SON
by Swiss Army Knife

The first time Fíli heard the word, it was whispered. There were no other dwarves in the mountain village where they lived, but whenever one passed through, he felt their eyes as he clung to his mother's skirt. At the time, he hadn't known what the word meant, and the only way it touched him was the way his mother's hand curled in his hair until he made a sound of protest and she stopped pulling.

His father he barely knew until he was older. Víli arrived in the middle of the night, braids matted and untended. He looked broken in half as he leaned into Dís, who gently stoked his thick beard. Fíli had watched from a corner, wondering who this stranger was.

Eventually, the dwarf revived enough to eat, and it was as he swallowed the stew Dís put in front of him that candlelight revealed Fíli. It was the first time their eyes met, and the older dwarf appeared bewildered. Gazing intently, he looked at Fíli's wheat-colored hair, and his bushy brows shoved into a furrow.

"Dís?"

Dís looked up from the bread she was sawing and laid down the knife. "You've been gone a long time. He's already a child now. Come here, Fíli, and meet your father."

Curious but wary, Fíli obeyed his mother's command. She didn't like asking him to do things more than once, and he could see that she was especially serious now. He went to the side of the table and stood under the twin shadows of his parents. Though his heart was pounding, he didn't hold out his arms to be comforted. Even then, he knew better.

Father's voice was hoarse. "He looks small."

"Times have been hard, Víli."

Fíli flinched when a large hand reached for him. He regretted it immediately in the face of his father's disproving frown. Fingers scraped through Fíli's hair, which tangled as the coarse nails pulled, but Fíli endured the pawing until his father withdrew. Then Víli's lip twisted. He looked at Mother with a fierce look.

It was later, when they were alone, that Víli looked at Fíli and said the word, the one he'd sometimes heard before. Fíli didn't need to wonder what it meant after that. His father told him.

Father hadn't stayed for very long, but when he left this time it was for a lead mine and not for a battlefield. Some time afterward, Fíli noticed that his mother began to swell and grow. It perplexed him, but he liked it when she sat before the hearth and stoked her belly. Then her face, which he had always known to be lined with care, became tranquil. She even smiled sometimes. Fíli watched her hand as it made its gentle motions. He thought he remembered her touching him like that, though the memory was already faint.

Once, when his mother was far advanced in her pregnancy, she had called him close and put one finger under his chin, commanding his attention. "Soon, you're going to be a brother," she said. "This is what you can do for me. You can be khurm to him, my Kíli."

Kíli sounded like his name, like Fíli. Very carefully, he touched his mother's distended abdomen. When his hand wasn't smacked away, he let it move in a little circle. Aloud, he wondered, "Kíli?"

She nodded, head falling back. "Yes, I'm sure. A strong boy. Not very long now."

Fíli felt the warmth under his fingers, and the inkling that there was a person inside dawned for the first time. He'd seen babies. There was an old barn cat that scratched him because he'd gotten too close to her mewling litter, and there were chickens in the village, and other animals. Also big, chubby infants carried by the wives of Men. Fíli's lips molded into a knot of pleasure without him thinking of it.

His let his hand go around and round until his mother pushed him away.

He remembered the screaming, the night Kíli was born. There was a midwife in the village, but his mother was too proud to ask for help from those who were not her own kind. Fíli didn't know it, but if Dís had still been at Erebor when her time came, she would have been attended in a comfortable chamber with steaming hot water, clean linens, and the most attentive and knowledgeable healers. Instead she gave birth squatting on the shabby floor of their cottage, grunting and screaming with only Fíli there, and he was terrified because he didn't know what to do.

Finally, the baby came. His mother's deft hands worked on its nose and mouth, then bound and cut something with a knife. Mother was panting, but she still had voice enough to command Fíli to come closer and take the naked, howling baby. There was lukewarm water, and she snapped at him to wash the sticky blood away. Afterwards, Fíli crouched on the floor with the red faced infant squished under his chin, his arms barely long enough to stretch around the wadded blankets. He looked at his new brother. The baby scrunched his nose, making weak, shivery noises. There was dark hair pasted down over his flattened forehead, which was as wrinkled as an old man's. Fíli looked on with wonder and some horror.

"Kíli," he said out loud, just to try it, and the baby wriggled. A tiny fist opened and closed where it peeked out of the blanket. For some reason, it made Fíli's heart swell.

Suddenly, his brother was taken from him. His mother had cleaned up the mess perfunctorily, and now she claimed her newborn and shuffled wearily over to the bed. She stretched out on it, drawing Kíli close to her breast, and sighed with satisfaction. Her finger petted the dark hair, smoothing it until it dried and stuck up from his tiny head. She let him suckle, her lips turned up with fierce satisfaction. "My son."

Dís's other son trembled where she'd left him on the floor. His arms felt empty now without the blanket. His hands were sticky and in need of washing, but he wrapped them around himself instead. "Mama," he tried, wishing she would let him crawl up beside her, but she ignored him, even when he called her again. "Mama!"

Finally, he crawled onto the rug before the hearth and watched his family across the gulf of the room. He held onto the memory of his new brother until sleep finally took him.

Later in life, Fíli would be sure that people were born knowing how to love, because no one had to teach him to love Kíli. The malformed, tiny newborn had quickly become a loud, demanding infant with huge brown eyes and a head full of hair. He had strong, grasping hands and could hold his head up almost right away, and he screamed with his powerful lungs day and night for months.

