Chapter Text
Inseparable, their mother used to joke about them at the kitchen table a lot before she died, a glass of gin in one hand and cigarette in the other. If you wanted those boys to come home, she laughed, you only had to call one of them. The other would be along soon enough.
Even when Fili grew old enough to drive, tearing around the back roads through the hills in a broken-down Âvul that Thorin had picked up for him, and Kili tried to follow him in his bicycle, wailing that it wasn't fair, they somehow vanished and reappeared as a pair. When Kili got his first motorcycle and promptly crashed it, breaking his leg and cracking three ribs, it was was Fili who found him first and stayed by his side every minute he was in the hospital. They were even arrested together, the night before Kili’s birthday. A neighbour caught them breaking into a policeman's house and rifling through his wife's jewellery box, sky-high on crystal and with a blood alcohol level that should have killed them. They were bailed out by Thorin and escaped charges together. They were involved in a nasty brawl outside a bar in the orcish ghetto together. And when the judge said there were no second chances in his courtroom, they served eighteen months in prison together.
So when Fili left like he did, without saying goodbye and without leaving an address or phone number, only a short note saying that he couldn’t go on like this anymore, it hit Kili hardest of all.
"Ugh— oh, yes, that's it, right there. More— more! Give it to me!" Fili tried to block her out. He should have turned Anah over on her stomach first, pushed her face into the pillow to muffle her whining, screeching moans. Her nails dug into his back, as though she wanted to tear his skin off and get inside his muscles and veins. Anah was as smooth as a little girl all over, with a streaming mane of cornsilk hair that tried to suggest elven blood, but mousy roots admitted came from a bottle.
Fili had sobered up by now, but she was still drunk, begging and whining for Fili to fuck her harder, howling like a beaten cat. His stupid friend Edmund had put them together, saying that she was an artist and a free-spirit, right up Fili’s alley. Fili liked fucking artists, but in fifteen minutes and two glasses of rum, he quickly realised that she was a superficial private-school girl who only saw Fili as an oddity, a dwarf who looked mannish enough to tolerate and something to giggle about with her friends over tomorrow's brunch. Someone with more integrity would have stopped short of bringing her back to their flat. Maybe Fili would on some other night, too, but he didn’t really want to stay out any later. He was tired and out of money, and when they started doing coke in the bathroom Fili knew he had to avoid the temptation, fingering the five-year chip in his pocket until he was afraid of rubbing the engraving off.
It was still going. Fili pawed at one of her breasts, tired and frustrated, with none of his usual skill. What was the point? Anah had gripped his hand on the train, pressing it against her lips and saying oh, it was so big compared to the rest of him, that he must have been hiding a monster in there and he had to be an animal in the sack. So Fili play acted at being boorish and clumsy, being the brainless oaf she wanted him to be. Maybe then, it would be over faster.
Finally, finally, she convulsed around him, drawing thin ribbons over his shoulder blades. Fili grunted, let himself go, and felt shame flood his insides while he emptied. The both of them lay there for a moment, entangled and sweating, hearts pounding and breath rasping. With a low groan, Fili rolled over and away from her, lying on one elbow as he reached for the cigarettes inside his discarded jacket.
“Ooh, can I have a light?" Her chest still heaving, Anah tried to look seductive, posing like a centerfold in a dirty magazine with one arm being her and a leg raised up. But it didn't really work— magazine girls were flawless, looked at but never touched, while Anah was a well-fucked mess. Her curls had turned tattered and ratty, one eye smeared, looking like she'd been punched, and her lipstick long gone. A giant paw had rubbed over her face, blending everything together and leaving something blurred and undefined. As though she could sense his disapproval, Anah tried self consciously to arrange her ruined curls over her shoulders, flashing a smile.
“Go ahead.” Fili threw her the packet. He sat on the edge of the bed, dropping ash all over the floor with his hands clasped, draped over his knees. Faded blue eyes ringed slowly fell shut, his bare, lightly freckled shoulders heaving in a long, long sigh.
Anah left her number on his bathroom mirror in blood-red lipstick, signed with an x. Wearing his boxers and shivering in the chill, Fili stared at it, standing on his footstool and catching his reflection in the corner of his eye. Blonde curls hair grazed his shoulders, limp and dreary, sticky with sweat. He needed to eat something. He needed a shave. He needed to sleep for a week. Licking his finger, Fili rubbed the girl’s number out, leaving a shapeless smudge behind.
