Author's note: Again, sorry for the delay. My move is completed and I've finally found the time to write again. This one was originally supposed to be the 'reunion-chapter', but I had to break it in half in order to not end up with an 8,000 words chapter. Chapter 15 is in the making though and should be up in a couple of days, so please be patient (I know, I've tested your patience quite a bit with this story...sorry about that...).

To those who have reviewed, favourited, followed - thank you so much, you're the best! I'm glad to see that you are still with me even if I take ridiculously long to update.

Disclaimer: I don't own The Hobbit or any of its characters.

Chapter XIV

"Let me see… now, which one would you like to try first?" The cold voice of the orcs' master drifted over to where Tauriel was slumped against the hard, uneven wall, her arms tied above her head, solid iron chains cutting into her slim wrists.

Things were not progressing well at all. Tauriel felt sick, faint almost, her legs quivering beneath the weight of the rest of her body. And this despite the fact that Nimwen had continued to relinquish most of what little sustenance they were given – but apparently this was not enough to keep up Tauriel's strength in her condition, at least not with the additional strains her body, mind and spirit were put to in this hellish place. It seemed that the child inside of her was making her more liable to the ailments of mortality. She had wondered more than once if all elleth felt like this during childbearing or whether the mortal, dwarven half of her child was increasing the symptoms of pregnancy.

Regardless of whether that was the case or not, her current situation was bad enough as it was. Angling her head to the side, Tauriel struggled to open her eyes wide enough to look at her capturer, the constant darkness surrounding her during the endless hours in hers and Nimwen's cell having caused her eyes to grow sensitive, swollen. He was standing before a long, wooden rack that held several, darkly stained phials. Poison of some kind, she thought to herself with a slight clenching of her stomach.

"No, please don't," she heard her own voice whimper, sounding as if it came from far away. Her thoughts were only for the well-being of hers and Kíli's child, her fear of whatever the master was about to force her to ingest overriding any other feelings she might have had. In a physical confrontation she might have been able to defend herself, might have been able to deflect the worst of the damage from her child. But against the terrible effects of poison no one – experienced warrior or not – stood a chance once it had been swallowed.

Her adversary whirled around and Tauriel thought that had she been able to see his face that, same as the last time she had been brought to see him, was disguised under a large hood, she would have found his eyes fixing her in a cold stare. "You are afraid," he sneered angrily. "I have to say, I am quite disappointed. You struck me as one who would not be scared so easily."

Tauriel did not reply, but drew a shuddering breath and averted her gaze, trying desperately to hold herself together and to not show her opposite the mind-numbing fear that his proximity instilled in her. This man, she had learned from what little time she had spent in his company, was impulsive and unpredictable and if he was in any way led to suspect something about the precious secret his prisoner carried inside of her, there was no possibility of knowing what this might inspire him to do.

He drifted over towards her, his closeness causing all of her senses to recoil from him. As he leaned in towards her, she instinctively angled her body away from him as best as she could. Had her hands not been tied firmly above her head, she knew she would have brought them down to cover her midsection protectively and was somewhat glad that her binds prevented her from doing so as this would surely have given her away.

Out of the corner of her eye she glanced at the face hidden by the large hood and thought she saw icy-blue eyes peering at her from underneath. "What is it that has you trembling?" he whispered, his voice cruel, cold, mocking her. "Surely the prospect of some slight discomfort does not cause a warrior such as you to grow weak with fear?"

Tauriel stared at him defiantly. "Trust me, any pain that I might have felt in my long life would be nothing compared to what I will one day inflict on you," she spat before she could stop herself, her temper getting the better of her.

He snickered. "Will you, now? Frankly, I do not quite see how you propose to do that, given your current predicament." He glanced pointedly at the shackles holding her in place.

Deprived of any other possible course of action, Tauriel reverted to glaring at her capturer in dismay. "Be that as it may," she growled, "I do not see how poisoning me will help you with your cause – whatever that may be."

