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Chapter 35: Hatred

It was good to be alone. I could really think. Even if it made me want to scream and claw off every inch of skin from my body - this was good.

Because - as I found out quickly upon the point in which my brain officially stopped allowing me the luxury of distraction by counting how many gray hairs were in Thorin's beard - I hadn't been alone with myself for a very long time. And sure, the King Under the Mountain was currently shaking out my vest and muttering about how many loose strings there were but he actually hardly took up any space at all. Odd that someone who seemed to take up so much space in my troubled psyche shrunk so much in a confined space.

So for the first time in my entire life, I sat with myself, unable to run away for years on end to go on ridiculous adventures with my brothers or pick inane fights with people who had offended me even a little bit. I couldn't hurl myself off the side of a cliff here.

Unfortunately, what I rooted out wasn't pretty.

Someone used to running.

Someone who had rooted herself in hatred so that she could survive.

Someone who loved fiercely but didn't know how to fully accept love in return.

Someone who tipped between drowning and living like the sea being pulled by the moon.

Someone petty and cruel and reckless with her own life because she didn't fully see the value in it to begin with.

And maybe I could say that that was because of how many people had made it seem lie my life was worthless to begin with. But how long could I cling onto my childhood before it started being pathetic? A bigger question was how I moved on from it before it took away what little future I had.

I wondered if everyone hated themselves this much. If everyone felt the need to pick and pick and pick at all the things about themselves that had ever caused them any bit of discomfort. I could think of many times that my recklessness had been worth it. When my cruelty had been warranted. When the drowning had given way to living and I had seen the first sunset from that great lake, my lunges filling with clear, sharp air and all I could see was endless waters without even a hint of mountains. When the drowning had made the beauty of breath so much more.

And still I picked.

I picked and picked at myself until I could feel the edges peel up, leaving behind raw, pulsing tissue beneath. And I relished it to a certain degree - the torture, the pain of reducing myself to all the negatives.

Did everyone do this to themselves?

And if they did, how did we all walk around as if we weren't such bruised creatures beneath our skin?

"You were very cruel to me growing up." My eyes narrowed on a discoloration in the wall just at the corner, unwilling to look at Thorin. Hot embarrassment burned along my face, tightening around my throat lie a noose slowly squeezing the life from me. "I tried…" I swallowed, nearly choking on the lump that was slowly growing in my throat. "I tried for a very long time to - to make you happy with me. I thought that if I was smaller or tougher - more like that rock that you mine then perhaps you would stop looking at me like I was - like I was…"

"An elf." I flinched, my gaze snapping over to him. He had placed my vest down gently beside where he sat on the pallet. I had never seen his face so open, his brows no longer heavy clouds over the gray skies of his eyes. He had rebraided his hair so that the pepper and silver strands now lay neatly away from his face, his regal features on full display. His lips tipped up into a sad smile and for the first time, I didn't see anything but soft recognition as if he were seeing something that he had lost. "You are an elf, Tori. Just as you are a dwarf."

He had never acknowledged that fact before. It stunned me.

But it also filled me with bitter rage. I couldn't help the swell of resentment at the reminder. Being half in each world had gotten me nothing but bad luck in my short life.

"I haven't always been good with my words, Tori," he whispered, his eyes dipping to his fingers, rubbing at each other between his spread knees.

My answer was whip sharp. "Please don't insult me by pretending that your words are being misconstrued."

His eyes slid to mine and held, that smile still on his lips. His eyes softened even further, a rueful type of expression gentling his features. "No. No I won't pretend like it was my words that were being misread…" He considered me for a long moment. "You know of what happened in the war?"

My teeth ground. "Thranduil refused aid to you leading to the massacre of your people. I would like to remind you that I wasn't even born then."

"Your brother's reminded me as well." A long sigh slipped from his lips, his whole body deflating with the motion. "Some princes fight against the line. They want their freedom. I… wanted nothing more than to take my rightful place within the Misty Mountains. It's who I am. All I've ever wanted to be. All anyone around me has ever wanted me to be.

"That day was more than a battle. It meant more to me. I lost more than a home. I lost everything I was and everything I would ever be."