The rest of his flatmates were out. Fili padded silently through the house, poured himself a glass of cask wine out of habit, checked his phone, and went to bed. Half an hour before bed of quiet reflection was key to mental healing, his therapist insisted years ago. He sat up now with a magazine on his lap, rifling through the lurid photographs and tiny boxes of text. Everything grew blurry again, and he couldn’t take anything in.
An hour or so before dawn, Fili woke after a bad dream. He lay on his side, watching the red numbers of his alarm clock through the warped lens of his half-finished wine. Outside, he heard the distant boom of a stereo, the barking of a dog, distant engine rumbling and car-horns. It was a soothing melody, and his mind drifted, turning in lazy circles. He thought his surgical assessment in two weeks time, about Gertie’s seventy-third birthday in a few days, wondering if it was appropriate to get her anything, about the noisy fan belt on his car that needed replacing soon. He thought about how his mate Edwin had insisted last week the car was a piece of shit, and he’d be replacing the engine in six months anyway. He thought about his old Âvul which survived anything he threw at it for ten years, and for all Fili knew, could still be parked up in the compound parking lot. And that made him think about Kili.
Damn. Fili sighed and rolled over on his back, throwing an arm over his eyes. Temptation crept in his stomach and left his fingers itching, like the call for a cigarette. No -- he’d already checked that night, and Kili hadn’t called. Just like he checked it the night before, and the night before that, and every other night the last two weeks. Kili hadn’t called. He tried to ignore the panic smoldering inside of him, tried to honestly believe that his brother was just pissed off (they ended their last conversation on an unusually heated argument), or he'd lost his phone again, or he'd just simply forgotten to call.
But he never did. Every Sunday afternoon Kili would call him, and if he didn't hear anything by five, Fili called, and he always got through. Always. As the days passed from one week into two, Fili grew increasingly unsettled, a general feeling of wrongness blanketing his head, leaving him restless and distracted. Once, he almost called Thorin. He dialed the number on his burner and stared at the screen for seven minutes at that familiar string of digits, head pricking from all the memories that were dragged along with it. But Fili didn't call, not yet. He wasn't that desperate.
Fuck it. Mechanically, Fili got out of bed and pulled the cheap plastic phone from his hiding place under the bed. He paced while waiting for it to turn on, kicking aside dirty clothes and cigarette butts and loose pieces of paper.
1 voice message.
Fili's heart leaped into his throat, the breath leaving him as every tense muscle sagged in relief. Only one person in the world had this number. The stupid shit, he was probably giving Fili the silent treatment and got too drunk in the night. Idiot, of course it was Kili just being a brat, why would he expect any less--
"Fili?" Kili’s broken gasp rang through the plastic. Fili sank slowly on the edge of the bed as joy plummeted into crushing terror. “Fili, please, please pick up the phone if you're there. Please."
He made an involuntary noise in his throat, listening to his baby brother's voice. "I-I'm so scared, Fili. I c-can't... I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I-I don’t know anything. I was stupid, so stupid. Please—They’ll be back any moment. I can’t let them know I called.” Kili was crying. “Thorin w-won’t come for me, I know it. I messed things up so bad with him, Fili. So bad. I-It’s a gang of orcs– I don’t know wh-who anyone is, th-they won’t use names around me. There’s a white w-warg’s head on their jackets, it’s all I know. I had a p-pound of crystal and they took it. They wanted to know where the rest was and— they hurt me, Fili. It hurt so much. I don’t know what they’ll d-do now and I'm—I’m so scared. I know you didn’t want to ever come back but please, please. Please – help me.” There was a sharp cry, a click, and then the message died.
There wasn't time to think. Fili didn't give himself the luxury of sitting down and crying, or being angry or scared. He emptied his backpack of all his university notes, throwing in everything at hand. Pushed in the corner of his mirror was the old picture of his family, all that he had left of home after he walked out with just the clothes on his back and a wallet in his pocket. Everything else had worn through years ago, but this photo remained. Fili picked it up now, staring at the faded image of a young family. Two blonde, two dark, mother, father, two little boys. It looked so utterly ordinary, you only could really tell something wasn't quite right if you studied the patch on his father's leather jacket, or the leather holster on his mother's hip, just visible beneath her creeping shirt as she hefted Kili in her toned arms.
