When, at last, Bilbo had regained enough control over his rather unruly emotions to leave off his embracing of Kili and consider what they might do next, it became clear to him that they all still had a very great deal to talk about. Nonetheless, he was aware that it was late (or rather, early, for it was two hours until dawn), and none of them had had a full night's sleep, and he knew well that such times are not the most auspicious for difficult conversations. So he stood up, and helped Kili to his feet.

"We should probably all go back to bed," he said. "Do you think you could sleep, my lad?"

Kili, who still looked anxious and downcast, stared at the floor for a moment and then shook his head. "Bad dream," he said. "I go bed, yes. You want I should sleep?"

"Not if it will give you nightmares," Bilbo said. "That is the last thing that I want."

"I do not think I could sleep, either," Fili said. "I feel quite awake."

"Hmph," replied Bilbo. If he was honest with himself, he did not feel much like sleeping, either - after all, he had drunk rather a lot of tea - but it offended his sense of order for them to all be up in the middle of the night. Still, it seemed there was nothing for it. "Well, if no-one will go to bed, that is one thing," he said, "but if we are up, then it is morning, and if it is morning, then we will have breakfast, no matter how early it is." And so he patted Kili's shoulder until the little dwarf sat down in his armchair, and then betook himself to the kitchen.

Breakfast was bacon and eggs, and none of them ate a great deal of it - Bilbo because he felt nervous and unsettled, and the other two perhaps for the same reasons. Afterwards, Fili built up the fire, and they sat as they had before in the living room, staring at each other and waiting, so it seemed, for someone else to break the silence.

Of course, it was Bilbo who spoke at last. "Now, then," he said, smiling at Kili, "we have had quite the time of it lately, haven't we? And I have - I have done rather a lot of things that perhaps I should not have done - though I didn't realise it at the time. But first of all, Kili, I must tell you that I will never send you away. Not ever, no matter what you do. Do you understand?"

Kili, who had been staring at the floor, looked up at him, apparently a little surprised by this opening to their conversation. "If - if you are angry?" he said.

"Not even if I am incandescent," Bilbo said, and then, of course, realised that Kili certainly would not understand that. "Or very cross indeed," he added. "Not even then."

Kili watched him for a moment, his expression indecipherable. Then he turned to look at Fili. "If you are angry?" he said.

Fili straightened a little in his chair. "I will not take you away if you do not want to go," he said, after a moment's hesitation. "I promise I will not. I see now that it does more harm than good."

"Especially if you go out without your coats," Bilbo put in. "I don't want to be rescuing frozen dwarves in the middle of the night, I don't mind telling you!"

Fili scowled at him, and for a moment, Bilbo thought he had managed to upset the fine balance that they had only just achieved. But then Fili shook his head, and smiled a little, and laid a hand on his brother's shoulder.

"If I do ever try to take you away, Bilbo will come running after us with our coats," he said, "and then, no doubt, he will insist on coming with us, just as he did when we set out for Erebor, though we tried our hardest to leave him behind. So you see, there is no danger of you being parted."

"That is not what happened at all!" Bilbo spluttered, feeling quite hard done-by. "I had not the slightest notion of going on adventures until you dratted dwarves dragged me along. Half against my will, I might add!"

But Fili only laughed quietly at him and threw an arm around his brother's shoulders. "I would not listen to the hobbit, my brother," he murmured. "They tell tall tales, from what I've heard."

Kili began to look most confused, and Bilbo took pity on him. "Never mind all that," he said. "The important thing is that you will not be made to go away if you do not want to. Not by either of us. So, then, do you feel better?"

Kili sat quietly for a moment or two and watched Bilbo intently, then glanced quickly at Fili and nodded once. "Yes," he said. "It is good. I am glad."

"Good!" Bilbo said. "Now, I must ask you to promise me something in return."

Kili straightened a little, all his attention back on Bilbo. He did not speak, and Bilbo, after waiting a moment to see if he would, continued with his request.

"You must promise me that if I ever make you feel like a-" He stopped here and floundered a little, then pointed to the teacups that still sat on the floor. "-like you are going in the wrong direction, you will tell me. Straight away, mind, don't wait."

