Chapter Text
They were deep in the shadow of the Mirkwood now, so far into the forest that even the sunlight dared not interrupt them. In time she came to the roots of a great oak tree, so ancient that she could not see the tops of its branches. The hollow between its roots was already empty, waiting. She slid the weight in her arms into the space. Kili looked so peaceful down there in the dark, his terrible wounds closed up with wildflowers. Here he would sleep and dream of a new life. Oak leaves would crown him. Acorns would be his hoard. The shadows covered him like cobwebs that could not be brushed away. She reached down into the shadows and lay down beside him, there to slip into darkness—
Tauriel came awake with a shuddering breath. It had only been a dream. She lay in bed gasping, trying to reassure herself. None of that had happened. She had not buried Kili, she had not—Kili was fine, he was—
There was an awful moment when Tauriel found herself grasping for a comforting reality and came up with empty hands. The dream had not been true. Kili’s kin had raised him a beautiful stone tomb beneath their lonely mountain. He wore magnificent armor chased in gold, and beneath a lock of her hair curled above his heart. The dream had not been true. But Kili was gone from her forever.
Tauriel felt a moment of unreality set in. It was as if she had awoken in the foreign country, where Kili was dead and always would be. It was written in the sky by the gods. It was sung by every bird that flew. Not only Erebor, but every mountain would be his gravestone. It was the world Kili had left behind, and Tauriel would have to live through it.
The dream had not been true. Tauriel would not end her pain by joining her love in the darkness of death. She did not laugh, but the bitter irony tugged at her lips. She was only in pain because of her own desire to live despite Kili’s death. Wilting tragically away was an expected enough thing of high elf-ladies, but not for Tauriel, huntress of the Mirkwood. She would suffer and endure.
She had certainly endured the long march back home. The Mirkwood was not so far from the Lonely Mountain, but their pace was tied to that of the injured. Tauriel rode the entire way at Thranduil’s side, an order that she had not dared question. For all his kind words that terrible day when she knelt by Kili’s body, he had certainly not looked at or acknowledged her since, except to command her to ride at his right hand. She could not make sense of it.
“May I ask you a question, my lord?” she finally said, low. Thranduil tipped his head very, very slightly in her direction without quite looking at her. His elk, more expressive, rolled his eye and snorted. Tauriel decided to take that as permission.
“Where is Legolas?” It was shocking to find him absent from her side, or more truthfully, to find herself absent from his. He was gone while her own self returned home? It made no sense.
Thranduil did not speak for a long time. Perhaps he found the question impertinent.
“He has gone north,” said the king. “I have decided that he shall serve your banishment in your place. Peace,” he raised a hand when she would have protested. “He has done this of his own will. And I will speak no more of it.”
Tauriel screwed her mouth shut, but her thoughts churned. Why would Legolas leave his homeland? He had crossed swords with the king of the Mirkwood not hours before. Perhaps this was some obscure punishment. Had he convinced his son, and her best friend, to leave willingly, and was instead allowing Tauriel to return in order to punish her in the comfort of home?
But when they finally reached their sprawling home in Mirkwood, nothing happened. The king had whisked away, the injured were taken to the healers, and there was nothing for Tauriel to do but to wander back to her room in the guard’s wing. It was cold and empty. Tauriel left it as soon as she had exchanged her bloodstained travel clothes for fresh. She stood outside her own door, trembling. She did not know where to go. She did not know where she was welcome. Her feet led her away, not entirely of her own volition, until she found herself standing before an empty jail cell.
What had Kili felt in there? Separated from his friends, locked into a narrow box of iron, not knowing what would happen to him or his kin…how brave he must have been to smile at an enemy. How trusting and kind. Tauriel would never love another like him again.
“Tauriel,” said a soft voice. She whirled. It was the king—bereft of his battle armor, and wearing as simple a robe as she had ever seen on him. And he was down here in the dungeons, alone. Tauriel, gaping, forgot to bow. Thranduil did not seem to notice the discourtesy.
“You are hereby restored to your post, Captain,” he said to her. Tauriel found her voice.
