I don't hear the words around me. I don't feel fingers against my skin, gentle and healing. I do not grab at the familiar familiar faces that swarm around me in the odd moments where my eyes open to the pain, confused and scared and just wanting help. Because that is all I had felt: the pain. The blinding, mind numbing pain that had screeched throughout my entire body.

The fact that I fell into an unconsciousness is a blessing. I think so, at least.

I do not remember what was happening in reality, but I do remember what happened in my mind. The hallucinations were weaker, greyer. I could feel every ounce of my energy and life fading away with each flash of pain, each recollection and realization that I was still alive.

But was I? Well, maybe I was. There was no sense of time or pattern in what I saw, but I know for a fact that, in the haze of my injury I had, for a short moment, died.

So, I like to think that in my moments of death, the faces of my family were a little real.

Those are the fingers that I had felt graze my cheeks, the whispers in my ear as their breath tickled my neck - they had felt real, far more real than those who had tried so desperately to save me in reality.

But reality had seemed an awful, uninviting idea. I didn't want to seek out the dead faces of those who I had lost - Thorin, Thorin, Thorin - nor did I want to look away from the smiling, sad faces of my mother and my father. It was in this small moment that I thought I might be dead, in which my voice spoke volumes in the grey and the unfocused.

'You're not here. You don't exist here. You're dead,' I had said to my parents, not really looking through my own eyes at my mother. She hadn't moved, hadn't blinked. Her face, blurred around the edges, had crumpled into a soft look. She was home, she was mine - my mum, my mother, ma mère.

She had looked sad. I never told anyone about the depths of my dreams, aside from Kili and two other people. Even then, I had waited until I told him, until I explained how sad and how real my mother had looked, despite that soft, blurred look about her. I know that she wasn't real. I know that she, in this world, does not even exist.

But it had felt so real, so personal.

And then I had breathed in for the first time in a long time, feeling my own fingers contract as the pain seeped back into my system. A feeling had found me, a complete realization of what was what happening. 'I'm dead,' I had said, terrified, and my dads mouth had opened.

'Not quite'. He had smiled (my dad, my father, mon père) with lines crinkling at the side of his eyes, and then I was gone.

I had wanted to just stop hurting. I remember that much. But it was a dull pain, as if I knew it was there but I didn't quite know what it was or where it was, you know? It had felt like when your alarm is going off, but you feel like you're dreaming the sound. Like that. Not real, but there.

Then again, that reflected my entire existence in Middle Earth.

I remember something from my dreams, aside from my parents, but I can't tell you exactly what had happened. Somehow, I don't think that I am supposed to remember what happened. That may sound stupid, but it just feels kinda...right. That I don't remember, I mean. All I remember is this feeling - this knowing - that I had done the right thing. No matter what, I had made the right decision.

And I had known that even though I was almost dead, Kili and Fili were not.

Because I had known that they were not dead, and I do not know how that can be. I also know that they weren't really supposed to survive, not really. And the idea that I, an average girl, had saved the lives of two people - well, that's something to be quite proud of.

There is a twisting moment in my broken thoughts in which my death turns into living. In which my wandering mind comes back to reality; comes home.

I hurt and I ache, but this is something to latch onto, something to pull me from the hazy daze of sleepy death. I continue to scramble at the pain, loud breathing echoing through my ears as awake become reality, as whimpering becomes my source of clarification that I am alive. My head rushes as the sense of consciousness is hurled back toward me, loud and fast like blood rushing through my ears.

And then, with a final gasp, I was seeing.

My hand had flown to grapple at the thick bandages that had covered my stomach and, to my horror, they had felt wet with what I knew to be blood. I had moaned and fallen onto my back yet again, feeling sweaty and hot and dizzy all at the same time. I could hardly move, hardly think.

'...Millie?'

I breathed in sharply, letting him know that I could hear him, but that I could not speak. I was overwhelmed by how much it had hurt, so much more than before. My eyes had been wide as I had stared up at the white blur ahead of me. Things were so much more real now that I was not seeing grey and lost faces. I could hear, I could see, I could feel.

The arrow. The Orcs. Thorin.

I fisted the sheets and gritted my teeth, eyes flying to the face that quickly loomed over mine. Him. He was alive. He was filthy and blood and shouting something at me, but he was alive.

'Stop moving, Millie! You're going to rip open your stitches!'

With this admonishment creeping into my mind, I had stilled and fell against the bundles of covers and quilts that I was surrounded by. My jaw shook with the whines that I had tried to keep in, but I had only stared at him, seeing how his face blurred, fell, started.

And I was gone again.

