Chapter Five: A Choice Is Made

By BlackDeath

Another storm was coming.

The moss grew dark green on the northern faces of the trees. The soil softened imperceptibly, ready to drink in life and rain. The humidity was a heavy drape in the air that cloyed at her senses.

Tauriel rested beside the river, watching it rage and froth at the roaring mouth of the dam. Birdsong drifted down from the sunless canopy. The old growth of trees and ferns that surrounded her were denser than any other part of the grove. None but her people had ever seen these reaches of the Mirkwood. It would take a mortal many lifetimes to navigate it without getting lost.

"How I find you," Legolas chuckled. He had taken care to be quiet though she had heard him coming up along the ridge behind her. It was a game of stealth they had played since they were young.

"You look wild—a fox come out of its den."

She flicked a snarled strand of red away from her face and smiled. "This fox was enjoying the scent of rainfall."

Legolas looked skeptically above his head, taking in the clouds that roiled across the sky. "It makes my hair do strange things."

She laughed. "So I have seen. You could be mistaken for a dwarf."

The light in his eyes dimmed. It had nothing to do with the shadows cast by the congregation of trees. "I know that you have grown fond of the dwarves, Tauriel. You have a gentle heart. But I think it wise that you stop speaking to them."

A chill breeze rustled along the edges of her tunic sleeves. "Is that a command, My Prince?"

He searched her face carefully. "It is the concern of a friend."

"I know my place, Legolas."

His relief was visible. It bothered her even more than what he had said. She closed her eyes and heard him sigh, letting the first hints of autumn wind bite at her cheeks and nose.

"Forgive me. That was tactless."

He sat down silent beside her. The grass was a lush emerald beneath them. When he did speak again, it was as if he were dredging up a heavy burden from a pit. "You were right about my father. He has been keeping secrets."

I am a fool. She realized too late how upset he was. When he desired Legolas could be artful at hiding his pain by lashing out at her with stern words. A lesson he had learned from his father, though Tauriel had begun to wonder how much the King still felt beneath his glacial repose.

"What happened?" she touched his fingers. They were warm but did not send lightning through her as another's had.

Kili. He had been on her mind too much of late. She had practically run from him the other night. But she wasn't avoiding him. She was busy with patrols, tightening security for the upcoming feast, scouting for further signs of orcs. This was the first idle moment she'd had to herself in weeks, and why should she not enjoy it away from her duties?

A butterfly arced overhead, its black wings fluttering, spiraling an impetuous dance. Tauriel wished she could unburden her thoughts to it. She could never discuss these feelings with Legolas. To speak of the curiosity she held for the dwarf—dwarves—would chase her ever closer to some consequence she felt but could not see that was growing up around her like a creeping vine.

Legolas plucked a blade of grass, deep in thought and unaware of hers. "He told me that they are trying to retake Erebor. Erebor! Can you imagine? A fool's errand. When I asked him how long he had known and why he hadn't told me, he…looked at me and said that it wasn't necessary. That speaking of it to me," he said bitterly, "had not been warranted."

Thranduil had never kept anything from his son. The change drove a nail now where before there had been none. The pain was clearer in Legolas' voice than in his face, tainted by an added sorrow—a look Tauriel had seen occasionally that seemed a vestige of something else he mourned for but did not talk about.

Thranduil was everything to Legolas. Father, leader, mentor. Could he be so callous? He would have known the consequences of keeping secrets from his heir. If he had still chosen to keep his own confidence it was for good reason. Perhaps what the dark voice whispered inside Tauriel was true—perhaps he was hiding more than either of them suspected to protect them. But that also made it dangerous. Was it knowledge that was made more dangerous for their unknowing?

"I know you suspected as much," he said, observing her with curiosity. "Yet you do not seem disturbed by it."

"I was," she admitted. "But I have had time to get used to it."

"You know?" His expression was a mixture of surprise and wariness, like an animal that had been wounded and feared another arrow in its leg. It devastated her to see him like this; that he looked on her now as if he must question even her trust. I would never hurt you, Mellon. Her thoughts turned unbidden back to a pair of dark eyes.

"I discovered it when I tried to question Thorin Oakenshield yesterday. I was going to tell you when you were finished with your father."

A hint of mirth tugged at his voice, laced with sarcasm. The wariness was gone, or had been masked. He needs the mask, she realized.

"I can imagine how that went. How did you get him to talk? Threaten to trim his beard?"

She smiled. "He didn't. I asked one of the younger ones."

"The black-haired dwarf," he said. All traces of mirth fled. "The archer."

"Yes."

Wind shook the leaves of the trees. The river boomed as a boulder loosened and moved along with the pounding in her breast. Tauriel waited for him to say something, waited…waited for what? He looks at you. She stared at her hands. Dirt embedded the nails, palms roughened with battle. Not fine by any race's standards. Do you want him to?

"I told my father of the orc tracks," he continued, as if there was nothing amiss and they were merely sharing a companionable moment like they always had. Yet she felt this new and immovable thing between them like a tree that had fallen in their path.

"He wishes us to double the patrols at night. He believes you are correct in assuming a connection with the dwarves."

Kili's pale face swam before her eyes. There's a bounty on our heads. If she told Legolas he was as likely to remove them from the dungeons himself and tie them up at the edge of the forest. Let the orcs have them if they want them. She could hear his words as surely as if he'd ever spoken them. Was it not better than tempting them further into his father's lands, better than risking the lives of their own people? Before Tauriel had come to know any of her prisoners, she would have agreed without hesitation. But now...

"Did he give any indication of what the connection could be?" she asked, not meeting his eyes.

"No," he shook his head. "He did not appear to have any idea. But then," his face hardened. "If he does, I no longer have the assurance that he will tell it to me."

She could not look at him. She wondered if she would ever be able to look at him again as the knowledge that she could not bring herself to divulge this truth to him sunk within her like a stone. You are right to doubt me, Legolas. I am no better than the King. She could not risk endangering her people, but how could she risk endangering the lives of the dwarves—prisoners that had become so much more than prisoners? Valar, guide me. What choice do I have?

"I will alert the guards and do my best."

"Yes," Legolas said. His blue eyes acquired the grey of the impending storm. "You always do."

