Chapter Text
"I don't believe the accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings. Gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at."
- Maya Angelou
The boating lake at Buckland Park is frozen. All the green and the blue has silvered, and the dome of the band stand glitters like the round crystals in Thorin's shop. It's quiet, and it's still, but the evergreen shrubs and hawthorn glow intensely against the grey light. Kili likes the world like this, patient and sleeping. The easy peace of winter.
He hoists his bag up, wipes at a nose stiff with blood and old scabs, and peers into the lake. Nothing there. It's like a steamed-up mirror, his reflection gleamed and frozen. It's easy to convince himself there really is no one else around - no one in the world - and it feels good. It's difficult to tell what time it is. It goes dark so early now, and his watch was stolen months ago. Thorin won't give him a new one, even though he can get them for free. Says Kili will only lose it. Says he can't be trusted with the smallest thing, even when it's clasped to his bloody wrist.
Even so, school finished ages ago and it's definitely late enough for him to be in trouble now. Thorin usually allows himself half an hour to be worried, and then it's fury from there on out. Kili can't find it in himself to care much. People at school say far worse things than his fretting uncle, and besides, Thorin's been in a bad mood for weeks now. Ever since he got that strange phone call last month, the one Kili wasn't supposed to listen in on but did, accidentally, on his way to fetch a glass of water.
Thorin's mood only worsened when, last week, two people in neat blazers drew up in a van and came up to the flat, poked and prodded at all of their stuff, even went into Kili's room and looked in his wardrobe and under his bed without asking first. They asked Thorin all sorts of weird questions, what kind of stuff he made for dinner and what he cleaned the kitchen surfaces with and whether or not he tested the fire alarm once a fortnight. They'd even interrogated poor Mr Baggins in the shop below.
Kili runs into Mr Baggins on his way home. This isn't a surprise. The stairs to the flat are at the back of Mr Baggins' flower shop, Bag End, and he always always always catches Kili trying to sneak in without being seen. He storms out of his bedsit, already in his patchwork dressing gown and slippers, bustling purple tulips as he goes.
“For heaven's sake, Kili, where have you been?”
“Just at the park.”
“The pa – ? Why on earth were you at the park at this time? In this weather? When it's this dark? Your uncle's been down three times to ask if I've seen you and I've...” Mr Baggins stops dead when Kili shifts forward out of the shades cast by the winter gloom and the flowers. “My God, Kili, what's happened to your face?”
“Nothing!” Kili ducks beneath the outstretched arm in front of him, but Mr Baggins is quick. He pulls Kili back by his school bag, eyes bright with sudden concern.
“You've blood all over your nose!” he says, sounding only a little repulsed. “What's happened, then? Have you, ah... have you been in a... scuffle?”
Kili resists the urge to roll his eyes. “I'm fine, Mr Baggins. Can I go upstairs to wash it off?”
Mr Baggins steps hesitantly aside to let Kili pass. “Be sure to tell your uncle, won't you?” he says.
The flat on Shire's End is quite small, but it's only Kili and Thorin living in it so it doesn't matter much. There's a long carpeted staircase - thick, red patterned carpet, like a pub floor - and a tiny hallway with two bedrooms on the left and the kitchen and lounge on the right. It's not luxurious, but they've tried their best to make it homely. Two summers ago they painted the lounge a deep honey yellow and laid big rugs over the bare floorboards, and Mr Baggins helped hang a little string garden from the kitchen ceiling with bright green ferns and orange begonias. They covered pockmarks and scars on the walls with photographs. There's a framed picture of Kili above the fireplace, clutching a drooping ice cream at Filey Bay Beach on his seventh birthday, his hair sticking to it in the wind.
But it's the size of the flat, the terribly close proximity of tiny rooms, which makes it difficult to do anything even remotely private or stealthy, such as sneaking in unnoticed. As soon as Kili makes it to the top of the stairs he hears a deep voice summoning him into the lounge.
Thorin's sitting in the armchair opposite the gas fire, the coffee table smattered with notepads and long rolls of receipts and two different kinds of calculator. He has a pen tucked behind his ear and his sleeves rolled to his elbows. For as long as Kili can remember, the flat has been positively stuffed with receipts. When he was little Thorin used to give him the older receipts to draw on, to stop him using his crayons on the walls.
