Chapter Text
Every once in a while, Dior dreamed of his death.
When nightmares came to him, they were most often of his children: Elwing, grown and gaunt and frightened at the edge of a cliff, clutching that thrice-damned jewel so hard her fingers bled; Elurín and Eluréd, shivering in the snowy woods, alone.
But tonight, he was in Menegroth again.
The air of the caves was cold and bitter-biting; the stones beneath his feet were stained dark with blood. All around him came the clashing of steel, and the wailing of grief, and the howling of the winter wind—the stench of blood filled up his throat—
—he whirled, catching his bearings—
Near him, Nimloth lay still as a broken doll, her white hair splayed about her blood-spattered face like the veil of a rotting mushroom, her throat pierced through so deep that she had not even been able to gasp.
And he was there—the Kinslayer, the monster of his childhood bedtime tales; just as Dior’s mother had described him, a tall, sneering demon with eyes that burned with green flame, and a crooked, crazed grin full of sharp white teeth. Sometime during the battle, he had lost his helm, and his silver braids whipped like shining long knives. At first, he’d moved like a mountain cat, prowling and sure-footed; now that only the two of them remained alive, he more resembled a rabid wolf, all its pack fled or slain, wild-eyed and desperate.
The tip of his spear was still dark with Nimloth’s blood.
In life they had spoken, if only a little, traded cruel words between crueler blows; in dream, in memory, they blurred in vicious silence. Darkness churned around the two points of those terrible bright eyes, shining like white-tinged fire against the gloom. Vines whipped in the air, and flew to aid Dior, encircling his enemy and tangling his armor in dark twisting ropes; Celegorm met his magic with dextrous strength and a determined snarl. Back and forth they struck at one another, evenly matched, locked into each other for what felt like an eternity.
Harried and exhausted, he was barely even thinking, by the time his sword found its home.
It slammed in beneath his enemy’s heart, and drew shakingly back out again. Wide-eyed, Celegorm made a horrible, strangled sound, and stumbled to his knees.
Dior might have gloated; he might have run—but he did not.
Because Celegorm had a little life left in him yet—and his spear, still gripped in his gauntleted hands, had plunged through Dior’s chest.
In reality, Dior had collapsed to the ground in near-unison with Celegorm, and heaved in shallow, ragged breaths; he had lain there in silence, twitching feebly, for what might have been minutes or hours. He did not know which of them had died first; he only knew that as his last strength seeped away, he’d taken some small, bitter pride in having taken Celegorm down with him.
But in his dream, as he staggered and fell, Celegorm lunged upon him in a blur of impossibly-regained strength, and pinned him to the ground. His hands crushed down over Dior’s open wound (the spear had mysteriously vanished), tearing it open wetly in a screaming burst of new pain; his cold green gaze was that of an animal’s, slitted and unthinking and wild.
His face hovered over Dior’s, blood-streaked and savage, his awful lips curled in a wide, sneering snarl. His teeth glinted in his dark open maw, slick-sharp and dripping, as he bent his silver head—
—and, in a sickening rip of red flesh, tore out Dior’s throat.
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Dior woke up gasping, twisting furiously in the sweat-drenched sheets, clawing at his chest and throat for wounds that were not there.
For a moment, he could not tell where he was; the remnants of his dream clung still behind his eyes, and in his sleep, he had caused countless flowers to bloom: vines of bittersweet nightshade that wound over the walls and tangled around the bedposts; shoots of wolfsbane sprouting up from the carpet. Poisonous purple beauty, wreathing from his sheets.
At first he flinched from the flash of silver hair above him—until he realized its hue was too pale to be Celegorm’s, and that the face peering out from behind it was his wife’s.
His hand found Nimloth’s, and she squeezed it, the rough, calloused skin of her fingers enfolding his palm. “Are you all right?” she said, peering out of a bristling halo of purple blooms.
“Dream,” Dior got out, pushing himself upright. “Battle.”
“Sarn Athrad?”
He shook his head. “Menegroth,” he rasped out. “Dying.”
With her free hand, she brushed his sweat-slick curls from his face; her hand was cool against his skin, soothing the fever-pulsing heat of his heart. “Breathe,” she told him, in her brisk, steady, reassuring manner. “Let it pass. You are alive, and so am I, and none of them are here.”
At her direction, he drew in deep lungfuls of air, while she held fast to his hand. Patches of angry red had begun to spring up on her light brown skin where the toxic wolfsbane had brushed her; she weathered it in silence, until Dior regained enough of his senses to smooth his shaking fingers over the areas of contact, healing them in a burst of quiet power. He concentrated, and the nest of wolfsbane and nightshade twitched away—receding from their bed, though not disappearing entirely.
At last, when Dior closed his eyes, he ceased to see Celegorm’s face behind them, blood-drenched and snarling; his heartbeat slowed, and the phantom pain eased away.
“Sorry about the mess,” he said, opening his eyes with a rueful half-smile. His nightmares had more destructive effects than Nimloth’s; at least this time, it was only flowers. “And sorry to wake you, beloved.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” she assured him. She blinked at him with her bright, owlish eyes, examining him cannily, like one of her beloved specimens: “Meril and I were going to go into the woods in a few hours to observe the eagle-owls. Would you rather I stay here?”