Kili frowned down at the cups and shifted uneasily in his chair. He did not look at Bilbo, nor did he promise, and Bilbo leaned forward and touched his knee.

"Did you understand?" he asked.

"Yes," Kili said.

Bilbo waited, but Kili said nothing more, and at last Bilbo prompted him again. "Can you promise me, then?"

But Kili did not promise. Instead, he frowned a little, and shook his head.

"It make you feel bad," he said.

Bilbo opened his mouth to declare that it certainly would not, but then remembered that it was the very act of his not being entirely honest - no matter how small and well-meant his untruths had been - that had precipitated this conversation in the first place. And so he closed his mouth, and rearranged his thoughts, and when he did speak, it was with great care.

"Yes," he said, "it might, at that. But Kili, my making you feel as though you are going in the wrong direction hurts your feelings, does it not?"

Kili stared at him. "Hurt?" he said. "It is not hurt."

"Bilbo does not mean that it hurts your body, my brother," Fili said. "He means that it hurts your feelings." He touched Kili's chest. "Your feelings, here."

Kili seemed to consider this for a moment. "Feelings," he said, touching his own chest. "It is like feel."

"Yes, it is exactly like that," Bilbo said. "You feel feelings. That is why they are called so." He paused a moment to reflect that what he had said sounded mildly ridiculous, but Kili did not seem to care, and so he forged onwards. "If I hurt your feelings, it means I make you feel bad," he said. "So, then: it hurts your feelings when I make you feel as though you are going in the wrong direction. That's right, isn't it? It makes you feel bad?"

Kili nodded. "Yes," he said. "Feel bad. I hurt - feelings."

"Well, then," Bilbo said, choosing to ignore Kili's grammatical infelicity. "So it is hardly fair for me to hurt your feelings and you not to tell me for fear of hurting mine, now, is it?"

It seemed to take a moment or two for Kili to unravel this sentence, but when he did, he shook his head. "My feelings - not important," he said.

"What?" Bilbo cried. "Of course your feelings are important! Why would you think they are not?"

Kili looked rather as though he had just realised he had said something he shouldn't, and he glanced away. "No," he said. "I - It is-" But he seemed not to be able to finish this thought - if, indeed, there had been a thought behind this utterance at all - and he stuttered a little and fell silent, hunching into himself a little.

"Come, my brother," Fili said to Kili, drawing him a little closer and sending a worried glance at Bilbo. "Do not hide yourself away. Why do you think your feelings are not important?"

Kili frowned at the floor. "Not more important," he muttered. "Less more important."

"You think your feelings are less important than mine?" Bilbo asked.

Kili made no response to this, but he glanced up at Bilbo, and his mouth twitched unhappily.

"Well," Bilbo said, determined to remain calm and measured. "Well, all right, why do you think that?"

Again, Kili did not reply, but he glanced at the teacups on the floor. It was the briefest of glances, but not so brief that Bilbo did not notice it, and, after a moment, discern its significance.

"Because you are still here," he said, leaning down and placing his finger partway between the two cups. "You think your feelings are less important because you are still making your way to this other cup, and have not yet arrived there. I am right, am I not?"

"Snaga not - not -" Kili started, but quickly stumbled to a halt again.

"But you are not a snaga," Fili said.

"No," Kili replied. "I am not snaga." And he glared at the cups on the floor, and did not explain further.

"But that is not all," Bilbo said. "This-" and here he gestured at the cups "- this is all very important, and I am glad to know that you think of getting better in this way. But in fact, it is not like this." And he reached down and picked up the two cups, and stacked them one atop the other. "It is like this, Kili. A snaga is a person. You are a person. You have always been a person, even when you were with the orcs. All the other snagas were people, too. It is only that the orcs confused your mind and your heart a great deal, and made you think you were not a person. But you were, you always were, and you still are. You still are, Kili." And here he held out the two cups to Kili, still stacked together.

Kili did not reach out to take them, but only stared at them for a moment or two and then gave Bilbo an incredulous look. But Bilbo shook the cups a little, and nodded at them, and at last Kili raised his hands and took them, holding them gingerly as if he was afraid they might somehow injure him.

