"This world...?" He supposes that could be how the elves speak of the lands in the West, but it doesn't really seem likely. More likely is the idea growing in the back of his mind: that he is somewhere else (somewhen else?) entirely. And that is...
He'd thought being dead was bad enough, but this, oh, this is far worse. If he'd been dead, he could at least have comforted himself with the knowledge that he'd died to save his family, and if he'd been in... wherever elves went, surely his Maker would have realized it eventually and brought him home. If he's right, though, if he's been spared, he's been snatched away from his friends and his family and everything he's ever known, perhaps forever... and maybe he could have learned to live with that, too, except his brother saw him fall. The cost of his survival is that Kíli thinks he's dead, his life bought with the sorrow of the one person in all of Arda Fíli would have died to keep from grief.
Oh, nadad, I'm so sorry.
He turns his face away so she won't see the look he knows must be there, and says, very quietly, "What is this world, Captain Tauriel? I had thought it was the afterlife, but it seems I was mistaken."
no subject
He'd thought being dead was bad enough, but this, oh, this is far worse. If he'd been dead, he could at least have comforted himself with the knowledge that he'd died to save his family, and if he'd been in... wherever elves went, surely his Maker would have realized it eventually and brought him home. If he's right, though, if he's been spared, he's been snatched away from his friends and his family and everything he's ever known, perhaps forever... and maybe he could have learned to live with that, too, except his brother saw him fall. The cost of his survival is that Kíli thinks he's dead, his life bought with the sorrow of the one person in all of Arda Fíli would have died to keep from grief.
Oh, nadad, I'm so sorry.
He turns his face away so she won't see the look he knows must be there, and says, very quietly, "What is this world, Captain Tauriel? I had thought it was the afterlife, but it seems I was mistaken."