Tauriel did not return to the dungeons for three days. She could not dwell on what she knew must come to pass. She had to tell Legolas of the bounty on the dwarves' heads. Though she had not been able to ask Kili why there was a bounty, the fact that orcs were willing to risk following them across Mirkwood spoke volumes. The reason had to be great enough to command such a relentless pursuit.

Merethen Gillith was beginning. The sounds of celebration could be heard even so far below the palace. Beneath it the steady rush of water flowed from the falls that had weathered the caverns a millennia ago. Tonight there were enough guards posted to keep watch over the prisoners if Tauriel wished to go above and watch the lights of the feast from a distance. Yet here she was, making her way down and down into the bowels of the earthen prison, paranoia driving her feet forward, a certainty in her gut that the young sentries would find a way to be deep in their cups by the end of the night. She had to keep an eye on them, she told herself.

Kili was tossing a stone in the air when she found him, contemplation and boredom set on his features.

"The stone in your hand—what is it?"

His mouth lifted, as if he was deciding whether or not to turn his lip up at the sight of her. It appeared as if he would simply turn his back and ignore her. Instead, he treated her to a grave and sidelong look that said all. Where have you been?

"It is a talisman. A powerful spell lies upon it. If any but a dwarf reads the runes on this stone they will be forever cursed." He brandished the stone at her and his eyes sparked with pleasure as she flinched.

Tauriel was not in the mood to entertain a bored and vindictive dwarf. Her conscience weighed heavily upon her. She gazed at him, seeing him with anger for the first time. It was him and his companions who were the cause of her present turmoil. They had brought a dire threat to the doorstep of her people, all for deluded dreams of a lost homeland. Were they so naïve? Did they know that they likely courted death rather than glory? Do they care that they may bring it to the rest of us?

She scowled and moved away from the bars. His voice piped up as she retreated.

"Or not," he said quickly. She heard the apology beneath it. She looked back at him. He hadn't been sleeping well again and his face was pale and gaunt from want of more frequent meals and sunlight. Perhaps he does know. Perhaps they all do.

"Depending on whether you believe that kind of thing…it's just a token." He turned the small stone in his palm.

"Do you believe in it?" she asked.

Kili stared at the cracks in the cell's clay ceiling as if he were studying it for answers. "I believe in the one who gave it to me. I believe in myself. Most of the time," he said, somewhat sheepish. "What about you, Captain? Do you believe in blessings or curses?"

Tauriel shifted and leaned against the bars. It was a strange question. The Silvan clans were very superstitious. Not so the Sindar—they were far better educated and knew the difference between true magic and foolishness. But she suspected that was not what he meant.

"I am not so unlike you," she said. Her voice carried on the damp current of air between them. "I think if we cannot believe in ourselves, we cannot believe in others. Once we believe there is faith. Without faith there is no trust."

Kili nodded sagely, as if he were aged by accumulated knowledge and experience. "Without trust there are no promises."

"Promises?" she asked.

The light of the torch glowed softly on his tangled black hair, highlighting it a cast bronze in places. "I believe in promises. I used to break them all the time. One time I promised Fili that I'd let him have my dessert for three weeks if he helped me hide my pet badger from our Mam beneath his bed. That didn't go over so well. I promised Bombur that I'd take him walking up the mountain slopes every morning and help him lose weight…"

He grimaced, an expression of self-disgust she was coming to understand. "I never kept any of them. Not until Uncle Thorin took me out hunting one day. I knew that he wanted to talk to me when he didn't ask Fili to come. That's how he is." He smiled slightly.

"He'd never come right out and say it. We'd go hunting first—catch some rabbits or squirrels, then go and roast them on a fire. The sun would be setting while we ate and he'd always start in on me after. I asked him about it once. He told me that we're at our most honest on a full stomach." He chuckled, a somber melody in the darkness. "If that's the case, Bombur's the most honest out of us all."

She suppressed a smile, thinking of the rotund dwarf always snoring in his cell the many times she had passed him. It was like clockwork; the only time that he bothered to rouse himself was when the guard came up for meals. Tauriel had begun to tell the time of day that way in the dungeons, relying less upon the faint scents of morning and night that filtered in on the air.

Kili went on, though his eyes flickered with renewed life as he saw the change in humor within her own. "He told me a king is only as good as his word. That goes for all of Mahal's children. To give your word is to pledge yourself, your honor. If you can't keep your word, none of it matters. It's easy to make many promises, but harder to keep them. He said it's best to make fewer promises so that you can be sure of fulfilling the ones you do."

Thorin Oakenshield's stony face was indecipherable. It was difficult to imagine the sneering dwarf king that brooded in his cell raising his nephews to be noble and fair. Tauriel tried to imagine tenderness in his cold voice and found that her imagination was poor indeed.

"That is very wise," she said. "I think the same can be said for all races."

"I've only made two promises since," he said seriously. "The one I made to Thorin—that I would follow him as my king to reclaim our home...and this." He held up the stone for her to see. "You asked what it was. It's a runestone. My mother gave it to me so I would remember my promise to her."

"What promise?" Her curiosity was becoming too persistent where he was concerned. She wanted to know more of his life. She wanted to know him, she realized with unsettling clarity.

"That I would come back to her." He contemplated the stone, tossing it in the air once more. "She worries. She thinks I'm reckless."

Tauriel could no longer stop the smile she had been holding. It bloomed across her face. "Are you?"

Kili tossed it again and shook his head emphatically. "Nah."

The stone slipped his grasp and fell through the bars, making a sound like a bell against the iron. She stopped it from rolling over the ledge with her boot. She picked it up and examined it in the torchlight. Dwarvish runes were incised carefully into its smooth surface.

"Sounds like quite a party they're having up there," he said, gazing past her up through the shadowy hive of cells.

The stars were at their peak of brightness. A scant glimmer of light had begun to reach even the lowest dungeon levels. Their spectral glow bathed Tauriel in a serenity that she rarely felt. "It is Merethen Gilith. The Feast of starlight. All light is sacred to the Eldar. And wood elves love best the light of the stars."

For a moment she felt the old longing flare from her childhood, the desire to revel beneath them with Legolas and his Sindarin relations. If her family had survived Tauriel would have chosen this night to be with them among the Silvan clans, watching and listening to the faint warmth of music and dancing that reached them from among the trees.

"Why are you not there?"

His question brought her back, spinning her thoughts into an invisible thread that tightened around her. "I am unwelcome."

