I told you I would have another chapter up soon! *Blows apologetic kisses to you all* I wanted to thank the people who reviewed last chapter particularly trouvaille (I'm still thinking about you too, though, Guest.) She gave me a great suggestion which I fully intent to take. And as for her questions on this being a fix-it fic, that, my wonderful readers, is a secret. Anyway, I hope you like this chapter and review and follow/favorite if you do please.
Chapter 7: Hindsight
Looking back on it, there were many things that caused a prince from the hills of Ered Luin, born with the rock of Erebor in his veins and a small, lost girl with an unknown father and an unknown mother to become "involved." We could go back to the night when slender fingers, white as snow and delicate as the sapling of a willow left Tori to die in the bushes of a human village. We could even go back farther when a dwarf took the hand of an elf for the first time. But for that, we would need much more time and time, no matter how long your days number, is precious and more valuable than mithril or the three jewels of Silmaril.
So for now, we'll start in the middle, when the world was not too young but still naive and delicately honest in its simple ways.
Five Years Before...
At first, it was annoying.
"She's written again." Fili could hear the excited whisper of Dori from across the great hall, his low voice and hopeful eyes making the young prince feel a sort of agitation that he rarely knew. It was a weekly ritual - one that was becoming more and more obnoxious as the months past.
Chairs scraped together and food platters were pushed aside as the droning of old dwarves started up. Forget manning the mines or preparing for the oncoming struggles that the dwarves of the Blue Mountains would have to face, they all must listen to the babbling of a half-elf.
"Aren't you coming?" Kili inquired. A young dwarf with few troubles other than the ones that involved steel and the warm glances of the opposite sex, Kili had little on his mind. He didn't harbor the same kind of resentment that Fili and Thorin and some of the older dwarves knew. It was a new kind of age with new kinds of thoughts and ideals. No longer would the dwarves look out through stone windows at the small creatures below their fortresses.
They had been forced out of that life. Forced into hard labor and bargains with humans whose minds were tricky and dark compared to the dwarves' and elves' who had known no other way of life but hard work and honesty.
"She's probably made it past the rivers of Glandiun and Greyflood."
In that moment, Fili thought that his brother was the stupidest person who lived in the mountains. Anyone could make it past those rivers. But Kili adored the Tori girl for reasons that completely boggled Fili. For what felt like hours, the young, sunflower haired prince would have to listen to the constant babble of his idiot brother:
"She was always so fast, brother."
"Do you remember how she would climb trees?"
"Why can't you be more like her?"
"I have no one to play with now."
Sending his brother a harsh glare, Fili slid back from the tables and made his way moodily out of the Great Halls. The only thing that had brought him there was the thought that he would get some rest from the drills that both Dwalin and Thorin insisted he take part in. They were prepping him to be the next king like his uncle would drop any day now. As it were, the young prince could barely comprehend Thorin Oakenshield being any other health but the most supreme. He adored his uncle like he would have adored his own father.
"Have I missed it?" Dis. The mother of both Kili and Fili, future heirs to the throne of Durin, daughter of Thrian, sister of both Frerin and Thorin. Brown hair stroked through with blonde curled around her face, only held in place by a series of braids. A beard of the same color shadowed her jaw. Her face was angular, her jaw and cheekbones coming from her father and his father before him and passing down to both Fili and Kili. It was the features of the line of Durin, the true heirs. But her eyes - her eyes were her mother's, soft and blue in the lamplight of the halls.
"Khagun," Fili whispered, bowing his head. It was a reverence that Dis scoffed at for she had only seen it given by her brothers to her own mother.
"Stop that," she snapped, slapping a hand over her sons cheek hard enough that he jerked away. "Do you think I want that kind of greeting from someone who I've seen naked and pooping all over himself?"
