A/N: In the ongoing saga of Dis's tragedy...

She is the daughter of kings. And so she stands, as her kings stood—while they lived—with unwavering gaze and proud shoulders, even though the taste of the mountain's air is heavy in her mouth.

"Welcome, Dis, king-sister," Dain Ironfoot says, and his bugling voice is almost hushed, reverent, as he gestures with respect.

He is the king under the mountain, now. But he is not her king, nor will he ever be.

Dis is finished with kings.

"I would see the place where they are laid," she tells him. For many a long year, she has not spoken Khuzdul before such a great number as these assembled dwarves—she wonders if it is stilted, or if the old words have merely grown dry and creaking in her throat.

Dain leads, and their boots echo over paths that she would remember well, if she let herself look.

But Dis does not want to see the Mountain. She does not want to call to mind gems and stone and cavernous expanses lit by golden light. Dis does not want to think of gold.

Dain's voice rumbles on ahead, as though he could hope to fill the silence.

Dis's hands are cold.

They come at last to a quiet chamber, with an arced ceiling stretching up into the far reaches of the mountain.

The air itself seems dead.

"They are here, milady," Dain's whisper echoes almost hesitantly, but Dis cannot bring herself to tear her eyes from the tombs, even to acknowledge his words.

There are great slabs of stone, finer than any she has seen since last she walked the halls of Erebor. They bear no mark save the emblems of their people, and the runes that form their names.

She knows those runes. Fili, she carved on the hilts of his daggers, and Kili, she guided the small hand into scratching on parchment. She has written and read and dreamt these letters, but they are deeper and sharper than she remembers in this cold stone, wrought by other hands.

Dis closes her eyes.

Her hands are at her side—she does not trust herself to touch the tombs, to feel the cruel barrier that lies forever between them.

When she opens her eyes, Dain's breath fogs the air. She wishes it were Dwalin, Balin, someone she had known better. For Dain is her cousin, and he was her brother's friend, but he did not know her sons.

"They were warriors," Dain says, and he is plainly trying, trying hard to be gentle.

He is trying, but Dis bites her lips to keep from screaming. Where are their likenesses? she would say. Where are their painted portraits and their carven images? Where is the tribute they deserve? Were they not princes?

But there is nothing. No memory that she can touch or treasure. For they were not princes, truly, though they will be remembered as such. They were children, and they knew forests and meadows but not this grandeur and legacy that would raise them in effigy.

They fought a battle not of their making, claimed a home not their own, and spent their blood for nothing.

It is not nothing, she hears a voice argue in her mind. The voice sounds like Thorin's. Think of our people.

But Dis cannot think of her people. She no longer knows who they are.

And there are questions she would ask—were their weapons buried with them? Were they frightened? Why did you not wait for me, to bury them?

But these are questions of a mother, not of warriors. So Dis stands with her hands at her side, an unwavering gaze, and she seeks no answers in the runes that form their names.