5: Could These Walls Come Crumbling Down?

In. . . out. . . in. . . out. . .

Images swam before her inner eye and strips of conversation flew by too quickly for her to grasp. She allowed herself to drift among her thoughts, choosing deliberately not to hold onto them in order to examine them more thoroughly.

When she opened her eyes, she instinctively knew that much more time had passed than she had anticipated, even though nothing about her surroundings had changed. Perhaps the sun had risen outside—or it had set. A glance at the walls revealed no change, not even the slightest glimmer of light permeating the cracks.

Of her prison mates on the other side of the corridor, there was neither much to see nor to hear, except the occasional snore or the sound of limbs shifting on the unforgiving wooden floor in search of a more comfortable position.

Kíli, meanwhile, had rolled onto his side, facing away from her. The compresses had come loose and were lying on the floor behind him in a small heap. The skin around his wounds still looked raw, but not nearly as bad as it had the night before. Now that she wasn't distracted by her horror over the deep cuts, she noticed with no small amount of fascination that in some places his skin had been marked with ink, shapes she could not quite make out in the poor lighting adorning his body. Feeling like she was prying on a secret she should not know, she tore her eyes away and went back to examining his general state instead.

His shoulders were hunched and his head bent forward—at first Tauriel thought he was asleep, but then she heard him whisper something. Straining her ears, she tried to make out the words, but the language appeared to be one she was unfamiliar with.

If she straightened her spine a little she might be able to look over his shoulder. . . Yes, she could see now that he had brought his hand close to his face and was speaking to something he held in his palm. A stone, she realized, its dark surface gleaming faintly in the weak light.

With a deep frown, she once again lowered herself into a more comfortable position. It shouldn't be surprising, she told herself, that the whole ordeal of being captured, imprisoned and forced to indulge in moments of severe violence was taking its toll on the young Dwarf. Still, he had seemed so clearheaded during their previous exchanges that she struggled to reconcile this version of Kíli with the one who lay just a few feet from her, muttering feverishly to an inanimate object.

Pity coursed through her veins, rivaled only by her outrage at the fate Kíli and the others had to endure. And for what? Was Suri right, was there some even more nefarious purpose behind all of this?

While she had at first felt mostly horrified by the idea of being forced to fight for the sole purpose of entertainment, she now grew impatient and wished that their captors would finally come and fetch her, so that she, too, would get an opportunity to see what was beyond the walls of her prison. To get an idea of what sort of place this was, and, most importantly, to formulate an escape plan.

When, maybe half an hour later, the door opened, Tauriel was on her feet in a heartbeat. Maybe her wish had been heard, maybe this was it, the moment where she would experience the cruel tastes of their captors firsthand.

Again, the slighter guard was accompanied by a couple of bulkier ones as he made his way down the dimly lit corridor under the watchful eyes of the five prisoners, who had, one by one, emerged from the shadows at the sound of the door opening. He was carrying something in his arms—a basket, from the look of it?

Tauriel's hope at a chance to prove herself in battle deflated quickly when a handful of chipped, earthen bowls was retrieved from the basket and put down in front of each of their cells. Once that had been accomplished, something hard was dropped carelessly next to each bowl, hitting the floor with a faint thud.

In front of Kíli's cell the guard distributing the food appeared to linger a moment longer than he had at the other cells. Kíli, fully awake now and sitting up, was staring darkly at the hooded figure before him until, finally, the guard turned away and left as quickly as he had come, the heavy door banging shut behind him and his entourage.

Tauriel crept closer to the bars separating her from the corridor and examined the items left behind by the guards with a frown. "What is this?"

Kíli was the first to answer, flashing her a broad grin that did not reach his eyes. "Breakfast, mylady."

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

It was, Tauriel supposed, a bit of a consolation to know that whatever their captors' plans for them, they did not intend for them to simply waste away from lack of food. Still, the term breakfast seemed to be stretching things a little far.

