And I'll Bloody Up My Hands (As Long As You Don't Have To) by electroniccollectiondonut

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Chapter 1

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When he wakes, he can’t remember falling asleep in the first place. His eyes are closed, and, given the pain ringing through most of his body, he doesn’t feel very inclined to open them. Still, he must have given some sign of his waking, because he hears a shuffling of fabric and then there’s a gentle hand lifting his head and holding a cool cup to his lips. He drinks, and he can taste the painkillers that the water does little to mask. He doesn’t mind, because they start to work a few minutes later and he falls back to sleep the moment the pain is gone.

Someone is playing with his hair. That’s the first thing he registers the next time he wakes up. That, and the pain is back. It feels like a tremendous effort to open his eyes, but he manages, belatedly realizing that the pained noises he hears are coming from him. A hand passes through his blurry vision then stops suddenly and pulls away: Curufin’s, recognisable by the centuries of little burn scars that mottle the pale skin.

“You’re awake!” That’s Curufin too, he knows, and the voice is followed by the creaking of furniture and a flurry of footsteps, but he’s too busy trying to rationalize the fact that the ceiling of the room he’s in is worryingly close and carved from stone. It looks almost like he’s in Nargothrond, but that can’t be right, he and Curufin were both banished after the Luthien incident. And didn’t Nargothrond fall a few years ago anyway? “Celegorm?” Curufin says after a moment with no answer.

Celegorm manages a noise of acknowledgement. “Narg’thrond?” he croaks, surprised at how bad he sounds.

Curufin confirms this, and begins a stream of useless babble as he turns away. Celegorm tracks him with his eyes, watching him pour a cup of water from a pitcher on a table and then add something to it. Celegorm lets Curufin feed him the painkillers and takes in the room. It looks like a regular guest bedroom in Nargothrond, but it’s filled to the brim with mismatched chairs, from a wingbacked armchair upholstered with rich green velvet to a beat up little folding camp stool that looks like it couldn’t hold a baby without collapsing. Some of the chairs are occupied, but most are empty.

Most of his brothers are crowded around his bed, and so is Finrod. Maglor and Caranthir and Telperinquar aren’t, as they’re dead asleep in three of the chairs. Telperinquar has his little cousin Finduilas asleep in his lap, and Orodreth is sprawled out in another chair, awake and looking horribly uncomfortable, with baby Gil-galad curled up on his chest. Finrod and Orodreth, and both children, are garbed in mourning black. Celegorm realizes abruptly that at least three of the people in the room are dead, possibly more. Well, he’s clearly taken some sort of injury in the battle. Doesn’t the king of Doriath have some Maia blood? That must be it, he lost the fight and Dior did something with his powers, and now he’s hallucinating.

Mystery solved, Celegorm closes his eyes and lets himself drift back toward pain free unconsciousness, resigned to wait it out until it goes away on its own or his brothers find some way to get rid of it faster. Except Curufin doesn’t let him get all the way to sleep, winding a section of hair around his fingers and pulling sharply. Celegorm yelps and instinctively tries to sit up, then gasps as the pain from whatever injury he has returns full force and it’s too much to even draw breath to scream.

He’s pressed back to the bed with a hand on his right shoulder, and Curufin continues to card through his hair in comfort, braiding it in the tiny braids Celegorm has always prefered. Someone holds the mouth of a bottle to his lips and he feels Finrod’s manicured hands holding his head up enough that he can drink. Finrod tips the bottle up and Celegorm almost gags at the bitter taste. Then he starts to feel hazy, and he's too blessedly numb to feel anything even as a healer is called and he watches them, through fading vision, prod at an ugly burn that covers most of his chest and neck and some of his right thigh.

When Celegorm wakes for the third time, he doesn't hurt. He looks around, gingerly in case the pain is just lurking below the surface, and finds that the room is now mostly empty. The chairs are still there, and it still looks like Nargothrond, but it's only Curufin, sitting at his bedside with dark circles under red rimmed eyes, and Maglor, standing over Curufin with a tray of food and begging him to eat. Celegorm reaches out, big brother instincts taking over even though he’s the one who’s bedridden. Curufin looks up and beams, taking his hand. Maglor sets the tray on the nightstand and leaves the room.

“I thought-” Curufin begins, choking on a sob and starting over. “It was so long, I thought you might not wake up…”

Celegorm glares, and wonders idly why his vision is still blurring on the left side. “So you weren’t eating?” he accuses, though it sounds weak even to his own ears.

Curufin is shamefaced, suddenly finding the floor very interesting. He looks at Celegorm again after a few minutes, and Celegorm looks pointedly at the tray. Curufin takes the hint. He moves the tray to his lap and starts to eat, talking about everything and nothing in between bites. It’s too easy sometimes to forget that he’s the second youngest of them all.

Maglor comes back, trailed by the rest of their brothers and Telperinquar. Finduilas toddles along behind Telperinquar, holding on to the dangling string of his leather apron even though it smears forge grime on her hands and frilly pink dress. She peeks over the edge of Celegorm’s bed with wide eyes, and he winces as she starts to climb up, spreading black gunk all over sheets that he knows to be fabulously expensive.

Finduilas sits herself by Celegorm’s legs, saying, as authoritatively as a toddler can, “You made people sad.”

Everyone laughs brightly as she continues to scold, and Curufin stops with his spoon halfway to his mouth so he doesn’t choke as he smothers his own laughter. Celegorm listens to her in amusement, finding it somewhat novel to be lectured by a girl who’s barely higher than his knee.

“And that’s not good,” she finishes some time later, punctuating each word with a smack to Celegorm’s ankle that leaves even more little black handprints on the sheets.