He gaped. "But you're the Captain of the Mirkwood Forest Guard!"

"Do you mind if I abbreviate?" she asked, arching a brow.

He smirked. "If you're going to make a joke you can't use mine. You've got to come up with your own. Those are the rules."

"I will remember," she said, lips twitching.

A comfortable silence descended as the sounds of feasting continued to float down amid the shafts of starlight. She wished it was still the same with Legolas. It hadn't been that way for some time with her friend. Even before the arrival of the dwarves. She couldn't help but sorrow for its loss and the growing sense of distance that lay like a collapsing bridge between them.

"Tell me," Kili said, breaking the spell of quiet. It made her feel like a ghost come to keep him company. "Why aren't you welcome?"

She felt the familiar shame rise along her neck. "I am a Silvan Elf. Low-born among my kind. Only Sindarin Elves are allowed to partake of the feast."

He snorted loudly. "What's the difference? Durin's folk are welcome in every hall, especially that of the King. We're all the same, none better than the other. The King is only there to serve his people, not be worshiped by them."

She sighed. "It is not so simple among elves."

"Isn't it?"

Kili gazed at her, drawing out the sting of what she was like venom. How strange it was that he could make such a vital distinction seem so frivolous—so arbitrary. "Rank is not determined by occupation," she said gently. "It is birth."

"Mahal's balls. You're the best of them all," he swore, as though it was as obvious as up or down. "They're a bunch of robe-wearing pointy-eared fools if they think otherwise. And besides—" he finished, undaunted. "I've never cared much for stars."

Tauriel's eyes widened. "Truly?"

Kili shrugged, as though it was something that he had grown putting little stock in—as though she had pointed out the color of his stockings. Did dwarves even wear stockings?

"I always thought it is a cold light," he said. "Remote and far away."

How could that be? "Do all dwarves feel the same?"

"Most of us prefer the glitter of jewels to the glitter of the heavens. Or a pretty lass," he added.

Tauriel rolled her eyes. She had grown used to his flirtations and for the most part had learned to ignore them, though they still made her uncomfortably aware of herself. She let it pass and looked on him with growing astonishment. How could any race not embrace the stars? "It is memory. Precious and pure," she insisted. How could she make him see?

The runestone was a slight weight in her palm, coaxed to life by his flesh and hers. It seemed to speak eloquently enough for them both. She handed it back to him. His fingers brushed hers for the second time since they had made their bargain. The same current of fire flowed between them, as though once ignited would now remain coursing beneath the surface.

"Starlight is memory. Beautiful and pure," she said softly, thinking of a mother anxiously awaiting the return of her son. "Like your promise."

The noise of the feast was winding down. Tauriel thought back through the years of her life, a life that seemed very long compared to his. She stepped away from the bars of his cell, wanting to share what she had known with him, a being whose heart would soon flicker out just as it had started to find rhythm with the rest of the world.

"I have gone wandering in the highest branches of the ancient trees of Mirkwood. I have been close enough that you could forget and think yourself wandering among the stars. There were times that I was sure that I have walked there with them sometimes…beyond the forest and up into the night. I have seen the world fall away. And the white light of forever fill the air."

She turned, wondering if perhaps she had said too much, given away too much of herself; but there was only Kili's face illuminated by a single torch and starlight, looking at her with a puzzling kindness.

"I saw a firemoon once."

Tauriel's breath hitched and she immediately flushed at the sound, so intimate in the darkness. A firemoon was a rare pleasure. She had heard stories of them, but in all of her years she had never been fortunate enough to glimpse one. How strange it was that such a young dwarf already had.

Kili kept talking, enjoying his captive audience. "It rose over the pass near Dunland. Huge. Red and gold it was. It filled the sky."

She kneeled down, lulled by his tale and the illusion that for a moment there was no iron that existed between their lives. Here, now, in this fragment of time, he could be Kili and she could be Tauriel. Not prisoner and captive, dwarf or elf; they were beyond these things and had climbed up into the trees to walk among the stars together.

"We were in escort with some merchants from Ered Luin. They were trading in silverwork for furs. We took the Greenway south, keeping the mountain to our left. And then it appeared—this huge firemoon lighting our path. I wish I could show it to you…"

So do I.

Someone was knocking at her door.

Tauriel had not chosen to sleep when she left the dungeons. Not that she needed to sleep often, though she did take pleasure in doing so. She had begun reading a small history of Erebor that Legolas had leant her from his library. It was written from its founding and the discovery of the mysterious gem that was said to bestow the rightful seat of power for the King Under The Mountain.

Kili had spoken of Durin's Line to her before. Like Thorin, she learned that he and Fili were direct heirs of Durin, the first created of the dwarves by their fiery forge god Mahal.

She had just become absorbed in the book when the knock drew her attention. She tied her sleeping robe close about herself and opened it. Lieutenant Rochirion and her host of guardsmen blinked lizard-like at the sight of her, as though they had never seen her without armor. She realized after an awkward pause of rustling fabric and the shifting of feet that they hadn't. They looked as if she were tucked away somewhere else, desperately combing their eyes about the small room in search of her. As Rochirion spoke she felt something turn to ice in her stomach.

"Captain you must come quickly—the prisoners have escaped."

"Where is the keeper of the keys?"

She rapidly donned her tunic, leggings, and armor. If Rochirion and the guardsmen had not been watching in awestruck horror as she stripped, turning and averting their eyes, she would have been thoughtless of asking them to. Preservation of modesty was the least of her worries.

Aglaradan rushed up from the wine vault, panting to keep pace with her strides. He was wild about the eyes from a night of drinking, hair mussed on one side, the imprint of a plate creased into his forehead. The keys dangled from his hand. "I have them! They never left my sight, I tell you—I don't know how they got out!"

"It does not matter now," she snapped. "We must find the prisoners or Thranduil's Winter will be a blizzard."

The guardsmen traded looks. Thranduil's cold-burning temper was infamous, coined 'Winter' as a rueful joke among them. All knew well enough that no pain was too great in risking to avoid His Majesty's wrath. If Winter was bad, news of the dwarves' escape would only make it worse.

"We will go ahead. Aglaradan, send for Legolas." she ordered. It was a testament to his panic that in this not even he hesitated in obeying.

