So Comes Snow After Fire

22.iii

Kíli wished he did not have the day off from his captain's duties. He would have preferred to be working—overseeing training, receiving patrol reports, even drafting shift schedules, anything to keep his mind off what he wanted most. Anything to keep him from making straight for Mirkwood and for Tauriel.

But with nothing to occupy him, Kíli had wound up here, in the hall of silver fountains, the one place he could not be without thinking of Tauriel, for she and he had come here often. He was, it seemed, intent on tormenting himself.

He sat on the rim of the central pool, one knee drawn up under his chin, watching the water drip from the intricately wrought metal that supported a series of raised basins from which more water ran. He imagined the droplets as so many tears, the ones he felt welling up inside himself but refused to let fall because they would be a sign of his weakness, his selfishness at not being able to let Tauriel go.

Yesterday, after his first wild joy and relief at Audha's release had subsided, Kíli had known what he must do: he must allow Tauriel to be free. If he truly believed that she would be better off without him and all the heartbreak he would one day bring her, he could not change his mind now merely because he was allowed to have her once more. Doing that would be thinking only of himself. And no matter how lonely he was, Kíli could not justify sacrificing Tauriel's ultimate happiness for his own.

Still, his chest hurt, as if someone had truly run him through with a blade. Maybe, he thought darkly, it would have been better if he'd died up there on top of frozen Ravenhill nearly two years ago. He could have been happy trading his life for hers, and then he'd never have known this far worse pain. Dying, he thought, could hardly hurt like this: the pain of knowing that he willingly let her slip away when his whole being, body and soul, seemed to scream for him to go after her.

Tauriel, I need you!

For a moment, all his desire found expression in that one urgent thought: the words filled him, as if he truly were shouting them. And yet he dared not even breathe them aloud, as if doing so, even in her absence, would burden her with his selfishness. He did not want to burden her, even when it was true that he could not do without her.

He dipped his hand in the water, wondering if any of the drops running down his fingers had been touched by her hand when she was last here, for she had always liked trailing her fingers in the pool. For a wild moment, he imagined what it would be like to drown here in these waters, receiving, by means of them, her final caress.

"What's wrong, love?"

Kíli started, then looked up to see his mother standing before him. With the sound of the water and the turmoil of his own thoughts, he had not heard her approach.

"I miss her," he confessed as Dís sat at his side.

"Then go to her."

"Mum. It's not that simple. You know why I can't."

"Do I?" Her manner was kind, urging him to explain. She laid her hand on his back, her fingers tracing a light pattern between his shoulder blades.

"Isn't it better that she let go of me now, rather than later when it will hurt her so much more?" Kíli asked, repeating for seemingly the thousandth time the reasoning he had been trying to make himself follow. Then, his voice harsh with anger at himself, he added, "How did I ever think I could ask her to love me when she'll have to lose me?"

"Kíli, there are worse things than losing one you love," Dís returned, her hand never faltering in its steady movement over his back.

He turned to look at her, not convinced.