Guilt pierced through him; he shook it away. He would do the same, for her; he had done the same, many times, and had never minded it. “If it isn’t too much trouble,” he said, quietly.
She smiled at him: half-quirked and knowing, with an edge of sorrow. Everything, it seemed, had an edge of sorrow, even here in Aman: here in their cottage, deep in the trees of Taur-na-Dúlin, where Dior and Nimloth had forsaken their royal duties to tend their grief alone.
“We can go another night,” she told him. “We have all the time in the world.”
“That we do,” agreed Dior, softly.
She kissed his cheek, pulled on a pair of leather gloves, and weeded out the last of the poisonous flowers from their bed. Then she slipped back beneath the sheets, and curled herself around him protectively, her strong arm wrapped tightly about his shoulders. His half-wild huntress of a wife; his beautiful, brilliant scientist. What would he do without her? Leaning into her, he took comfort in the thumping of her heartbeat: gentle and steady, thrumming against his own. Alive, alive, alive. He was alive, and his wife was alive, and their dear friend Meril was alive; his daughter was alive, as little as he saw her. (His sons, though . . . his sons. He could not bear, just now, to think of his sons.)
He did not dream of Celegorm again for many months.
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Dior did not know these woods.
As he sometimes did, in the world of dreams, he found himself in the form of a nightingale: small and brown, and flitting amongst the trees. They were unfamiliar: not the emerald woods of his childhood upon Tol Galen, not the shining elms of Ossiriand, not the dark oaks and sprawling beeches of Doriath. Certainly not the misty depths of Taur-na-Dúlin, where now he made his home. The brush grew thick and tangled, wildly overgrown, and the moon shone coldly upon the rustling, snow-dusted leaves.
A movement below caught his eye. He paused his flight, and perched upon a branch.
There he was, moving swift and silent as a ghost: the Kinslayer, the silver demon, clad not in steel armor but in dark leather and wool—though his great barbed spear was balanced on his shoulder. He was moving forward briskly, as if in pursuit of something.
Silently, Dior watched.
As if sensing his gaze, the Kinslayer glanced up.
His gaze fell upon Dior; his pale brow furrowed. Dior, uncertain if he had been recognized, remained still.
All at once, Celegorm’s voice rang out: “I know you,” he said, eyes narrowed in bewildered accusation.
Dior, slowly, cocked his head.
“Who are you?” Celegorm demanded.
He moved—
The sight of that barbed spear flashing in the moonlight urged Dior to take off, caged by the instincts of his small and fragile dream-form. He heard the Kinslayer’s voice echoing behind him, raised to a frantic shout—“Wait!”—but he did not obey, and blurred off into the trees—
—until, all at once, he was awake.
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“He saw me,” Dior insisted, gripping white-knuckled at the silken sheets. He watched Nimloth, who paced back and forth across their room, her striking features thoughtful and grim. “He saw me, as if he were there in truth. This was no memory, no mere dream. He was there. I felt him.” He swallowed, dry and harsh. “I am certain of it.”
Nimloth hummed, and turned to him. “Dreams do not come without reason,” she said, slowly, “not for someone like you.”
Someone like Dior—that could mean any number of things. A half-Elf, a scion of Lúthien, a former king. Nimloth often dismissed her own historical importance, though Dior never could—she was the shining core of his heart, and he lived in eternal awe of her, though he was the one famed for his heritage and beauty. The world through her eyes was a marvelous thing: every creature and plant something beautiful.
Never did she falter in her opinions; never did she let a barrier stand in her way. When he had been too cowardly to admit that he wanted her, she had asked him to court her, although she was merely the third daughter of a minor lord, and his advisors disapproved of her. When he had said, I am not a woman, but I think I’d prefer to dress like one, she had said, take my gowns; I don’t want them! When he had said, I want to be an Elf, and stay in Mandos with you, she had said, Of course you will! When he had said, I don’t want to be king again, she had said, Then don’t be! She knew what she wanted, and she went after it with nothing but bravery. She had never once cared for the opinions of others; she did not know the meaning of shame.
And then there was Dior, who sometimes felt he was made of nothing but shame—shame, and wasted legacy. Dior, who did not even know what he was—Elf or Man or Maia, boy or prince or king. Nervous, strange, fairy-child Dior, who had spent his whole life wavering; the one time he had truly stood for something, it had ended with his kingdom in ruins.
But that was not what Nimloth meant, when she said someone like you.
“He knew me,” said Dior, “but not who I was. He might have been uncertain because—well—he might have taken me for my mother—”
“But your mother is gone, and you are not.”
“And he is in Mandos,” Dior returned, “while I am here in Aman. Why should he expect to see either of us?”
She tapped a finger against her pursed lips, thinking. “True.”
