BatB Chapter One
Feb. 10th, 2015 01:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
youngarrow"Kili. Kili, wake up."
There was a hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently but incessantly. Kili grumbled and rolled, keeping his eyes squeezed shut and dragging his blankets around him until he was cocooned in wrappings like the littlest babe. "Don' wanna." For good measure, he burrowed farther into his pillow and lifted an arm to cover his face, completely covering every inch of his body.
"Kili." He recognized the voice now: his brother Fili, three years older and therefore allowed to stay up later until the men came home every night. Fili was everything an older brother should be, cheerful, friendly, dependable, steady, and certainly calmer than his rambunctious younger sibling - and Kili tensed when he heard the sharpness in his voice. "You have to get up, something's wrong."
"Wrong? Wha-" Winding himself into a knot in the bedsheets was an unfortunate habit of his, and it was a struggle to get himself out of it every morning, but this time was made worse by the sleep he'd been woken from making him still muzzy-headed. Fili reached forward to help, grabbing the blankets and dragging them down through sheer force, leaving his little brother kicking his way free and his dark brown hair tousled all around his head. As he sat up, peering through the tangled mass of hair, his eyes widened at just how pale Fili appeared in the light from the candle he held and the amount of worry in his bright blue eyes. His heart started galloping a mile a minute; even at seven, he knew he had a tendency to overreact to things, but Fili never did. "What's going on? Are you all right? Is Mam all right? What-"
"I don't know, Kili. I don't know, but Uncle Thorin's here, and he told me to come get you." He paused briefly, glancing down and back up. "Mam's crying."
Kili gasped, frozen in shock on his bed for a second. If Uncle Thorin was here, in their house, at this time of night... Unfreezing in less than an instant, he sprang from his bed, Fili catching him as he nearly tripped with his foot caught in the blankets and fell on his face. His brother also grabbed him before he could run from their room without anything on his feet, shoving his bed slippers at him, which Kili pulled on hopping from one foot to the other in as little time as he could manage. He didn't tie them, and Fili didn't insist on it, instead taking his hand and leading him at a fast walk down the upper hallway and the stairs to the first floor.
Fili halted at the bottom of the stairs as if afraid to go any further, and Kili crowded in behind him, clinging to his brother's hand as if it had suddenly become a lifeline, pressing his sharp little face into his brother's shoulderblades and afraid to look for himself. They could both hear it: the sound of their mother, their fierce, sharp, pulled-together mother, crying with little gasping sobs that tore at both their hearts and sounded completely unlike her. Their uncle's voice responded, even deeper than normal with something heavy that almost physically tore at his words and stopped them from moment to moment. Shadows danced across the wall opposite them, cast by the flickering fire in their sitting room, showing a person in a dress seated on a stool with her head bowed forward and a larger shape in trousers bent toward her as it spoke. Kili squeezed Fili's hand, suddenly terrified, and whispered as quietly as he could in the hopes that neither adult would hear him. "I don't want to go in there."
"We have to."
"But Fili-"
"I don't either." His brother squeezed his hand in return, and Kili could feel the way his fingers were shaking. "But we have to."
Gulping, Kili finally nodded against the back of his brother's shirt, and Fili stepped forward, drawing him along behind. Both of them moved slowly, Fili's boots making very little noise on the richly patterned carpet under their feet and Kili's slippers making none at all. So wrapped up in their own thoughts were their mother and their uncle that both boys were several steps into the room before either of them realized they were there. Thorin looked up, clearly catching their movement out of the corner of his eye, and both boys sucked in air: their uncle, already a fairly stern person, looked positively hollow now, paler than Fili and with pain in his eyes.
"Fili. Kili. Come here."
Neither of them wanted to do it. Whatever had happened, the longer they didn't hear it, the longer it wasn't real. Both boys looked at each other, silently fighting to see who would have to take the first step; as usual, it was Fili who began. He didn't let go of Kili, though, dragging his brother with him across the room as their uncle stood to receive them and their mother looked up, her handsome face streaked with tears and a hand covering her mouth.
Thorin knelt when they reached him, placing a hand on each of their shoulders and watching them gravely. "Boys... there's been an accident."
"...What sort of accident?" Fili asked, even though he didn't want to. "Accident" could mean something not so bad, like the time the year before Kili had fallen out of the old apple tree in the backyard and had to have stitches, or something very bad, like when Old Man Micheil had lost control of the horses on his cart and had been trampled to death.
The fact that their uncle couldn't answer the question right away told them both that this time, it was bad. Very, very bad. "...An accident at the mine." They waited again for him to find his words, almost holding their breaths. "...A segment of the mine collapsed. There are..." He breathed sharply, and Kili's mouth slowly dropped open as he saw tears in his always-collected uncle's eyes. "There are wounded, some severely. And there are..."
"-What? There are what?" Kili demanded when Thorin stopped speaking again. He didn't want to know, he really didn't want to know because knowing would make it real, but he had to know.
But the answer didn't come from their uncle. Their mother sobbed, a choked noise that turned into a squeak that frightened Fili more than anything he'd heard in his ten years of life, and rose from her chair only to push her brother out of the way as she fell to her knees before her boys and gathered them into her arms. Holding them tightly, more tightly than they were comfortable with but were too afraid to protest, she sniffed and managed to get a few words out. "Your father and grandfather... they didn't make it."
"And your Uncle Frerin is not expected to live the night," Thorin added, voice somber and clearly too far beyond sorrow to cry.
"What?" Kili asked sharply, afraid to comprehend it just yet.
Fili just shook his head, knowing exactly what they'd said but unable to understand how it happened. "But the mines are safe... how could that..."
"We don't know," Thorin answered as their mother squeezed them harder, making Kili squeak slightly. "But it did."
"It can't be." Fili turned wide, confused blue eyes up at his uncle, his head all he could move of his body in his mother's embrace. "It can't be, the mine's safe. You let us in there, you showed us where everything was and what it did, you wouldn't have done that if it was dangerous..."
"Mam, stop- Mam, you're hurting me-"
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Dis murmured, releasing her hold a little but not letting go of either one of them. "I just... I need..."
"You're wrong," Kili declared, not one note of uncertainty in his young voice.
"No, we're not, Kili. I wish we were."
"You're wrong, you're wrong," he continued insisting. "Nothing happened, Da's going to come through that door and tell you how stupid you are."
Thorin's eyes flashed. "Do not call your mother or myself stupid, young man, not now."
"You are!" Kili struggled, shoving at his mother until he wriggled out from under her arm, falling backwards on his little bottom as his balance gave way and shoving himself backwards along the carpet, glaring daggers at all three of them. "You're wrong! You're all wrong! Da's coming home and Uncle's coming with him and they're all going to laugh at you for being such fools and-"
"Kili-"
"-going to yell and scream and you're ALL WRONG!" Kili kept pushing away from the group, eyes scrunched together and tears starting to run down his cheeks that he didn't even recognize were there. "DA IS NOT DEAD! HE'S NOT, HE'S ALIVE! I WANT TO SEE DA, I WANT TO SEE HIM RIGHT NOW!"
"Kili!"
"NO! NO IT'S NOT TRUE, IT'S NOT TRUE IT'S NOT TRUE IT'S NOT TRUE-" Even as he turned over to scramble to his feet and run for his bed, heavy footsteps came up quickly behind him and large, strong hands caught him around the waist to haul into the air. Kili immediately began kicking his legs and flailing his arms and screaming as hard as he could, fighting to get away and striking Thorin several times before his uncle managed to pin him bodily against his chest. He threw back his head, trying to bash the older man in the nose, but his uncle caught that as well and pushed it under his own chin, holding him so tightly he couldn't move at all, only howl. Tears fell hot and heavy from his eyes, blurring his vision, and he could barely see Fili sobbing himself against their mother's shoulder as she cried into his tousled blond hair, and he could barely hear his uncle trying to calm him over all the noise he was making.