He was on the road before dawn. Fili rung up the agency and left a message saying he needed to take unpaid leave, effective immediately, scrawled a note on the fridge for his flatmates and left his regular phone on his bedside table, switched off. As he took the highway out of town and headed east, the sun broke over the horizon, right in his eyes. The city behind him was swallowed up and Fili kept on driving towards the sun, towards the east, towards what for so long had been home.
After about an hour past the Edoras city limits, Fili had to pull over. Just up ahead was the north-east turnoff, listing several main destinations in that part of the world; Dale, presiding at the foothills of some mouldy old dwarvish ruins, Dafinîn in the heart of the Iron Hills, and Khamûlor, the vast eastern capital on the shores of Rhûn. His mouth was dry. He could feel the pressure rising, and with a short sharp little gasp, it all came out. Fili rested his forehead against the steering wheel as he cried. It was such a massive, ugly step backward, Fili cried out of fear as much as he did grief and anger. He was afraid of Thorin, afraid of how he would be received after the heartless way he left.
Fili had been relieved as well as sad, thinking there was nothing that would drag him back to that awful hell-hole. He thought he was done with that part of the world forever. Of course, it was Kili that brought him back. Fucking Kili. The terror doubled in his heart, and he gripped the steering wheel, as though he were suspended over a steep precipice and afraid for his life. He was afraid for Kili, that he would be too late and they’d find his body at the bottom of a river or in a shallow roadside grave. He wasn’t a ransom -- they’d have given Thorin a finger or ear by now if he was. Whoever this upstart gang was, they wanted to keep Kili, at least until his usefulness ran out.
When his eyes dried, Fili leaned back, wiping at his damp face. He felt deflated and hollow, a sensation that didn’t feel any better than that cascading horror. Through half-lidded eyes, Fili stared out at the grey ribbon of road, disappearing over the horizon with no end in sight, the thin rim of mountains just barely visible in the haze of early morning sun. Another car roared past, gleaming in the sunlight.
Every second he sat here, crying like a baby and feeling scared was another second where Kili was held captive. The thought brought Fili back into reality. He sat up and brought his car to life, pulling back into the highway and staying in the left lane.
Driving hundreds and hundreds of miles gave Fili the last thing he wanted just then -- time to think. Fili had filled his life to overflowing with his job, study, volunteer work, friends and girlfriends. Unlike Kili, who could spend hours at a time sitting on the balcony with a beer on his hand, just staring out across the fields and claiming he wasn’t thinking about anything, Fili always needed to be busy. He hated being alone with his head -- he liked to just charge on, to move from one task to the next without stopping and thinking. Hard-working, his boss called him, said it must have been a dwarvish thing. She hadn’t met many dwarves.
He blared the radio, trying to sing along and distract himself, until it faded into static, sometime around the early afternoon. Fili didn’t bring any tapes with him, there were just a handful in the glovebox. One was busted, spilling tiny ribbons of film all over his fingers as he rifled through the mess. Another was a mix Ella had made for him, one he’d forgotten about. He saw it, turned it over in his hands, and put it away. Not yet. He played the remaining three, over and over while the radio was dead, stopping occasionally for petrol and coffee, until it was late at night. There was a one-road town, about two hundred miles out of Khamûlor, a neon hotel sign and a front office that still looked open. Fili paid for the cheapest room available, a small single studio, and collapsed on the bed fully-dressed. He was too tired to dream. That was a mercy.
Fili drank his first coffee of the day - horrid, watery stuff from the front reception - on the hood of his car with a tasteless, rubbery pastry wrapped in plastic and a cigarette. A few others milled about, having breakfast and arguing with the hotel owner over the bill. Fili watched them through the window. An orcish couple with three screaming kids, a small handful of freshmen from a university in Khamûlor, two bikers, who stood in the corner and muttered to themselves, and a lone elderly dwarf. Fili nodded at the dwarf as he stepped out in the parking lot, half-heartedly lifting a hand in greeting. The dwarf didn’t smile back.
He was on the road again before nine, turning north at the shore, towards the Iron Hills and Dale. Unlike the razor-straight highway that cut across plains and hills between Edoras and Khamûlor, the northern two-lane road wound along the coast, dotted with little fishing villages. Behind him, the massive city, thought to be the biggest in the whole world, belched thick, grey smoke in the sky. Four hundred and fifty miles to go.
