Work Text:
Fili tries so hard to be the strong one, is biting his lips to keep back the sounds, but the tears fall anyway and the whimpers worm their way from his throat. They've come so far and fought so hard, in this land that isn't really theirs but their uncle's, surrounded by more bodies than Fili thinks he's ever seen, and still the battle wages on.
Kili is crying next to him and Fili thinks his heart can still ache for the arrow piercing it because as much pain as he is in, two arrows in his chest, one in the thigh and breath coming in short, he cannot stand the quiet sobs and gasps from Kili's lips. He tries to reach out for his younger and comfort him, despite the mewl is brings from his mouth as his wounds protest. He can't be a good big brother with Kili frightened and crying for their mother.
Thorin kneels between them, face a mix of forced neutrality and anguish. He too is wounded, and Fili thinks it was all for naught. They had leapt into harm's way to save their uncle, and still they have failed for the blood soaking through his tunic and thick leather jerkin. And then Thorin is pulling him close and he is resting against his uncle's chest, and Kili is on the opposite shoulder, and he tries -fails- not to cry out as the movement jars his injuries. He thinks this must be hurting his uncle, to have his nephews press so against his own wounds, but he is grateful to be held in what he knows are his last moments, to have his brother and king with him at the end.
Kili is still whimpering, burying his face in Thorin's bloody chest and gasping that it hurts, Uncle Thorin is hurts so much and Thorin is leaning his face in Kili's hair and murmuring to him, to them both, that he knows and he is so so proud of them, his nephews, his heirs, his sister-sons who have been so much his own children as their mother's. And Fili sobs despite himself when Thorin pulls away from Kili to press kisses in his own hair because his king is weeping and keeps breathing into his ear how proud he is and how much he loves them and how he is so so sorry for bringing them to this. And Fili cannot breath enough to tell him it's all right, they would have followed their uncle, their king, anywhere.
But he cannot speak anymore, not even to whimper or cry, and he reaches up to grasp Thorin's braids like he used to when he was a wee dwarrow sitting on his knee, and he can't quite get his hand up high enough to touch them. Fili hears a choked sound, caught between a laugh and a sob, a sound of memories and misery, and Thorin's hand is guiding his own and he finds the braid in his fingers, looks to see Thorin help Kili to hold the other.
He rests his head on Thorin's chest, although it is less resting and more slumped desperately, and strokes the hair in between his fingers, watches his brother do the same on the other side of his uncle. Thorin's voice comes to him, a vibration that rumbles in his chest, a slow lullaby they used to beg for whenever he'd visit, when they'd lay exactly this way, all crammed in their bed in the blue mountains and Fili almost smiles, tilts his forehead against Kili's, whose eyes are dry and blank and faraway, and lets himself be sung into sleep, into the next life.
Thorin sits alone with his dead heirs on his chest, their hands in his braids, and keeps singing to them, kissing their hair and weeping until their is an orc spear in his back and he does not have the breath to sing anymore, and he falls back with them in his arms, lips still mouthing to words to the lullaby, and thinks he will be with them soon, thinks, for an instant, that he can hear them singing to him as the world goes white.