Chapter Five

Tauriel sensed them before Kili did, and knew their interlude was coming to an end. She breathed in the air, soaked in the starlight, and memorized the feel of Kili's hand in hers.

She stood up and turned around slowly. A number of dwarves were crowded around the doorway, Dain Ironfoot at their lead. A few of them she recognized, while the rest must have come down from the Iron Hills to support Erebor in battle. Tauriel felt her dagger sitting comfortably at her hip, but she did not reach for it. Not yet.

"What is the meaning of this?" Dain demanded, hands on hips and chest puffed out. Tauriel took an instant dislike to his brash manner. He glared at Kili. "You would sit there, hand in hand with an elf? Is that whose side you are on?"

"There are no sides here," Tauriel said before Kili could answer. "The battle is over. There is nothing more to be won."

"You are not wanted here," Dain said. "Go back to your king and your forest. This is our mountain."

Tauriel only looked at him. Here was a dwarf who appeared to have no interest in letting go of old prejudices.

"Now wait a minute," Kili said, pushing forward and standing in front of her. "You are kin to us, Dain, but you do not rule here. You do not say who comes and goes."

"Do you think anyone else wants her here?" Dain asked.

Kili looked over the other dwarves gathered near the doorway. He glared right back at Dain. "I would be dead without Tauriel," he said. "I would have died. Twice. Fili would be dead. Thorin would be dead. She deserves our respect, not our scorn."

"Kili, you do not have to do this," Tauriel murmured quietly. "It is all right. I did not expect a warm welcome here."

"No, this is not all right," he answered. To Dain he continued, "Tauriel has done more for us, lost more, than anyone had a right to ask. I will not have you disrespect her this way."

Dain took a step forward. "I speak for the many, and I do not answer to you, boy."

"Nor do I answer to you," Kili shot back, hot, reckless temper burning through him. "You are Lord of the Iron Hills, not King under the Mountain." Kili scanned the crowd of dwarves again. "Bofur," he said when he spotted the familiar hat. "You were at Lake-town. You saw what happened there. Is Tauriel our enemy? After Thorin sent you to find her, should we now send her away in the night, as though we are ashamed?"

He didn't wait for an answer. Kili met Dain's eyes again. "I am not ashamed! And if you demand that Tauriel leave here, then you are demanding that I leave as well."

Tauriel stared at him, her heart thudding. "Kili," she breathed, stepping back away from the confrontation so he would follow her. "You cannot walk away from your home. Your brother is sick. Thorin is sick. You can't leave here for me."

"I will not let Dain make a villain of you. I do not care if he is kin. I want you to be welcome here."

"Perhaps someday I will be." She smiled gently, loving this man and his wild, reckless heart. She was keenly aware of the rune stone in the pouch at her waist, and of the many eyes that were on them. "The rift between elves and dwarves is wide and deep," she said. "It cannot be healed in a day, or by a single act of kindness or bravery on either side."

She took a couple steps toward the steps leading down the mountain. "I'll go now. You should be with your brother when he wakes up."

She took two steps down, but stopped when Kili took her hand. "No, not this way," he said. "If you insist on going, I will not have you sneak down the mountain like a thief in the night. Honored guests use the gates."

She balanced on the narrow steps, their faces level, their eyes locked on each other. "I'm not going to give you your stone back," she said quietly. "The promise is still there, and I mean for us to keep it."

She saw that he understood her meaning, that she was not parting from him for good. "Dain does not rule here," Kili insisted. "I want you to stay."

"I do not want to be the cause of dissension amongst your people. Take some time to be with them, to rest, to get to know this place. You deserve that."

"Where will you go?"

She considered her previous plans. A forest somewhere, far from Mirkwood and her memories of Kili. "I'll go to Dale for now," she said. "Not so very far. Bard said that I would have a place there if I wanted it. Helping them rebuild and prepare for winter will give me a purpose."

"You could help rebuild Erebor."

