thecapitol | ( open ) Arrival

Entry tags:

( open ) Arrival

Who| Fíli and anyone!
What| Fíli arrives, and he is still quite lost despite whatever information has been given to him.
Where| Anywhere around the Training Center (also District 6 Suites), let me know in the subject line!
When| Now & during the next couple of days (ICly)
Warnings/Notes| None that I can think of.

FOR KÍLI;

Things happen entirely outside of him, beyond himself. Fíli feels as though he is nowhere at all, words spoken that he does not hear, things placed on his hands that he cannot touch. He demands then he asks, he all but begs, where his brother is, where Lake-town is, but the people around him only seem to answer questions that he is not making. Vague mentions of some games and a battle to the death hover at the back of his mind, but by the time he thinks to ask about those, he finds himself being taken to someplace else.

He does not stay for one second once he is left at the apartment, and makes off to find a way back, or at least someone he knows. He walks and runs, for however long he does not know, screaming and shouting for Kíli, for Bofur or Óin, but there is no one, he recognizes no one or nothing in this place.

It is a fear that coils at the pit of his stomach, settling heavier with each step he takes. How did he find himself here, and why? How is he to return? Panic surrounds him until it is too great for him to keep going and he all but collapses against a wall, sliding down until he is sitting on the ground, legs folded, head resting against his knees.

He can't breathe, and he realizes now that he is also lost.

FOR ANYONE;

All of this may be explained a thousand times over, still Fíli remains just as lost. He has found his brother, but that is as much familiarity as this place brings. He walks the halls and the rooms, everything strange and entirely foreign, and therefore all too intimidating to him, but he does not show it. He makes his best effort to keep his step sure as he peeks into each corner, watches each person that passes him attentively, and opens every door that he does not find locked - including doors to other people's rooms, but it is not as if he knows that.

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Even through layers of fabric he can feel his brother shuddering, the breath coming from him in a shiver, and he knows that something else had scared him into springing to action. Fíli looks at the avoxes but they don't seem to pay them much mind, if any at all, yet he is wary of them, only really tearing his eyes away when Kíli is pushing the button on the wall.

Kíli moves with an unsettling ease, even in his current state, as if he's walked these halls many times before, as if he knows this place well. But he cannot, as they had not been separated for that long. Or rather, they had been kept apart for far longer than Fíli would ever want, but at the same time not long enough for Kíli to know any of this.

It all feels too surreal to him, even Kíli's hand on his arm is barely there, still there is no resistance in him to stop them from stepping into the small compartment, his mind not at all registering the space, or the fact that the doors are closing behind them until they click shut, and he turns.

Everything that happens just piles up to his disorientation, and Kíli's own behavior only seems to bring more questions rather than answering any that Fíli might have. If before he wanted only to know where he was and how to go back home, now he wonders why his brother behaves the way he does, why he speaks of killing and dangers and opens doors in walls, pushes buttons, speaks of rooms.

Why he pushes him away, tells him to go back and simply leave him there. Why he thinks breaking Fíli's heart with those words is better than whatever he saw in this place in the short while they have been here.

"How?" is the only thing he can think of asking, his mind too much of a whirlwind of thoughts and doubts that he cannot arrange logically, into an order of priority. He still rests a hand on Kíli's shoulder, like he expects Kíli to stumble and fall at any given moment, even when they are not walking. "How do you know? We have only gotten here."

As Kili moves into the elevator, he drags his fingers across the button for his floor and then steps further into the steel carriage. There's little motivation to move or breathe, much less answer his brother's questions, but it's only then that Kili truly realizes that Fili has only just arrived here, if he is not simply a bad dream. He hadn't planned for this, hadn't even thought through his own path and whether he would kill in the next arena or not. Until now, he had been content to simply sit and be himself, to take all the time in the world to decide, to court as many other opinions as he could. Most of them pointed toward the necessity to kill his fellow tributes in the arena, but he had not made a firm vow to do so.

Not until now. There was no more time to decide, he had to choose his way now, for the hand that rested on his shoulder. Kili would protect him from everything he could, but not only from steel; he would keep every last horror of the arena from his brother if he could, starting now. The only way Fili could get out of the arena was to win it and Kili had the unfortunate advantage of having been killed by the previous victor.

