Chapter Eleven: gairurakhâs
Pairings: Fíli x Original Female Character; Kili x original female character
CW: graphic depictions of violence; major character death; self-insert style original characters; The Trifecta (smut, fluff, and angst); time travel; MGiME
Summary: @lilbardrhi and I started yelling about Tolkien. Go read her parts and my other before you read this one, or this makes no sense. Find them here (hers). And here. (mine)
{Khuzdul; goblins}
His lip curled in a sneer, eyes fixed on the goblins swarming around them. “Steady, eagle,” he murmured to the woman practically vibrating at his side.
“They’re gross,” she hissed back. “And they took my weapons. Fí. I hate this.”
“I know. Stop screaming, we need to listen.” He focused on the giant, repulsive king of goblin town, demanding to know which of them was Fíli’s uncle, and his hands moved for blades that were no longer there.
Mahal take these perversions of life, he swore viciously as the goblins crowded closer to him and his eagle. He shoved back, feeling her shudder at their touch, and found himself nose to nose with one particular bastard who leered at her harder than he liked.
He found his attention straying from the fat goblin king who was most certainly going to sentence them to death and focusing on the woman at his side more than ever before, and he wondered yet again if he had made a mistake back in Rivendell.
He had watched her flirt with elves, men and women alike, and jealousy flamed and screamed within at the idea of her lying with one of them. It was not merely that they were elvish bastards, whom he hated as his uncle did, but that- that it was not him who she looked upon with that single-minded hunger in her eyes.
He’d acted on it, taking her in a public place, on a public bench, and since then the thought of feeling her moving against him again had haunted his every dream and most of his waking moments, despite their careful promise to each other to stay merely friends.
He was forsworn to carry on the line of Durin, provided they made it out of this cavern with their heads in tact- a circumstance seeming more and more unlikely as the Goblin King held them longer- and she was not a dwarrowdam. There was no future in a liaison between them, however enjoyable it might have been.
So why did he flex the not inconsiderable muscle of his arm when she latched onto it?
“Fí. Pay attention. Things are about to get messy,” she said into his ear, so low he knew only he would hear.
It was unlike her to use the knowledge he knew she had of what would happen to them. There was something coming then, something urgent and important, and it was up to him to be the king apparent and defend his people. He nodded, not asking questions, and suddenly the cavern was awash with blinding light.
“And there it is,” she muttered. “Get ready for running. And improvised weapons.”
Something about it made him smile, how dryly annoyed she sounded about the whole affair. Then the cavern burst into riotous, chaotic motion, and he was indeed busy defending his people- and her- with whatever he could grasp to use as a weapon.
And while he said he defended azaghâl, the truth was, she fought right there at his side, yelling to Rhi- who burned goblins with a touch of her hands- and to him and adding insults to the unending crowd of goblins they charged through.
It was useless, and he knew it, but they would not go down without a fight. And besides, if she had believed it impossible to escape, she would have told him.
He could not imagine she would choose not to share that knowledge, if it was in her possession.
They found themselves once more in a precarious position, surrounded and outnumbered and taunted by the massive form of the king. At his side- always at his side, he thought, and when she wasn’t he searched her out until she was there- she muttered something under her breath he couldn’t catch.
Gandalf sliced open the goblin king at stomach and throat, and he would have cheered, except then they were falling.
They slammed to a halt, and beneath him, Meg groaned.
Instantly, Fíli reminded himself they were at risk of death, and did his best to not react to their deeply unfortunate positioning. Which he could not do anything to avoid, given Bombur was on top of him, and-
"Well, that could have been worse."
Meg groaned again, and instant later, weight slammed onto them from above. Fili grunted as the impact drove him harder toward the ground, which unfortunately meant harder into the body beneath him as well, and-
Her eyes opened and she flashed him a wicked grin. "At least buy a girl dinner first, damn."
He rolled his eyes at her as he strained to remove the weight of Bombur and whatever rocks had rained from above from his shoulders, and watched something move across her face that could, maybe, have been… appreciation?
She slid rapidly free the moment he'd gotten himself high enough for her to do so, grabbing Bombur by the arms and tugging until he rolled from Fili's back. "Good news, the fat bastard's dead. Not you, Bombur, we love you, I'd never call you a fat bastard. Bad news," she continued in a strangely cheerful tone, "we're not done with the running and escaping. Find your feet, Fi; time to go."
"Gandalf!"
Fíli's head whipped toward the sound of his brother's call, and he followed Kíli's eyes toward the swarm descending on them from above. Immediately, he began pulling the others to their feet, shoving what weapons they had into their hands and generally attempting to get the crowd of them ready for what was coming.
"There's too many. We can't fight them," Dwalin growled from where he did the same as Fíli.
"See? The running," Meg muttered at his side. "Come on, let's go already."
"Indeed. Only one thing can save us now," Gandalf agreed, eyeing her as he turned to search out a path. "Daylight."
"So let's fucking go," Meg repeated, grabbing Rhi's arm and hauling her to her feet. "Kick it into gear, bitches. That way."
In the bright morning sunlight, everything seemed, for a moment, to be fine. Their Hobbit returned, having survived some adventure of his own, and though his uncle was- as Meg would have put it- an ass, Bilbo remained with their party.
But nearby, despite Rhi leaning against her and breathing hard, his warrior seemed… uneasy. And Fili had learned to trust that unease explicitly.
"Something's coming," he said quietly to Kíli. "Prepare yourself."
Kíli looked startled, but he followed Fili's nod toward the women and sudden thoughtfulness crossed his face. "Do you think it's because she knows things, about us? They both have heard our story. They know how it ends, right? Why don't they tell us?"
Fili often forgot that small fact, their knowing everything about how this quest would turn out. But there was more to it than that, he was certain. "She is attuned to the world. To its evils. There is something coming, whether predestined or not, and I will face it the same either way. We make our own destiny, brother."
And then the Wargs began to howl.
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