"Meleth vuin," she whispered, touching her lips to his in a gesture she hoped showed him how hard it was for her to turn and walk away from him, to leave him with people who hated her. She wanted to protect him from them, from their judgment. She knew that when she left, they would try to convince him he was foolish for wanting her, foolish for thinking he could forge a relationship with an elf. But she had to trust that the strength of what they felt for each other would stand up to whatever was thrown in their way.

Before she could change her mind, she turned and began descending the steps. They were carved out of the mountain itself, narrow and winding and steep. When she reached the bottom and mounted the horse that was grazing on the remains of the autumn grasses, she looked up to see Kili standing on the edge of the overlook, silhouetted against starlight and stone. She held a fist against her heart, knowing that he couldn't see the gesture from his distance but hoping he felt it nonetheless.

And then she turned, resolute, and galloped across the valley.

Kili stalked through the halls of Erebor, his anger at the unfairness of the situation growing with every step. Tauriel had saved him from the brink of death, only for his kin to force her away. He did not care about old prejudices at the moment. He only cared about what he knew; that Tauriel was not like the others of her kind. That she had risked so much for him, and that he loved her.

"Kili, lad, you must think about what you are doing before you make a mistake you cannot come back from."

Kili stopped outside the doors of the sick room and turned. Balin stood there, with his great white beard and intelligent gaze. He had been with Thorin when Erebor was lost many years ago, Kili knew, and he had great respect for the old dwarf. But he was in no mood to be counseled. "What I feel for Tauriel is not a mistake," he said. "Do you think that what I feel has made me forget all the ways our people have been wronged by Thranduil, and all the other elves who have refused to help us when we've needed it? I haven't. I hate him for everything he has done to us, and now for what he has done to her because she is different."

He shook his head, threw up his arms in frustration. "She is not like them," he insisted. "Do you think that just because she is an elf I am wrong to love her?"

"I think that love can blind a man," Balin said. "Even if it is true that Thranduil has banished her from Mirkwood, where do you suppose she will go? What do you suppose she will do? Do you think she will stay here, lingering around the edges of her former home so that she can spend time with you? She is a wood elf, Kili. She needs forests and trees and rivers."

Kili didn't want to think overmuch about where Tauriel would eventually go. He wanted to remain convinced that somehow, they would find a way to be together, with peace between their people. He wanted her to be able to walk through the halls of Erebor without facing judgment and hate. And he wanted also to see the world through her eyes, to learn to spin daggers the way she did so effortlessly, to learn to speak her Elvish language. He wanted to run through forests with her, wherever those forests may be. And he wanted to sit in the starlight with her again, and for all the long days of their future.

"Yes, she needs forests, and she needs light. I would see them with her."

"Are you so eager to leave the home that is your birthright?" Balin asked.

"I want to see Erebor returned to what it once was, and I want our people to prosper. But I am a second son, and when Thorin dies Erebor will be Fili's, not mine. I don't want us to become trapped inside this mountain so that we forget there is a whole world out there. If we stay here and never leave, will dragon sickness take us all eventually? Will we have nothing to hold onto but our gold and our hatred? How would that be any better than what things were like before we came here?"

Balin sighed, for he knew all too well the dangers of dragon sickness. He had watched Thror descend into a madness that had led to his death, and the same had nearly happened to Thorin, before he came back to himself. He did not want the same to happen to Fili, to Kili, or to any of them.

"I know you think I am young and reckless," Kili said, "and that I care nothing for consequences or the future. And once that was true. But I am not the same as I was when we set out to return here. I am alive when I should be dead. I know what I am willing to risk, and I know how we can begin to mend the rifts that have torn us all apart."

Balin shook his head when Kili detailed what he wanted to do. "An ambitious idea, but Thorin would never allow it."

"Do you think Thorin is the same as he was before? We have reclaimed Erebor. He fought the dragon sickness and won."

"And Thorin has more reason than anyone else to hate the elves. He allowed Tauriel to come here because there is nothing he would not do for you or for Fili, but this he would not agree to."