"You are still King," I breathed, baffled. The way that people talked about him in the halls. The way people looked at him as he was as if he was a star that had fallen from the sky to bless us with its light. As if he was a dream that had be discovered and born - something that was meant to be fulfilled no matter the time, no matter the effort.

His gray eyes swirled with sadness, his lips tipping up in an expression so soft that I thought it might be torn away by the wind alone. His head tipped forward, hiding his expression as he stared at where his fingers toyed with the dirty folds of his trousers. "We lost over half of our people that day. Friends and family. Children… I couldn't even go back to… Well, there was nothing left but fire anyway, I suppose. Fire and ash." His throat worked, bobbing as he swallowed thickly, still unable to meet my gaze. "Thranduil and his kin were the first that I saw. The first light of hope in that darkness. I'll never forget it. For as long as I live, I'll never forget how beautiful I thought they all were. How much my people cried out - not for me but for him. How he saw all those women and children, burned and dying and begging and he just… left."

A lonely wind slithered from the gaping hall just outside our doors, the torches flickering in the glow of the moon overhead. The lanky form of elven guards slithered here and there, so quiet, so ancient like the trees that they shared their home with. I couldn't imagine… I couldn't imagine having that hope so ruthlessly extinguished.

"All of them," Thorin whispered and I looked away, unable to watch any longer as his words broke, catching and tumbling like he was seeing it all over again. "Not a single one of them even paused. While my people died -" His fingers closed, his rough hands squeezing so hard that his knuckles went white. Raw anger coursed through his next words, sharp as the press of a fresh blade. "I hated them. I hated them more than anything - more than Azog the defiler. More than my coward of a father. More than the sickness that took him away even before Smaug came and torched my home. I saw them in the hungry faces of my people. I saw them when we had to stop and bury children in the night on some unmarked stretch of land because they had succumbed to the burns and the fever and famine-"

His eyes burned, luminous in the moon's glow. "I thought about them. More than Smaug - Smaug was just an animal. He took what he wanted like a feral beast. But these people - they had been my friends. They had spoken to me and bartered with me and held feasts to our allegiance, promising aid and kindness and compassion when they were willing to give none. I dreamed of what I would do when I finally reclaimed the throne. I dreamed of it so much that it felt like reality some days. It got me through the hard work, the hard roads, and the vile creatures we had to reduce ourselves to survive from. My name wasn't the King Under the Mountain anymore. It was the King of None. The King of Fire and Ash. I blamed that on them as well. We had nothing when we left our home. And the humans that we met on our search for a place to simply rest, loved reminding us of it. If we weren't getting spit on, we were being propositioned - like oddities, unique treats that could be sampled." I flinched, curving into the hard stone at my side. Disgust coated my tongue. "And that I blamed on them as well."

Silence stretched for a moment between us, long and taut and filled with the sorrows of the past.

"And then you came." My eyes snapped up to meet his, his expression one of melancholy amusement. "So small and frail and odd with your burning hair and your pointed ears. He brought you to me first - Dori. Ori and Nori lingered at the door like unruly children but Dori brought you and he got down on his knees and begged me for my blessing, for my hospitality." A deep warmth filled my lungs. My brothers. My lovely, strong brothers. I loved them more than my next breath, I realized. His gentle expression fell slowly, the light dimming in his eyes. He looked away again, an odd expression settling on his face. "You were the first elf that I had seen since…" He cleared his throat once and then again. "I could ignore you when you were a baby, all swaddled up in your brother's arms. How odd, I thought. How odd that Mahal had set this small child in the arms of my most trusted. How odd that he would force me to give hospitality to the one people that had watched my people burn."

I gulped, looking out at the stairs that spiraled up and up and away from my gaze. His words burned at me.

"It felt like a punishment. You felt like a punishment." Somedays I felt like that as well. I stared harder at the elves in the distance. "Then Fili and Kili started paying attention to you. Dwalin said you were light on your feet, a better fighter simply because of your blood. And even that felt like an insult. Everything had narrowed down to you. All that hatred and disgust and pure, raw darkness - it had all suddenly centered on you in my mind." His mouth twisted sourly, a look of shame reddening his cheeks. "I want to say that I was young. That it all went downhill so much quicker that I ever realized. I didn't yet understand how closely people watched me, how much they craved my approval. I didn't realize that my disdain was so blatant. Worse - I didn't realize that others could see it and wished for nothing more than to emulate me." A harsh laugh burst from him. "As if I had anything worth aspiring to."