“What have you been doing?” Thorin asks without turning around. His voice is gruff and tired, like he's about to fall into bed. “Where have you been?”
“Sorry, I lost track of time.”
“But where have you been?”
“Buckland Park.”
“For hell's sake, Kili, the lake's been frozen over for weeks. What were you doing there?”
Kili shrugs and chips at the door frame, even though he can't be seen. He's used to getting told off by his uncle. They're not even proper lectures anymore, just terse conversations with lots of sighing and tutting. Thorin sighs now, in fact, and turns to look at him. When he sees Kili's face he shakes his head. Not like he's sad. Just tired.
Thorin's always tired these days. Well, he was always tired before too, but in a different way. He owns a jewellery shop in town, Arkenstone, and he used to adore it. There was a time, years ago, when he'd come home from the shop utterly exhausted, but a good kind of exhausted. He'd be red-faced and smiling from a busy day spent on his feet, serving customers, stocking his shelves with beautiful jewellery. He'd drop on to the couch and pull Kili on to his lap and yawn, "Shall we have a nap before dinner?" and within minutes he'd be snoring. Kili, too restless for sleep at the best of times, would sit there happily in his arms, watching the television on low.
They don't have a television anymore. They had to sell it, along with everything else of worth in the flat, once the shop began to dwindle into a sorry state last year. Recessions and insufficient capital and over-investment and other phrases Kili didn't fully understand were for months the topics of hushed, world-weary conversations between Thorin and his business partner Dwalin. Thorin doesn't come home smiling and blissfully red in the face anymore, but he certainly comes home tired.
Now he stands and walks over, raising an arm. For one strange moment Kili thinks Thorin is going to hug him, but instead he takes Kili by the shoulder and leads him into the bathroom. He fetches a clean wash cloth from under the sink and wets it.
“Lean over the sink,” he gently orders, and starts dabbing at Kili's blood-choked nose. He isn't rough, but it hurts, and Kili wants to tell him he can do it himself. Thorin always does it for him. It's almost ritualistic, even though Kili is nearly fifteen years old now. “You're going to start taking the bus home,” says Thorin, rinsing the flannel and raising it to Kili's face again.
“But you always say the fare's ridiculous!”
“I mean the school bus.”
“No!” Kili jerks his head to look at his uncle and ends up getting the wash cloth in his eye. “No, they're worse on the bus.”
“Keep out of their way, then.”
“I can't!”
“Then I'll ask Dwalin to start picking you up. And you can walk back with Mr Baggins on his way home from the market on Wednesdays. I'm not having you –”
“But –”
“I'm not having you staying out in the dead of winter on your own. Do you not think I have enough on my plate without having to worry myself sick wondering where you are? I've got the shop to run, your... your brother's arriving tomorrow, we'll have social workers poking round the flat for God knows how long. I don't need this, Kili.” He slaps the cloth into the sink, smattering dark bits of blood, and turns the tap on to wash it away. “Next week I want you home on time every day. Having someone else live with us... you're just going to have to start pulling your weight a bit more.”
“I'm sorry,” Kili mumbles, upper lip dripping with pink water. “I just wanted to be on my own for a bit.”
“You can be alone in your bedroom. That's what it's there for, your space.” Thorin looks at him, and his expression softens very slightly. “Look, I know you're having a hard time but it won't be forever. Another year at most. Can you manage a year for me?” He hesitates. “Do you want me to come in and speak to your teachers?”
“No!”
“Because I can, you know...”
“I don't want you to.”
It would only make things worse. Thorin would be so uncomfortable sitting there, trying yet again to explain why his nephew can't seem to get along with a single other person in his class, why nobody seems to like him. Kili's always felt that Thorin's a bit embarrassed by it all. He was popular at school. He's got old photographs in his desk drawer of himself as a stocky, smirking teenager, sitting in a row with his rugby mates, the ball in his lap to show his status as Captain. Kili's useless at most sports. He's too short to be any good at running, though Thorin insists he'd be the perfect build for rugby if only he'd eat a little more.