"This way," she barked. "Asca!"

Tauriel divided up the guards, sending one party racing off through the forest to intercept the dwarves in case they had already made it aboveground. She took the second and flew down through the dungeons and toward the vault, flanked by a winded Rochirion.

The door was closed as they approached, as though it hadn't seen any activity all night; as though thirteen escaped prisoners hadn't crept across its threshold before it had been flung open by a drunk and hysterical Aglaradan.

She gave the signal and the guards kicked it in, arrows and blades at the ready. They flooded the vault, searching every corner.

"They're gone, Captain," her Swordmaster announced. "There's no way out."

Tauriel was mystified. She peered around the room wordlessly, searching for hair or bootprint, anything that might have indicated their presence. Her eyes narrowed at the wooden crates filled with apples and goods in the center of the room. Something was missing.

She whirled on the guard that oversaw the river shipments of wine. "Istafon? Did you have empty barrels that needed to be sent back to Laketown for refilling?"

Istafon's face went pale. slowly, as if one mind, each of the guards gazed at one another and turned to stare at the outline of the cargo door that shown against the floor.

"This is going to be a blizzard," Rochirion groaned. Tauriel agreed.

A thrush cooed in the distance. Tauriel cupped a hand around her mouth and delivered the answering chortle, drawing in closer.

The party she had sent ahead jumped down from the position they had taken in the trees while waiting to rejoin with them.

"Any sign?" she asked.

Her Third In Command shook his head. "They have either found clever hiding places or a way to move swifter than anticipated."

"Much swifter," she said grimly. "They have taken the river. We must hurry."

It was ingenious—Tauriel did not understand how the dwarves had known of Thranduil's wine vault or the door. She didn't understand any of it. How, how how, her mind chanted. How had they known? How had they escaped?

Someone let them out. But who? Aglaradan still possessed the keys, and the keys were the only means of opening the cells. As resentful of her Captaincy as he and his father were, they were loyal. Even were they not, Tauriel could not see the former Captain willingly risking Thranduil's rage to try and make a fool out of her with the most obvious finger pointing to his son.

Disbelief clawed at her, disbelief and something else. Kili, she thought traitorously. He was gone. They all were.

It is better this way, a voice inside of her whispered. She thought of the bounty, of Legolas' hurt and fury when she would have had to tell him. She could not have omitted the truth from him for very 's face rose like a fog before her. Liar.

But you know what he would have done. Legolas would have taken them bound from their cells and left them out for the orcs to do what they wished with them.

She could not think on it now; they were free. Tauriel slowed, wondering why she was running so fast. She could lead the guards down the longer path to the dam and the river gate and hope that they wouldn't notice, hope that the dwarves had got there and opened it before. She could call off the search.

Let them go. Let him go.

The guard's footfalls were swift and silent through the underbrush as they dashed after her, dodging jutting roots and branches. Any minute they might be on them—any minute they might recapture them if she didn't think of something.

A cry of surprised anguish exploded from her right. Istafon fell forward, the shaft of a black-tipped arrow shot through the center of his chest. Tauriel froze as another whistled through the air and pierced the ground in front of her.

A deep, guttural cry of hate shook the trees. A line of orcs leapt from their hiding places, the wicked curves of their blades blinding, reflecting white-hot slivers in the sunlight.

"Plag tak poshat! Baj tak sorshul!"

she had led them, weapons undrawn, straight into a trap. She had been so fixated on the dwarves, she had not thought to be careful, had not thought…what have I done?

"Captain, look out!"

Rochirion's voice cut where the orc's greatsword would have had she not ducked in time. It sang above the crown of her head, displacing the air. She spun and stuck her dagger between its ribs.

"Aaaaoooggg!"

Two more were upon her before she could blink. They were fierce, but she managed to take them down, sweat and shivering exertion seeping out along her skin. They kept coming. She could not see where they sprang from. They used the cover of the trees to their advantage, turning their own knives against their throats.

"Lle baur na cin sen na rashwe na a lhedin," Tauriel shouted to Rochirion, who defended beside her with one arm while the other hung useless and injured at his side. "Lye baur na istas sut lhaew ennas naa."

He bared his teeth, delivering the killing blow to his adversary. "An in Gadorenas?"

Tauriel helped him fight off another orc, monstrously large, the size of a small mountain with a deformed skull and rictus grin. Her hand slipped around its blood on her blade as she drove it back. "They are still under our protection."

Rochirion grunted and delivered the killing blow, skewering it up through its mandible and into its brain. "Nean lye ve lye mani lle shen na lle ona a norgontin. Mellonea! Na lle Nikerym! Suer Sen chu Duin!"

The guards gave a rallying cry and made a tight ring around Tauriel, a band of leather and armor pressing in on her. They circled slowly, a spinning phalanx, never breaking rank as the orcs continued to erupt from the trees and advance.

When she saw no more coming, she discreetly fell to her knees in the middle of them and pushed through their legs, seeing Rochirion jerk his head in the direction of a wide-leafed fern nearby. He waited until she was safely behind it and out of view before giving the command.

"Now!"

They broke rank and attacked, falling upon the orcs. Tauriel tried to catch her breath. She could not risk running until they were out of sight.

She waited, heart pounding, listening as the pained cries of the guards and bellows of the orcs grew fainter, knowing she could do nothing, hating herself for risking their lives because of her carelessness. They were rallying, but it would not last. There were too many orcs. They needed reinforcements. They needed Thranduil's soldiers. They needed Legolas.

Legolas looked like he hadn't stopped running until he saw her. "Aglaradan said the dwarves have fled."

"Yes," she said, drawing a quaking breath. "They have hidden in barrels and escaped down river. Where is Aglaradan?"

"Relating the news of their escape to my father. Where are the others?"

Tauriel closed her eyes. It had happened so quickly; like a dream recounted in pieces. The orcs had appeared from nowhere. Her guards...she couldn't think. Guilt was a luxury she didn't have time for. She had to save the dwarves. She had to save him.

"We were ambushed. The orcs took us by surprise and Rochirion and the rest took the brunt of the attack so I could pursue the prisoners. They herded the ones we didn't kill up river. There are many of them. We need to send a message to your father. We need his guards."

Legolas' jaw tightened. His eyes kindled with fury. "There is no one to send word. We will have to hold them off ourselves from the palace until we can spare someone. The prisoners are a lost cause."

