Work Text:
DREAM I.
Your eyes your eyes your eyes
How many times have they cried in front of me -
they were bare, your eyes,
bare and vast like those of a child
but not for a day have they lost their sun.
Your eyes your eyes your eyes
should they get just a little languid, your
joyful, immensely intelligent, perfect eyes:
I'll make the world
resound with my love.
-Nazim Hikmet
"Mother!" he cried toward a maiden with a long blond braid, dressed in white. The dress swelled like a sail as the barefoot figure pranced across the misty, light moor. An immense field of wyvern tails, white as the bones of the dead. "Come, Dion! They are all dead, come and see how the flowers grow where soldiers die!"
She laughed, a laugh of silver bells. He never saw her eyes, but he knew they were amber-brown with long lashes.
"Mother!" he cried again. "Please, wait for me!"
He was a little boy. He ran after her, but she was so fast, she seemed to float. His bloody little legs were not keeping up. She was not waiting for him. Dion put stumbled down and fell. The wyvern tails wounded the skin of his legs, tugged at his clothes, stung the tender baby skin.
"Mother!"
The woman laughed as she ran toward the cliff at the edge of the field. "Mother, stop! You're going to fall!"
A white dress swelled once again, before disappearing downward, swallowed by the mist.
"Dion is too soft." Whispered the Cardinals, in their turquoise robes. "He will never be the champion of the Empire."
A golden room.
"My little dove." his father's voice was hoarse and metallic, a dragon's voice.
"You will fly high, for me, on wings of Light."
Belanus Tor, from above. The angle of Bahamut's wings as he turned: but they were black wings. The plain above was carmine red.
"You will give me the world."
Were they roses? Red heath plants? Or was it...
From below, shouts: "The Prince is with us!" but also, "The destroyer has come!"
His father's mouth twisted into a satisfied grin, "Yes, you will win me the world, won't you, Dion, my little dove?"
Nothing reached his eyes, cold as Valisthea's polar night: filled with a light that was not light. Pale. He looked down at him. The hand that wore the seal on his shoulder. "Right?"
A beat. The field of colorless grass, dozens of bodies piled like debris from a collapsing house. Red. Not heath, blood. Carmine-colored. "The destroyer."
Thrown on top of each other, falling disjointedly, in a flash. Arms and legs broken, skulls cracked, faces lifelessly turned to Metia. So close, suddenly very close. One of them's eyes were open. Blue-green eyes.
No. He felt nausea, a cry stuck in a parched throat. A heart, somewhere, launched into a desperate, erratic beat.
Not him. No. No.
"No." he replied, in his baby voice.
The hand on his shoulder squeezed tighter. "No?" his jaw and shoulders contracted, "You sadden me, my little dove. You disappoint me. All this vile, foolish tenderness!"
"Father, you hurt me." The fingers sank into his flesh like claws. Then the grip ceased, but the movement was abrupt, Dion collapsed to the ground, his small, ten-year-old knees gave way. He was weak, unfit to be a prince, a warrior, a son. The man walked away and returned with a white flower.
A wyvern tail. It had no scent: "A gift for you, little dove. To remind you what you were born for." His father's gaze was filled with blame and disgust. It was overflowing.
"Yes!"
He thrust the stem of the flower directly into his chest, at heart level: the flower pierced his clothes and flesh. The pain was real; it broke his breath. Dark, viscous blood dripped from the flower onto his chest: in an instant, his hands were soaked. It dripped onto the marble floor.
"Yes, Father. Forgive me. I will take the world for you! Don't go away!"
One beat, and he was lying next to Terence on the big bed in his royal chambers.
He was a man. The pain in his chest was distant, dull, but it was there. His beloved had his back to him. He knew those beloved freckles one by one. They were a constellation to him; it had the same power they had for sailors, lost in the immensity of the oceans.