"Find a doctor, tell him to bring a sedative," he vaguely heard his uncle tell someone, probably Isbeil, the household maid. Kili kept screaming denials, occasionally changing to shrieks of pure hatred and misery, until his voice started to crack and fragment. After that he switched to howls of pain, but his little body couldn't sustain that much raw emotion for too long, and those quickly petered out to leave him clinging to his uncle like a barnacle and sobbing into his shirt. The fact that Thorin himself was finally letting the tears fall into his messy hair didn't comfort him; it only scared him more. For his uncle to be crying, that meant things were real. Things shouldn't be real, not these things. Never these things.
Kili never even felt the needle pierce the skin on his arm, nor realized when he dropped into sleep, still crying.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Waking was slow, his head muzzy and his mouth very dry, as though it had been stuffed with cotton batting in the night. Kili couldn't make a noise for several moments, couldn't even turn his head as he fought against the pull of sleep to open his eyes. Still, something must have shown through his ineffective struggles, because a warm, soft hand smoothed bits of his unruly hair from his forehead and eyes before cupping the back of his head to lift it carefully.
"Up y' get, Master Kili, doctor says you'll need this..."
A cup was pressed to his lips; water with something tingly in it washed against them until he could figure out how to open his mouth once more. His bleary mind finally placed the voice as Isbeil, with her gentle hands and gentle spirit, as she carefully splashed tiny waves of water flavored with mint into his mouth until he was capable of drinking on his own. His hands were shaky as they raised to take the cup, her own helping him grip until his strength came back enough to manage without dropping it, and with quiet words and voice she coaxed him to finish the drink to the leafy dregs on the bottom.
Once he was done, Isbeil placed her hand behind his back and helped him sit up the rest of the way, leaning against her shoulder and rubbing her hand in comforting circles against his spine. "How are y' feelin'?"
"...Fluffy."
"Fluffy?"
"M' head... s'like it's got stuff in it..."
"Ahh," she breathed in understanding, nodding a little. "That'd be the drugs. The doctor said childer might react strong to 'em, but you'll be up and runnin' around and causin' trouble before the day is out, he said."
Then she paused, the faint note of encouragement fading from her tone as her hand stilled on his back. "Master Kili... do you remember why y' had to take the drugs?"
Images drifted through his mind, slowly but steadily: his mother and uncle against the light of the fire, the view of the ceiling of the sitting room, screams of pain from a voice that was his and not his at the same time. "Something... something happened..."
Isbeil nodded, both arms folding around him and pulling him to lie more snugly against her side, one hand stroking his hair. "That's right. There was an accident - Mister Thrain and your father, they're gone, lad." The words were steady, but her voice was deeply saddened. Though she wasn't family, Isbeil had worked for their household for as long as Kili could remember, and held them all in high esteem.
He struggled a little in her grasp, but there was still enough of the drugs left in his system for him to have no real chance for escape; more so, while he slept, the awful truth seemed to have collapsed around him like a tower without foundations, trapping him in certainty there was no escaping. He still didn't like it, would never like it, but fighting it any longer was impossible. "I want to see Da," he whispered against her, eyes scrunching up against the tears that were starting to come.
"I know, love. I know." Her grip shifted around him, drawing him onto her lap as she'd done so many times before after he'd scraped a knee or a palm, kissing him on top of his head and cuddling him close. Kili burrowed in against her and stopped trying to hold himself back, the tears coming slow and steady as opposed to the screaming torrent of the night before. Isbeil held him and rocked him, murmuring comforting nonsense words and patting his back, until the tears simply couldn't come any more and he was reduced to sniffling against her blouse.
"We have to get you ready," she said quietly once the tears were done. "Your uncle wants to take you to his house to say goodbye to your... other uncle."
"He's still... here?" Hope kindled in Kili's breast instantaneously, his face turning to look at the woman who'd been almost an aunt to him in his short life, only to die just as quickly at her expression, and response.
"Not for long." Isbeil wasn't capable of hiding anything from him at this moment, not when her family was hurting this much, and herself along with them, her face clouding at having to dash his dreams. "His head and chest were hurt bad in the collapse, and he'd bleedin' on the inside. There's nothin' that can stop it. Doctor says he only has another day or two, at best, and he's not woken up since he was pulled free."
His eyes burned and his breathing hitched, but Kili was simply out of tears. He panted for a few moments, almost-sobbing dry heaves that faded quickly from lack of energy, but eventually nodded in reluctant agreement. With another kiss, Isbeil set him gently on the floor, then drew him over to his chest of drawers to find something suitable to wear.
In much less time than it normally took, since he didn't have the energy to fight it, Isbeil had him washed, dressed, and his unruly hair put to rights. Black was the color of the day, of course, since the family was now in mourning - at least Kili already had plenty of clothing in darker dyes, as they suited his darker natural coloring. Fili would be the problem child in this, but he did have a few things, and he'd already been taken care of. Once they were done setting him to rights (though nothing could hide his reddened, scratchy eyes), Isbeil took his hand and led him downstairs to where the rest of the family was gathering.
When he saw them step through the door, Fili immediately broke from his uncle to go to his brother. Kili followed suit, clinging to his older sibling with a strength he'd not had since he'd awoken. The room was more full than he'd expected, with a few of their cousins and partners in the business having come over, but there was one figure very obviously missing from the gathering. "Where's Mam?" Kili asked in a whisper.
"Still asleep," Fili replied just as quietly. "Every time she wakes, she starts crying again, and takes another draught." To anyone who didn't know Fili as well as his brother did, they would have seen a young boy mourning the loss of three family members, and that would have been enough. But Kili could see his brother was starting to fray around the edges, his voice a little more ragged than would be expected, and even at his young age he knew that Fili was trying to hold himself together for everyone around him. He pressed harder into his brother's chest, trying to tell him he didn't need to do that, but Fili simply patted his head and led him over to their uncle. "He's ready, Uncle Thorin."
"We'll be going in a minute," he replied, and Kili's eyed widened at how exhausted his uncle looked. He didn't need Fili's barely-audible whisper in his ear to tell him that Uncle Thorin hadn't slept at all the night before, not with those circles around his eyes, the pale cast to his face, and the ragged hoarseness of his voice.
Kili let go of Fili only to latch onto Thorin's coat instead, gripping the waist of the material in his strong little fists and looking up at his uncle anxiously, ignoring Fili's hiss of warning. "You're okay, right Uncle? You're not going to go away are you?"
Thorin could only blink down in surprise at his nephew's question. "Of course not, why would I be going away?"
"You look like Fili did when he was sick last year. When everyone talked about how he might be going away. Uncle Frerin's going away, I don't want you to go away too!" he said with more emphasis, though not yelling, eyes wide and frightened.
His uncle blinked down at him for several moments, trying to take in what the young boy was saying and finding it difficult. But, eventually, he bent down and scooped Kili up, holding him almost as closely as he'd done the night before as the boy flung both small arms around his neck, getting tangled in his long hair. "I'm not going away, I promise." He aimed his gaze at Fili as he answered, the troubled expression on his older nephew's face impossible to ignore. "There's been a lot to do last night and today. I'm tired, but I promise, I'm not going away. I'm not going to leave you or your mam again."
Fili nodded, once, obviously still hesitant after the events of the last day but willing to believe that Uncle Thorin at least intended that promise to be true. "Good."