I am Alexandria Millicent Fournier, and I am going to live.

For them.

For him.

There was nothing to see in that space of unconsciousness, only the feeling of a restless sleep. I suppose that's because I wasn't really sleeping, I had more or less passed out because of the pain and the Middle Earth equivalent of sleeping pills.

But still, I had held tightly onto that rope that would pull be back to awake-land.

I didn't want to let go of it again. Just in case.

I am writing this to portray how I had felt at that time. That is what this has been: a story of my feelings and experiences so that it is here, a complete recollection of those days. Because I want to remember when I am too old to do so.

The next time I woke up, I knew that days had passed. I was in a stone room this time, and the pain was so much less. I couldn't tell whether it was day or night, but I did know that we were in Erebor. That much, at least, I had known.

And when I say 'we', I mean myself and Fili.

He was lying on the cot near me, staring straight back at me with one blue eye, the other covered up with a bandage. I had felt like I was going to say something, but instead a cough/sob had broken it's way through my system and out of my mouth. I did not move, because the moment I shifted my hips I felt the slight tug in my abdomen that suggested stitches.

'Stop moving, Millie! You're going to rip open your stitches!'

'I thought you were going to die,' said Fili. 'They said that you did die'. I remember being so relieved that I was able to comprehend what was happening to me, unlike the last time I had awoken. I had felt drugged and, possibly, I had been. Something to keep me asleep, to keep me out of pain. 'Thorin's dead,' he added, very plainly. I was glad for that.

I swallowed and nodded through the tears. 'I know. I...saw'. I sounded raspy, weak. I looked to the bandage that went across his head and over one of his eyes, but said nothing. I needed time to wake up, to clear my head, to understand what was happening. The fact that I was no longer so dopey suggested that I hadn't been given anything to numb the pain or make me fall asleep.

'We thought you were going to die,' he said yet again. 'I found you and stood near you, but got driven down by three Orcs. You looked dead, Millie. I thought you were dead until Kili told me when I woke up. I- I remember Thorin-' His voice broke sharply, and had it not been for my own injury, I would have joined him in that cot.

There was a scuffle and I turned my head, wincing as my body shifted and the stitches tugged. I could feel it beginning to sting more and more with my movements. I felt as if I hadn't moved a muscle in days, probably because I had not. Not since I had fallen. When that arrow had ripped into my stomach and the face of Bilbo had swam in front of me-

Don't think about it. Not yet. Heal.

I winced and opened my eyes to see Kili kneeling in front of me.

'Millie. Millie-'

I had known that he was alive, but to see him in front of me was something so different and so amazing that, in a split second, I forgot about my pain and reached up to grab at his cheek. Solid. Real. There.

'I blacked out for a second, I'm sorry,' I apologized quickly, blinking and wishing away the tugging pain and the rushing sound in my ears. I had felt dizzy. 'I'm so glad you're both alive. I'm so-' my voice broke and my hand shook. My face was beginning to sting, along with every other part of me. I could only guess that I had cuts there, too. Tiny little nicks all over my body.

I couldn't bring myself to look.

Kili had peered at my face, and I had seen that his was cut up and bruised too. 'The medicine is wearing off. You're in pain,' he pointed out, worried and frantic. 'I'll go and get Oin. Fili, how are you-'

Fili spoke up, and his voice had sounded dull. 'I can't feel anything. I'm fine, Kili'.

That had me alarmed. 'What's wrong with Fili? Where is everyone else? How many are okay?' I tried to sit up, to see what was wrong with Fili. Quickly, Kili had pushed me down with two hands, one of which was heavily bandaged. Apparently he had forgotten this, because he had grimaced heavily. Ignoring the biting at my abdomen, I'd looked to him, not wanting him to know that I hurt.

'What's wrong with you too?'

There was a pause in which Kili glanced over his shoulder to his injured brother. Of course Fili would be heavily injured, why else would he be in bed? Had I assumed that the bandage on his head was only a small injury?

'I took an arrow to the hand and Fili...' Kili had trailed off and looked back to me. 'Fili-'

'Blind,' cut in the eldest brother. 'I can no longer see out of one of my eyes...an Orc struck me when I wasn't looking. There'll be calling me Fili, the One Eyed King - just you wait'. As my eyes had widened, Kili had turned roughly and bitten out something in Dwarvish with an angry look on his face. Fili had merely turned his head away and stayed silent.

I had said nothing. I hadn't known what to say.

There was a small silence in which Kili looked to me, looking all over my face as if he would never see it again. I understood, of course. I thought I was going to die the last time I saw him.

