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She is in the kitchen when she hears the screaming. She doesn’t drop the bowl she is washing, but she does stop scrubbing it, holding still and listening. Her house is tucked into one of the better places of Ered Luin, where the rocks are sturdy and the air is clean. There are always children here, playing between the houses and on the high, curving staircases, shrieking and laughing and chasing each other as long as daylight slips in through the holes carved out high up the mountain side. Fighting is not unusual, and some child or another always begins screaming at some point, every day--it may not be her children.
The screaming is tinged with hysteria, though, and she is already setting the bowl back into the washing basin when she hears the front door slam open.
“Mother!” Fili’s voice shouts, and Dis slips a boning knife into her pocket before rushing from the kitchen.
Fili is standing in the open doorway, squinting into the house, and when Dis gets close enough, she can see that there are scratches on his face. The screaming is growing louder, more shrill and more hysterical, and Dis doesn’t ask Fili what has happened--it is always the same, every time she lets Kili out to play.
The street is far brighter than her house, pierced with sharp squares of sunlight, and the light dazzles her. She blinks, turning, and Fili grabs her hand, tugging her to the left.
“He won’t stop,” Fili says, and Dis squeezes his hand firmly, then lets go so she can grab up her skirts and run.
Kili isn’t far, only around the next corner, and there is a small group of children, all of them fighting amongst themselves, pinching and biting each other, shouting and crying. Kili is in the center of the group, lying on the ground, thrashing and wailing, and there is another boy on top of him, pinning him to the ground. Kili is scratching at the boy, pulling his hair and trying to bite him, and the boy is punching Kili as steadily as a brutal little machine.
“Go home!” Dis barks, and the nearest children shy away from her, flinching back and then turning and running. Most of the children, though, pay her no mind, and she wades through them to where Kili is being beaten.
The little boy straddling Kili doesn’t stop punching him, even when Dis grabs him; when Dis lifts the child up, he claws at her arms, then swings his arms wildly, as though that will give him the reach necessary to hit Kili again.
“Give him to me, Dis,” a dwarf says. There are dwarves gathering, all women, and one of them is holding her arms out. “That’s Askr’s boy--always making trouble, I’ll get him home.”
Dis doesn’t want to give the child up--she wants to beat him bloody, as brutally as he’s beaten Kili; she settles for giving the child a good hard shake, then shoves him into the waiting dwarf’s arms. The dwarf tucks the boy under her arm, pinching his ear as she does it, and says, “I’m sorry for the trouble, Dis.”
Kili is curled up on the ground now, his arms curled around his head, and he is still screaming. The bits of Kili’s face that Dis can see are covered in blood and spit, and Dis wants nothing more than to take a stick to all of the mountain’s children. She swallows hard, then crouches, reaching out to touch Kili’s arms. Kili only curls up tighter and screams all the louder. This will be done the hard way, then.
She tucks a hand under each of Kili’s armpits, then lifts him up. The movement sets Kili off again, and he begins beating at her with his fists, hitting everywhere he can reach: her face, her throat, her shoulders. One hit lands on her lip, made powerful by Kili’s rage and fear, and Dis feels her lip split. She pulls him close, wrapping her arms around him, and forces his head down against her breast. He retaliates by biting her in the soft flesh between her shoulder and her breast, and Dis bites back a curse.
He bites her, scratches her, pinches and kicks and thrashes, trying to break free the entire walk home. For all that home is only around the corner, the struggle home seems forever long with a mad little dwarf squirming and fighting in her arms. Fili follows Dis obediently, out of reach of Kili’s feet, and when Dis pants, “Go and open the door, Fili,” Fili runs ahead.
Dis’s arms don’t lessen Kili’s fit at all, nor the cool darkness of the house, or even being held in the rocking chair. It seems to take hours, clutching a squirming, struggling Kili, rocking him and singing to him and holding back the tears when he scratches and bites like an angry cat. When Kili finally falls asleep, going soft and mild in Dis’s arms, Dis is nearly ready to weep. She tucks Kili close to her, folding his arms and legs in against her stomach, and holds him as she rocks.
Fili has been hiding in his room, but now that Kili’s crying has stopped, he edges back into Dis’s bedroom, coming just inside the door. Dis smiles at him as best she can, then whispers, “Fetch me a cloth, and some water.”