"Terence..." he reached out a hand to caress him. The skin of his back was so cold. The window was wide open to a dark, silent night. "I had a horrible dream." He heard his voice break, and he cursed himself for his weakness.
Terence did not turn around. He was unnaturally still. The portraits in the mirror gallery were less still.
"Sweetheart," murmured Dion, shaking him gently, almost pleading.
Cold as morning wind, came Terence's voice. Dull, unrecognizable: "Remember to change the water in the wyvern tail’s pot."
Dion felt his heart hammering in his ears, "What did you say?" He felt a metallic taste in his mouth.
"It is the most important thing. It's who you are. Did you think I would have looked at you twice, if you were not the Prince, if you were not Bahamut? You're gorgeous, no doubt about it, but if I pay the Veil enough they would definitely find me someone who looks like you. Change the water to the vase, the flower is suffering."
He felt his chest contract, filled with unexpressed anguished sobs, "Terence. Please."
"There is no reason to whine."
His man turned around. It was Terence's face, but it was hard, full of disgust, and blame.
"My little dove."
He awoke to the sound of his own shouting. What he was shouting, he did not know. He was drenched in sweat, but he was cold. He was shivering. His heart was no longer aching, but it was flapping against his ribs like a trapped bird. He could not breathe.
A ringing in his ears, like when the clangour of steel against steel, in battle, leaves those dull sounds, and everything takes the shape of a cruel dream.
Is it real?
He was gasping for air, and breathing like a condemned man on his last steps. His mouth was completely parched. The sheets were sticking under his knees, the window was closed.
It was not the same room.
It was their tent, spartan, draped in the colors of Sanbreque, white on turquoise field, now light gray on dark gray, in the dark room. Halberd and sword leaned side by side, resting together.
He realized that two arms had enveloped him, that someone was speaking to him. It was a distant sound like the bells of the Cathedral of Winged Greagor, announcing the day of prayers. He focused on that sound. It was a very sweet voice. Terence's voice, emerging from the depths of a lake like a lily pad pushed down, and again opening to the air. "...Here, my prince. I am here. It's all right."
His Terence. He did not have the courage to turn around. Not yet. Anguish paralized his muscles.
He felt Terence's hand stroking his hair, softly, as if he were the most precious and delicate thing in the world.
"The wyvern tail...white..." he mumbled, trying to pull the dark-soaked fragments of images from his mind.
"It was a dream, my love." Terence's lips rested on his sweaty forehead. "They're not here, those damn flowers. It's just us: you and me."
Dion exhaled a shuddering sigh of relief, "I am awake."
"You are awake, my prince. You are here."
Terence cradled him in his embrace. Dion managed to move just enough to get more comfortable in his arms, resting his head in the crook of Terence’s neck and brushing his skin with the tip of his nose. His breathing was still labored, he dared not close his eyes or move his arms. "Terence."
He said. A statement: he said the name to make his lover even more real, as if names had the power to fill that moment with concreteness, and let the anguished images that had populated his night evaporate. Harpocrates said that dreams are the shadow of truth.
That was why Dion was still trembling. There was truth, no doubt, but also fears, lies, deceptions, concerted by his mind in turmoil. The war against Waloed was real. The flowers his father pinned to his chest were real. His mother had been real, though for Dion she was a tale long gone, another of the lives taken because he was Bahamut. But Terence...
His knight took Dion's hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed his phalanges one by one, with such tenderness that he felt tears sting his eyelids.
'Too soft.'
He clenched the hand Terence had between his own, capturing the other's fingers in a firm grip, but not enough to hurt him.
"My sweet prince..." he whispered, "What happened in your dreams?"
Dion threw his arms around Terence's neck and pressed them both to the mattress. Before he could stop them, long-held tears erupted. He sobbed against Terence's chest, filled with fear and shame.