This earned her another cold chuckle. "Oh, but you are wrong there. I do not intend to poison you by any means. See," the orc-master said, strolling back over to his collection of phials, brushing across them with his fingertips, "I have spent quite some time adjusting the properties of my potions to the properties of your kin. I do not mean to kill you – quite the contrary. I want to find out what it is that makes you so strong, so fast, so long-lived. I will admit though that once or twice I have taken my little... experiments a step too far, resulting in the passing of my subject." He sighed as if this was a terrible nuisance while Tauriel stared at him in horror.

"We are what we are because the Valar created us as such," she said, trying to keep her voice calm. In her heart she knew that there was no reasoning with this man, but, deprived of any other way to defend herself, she tried to talk some sense into him. "Nothing will come of your enterprise, except more death."

He did not even turn around at her words, but merely laughed lowly. "You have no idea of what I am capable of, of the great things I have already achieved." His hand paused above one of the small containers on the wooden shelf, his laughter dying away. "But enough of that chatter for now."

He turned around with the phial of his choice in hand and approached her slowly, like a predator stalking his prey. Holding the phial up for her to see, he sneered, "You will like this one, I am sure. It is quite… invigorating."

He chuckled as he uncorked the phial, a pungent, foul smell erupting from it immediately. For Tauriel the urge to vomit was now stronger than ever and she tensed in an effort to maintain control over her body. Turning her face as far away from the stench as possible with her lips pressed tightly together, a solitary tear made its way down her cheek. She simply couldn't let herself be forced to drink this – it would harm her child, she knew it. But what could she do?

Watching her reaction intently, the master stood poised before her, phial still in hand, hesitating. "You reek of fear," he eventually spoke through gritted teeth, his voice angered, disgusted. Setting the phial aside, he grasped her chin with his hand, long, dirty fingernails digging into Tauriel's skin, and forced her face towards him. Tauriel, no longer able to suppress her terror, squeezed her eyes shut in a final, desperate attempt to conceal the truth from her capturer.

"What are you hiding from me?" he demanded, his tone low, menacing. When she did not reply, he shoved her head back against the wall, causing her to whimper in pain, before letting go of her chin and taking a step back. From below her eyelids, Tauriel could see him scrutinizing her, and she thought she felt her heart stop in her chest when his gaze settled on her stomach where, she knew, the fabric of her tunic was a little tighter than it should be, her efforts to hide the gentle rounding of her belly becoming more futile with each passing day.

Her quickened breath hitched on a sob when she saw her torturer reach for a knife on a table to his right. "No, please," she began, prepared to beg him, if not for her own life then at least for that of her child. This was not the time for pride.

"Show me what you are hiding under there," the master growled and approached her once more, reaching for the neckline of her tunic. With his knife he cut into the material, sliding the blade down several inches of fabric while Tauriel struggled desperately in his grasp, her mind blank from rising panic. Kíli, I'm sorry, she cried out in her heart, for I miserably failed at protecting this unexpected gift that we were given. I failed as a mother even before our child was born…

Suddenly there was a loud bang, like a clap of thunder, that made the floor vibrate and caused the bottles aligned on several shelves to rattle. The master paused and whipped his head around towards the door while Tauriel held her breath. For a few seconds nothing happened, but then a commotion was to be heard outside in the hallway.

With an angry roar the master shoved Tauriel away and headed for the door just as it was flung open from the outside. Two orcs stumbled inside and stopped abruptly when they saw their master charge towards them. "What is it this time?" he snarled.

"T-there was an explosion of some kind," one of the two stammered. "Down in the pits. There's smoke coming up and we heard some terrible screams…"

The master groaned on frustration and grabbed the orc by the back of his neck, using his other hand to swiftly slice the creature's throat with the knife he still held in his hand. Letting both the body and the knife fall to the ground, he glared at the other orc. "Take the she-elf away. But bring her to a separate cell this time. I will decide what to do with her later." He leaned in closer, fixing the orc in a menacing stare. "Make one mistake and you will find your end just as swiftly as your companion."

The orc nodded eagerly, carefully taking a step back to put himself out of the master's reach, who left the room without looking back. While the orc set about loosening the chains that held up Tauriel's arms, she thought to herself that the time of patient waiting had to come to an end now. With her secret so close to being revealed, she had to make sure that this had been the last audience with the master – another might cost her child its life.

