thecapitol | you must have the words in that head of yours {closed}

Entry tags:

✘ fili,
✘ kili

you must have the words in that head of yours {closed}

Who | Kíli and Fíli
What | Awkward conversations
Where | Kíli's room in the District 7 suites
When | During the thicker than blood plot, just after the mock arena
Warnings/Notes | Talks of death, etc

Another night, another attempt to sleep, another failed attempt to sleep. Despite his brother's warmth beside him in the large bed, Kili still couldn't seem to be able to shut his eyes long enough to truly sleep. First he tried one side, facing Fili, and shut his eyes, tugging the covers up around him. Then, the other side, away from the familiar blonde mane and finally on his back before he simply gave up entirely on the idea of sleeping. The past week or so had been spent in misery, waiting anxiously for any more of his family to come walking through the door, his dreams filled with that which he feared: Fili's name read aloud and Kili's absent in the air around them. In his mind's eye he watched his brother die again and again, alone, hungry, and in unbearable pain. While his brother had not been selected for this arena, as playful as it seemed, Kili continued to fear that the time would come when his brother stood on a pedestal of his own.

So Kili sat up and climbed out of bed, his steps heavy on the soft carpet as he trod across the room to the desk he requested after Fili's arrival. Inside, there were sheets of paper in various colors and weights like Kili had never seen before, but he rarely selected anything but the one most resembling the books of home. Most nights, he didn't write anything on any sheet, not only for fear of Fili finding it, but he knew the Capitol watched every breath they took. Would they think that he was planning something fowl? Would they take Fili away if they saw him writing anything in their secret language?

Instead of turning on the lamp beside the desk, Kili wrote in the dark; the last thing he wanted was to wake his brother. With one more glance back at the sleeping form of Fili, Kili turned to the page he had left blank for nights and nights on end and began writing down names. Those that belonged to other tributes: Ellie, Joel, Albert, Some. Each name was carefully written in the neatest Cirth Kili had ever produced since he began learning decades ago.

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It had been a while since Fíli had asked Ellie to tell him all she could about this place, and still the days passing did not help him to cope with any of it in the slightest. If he feigned sleep during the nights, it was entirely for Kíli's sake, only managing the few hours needed for his body to function in the morning. But closing his eyes was painful, all he would see was his brother in danger, getting injured and killed, replaying in his mind the moment the arrow shot through his leg, then him collapsing onto the stone with a pained yell.

Except now Fíli saw the arrow piercing through his chest rather than the leg, and more than once he nearly startled out of those thoughts when Kíli shifted next to him on the bed. He did it all night, most nights, and though in the past Fíli would not hesitate to turn around and wrap his arms around Kíli, pull him close and offer him comfort, he could not do that now. Somewhere along the way, sometime between their arrivals, Kíli had built walls that not even he could look past or climb over, and after his conversation with Ellie, Fíli could feel that distance growing on his end just as well.

They were so far apart it was impossible to reach one another.

Tonight, unusually so, Kíli stood up, and though unmoving at first, Fíli followed the sounds attentively. When his brother settled and it seemed as if he was no longer planning to walk around, he turned on the bed until he was lying on his back, his eyes searching the dark and finding the figure hunched over by the desk. Fíli spoke then, his voice quiet and soft, yet dragged from him almost painfully, words seeming to him to fly through the air and drop cold to the ground long before reaching Kíli. "You should lie down, even if you cannot sleep."

Fili's voice rang almost too loud in the dark, and certainly enough to make Kili flinch where he sat at the desk. It sounded so easy out loud: lie down even if you cannot sleep, but Kili knew it would be useless. Most nights he could hardly lay still, much less focus on sleeping and tonight he was at least doing something even if it was the small task of figuring out who he could trust of those he had met, those he felt he could trust to protect Fili if they were separated in an arena or worse. It had taken until now for the fear to truly galvanize his decision to kill, to do anything to protect his brother. To survive the Games, he would have to make alliances, that's what he'd been told. More than just friends. More than just smiles and parties. He would have to forge them deeper than that, to tell lies if he had to, but Fili was worth all of that.