He started toward the river but she grabbed his shoulder. "They have no arms. They are defenseless."

He glared at her. "Let them save themselves if they can! We must save our own." She stepped in front of him.

"It is not the King they are after."

Legolas stared at her as if he had never seen her before in his life. "What are you talking about?"

Tauriel steeled herself and met his eyes. "There is a bounty on their heads. I am sorry, I—"

Incredulity rippled across his face. His mouth opened as if he would speak and snapped shut. It was betrayal and everything that she had feared and worse. He turned from her.

"We will speak of this later."

"Istafon has been killed."

He did not turn around, not even for that, though she saw the bowing of his shoulders. She continued, relentless.

"Would you have his sacrifice be in vain? Would you not protect those who cannot protect themselves?"

The distant sounds of battle up river could no longer be heard. Tauriel realized that she had stopped hearing them even before he had arrived. Terrible awareness sunk in her gut, and she prayed it did not mean the worst.

Legolas turned back then but did not look at her. He breathed deeply, a muscle trembling in his jaw. "I will do what I can to save the prisoners. But for Istafon and not for what you have said. It was not for himself that he met his death. He was unselfish."

She had been ready for it. She deserved it, though she felt the full weight of the blow nonetheless—rending her in two.

He drew his bow and notched an arrow, making his way downriver and never once glancing to see if she followed.

"Know only this, Tauriel. Their lives on your head. You have done this."

The din of battle and orc-cry were vengeful spirits in her ears. Gannelwen's fallen body and severed head shuddered like an open wound before her. Legolas gripped her arm, shouting in her face. His voice was muted, far away.

"Dartha an nin!"

Chaos had broken loose downriver. It was worse than the ambush had been. Thirty orcs swarmed the banks. He's already dead. Dread beat in her chest like a war hammer. They all were.

You have done this. She had made her choice.

Legolas shot an orc through the eye. As it fell he barreled into it, using it as a battering ram to plow into another and take it by surprise.

That's when she saw him. Ten paces away, staring in wide-eyed terror. Kili had seen her first. He wore the same expression as on the day her guards had captured him except now he was lying on his back, braced for undoing as the shadow of an orc's blade swooped falcon-like toward him. It was not the orc that held it but death itself.

You cannot have him. Not this one.

The fighting slowed to sluggish unreality. Sound and movement crawled. Tauriel's vision narrowed, funneled to a single pulsating point. A cold fire coursed through her limbs. She shot an arrow through the heart of the orc. It fell back on the weight of its blade.

Kili's eyes met her across the battlefield. Living eyes. That was all that mattered. They held hers, anchoring her, assuring her that they were in the middle of a violent dream that they would soon both wake from. Tauriel watched him drop something that had been coiled in his hand and roll himself off the edge of the rampart step closer to the water. He was out of sight. Stay where you're safe. They don't see you. She could not stop for anything again, not even him. She drew her daggers and spun, cutting two more orcs down as they hurtled toward her. She looked up—

—and recognized the face that had drunk the death of all that she loved.

The Pale Orc knew her immediately. It had never forgotten. Neither had she.

"Azat ta! Azat ta golug! Mabas tak!" it roared.

"Kili!" His brother's voice reached her beyond the clash of steel and the seething rapids. He had lifted the river gate.

Kili flashed through her line of sight once more. He dragged himself over the lowest hidden step of the rampart and slumped forward, splashing into a barrel that rocked wildly downriver with the rest of his companions. Using her diverted attention to its advantage, a towering orc seized her and nearly cleaved her in half.

"Mabas tak!"

"Sin athrad, Legolas!" She danced out of its grip and severed its ear. It screamed as she turned the tables on it, distracting it long enough to plunge her dagger into its belly. It crashed into the water and the river swept it under. She sighted Legolas' silver hair flaring out behind him as he shot another arrow through an orc's skull. He ran when he was free, jerking his head for her to follow.

They pursued the progress of the dwarves, shooting and impaling their way through orc flesh. Tauriel doubled backward, sweeping her blades in a circle as they leapt from the highest rampart wall. Legolas kept time with her. They climbed and jumped over Mirkwood's border together, leaving behind the thickest cluster of enemies.

"Come!" he shouted.

The orcs spat a volley of arrows at the barrels. Legolas was nearer to the bank that she was. She sprinted after him, hurling herself into a tree whose branches suspended over the river, jumping from limb to limb to get closer.

She fired arrow after arrow, knocking orcs into the water, watching them as they drowned. Balin and Thorin were in the last of the barrels. Another orc took inspiration from their strategy and ran across a fallen tree that bridged the river, poising an axe over Balin's white-bearded head. Thorin Oakenshield grabbed a floating branch, throwing it at the orc. It dropped into the water and its blade fell easily into his grasp.

The dwarves were efficient at taking weapons as they downed their adversaries. Dwalin got hold of an axe and chopped another tree that had fallen across the river that the orcs lined like a flock of birds, sending them to their graves. By luck or misfortune, Bombur's barrel was spit out of the water onto land and rolled, bouncing across air and tree and stone until it landed and shattered around him. His legs and arms burst out of the sides with weapons in hand, providing a strange armor against the bombardment of orcs he cycloned his way through.

There was a fourteenth in their company—there had only been thirteen prisoners Tauriel had counted that they had captured. He was smaller than the other dwarves, a mere child. She could not make out his features from the distance. Where had he come from?

Legolas gained ground ahead of them and waited for the right moment. "Cover me," he shouted.

As Dwalin and Dori rode the froth past, he jumped from the riverbed and skipped stones across their skulls, turning and firing arrows at the orcs from his moving platform of cursing dwarf heads. Tauriel took the high ground and let loose her remaining arrows until her arms arched. He reached the other side of the river and killed the last of them. She let out a cry as he missed one and it raised an axe at his back.

"Behind you!" she screamed.

She watched, helpless, knowing he could not hear above the noise and thunder of the river. She was about to witness his end. Tears of rage and loathing hazed her vision. He will die with my lie upon his heart. She despaired, spirit raging against the inevitable as another blade milled through the air and gutted the orc not a hairsbreadth before it was too late.

Thorin Oakenshield glanced at her before settling back in his barrel. He said nothing. A debt for a debt. He and Legolas watched each other like wary chess pieces as the fourteen barrels grew smaller until they had disappeared from sight. They were gone.

