5. And from this slumber you shall wake, when true love's kiss, the spell shall break.
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Eryn Lasgalen Expedition
Day 3, continued
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"I am not going to kiss her!"
Fili snorted. "You're joking, right?"
"She's not even conscious! I'm not going to assault her in her sleep!"
"No one's asking you to assault her, Kili," his uncle told him dryly. "Believe me, none of us want to see that."
"I've already seen enough," Bilbo muttered. Fili pointedly ignored him.
Kili's outraged gaze settled on his sister-in-law. "Sigrid, if you were unconscious would you want some guy kissing you?!"
"No," she admitted. "But what if this is the only way to wake her up? You can't sit down here forever."
"Is this the only way to wake her up?" he demanded of Gandalf. "Isn't there something else I can do?"
"This is a way which could wake her. It's something that has been known to work in the past," the wizard replied irritably. "But as I told you all earlier, I'm not certain what sort of spell she's under. It's not wizard-cast, nor does it feel Elvish, and it's certainly not part of the enchantment that's been placed on the Halls. No, that is entirely different. So I'm afraid the only way to see if it works is to try it." His voice took on an edge of amusement. "She won't mind, I promise you. After all, she already kissed you."
The room erupted into confusion, Kili's voice finally rising above the clamor. "When? Why don't I remember that?"
"Oh, well, you wouldn't be able to remember it."
"Was it when I was ill? Because I remember her being there then, and glowing and stuff."
"I don't think so," Fili argued. "I was dreaming about that last night, and I don't think you were ever alone with her. Besides, Gandalf wasn't there for that, were you?"
"No, I wasn't. It—"
"It was when he was dead," Sigrid interrupted, squeezing Fili's hand convulsively. She looked nauseous. "Right, Gandalf?"
Gandalf inclined his head. "You are correct."
Kili flinched. "Oh, Tauriel," he murmured, distressed.
"I didn't witness it," Gandalf continued, "but Legolas told me about it many years later, after he and Gimli sailed to the Undying Lands."
"Who?" asked Fili blankly.
"Sailed to where? What are you talking about?" Thorin demanded.
"Gimli," Bilbo muttered. "Gimli. I know that name." His head shot up. "Wait, is that Gloin's son?"
"Gloin doesn't have a son," Thorin objected. "He only has the girls." Bewilderment flashed across his face. "But... No. He did. He did have a son then. He never shut up about him. If we're all here now, why isn't he?"
"As I said, he went to the Undying Lands. He never died, therefore he could never be reborn."
"Wait," Sigrid exclaimed. "You must have been there too, or that Leg-whatever-his-name-is couldn't have told you about it. So how are you here, then?"
"My dear Sigrid," Gandalf replied smugly, "I am a wizard. I am not subject to the same constraints as other races."
"In other words," Bilbo commented a little sourly, "you do whatever you want."
Gandalf laughed outright. "Not nearly so often as you think, or as I should wish! And now, Kili, it is your turn to do what you would rather not. Let us see if a kiss is the answer to this riddle."
Kili sighed, and gently smoothed Tauriel's hair off her cheek. "For the record, I still object to doing this while she's unconscious."
"Yes, yes, we know," his uncle grumbled. "Just do it already."
He leaned forward, the lines of his face softening as he looked at her. Then his eyes closed, and their lips touched, and the entire room stilled, unbreathing.
He straightened, tucking a strand of hair behind her pointed ear, his fingers lingering.
The room exhaled.
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"Well," Gandalf said unnecessarily, "that didn't work."
The day wore on. Gandalf tried numerous incantations, muttered about the spells he used to know, and lamented the lack of something called athelas. He and Bilbo spent hours in the depths of the library, only to emerge irritable (Gandalf) and anxious (Bilbo).
Kili spent the day sitting next to Tauriel. He held her hand, rubbing his thumb over the callouses from her bow, and tried not to think about what he would do if she never woke up.
"You okay?" Sigrid asked him quietly, forcing a sandwich into his free hand.
He looked at her and then away. She kissed the top of his head and sat down close beside him, Fili sitting next to her, sliding his arm behind her so he could put his hand, warm and heavy, on the back of Kili's neck.
Thorin and Bilbo watched him worriedly from across the room.
Gandalf paced the walkway and muttered.
There's a sandwich in his hand.
What will he do if she never wakes up?
Fili kept his hand on the back of his baby brother's neck long after his shoulder cramped and he lost the feeling in two of his fingers.
He was afraid.
Kili had been sitting there for hours, unmoving, his dull eyes fixed on Tauriel. In his entire life, even in his sleep, he had never stayed still for so long. When they'd been small, Kili's unceasing motion had driven him crazy and more than one argument had started by Fili snapping at his brother to "just stop that!" or "leave that alone!" or "why can't you just be still for five minutes!"
He would give anything to see Kili be his usual annoying, lovable, whirling dervish self.
"We should call your mother," Sigrid said quietly. He looked over at his uncle, only to see an unsure expression on his face.
"If nothing changes, we'll call her tonight," Thorin decided finally. He ran a hand over his face and slumped back against the wall.
Kili was motionless and Thorin didn't know what to do. Everything was wrong and Fili had never been so afraid in his life.
What would they do if she wouldn't wake up?
Gandalf rushed into the room, making everyone start. "Have any of you moved her? Or is she just as you found her?"
"We haven't moved her," Thorin replied. "We thought it better not to."
"You've figured it out?" Sigrid asked eagerly, just as Bilbo exclaimed, "You know how to wake her?"
