Chapter Text
The band of dwarves was starving.
Nobody came to feed them, as they traveled further off the main road they had been told over and over not to leave, lest disaster befall them, and they became desperate for a sign of life.
The only company they had were the spiders; whenever they turned their backs, they could feel beady eyes follow their course. They seemed to shy from the light—but there wasn't enough light in these woods to be safe all the time.
It was when they thought they could go no further, weary of days without proper food and lack of sleep, that they saw the wisps. Red, dancing like a show of merry fireflies, they popped from the floor and seemed to grow in frequency a little further down into the forest.
Bombur, who'd awoken from his sleep none the happier, was the first to follow his instinct. The company nearly lost sight of him. It wasn't because Bombur was that fast; it was that they were all slow, and even more reluctant to follow deeper into this forest of death and deception.
"Aye!" they heard him shout, "Food!"
That set feet moving. Before long, the company of dwarves and one hobbit beheld a sight they thought they'd never see. Weak and tired of their long, directionless wander in the woods, the large dining table made from willow and sprouted directly from the ground—that nevertheless looked like it had been there for centuries—bore venison, berries, and silver chalices that smelled deliciously of a deep red wine.
Autumn was upon the world, and it reflected itself in the host that had gathered around the table, wearing the palette of the withering trees in their attire. They were alien to the dwarves; they were tall and spoke in syllables familiar yet incomprehensible.
"Elves," Balin looked on.
"Elves?" Gloin and Oin moved to his side and peered.
"Elves," bristled Thorin. "Do not go near. They will not help us."
It was too late for that. Bombur stumbled into the clearing. Promptly, the lights went out and the host was gone. So was the food.
"What have you done?!" Dori promptly wailed. "They had food!"
"If we see them again," said Ori, "I'll ask if they might give us some. They looked like they had enough. I'm sure they wouldn't mind, right?"
But when they saw the wisps again, the same thing happened. Blinded by hunger, they stepped into the circle and in the darkness that followed, all they could hear was the hungry clicking of spiders.
It was the third time that the darkness swallowed them whole, that Thorin fell missing.
It was the third time that the spiders charged.
- - - - -
"Ge'roff me," he protested weakly, trying to raise his hand to push the intrusion away. He felt sick and lethargic, and began to panic when he found he couldn't move his hands. He couldn't move at all!
"Kili," Bilbo's stern voice broke through his hazy consciousness, "stop struggling! You're trapped in a spider cocoon and I'm trying to free you."
"A c-cocoon?" the young dwarf gasped weakly, and realized he was looking up at the hobbit through a thin veil of white. He couldn't remember anything.
"Yes, a cocoon," Bilbo confirmed. "You were bitten, all of you, in fact, and hung up like so much meat in a pantry. I need you to help me free the others, so please, stay still."
Kili did as he was told. He was so sick and exhausted that the notion of struggling only made him more nauseous. Of course, that nausea could have also come from the fact that the company hadn't eaten in many a day.
Then, Bilbo's hand made contact with a very tender spot on his shoulder, and it all came back to him. Dragged through the brush by a large black chittering creature. A sharp pain in his shoulder. Then, nothing.
"K-killed them?" was all Kili could manage.
"Mostly," was Bilbo's response. "Many of them. Others ran off," he explained. With a grunt, he pulled the webbing away from Kili's left arm. "Can you move your hand, Kili?" the hobbit patted the extremity.
Slowly, Kili opened and closed his hand, but he felt as if his arm were miles long and the instructions were taking forever to reach the other end. "So dizzy," he told Bilbo.
"Yes, I imagine you are," Bilbo started cutting his other arm loose. "I've opened three cocoons so far and you're the first I've found awake. Your brother still hasn't stirred."
"Fee?" Kili tried to sit up.
"No," Bilbo forced him supine with a firm hand. "Not yet. He'll keep. You're ill."
As if to confirm this, a wave of nausea rose and Kili felt bile rising in his gorge.
"Good thing we haven't eaten," Kili weakly tried to joke. "Nothing to puke up."
"There's always a silver lining," Bilbo chuckled. "I'm going to need you to help me free the others, my boy, so steel yourself."
"C-can they breathe?" the youngest of the dwarrow wondered.
"It would seem so," Bilbo told him. "Enough to stay alive, at least."
Kili let out a groan as he tried to raise his freed right hand. His injured shoulder protested the movement, but he was eager to help Bilbo cut his comrades free.
An hour later found all of the dwarves free of their cocoons, but two remained unresponsive—Ori and Fili. Bilbo reasoned that it was due to their smaller size and the potency of the venom. This, of course, did little to console their worried family members.