"Forgive me..." he managed to say between sobs, and his voice sounded to him like the most pathetic sound produced by human lips. A pathetic child whimpering because he was weak, and throwing all the pain sprung from his fragile and cowardly nature onto the shoulders of the man he loved, and whom he was supposed to protect and make happy. "There is no reason to whine." He said, shuddering, repeating the same wordsTerence had addressed to him in the dream.
Terence let out a sigh, "Don't say that. I don't want to hear you blame yourself for your emotions. You can cry as long as you want, in fact, you do it too seldom, for all that..."
Dion felt his heart swell with relief and gratitude, but more tears came. No use trying to say anything vaguely comforting, or rational. Terence had no expectations: he never expected anything. He protected, he served, he loved.
He had no expectations.
He was reminded of his father. When he was little, he had for Dion motions of affection, he would call him my little dove, or little bird, or little golden dove, he would take him on his lap. But why didn't he remember these moments with warmth? Why did he remember that after these encounters, he took away only a great chill in his heart and a deep fear?
And a white flower.
Terence stroked him relentlessly, whispering comforting words and soft 'shhhs'.
Dion, slowly, calmed down. The sobs ceased, and left within him a silence of ruined cathedrals, exposed to the wind, deconsecrated.
Why was it that when they had begun to love each other, six years earlier, Dion had been afraid of the tenderness they exchanged? Like uncharted territory, populated by sweetnesses and pitfalls in equal measure? Why, at times, had he held Terence at arm's length, in his stomach a twisted snake whispering that those were not things for him?
That time had passed, but comes to visit him in dreams. Dreams, the infinite shadow of truth. His father hurt him, his eyes were icy, but his words were filled with tender names and sweetness. He caressed him, even.
Dion lifted himself from Terence's embrace, restless. He placed both hands on his chest. He called his name, sniffed and told him everything he remembered about the dream, while Terence's eyes dilated in anguish. Not once did he interrupt him. Only, he clasped his hands and stroked his face with the back of his fingers, gently.
When Dion recalled the final part of the dream, Terence's hand trembled in his.
Finally, silence fell. Dion waited, caught in a liminal terrain between relief and terror. He fixed his dark eyes in Terence's pale pupils. The aquamarine of his irises looked silver gray in the dim starlight; they were eyes full of love, there was no mistaking them.
Right?
His knight swallowed, "I'm sorry, love. I'm so sorry."
He took his face in his soft hands, roughened here and there by sword calluses: "But please, never, never doubt my love. It has little to do with the role the world imposes on you, or your powers. I cannot even remember a day when I did not love you, not even when you were a blond brat from a noble family, smart and good, spending time in the animal pens, filling them with attention, and wanting to know everything about our lands."
Dion chuckled, "Do you still remember everything? It seems like another life."
"But it isn't. It is ours. It is still ours: I remember everything that has to do with you, because you are the light that came into my life. It is not because you are the Guardian of Light. I am not talking about that: I am talking about how you have changed the brightness of my days. You know when Spring breaks through the frost of winter and you feel it for the first time? You must feel it, you cannot explain it. Since that day, it has been Spring for me: even in war, in pain, in uncertainty. And I would also have been happy in standing by your side and living by your reflected glow, you know. That would have been enough."
Tears streamed down Dion's face. He felt full of warmth, and love. That dream felt like an idiot's delusion; he no longer had power over him.
"Oh."
He kissed Terence on the mouth, once, twice, three, four times, then, with his lips still on his, he whispered: "You are my life. Happiness… you gave it to me. A destroyer, that's what I would be, without you. I would contend with Odin for dominion over the Darkness. I do not doubt your love, I am only terrified of losing you."
Terence kissed him again. This time it was a long, languid kiss that brought them lying together again, impossibly close, pressed tight against each other to match perfectly, as if they had been generated as a whole.
There was a pearl glow, suffused on the horizon. They could see it from a slit in the tent.
The hated dawn, come to bring a new day of duty, tasks and distance. Dion blinked eastward, cursing the rising sun. Terence entwined their fingers together, "It will never happen. And if it does happen, it means I will be dead."