"That is all rather a lot for you to think about, I suppose," Bilbo said. "But you are a person, my lad, and that means that you are just as important as I am. Every person is important, Kili, we are all just as important as each other. Your feelings are as important as mine. Indeed, I think it might be even more important that your feelings do not get hurt, since you are so much more vulnerable than I am."

Kili, who had been sitting very still with a rather blank expression on his face, frowned and shook his head.

"I not know this, vulnable," he said. "What it is mean?"

"Vulnerable," Bilbo said. "It means - it means you are more likely to be badly hurt than I am, because you are - fragile, easily broken. And so you need more protection than I do."

This, though, produced a rather unexpected reaction from Kili. He sat up straight in his chair with a look of great surprise, and made a face that was almost a scowl.

"No," he said. "Not this. I am strong. Not weak. I - I-" He frowned at the cups in his hands as they clinked together, and Bilbo realised that his hands had begun to shake. "I not," Kili said, "I not - Dwarfs are strong. I am dwarf." He looked at Fili. "I am dwarf," he said again.

"Yes, my brother," Fili said, removing his arm from Kili's shoulders and taking the cups gently from Kili's hands, setting them - still stacked - on the little table. "You are a dwarf," Fili said. "You are a dwarf, and stronger than any dwarf could hope to be."

"Yes, of course," Bilbo put in. "I certainly did not mean that you are weak. Why, in body you are marvellously strong, indeed. And in mind, too - for your mind has suffered unimaginably, and yet still it is whole, and sound, if a little confused at times. It is only that - well, let me see now, how can I explain this? It is that your feelings have been hurt so dreadfully, for so long, so that they need time to recover. And my feelings have never been badly hurt - not as yours have - so they are less in need of protection. Do you see?"

Kili looked like he did not really see at all, and Bilbo cast around for some other way to phrase his thoughts. "Ah!" he said at last. "It is like your knee." And here he patted the aforesaid appendage. "Because your knee was badly hurt before, it takes less for it to be hurt again now, so it is important to be more careful of it that of your other knee. Your feelings are like that. Do you understand?"

Kili frowned down at his knee and then nodded. "Yes," he said. "Knee is weak. Orcs hurt knee, knee is weak. I understand."

"No, no, you have not understood at all!" Bilbo said, beginning to feel rather frustrated. "Your knee is easier to hurt now, it is true, but only because it has already been so damaged. If you think of all the hurt that your knee has had to cope with, and add it all together, why, it is a very strong knee indeed!" Here he patted Kili's knee again, feeling oddly offended on its behalf. "Even after what was done to it, it still holds you up all day, and lets you run, even, and do everything you might otherwise want to do, only that sometimes it gets weary and it needs to rest. And your feelings - your heart - your heart is like that, too. If you add up all the hurt it has suffered, why, I think you must be the strongest dwarf in all of the world, but nonetheless, it cannot suffer forever without showing some strain. And so it is important that you should protect it, and that your brother and I should do our best to protect it, too."

Kili listened to all of this with a frown on his face, and when Bilbo had finished, he sat quietly and seemed to be staring at nothing. But his frown was one of concentration, not unhappiness, and Bilbo let him alone to think his own thoughts, and considered whether it might not be time for more tea, as his last cup had gone rather cold. He did not wish to disturb Kili's reflections, though, and so he simply waited until at last Kili spoke again.

"It is not right," he said. "I think - hobbit, you know, know many things. But not orcs, not snaga. I know this. Orcs not hurt feelings. Orcs hurt body, hurt mind. Not hurt feelings."

Bilbo found himself quite unprepared for this answer. "Of course they did!" he said, and then rather thought better of it. "I mean, well, I don't understand. They were constantly, terribly cruel to you. How can they not have hurt your feelings?"

Kili frowned at him. "I not have feelings," he said. "I tell you this. Did tell you, before. No feelings with orcs. Only have feelings now, only since not long."

Well, this was enough to throw Bilbo quite off the path, for of course Kili had indeed said this before, but it was quite as difficult to comprehend now as it had been then, if not more so. He groped for something to say that was not simply a denial, but came up empty-handed. And in fact, in the end it was Fili who replied.

