So Comes Snow After Fire

4.i The Snows They Melt the Soonest

Fíli yawned and swept sleep-tangled hair out of his face as he went from his chamber into the common rooms. Kíli's bedroom door was open, the room beyond empty. Had Kíli really done it, then? Had he left?

When he entered his brother's room, Fíli found the bed neatly made, but his brother had always been good about doing that; Kíli insisted blankets weren't as comfortable if they had been left in a heap all day. The empty dressing table offered no clues, either. Kíli didn't have many personal things yet in Erebor and those he had—a pipe, flint and steel, a knife—he usually carried with him. Yet the wardrobe door was open, and glancing inside, Fíli got the answer he sought: Kíli's heavy cloak was gone, as was his knapsack.

Fíli stood staring into the empty wardrobe. What did his brother think he was doing? Kíli was running away from the home he had fought and nearly died (on more than one occasion) to reclaim. And for a woman who, though she was not truly an enemy, was not yet counted an ally by their people.

He felt a flare of resentment at Tauriel for drawing Kíli away from his place. How was it that she had a greater claim on Kíli than did his own family? She was just an outsider. She hadn't earned that kind of devotion from him yet.

Fíli was disgusted with himself as soon as he had thought that. He knew Tauriel had a kind heart and that her affection for Kíli was true. And when he wasn't peeved about what Kíli's feelings for her led him to do, Fíli did think she was a good match for his brother, with her thoughtful manner balanced by her sudden lively wit. But that was just it—everything would have been so much easier if he could simply have hated and dismissed her. Instead, he recognized that Tauriel offered Kíli something good, and that Kíli had chosen it above his birthright, leaving that burden to his brother alone.

That last fact was what truly stung him, Fíli realized.

Kíli had never felt the pressure of expectation that his elder brother had. Fíli would be king, and had known nearly all his life that he must learn to act like one, to prepare himself for the responsibility that would one day be his. And so Fíli was always left to do the right thing, while Kíli did, well, whatever he wanted. Not that Kíli had ever wanted anything that was terribly at odds with his identity as a prince; he always had had a deep sense of the nobility required of a son of Durin. But for Kíli, choices had always been uncomplicated, guided only by what fit with his rather universal definitions of what that nobility entailed, without being clouded by the considerations of a king for the particular and therefore often conflicting needs of others.

Certainly it was right that Kíli refuse to compromise his love and loyalty to someone who deserved both. Fíli just wished his brother could see that matters were rarely so well-defined that you could simply choose one thing over another. Sometimes, you could refuse neither option, and then you had to try, somehow, to find a third way.

Maybe, Fíli thought, he was just jealous that his little brother had never had to see things that way.

Maker save the stupid idiot from himself. Fíli closed the wardrobe door and turned back to his own bedroom to finish dressing. On the way, he paused for a moment in the common room, which was dark and still without the fire lit yet. Damnation. Was this whole blasted suite of rooms going to belong solely to him now? Things would be so quiet. Kíli had always been there, a companion and an accomplice, someone who'd ensured Fíli had never had to do anything alone.

There had been one choice for Fíli that truly had been simple: his brother's welfare meant far more than a moment of glory reclaiming a mountain. He could not have left Kíli to face fear and death alone in Laketown.

Fíli had never before doubted that he could count on the same support in return.