Chapter 13: Steady as the Morning

A/N: In a drunken New Year's haze, I swore to myself that I would write 500 words every day, and post new chapters at least every three weeks until this fic is done. I'll, uh, see how that goes. In that spirit, the second half of this chapter should be up soon. In the meantime, please drop by my tumblr (I'm basilandtheblues over there) to say hello, chat about fandom, and/or guilt me into keeping my ill-considered promises!

The celebration sparked by the supply caravan's long-awaited arrival was as wild and boisterous as last few months had been austere. Soon every dwarf in the mountain, except those unfortunate enough to be on guard duty, had crowded into the servant's mess hall. Nori and Óin's distillery supplied the drink, of uncertain quality but undeniably strong, and if the food was scant by the standards of the Blue Mountains or the Iron Hills, it seemed very fine indeed compared to barley gruel and old salted fish.

The soldiers that Dain had sent along with the caravan were already well-known to most of the dwarves now living in Erebor. They were welcomed so handsomely to the mountain, and with so much gratitude, that some of them might have been tempted to stay regardless of the attendant hardships. Kíli, meanwhile, was hailed as a hero, and his soldiers plied him with drink all night. He withstood it astonishingly well, draining mug after mug without the slightest ill effect. Fíli, by contrast, grew paler and more unsteady as the night wore on, though he drank but little, and he finally vanished from the celebrations in the small hours of the morning. Kíli followed after him, despite a host of protests.

"You're not getting off that easy, little prince," Isda called over the general clamor when he tried to slip away. On the road back to Erebor they had taken to sparring together after they set up camp in the evenings; if nothing else, they were well-suited with swords in hand. "Not with the night so young!"

"Middle-aged, at least," Kíli said, draining one last mug and leaving it at the table. His speech wasn't even slurred, though he'd been outpacing larger, sturdier dwarves all night, and there was an unpleasant edge to his words; Kíli could be sharp when he wanted to. He offered her a mocking bow. "And so it's only fair that I leave it to my elders."

"Don't get uppity with me," Isda said. "I'll knock your head in, see if I won't. But off you go, youngster, if it's your bedtime."

Dwalin, sitting nearby with an arm slung over Thorin's shoulders, watched Kíli take his leave. "Tell me you've some notion what's wrong with our lads. It's like the villages again, or even before."

"Fíli thinks that he knows," Thorin said. He kept his voice down, too, although no one could possibly have heard them amid the general revelry. Folk had to shout to be heard across a table. "He says that there is a strange bond between them. That Kíli has been stealing his strength."

"On purpose? Never in life." It was a sign of their unspoken fears—that Fíli might die for reasons they didn't understand and couldn't fight—that a dwarf as solid and skeptical as Dwalin would even consider such a wild idea.

"I know. But you remember the winter that Kíli was born," Thorin said. "If it was an accident, some sort of spell or mischief, and neither of them understood what was happening—perhaps. Bilbo said that Gandalf wasn't entirely himself when he woke Kíli after the battle."

"Wizards," Dwalin said sourly. He took a swig from his mug to wash the taste from his mouth, but whatever else he was going to say, it was forgotten when he saw Varin working his way through the crowd toward them, and instead he said: "Watch your back. The buzzard's behind you and coming up quick."

It wasn't that Dwalin didn't respect his cousin, who was loyal and proud and undeniably clever when it came to bureaucracy and politics. It was just that every time Dwalin heard Varin talk about the old families, and the old bloodlines, and the way that Thrór had managed things in—Mahal help them—the old days, all he could think was: and where were you at the gates of Moria? Where were you when our princes were starving, and our folk begging for work? Where were you when Thorin Oakenshield said that he was going home at last, and asked who would follow him east? If Varin looked down his nose at the folk who had answered Thorin's call, that was his business. But Dwalin wasn't about to think well of him for it.