Kili swallowed before turning slowly to face Fili in the darkness. He thought Fili had been asleep, blissfully unaware, but once more he had underestimated his brother's astuteness.

"Not tonight, Fee," he shook his head before turning back to the paper.

It was entirely foreign to deny his brother something, anything, and as soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them. He shut his eyes a moment before getting up from the chair to sit back down on the edge of the bed nearest Fili. Even now, there seemed such a distance between them, a chasm, an impassable ridge that Kili had built himself to protect his brother, but tonight he didn't want to feel so separated from Fili. He selfishly wanted to tell Fili everything, to put them back beside each other, to let Fili be the older brother, the protector. More than anything else, though, he wanted to be home, not only back in Arda in a bedroll tucked beside his brother, but home in the Blue Mountains, where they could sit up and laugh all night and the only consequence a drowsiness the next day.

But admitting even that would give away his fear, which he had silently swore to not show the morning he woke up after his brother's arrival and realized his brother's presence was real.

So instead he fumbled with his words, tried to pick something inane and dull to talk about, "How many stylists have you scared with those bags under your eyes, brother? You should be the one ordered to sleep."

The answer was not a strange one entirely, not now that he knew what Kíli was hiding from him. So if normally he would object, he would sit up or look back to his brother with a look so surprised it would be felt even in the dark of the room, now he just let his shoulders sag heavily until he all but merged into the bedsheets. He felt himself stretching thin and losing form, trying with all his might to stay strong in the midst of all this, holding onto anything solid even though he could sense it all slipping from under his grip.

But he had to hold on regardless, because if he thought this place was bad as it was, then he could only imagine how it would be like in the arena, where everyone turned against everyone, where friends surely were to be forgotten in favor of survival. And yet Fíli knew, even without thinking much of it, that anything he would have to deal with in the arena, no matter how gruesome, painful or traumatizing, it would never be as horrifying as seeing the distance between him and Kíli stretching on for miles on end, ever-growing even now, with every word unspoken, every touch unshared, every glance averted.

He only realized Kíli had stood up by the time he sat down next to him, to some of his surprise. The gap was still there, wide and black like a bottomless pit, threatening to swallow Fíli whole if he dared to try to overcome it. Their hearts sat in worlds apart, but at least he could reach over to rest his hand on Kíli's arm, even though that just felt like another thing he gripped that seemed to slip right through his fingers. So he did.

"I could care no less whether or not I scare those people," he knew his brother meant it in tone of joke, and though he tried to reply in kind, there was nothing but truth to his words. He regarded those people in as much contempt as he did the Capitol itself, even if he knew that they might not have much of a say in any of what was going on. But he did not care. He felt for those who had been taken here against their will, the tributes as they were so called, and those were the ones he spoke to in more than one word at a time. The others he would spare not a comment or a glance, not if he could avoid it, and the glare was surely what scared them, not his heavy eyes from sleep deprivation.

He looked briefly at the table across the room, but when he asked he was not truly expecting a honest answer. "What were you writing?"

Kili felt that light touch on his arm before he saw it and all of his resolve threatened to crumble in an instant. He wanted nothing more than to spill his guts, to leave everything plain to see, to seek comfort in whatever his brother might say to it all. Before he could stop himself, he reached up to cover his brother's hand in his, needing just this brief moment. While he's not surprised by his brother's response, he found himself off-guard when the question came. He tried to swallow down the desire to tell his brother everything, to bridge the chasm between them, but the longer his fingers rested on Fili's in a reminder of how they used to joke and laugh and take comfort in each other, the greater his heart's demand for relief from the fear and paranoia grew. So much had changed and Kili didn't want it to be.

For a long few moments, Kili sought out his brother's gaze in the darkness, his own too wide to be truly calm. Would keeping information from his brother truly protect him? And if it did, would the cost of his protection and safety be too high for Kili to bear? Of course, the answer to the second was clear: no, Kili would take any torment, any cruelty, any death if it would keep Fili safe. The first, though, was decidedly less obvious. How could his brother fight if he could not see in the dark, if Kili kept him blind? How would his brother survive if the first he heard of the Games was when he rose up onto the pedestal with the countdown already started?

