Author's note: This chapter jumps back in the timeline to the dwarves' escape from Mirkwood, so it fits chronologically between chapter 1 and chapter 2.

Tauriel stood with her knife to the neck of the Orc scum. There was little she wanted more than to press the blade deep, but Legolas had stayed her hand.

They led the Orc back to the river gate, where they were joined by several other of Thranduil's guard. Tauriel looked around at the remnants of battle as Legolas instructed some of the others to begin gathering up the bodies of their dead, as well as disposing of the Orcs.

Her eyes were drawn to the lever that controlled the gate. It was the last place she had seen Kili. He had fallen to the ground, shouting in pain as an arrow pierced his thigh. After that, she had become too immersed in fighting the Orcs to keep track of him. Her jaw tightened. The dwarf had managed, in a very short time, to sneak through her defenses, so that the thought of him being injured bothered her a great deal.

She frowned suddenly. Were there marks on the ground there? Had Kili dragged himself backward, instead of toward the edge where he could have dropped into one of the barrels and made his escape with the others? She thought back, but couldn't remember seeing him floating down the river.

"Tauriel."

She looked up to see Legolas watching her. "Are you coming?" he asked. "We're taking the Orc to my father. He will have a lot of questions."

"Go on ahead without me. I want to check the forest to be sure no Orcs linger."

"We can assign others to that task."

"I am the captain of the guard. I can handle it."

He watched her for a long moment. If he suspected at all that she had an ulterior motive, he kept it to himself. He knew as well as she did that arguing in front of the other elves would not leave a good impression. "All right," he said finally. "I will see you back in the halls." He gestured to the others, who herded the surly Orc back toward the main gates.

Tauriel climbed up to the lever and looked closer at the ground. Yes, she definitely saw signs someone had been dragged—or had dragged themselves—away.

She quickened her pace, tracking the marks she believed belonged to Kili into the trees that ran along the riverbank. She saw a few droplets of blood on the ground, which quickened her steps and her heartbeat. She dashed through the trees, having no trouble tracking Kili's movements. And after only a few short minutes, she could not only see signs of his passage, but hear him up ahead.

But she could also hear something else. An Orc.

She drew her blades and moved ahead with caution. She could see the Orc just ahead, could smell the stench of it in the air. She closed in on it, and when she saw the Orc aim its bow at Kili, she used a burst of speed to catch up and shouted to draw its attention to her.

The thing snarled and growled, but before it could aim its bow at her, she leaped for it and drove a blade into its skull. It collapsed with a howl and died.

Tauriel looked up and saw Kili ahead. He stumbled, falling awkwardly against a nearby tree in order to stay upright. She approached him slowly.

He looked up at her approach, his face strained but determined. "If you think I'm going back to the dungeons, you're going to have to drag me. I'm returning to my kin."

Drag him back was exactly what she should do. It was what Thranduil would expect of her. It was what Legolas would expect of her, and what she should expect of herself. She'd never before questioned her duties or where her loyalties lie. But looking at Kili she found herself frozen. A storm of conflicts swirled through her mind.

Taking him back would keep her in Thranduil's good graces, and it would also mean she would have a chance to see him again. Selfishly, she wanted that. There was some indefinable connection between them, and she was reluctant to let it go. She had forged very few connections that were real, and Kili was real. She barely knew him, but she knew that much.

She watched him stagger from tree to tree, one hand clutched to his thigh. She looked back in the direction she'd come. The war raged in her mind.

It was finally decided when he stumbled again and fell to his knees. She watched him stagger back to his feet. "Stop," she called, jogging to catch up to him. She propped her bow against a nearby tree and reached for him. He jerked away, and she glared at him. "Stop, all right? Just stop."

She grabbed the bottom of his tunic and ripped it. She tore a long strip and knelt in front of him. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm binding your wound. Every step you take without doing so only makes it worse." She wrapped the strip of torn fabric around his thigh and pulled it tight. He grunted in pain, but otherwise held still while she completed the task.