Kili breathes in slowly to settle the nausea, to try and clear his alcohol-filled head enough to focus on this plan, to construct it as carefully as he can.

Which of course he is already ruining when he opens his mouth, "I have been here for three months."

Three long months without Fili, comprised mostly of the arena, but since he got back he had done nothing but wish that his family would never show up, that he would never see them again. It was easier here with relative strangers, though he had quickly gotten attached to them in his way. Ellie, Albert, Hawkeye... there were already so many that Kili doubted he could ever raise a hand against.

But he had to. He had to if he wanted to protect Fili, if he wanted Fili to win. He would have to kill all of them.

A chime sounds from overhead and the doors slide open again, displaying an entirely different floor than the one they left from, but Kili moves just as easily as before, his hand still on Fili's arm.

In a small and closed space, the discomfort and silence that lingers between them is all the more noticeable, sharper like a blade cold. He feels it with a sting to it, and he sees it like a hole too, a big empty space. When he looks at Kíli it is almost like they are standing on edges of two cliffs, a gap separating them, one too large to jump across. His brother seems too much but at the same time not entirely there, and Fíli wants to desperately cling to him, to shake him until there is no split between them, until he feels like his brother is talking to him, and not just muttering words of nonsense as if Fíli were no more than a dream.

Though Fíli has to wonder, even if only for a brief moment, because the answer he gets is so far from any semblance of logic that he cannot find anything else that can explain why Kíli would even say or think something like that.

"No, you haven't," he says simply, but still lost, all the more bewildered upon hearing that. Kíli cannot mean it, simply because it is not possible. They have not been here so long, and even if Kíli had passed out, if he'd slept all that time, he could not have dreamt or imagined that he had been in this place for days, let alone months. "I was with you just a few hours ago, at best."

But Kíli keeps walking, keeps moving as the doors open to a different place. Fíli had seen it happen before, still it takes him a second to remember it before he walks after his brother. He still does not look at Fíli, and that is slowly turning into the thing most difficult thing to handle in this place so foreign.

He wraps a hand around Kíli's wrist instead, clings and tugs in a plea for answers, for comfort, for anything that resembles care or recognition. Anything that may have his brother looking at him. "What is happening? What place is this?"

Throughout the short trip in the elevator, Kili can feel his brother’s gaze on him, wide and searching, but he doesn’t look back. Instead, he keeps his mind focused on the loosely-constructed plan, on not telling his brother anything. Whatever connection links his lips to that plan, though, is so steeped in alcohol his mouth simply continues to spill information that Kili doesn’t want to give. After all, there’s little anyone can do about the situation that would not result in either losing one’s tongue or life. Fili would only worry about something he cannot change, Kili reminds himself when the doors slide open again, when he feels his brother’s grip on his arm, tugging him like Kili had many times when they were younger.

His heart stops in his chest at the memory and he struggles to keep his composure and his silence. He only succeeds at the former.

“The Capitol,” he replies before his fuzzy head can catch up with his lips.

But still he does not look back at Fili and instead scrubs a hand over his face as he tries to lead them toward the stairs around the corner of the elevator. It’s a walk he’s made many times and drunk or not he knows the way with such a familiarity he could likely still find his way back asleep. What he needs more than a bed to flop down on, though, is a cold shock of water to shake away the apparition of his brother, despite how his heart tells him the hand on his arm is real, that his brother is truly here.

“You can stay with me,” he invites all the same.

Fíli tries to take the whole thing in stride, truly. He tries not to think much of his brother's reaction to seeing him, considering that the current situation he has found himself in is far more pertinent at this moment. He tries even harder not to think about how Kíli knows so much when he himself barely recognizes one door from the next. But he feels his heart clenching in a mix of loss and fear, and an all-around concern about Kíli's strange behavior.

"Of course I can stay with you," he answers with a slight sting to it despite himself. Wherever this may be, or whatever they might have gotten themselves into, it is obvious that Fíli will not stand to part from his brother, just like he hadn't before. And they can very well cut his tongue or his fingers one by one, the only way anyone can stop him from staying near Kíli is if they take his life.

