Memory (Kíli/Tauriel drabble)

It was a cold light.

Cold and lonely and icy.

An empty light.

Tauriel sat in the high branches, far, far from the ground. Far from Mirkwood's palace, and for a moment, away from the responsibilities of being the captain of Thranduil's army. She pulled out her knife, twirling the blade in her hands, silver flashing in the starlight.

Memories flickered across her closed eyes.

Blood. The cries of war. A frantic pounding in her chest and the snarling grasp of fear tightening around her chest. His name on her lips.

She watched him fall, arrows protruding from his chest. She had screamed and ran, killing everything in her path. A slash with her knife, a loose of an arrow, they all fell.

And so did he.

She pressed the knife into the open palm of her hand, feeling the stinging pain tick across her skin. Blood dripping across her hand. The pain felt better than the hollow feeling she had grown to know.

She looked back up at the stars.

She hated them now.

They were memory.