"Why are you helping me?" he asked.

She looked up and found him watching her, the strain on his face mixed with curiosity. She had surprised him. "I don't know," she said, looking away to finish the bandage before standing back up. She reached for his wrist and pulled his arm up across her back. She clutched his hand to her shoulder. "If you're going to have any chance of catching your friends, we need to hurry."

Not to mention if she was going to have any chance of returning to the halls of Mirkwood quick enough to keep from raising Thranduil's suspicion, she needed to get him moving quickly.

For just an instant she closed her eyes and savored the press of his body against her side. But just as quickly she snapped back to reality. He was hurt, and there was no time for savoring, no time for dreaming now. She grabbed her bow with her free hand and started moving at a fast walk, as close to a run as they could manage. The difference in height and his injured leg made it hard to match their gaits. She steered them to the edge of the forest, so she could look through the trees and watch the river as they moved.

"I think you do know why you're helping me," Kili said. "You're helping because you don't believe your king should have imprisoned us in the first place."

"It is not that simple," she said.

"Then why?" he pressed.

Tauriel shook her head. She didn't know the entirety of Thranduil's history with the dwarves, or what grudges he might hold against Thorin Oakenshield in particular. She knew well, however, that elves and dwarves had been mistrustful of each other, sometimes even to the point of being enemies, for a very long time. Had he intended to leave the dwarves locked in the dungeons forever, as reparation for some long-ago slight?

When she made herself consider it, part of the reason was indeed that she thought the continued imprisonment of the dwarves felt wrong. But to defy Thranduil openly and ask for their release would do no good. There was however, more to it for her. The quiet conversation she'd shared with Kili in the dungeon had shifted something inside her. Seeing him injured in the midst of an Orc attack had solidified the change. She was not who she'd been only a day ago. The question now was, who was she going to become?

"I know what it is to be lost and alone," she murmured. "To be hurt and have nowhere to turn. You won't make it back to your friends on your own."

"Why were you lost? Who hurt you?"

"It was long ago," she said.

"Why not—"

"Quiet," she said suddenly, freezing in her tracks. Kili leaned heavily against her, his chest heaving. She looked in every direction, her eyes sharp, her hearing attuned to the sounds of the forest and river she knew so well. There had been another sound, a foreign sound, but it was gone now.

How long until it returned?

"We need to go now, and we need to go quickly," she said. "It is going to hurt."

Kili gritted his teeth and nodded, attuned to her sudden tenseness. "Do it."

She shifted him to her other side so his injured leg was against her. She carried as much of his weight as she could and took off at a run. He couldn't contain several quiet grunts of pain, but he made no complaint. Tauriel could feel them behind her now. She didn't know how many, but she had fought enough Orcs to know when they were nearby.

Tauriel and Kili burst out of the trees and onto the banks of the river, where she saw exactly what she'd been hoping to see. An empty oaken barrel, bobbing in the shallows. "Come on," she said, guiding him down the rocky embankment. Her free arm wrapped around his back and gripped his waist. He leaned heavily against her, his bad leg struggling to hold his weight. He would have fallen had she not had a steady grip on him.

She let him go when they reached the barrel. Luckily, there wasn't much water left in it. "Get in," she said. "I don't know how far down the river your friends are. This is your only chance to catch up."

He looked at her for a long moment before he nodded. He gritted his teeth as he climbed in. Tauriel tipped the barrel upright. She started to guide it out into the river. Kili gripped her hand where it rested on the edge of the barrel. She looked up at him and their gazes held. No words were spoken. It was a moment out of time, a connection with no bars between them. Exquisite and excruciating at once. Tauriel swallowed, her throat suddenly tight.

She pushed the barrel until she was knee-deep in the rushing river and could go no further without the risk of being swept downstream. "Good luck," she said.

He nodded, and then his eyes suddenly went wide. "Tauriel, behind you!"