Just before noon, about ten miles after he turned onto the four-lane highway that opened across the plains and pastures, Fili came across a hitchhiker. It was a girl, couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen, walking on the side of the road with her thumb out. She wore a sleeveless light blue shirt, and denim shorts, a backpack slung over one shoulder and canvas shoes with mismatching ankle socks. Waist-length hair was pulled back in a single braid, dark and glossy as wet chestnuts. It was so out-of-place amongst the dust and grit of the road. Without thinking, Fili pulled over, leaning across the passenger window. “Need a ride?”
She stood outside the car with one hand on her backpack, the other on her hip. “Where are you going?” Her eyes were wide and dark.
“Shulkahar.” Fili answered. “Near where you need to be?”
She chewed her lip. “I’m going to Shulkahar.” She looked up and down the empty highway, studying Fili’s face, his broken-down car, obviously weighing up the chance and danger in her mind.
“I’m not affiliated.” Fili tried to assure her. “No funny business, I promise you.”
“That’s exactly what they would say.” But she opened the car door all the same. Halfway in, she saw Fili’s booster seat, and froze. “Oh!” She blinked. “You’re a dwarf.”
“That a problem?” She slung her backpack at her feet, shaking her head.
“No, it’s just— you don’t look like one. Not at first.” She broke into a smile, seeming a little more calm. “I’m Sigrid.”
“Sigrid.” He repeated, holding out his hand. “Good to meet you. I’m Fili.”
Sigrid was quiet as he pulled back onto the road. She leaned her head on a flattened palm, staring out.
“So, er,” Fili tried to start conversation. “Why on earth were you trying to hitch all the way up to Shulkahar? They’ve found bodies along this road, you know. Dozens of ‘em.”
“I know.” Sigrid murmured. “But I missed my connecting bus north, and I couldn’t afford an extra ticket.”
“So you thought you’d risk it?”
She shrugged. “I’m not afraid.” Sigrid looked over at Fili, eyeing his clean jeans and button-down shirt, the faded brown coat slung over the backseat. “But why are you going? You don’t look like the type with business in a town like mine.”
“Well,” Fili kept his eyes on the road. “I got family.”
“Oh, so you’re popping up for a visit?” Fili swallowed hard, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Something like that.”
Fili kept the conversation intentionally light, asking about his hometown— who was running it now, if old Morris still had his store on the corner of first and west, if the farm with the petting zoo on the outskirts was still running, any goings-on that he may have missed. Sigrid responded in kind, the both of them sizing one another up, carefully testing each other, and wordlessly agreeing the other was all right.
They stopped at a greasy truck stop around one, buying gristly mince pies and cheap filtered coffee. Sigrid used a payphone to call somebody, a quiet conversation that turned into a sharp argument, and she abruptly hung up. “Brothers.” She muttered as she returned to the remains of her coffee.
“So what were you doing down in Khamûlor? At least, that’s where I assume you were.” When they were back in the car, Fili tried to strike up fresh conversation. Sigrid looked quite hard at him, rolling the question around in her head. “Did you have school?”
“I don’t go to school.” She fiddled with the thick string of bracelets on her wrist, all woven ropey things made from thread and beads. “I was… visiting my dad.” Fili stared at her wrist too, noticing in amongst the handwoven jewellery a ribbon-thin plastic band, stamped with a string of numbers and a barcode. Oh.
“South Central Correctional, huh?” Sigrid’s head whipped up. “I served eighteen months a while back.”
She paused. “What did you do?” It was sharp, accusatory. Fili’s eyes strayed from the road for a moment.
“Stupid, really. My brother and I got in a fight outside a bar over on West Avenue. Police came to break it up, my brother got rowdy with them, I had to back him up…” He sighed. “Really, really stupid.”
Sigrid looked him up and down, a frown knitting her eyebrows. She didn’t shape or pluck them, they were thick, almost severe, framing her wide eyes, but she suited it. Fili caught himself staring and returned his gaze very deliberately to the road. “Dad was framed.” Sigrid kicked off her shoes and socks, and put her feet up on the dashboard. Her nails were painted red, a little wobbly around the cuticle, as though a child had done it. “I know that’s what you’d expect anyone to say, but he really was. His defense lawyer made him take a plea bargain, said there wasn’t evidence to prove his innocence in court, and it was better to just take a manslaughter sentence than gamble between freedom and life imprisonment.” Her mouth was a thin, pink line.
“Can you tell me what they said he did?” Sigrid sighed in the passenger’s, squirming around a bit and trying to get comfortable. “You don’t have to.”
“Oh, Hell, it’s not a secret. They said he shot someone. A neighbour. It was eighteen months ago, he’ll be out in six years.” She fiddled with the plastic ID bracelet again, trying to tear it off. “With good behaviour.”
