Archive of Our Own

“Play nicely,” Dís commands, tucking the wrap firmly around Fíli’s head and pushing the ends into the collar of his thick winter jacket. It is a little too small for him now, but he likes it too much to give it to Kíli just yet.

His little brother has already raced from their warm rooms, full of the fug of winter fires and hot drinks and sweat-damp furs, into the tunnels that lead up to the surface, his whoop of delight still ringing from the rock. Fíli flexes his hands in his mittens as his mother ties his collar a little tighter, and then pats him on the head.

“Off you go, then,” she says. “I’ll send Mister Dwalin out to get you in a little while. Don’t lose him!”

Normally she would mean Kíli, but not today. Fíli’s eyes land on the small figure wrapped so heavily it is nearly immobile, toddling by his mother’s feet. “Do we have to?” he whines. “He’s a baby still! He’s too little to be any fun.”

She crouches down before Fíli and gives him a Look. He winces. He knows that Look. Everyone knows that Look. It is the one his mother wears when her family is being particularly thick. “That was unkind, inùdoy,” she says sternly. “He’s little, yes. You were once that little, and yet others made time to play with you. They never thought you dull or boring simply for being young.”

Fíli drops his eyes, and then sends a resentful glance over at the trussed-up figure. “But...”

“No, Fíli,” she says, standing again. She gives the little one a gentle push towards Fíli, and he totters forward reluctantly – even nervously. He saw the look that Fíli sent him, and he knows he isn’t wanted.

Well, good.

Fíli sighs as loudly and dramatically as he can. “Oh all right,” he says crossly, and grabs the little wool-smothered hand in his. “Come on then.”

The little one says nothing as he is dragged along. His little boots tap-tap-tap like tiny hammers against the stone of Ered Luin.

Fíli blinks as the cool, sharp light of day stabs his eyes. There is always a moment of adjustment when one steps from the close, comforting darkness under stone to the wider world. Fíli is good at it now! He barely flinches.

Beside him, the little one stifles a whimper. Fíli looks down at him, still clutching onto his hand with an iron grip in those tiny fingers. “Are you all right?”

The child nods, dashing tears from his eyes with a clumsy, woolly hand. “Yes.”

Fíli is a little impressed, but not so much that he forgets his resentment. “Good. Well? Move it!”

Kíli is ahead, and he has already made a fantastic pile of snow. It is good building snow: hard and crunchy. “Look!” he laughs as Fíli comes closer. “You’ll be lucky to land a single hit against me this time!”

“In your dreams,” says Fíli, grinning cheerfully, and he can pinpoint the moment Kíli spots the little one by his side.

“Aw, why’d we have to bring him along?” Kíli complains, and then he sits down amongst all that crunchy snow, his brows drawn into a petulant frown.

“Mum said,” Fíli says, and looks down at the child. “We’ve only got him for today. Not forever.”

The little one’s chin lifts. “I can play,” he announces bravely. His eyes flash. “I can.”

Kíli is openly sceptical. “You’re tiny.”

“How d’you play?” the boy demands again, letting go of Fíli’s hand and stepping forward. His little mittens fist at his sides. “Show me, an’ I’ll beat you.”

“You make stones out of the snow, and you throw them at each other,” saiys Fíli, giving Kíli a warning sort of look (one that Kíli would absolutely ignore, no doubt). “The winner lands the most blows.”

“I have the best aim,” Kíli says, his chin cocked proudly.

“He does,” Fíli agrees. “You can’t beat us.”

The Dwarfling didn’t balk. “All right then. I’ll play too. I can.”

“You’ll get pummelled, and you’ll start blubbing,” says Fíli, crossing his arms. “I bet you.”

The little one’s eyes glint. “How much?”

“How about you don’t ever try an’ play again if we win?” says Kíli, after a quick look to his brother.

The little one smiles, his hair escaping from under his hat. “Yes, all right. And if I win?”

The brothers look at each other, and burst out into howls of laughter. “If you win?” Kíli gasps, “you can play with us whenever you like!”

Their cousin considers it, and then raises his eyebrows. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why play with you? You’re mean,” the little one sniffs. Then he narrows his eyes at them. “How about this instead? You won’t say mean things about me anymore. I’m not too little, and I can too play. Honest.”

Fíli feels a faint stab of shame, but he is interrupted by a snort from Kíli. “Fine, fine,” he says, waving a hand. “We won’t breathe a word. Hah, if you win!”

“Go get your weapons,” Fíli says, turning his back on the stubborn little thing. Honestly. It was going to be such a dreadful bore, having to mind their tiny cousin. Hopefully this would teach him a lesson, and he wouldn’t come with them ever again.

“If we both get him, he’ll go running back to Mum,” Kíli whispers, grinning, as his hands packed the snow into stones and piled them high.

“Yes, but if he’s crying she’ll be angry,” Fíli warns.

