Sixty-eight

The incident of the river and the seizure that followed never leave Fili. It stays in his mind, turning his stomach on nights when he cannot sleep until he turns to assure himself that his brother is beside him, breathing, safe. And yet, it has another effect, too, this one less unpleasant. Kili becomes Kili again, but he is changed. Still he throws himself with great enthusiasm into anything and everything (excepting, of course, the dreaded genealogies), but now he takes a moment to look where he is going more often than not. He laughs and shouts and makes a fool of himself just as he always did, and yet he accumulates nothing worse than cuts and bruises, the natural harvest for a dwarf his age. It is many years before Fili holds him dying in his arms again, and as time goes on, Fili almost forgets the strange power that saved his brother's life four times.

But when he is sixty-eight years old, he is reminded.

They are miles from home, high in a hanging valley that gleams with spring, all gold and green and white with grass and flowers. It is the first day in many that they have not been working in the forge all the daylight hours and some of the night, for the passes are finally open and Thorin and Dis have taken the wares they made over the long winter to sell in the town of men two days' journey away. Kili, to the surprise of everyone (and perhaps himself most of all), is a natural metalworker, and although he has gained little in the way of patience over the years, still the knowledge that his are the swords that will bring in the greatest price has made him more serious about the work than he is about anything else in his life. Now, their first empty day, he seems to have a winter's worth of impatience come upon him all at once, and he races up and down the valley, shooting at targets and fetching arrows and laughing his crowing laugh into the blue bowl of the sky. Fili, no less tired of the dim heat of the forge than his brother - though he knows it is unworthy, for the forge-fire is the breath of Mahal - gives chase, and they wrestle in the grass like dwarflings of thirty-five.

And in the afternoon, the weather closes in.

It is not unusual, especially so early in the spring. They have lived in these mountains all their lives, though they are not theirs as Erebor is, and they know the moods of the sky, start for home as soon as they see the clouds blowing in from the west. It is not so very far that they will have to spend the night outside, provided they are lucky. But they are not lucky.

The cloud settles on them when they are only at the lip of the little valley, stepping onto the narrow, winding path cut into the rock that leads to the floor of the lower valley where the village lies. The world disappears in an instant: one moment there is grass and flowers and the little houses far below them, and the next there is nothing but pale grey pearlescence, the stony path and nothing beyond it, as if everything else has been cut away and flung into nothingness. It is unsettling, even though Fili knows this path as well as he knows the eyes of his mother or the voice of his uncle. They do not speak, but only shiver and hope that rain is not on the way.

They are only a quarter of the way down the path when Fili realises that they are not to be lucky in this, either. The rain is sudden, sharp. It is not the soft showers of a spring day, nor even the heavy cloudburst of summer. It is the driving, icy rain of winter, that blurs Fili's eyes even with his hood raised. The path grows slick and black in a moment, slippery and treacherous. Fili looks back at Kili, looks to see that he is moving slowly, keeping close to the rock wall. He is glad that he is in front, and can set the pace.

But it is not the rain that proves their undoing, in the end. For when they are half-way to the valley floor, and Fili, reaching a bend in the path, is turning his head to look at Kili once again, the dull grey emptiness around them lights up so that it seems for a moment that they are standing in a ball of radiance, and there is an ear-splitting noise immediately above and around them, as though the very sky itself were being torn in two. Fili, alarmed and half-blind with the light, steps back. And for a moment, it seems he is suspended, watching Kili's eyes widen in horror and realising what it is he sees. For a moment, he hangs still and knows that he will fall, and knows that the fall will kill him, and feels a strange sort of peace, to have nothing left to do but accept.

Then he falls, and the peace is gone. His stomach swoops within him, the wind blows his cloak across his face, and somewhere above him he hears a dreadful wail that tears at his heart. He strikes the path below, a narrow ledge, and feels his ribs snap before he is falling again. This time, he strikes nothing. And then everything.

When Fili opens his eyes, it is to find himself lying awkwardly half on his back, with a heavy weight on his chest. It is raining still, and the fog still curls tightly around him, but beneath his palms is green grass and sodden wildflowers, not the dusty stone of the narrow path. He wonders, for a moment, if he dreamed the fall, and is still up in the high valley with Kili. Then he tries to sit up, and finds that he is with Kili indeed, but they are not in the high valley. They are at the foot of the path, and the weight on his chest is his brother, who is dead.

He opens his mouth, but all that comes out of it is a terrified groan. Kili's face and the front of his tunic are covered with blood. His eyes are closed, and his chest does not move, and when Fili's shaking fingers find his neck, the skin is cool and there is no pulse of blood beneath it. And yet it is not possible. It is not. It was he who fell, he - it cannot have been a dream, for here he is, at the foot of the path - and yet it is Kili who lies silent and breathless and bloody. It cannot be.

"Kili," he croaks, searching desperately for a wound on his brother, for a source of the blood - perhaps he can stem it somehow, perhaps he can heal the wound and then his brother will not have died - and finding nothing. "Kili, no. No." And it is then that he remembers, this strange power of his that he has not had to use in decades, and without another thought, he pulls Kili into his arms, holds him tight, tight, and buries his face in his brother's blood-stiff hair.

"Don't die," he whispers. "Don't die, don't die. Kili, Kili."

But there is no pull of sleep, no drifting away. There is no life returning to his brother. He clutches Kili to him and repeats the words, over and over, and yet it does not happen as it has four times before. And it is not until he has fallen over the edge of despair and feels half-mad, feels that if he holds Kili any tighter that he might break his ribs, that he remembers that his own ribs are broken. He knows nothing of the other injuries he sustained in the fall, but he knows that his ribs broke, because he felt them break. And yet. And yet they are whole.

