tauriel this time.

Her voice remained in his head, but now it felt…closer, not so much a dream. He realized he felt remnants of pain, and was exhausted deep in his bones, but he was no longer fighting against a mire of hazy clouds. He was…alive. It was not death he had felt, but a near thing that left him floating in a nightmare world where shadows lurked. Now he felt the warmth of braziers instead of the icy winds, and he heard Tauriel speaking in Elvish nearby.

He opened his eyes, needing to see her, needing to know he was no longer dreaming. She was not beside him as he'd wanted to believe, and he felt a crushing disappointment. But her voice was nearby.

"Tauriel…" he said, and his voice was so raspy and quiet that nobody heard him. He turned his head to the left and saw nothing. To the right, he saw a dream and a nightmare. Tauriel was there, kneeling over Thorin, who was sprawled on the ground, streaked with blood. Kili watched as Tauriel's voice faded away and she fell to the ground beside Thorin.

He pushed himself up to a sitting position. "No." He dragged his legs over the edge of the cot as Oin scrambled back to them from where he'd been gathering bandages. Kili gained his feet but stumbled immediately, still weak and dizzy. He braced a hand on the cot and reached down to his side, where the gash from Bolg's blade was still angry and red. He could not take his eyes from the scene before him. "Tauriel. Thorin. No."

Bofur turned at the sound of his voice. "Kili! You're awake. You're alive!" Bofur rose to embrace him, and Kili swayed from the force of it. "You need to stop this habit of yours of nearly dying," Bofur told him.

"I hope to," Kili managed. "What is this? What is happening here? Have we won the battle?"

"Aye, we have won, and we are back in Erebor. You have been near death since yesterday."

"And Thorin? Fili?" he asked, looking over to where he'd seen his brother lying.

"Fili survived his injuries," Bofur said, "and Tauriel healed him after you, though he has not yet awoken. And Thorin…" They looked down at him.

Oin looked up from his task of binding Thorin's wounds. "He hid this from us," he said, his voice rough. "He hid the seriousness of his injuries from us until he could no longer stay on his feet. Tauriel tried to help him, but she was spent already. I do not know if it was enough. And then she fell…"

Kili sank to his knees beside Tauriel. He rolled her onto her back and held her head in his lap. "Wake up, Tauriel," he whispered, brushing his knuckles over her cheek. "You do not get to do this. You cannot die, not now. Not after everything." He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips to her forehead, then looked back up at Bofur. "How did Tauriel get here? I was with her on Ravenhill. That Orc…she was injured. How did she come to be at Erebor?"

"We thought you were dead, lad," Oin said. "We were to prepare you for funeral rites, but I saw you take a breath. My meager skills were not enough to save you, however, so Thorin sent Bofur and Dwalin to look for Tauriel and bid her come here."

"She had not been seen since Ravenhill, so we went to Dale first," Bofur said. "Bard said that she had passed through but had not stayed. He came with us to Lake-town, and we found her there in Bard's home, which managed to escape the dragon's wrath. When we told her you were alive, she came."

"She already risked herself once to save my life," Kili said. "I imagine King Thranduil will be angry with her for this."

"Ah…" Bofur said, wincing a little and sharing a look with Oin.

"What?" Kili asked. "What is it?"

"When we were in Dale, Bard told us that Thranduil banished her for going to Lake-town. I do not think he cares what she does anymore."

Kili looked down at her again, horrified. For saving his life, she had been banished from her home? He gathered her closer, held her against his chest. He knew what it was to be kept from your rightful home. Hadn't his only just been reclaimed? And now Tauriel had lost hers. For him. He wanted to march to Mirkwood and make Thranduil realize what a mistake he had made. He might have done it, but he could not let her go. "I will make this up to you," he vowed in a whisper. "I will find a way."

"There is nothing more than I can do for Thorin now," Oin said, having removed Thorin's boot and used kingsfoil to treat his wounded foot as best he could. "Bofur, help me get him up."

While Kili knelt with Tauriel in his arms, Bofur and Oin picked Thorin up and placed him on the cot that had been Kili's. Kili looked up from where he knelt. "Is he going to live?"

The worry was clear on Oin's face. "I do not know. If he had let us see to his wounds sooner…Tauriel tried to help him, but she was already so exhausted she could not finish. I do not know if it was enough."

