23: Nothing to Forgive

Drip. Drip. Drip.

It was the persistent sound of small droplets of water hitting a hard surface which first permeated the veil Tauriel's consciousness had been shrouded in. Other sensory impressions followed later—a damp chill seeping into her bones, the unforgiving hardness of the surface on which she lay. The occasional clang of metal echoing loudly in a confined space, followed by muted groans and muttered curses. Somewhere outside, the sound of waves breaking against steep, jagged cliffs.

She wanted to open her eyes, examine her surroundings in more detail, but found that it was a long time yet before her body began to slowly cooperate with the commands of her mind. When it finally did, it was the sight of an uneven stone ceiling to which her eyes blinked awake, flickering candlelight sparsely illuminating the scene.

There was movement to her left, and when she managed to angle her head in the right direction, she was unsure whether she wanted to smile or cry at the very familiar sight of Kíli leaning against a row of bars separating them. He looked tired, but otherwise unharmed. Still, when his eyes found hers and he realized that she was awake, his smile was more subdued than Tauriel was used to.

"This again, hm?" Her voice was raspy at best as she tried to deliver her little quip in the hope of drawing Kíli out of the darkness of his thoughts. She wondered how long she had been incapacitated. How long he'd been alone with his thoughts.

"Well, I did try to make the alternatives appealing to you, did I not? But you wouldn't take the opportunity handed to you on a silver platter. And hence. . . Yes. This, again."

The unexpected, third voice echoing through the cold, dark space startled Tauriel enough to make her scramble into a half-sitting position, even though both her limbs and her still fuzzy head protested against the sudden change in position. She was in yet another cell, as she had already gathered, with Kíli in an almost identical one beside hers. Other than the two barred compartments, the space was made up of a narrow corridor running down the length of the bars and a winding set of stairs leading up into unknown territory on one end. In the corridor, two lanterns were fastened to the wall, giving off a faint, orange light that almost caused a sense of nostalgia to wash over her. Below the lanterns, a single stool was placed safely out of reach of those locked up in the cells. On that stool, Gansukh lounged as comfortably as if it were a throne trimmed with velvet.

In his hands, he lazily twirled a bolt from a crossbow, its tip darkened by what Tauriel realized was probably her own blood. Catching her looking at the slim missile, he held it up into the light for her to see.

"Such a small thing, really, and yet capable of inflicting so much damage. Especially if, as in your case, its tip is laced with poison. You are lucky that your trusted companion here was prepared to suck the venom from your veins before it had a chance to spread even further through your body."

While Gansukh got up to pace the length of the corridor as he spoke, Tauriel looked to Kíli for confirmation of the tale she had just been told. His face was a mask of stone, one hand coming up to reflexively wipe his sleeve across his lips, as if the taste of the poison still lingered there. Tauriel's gut clenched. Had it really been that close of a call?

"I must say," Gansukh went on, "you have greatly disappointed me. Not only did you fail to bring glory upon our house, but also a considerable number of prisoners is somehow still unaccounted for. If it had been up to me, I believe I would have let that poison fester in your blood."

That last, spiteful comment went mostly unheeded by Tauriel. Prisoners still unaccounted for. . . Perhaps it had not all been in vain then. Perhaps Malik, Arun, and some of the others they had tried to help had actually made it to safety. Her heart beating with renewed vigor inside her chest, she fully sat up and fixed Gansukh with a level stare. His good opinion of her had never mattered to her, not really, but now she figured that there wasn't exactly anything left to lose.

"We were never going to submit to any of the mad schemes you had planned out for us. If you had any conception of how the world outside of the illusion you have built for yourself on this pathetic pile of rocks works, you would have known that all along."

With a swirl of his robes, Gansukh sat down again, leaning forward with his hands braced on his knees. The only sign that her words had angered him was a faint twitch in his left eye.

"I shall tell you how the world works, my dear. The time of both the Elves and the Men of the West is drawing to an end, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Right now, there are forces gathering in the North, forces darker than anything you can imagine. All they need before they will sweep across Middle-earth is a stronghold—a stronghold that your kind—" he tipped his head towards Kíli, who was clutching the bars with white knuckles, "will rather conveniently provide for them. It will be a changed world out there, soon, and once that happens, we people of the East will be ready to reap the rewards which were denied us for so long. The resistance of one Elf and one Dwarf will hardly factor in this development—you greatly overestimate your importance if you think otherwise."