Of course, Thorin would never say that he's disappointed in Kili; that he wishes he could just be a bit more, well, normal. He would be more than willing to go to Kili's school and have a word with the teachers and try to fix things for him, but Kili doesn't want him to. People would give him an even harder time for being sad enough to go sobbing to his uncle and to staff. Besides, Thorin would be so disappointed if the teachers showed him the clutch of pink detention slips which say that, even if Kili doesn't start fights, he's certainly quick to fight back.
Thorin finishes rinsing the wash cloth and wrings it, tossing it into the laundry basket by the bath. “Alright then,” he sighs, “off you go to your room now. And keep the noise to a minimum, please, I've a few things to sort out. I'll give you a shout when tea's ready.”
Kili's room has always been small. With the new single bed crammed in beneath the window, there's even less space to move around. Actually, the bed's not new at all. It's second hand. They found it at a car boot sale for £15, and Mr Baggins gave them a spare mattress he said he had in storage. It smells very good though, very clean and fresh, and Kili suspects it isn't a spare mattress at all. He suspects Mr Baggins bought the mattress specially for them.
There's not much else in the bedroom, just a wardrobe and an old chest of drawers and a cage for his budgie, Blue. The walls are a dull cream they never got around to painting, but Kili's done his best to cover them with pictures and drawings and postcards. He's got a lot of postcards now, picked up from the day trips Mr Baggins used to take him on when he was younger: Bempton Cliffs and Lancaster Castle, The Forbidden Corner, the Pendle Witches Treasure Trail, Carlisle Cathedral and Hadrian's Wall. They don't have many days out anymore. Not because of money; the trips would barely cost anything bar the price of a quick train journey and twenty pence for the postcard. Mr Baggins just doesn't have the time anymore. Kili wishes he did. There's still a patch of wall he needs to fill.
He feeds Blue a few seeds before flopping on to his own bed, curling up into a ball even though his feet don't even come close to the end of the mattress. He's been short his whole life, and it looks like it's going to stay that way. At any rate, he hasn't had that magical teenage boy growth spurt yet. It has its advantages and disadvantages, his height; on one hand, he's spectacular at hiding – on the other, he's not nearly as fast a runner as he'd like to be.
He wonders if his brother is tall, or short like him. Kili has one photograph of them together, in the small wooden box stashed at the bottom of his wardrobe. It's not much good, though. Kili is three in the photo, which would make his brother, Fili, around four or five. They have the same round baby faces, the same ill-fitting jumble sale clothes. The only difference is Fili is blond, whereas Kili's hair has always been wild and raggedy, almost black. Like a scruffy water spaniel, Thorin says, when he's in a good mood.
His mood hasn't brightened at all by tea time. They eat in silence, save for the moment Thorin tells Kili not to lick his knife. Afterwards, when they're washing up, he passes a plate to Kili and says, “Have you cleaned your room?”
“Did it last night.”
“And you've cleared a space in the wardrobe?”
“Yeah. And a drawer, too.”
It wasn't an easy task. There was a lot of stuff in that drawer. Most of it was old or dusty or broken, and ended up in the bin. Thorin's always on at him to clear out his room, but now Kili's actually done it he just grunts. He's got huge purple bags under his eyes; he looks exhausted, like he wants nothing more than to go straight to bed after cleaning up, rather than stay up half the night playing with squiggly numbers.
“It won't be forever, you know,” he says after a while, drying his hands. “Sharing a room, I mean. If he stays... we'll just have to find somewhere bigger.”
Kili nods, even though he knows they can't afford anywhere bigger.
“Maybe sell the shop,” Thorin continues tentatively.
Kili looks up at that, startled. “But you love the shop!”
Thorin shrugs, as though loving something hardly justifies keeping it. “It might not come to that. You never know, you might get on famously with Fili. You might really enjoy sharing a bedroom, having a brother, a bit of company. It might be good for us.” He gives a tired smile and reaches to ruffle Kili's hair. “Do you remember your brother at all?”
Kili's been asked this question before, by the social workers who've been in and out of their flat all month, who last week sat him down in the living room with a cup of tea and a thick paper book with his brother's name and picture on the front. They asked if he remembered much, and he gave them all the same answer: "Bits and pieces."
It's what he says to Thorin now. He can't say he remembers his brother well, that sharing the flat with him will be like welcoming someone familiar home. But there will always be memories stuck sepia-tinted in his mind. Words and voices and faces, images and short fuzzy sequences like old film reels. Bits and pieces.