The Games We Played

Skyborn Huntress

"Kíli! Be careful!"

Kíli, as usual, ignores his brother's advice and splashes his way out into the river. Kíli, as usual, forgets the precariousness of the stream-bed in his haste to refill his canteen and makes a wrong step between the loose stones.

He goes under, his flailing arms splattering one surprised Hobbit and an unamused Balin.

Fíli sighs when his brother's head resurfaces. Kíli's dark hair is plastered to his face and he's sputtering gracelessly, but he's laughing, too, so he can't be too badly hurt. The wide grin is still on his face as he gingerly wades his way back toward shore, where Fíli is keeping watch for the Company.

"Well, that wasn't so bad." He holds out his hands.

Fíli lifts an eyebrow, gauging Kíli's wicked grin and his outstretched hands. "What do you want now?"

"A bath. Mahal knows you could do with one." Kíli scrunches up his nose and Fíli has a sudden, un-princely urge to shove him back in the river.

But much as he would like to wipe the smirk off Kíli's face, Thorin has seen them. Their uncle paces toward them with an increasingly common scowl fixed in place, and his brow darkens.

"What in Durin's name are you two doing now?"

Kíli's careless smile slips away. "We didn't mean anything -"

"No, of course you didn't mean anything by it," Thorin growls over him. "Fíli, would you care to remind your fool of a brother why this racket is highly unwise?"

"Wargs on our trail," Fíli mumbles, acutely aware that the entire Company is watching them now.

Thorin nods curtly. He knows it, too, as he barely lifts his voice when he commands, "We move on."

While Thorin tramps off to brood in the brush ahead of them, and the Company gathers their things, Kíli rolls up his sleeves.

"Growly mood again," he comments idly, as if Thorin's mind changes with the weather.

Lately, it does.

Fíli doesn't answer. His skin is still prickling from the last glare Thorin sent his way – directed at him, not at Kíli, he's certain – and he mutters, "You shouldn't have done that."

Kíli shrugs, unaffected. He squeezes the water out of his limp hair, ties it in a lumpy knot at the back of his neck, and grins wolfishly. If there's one thing Kíli hates, it's doing anything proper and dwarvish with his hair.

But, that's Kíli.

Kíli has always been like that: so utterly oblivious to the judgement in their uncle's gaze when he looks upon his nephews. Fíli is duly conscious that it's not just a growly phase – really, as if their uncle is some sort of disgruntled puppy who doesn't know any better – and that, sometimes, they'd probably be better off listening to Thorin.

Once, he tried explaining as much to Kíli. In response his younger brother had huffed a little, crossing his arms. Don't make sense. Princes ought t'do what they want.

It's funny, but he can't remember the occasion now. Fíli creases his brow in thought as they set off anew through the woods (Kíli, meanwhile, dutifully drip-drips a step behind him).

An image of Kíli comes to him, much younger, a petulant curl to his lip and limp braids in his hair. The prince's braids. Fíli had taken to wearing them out of obligation as soon as his fat dwarfling fingers were nimble enough to make them without Dis's help; Kíli, meanwhile, hated them with a passion and practically had to be tied down before an important event to get him to wear the things.

Kíli has always been funny like that, though. He has nimbler, quicker hands for braiding, but he won't stand them in his own hair. He has excelled under the tutelage of the best swordsmasters Thorin could afford, but what captures Kíli's attention is the bow. (As if Ered Luin didn't think he was queer enough; now there are whispers the second-born has something Elvish about him.) Other dwarves burrow in deep mines for their gems; Kíli...well, Kíli climbs trees to get a better look at the stars.

Kíli has always been a right stubborn brat.

And, more than anything, Fíli has envied him that.

He envies that Kíli has daydreamed through all of Mister Balin's lectures on long-dead heroes and old customs; that he refrains from reading the loremaster's musty Khuzdul tomes because (so he claims) they give him a headache; that back in Ered Luin he can disappear into the woods, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, without a thought for the councils he's missing or the visitors he's spurning. Fíli envies that he can proudly show Thorin the doe he brought down with his bow and earn a smile, even if the thing's what makes Ered Luin whisper about their family in the first place.

But Fíli is not jealous. No, he loves Kíli, for all that his brother is different and wild and maybe (sometimes, when he drives Fíli up the wall he lets himself think it) even Elvish. No, he understands that Kíli is not like him; Kíli is not Thorin's heir, not the future Crown Prince of Erebor, and because of this he doesn't have to be responsible or respectable or even perfect.

Fíli knows that he's been perfect, or at least as close to it as he can be, but all that really means is that Thorin never had to worry about him.

Fíli is too old now to care about favourite nephews, but it would have been nice to have Thorin smile at him once in a while.

Even if he is too clumsy with a bow to hit a tree that's standing in front of him.

A twig snapping behind him is his only warning before Kíli lunges and grabs him – around the laden bags and shovel and other burdens – in something like a hug that knocks him forward three steps.

"Oh, thank you," says Fíli, who is now soaking wet, too.

"You were falling behind, Fee," Kíli says with wide-eyed worry that, for some reason, doesn't fool him for an instant.

"I'm sorry. My footsteps will be nothing but swift from now on."

Kíli grins brightly and nods, but he doesn't let go of him immediately, either.

Fíli smirks.

He's too old now to care about favourites, but he's pretty certain that he's Kíli's favourite above all.

End.