Dior ran a still-trembling hand over his throat, then down over his heart, where his death-scar stretched starkly across his ribs. A phantom ache shuddered beneath his skin. “Why would Lord Irmo send me this?” he said. “What have I done to—”
“Perhaps it was meant for Celegorm, not for you,” Nimloth suggested, but Dior shook his head:
“Since when does Lord Irmo meddle in his brother’s affairs?” he pointed out. “Since when do the dead dream?”
“Perhaps it was not truly him.”
Dior shook his head again, inexplicably certain. “It was him,” he said, softly: he would know his killer sleeping or waking, alive or dead; he would know the awful prickling bite of his awareness, like sensing a predator’s gaze from the shadows, so much sharper than in mere memory. “It was him.”
“Perhaps Lord Badhron means to show him something, and you were brought in by accident?” said Nimloth. “You know how the Powers get tripped up by you, my dear; they never quite know how to deal with you . . . perhaps it was you who did it.”
“I have no desire to see his face,” said Dior, lowly.
She made a low hum of acknowledgment. “Foresight, perhaps.”
“It can’t be,” said Dior, and willed it to be true. “He isn’t allowed to reembody.”
“Symbolic foresight?” she suggested. “You will face your fears, or something in that vein?”
“I am not afraid of him,” Dior said.
In this moment, sitting safely in his own home with his wife at his side, he meant it entirely. But in that dream, when he had seen the gleam of Celegorm’s hair, and the even brighter gleam of his spear-tip . . .
“Your ghosts, then,” Nimloth amended. “You will face your ghosts.”
Dior tilted his head by way of answer. Certainly, he was no stranger to ghosts. He carried them with him in every step he took: wisping and ephemeral, like cobwebs trailing after him that no one else could see. All the people he had lost, all the people he had failed, all the people whose blood was on his hands.
But of all the ghosts that could have haunted Dior—why, oh, why, did it have to be him?
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In a handful of nights, the next dream came.
Once more in the body of a nightingale, he perched in that unfamiliar wood, and felt the sense of other presences yawn at the edge of his awareness. Through the shadows of the trees, he watched a wolf chasing after a pure white stag—chasing it alone, unaided and reckless. The stag he did not know, but the wolf . . .
He knew who the wolf was—that moonlit shade of silver fur, those blazing emerald eyes. Celegorm the Cruel.
All at once—the chase stopped.
Ears pricked, the wolf turned its head up, away from the stag—toward Dior.
Recognition burned between them.
Dior fluttered his wings, and darted off into the trees.
He could hear the wolf—could hear Celegorm—chasing him; the snap of thorns and branches, the pounding of his paws against the earth. Streaking through the dim-lit dusk, shadows blurring in his vision, Dior willed himself with bitter desperation to fly faster, to be stronger—he was sick of running away, all he did was run away, run away from his duties and his people and his family—
No, Dior thought, in a sudden burst of determination. No.
He would not be chased any longer. He would not be prey.
Pausing his flight, Dior called out to the woods—and the woods glistened, and unfurled, and called back.
At Dior’s direction, dark whips of vines burst out of the earth and wrapped themselves around the pouncing wolf, pinning it down. Snarling in fury, it writhed against the vines—
Then, in a rippling flash of light, the wolf became an Elf—tall and broad and silver-haired, thrashing just as fiercely, his skin torn open in trails of gleaming red where the vicious thorns had caught on him. His snarling teeth remained bared; the sounds that hissed from between them did not change at all, low and growling and harsh.
Matching him, Dior shed the skin of the nightingale for his own. Behind him, he felt a pair of wings unfold—wings that he did not possess in life, but that felt right somehow, like an extension of his soul. He looked down, casting a shadow over his panting, writhing foe.
Struggling against his bindings, muscles flexing to no avail, Celegorm leveled Dior with that poison-green glare—ferocious, hateful, and heated.
The earth was spattered in red.
Dior!
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“Dior,” said his wife’s voice, as if from very far away. “Dior!”
Gasping, Dior snapped his eyes open.
He could not move—that was the first thing he noticed. He could not move, and when he thrashed instinctively against the hold, he realized why: dark, thorn-pricked vines had crept through the window, burst out of the carpet and the cracks in the walls, and snaked tightly around every inch of his body, just as they had around Celegorm’s. His arms were pinned against his sides; his legs were bound to the bed. He gasped again, choking, against the slender vine that had cinched about his throat.
“Stay still,” Nimloth urged him, calm and practical—though her wide, wild eyes betrayed her panic. “I’ll get it—”
Her strong fingers scrabbled at the vine around his neck, and pried it away from him; he drew in a long, ragged gulp of fresh air. “There you are,” said Nimloth, “breathe, love, just breathe.”
As Dior calmed, the vines began to loosen, and he managed to wriggle free, and throw himself into Nimloth’s waiting arms. He heaved out dry sobs, trembling incessantly, his skin burning where the thorns of his own vines had scratched him; he clung to his wife tightly, and thought in horror of how lucky they were that she had come into the room—that she had not been asleep beside him.
“Another dream?” murmured Nimloth, rubbing soothing circles into his back.
Dior buried his face in her shoulder, and breathed shakily against her cool skin, “Him.”