A/N: So I saw The Hobbit and these two are basically the cutest thing to ever cute help me.
Warning for implied major character death. Nothing actually happens in the story, but if you know how The Hobbit ends, then you'll know what I'm talking about. But I repeat, no one actually dies in this fic, so I hope the warning's not too off-putting.
Also warning for descriptive language and not a whole lot else.
I own nothing. All mistakes are the fault of myself and spell check.
It is a love story.
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Dwarves are made for the earth. They look to the ground so much that they very rarely grow far above it. They long for the soil and the rock and the tunnels. The only jewels worth searching for are the ones buried beneath their feet. All their lives they spend digging deeper and darker, moving further away from the sky.
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Elves are of the sky, the children of light. They look up towards the heavens and dance among the constellations, their feet seemingly not rooted to the earth. They dream of places unhindered by walls or by roofs, where all that is living can grow and stretch and bask in the sunlight. The most precious among them are named for the stars
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When Kili first looks upon her he thinks of light. Not the light of the stars, which he believes cold and distant, but the light of the fire, the forge. Powerful and unyielding, but necessary, vital. He sees nothing but her - no matter the fact that his life is in peril - her hair like flame and her movement like water as the spider she has killed curls its long legs over its body, and he finds himself surrounded by bows in the hands of elves.
She is like nothing he has ever laid eyes on before. Tall and slender and more beautiful than he imagines even the Arkenstone, and she hardly looks at him as she straightens, her fingers curling slowly around her bow. Elves are, of course, everything he has been told to despise, and even now her kind could easily be the death of his family and companions, but he can not bring himself to care. What other women could possibly compare? The dwarf maids he had once chased back home seem plain in comparison, squat and practically shaped. It seems daft that he once desired broad shoulders, muscled limbs and a neatly trimmed beard when out there, there had always been a woman made of light.
The fire that shapes the most beautiful of jewels blazes in her hair and her hands bring death but gave him life. He would allow her to take him anywhere.
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The next time he sees her, she swings the door of his cell closed in his face. He hears her speak, too, a response to his flirtation, though not a favourable one. He does not let it bother him, however. He may have a very long time to charm her, if Thorin can not negotiate the company a way out of this prison.
Her name is Tauriel, he overhears, and while it feels alien on his tongue, he repeats it in a whisper when he is sure no one else can hear, hoping to get the same inflection the elves use when they say it so casually.
She speaks with him, occasionally, as she does her rounds, but only in response to his questions and prodding, and her eyes are fixated on something more important up ahead. It is not so different from the dwarf lasses back home, he laments. Their eyes too are always watching someone else, no matter how hard he tries. Often they are on his own brother, even, who has a far greater claim to the throne of Erebor, and a full beard to match.
But she does offer words to him, something she does not seem to do for the other dwarves, as he listens for her voice when she is out of his sight. It is harsher than those belonging to the elves of Rivendale, but still so light to his ears. It is almost unsettling, the way he thinks of her, being as she is in so many ways the opposite of what he has been told is desirable. But she is brave and a warrior, and no dwarf could ask for more.
After he finishes what he believes to be the final meal of the day, he takes out the talisman given to him by his mother and rolls it around in his hands. When he holds it, it feels like home, and he finds himself doing so more and more often the closer they get to the Lonely Mountain. An odd action, seeing as it was he who insisted that he and Fili come along for the quest. Erebor is the home he has been hearing about in stories since before he could walk, but the Blue Mountains are the only one he has ever known.
She walks past as he runs his fingers over the runes carved into the stone, but she doesn't continue. She stops, and asks after his talisman. He finds himself telling her about his mother and her opinion on his sound judgement (not a positive one) as well as his promise to return home to her. In turn, she tells him of her people, and their love for the stars.
She smiles softly as he talks, and all at once he can see what the poems and songs mean when they talk about elves being the children of starlight. For starlight is not cold or distant or faint. It flares brighter than the rarest stone, and he can see it twinkling in her eyes and radiating from beneath her pale skin. It is the brightness that lights even the darkest of places, and his dwarven heart is changed forever. For though it is set on the mines and tunnels under the mountain, it years for the sky.
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Tauriel tells herself she does not have time to think of him, though she can not help but be flattered by his flirtations. She does not receive much attention from elvish men. For all she is Captain of the guard, she is still only a Silvan elf, and more than that, Leoglas' affection for her has not gone unnoticed. No elf would dare attempt to endear one so obviously favoured by the Prince, no matter that his feelings were not returned.
Truthfully, she does have much that demands her time - she has battles to fight, a kingdom to protect and soldiers to lead - yet she finds that she lingers near Kili's cell when checking on the company of dwarves each night after her patrol. She tries not to let it show, it would not do any good to let any emotions be known to her prisoners, but she can not help but answer the questions he asks, or respond to his jibes.
When she recovers consciousness after drinking far too much wine and finds the dwarves have escaped, her first thought is not one of anger, but of regret that she waited so long to hold conversation with him. He is certainly not conventionally attractive by elvish terms. Perhaps not even by dwarvish, she imagines, for his companions sport great beards, while he himself has only stubble. Though Thorin too does not wear one, so perhaps she is assuming too much. Yet she found him charming in his own way, and his face handsome beneath the hair, more like a man than a dwalf. Also, she was not lying when she mentioned he was tall for a dwarf, even it was only to rile up Legolas.
The anger comes soon after, and she chases after him and his company, right into an orc attack. Then she doesn't have time for any emotion, save a relentless desire to rid her lands of the invading force.
However, she sees the arrow pierce his leg, and she thinks of him telling her of his mother. The look of vulnerability and longing of his face as he spoke of home, the way he had watched her as she held his talisman with his eyes wide and even trusting despite the history between their races, and the way he had brushed his fingers over hers when she handed the stone back. And she feels her heart stutter, as though she is falling from the sky, to the earth she was once so certain she would leave behind.
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He murmurs her name as she heals him, and she can not help but look down at his face. He is sweaty and flushed and in pain, but she can't bring herself to look away. There are no beautiful words that she knows to describe him. Elvish poetry and song speak of trees and air and stars, and he is none of those things. He would look foolish dressed in any of the finery that elf convention deems attractive, for all that he is fairer and softer to look upon than his companions.
She thinks of the smile he sometimes wore, even trapped in the dungeons of her homeland; how it was bright and carefree, how it made her remember simpler things. She thinks of the way he fought, how he threw himself into battle out of loyalty and love for his friends. She thinks of the way her looked at her when she saved him from the spider, and again from the orcs, and the way he is looking at her now, speaking of her beauty even in his delirium.
"Do you think she could have loved me?"
And he reaches up and she reaches down and their fingers hold. She thinks "Yes. Yes, I could love him."
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In the songs, all the best love stories are tragedies.
A/N: I'm sorry, I'm sorry I have no excuse for this, all I can say in my defence is that I came up with this when I'd been raking for six hours in a paddock full of potholes and I was covered in hay dust and I'm pretty sure my knee will never recover from the amount of times it smacked into heavy machinery and I was bored and miserable and then this happened. I can't believe I wrote a(n implied) sad thing. Now I'm off to immerse myself in crack fic.
Now with sequel! The Best Love Stories