“Yes, my lord,” she said hoarsely.
He hesitated, drawing away. “There is one thing more. I do not lightly break my promises. You would have been welcome to bury your dwarf in our forest, had his kin allowed it. I…regret giving you that hope, Tauriel.”
Tauriel stared. Was this an apology? “T-they were his kin,” she stammered out, “and had a better claim than I.”
The king continued to gaze at her steadily. “If you should like to contest that claim, you have my support.”
The walls were spinning around her. “No!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you think enough blood has been spilled? And I would not separate him from his homeland. Even in death.”
Thranduil’s eyes narrowed, and his manner was suddenly less gentle. “I would not shed further elvish blood on the account of a dead dwarf,” he said. “I was offering to negotiate on your behalf, Captain. But as you do not wish so, I will gladly not.”
Tauriel had not slept since Kili had died. Her body ached with all the tears she had not yet shed, her best friend was gone from her. There was no room in her head for politics. All she could think of to say, to her affronted king, was—
“He wasn’t just a dwarf,” She sagged against the cell bars. “His name was Kili.”
Something about him softened then. “Kili,” he said, trying the name on his tongue. He nodded at her. “The hour is late, Tauriel. You would do well to return to your bed and sleep. Your duties return to you in the morning.” He was gone before Tauriel could force her slow brain to make a reply. She had staggered to her room and was asleep before she even hit the bed. Now she lay there, slowly waking. Like all elf-dwellings, the palace of Mirkwood combined shelter with an openness to the elements. Bluish pre-dawn light crept through her window, accompanied by birdsong. The sound of the forest was nearly a second language to her. She would have to lead the dawn patrol soon; it was comforting to fall back on old routine. She could pretend that she was the same elf she had been before and not some shadowy imitation of her, walking around with a hole in her chest, pretending to be alive.
She dressed mechanically and slipped out the door. As she paced toward where the dawn patrol usually met, Tauriel began to have doubts. She had been banished. Someone must have been promoted in her place, who would now be demoted by the whim of the king. And the rest of the guards—would they even want her back? She knew what she would have thought of someone who broke orders as flagrantly as she had. By now the entire woodland realm likely knew that she had nocked an arrow at Thranduil. That she and the king came to blows. That a beloved elf prince had left Mirkwood forever for her sake. And perhaps worst of all—that she had given her heart to a dwarf.
She went on. What else could she do?
When Tauriel emerged at the guards entrance, what she saw made her forget to be nervous, at least for her own sake. The royal elk was there, snorting and tossing his ferocious antlers. By its head, stroking its nose despite the flashing antlers, was the king. He reached up and removed the last of the elk’s harness. Tauriel took an involuntary step back, and on the other side of the great elk, she could see the gathered guards do the same. Thranduil seemed unconcerned even as the elk realized his freedom. It snorted and stamped like a horse, hesitant, and then seemed to decide. It gathered its muscles for a mighty leap that took him over the heads of the startled guards, crashing into the forest, and out of sight. But Tauriel knew that if ever Thranduil needed him, he would return.
Thranduil shook his robes back from his hands, serene. His wintry gaze met Tauriel’s.
“Captain,” he said to her, and swept past. This time she managed to bow. Her heart pounded as she realized what he had done for her. Acknowledging her in front of her men implicitly put the will and power of the king behind her commands. Whatever mutinous resentment she could expect to find would have evaporated after his show of power.
By Thranduil’s standards, it had been remarkably unsubtle. And, she realized, remarkably…kind.
The thought dwelt in her mind as she led her men into the woods. Three levels of sight; ground, middle, treetop. Tauriel herself led the highest group, reveling in the sweet smell of the waking forest and the brightening sun on her face. This was where she had been happiest, and she had never missed it so much as when she thought she would never come home again. She ran so nimbly along tree branches that her squad was panting, keeping up. Yet something was off. Inside herself, she was changed. No longer could she lose herself in breathless speed. Some part of her was distant, tinging the sunlight with gray. Even now she was mourning. Yet this was also the most comforted she had been since the funeral. Had he known that? Was this simple pleasure a gift from the king? Why? Thranduil hated her. The thought nagged at her as patrol ended.