It is then that Fili feels a glimmer of hope. He shifts, still clinging to Kili with one arm, and feels along his ribcage. It is sore; but it is the soreness of a recently-healed wound, not a fresh break. A thought grows in his mind, one he hardly dares to contemplate, and he touches his own face, drags his fingers across it. They come away with dried blood thick under the nails. His hair, too, is matted, much more so than Kili's. His clothes are stiff and dark.

It is not Kili's blood. It is his blood. It is his.

"Kili," he says again. His voice is hoarse; he does not know how long he has been repeating his brother's name, but he thinks he was not always whispering it. His fingers find Kili's neck once more and press, deeper this time, and he forces himself to sit quiet and ignore the thundering of his own heart. Kili's skin is still cool, but it is not cooling. It is the cool of someone who has lain out in the rain for too long. And on the very edge of Fili's senses, there is a thud. Another. Slow and quiet, so very quiet. But unmistakeable: the sound of Kili's heart measuring out the moments of his life. Those moments are not yet all told: Kili is alive.

Fili does not cry often, has not truly cried for years. But here, lost in this strange, grey world that extends no further than twice the reach of his arms, lost in this nothingness with his silent brother who lies pale and still and is not dead, he weeps.

Kili does not wake. Fili, who has slept this sleep himself more often than he likes to consider, knows it is likely to last a day and a night, if not longer. And yet, they are still three miles from home, and the rain still drives mercilessly down, and Kili's skin is not the cool of death, but it is cool nonetheless, cooler than Fili would like. It is not the first time he has been far from help with his brother unable to walk; but he is older, now, and a great deal stronger, and although Kili has surpassed him in inches, his shoulders have not broadened as Fili's have. Fili is older, now, and he can take up the burden of his brother which always defeated him before.

He carries Kili over his shoulder. It is an awkward journey, for he keeps one hand wrapped always around Kili's wrist, his fingertips pressed against the pulse point, to assure himself that his brother's heart still beats. He is stiff and sore, not just his ribs but his head, his arm, his knee. He is a little light-headed, which is no surprise, considering how much blood there is on his clothes. But dwarves are made to endure, and he endures.

When they are almost home, Kili's arm twitches in his grip. He groans, and Fili shifts his weight hastily, lays him down on the grass and props him up with one hand.

"Kili," he says, seeing that his brother is trying to open his eyes. "Kili. Are you awake?"

Kili's eyes open a crack, and he speaks. The words are garbled, unintelligible. He seems to be trying to reach for Fili, but before Fili can take his hand, he is suddenly and copiously sick. The worst of it lands on Fili's breeches, and he wonders later if this is Kili's revenge for the long-ago ruined boots. But he does not wonder this in the moment, too busy worrying what it might mean that his brother is vomiting, too worried to remember that once he did the same thing in the same situation. He holds Kili up, tries to pull his hair out of the way. It is too late, of course, and Kili seems to have done what he woke up to do, and is unconscious again within moments. When it becomes clear that there will be no more vomit, Fili cleans himself off as best he can and lifts Kili onto his shoulder again.

It is a long walk home.

Kili does not wake again until the following afternoon. The rain eases, but the fog does not lift, and Fili does not leave the house, barely even leaves the bed until Kili's breathing becomes clear and obvious at some point during the night. He soaks their clothes in the hope of saving them, cleans the blood from Kili's skin and his own - and he almost jumps out of his skin when he sees himself in the mirror, for his face and hair are dark with blood, as if he has had it poured over his head - and then simply sits. The house, wrapped in fog, seems to have become a world all of its own, with nothing else beyond, and Fili sits still and silent with his still, silent brother and feels something that he has felt rarely in his life before. He is lonely.

He understands, now, what Kili meant, all those years ago, when he said I don't want to see you like that. He thought he understood it at the time, but now, seeing Kili so still, when he is always moving and making noise even in his sleep, now he realises he did not, not really. But now, now he knows. He does not want to see this, either. He does not want to see this ever again.

When Kili wakes at last, Fili is there beside him. Kili, seeing him there, opens his mouth to speak, but seems to have no words. He raises shaking hands, grasping for Fili, and Fili lets himself be pulled down, though Kili's grip is weak and faltering. He presses his forehead to Kili's, and Kili tangles his fingers in Fili's hair and stares at him, tears standing in his eyes.

"You're alive," he whispers, as if he is afraid that if he speaks too loudly it will not be so.

"I am," Fili replies. His voice is rough, unused for a day and a night. But he is alive.

Kili closes his eyes, then, and the tears spill over his cheeks. "Thank you," he whispers. "Thank you."

But it is not Fili he is thanking. It cannot be Fili, for all he did was fall and let Kili catch him.

It is hours before Kili is calm enough to have a sensible conversation. He is still exhausted, barely able to move from the bed, but if Fili moves too far away he will try and follow. After the third incident of turning to find his brother collapsed on his knees behind him, Fili sits beside him and lets him touch the sore spot on the side of his head, lets him assure himself that it is truly whole. He does not know what Kili saw when he reached the bottom of the path, but he saw the blood, and he is only glad, only selfishly glad that, for all the times he has held his dying brother in his arms, he has never seen such a sight himself.

In the evening, Kili manages to get up and sit at the table, though he barely has the energy to do more than pick at the food Fili puts before him. He watches Fili, intent. And then, at last, he speaks.

"I did that," he says. "I brought you back."

Fili nods. He has had a long day and night of silence and stillness to consider this. It frightens him - and yet, it fills him with an odd sort of warmth at the same time. But he is not Kili: he does not see this as a reason to throw caution to the winds. If anything, he will be more cautious from now on. To know that his brother can save him in this way - it gives him all the more reason to never need saving.

"Did you know I could do it, too?" Kili asks him.

"Of course not," Fili says, astonished that he would even ask. But Kili is still young enough to think that Fili must know everything, even if it flies in the face of common sense and evidence both. It has never even occurred to Fili to wonder if Kili can help him as he helps Kili. That has never been how they are, the two of them. Not until now.

"I didn't know," Fili says again. He points at Kili's food. "Eat," he says.