She whirled around and saw three Orcs rush out of the trees. Two of them aimed bows, while the other carried a long axe. Tauriel shoved Kili's barrel into the rush of the river and raised her bow in a single fluid motion. She hit one of the Orcs as she slogged back to the shore. Another swung its axe at her, and she had to bend back nearly double in order to keep her head attached.

Meanwhile Kili's barrel had caught the rapids, twisting and turning on the raging waters as he was swept away from her.

...

"He is my brother," Fili argued. We cannot leave him behind."

"We don't have any more time to wait," Thorin said implacably. "We must go now if we are to have any hope of reaching the mountain in time."

Before Fili could take another breath to argue again, someone shouted, "Look! There on the river!"

They all looked up, and Fili scrambled back into the water when he saw the barrel. Bofur and Nori helped him, and together they dragged an exhausted Kili onto the rocky shore. "What happened?" Fili asked. "How did you get past the elves and the Orcs?"

"I had help," Kili murmured, sitting down heavily and gripping his wounded thigh.

"Help? From who?"

Kili shook his head, struggling to catch his breath. It still didn't feel entirely real, that Tauriel had come after him and helped him escape. He closed his eyes and he could feel her against him, could see her face only inches from him in the moments before she let the barrel go.

It had strangely beautiful to watch her fight the Orcs as he was swept down the river, although it also terrified him. He'd been swept around a bend and out of sight of her before she killed the final Orc, but he had no doubt she had done so. She was an incredible fighter, graceful and deadly. Watching her was mesmerizing. She was mesmerizing.

He wondered when, or if, he would ever have the chance to see her again.

...

Tauriel raced for Mirkwood.

After slaying the Orcs, she had spent only a few seconds looking down the river to ensure that Kili was gone before she broke into a run. She had to hurry, had to get back as quickly as possible.

At least she had something to tell Thranduil now. She could tell him that she had killed four more Orcs. That should suffice to keep any suspicion at bay.

She nodded at the guards who were stationed at the main gates. "Tauriel," one of them said. "Legolas and the others brought back an Orc. It tried to get away but they caught it and took it to King Thranduil. They've just started questioning it."

"All right." She went inside, inwardly shaking her head at her luck. The filthy Orc might just have made things a little easier for her. She quickly made her way along the paths to Thranduil's throne. She saw the Orc on its knees, Legolas's knife at its throat. She bowed her head to Thranduil when he turned to look at her.

"Tauriel," he said, the single word somehow conveying a judgment that shivered down her spine.

"I found four Orcs lingering in the forest. They've been handled," she said.

She moved back and listened as Thranduil and Legolas spoke to and questioned the Orc. She struggled to contain her emotions. And then the Orc did something unexpected. It struck terror in her. She listened in silent, stone-faced horror as it smugly hissed that Kili had been shot with a Morgul arrow. The poison coating the arrow would indeed kill him, and she couldn't help but fear that it would be partially her fault.

She should have known. True, he had already pulled the arrow free by the time she had found him, but she should have known. She should have sensed that it hadn't been a common arrow, but something darker. But she hadn't, and now the man she'd risked everything to save was going to die anyway.

When her control slipped and Thranduil ordered her to leave, she did so with a grim determination that was reinforced when she heard him say that he didn't care if Kili died. She knew what she had to do. If her heart started beating a little too fast, she blamed it on the fact that she was about to jump off a cliff, so to speak. She had reached the point of no return on the reckless path she had started down. There was no going back now, no changing her mind.

She changed into traveling clothes, gathered her weapons, and marched to the main gates.

"Tauriel," said the same guard who had greeted her only a short time ago. "Are you leaving again so soon? Alone?"

"For now," she said. "Too many spiders, too many Orcs. I want to check again." She nodded and walked away before he could question her further. Soon she was swallowed by the thick of the forest, and the gates of Mirkwood were lost to her sight.