"We're going to have to get moving out of this Aulë-forsaken forest," Bofur's voice was not as strong as Kili would have liked it to be. "We'll build a litter, or carry them if we have to."
"We're all so weak, Bofur," Balin cautioned. "I can barely stand, let alone carry one of the lads."
"Then I'll carry you, nadad," Dwalin assured him, but he didn't sound very convincing.
"We're not all strong enough to travel," Dori surmised, again checking his youngest sibling for signs of life, as Ori seemed to be awakening at last.
"We'll have to be," Bilbo told them. "This is the spiders' lair, and those I didn’t slay won't stay away much longer. They'll return, hungry and angry. We won't want to be here for that. We need to move as soon as possible." He approached Kili, who'd pulled his unconscious brother against him protectively. "I'll help you carry Fili," he told the youngest heir.
Kili, still feeling weak as a kitten, put up little argument. He rose unsteadily to his feet and slipped his arms under Fili's shoulders to pick him up, then wobbled and fell unceremoniously back onto his rump. Under normal circumstances, the rest of them would have found it rather amusing. Except that they were all equally helpless. Kili struggled back to his feet.
"Come, Bilbo," he said with resolve, "I'm ready now."
"Good lad," Bilbo nodded, slipping under Fili's other arm so they could support him between them.
Step by painfully slow step, the company made its way out of the spiders' lair and back into Mirkwood proper.
Surely, Bilbo reasoned, someone up ahead would be able to feed them. They might even have an anti-venom.
The forest stretched on for miles in every direction. Their senses weakened, they had no way of knowing if they weren't doubling back on themselves. Sometimes, the area seemed awkwardly familiar.
The spiders came closer. It wasn't hard to discover them back on their tracks. That very night—as dark as the morning, and the afternoon—Bifur's eyes went big as he peered into the darkness. They promptly got up and continued to move, but they were slow, and tired.
Only a few hours later came the next attack.
"Fili!" Kili called after his brother in distress after he stumbled weakly over a branch, and a large black monster swooped on top of him. "Fili, no!" He tried to fend the creature off with his sword, but he was too weak to make a dent.
That's when the others came. Larger in number, and infinitely more angry this time around, they swarmed the loose phalanx that the dwarves had pulled up, Bilbo in their midst. Nobody noticed it when he put on the ring and vanished. One after another, the spawn of Shelob avanced on them. For every wave that was miraculously beaten down, a stronger one emerged.
They were losing.
Mirkwood would be their end, long before a dragon could.
As one after another struggled to stay alive, and fell to the spiders instead, only few were still standing when the faint drone of a horn sounded in the distance. The spiders heard it too. They stilled and turned their heads in the direction of the sound. When nothing followed in its wake, they continued on.
An arrow felled the arachnid that was about to swoop down on Ori.
Those still alert saw how a volley of yellow-fletched arrows, bright like the morning sun, followed.
The remaining dwarves succumbed before the elves were upon them.
- - - - -
"Kili?" he croaked, then cleared his throat. "Kili?"
Silence answered him.
All around him were the sounds of the forest—as a forest should be. He heard scurrying mice, and the faint whistling of the wind. Above all, he thought he could hear the bustle of a world around him. But he couldn't see.
"Fili?" a disembodied voice drifted in through the bars. It sounded like a chant, so weak that maybe he was just imagining it; a spectral shadow of a world to which it did not belong.
Then the world went again silent.
Fili tried to sit up, but dizziness rapidly overtook him and blackness encroached on his vision. "No," he whispered to himself, lowering his forehead to the floor and taking deep breaths to stave off the unconsciousness threatening to claim him. "No. W-who's out there?" he asked weakly.
Nobody answered, but the forest floor underneath him, littered with leaves of a thousand shades of blue, red and orange, rolled like a calm sea and undulated beneath him.
Two tall creatures passed the bars outside his cell. They did not stop to look at him, for they had other destinations. One whispered to the other like he didn't want to be overheard. It was pointless. None of their newest prisoners could understand.
As their steps faded and swelled in sound for others in the vast dungeon plan underneath the forest, Kili perked up from the floor of his own cell.
"Hello?" he called. No answer. "Hello? Is anyone there? What's going on? Can anyone tell—" he bit off his sentence, his eyes wide with fear at the unfamiliar surroundings. His bow and swords had been taken from him, and he was left defenseless in a world where he felt disoriented.