“But she can’t stay angry all the time – but he can stay away all the time,” Kíli points out, still grinning cheerfully.

“Right,” they hear the small one say to himself, his piping little voice satisfied. “That should do it.”

“D’you think he has any idea of what he’s let himself in for?” Kíli sniggers.

“Nah,” Fíli says, and laughs a bit himself. “That’ll teach him to tag along!”

Kíli tosses his head, his hat sliding over one eye as he says triumphantly, “Right! Teach him to mess about with a pair of Princes of the line of—ulf!”

The world is white and wet and freezing, and Fíli splutters, coughing and shaking. He can’t quite tell which way is up.

“Fee!” Kíli is saying, high and panicked. “Fee?! What happened?”

Fíli finds his way up out of the clinging white, and shakes himself free. His eyes sting again – this time from the snow. “What...” he says, bewildered and a bit angry.

The blur before him resolves into the shape of their little cousin. His hat is full of snow-stones, but he hasn’t thrown a single one.

Yet.

“You were sitting under a tree,” he says brightly, and then begins to throw. The snow-stones burst against Fíli’s chest and chin and he is forced to throw his hands up to keep them from hitting his face. Kíli is howling again, but for an entirely different reason. “One, two, three, four,” the little one counts, concentration all over his small face.

“He kicked the tree,” moans Kíli, and Fíli says a word he has heard Uncle Thorin use that his mother would be very, very cross to hear coming from Fíli’s mouth. “He kicked the tree!”

“Shut up,” splutters Fíli, and he wades through the barrage of snow-stones to nearly fall upon the boy, pinning him to the ground. “Stop it!”

“You said the winner was the one who...” says the little one, scowling.

“Yes, all right, you won,” says Fíli, still spluttering and spitting snow, “just stop it!”

“I won?” The boy’s scowl melts into a brilliant smile, one gap in the line of his teeth very apparent in the sunlight. “I won! Yes! I won!”

“That was sneaky,” moans Kíli.

The boy, still pinned by Fíli’s far greater weight, shrugs a little. “You’re a lot bigger than me,” he points out. “I have to be sneaky. I’m little, but I can play.”

Fíli sits back, letting the Dwarfling’s wrists go. “You can play,” he murmurs, and the boy beams up at him, flushed with victory and vindication.

Kíli’s hair is sopping as he struggles from the huge heap of snow that had landed on them. He is shivering a bit, and his teeth are chattering, and Mister Dwalin will laugh himself sick. “You really can,” he says, and the look he shares with Fíli this time is very different.

“All right, cousin,” Fíli says, and he puts an arm around the sturdy little shoulders. “You stick with us. A mind like that needs to be taken care of.”

The boy looks bemused at their absolute change of heart, but he accepts it readily enough. “All right. No being mean?”

“Never again, Gimli,” Kíli says solemnly. “You’re with us from now on. Promise.”

And then both Fíli and Kíli leap onto the boy and rub snow into his hair until he roars and Kíli gets a handful of snow in his jacket and Fíli gets another handful dropped down his trousers and all three of them are breathless and pink-cheeked with laughter.

...

Kíli pulls his hair. A lot. Gimli’s hair is bright and thick and practically untameable, or it will be until it grows long enough to be pulled back. Gimli learns to ignore it – in fact, the hair-pulling leads him to ignore his hair with a disdain that is nearly unheard of in a Dwarf. He barely ever even brushes it.

(Kíli teaches him how to bend a bow properly, with the painstaking patience he only ever displays for archery: to aim and release without hurting yourself. Kíli hands him a fiddle one day and shows him the strings. Gimli practices diligently. He wants to impress his big cousin with how much he has improved.)

Fíli hides his toys. Gimli is so much younger than them – fifteen whole years younger than Kíli – and all his toys are for small children. But Gimli hates to be seen as a small child. His sister is a small child: Gimli is a big boy. So Fíli hides his toys, and gleefully watches Gimli grow crosser and crosser because he simply will not let himself cry like the little Dwarfling of twelve that he is.

(Fíli teaches him how to knot rope: all the different ways and holds and slips used in the mines where he is not allowed without his mother or his uncle Óin. Fíli flips a flawed diamond to his cousin one day, and Gimli is awed. “Tell me what’s wrong with it,” says Fíli, and Gimli studies it with avid concentration it for two weeks until he can give his answer confidently.)

Gimli kicks their shins. Hard. He is very strong for a Dwarf so small, and his kicks have some power behind them. They make Kíli hop around with his leg held in his hands, and leave little bruises the shape of his steel-capped boots on Fíli’s skin.

