Life's my light and liberty and I shine when I wanna shine;

[emptytrousers]

Who | Kili and open!
What | Kili reacts in his usual way to things he doesn't like
Where | All over! Prompts are below.
When | Week 7, anytime after Monday afternoon but before Saturday.
Warnings | Descriptions of starvation and being stabbed probably! Will update if needed!

(Thread starters are in the comments below if you'd like something to work from!)

Comments

[emptytrousers]

He finds it odd that she's offering him reassurances amid all of this. After all, it's quite undwarvish to doubt and be unsure but he can't imagine how even Thorin could know what to do in this situation. Ellie's one of the few people he doesn't have to crane his neck to look up at and it comforts him to know that they're almost on the same level, even if he's likely decades and decades older than her, as far as he knows.

Watching her, his mouth twists in a grimace, even when she reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. He's supposed to be watching out for her not the other way around, Hawkeye had told him to do so, but he was never as good at this as Dwalin or Fili or any of the others.

Nodding slowly, he replies, " 've you ever done anything like this?"

[onlyimmune]

She raises a hand and rubs through her hair, glancing down at the floor.

"Me? Not- well, kind of, I guess. Not exactly. But my world was kind of a shit hole, you know? You have to believe that people can change, that what you are - who you are - can be worth something, can change something, or you just... die. You know? There's got to be something, or there's nothing at all."

[emptytrousers]

It's strange to hear Ellie talk about her home so negatively; Kili came from a world of relative peace and grew up after Durin's folk settled in the West. Of course, he could count on Thorin to talk of death, to remind him of everything that could go wrong in their quest, but he rarely followed it up with a note of positivity about how much the world could change with one person's influence.

He's just one dwarf, one of Durin's unbreakable line yes, but still a singular dwarf. His brother, though, he's quite sure could do something very real here, but that was the catch. He didn't want Fili to arrive, didn't want to sacrifice his brother to a cause Kili otherwise had little stake in.

"Maybe we can," he posits hopefully, smiling up at Ellie. "We're not just one person, after all."

[onlyimmune]

She looks up, catching his smile, and her own slowly comes back to her face.

"Yeah. We aren't. We don't have to be alone here, at all."

[emptytrousers]

Yes, after all, they were two people already: Kili and Ellie. If they could convince others one by one, eventually there would be a veritable army. It sounded easy enough: two would become three, three would become four. Progress would be measured in singular individuals but it would be noticeable, at least, to them.

"And if you try to convince one person and I do too, we'll have four," Kili replies with a growing smile.

[onlyimmune]

Her smile only broadens, and she reaches out to clasp his shoulder and give it a gentle, friendly shake.

"See, that's the spirit, right?" She raised her other hand into a fist. If she had to teach him to fist bump, god damn it, she would do so. "One fucking person at a time."

[emptytrousers]

Her smile feeds into his and brightens it further, though he's confused about the fist raised. He answers it with a mirroring gesture, albeit he isn't sure what to do from this point.

"We'll really find a way, won't we," he replies, hope fueling his words.

Wrapping this up here, I think c:

[onlyimmune]

She reaches out with her other hand to grab his, make it into a fist and bump it against hers.

Nothing like learning by doing.

"Fucking Amen!"