Author's note: Thank you all for leaving reviews & PMs. I love hearing from you guys! After so many dramatic chapters I need to figure out where I want to take this story. In the meantime, here's another chapter. I got a bit carried away there towards the end, which explains the length of the chapter. But... I think (hope!) you'll enjoy it ;)

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

Chapter XVII

Stepping out on the small terrace onto which her room opened, Tauriel breathed in the sweet, fragrant air of a night in spring. Beneath the soles of her bare feet the ground was warm, the stones having retained the heat of the sun that had shone down upon them for the better part of the day.

Looking around her, Tauriel saw a great number of small lights illuminating the many structures scattered across the valley and her sensitive ears picked up voices speaking here and there, low laughter, and soft sounds of music. It was the middle of the night, but of course the Elven inhabitants of Rivendell did not sleep. Night was a time for reflection, for rest, for enjoyment - but not for sleep. With the many unexpected turns her life had taken lately, Tauriel was surprised how easily one would almost forget such things that had come natural to her for many hundreds of years.

In many ways it was strange, after such a long time, to be in the company of other Elves again – even though she had yet to meet one of her hosts in person. Standing there on her small balcony, Tauriel felt a wave of nostalgia for her own past wash over her, this curious feeling that leaves you happy and yet also a little sad, lonely.

But no, not lonely, she thought to herself when a small sound drew her attention back to the room she had just left. Turning her head to glance over her shoulder, she smiled as she watched Kíli shift on her bed, mumbling softly in his sleep. Not lonely at all, no. For the remainder of the day since she had woken up, he had been at her side, had listened to her story, had comforted her when she had shivered with the remembrance of her prison, had held her when the realization that one of her dearest friends was gone and would not be returned to her in this life, had hit her again. Eventually, though, he had had to succumb to his own exhaustion and for the last couple of hours he had slept soundly in her arms, the lines of worry and fatigue on his face slowly smoothening themselves out, his tense muscles finally relaxing.

For a long time, Tauriel had been more than content to lie beside him and watch him in his sleep, her fingers moving across his face, his hair, his shoulders and back as if she could hardly believe that he was really there and not some sort of dream of hers. As the night wore on, however, she had felt herself grow restless, her mind overflowing with too many thoughts at once.

There were still many things she wanted to ask Kíli, things that they had not found time to discuss before he had drifted off to sleep. What had happened to him, the night they got separated? How had he ended up searching for her with the young Dúnedain as a traveling companion? And where had his brother and Dwalin come from so suddenly when they were supposed to be nowhere on this side of the Misty Mountains?

Aside from those questions, which she was sure Kíli would readily answer once he had gotten his well-deserved rest, there were a number of other issues keeping her awake, her thoughts once again turning to the question of how they would – how they should – proceed after everything that had happened. She swallowed, suddenly nervous as she gazed upon the lights burning below, wondering how an encounter with the inhabitants of Imladris was going to go down.

Averting her gaze she glanced down at the rounding of her stomach, clearly discernible even beneath the pale-grey, flowing gown she had been dressed in at some point during her time of unconsciousness. Her own clothes, she had realized when she had risen from the bed and found them patched up and cleaned on a low shelf, would not fit her much longer. And neither would anyone be likely to overlook the fact that she was with child – a child conceived under conditions she did not think had any precedence in the long history of the Elves of Middle Earth.

The kindness that Elrond had bestowed on her when he had aided in her rescue and had taken her here to heal, suggested that the knowledge of her condition did at the very least not mark her as an outcast in his eyes – but would his people feel the same way? Or would they shun her and Kíli, turn them away from this place, the safety of which she knew she needed in order to recover from the turmoil of the last few weeks?

When her thoughts threatened to spiral down into complete desolation, Tauriel squeezed her eyes shut, willing her mind to give those matters a rest for now. Some of them she could not influence either way and maybe, just maybe, things would turn out well in the end. After all, somewhere at the back of her head, a voice kept whispering that the fronts between Elves and Dwarves might not be quite as hardened as her experiences with both Thranduil and Thorin suggested.

She opened her eyes again when, somewhere currently out of sight, she heard the sound of hooves on stone followed by the clatter of riders descending from their horses. It seemed that the rest of the party that had found them many miles south had now returned as well.