Kili lifts his fork, but does not put it in his mouth. "What if there's something wrong?" he asks. "It's not normal."

Fili remembers what Oin said, many years ago. Dark magic. And he remembers his mother's reply.

"You saved me," he says. "Does that seem wrong?"

"No," Kili says. He stares at Fili. "I saved you," he says, very quietly.

"Eat," says Fili.

And Kili eats.

Sixty-nine

Kili does not speak again of the thing that they can do, and Fili does not bring it up. All is as it was, except that sometimes Fili turns to see his brother watching him with speculative eyes. What it is that he is wondering about, Fili does not know. He does not ask. It is better, he thinks. Better not to talk about it.

And then, on a summer evening the year after Fili fell and Kili caught him, Fili steps outside the house to find his brother seated on the doorstep, holding a small, dark bundle in his hands. It is a bird, Fili says, a bird that twitches feebly in his brother's grasp.

"Smaller than your usual prizes, brother," he says with a smile. "Are there no deer left in the forest for your arrows to find?"

Kili frowns down at the bird. "It's dying," he says. "I found it by the stream."

"Then leave it," Fili says. "Perhaps it is diseased."

Kili makes a noise that sounds like agreement, but he does not set the bird down. Instead, he continues to stare at it as if it is the greatest of puzzles.

"Kili," Fili says. "Leave the bird for the foxes." Even if it were bigger, they cannot eat something that is dying when they do not know the cause. But Kili ignores his instructions, and suddenly hugs the bird to his chest, cradling it and stroking the feathers of its head. Fili is startled - Kili has never been sentimental about wild creatures, not since he learned that he could earn his uncle's praise by bringing them down with his bow. And this is nothing - just a bird, one of the many that die every year.

"Kili," Fili says again. "What is this, my brother?" There is something else at work here, but Fili cannot fathom it. Some days, he knows his brother better than he knows himself; others, Kili is like an impenetrable whirlwind moving through his life.

Kili holds still a moment longer, murmuring something to the dying bird. Then he sets it down on his lap and frowns at it.

"I'm trying to heal it," he says. "I wanted to see if I could."

Fili finds himself astonished. It has never occurred to him that this gift of his - of theirs - might extend beyond themselves. It has always been obvious: it is because Kili is Kili that Fili can save him. It is because he is Fili's brother, because it is Fili's first and foremost duty to protect him. He finds himself almost wounded that Kili should consider any other possibility. And that is not all.

"And what if you could?" he asks. His voice is steady, but Kili looks up at him anyway, frowning in surprise. He knows Fili just as Fili knows him, and he hears what Fili does not say.

"It would be interesting to know," he says. "Are you angry? Why?"

"Because I am the one who would have to explain to Mama why you sleep like the dead for hours on end," Fili says. "You would risk this, for a bird?" It is not the explanations that trouble him, truly, but the thought that all his own careful efforts to never need saving again might be for nought, that his brother might go about his life healing any and all comers and Fili would have to see him still and silent and have no recourse to call a halt to it. "For a bird?" he says again.

Kili's face falls. "I didn't think of that," he says.

"Aye," Fili says. No more words are needed - he has said you do not think so many, many times that he knows Kili hears it even when it is not said. And Kili does hear. He shakes his head and casts the bird away.

"It's done now," he says. "And it didn't work."

Fili does not reply to this. But in his heart, he is glad.

Seventy-six

In the long, long winter, Thorin falls ill.

It is the first time Fili has seen his uncle laid low. He has seen him angry - oh, so many times - has seen him sad, has seen him weary, has seen him wounded. But ill? No, never ill. It is not normal for dwarves. They are hewn from stone, made to endure, and Thorin has endured and can endure, more than anyone else Fili knows, except perhaps his mother. But a deep cut on the hand that was not cleaned thoroughly enough leads to an infection, and Thorin lies abed, glazed with fever, the sheets that cover him damp with sweat.

The house is quiet and still as it has not been since the fog of almost a decade ago, and before that, since Kili almost died when he was three and Fili was eight. Their mother works tirelessly, pounding herbs, making soup, boiling water. At odd moments, she sits by her brother's side and mops his brow. But for the most part, she is in the kitchen, giving a wide berth to the door of Thorin's little room as though if she comes too close the sickness will reach out and catch her, too.

"Why does Mama not come and help?" Kili asks as he and Fili are changing the bedsheets. Between them, Thorin shivers and grumbles. He has not recognised their faces for two days.

"She's busy," Fili says. "She's making food for him."

"She has made enough food to last until the remaking of the world," Kili says. "Doesn't she want to see him? Doesn't she care?"

Fili almost laughs. His brother is such a fool. "She cares too much," he says. "He is her brother."

Kili takes a cloth from the bowl of water by the bed and runs it over Thorin's face. "I would sit with you," he says. He does not say I did sit with you, but he does not need to for Fili to hear it.

"We are not all the same," Fili says. But he wishes that his mother was there.

That night, Thorin takes a turn for the worse. He shouts at phantoms, tries to rise from the bed, struggles violently when Fili and Kili hold him down until their mother sweeps in and seizes him by the shoulders, pressing him into the bed.

"Quiet, quiet, my brother," she says to him. "You are safe. You are safe."

Thorin calms, staring up at her with glassy eyes. When she lets go of him, he reaches for her and brings her forehead to his.

"I still have you," he murmurs. "They have not taken everything."

Fili stands at his brother's side. He feels weary, hopeless. Oin has said there is nothing they can do but wait. Thorin will recover, or he will not. Fili imagines a world without his uncle's glowering presence, and feels cold, nauseous. But there is nothing to be done.

If it was Kili, he could do something. He watches his mother and knows this. And he knows this, too: it is not dark magic. It is a gift.

Their mother falls asleep before dawn, seated beside her brother's bed, head pillowed on her arms. She still holds Thorin's hand loosely in hers. But Thorin has long since stopped shouting - now, he lies still, his eyes closed, breathing slow and laboured.