As she was being led towards the door she took it as a good sign when, due to the orc's inability to resist taking some items of questionable value off his companion's dead body, she was able to lean down and snatch the knife the master had discarded off the ground, sliding it up the sleeve of her tunic to conceal it from view. It was scarcely more than a pocketknife, but its blade was sharp and pointed. She clenched her jaw in determination. During her long life, there had been instances where she had caused a considerable amount of damage with weapons of even less significance, so this might significantly increase her chances at escape.

"I don't like this," Dwalin growled. He, Kíli, Fíli, and Finn were crouched low behind a series of large boulders that had been piled up at the far edge of the plain leading up to the fortress hewn into the side of the mountain. From their vantage point they were able to observe not only the fortress itself, but also the pits covering the ground at its base.

"No one expects you to like it," Kíli mumbled in reply to Dwalin's statement, not taking his eyes off the sight before him. They had been skirting the edges of the terrain for most of the day, only daring to draw in closer once night had fallen again. "It is an orc fortress or something like that, after all, and thus not what you would commonly call a pretty view."

Dwalin grunted next to him. "That's not what I meant, lad." He sat back on his heels, Fíli and Finn turning around to look at him. "The place is crawling with orcs," the older dwarf said, looking first at Fíli and then at Kíli, who spared him a quick glance over his shoulder. "We stand no chance against that."

"If we were to try and fight them, yes, that's probably true. While that sounds like a lot of fun, I say we save taking them out for another day," Kíli returned distractedly. "All I care about is getting Tauriel out. If I manage to kill a couple of orcs in the process, fine, but that's not my top priority."

"If we're discovered, chances are we'd not make it out alive…" Fíli muttured, coming to kneel next to Kíli. "It's a shame we don't have a hobbit here with us."

"It is. But still we can reduce the risk of being caught," Kíli said and finally tore his gaze away from the mountain. "We need to split up," he explained, turning around to lean with his back against the rocks behind him. He looked at each of the three faces staring back at him. "Two are less likely to be discovered than four of us."

Fíli nodded, his mouth forming a completely straight line as always when he was being very serious. "Let's go then, brother."

He made to rise, but was yanked back down roughly by Dwalin, who had a murderous look on his face. "If you two think I'll let you walk in there while I babysit the boy, you are very, very wrong."

Kíli silenced Finn's protest to Dwalin's words with a hand on the young Dúnedain's shoulder. To Dwalin he said, "Out of the four of us, Fíli and I are attuned to one another the most. We can work together almost blindly. I need you," he looked pleadingly at Dwalin, who crossed his arms in front of his chest, "and you," he looked at Finn, "to guard our back as we go in and to help us when we come come back out in case that we are being followed. Can you do this?"

Finn nodded eagerly, and Kíli took Dwalin's lack of verbal protest as his way of agreeing to the plan.

"And how do you intend to get inside?" Dwalin finally asked, still looking skeptical.

All four turned around to look at the large structure in front of them. At the bottom of the fortress a large gate appeared to be the only way in and it was heavily guarded. Above the gate, several ledges jutted out from the surface of the mountain that were also guarded, but not as heavily as the main gate below.

"If we could just climb up to one of the upper levels undetected…" Fíli said, his brow furrowed in thought.

"We'll need to create a distraction," Finn said purposefully, causing the others to look at him. Kíli followed the boy's line of sight to a large, wooden construction that was positioned at the edge of one of the pits. Apparently it was being used to lift heavy weights in and out of the pits and thus had to be quite solid.

Kíli grinned. "I like your way of thinking."

Fifteen minutes later, Finn and the two brothers were taking up position behind the wooden structure while Dwalin was carefully making his way along the side of it, axe in hand. Upon getting closer, they had discovered that there were wheels at the bottom of the construction, wooden bolts on the front wheels preventing it from rolling into the pit. Until now, that was.

"Dwalin, go, we are ready," Kíli whispered as loudly as he dared, leaning with his whole weight against a wooden beam, Fíli and Finn imitating him to his left.

