Dancing In The Dark by Grundy

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Sweet Dreams

WARNING - This chapter ends in an unpleasant place.   Non-con.

If you need more information, there is no violence and nothing graphic. Proceed at your own risk.

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Curufinwë knew perfectly well he was dreaming.

The Treelight gave it away. Had the Trees not been destroyed, he doubted his father could have succeeded in rousing him and his brothers to swear the Oath, much less persuading so many of the Noldor to follow him to Beleriand in pursuit of vengeance. But in the darkness, they had all been willing to listen to plans they would never have given any credence by the light of the Trees.

He had not fully appreciated the beauty of the Trees and their light while it was still part of his daily world.

Just as he had not appreciated-

“Husband, do you mean to ignore me all night as you contemplate Telperion’s wonders?”

He turned so quickly that, dream or no, it was a wonder he didn’t do himself an injury.

Tyelpesilmë’s beautiful face was amused.

“I shall take that as ‘no’, then?” she asked, her lovely smile turning a bit wicked – in the harmless way ‘wicked’ had once meant, in Aman, before it meant true evil.

“This is a dream,” he murmured.

“So logical and practical, even in your sleep,” she sighed.

“Not so practical I will not enjoy every second with you,” he replied, kissing her with the hunger of a starving man.

“You just said this was a dream,” she laughed, though the feel of her hands slipping beneath his nightshirt to caress his chest felt real enough.

“It is a good dream. Perhaps it is a dream we share,” he suggested. “You on your side of the Sea, and I on mine.”

“Still a secret romantic,” she teased, nipping lightly at his ear.

“Don’t tell,” he mumbled, nuzzling her neck as he attempted to master his body enough not to embarrass himself, for he was as eager as a bridegroom on his wedding night after so long apart from her.

“Who would I tell?” she breathed, the last word practically a moan.

“Anyone. Everyone.”

Silmë’s laugh turned into a gasp of pure pleasure as his hands traced her body.

“As if I could! No one but Tyelko, Artanis, and your mother would believe me. And they probably already know anyway. Have you missed me?” she asked.

“More than words can say,” he said, abruptly leaving aside his exploration of her hröa to simply embrace her, savoring every gentle curve.

“Yet you would not stay when I asked you to,” she pointed out sadly.

He bowed his head to meet hers, and they lay together with their foreheads touching, as he let her feel his sorrow and regret.

“I was wrong,” he said quietly. “And if ever I am granted the grace to see you again with waking eyes, I will tell you so.”

“Curufinwë Atarinkë admitting he was wrong?” she asked in mock astonishment. “And without arguing the point first?”

“It is not the first time I have been wrong,” he pointed out. “Nor is it likely to be the last. Though I hope I am growing wiser with the years.”

“You are a good ner, if not always a wise one, Curvo,” Silmë assured him. “Your father never admits fault no matter how in the wrong he may be. Not even to your mother.”

He knew that. He’s seen it often enough – and seen how it had been slowly corroding his parents’ once unbreakable union.

“I am endeavoring to be a better man than he was – and a better father.”

He heard the catch of her breath, and steeled himself to continue.

“I was wrong in that, as well. I should have yielded to your wisdom and left our son in Aman. In safety. If I had it to do over again, I would not insist that Tyelperinquar come with me.”

“Is he safe?” she asked hesitantly. “Is he well?”

He could fear her fear in that minute, and hadn’t the heart to tell her that knowing Beleriand as he did, his easily outstripped hers. That at least he could spare her.

“As safe as I can keep him here,” Curufinwë assured her. “But he is not happy, and I must accept that his unhappiness is my doing. He is not living the life a boy his age should. And he misses you, and my mother, and your parents.”

Silmë’s eyes glistened with tears.

“Why do you tell me this?” she demanded. “Why could you not just accept the kindness of the dream as it was? We might have loved each other and both woken happier for it.”

“Because what I am saying is the truth, and I would not lie to you any more than I wish to lie to myself,” he replied. “And perhaps I am a fool, but if this truly is a dream we share, it may be the only chance I have to tell you these things.”

He could not look her in the eye at that, for he did not want to have to put into words his fear of what his future held.

“You do not believe that you will ever return to me?” she asked, sounding heartbroken.

“I hope I will,” is the best he can manage, because the idea of being sundered from her forever hurts too badly to contemplate.

“Why did you not agree to another child?” she said, and he could hear her trying to keep from crying. “Why did you leave me alone?”

“I was wrong in that also,” he whispered, wretchedly watching a single tear slip down her cheek despite her efforts. “Please forgive me.”

He brushed the tear away gently, almost hesitantly.

“I will forgive you,” she said quietly. “If you promise me we will have that child someday.”