His hand moves and wraps around Kíli's, wanting to offer support more than he wants answers right now. Whatever confusion he feels comes as secondary concern when he can see his brother is not well. But he thinks it must be the place or the wound that is making him sick and weak, and no once it crosses his mind that it is his presence there that is making him react this way.

He just needs rest, Fíli thinks, and his own questions can wait for one night before he sees them answered. Though he himself does not think he will be able to get much sleep.

Well that's certainly answer enough for Kili, though it fills his heart with dread. Of course his brother would not want to be anywhere but at his side and while that would usually fill the younger with a nearly arrogant glow, it now beleaguers his hope. This apparition is no more a figment of his imagination than Fili had been back home. When Fili wraps his fingers around his own, Kili's slow but purposeful gait stops altogether. There's nothing in the world that could be more familiar than that, nothing now more painful than the simple gesture of comfort. His chest burns with the touch and soon his eyes join the fire as they tingle with the beginning of tears.

Fili is here. Fili is truly here, not a ghost, not a dream. Once more, Kili's mind substitutes Fili in his place in the last arena. Fili hunched down in a shelter of bones, rising from it when he felt he would die of hunger, unable to lift his armor. Fili talking to Mindy, realizing he couldn't kill her, feeling the cold sting of steel in his chest. Fili bleeding out in the lobby of that horrid museum, looking up at his murderer for comfort while silently wishing for his brother.

All thoughts of taking a cold shower leave him and all he wants is to get Fili out of here, far far away from the Capitol and the monsters that smile all around them, making sport out of killing. But he can't. Kili can't do anything except try to protect his brother from this, from the death and the killing, to get him out of the games as quickly as he can. No matter what it takes, Kili will do it: lying, killing, wheedling, anything. Nothing will stop him from making Fili the victor of his first arena. He would need to talk to the mentors Karkat mentioned: Katniss and Peeta. There would be a way to get Fili out.

Even with a plan in his mind, though, Kili can't fight off the hopelessness that still reigns over his emotions. He hadn't killed a single tribute in the previous games, been told he was too slow to keep around, what could he actually do to help his brother against the odds that faced him?

Bowing his head for a moment, he gestures toward the door ahead of them as he resumes walking up the stairs, "That's my room."

Nothing else, he vehemently reminds his inebriated mind. Don't say anything else about the games. So Kili simply continues moving toward it, biting his lip to keep them shut, tears stinging his eyes. Don't say anything.

He nods like he understands, and he follows as if he has no questions. Holding his brother's hand right now is the only thing he can think of to offer any kind of comfort, and he tells himself that is what he is doing. That his grip around Kíli's fingers is giving him strength and even the faintest semblance of reassurance and joy, all the while forcing himself to ignore how each nerve shakes beneath his touch, how every muscle in Kíli's hand and arm, no matter how small, tenses unpleasantly just because Fíli is touching him.

And Fíli does not know what is happening, he has no notion of what is wrong, so he has the most natural reaction to it all - he blames himself. For some reason his brother is not well, he is miserable in fact, and it is difficult not to think that it is not because of something he's done or said, or that it is not his simple presence that Kíli does not welcome there with him.

The thought weighs heavier in his chest than anything else ever has before, or ever will. His eyes lower to the ground as they keep walking towards the door, not paying any mind whatsoever to his surroundings, strange as they may be.

Kíli does not want him there. From the very first second, he did not want him near. Breathing is a struggle and entirely unwanted when the realization rolls thickly down his throat and lingers in the form of ache at the pit of his stomach.

The room they walk into is similar to the very same he had been guided to when he had first arrived, but he does not pay it a second thought. His whole everything thinks only of Kíli now, and his whole everything turns into a deeper and darker nothing with each second that his brother refuses to do so much as look at him. He tries to swallow some of it down, but he only manages enough to utter his words in a steady manner. "Let me see your wound."

And then Fili does something Kili does not expect. While he leads the way to his room, his brother goes silent and now he too can suddenly feel the distance between them. It's so strange and foreign like the mostly spotless nature of the room to which Kili opens the door. He can't even remember the last time his brother was willingly so quiet. Of course, he can't match Kili's natural propensity to prattle off every thought that entered his mind, but he was rarely such a stony shade of quiet. It unsettles Kili further as he shuts the door behind them and just as silently moves toward the gigantic bed in the center of the room.