Thorin hunched his shoulders, as if that would make him a smaller target in the crowd. "He wants to talk about Dale. Tonight of all nights, I swear by the Maker—"

Glóin, Varin, and Bilbo had spent the better part of a week sorting through the account books, and they'd found a dizzying number of errors, all of them in Dale's favor. The trick was untangling fraud from plain incompetence. The accounts were collected and copied over a half-dozen times before they came to rest in Glóin's hands, and Erebor's small collection of scribes, most untrained and all overworked, were by no means infallible. Varin, who had been convinced all along that the folk of Laketown weren't to be trusted, and that Bard in particular was a jumped-up fisherman ("a bargeman," Bilbo always interrupted, "he was a bargeman") who ought to be put in his place, wasted no time insisting that the king issue a formal accusation. But Thorin wasn't about to accuse anyone without proof, not even Bard of Laketown. He could never now think of betrayal without remembering the battlements, and of words that couldn't be unsaid. Take him, if you wish him to live, and no friendship of mine goes with him.

Perhaps in answer to Thorin's prayer, Varin missed them in the crowd and headed off in the wrong direction. Thorin breathed a very unkingly sigh of relief. "I promised Bilbo I wouldn't make any decisions about Dale before the meeting tomorrow," he said, when Varin was safely out of sight. "He still insists that Bard is reliable, and that there's been some mistake. He's too trusting by half."

Dwalin grinned. "So you've been talking things over with the hobbit. Glad to hear it. Are you own affairs coming along, then?" The words were inoffensive enough, but his tone was so lascivious that Thorin—still something of a prude, according to Dwalin, even after all his years in exile—nearly spat out an unlucky mouthful of ale.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said.

Just then, in a feat of spectacularly bad timing, Bilbo appeared at their table, breathless and red-cheeked and more than slightly tipsy, saying, "Oh, Thorin, there are you are. Varin's on the prowl, did you know? I've been looking all over to warn you—"

Thorin almost knocked Dwalin off the bench in his haste to move over and give Bilbo a place to sit, and Dwalin made a choked noise before almost falling off of his own accord in a fit of barely-stifled laughter.

"What's so funny?" Bilbo asked, tucking himself against Thorin's side and looking at the two of them bemusedly.

"Nothing, nothing," Thorin said. He rammed an elbow into Dwalin's ribcage when Dwalin opened his mouth to offer his own perspective on the situation.

The rest of the night slipped away in a warm, comfortable haze, interrupted only by one or two brawls—"High spirits," Thorin said, when Bilbo flinched at the flurry of shouts and crashes behind them—and at last by the watery sun, slipping in through the long, narrow windows that brought light and fresh air to the lower halls.

Soon after daybreak, Thorin stood. Tradition dictated that the king or lord's departure marked the end of any revelry, and he was loath to halt the first happy night that Erebor had seen since its recovery; it was better than a dozen supply caravans for bolstering spirits. But there was to be a council meeting late in the morning, and then the rest of the day's work to attend to. Besides, they were almost out of alcohol, much to Nori's dismay, and it would be far better if folk stumbled to bed to nurse their aching heads in something close to peace and quiet.

Bilbo, who had stubbornly refused to leave before Thorin, was snoring gently at his side. "Up you get," Thorin said, tugging the bleary-eyed hobbit to his feet.

"Wasn't sleeping," Bilbo said, automatically. He staggered, losing his balance when he tried to take a step, but Thorin caught him.

"You haven't been trying to keep up with us all night, have you?" Thorin said, looking at Bilbo with concern.

"What do you mean, trying? I can hold my liquor every bit as well as you, Thorin Oakenshield."

"Good," Thorin said, not even remotely in a mood to argue with him. "We can hold each other up, then; my quarters are closest."

Bilbo looked up at him suspiciously. "Are you trying to seduce me?"

Thorin, who was supporting most of Bilbo's weight, almost dropped him in shock. Did Bilbo think so little of him, to suspect that Thorin would try to trick him into bed when they were both sodden with drink? If he'd had his wits about him, he might have remembered that seduce was one of those unfortunate, untranslatable words; there was no precise Khuzdul equivalent, because seduction hinted at trickery and persuasion, even outright deceit: something that no decent dwarf would ever associate with matters of the heart. But Thorin was in no state to be reasonable, and somewhere beneath his wounded pride was the ache of desire. Bilbo was soft and warm at his side, and despite everything, he'd made it clear that he was amenable to the idea—

"Oh. That's all right, then," Bilbo said, obviously relieved.