“The parole board is pretty lenient with first offenders.” Fili tried to sound encouraging. “As long as he keeps his nose clean and does the rehab paperwork, they’ll let him out.”
“Does it ever work? The rehabilitation courses, I mean.” Fili reached into his jean pocket, and pulled out his five-year chip, holding it up for her to see for a moment before stowing it away again.
“Worked for me.” His voice softened. “Not my brother, though.” Fili chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, thinking of something else to say. “So… You live at home then? Who looks after you? Your mother, or…”
“Nobody looks after me.” Sigrid crossed her ankles. “Mum died when my little sister was a baby. Dad worked all the time, trying to make sure we had enough, so I s’pose I always looked after myself, in a way.” She shrugged. “My Grandma moved in just after Dad got charged, but she had to go into a rest home about six months ago. It’s not so bad. Before Dad went away, he managed to get the bank to remortgage the house, so I can afford the payments. I work at a gas station, and Grandma gives us most of her pension. We’re happy.”
“You don’t want to move away? Why not sell the house and buy an apartment in Khamûlor so you’re close to your dad, or go more north to a better city?” Sigrid wrinkled her nose at Fili’s suggestion.
“Because it’s home. The kids have school and friends, and I have a pretty cruisy job, all things considered. My case manager at social services is an old friend of Mum’s, she makes sure my inspections are always signed off. Running away, it wouldn’t solve anything.” She challenged him, sitting up now with her legs crossed beneath her. Fili kept one eye on her and one eye on the road, feeling a little lost for words. Guilt was stirring at her words, touching a nerve.
“If you didn’t have family— or if they were old enough to take care of themselves, do you think you would still stay?” Fili was gripping the steering wheel again, unusually tense.
Sigrid brushed the hair back from her face. “That’s what you did, isn’t it.” She sat sideways in the seat, cheek pressed against the headrest. “You ran away.”
“I did.” Fili swallowed hard. “I had to, for myself. My brother was old enough to look after himself, and I didn’t have any other family, so I thought I could make a clean break.”
“So why are you coming back?”
Fili’s mouth was trembling. He closed his eyes for a second, trying to hold himself together as the guilt multiplied, burning in his gut like cheap whiskey. “I was wrong about my brother being able to look after himself.”
There was another awkward silence. Sigrid fiddled with the radio, trying to pull in a station and getting nowhere. “Tapes are in the glovebox.” Fili suggested.
“Oh, I see. Ugh, really? My Dad likes this stuff. Don’t you have anything better?” Sigrid rifled through the bits and pieces, old receipts, lottery tickets, bills, insurance information, finding Ella’s mix at the back. “What about this?”
“Um, an old girlfriend made it for me.” Sigrid read the short note on the back. “I’ve been meaning to throw it out.”
“‘To remind you of the night we met’. When was that?”
“A four-day music festival in Fangorn, about three years ago. Her name was Ella, she was half-elf, half-orc of all things. Yeah, weird I know.” Fili noticed her open-mouthed stare. “Her parents were… very, very ahead of their time. Apparently orcs and elves are the most genetically similar of all the races, even more than elves and men. Something about their ears and bone structure, I can’t remember exactly. Anyway, I bumped into her halfway through Diamond Veil’s set and spilled her beer.” He smiled at the memory. “She insisted I buy her another, and then we got to talking and…”
“I love Diamond Veil!” Sigrid beamed. “Can I play it?”
“Um…” Fili looked over at her smiling face, wanting to say no, wanting to say that he didn't think he could listen to anything on that tape without feeling all ripped up inside. But he kept looking at her smile, almost drifting off the road. With a start, he nodded. “Sure. Go ahead.”
“So, what happened?” More comfortable now, Sigrid stretched out her legs, getting some sun as the music started up. “You said old. Did it not work out?”
“Mm, no.” Fili stared very determinedly at the road now. “We were together for a few years. We were going to get married and everything, but, no, it didn’t work out in the end. I loved her to bits, but um… I wanted to stay clean and… she didn’t.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Sigrid murmured unhelpfully. Neither of them could think of anything to say, so they fell into a steady, pensive silence. Fili listened to the music, the years falling away with the minutes that passed, the miles they travelled along the endless highway. Listening to Diamond Veil, to Long Gone and Ripcord Morality and all these rabid, drug-fuelled, guitar-squealing artists, it was like listening to old friends again, talking shit in the garage of in the back yard over cans of bourbon and cheap beer. There was a tinge of nostalgia to it, and the longer Fili listened, the more he realised he’d outgrown it. And in that realisation, he didn’t feel quite as sad to listen to it all again as he thought he would.