'How close was I?' I asked him, too frightened of Fili's reaction if I questioned his eye. I couldn't imagine losing my sight like that. And it had happened to Fili, of all people. Fili the King.

Kili knelt back on his feet and blinked slowly. 'When I found you, you had an arrow sticking out of your stomach that was smothered in poison. He was near you,' Kili jutted his head back toward his brother. 'Protecting your body. You were screaming-'

I shut my eyes. 'I thought I was as good as dead. I could feel it, even when I wasn't awake'. We spoke quietly, not wanting to disturb Fili, but wanting to just talk, to envelope ourselves in the fact that we were alive.

Kili stayed silent. 'Ori gave me your letter two days ago'.

God. The letter. I'd completely forgotten about that piece of parchment. It had seemed like an age ago, when I had been sitting beside Ori and telling him what to write, when the prospect of death had been a maybe. But I had at least now known that Ori was alive, and that I had been out for two or more days.

I'd missed so much.

'I just wanted to be sure,' I murmured, trying to desperately, to ignore the prickling pain and the tight feeling around my stomach. 'I didn't want to go without knowing that I would have some way to tell you-'

I was cut off, like so many times before, by his lips on mine. They were gentle, hardly there at all, but they had felt like something I had needed for so long, but had only realized now. With Kili with me, touching me, I knew that I had succeeded in something amazing. That in all of the horror of the days to come, he woul be there beside me, and I would be there for him.

He pulled away, breath ghosting my mouth, and said, 'Don't ever do that to me again'.

I could only nod but, after a small pause, a inquired in a very small voice, 'I don't suppose I could get that medicine now?'

Another day later, I was permitted to stand.

Fili watches from his cot as Oin and Kili linger beside me, the only Dwarves who I had seen so far. I could hear voices pass the door sometimes, but it had all felt so surreal. A day ago I had woken up to find out we had won the battle, that Thorin was dead and Fili was King, and that I had, somehow, survived.

Kili and Oin had held my arms, balancing me and ensuring that I did not topple over. I had ached from bruises and cuts and from lying down for days after such exertion. A loose, white shirt fluttered around my bandages, while equally loose beige trousers clung at my thinner hips. I was able to peek at the cuts and bruises all over my arms.

I didn't let them upset me. They were there because I had survived - that's what Kii told me, anyway.

'You're a healer you are, lass,' Oin had told me, allowing me to lean on him. He looked as cut up as the rest, except more tired. Kili had told me that he was one of the few with knowledge of Healing, so he was helping out as much as he could. 'A few days ago you were as white as bone, and now you're walking! Magnificent'.

'I don't think I can walk much longer,' I gasped, nearly toppling over as I had taken a stupid, daring step. I had been practically thrown back onto the cot

I had peered at my wound when Oin had changed the bandages that morning. Although I had become used to the dull thud of pain, when the bandages had come off, it had hurt. The dried blood had cracked away - ugh, just thinking about it makes me cringe. I won't go into too much detail, but considering that the wound had been poisoned...well, there had been some interesting stuff seeping out of it.

I was told that Fili and I had been put in a separate, isolated room because he was the King, and I was the Prince Kili's betrothed. I was, in some ways, very grateful for this. I couldn't stand the idea of facing people now - of seeing the injured, the fallen, to hurt and the crying. Kili would sit with Fili and I, gazing at us like he couldn't quite believe we were there, despite Oin's reminders that he should be acting his royal part where his brother could not.

Kili would refuse point blank, his retorts becoming snappier every time Oin had said something. I was half surprised that he had not been taken away by Dwalin - They can fight!' he shouted. 'You'll get yourself killed, khuzd! Fight here, stay away and I will protect-'

Don't think about it. Not now, not yet.

We never once mentioned Thorin. He was raising his sword arm, just as Bolg raised his. He was a King, then. Defender, Warrior, King.

STOP.

Breathe. I sometimes thought that it was because of Fili, and how sensitive he was to be taking the place that his Uncle had longed for. I could see Kili looking at him sometimes while Fili slept, considering that the youngest brother would fall asleep on the chair that had been brought into the room. He didn't like to leave us very often.

I was worried, though. Worried about what I would see when I finally ventured out into the halls of Erebor once again. Kili and Oin always looked troubled when they came back in, and I could only imagine how many injured there were, how many sick and dying and homeless.

We hadn't even had time to mourn yet - I had hardly faced the harsh reality of what had happened.

I'M SORRY I AM I'M SO SHITTY WITH UPDATING CHAPTERS LIKE THIS I'M SORRY.

But hey, I'm Greece. Thanks for the reviews and follows!