Ground and Middle had nothing to report. Neither had she herself anything from the treetops. Tauriel frowned. That in itself was worrying. She liked to know of any suspicious activity inside her forest. Not seeing the enemy was a bad sign. Either they had withdrawn to plan something or—even worse—moving undetected through her territory.
“I don’t like this quiet,” she said to her assembled guards. “I want to get a closer look at the nests.”
One of them nodded. “Aye, Captain,” said Dolorian. “The woods were crawling with the damn things before the battle. Them being quiet is no good news.”
“I’m glad to hear your agreement,” said Tauriel. In truth, she was even more glad for the informal nature of their discussion. The Royal Guard had always been a loose group, tasked with the use of their own wit and courage for the protection of their homeland—spies and scouts rather than soldiers, although that also, when necessary. That her fellow guards were speaking their minds rather than sullenly taking her orders was a reason for hope.
Elanor, on the other hand, shook her golden head. “Thranduil-King forbade us to enter the spider nests,” she objected. “It is far too dangerous to engage with those beasts on their own territory.”
“It is not their territory,” said Tauriel, feeling her temper rise. “It is ours and we must defend it. As for orders—” She saw a few of the guards take on wary expressions. That was wrong. Once they might have grinned and cheered to hear their captain blast royal orders, particularly when Legolas was more often than not in their company. But that had been before she had proven unexpectedly willing to put deed to word. They accepted that the King had, for reasons of his own, forgiven her trespasses. But that did not mean they wouldn’t be watching her closely. She swallowed the rest of her remark.
“There’ll be no violation of orders,” she told Elanor. “We’ll only be passing by. Our duty is to keep track of our enemy, after all. How can we do that without going near them? But if we do happened to be attacked by them—” her jaw set. “We show no mercy.”
On that, at least, no one dared defy her.
Although perhaps it wasn’t quite right that she took an incautious path to the spiders nests. Tauriel was more than half-hoping to be ambushed. She longed to hunt something evil. Even before…everything Tauriel had never shied away from facing the spiders. Their very presence here fouled the forest and everything within. Why should they not fight them? And she knew the spiders had an outpost just on the other side of the forest road, where they harassed travelers. That had been where she had met Kili, after all. What had were those first words they had spoken to each other? He had had the nerve to ask her for a weapon in the middle of battle! Tauriel struggled to keep the smile off her face. Brave, funny, honorable Kili, whom she had loved and was now…
She faltered in her steps and hoped that none of her guards had seen. She felt like a fool. Grief had been haunting her every footstep since she left Erebor. It had been in her dreams. Whyever did she think she was ready to resume her duties? But every part of her rejected the idea of keeping to her room, allowing her grief to overcome her. The memory of Kili would not make her weak. Now she only had to prove it.
Something caught her eye, drawing her out of grey thoughts. It was a small dimple in a tree root, the sort of thing no one but a Mirkwood elf would notice. An intruder beast never would. It was just the right size and depth to briefly trap a spider leg. Tauriel sank silently into a crouch to inspect it more closely. A single black hair was snagged in the bark.
Elanor came forward and looked at it a moment. They exchanged a wordless glance, and then she nodded assent at her. Tauriel stood.
“Spiders have passed through here,” she announced. The guards, assembled in a loose semicircle around her, exchanged uneasy glances. They were well north of the old forest road, in an area where spiders hadn’t been seen in many years.
Elanor had drifted some distance away.
“There are more signs of their movement here, Captain,” she called. She trotted back into their midst. “Hundreds of them, heading north.”
“When?” Tauriel asked sharply.
“One night ago,” said Elanor. After the battle had been won then, thought Tauriel. Or lost, depending on the point of view.
“Take two trackers and keep following their trail,” Tauriel ordered. “We’ll join you after we’ve burned down their nest.” She turned back to the rest of the guards. There must have been something in her expression that told them how bad an idea it would be to defy her on this, because none of them dared.
