10: Something Worth (Not) Fighting For

Tauriel was an autumn leaf, drifting by on the surface of a body of water. She was light—lighter, almost, than the mind was capable of imagining. As such, she was sensitive to every movement of the water beneath her, every undulation an experience which went through her whole body.

It was frightening, to be this fragile, this exposed to the whims of nature. And yet, the gentle swaying motions, the way the world around her was constantly tipped out of balance only to regain its equilibrium a moment later, was oddly peaceful. Yes, she was at peace now. She hadn't been, not so very long ago, even though she could not recall why. Now, she was at peace.

The sound of hushed voices was what dragged her from her strange little dream, and it was with no small amount of surprise that she realized she must have been properly asleep. It had been a long time since that had happened. Then again, it had been a long time, too, since she had last attempted to heal more than a superficial injury and had almost forgotten the strain it could put on both one's body and one's mind.

Flexing her limbs, she came to the conclusion that the rest had done her good—she felt much better than she had for days, ready to face whatever challenges fate might throw her way. Whether that had anything to do with the events immediately preceding her slumber, she did not pause to dwell on now—which did not stop her heartbeat from picking up its pace and a curious, tingling sensation from erupting in her stomach.

When she lifted her head and looked around, she saw that Kíli was crouched down at the door to his cell, engaged in a whispered conversation with the young guard who had given him his new shirt. Adis, if she recalled correctly.

Right now, Adis was speaking urgently to Kíli, his hands accompanying his words with small gestures. Kíli kept his head down, listening intently to each of Adis's words, nodding from time to time. Slowly, Tauriel sat up. As soon as Adis saw her move, he fell silent, his lips pressed firmly together.

Kíli raised his head and glanced over his shoulder. If Tauriel had expected to see some sort of acknowledgement of what had happened between them the night before in his eyes, she was disappointed. Then again, Kíli had always looked at her with a particular sort of intensity, one which at first she had interpreted as dislike, but was now beginning to think of as something else entirely.

Now, Kíli was beckoning to her and she followed his invitation, scooting across the floor so as not to wake the others. The heavens knew they needed their rest.

"Hello," she whispered once she had settled in the corner nearest to both Kíli's cell and the corridor. "I am Tauriel of the Woodland Realm."

Adis stared mutely at her, uncertainty darkening the golden brown of his eyes.

"Whatever you want to say to me, you can say to her as well," Kíli assured him. "I trust her. Without reserve."

Tauriel fervently hoped that her answering smile reflected nothing of the liquefying sensation her insides were currently experiencing as a reaction to Kíli's declaration. Either it really didn't and she was able to maintain a composed facade or Kíli was politely ignoring the fact that he was able to reduce her to a nervous wreck with just a few carefully chosen words. Whichever it was, he appeared perfectly calm and collected when he explained the nature of his conversation with their visitor.

"Adis here was just telling me that our performances yesterday caused a few conflicts that had been simmering for a while to finally boil over. It would seem that the current climate out there is rather. . . hostile."

Tauriel huffed. "More hostile than it normally is?"

Adis winced. "I can understand why you might feel that way. But believe it or not, not everyone out there is a soulless monster." He studied his hands for a moment and Tauriel wondered what things he had been forced to do against his will. When the young man lifted his eyes again, the fear in them was palpable. "The journey has been a long one, for many of us, and most places on this vessel are not much nicer than this one. Many feel that they weren't given what they were promised. And now everyone is getting restless. Angry."

"Are they giving you a hard time?" Kíli immediately asked, and Tauriel could have kissed him for thinking of the boy's well-being when it was their own safety they were supposed to be concerned with.

"No." Adis shook his head. "No, not much more than usual. Ayana—she says in the kitchens it's mostly fine, that they are safe as long as they stick together. I shudder to think, though, what might happen if she's ever caught on her own."

He looked visibly shaken by that thought and Tauriel recalled that Kíli had mentioned a sister whom he had helped out before, earning himself Adis's friendship. Recalled that they were not the only ones who were in peril.

"What is it then that you were promised when you came along on this journey?" she asked to distract herself from the hot rage starting to burn in her throat.