"Thorin has not awakened, and someone must make decisions in his stead. I know that Dain is a great warrior, and he is kin to us, but I do not wish to follow anyone who hates so blindly."

"This is a dangerous path you are on, Kili," Balin warned. "If you continue down it, there are many who will call you a fool."

"I have been called worse, I am sure," Kili said, pausing in the now-open doorway. "This is what's right, Balin. You know it's right."

He went inside without waiting for an answer, his thoughts consumed with questions of how he would get past Dain and the rest of those who would be opposed to his ideas. But if doing it would bring about the beginning of peace after centuries of hate, he would see it done.

He looked up, and his thoughts scattered like fallen leaves in wind.

"Fili."

Tauriel wandered the streets of Dale, looking for a suitable shelter that was not already occupied by some of the former residents of Esgaroth. She wanted somewhere high, where she could see out over the land, and where she could have a little privacy when she desired it. Once towers had jutted toward the sky from many points of the city. Now, after Smaug, after the Orcs, many of them were in ruins. And most of those that still stood were in use for their intended purposes, with guards watching for any new hostile forces approaching.

She didn't think new enemies would come so quickly, but they would come. She cared not for whatever gold or jewels were stored in the depths of Erebor, but there were many who did, many who would go to great lengths to obtain the wealth of the mountain. She planned to find Bard, tell him she would help secure and rebuild the town in exchange for shelter. Doing such would serve two goals: it would give her a new purpose, a new focus, and it would keep her close to Kili.

She wondered where they were going to get the coin to rebuild their town. She certainly didn't expect any further help to come from Mirkwood. Many elves had fought and died in the battle. She mourned them quietly at the same time she acknowledged that their loss could easily spur Thranduil toward further anger, further isolation.

Thranduil was a warrior of great renown amongst the elves of Mirkwood, but he was also a king, one who would stop at nothing to ensure the survival of his kingdom. Over time, his chosen strategy of protecting their own borders and nothing else had begun to chafe at her. How could they simply ignore anyone else who might need their help? And why would they want to?

When the dwarves had escaped Mirkwood on the Forest River, and Thranduil had sent her away for threatening the Orc, she had no longer been able to ignore her conscience. If Thranduil would not help them, then she would use her own skills and do what she could. For Kili, for all of them. And though she had expected anger from Thranduil, expected consequences, when news of her banishment had reached her amongst the refugees on the shores of Esgaroth, she had nearly shattered. Perhaps would have, if Legolas hadn't given her the distraction of a journey to Gundabad.

She missed Legolas, she admitted to herself. He had always tried to protect her, even when she thought she didn't want his protection. They had spent six hundred years fighting side by side. Such a bond was not easily set aside. She had learned so much of her fighting skills from him. She was who she was today in part because of Legolas's companionship.

She wished she had had a chance to say goodbye to him when she was not already consumed with sorrow and grief. It had not occurred to her then, with Kili's lifeless body in her arms, how much she was going to miss Legolas. And she had not thought of him at all while she was at Erebor. It was only now, alone in the streets of Dale while Kili saw to his kin, that she began to mourn the loss of her lifelong friend.

She finally found what she was looking for, in the high reaches of the town. A narrow, unoccupied tower. It was partially crumbled, its roof gone, leaving the upper floor open to the cold night air. She barely noticed the chill of it on her skin. She stood amongst the crumbled stones and looked toward Erebor. There were braziers lit beside the ruined gates, and there would be guards there, she knew. Probably Dain, she thought, unless the surly dwarf was still inside, ruling Erebor in Thorin's absence.

She turned away, kicked some crumbled stones aside and sat against what remained of the ruined walls. Were she and Kili fools? She loved him, and that was a feeling she had never felt before. She did not want to lose it, but how could they be together when his people hated her? Apparently still hated her, in spite of what she'd tried to do to help them. She didn't know what else she could do; she had fought to the ends of exhaustion trying to heal Kili and his kin.

She could ask him to go with her. Anywhere in Middle Earth she chose, and he would go. But was it fair, to take him from his home because she was lonely?