Only when Fili asks about a wound does Kili rise up out of his own silence and turn toward his brother in candid surprise.

"What wound?" Kili blurts out despite his efforts to keep quiet, and his hand goes right to his chest where he can still almost feel the sting of steel.

Had someone already told his brother about the games? No, then he would have not asked so many questions. Or would Fili ask them anyway to try and hear the story from Kili's mouth? Kili's mind is set buzzing again with his own questions.

Fíli's eyes remain on the ground for only a moment longer, until his brother speaks and then he looks up. He could not be so delirious that he would forget his own wound, could he? His eyes settle on Kíli's leg, the one that had taken the arrow, but Kíli is moving a hand to his chest instead, and it is only a brief second before Fíli begins asking himself why.

"The one on your leg," he says, and takes a step close, finding his muscles and limbs all the heavier just thinking of reaching for his brother. The taste is sour and unpleasant in his mouth, it gurgles up his throat and makes him feel sick, and he realizes he is scared. He is stared that if he tries to check on his brother's wound, if he so much as traces Kíli's face with his fingers, he will be rejected, pushed away in another wave of cold detachment.

His free hand lingers in the air for all that while, finally settling on Kíli's arm, hesitant and entirely unsure, as if they had not ever touched before, as if this is the first time they stand this close. Fíli hates it. "The one from the arrow you took, Kíli. Remember?"

Edited 2014-04-17 23:23 (UTC)

Still, so much space hangs between them and Kili hates it though he would rather Fili not be here at all. He can't run from his brother, not with the confirmation of just a few moments before. He furrows his eyebrows when his brother mentions his leg, his mind immediately replaying the fight with Mindy and how her blade had been slammed into his thigh first, brought him down before stabbing him in the chest. While he could remember both clearly, they had disappeared when he woke back up in the Capitol. Kili reaches down for his left leg, still frowning at his brother as Fili's hand finally returns to his arm. At first, he continues to suspect that someone told Fili about the games until the word arrow leaves his mouth.

"I've never taken an arrow to my leg," he replies as he shakes his head, not overtly replying to his brother's touch but not pushing him away.

But that simple hand on his shoulder is so distant, so hesitant, and he takes a moment to just watch Fili. Concern bubbles up in his own gaze as he takes in his brother's state, his messy braids. Who had been touching his brother's braids if not him? After all, Kili plaited Fili's mane with a care reserved only for this one task. Carefully, Kili reaches up for the larger of the two braids hanging in front of his brother's ear. The last time he saw them, they were tangled but not like this.

"What's happened to your braids?" He runs his thumb over the uneven ridges until his fingers stop at string instead of the bead of silver. "Your beads, Fili!"

There is something in that moment that tips off to the fact that this, too, is wrong, that Kíli does not even remember the arrow to begin with. It is only after replaying the scene carefully in his mind that he notices, and it is an odd thing indeed - Kíli reaches for the wrong leg. Fíli knows it, he had been the one wrapping linen around the wound since they first stepped out of the river, he'd torn his own clothes when there was nothing left for him to use, and he knows that Kíli had been shot in the right leg.

"Yes, you were," Fíli sounds as confused as he does sure, which is a contradiction in itself yet at the moment seems to work perfectly. He is ready to drop to his knees then, to check for the wound with or without request or permission, in hopes that at least showing it to Kíli will spark his memory. But then his brother is touching his braids with the same confusion that had coated his own voice just a second ago, and he drops that thought for the time being.

"I had to do them myself. You were not well," it is said thoughtlessly, but only because he still does not quite understand that Kíli does not remember it. Not only that, but he has not even lived through it yet. His eyes lower to the end of the braid, where the string ties it together. "Bard's... I think I left them at Bard's house."

Kili furrows his eyebrows further as he watches his brother explain not only that he'd apparently been shot in the leg with an arrow. Of course, he almost laughs when Fili mentions he tried braiding his own hair, but the justification that follows makes Kili's stomach churn uncomfortably again. Who's this Bard? Why would Fili take out his beads in the first place? Kili had made those for him so many years ago. When he looks at his brother, he feels as if he's staring at an entirely different person, not the dwarf he grew up with and certainly not the one who he'd spent nary a minute apart from before he arrived in the Capitol three months ago.