"Ready to go?" At both their nods, Thorin nodded to a figure behind Fili, calling for it. "Balin." Their cousin, now the family elder, turned to the now-head of the family at the sound of his name, sorrow marking his eyes just as everyone around them. "Fili, walk with him. You need to stay with him and Dwalin, do you understand? The house is busy right now, and even if you're familiar with it we don't have time to spend hunting you down. Kili, that goes for you, too."
"Yes, Uncle," both boys chorused, Fili slipping his hand into the white-haired man's larger one. Balin gave him a small, sad smile, tightening his fingers around the ten-year-old's briefly in comfort, as his much larger brother Dwalin stepped up to the boy's other side.
"Then let's go."
It wasn't a long walk since most of the families shared a single estate, one that had grown over time as the profits from the mines had doubled, and then tripled. Dis and Vali's home, while more than big enough and certainly very comfortable, hadn't been the grand centerpiece of the bloodline; that honor went to Thrain's house - now Thorin's - situated closest to the mountain and on the original plot of land the family had purchased just outside town four generations back. Since then as land had been bought or claimed from the forest, more homes had been built, smaller but still of a stature for the wealth of their bloodline, and married children had moved into them to begin their own families while most who were unmarried remained in the manor. Fili and Kili had never gone a week, at most, without making the walk to the Big House (as all the children called it), and much more frequently went over for lessons or playtime in what was more or less a children's paradise for games such as Tig or Seek-and-Hide. Many of their happiest memories were contained in that building.
But not this day - not after not just one, but multiple deaths. Fili had been just old enough to remember when their great-grandfather had died, though Kili had still beenjust a toddler learning to string sentences together. Thror had been very old at the time, and his death had been quiet and peaceful; a "brainstorm," he remembered one person saying, though he still didn't know what that meant. It had seemed to him at the time as though everyone was sad and missed Great-Grandda but were happy, too, because he was no longer hurt. He'd barely understood it then, but he'd known enough to know that the somber atmosphere wasn't a heavy one, and while he played quietly with his wooden blocks in the corner, no one was telling him not to play at all. This time was entirely different, and it was not a difference he liked. The house had been draped in the lengths of black cloth he remembered, hanging from all the balconies and framing the windows which all had their shutters closed. Those few people moving around were blotchy-faced from crying and many didn't seem to have any idea what to do. Noise usually echoed through the manor, a reflection of so many people living and working there, but at the moment it was a low buzz of voices that didn't seem able to speak above hushed murmurs. One of the servants was at the door, waiting to take outer wraps, and he leaned forward to say something to Thorin in tones so hushed that not even Kili could hear it. Thorin nodded at him and continued on, still holding Kili, while Fili, Balin, and Dwalin followed the pair.
There were clusters of people, most darkly clothed, milling aimlessly around in the downstairs rooms off the main hall, but Thorin unerringly led the group through the crowd to the kitchen, and then through it. There was a small room usually occupied by the cook's boy near the back door; at the moment, the occupant had been evicted to make room for the son of the master, having been brought to the closest bed available to the mine after the accident. Another servant was sitting on a chair outside the room, literally guarding it from intruders, and he shook his head when Thorin asked him if any had entered the room since he'd left. By now everyone knew that Frerin was already gone, even if his body hadn't given out yet, but all wanted him to be able to leave with at least some dignity.
"He doesn't look well, lads," Balin said, catching and keeping Fili's eyes with his own, the sadness in them enormous but also with a touch of kindness for his young cousins. He'd always been the calmest of the family, along with their own da, and Fili knew he was trying to prepare them for what was undoubtedly a bad situation. "There were a lot of rocks that hit him. You know what happens when you hit your arm or leg against something when you're running around?" A brief pause for their nods, Kili still not looking up from Thorin's neck. "He looks like that, but everywhere. Just... if you have to leave, we'll understand."
"We can do this," Fili responded for both of them, trembling and unable to hide it but completely determined to see everything through to the end. The three men nodded, then Thorin glanced at the servant and took a deep breath before opening the door and heading in.
The bed wasn't quite big enough for Frerin, made to fit a child or a still-growing youth at best, so his feet hung limply from the end. A blanket had been pulled over his body in a vain attempt to make him comfortable until the inevitable end, so not much was actually visible, but the blanket couldn't hide the way most of his body seemed... off. His feet weren't shaped like feet anymore, not reaching tapered points under the blanket; rather, they were bent and humped and didn't seem to have any toes. His right hand was hanging free of the blanket and except for some purple mottling spreading up his palm from the wrist seemed fine, but the arm it was attached to bent in at least two places it shouldn't and seemed strangely flat towards the shoulder. Kili gasped when he looked across the bed and realized that half of his uncle's left arm just wasn't there anymore. The rest of his body looked much the same as his right arm, with things more or less in the correct places but not the correct shapes. His face under his thick, dark hair, so like his nephew's, was bruised purple and swollen so that one eye had almost entirely disappeared and not even his closest relatives would have realized who he was if they'd seen him on the street.
Everyone had always commented on the resemblance between Frerin and Kili in the past, the young boy's facial shape, body type, and coloring obviously taking after his uncle to an uncanny degree. It was such a sure thing that total strangers frequently mistook them for father and son when they were seen together, and everyone assumed that once Kili was done growing only their differing ages would be useful in telling them apart, and Fili was suddenly struck with an unwanted vision: his baby brother as an adult, bruised and battered just like their uncle before them, holding his head in lap and shouting at him to wake up and return to him. He shuddered and shook his head emphatically to drive away the image, rejecting the possibility, and gripped Balin's hand tighter as the man turned to look at him quizzically.
"Say goodbye, lads," Dwalin's voice came, much quieter than it normally was. Thorin set Kili on his feet once more and Fili slowly took his hand away from Balin to step to the bedside, reaching forward to slowly touch the hand hanging free with just the tips of his fingers. It was still warm, which helped, and if Frerin didn't react with pleasure to see his beloved nephews, he made no sounds of pain either. If one could just ignore the way he looked, it was almost like he was sleeping; without speaking, both boys made the exact same decision to think of it in that way. It made this easier to bear.
"Goodbye, Uncle Frerin," Fili said, and Kili tentatively reached out to touch the tip of his first finger to his uncle's, echoing his brother with a whispered "Goodbye." Fili swallowed; more words were needed, but he didn't know which ones. "We'll miss seeing you at dinner on Sundays... and... playing with you, and telling you our lessons."
Kili nodded at his brother's words. "I promise I'll practice more, just like... like you wanted me to."
He glanced up at the men with them and Balin nodded, glancing at the door in a wordless command to wait outside. Both boys nodded and, with last mumbled farewells, backed out of the room to wait by the large wooded table in the kitchen under the sympathetic but watchful eye of the servant. Tears were spilling down Kili's cheeks once more, silently this time, and Fili's sight was blurred as he fought to hold them back, the two of them leaning against each other and waiting for the men to emerge. It was several minute later that the door opened once more and Thorin, Balin, and Dwalin came through, shutting it behind them. If their own eyes and faces were wet, no one was going to mention it.
There were some silent glances among the men before Dwalin stepped forward to take Kili's hand and guide him to the larder in search of something to hopefully eat. Another glance passed quickly between Thorin and Balin before his uncle knelt in front of Fili, looking straight into his eyes to import how serious his next words would be. "I won't offer this to Kili," he began, keeping his voice low. "He's too young for it, and too emotional right now. But if you want, you may see your father and grandfather - we managed to free them early this morning, and they were brought here."
"I want to!"