Fili does not sleep. He sits beside his brother and they wait. As the sun rises, Kili turns to him.

"Will Uncle Thorin die?" he asks. He is seventy-one, but he still expects Fili to know all things.

"No," says Fili. It does not feel true. "I don't know."

"What will we do if he dies?" Kili asks.

"I don't know," Fili says again. Dwarves are made to endure, he knows this. They will endure. But he does not know how.

Kili is silent for a time. Then he rises suddenly to his feet. "Perhaps-" he says, and then falters. But he takes the two steps to Thorin's bedside and reaches down, gathering their uncle into his arms, pressing his face into Thorin's neck.

"Kili," Fili says. It is a moment before he understands what Kili is trying to do, but when he does, he is on his feet, as well. "Kili, we do not know-"

Kili's body stiffens. He lets out a harsh noise and falls to his knees, rigid arms still clamped around Thorin's neck. Fili leaps forward, seizing his brother by the shoulders and trying to pull him away. But Kili does not seem to be able to let go, though his face is twisted in pain and his eyes are wide with fear.

"Let go," Fili whispers, afraid to wake their mother. "Kili, let go." Kili is shaking, now, his mouth falling open, breath coming in pained gasps. But he does not let go.

Fili takes hold of Kili's arm and pulls on it with all his strength. Sweat is standing out all over his body, and his heart beats in his throat. He pulls, jerks violently at Kili's arm. And Kili lets go, falling backwards, landing heavily on his back before Fili can catch him. His head hits the stone slabs of the floor with a dull thud, and he shakes and shakes until Fili can remember nothing but the seizure that so terrified him many years ago.

"Kili," he says. "Kili, no." He lays an arm beneath his brother's head to stop him from hitting it on the floor, and makes to pull him close. This, at least, is something he can do.

But Kili raises his shaking hands and pushes weakly at Fili's chest. "No," he says through chattering teeth. "No, don't do that. I'm not dying. I don't want you to."

He is afraid, Fili sees. Afraid, and in pain, but determined. He is weak, though, barely able to hold his arms up, and if Fili wanted to, he could make him better. Kili could do nothing to stop him.

Fili wants to. He wants to make his brother better. But he remembers watching him sleep, keeping his hand wrapped around his wrist to assure himself that he had not yet left the world, and he knows he will not.

"Sh, then," he says, holding Kili so that he does not hurt himself further, but not so close that he will push his own life into his brother's body. "Sh. You'll wake Mama."

And Kili quietens, shaking still, hands clutching at the front of Fili's tunic. After a moment or two, he closes his eyes.

"Can't heal Thorin," he says, through gritted teeth. "Now we know."

Despite everything, Fili cannot help but laugh.

"Now we know," he says.

They cannot heal Thorin. He does not wake that day, but grows only worse, and it is clear that the attempt that had such a serious effect on Kili had no effect on Thorin at all. But on the following day, when they are all hollow-eyed and silent, his fever breaks. They cannot heal Thorin, but Thorin heals himself. Dwarves were made to endure, and Thorin endures.

"It's just you and me," Kili says, when the fear has subsided and their mother is occupied with scolding Thorin thoroughly for his every attempt to rise from the bed. "Did you know that?"

Kili still thinks he knows everything. Sometimes, he is right.

"Yes," says Fili. "I have always known."

Eighty-Two

When Fili is eighty-two, they set out for Erebor.

They have been waiting all their lives, but now that they are finally on their way, it is not as Fili imagined. He and Kili have travelled in the Blue Mountains, but by the time they reach the Shire, they are further from home than they have ever been.

"Closer to home," Kili says. "Erebor is our home."

"Of course," Fili replies. But he finds he misses the little village, the sunrise over the mountains, the wildflowers. Their mother.

Kili thrives on the adventure of it all. It is more than forty years since he threw himself into the maw of the swollen river, and he has changed since then - but not so very much. Fili keeps a careful eye on him when he can, and joins him in his exploits more often than not, and all is just as it has always been, except that they sleep every night on the ground and see new sights every day. But when one of the ponies takes fright at nothing and bolts into the river, and Kili does not hesitate to fling himself after it, it seems to Fili that even the sights are not as new as they might be.

It is different, this time. The river is not small, but it is not raging in flood, either, dangerous, but not hopeless. They are older, they are stronger, and Fili does not stand helplessly on the bank, but follows after his brother, gasping at the shock of the cold water, reaching to help Kili hold on to the pony's bridle as it rolls its eyes and snorts. They work together, shoulder to shoulder, the water flowing up to their chests, ignoring the shouts of the dwarves on the bank. They are solid, immovable. They will not be swept away.

They manage to wrestle the pony back into the shallows. Kili grins at him, eyes alight with the thrill of it, and he grins back, for he has never been able to resist his brother's joy. And after all, this time they are not mischievous, not skirting the rules or outright breaking them. They are helping.

And then the pony slips, halfway up the bank, and rears in fright, striking out with its hooves. One catches Fili on the temple. The pain is blinding, dazzling. He feels weightless, he is nothing but pain. And he is cold. He is cold.

All sound ceases, replaced by an echoing silence, and when Fili gasps, he breathes in water. He is in the water. He is in the water.

He struggles, his head throbbing. There is water in his ears, his eyes, his mouth. There is water in his lungs. The world is dark, silent, cold. It reaches down his throat to choke him. Somewhere there is a world of light and air and people. He was there only moments ago, only moments. And yet he cannot find his way back to it. He can find nothing solid, cannot find which way is up. He is lost in this cold, silent world, and he breathes in water, frantic, and understands that he will never see the sky again.

Fili opens his eyes to see his uncle's face above him. Thorin is scowling, but this means nothing but that he is Thorin. Fili has a headache, but it is nothing to the rending pain of before, and he knows before he turns his head that he will see his brother lying as if dead beside him. He turns nonetheless.

