So Comes Snow After Fire

16.iii

Fíli left his rooms some time after midnight. Kíli would surely be returning soon, brokenhearted and dispirited from his farewell of Tauriel, and Fíli could not bear to be there when he did.

He wasn't exactly angry at Kíli as he had been the previous night, but still he could not stay, either to watch his little brother's grief or to share in it. He understood why a life with Tauriel had mattered so much to Kíli, and even now he could admit that he did not blame Kíli for wanting to be with her. Yet Fíli still could not forgive his brother for destroying any chance Fíli might have had to find the same thing for himself without forsaking his kingdom first.

Of course Kíli hadn't meant to ruin everything. Kíli never meant for half of the things that seemed to result from his impulsive actions. That was the problem: Kíli always did exactly what seemed the right idea at the time, and everyone else got to pay for it with him. But this time, the cost wasn't simply working late to finished forgotten chores or listening to a lecture on the duties that a prince, even in exile, had to his people. This time, Fíli would have to give up the one thing that had come to matter to him as much as the quest for the mountain once had. Indeed, Fíli realized, Sif had come to represent the new life that he could build here. She was the person he loved and wanted to make a new home for and with; without her, his duty to Erebor seemed an empty and impersonal one performed out of obligation and not from love.

It was wrong, Fíli supposed, to let Sif mean all of that for him. Didn't he care about serving all the dwarves whom he had known since Ered Luin, the ones who had watched him grow from a boy and who had honored and looked after him, their young prince? Didn't he care about all the comrades who had toiled and fought and suffered alongside him to come back to the mountain that he'd never even seen before? He did; oh, he did, and so he knew it was terribly unfair to place one young woman ahead of all those faithful subjects and kin.

This was the other reason Fíli could not stand to face his brother tonight: Kíli was a reminder of how following a personal desire could result in so much trouble for others. And Fíli did not like to think that if he chose to let the kingdom go so that he might marry Sif, he would be doing the same thing that so frustrated him in Kili.

But one way or another—for love or duty, for himself or his kingdom—he had to make up his mind tonight. The Council of Seven was to resume tomorrow afternoon, and if Fíli wished to secure the necessary Blacklock vote, he would need to present himself to Audha and her father in the morning. The vote would surely take place no later than the following day.

Fíli wished the controversy were over and settled. That he didn't have to decide. That this once, what he wanted and what was right could be the same thing. He had been trying to tell himself they were, and yet it still felt a lie. How could he trust any line of reasoning that served something he wanted so badly?

So Fíli roamed the deserted halls of the mountain, hiding from his own doubts as well as avoiding his brother. He had no particular goal or route, and indeed did not pay attention to where he was, much of the time. An echoing gallery or a trickling fountain, a soaring vault or plunging stairwell would occasionally intrude on his awareness, though he could not have told how he had found them.

Somehow in the end, he wound up in the vast work halls, near his own workshop. At such a late hour, all should have been still and dark. And yet—

Ahead, he saw light spilling into the hallway from a workroom off to the side. He paused, listening to the whoosh and roar of a bellows and forge being worked, and then the ring of hammer on anvil.

The lighted workshop, he realized, was that of the Ironsides family.

He continued down the hallway, keeping his steps quiet, until he could see through the open door.