Uncle Thorin sighed, eyes closing briefly at the insistence of his nephew. "Fili, please understand what I'm trying to tell you. Your uncle, what he looks like is nothing compared to them. Frerin was on the edge of the fall; they were directly under it, and so were almost totally crushed. They don't look like you remember them. They barely look like people." As much as it pained him to describe his own family that way, Thorin wasn't able to coddle his nephew in difficult times. Fili was a strong child, it would only be a disservice to him to do so. "I'll take you if you want, but this will not be easy for you. Do you want your last memories of them to be as you knew them in life, or in this condition?"
To his credit, and Thorin's relief, Fili didn't immediately insist on going. Several thoughts flitted over his young face, still round with the baby fat he was just starting to lose, but an intelligence Thorin was happy to see in his blue eyes. Still, he knew he was beaten when his nephew's lip set in a stubborn line he immediately recognized as a family trait - hard-headed idiots, the entire lot, himself the worst of all - and his eyes meeting his uncle's once more, even if they did quiver a little. "I want to go. I... I don't know why, but I have to see this. I have to..." It was obvious he was afraid of what he would see in the slight shaking of his voice, but he didn't allow that to hold him back. "I have to be able to tell K-Kili about this some day. And I..." He gulped, forcing down a sob. "I owe it to Da."
Thorin glanced up at Balin in another silent communication, and then pushed himself to his feet once more. Both men reached for one of Fili's hands, and although most of the time he would resent being treated as such a youngling, now he only gripped them tightly as they led him through the back door and in the direction of the outbuildings scattered around the property. "I mean it, this won't be pretty," Thorin reiterated as they walked, before pausing to consider what more to say. "But you are doing a man's work today. Your father would be proud."
Several of the small buildings that had been thrown up in an arrangement that spoke of no prior planning whatsoever were storage sheds for various things, working stations for others. They passed a small forge, a stable for the mules that worked pulling carts in the mine, gardening sheds for forcing plants, and building after building just for holding things that had been erected wherever there was space at the time. One of those was the farthest out; Fili didn't remember what it held, but Thorin and Balin led him there unerringly. His hands tightened on theirs and his breathing came more rapidly as they got closer; they didn't slow down, but they did give his hands small squeezes of their own, reassuring him that he wouldn't be facing this alone. The door had been locked; no one was on guard here, perhaps because the dead needed no such protection, and Thorin fumbled a key out with his free hand. As the door opened, Fili's gaze was drawn immediately to the large table in the center of the building. It had been spread with thick canvas tarps that were dirty with rock dust and mud, two figures lying in state on them and covered by another tarp. The fabric was so thick that any imperfections in the forms were mostly hidden to a boy who couldn't yet look down on them, which he was grateful for. But of course that wasn't to last.
Thorin gave him several seconds to acclimate to being there, the smell of rocks and dried blood invading all their noses, before stepping forward to pull down the canvas about halfway. Fili's eyes widened alarmingly, his face going white as a sheet in less than a second as he swayed on his feet at the sight of his father and grandfather. He clutched at Balin with both hands, struggling to stay upright as his mind fought, and failed, to process the sight before him of two men whom he'd loved unconditionally as mutilated as the two were before him. That couldn't be his grandfather, short but powerful and commanding, stern but secretly soft-hearted, always ready to sneak a pair of rambunctious boys a pair of hard candies to suck. And that absolutely wasn't his father, he of the golden hair and large, gentle hands, who carved little toys for his sons that looked alive and liked to dance their mother around the house when they both thought those sons to be in bed. No, those... things weren't them. Couldn't be them.
Fili spun and ran, not thinking about it, only knowing that he had to get out of there, bursting through the door into the weak October sunlight. He fell to his knees only a few feet from the building, landing on his hands and retching as a gentle hand laid on his back and brushed the hair away from his face. It had been a long time since breakfast and he hadn't had much appetite anyway so there was nothing to expel, but his stomach seemed to be trying to claw its way up his throat and out through his mouth in the most painful way possible. The hand on his back patted him softly, comforting him, and he heard Balin's voice through a haze of pain and grief. "There, there. Your uncle's coming. We'll take you back to the house and clean you up. You did a good thing today. A hard thing, but a good thing."
"That's right. I'm proud of you, Fili. Not many would have the strength." His uncle's hands reached under his arms to help him back to his feet and he leaned against him, scrubbing his sleeve against his mouth as he breathed heavily. "I know this is hard for you, but you're doing well."
"I ran away," he whispered, turning his face into his uncle's coat as the tears began to come in earnest.
"Older and stronger men than you wouldn't have gone in the first place. Making you the strongest of them all. Come on, we'll get you fixed up at the house."
He was too old to be carried, and too big, but Fili didn't protest when Thorin lifted him into his arms to return to the others.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The funerals happened four days later, three days after Frerin passed on and two days after Thorin had finally collapsed from the strain of work and grief combined with the collusion of his cousins with the doctor and his drugs. He'd been taking the accident more personally than anyone had expected, already being short of sleep when it had happened and staying awake for two days afterwards to finish helping clear the collapse so the rest of the bodies could be retrieved. Balin and Dwalin, now the most senior members of the family not incapacitated in some fashion, had taken over handling the arrangements of the memorials not just for their own relatives but for the eight other miners killed with them. Another four had survived with heavy injuries, two needing amputations, and a dozen more needed stitches, bandaging, and various other forms of doctoring for wounds that were not debilitating but were still painful. While Thrain, and Thror before him, had always had a policy of caring for their workers in case of accidents, nothing had ever been seen like this before in the history of the family, and no one quite knew what would happen afterwards.
Dis had finally left her bed after Thorin had been confined to his, once more taking over the care of her sons and household with Isbeil's help and aiding her cousins wherever they would let her, which wasn't many places. She had a layer of toughness over her now that seemed brittle, like it would crack under any pressure, making her children watch their step around her and speak only in hushed whispers anywhere in their home. The entire estate banded together to keep her protected so that veneer of solidness wouldn't break, making meals for the family and arranging for mourning clothes to be made and delivered, pulling weeds from the garden or making sure the boys were distracted. Fili and Kili weren't in much better shape, but it was to be expected in children; the change in Dis frightened everyone more than they would admit, as if they were afraid she would follow her husband, brother, and father if pushed too hard. Conversation was quiet, laughter was anathema, and the house where so much time had been spent in happiness seemed colder for it.
But life went on, even if no one, including the children, quite felt they were living. Thrain, Frerin, and Vali were buried in the family cemetery on the estate after a closed memorial in the manor house, after which the adults in the family laid the children down for naps in the nursery and attended the larger service for all the lost at the town hall. It was an exhausting day for everyone involved, no one eating much at the well-catered wakes, and Thorin and Dis had immediately retreated to their beds once more after the spectacle was done to not rise again for another two days.
By the time they were on their feet again, work in the mine had begun once more, repairs begun on the collapsed section in very careful steps directed by Balin. Their mines were one of the highest producers of ore in the region, ore that was desperately needed for all sorts of metalwork from blades to hinges, and even a tragedy of the magnitude that had just passed wouldn't shut down production for more than a few days. The miners themselves wouldn't let that happen, as they would have little chance of finding other work in the area, and few could afford to move. Fili and Kili, under Isbeil's watchful eye, were slowly starting to play and make noise again, but more than anyone they could feel something different in their mother and began taking their own steps to take care of her. Fili, being older, was better at it, but both boys would bring her water, or her slippers, or little candies that friends kept slipping into their pockets. Dis would always smile at their actions - but Fili noticed her smile never quite reached her eyes, which didn't lose their aura of sadness.
