july 9

[willnothide]

He supposes he could have gone to Tauriel.

Walking back toward Candlewood, Kili wonders why, indeed, he'd chosen to text his brother (Time for a quick chat?) this evening when he knows very well what will come of the conversation, which is to say nothing but overreactions and Thorin-like huffs of frustration. Courage isn't the only thing either of them had inherited from their uncle, after all. Kili can already anticipate Fili's reaction when he walks through the door, a casual smile in greeting that will quickly give way to comically widened eyes at the sight of the blood soaking through Kili's torn clothing.

The wound isn't dire, though Kili has a fairly skewed vision of dire now that he's already been killed once, a mere cut to his side that had been a result of his own foolishness. He'd left his apartment this evening on what he'd convinced himself would be a lovely, quiet stroll, though he'd armed himself with one knife in each boot and another attached to his belt. He would have brought his bow and arrow but that, he'd decided, would be less justifiable.

He'd come across, as he'd privately hoped, a certain bit of a panic in an alleyway as he'd neared Petros Park--a vampire attacking a young, blonde woman who had reminded him very much of Beth, aside from her muffled cries for help as the creature had aimed to sink its fangs into her neck. As he plans on telling his brother, he'd had no choice but to intervene. He's only gone wrong briefly, taking his eyes off his opponent with his knife wielded in front of him to check on the poor woman, and the vampire had wrenched it from his hand before parrying forward with a swipe of its wrist.

Kili hadn't cried out, for which he is proud, but even after he'd pulled his second knife from his boot to dispose of the creature, he must now admit that he feels just a bit affronted that the woman hadn't even stayed long enough to thank him for his help. He'd been wounded in her name, after all, a name he doesn't even know. He'd taken one look at the cut, grimacing at the sight, and decided that in spite of his stubborn urge to ignore it, the wound needed care.

It comes as no surprise to him that Fili is the first he'd go to for this sort of thing, his brother had always been the one to mend his lesser wounds in the Ered Luin or fetch Oin for the ones he could not properly dress on his own. Their mother, though fretting, would allow it without much other fuss, if only because in his younger years, Kili would screech and writhe unless he'd been under the attentive care of his older brother. Still, he thinks as he waits for the elevator to take him to their floor, he could have gone to Tauriel and kept mum about this entire incident.

But he'd promised no more lies and so, he walks through the door, smiling from ear to ear to distract from the primary reason he's entered so hastily.

"Not busy were you, Fee?" he asks cheerfully, unbuckling his belt and letting it fall loose to the floor, though he makes no effort to hide his wound. His brother has always had a knack for spotting his vulernabilities, after all. "I'd hate to be the cause of a ruined evening."

Comments

[sonofdurin]

Fíli's been a little concerned since he got the text. It's not like Kíli to ask if someone's available to talk - he seems to prefer to simply show up and start talking, a trait Fíli has to admit he shares - so a text like the one he'd received can only presage some serious conversation, and he has no idea why. He can't imagine a second revelation like the one the seeing stone had given him, and he doesn't think his brother and Tauriel have figured themselves out enough to warrant that conversation just yet (though he honestly can't deny that he's rather looking forward to it, if only for the chance to make Kíli squirm), and as there isn't any other reason he can think of for such a message, he has no choice but to sit and wait until Kíli returns to find out what it is.

He is eighty-two years old and has gotten fairly good at sitting and waiting by virtue of necessity, but he still hates it all the same.

Kíli enters the room with a broad smile that draws an answering grin from him despite his worry. "Nothing that couldn't wait," he says, and then his eyes narrow as he takes in the blood-stained gash in his brother's clothing. "Nadad, what happened?" Kíli looks to be fine, but as the black arrow proved, that means absolutely nothing.

[willnothide]

"What, this?" Kili asks, having already known very well that Fili would have noticed the blood almost immediately, his brother always does.

Even when Kili would come home after getting into fights as a dwarfling, trying to hide an altered gait or a split lip or a freshly bruised eye, Fili had been the first to notice. During the journey, too, Fili had been the one to stay closest to his side after he'd suffered the Morgul arrow to his leg; though, Kili thinks, it isn't often that he and his brother are very far apart in the first place.

