we will all burn together [closed post]

[sonofdurin]

The last thing Fíli sees in Arda is his uncle's face, frozen with fear and grief and horror, and he isn't running, of course he isn't running, he will not dishonor his nephew by turning away now - and Fíli is afraid, more afraid than he has ever been, but he looks back into Thorin's clear eyes and knows that he was loved, that his family will survive this, and he finds that he can almost bear the knowledge of his fate.

The last thing he hears in Arda is the sound of his brother's scream, and that would be much harder to bear, if he had any time left to endure it.

 

+

He is moving at a great speed, far faster than any horse could run. Something rattles nearby, and perhaps he ought to look and see where he is, but opening his eyes seems like too great an effort. 

There is no more pain.

 

+

 

He thinks perhaps he wanders, though he knows not where, nor for how long, and when he wakes it is to the sight of trees. The sheer wrongness of it all propels him to his feet in an instant, sends him scrambling for any weapon he can find, and it is only when his boot-daggers are in his hands that he bothers to stop and take in his surroundings. He is standing in the sun, beneath trees that do not grow on the slopes of the Mountain, and he is utterly alone.

 

I died.

Fíli's conscious mind flinches away from the thought, but the knowledge is unavoidable. He died, he remembers dying, and now he is... here. Wherever "here" is.

 

If this is the afterlife, he thinks, it is nothing at all like I expected. 

These are not his Maker's Halls, and Fíli wonders, with a vague sense of hilarity, whether the Valar got mixed up in the chaos of the battle, and he is in the afterlife of Elves or Men, instead. It is certainly an afterlife, though, it has to be, because he feels no pain. If he was alive, he thinks, it would probably hurt.

 

It would hurt, and his brother would be with him, but Fíli knows with a bone-deep certainty that he is alone. He's never been alone before, not really - Kíli's always been somewhere nearby - and he thinks that, when he remembers how to feel again, he will probably hate it. His soul is screaming with his brother's absence, and all he can do is thank Mahal for that emptiness, because this is an afterlife and Kíli isn't here, Kíli is alive, and Fíli will gladly bear this pain until the end of days because it means his brother lives and he is... dead. He's dead.

 

All at once it is very hard to breathe. He stumbles backwards - falls - his knives slip from numb fingers - and he is on the ground, choking on tears, dead and abandoned and more alone than he has ever been.