Mother was very cross during this time. She couldn't work much because Kíli was always hungry. Fíli was hungry, too. His belly ached, and sometimes the smells in the market made his knees weak. Once, a woman had seen his hollow look and offered him a pastry. Overwhelmed, Fíli grasped the treat between his fingers and tried not to loose the prickles in his eyes. The woman petted his fair hair.

Then Dís tore the pastry from his hand and threw it into the street. Jerking Fíli away, barely holding on to a fussing Kíli in her other arm, she dug in her fingers and barked, "A dwarf needs no charity!"

Later, Dís had tanned Fíli so hard that he'd whimpered all night and couldn't sit down. After that, he learned to avoid looking at anything but his feet when they passed through the market.

One day, Dís shook Fíli awake early in the morning and wrapped a shawl around him to make a sling. She put Kíli into it, snug against his chest, then snapped up his hand and dragged them both to the forge. After that, unless the baby was being fed, Kíli was his responsibility. He sat outside of the ring of heat while his mother worked, moving things in front of his brother for him to grasp or singing fragments of songs he made up. At night, while mother rested, he learned to give Kíli a bath and make sure his linens were clean. It was hard, but Fíli didn't mind how red and cracked his fingers got or how achy his back was from carrying around a baby who was almost as heavy as he was.

He didn't mind, because when Kíli smiled for the first time, it was for Fíli. He flailed his arms when Fíli came near, and he made contented sounds when Fíli held him. As long as they were pressed alongside one another, he stopped howling during the night, and his first laugh was at the tickle of his brother's hair brushing his nose. Fíli didn't mind because the first time Kíli spoke, it was with his arms clasped around his brother's waist and in his high, baby voice, he said, "Fee."

Father came home again on a night when the smoke from the village chimneys was so thick that you couldn't see the stars. He arrived on the path from the north, but although he was just as bent as before, his eyes seemed less like a broken thicket, and his hand was firm around the pack cast over a knotty shoulder.

Fíli and Kíli were outside when he reached the cottage. Fíli was bringing down an axe on crooked branches to make fuel while Kíli squatted nearby in the dirt, harassing a beetle with his finger. Both lifted their chins at the sound of the stranger's approach, and Kíli got up and waddled to the safety of his brother's side. Their father stopped when he saw the two of them, standing so close that they cast one shadow on the ground. His eyes bore into Kíli. Then he turned and went inside.

Kíli tugged on Fíli's tunic. "Who that?"

Fíli didn't answer at first because he was remembering, and it made his stomach hurt. "That's Da," he said, trying to sound calm. "He's come home."

"Scary," Kíli commented, and his lip stuck out stubbornly as it did whenever he encountered something he didn't like.

There were plenty of things Kíli didn't like. Fíli had never known anyone so willful as his brother, who was full of insistent half-words even though he could barely talk, who battled over everything and threw tantrums when he didn't get his way. For the most part, Fíli cherished his brother's spirit, but tonight it made him uneasy. Untwisting the hand around his shirt, he took hold and said firmly, "Be good."

He led them to the door and peeked inside. His mother was embracing Víli as father rocked slowly back and forth, and when they finally pulled apart, Fíli saw her wipe her eyes. Yet she was smiling, a wider smile than Fíli had seen since the nights when she'd been waiting for Kíli. She toward the door and saw her children there.

Turning Father's shoulders so that he was facing the boys, she said, "This is Kíli, your son."

Kíli fidgeted as the huge dwarf gazed without speaking. He tried to sink into the space under his brother's arm, but Fíli knew their mother intended for him to be seen, and he didn't want to make her angry. Instead, he shifted Kíli in front of him and held onto his shoulders.

"Kíli," the older dwarf said, stepping closer. He reached out his hand.

Kíli didn't flinch as Fíli once had. Instead, he stuck out his chin, and a belligerent look crossed his face. He batted away his father's hand and cried, "No!"

Fíli's muscles tensed, but Dís just chuckled. She came beside her husband. "Kíli doesn't like anyone to play with his hair," she explained. "It's always hopelessly tangled."

"Bad faeries," Kíli agreed, relaxing. Looking up, not at their father but at Fíli, he asked, "Da?"

Until then, all eyes had been on Kíli, but now attention shifted. Fíli witnessed the moment his father's expression hardened, and the word burned behind his eyes without it having to be said. It made Fíli's throat tighten, but he swallowed with effort. To his brother, he confirmed, "He's your da, Kíli."

What Kíli knew about fathers was questionable. In all his rudimentary memories, there had never been one. The things a father might have done had been done by another, from binding his boots to soothing his tears. Still, Fíli could tell he was curious. He reached out to grasp the thick, coarse beard. "Big," he commented.

Then Víli did something that Fíli had never heard. He laughed. It came from deep down in his belly, and a light burned suddenly in the dark eyes that rounded the edges of his cheekbones. He turned to Dís with an expression of wild delight and gathered Kíli into his arms.

Dís kissed both their cheeks, one on each side, her eyes watering again. Even Kíli, startled by the sudden proximity, was so caught up in the warm reaction of his mother and this new thing – this father – that he didn't resist. Their three dark heads ducked close together as Dís leaned in, pressing her forehead to her husband's.

Fíli leaned against the threshold of the door. He watched and stayed silent, not daring to speak. Just as he had when he was a much smaller child, he knew better than to hold out his arms.

Author's Note: This started out as a prompt fill right after the first film when there was a lot of speculation about the dwarf diaspora in the years before the quest. If you're looking for a "how they were raised" story, this doesn't really fit the bill. It's more moody speculation about the vulnerability of women and children in crisis, and – to be honest – it's also pretty indulgent hurt/comfort.