She can hear him digging around through the kitchen, and when he comes back he is carrying a big bowl of water, with a handful of cloths already floating in the bowl. He sits on the bed, holding the bowl in his lap, and he stays quiet as she squeezes out a cloth and begins to clean Kili’s face.
Kili is a mess, covered in blood and spit and snot, and for all that he is asleep, he twitches and whimpers as Dis cleans the scrapes and cuts. There is blood on his lips and in his mouth, so she slips a finger past his lips, feeling for any cracked teeth. She presses damp, clean cloths against the bruises that are already swelling on his face, then takes his little hands and wipes them clean. There is blood beneath his fingernails, dried to a rusty brown, and there are teethmarks on his left wrist. His fingers aren’t broken, though, and neither are his wrists, and she is thankful for that.
“He pushed him,” Fili says abruptly, when Dis is running her fingers along Kili’s arms, checking the bones. “Vindarr caught Kili and Kili got mad, so he pushed him.”
“You were playing?” Dis asks. There are no broken bones, only scrapes and bruises. When she shifts Kili, he makes a soft sound and presses his face against her belly. The love she feels for him at that moment feels enormous, larger than the mountain range, deeper than the mines. She wants to hold Kili forever, wants to hunt down the children who hurt him, and hurt them as badly. She is angry--so angry that her son is battered again.
“Chain tag,” Fili says slowly, as though he’s frightened of being scolded. Dis swallows, then reaches out, pats Fili’s knee gently.
“It is no one’s fault,” she says. Fili gives her a hesitant smile and she smiles back at him, as reassuringly as she can. “Go and wash your face,” she says, “and I will put something on the scratches.”
She lets them sleep in her bed that night. Once Kili wakes up, late in the afternoon, he is clingy and won’t let go of her skirts. Fili is just as clingy, though in his own way: he follows Dis and Kili from room to room, lurking in the doorways and watching everything Dis does. Dis ignores tension in the house, puts all of her energy into chatting as brightly as she can, tickling Kili’s sides and ruffling Fili’s hair and teasing her boys until they smile.
It is easiest, when it’s dark, to tell them that they’ll have a sleepover. A treat, she says, and they race to put on their nightshirts. Kili must still feel awful, because he doesn’t jump on her bed--he settles for curling up against Dis, pressing his little face against her breasts, and she plays with his hair as Fili jumps up and down on the bed with wild whoops.
Fili falls asleep first, after jumping himself into pure exhaustion. Dis tucks him into her bed, then tucks herself in, Kili snugged up beside her. Kili struggles to fall asleep, dozing and then waking up in starts.
He is so difficult--such a difficult child, and Dis doesn’t know why she was given such a strange little dwarf. When the hour is late and Dis is half-asleep herself, Kili begins to cry.
“You’re tired,” she says, patiently as she can. “Close your eyes, go to sleep.”
“I’m not,” Kili cries, ugly gasping sobs that make him sound as though he is choking, “I’m not, I’m not--”
He fights her, pushing and kicking, and she drags him out of the bed before he can hurt Fili. She lifts him up into her arms, holding him tightly, and he throws his arms around her neck, fisting his hands in her hair and shoving his face against her neck. She can feel him crying, the tears and the heat of his bruised cheeks, and she hurts for him.
“I love you,” she whispers, and she sits in the rocking chair, rocking him as he cries. “I love you, Kili, I love you.”
x
Thorin has always had the worst timing, ever since they were children. When Thorin comes to visit, he comes when Kili’s face looks the worst. The bruises are huge things, turning Kili’s face into horrible patches of purple and blue and green and yellow, and Kili has been scratching at his scabs whenever Dis’s back is turned, opening the scrapes and cuts.
Dis is in the boys’ bedroom, searching for a missing coat, when Thorin knocks on the door, and Kili opens the door before Dis can leave the bedroom.
“Kili--”
Thorin’s voice sounds livid and Dis covers her face, cursing quietly. When Thorin calls her name loudly, she pushes her braids over her shoulders, then squares her shoulders and leaves the boys’ bedroom.
“What,” Thorin asks her, not even lowering her voice, “happened?”
“Fili,” Dis says first, looking at Fili, “take Kili to the kitchen and see if you can any sweets for your uncle.”