"That is how we know," he said. "It is how we know, Kili. Because you had feelings before the orcs, and you have feelings now. They did not disappear when you were with the orcs. Only you forgot you had them. That is how we know that they were hurt."

"Indeed," Bilbo said, seeing in Fili's explanation the words he had been scrambling for. "Your brother is quite right. It is not that you did not have any feelings when you were with the orcs, but only that your feelings became so very battered that you hid them away rather than let them become even more damaged."

Kili looked bewildered by this. "No," he said, "I not do this. I not know how do this."

"Bilbo does not mean that you did it on purpose," Fili said. "But your heart did it, without you knowing. It grew so bruised that it closed itself up, like a caterpillar when you touch it." He touched Kili's chest. "It is only now beginning to open again, after so many years, and that is why you are feeling things again. Why you are able to be happy and angry and sad."

Kili stared at him for a long, quiet moment. Then he turned back to Bilbo. "It is right?" he said. "Heart is - closed?"

"It was closed," Bilbo said. "Now it is opening, very slowly, and your feelings are coming out again. But they are like - they are like someone who has been ill for a long time, and only now rises from the bed. They are still weary, and lacking in strength, and they cannot do all the things they used to be able to do. That is why it is important that they are not hurt - much more so than my feelings, which have never been ill at all."

Kili was beginning to look rather overwhelmed by all of this. "I did do this?" he said. "Why I did do this? I close heart - make feelings go? Why I did do this, make be less person?"

"You were protecting yourself," Bilbo said, not liking the slightly panicked tone to Kili's voice. "That is all it was. You were not trying to be less of a person - and you were not, now, Kili, I must insist, you were just as much a person as I am - but no-one could withstand what you withstood with their feelings unprotected. Why, imagine what it would be like with the orcs, if you were able to be sad, or angry!"

It seemed Kili followed this suggestion, though Bilbo had not really meant him to, for he frowned a moment and then looked suddenly desperately miserable and not a little frightened. Fili, ever alert for the slightest change in his brother's mood, put a quick arm around his shoulders.

"No, do not imagine it, my brother," he murmured. "You do not need to imagine it."

Kili, though, seemed not to be able quite to escape from whatever his mind had shown him, and he reached out towards Bilbo, seemingly without thought. Bilbo, alarmed at what he had inadvertently caused with his words, held out his arm, and Kili clutched at his sleeve and closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them, he looked pale and shaken.

"No," he said hoarsely. "It is not good."

"Not good at all," Bilbo said, stroking his arm soothingly. "I suppose perhaps we can be grateful that you do not remember the time from before you hid your feelings away. I am sure it was quite -" And of course, he could find no word for what it must have been like, for when he imagined it - and Kili still a child, at that - all the ones he knew seemed entirely inadequate. "Quite unpleasant," he finished at last, and then tried to think of a way to change the subject, or at least steer the conversation into some less disastrous waters. "In any case," he said at last, "that is why your feelings are more vulnerable than mine, my lad. Only because they have been so injured in the past, and they are still recovering. And that is why you must promise me that you will tell me if I ever make you feel as though you are going in the wrong direction again. So, now that we have talked about it, can you promise me that you will?" In truth, he rather thought that it was time for them to stop talking all together and do something less exhausting, but he did not feel that he would be able to rest if he did not extract the promise from Kili.

Kili tightened his grip on Bilbo's sleeve a little. "Because vulnable," he muttered. "I understand. Heart is-" But whatever his heart was, he did not complete his thought, but only shook his head. And yet still he did not promise, and all of Bilbo's reassurances seemed to have had worse than no effect, for he looked if anything more tense and upset than he had when they had begun the conversation.

"What is the matter, my brother?" Fili asked. "Why do you not promise, as Bilbo has asked?"

"I not-" Kili said, and then glanced from Fili to Bilbo, looking worried. "I think - it is not right," he said. "That I am person. That all person is important. I think you more important, hobbit more important."

"You mean your heart does not believe it?" Bilbo asked.