Kili nodded slowly. "You both should leave, rest. I will watch over them."

"Are you sure?" Bofur asked. "You've only just awoken."

He looked back down at Tauriel. "Yes. I am sure."

Tauriel swam up through a sea of exhaustion. She felt a sense of time passing while she tried to reach the surface. There was something important she was supposed to be doing. Something she had been trying to do when she had…lost herself. There was warmth and flickering light where she'd been, soft voices and urgent pleas.

Ravenhill. Bolg. Kili. Words and images flashed through her mind like lightning, and she sat up with a gasp. She blinked, for a few seconds believing that she had been caught in the grip of a nightmare. She expected to see Mirkwood when she looked around, but instead found something very different.

She was not in Mirkwood. She would never be in Mirkwood again. She closed her eyes. Her home was gone. Her purpose was gone. And Kili. Kili was gone as well.

Wait. No.

She wasn't in Mirkwood. She was in Erebor. And Kili was alive. She looked around frantically. On the cot to her right lay Fili, quiet and still, but breathing. She spun around, only to find that on the other cot lay Thorin, not Kili. For a moment she panicked, fearing something had gone wrong while she lay floating beneath the surface.

A door opened at the far end of the room. She turned at the sound, and when she saw Kili slip back into the room, her heart tripped, and what seemed to be an endless supply of tears threatened yet again. He was alive. He was safe. "Kili," she breathed.

Kili looked up, nearly dropped the tray of food Oin had given him. He quickly set it on a table. "Tauriel."

A lone tear spilled down Tauriel's cheek. "You're alive." A smile bloomed on her face, the first in what felt like an age. "I cannot believe you are still alive." She took one, two, three steps toward him, needing to close the distance, needing to be able to touch him so she could be sure he was real.

Her knees buckled, lingering weakness rising up to swamp her. Kili rushed forward and caught her before she could fall. "Easy, easy now," he said. "You need to sit. You need to rest."

He guided her to a nearby cot, then stood in front of her. "I—"

"I—"

They both tried to speak at once. Tauriel looked away, searching for the words to express what she was feeling. Things she had never felt before. She lifted a hand and cupped it against his cheek, but the contact was not enough. Not for either of them.

Kili took a step forward and wrapped his arms around her. She wrapped hers around him in kind, and the embrace spoke of longing and fear, relief and a dawning love that neither had expected. Tauriel buried her face in the curve of his neck, and he pressed his to the long silk of her hair and breathed deep.

If both of them wept a little, neither one noticed or cared.

The moment stretched long and sweet, joy and sorrow, angst and deep relief flowing through them. To come so close to death, to come so close to losing each other and the potential of what they felt together...they held on tighter, the world outside the two of them fading away.

It was Kili who eventually pulled back, but only far enough to reach into his pocket. He held his rune stone out to her, a soft tilt to his lips. "I did not ask for this back."

Tauriel closed her hand over his, over the stone. "I did not feel like it was mine to keep. Not when I thought..."

He placed it firmly in her hand and closed her fingers around it. "I want you to have it. I want you to keep it. We'll make a new promise."

"What sort of promise?"

"It can be anything we want it to be." He smiled. "There is nothing stopping us now."

Tauriel's own answering smile faltered suddenly. She could make any promise she chose, because there was no duty holding her back. She no longer had a home, a king, a purpose. She'd begun to grieve her loss of Mirkwood, but she hadn't truly mourned for all that entailed, because her fear for Kili had overridden everything else.

But now that Kili was alive and safe, it started to truly seep in, the magnitude of what Thranduil had done, of what she had lost.

"What is it?" Kili asked. "What's wrong?"

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and overbright. "Mirkwood has been my home for more than six hundred years," she whispered. "He took it. Thranduil took my home from me."

"I am sorry," Kili said, hating that this fierce, noble woman looked so lost. "You will find your place again. I will help you."

He leaned his forehead against hers. He wanted badly for her place to be here at Erebor. He wanted her to stay here with him. But he knew that was not such an easy thing. The dwarves that would support him in this were very few in number. He thought that he could win over Fili when his brother woke up, and certainly Bofur and Oin knew Tauriel was different. But the others of the company he was not so sure of, and soon Erebor would be filled with many dwarves who distrusted or even outright hated elves. Winning them all over might be impossible.