His eyes finally sought mine out. "By the time I realized and tried to change things, you already despised the very sight of me. You resented my efforts. And I couldn't blame you. Not after what I had given you for simply being a child in my halls." I remembered. I remembered all too well. "I am sorry, Tori. I am sorry for my weakness. For the hatred that I allowed to grow, thinking it was strength. I am sorry."

Hot tears burned at the back of my throat. The first in a long time. I choked them back down, blinking quickly.

I was tired of hating him. I was so fucking tired.

"You will never get close enough to hurt me again," I whispered, my voice cracking brokenly. My breath quivered between my teeth, my molars clenching as I tried to swallow down all the sadness that was threatening to upend my life. "I forgive you but only because I need to. Only because I won't allow myself to twist into something vile from this." Blue eyes. The smell of bread and warmth and safety. The first bit of goodness that I ever thought I actually deserved. "I'll forgive you because I love Fili too much to ever hate the things that he values. But know that I do not trust you because of your reasoning or your words. I do not trust sentiment. I trust consistent actions."

His chin dipped in the smallest nod. "Then I will show you through actions."

I didn't say anything, battling with myself.

Because even though I said those things and meant them, I could understand all too well Thorin's hatred. Elrond had been the first elf I had been in contact with for a prolonged amount of time and I had punished him as much as possible. How pathetic Thorin and I were. No wonder we got tossed in the same holding pen.


When Grothphen came for his nightly staring, I stared back. It was the first time I had allowed myself to really hold his attention since that fateful day. How long had that been now?

His hair was a smooth russet wave, tucked neatly behind those pointed ears. He had the air of someone who didn't normally see the other side of a mess. His forest green uniform was so spotless and unwrinkled that it looked like it had never seen the outside of a closet.

"Why do you come?" I whispered. Thorin was asleep in the corner opposite me, tucked to the wall like a babe waiting for the embrace of his mother. It was not at all how I thought a king would sleep. But then again, many things were not how I had thought they were.

Gortphen's head tipped, his eyes darkening as he took me in. A man of few words with enough anger to fill in the missing syllables. "Your lover has been asking about you."

That was Gortphen. Always choosing the sorest spot to poke. Then again everything felt sore these days. "You wish to talk of my lover?"

Fili and the russet-haired elf had gotten on like a spider and a fly, like a cat and a bird. The animosity was built on a love of the chase, a desire to trip the other up.

"I wish to talk of nothing with you," he snapped, just as peevish as ever.

Fili had called him a liar and I was starting to see that my mate was a good judge of character.

I let the silence drag on.

A tick in the elf's jaw jumped. "Where is her journal?"

I didn't even blink. "Somewhere safe."

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Nothing is safe in the hands of dwarves."

"Funny, I heard the same of elves."

His eyes shimmered with distaste. For someone who seemed so surly, he wore his emotions right there for everyone to see. Gortphen was honest, genuine in a way that very few were. It was hard not to like him for it.

"You are a coward," he suddenly burst, his voice low and venomous.

That was a new one. When was the last time I had been called a coward? Well… he wasn't wrong.

"You keep her journal hidden but you won't give it back," he sneered, his lips curling. "You won't read it because you're scared of what it will say. You're scared of where you come from."

I was very tired. I stared at him for a moment longer. So tired. "I come from the mountains. From the mines and the cold tops and the dark of unexplored places. Where I come from is all around you. In these cells and just outside of your little forest where your people have decided to hide. Just a few cells down are my brothers, the ones who took me in when I was left to starve on the outskirts of a human village. Beside this cell is my heartmate who loved me enough to beg a troll to eat him alive instead of me. And in this very cell is a King who took in a little elf child even though elves had taken away what little hope his soul had to offer." I tipped my head to the side, watching that muscle in his jaw feather once more. "I would watch where your anger takes you, Gortphen. It's not a pretty path."