Tauriel ran along the embankment until she found a place to cross, hopping from stone to stone to where Legolas stood, staring past the horizon, the energy and exhilaration of battle fled from his body.

The whine of another bowstring being drawn pierced her ears.

She turned just as another orc took the former's place. One. Just one. It strung an arrow and pointed it at Legolas. Tauriel shot her last as it fired, foiling its mark. The orc whipped its head around as she somersaulted toward it and brought her blade to its throat.

"Tauriel!" Legolas ordered. "Ato."

"This one we bring to my father. Sen pen nae heb cuin."

"Out there in the vast ignorance of the world it festers and spreads. A shadow that grows in the dark. A sleepless malice as black...as the oncoming wall of night."

Thranduil circled the orc Legolas restrained with the dagger. It growled, fixing its snarling hatred on Tauriel. Myriad tortures lurked within its eyes.

"So it ever was…so will it always be. In time, all foul things come forth."

She and Legolas had gathered the rest of the guard up river and taken it back to Thranduil for questioning. Bodies of orcs littered the land between the palace and the river gate. The guard had been outnumbered but they had won. Tauriel sent up a small prayer of gratitude to whoever was listening. It had been miraculous that there were no more casualties; they had been fortune, though she knew that the outcome may have been vastly different had the orcs been targeting them.

Istafon, she grieved. Istafon...

You have done this.

Thranduil was deathly quiet. Winter was upon them, and what a blizzard it was. He turned his eyes upon Tauriel, as though she had all the opacity of sun-dappled leaves.

"It is a tragedy that we have been surprised by this attack."

He knows.

Legolas was a statue of indifference. He restrained the orc that was kneeling at his feet, dagger to its throat. She recalled the betrayal in his eyes as he refrained from looking at her.

"Prisoners have escaped today and we have lost kin. How could this have happened, I wonder?"

He glided past her, scrutinizing her the way he would a termite that had eaten its way through his carven throne.

"Who is responsible?"

Her heart constricted in her chest. Legolas continued making as study of avoiding her gaze, as if she were not even in the same room. You have done this.

Kili…be safe. Be well.

If he and his companions survived and succeeded on their quest—wizened old Balin, sweet Ori, Fili, Bombur, as well as their resentful leader and the others she hadn't a chance to know, what would be the consequences?

What have I done? What have I set in motion?

She hadn't been able to do it. She had betrayed Legolas and the safety of her people with a lie. She had made a choice.

Thranduil seemed to know her suffering. He breathed deeply, savoring it as though it were an acquired vintage. Istafon was dead because she had not told Legolas of the bounty—because of an omission of truth born out of a desire to protect. But Tauriel had never meant it to be at the expense of her own people.

Was this what it was to rule? she thought. Was this what it was to live honestly? Having to make a choice between the needs of the few for the needs of the many? To make sacrifices? To offer up shackled prisoners with wives, husbands, children, loves of their own so that they could protect and defend their own kind?

Now you understand, his eyes said. We are not so different.

The orc spat and hissed. Thranduil observed it like a token curiosity.

Legolas pulled its head back, letting the blade lick at the exposed artery. "You were tracking a company of thirteen dwarves—why?"

Tauriel recalled the fourteenth she'd seen in the river. She had not been mistaken. There had been another. But where had he come from? Who was he?

The orc gurgled. "Not thirteen. Not anymore." Dread beat through her ribs as it's laughter.

"A young one—the black-haired archer." Bile rose in her throat. There could only be one that fit that description.

"We struck him with a Morghul shaft. Poison's in his blood. He'll be choking on it soon." The orc fixed its attention on Tauriel, as though it was speaking only to her. It was impossible to tell if it sneered or smiled through its rotting gums and ruinous teeth.

The throne room grew smaller, enclosing her. Blood roared in her ears. "Answer the question, filth."

For the first time Legolas looked at her, a warning set on the forbidding line of his mouth. The orc lunged at her.

"Sha hat nes kon ta golog!"

Legolas jerked the dagger as it struggled, digging it deeper into it's flesh so that a scratch of black blood curdled along the edge. "I would not antagonize her."

Tauriel greeted the void within her heart, peering down into its mote of ashes. Kili lay beneath the shadow of the orc's raised blade. Her mother and father dead, burnt in the flames. Adanethael's screams and silence on the other side of the door. Gannelwen's body broken beneath the tree.

Her hand acted of its own will, unsheathing her blade for her. "You like killing things, orc? You like death?" She spoke to the creature before her and to another from long ago. The Pale Orc had been there. It had seen her and Tauriel had seen it. It had come back, still holding her sister's head, kneeling in front of her.

"Then let me give it to you!"

"Far!"

Thranduil's command was a physical force that stopped her. The voice of the King had been ingrained in her to follow. Tauriel blinked down at her weapon as it hovered a breath away from the orc's heart. It growled low in its throat.

"Tauriel, aego! Kela si."

Legolas watched, saying nothing. Betrayer. False one.

She averted her eyes and stepped back. She did not glance at her King where he stood, composed of ice in the middle of the throne, so confident that secrets would save them; that the cage he had built for them all would be enough to ward off the darkness.

No, we are different. I have not lost hope.

"I do not care about one dead dwarf," Thranduil continued. His voice followed her, pressing chill fingers up her spine as she left. "Answer the question."

Tauriel packed light. Water was unnecessary; it would be plentiful along the way. Five cakes of lembas and her weapons were all she needed. She swiftly cleaned her armor and sharpened her blades, gathering enough arrows until she could replenish them in the cities of men. The river would take them first to Laketown and they would have to journey by foot on to the mountain that lay on the other side. The orcs would get there first. Legolas' face in the throne room haunted her.

He knows you. You know him. He will forgive you. She shut her eyes, struggling to bear herself up under all that had come to pass. If she had faith in anyone, it was him. He would come. He would find her, he would…

It doesn't have to be this way. Not how Thranduil believed. They could all guard each other against what was to come—they did not need their boundaries, barriers, walls. They could find another way. Tauriel would save them; her people, the dwarves. They could save each other.

She plucked up the Book of Erebor from where it lay on the small table and slipped it beneath her belt, covering it with the green folds of her tunic. It gave her the hope that she would see his grin again.