Somewhere below, somebody else appeared to have come to the same conclusion and Tauriel watched a slight, clearly female figure hurry down a couple of steps at the base of the house she was currently looking out of and run across the small garden the stairs led into. Something about that person felt familiar, and Tauriel was still trying to find a place for her in her memory when, through an archway on the other side of the garden, stepped Fíli, a look of urgency clearly visible on his face in the light cast by the moon and the few lamps scattered throughout the garden.

Immediately, the figure Tauriel had been watching threw herself at the blonde dwarf with a small sob, hugging him tightly, and Tauriel looked on with wide eyes as Kíli's brother reached up to gently take this person's face between his hands, pulling back from their embrace to gaze at her with such tenderness that Tauriel felt she should look away and yet found that she could not.

Her baffled mind was still trying to comprehend why an elleth of Rivendell would display such an extreme reaction to Fíli's arrival, when she realized that no, this way no member of the Elven race, but a young woman that Kíli's brother was holding, whispering random words of reassurance into her ear. And none other than Bard's eldest daughter, Sigrid.

"The nephews of Thorin Oakenshield are both drawn to unconventional romance, it appears," a low voice suddenly spoke up behind Tauriel and she whirled around to find Elrond himself stepping onto the small balcony from a narrow, winding staircase on its far right.

Suddenly self-conscious in her thin, clinging dress that so bluntly displayed the evidence of her's and Kíli's love for each other, she crossed her arms in front of her chest and stared at the elf-lord for a moment before lowering her head respectfully. "My lord," she stammered, at a loss of how to address him, much less converse with him.

Elrond came to stand next to her, calmly gazing at the couple still fawning over each other below. "All his life the dwarven king has strived to deepen the divide between his people and both Men and Elves. And here are his princes, involved with members of both races." He glanced at her from the corner of his eye with a small smile on his lips before looking down into the garden again.

Tauriel relaxed a little at the unaffectedness of his tone. "It does not sound as if you thought this a bad thing," she said hesitantly, following his gaze to look at Fíli and Sigrid, her mind still reeling to comprehend what she had just witnessed.

Elrond turned to look at her properly, one corner of his mouth curling upward. "By far not. When I met Thorin, I did not believe he would succeed in his quest of reclaiming the Mountain of Erebor. I was proven wrong, but still I would doubt the dwarves' future under that mountain were it not for what I have seen with my own eyes since the brothers returned here."

"Why?" Tauriel asked bluntly, her mind racing to understand Elrond's perspective on the relations among Elves, Dwarves and Men when for hundreds of years she had had a king before her who would barely tolerate speaking favorably of people outside of his kingdom, much less befriending them.

"I know who you are, Tauriel, and I know where you come from," the elf-lord returned, causing her to frown. "So I understand that for most of your life you have been taught to regard the differences between us and Men, between us and Dwarves, as reason to stay away from one another, as obstacles that cannot – an should not – be overcome. Now I can only guess at the circumstances that caused you to reject those teachings of your king, but maybe now you will agree that the ways in which we differ from one another are ultimately what unites us as well."

Tauriel thought about his words for a moment and looked back towards her room. Through the billowing white curtains she could see Kíli's sleeping form on the bed, his face so young and yet so old with the things he had seen, with the things they had seen together. "Dwarf, Elf, human… it has ceased to matter to me who is which," she whispered, not taking her eyes of her sleeping lover. She turned back around to look at Elrond, her expression pained. "But not to my king, or to some of those I cared about."

Elrond inclined his head. "Some prejudices are too longstanding to be done away with, some animosities too great to be overcome. All you can do then, is to let go."

Tauriel looked up sharply. "You do not condemn me for deserting my king, my people?"

"It is neither my right to judge you, Tauriel," Elrond returned, his voice gentle, "nor is it my desire."

When Tauriel remained silent and cast her eyes down, wondering if Elrond's thoughts on the child growing inside of her were equally tolerant, the ancient elf continued. "I wonder if you know what Imladris originally was."