"Thank goodness." This is the little hobbit, Mr. Baggins, who is hovering over them both with an anxious look on his face. "Are you all right?"

Fili struggles to sit up. A hand fits itself to his back, helping him. Thorin.

"I just slipped and fell," he says. He lays a palm over his brother's chest, but he cannot feel his heart beating through the layers of sodden clothes. Swallowing his fear, he moves his hand to Kili's mouth, and feels the shallow puffs of warm air against his skin like the first breeze of summer. "Kili?" he asks, because it would not do not to ask.

"He was pulling you from the river," Thorin says. "He fell."

"Dropped like a stone," Mr. Baggins says, gesturing nervously. "I can't think what could have happened, one moment he seemed fine and then-"

"He was kicked," Fili says. "The pony kicked him." It is not true, of course, but it is the only thing he can think of that will come close to explaining what he knows will happen next.

"Oh dear," the hobbit says. "Oh dear. But it seemed to me that it was you that was kicked."

"A glancing blow," Fili says. "I was only startled. But it caught Kili first. The pony must have been between you and him when it happened."

There is a moment of confused silence, and then Mr. Baggins opens his mouth again. But Thorin speaks before he has the chance.

"We were mistaken in what we saw," he says. "But Kili has a thicker skull even than most dwarves. He will recover, I do not doubt it." And when Fili looks into his uncle's face, he sees it is true: there is no fear, there, only mild concern. And he is not frightened himself - though he keeps his hand close to Kili's mouth - for this is familiar ground.

"We should keep him warm," he says. His own clothes are soaked through, but he cares little for that.

"Then we will build a fire," Thorin says. "We will journey no more today."

It is not until two weeks later that Fili comes to understand the meaning behind his uncle's lack of fear. They are camped at the edge of a forest, and Fili is filling his water-skin from a nearby stream when he hears his name being called. It is his uncle's voice, and something in the tone of it has him on his feet and moving before he has even had a chance to think. He sees Thorin, standing just inside the trees, and with him is the hobbit, and Kili, seated on the ground. Thorin is calling for him, and when he approaches he hears that the hobbit is speaking, too.

"Shouldn't we be getting Oin?" he is saying. "Thorin? I said, shouldn't we be calling for Oin?"

But Thorin does not call for Oin: he calls for Fili. He calls for Fili, and there is a note in his voice that has Fili suddenly looking more closely at his brother, who sits with his back to a tree trunk, one hand pressed against his thigh. There is no blood. And yet Kili's face is pale and set, and his skin gleams with sweat.

"Fili," Thorin says when Fili comes near. "A snake."

Fili stops, feeling a prickling fear in his belly. He casts around and sees the snake, headless now, curled in the grass. It is brightly coloured, marked with sharp-edged patterns. The fear in his gut becomes needle-sharp. He knows its kind.

"I'm going to get Oin," Mr. Baggins says, hastening away. But Thorin does not look at him, does not look for Oin. He looks only at Fili.

"Help your brother," he says.

Fili's mind is filled with questions, but he does not hesitate. He kneels beside Kili, takes him by the hand. "Come here," he says.

Kili, face tight with pain, does not object. There's saliva gathering at the corners of his mouth. Fili wipes it away and presses him to his chest.

Somewhere in the distance, he hears the hobbit's high-pitched voice calling for Oin. And then he hears nothing.

Fili awakes to find himself on a pony, with his brother seated behind him, warm against his back, one arm wrapped around his chest. It is not his pony, nor yet Kili's, but the sturdiest of the bunch, generally ridden by Bombur. He tries to lift a hand to take the reins, but he can manage no more than a twitch.

"You're awake," Kili says into his ear. "I've been waiting." His voice is not shrill and strained as it was in the forest after the boar. This is familiar to him, now, too.

"Thorin," Fili says.

But the word is more than enough to exhaust him, and he slips away again.

When next he wakes, he is lying next to Kili on the ground. It is dark, and the camp is full of the sound of sleeping dwarves. Kili is not sleeping, though. He is lying on his side, watching Fili.

"What about Thorin?" he says, as though no time had passed since last Fili spoke.

"He knows," Fili says.

Kili considers this. He is still reckless, still foolish. But there is something steady in him that has been growing since their journey began. "About you?" he says. "Or about both of us?"

Fili thinks about how calm Thorin was when Kili lay as if dead by the river. "Both," he says. "I don't know how much. We haven't spoken of it. But he called for me when you were bitten by the snake. For me, not for Oin."

Kili nods. "I remember, a little, at least," he says. "How long has he known?"

Fili shakes his head. "I don't know," he says. "Maybe just since we left." But it must be longer than that, or he would not have been so calm when Kili fell into the river like a stone.

"Do you think Mama knows?" Kili asks.

"Mama told me you would grow out of asking so many questions," Fili replies. He is exhausted. But Kili is warm beside him, and there is no bite to his words.

Kili laughs a little and lies down, staring up at the stars. "I don't think I ever will," he says. He bumps his shoulder against Fili's, then presses close. A snake bit him, but he is alive.

"I hope you do not," Fili murmurs. But Kili is already asleep.

In Lake-Town, Fili learns something new, and wishes he had not. Kili, still foolish, still reckless, is shot with an orcish arrow as they escape from Mirkwood, and will not let Fili heal him as they sit on the bank of the river an hour later.

"It's a scratch," he says. "If you fall asleep now, how will we carry you? We have no ponies. Fili, no." And he pushes Fili's hands away, and will not even let him tie the bandage around his thigh. But later, when Kili's skin is grey and bright with sweat, when Kili's hair is lank and his eyes shadowed, when Kili topples sideways moments after their uncle has set off for Erebor and left them behind, Fili thinks he was a fool. He was a fool not to see the sickness spreading through his brother's veins, he was a fool not to notice the pain he was in, he was a fool not to heal him as soon as he saw the wound. Now Kili is gravely ill, and although Fili knows he can remedy that, still, by the time he wakes, Durin's Day will be upon them. He will not step into Erebor at his uncle's side. He is a fool.