(Fíli feels the weight of responsibility weighing down upon his head – the heavy, dusty taste of his uncle’s solemn words, the great mass of expectation wrapped around his shoulders like a huge and smothering cloak. Even his madcap and reckless brother is a reminder of what may come: the third in line, his heir. He is too young to think of his brother as his heir, but it cannot ever be avoided, not when Uncle Thorin looks at him with those steely, sad eyes. There are always the grand, stately shadows of the future, stretching out before him, made tall and threatening by the firelight. Gimli is easier to care for. He can be fond of Gimli without the ghost of a crown gripping his brow too tightly.)

They fight and scuffle and routinely declare their undying hatred for each other. It never lasts long.

(Kíli is so, so tired of being the youngest, the child, the baby of the family. He is tired of being left out. He is tired of others talking over his head. He is tired of being told that he will understand later, when he is older. He is tired of safety and caution, of restraining the wheedling little voice inside him that whispers, “why not go there? Why not do that? It will be an adventure!” Besides, Kíli is almost grown now! He is taller than his brother! Being around Gimli helps. He is so young – the youngest Dwarrow in Ered Luin, except his infant sister. Gimli looks up to Kíli. Gimli admires Kíli. Gimli always listens.)

It becomes commonly known amongst the Dwarves of Ered Luin that the sons of Dís have acquired a shadow.

...

There is a chill in the air as Gimli makes his way down the stairs. It is always cold here. The fires are not lit very often –only on very particular occasions. Terrible occasions.

The last such occasion was two years ago, now.

Gimli had not been here, then. The journey from Ered Luin was long and slow, what with so many caravans and so many families traversing the Misty Mountains. The paths have not grown less dangerous, but the movement of so many Dwarves had at least discouraged most predators of the more animal type. There had been an encounter with some goblins that was, thus far, the most exciting and frightening thing that has occurred in the whole of Gimli’s young life.

Of course, it is so dark and chill here that Gimli feels himself shudder. He is not superstitious, and he knows well that he is in the home of his forebears, held close and safe in the embrace of the Mountain. Still. This is not exactly comforting, and the torch in his hand is the only light he permits himself.

He is a Dwarf of Durin’s line. He has nothing to fear from his own kin.

Eventually the stairs level out, and the new chamber is revealed. It is long and narrow and full of shadows, columns lining the walls. Between each column stands a motionless figure, guarding the mighty marble coffin that rests in the arch behind it.

Gimli lifts his torch high, looking up at the solemn, carven faces of Dwarrows long dead. The weary, determined face of Thráin the Old, the very first King Under the Mountain, stares at him with pitted stone eyes. His great-great-grandfather Borin gives his descendant a blank cool marble glare. A Dwarrowdam, her name obscured by the crumbling stone, gazes out upon the darkness as though waiting.

Eventually the figures and the great heavy stone sarcophagi become less frequent as Gimli moves towards the back of the long, pillared hall. His footsteps are very loud, and the air is very still. He can hear every breath as it fills his lungs, it is so silent.

There are places here meant for Dwarrows who fell elsewhere, their bodies burned by dragonfire or before the gates of Khazad-dûm or mouldering under the sky, their likenesses lost to time. Names have been carved upon empty slabs where the great grey coffins should rest: Frís, Haban, Gróin, Hrera, Frerin, Fundin, Thrór, Thráin II. They do not rest beneath stone as a Dwarf should. They are gone forever from the world of their kin. Few now remember their faces and none of those know the ways of shaping stone, or are too old to manage the work.

The empty arches are lonely somehow. They yearn. Gimli sighs as he passes them, his eyes lingering over his grandmother’s name. She is lost: they have all been lost. They were all so lost for so many years, and many will never be recovered.

Then there are three new statues, as solemn as the others. The stone is clean and newly cut, uniformly grey without blotch of water or stain of moss, fresh from the ground and unmarked by the passage of the ages, unlike the others so far behind him. Gimli lifts his torch and his heart beats faster.

His mighty cousin, hero of wars, doer of great deeds and reclaimer of their home, the once-King Under the Mountain, is clad in simple, humble travelling clothes. Gimli knows that were he to lift the lid upon the coffin behind the statue he would find the glowing Arkenstone resting there upon the skeletal chest, the clacking fingerbones wrapped forever around the hilt of an Elvish sword. Gimli winces, and looks up into the unyielding, resolute face. The expression is not peaceful.

It seems unjust in the extreme that even in this carven representation of death, Thorin Oakenshield has not found his peace.

Gimli cannot look at this hero of his people, not for long. There was once a blacksmith of the Blue Mountains, a grim Dwarrow who loved his nephews and stamped along to the louder songs and joined in with the softer ones and drank his ale like it had personally offended him. Gimli remembers that Dwarrow quite well. This one is not the same. This one is locked forever in implacable stone grief. This one found them all, all of the lost and dispossessed and homeless, and brought them back. This one did great deeds, but he lost himself in the doing of them. This one is a warning: be careful what you wish for.