"Or that I will be dead." Dion whispered gravely.
Terence let this sentence drop, but Dion felt his heart quicken under his cheek. He gave him a kiss on the chest, where that miraculous organ was, and it belonged to Dion, as his own belonged to Terence, for at least twenty years. He felt ready to close his eyes again, "Thank you, my love." He said.
Terence replied that he loved him. That he was beside him, and that he would protect him: even from himself. Dion knew this, and so did his body; he could only sleep well when he slept with Terence. The prince fell asleep to the sound of his voice. The image that accompanied him in his sleep was a memory.
The naked truth, without a shadow. It was Terence handing him a little dragon carved out of wood, which he had made; badly hewed, but the shape was recognizable. It was adorable. Dion had just returned from his father's rooms. As he picked up the toy, the terrible chill in his heart dissipated.
Terence smiled at him, glad that he liked the gift: the sun returned and dried the fog.
DREAM II.
“To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep—
To sleep—perchance to dream.”
-Shakespeare, Hamlet
He was flying on Bahamut's wings. Silver wings in the light of a full moon. Metia hung like a ruby on an immense cobalt blue velvet robe. The wind filled all his senses, it lashed across his face, and he could barely keep his eyes open. In his heart there was an indefinable expectation. A vague curiosity...a sense of freedom and suspension. He knew it was impossible, but he smelled a scent of night jasmine.
In his mind, echoed his prince's dear voice, distorted and amplified by his Eikon: "Hold on tight, we'll get down fast!"
Then, he found himself hurtling toward the milky veil of a waterfall. He squeezed his eyes shut, felt the icy water, then it was darkness.
A flash of light, and they were beyond the veil. Terence was standing. In front of him stretched a secret cave, hidden from the eyes of the world by the waterfall: smooth dark rocks surrounded a small pond in which reflections of starlight flashed, leaking through cracks in the rock. A small patch of soft moss dotted with forget-me-nots, over which Dion had spread a thick cloak of turquoise velvet.
Dion sat down. He held out her arms to him, "Come," he said, his mesmerizing figure dressed in white.
Terence lay down beside him, his heart pounding. Everything is perfect, everything is wonderful. You are wonderful.
Dion heard him, "You are the love of my life. No one will be here but the two of us. No one will ever find this place."
Because it doesn't exist.
Terence found himself thinking. From motionless distances, a wave of sadness enveloped him.
"You are not here." An ashen hand gripped his throat. He shook a blond lock from Dion's forehead as he stared at that beautiful, ethereal face with religious passion and torment. The reflections on the water were too bright, the beam of light refracted in flickering colors. It could not be real. From where was all that ligh coming through?
Dion took his face in his hands, with a wounded expression "What are you saying, my darling? I am here, and we are together. It's your birthday, and we've come here many times, remember? We come here every year."
Terence shook his head. "Dion. You fell from the sky. You cannot be here."
His prince gave him a bitter smile. His eyes were two shiny amber almonds, full of love and melancholy. He passed his hands over his face, leaned down to kiss his forehead, his cheeks, his neck. Elegant tapering fingers fumbled with the buttons of his doublet, then slid across his chest. Terence gritted his teeth, feeling desire run over him like a fever: "You say strange things, my dear love." He giggled, his breath hot on his ear. Terence was seized by an intense shiver. "Stop talking nonsense."
Terence stopped thinking and pounced on his lips, devouring them. You are here.
The melody of water covered the sound of their kisses.
Mine.
My Prince.
You came back to me at last. Or I joined you, eventually.
It was him, because his skin smelled the way he remembered. Always warm, smooth, the color of pale amber.
"Oh, my prince..."
Bathed in his warmth, he no longer felt the cool feel of the grass and the softness of the cloak. Everything was him. Their eyes were impossibly close, there was no space between their bodies. Excitement and tenderness held him there, surrendering in Dion's arms.
