So Comes Snow After Fire

20.iii

Kíli woke to a soft, intermittent sound. He could not identify it at first, till he rolled over and saw his wife sitting up on the far edge of the bed. Her shoulders trembled slightly, and then he knew: she was crying.

"Audha?" he mumbled, pushing himself up. "Are you unwell?" It was a foolish question, of course. Kíli was already quite sure her distress had nothing to do with her health. But he was not sure it was in his power to help alleviate any other sort of pain.

"I am well," she affirmed softly.

Kíli stood and padded around to her side of the bed. Audha looked up at him, the tears on her cheeks glimmering faintly in the dim light of the room's night lamp. Placing his hands on her shoulders he asked, "What can I do?" His voice came out faint and hoarse with his own submerged grief.

"Kíli, I—" Audha looked up searchingly into his face, and a fresh wave of tears fell. She drew a breath, gathering her courage. "I know I am not her, not your Tauriel. But please, won't you let me love you? Kíli, I do love you."

Her words struck him, sharp as a dagger's point through his heart. Kíli had tried—Mahal knew!—he had tried so very hard to offer Audha all she deserved as his wife. He had given her honor, respect, freedom—all the things she could benefit from in her standing before others. But even so, he felt a deep and ready guilt knowing what else he had not given, the private, personal things: a word of endearment, a caress, even the casual touch of one used to another's proximity. Oh, he had lain with her as was expected: he would not shame her with a incomplete marriage or deny her the right to bear royal heirs. But even fulfilling that intimate duty had not brought him any closer to affection. Seeing Audha, touching her, still felt like an act of betrayal, and he could not make himself comfortable with her.

And still, looking on her tears, he hated what he had done to her.

"Audha, forgive me," he gasped and drew her against him because he knew he must; she was breaking right before him. He did not want to see her destroyed, though he was not sure he could save her, either.

Audha clung to him, her head pressed against his chest. After a few moments, Kíli thought to draw his fingers through her hair; he had once done so with Tauriel.

"Would it be easier if I did not love you?" Audha murmured, her voice muffled by his shirt.

I don't know, Kíli thought, but he did not say it. The words would be no help.

He brushed the hair back from her brow and kissed her there, and then, because he did not know what to do, he pressed his mouth to hers.

She responded desperately, hungrily, as if he were something long withheld and longer desired, not the spouse who, if he belonged to anyone, surely had to her, all this past year. Indeed, he could not remember her ever having held him like this, seemingly unable to be near enough to him.

It was not so difficult to kiss her back as he had expected, once they had started. For his part, there was still no desire in it, but he could sense quite plainly that she needed something from him, and a proper kiss, at any rate, was something he knew how to give.

When they broke off, Kíli lay against her as they caught their breath. He should, he told himself, give himself permission to love her. His reluctance gained Tauriel nothing, and cost Audha so much. And yet offering himself to his own wife felt like bending a band of metal in a direction it was not meant to go: soon it would break.

"Kíli," Audha said, and the pained edge in her voice told him she knew he was still not wholly hers. Yet her hands moved over him tenderly nevertheless. He supposed she was grateful even for the fiction he offered her. "I feel truly guilty," she said, and she was crying again.

He pushed up from her breast to look down at her face. "What—?" The guilt was all his own for betraying Tauriel and for denying Audha.

"I know you cannot want me to have this," she continued, tears slipping from the edges of her eyes. "This gift should be for her, and I feel I am wrong to be so happy to receive it instead."

"Audha?"

"Tell me I may be happy," she pleaded gently. She brushed her fingertips over his face, and there was more desperate need in that touch than when she had kissed him.

"I don't understand..." he said again. Of course he wanted her happiness; he was miserable now because he knew she was, too.

"Kíli," Audha breathed, "I am with child."

Kíli gave a low moan and sank down against her...

...and woke clutching a fold of the woolen blanket over the bed in his Ravenhill captain's quarters; he had come here for a few days to catch up on the duties which he had deputized during the Council. Kíli stared into the dark for a few moments, taking in the dim outlines of his armor stand and weapons rack, the objects offering proof that he was in the outpost fortress and not some royal bedchamber under Erebor.

He was, he realized, drenched with sweat. Sitting up, he threw off the blanket and swung his feet to the floor. His breath came hard, as if he had been running.

It was hard to say what had upset him most about the dream, the thought that he might truly make Audha feel quite so miserable and rejected some day, or the sudden, painful reminder that he did not want his future children to belong to anyone but Tauriel. The loss of Tauriel and all the life they might have had together was his own, private grief, and he would continue to face it as best he could. But Kíli was terrified at the thought that his inescapable devotion to his first love would poison Audha's own happiness.

He had not worried so much when he had thought she viewed the match as no more than a political contract; in such a case, neither of them might expect much in the way of personal affection from one another. But he had been haunted by her recent admission that she could learn to admire him. What if she even came to love him? How would she then bear the knowledge that his heart was forever settled elsewhere? For there was no hope that Kíli could ever return her love.

But what was he supposed to do? He could no more forget Tauriel than he could his own name, and yet he felt how cruel it must be to hold her between himself and the woman he had pledged to marry.

Kíli pushed to his feet, and drawing a coat over his nightshirt, shouldered out the door, making for the open battlements.

The fresh night air calmed him somewhat, and he stood for several long minutes drawing slow, deep breaths, his gaze fixed on one bright star that hung in the west, over Mirkwood.

Eventually he heard steps approach, but he dismissed them as a sentry's till he was addressed by a familiar gruff voice.

"Are ye well, laddie?"

"No, I'm not," he answered his cousin Dwalin without turning.

"I didna' expect ye were." He stood at Kíli's shoulder for a while before continuing, "It's a hard thing, ta give what you must. Ye've made the warrior's sacrifice of going into battle, willing to give up life an' home for the sake of others. An' I'll tell ye what I would any young dwarf before his first battle: the fact that it hurts an' yer afraid doesn't make ye any less strong."

Kíli did not say anything because he didn't trust his voice, but he nodded. Eventually, he said, "I'm not afraid for myself. I don't want to make poor Audha suffer."

"I believe she's willin' to like you," Dwalin offered.

"That's what frightens me the most! I'll never be able to give her what she wants. I can't love her."

The older warrior laid a hand on Kíli's shoulder. "Lad, ye'll treat her the best ye may. An' remember, she knew what she was gettin' in for, an' she accepted ye all the same. So don't carry on blamin' yerself for what ye can't change. This situation isn't all of yer makin'."

"Thanks."

"Now, unless ye've a particular affection for this bit o' wall, why don't ye take a stroll with me afore yer feet grow rooted to the spot. I could do with the company."

"Right," Kíli said, and turned to fall into step beside the comfortingly sturdy outline of his kinsman.