Gimli bows deeply to him, letting his head strike the plinth where the carven feet rest. This one is owed that, and more.

Then he straightens and turns to the next alcove. There are two statues there.

Good. They would not wish to be apart.

His friends seem taller even than they were in life, and older, and grimmer. Gimli sets the torch down in the holder before them and sighs deeply as he takes in their likenesses. They are not exact. They are not right. It is wrong that Kíli is not grinning, Kíli always grins. And Fíli looks bowed beneath a great weight, rather than standing tall and proud with that cocky set to his chin and a swagger in his step.

It is wrong that their limbs are now but bones locked in a stone embrace, rather than moving constantly and energetically, slapping Gimli on his back and hanging from his shoulders in their enthusiasm. It is terribly, horribly wrong.

“Hullo, Fíli, Kíli,” he says softly, and his voice rumbles through the room, echoing back and back towards the stairs. “I have finally made it here, treading where you have trod. I stand in the Mountain you took back for us. I am home now. I have followed you, like I always do.”

But no. Gimli cannot follow them, not anymore.

He bows his head, and then he looks up once more, a sad smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He reaches up and unbinds his short beard before taking out his belt-knife and cutting three locks from it. Hair already dusts the feet of the three statues: some more will not make an appreciable difference. His bright red hair joins the others, to moulder away along with the bones of the honoured dead.

“You bloody sods,” he says, and then he laughs softly. The echoes laugh back: a thousand Gimlis are laughing at him. “My beard is long enough to braid now,” he says to the solemn face of Kíli. “No more tufts. How jealous you would be!”

“I am working with two axes these days,” he tells Fíli. “They are not swords, but you would be proud, I think – right before you beat me into the dirt!”

His eyes sting. “Who shall I look to now?” he asks the dead, and they do not answer. Gimli is sixty-four, he is not yet of age. He is far, far too old to kick Fíli’s stone shins – but he is too young to follow them. “Who will mock me and tease me and teach me and show me how to be better? Who will pull my hair and take my things? Who will drink with me and teach me Mahal-damned awful drinking songs and dance upon the tables and tell bawdy stories and get us thrown out of every tavern in the Mountain? Who will cheer me when I am the most foolish, and listen to me when I am wise? Who will face my anger and my axes when no-one else will suffer to hear me? Who will lead me into my greatest triumphs and my worst disgraces? I am not ready to lead myself! I am not ready, and you promised! You promised!”

“You pair of bastards,” he adds for good measure, and Gimli’s bright head lowers, and he masters himself with a great effort.

The crypt is silent, but for the gulping of his breath.

“I will have to take up where you left off, I suppose,” he eventually says to himself. His eyes are glassy and swollen from holding back tears, but his mouth is set in a flat line of determination. “I will miss you. You stupid idiots. I will make you proud. I will.”

Then he takes up his torch and turns to leave, but not before fixing his cousins with a hard glare that rivals even their flat stone eyes. “I will be back,” he rumbles. His voice bounces around the crypt, deep and firm and certain.

For the first time, Gimli sounds like the adult he will one day be.

...

Gimli is sixty-four, not even of age, and he is too young to have mourning-marks inked into his skin. It doesn’t stop him in the slightest. His mother gasps and then swears like a soldier when she sees the three new tattoos across his shoulders: puffy, bloody lines sliding out from under the neck of his too-small tunic. His sister goggles in awe at his audacity.

“You are so, so, so dead,” she breathes.

Gimli doesn’t correct her. Being in trouble – again – feels like coming home in a way that walking through Erebor reclaimed does not. The new marks are special and he does not regret them. The symbol of his dead hero King rests at the top of his spine, and each of his pale, freckled and heavy shoulderblades is covered with the design of a cousin: Fíli’s upon the right, Kíli’s upon the left. They are a reminder, etched into his flesh. They are a memory inked into his skin. They are a promise: I lead myself now, but I do not forget. I will make you proud. One day, I shall follow you once more.

Glóin sighs loudly and wearily. Nothing shocks him anymore. “I don’t have to wonder who inspired you to get those,” he growls, roughly cuffing at Gimli’s head. Gimli ducks. “You reckless little fool, inùdoy. I hope you lied to a reputable skin-artist, at least. You are certainly upholding your reputation as their apprentice and successor!”

Gimli does not resemble the elder line of Durin closely, despite the traits he shares with them: the broadness of his brow, his square shoulders and the hugeness of his hands. Their family is one of the lesser lines, the branch descended from the younger brother of the very first Dáin. Gimli himself is six whole generations removed from any Dwarf who wore a crown.

But he cocks his chin in the proud, confident way Fíli taught him, and grins as brightly as Kíli ever could – and he looks like them, if only for a moment.

“Aye,” he says, and his dark eyes shine with satisfaction and steely resolve. He can almost hear the laughter. “Aye, I will.”

...

END