"Kili," he says, afraid as he always is, although he knows that he can help. He hears Oin demanding that he move aside, but he ignores him and holds his brother close. "Don't die," he whispers.

Kili leans heavily on him, panting in his ear. The skin of his neck burns against Fili's cheek, and his heart beats fast, far too fast. "My leg," he says, his voice shredded by pain. "Help me."

"I will," Fili says, putting a hand on the back of his head. "I will."

But he does not. He holds Kili just as he always does, but Kili's skin still burns, his breath still wheezes in Fili's ear. Fili does not feel the pull of sleep, but something else creeps through him, a strange, grimy darkness that crawls across his skin and through his veins. His breath becomes short, and he finds himself pushing Kili away, recoiling.

"About time," says Oin, pushing past him to peer into Kili's face. Kili only stares at him, eyes dark and afraid. "What ails you, laddie?" Oin asks.

Kili does not answer. But Fili knows: it is poison. It is poison.

Fili has held his dying brother in his arms four times in his life. He has sat by his side for hours while he lay still and silent. He has forborne to help him when he was asked to forbear. All these things he has done, and each time he has felt sorrow, and anger, and regret that he should have to see this, that he should have to watch as his brother suffers these things. But it is not until Lake-Town that he understands what this gift that he has been given means. What a gift it is. For now he must stand by and watch as his brother writhes and groans, as he sweats and twists the sheets in his fingers and stares into Fili's eyes without recognition. He must watch as Oin grows steadily less calm and confident, as the crease between his eyes becomes deeper and deeper. He must feel the heat from his brother's skin, never diminished despite the constant cool cloths they apply, must feel the growing weakness in his grip as he clutches at Fili's hands. This, he has never done before, never for more than a few minutes before the sleep took him away and he knew he would wake to find his brother whole. This is what has been spared him, because of his gift.

It is the greatest of gifts.

By the time the orcs attack, Fili is almost relieved to have some distraction, something he can spend his energy on that is not watching his brother die, inch by dreadful inch. He throws himself into the battle, weaponless, filled with a fury that he barely recognises as belonging to himself. But when the fight is over, Kili lies on the floor, and his eyes are clouded and grey, as though he is blind, as though he is already dead. The orcs are gone, but Kili is still dying.

It is the elf that saves them, in the end - saves Fili and Kili both. She commands them to bring him to the table, and he howls and thrashes and stares wildly with those dead eyes, and Fili holds him close and cares not for the filthy feeling that creeps through him, because if this is what is taking his brother from him, then he will have it take him, too.

But Kili does not die. Fili does not save him, but the elf does, with magic that is not what Fili has, and does not mean what Fili's gift means. He has never been more grateful to any being as he is when the grey clouds fade from Kili's eyes and he drifts into peaceful sleep. He stands in the corner of the room, within easy reach of the wall, because he is not sure his legs will hold him.

"That was a privilege," says Oin.

It was more than that, so much more. So much more.

It's not until much later, on the boat as they cross the lake, that Kili talks about it. He is weak, still, though he will not admit it, and his leg pains him: not just a nagging soreness, as when they heal each other, but something deeper. Fili watches the way his hand strays to press against it, and he knows.

"You couldn't help," Kili says, when they are halfway across the lake.

Fili stares at the mountain rearing above them. It is grand, majestic, just as he always imagined it would be. Yet he misses the village, the wildflowers, his mother. "There was something in you," he says. "A darkness. I have not felt such a thing before."

Kili shudders, presses his hand to his leg. "Do you think it's still in me?" he asks.

"No," Fili says. He has held his brother close, has felt nothing moving across his skin. He is sure. "The elf banished it."

Kili's face softens a little at the thought of the elf. But he is still lost in his worries. "I saw death," he says, and turns to look at Fili with haunted eyes. He looks older, has looked older since he awoke from his fever. But he will always be the younger of them, and Fili puts an arm around him.

"I will keep you from death, my brother," he says.

And although they both now that it may not be the truth any more, Kili allows himself to be comforted, and this is enough. Their mountain stands before them, and they are both alive. It is enough.

At the last, though, it is not enough. A comforting lie holds no more comfort when the truth is clear. Fili kneels on the battlefield, one eye closed and sticky with blood, one arm hanging useless at his side, and grasps his uncle's hand.

"Thorin," he says. "Thorin."

He hears a shout - his name - and sees Kili picking his way towards them. Half of his hair is shorn away, and he is limping - has been limping since the battle began. But he is alive, out here in the cold of the winter evening. He is alive.

The battle has passed on. Perhaps it is even over. Here, where they stood defending their uncle, they are alone but for the mounds of dead. They stood before him, defending him with shield and body. And yet still he lies here, bleeding from a great wound in his side, his eyes closed in his last sleep. He is not yet dead, but it cannot be long now.

"Fili," Kili says, breathless, falling to his knees on Thorin's other side. He takes Thorin's hand, stares at him, and then reaches over with his other hand and seizes Fili's forearm. "You are well?"

"Not so well, my brother," Fili says. Thorin bleeds, but Fili bleeds, too. He feels it inside himself. There is a tang of blood in his mouth, and he knows what that must mean. "I am half in my grave."

Kili nods, pale. "I will pull you out of it," he says. But as he reaches for Fili, he pales further, curling around himself. It is then that Fili sees the snapped-off shaft of an arrow protruding from his chest.

"A moment," Kili whispers, the breath crackling in his lungs. "Give me a moment."

"Aye, and all the moments to come," Fili says. "You cannot heal me, brother." He feels Kili's grip around his forearm tighten.

"I can," Kili says. "I can."

"No." Fili lets go of Thorin's hand and puts his own hand over his brother's. "How will it be, then, if you give me all your strength? I cannot let you."