All of it seems so foreign to him, to be touching Fili's braid and not knowing how those patterns got there. Of course, he would never let them get into such a state had he been in charge of them. Stepping a little closer to start tugging the string away, though, Kili catches a whiff of the delightful menagerie of smells haunting Fili's form. Orc, ash, and, if he wasn't mistaken, some kind of animal waste.

"What did you go rolling around in?" Kili grunts as he waves a hand in front of his nose. "Did an orc sit on you after eating some bad meat?"

His brother certainly needed some washing up, if nothing else. Some clean clothes, new braids, and makeshift beads if Kili could think of something for them. Anything, he's quite sure, would be better than the string holding them there.

"You're not getting in my bed smelling like that," he shakes his head, though he's quietly glad for the distraction from the very strange, disjointed conversation. "Off to the standing baths for you."

And he'll tug his brother along again, heading toward the bathroom in the middle of the hallway they just came from.

Fíli watches in a daze as his brother keeps touching his braid, almost detached from himself as he hears him fuss about something that now seems so unimportant. He wonders still why he even braided his own hair afterwards, it had been a lot more practical to simply tie it back. But he had done it, because they were headed to Erebor, and because that meant something. Or was supposed to, at least.

Again, Kíli speaks as if he does not remember any of it. Of course Fíli stinks, he is not surprised. His nose is used to it by now but he is sure his smell must be a most unpleasant mix between dung, sweat and fish. There had not been a time for him to bathe or even clean himself, and frankly even now, he feels that there are things far more important to worry about.

Still he lets Kíli drag him down the corridor, his eyes wandering around the area so foreign to him.

"Kíli," his voice is weak and unconvincing even to him, and he knows well it will not be enough to get his brother's attention. But it is only once they are inside the bathroom, which Fíli does not immediately recognize as one, that he tries again, his hand tugging at Kíli's arm, his voice gaining solid form then, echoing in the cold tiled walls. "Kíli! Look at me."

At first, Kili doesn't see that his brother doesn't seem to be listening to his fussing, but he pays no heed as he drags his brother to the bathroom that looks nothing like he had ever seen before arriving in the Capitol. There were a great number of things he had never witnessed or experiencing since before three long months ago. Already, he feels he has changed, that he must do so more than ever now to protect his brother. His golden-haired brother who right now is still so far away from him despite his warmth underneath Kili's fingers.

Only after Fili tugs back, provides some resistance to Kili's ever-changing mood that the younger turns once more to look at Fili. His gaze is far too bright with alcohol's touch, but there is still a heavy presence of something darker and colder lingering behind the otherwise warm brown.

"I'm looking at you and you're a mess, brother," he tries to play off again, finding what little comfort he could in his brother's presence.

He breaks from Fili's side to reach over toward the buttons on the wall of the shower, pressing a handful of them with only passing familiarity. Still, a warm stream of water from the top of the stall earns a smile from the younger dwarf.

Fíli's confusion is slowly but surely turning into a headache now. He is too far from being accustomed to everything around him, made all the worse whenever Kíli turns on a switch, opens a door, hits buttons to have water spring out of somewhere Fíli cannot even see.

He is sure he is a mess, yet he is not as bad as Kíli was the last he had seen of him at Bard's house. But words are stuck in his throat, because he can see something deep and rotten behind the glow of his brother's eyes, and it is so great, so strong that it poisons Fíli, it eats at him from the inside out. It is not simply a feeling anymore - he knows that something within him has just withered with just that briefest of glances exchanged between them. It dies at the corner of his soul and spreads across his muscles like a shiver of death.

It takes all the strength in him to not give into the weight of that coldness and distance between them, but he manages, though he finds himself resting his back against the closed wall. Finally, he speaks again, though the words slip past his lips scattered an lost.

"But your wound," the first thing is no more than a murmur, aimed more at himself than at Kíli, his eyes on the ground for a moment before he looks back up and continues, his voice a little stronger. "How do you not remember? You nearly-- you had a fever. If Tauriel hadn't come for you..."

He cannot even finish the words, not even in his own head. He shakes them off and drops them entirely. "You cannot have forgotten that."