Everything had changed, in ways that could never be made right again.
There was a hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently but incessantly. Kili grumbled and rolled, keeping his eyes squeezed shut and dragging his blankets around him until he was cocooned in wrappings like the littlest babe. "Don' wanna." For good measure, he burrowed farther into his pillow and lifted an arm to cover his face, completely covering every inch of his body.
"Kili." He recognized the voice now: his brother Fili, three years older and therefore allowed to stay up later until the men came home every night. Fili was everything an older brother should be, cheerful, friendly, dependable, steady, and certainly calmer than his rambunctious younger sibling - and Kili tensed when he heard the sharpness in his voice. "You have to get up, something's wrong."
"Wrong? Wha-" Winding himself into a knot in the bedsheets was an unfortunate habit of his, and it was a struggle to get himself out of it every morning, but this time was made worse by the sleep he'd been woken from making him still muzzy-headed. Fili reached forward to help, grabbing the blankets and dragging them down through sheer force, leaving his little brother kicking his way free and his dark brown hair tousled all around his head. As he sat up, peering through the tangled mass of hair, his eyes widened at just how pale Fili appeared in the light from the candle he held and the amount of worry in his bright blue eyes. His heart started galloping a mile a minute; even at seven, he knew he had a tendency to overreact to things, but Fili never did. "What's going on? Are you all right? Is Mam all right? What-"
"I don't know, Kili. I don't know, but Uncle Thorin's here, and he told me to come get you." He paused briefly, glancing down and back up. "Mam's crying."
Kili gasped, frozen in shock on his bed for a second. If Uncle Thorin was here, in their house, at this time of night... Unfreezing in less than an instant, he sprang from his bed, Fili catching him as he nearly tripped with his foot caught in the blankets and fell on his face. His brother also grabbed him before he could run from their room without anything on his feet, shoving his bed slippers at him, which Kili pulled on hopping from one foot to the other in as little time as he could manage. He didn't tie them, and Fili didn't insist on it, instead taking his hand and leading him at a fast walk down the upper hallway and the stairs to the first floor.
Fili halted at the bottom of the stairs as if afraid to go any further, and Kili crowded in behind him, clinging to his brother's hand as if it had suddenly become a lifeline, pressing his sharp little face into his brother's shoulderblades and afraid to look for himself. They could both hear it: the sound of their mother, their fierce, sharp, pulled-together mother, crying with little gasping sobs that tore at both their hearts and sounded completely unlike her. Their uncle's voice responded, even deeper than normal with something heavy that almost physically tore at his words and stopped them from moment to moment. Shadows danced across the wall opposite them, cast by the flickering fire in their sitting room, showing a person in a dress seated on a stool with her head bowed forward and a larger shape in trousers bent toward her as it spoke. Kili squeezed Fili's hand, suddenly terrified, and whispered as quietly as he could in the hopes that neither adult would hear him. "I don't want to go in there."
"We have to."
"But Fili-"
"I don't either." His brother squeezed his hand in return, and Kili could feel the way his fingers were shaking. "But we have to."
Gulping, Kili finally nodded against the back of his brother's shirt, and Fili stepped forward, drawing him along behind. Both of them moved slowly, Fili's boots making very little noise on the richly patterned carpet under their feet and Kili's slippers making none at all. So wrapped up in their own thoughts were their mother and their uncle that both boys were several steps into the room before either of them realized they were there. Thorin looked up, clearly catching their movement out of the corner of his eye, and both boys sucked in air: their uncle, already a fairly stern person, looked positively hollow now, paler than Fili and with pain in his eyes.
"Fili. Kili. Come here."
Neither of them wanted to do it. Whatever had happened, the longer they didn't hear it, the longer it wasn't real. Both boys looked at each other, silently fighting to see who would have to take the first step; as usual, it was Fili who began. He didn't let go of Kili, though, dragging his brother with him across the room as their uncle stood to receive them and their mother looked up, her handsome face streaked with tears and a hand covering her mouth.
Thorin knelt when they reached him, placing a hand on each of their shoulders and watching them gravely. "Boys... there's been an accident."
"...What sort of accident?" Fili asked, even though he didn't want to. "Accident" could mean something not so bad, like the time the year before Kili had fallen out of the old apple tree in the backyard and had to have stitches, or something very bad, like when Old Man Micheil had lost control of the horses on his cart and had been trampled to death.
The fact that their uncle couldn't answer the question right away told them both that this time, it was bad. Very, very bad. "...An accident at the mine." They waited again for him to find his words, almost holding their breaths. "...A segment of the mine collapsed. There are..." He breathed sharply, and Kili's mouth slowly dropped open as he saw tears in his always-collected uncle's eyes. "There are wounded, some severely. And there are..."
"-What? There are what?" Kili demanded when Thorin stopped speaking again. He didn't want to know, he really didn't want to know because knowing would make it real, but he had to know.
But the answer didn't come from their uncle. Their mother sobbed, a choked noise that turned into a squeak that frightened Fili more than anything he'd heard in his ten years of life, and rose from her chair only to push her brother out of the way as she fell to her knees before her boys and gathered them into her arms. Holding them tightly, more tightly than they were comfortable with but were too afraid to protest, she sniffed and managed to get a few words out. "Your father and grandfather... they didn't make it."
"And your Uncle Frerin is not expected to live the night," Thorin added, voice somber and clearly too far beyond sorrow to cry.
"What?" Kili asked sharply, afraid to comprehend it just yet.
Fili just shook his head, knowing exactly what they'd said but unable to understand how it happened. "But the mines are safe... how could that..."
"We don't know," Thorin answered as their mother squeezed them harder, making Kili squeak slightly. "But it did."
"It can't be." Fili turned wide, confused blue eyes up at his uncle, his head all he could move of his body in his mother's embrace. "It can't be, the mine's safe. You let us in there, you showed us where everything was and what it did, you wouldn't have done that if it was dangerous..."
"Mam, stop- Mam, you're hurting me-"
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Dis murmured, releasing her hold a little but not letting go of either one of them. "I just... I need..."
"You're wrong," Kili declared, not one note of uncertainty in his young voice.
"No, we're not, Kili. I wish we were."
"You're wrong, you're wrong," he continued insisting. "Nothing happened, Da's going to come through that door and tell you how stupid you are."
Thorin's eyes flashed. "Do not call your mother or myself stupid, young man, not now."
"You are!" Kili struggled, shoving at his mother until he wriggled out from under her arm, falling backwards on his little bottom as his balance gave way and shoving himself backwards along the carpet, glaring daggers at all three of them. "You're wrong! You're all wrong! Da's coming home and Uncle's coming with him and they're all going to laugh at you for being such fools and-"
"Kili-"
"-going to yell and scream and you're ALL WRONG!" Kili kept pushing away from the group, eyes scrunched together and tears starting to run down his cheeks that he didn't even recognize were there. "DA IS NOT DEAD! HE'S NOT, HE'S ALIVE! I WANT TO SEE DA, I WANT TO SEE HIM RIGHT NOW!"
"Kili!"
"NO! NO IT'S NOT TRUE, IT'S NOT TRUE IT'S NOT TRUE IT'S NOT TRUE-" Even as he turned over to scramble to his feet and run for his bed, heavy footsteps came up quickly behind him and large, strong hands caught him around the waist to haul into the air. Kili immediately began kicking his legs and flailing his arms and screaming as hard as he could, fighting to get away and striking Thorin several times before his uncle managed to pin him bodily against his chest. He threw back his head, trying to bash the older man in the nose, but his uncle caught that as well and pushed it under his own chin, holding him so tightly he couldn't move at all, only howl. Tears fell hot and heavy from his eyes, blurring his vision, and he could barely see Fili sobbing himself against their mother's shoulder as she cried into his tousled blond hair, and he could barely hear his uncle trying to calm him over all the noise he was making.