The prince's eyelashes tickled his cheek.
Then, he spoke, "You must not be sad." He said. Terence looked at him, confused.
"I am Light. I will watch over you and find you again, and again."
Terence opened his eyes. The pillow was soaked with tears.
Alone, in a dusty room, on top of a stiff straw mattress. Dion was not there.
Reality swept over him like a thick, oily wave. Twinside. Origin. The medicine girl. The escape. He sat abruptly, doubled over by nausea.
He dressed, went out onto the moor, collapsed on the steps and wept.
The marsh was the exact replica of his heart: colorless, squeezed in a grip of poisonous exhalations, without a flower, or a living, happy being, only rapid lapping on the surface, movements of unknown, restless creatures. Every sound seemed hesitant, unsure of life: an eternal leaden twilight hung over everything.
His chest jerked restlessly. He had lost his light forever. There was no reason to wander around the world, now that love and joy and tenderness visited him only at night. He would have asked the medicine girl to make him a hypnoinducing concoction that would make him sleep as much as possible. To sleep and dream.
That thought gave him an absurd, sick comfort. But in his mind, Dion shook his head, filled with melancholy. Those eyes, which were pure gold in the sun, were brimming with guilt and helplessness. When would the day come when he would stop remembering precisely his face?
He precipitated again into a soft cry.
There is nothing left here for me.
The light changed in the lagoon. Everything became a dark indigo. A few fireflies pulsed intermittently like small, golden, moving stars. They seemed to contract matching the rhythm of his crying.
At that moment, he felt two slender arms wrap themselves around his back, slowly.
He held his breath. The deafening chirping of the crickets ceased, then began again.
A light weight, right in the center of his shoulder blades. A small head that had leaned against him.
Kihel.
Terence did not stop crying. Something, however, inside him, hatched: a small flame, a dim, pleasant warmth. Kihel's heartbeat was faster than his own; she was so tiny.
Her arms were too short to embrace him entirely. Terence covered her cold, small hands with his. They stayed like that for an indefinable time, until Terence turned slowly toward her, loosening their embrace. Her large hazel eyes were moist with tears.
Terence stroked her hair softly, her cheek. It was his first gesture of affection toward her.
"Thank you."
The maiden nodded sadly.
Then Terence held out his hand to her; he had something, for her. Not even an idea: a feeling, blossomed from memory. He wished to consecrate that instant, and make a promise. Or rather, keep it.
Dion had written him that Kihel needed love. That she deserved it. It was his last wish: wish for a creature to be loved, to have a family. Dion knew damn well what it was like not to have that love. And he had chosen Terence to fill that void and raise a happy creature.
It was the greatest honor, and the act of deepest trust and love.
Kihel put her little hand in his. She was much smaller than a normal twelve-year-old girl, but she would grow. She would blossom.
He led her inside their temporary hovel. In his bag, a silly heirloom Dion had carried with him since the beginning of the war. A small dragon carved out of wood. He had no idea if Kihel was already old enough for such toys. He placed the object on her open hand.
"For you." He said, with his heart threatening to fall to the floor.
Kihel looked at him with an indefinable mixture of wonder and fear: "Was that a gift for your Prince?"
How she knew, Terence ignored. He swallowed a lump of tears as Dion, eighteen years in the past, smiled at him dispelling his doubts, beaming.
"It was, once. It's yours now, if you want it."
Two big tears welled up in the girl's eyes, "I never had a gift before."
Terence swallowed, "Do you like it?"
The girl nodded, overwhelmed. She clutched the little dragon to her chest, and threw herself into Terence's arms. He held her close.
He would protect her. He would love her. She was the last part of Dion living in this world, but she was also a lovely creature who deserved to be loved for herself. A plan formed in his mind. A purpose, albeit fragile as crystal.
Two creaures of life and pain, clutched together, in an unnamed marsh.
Terence smiled, looked up and said to the fireflies, "Thank you, my love, for finding me again."