"No," Kili said, and then, "yes. Heart not believe. Also head. Head not believe. It is not right." He hunched his shoulders, and it seemed it cost him quite the effort to disagree thus with Bilbo. "I think - maybe it is you not understand orcs? Sometimes you not understand. It is this. It is not you are wrong. Only not understand."

And now Bilbo found himself greatly torn, for he wished more than anything to encourage this line of thought in Kili, that he could disagree if he wished, that Bilbo was not always right. And yet he could not agree with him, nor yet even allow him to think that this particular belief of his had the slightest merit. Oh, it was a difficult trap indeed for our poor Mr. Baggins!

"Kili," he said at last sliding forward on his chair so that his knees touched Kili's and laying his hand over Kili's where it still gripped his sleeve, "it is true that sometimes I am wrong, and especially that you understand a great deal more than I do about the orcs. But I have never been more sure of anything than I am of this. You are a person, and you are just as important as any other person. Just as important as me, or Fili, or Thorin, or any person you can think of. I am not wrong. In this, I am not wrong."

Kili stared at him unhappily, then turned to look at Fili. "You as well think this?" he said.

Fili shook his head. "No, my brother," he said. "To me, you are more important. More important than me, more important than mother or Thorin or Bilbo." And here he cast a quick, apologetic glance at Bilbo, who only smiled his approval, for of course it was nothing he did not already know. "You are more important, Kili, not less," Fili said. "That is what I think."

Kili seemed not to know how to respond to this - and indeed, it would surely have been difficult for any creature, let alone one such as he - and turned back to Bilbo, beginning to look most distressed.

"I not think it," he said. "I try. I can not think it."

"You do not have to," Bilbo said hastily. "Not yet, at any rate. These things take time. But Kili - can you perhaps convince yourself that your brother and I are right, even though your heart and your mind say differently? You do not have to think it is true, as such, but only that we are right and you are wrong. Can you do that?"

Now, perhaps you have never tried to believe something that everything in you tells you is wrong, for certainly it is not a feat often attempted (though perhaps the world might be a better place if it were). It is a thing that is almost impossible to imagine, let alone achieve. And yet, Bilbo's words had not been empty when he had spoken of the strength of Kili's mind, and although the little dwarf sat staring blankly at the floor for long enough that Bilbo began to fear he had slipped into a fugue state, at last he roused himself, and looked up, and nodded.

"Yes," he murmured. "I do this."

"Good," Bilbo said, with a sigh of relief. "Thank you, my lad."

Kili nodded again and let go of Bilbo's sleeve, leaning back against his chair. He looked quite exhausted, and yet Bilbo could not let him rest yet.

"And the promise?" he said. "Can you promise me?"

Kili did not answer. But Fili touched his arm and spoke with great feeling.

"Please, my brother," he said.

And Kili looked at him, and then at Bilbo, and gave the briefest nod.

"Yes," he said. "You want this. I promise. I promise this."

"Thank you," Bilbo said again, and found himself sagging in his own chair. He had meant the promise to be something short and simple, just something to be assured of before the much longer conversation he had envisaged concerning Kili's deception and what it meant. But now here they were, and the sky was growing lighter, and every part of him felt heavy, as though he had been chopping firewood or building walls all night. Kili's eyes were shadowed, and Fili looked tired and grim, though he at least was still upright in his chair. There was nothing for it: they would have to go back to bed.

And so they did, neither Fili nor Kili protesting in the slightest, but both seeming only to happy to crawl back into their bed and blow out the lamp. Bilbo, despite his weariness, spent a moment or two tidying up the living room before he made his way to his own rest. He took up the two cups from the little table and rinsed them out in the kitchen, then made to put them back in the cupboard. But he stayed his hand at the last moment, and stood up, holding the cups in his hand.

"After all," he murmured to himself, "I do think they helped."

And he took himself back to the guest room, and closed the curtains firmly against the pre-dawn light. But before he climbed into his own bed, he set the two cups in a neat stack on the table beside the dwarves' bed. Kili was already asleep, head nodding on his chest, but when he woke up, he surely would not fail to see them, and maybe he would begin to understand.

"Good night, you two," Bilbo murmured to his sleeping guests. And he crossed the room to his own little bed, and fell asleep without even crawling under the covers.