Kili swallowed before he told himself he would only answer this one question and that would be it. Everything else he would dam behind his lips.

"A list of friends," he replied with a soft sigh. People they could trust, Kili didn't add.

He saw the conflict in his brother and did not know what to do of it. For a while now he wondered if perhaps he should bring up the arena himself, or if keeping quiet would be best for the both of them. Now he hesitated between pretending as if he could not see all of this eating away at his brother from the inside out, or pulling Kíli into a hug and telling him everything would be alright - even though he himself doubted it, but that did not matter.

Briefly he wondered if perhaps he was just afraid to find out how much of his brother was still left, and how much had been lost in the span of three months.

In return to the hand resting on his, Fíli gave what he could. To the wide-eyed gaze of his brother he offered a calm one of his own, soft and comforting, and he could only hope that Kíli could see it across the distance and in the dark. His hand let go of the arm just so he could turn it around and wrap his fingers around Kíli's instead. It wasn't much - it felt like nothing, nearly not enough, but it made it a little easier to breathe when he felt callouses and a semblance of warmth beneath his palm.

"From here?" he asked but he was almost sure that was it. Because Kíli did not say that second part, but Fíli thought it. "I did notice you made a number of friends, unsurprisingly."

Of all of the different forms of comfort offered, Kili found Fili's returned grasp of his hand both the heaviest and burdensome as well as the most hopeful. It reminded him, of long nights filled with low giggles and stories in their bed, of summer rains and days on the road. Yet, nothing made want to crumble more, to give up this false bravery. He laced his fingers through Fili's, filling the gaps with his own longer ones. It had been months since they were allowed this childish gesture, for between the journey and Kili's arrival here in the Capitol, they had both grown. Still, he did not even fathom any good from the time they had spent apart, those long three months. No, they were stronger as a whole, as two heads of one axe, two edges of one sword.

But now they were crooked and bent, their corrugations changed so they no longer fit together like two halves of a whole.

In the dark, Kili tried to smile, soft and unassuming, but the cold fear in his gaze would not release its hold. No matter how well they matched each other, they would be separated again and again by the arena and more. Here, they would never be whole again.

When Kili's smile failed, he sighed quietly and looked back over toward the desk for a moment before directing his attention to his brother once more. His brow knit in thought as he tried to think through the consequences of telling his brother everything. Of course, first and foremost, Fili would worry and that's what Kili wanted to spare him the most if he could, but the promise of comfort overtook him.

"Fili, there is more to the Capitol than luxuries." Kili didn't answer the question directly, his fingers tightening their hold on his brother's. "There are 'Games,' as they call them. A sport of death that we'll have to play in. All of us— the Tributes I mean— are forced to fight in an Arena until one remains alive. We'll need friends to survive. That's what that list's for."

In silence he saw the change in his brother, superficially so. n his face, when he tried and failed to smile, and his whole demeanor, when his shoulders fell with that sigh, not so quiet when it was just the two of them in the dark of the room. Fíli had learned over the years to read these things after all, no matter how much Kíli tried to hide them, or how much three months in this place could have changed him - Fíli would always know his brother.

But more than that, he saw the change inside, in his own heart. He knew for a while now, even before he had learned the truth from Ellie, that Kíli had been trying to build walls around himself, but they were thin and made of weak materials, with no skill to them, no steady work as deep within the mountains they knew so well. Fíli wondered if his brother even realized how those walls were made of no more than paper and clay, pieces of cracked stone that with the slightest hint of pressure, turned to sand. He was hiding nothing from Fíli, and frankly it was foolish of him to think he ever could.

Finally the truth came, and his reaction, he knew as much, would surprise Kíli, but it had never been his intention to continue with pretense. For too long they had been keeping things from one another, letting silence settle between them like a chasm, but no more.

Fíli's breath did not even stutter, it remained calm through it all, his gaze fixed on his brother's features. His heart beat a little quicker in his chest, but not out of surprise - it was out of relief, of all things, that Kíli was finally being truthful.