"You cannot stop me," Kili says, straightening up, now.

"And if you touch me, how do you know it will be me that heals, and not you?" Fili asks. "If there is strength enough in both only for one, how will we choose which one is to have it?" He would let it be, would let Kili embrace him if he knew for sure that it would be Kili who lived, and not him. But if it is not - if it is not.

The question causes Kili to stop, his hand outstretched but grasping at air. "What can we do?" he asks, ever questioning, ever sure that Fili knows the answer.

But there is no answer. Perhaps one of them can heal the other, and perhaps not. But Fili will not allow it. He will not allow the chance that his brother could die giving him life.

"Find Oin," he says instead. "Find your elf. Find someone who will heal you. You can still walk, so walk. I will stay here with Thorin and wait for your return."

He does not look at Thorin as he says this, but Kili knows him just as he knows Kili, and his eyes narrow.

"You cannot heal Thorin," he says. "Remember what happened before."

"And does it matter?" Fili asks. The taste of blood in his mouth is growing stronger, the pain inside him growing worse with every breath. "I will not live, my brother. If I give all my strength and Thorin is not healed, what does it matter? At least I can say I fell defending him when I meet our ancestors." He reaches for his uncle, only to find his arm caught by Kili.

"Fili," he says, pleading. He still believes that there is an answer.

"I am waning," Fili says. He looks into his brother's eyes and wills him to believe it. "Let me choose to spend the last of myself here, instead of letting it slip away for nought." His uncle lies dying before him, and although Fili has always known that he is the king, in these past months he has felt it in his bones. Perhaps he will never be king himself, but he can at least give his people the king that they need.

And Kili's face grows slack in realisation. He lets go of Fili's arm and allows him to lift Thorin, to wrap his arms around him. But before Fili has his uncle close in his embrace, he finds that Kili is embracing him, too, embracing them both.

"No," he says. "Kili, no. You can still be healed."

"Elves, and Oin," Kili says. "I will no more be healed than you. I will not." And although Fili can hear the scrape of his breath in his lungs and knows from the angle of the shaft that the arrow is most likely lethal, elves or no elves, nonetheless he sees from his brother's eyes that that is not what he means. "I could not heal Thorin when I was hale and hearty," Kili says, "and you are neither. But perhaps together."

"No," Fili says again. Kili is the younger, the foolish, reckless, joyful child who needs to be sheltered from the world. It does not fall to him to protect. It falls to Fili, always to Fili.

Kili is still reckless, still foolish, still joyful. But there is something in him now, steadier, older. He looks Fili in the eye, and they are not elder and younger, but only brothers.

"He is my king, too," Kili says.

Thorin Oakenshield awakens to find himself stiff and sore, a great ache down one side of him, and a throbbing pain in his head. He is lying on a bed of furs looking up at a carved stone ceiling. When last he looked on the world, he was surrounded by mud and death, swinging his sword in the fields below Dale. But now he is in Erebor.

He coughs a little, his throat dry, and he hears a squeak beside him. Turning his head, he sees Bilbo Baggins jumping to his feet, reaching for a cup of water.

"You're awake!" the little hobbit says. "How are you?"

Thorin accepts the water, though he pushes Bilbo's hand away when he tries to feed it to him. He drinks deeply, and feels much refreshed. "The battle?" he says.

"We won," Bilbo replies. "Well, the eagles won, really. But they certainly wouldn't have been able to if the elves and dwarves and men hadn't fought so hard beforehand."

Thorin nods. The elves and men - he will deal with them later. But he has no more thirst for war, Arkenstone or no Arkenstone. Erebor is his. "And the others?"

"They-" Bilbo says, and then his eyes fill with tears. "Thorin, I'm so sorry - Fili and Kili -"

The breath stops in Thorin's lungs. "Both?" he whispers.

Bilbo does not reply to this, but his anguished expression makes it clear. Thorin, who saved Erebor for his people, cannot give it to his heirs. He has fulfilled his promise to his company and made a mockery of his promise to his sister. He is a fool, indeed.

"I should get Oin," Bilbo says, patting Thorin's shoulder and hurrying away. Thorin barely hears him: he is curled around himself, lost in this awakening to the victory he has dreamed of since the dragon came. When the hobbit returns, bringing with him Oin and Balin and Dwalin, he can scarcely bear to look at them.

"Now, then," Oin says, forcing him to lie back down. "Let's have a look at you." He pokes and prods, and Thorin stares at nothing until Balin sits beside him with a grave expression.

"Mr. Baggins told you, then," he said. He is not far from tears himself, Thorin sees, and it is a shock to see his oldest friend thus shaken. "I think they did not suffer, Thorin. They were together, at least."

"A mercy," Thorin manages, though it feels anything but.

"They fell defending you, shield and body," Dwalin says. His voice is hoarse, gruffer even than usual. "They are fêted as heroes in the halls of our ancestors."

"I would have them fêted here, in my halls," Thorin says, feeling fury stir within him. He hisses, then, when Oin's fingers press into his sore side.

"Does that hurt?" Oin asks.

"Of course it hurts!" Thorin snaps. "I am torn shoulder to hip!" He fends off Oin's questing hands, amazed that he should be so rough with so serious a wound.

"What do you mean?" Oin asks. "You have no wound. There is no reason the skin should be sore, unless you've been hurt inside."

"Don't-" Thorin starts, and then the words tangle on his tongue. He sits up again, waving away Oin's protestations, and peers down at his side. The skin is smooth, unblemished. There is no wound. No scar. No sign of anything at all. And yet, he remembers: remembers clutching at his side, remembers the blood gushing, remembers Fili's anguished cry.

"How can this be?" he says.

And then he knows.

"Dwalin," he says, turning sharply to his old friend. "Did you find them? Fili and Kili, where did you find them?"