The bowls distributed by the guards contained a sticky, grayish sludge, which smelled of wet parchment and was just a little too cold to qualify as lukewarm. This delicacy was accompanied by a chunk of stale bread that felt heavy in her hand and, Tauriel suspected, would feel even heavier inside her stomach.

Still, she forced herself to nibble on the bread, reminding herself that while she might not require material sustenance to the same extent as her cell neighbors did, her strength would soon wane if she did not eat. While she chewed carefully and deliberately on her small morsel, she watched the others. Ruari and Ingolf were devouring their bowls of unappetizing porridge with vigor. Suri had turned her back to them, presumably to remove her veil, and was using her forefinger to scoop up bits of the gray substance with utmost concentration, apparently intent on not wasting a single drop of it. Kíli, by contrast, was mirroring Tauriel and only ate from his bread, his bowl sitting untouched just outside the bars to his cell. The second that Ingolf placed his own bowl on the floor and reached for his bread, Kíli pushed his porridge across the corridor.

"Have mine, too," he said when Ingolf's questioning gaze met his. "As an apology for yesterday." He indicated the bruises blooming across Ingolf's face from the fight they had been forced to engage in before Tauriel's arrival.

"Nah, I couldn't," Ingolf returned immediately even as he eyed the full bowl of porridge with obvious interest. "You need your strength as well."

Kíli shook his head. "Not hungry. Besides, as my cousin Bombur always says, where there's a lot to love, there's also a lot to feed. And believe me, if there's one person who knows about that it's him. Eat up, big man."

Ingolf looked vaguely bemused, as if he didn't know whether to be offended or grateful, but in the end his hunger won out and he snatched up the bowl without further protest.

"Have mine, too, if you like," Tauriel offered. "I have no need for it right now."

Blue eyes glared at her from behind the rim of a porridge bowl. "I am not eating half the rations of this group. That would be . . . indecent, given how little we all get."

"I'll have it," Ruari threw in. "And I won't even suffer a moral crisis about it."

Tauriel rolled her eyes, but grinned as she slid her bowl across the floor in the direction of Ruari's cell. "Enjoy."

"Thanks. You know, I'm beginning to think we'll have a good time with you here."

She knew this was merely said in response to her offering of free food, but still her cheeks grew faintly warm, even more so when she glanced at Kíli and found him looking at her intently. Their eyes met and when his lips curled into a soft smile, Tauriel found herself mirroring his expression. Yes, not everything in here was so very bad . . .

"It probably doesn't live up to your refined tastes," Ruari went on, oblivious to the silent exchange between his two neighbors, "but this is really not so bad once you get used to it."

He took a hearty gulp of the gray sludge, frowned, and retrieved a small bone from inside his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. Shrugging, he chucked it over his shoulder. "Garnish."

And that was it. Everyone just exploded with laughter, all their pent up confusion, frustration, and fear finding momentary release in their bout of mirth. Again, Tauriel's gaze found Kíli's, him leaning against the bars separating their cells with his shoulder, she on the ground once more herself, her long legs folded underneath her body.

His eyes sparkled with amusement and something shifted inside Tauriel's chest in response, something that triggered a vague sense of warning in her mind. Something she hadn't felt before, not once, and yet recognized instantly.

What are you doing, Tauriel? This is not what is meant to happen.

And yet she couldn't stop, wouldn't stop looking at him, even when their laughter slowly ebbed away, leaving rather hard breathing and the occasional giggle in its wake.

"How are your wounds?" she forced herself to say before anything much more foolish, much more dangerous could slip past her lips.

For a brief moment, Kíli looked as if he didn't remember which wounds she was talking about. He shrugged, winced a bit as his shoulders moved up and down. "Stings. But it doesn't feel as if my back is about to rip in two halves, so that's a definite improvement. One I have you to thank for."