Only one thing he could say to it all, and in the quiet pause that followed, he drew a slow breath. "I know."

Kili met his brother's gaze as searching as ever, not only for the comfort and the calm Fili seemed to always bear, but underneath as well. His brother had been hiding something as well, he knew quietly but had refused to truly acknowledge, for it would mean the chasm between them had deepened further than Kili first thought. Yet, his brother's answer surprised him, he leaned forward slightly, blinking dumbly at his brother.

"What?" The word fell out of his mouth before he could even think to stop it, his emotions still candid and clear despite his prior efforts to disguise and hide them. "How could—"

It hit him the moment after he began the question. Someone must have told him. For Fili did not know when Kili first saw him, and Kili certainly had told him nothing in the weeks that followed. Therefore another Tribute had to have explained matters to Fili. At first, anger took hold. His eyebrows furrowed and he shook his head.

"Someone's told you then," he deduced out loud before turning back to his brother. "Who?"

How could you know, Fíli figured was the question that never came, yet it should be made plenty easy how. And it was not that someone told him, it was that he was aware all along there was something wrong, something Kíli was going to great lengths to keep hidden from him, and in the end he had to seek out anyone that would tell him, anyone who, despite the short time he had been here, he trusted minimally.

And Ellie was that.

"That does not matter," he spoke resolutely, ending any insistence from his brother before he even thought of doing so. The girl had only been honest with him, helpful as well, he would not give her name to Kíli so that he would be mad at her for something that was not her fault.

It was not Kíli's fault either, and it was not his own. He found none to blame but those who brought them here, faceless and nameless as of yet, but not for always if Fíli had any say in it. And he would find a way to have a say in it, even if it would kill him.

But for now, thoughts of fighting and rebellion were neatly stored. For now, he looked at his brother with concern in his eyes, but too a hint of hurt. "Why did you hide it from me? You think I would not know? That I couldn't-- that I can't tell when something is wrong with you?"

Just as Kili opened his mouth to indeed be angry and insist on knowing, Fili defeated his first argument before he could even speak it. Of course, it didn’t truly matter who told Fili, since it should have been him, but it's difficult for Kili to see that through the hurt of the betrayal, no matter if Fili heard it from a Capitol official or a friend. However, his anger fizzled out just as quickly at his brother's next set of questions and the pain he could so easily see in those blue eyes. Of course, he had never done it to hurt Fili, to betray him, or to otherwise demonstrate a lack of trust.

Instead, Kili could only offer the truth of the situation, "I hoped you wouldn't."

Hoped. The words of a child who could still not see the consequences of his actions, of a dwarf not fully grown. As soon as they left his mouth, humiliation followed hot on their wake. He sounded like a dwarfling, like he was twenty-five again and not aware of the world around him. He supposed Thorin had been right, he still knew nothing of the world, of hiding secrets from those he loved, of bearing his own burdens.

"I didn't want you to worry," Kili tried to explain, once more feeling like a dwarfling who got his hand stuck in the cookie jar. "There's nothing we can do about it."

"You hoped I wouldn't?"

He sounded more perplexed than he did angry or upset at the moment. His fingers still wrapped tightly around Kíli's, he gave them a gentle squeeze, a light tug, but it was meant as a sobering thing. He knew his little brother did not like being talked to like a child, but it was difficult not to when he did things like this, with no thought or consequence whatsoever.

Fíli had to, for he had to make sure Kíli understood why what he did was not alright, what was so wrong with what he did. Because he really was no longer a child, and it was more than time that he started understanding some things like a grown dwarf. That he began understanding the reality of the world around them, harsh as it may be - harsher still in this case -, and to realize that even when things are unpleasant, they could be not hidden or pushed away and simply not be faced or dealt with.

"And this was your grand plan, that I would never learn? Tell me, what was to be your next step, when we are to be thrown into the arena? You would have me going in unprepared, unexpecting? Do you think I would fare better if I could not ready myself for what is to happen?"