She slept little that night, and what sleep she did manage was troubled.

"Fili!"

Kili rushed across the room and embraced his brother, who stood beside Thorin's cot. "You're awake!" he said with a laugh.

Fili embraced him in return, the two brothers celebrating the fact that they were still alive when they should have been dead.

"I am glad to see you, brother," Fili said, stepping back so he could look Kili over to be sure he was all right. "When I awoke and you were not here, I feared the worst."

"I awoke hours ago," Kili said. "I watched over the three of you for most of the day."

Fili frowned. "Three? Who was the third?"

"Tauriel," Kili said.

"Tauriel was here, in Erebor? And she almost died? How?"

Kili relayed the story Bofur had told him, of his own near-death and Thorin's order to find Tauriel. "She came here when she didn't have to, and she almost died trying to save us all. I woke up in time to see her collapse on the ground next to Thorin. She didn't rouse until after nightfall."

"I would thank her if I could," Fili said, "but I suppose she's gone back to Mirkwood by now."

"She is not going back to Mirkwood." Kili turned back toward the doors and scowled. "Thranduil banished her from her home for coming to Lake-town. And then when she woke Dain ordered her away as if we should all have been ashamed that she was here."

Fili watched his brother closely. "What part of the story are you leaving out?" he asked.

Kili paced away, picked up a bowl with the remains of crushed kingsfoil in it and threw it against the wall, then sat down heavily on the cot that Fili had vacated. "I love her, Fili. I love her, and I do not care who knows it. She is not like Thranduil, anyone can see that, and yet they still treat her with contempt and scorn."

"You cannot expect everyone else to see her as you do," Fili said, concerned that Kili's feelings for Tauriel seemed to run so deep. It would not be an easy road if he insisted on continuing down it, and he did not want Kili's temper to lead him to do something rash.

"I expect them to treat her with respect when she risks herself for us," Kili said, the temper Fili was so worried about coming back to boil the longer he thought about it. "And I'll tell you something else. I will not follow orders from Dain. I do not care if he is a great warrior. I do not care if Erebor would have been lost had Dain's army not come. I will not answer to him, and if he thinks differently, I will walk out of here without looking back. I told him as much already, and I still mean it."

"All right, just relax now," Fili said, holding out his hands. "Dain isn't here, and if anyone is to make decisions in Thorin's stead, it should be Balin."

"Balin already tried to convince me that my feelings are folly," Kili said. "I do not want to hear it again. And besides, by rights you are Thorin's heir. It is you who has the claim to rule in Thorin's absence."

"And you think my opinion carries more weight than Balin or Dain? Do you think that if I tell everyone to accept Tauriel that they will?"

"You were there at Lake-town. You saw her. You said yourself that you heard Legolas order her to leave, but that she stayed and healed me instead. I could have loved her for that alone, but there's so much more to her. Fili…" His anger seemed to drain away, and in that moment he looked both impossibly young and far too old. "Tell me how to love her without losing my kin," he pleaded.

Fili wished, more than anything, he could give his brother the answers he was seeking. "I don't know if you can," he said instead. "And I'm not sure you should try."

"How can you say that?" Kili demanded. "How can you expect me to walk away when I love her this way?"

"I don't doubt that you love her," Fili said, though he did not personally understand how such a thing could happen so quickly. "But you are right. There are those who will judge you no matter what you do to convince them otherwise. I don't want you to face that. I don't want to watch our people turn away from you because of this one choice."

"If they judge me for my decisions, then so be it," Kili said as he surged to his feet. "I know how I feel, and I've made my choice."

Fili watched pensively as Kili stormed from the room. Hadn't he seen the signs that Kili had feelings for Tauriel? The problem was, he hadn't suspected just how deep those feelings ran, or how far Kili would go to hold onto them. And he was afraid that Kili just refused to admit how much it was going to hurt if the other dwarves rejected him because of Tauriel.

"You need to wake up now," Fili said to Thorin. "Before Kili gets himself into any more trouble."