—or perhaps not.

They made the rest of the brief journey to his quarters in silence. Thorin regretted the careless suggestion, but he could scarcely retract it. When they arrived, Bilbo crawled into Thorin's bed fully clothed, said a sleepy "Good night—or good morning, I suppose—" and was asleep again within minutes.

For a while, Thorin wondered if he ought to sleep on the stone floor, but his back and ribs protested the idea vehemently, and in the end he settled down on the very edge of his bed, as far away from Bilbo as he could manage. Eventually he drifted off to a few unsettled hours of rest. His last thought before he fell asleep was that if he wrongly accused Bard of crimes against his kingdom, Bilbo would hold it over his head for the rest of his life.

Some hours later, down a hallway and on the opposite side of the royal quarters, Fíli woke comfortable and well-rested. That alone made him suspicious. He shifted a little, waiting for the aches and splintering pains that had become his constant companions to realize their mistake and settle back under his skin. Nothing happened. His blankets, piled over the flat stone of his bed, were heavy and warm. His pillow, which was in fact an old coat wrapped around a pile of rags, tempted him with the promise of another few hours of sleep.

He didn't hurt. Not even a little.

It was too good to be true. Given how much Kíli had drunk last night, Fíli had expected to wake up with the most undeserved hangover in history, if nothing else. He sat up, moving slowly and carefully, and then got to his feet; his muscles obeyed him cheerfully and without complaint. When he reached down to grab a shirt from the small pile of clothes on the floor, he didn't even feel dizzy or lightheaded.

A sudden, awful thought occurred to him. In a few hasty strides he had crossed the room to look through the archway that separated his half of the room from Kíli's. But Kíli was still there, curled up in bed, his unfortunate new pet huddled beside him. In some ways he and the wolf were a matched set, both dark and young and motionless but for their breathing, apparently sound asleep. Perhaps that was the reason that Fíli felt so ordinary; Kíli wasn't awake to get into fights, drill to excess, or work beyond his limits. Fíli was just about to turn around leave Kíli to his rest when the blankets rustled and Kíli twisted around to face him.

"Stay for just a minute, would you?' he said, voice tight.

Careful not to disturb Khahûl, lest his unexpectedly painless morning end with a small, terrified animal digging its teeth into his hand, Fíli settled down on the edge of the bed. When he put a hand on Kíli's shoulder, Kíli jerked back, away from Fíli and closer to the wall. "Sorry," he muttered, voice muffled as he buried his face in blankets. "Sorry, sorry—"

"Don't be," Fíli said. He didn't try to touch him again. "Come on, blackbird. It's all right."

Blackbird had been their mother's name for Kíli when he was younger; she hadn't used it in years, but sometimes Fíli did. Kíli always made a great show of hating the name: I'm not a baby, he used to say, until he realized how petulant that sounded and starting putting Fíli in headlocks instead. But this time he only shuddered and moved further away until he was pressed against the wall. "Do you want me to leave?" Fíli asked, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. They both had nightmares sometimes, but this was something else.

"No! No, I just—I don't want to hurt you, but I don't know how. I'm sorry."

Fíli heroically repressed his first response, which was a string of curses that even Dwalin would have been impressed by. He should have known that Kíli would figure it out on his own, given half a chance. They'd never been good at keeping secrets from each other. So much for good intentions. He should have told Kíli the moment he came back from patrol.

"When did you realize?" he asked.

"Last night, at the end of the party. Even I can't hold my drink that well, but you were sick without touching a drop. You got sicker the more I had. And then Isda was talking with her brother, and he said that you'd known about the fight with the goblins while it was happening. That you'd felt it. And then I figured it out. Has it—" he bit at his lower lip, already cracked and bleeding— "Has it been my fault the entire time? Ever since the battle?"