"Find a doctor, tell him to bring a sedative," he vaguely heard his uncle tell someone, probably Isbeil, the household maid. Kili kept screaming denials, occasionally changing to shrieks of pure hatred and misery, until his voice started to crack and fragment. After that he switched to howls of pain, but his little body couldn't sustain that much raw emotion for too long, and those quickly petered out to leave him clinging to his uncle like a barnacle and sobbing into his shirt. The fact that Thorin himself was finally letting the tears fall into his messy hair didn't comfort him; it only scared him more. For his uncle to be crying, that meant things were real. Things shouldn't be real, not these things. Never these things.
Kili never even felt the needle pierce the skin on his arm, nor realized when he dropped into sleep, still crying.
Waking was slow, his head muzzy and his mouth very dry, as though it had been stuffed with cotton batting in the night. Kili couldn't make a noise for several moments, couldn't even turn his head as he fought against the pull of sleep to open his eyes. Still, something must have shown through his ineffective struggles, because a warm, soft hand smoothed bits of his unruly hair from his forehead and eyes before cupping the back of his head to lift it carefully.
"Up y' get, Master Kili, doctor says you'll need this..."
A cup was pressed to his lips; water with something tingly in it washed against them until he could figure out how to open his mouth once more. His bleary mind finally placed the voice as Isbeil, with her gentle hands and gentle spirit, as she carefully splashed tiny waves of water flavored with mint into his mouth until he was capable of drinking on his own. His hands were shaky as they raised to take the cup, her own helping him grip until his strength came back enough to manage without dropping it, and with quiet words and voice she coaxed him to finish the drink to the leafy dregs on the bottom.
Once he was done, Isbeil placed her hand behind his back and helped him sit up the rest of the way, leaning against her shoulder and rubbing her hand in comforting circles against his spine. "How are y' feelin'?"
"...Fluffy."
"Fluffy?"
"M' head... s'like it's got stuff in it..."
"Ahh," she breathed in understanding, nodding a little. "That'd be the drugs. The doctor said childer might react strong to 'em, but you'll be up and runnin' around and causin' trouble before the day is out, he said."
Then she paused, the faint note of encouragement fading from her tone as her hand stilled on his back. "Master Kili... do you remember why y' had to take the drugs?"
Images drifted through his mind, slowly but steadily: his mother and uncle against the light of the fire, the view of the ceiling of the sitting room, screams of pain from a voice that was his and not his at the same time. "Something... something happened..."
Isbeil nodded, both arms folding around him and pulling him to lie more snugly against her side, one hand stroking his hair. "That's right. There was an accident - Mister Thrain and your father, they're gone, lad." The words were steady, but her voice was deeply saddened. Though she wasn't family, Isbeil had worked for their household for as long as Kili could remember, and held them all in high esteem.
He struggled a little in her grasp, but there was still enough of the drugs left in his system for him to have no real chance for escape; more so, while he slept, the awful truth seemed to have collapsed around him like a tower without foundations, trapping him in certainty there was no escaping. He still didn't like it, would never like it, but fighting it any longer was impossible. "I want to see Da," he whispered against her, eyes scrunching up against the tears that were starting to come.
"I know, love. I know." Her grip shifted around him, drawing him onto her lap as she'd done so many times before after he'd scraped a knee or a palm, kissing him on top of his head and cuddling him close. Kili burrowed in against her and stopped trying to hold himself back, the tears coming slow and steady as opposed to the screaming torrent of the night before. Isbeil held him and rocked him, murmuring comforting nonsense words and patting his back, until the tears simply couldn't come any more and he was reduced to sniffling against her blouse.
"We have to get you ready," she said quietly once the tears were done. "Your uncle wants to take you to his house to say goodbye to your... other uncle."
"He's still... here?" Hope kindled in Kili's breast instantaneously, his face turning to look at the woman who'd been almost an aunt to him in his short life, only to die just as quickly at her expression, and response.
"Not for long." Isbeil wasn't capable of hiding anything from him at this moment, not when her family was hurting this much, and herself along with them, her face clouding at having to dash his dreams. "His head and chest were hurt bad in the collapse, and he'd bleedin' on the inside. There's nothin' that can stop it. Doctor says he only has another day or two, at best, and he's not woken up since he was pulled free."
His eyes burned and his breathing hitched, but Kili was simply out of tears. He panted for a few moments, almost-sobbing dry heaves that faded quickly from lack of energy, but eventually nodded in reluctant agreement. With another kiss, Isbeil set him gently on the floor, then drew him over to his chest of drawers to find something suitable to wear.
In much less time than it normally took, since he didn't have the energy to fight it, Isbeil had him washed, dressed, and his unruly hair put to rights. Black was the color of the day, of course, since the family was now in mourning - at least Kili already had plenty of clothing in darker dyes, as they suited his darker natural coloring. Fili would be the problem child in this, but he did have a few things, and he'd already been taken care of. Once they were done setting him to rights (though nothing could hide his reddened, scratchy eyes), Isbeil took his hand and led him downstairs to where the rest of the family was gathering.
When he saw them step through the door, Fili immediately broke from his uncle to go to his brother. Kili followed suit, clinging to his older sibling with a strength he'd not had since he'd awoken. The room was more full than he'd expected, with a few of their cousins and partners in the business having come over, but there was one figure very obviously missing from the gathering. "Where's Mam?" Kili asked in a whisper.
"Still asleep," Fili replied just as quietly. "Every time she wakes, she starts crying again, and takes another draught." To anyone who didn't know Fili as well as his brother did, they would have seen a young boy mourning the loss of three family members, and that would have been enough. But Kili could see his brother was starting to fray around the edges, his voice a little more ragged than would be expected, and even at his young age he knew that Fili was trying to hold himself together for everyone around him. He pressed harder into his brother's chest, trying to tell him he didn't need to do that, but Fili simply patted his head and led him over to their uncle. "He's ready, Uncle Thorin."
"We'll be going in a minute," he replied, and Kili's eyed widened at how exhausted his uncle looked. He didn't need Fili's barely-audible whisper in his ear to tell him that Uncle Thorin hadn't slept at all the night before, not with those circles around his eyes, the pale cast to his face, and the ragged hoarseness of his voice.
Kili let go of Fili only to latch onto Thorin's coat instead, gripping the waist of the material in his strong little fists and looking up at his uncle anxiously, ignoring Fili's hiss of warning. "You're okay, right Uncle? You're not going to go away are you?"
Thorin could only blink down in surprise at his nephew's question. "Of course not, why would I be going away?"
"You look like Fili did when he was sick last year. When everyone talked about how he might be going away. Uncle Frerin's going away, I don't want you to go away too!" he said with more emphasis, though not yelling, eyes wide and frightened.
His uncle blinked down at him for several moments, trying to take in what the young boy was saying and finding it difficult. But, eventually, he bent down and scooped Kili up, holding him almost as closely as he'd done the night before as the boy flung both small arms around his neck, getting tangled in his long hair. "I'm not going away, I promise." He aimed his gaze at Fili as he answered, the troubled expression on his older nephew's face impossible to ignore. "There's been a lot to do last night and today. I'm tired, but I promise, I'm not going away. I'm not going to leave you or your mam again."
Fili nodded, once, obviously still hesitant after the events of the last day but willing to believe that Uncle Thorin at least intended that promise to be true. "Good."