But there was something, a small thing, he could give her now in thanks for what she'd done, to begin to make amends for all she had lost. "Come with me," he said suddenly, standing up and holding out his hand. "I want to show you something."

Tauriel stood up, unsure of what he intended but knowing she needed to pull herself together. She had shed more tears in the past few days than she had shed in the past hundred years. She was tired of them. She needed to find her strength again.

She retrieved her bow from where she'd dropped it near the door. "You do not need weapons," Kili said. "You are safe here."

"All the same," she murmured. When it came to her safety she did not share Kili's optimism. She had lived alongside Thranduil for too long to believe elves and dwarves could so easily mend old wounds. Perhaps she had made a start, using her healing skills here, but she was still holding onto her weapons.

When they opened the door, the hallway was filled with dwarves, and an open hostility permeated the air. Tauriel had been wrong. It seemed she hadn't made a start, because the dwarves were still rife with distrust. She plunged ahead, her head held high. She wondered what it would take for them to see that she was not like Thranduil and the rest of the elves. Hadn't she risked enough for them? Hadn't she given enough already?

Their hostility toward her scared her. Not for her own safety, but for any future she hoped to have with Kili. How could anything last between them when his people despised her?

Kili led her through halls and vast chambers, but they went up instead of down, as she expected. She had wondered if he meant to show her the treasure hold. "Where are we going?" she asked.

"You will see. We are almost there."

They walked through a hallway and stopped at a heavy stone door. I hope that my kin can forge a new legacy here," Kili said, looking up at her. "And thanks to you I can help them. And I know this place is not what you are used to, but it's not all bad."

He pushed open the door and they stepped out onto a small plateau on the side of the mountain. Tauriel saw stone steps to her left leading down the sheer face of it, and up above her the night sky dazzled with stars. She breathed deeply of the crisp night air and closed her eyes. She felt the starlight on her face, and sensed Kili step up beside her.

She looked down at him. "I have wanted to watch the starlight with you since the day we met," he said. He gestured up toward the sky. "This seemed like the best gift I could give you in thanks for all you've done for me, for Fili, for Thorin. I owe you so much, for everything you've given up for me."

"Seeing you alive and safe is gift enough," she told him. "I have known fear, and worry, and sorrow before. But what I felt when I saw you fall to Bolg's blade up on Ravenhill, it was different. I thought I would never stop mourning you."

She walked over to the edge of the ledge and looked out at the stars sparkling over the valley below, and the fires that were lit around Dale in the near distance. She lifted her face to the sky and breathed deeply of the crisp night air, closed her eyes for a moment and let herself be bathed in the light.

Kili stood speechless as he watched her. The starlight didn't seem so remote when he saw her bathed in it. She was beautiful and regal and strong. She was brave and honorable. He could not imagine letting her walk away from him, and he would never understand how Thranduil had tossed her aside.

When she sat on the edge of the ledge and let her legs dangle, he joined her. He sat beside her, and together they watched the stars twinkle and glow. Tauriel felt him next to her, and the closeness began to settle her raging emotions. Her eyes on the stars, she reached for his hand, wrapped her fingers around his. For a time they were quiet, sitting hand in hand beside each other, watching the stars. It was as close to peace as Tauriel could have hoped to feel again.

There was only one thing missing.

"Will you say the words to me again?" she asked quietly. "If you mean them, will you say the words you said to me on the shores of Esgaroth? I need to know that all of this has meant something."

When she felt him turn, she looked over at him. The look in his eyes told her all she needed to know, but still he lifted a hand to her cheek. "Amralime, Tauriel."

Her lips trembled into a smile. "Melethenin," she murmured back to him, and leaned forward so her lips could meet his under the starlight. It was a moment that neither had truly believed would ever come, not with all the obstacles between them. Here they were, in Kili's home, bathed in Tauriel's light. She felt his lips on hers, the roughness of his beard and the gentleness of his fingers as they brushed her cheek.

None of their problems mattered in that moment. Not hostile dwarves, not lingering injuries, not the fact that she had no home and did not know where she was going to go. Whatever was to come, all that mattered just then was that she was sitting in the starlight with the dwarf she had improbably fallen in love with.