“My love,” he said, wishing with all his heart that it was a promise he could make, “I would if I could. But I can have no confidence of keeping such a vow.”

“Please, Curufinwë? Would you refuse me again?”

She pressed her hröa against his, and his body responded with almost shameful eagerness. It might be a dream, but it felt so real…

“Here, like this, I can give you anything you would have of me, beloved,” he told her. “But I will make no promise that I do not know I can hold to, not even in a dream. It has been a hard-learnt lesson, but I have had my fill of thoughtless words and careless oaths.”

She kissed him with a desperation that matched his own.

“That will have to be enough then,” she whispered between kisses, as they both did their best to remove the clothing that separated them from each other.

If this is the only time he will ever hold his wife again, he will make it a night to remember.

Later, in the contented afterglow, Tyelpesilmë clung to him like she would never let go – as if the Valar themselves would not be able to command such a thing – and they spoke of the child they would not have.

“A daughter,” Curufinwë said thoughtfully. “A daughter with her mother’s smile, and clever hands, and above all, your wisdom.”

He realized as he said it that he would dearly love it to be true. He has no doubt that the daughter of two such talented craftspeople as him and his wife would follow him to the forge as quickly as her older brother had.

Silmë laughed.

“I would rather a son with his father’s eyes,” she told him, one hand tracing designs on his chest. “After all, this child is to remind me of you, my love. Your eyes, and expressions, and perhaps your inspiration. But I would have him somewhat more inclined to listen to good counsel.”

She poked his chest for emphasis, but he was not inclined to argue. Indeed, his only amendment to Silmë’s dream child, he thought privately, deep in his fëa would was that if the child had to have his eyes, he should also have Silmë’s lovely silver hair to go with them.

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Artanis was uncertain where in Doriath they were, but she knew it was Doriath. The trees, the birds, the air – all were signs she had been taught to read in her first few years in the Fenced Land. Not close to Menegroth, but not so far as she had journeyed of late.

She wasn’t inclined to question it – particularly not since Celeborn was there.

If Irmo wished to grant her this kindness, she would gratefully accept. Most of her dreams of late have not been nearly as pleasant. Even before Curvo had wanted to speak of the Ice and Ambarussa, the paths she walked in her sleep had been starless and frightening more often than not.

It had been all too easy, with her husband’s absence an unavoidable pain during the day and such darkness during the nights, to believe that Thingol had been confirming the judgement of the Valar themselves when he pronounced her unclean.

Never enough, are you, Artanis? Too Noldo for the Lindar and the Sindar, too Lindar for the Noldor. Too girlish for a royal house that has no use for anything but sons, yet too strong and stubborn to be a proper princess, Nerwen.

The whispers had been relentless, and without Melian’s fortified borders or Celeborn’s calming presence to buffer her, she had little defense against them. She could only grit her teeth and endure.

It was not as if this was the first time she’s had to do that.

Doomed. Bloodstained. Slayer of kin unrepentant. Too proud to admit your sins. No different than your uncle in the end.

Every whisper, ever rumor, every fear she’s ever had has haunted her since she left Doriath. Even suspecting that her tormented sleep was the work of the Enemy did not help, for what good was it to know the source if she could do nothing to stop it?

You will never see your parents again. You will linger here, watching your family die, until at last it is your turn, choking on your pride and drowning in your own blood.

After nights of that, she was only too glad for a night of simple forest and Celeborn. Indeed, she wanted little more even in her waking hours. Even if this dream turned out to be merely one more trick, she will take the respite. And it is just possible that Irmo might have taken pity on her. The Lord of Dreams may be brother to the Doomsman who exiled her, but he is also the brother of Mercy.

“I have missed you,” Celeborn whispered in her ear.

It was easy for him to do, seeing as his mouth was mainly occupied in teasing the sensitive tips of her ears.

“Whose fault is that?” she asked archly, doing her best not to moan aloud. 

“Certainly not mine,” he replied, his clever hands as busy as his tongue. “You have a very bad temper, beloved.”

She meant to scoff, but as his hands moved teasingly over her body, that became impossible.  Her breath escaped in a sharp exhalation that prevented coherent speech.

“I am not the only one,” she told him shakily, once she was able to manage words again.

“No doubt,” he agreed, his lips tracing across her neck and onto her chest as she turned to face him. “But I really would rather not think on my uncle just now…”

She did not particularly want to think of him either, not when Celeborn had continued his downward trajectory. In fact, talking, and even thinking was vastly overrated in such a position.

It was only later, as they lay sated and content with each other, curled happily against his chest, that she attempted to pick up the conversation again. Not about tempers and Thingol, though.

“How is it you are finally with me, if only in my dreams?” she asked, deliberately calling to mind the last time she’d slept by the pools of Ivrin- also, as it happened, the first time they’d joined their hröar.