“I see,” Celegorm says, with all the seriousness he can muster.

“You be good?” Finduilas asks.

“I’ll be good,” Celegorm promises, though he really isn’t sure what it is a hallucination thinks he’s done wrong.

When Curufin finishes his food, he goes off to get some for Celegorm, and he returns with Orodreth, who’s still garbed in black, in tow. Orodreth takes one look at the mess that has at least, thankfully, stopped spreading, and groans longsufferingly. He grabs Finduilas up and swings her around, then settles her on his hip and examines the stained dress and sheets more closely.

“Oh, that isn’t going to come out easily,” he mutters, them he casts Celegorm a smile completely at odds with his mood the last time they’d met outside of a hallucination. “It’s good to see you awake. You were scaring everyone for a while there.” Then he leaves, and Curufin helps Celegorm to sit up against the pillows so he can eat.

The minutes pass largely in silence as he eats, and he only realizes the meal is drugged when he starts to drift again before he’s even halfway finished. His last thought, before Irmo claims him, is that he’s getting really tired of sleeping.

When he wakes again, and he’s determined not to let anyone put him to sleep again except for himself, Finrod is the one sitting vigil at his bedside, threading green glass beads onto a length of string to keep himself occupied. The king of Nargothrond is still in all black, with his hair pulled back into mourning braids that have frizzed out into a halo of gold that catches all the artificial light in the room and holds it around his head.

“Aren’t you usually cheery?” Celegorm asks, and Finrod jumps a mile in the air, beads scattering across the floor. He looks like a startled cat, Celegorm thinks, and he can’t help but laugh even though it pulls on the burns and leaves him breathless with pain.

“Not when a member of my family has died,” Finrod responds when they’ve both calmed.

Celegorm glanced down at himself. “Fairly sure I’m still alive, actually. Unless spirits can feel physical pain. I’m pretty sure they can’t, though.”

“Not you,” Finrod snaps, “my brothers.”

“Angrod and Aegnor? They’ve been dead for decades. So’ve you.” Celegorm says. He follows it up with, “I know you’re a hallucination.”

Finrod looks terribly taken aback. “What?”

Celegorm just nods, speaking breezily as though he’s discussing the weather. “You aren’t real. I guess that’s what I get for attacking someone with Maia blood.”

“What?” Finrod says again, even more incredulous.

“I’d do it again, though. Not even for the Silmaril, just to protect Caranthir and Curufin.”

For a moment, Finrod looks as though he’s going to repeat himself again. Then he abruptly stands and leaves, and Celegorm can hear him counting under his breath all the way out the door.

Eventually, he comes back, and Maedhros with him. Maedhros looks a little pained and a little confused, but mostly worried. He sits down in the chair Finrod was in before, and Finrod comes to stand behind him with a white knuckle grip on the back of the chair.

“Finrod says you think you’re hallucinating,” Maedhros says carefully.

“Of course I am. Finrod and Orodreth and Finduilas are all dead and Nargothrond is gone, Sauron and dragonfire and all that. I fought Dior, and he put a spell on me or something.” Celegorm wiggles his fingers to illustrate that last statement.

“I think you’re confused,” Maedhros says gently, like he’s talking to a wounded animal, and Celegorm tries to roll his eyes. Operative word being tries, because it sends pain lancing through the right side of his head badly enough that he worries for a moment he might be sick.

“Careful!” Maedhros says, alarmed. “Your eye isn’t completely healed yet.”

“Oh, healed from what?” Celegorm growls. He’s tired of being questioned and kept in the dark and treated like he’s so fragile. “What am I supposed to believe is going on here? Want to give me a hint? Because I have no. Damn. Clue.”

“Celegorm, you were the one caught in dragonfire.” Maedhros’ tone is still frustratingly gentle, even though what he’s saying makes no sense.

“There are no dragons in Doriath,” Celegorm says scathingly. “I think I would have noticed , don’t you?”

Maedhros takes a deep breath and Finrod groans. “You’ve never been to Doriath. No one can get passed the Girdle even if we wanted to.”

“There is no Girdle!” Celegorm cries, voice raising in frustration. Shouldn’t Maedhros be smarter than this? “Melian left when Thingol died!”

“Celegorm, Thingol is still alive. You were caught in dragonfire protecting your people and Curufin when Morgoth set the world on fire.”

“That was more than fifty years ago, and the only injury I took was a twisted ankle.”

Maedhros growls, then walks to the other side of the room and produces a mirror from a dresser drawer and holds it out for Celegorm to take. Celegorm humours him. It’s not as though he’s going to see anything other than what he always sees. Except that he does.

The left side of his hair is shaved close to his head. The right is still long, but it’s tangled and matted from Eru only knows how long lying in bed. His left ear is mangled, the burned flesh twisted and red. The burn, bits of it healed and scarred over, stretches down the left side of his face. His eye is… intact, but that’s all that can be said for it. It’s filmy, looking more blue now than grey. The corner of his mouth is twisted and a little stiff, but not particularly painful. The burn continues down his neck, twisting the flesh nauseatingly. He knows it goes down to his elbow on the left side and covers most of his torso and right thigh. He sees his right eye widen and the unburned part of his face pale before he drops the mirror.

“We have to go to Hithlum,” he says, and he’s up and out of bed before the pain or Maedhros can catch up with him. If there’s a chance, even a sliver of a fraction of a chance that any of this is real, he can’t let Morgoth kill everyone in his family.

Maedhros and Finrod are quick to grab for him, and, as much as he hates to admit it, he doesn’t have enough strength to fight both of them right now. Instead, he ducks out the door, picking a direction and running.