Tauriel (anotherworld) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2014-12-28 19:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, kili, tauriel |
Who: Tauriel, Kíli
When: Sunday night
Where: Potts Tower?
What: A reunion.
Rating: PG, there's no bloodshed. This time. SPOILERS for The Battle of Five Armies
The Lonely Mountain lived up to its name, she found. The dwarves may yet have better luck with Erebor, but for Tauriel, she vowed never to return there, not in all of her long days. There was nothing but heartbreak for her there, and she refused to lay down and die. Though it was midday, starlight twinkled, and Tauriel's love of the stars beckoned her to it. As it turned out, walking in starlight hurt beyond measure. They told her this realm was Earth, but it was no Earth she heard of. She recognized no markers or names. There was something dwarfish about the hardened steel buildings, though there was no harmony with nature. There had to be something natural about this place; there were men, and men couldn't survive solely on buildings and smoke. Even their carriages had no horses or ponies. The more she saw, the tighter her hold on Kíli's stone became. Even the tower they took her to, though warmer than many of the surrounding buildings, still rang of falseness. With her elf eyes, she could see several small trees halfway to the top of the building. They could hardly sustain anything, let alone a building of this size. Where was the water? How did these men survive? The flat card they had given her was called a keycard, but it appeared as no key she had ever handled. It took too many attempts until there was a tiny beep, a click, and the light above the door turned from red to green. Inside was another story altogether. Tauriel stood in the doorway, surveying the scene with scrutiny. Some objects were familiar - seating, windows, more doors. Others were not - a flat black object facing the long seating, gadgetry on the walls, marked with runes of their own. Her curiosity was piqued, and yet, she still stood outside the doorway for quite some time. Kili had arrived in this realm screaming his brother’s name, his heart full of rage and grief and vengeance, his skin and armor covered in blood and dirt. It was not a graceful arrival, nor was he easily calmed. He didn’t attack - that was not his way - but he was defensive and protective of himself in a world he did not understand, faced with people who could not give him the answer he sought. How could he go home? There was still a war to be won. Once he was assured he wouldn’t be harmed, he peppered the humans with questions: was his uncle here? The rest of his company? His cousin Dain? Surely they were all needed on the battlefield instead, but if he could be ripped from the clutches of death, then so could they. But they hadn’t been, to anyone’s recollection. Only him. The world outside was just as troublesome and confusing, but Kili looked upon it with wonder. Stone and metal combined in ways he’d never seen before, and he didn’t understand - though he wanted to, desperately. He realized quickly that he didn’t care for the elevator, and so took the stairs to the floor he’d been assigned to. (Was he really supposed to live above ground like this? He shuddered at the thought.) In the hallway was a sight he wasn’t sure he’d ever see again. “Tauriel?” he called out with disbelief. He knew it was her - in his heart, he knew. He would know her anywhere, through the densest fog or heaviest blizzard. His heart knew. They'd told her that there would be men who would know her here. There was a story being told -- shown, the said -- and she was a featured player. They all were. Songs and stories would be told of the battle, she was sure. She just wasn't sure why she would feature. Her head whipped to the side at the sound of her name, toward the voice. It was so familiar, and yet it could not be. That face, though. For what felt like an age, Tauriel stared at Kíli's face. There was no pallor of death upon his lips, and no wound in his heart. He was still flush from the cold and battle, though she knew that this could not be. In truth, it took less than a second for her mind to take in all of this. Her feet moved swiftly, gracefully as she crossed the corridor toward the dwarf with purpose. However, there would be no happy reunion. Tauriel's daggers were ripped from their place and crossed one another in their clamor to reach his neck. She backed the foul creature up against the wall, pressing those blades so close to the arteries in his neck. "You cannot be! What trickery is this?" When she first turned to look at him, a wide smile crossed his face. He'd been certain he'd never see her again. Despite the promise he'd given her, the odds had been very slim once the battle had begun. But now, here… they were alive and well, even if they were far from home. His smile quickly faded as his eyes took in her demeanor. She looked as though she'd been crying, and she wasn't approaching him as he thought she would. She looked furious. He should have tried to get out of