How I Leave You

What We Do in the Dark

"What?" I draw back, still taking in Kili's words. "Why?"

He shrugs, his mouth in a frown.

"Something about making sure you were safe."

That idiotic king of a dwarf. If only he had stayed in his mountain and focused on keeping himself safe, neither of us would have been in the predicament we found ourselves in at the hand of Azog.

And I would currently be free of the headache raging against my temples.

"Well, it seems it was I who wound up keeping him safe."

"Indeed," Kili smirks, his gaze falling to my throat. "And don't you let a day go by where he forgets it."

"Trust me, princeling," I say, my words affectionate. "I won't."

"How do you feel, Ilwien?" Tauriel asks, pushing Kili aside as she changes the subject.

"Better than when I was poisoned," I admit, sharing a knowing glance with her at the memory of it.

"You look better, too," she says, smiling one of her wide smiles. "You're glowing, even."

"Why, I could say the same about you," I say, tilting my head at the sight of the two of them.

Kili's face is filled with a smile, and it looks good there. It comforts me, the thought that she inspires joy in him where there otherwise only would have been sorrow.

He takes her hand, the gesture affectionate, but she slaps him away. He rubs the spot on top of his hand where she hit him, mumbling swearwords in Khuzdul.

"Well, at least one of you is in love."

Tauriel rolls her eyes, crossing her arms across her chest.

"Oh, yes," Kili says, shaking his head, "terribly so. Not a day goes by where she does not proclaim her love for me. It's embarrassing, the amount of times I have had to turn her down."

"I could imagine," I say, unable to wipe the smile off my face. "Though it is impressive that she should find such a low-born dwarf worthy of her affection."

"I make up for it alright," Kili smirks, which prompts a smack at the back of his head, courtesy of Tauriel.

"We are leaving," she says, dragging him by the arm.

Kili chuckles all the way out, seemingly a lot more amused by the situation than his other half is.

At the prospect of rest, I let myself close my eyes, waiting for the sound of the door shutting close to reach me.

Once more, it never does.

Annoyed, I open an eye, seeing that something is in the way of the door finally closing. I contemplate getting up to fix it, but before I gather the energy to reach a decision, it moves. The object moves, and entirely so on its own.

For it is not just any object. It's a boot.

A dwarven boot.

In comes one dwarf after the other. Though I recognize a few faces at first, the beards soon start to blend together, and I start to feel quite overwhelmed.

"How are ye, lassie?" Balin greets.

"Did ye get enough beauty sleep?" Nori asks, prompting a laugh from the rest of the group.

I suddenly very much sympathize with how Bilbo must have felt when thirteen dwarves fell, one after the other, over his doorstep and into his hobbit hole.

But they are kind, the dwarves, and only seek to thank me for saving their king, many of them here to put a face on the person that did it.

"They say you were sent from the gods," a dwarf I have not seen before says, others nodding at his words.