"Ready to go?" At both their nods, Thorin nodded to a figure behind Fili, calling for it. "Balin." Their cousin, now the family elder, turned to the now-head of the family at the sound of his name, sorrow marking his eyes just as everyone around them. "Fili, walk with him. You need to stay with him and Dwalin, do you understand? The house is busy right now, and even if you're familiar with it we don't have time to spend hunting you down. Kili, that goes for you, too."
"Yes, Uncle," both boys chorused, Fili slipping his hand into the white-haired man's larger one. Balin gave him a small, sad smile, tightening his fingers around the ten-year-old's briefly in comfort, as his much larger brother Dwalin stepped up to the boy's other side.
"Then let's go."
It wasn't a long walk since most of the families shared a single estate, one that had grown over time as the profits from the mines had doubled, and then tripled. Dis and Vali's home, while more than big enough and certainly very comfortable, hadn't been the grand centerpiece of the bloodline; that honor went to Thrain's house - now Thorin's - situated closest to the mountain and on the original plot of land the family had purchased just outside town four generations back. Since then as land had been bought or claimed from the forest, more homes had been built, smaller but still of a stature for the wealth of their bloodline, and married children had moved into them to begin their own families while most who were unmarried remained in the manor. Fili and Kili had never gone a week, at most, without making the walk to the Big House (as all the children called it), and much more frequently went over for lessons or playtime in what was more or less a children's paradise for games such as Tig or Seek-and-Hide. Many of their happiest memories were contained in that building.
But not this day - not after not just one, but multiple deaths. Fili had been just old enough to remember when their great-grandfather had died, though Kili had still beenjust a toddler learning to string sentences together. Thror had been very old at the time, and his death had been quiet and peaceful; a "brainstorm," he remembered one person saying, though he still didn't know what that meant. It had seemed to him at the time as though everyone was sad and missed Great-Grandda but were happy, too, because he was no longer hurt. He'd barely understood it then, but he'd known enough to know that the somber atmosphere wasn't a heavy one, and while he played quietly with his wooden blocks in the corner, no one was telling him not to play at all. This time was entirely different, and it was not a difference he liked. The house had been draped in the lengths of black cloth he remembered, hanging from all the balconies and framing the windows which all had their shutters closed. Those few people moving around were blotchy-faced from crying and many didn't seem to have any idea what to do. Noise usually echoed through the manor, a reflection of so many people living and working there, but at the moment it was a low buzz of voices that didn't seem able to speak above hushed murmurs. One of the servants was at the door, waiting to take outer wraps, and he leaned forward to say something to Thorin in tones so hushed that not even Kili could hear it. Thorin nodded at him and continued on, still holding Kili, while Fili, Balin, and Dwalin followed the pair.
There were clusters of people, most darkly clothed, milling aimlessly around in the downstairs rooms off the main hall, but Thorin unerringly led the group through the crowd to the kitchen, and then through it. There was a small room usually occupied by the cook's boy near the back door; at the moment, the occupant had been evicted to make room for the son of the master, having been brought to the closest bed available to the mine after the accident. Another servant was sitting on a chair outside the room, literally guarding it from intruders, and he shook his head when Thorin asked him if any had entered the room since he'd left. By now everyone knew that Frerin was already gone, even if his body hadn't given out yet, but all wanted him to be able to leave with at least some dignity.
"He doesn't look well, lads," Balin said, catching and keeping Fili's eyes with his own, the sadness in them enormous but also with a touch of kindness for his young cousins. He'd always been the calmest of the family, along with their own da, and Fili knew he was trying to prepare them for what was undoubtedly a bad situation. "There were a lot of rocks that hit him. You know what happens when you hit your arm or leg against something when you're running around?" A brief pause for their nods, Kili still not looking up from Thorin's neck. "He looks like that, but everywhere. Just... if you have to leave, we'll understand."
"We can do this," Fili responded for both of them, trembling and unable to hide it but completely determined to see everything through to the end. The three men nodded, then Thorin glanced at the servant and took a deep breath before opening the door and heading in.
The bed wasn't quite big enough for Frerin, made to fit a child or a still-growing youth at best, so his feet hung limply from the end. A blanket had been pulled over his body in a vain attempt to make him comfortable until the inevitable end, so not much was actually visible, but the blanket couldn't hide the way most of his body seemed... off. His feet weren't shaped like feet anymore, not reaching tapered points under the blanket; rather, they were bent and humped and didn't seem to have any toes. His right hand was hanging free of the blanket and except for some purple mottling spreading up his palm from the wrist seemed fine, but the arm it was attached to bent in at least two places it shouldn't and seemed strangely flat towards the shoulder. Kili gasped when he looked across the bed and realized that half of his uncle's left arm just wasn't there anymore. The rest of his body looked much the same as his right arm, with things more or less in the correct places but not the correct shapes. His face under his thick, dark hair, so like his nephew's, was bruised purple and swollen so that one eye had almost entirely disappeared and not even his closest relatives would have realized who he was if they'd seen him on the street.
Everyone had always commented on the resemblance between Frerin and Kili in the past, the young boy's facial shape, body type, and coloring obviously taking after his uncle to an uncanny degree. It was such a sure thing that total strangers frequently mistook them for father and son when they were seen together, and everyone assumed that once Kili was done growing only their differing ages would be useful in telling them apart, and Fili was suddenly struck with an unwanted vision: his baby brother as an adult, bruised and battered just like their uncle before them, holding his head in lap and shouting at him to wake up and return to him. He shuddered and shook his head emphatically to drive away the image, rejecting the possibility, and gripped Balin's hand tighter as the man turned to look at him quizzically.
"Say goodbye, lads," Dwalin's voice came, much quieter than it normally was. Thorin set Kili on his feet once more and Fili slowly took his hand away from Balin to step to the bedside, reaching forward to slowly touch the hand hanging free with just the tips of his fingers. It was still warm, which helped, and if Frerin didn't react with pleasure to see his beloved nephews, he made no sounds of pain either. If one could just ignore the way he looked, it was almost like he was sleeping; without speaking, both boys made the exact same decision to think of it in that way. It made this easier to bear.
"Goodbye, Uncle Frerin," Fili said, and Kili tentatively reached out to touch the tip of his first finger to his uncle's, echoing his brother with a whispered "Goodbye." Fili swallowed; more words were needed, but he didn't know which ones. "We'll miss seeing you at dinner on Sundays... and... playing with you, and telling you our lessons."
Kili nodded at his brother's words. "I promise I'll practice more, just like... like you wanted me to."
He glanced up at the men with them and Balin nodded, glancing at the door in a wordless command to wait outside. Both boys nodded and, with last mumbled farewells, backed out of the room to wait by the large wooded table in the kitchen under the sympathetic but watchful eye of the servant. Tears were spilling down Kili's cheeks once more, silently this time, and Fili's sight was blurred as he fought to hold them back, the two of them leaning against each other and waiting for the men to emerge. It was several minute later that the door opened once more and Thorin, Balin, and Dwalin came through, shutting it behind them. If their own eyes and faces were wet, no one was going to mention it.
There were some silent glances among the men before Dwalin stepped forward to take Kili's hand and guide him to the larder in search of something to hopefully eat. Another glance passed quickly between Thorin and Balin before his uncle knelt in front of Fili, looking straight into his eyes to import how serious his next words would be. "I won't offer this to Kili," he began, keeping his voice low. "He's too young for it, and too emotional right now. But if you want, you may see your father and grandfather - we managed to free them early this morning, and they were brought here."
"I want to!"