The sun beat down on them and there was no air conditioning, so they opened the windows, hair blown about and loose papers fluttering. Chatting casually, Sigrid rested her head on her arm, propped up on the open window, squinting a little through the dust. Fili had a cigarette. The land began to grow familiar. The rolling hills, bleached in the autumn sun, the thin, ribbon of the river that wound closer at times and arched further away, the ramshackle little farmsteads, the paddocks dotted with a few sheep and horses. It was picturesque, in its rusticity, simplicity, in just how steady and plain it all was. So much potential for tranquility and bliss, Fili wondered just how it all went so wrong.
“So, what school did you go to before you left?” It seemed almost inappropriate to ask. Sigrid smiled again.
“Katûb-zahar. It was the one in my district, so yeah, I know all about you dwarves.” The radio had come back and she fiddled with it again. “Ugh, I hate this song.”
“That’s where I went for a few years. Tell me, is old Styrr still the headmaster there? He hated my brother and I, said we were the ruin of the school. I managed to stick on till the end, but after I graduated, Kili just went completely out of control. He was expelled within a year.” That should have been the first sign that Kili didn’t exactly get along fine without him. Fili’s nostalgic smile faded.
“Yes! He’s as grumpy as ever. My brother’s fifteen and he’s still there. Styrr is horrible about him, I keep getting called in.” Sigrid sat up straight, intentionally furrowing her brow. “Miss, we simply must do something about Bain. We don’t condone his disruptive behaviour at our fine establishment. You must be mindful of your influence on such an impressionable young man.” She put on her best impression of the old headmaster, breaking into giggles. “He used to always catch me behind the bike-sheds with the girls back in the day, trying to light cigarettes, and he was convinced that it was my fault Bain was always acting out.” She sighed. “Old git.”
“Is your brother having problems in school?” Fili looked over at her. Sigrid had gone quiet now, staring across the fields.
“He’s fifteen, of course he’s having problems.” She shrugged. “Dad going away, that shook him up. His faith in the justice system is completely broken, and he’s just… he’s very angry, a lot of the time. He wants to visit Dad, but he said not until Bain’s sixteen. His friends are all right, so it’s not like he’s in a bad crowd or anything. His head just isn’t in a good place at the moment.” She scratched her knee. “I’m not worried about him, not yet.” But there was an air of finality in her voice and Fili realised it was best to leave it.
They kept on driving. Sigrid grew bored, and started playing around with loose scraps of paper. There were dozens of receipts floating around, mainly for fast food and cigarettes, and she gathered them all up, folding them and lining them all up on his cracked dashboard. They were tiny paper stars, the size and shape of big plastic beads that children wore. Fili stared at them.
“They’re pretty.” He commented. “Where did you learn to do that?”
“A girl in school taught me.” Sigrid kept her eyes on her hands. “Oh— you don’t mind, do you? I hope you weren’t saving them.”
Fili laughed. “No, it’s fine.” Sigrid smiled again, one of those wide smiles that made her face light up. She smiled a lot.
“So, what do you do with yourself down wherever you live now?” She folded the last star and put it on top of the little pile she had made.
“I live in Edoras.” Fili spoke without hesitation, without considering the consequences. In his mind, the city was still plenty big enough to get lost in. “I’m at university, actually, just started my final semester. I’m studying to be a nurse.”
“Oh, cool!” Sigrid lit up again. “Where, like in a rest home, or a hospital, or in the army?”
Fili laughed again. “Definitely not the army. I work in sort of a rest home now. I go to the houses of old folks that live on their own and help them out with getting showered and dressed and stuff. It’s not strictly medical, but… I like it. I like helping them and they’re usually quite lovely. It’s better than a hospital in a lot of ways. I did a placement for a few months at the start of the year in one of the bigger ones in Edoras, it was pretty awful. Sure, you got to see more, but what you did see, it was depressing, in a lot of ways.”
“It would be.” She stared at him, spitting a few loose strands of hair out of her mouth. “I hate the hospital.”
“I like the folks I work for. The agency is good, gives me more work when I ask for it and less when I have exams.” Fili fell silent for a moment as the green sign came into view. Shulkahar, fifty miles. His hands went tight again and he dipped his head in a brief moment of panic. “Shit, we’re close.”