She did not doubt for a moment that it was Celeborn she touched, with her in spirit as he could not be in person. She could feel him, and was calmer for his presence. This was the first time it had happened since she crossed the borders of Melian’s power.

He smiled drowsily against her hair. She knew he was doing it, even though she could not see it. She poked him.

“Do not you dare fall asleep on me!” she told him sternly. “I have missed you long enough.”

She felt his laughter, rumbling through his chest, as much as she heard it.

“We are asleep, golden heart,” he told her. “Else I would not be able to speak to you. You know I haven’t your way with osanwë.”

That last was said in a tone of disappointment that as good as admitted he’d tried and failed to touch her mind in their waking hours.

She hugged him, unwilling to have him linger on things he could not do when there were so many more things he could.

Curufinwë had not been the only one surprised that after so many nobles and princes who would have willingly married her in the Blessed Land, she had chosen a mere minor prince of the Sindar.  Celeborn’s people were rather proud of the match – or had been, before they knew of her bloodstained hands and murderous kin –  whereas hers will no doubt scrutinize her husband even more sharply than they would any other moriquendi, suspecting him to be unworthy of her.

It’s none of their business that she often feels like it’s the other way around. (Though it will absolutely be her business if any of her people dare run him down. She rather suspects they will not be foolish enough to do so in her hearing.)

“As to how I am with you, I am outside the Girdle, so what was impossible before is not now.”

She traced the contour of his chest, her fingers lingering on the spot she adored in the hollow between his pectorals.

“Did you wish to hear this?” Celeborn asked her. “Because that is rather distracting…”

“Tell me, and then I’ll decide how much I should distract you,” she suggested, not stopping entirely.

“I met Oropher and Belthil. They were returning from their errand to your uncle and were able to tell me that if I sought my heart, it was no longer to be found in Barad Eithel, and suggested I should turn my feet instead toward your brother’s halls.”

She smiled.

Celeborn had lost his parents to the Shadow long before she had met him. His cousins had done their best to stand in the place of siblings for him – Oropher as an older brother, Belthil a younger. Merelin and Nimloth were as much his younger sisters as Oropher and Belthil’s.

She too had been coming to look on them as family since her marriage. For the pair of them to have told Celeborn where to find her meant that they, at least, found her sins forgivable. She took heart from that.

“They continued homeward,” Celeborn told her. “While I adjusted my path to meet you as soon as may be. I shall leave them to take up the burden of talking sense into the king.”

She did not need to ask if Thingol had relented. For him to speak so meant he had not.

“Be easy, my love,” Celeborn said, his arms tightening reassuringly around her. “If there is wisdom in my great-uncle’s course, few other than himself see it. And we have not been shy about telling him so.  Loathe though our people may be to deal with Kinslayers, still less would we condemn those who have done no wrong. It is known that there are those among your people who shed no blood. From what Oropher says, they are now as angry with Thingol as he was with you.”

“That I knew already,” she told him drily, letting him see and feel the fury that had seethed behind the polite façade of the court. “Is Oropher’s heart more at ease now that he has seen for himself that Merelin is not being mistreated?”

“Surely you do not hold his anxiousness against him?” Celeborn asked. “She is the first of us to beget a child. He worries for them both, and that was before he knew her husband’s people to be in an uproar.”

“Artaresto has been as protective of her as you would be of me in such a position,” Galadriel assured him. “Besides which, she carries a princess of the Noldor. No one would allow her to come to harm, my uncle least of all.”

She caught the not-quite-concealed thought that flitted through Celeborn’s fëa at her words, a product of a longing he could not suppress.

“As to the begetting of children, we can speak of that some other time,” she said firmly. “I have not said never, only not now.”

Inspired by her talk with Curufinwë, she let herself be open with him, as she has not been before – she let him see how she did not know how under the stars Merelin and Artaresto did not go crazy from the worry of bringing a child into a world where they live so close to the threat of the Enemy. She remembered Arakano’s death all too well, and what it had done to her uncle. Strong as she may be, she knows she is not strong enough to see a child of hers die.

And it was clearly the right thing to have done, because she can feel his relief. Her worry, even her fear, he could understand. Celeborn pulled her to him, to soothe her worries and fears the best way he knew how.

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Curufinwë wasn’t sure what it was exactly that had startled him out of his slumber – only that he was abruptly and irreversibly awake. He frowned, trying to work out what was not right. His arm tightened around the warm body nestled against his own.

That was when reality reasserted itself in the harshest possible manner, driving away the lingering remnants of the peace and contentment he’d felt in his dream.

He sat up, realizing in horror that the woman he was curled up to, with both of them very naked and smelling of sex was not his beloved Tyelpesilmë.

It was Artanis.