Valar keep him and grant me wings. I am coming.

The sun was sinking. The reek of slain orcs engulfed her nostrils. The stench of recent death was thick and nauseating. The guards would remain at the palace and remove the bodies in the morning. They would not be buried in Mirkwood. They would have to be carried outside the boundary of the forest, lest their marrow disease the soil.

Tauriel was alone. The grassy knoll that surrounded the stone ramparts housing the river gate was stained with slaughter. She had sat upon it just days ago. Now it was tainted; poisoned by death. She had seen the Pale Orc near one of the largest trees adjacent to it.

When we meet again, one of us will die.

The forest was soundless but for a young lark that whistled. Tauriel found the spot where she had last seen him. The water was white and strong, cascading across rocks and the bones of the orcs it had claimed that day.

He lay on the ground here, she thought. She went to the lever that hoisted the gate and looked down at where Kili had rolled onto the lower parapet that rose just above the level of the rapids. There was something that lay on top of it.

Tauriel bent and picked up the necklace, uncomprehending. He asked for the loose leather string from my bow and two locks of my hair.

The memory of his grin was a light before her. No kisses three from a fair-elf maid?

He had used pieces of the soiled blue cloth from his tunic. It was coarse cloth, but it had been a beautiful color once. It was beautiful still, even with dirt creased into the folds.

The chain had been woven with long strands of her hair with darker strands she recognized as his. She touched them reverently as a vice clenched within her breast. The chain was supported by the piece of leather she had traded him. In the center, the scraps of ripped blue cloth had been tightly coiled until it formed the shape of a flower.

Not a flower, she realized, caressing it and peering closer at the pointed edges. A star. He had dropped it. Did he hope that she would find it?

The strands of copper and ebony were a complimentary contrast, the humble cloth showing against the artistry of the weave. If he had given it to her, what would he have said? What would she have done?

I will ask him why. I will save him and ask him why. The Morghul poison moved fast, but Tauriel would move faster.

She felt the reassuring weight of the arrows on her back, the blades at her hips. Doubt entered as an uninvited guest. If I leave, I may never return. Thranduil would never pardon me for deserting, for disobeying orders. The irony was not lost on her. Perhaps I am more like Aglaradan than I thought. The smile failed at her lips.

The trees wept at what they had seen that day. She could hear their sorrow in the leaves that shook and sighed with the breeze. She loved the land of her ancestors, loved it with all of its perils. It was her land, her life. All that she knew—could she truly leave it behind forever to save his life? Perhaps there would be others he would meet on the road who could help him.

Men lack healing knowledge of dark magic. There will be no others to help him where he goes.

What was the answer? Here, when the final hour was upon her, Tauriel did not feel strong or certain. She was not brave, nor was she courageous. Could she really help her people? Could she aid the dwarves? Valar help me. Show me the way. She clutched the necklace for fear it would disappear as he had.

A wave of sensation overtook her suddenly, robbing her of her senses. Her knees buckled and the world tilted. White blooms of vertigo erupted behind her eyelids. Tauriel swayed forward and caught herself against stone, feeling the spray of the water reaching up for her below.

She opened her eyes. Kili lay on a table. There were two human children and three dwarves—Oin, Bifur, and Fili. He was lashing out, arms flailing, unseeing. The poison was claiming him, pulling him down into darkness.

"Tauriel!" he wept, pain and terror drying on his cheeks. "Tauriel!" He was screaming, a sickening rattle in his throat.

I am here! She cried. She was, but he could not hear. She touched his face, but he could not see her.

His body shook and all at once there was a terrible stillness. Clots of blood trickled from the side of his mouth. The black taunts of the orc in Thranduil's throne room came back to her.

Oin touched Fili's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Lad. There's nothing more we could do." Grief flowed down his face like the streams she imagined in the mountain kingdom they all sought to reclaim.

"Another Prince of Erebor has fallen."

Tauriel coughed and swallowed draughts of air. She had been holding her breath, thinking that she'd fallen in beneath the rapids. She stared, dazed and grateful to find herself still on the rampart wall.

She looked down at the necklace. The vibrant red strands shown in contrast to Kili's. This is impossible. It should have happened when she was a child. It was too late. It couldn't be now. It wasn't supposed to be passed onto her. She was too old. She took after her Adaienior in look only. Adanethael was the one the other clans whispered about—the one with the Sight. Not her. Not Tauriel of Mirkwood.

But the vision had been real. It remained, preying on her; Kili's face contorting, the light and song of his life leaving him. She had not believed…not since the murder of her family. Yet she had seen it. She had seen his end.

He will die if I do not go to him. She knew it with utter certainty; with everything that she was. There would be no one else to prevent it. His fate had been shown to her, as true as if it was tale that had already been written.

If this is a gift, take it from me. I do not want it.

"You cannot hunt thirty orcs on your own."

Legolas crested the flat grey stones toward her.

You know his heart. "But I'm not on my own."

Fatigue and concern layered his face. "You knew I would come."

She forced the vision away, letting it fall deep within the well of grief and mysteries that still burned their unanswered questions inside her. Kili's face settled there with the others—of Gannelwen, of Adanethael, her father and mother. Not this time. Not this time.

"I had hoped. I did not know if you would forgive me."

He shook his head. "You knew." His silver hair rustled over his shoulders like the churning waters. He sighed. "Help me to understand you, Tauriel. The Valar knows that I want to." His eyes pleaded.

He is lost. Like she had been. Like she still was. But now there was something. Something more to become. A reason, a way. It had been there all along. It was there.

She had seen it.

"You do understand me, Legolas. More than you care to admit." He crossed his arms over his chest.

She gazed levelly at him. "You agree with your father about as much as I do. You are not him; you will never be him, no matter how much you try to mirror yourself in his image. You are not weary of the world—you do not accept defeat."

Legolas widened his stance. He did it when he came prepared to argue with her, to drag her back to reason. "The King is angry Tauriel. For six hundred years my father has protected you, favored you. You defied his orders, you betrayed his trust."

Betrayed mine. She heard the words. He had forgiven her, but they were there. The hard expression he wore belied the truth. A truth that said he was afraid for her. Afraid for them both. Of what this could mean. Hope stirred inside her.

She could not let him win.