Uncle Thorin sighed, eyes closing briefly at the insistence of his nephew. "Fili, please understand what I'm trying to tell you. Your uncle, what he looks like is nothing compared to them. Frerin was on the edge of the fall; they were directly under it, and so were almost totally crushed. They don't look like you remember them. They barely look like people." As much as it pained him to describe his own family that way, Thorin wasn't able to coddle his nephew in difficult times. Fili was a strong child, it would only be a disservice to him to do so. "I'll take you if you want, but this will not be easy for you. Do you want your last memories of them to be as you knew them in life, or in this condition?"
To his credit, and Thorin's relief, Fili didn't immediately insist on going. Several thoughts flitted over his young face, still round with the baby fat he was just starting to lose, but an intelligence Thorin was happy to see in his blue eyes. Still, he knew he was beaten when his nephew's lip set in a stubborn line he immediately recognized as a family trait - hard-headed idiots, the entire lot, himself the worst of all - and his eyes meeting his uncle's once more, even if they did quiver a little. "I want to go. I... I don't know why, but I have to see this. I have to..." It was obvious he was afraid of what he would see in the slight shaking of his voice, but he didn't allow that to hold him back. "I have to be able to tell K-Kili about this some day. And I..." He gulped, forcing down a sob. "I owe it to Da."
Thorin glanced up at Balin in another silent communication, and then pushed himself to his feet once more. Both men reached for one of Fili's hands, and although most of the time he would resent being treated as such a youngling, now he only gripped them tightly as they led him through the back door and in the direction of the outbuildings scattered around the property. "I mean it, this won't be pretty," Thorin reiterated as they walked, before pausing to consider what more to say. "But you are doing a man's work today. Your father would be proud."
Several of the small buildings that had been thrown up in an arrangement that spoke of no prior planning whatsoever were storage sheds for various things, working stations for others. They passed a small forge, a stable for the mules that worked pulling carts in the mine, gardening sheds for forcing plants, and building after building just for holding things that had been erected wherever there was space at the time. One of those was the farthest out; Fili didn't remember what it held, but Thorin and Balin led him there unerringly. His hands tightened on theirs and his breathing came more rapidly as they got closer; they didn't slow down, but they did give his hands small squeezes of their own, reassuring him that he wouldn't be facing this alone. The door had been locked; no one was on guard here, perhaps because the dead needed no such protection, and Thorin fumbled a key out with his free hand. As the door opened, Fili's gaze was drawn immediately to the large table in the center of the building. It had been spread with thick canvas tarps that were dirty with rock dust and mud, two figures lying in state on them and covered by another tarp. The fabric was so thick that any imperfections in the forms were mostly hidden to a boy who couldn't yet look down on them, which he was grateful for. But of course that wasn't to last.
Thorin gave him several seconds to acclimate to being there, the smell of rocks and dried blood invading all their noses, before stepping forward to pull down the canvas about halfway. Fili's eyes widened alarmingly, his face going white as a sheet in less than a second as he swayed on his feet at the sight of his father and grandfather. He clutched at Balin with both hands, struggling to stay upright as his mind fought, and failed, to process the sight before him of two men whom he'd loved unconditionally as mutilated as the two were before him. That couldn't be his grandfather, short but powerful and commanding, stern but secretly soft-hearted, always ready to sneak a pair of rambunctious boys a pair of hard candies to suck. And that absolutely wasn't his father, he of the golden hair and large, gentle hands, who carved little toys for his sons that looked alive and liked to dance their mother around the house when they both thought those sons to be in bed. No, those... things weren't them. Couldn't be them.
Fili spun and ran, not thinking about it, only knowing that he had to get out of there, bursting through the door into the weak October sunlight. He fell to his knees only a few feet from the building, landing on his hands and retching as a gentle hand laid on his back and brushed the hair away from his face. It had been a long time since breakfast and he hadn't had much appetite anyway so there was nothing to expel, but his stomach seemed to be trying to claw its way up his throat and out through his mouth in the most painful way possible. The hand on his back patted him softly, comforting him, and he heard Balin's voice through a haze of pain and grief. "There, there. Your uncle's coming. We'll take you back to the house and clean you up. You did a good thing today. A hard thing, but a good thing."
"That's right. I'm proud of you, Fili. Not many would have the strength." His uncle's hands reached under his arms to help him back to his feet and he leaned against him, scrubbing his sleeve against his mouth as he breathed heavily. "I know this is hard for you, but you're doing well."
"I ran away," he whispered, turning his face into his uncle's coat as the tears began to come in earnest.
"Older and stronger men than you wouldn't have gone in the first place. Making you the strongest of them all. Come on, we'll get you fixed up at the house."
He was too old to be carried, and too big, but Fili didn't protest when Thorin lifted him into his arms to return to the others.
The funerals happened four days later, three days after Frerin passed on and two days after Thorin had finally collapsed from the strain of work and grief combined with the collusion of his cousins with the doctor and his drugs. He'd been taking the accident more personally than anyone had expected, already being short of sleep when it had happened and staying awake for two days afterwards to finish helping clear the collapse so the rest of the bodies could be retrieved. Balin and Dwalin, now the most senior members of the family not incapacitated in some fashion, had taken over handling the arrangements of the memorials not just for their own relatives but for the eight other miners killed with them. Another four had survived with heavy injuries, two needing amputations, and a dozen more needed stitches, bandaging, and various other forms of doctoring for wounds that were not debilitating but were still painful. While Thrain, and Thror before him, had always had a policy of caring for their workers in case of accidents, nothing had ever been seen like this before in the history of the family, and no one quite knew what would happen afterwards.
Dis had finally left her bed after Thorin had been confined to his, once more taking over the care of her sons and household with Isbeil's help and aiding her cousins wherever they would let her, which wasn't many places. She had a layer of toughness over her now that seemed brittle, like it would crack under any pressure, making her children watch their step around her and speak only in hushed whispers anywhere in their home. The entire estate banded together to keep her protected so that veneer of solidness wouldn't break, making meals for the family and arranging for mourning clothes to be made and delivered, pulling weeds from the garden or making sure the boys were distracted. Fili and Kili weren't in much better shape, but it was to be expected in children; the change in Dis frightened everyone more than they would admit, as if they were afraid she would follow her husband, brother, and father if pushed too hard. Conversation was quiet, laughter was anathema, and the house where so much time had been spent in happiness seemed colder for it.
But life went on, even if no one, including the children, quite felt they were living. Thrain, Frerin, and Vali were buried in the family cemetery on the estate after a closed memorial in the manor house, after which the adults in the family laid the children down for naps in the nursery and attended the larger service for all the lost at the town hall. It was an exhausting day for everyone involved, no one eating much at the well-catered wakes, and Thorin and Dis had immediately retreated to their beds once more after the spectacle was done to not rise again for another two days.
By the time they were on their feet again, work in the mine had begun once more, repairs begun on the collapsed section in very careful steps directed by Balin. Their mines were one of the highest producers of ore in the region, ore that was desperately needed for all sorts of metalwork from blades to hinges, and even a tragedy of the magnitude that had just passed wouldn't shut down production for more than a few days. The miners themselves wouldn't let that happen, as they would have little chance of finding other work in the area, and few could afford to move. Fili and Kili, under Isbeil's watchful eye, were slowly starting to play and make noise again, but more than anyone they could feel something different in their mother and began taking their own steps to take care of her. Fili, being older, was better at it, but both boys would bring her water, or her slippers, or little candies that friends kept slipping into their pockets. Dis would always smile at their actions - but Fili noticed her smile never quite reached her eyes, which didn't lose their aura of sadness.
Everything had changed, in ways that could never be made right again.