Adis chuckled drily. "Me personally, I wasn't promised anything. I merely joined so I could be close to Ayana. To help her, if she got in trouble." He grimaced. "Or rather, more trouble than she already found herself in. You see, she joined this quest for love—only, the soldier whom she had given her heart to, proved himself undeserving of it in the course of our journey. But many of those whom you have seen out there, they were made to believe that, at the other end of this mission, glory awaited them. That this would change the course of fate, which, to be fair, hasn't always run in our favor."

"I'm afraid I don't entirely understand," Tauriel admitted.

"Before any of this, most of us were simple traders. And I believe many would be content to remain just that—if it weren't for the other things, that is."

"What other things?"

"Theft. Raids. Constantly feeling like you need to be looking over your shoulder to make sure what meager earnings you made don't get taken away from you before you even had the chance to fill your belly with food. It's been like that for as long as I can remember. But more recently whispers arose of a change that is to come, of a chance for us to get our hands on riches we never even dared to dream of."

"So that is what this whole mission is about? A hunt for treasure?"

Adis shook his head. "No. This campaign was to be the first step. To gather resources, the best of them, so that we would be able to build armies that would stand a chance against those of the West if indeed there is to be a war."

This confirmed, at least, that they were still headed East and that the Eastern Lands had also been where their captors had hailed from. At the same time, more questions arose. It was Kíli who put one of them into words.

"So, by resources, you mean. . . people? People like us?"

Shame tinted Adis's cheeks pink. "That is at least somewhat true, I fear. If I'd. . ." He faltered, wringing his hands while he searched for words. "If I had known what it would be like, what they would do to the people they picked up along the way. . . I would have grabbed Ayana and made a run for the mountains as soon as they started advertising their quest around our town. What they have been doing. . . It's just so much more horrible than anything I could have pictured. And I'm sorry."

He looked pained, his eyes flickering from the bruises around Tauriel's throat to those still adorning Kíli's face.

"It's alright," Kíli muttered, even as the shadows of the abuse he had suffered darkened his eyes. "You didn't have much of a choice, nor could you have guessed what would happen."

Adis shook his head vigorously. "No, it's not alright. Far from it." He glanced around their prison, as if making sure that they were still undisturbed. "And that's why I came to warn you. Both of you."

Tauriel's fists clenched around the bars separating her and Kíli's cells. "Warn us about what?"

"That they are going to hold some sort of spectacle, involving you two. We're in the final stages of our journey and if people stop following orders now, the mission will be perceived as a failure by those back home. By offering you up for a big fight, they are hoping to win back the favor of the crowd, I believe. I don't know what they are planning, exactly, but I heard the other guards placing bets on which of you will win."

Tauriel's eyes flitted to Kíli's and he met her worried gaze with his own. She had known, of course, that there was a certain likelihood of something such as this happening. So had he, judging by the resigned unhappiness of his demeanor.

"When?" he asked Adis. His hand had come up to wrap around the iron bars just below Tauriel's, the tip of his index finger grazing along her knuckles. Tauriel's grip tightened, the impulse to clasp his fingers in hers and bring them to her lips almost overwhelming.

"Tonight, at sundown." When Adis saw them cast a futile glance at the tarred walls, he added, "You still have a good ten hours until then."

The implication behind his words was clear. Make good use of the time that is left to come up with some sort of plan.

Again, Tauriel caught Kíli's gaze as her pulse began to hammer in her throat, her thoughts threatening to spiral out of control. What kind of plan? One which would allow them to come out of this fight with both of them unharmed? One which might enable them to avoid fighting altogether? Or one where they simply accepted that by tonight nothing would be the same again and made the best of what little time they had left with each other?

Maybe Kíli experienced a similar turmoil, maybe he didn't. Either way, his mind appeared to be made up rather quickly.

"If you learn anything else," he said to Adis, "anything at all that might help us prepare for what is coming, will you try to let us know?"

And of course he was right, Tauriel thought, even as a remote sense of disappointment washed over her. It would be foolish to believe that they might come up with an escape plan within a few short hours if many days locked inside her prison hadn't yielded one. And neither of them were the type to simply give up and resign themselves to their fate. So all that was left would be to see it through and to hope that they would be able to outsmart their captors. To fight and survive.