Thorin holds his tongue as Fili grabs Kili’s hand and pulls him from the room, but as soon as the boys are gone he rounds on Dis, saying, “Kili’s face, and Fili’s--yours--”
Dis licks her lips, feeling the split that Kili’s fighting had given her, and says, “Kili got in a fight.” When Thorin makes an ugly sound, she adds, “With another child. They were playing a game and there was a disagreement.”
“A disagreement--” Thorin takes a hissing breath, then snaps, “He looks as though he was beaten, Dis.”
“You know how brutal children can be,” Dis says as evenly as she can. Thorin is only looking angrier, so she touches his arms, then tugs his hair gently. “It’s nothing, it was only a spat. Kili is fine, he barely even remembers.”
Thorin hardly seems comforted, but Fili and Kili are coming back into the room now, and their hands are filled with the candied cherries Dis has been saving. Thorin sits on the floor with the boys, holding out his hands, and Kili and Fili dump the cherries into Thorin’s hands. Dis snatches one of the cherries for herself, then goes to the kitchen to find something to feed Thorin while Thorin entertains the boys.
When she brings out a bowl of meat and bread, Thorin is still in the same spot, watching Kili and Fili play with their toys. The boys’ hands must be horribly sticky, and Dis will have to clean all of the toys tonight, but it’s a small price to pay for peace. She sits beside Thorin, and leans against his shoulder as he eats. When he’s finished, he wraps an arm around her, as affectionate as he will ever be with her.
“It’s truly alright?” he asks late in the night, when she has put the boys to bed. Thorin had helped, as much as he ever does, throwing the boys in the air and carrying them under his arms, roaring like a dragon and chasing them around the house as they screamed with laughter. Riled up, the boys had taken hours to finally fall asleep, but they’re asleep now, exhausted from playing with Thorin.
“It’s fine,” Dis tries to assure him. She tosses him a rag and says, “Wipe down the table, if you would.”
While Thorin is wiping the table, she readies the bed in the spare room, throwing off the dust sheet and pulling a pillow out from the blanket chest. She folds an extra blanket, lays it across the foot of the bed, and then sits on the edge of the bed. She wishes there was more she could do--she wishes she was closer to her brother, than she could find some way to tell him how lost she sometimes feels, raising two boys who are so very different.
“Dis?” Thorin asks. He’s standing in the doorway, frowning at her, and she sighs, smooths her skirts over her knees.
“It’s nothing,” she says, “I’m only a little tired.”
He catches her when she pushes past him in the doorway, pulls her close enough that he can press his forehead against hers.
“Sleep well,” he says gently, and she smiles at him, squeezes his arm and says,
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
x
When she goes to wake up Fili and Kili, the boys’ bed is half-empty. Fili is sprawled out under the covers, his head lying on the mattress rather than the pillow; the place next to him, where Kili sleeps, is empty.
It’s not unusual--Kili never seems to sleep well, is always waking up in the middle of the night, hungry or cold or frightened by some night terror. Usually, though, he comes to her room and crawls into her bed, and her bed is empty this morning. She checks the kitchen first, in case he got up in search of food, and then she goes to peak into the spare room.
Kili is sleeping in Thorin’s bed: he is lying on his stomach, one of his arms thrown over Thorin. Thorin is lying there as well, but he’s awake, looking at the doorway. When he sees Dis, he raises his eyebrows, and Dis slips into the room as quietly as she can, tiptoeing to the side of the bed.
“He was crying,” Thorin says in a low whisper when Dis sits on the side of the bed, next to Thorin’s hip. “I thought, rather than waking you....” He trails off and Dis sighs, shifting so she can tuck a leg beneath her.
“He has difficulty sleeping,” she says after a while. Kili’s hair is mussed, sticking up in the back, and she leans over Thorin so she can smooth it out. “It’s better, now, but he still wakes during the night.”
Thorin makes a thoughtful hum, pats Kili’s arm in an absent manner. “Isn’t he--” Thorin cuts himself off, then says, as he is looking anywhere but Dis’s eyes, “I don’t remember Fili crying so much.”
“No.” Dis says it slowly, unable to keep from frowning. “Fili never cried much at all. Kili is--” She pauses, presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “Kili is different,” she settles for saying. “Things are difficult for him.”