Tauriel knitted her eyebrows together, thinking about the things she knew – or thought she knew – about the place. "The Elves were driven north when Eregion fell," she recited from memory. "They stayed and it became the only Elven settlement in all of Eriador." As with all history once memorized, those were mere facts to Tauriel, things located so far in the past that she could barely grasp them. As she looked at the ancient Elf before her, who was gazing at the valley stretching out before them with something akin to the tenderness with which a father would look at his children, she remembered with no small amount of awe that he had been there to see those things happen.

"Well, after losing everything to the enemy, it became both our refuge and sanctuary," he said, "a place of safety and security. And, in essence, it has remained such for many a soul throughout the centuries. Including myself."

Tauriel looked back up at him again, trying to figure out why he was telling her this. Elrond had turned away from her and was once more gazing down into the garden, though he did not appear to be looking at the couple below, but rather at things that Tauriel could not see, things that he had seen happening in the course of the long history of Imladris.

Watching Elrond grow more distant, Tauriel felt as if their conversation had come to an end and was just debating with herself whether it would be appropriate to return to her quarters when the elf-lord suddenly addressed her once more, his voice soft. "You are welcome to stay here for as long as you wish. Let Imladris become the sanctuary for yet another soul without a home." When she hesitated, he added, "This invitation extends to Kíli as well, of course."

Tauriel dropped her hands that had sneaked up to gently rub her stomach at Elrond's words and blushed. "Thank you, my lord," she stammered, not quite knowing what to say to this. It was not a decision she could make on her own, either way, but the question was, was this something she really wanted? To make herself at home at Rivendell? More than once before, the idea had been rejected by both herself and Kíli, but in the light of the most recent events, Elrond's offer stirred a renewed longing for a place to settle down. For a while, at least.

"Think about it," Elrond said. "This is not a decision that needs to be made right away. Rest and heal properly first." And with that he withdrew, slowly descending the narrow staircase silently as a shadow.

Tauriel stared after him, her thoughts running wild in her head. They were interrupted, however, by a voice coming from behind her, its tone slightly uncertain. "Tauriel? Who were you talking to?"

She turned around and looked at Kíli, who leaned against the side of the archway leading into the room they shared. He was barefoot, his dark hair a tousled mass, and Tauriel could not help but smile widely at his appearance, the joy over being once more able to see him in such an intimate moment difficult to put into words.

"The Lord Elrond," she said in answer to his question and walked over to where he stood, reaching out to run her hand through the strands of his hair.

"Oh?" he returned with an accompanying small frown as he drew her closer with an arm around her waist, looking up at her with eyes that were still heavy from sleep. "What did he want, in the middle of the night?"

Tauriel smiled. "You forget that normally we do not sleep," she teased, lightly placing a hand onto his upper arm. Feeling the muscles beneath her palm tighten and shift in response to her touch, she felt her mind go astray, a sudden desire to run her hands over other parts of his well-muscled body filling her. She dropped her hand, slightly flustered, and cleared her throat, eliciting a coy smile from Kíli who seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. "I believe he merely wanted to assure himself that I was comfortable," she said, picking up on their previous conversation. She had just decided that discussing the details of her talk with Elrond could wait until morning when Kíli surprised her with his next statement.

"I see," he said, lifting the hand she had just dropped to press a small kiss to her wrist that made it very hard to focus on his words. "Did he offer for us to stay? At Rivendell, I mean."

Tauriel gaped at him. "How do you-?"

Kíli shrugged and lowered her hand, interlacing his fingers with hers. "I thought that he might," he replied. "He seemed very concerned when you were… unwell." A shadow passed over his face at those words, but he quickly shrugged it off. "He… told me some things while we were waiting for you to wake up."

Tauriel frowned, surprised but not displeased that Kíli and their host appeared to have bonded during her time of recovery. "What kind of things?"

He pressed his lips together and averted his eyes for a moment. When he looked back up at her, his gaze was soft and a little saddened. "He told me that, many, many years ago, orcs took his wife from him. They- they tortured her." His grip onto her hand tightened and Tauriel saw not for the first time since she had woken up the clear evidence of the pain and guilt that her abduction had caused him.

"What happened?" she asked softly, this being a part of Elrond's history that she was unaware of.

Kíli cast his eyes down. "They recovered her. She was healed in body, but never truly in mind or spirit. She… she left this world soon after." He paused. "So it seems that Elrond can relate quite well to what happened to you – to us."