Spiders. Fili remembered being bitten. It had to be the venom playing games with his mind. Was he here? Was he even free from the webbing? He remembered being half-carried, half-dragged between his brother and Bilbo. Then, he was tackled from behind by something heavy. Aulë, was he even awake, or just hanging somewhere waiting to become a spider's meal?
The footsteps of the two shadows died away from his hearing.
With faintly swaying hips and shoulders always on one level, the two silhouettes looked around. One spoke of something to the other before they passed a door into the darker parts of the dungeon. In the middle of an isolated large room, mossy like it was directly under a tree and with a single shaft of light bearing down, sat a hunched figure.
"Thorin," one of the shadows sighed. He ran one hand down a bare shoulder. "Son of Thror, son of Thrain. To what do we owe this honor?"
Despite having been stripped of everything but his smallclothes and long pants, Thorin still raised his head slowly and proudly. He was hungry, exhausted, terrified...but none of that could be intimated to his captors.
"I am but traveling, alone, and in search of food," he said aloud, locking eyes with Thranduil, trying hard not to show contempt. He'd already told him this several times, yet the questions never changed.
"Traveling?" The tall elf looked down on him, as Thorin was in no position to crane his head up to meet the gaze. He kept himself properly out of range from the savage dwarf and looked at the animal his men had brought in. The image did not match with that of the throneless prince beseeching him for help, so long ago.
"To what destination would you be traveling that you seek to cross my domain, dwarf?"
"I have done nothing but travel since I was forced by cruel fate from my home. You know this."
"But never have you wandered into these woods."
"A foolish choice, I will admit. A poor attempt at a shortcut I have come to regret."
Thranduil crouched in front of him and raised Thorin's chin. His hands touched him like they were defiled by the mere touch, though his eyes spoke of a curiosity.
"You lie," he whispered so that only the two of them could hear. "You will tell me, be it today or in a hundred years. I have time on my side. And your nephews. Alone, you said. I could make you alone."
Thorin swallowed audibly. "I am alone," he reiterated, but not with as much conviction.
At once the king of the woodland realm raised himself to his full height. "We'll see what you say about that tomorrow. I'll pay them each a visit. Perhaps they're able to tell me more about your purpose than you feel inclined to tell me. Good day, master dwarf."
With the same coldness, he turned on his heels and left Thorin to the darkness.
When Thorin was sure he'd gone, his head sank to his chest, hands fisted. "No," he breathed. "Please, no."
The silence that greeted him was deafening.
- - - - -
A figure, dwarven in stature by the sound of the thud it made, was thrown into the pitch black cell, the door closed with a sound that dictated impossibility to break. Half drunk on sleep and venom, Kili scrambled into the corner.
That was, until he realized who this stranger was.
"Fili?"
"Nadadith?" Fili asked weakly. "Is it really you? I—I have been hallucinating it seems."
"If you are, it's me who shares your dreams," Kili pushed himself forward and let his fingertips fill in the blanks that the darkness did not allow his vision to provide. He laughed in relief. "It's so good to have you with me, brother. How are you? Have they treated you alright?"
"Kili!" Fili pulled his sibling to him and held him as tightly as he could. "Up until this moment I would have told you I was terrified and in pain. But suddenly, I feel...better. I was so frightened you'd been killed...or worse." He caressed his brother's face in the dark with one trembling hand.
Kili smiled into it, and made sure Fili's fingers mapped his smile. "I'm here. I don't know why you're here, but I'm glad you are. Wherever we are, they're not bad people. They give me good food, Fili." He pressed a kiss against his brother's temple, before masking it with a manly hug.
"My appetite has been poor, despite our lengthy hunger," Fili admitted. "They don't speak to me. Don't even look at me. I see only shadowy tall figures passing outside my cell. I only trust the water. Maybe you should too."
"They're elves, Fili. They're the ones we saw in the woods." Kili hadn't been able to understand much more than that, but their company had been so eager for their meals before that he truly hadn't hesitated eating it. "I don't know why they've got us locked up, but I don't think they want to kill us."
He did feel slightly blurry in his head but, he thought, it was rather pleasant.
Fili sighed, still not totally on board with his brother's logic. "Have you seen Thorin or heard mention of him?"
Kili shook his head, his mouth around a piece of bread. He sounded more downcast. "Nothing. I don't think he's here. I think maybe the spiders... Maybe the elves came too late for him."
"No," Fili whimpered. "H-he can't be gone."
"I don't know," Kili looked down. "I really don't. But you know uncle. He might be standing with every spider dead around his feet, but lost as to where to go. I don't want to believe he is gone."