“You all right?” Sigrid leaned forward, resting a hand on his shoulder. Fili caught his breath and nodded, looking a little pale. “Tell me more about Edoras, about what you do.”
“Um, I volunteer— can you get me a smoke, please? Thanks.” He accepted the lit cigarette, taking a heavy drag. It calmed him down, just a very little bit. “I volunteer at a youth centre every second Saturday. Just cleaning up, taking a couple of kids’ sports groups and stuff. I wanted to be a youth counsellor, you know, work in social services and that sort of stuff, but my criminal record was a big black mark against me.” Fili shrugged sadly. “I’ll get there in the end, with luck.”
Sigrid stared, looking thoughtful for a few quiet moments. “You’re guilty.” She brought one long leg up, winding her right arm around it. “You want to make up for the shitty stuff you did as a kid, so you’re trying to help as many people as you can.” Fili was doing that stiff, silent thing again, where he stared at the road, trying to ignore her. “I mean -- you have to realise that, right?”
“Of course I realise that.” When Fili finally spoke, his voice was short and tight, and he couldn’t look at her. “You’re right. I was a shitty person. I was a criminal and an addict. I accept that. I just worry that... if I’m doing all of this for the wrong reasons, like you said, just to try and absolve myself, then that doesn’t really make me a better person, does it?”
“Of course it does. You’re still doing something,” she pointed out. “As long as you’re not stuck-up about it, who cares about the reasons?” That coaxed a little smile out of him, and his tight grip relaxed a fraction. “Are you worried that’s what other people may think?”
“I know it’s what my grandfather and uncle will say, if I told them.” Fili tried to swallow the bitterness on his tongue. “They’re, um, quite big in the town, when it comes to green and crystal. They care about money, and building their empire. If they knew I ran away to be a nurse, they would either laugh at me or tell me to fuck off out the door again.”
“But you’re not back for them. You’re back for your brother.” Fili nodded. “Does he live with them?”
“Yeah. We both did, since our parents died when we were kids.” Fili’s voice wobbled. “Now he’s -- I don’t know where he is. He’s missing.”
Sigrid squeezed his arm again. “Oh, Fili, I’m so sorry. Do you have any idea where he might be?”
Fili shook his head. “He left me a message last night. It sounds like some sort of deal went wrong, and they nabbed him. He--” He stopped, almost swerving in an effort to maintain his brittle composure. “He doesn’t know where he is, or who took him. Just that they’re orcs, and their gang insignia is a white warg’s head. You work at a gas station, do you…”
“No, sorry.” She rested her hand on his arm, sympathetic. “I’ll ask around, and if I hear anything, I’ll let you know. I’m sure somebody has a name, or a hideout.”
“It might be an upstart gang, wanting to make waves.” Fili’s throat was burning. “And to send a message to Thorin, they’re gonna leave his body somewhere. It’s not a ransom, they wouldn’t keep him this long, if it was.”
“Thorin?” Sigrid drew back. “He’s your uncle? So that makes Thrain…”
“My grandfather, yes. You know them?”
“Everybody does. The Durins are tough as nails and the biggest suppliers in between here and the Iron Hills, nobody messes with them.” Fili’s lip curled. “Shit, I had no idea, Fili. Do you have any ideas who took your brother then? Is there anyone you have history with?”
“Who don’t we have history with? Grandfather has a lot of enemies.” The vast, pastures were beginning to close in, the paddocks smaller, the houses slightly more frequent. “The Crows keep stepping on our borders, but they wouldn’t have the balls to touch the immediate family. The Grishnaak would have ten years ago, but they’re just racketeers now, no interest in drugs. The worst we ever had was Azog, years and years ago. Those turf wars wrecked us. Killed my parents, my uncle Frerin, my great-grandfather… Shit, you think if something was going to make my family turn, that’d be it. But Thorin got Azog almost twenty years ago now, raided their hideout, shot Azog point-blank and sent what was left of them out of town for good. They’re long gone.”