"Not all of it," Fíli said. But the lie didn't sound convincing, not even to him. He tried another tack. "Look, whatever it is—an enchantment, a curse, I don't know—it's nothing you did. Thorin thinks it was wizardry, that Gandalf put a spell on us. And it hasn't been as bad as all that. I was only tired, that's all."

"I thought you were dying," Kíli said. He bit out each word like it hurt to speak. "So did Thorin. You almost did die, I heard about it, you almost fell a hundred feet and split your head open because I was off on patrol, pretending that nothing had changed, that I could still fight like before. And I couldn't. I thought I was strong, but it wasn't my strength at all, it was yours—"

"So now you're keeping your hangover all to yourself?" Fíli said, cutting him off. Whatever misery Kíli had caused him, it had been entirely accidental. All the guilt in the world wouldn't do either of them the first bit of good, and hearing his brother sound so low and bitter was a misery in itself. "That's plain selfishness. What would mama say?"

He picked a sleepy, confused Khahûl up and plopped him down on Kíli's stomach before settling down more comfortably on the bed. Kíli didn't smile, but he sat up a little. When Khahûl nudged him, he automatically began petting him; Khahûl, who was unsettlingly well-mannered where his new master was concerned, draped himself over Kíli's lap. He didn't quite fit, even though he was skinny as a rail, but he only let out a small sigh and went back to sleep.

"What've you been feeding him?" Fíli asked.

"Gruel. Well, barley and milk, mostly," Kíli said, gratefully latching on to the change of subject. "I offered him scraps of meat, but he's not interested. It's strange. From his size, I would have put him at three months, but he's acting like an unweaned pup."

"A pup with mûmak feet. He'll be taller than you if he ever grows into them." Khahûl's paws were so large that he tripped over them when he walked, and his head was, if possible, even more disproportionate to his half-starved frame. If a particularly talentless artist had been commissioned to sculpt a wolf based on a child's description of the shadowy creature that haunted his nightmares, the resulting sculpture might have looked more or less like poor Khahûl.

Kíli, true to form, was already hopelessly devoted. Which reminded Fíli of something else that might brighten his brother's spirits: "When we go to council, remind Ori to give you your letters. You've had two since you left on patrol, sent along with the timber shipments from Mirkwood. If you write back, you should ask her if she's ever heard of anything like—" Fíli gestured at the space between them, as if the bond was a piece of string tying them together. "Us."

Kíli shook his head. It seemed he was too distracted, or too sick to his stomach, to remember that he was supposed to turn defensive and embarrassed whenever Tauriel came up in conversation. "I don't think so. She doesn't have much to do with elf-magic, except for concealment and a little bit of healing."

"And there's no knowing how soon Gandalf will be back," Fíli pointed out, "so we might as well learn to live with it. Besides," he said, when Kíli still looked unconvinced, "you've always been a lightweight. Will I even notice your headache?"

"This headache," said Kíli, with a touch of his old braggadocio, "would fell a mountain troll."

Fíli scoffed. "I doubt it."

The words were barely out of his mouth before he was struck by a starburst of pain and nausea that literally knocked him flat on his back. "Sorry, sorry!" He dimly heard Kíli's frantic voice above him. "Here, just let me—"

The pain didn't vanish, but it eased enough that Fíli could open his eyes without being sick. "Right," he said. "I'll give you this one." His mouth was as dry as old stone, and his head pounded in time with his heartbeat. "At least one mountain troll. Maybe two."

"I told you," said Kíli, looking anxious. "Is this all right? I think we have about half and half."

Whatever outrageous stories Fíli told about his younger years, he rarely drank to excess, in large part because he loathed hangovers. His simple, blessedly painless morning was ruined, and at some point in the last minute or so, despite his best efforts, Khahûl had taken fright and given him a nasty swipe across the forearm.

"Come on," he said, feeling better than he had in months. Finally, finally, he had his brother back. "Get up and get dressed. We're going exploring."