Kíli huffed a humorless laugh. "Then why go through all that trouble of trying to convince us to join your side in the first place? If we matter so little?"

Gansukh shrugged, his smile cold as ice. "I told you both before, I enjoy being right. I took a gamble, and, in this instance, turned out to be wrong. Luckily, I do not have to bear the consequences of my mistake. You do."

And with that he rose off the chair, took one of the lanterns off the wall, and left without so much as a glance back. The remaining lantern flickered in the draft from a door being opened somewhere further up the stairs, but, thankfully, quickly recovered rather than being snuffed out.

Now that they were alone, Tauriel finally had a proper look around their prison—not that there was much to see. Bare walls and uneven floors with a small heap of damp straw in a corner in each cell. There was a window high up on the wall of Kíli's side of the room, but it was too small to see more than a small patch of night sky, much less entertain any ideas of climbing through it.

"Do you think he means to have us killed?" she asked. This did not strike her as a place intended to hold a person for very long.

"I don't believe he would want to go through the trouble of that. I rather feel like a toy that has outlived its purpose, don't you?"

"A bit, yes," Tauriel agreed with a grim smile. With Gansukh gone, the energy which had fueled her ability to move was draining quickly. Still, she managed to scoot over to the bars separating their cells before her strength left her and leaned against them heavily, looking up at Kíli. "What is he going to do with us, then?"

Kíli shrugged as he reached a hand through the bars to pluck a bit of straw from her hair. "Let us rot in here, I suppose. Out of sight, out of mind."

She let her forehead rest against the bars, their iron pleasantly cool against her feverish skin. "We've only made things worse for us, then. There is nowhere to go from here."

Kíli let his hand drop, staring at the piece of straw as he twirled it between his fingers. "We always knew that was a risk, didn't we?"

"Still, I'm sorry for being the reason we ended up here. If I had not gotten hit. . ." She hung her head, the weight of what had happened only just beginning to sink in. "Perhaps you should have taken your chance and ran when you still could. Then we would not both be stuck here, and you could already be on your way back to your people."

In a flurry of motion so fast it made her foggy head spin, Kíli was on his feet, staring down at her with his mouth forming a hard line and his eyes dark as coals. He paced the length of his cell, running his hands through his matted hair, yanking on the tangles in frustration before whirling around to face her once more.

"After everything, how can you suggest that? Do you even realize how close I just came to losing you? And you ask me why I did not simply leave you dying on the fucking forest floor to run back to my kind? As if they could ever matter more to me. As if you are worth so very little." He paused in his angry tirade, staring down at her. Within the blink of an eye, all fury had drained from his face and now he looked just tired. "But that is just it, is it not? You do believe that you are not worth it. Worth staying for, I mean."

"No, I—That is not—" Tauriel blinked rapidly while she fought for her composure. His words had tugged at the ragged seam of a wound somewhere deep within her, threatening to break the stitches. She took a deep breath, tried for another, less dangerous approach. "You heard what Gansukh said. Your people—once they reach the mountain, they are going to be in so much danger, if what he says is true. You have to get there in time to warn them of what is coming. But from in here—", she gulped down a sob, "from in here, I just cannot see how."

Kíli regarded her with quiet seriousness. "You still underestimate the stubbornness of Dwarves, I'm afraid. Even if I did manage to warn them in time, it would not make much of a difference. They would not be deterred from their mission, no matter if one or ten armies were coming for them." He had sunk down on his knees while he spoke and now reached through the bars to grasp her limp hand in his. "But even if it did make a difference, it would not change the fact that I would always stay, for you. Now, I don't know what sort of ideas any kings or princes of yours have been planting inside your head, but I need you to understand that you are worth it. A hundred, a thousand, a million times over."

She nodded, dropping her gaze to their joined hands while she blinked away tears. One or two still managed to fall. Furious with her own weakness, she pulled her hand from his grasp to wipe them away, but Kíli beat her to it.

"Forgive me," she sniffled, even though she did not quite know what exactly it was that she was apologizing for. Her tears? Getting them captured once again? The fact that he was right, that a part of her would always think of herself as somehow less, because wasn't that what she had been told over and over again, for hundreds of years?

It did not seem to make a difference to Kíli. His hands slid into her hair, cupping both sides of her head, and he gently pulled her close to press a soft kiss to her lips. "Nothing to forgive," he whispered as he pulled away to rest his forehead against hers.

