Kili ducked and rolled under cover as elves appeared as if from nowhere to surround the other dwarves. His heart pounded. How he was going to help them alone he didn't know, but he certainly couldn't help if they caught him too. It had been pure luck that he had been able to avoid them in the first place.

He peered through a break in the brush and spotted his brother. After one of the elves took all of his weapons—or what he probably thought was all of them, because Fili always had more hidden somewhere—Fili started looking around. Kili silently shook his head. If Fili alerted them that someone in the company was missing, he would be caught for certain. Fili suddenly looked right at him. His eyes widened, and he took an instinctive step forward.

One of the elves stepped in front of Fili. It was a she-elf, Kili realized, with very long, bright hair that reminded him of the fire moon he'd seen so long ago.

"What are you looking at?" she asked Fili.

Fili stared up at her and shook his head with a shrug. She said something in elvish to the pale-haired elf who had taken Orcrist and pointed it at Thorin. Kili backed away slowly. He had to find another place to hide.

But the nightmarish maze that Mirkwood had become foiled his plans. Without warning he fell backward and tumbled down a short hill. He took a moment to catch his breath before scrambling to his feet. He looked up, expecting to see a dozen arrows pointed at him, but there was nothing. He backed up slowly, one step, two, until something at his back stopped him. A hissing sound froze his blood in his veins. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and whirled.

Tauriel's head whipped around when she heard a shout from further into the woods. The dwarf she'd blocked a moment ago shouted, "Kili!" She looked up at Legolas, who was holding an elvish blade that had been discovered in one of the dwarves' possession.

He nodded, and without a word she dashed into the cover of the forest. She glided over brush and vaulted up into the trees again so she could come at the spiders from above. It didn't take long to find the source of the commotion. A spider had a dark-haired dwarf by the leg and was dragging him backward across the brush.

Tauriel ran along a heavy branch and fired an arrow into the top of the spider's head. It screeched hideously as it died. She barely took note of the dwarf scrambling his way free of the spider's corpse. Three more spiders came crawling out of the shadows, and it took all her concentration to fight them off on her own. The dwarf called for a weapon, but she ignored him, instead firing another arrow over his head to take out a spider that had been poised to strike. The final two came after her and she switched to her daggers, slashing and stabbing as fast as she could.

She was breathing hard by the time she killed the last spider. She allowed herself a tiny smile of satisfaction before she turned to the dwarf. "You must be Kili."

"How did you know that?" he asked.

She inclined her head and raised an eyebrow. "One of your friends was looking around for something. And when you started shouting, that is the name he called out."

"Fili," he murmured under his breath. He brushed at the strands of spider webs still clinging to him and looked up at her. "Is this the part where you pretend you never saw me and we go our separate ways?"

Tauriel had to bite her tongue to stifle an involuntary chuckle. "This is the part where I take you to rejoin your friends."

"I can catch up to them later. They won't miss me," he argued.

"You'll never find your way out of the forest on your own."

"I'm more resourceful than you think."

Tauriel shook her head. She didn't want to like the dwarf. All her life she had heard tales of the animosity that existed between elves and dwarves. King Thranduil had a particular dislike for them. She had never felt it herself, but then, she had never come across many dwarves until now. This one didn't seem so bad as she'd been led to believe.

But she could not allow mixed feelings to cloud her judgment. Legolas and all the others knew she had gone after a wayward dwarf. They would all be expecting her to bring him back. There was no way she could do otherwise. She sheathed her daggers and picked up her bow. "We need to move."

"We don't have to. Just tell them I got away. They won't know."

"They will," she replied. "You clearly don't know us any better than we know you. Now move."

He glared at her, but finally started moving. Tauriel walked behind him, so she could see where he was, and so that he couldn't see her face. She didn't want him to see her sudden doubt. There was a part, just a small part, that was tempted to let him go. It was the part of her that had begun to doubt her purpose, the part that had begun to question Thranduil and his seeming determination to create an insular kingdom that had very little contact with the outside world. But now was not the time to examine her doubts. If she did not return with Kili in her charge, Legolas would know something was wrong. They had spent too many years together. He knew her too well, knew how skilled a fighter she was. It was why they led the guard together; he as prince, she as captain.

If she did not return with Kili, Legolas would simply send someone else to find him. And then he would question her and wonder what was wrong with her. This way, she told herself, at least Kili would not suffer injury at the hands of the elves. She did not want him harmed.

They trudged through the darkened, decaying forest. Tauriel tried to remember a time when it had all been green, but that was farther in the past than she had been alive. There had been a time once when the darkness had not spread so far, but she couldn't see it now, could barely remember what it had looked like. It worried her.

"Is this what you do all day?" Kili asked as they walked. "Roam this miserable forest and kill spiders? It sounds dreadfully repetitive."

"Somebody has to." In a way he was right. It seemed that of late all they did was patrol the forest and kill the wretched spiders that kept coming and coming. It had become a never-ending task, one that they could have put a stop to long ago, if only Thranduil had let them.

Kili turned and looked back at her. "You are different than the other elves, aren't you?"

She stared down at him. She was suddenly filled with a number of things she wanted to say but couldn't. Things that would indeed mark her as different, things that could get her into trouble. "You are not going to convince me to let you go," was all she said.

"You don't know that. Give me a little more time."

She again had to bite her tongue to contain a reaction. "Do you hear that, just up ahead?" she asked, and stood silently for a moment until she saw on his face that he heard what she heard. "There is no more time." They climbed a slight hill and stepped through the trees into the clearing where the other dwarves still waited, guarded by Legolas and the rest of the elves. Tauriel gestured for Kili to join the others and he did, tossing her a quick look that she didn't have time to decipher.

"Trouble?" Legolas asked.

"No. They are all dead now."

All of the dwarves now accounted for, everyone began marching through the woods. The dwarves were sullen, and Tauriel couldn't blame them. They all knew they weren't being guided toward freedom. She didn't know for certain why they were in Mirkwood to begin with, but she suspected they were trying to reach Erebor. And the thought, if true, struck a chord in her. She glanced at Kili, again walking ahead of her. To be unsure of where you belonged in the world…it was a feeling she knew, and one she despised.

The battle high had left her by the time they entered the gates, and malaise took its place. The elves would celebrate tonight, dance and revel in the starlight. Normally she would not hesitate to join in such an event, but tonight she wasn't sure. An old, closed-off part of her was in danger of cracking open again, and she didn't know if being around the other elves would help or hurt.

What she did know, she thought as she closed the door to Kili's cell and shot him a final glance before walking away, was what had caused the crack to appear in the first place.