Kili presses his lips into a thin line, his hope that Fili would somehow simply not know about the Games dimming the more his brother spoke. His hand returns to his chest as the memory flares up once again: steel biting into his chest, dropping him to the cold tile of the museum's lobby, his strength leaving him with every terrifying heartbeat, looking up at Mindy, begging her to stay until he passed. His heart clenches tighter within his ribcage and a shudder runs down his body, but he shakes his head nonetheless. The smile has long since disappeared from his expression.

How do you want to be remembered? fills his mind again as he stares across the distance at his brother, who continues to speak nonsense. He does not know a Tauriel or a fever. Certainly, his last moments had been full of a cold terror, not the heat he felt now, though the latter could be attributed to just how much of the white liquor he had imbibed that evening.

His fingers fiddle at the zipper that reaches up to the collar before he tugs it down low enough to expose his chest. Though it sends another spike of fear through them, Kili rubs his thumb across the unmarked skin over his sternum.

"It's healed, when I woke up it..." No tribute had been able to talk about their death in the arena, not to each other, not yet. "Whoever this Tauriel is, she didn't arrive in time. Was too fast to become feverish. Whatever you've seen, it looks worse than it was."

He doesn't really put it past the Capitol, though, to make up some other story involving a Tauriel and a fever or something else to cover up his cowardly death. After all, they were the ones who dressed him up in dark colors, who thought smudging kohl around his eyes would make him look more like a fierce warrior.

Honest as Kíli may be at the moment, Fíli does not recognize it as such, because he has no idea what he is talking about. He does not know why his brother is showing him his chest, which does not even hold any mark or scar to it to begin with, and his words do not explain the action in any way.

"What are you talking about?" Fíli cannot help twisting his face into a deep frown, his voice spiking in loss and disorientation, as his eyes lower again to Kíli's right leg. That is what he is supposed to show, that is where it is supposed to hurt and to be marked. His brother had taken no such blow to the chest, and frankly just the thought that he could have sends a strong painful shiver down his spine, making his bones press into one another as if he is being crushed under the overwhelming weight of something as of yet unknown to him.

"How do you not remember Tauriel? She came from Mirkwood for you." Because that much is as odd as everything else. Fíli had been there, in Bard's house, and whether he wanted to or not he had heard more than enough to know his brother would definitely know who Tauriel is.

It must be this place. Something is wrong, and it is not just the freezing quality to the wind that blows through the chasm that separates them. They are split apart by something else.

Fearing the answer perhaps, or hoping equally that it would explain anything, he asks. "What is the last you remember? From home, from... from the quest. Before you came here."

Nothing Fili says makes any sense to Kili. Not only this Tauriel from Mirkwood or the strange question that fell from his brothers' lips. Kili needs more than a couple moments to process what he's hearing. His eyebrows furrow further as he stares over at his brother, trying to comprehend everything he's just been told. While his fingers leave the unmarked skin of his chest, he doesn't zip his jacket closed again. In the past, they've used each other as soundboards for their thoughts, Kili more than his brother, but this time he does not; he sorts through his thoughts one by one as he watches his brother. He knows he's been here in the Capitol for three months. Before that, they had been in Mirkwood, yes, but the company had been arguing, Fili standing between him and Nori, Dori, and Ori. Then Thorin had said something about being watched.

"Thorin said we were being watched," he supplies, though his mind continues churning away as his eyebrows threaten to merge and become one on his forehead.

And then he woke up here, to hands pulling his weapons away from him. There was no 'Bard' or 'Tauriel' anywhere in his memories. But something strikes him as more odd than that. He's been missing for three months; the Capitol kidnapped him from Mirkwood, but Fili spoke as if he had not disappeared at all.

Before he can stop his mouth, it runs away with this newest thought, "It's been three months. Did you not miss me?"

Three months. Three months without Fili and Kili had missed him so dearly, though he wanted him to never show up in a place such as this. He missed his brother's smile, his warmth and reassurance, even his sometimes overbearing and overprotective nature. It seems impossible that Fili would not have missed him, though the distance between them right now says differently. Kili quickly tries to replay everything Fili has said since he arrived, but there are blocks and the alcohol makes the effort even more dizzying.