It wasn’t even as if she was disobeying orders, thought Tauriel as she watched the webs shrivel and burn. After all, a nest without spiders could hardly be said to be a spider’s nest. The sight of it sent her veins singing with dark satisfaction.
The king didn’t seem convinced by the argument, when she repeated it to him later that night.
“Hmm,” he said, a polite sound that could mean anything. Tauriel had heard him make that sound right before ordering torture and executions. Thranduil poured more wine into his glass and then, to her surprise, poured a glass for her.
“And what were your actions then, Captain?” he asked with excruciating politeness. They were alone in his throne room. Perhaps for this reason, he was not sitting on his throne, but rather pacing before it. The shadow of those enormous antlers fell over them both.
“We turned north to meet with our trackers,” said Tauriel. She fiddled with the wine cup before she set it down without sipping it. Taking wine from the king’s hand made her as uneasy as the thought of being drunk in front of him. “They had followed spider tracks into the foothills of the mountains.”
Actually, Tauriel had been impressed with Elanor. She had always been the stickler, but when Tauriel and the guards had caught up they had found her looking into the entrance of the Mirkwood Mountains in utter frustration. Tauriel knew how she felt.
Thranduil turned about in his pacing. His eye fell on the full glass of wine by her empty hand.
“And then you came here,” he said. His voice had turned sharp.
“We did, sire,” said Tauriel. She wondered what she had done to anger him this time.
“You bring glad tidings then,” said Thranduil. He left off his pacing and climbed the dais to his throne. “The spiders are leaving their nest on the Old Forest Road. Have you not long complained of their presence there?”
This was too much for Tauriel to hold her tongue against. “They’re retreating strategically, sire!” she burst out. “The only reason is because we—” And dwarves, and men “—defeated their allies at Erebor. In time they and the orcs will recover, and we will regret not taking action while we could! We…” Her words choked off as Thranduil turned his gaze on her. His frostbite-blue eyes demanded her silence.
“Do not think you can dictate to me what I will or will not regret,” he said, very softly. Thranduil sat on his throne. “Your request is denied.”
Tauriel faced the floor. “I did not get to make it, my lord.”
“Oh? Was it one you have not made a hundred times before?”
“I would like to make it once more,” said Tauriel stubbornly. “As Captain of the Royal Guard, I have the right to formally petition the king when I think it needful—”
“Very well,” murmured the king. “I can tolerate foolishness too, as you know.”
Tauriel ignored the burning in her ears. “I ask the king to send troops to the spider nests, to burn their webs and force them into the open, and drive them out of our forest once and for all,” she said.
“And what if I said yes?” asked the king. Tauriel’s head snapped up.
“Sire?”
“Would you lead them, Tauriel? You, having no experience in true war? It is nothing like the skirmishes you enjoy with the spiders. Will you go to the troops, who are injured and weary, who are grieving for their fallen comrades, and tell them to march towards death so soon again? Would you spend elven lives like a dwarf-lord spends coin and at the end of it, be rich only in blighted lands that we cannot possibly defend? Would you be the one to do all of that, Tauriel, Captain, or would it be me?”
Her teeth ground. He had only sought to mock her, after all. “Will that be all, my lord?”
“Until you have an answer for me, Captain. You are dismissed."
Her feet returned her to her lonely room. After a moment Tauriel began to undress. She thought she would be shaking with anger—and the emotion was there somewhere, distantly shaking the bars of her soul—but mostly she was aware of a terrible blankness. An absence. Her thoughts were gray. If Tauriel had known how much more alive she would feel when she was arguing with the king, she would have treasured those moments more.
It was early yet. She could hear distant laughter and conversation. Perhaps some of her guards were playing at dice. She could join them easily, allow herself to make jokes, laugh at theirs…but Tauriel blew out her light and curled into her bed. A thought strayed through her mind and it ignited a spark of true happiness, the first she had felt in ages. Tauriel closed her eyes and prayed to dream of Kili.