He heard Dwalin grunt in reply, and after one, two, three strikes of the dwarf's axe that surely had not gone unnoticed, Kíli felt the wood under his shoulder yield ever so slightly. He and the other two pushed as hard as they could, but after the initial little jolt the heavy apparatus refused to move any further. Shouts were heard in the distance, and Kíli already thought that their plan had failed before ever being properly set in motion when Dwalin came sprinting around the corner and threw himself against the wooden structure with all his weight, effectively sending it into the abyss opening up before it.

With the wood supporting their bodies suddenly gone, Kíli, Fíli and Finn all fell to their knees in surprise and looked on in fascination as the gigantic contraption disappeared into the earth, the wood creaking almost eerily as it tipped over. After that followed a series of crashing sounds over which Kíli heard shouts and screams drifting up from below. And then, suddenly, there was an ear-shattering explosion somewhere deep down in the ground, fire surging up from the pit in front of them.

The three dwarves and the young Dúnedain scrambled backwards. As the flames disappeared back into the pit, they looked at each other perplexedly. "Well, that escalated quickly," Fíli muttered under his breath.

Kíli nodded, still looking on in confusion, but then shook himself out of his stupor. They had no time to lose now. Seeing orcs stream towards the burning pit from the direction of the main gate, the four of them quickly put some distance between them and the destruction they had caused, circling the plain on the far left side.

Coming to a stop where the walls of the fortress rose into the sky steeply before them, but not so steep as to make climbing them wholly impossible, Kíli turned around to face his companions, who all looked white determined. "Finn, Dwalin," he spoke hurriedly. "Find a good spot to hide and from where you can charge at anyone coming for us." He took his bow off his back and looked at it for a moment before thrusting it into Finn's arms. The boy opened his mouth to protest, but Kíli quickly silenced him. "Take it. It will not be of much use to me once we're inside and I still cannot shoot it properly either way."

"But I cannot…" Finn began, but Kíli interrupted him.

"Yes, you can. And you will. Go now, quickly!" Watching Dwalin and Finn disappear into the darkness, he turned to his brother. "Ready?"

Fíli grinned. "If our reasons for doing this were not so serious, I think I'd almost enjoy this."

Kíli smirked, grateful to have his brother there with him to give him confidence. And to guard his back. "Come on, then."

Side by side they began to scale the rocky wall, Fíli reaching the ledge above them first and reaching out to draw Kíli, who still had some slight problems with his injured shoulder, up onto it. Below they could see that most of the orcs still surrounded the burning pit. Dwalin and Finn were nowhere to be seen, but Kíli was confident that they would enact their part of the plan as discussed.

With their backs pressed against the wall, the brothers slowly made their way along the ledge, swords drawn. If they encountered any guards, they would have to take them out as swiftly as possible, before they could raise the alarm and give their presence away.

Soon they came upon a cave-like entrance from which light was shining onto the stony ledge. They paused and then tensed when two orcs stepped outside, pointing at the tumult below, talking in their own language. From behind, Fíli gently tapped against Kíli's shoulder - once, twice, three times – and together they jumped up and launched at the guards, each taking on one of them. The orcs stood no chance against the swords of the Durin brothers and Kíli was just about to congratulate his brother on their swift work, when another orc emerged onto the ledge behind Fíli, opening his mouth to give a shout of warning to someone inside the fortress before either Fíli or Kíli could react.

The guard did not manage to utter a sound, though, before his throat was pierced by an arrow which Kíli immediately recognized as one of his own. Feeling a strange sense of pride flood his heart, he gazed into the darkness below, silently praising Mahal for the fact that Finn had chosen this particular moment to finally succeed in hitting his target. Not only because this saved them from being discovered, but also because, had Finn missed, either he or his brother might now have an arrow stuck somewhere in their bodies.

Nodding at Fíli, who had taken up position on one side of the opening in the side of the mountain, Kíli wasted no more time to enter the fortress, Fíli following closely behind. So far, they had been incredibly lucky. Now Kíli could only hope that his luck would hold out for long enough to enable him to find Tauriel in this vast place and to get her out safely. For he knew that he only had one chance to make this right – one false step might cost his life or, worse, the lives of the two people he cared about most in this world. No, make that three, he thought to himself when the image of the little girl from his dream flashed before his inner eye, causing a tight feeling to erupt in his chest.

tbc...