His voice was low, but it was a strong thing, it was reality. It had to be. Fíli seldom scolded his brother, frankly he could not remember the last time he did. He was always the one with soothing words after Dís or Thorin called him out on his actions, on his thoughtless behavior. But here, in this place, he had to be the voice of reason. As much as it hurt, as much as it killed a part of him that he no longer could shield his little brother from the bitterness of reality, it had to be done.

Kili could certainly not even remember the last time Fili had scolded him for anything, or truly the last time his brother had so much as raised his voice in his direction. Certainly, Thorin measured enough words for him to last a lifetime, but their uncle had seen so much of the harsh reality that Kili had been sheltered from for decades. He had never known betrayal, never known an empty belly, never known the hand of death until he arrived here. Three months without his brother and yet so many things remained unchanged for Kili's stubborn desire for matters to remain the same. Since the arena, he had fought to try to pretend as if none of it had happened, found his respite in white liquor and the shallow attentions of the other Capitol citizens. And only now, when he felt so exposed and naked before his brother, his farcical gambit revealed for what it was, that Kili realized it had been foolish to even try.

The explanation makes the shame burn hotter in his chest.

"I've friends here," he attempted to rationalize still. "I would make deals with them to find you a hiding spot with good protection. You'd win and then you'd never have to see any more of the Games."

Except that wasn't the entire truth either. The winners would never escape the Games, they would have to help their tributes, they would have to watch them die, speak to those who had been murdered again and again.

"I wanted to protect you," he finally offered, though his voice was smaller than ever. " 's all."

But there was no true protection from the Games, not here, not ever. The sport had become so entrenched in the culture it followed Tributes like a bad smell.

To some degree, he knew what his brother had meant to do, even if he obviously had not thought it through properly. He knew there was no more than a genuine and innocent wish from Kíli to keep him safe, but as most everything was the case with his little brother, logic often fell through the cracks, and his plans always the thoughtless kind, always with large lacunas that he did not care to think so much about. There was no anger in him, not truly, but more a kind of worry about this all, and about Kíli's attitude towards it. A naïve notion that such horrors could be hidden from anyone here, a childish attitude when there was no place for it, not anymore.

"Yes? And then what, you would force me to stay there, lock me up so that I could not leave?" He moved his other hand to rest on Kíli's other arm, beckoning him to turn to him. His voice tender even as he spoke words meant to bring some sense into his brother's head, and he hoped only they would reach somewhere, they would be heard. "Not even you can think I would simply sit there for weeks on end, not without wondering what was happening outside, wondering where you were."

"I would not win. There is no winning here, do you understand? I would see you--" he paused, his words shaking to the core until they crumbled and shattered to the ground in pieces. A quiet gasp, choked as he unsuccessfully tried to breathe in, was something he could not quite hide entirely, even though he tried. But he continued his thoughts regardless. "I would see you die, and even just once that would already be a loss much too great. Even if you were to be brought back."

Because that was the true game, was it not? These people did not want winners, they wanted victims. They wanted cattle for slaughter, and for a purpose even lesser of the one cattle served. For mere morbid entertainment, a past time for people who are rotten to the core, who must be. He could not imagine any other reason why anyone would ever willingly watch something like this, cheer for the death of so many, and so often innocent, and not do a single thing about it.

It was embarrassing, really, to have every flaw of his previously well-thought-out plan of alliances (or as well-thought-out as Kili could manage) exposed for Kili to see. In fact, his brother's advice only served to further illuminate that Kili did not have the mind for strategy like his uncle, no matter how hard he had tried here. At the touch to his arm, Kili did not turn up to look at his brother and instead more obviously looked away. Shame ran hot through him despite the gentle presence of his brother's words. Only when Fili's breath caught did Kili finally glance at his brother, concern darkening his gaze at the honest sentiment.

"I won't see you die, Fee," he whispered, his voice becoming graveled with emotion. "I won't."

Yet, he knew even that thought was naive and childish, no matter how fiercely he wanted to believe it. If he just hid his brother, if he just made enough alliances, then Fili would never have to face any of it.