Red burst across the young dwarves cheeks as he spluttered. "Mother-"
"This is what I get for leaving you in the care of that big oaf. Kuna, unna. Lu', unna. It's like I'm his bloody maid. It's that properness that ran off all the women, I tell you." Her eyes flashed wickedly as she turned to her horror-struck son once more. "Now, how do you address your mother?"
"Kha-" Another hard slap and he cursed under his breath, his eyes watering.
"You answer my question!" Dis exclaimed, grinning at her son's foul mouth and patting his un-bruised cheek lovingly. Her blue eyes lit up with excitement. "Now… Have I missed it?"
"Missed what?" The young dwarf muttered, flinching when his mother's hand moved a fraction. And then glowering as she burst into hysterically happy laughter. How a woman so small could be so abrasive was beyond him.
"The elf girl? Her letters? She writes so beautifully. And about so many things!" Irritation. This whole entire evening was becoming more and more irritating and annoying than Fili could have ever predicted. "Can you imagine living like Nori and she do? It's magical!"
With all this gushing, Fili found it hard to believe that he was still standing on stone and not sinking under an onslaught of water.
"She writes about unimportant things," Fili snapped. And it was true. Tori sister to Nori, Dori and Ori wrote about the market places of Nordinbad and Eriador. She wrote about the people she saw and how it made her feel and what it was missing and who she was missing.
And maybe that was part of why Fili always felt so utterly irritated when he listened to her letters, the beautiful words of a girl he was ashamed and confused to admit that he thought was beautiful as well, echoing off the walls. She was forbidden and even to dwarves that is tempting to the young and brash who find even the smallest dangers mysterious and beautiful.
But there was something about her - something about the ways that she had refused to cry when children were cruel or worse, when adults were cruel. It was something about the way that he had never spoken to her but always seemed to have the misfortune of running into her at her most vulnerable moments. And more than that, it was because he had never said a word. He had never approached her when he had found her resting on one of the mountain ledges, silent but crying, her hair catching fire in the setting sun.
The young prince of Durin found her utterly enchanting. But his uncle had taught him enough to know that such emotions were young. And that was also why Fili pressed them down until they were nothing more than an annoying buzz in his ears.
"She's always saying that she doesn't understand things," the young, naive, utterly confused yet irritated prince lashed out, earning a knowing glance from his mother. "She doesn't understand why the humans are so loud. She doesn't understand why the elves are so quiet. She doesn't understand why the water only seems to take her one way. I have a hard time seeing how a girl like that could-"
"Be so well traveled and intelligent?" Dis inquired, giving him a crushing stare and an unimpressed once over. The prince's lips thinned, his eyes so like his father's snapping in the dim light. Dis knew that this look did not come from the high browed ways of her people but from the merchants that toiled in the blood of Fili and Kili's father's. "It takes a far bigger person than you or I to admit the things that she doesn't understand. It take humility. Something that you, my brave, stupid son would do well to learn."
And with that, her calloused hands patting gently at the young princes cheek and her robes whistling along the floors, she hurried to read what Tori had written.
Humility, oddly enough, isn't something that can be taught. It is an emotion that will only come from the mixture of many others - love and fear, trust and honesty. And that is the reason that the heir to the throne of Erebor, who had been taught how to fight and speak and when to give smiles and commands, was so utterly lost.
Fili thought about it for days. He toiled over the idea of humility. Being young and naive, he thought that he knew. He argued with his mother in his mind a million times. When he closed his eyes, his mind circled around all the things that he should have said. And because he knew the girl who seemed to know so much more than he did, it made the annoyance even worse.
Slowly but with no free will of his own, Fili's thoughts were beginning to revolve around her and her stupidly beautiful words.
"Do you have the letters?" Dori stared up at him, his meal of meat and bread sitting half-eaten in front of him. Fili coughed, looking away before straightening and trudging on awkwardly. "The ones from the elf-girl?"
Ori's eyes broke away from his journal, turning slowly up to stare at the blonde dwarf. "...Tori?"