"Merely a flesh wound," Kili continues, already lifting his tu"nic to get a better look at the cut. It's deeper than he'd initially imagined it to be and that alone makes him wince, let alone the fact that he seems to have managed to open the cut again by the way he's stretched his body to look at it. "Alright, perhaps not merely a flesh wound. It's possible that I may have run into a vampire while I was out. It's also possible that this vampire may have gotten hold of my blade while I wasn't looking and even more possible still that it did... well, this."

Kili flashes Fili another bright smile, hoping his brother will save any lectures he might be prone to give about going out on his own to hunt the creatures for after the bleeding at his side has stopped.

"You'll help me dress it, won't you, Fee? I'd prefer not get blood on your floor."

[sonofdurin]

One of the first things Fíli had done, once he'd begun to settle into life in Darrow, was purchase a fully-stocked medical kit and figure out the differences between it and the kind of medical supplies Oin had used back home, and he's already going for it by the time Kíli confirms that he's injured. He turns, bandages in hand, and gets a look at his brother's injury, and sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. He's no Oin, but Kíli's insistence on having his brother tend his wounds when they were younger has given him better-than-average healing abilities; he has no doubt that he can dress the wound, but it's a nasty-looking thing all the same.

"If you get blood on my floor, I'm making you clean it up, injured or no," he says. "And we'll discuss why you were hunting vampires on your own in the first place and why you let one of them get your blade away from you once we get that cut taken care of."

He doesn't buy for a second that Kíli just happened to run into a vampire tonight. He doubts he'd have believed it even if they'd had no idea vampires existed, but since his brother's run into them before, there's no doubt in Fíli's mind that Kíli was out hunting the things.

"Go sit down. I need to get a closer look at that; it may need to be stitched up."

[willnothide]

That isn't the sort of news he'd wanted to hear, but Kili supposes it can't be helped. It's his own fault, going out on his own (specifically without his brother) and letting the creature get the upper hand, even if just for a moment; but he's hardly going to admit that out loud so instead, he pouts and quietly tugs off his tunic as he crosses the room to lower himself gingerly into a chair and wait for Fili to attend to him.

"You'd make me clean your floor whether I bled on it or not," he calls out, looking down at the wound again and sighing when he sees that Fili had been, quite unsurprisingly, correct in his assessment that it needs stitches. Kili gently brushes his fingertips over the cut, hissing at the sting of it and glaring at the dried blood that's flaked over his fingers as he pulls them away.

"At least I'm not trying to keep this one hidden," Kili continues, shrugging a shoulder, though only to himself. He'd wanted so badly to prove himself to Thorin on the journey that he'd ignored the pain in his leg from that foul Orc's arrow and in the end, his pride is what had seen them caught when they'd been so close to making it out of Lake-town undetected. If things had gone differently then, if he hadn't been so stubborn, maybe everything else would have changed, too.

But there's no sense in dwelling on what cannot be changed. Mahal had seen it fit to bring him here, so Kili and Fili both have done what they can to make the best of it. A part of that means keeping his promise that he won't lie to his brother again so really, he should be praised for admitting to the wound he'd been given tonight.

Fili, of course, may not see it the same way.

[sonofdurin]

"Mahal be praised, he learned something after all," Fíli says dryly. It's not that he doesn't understand why Kíli had tried to hard to keep the severity of the wound to his leg hidden, nor can he honestly say that he wouldn't have done the same thing, had their positions been reversed. But where his brother's concerned, in Fíli's opinion, anything that doesn't kill him is grounds for mockery - a fact which Kíli knows perfectly well. "There's hope for you yet, Kee - maybe by the time you're Thorin's age, you'll have even learned not to let your enemies get your weapons away from you."

With one of the spare bandages, he wipes away most of the blood obscuring the wound so he can get a better look at it. It will need stitches, though not as many as he'd initially feared, the blood having made the cut look worse than it really is.

"And you must have lost more blood than I thought," he adds, carefully cleaning the wound, "you're talking nonsense. If I made you clean my floor, it would only wind up dirtier than when you started, and I'm not that much of a fool."