"Yes," Fili squeezed Kili's hand warmly. "Surely he's lost. And hopefully he'd found some food as well." He was silent for a moment, simply enjoying the physical contact after—well, how long? "I'm scared, Kee," he admitted.
His brother pulled him closer and wrapped his arms around him for courage.
"You're not alone." Though he could have said it to himself.
- - - - -
When he returned the following day, Thranduil sat in quietude in front of Thorin,just out of reach, for a long time. Thranduil was peaceful. He was going to wait until Thorin spoke to him.
Finally, the dwarf could bear it no longer. He was literally shaking with hunger. "Will you not begin your infernal questions, so I can have another day's peace?" he finally asked.
"If you acquire peace from my absence, I should change things around here." Thranduil looked down like a painting cracked from age, but still ageless. He pushed a plate forward. "We are no barbaric people, master dwarf," he said. "Eat. You look famished."
Thranduil found that he loved the feeling of control he could exert over the same creature who had once looked at him so vilely. He wanted Thorin to eat; he wanted to be able to have that amount of power.
Once, Thranduil had bowed to this man and his father. Once, he had desired more than diplomacy. Now, finally, without home and without a throne, the prince in exile was his.
Thorin looked up at him coldly. "What trickery is this, elf? Poison? I would prefer a quick death, as you can well imagine."
"If I wanted you dead, I would have left you to the clutches of the spiders," Thranduil spoke. "I do not care if you refuse to eat. I merely intended to make sure you can still talk when you choose to. Shall I take it away?"
"You can understand my hesitance at eating anything you'd offer me," Thorin replied. The smell of the food caused his stomach to give a traitorous growl. "But, I am practical, if nothing else," he said, stalwartly, lifting a piece of bread to his mouth and taking a controlled bite. The taste exploded in his mouth like ambrosia.
Thranduil inclined his head. Inwardly, he felt a surge of accomplishment. The question at hand was beginning to be less and less interesting, now that he started thinking of other ways to exploit this. Nevertheless, he had to ask.
"Now, tell me finally. What are you doing in these woods?"
"I am traveling alone, seeking food," Thorin told him, around a mouthful of bread. "I thank you kindly for providing some." He made quick work of taking a pear and an apple from the offered tray, as well as a second hunk of bread.
Thranduil's patience was wearing thin. "Your nephews..." he started. "They're remarkably attached to each other, are they not? They know not that you're here. To them, you might have died. Let's play a game, shall we not? For every day in which you cease to answer me truthfully, I will push them further apart. If you give in, they'll not come to harm. If you resist, your blood will be the ones to suffer."
"If it's my sister's sons you speak of," Thorin said around a bite of apple, "they are leagues away—in the Blue Mountains. You'll have to find another leverage point, I'm afraid."
"Oh, then the dwarflings in my possession are not yours?" Thranduil leaned closer and whispered in Thorin's ear, "Then I'm sure you don't mind if I...play with them a little."
"Decidedly not mine," Thorin tried to keep his voice steady. "But I do feel for them, stuck here in this place. I do hope you'll be more hospitable to them than you've been to me."
In the dark cell, the elf sat back. He loved the way they had bound Thorin, on his knees, hands tied together penitently, hunched forward so that all day, everything he saw was soil and sunlight. "For an honored guest with the best arrangements under my castle, that wasn't a nice thing to say. Very well. I will start with the youngest."
He loved this game. Reaching for something, he threw Kili's bracers to the floor in front of his prisoner. And they were unmistakably his. "A memento," he said, "From the youth you've just condemned. We will meet again tomorrow."
After the imperious elf had gone, Thorin placed his fruit aside as if it meant nothing that he'd hardly eaten in a fortnight. He caressed the leather on the bracers and brought up a mental image of his headstrong nephew, a captive to Thranduil. "Be strong, Kili," Thorin said softly. "Be strong, but don't anger him."
- - - - -
The blonde whimpered in agony, rousing from his thin, non-restful fugue. No medical treatment had followed their encounter with the spiders. While the puncture wound on Kili's shoulder seemed to be healing with relative ease, Fili's injury was festering, oozing foul smelling green and yellow fluid.
He'd tried in vain to clean it on his own with water brought by his captors, but clearly something stronger was required. "Please," he'd begged in a hushed voice to the elf who'd brought their food earlier while Kili was asleep, "can you help me tend to my injury?" He'd torn his trows away from the punctures and shown it to the guard, but he couldn't be sure the haughty creature had actually seen. Or cared.
