AN: This is my first purely film-canon story. I watched BotFA on its opening night and while I enjoyed a lot of the film, I was not overly impressed with the changes PJ made to the deaths of our favorite Durins (eg. all of the Durins). While I definitely prefer the family dynamics and the deaths they are given in the original novel-as exemplified by my previous "With Shield and Body" series-I also have to admit, however, that there were a couple things in the subtext of how Fíli meets his end in the filmverse that definitely intrigued me. So I decided to add my spin to it because hey, I already put myself through the wringer once before with his book-death, why not put myself through the unnecessary pain of fleshing out his film-death too? Your call on which is worse.

Dedicated to TolkienGirl because whoa she writes great House of Durin stuff, plus we vented emotions at each other after watching the movie and she was remarkably patient with my all-caps review, lol.

Disclaimer: I own nothing Tolkien, but everything Tolkien owns me.

As soon as he sees the firelight leaping over the stony walls, Fíli knows that he is going to die. That he had made a foolish, foolish error in sending Kíli away, because always their strength has been fighting together. That even though fighting back-to-back with Kíli would be his only chance at surviving this, he will not call his brother's name even as the axes cut him down. It is too late, for the fire ripples over the walls before and behind him, and he knows he is truly and finally trapped.

(And Kíli would come. He knows that like he knows his own name. If Kíli heard even the slightest rumor of Fíli's peril, he would try to reach him even though it is impossible, and then Kíli would die, too.)

He fights in silence—no yelling of Du Bekâr in this narrow corridor, no shouts of khazad! Once, a blade passes his guard and sinks into his arm, and he bites his lip to keep quiet, sweat running down his face. Kíli is what he clings doggedly to in the whirling darkness, in his pain: Kíli cannot hear. Kíli cannot know.

The orcs do overpower him—he can fight only so long, even with the close quarters keeping them from easily swarming him, even as he swings his blades more fiercely than he ever has before, with a wildness he never before knew he possessed, raging with the desperation that beats at him beneath his fury. He knows that he is going to die, but he does not want to. Oh, Mahal, he does not want to.

He does not even notice, in the fight, that the orcs are keeping as silent as he.

It is only when they beat his swords from his hands—when they leap on him, clinging to his arms and dragging at his hair—that he feels a frantic flare of hope. Maybe, if they seek only to capture him, he will be left alive long enough for Thorin to come. Maybe, if they take him prisoner, he can escape. Terrible things happen to those orcs hold in thrall, this he has known since childhood, but if he can but bear it a little while, just long enough for his uncle to—

Azog, he hears one of the orcs snarl amidst a stone-clattering rush of Black Speech. Azog.

Hard hands begin to drag him further up the passage, shove at him from behind. And it is then, only then, that Fíli falters, remembering suddenly a grassy hillside on a balmy evening just outside the Shire, the quiet violet night, the stark black shapes of trees limned with the light of both moon and fire.

The giant Gundabad Orc, Balin had said, had sworn to wipe out the line of Durin. He began—

Fíli fights.

He struggles to break free, twisting his arms and trying to dig his boots into the floor, to fling himself down and out of his captors' grasp, but those hard hands are like iron and he cannot escape them. There are tears in his eyes as they drag him forward and up, up towards an archway through which he can see the white light of day. There are claws at his throat, in his hair, foul upon his bare skin, cutting through the leather of his coat.

He began, Balin had said in a voice both soft and sad, by beheading the king.

No, he thinks. No, no, no. It is all he can think, until he remembers, through the horror that has gripped him: Kíli is out there, still. Kíli is somewhere nearby. His prayer changes.

Please.

Please don't let Kíli see.

(He thinks of the way Balin had wept, even a century after Thror was beheaded before his eyes. He thinks of how little Thorin laughs, of how he could not bear to hear again even the telling of his grandfather's death.)

(He thinks, Thorin lost a brother at Azanulbizar, too.)

An orc kicks him hard behind his left knee so that he staggers and almost falls as they haul him up a short flight of stairs to that white archway. The sound of his own breathing is a thunder in his ears. There are only a few more steps left, and the terror is choking him. One more step, and—

(What was the last thing he said to his brother? Did he say goodbye? Everything is going too fast, and he cannot remember.)

And they drag him out of the darkness into the pale wintry sunlight, and he can barely see—can barely see anything, he is almost blinded and he shrinks back reflexively as the light cuts into his eyes, as they—they drag him, they shove him, hard hands and steaming breath dripping in the dazzling air, but—but there paleness upon paleness he can see the massive Orc waiting, and there's the blade, the blade in his arm, huge and wicked and curved like a dragon's tooth, and oh Mahal is that how he is going to do it, is that how—

He is pushed closer to the cliff's edge and he sees beyond the Orc, tiny and indistinct through the blurring tears in his eyes, dark and small on the ice field below—he sees Thorin, he sees Thorin. And he should not want it so, he should want his King far away from this place, but even now something in him, seeing his uncle, is crying out, reaching with both hands and sobbing safety and warmth and uncle, please, please—

Because Fíli knows that he is dead but oh, Mahal, he is right there, he's

Right

There—

"Run," he screams at the last, with all the bravery that is left in him, and it is almost a relief when he finally feels the blade go in—not severing his head from his body, no, driving through his back, forced through flesh and bone alike to protrude from just below his breast-bone, his lungs suddenly filled with blood, his whole mind white with agony.

He thinks he hears his uncle cry out.

(The last thing he clings to is that the last of his prayers, at least, was answered. Kíli is not here to see him die. Kíli is safe. Kíli is safe, he thinks, as the blood rushes into his mouth, as he shudders with the pain, as the Orc lifts the blade higher and it cuts even more and oh god, oh, god—)

And then everything—just—

Stops—