The answer comes, but even then it takes Fíli a while to even find that moment in his memories. Not only because it had been some time ago, but because Thorin's words had been brief and low, and soon followed by the arrival of the spiders, and then the Elves.

But that cannot be. How can Kíli have forgotten this much? Did coming here erase his memory perhaps? Even so, would he still not have his wound? Not to mention that none of this explains how Kíli seems to have been taken three months ago, when Fíli knows for a fact that three months ago, his brother was safe and hale, right next to him.

And that is the puzzling thing that Fíli answers to next, as he shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head once.

"You were never gone," he replies honestly, his whole body beginning to give into the pressure of this moment, and he can practically feel himself yielding to the senselessness of it all, bending and breaking like a twig, small, dry and pointless beneath the weight of his brother's words, and the cold they always seem to carry within.

Even so, he clings to whatever he can, as if that will distract him from the overwhelming weight sitting in his heart. And Kíli's lapse in his memory seems his best option at the moment. "That was in Mirkwood. That is long behind us. What of the Elves, the river? Or Lake-town? Do you remember nothing of it?"

You were never gone. Of everything Fili has said so far, that is the hardest for Kili to hear. Not only had he been stuck in a foreign place away from his brother, forced to attack friends, to die begging for his murderer to stay at his side, but it had been done without any knowledge of his kidnapping. Had some impostor stood in his place for those three months, some illusion that could fool even his brother? There was no denying the three months that separated him from the journey, from his brother. Not even the mention of long behind us leaves a hole in his heart like the others.

"I was here," he replies with another slow shake of his head, his own distress growing the more Fili questions his memory. "I would remember elves, brother, and I'm sure I've not seen a single pointed ear since Rivendell."

So, instead, he tries to focus on how horrible Fili smells, on something superficial and easy to fix. He gives Fili a shooing gesture toward the shower.

"You still smell." This time, it's said without a hint of a smile as he swallows down his own growing worry. "Haven't forgotten that."

Nothing in this comes together, none of the pieces given by both him and Kíli fit right, none of it makes sense. Because even if Kíli had been taken from Mirkwood, before the spiders caught up to them, that would still not have been three months ago. Even if Kíli had disappeared then, not so long would have passed.

Fíli hopes desperately for an explanation, though it is obvious that Kíli cannot give it to him. In fact, at the moment it seems like his brother cannot give him anything, not beyond cold words and fake smiles, while he tries to mask it all beneath a veil of humor that Fíli can so easily see through. He feels himself being pushed farther away with each word, every gesture, much more so than before when his brother ran from him in shock.

His movements are thoughtless, his mind too much of a haze for him to think about anything else. Wordlessly he takes off his clothes, because he does stink after all, and right now he is at a loss of what to do, where to start looking, or what to start asking. It is only when he reaches for the curtain of falling water that he realizes with some surprise. "It's warm."

Kili is so glad Fili seems to have surrendered to the shower— or, more importantly, stopped asking questions Kili would not answer— that he doesn't notice the nature of his brother's movements, how his brother seems shrouded in a fog. Instead, he releases a sigh of relief and collects Fili's clothes to fold as neatly as he can manage. He would make sure these got back to Fili after being washed; the Capitol would not rob them of more of their home. For a long moment, though, Kili stares down at them. The hooded tunic he's quite familiar with but the shirt that had been draped over it was far too large, not unlike the thing Kili had worn into the arena. Of course, Kili had noticed his brother had lost his coat and all of his weapons, but having donned something else entirely is so strange. Who had taken such things from his brother along with his beads? Was it this Bard Fili spoke of?

Still, he doesn't have long to ponder it as Fili distracts him with the mention of the warm water pouring down.

"Yes!" he chirps from where he's quickly folding Fili's things into a neat pile once more. "They say you can change how warm or cold it is, but I've yet to figure it out. There's buttons though that give you soap. Those're on the right."

He knows, though, that there are many, many buttons on the thing in front of Fili, some would drop the strange liquid soap in his hand, others some kind of perfume, but temperature control was something quite beyond his reach.

"I'll get you something clean to wear," he chatters, tucking Fili's things under one arm as he heads for the door. "Stay here."