She leaves Thorin to wake the boys and get them ready for the day. The days Thorin spends in her house are days to be savored: he takes care of the boys, keeping them entertained and out from under her feet, and she takes advantage of every free hour she gets. She cleans the house, beating rugs and flipping mattresses and restocking the pantry. Thorin takes over the boys’ lessons, working with Fili on his numbers and with Kili on his letters, and it is a treat for the boys, a chance for the boys to compete for Thorin’s pride and affection.
And wherever Thorin goes, others are soon to follow.
By the third night, word has spread that Thorin is Ered Luin, and Dis’s house fills with dwarves. Tables are brought from neighboring houses, and chairs from wherever they can be found, until there is little room to walk. Each dinner becomes a small feast, the tables groaning under the weight of platters of meat and sausages, baskets of thick breads, and pots of soup and stew. There is plenty to eat, and even more to drink, wine and beer both.
The dwarves make a great deal of Fili and Kili, listening to the boys ramble at length, admiring their toys and remarking on their energy. Fili is certainly the pet of the dwarves: his hair is spoken of at length, and how lucky it is to have a golden-haired child from two dark-haired parents; he recites his lessons and the dwarves say, What a smart child, and A good heir.
For all that Fili is the favorite, Thorin turns nearly all of his attention on Kili. He carries Kili about, on his shoulders and on his back and tucked under his arm, like Kili is so much luggage. He lets Kili sit on his lap, and whenever Kili points at something on the table, Thorin grabs it for him, feeds Kili from his hand.
Dis watches it all, as strangers flock around Fili and as Thorin tends to Kili, and wonders if Thorin’s love is really only pity.
She’s not surprised when Kili has a fit. She’s only surprised that it has taken so long, and that Kili has the fit early in the day, before her house is overrun with strangers.
She is sitting at the table with Thorin and Dwalin, listening to them discuss the roads to the Iron Hills. Dwalin has just returned, bearing letters from kin spread eastward, and Thorin has already pocketed his letters, sliding them away as though he’s scared someone will steal them. Dis has left hers on the table, a thick pile of letters from Sindri and Finnra, a small package from Andvari. There are gifts for Fili and for Kili, wrapped in oilcloth and tied with string, and Dis has already hidden them away to bring out as a surprise in the evening.
She’s fiddling with one of Kili’s toys, a wooden bird with flapping wings that broke a week ago. She’s turning it over in her hands, trying to decide if she’ll be able to fix the broken wing, when Kili begins wailing. It is a hideous sound, more like an animal than a dwarf, and Dis is up from the table and running to the boys’ room before Fili even begins to shout for her.
Fili’s standing in the doorway of the bedroom, his shoulders lifted high and his face pale, and Dis grabs him, pulling him back and saying, “Go to Thorin,” before she steps into the room.
Kili is standing in the middle of the room, his hands clenched into fists at his side, his feet planted firmly on the floor. He is facing away from her, toward the wall, and she can see his entire body shake as he cries.
“Kili,” she says, and her voice is nearly drowned out by his wails. She touches his shoulders gently and feels them tense up, rising up toward Kili’s ears. His crying seems to get louder, shriller, and Dis crouches behind Kili, pulling him back until his back is pressed against her body. “Kili, sweetling, what’s wrong?”
His body is stiff and unyielding, like anxiety and fear bound up in physical form, and Dis wraps her arms firmly around him. She can hear Fili saying, “Nothing, I didn’t do anything,” and she tucks her head in against Kili’s body, pressing her cheek against his ribs. She can feel his body shudder as he cries, his chest lifting and falling in an awkward pattern.
“Kili,” she murmurs, “you’ll make yourself sick.”
She crouches there, wrapped around him, until the muscles in her legs are cramping. She shifts, letting her heels slide further apart, and stands, picking Kili up. It is a mistake--as soon as she moves him, he lashes out, his sobbing picking up pace until he is screaming. He throws his arms and legs out, punching and kicking at the air and Dis both. Dis hikes him up in her arms, turning him so she can hide his face in against her shoulder, and she presses her face against the top of his head, kissing his hair and whispering, “Shh, shh, you’re fine, Kili--”
He is crying too hard to bite her, which she counts a mercy. His fighting fades, until he lying limply in her arms, crying as though the world is ending. She sits on the boys’ bed, Kili lying against her chest, and she rocks him from side to side, whispering nonsense into his ears.