"That's the one." Fili knew her name. Ori knew that Fili knew her name. And Dori knew that both Fili and Kili should know his sister's name simply due to the fact that the group used to throw mud-balls at each other. Fili coughed again. "Do you have her letters?"
"Why do you ask?" Deeply protective, Dori didn't like the uncertainty that came from handing over something that he had treasured for so long. He kept them in a box that was incidentally inside another box which was locked up tight beneath his bed.
"I…" Fili didn't have an answer. In vain, he muddled through his own mind before something overcame him and he bowed his head, his voice going soft. "I just want to read them. Akuf?"
Who knew that something so small could change someone's mind so quickly? Both Dori and Ori nodded and by the end of the day, a small, floral print box was sitting in front of Fili along with a note from Dori warning the prince of what he would do if so much as one letter was ripped.
Fili slaving over them, reading them so many times that he thought Tori's own voice was whispering to him. Years later he would find that the voice he had been hearing was so much different from the one that she now possessed. But things come to us when we need them and what Fili needed was the voice of a childhood friend. He needed the girl who screamed insults at him and walked through the halls barefoot, who cut her hair to the scalp because it got in her way when she was running after his brother and him.
I miss you, the letters read again and again. I miss my home with the boys that used to pull on my hair and where the food was hearty and good. I miss your tea times and your cookies. How are you doing? Tell me, how are Fili and Kili doing? The king and his princes? Fili was always so arrogant but I suppose that's what all princes are born to.
And it was so ridiculously true that the young prince laughed. She was right. Fili knew it and in that moment he was sure that everyone else in these halls knew it as well. Another letter:
For the first time, I feel like I could have been anything. Sitting on this rock, if I close my eyes I can pretend that I am a dwarf or an elf or maybe even a human. And then there was a line scribbled out, the ink just light enough that Fili could make out the words: But in fact, I am-
Fili's mouth went dry. There wasn't a single word that could finish that sentence - because Tori didn't have one. A million miles away, the girl with the dragon's fire hair had no words that she could think of to describe herself. She was neither dwarf nor human. She had neither family nor was she homeless. She was a mystery to even herself and that is the most terrifying feeling that anyone will ever have to endure.
The thing about change is that it can happen all at once in very rare cases. When circumstances and time collide together, a being can be snapped from themselves like a bone being set. And like a bone being set, it hurts and it takes longer to heal than we would expect.
And although no one could say that it was a simple line from a simple girl who was neither dwarf nor elf that made Fili change, no one could say that she had no part in it. Because Fili knew what she meant. Sometimes, when he was so beat up from training with Dwalin, his arms pounding with fatigue and his legs barely able to carry him, he would go out to the place that he had seen Tori crying and for a moment, he would pretend he was somewhere else.
And although, Tori and Fili were surely not the only ones to feel this, they were connected by time and coincidences and in the end that is all that keeps fate moving.
"Neddar."
It had been months since Fili had returned the box of precious letters to Dori and Kili and Fili were sitting out on a ledge that overlooked the valleys of the Blue Mountains. The wind carried the sweet snow that only could be found on the highest mountains as well as the damp rock that every dwarf should know by birth. If not for the setting sun, even beneath their thick, fur-lined jackets, the brothers would not be able to sit out here.
"Are you alright? Has anything happened?"
Fili's gaze stayed out of the valley, his eyes calm like an untapped spring. In the months since Fili had memorized those letters, he had become calmer. When Dori read to the Great Halls, Kili was surprised to see his brother stay. "Why do you ask?"
"You just seem…" Kili shrugged. He was still young and his brother had come to know something that it would take a very long time for the hazel-eyed dwarf to understand. "Burtul."
Fili's eyes remained where they were. "Mm. I hadn't noticed."
And annoying though it may be, sometimes that's just how fate is.
Khuzdul:
Khagun: Honored mother
Kuna, unna. Lu', unna.: Yes, honored sister. No, honored sister.
Akuf: Please?
Neddar: Honored brother.
Burtul: Different