Tauriel closed her eyes for a second, sympathy for the pain both Elrond himself and his wife had experienced making her heart heavy in her chest. Letting out a breath, she cupped Kíli's cheek with her free hand to make him look at her, the vulnerability in his eyes causing her own eyes to mist over. "That is not what is going to happen to me," she said, her voice trembling with the realization that this must have been something he was genuinely worried about. "You got me out before I was ever truly hurt and I owe it to Nimwen to live the life for which she has given hers." Her voice hitched on those last couple of words, but she refused to let her grief overtake her once more and smiled a bittersweet smile instead, placing Kíli's hand on her stomach with hers on top. "And aside from that, I have so much now to keep me here."

Kíli exhaled a shaky breath, leaning forward to rest his forehead against her collarbone, holding her close for a few, silent minutes. When he looked back up at her, she lowered her head to capture his lips softly with her mouth, letting actions reinforce what she had just told him in words. I am here. And I'm not going anywhere unless it is with you at my side.

When they pulled apart, a slow smile spread across Kíli's face, his hand pressing gently against her stomach. "Do you remember her?" he whispered, "The girl from our dream?"

Tauriel laughed softly, happily, despite the serious words they had just exchanged and the turmoil of emotions that were still swirling beneath the surface. "I do," she said, "How could I ever forget?"

Her dark haired, dwarven lover responded with a little chuckle. "She really is something, isn't she?"

"She is," Tauriel breathed, leaning in to kiss him once again. "And I cannot wait to meet her."

"Me neither," Kíli mumbled, bringing her lips to his with a hand wrapped around the back of her neck, his mouth moving against hers gently, but not without heat this time.

Tauriel pulled away slightly when he pressed her against his body more firmly, more demandingly, taking a step backwards and into their room and pulling her with him. "Kíli, we shouldn't-ˮ she began, but forgot what she had been about to say when he leaned in, bringing his lips to the tender skin at the nape of her neck.

"We will be really quiet," he whispered and she felt rather than saw a mischievous grin spread across his lips where they touched and warmed her skin. "And besides," he reasoned, pulling back to look at her with glittering eyes, "it is not as if it wasn't obvious to everyone around us what we have been doing with our time for those past few months." He sneaked a pointed glance at her steadily swelling midsection.

For this remark she lightly swathed his shoulder with her palm, but giggled nevertheless and allowed him to draw her close once more, both of them swaying and stumbling slightly, making their way back into the relative privacy of their room while simultaneously refusing to let go of one another for so much as a second.

When Tauriel felt the back of her knees touch the mattress of the wide bed she realized that Kíli must have turned them around and slowly sank down onto the sheets. Leaning back onto her elbows she looked up at Kíli who had come to stand between her legs and gazed down at her with burning intensity.

"What is it?" she asked, when he made no move to join her on the bed.

"Nothing," he replied, slowly shaking his head without taking his eyes off her. "It's just…" His eyes stopped roaming her body and locked onto hers. "There were moments when I doubted that I would ever get the chance to see you again, not like this…"

Like what, Tauriel meant to ask him, but then realized she knew the answer already. Alive. Deciding to make light of the situation, she swallowed against the lump that had formed at the lingering sadness behind his words and sat up, holding his gaze. "Well, there is much more of me to see, if you want to…"

She felt her face burn under his smoldering gaze, but did not let that stop her from bringing her slightly shaky hands up to her chest where she began to untie the lacing of her low-cut dress with deliberate slowness. Kíli's eyes fluttered down to watch her hands doing their work, his pupils dilating visibly. When the last of her bindings came undone, the silky fabric slid off her shoulders almost of its own accord, and, straightening up ever so slightly, she allowed the upper half of the pale-grey, almost silver dress to pool around her hips.

Taking a quivering breath, she lay back on the bed, an invitation for him to join her in her eyes. Suddenly as nervous as if this were their first time together, she watched him reach out to gingerly touch her knee, running his fingers up her thigh in a feather-light touch that caused a familiar warmth to pool at her center, obliterating all sound and all sight, except for him standing there before here.

Automatically she lifted her hips off the mattress when his hand reached the bunched up fabric of her dress and he slowly pulled it down and off of her, his fingertips brushing against her skin in various places, already making her crave so much more of his touch.