Tauriel hoped the warmth in her cheeks wasn't visible in the low light. "I could have done more with the right supplies." She chewed on the inside of her cheek. Her instincts were screaming at her that it might be better if she kept her distance from Kíli for a little while, at least until she felt more in control of the thing that had taken up residence in her chest. But then again, she had a sort of responsibility to him now that she had taken charge of his injuries. Also, their current situation made it all but impossible to stay away from each other. "Can I take another look?"

Kíli looked up at her with something akin to the hesitation she had experienced herself mere seconds ago, but then nodded and obligingly turned his back to her, leaning forward a bit with his elbows resting on his knees. Tauriel scooted closer.

"This looks better than I had dared to hope," she concluded after a brief inspection. She probed the skin around the deepest cuts with gentle fingertips. A shiver ran through Kíli at her touch, but he did not flinch away. "Is this painful?"

"N—no." Kíli cleared his throat. "Only a little bit."

With a curious mixture of relief and reluctance, Tauriel withdrew her hand. "I don't think we have to worry about inflammation for the moment. Still, it would be good if the wounds were covered . . ."

Her eyes trailed away from her patient's back and landed on the small heap of fabric that had once been Kíli's shirt. He appeared to be thinking along the same lines.

"That's not going to do much good, is it?"

Tauriel grimaced. "I'm afraid not. Even if it were still intact, it would probably be more of a hazard than a protection given its general state of . . . filthiness."

Kíli chuckled. "Sorry about that. Fell a little behind on my laundry, I suppose."

"You should really take your chores more seriously," Tauriel went along with his joke, "and not allow yourself to be distracted by all the amusements this place has to offer."

"I really should, you're right." Kíli gave a dramatic eye-roll. "It's just so hard to focus on anything else when you're enjoying yourself quite as much as I did, these past few weeks."

Tauriel giggled, looked at her hands in her lap when she noticed that thing swell inside her once again. Reminded herself that not only was Kíli more or less a complete stranger to her, but that just a little while ago, she had witnessed him whispering feverishly to himself, like a poor soul with a broken mind. Only, he did not seem the least bit mad or broken when he talked to her like this, joked with her, made some sharp-tongued observations about their situation.

Still, it's not a good idea. Let it go and focus on what you really ought to be working on—a plan for getting out of here.

"We'll have to think of a way of cleaning what is left of your shirt, then, since I do not assume you have a wardrobe full of fashionable clothes hidden somewhere back there?" She nodded her head towards the back of his cell, concealed in shadow.

"Nah, sorry to disappoint," he replied with a grin, which faded when the door at the end of the corridor opened yet again. "An opportunity to clean it might however be imminent, if I'm lucky."

Tauriel looked over her shoulder and watched the by now familiar forms of the guards advance down the corridor with a frown which deepened when they stopped in front of Kíli's cell. Surely they couldn't mean to make him fight again. . .?

The concern she experienced on his behalf must have shown on her face.

"Don't worry," Kíli muttered. "Unless I'm very mistaken, it's just bath time. Or, in my case, laundry time."

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

'Bath time', like breakfast, turned out to be a bit of a generous denomination for what came next. One by one, their merry band of captives was taken from their cells and led to a small room just opposite their prison. Inside, two buckets awaited them—one was filled with filmy, tepid water, the other reserved for any other urgent business which needed to be taken care of. Tauriel made a deliberate decision not to overthink the whole affair and be grateful that their captors appeared to possess at least a minimal degree of civility.

On her way there and back again, Tauriel tried her best to take in as much of the immediate surroundings of their prison as possible. Which wasn't an awful lot, unfortunately. Two of the bulky guards stayed close to her throughout the whole time, forcefully yanking her along when she tried to stall by pretending to stumble over her own feet. All she could see were more corridors, with low ceilings, everything built out of wood and lit by lanterns just like the one to which she had formed a bit of an odd attachment.

If they were to escape from their cells, they would be faced with a labyrinth of corridors, she suspected. A labyrinth which she, at the very least, did not know how to navigate. She would have to talk to the others, find out how much they knew about the layout of the place. So that if the opportunity presented itself, they would be ready.