Fíli stands in silence as he watches Kíli walk out the door, for a moment lost on what to even do. Stay here, as if he has anywhere else to go. He'll not find it in himself to stray too far from his brother, not back home and especially not here, where everything is so strange and unfamiliar. In fact thinking of Kíli stepping away even for just this brief moment is enough to make him uncomfortable, despite how cold and distant he has been towards Fíli so far.

He does nothing for a while, simply letting his hand test the water, then after some seconds he slowly steps inside the shower. The water works somewhat well in soothing his tired muscles at least, and he all but leans against the wall as he closes his eyes. His fingers undo the braids in his hair distractedly - they are a mess, after all, and there is little point in keeping them here. He wonders if Kíli will even want to braid them for him again.

Then he turns to the buttons to try and find which one would produce soap for him, but as he clicks them at random he discovers more than just one feature of the shower. The water turns scalding hot when he hits one of the buttons with an arrow on it, and yells out a curse when it burns his skin. Luckily his fingers all but smash the control and he gets the temperature back down... all the way to freezing cold.

That is far more manageable at least, though now he is rather missing that warm water. But he much prefers to take a shower like this than getting it too hot again.

As quickly as he can, Kili returns to his room to pick out a clean set of clothing for his brother. However, as soon as he closes the door behind him, he's easily distracted by the barrage of emotions he's tried to keep at bay. His fingers tangle in Fili's hooded tunic, thumbs tracing the laces and every scratch and tear. The marks, the holes, everything should be familiar, but Kili finds there are things he doesn't remember happening in his brother's tunic, evidence of time that Kili had apparently missed. His chest pounds too heavy in his chest at the thought and he hurriedly folds the clothes to hide under his bed until he can talk with the stylists about washing only. If this was all his brother had from home, Kili would protect it.

Despite the distracting task of picking something to suit Fili, Kili can't stop thinking of what the next step would be, what tomorrow would bring if he woke up to find his brother's presence real. How could he ever tell Fili anything about the Games, the Capitol, the consequences for not listening or following the orders of mentors and stylists alike? How could he help his brother if he too knew so little about this place? He had not used their time apart wisely, he had only made the decision to kill after he saw Fili. Everything in his body hurts and Kili wants nothing more than to crawl into bed and pretend to be asleep, to forget everything he had seen and heard since waking up here three months ago.

Instead, he focuses on haphazardly tearing the clothes down from the hangers, some beautiful and ornate, others more solemn and dark-colored. Every last piece of cloth goes from hanger to floor, some in shreds. Just as he's finished, though, he hears his brother's cry and immediately he acts, no thoughts as to who might be attacking his brother or why; simple instinct and paranoia surges through him as he scoops up the nearest heavy object, a bookend, and sprints back toward the bathroom.

Without hesitation, he bursts back into the room, bookend held high, anger blazing through his gaze as he tries to sight his brother's attacker. Despite his eyes quickly telling him that only Fili is there in the room, the prickles in the back of his mind tell him they must be standing right behind him, and so he spins to face the wall, slamming the door shut to see behind the door. Just as he does that, another prickle tells him to turn again, and so he does, anger and fear too hot in his mind to not respond to.

Only after the second time he turns to take in the room, does Kili realize there's no one but Fili present and though he keeps an eye on the door, he calls back for his brother, "Fili?"

The sight of his brother bursting back in through the door due to his shout should not be so startling, yet Fíli finds himself turning around in a near jump until he is facing Kíli, only barely managing not to slip and fall on the slippery floor. He would worry, Fíli knows it, but there is still something so strange about it all. Kíli is in a panic, looking frantically for dangers behind the door and in every other corner of the room, regardless of how small.

Fíli is sure that even with the surprise the water had caused him, he had not screamed in such a way to bring on this kind of worry. The exaggerated reaction is just one more thing he adds to the pile of strange things about Kíli's behavior, though for now he brushes it aside and focuses on getting his brother's attention and calming him down.

"Kíli," he calls out at first, but he knows by the complete lack of response from his brother that he did not even hear him. It is only after a few seconds that he finally says his name in return, and Fíli breathes out audibly.

"Mahal's beard, Kíli," he almost scoffs, still mostly under the spray of cold water save for his head, then gestures at the control panel of the shower. "It was this that startled me! I don't know how I did it, but I turned the water too hot, then cold."

( open ) Arrival

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