her way once she pulled her daggers out, but she was too fast for him. "No --" His eyes grew wide and he stretched his neck, trying to back away from the blades as much as he could. "It's not a trick. It's me." She had to recognize him. "Tauriel, please." From his position, he thought he might be able to hit her - but not before she could at least cut him well and good. He could try to reason with her, instead. "This isn't a trick." "You are some foul vision meant to cause more grief." Thranduil could not conjure or anything of the like. Nor did she think he would, not after their heart to heart. They seemed to come to some sort of understanding, and perhaps Tauriel knew why the Elf-King held himself and his people so isolated from the rest of Middle-Earth. She was weary, so weary from battle and injuries, from all the death around her. So many died, and all she could think about was the life of one dwarf. When the starlight took her, she felt Kíli's hand slipping from hers. He was fading away, or she was, and she'd heard stories of elves who died of broken hearts. Lúthien and Beren were well known stories among their halls. Though in Mirkwood, they were stories of sadness and caution. She would not have been surprised to be among those numbers. She could no longer hold in her grief. False vision or not, there was something to be said for taking comfort in it. Tauriel dropped the daggers as she fell to her knees. She was face to face with Kíli. Her face was wet with tears that once again could not be controlled. She managed to choke out, "I tried to save you, and I -- " Her voice failed her. "I failed you. I failed your mother." In an instant, he understood: something terrible had happened to him. He knew why she looked the way she did, he knew why she had approached him the way she did, full of anger. He knew, and he felt his chest tighten. It was one thing to accept that he might not return from a battle, but it was another to be face to face with the reality of one's own death written in the face of another person. Truth be told, he hadn't expected to return from Ravenhill, not after the orcs had killed Fili. Before that, he'd fully intended on returning to her, but that had been a turning point. "No, you couldn't ever fail me," he murmured, reaching out to cup her cheek with a rough hand. What was done was done, and he wouldn't have chosen anything else. His people were forged in battle and strife, and his brother's death had to be avenged. "Some of us are not long meant for the world." He thought of his brother, and their mother waiting at home for sons who would not return alive. "And I am here now." Tauriel did not know what she expected when his fingers met her cheek, but there were no wisps of smoke or sudden disappearance. There were callouses and battle wounds cleaned up or covered with strange cloth. This fantasy even had the scent of war and sickness. It was a very vivid fiction. One that she could reach out and touch. One she could pull close and embrace as if her very life depended on it. It did not matter to her that burying her face against his neck would be completely unacceptable in any realm. Where they'd been tentative before, hesitant and respectful of each other's duties, none of those same responsibilities carried over here. He eased his arms around her and held on, wanting to banish the grief from her heart and soothe her pain. And even if there were other dwarves or other elves here, Kili wondered, would it even matter anymore? Didn't they deserve some happiness, after everything they'd been through? He only wished he could have brought her home to meet his mother. "It's alright now," he whispered, smoothing a hand gently over her hair. "We found each other again. Just like I knew we would." Tauriel hadn't had the same faith. She wasn't even sure what she felt for him until the moment that Bolg plunged his weapon into Kili's chest. The world had never been very fair to her, taking her parents from her so early in life, and then again, with her first blossom of love. She'd had enough heartache for one life. And here he was, talking as if he'd had every faith in the world. She recalled that the men in the hall she arrived in had told her that people come from divergent points in their time. She hadn't believed them; hearing it and seeing it were quite different. Eventually her tears quieted. Perhaps this was one of those times, and she should be thankful. Tauriel did not move away from him, simply moved her head from neck to chest, listening intently for his heart beat. "You have more faith than I have ever had in anything." Some called it faith. Others, Kili knew, called it naivete. Kili wasn't sure which to call it, except that he'd had hope, right up until his brother had been killed. He didn't have much to hold onto besides hope -- hope that they would right the wrongs that had been done to their people all those years ago, hope that he would see his family's kingdom restored, hope that he would see his mother again, that he would see Tauriel again, that they would survive. It had given