Tauriel kept her eyes on Kíli while he listened to Adis's reassurances that yes, he would try to get as much information to them as he could. It seemed that Kíli was willing to trust the young Easterling and Tauriel decided to follow his lead in that matter. Wherever there was power to be gained by those who had been born without it, some would gorge themselves on that power until their hearts turned black. Adis was not like that—he had seen what power was used for in this place and was understandably horrified by it. Whether that would be enough to make him risk his own safety in favor of helping out a couple of strangers remained to be seen, but for now Tauriel was willing to suspend all doubt. Not that she had much of a choice, for that matter.

Adis bid them farewell, soon after, disappearing into the depths of the rolling fortress, which was just beginning to come alive with sounds of people moving about, doing whatever things were necessary to keep the daily life in such close quarters running. The silence he left behind was a strained one, interrupted only by the soft snores emanating from Ingolf's and Ruari's cells.

Kíli's fingers ghosted over Tauriel's, his featherlight touch prompting her to release her iron grip on the bars. He took her hand in his, his eyes downcast while he traced random circles around her knuckles with a calloused thumb. Tauriel watched him for a while, the pain inside her chest swelling until it finally became too much to bear.

"What are we going to do?" She hated how lost, how desperate, how weak she sounded. But then again, she did feel lost, and desperate, and, after everything that had happened to her, at least a little bit weak, so maybe she ought to cut herself some slack.

Kíli looked up at her, a soft smile playing around his lips. "Well, that's rather obvious, isn't it? We're going to walk into that arena, you are going to kick my sorry arse, and then we're going to hope that the show we've put on will be good enough that they are going to let me walk out of there alive. If not. . . well." He blew out a breath. "We'll have to see about that when we get to it."

"No." Tauriel snatched her hand back as if it had been burned, causing Kíli to squint at her in surprise. "There is no way that I am letting you do that. I neither want nor need you to play the hero for me."

Kili looked taken aback. "Play the—" His face shuttered and he leaned away, further into the shadows. "It's not about playing the hero. It's about probability. You are the better fighter—better than anyone in this shithole, probably. If the fight is staged or not doesn't matter—you're going to win."

"You have never even seen me fight."

"I don't have to."

The heat in his gaze caused something inside her chest to squirm and she shifted a little in her spot on the floor. Finally, when she was unable to stand the intensity of his gaze anymore, she frowned at the floor. "So, what, you expect me to just go and hurt you, injure you, possibly, and then hope that they will bring us both back here, like after any other fight?"

"Well, I'd try to make a bit of a show of trying to fight back, obviously, but in essence, yes." He gestured towards their sleeping friends. "A similar arrangement worked out quite well for us in the past, after all."

"I fear our definitions of 'quite well' do not entirely match," Tauriel shot back, her gaze lingering pointedly on Kíli's various scrapes and bruises. "And besides—Adis said that this is intended as a bigger spectacle than normally. What makes you think that the same rules will apply?"

Kíli considered this for a moment, then shrugged. "Perhaps they won't. Perhaps—"

Here Tauriel cut him off. "If you are going to suggest that in that case I should simply go ahead and kill you, then you can take those words and stuff them right back down your throat."

Kíli's mouth snapped closed with an audible click. He glared at her. For a moment Tauriel thought that he would argue with her, almost hoped that he would—any chance to release the tension still holding her insides in an iron grip welcome to her. But then his gaze cooled until he just looked weary. He ran a tired hand over the stubble on his jaw.

"What, then, do you propose as an alternative? I need to . . ." He faltered, frowning at the floor. When he looked back up at her, his eyes were deep, dark pools of misery. "I need to believe that there is a chance you will come out of this unharmed. Without that, I can't. . ." He drew a shaky breath. "I just can't, full stop."

"Alright," Tauriel said, her voice calm despite the staccato beat of her heart against her ribs. "Alright. But then you need to accept that it is the same for me. The exact same."

To emphasize her meaning, she reached up and interlaced her fingers with Kíli's where they were once again wrapped around the bars. If she had been a bit braver than she was, she might have leaned in and kissed him. She wasn't, though, and thus had to content herself with the sensation of warm fingers closing around hers and the swarm of butterflies which Kíli's soft smile set loose inside her stomach.

Kíli cocked his head to one side, the boyish charm which the gesture added to his general demeanor only intensifying the fluttery feeling within her. "So," he said, "now that we've established what we're unwilling to do—what are we going to do?"