"No."
Everyone deflated.
"Well, perhaps," he temporized. "I don't know. Let's lay her on the bench; we're looking for jewelry, or anything with markings, or an injury, or something in her mouth, or… well, anything, really. Anything that looks out of place or significant."
Kili got to his feet obediently and shifted her towards himself so he could lift her. He looked at the hard stone of the bench and balked. He knew it was ridiculous, since she'd spent Valar knew how many centuries with her cheek pressed to that same stone, but it looked so uncomfortable.
Actually, he remembered with perfect clarity exactly how uncomfortable it was and he wasn't putting her on it.
"It's okay, Kili," Sigrid told him, and he wasn't sure if he'd said it out loud or if she'd suddenly developed an ability to read his mind. "We'll put down a sleeping bag and pillow, alright?"
He reluctantly lay her down on the improvised bed and tried to smooth her mass of hair into a tidy bundle while Sigrid straightened the skirt of her gown. Then they stepped back to make room for everyone to crowd around.
"Well, no jewelry that I can see," Fili commented. "Wait, does she have something in her hand?"
They all craned their necks forward. The hand Kili had been holding was relaxed, the fingers gently curved. Her other hand was tightly closed.
"The way she was sitting, we couldn't see that hand before," Sigrid realized. "Is she holding something?"
Gandalf leaned past Kili and gently picked up her hand, turning it upwards so they could see. Then they all spoke at once:
"She is holding something!" (Sigrid, excited)
"It's something dark. A stone, or…?" (Fili, inquisitive)
"Is it cursed? Is that why she's sleeping?" (Thorin, suspicious)
"Is it some kind of evil artifact?" (Bilbo, fretting)
"What is it?" (Kili, desperate)
Gandalf closed his eyes and hovered his hand over hers for a long moment, then opened them, all tension gone. "Well, it's not cursed or evil, but there is a spell on it. I do believe it is the answer to our question. Kili, please see if you can remove it from her hand."
He took her hand from the wizard and tried to pull her fingers back, but they wouldn't move and he didn't want to hurt her. Perhaps if he slid his fingers under the stone he could push it out? He could see the edge of it peeking out of the circle of her thumb and forefinger, so he wedged his fingertip under the curl of her pinky to see if he could move it farther over.
"Good grief, Tauriel," he muttered. Her fingers were like iron, completely unyielding. He pushed harder and his finger jolted forward, finally touching the stone.
And her fingers opened.
The stone fell from her suddenly lax hand and he fumbled it, almost dropping it on the ground. When he finally grasped it securely, he held it up so everyone could see the smooth surface, then flipped it over to expose the carving he could feel beneath his fingertips.
"Innikh dê," Bilbo read, then translated, "Return to me."
"Amad," Fili breathed.
But Kili didn't hear them. Kili was on the shore of a lake, devastation all around him, Tauriel before him, her beautiful face so uncertain as he told her he wasn't afraid. And he wasn't, though Mahal knew he should be, he wasn't, because she was everything he'd ever wanted and everything he'd never known he needed and she was there in the world with him so how could he be afraid? Amrâlimê he'd called her, and he had never said a truer thing in all of his life.
She said she didn't know what he meant, but he knew she did.
She'd kept the runestone. He'd pushed it into her hand, but she'd kept it.
"You do," he told her, both the Tauriel on the lakeshore and the one on the wretched bench in his old prison cell. He held her hand in both of his, the stone pressed between their palms. "You do know what I meant."
The hand he was holding twitched.
He froze so suddenly and completely that it captured everyone's attention. "Tauriel?"
Her hand moved again, sharply this time, jerking out of his grasp as her whole body convulsed.
And then light exploded from her.
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.
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It wasn't a gentle glow, or beautiful, as it was when she'd healed him. This was violent, too bright to look upon. A wind was blowing and even though there wasn't any heat he was sure she was being burned from the inside out, and he was screaming her name and begging Gandalf to save her, barely able to hear his own voice over the shouts of the others and the wizard's foreign chanting swelling and rising to an inhuman peak.
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And then… as quickly as it began it was over. The wind and the terrible light were gone and Tauriel lay there in the loud silence looking almost as she had before. She sighed, and stretched, and sat up. She frowned at first, uncomprehending, but then stilled, her eyes wide.
"Kili?" she asked. Or perhaps pleaded, or perhaps exulted.
"Tauriel," he whispered, and she knew everything he meant.
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It was hard to determine which one lunged forward first.
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But what did it matter? They were there on the floor, jumbled together in kisses and fierce Sindarin and Khuzdul whispers, surrounded by people who loved him and would love her. Fili kissed Sigrid soundly through her tears and pulled her down to join the heap on the floor, while Bilbo sniffled and muttered crossly and Thorin laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled.
Gandalf stood back in the corner of the cell, watching the pandemonium, and began to laugh.
"Well, Thorin," Gandalf said later as they strolled out of the Elvenking's Halls. "Next summer in Erebor?"
"Fine, fine, you win," Thorin groused, and tried not to appear as if he was looking forward to it.
A/N:
Innikh dê- Return to me
Amad- mother
Amrâlimê- My love
Sorry for depriving Gloin and his wife of Gimli, but I really needed Thranduil to be permanently stuck in the Undying Lands. Obviously, for the purposes of this AU Hobbit!Bilbo chose to die in Middle Earth instead of sailing there. I haven't decided about Frodo and Sam- what do you think they would have chosen to do?
The epilogue will be posted sometime tomorrow!