Dwalin looks taken aback, but he is long accustomed to playing the loyal soldier, and he answers without question. "They were with you on the battlefield," he says. "Curled around you. They looked peaceful, Thorin. Like they were asleep."

He is trying to ease Thorin's grief, but all he does is spur him to action. "Where did you put them?" he asks. "The bodies?" He has a sickening vision of graves, or a funeral pyre - no, no, he will not think it.

"In the cold room," Dwalin says. "We didn't want to bury them until - Thorin, lie down, you are not well."

But Thorin will not lie down. The cold room is a great chamber near the peak of the mountain, where snow is brought year round. It was once used for the storage of food, and now, it seems, for the storage of bodies. He stands, fighting off the grasping arms that seek to push him back down. He is stiff and sore, but he is healed of the wounds he had on the battlefield, wounds he knows he had, and he can still run, if it is needed.

He runs.

They are there, in the cold room. They lie side by side, shoulder to shoulder, just as they did in life. There are many other bodies, but these two are set apart, and Thorin sees them the instant he enters the room. A groan leaves his throat, and he hastens to their side.

"Biers," he says. "Litters. Anything." He lays his hand on Fili's neck, his other over Kili's mouth. They are cold. They have been in this freezing room since they were found on the battlefield, and they are too cold.

"Thorin," Balin says. He plucks at Thorin's sleeve, his face kindly, wretched. "Thorin. They are gone to meet our forefathers."

"Perhaps," Thorin says, for he can feel no heartbeat in Fili's throat, no breath on Kili's lips. "I would not care to face my sister and say that I never made sure."

Balin tries again to dissuade him, but Thorin will not be swayed. And he is king: now he is truly king, and cannot be denied. Litters are brought, and Fili and Kili are borne from the cold room, taken to the warm pools deep in the heart of the mountain. They are stripped of their freezing clothes, and Oin gives a cry of surprise and touches Kili's chest.

"He had an arrow in him," he says in explanation. "I removed it - I didn't want him to meet his father with it in his chest. But the wound is gone."

And these words are the sweetest Thorin has ever heard. They lay shoulder to shoulder in the cold room, and although they slept as the dead then, and do so still, Kili's wound is gone.

There is hope.

Fili awakens to Erebor, and to his brother. Erebor is around him, above, below, the air that he breathes. His brother is lying on his chest, his hair trailing in his mouth.

"Move," Fili mumbles, spitting out hair and shoving Kili off him.

And then he remembers, and turns back, seizing his brother and dragging him back, wrapping his arms around him as if to let go would be to fall to his death.

"Ow," says Kili. "What?"

He is speaking. He is alive and breathing and speaking, and Fili feels his throat choked with relief and joy. He sees the moment Kili realises it, too, and lets Kili reach up to his face, to his chest, checking for injuries.

"You are well?" Kili asks, a little frantically. "You are not still hurt inside?"

"Well, indeed," Fili says. He does not even feel the exhaustion that is usual, nor the soreness, and he wonders how long they have been sleeping. "Although I think I have never been so hungry."

"Oh," Kili says, and then he sits up and curls around his stomach. "I think my innards are eating themselves." His eyes widen. "Thorin?"

Fili is about to reply that he does not know, when he realises that Kili is not looking at him. He is looking at the doorway, where Thorin stands on his own two feet, and wears a look that Fili has only seen from him once before, when he was eight years old and his brother was dying.

"Thorin," says Fili, a sense of unutterable relief spreading through every part of his being. For a moment, he considers that perhaps they are all dead, after all. Then Thorin crosses the room and seizes him and his brother both in a great, warm hug, and he knows that he has never felt more alive.

"My nephews," Thorin murmurs into their hair. "Are you well?"

"Mm," says Kili. "Hungry." But his fingers curl in Thorin's beard as they used to when he was a child, though he is older now, older and steadier and alive.

"Aye," Thorin says with a laugh. "Then you shall eat." But he holds them close a moment longer and kisses each of them on the tops of their heads. "Welcome to Erebor, my nephews."

It is not until long afterwards, though, when they are fed and watered and bathed, and have assured Oin and Thorin and Dwalin and Balin and Bilbo and perhaps every single inhabitant of Erebor that they are perfectly fine and do not need to rest, that they are finally able to leave the room and see this kingdom of theirs. They have been asleep for weeks, which accounts for their hunger, and for the fact that they both seem fully healed. Even so, Oin tells them sternly to rest, and sleep, at least another day, perhaps another week.

When he is gone and Erebor has settled down for the night, Kili turns to Fili with a gleam in his eye.

"Come on, then," he says.

"Oin said to rest," Fili replies.

"Oin," Kili says, waving his hand dismissively. "We've been asleep for weeks. I may never sleep again. And it's Erebor, Fili. It's right out there." He points at the door, and then climbs out of the bed, looking back at Fili with a raised eyebrow.

Fili opens his mouth to argue, and then closes it again. Erebor. They saw it before, when their uncle ran mad among the gold, but they spent that time building walls and watching armies mass on their lands and worrying. Now - now everything is different. And Fili has never, never been able to resist his brother.

A few steps from their room, they find a balcony that looks out over a great public square. There is rubble still strewn around, though it is clear that great efforts have been made to remove the best part of it, and the place looks a little shabby, deserted this late at night. Still, Fili's eyes widen with the grandeur of it. The balcony leads to a wide stair, and where that leads, Fili does not know.

"Oh," says Kili. He stands a moment, and there is a look on his face that Fili knows only from recent years, a serious, wonderstruck look. And then he turns to Fili, and the look is gone, replaced with a grin that Fili has known almost all his life.

"Welcome to Erebor, my brother," he says. And he seizes Fili by the arm, and turns to the staircase. "Where does this go?"

"I do not know," Fili says with a laugh. "How would I know?"

Kili shrugs. "You're Fili," he says. "You know things."

"Not this," Fili says. "This is something neither of us know."

"Well, then," Kili says. "Let us find out together."