“Well, I hope you find answers.” Sigrid sounded rattled, but she held on to his arm again, and this time, she didn’t let him go until they reached the city limits, passed through the old market gardens, the scattered factories, mostly shut down and abandoned now, and on the main drag. She gave him directions to one of the nicer neighbourhoods down by the river, a quiet cul-de-sac. It was late in the afternoon, the sun as dark as melted butter on the brown grass, long shadows stretching over the road. Fili drove with the windows wound up, staring at his old home. He knew that bar, that gun store, that barber, that temple…
“Well, thank you.” When he pulled up outside Sigrid’s house, she lingered. The car idled outside a pretty little two-bedroom cottage on a little patch of grass, starting to show signs of wear. One of the windows was boarded up and the paint was peeling the scrubby grass a little too long and the porch sagging. “I really, really owe you one, Fili. It was brilliant luck, wasn’t it?”
Fili nodded. “Brilliant luck.” He echoed, stomach feeling soft. “You, um, take care of yourself, Sigrid. And maybe I’ll see you around, before I go.”
“This isn’t a big town, I’m sure you will.” Sigrid shouldered her pack and opened the door. “I’ll be at the gas station all day tomorrow and the next, if you need to fuel up.” She leaned against the open door. “And… good luck with your brother, Fili. I hope you find him.”
Fili nodded, smiling through a lump in his throat. “Good luck with yours.” She closed the door, and he watched her open the lopsided gate, making her way to the door and pulling it open. He saw a little girl run out and grab Sigrid in a whirlwind hug, almost knocking her over. His small smile faded, and he put the car in gear, turning across the road, weaving his way through these more pleasant suburbs.
As Fili drove across town, he could feel that tension, that guilt and fear grow higher and higher. The smell of Sigrid lingered in the car, beneath the stale odour of cigarettes and petrol fumes, and her paper stars littered the dashboard, dancing from side to side as he turned the corners. He almost faltered, pulling over on the main road up on the north side, bringing his knees up and resting his forehead on them. His joints were aching after two days on the road, his throat dry, and for some reason, Fili felt very, very cold.
No— he had to do this. Fili lifted his head and tried to calm himself down, breathing slowly, in and out. It was just Uncle Thorin, and Grandfather, nothing to be afraid of. They were dwarves, just like him, and he wasn’t a little boy anymore. He was a grown-up, with his own life now, so completely removed from all of this nasty shit. He’d moved on, he’d beaten them. There was nothing they could do to hurt him anymore.
Fili reached out and picked up one of the pieces of folded paper. He turned it over and over in his hand, not really looking at it, just wanting something to do with his fingers. In his head, he rehearsed what he was going to say. He was going to be confident, outspoken, honest. He wasn’t going to apologise, he wasn’t going to beg. This was something he had been considering for six years, something he had almost fantasised about, but also thought was never, ever going to happen. When he was younger, he used to imagine hitting Thorin, shouting at him in an outpouring of grief and rage and pain. He used to imagine getting a gun, looking his uncle in the eye and hearing him plead for forgiveness, giving none of it as he pulled the trigger.
He’d moved beyond that, to a dead, dull sort of acceptance that he couldn’t ever get the sort of retribution that he thought he deserved, which was itself in many ways a form of closure. Fili didn’t feel red-hot with rage when he thought about his uncle, not like he did four or five years ago. But he was still afraid. That little inside of him was still terrified, and as Fili stared out along the busy road, to where he knew his family lived, half a mile beyond this row of squat, grey buildings, that fear had taken root and budded.
Leaving Kili behind was the most selfish decision he’d ever made. He thought all the time about the stupid, thoughtless, selfish things used to do, but for every broken-into house, for every smashed-up car and bloody nose and gunshot wound, nothing really came close to what he’d done to Kili, leaving him alone with their fucked-up family. But it wasn’t fair! Fili crushed the little star in a shaking fist. Kili didn’t want to change. He didn’t want to leave home, didn’t want to get clean, didn’t want to go straight. Fili tried and tried and tried, he did everything he thought he could, but nothing could convince Kili to turn away from the only life he had ever known.
For a while afterwards, Fili had wondered if he had been fair. He should have given Kili an ultimatum. He had wondered if he had told Kili, when he walked out to grab a few things from the corner store, that he wasn’t ever coming back, if his brother would have come too. He wondered for six months, until he finally had the nerve to call Kili, just Kili, on his cellphone, and after the screaming and swearing, when the two of them were able to talk to one another with civility, it became clear that Kili didn’t want to go.
Not any more. Fili straightened up in the car, feet finding the pedals. He was going to find Kili, alive, and when he did, they were both getting the fuck out of here, whether Kili wanted it or not. He was going to save his brother from that gang, from their grandfather, from himself. But first, Fili had to talk to his family. He had to get help, get answers, because he knew he couldn’t do this on his own.
He was ready.