Tauriel chewed her lip. "What if we use the crowd's thirst for violence to our advantage, then?" she asked, a sudden flash of inspiration setting her thoughts on fire. "Maybe we can convince people that if they crave a fight, they should be the ones fighting."

The corner of Kíli's mouth lifted, his eyes sparkling. "Cause a bit of mayhem, hm? I like the way you think. Unfortunately, there is one slight problem with that idea."

Tauriel quirked an eyebrow. "There is?"

"Yes. What if it is us prisoners they turn against, instead of each other? Which, I suppose, is what you are hoping for?"

"Not necessarily. I was rather hoping they would turn against those who hold the upper hand. Those who sit back in comfort while we fight for our lives right in front of their eyes." She wrinkled her nose in thought. "But of course you are right. There is no way to foretell if people would be willing to follow us, to listen to us."

Kíli made a humming sound somewhere deep inside his chest. "I somehow think it wouldn't be that difficult to get their attention if that is what you desire. Especially after what happened yesterday, I suspect you hold a bit of a reputation. Did you see the way those two guards looked at you after you helped Suri?"

Tauriel felt her cheeks grow warm under Kíli's proud beam. Of course she knew the sort of looks he was talking about. It was unnerving to imagine people thinking of her as some sort of vengeful sorceress, someone to be afraid of. Unnerving and yet. . . empowering.

She nodded, more to herself than to anyone else. "Well. Let them believe whatever they want to believe as long as that means they might be persuaded to bring an end to this whole sick undertaking." She turned to Kíli. "Do you think that might work?"

He looked doubtful, still. Doubtful and at least a little bit hopeful. "What would we say to them, though? I hate to be the one to tell you this, but us Dwarves are not exactly known as wordsmiths."

"Perhaps we do not have to say anything at all. Let actions speak what words cannot—we have both done it before, have both refused to be coerced into violence. All we need to do is remain steadfast. Show them that we refuse to accept those as our masters who would sit on soft cushions while others suffer at their request."

Kíli's smile was like a secret, shared only between them. "Maybe you should be the one who does the talking. You certainly do have a way with words."

Warmth spread across Tauriel's cheeks. "I am not a leader," she muttered. When Kíli looked at her with a fond smile playing around his lips she felt compelled to add, "No, really. It is not modesty that makes me say that—other than my small, trusted squad back at home, I have never needed nor wanted to lead anyone anywhere. Nor do I believe myself particularly suited to do so."

Kíli weighed his head from side to side as if he wasn't entirely convinced of that. To his credit, though, he did not try to argue with her. "Alright. What we have established then, I believe, is that neither of us is willing to fight the other. Also, we are not disinclined to causing a bit of a rebellion amongst the crowd, but we both don't think of ourselves as potential leaders in said rebellion." His grin as he listed those items was decidedly cheeky. "Does that sound about right to you?"

"To me that sounds as if you're both bloody big fools."

Tauriel's answer to Kíli's question died on her lips as she turned her head and glared at Ruari across the corridor.

"And what would your solution to our dilemma be then, oh wise one?" Kíli asked with a roll of his eyes. "I assume you've been listening long enough already to know what sort of pickle we've found ourselves in?"

Ruari made a hrrumpfing sound which Tauriel took as confirmation. "Wouldn't even go as far as to call it a pickle. Solution's pretty obvious to me—go out there, fight, see how it all turns out. It's not as if we haven't all done that before."

Tauriel ground her teeth together. "That is not an acceptable option."

Under his shock of red hair, Ruari raised a bushy eyebrow. "And why not? Because you two have gotten all cozy over there?"

Hopefully, the dim light was able to conceal the fact that she had just blushed to the roots of her hair. Beside her, Kíli gave a vaguely threatening growl.

"Oh, leave them be, you old grump," Ingolf joined in. "Just because no one is willing to put up with your sunny personality does not mean everyone else has to be alone and miserable." To Kíli and Tauriel he added, "Never mind him. If you've found something worth fighting for in this hellish place, you'd better make sure to hold onto it."

Was it possible to die of mortification? Up until now, Tauriel would not have thought so. However, as she realized that apparently none of her more recent interactions with Kíli had been as private as she had thought, she was beginning to revise her opinion on that. She had the strange urge to laugh it off and deny that anything had changed between her and Kíli, but one glance at the soft smile playing around his lips sufficed to tell her that this would be the wrong way to go about it. Surely keeping that smile in place would be worth any embarrassment she might experience over having her feelings become a matter of public discussion.