They stayed like that for a long time, the roar of the sea outside their prison and the flicker of the candle creating an almost peaceful lull, and Tauriel closed her eyes, submerging herself in Kíli's warmth, his scent, the feeling of his breath whispering over her skin. She must have fallen asleep like that, for when Kíli tugged at her to get her to lay down on her side, facing him through the bars, she experienced a brief moment of disorientation.

"You need your rest," he explained when he noticed her startled flinch. "That poison was no trifle."

Mirroring her position on the other side of the bars, Kíli slipped an arm through to allow her to pillow her head on it. At this, they had some practice, after all.

Once they were settled, Tauriel sought his gaze. "Will you tell me what happened out there? I think I remember getting shot, but after that things become vague pretty quickly."

"That does not surprise me. You were rather out of it when I got to you." He smiled fondly, even though his eyes were heavy with worry. He shifted into a more comfortable position and gave a small sigh. "Alright, I'll tell you everything. But I believe I'll have to go back a bit further than when you were shot."

And so he told her the whole story from his perspective, beginning when they had gone separate ways in order to lead their charges to safety. With the three boys he had taken under his wing securely settled in the cavern they had discovered, Kíli had settled down to wait for her, growing nervous rather quickly when she did not turn up. When the man and boy who had been with her had arrived with news of Timon and his unfortunate demise, Kíli had set out in search of her right away.

"The rain had turned the hillside into a bit of a mudslide by then, and getting back up was much harder than coming down, which is why it took me so bloody long. By the time I had finally managed, you were already gone, and only poor Timon was left behind."

Tauriel's lips twisted as she swallowed against an unexpected wave of grief. "I wish I could have helped him. I think that, right before he died, he was prepared to join our side, leave this whole mess behind. They took that choice away from him."

"Aye, they did," Kíli agreed, brushing a kiss against her temple to comfort her. "I thought at first that you had gone after Timon's murderer, but then, as I followed your and several other tracks, I realized that something else had to have happened."

"Arun," she confirmed. "I'd met him and his brother Malik in the arena, back when they let us go without finishing our fight. He was half out of his mind with fear back then—now, he was even worse. He would have thrown himself off a cliff just to get away from me if I had not stopped him in time."

"I gathered as much." Kíli had shifted onto his back and was gazing up at the ceiling, his eyes moving quickly back and forth, as if he was watching the events from his memory play out in front of them once more. "When I finally got to you, you had already been hit. And I—I just saw red, I suppose, for a moment or two. It was Malik who reminded me that there was still an assassin on the loose. It was also Malik who figured out that the bolts had been dipped in poison when you began shaking uncontrollably."

He seemed to struggle with his composure for a bit, prompting Tauriel to reach through the bars and cup his cheek in her palm to remind him that she was here and that she was fine, for the most part. "Did you get him then? The assassin, I mean."

"Malik did. He's the hero in all of this, I suppose."

"Hmm, I don't know. I heard that it was you who sucked a strange, possibly dangerous poison from my veins. So I would say the scales are mostly evened out between you two."

Kíli rolled his eyes and lightly pinched her side for her gentle teasing. "Perhaps," he said. "Hero or not, you will be glad to hear, I think, that I managed to send Malik and his little brother on their merry way before the guards figured out that something had gone amiss with the hunt, found us, and dragged us back to this hellhole. He wanted to stay and help you, but the boy seemed on the verge of collapsing from fear and needed to be taken away."

"That is indeed good to hear. At least this wasn't all for nothing, then."

"For nothing? Not at all. You heard Gansukh—some of their prisoners are still on the loose. And, if they still have their wits about them, miles and miles away from this place. We may have saved a lot of lives, back there."

"I really hope you are right about that." A part of Tauriel wondered whether the people they had tried to save were not rotting away in some hole in the ground. If they had not sacrificed their one chance to run for nothing after all. But Kíli did not need to hear that, not when their own outlook was already so very bleak.

After a few more minutes of quiet conversation, they settled down for the night. From what Kíli had related of their capture and transport back to the island, no real threats against their well-being had been made. This might have been due to the fact that he had shown no resistance, what with Tauriel being fully incapacitated at the time and, from what she read between the lines, still hovering on the fine line between life and death. There was thus no real reason to remain on their guard for now.