"Promise me." He would try, anyway, to try to get some vow from his brother, something sacred that when the arena came perhaps his brother would remember and hold true to. Perhaps he would take fewer risks, run when the situation called for it.

The nightmares told him differently, but he would not dwell on those now.

Fíli wanted to do nothing more than that. He wanted to make that promise, to reassure his little brother, to tell him that no matter what he would not die, and he would not let Kíli get hurt or die either. That in the mess and confusion that he was sure the arena would be, he would keep them both safe and hale until the very end of it. And if possible, that he would find a way out for the both of them without neither having to die.

If only were he sure he could keep such a promise.

"I cannot promise you that," his voice quieter still now, feeling to him like a stab through the gut because he knew the words would hurt Kíli, that they would shatter him in ways unseen. But this was all so beyond anything they had ever experienced before. This was no promise like the ones back home, that they would find the way back to their mother when they got lost in the forest, or even that they would be alright all their way to Erebor (and even that one had been broken already, though Kíli did not remember it - but Fíli did). This was worse, if anything because Fíli had the distinct feeling he was destroying whatever image Kíli had of him, that he was strong and somehow invincible, that he could surmount even something as inevitable as death.

He let go of Kíli's arm and rested his hand over his eyes, fingers rubbing circles over his eyelids tiredly before he dropped it to his own lap. "You cannot ask that of me, Kíli. I will do what I can, you know that. But do not ask me to make promises I cannot keep."

Kili could not remember a time when Fili refused to promise something to him, when he would not do everything in his power to assuage fears and the nightmares they brought. Not only did Fili deny the promise, but he pulled his hands away as well, leaving Kili to flounder in the sudden distance between them. Still, the words hurt more than the space that hung between them. They sunk down into Kili's foundation, shattered what little hope he had gathered upon his brother's arrival. All courage died in his chest and he looked away again and once more he wanted nothing more than to run away from it all, to leave the rest of the world behind if he had to. His heart beat too painfully in his chest as he tried to shake off the disappointment and hurt barreling through him at breakneck speed. No, his brother couldn't mean that, his brother had never died him anything, not truly.

"Promise me," he attempted to ask of his brother again, more insistent before as he reached out for Fili's hands, to re-establish the physical connection between them.

Despite his plea, he knew the answer would still be no, that he truly asked the impossible, but that did not matter to him. He wanted to hear those words, to be assured, to hold onto his naive belief that he could keep his brother safe.

He could hear the ache in his brother's voice, something nearing betrayal, and it destroyed him, it tore him apart from the inside. His throat clenched and every heartbeat hurt almost unbearably, but at least it was just about dark enough that when he turned his face to the side, he could hide the expression taking over his face in the shadows, a sad frown, a deeply set grimace.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, but at least he returned the hold on his hands strongly, almost desperately in the way he clung back to the other's palms. "I'm sorry that I can't make this right."

He felt ever so hopeless. As an older brother it had been his own decision that he would always take care of Kíli, when he had been as young as five and he first held him in his arms. A tiny bundle wrapped in blankets and covered in far too little hair, and he remembered wondering back then how would something that small turn into a dwarf large as himself, perhaps even larger still, taller, broader. He had promised to himself then that no matter what he would always be there for Kíli, he would always see him be happy and smile, he would drive any worries, fears or doubts away, any monsters from his nightmares and all the ghosts from under the bed. No matter the circumstances, he would make everything right.

But now he failed. Now he could not do even that, and in the dark of night he could not take the fear from his brother's voice, he could not see a way out and he would not lie about it, despite the great temptation to do so to see him smile just once. Kíli would only hate him for that lie later on, lose all trust and turn on him when truth came to the surface.

"I can only promise to be with you," his hands moved up arms, clutching gently, tentatively tugging Kíli closer as he too leaned forward. "I will always be with you, regardless of what happens. And no matter how many arenas, how many times, I will always find you. I will find you every time. Alright? Please, Kíli. It is all I have now."

A strained breath, though quiet, and though he does not cry, the sob can almost be heard in his voice. "You are all I have."

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you must have the words in that head of yours {closed}

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