She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin. Did not retract her hand when Kíli grasped it more firmly as he gave a grateful nod in Ingolf's direction. There, that wasn't so hard, was it? After all, if she couldn't stand up for what had grown between her and Kíli in here, in front of their mismatched little group, then how could she hope to remain steadfast out there, faced with the cruel indifference of their captors?

Still, she was glad when a soft rustle of fabric drew all attention away from her and Kíli and towards Suri, who had just woken up and was understandably disoriented. The next few minutes were spent examining her for any lasting aftereffects of the injuries she had sustained the day before. Thankfully, she appeared to be mostly fine, a bit shaky on her legs, maybe, but that was to be expected after the ordeal she had just been through.

Even after she was done tending to Suri, Tauriel stayed close to her. Normally, Ingolf would have taken it upon himself to offer their friend the comfort of his presence at her side, but seeing that he was now locked up on the other side of the corridor, Tauriel did not want Suri to feel alone.

For a while, as they received their meager rations for breakfast, which, today, they all ate without much enthusiasm, Suri seemed quite content to sit shoulder to shoulder with Tauriel and let the others fill her in on what she had missed while she had been unconscious. When they got to the part of how Tauriel had healed her, Suri stiffened before leaning into Tauriel more fully than she had before.

When Tauriel turned her head and looked down at her friend, Suri was gazing up at her with wide, wondrous eyes. Once she was sure she had Tauriel's attention, she tapped her chest right over her heart, her eyes crinkling at the corners with the smile hidden beneath her veil.

An answering smile split Tauriel's lips. "I would not hesitate a moment to do it again."

Suri bowed her head in acknowledgement, humbled as she appeared by the knowledge of what Tauriel had done to save her. When she looked up again, a more mischievous glint had replaced the awestruck expression in her eyes. She gave a gentle nudge with her shoulder and, when Tauriel raised her eyebrows questioningly, jerked her head in Kíli's direction, adding another, firmer jab with her elbow.

Tauriel exhaled with equal measures of exasperation and amusement. Clearly not even Suri, who had spent the better part of the last eighteen hours unconscious, had missed out on the latest developments in that matter. It was just as well, though. If Tauriel was honest with herself, every minute she spent with more distance between herself and Kíli than was strictly necessary, felt like a waste of precious time. Hence, the roll of her eyes was mostly an attempt to conceal her own eagerness as she whispered, "Yes, fine, I'm going!"

Suri looked reasonably satisfied with herself as Tauriel returned to the other side of her cell, where she sank down onto the floor with her shoulder pressed against the bars and her back to the rest of the room.

Kíli had been lying flat on his back while Tauriel made her way across the cell, his face impassive as he kept throwing his rune stone up into the air and catching it again. As soon as she was settled beside him, he stopped toying with his talisman, using the bars to pull himself into a position very similar to Tauriel's.

For a few moments, they simply looked at each other. As was so often the case, it was Tauriel who dropped her gaze first, the unabashed fondness with which Kíli was looking at her making her heart clench painfully.

"So," she said.

"So," he echoed.

No other words would come—it seemed there simply wasn't anything left to say. Or rather, there was so much left to say, so many things Tauriel wanted to tell him and longed to hear from him, that a lifetime appeared insufficient to put them all into words. Much less a few short hours before they would be marched out of here to be met with an uncertain fate.

Either Kíli thought the same or he read her thoughts on her face (did that make a difference?), but either way, he reached his arm through the bars, wrapping it around her knees where she had pulled them up in front of her body and held on tight. Tauriel's own hands came up to cover his, her fingertips running over his flesh in a desperate attempt to memorize every ridge of skin, every callous, every tiny scar.

They stayed like that for a long moment, their heads bowed towards each other, breathing each other's air. Kíli gave a sigh, his breath whispering across Tauriels's cheek.

"Maybe Ruari's right. Maybe we are both fools to think that we will somehow get out of this whole mess alive. But, be that as it may, I'd rather die a fool by your side than survive alone."

Tauriel's fingers clenched convulsively around Kíli's. "So would I," she assured him, her voice thick in her throat.

And that, after all, was all that needed saying.