him something to fight for. Kili shrugged. "What's life without faith?" It seemed simple to him. "Without hope?" He didn't want to go the way of his forebears, hiding away in squalor, wallowing in hills that could never be home. "You had faith in me, didn't you?" In us. In what could be. "No one ever had - not like that." The truth was simple, that Kili seemed the kind of dwarf, the kind of person who believed in things so strongly, saw things with such youthful eye. It wasn't a matter of having faith in him, so much as knowing the foul things that were out in the world. Even their first meeting was fret with danger, and every meeting since. And yet, she had faith that he would do everything he could to see her again. He had battled through orcs to rescue her from Bolg, and even as he was dying, until his very last breath, believed that he fought against his death. Finally, she withdrew enough to look upon his face. She allowed herself to smile at the sight. "It really is you?" Her smile brought one back to Kili’s face - at both the relief of being alive and knowing he could make her smile like that. It lit up her entire face in a way he hadn’t seen before. “Kili of the House of Durin,” he began, his smile turning playful and cheeky. He bowed his head slightly, as much as he could in their embrace. “At your service.” The mention of his family line sent a cold chill through his bones, however, and he tried to ignore it. “For as long as you’ll have me.” It was, perhaps, a touch dramatic, a bit too bold, but Kili had always lived with his heart on his sleeve. There was no sense in hiding it now. Tauriel got to her feet, rising in that strange, ethereal way that elves had that didn't seem real or natural. Though she wasn't entirely convinced this wasn't an extremely vivid dream, she thought there were worse things to imagine. She held out her hand. "Where have they put you?" The last time he'd taken her hand, it'd been to leave her with a promise. That they had a chance to start over now wasn't lost on Kili. That she appeared to genuinely care for him as much as he did for her wasn't lost on him, either. Someone - particularly an elf - wouldn't break down the way she had if it hadn't been for love. He took her hand and squeezed it gently. "1208. Do they really expect me to stay this far above ground?" Kili scoffed lightly at the idea. It was odd, but that seemed to be how the humans did it here. If he had to - well, he would make do with what he had. "Where are you?" He assumed her room must be nearby, or else he didn't know why she would be in this specific hallway. With a twist of her brow, she slowed her walk slightly at the mention. They'd put them in the same lodgings. She hadn't considered that at all when he arrived on this floor. Glancing down, she frowned slightly. "I'm in the same quarters…" The same quarters? The significance wasn't lost on Kili, either. Though it'd be a lie if he said he hadn't imagined sharing quarters - in a sort of wistful way - he also understood how unlikely it was to ever come to pass. Or so he thought. He offered a smile. "I won't intrude on your privacy," he told her, in an attempt to make the idea more acceptable. "In any case, it's best if we stay close, until we sort all of this out. I'm unarmed, and we don't know what sort of dangers exist here." It was safer this way, even if it was unusual. He took a step down the hallway towards their quarters and then hesitated, turning to her abruptly. If she'd seen his death, then she was from his future - and if she was from his future, she would know more of what had transpired on the battlefield. "Did we win? What news of my uncle?" Whatever relief she felt was washed away by a second wave of grief. If he had come from before his death, how long before his death had he been pulled? Was there any point in lingering on the details? Tauriel paused, her footsteps halting as she drew a breath. She thought, if only for a brief moment, that she might instead tell him that she had most of her weaponry on her, and that should would not allow anything to harm him. His question, however, demanded an answer. "I am sorry, Master dwarf, but your brother and uncle were slain in the battle. Orcs of Gundabad came as a second wave. Your uncle… He died bravely." Had they not been talking about something so grave, he might have scolded her for being so formal with him. As it was, Kili was caught up in something else entirely. He let the news wash over him like a mudslide, and he could not hide the pain that flickered across his features. "I know --" He inhaled sharply. "I saw my brother." It was difficult to speak those words, but he had known that much. He suspected his own death wasn't far off. He had never been far from Fili's side, not once he had learned how to walk. Where one of them went, the other followed. Thorin, however… his death meant he was finally free from the pain that had haunted him for so many years, and it meant Dain would be king. Eventually, he nodded his head. "Thank you for telling me. Come. Show me where we're meant to stay." |