She was the last of their group to be led back into her cell, the others having taken their turns before her. Again, it was the slighter guard who closed the door to the cell once she had stepped inside, a grinding sound followed by a metallic clang confirming that it was well and truly locked. Tauriel was busy trying to determine the exact mechanism which locked the cell doors—bolts, of some kind, that could be operated from that elusive box next to the door—and did not notice immediately that the guard had approached Kíli's cell once more, producing a small bundle from inside his coal-black uniform.

He glanced at the other guards, who were engaged in a muttered conversation by the door, and pushed the bundle through the bars of Kíli's cell, turning to leave in the same movement.

Kíli, notably, did not react at all and remained in his potion on the floor, knees drawn up almost to his chest, dark strands of hair concealing parts of his face where they fell forward across his cheeks. He had washed his hair, Tauriel noticed without really meaning to.

She did not turn around to watch the guard leave, her efforts to figure out the mechanism which locked and unlocked their doors momentarily forgotten. Her eyes remained fixed on the small bundle in Kíli's cell.

"What is that?" she asked as soon as the door had shut behind the guards.

Kíli quirked an eyebrow as he grinned up at her. "My way of getting out of having to do my chores yet again."

Mystified, Tauriel watched as he unwrapped the bundle, revealing a tunic. It had seen better days, the fabric coarse and stained around the collar and cuffs. In comparison to the shredded, bloody rag which had once been Kíli's shirt, however, it was a luxurious garment.

Kíli shrugged the tunic over his head, rolling up the too long sleeves to just below his elbows so that they wouldn't get in his way. He stood up and twirled once around his own axis.

"How do I look?"

"Like some reckless fool who is much too lucky for his own good," Ruari offered with a scowl.

"Now, don't mistake competence for luck, my jealous friend."

Tauriel tuned out Ruari's mutterings about how he would show Kíli what it meant to be jealous soon enough. "And what on earth was that?" she asked, glancing toward where the guard had disappeared through the door, her eyebrows raised in confusion.

"That, my dear," Ingolf interjected before Kíli could answer, "was a demonstration of our young friend pulling the right strings at the right time. A bit of a talent of his, it turns out."

Kíli laughed even as he blushed a little. "Now that makes me sound like a manipulative bastard."

"You certainly do seem to have a tendency to get what you want," Tauriel mused aloud.

"Really? If that were true, I wouldn't be here, would I?"

Tauriel could not deny the truth of that. Still. . . "So if it wasn't your bountiful charm by which you so marvelously procured a new shirt, then what was it?"

His lips twitched at her choice of words, but his eyes remained serious. "It's nothing as suspicious as you may think. I was owed a favor and now seemed to be a good time to call it in."

She considered this for a moment. "Is there a chance of any more of such favors when we might be in need?"

Having someone willing to help them out who was not currently locked in a cell would be a valuable advantage indeed. Kíli, of course, grasped what she was trying to imply and scratched his neck thoughtfully.

"I can't say for certain. Adis, he. . . he doesn't want to be here anymore than we do, as far as I can tell. His sister is a servant girl in the kitchens, where they put me before they figured out that I'm quite good at killing things. I helped her out, once, which is why he isn't exactly disinclined to help me out in return. That being said, a borrowed shirt and a prison break are two very different things. One might earn you a beating, whereas the other. . . well."

"You do not want him to get in trouble."

"Not because he feels like he owes me something, no."

Tauriel couldn't argue with that, and truth be told, she didn't want to. It had been people like Adis, after all, for whose sake she had set out on this mission, so using him to get out of the mess she had brought upon herself was really not an option. Still, it was good to know that not everyone on the other side of those unrelenting bars enjoyed seeing them suffer. That someone might even be willing to help.

"Well, it is good to see you wearing clothes again," she offered instead.

Kíli grinned as he tied the lacing on the shirt's collar. "I know, I'm a terrible sight without them, aren't I?"