He can’t soothe himself--whenever his crying slows, he chokes on his breath, painful sounding hiccups, and that only sets him up to crying even harder. She can feel his body getting hotter as he wails, and his face, pressed against her neck and breast, is wet with sweat and tears. He’s insensible now, she is sure--trapped in his own heartache, crying because he can’t stop crying.
She can no longer hear Fili, nor Thorin and Dwalin, and she hopes that they’ve taken Fili out of the house, to some place happier, where they can give him the attention he deserves (and needs, she thinks to herself--all the attention that Fili needs, and that Dis cannot give him, because Kili’s needs are so much greater than Fili’s). Dis sits there on the bed, cradling the body of her youngest son, and she feels so alone; Kili’s gone away in his head, and nothing she says or does seems to help.
And Mahal, but she misses Andvari: his voice, and his arms, and the way that nothing could alarm him, not even Kili’s fits. She misses the way he would sling Kili up beneath his arm and carry Kili around the house until Kili stopped crying; she misses the way he would let Fili cling to his leg, to be dragged along like millstone; she misses the way that he would kiss her hair and murmur empty nothings to her the same way that she whispers empty nothings to Kili. She misses her husband, because he had understood something in Kili, some piece of Kili’s heart that Dis will never be able to understand.
It takes hours for Kili to truly stop crying, and he makes himself sick during it, throwing up and making himself cry all the more. It is a battle to strip his clothes from him and wash his body, and when he is clean, she wraps cold, damp cloths around him to cool him from his crying. She tickles his feet and kisses his stomach and tells him, “I love you, Kili. I love you, I love you, I love you--”
She tells him, “I will make your favorite food,” and “We’ll chase the cats tonight,” and “I’m here, I’ll never leave you.” He clings to her, his tiny hands wrapped tight in her hair, and she clings back to him, unsure how she got such a changling child, unsure if she can ever be what he needs.
By the time Kili is dry of tears, Dis feels just as drained, as though she has moved the entire mountain by herself. She kisses his hot, wet cheeks, where his bruises are all green and yellow, and swallows down the threat of her own tears.
“Let’s take a nap,” she whispers into his hair. “I’ll tell you a story, anything you want, and it will just be us--”
He says nothing, just clings to her all the tighter, and she tucks them into the bed, pulling the blankets over their heads. She tells him a story of a miner and a princess, whispering the words as he sleeps fitfully beside her. It is hot beneath the blankets, dark and smothering, and she wonders if this is what being in the womb is like. For a moment, she wishes that she had never given birth to Kili, that he had always stayed inside her, where she could have kept him properly safe.
She is lying there, listening to Kili’s uneven breaths, when she hears someone come into the room. The footsteps are heavy, carrying the weight of an adult dwarf, and it must be Thorin, because no one else would come into the room without her invitation. The footsteps stop, and then the bed sinks down as Thorin sits on the edge of it.
“Dis,” Thorin says, and he pulls the blankets down until Dis is blinking against the light of the room. “He’s stopped crying?”
“He’s asleep,” she tells him, and she pulls her knees up further, as though she can tuck Kili back into her body, where he’ll be safe.
Thorin sits there, on the edge of the bed, looking at his hands and saying nothing. His face looks grave, lines etched around his mouth, and Dis swallows back her tears again.
“There is nothing wrong with him,” she says softly. Her voice shakes, as though she is already crying. She thinks of how Kili gets lost in his rage, how he hits and scratches and bites, how he cries until he makes himself sick. “It is only,” she lies, “that he is so young, and he doesn’t know how to soothe himself.”
“Is it?” Thorin asks her, and his voice sounds as ragged as hers; she wonders where they went so wrong, how their family has broken apart so completely.
“I don’t,” she says, and the tears feel like they’re burning her face; she feels so much, like her heart is bursting from the heat and pain of it, and she wonders if this is how Kili feels all the time; she wonders how he hasn’t gone mad with it yet, “know why he hurts.”
Thorin says nothing to that. He tugs the top blanket a bit, until he has slack in it, and he touches it to Dis’s face, drying her tears with the edge of the blanket. It is ridiculous, and it is heartbreaking, and it makes her cry all the more.
“I wish,” she says, “that I could give him my heart, instead.”