Separate me from my brother if you don't intend to aid me, his feverish mind supplied. For I cannot bear the idea of him watching me die like this.
He tried not to drink so much of the water, for he knew he had to share it with Kili, but the fever had made him incredibly thirsty. Perhaps Kili was on to something. The food seemed to make his brother sleepy and forgetful. Perhaps just a few bites. Fili found his shaking fingers closing around a small square of bread. He popped it into his mouth and chewed, chasing it with more water.
Moments later, he'd fallen into a deep slumber, huddled against Kili for warmth.
Kili knew, of course. He'd pulled Fili closer against him and wrapped his arms around him almost immediately, but the shaking wouldn't be put at bay. He'd looked at the guards with big, pleading eyes. They showed no emotion as they looked upon their captives and the fallout of the encounter with the spiders.
So he batted his eyes in confusion when one finally replied, and in the common tongue no less.
"You look desperate, young one. Are we not treating you well?"
The tall, statuesque shape of Thranduil appeared in front of the bars. Like it was magic of a world long lost, the bars bent sideways like saplings in a storm to let him through.
Fili awoke at the sound of his brother's voice. "Kee?" he asked hoarsely. "Is everything all right?"
"No!" Kili whispered, pulling his eyes away from the elf in their prison cell. "You're not all right, and if you're not, I'm not."
Then he turned back to Thranduil. "Can you help him?" he begged. "It's the spider bite. The venom doesn't want to leave his system. I, I think—"
But Kili didn't want to admit out loud in front of his brother that he believed the venom to grow worse until it became the end of him. He didn't want to think about it. The meaning was not lost in translation as Thranduil took it in however, and he inclined his head.
"Do you love him, young one?" he asked.
Kili flustered. "What?"
"Your brother. You would do anything for his safety, would you not?"
Fili did not like the tone of this haughty elf's voice. "Kili..." he squeezed the younger's arm gently but firmly.
"Nearly anything," Kili spoke louder than Fili as he addressed the elf. "You're the one in charge here, aren't you?"
The brashness in his words was so youthful that it surprised Thranduil. He crouched down next to them, his back straight and even as he lowered himself to the level of the two dwarves seated on the floor, he held an air of supremacy.
"I'm the one in charge here," he nodded. "I will help your brother, but it comes at a price."
Thranduil paused.
"Kiss me," he said at last.
"By the Maker, no!" Fili protested. "Kili, this is madness."
"A kiss for your life," Kili reasoned to his brother, after the initial shock wore down. He didn't like it, but all things considering, Thranduil could have asked for things a lot worse. The only downside was that here was Fili, conscious and present, and kissing Thranduil in front of him would break Kili's heart. "I would pay it any day," he whispered.
Fili's chest was tight with anger and fever. "It's what he asks now," he eyed Thranduil warily. "But he'll ask for more. And more, until he breaks you. You need to leave us, now," he told the elf. He sounded much less threatening than he had hoped to.
"But it'll get worse!"
Kili made up his mind. Though he didn't like to do it, he carefully removed himself from partially under Fili and got up. Brushing off his knees, he looked up at Thranduil, who had raised himself to his full length as well.
"Not in front of my brother. Lead me."
"Kee...no. Please, don't do this," Fili begged a final time, but Kili had already vanished with their captor. "Oh, Kili," he sighed, downing more water. "Be strong, nadadel."
Thranduil led Kili to another area. They moved in total darkness, unbound, so he explained, "You will not leave this place unless I will it. You're in my palace, and its doors listen only to me. If you flee, your brother will die. Follow me, young one."
He finally stopped in a single beam of light and looked down calculatingly. Kili looked afraid; timid and unsure of himself. It was exactly how Thranduil wanted him to be. He cast one look into the darkness, where Thorin sat, with baited breath, before he swooped down and pushed his lips forcefully against Kili's.
Kili didn't know what to do. He felt absolutely repulsed by the kiss, yet he forced himself to accept it. His heart was hammering in his throat. He didn't understand. Why here? Why in this location, with no one around? Unless Thranduil had plans. Kili gasped at the implication of that.
Thorin's hands, bound to the arms of the chair he was seated in, balled into fists and his guts churned angrily. But he couldn't call out. Kili couldn't see him there, lest he endanger his nephew. He seethed silently.
Thranduil put on a show. His hands cupped the young dwarf's cheeks and held him there when Kili already wanted to pull back. He forced his physique forward, pushing Kili out of the light and back into the darkness. "Good boy," was the last thing that Thorin heard him whisper.
Thorin was forced to swallow his scream.