"That—that is not what—," Tauriel blurted out before she realized he was once again teasing her. Her cheeks painfully hot, she ducked her head and toyed with the frayed hem of her dress. "You know what I meant."

She glanced up and caught the trace of a wistful look on Kíli's face, quickly followed by a smile.

"Don't fret—I do know how you meant it." He rubbed his hands together. "So, now that the impediment of my state of undress has been overcome, why don't we get on with the rest of our day?"

"And what does that look like, normally?" Tauriel cast a look around the room and was a bit unsettled to find four faces looking back at her with disturbingly gleeful expressions. "Oh dear, do I even want to know?"

Whether she did want to know or not turned out to be of very little consequence. Two hours later found her glued to the bars of her cell, her lips puckered in concentration as she took aim, released her tiny missile, and—

"Yes! I knew she'd beat you!"

Ruari drummed his flat palms against the wooden floor in a gesture of triumph, while Kíli doffed an invisible hat, saluting Tauriel.

"I surrender. You are today's champion of 'Toss the Pebble into the Cup.' My sincerest congratulations."

Her cheeks warm with an odd sort of pleasure, Tauriel gave a series of little bows in response to the enthusiastic applause of her prison mates and grinned. Who would have thought that playing silly, improvised games with a group of strangers could turn out to be the most fun she'd had in a long time?

Then again, they weren't exactly strangers anymore, she supposed. Suri and the shrewd glint in her dark eyes, Ingolf with his big, slightly clumsy hands and his even bigger heart, Ruari and his sharp tongue and cutting wit with which he tried to conceal the fact that he cared deeply about his fellow prisoners. And Kíli. . . well. Kíli.

Sometimes, when he looked at her as if she had personally put all the stars in the sky, it felt as if they knew each other much longer than just a couple of days. As if they shared the knowledge of a secret no one knew but them.

It was. . . confusing to feel this way and could surely be ascribed to the unusualness of their circumstances. Still, that did not make it any less distracting. So distracting, in fact, that when the guards came to fetch Tauriel a couple of hours after their last visit, she was, for a moment, caught completely off-guard and had to remind herself that she was, after all, a prisoner. A prisoner with a particular purpose.

Just like the others, Kíli was on his feet the moment that the guards stopped in front of Tauriel's cell and she prayed silently that he would not do something foolish. Like offer to go in her stead or whatever other, reckless thing he was capable of coming up with. He was in no shape to fight at all, not unless he wanted to open the wounds on his back once again and increase the risk of inflammation. Besides, she needed no one to fight in her place. She wasn't scared—apprehensive, perhaps, but whatever they might force her to confront could hardly be any worse than giant, bloodthirsty spiders, could it?

To her relief, Kíli appeared to have no intention of sacrificing himself for her. Which was perfectly reasonable, seeing that they had only just met. Instead he spoke urgently to her. "There's a small dais in the middle of the arena. If they feel like spicing things up a bit, they will leave weapons there for the contestants. Whoever gets to them first has a big advantage." His eyes locked with hers. "Make sure that's you."

She nodded, her words of thanks cut off when the guard who had entered her cell grabbed her quite roughly by her upper arm and shoved her into the corridor where two other guards immediately took a hold of her and began dragging her towards the exit. Kíli's acquaintance—Adis—was not with them, this time, and it seemed to Tauriel that they were being a lot harsher than usual, despite the fact that she was barely even resisting them.

"Will you be alright?" Ingolf called out. "Your ankle. . ."

"Perfectly fine, don't worry," Tauriel managed just before the door through which she was being manhandled banged shut behind her.

Focus on what lies ahead, she reminded herself, even as her thoughts lingered on those she had left behind. There would be time for them later—if she was lucky, her trip to the arena would not only yield an opportunity to get rid of some pent up tension, but would also give her a better idea of her captors and her surroundings. An idea of how she might plan their escape.

A/N: Chapter title inspired by the lyrics to "Into the Open Air" by Julie Fowlis.

Glad to see a few people are enjoying this!