"Your turn, Master Dwarf," she demanded in a whisper when the dress dropped to the floor with a soft, rustling sound, the fast beating of her heart making it difficult to pronounce the words. He looked at her with such heat that it made her fingertips tingle and she dug them into the mattress as he yanked his shirt that had already been unlaced over his head, bunching it up in his fist before letting it fall to the floor atop her dress. With one hand he unbuckled his belt and his trousers slid down his legs, leaving him bare to the cool air of the night that streamed in from outside.

Taking in his very evident arousal, Tauriel felt a small tremor run through her body and instinctively she spread her legs ever so slightly, the muscles in her legs almost refusing to obey. For a moment she thought that the heat passing between them from merely looking at each other would suffice for both of them to come undone without even touching, but then Kíli finally did move, crawling onto the bed with his knees between her legs and his arms on either side of her body.

With an almost silent gasp, Tauriel used her elbows to move herself back on the bed so that she might stretch out on it, Kíli following her with his gaze darkened by desire. As the back of her head hit the wooden bedhead, she reached up with both arms to welcome her lover, her body sinking back into the soft cushions piled at the top of the mattress. Kíli came to lie on top of her eagerly, the heat of his skin setting hers on fire while he crushed his lips to hers. Where before she had sensed him holding back, possibly because he feared that she might need more time to recover, he now kissed and touched her without inhibition, moaning softly into her mouth when her hands pressed into his lower back.

"You promised to be quiet," she chastised when his mouth left hers to plant kisses along her jaw, the side of her neck, the swell of her breasts, her voice a breathless whisper.

He glanced up at her, his lips barely leaving her skin. "I will," he returned, one of his hands firmly gripping her slender thigh. "I cannot guarantee the same for you though, my love." And with that he slid his hand up her leg, pressing his fingers against her center so suddenly, so firmly, that she felt herself buckle beneath his hands, a moan escaping her lips before she knew what was happening.

She would have chided him for causing her to lose control like this when they were surrounded by too many keen ears, had he not begun to keep up a steady rhythm with his fingers that stole both her breath and all rational thought.

"Kíli…" she pleaded softly, her head turned into one of the pillows to muffle her gaps. She felt his fingers leave her and grasp her chin, turning her head towards his so that he could claim her mouth in a hungry kiss.

Bracing himself with his other hand against the mattress, he pushed himself inside of her, his mouth leaving hers to draw a sharp breath, the hand that had previously cupped her chin now clenched in her hair. The feeling of him filling her was overwhelming and after a few, barely controlled movements of his body against hers, Tauriel felt herself constrict around him, waves of pleasure rolling over her with such vehemence that she buried her face against his neck to stop herself from crying out.

Drawing him against her more tightly than it should rationally be possible, she felt Kíli's whole body tense and then shiver, his own powerful release following only seconds after hers. Allowing both of them to catch their breath, she held him close, tracing small beads of sweat that had formed on his back with her fingertips. For a while neither of them spoke, both of them content to lie in each other's arms, letting the cool air of the night soothe the heat of their skin.

When Kíli finally lifted his head to look at her, his gaze still retained some of that dark intensity from before. She looked at him questioningly and he let his head fall forward, strands of his dark, unruly hair falling into his face but not quite hiding the slightly abashed grin on his lips.

"What?" she asked, laughter bubbling underneath her voice.

"Will you think me coarse and insatiable if I say that I want you again already?" Had Tauriel been inclined to doubt his words, this doubt would have been thrown out the window when she felt him stir against her once more, causing her pulse to pick up in speed.

As it was, she swiftly pushed herself off the mattress to reverse their positions, reaching down to pull a sheet over both of their bodies as she straddled him. "Coarse? Never," she whispered as she leaned down to press her lips against his broad chest in an open-mouthed kiss. "Insatiable – possibly. But I do not mind, not at all. Only this time-" she grinned mischievously, "- this time it will be me who tests your self-control when it comes to keeping quiet."

She sensed that he was about to return something to this, but quickly silenced him with a deep kiss, setting about to make up for the time that had been stolen from them while outside night slowly turned into morning, the first rays of light chasing the darkness away.