Unfortunately, there was also no reason to expect any offers of food or privileges such as a visit to the baths to be extended towards them. For what it was worth, they really appeared to be treated like discarded toys, as Kili had commented earlier. That they had been there for more than a day already without being provided food or drink caused a niggling sense of worry to make itself known at the back of Tauriel's mind. She could go for far longer without either, but for Kíli, that was a slightly different matter. What if Gansukh's great plan was simply to punish her by watching Kíli waste away right in front of her, with nothing she could do about it?

Her worry began to coil cold and heavy inside her stomach when the arrival of the following morning brought no change. No food, no visitors, no one to check if they were still there, still alive. They passed the day in quiet conversation or, more often, by simply lying side by side, hands entwined and heads turned towards one another. They did not speak of it, but Tauriel could tell that Kíli, too, was growing concerned. And, more worryingly, weaker.

It was after nightfall on that day, when Tauriel had already given up hope on any new developments, that they heard a door creak open somewhere above, followed by the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

The candle inside the wall-mounted lantern had burnt down sometime during the day, and in the almost-darkness they could only make out the vague shape of their visitor. That no clatter of earthenware or the like reached their ears already did not herald any positive surprises in the food department.

A match was struck, a candle lit, revealing the bland uniform worn by the female servants in Gansukh's household. Tauriel's bemusement over why a servant girl had been sent down here if not to bring food lasted only a second or two before it was replaced by the surprise over discovering who was concealed beneath that brown hood when their visitor pulled it back. Nesrin.

Tauriel's stomach clenched painfully when the dark haired woman fixed her with a red rimmed stare. Of course it was Nesrin. Of course she would not let the chance to confront those whom she likely blamed for her mate's death slip her by, not when they were, once again, on the same bit of land. How she had done it eluded Tauriel for the moment, but in the end, it did not matter, did it? All that mattered was that Nesrin was here now, her face ashen with both grief and anger.

Steeling herself for whatever verbal (or, perhaps, physical?) attack Nesrin had planned, Tauriel sat up straight. While she harbored her doubts about several of the things which had occurred during the hunt, Timon's death was something she knew she could not have prevented. She had offered him a way out, more than once, but in the end, he had been too slow, too hesitant to take it. Still, she was prepared to welcome Nesrin's fury with open arms, if that was what she needed.

Tauriel was thus ready for almost anything—except for the words which eventually tumbled from Nesrin's lips.

"I'm sorry."

Even more shockingly, after she had spoken, Nesrin buried her face in her hands, her shoulders trembling with her quiet sobs. Tauriel exchanged a startled glance with Kíli, who had moved as close as he could to the pair of them on this side of the bars. He seemed equally bemused by their visitor's sudden outburst, but recovered swiftly to gesture with his hands towards the weeping woman.

Comfort her, he mouthed.

A little awkwardly, Tauriel patted Nesrin's shoulder through the bars, her touch growing firmer and more confident when she realized that it apparently did help calm the heart-wrenching sobs. After a few more minutes, Nesrin took a step back, out of Tauriel's reach, and wiped her face with the sleeve of her dress.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"Whatever for?"

Tauriel wrapped her hands around the bars, partly so that she might lean closer and study Nesrin in the low light, partly to steady herself should she be hit with another wave of nausea. Those were becoming less frequent the longer the poison had been out of her system, but still. Nesrin was not quite looking at her, frowning into the darkness behind her instead.

"I'm sorry for not listening to you when I could have," she said, her voice breaking. Still, she went on. "I'm sorry for not telling Timon to run as far away as possible if he ever got the chance, for making him think that this life was something worth coming back for, to hold onto. If I had, he might still be alive."

This time, Tauriel reached through the bars of her own accord, wrapping her hand around Nesrin's wrist where she had crossed her arms in front of her chest, as if she were afraid she would fall apart if she loosened her stance. "I know it does not change anything, but I do not believe it was life on the island he wanted to come back to. It was you." She turned her head to cast a glance at Kíli and offered him a small smile. "And no matter how often you might have told him to leave all this behind and get himself to safety, he would have fought to come back to you. Every single time."

Kíli's face softened as he gazed back at her, his forehead resting against the bars. Nesrin noticed nothing of their brief exchange, her head still lowered to hide the evidence of her grief. When she looked up again, her eyes glistened with both the remnants of her tears and a steely determination.

"Perhaps it wouldn't have made a difference, then, after all. Perhaps it would have. Either way, I'm going to start making a difference now. I'm going to help you escape."