"And has he not betrayed the trust of his subjects?" she asked. "Mine? Yours? Do not deny that you don't feel it, Mellon. You know that he guards a greater fear than Erebor. What if he is making the wrong choice in doing so?"

Legolas' eyes were a blue sea; his father's breach of faith a rocky shore contained inside, as was the memory of hers."That is what he tries to protect us from. If there is a dragon in that mountain, Tauriel—if the dwarves wake it—"

"Then we shall stop them." She felt her strength surge and realized that it had never left.

She went to him and took his hand, as she had done when they were still little more than children, peering at the lines, imitating the way her grandmother had read the paths in her hand as well as her sister's. He had always asked her half-teasing what she was doing, though she would never tell him. He had sensed that it was something private and comforting to her, and he had allowed it because he had also been comforted by it, though he didn't understand why.

Tauriel smiled sadly. "If I have learned anything from this, Legolas, it is that secrets cause more pain than they spare."

She thought of Istafon with a lump in her throat. His was the one body that would be buried in Mirkwood, not left to fester with the others, but laid out and buried with honor. Even now, his mother and father were bathing him, preparing his funeral shroud. You have done this. Someone else had paid the price of this lesson for her.

His grip tightened in hers. She squeezed back and pulled away. "I could not do it, Mellon. I am sorry that I kept it from you, but you would have given the dwarves over to the orcs if you had known." She saw him tense but he did not deny it.

"I never intended to endanger our people. But I do not see a difference between their lives and ours. Are we not them? Are they not us? Do we not share a common world, common joys, and common enemies? We are at the same risk of falling to darkness as they. We cannot seal ourselves in a tomb and hope for life. There is more evil simmering in the world than the destruction that may lurk within that mountain. Something is coming—a greater threat than we have ever faced. I know you feel it, Mellon. I know you."

He looked past her toward the horizon. "Unglo a namie. Naego haunna kah," he urged one last time, divided within himself.

"Uuho ha ne kan. Eethon or he ni kee kan dihena me."

I know you.

The sun was beginning its slanting descent, but it would be hours until nightfall. There was still time.

"The King has never let orc filth roam our lands, Legolas. Yet he would let this orc pack cross our borders and kill our prisoners."

"It is not our fight." She felt it sigh out of him—the last of his rationalizations, his circular arguments, his fear; his weakness. Let it go, Mellon.

The way was before them; singing sweetly through Tauriel like an instrument. She could see it now, even if he was not sure. Nothing was. But now, the words came without effort; signs that pointed, directing them toward a destiny that, though paved with darkness, promised a light that was worth the crossing.

"It is our fight. It will not end here. Don't you see? With every victory this evil will grow. If your father had his way we will do nothing. We will hide within our walls. Live our lives away from the light, and let darkness descend. Are we not part of this world? Tell me, Mellon. When did we let evil become stronger than us?"

She stared at him in silence, waiting. Legolas' blue eyes sparked to life like the reflective surface of the river.

"It seems I have lost our argument."

"You had to sometime."

"True," he said, wry.

The waning sun illuminated his face; the smile that had never been allowed at last showing through. Tauriel had waited long to see it. Yet there was another's she looked forward to now that sent a sharp ache lancing through her heart.

Kili…I'm coming.

"Let's go prevent your blasted dwarves from doing anything stupid," Legolas said, gazing out at the golden rays that embraced the valley and unknown that awaited them. "And save Arda."

*Special Pre-Note:

There is a fabulous artist by the name of Irrel who has done a number of artworks for this fandom. She's done cover art for The Heir Apparent by Chasingperfectiontomorrow (my favorite author in this fandom) whose fic I highly recommend and you can find at AO3.

And she's done a lovely gem for this fic from the "bargain" scene in Chapter Four: A Deal is Struck, which I would like to use as cover art with her permission. I can't thank her enough. She's really incredible. Please go support her and check out her art at her tumblr. Username is Irrel

Note-Notes:

Translations:

(Sindarin)

Asca (Hurry!)
Istafon (Masculine. Name means "River Soldier.")
"Lle baur na cin sen na rashwe na a lhedin." (We need to get them to retreat to a clearing.)
"Lye baur na istas sut lhaew ennas naa." (We need to know how many there are.)
"An in Gadorenas?" (And the prisoners?)
"Nean lye ve lye mani lle shen na lle ona a norgontin. Mellonea! Na lle Nikerym! Suer Sen chu Duin!" (Then we will do what we can to give you a distraction. Friends! To your Captain! Drive them up river!)
"Dartha an nin!" (Stay with me!)
"Sin athrad, Legolas!" (That way, Legolas!)
"Ato!" (Wait!)
Sen pen nae heb cuin." (This one we keep alive.)
"Far!" (Enough!)
"Tauriel, aego! Kela si." (Tauriel, go! Leave us.")
"Unglo a namie. Naego haunna kah." (Come back with me. He will forgive you.)
"Uuho ha ne kan. Eethon or he ni kee kan dihena me." (But I will not. If I go back, I will not forgive myself.)

(Black Speech)

"Plag tak poshat! Baj tak sorshul!" (Cut them down! Make them suffer!)
"Azat ta! Azat ta golog! Mabas tak!" (Kill her! Kill the she-elf! After them!"
"Mabas tak!" (After them!)
"Sha hat nes kon ta golog!" (I do not speak to dogs, she-elf!)

So, I decided to post a longer chapter than usual this time. That's the good news. The bad news is that this is the final chapter for the first installment of this series. The next installment still needs to be written, so I will be doing that for the next month. *hides behind a dartboard* No worries, a month will be up before you know it. I prefer to write the installments for my series ahead of time, that way I can relax and just do some revisions and put up the chapters every two weeks without racing to get them posted.

Again, I want to say a huge and resounding thank you to all the people who have reviewed and left kudos and have supported this fic. You're all awesome. This is a great, tight-knit fandom, and everyone has been very helpful and kind.

On that note, the next series installment will be titled "Second Sight." It will chronicle the events from the end of The Desolation of Smaug to the Battle of The Five Armies (and possibly beyond...? you will just have to see. *wink wink*) If anyone is interested in creating more fanart for this series, or even compiling a soundtrack, I think that would be bloody awesome and fantastic. I'd love to see that happen. Just an idea, if anyone is interested...anyone at all...

Thanks so much! See you next month :D