They were young, once, when the air was sweet and clean, and are young no longer. Malekith's strength fails him already and he is dying; in the best of all endings to this story the Aether will devour him, will drown him from the inside out and burn its way through the most secret pathways of his mind until there is nothing left. All things that are born must have their end, but in dreams they have all the time in the world to devise their plans and to plot the movements of the Nine Realms, and to number the lists of their dead. Time enough for wrath to cool and be kindled again; time enough to undergo the full metamorphosis into grief.

Malekith dreams, sometimes, of the ones that were before the coming of light, but even in dreams he moves through desolation. He abhors idleness and even in the confines of their shared minds there is much to be done.

In dreams, two questing dreamers might find one another. They haunt the twilit palaces of ages past; all dark and quiet they are, sunken in shadow, tranquil as the grave. Here they are attired for peace rather than suited for war, softly-braided, and his mantle has fallen away; they lie together there at their leisure, spread out in pooled-up cloth that is softer than shadow. They have lain together before in the waking world, and this is only a thin substitute, but for now it must satisfy.

"Not long now," Algrim says to Malekith, who is nuzzling one of his braids against the powerful expanse of his shoulder. (His flesh smells like electrical discharge and things growing green underneath the earth, and it leaves his lieutenant lovesick for the real thing.) Long pale hands idle along his skin, between hipbone and navel.

Great men never act without purpose; he rolls him over and they carry on like younger men.

Their bodies lock together closely, Algrim's great limbs all bare entwining and his captain slim and powerful as an iron chain. His head rests against his captain's stomach; in the waking world he must be carefully tended by machines and even here one can hear the unsteady thrumming of his bold heart as it begins to flag, shuttered-up tightly in the casket of his body. His scarred lungs labor to draw breath. Even among their kind he is old, one of the oldest among those that survive, and much-wounded, much scarred by grief suffered without complaint. The least Algrim can do is suffer with him.

"We have much to do." His voice is beautiful and terrible; Algrim listens. He would sacrifice all his own strength if only he might earn the smallest fragment of the resolve that lives in the body of his captain and king.

It isn't easy, to remember how these things looked in the cool of the darkness and willingly opt to see things as they are. The sight of the world below them, sunken in ash and crossed with the debris of fallen home-ships, elicits a surge of gut-deep outrage like the face of a lover disfigured; they walk along shores now blighted and inhospitable, where the children of Malekith once bathed with their mother. Algrim knows that his own children are dead. He knows that his commander has seen all of his children uprooted and slain, the young and the old alike; Malekith has seen his queen's head struck from her shoulders, hacked apart in the name of some sick sense of thoroughness. There will be no further generations born to breathe poisoned air and taste ashes.

They look out over vistas defaced by war, all things exposed to the bitter air where once they were secret and solitary and carefully-kept. Malekith and Algrim talk of tactics.

The Svartalfar have been cast into exile without exile, desolation without escape. If the old ways can't be restored, perhaps they will die. None of them will survive this the way that they are now.

The sentries and lesser ranks stand aside for the Kurse, and permit him with all fit solemnity to speak with their commander. Algrim as he was would have fallen to his knees and wept for him. His comrade shows no sign of recognition; he does not raise his head at fist, nor make a sound beyond the warm irregularity of his drawing breath.

The charred places have begun to fall away; when he withdraws his heavy hand it is dusted in flakes of ash. Malekith's half-blind eye peers back at him from under a damaged eyelid; his gaze is fully alert and bright with intention. He is considering, where he ought to be martialing his strength.

No, it is Algrim who selfishly fears for what he loves, who wants to caress and comfort one who is not afraid, and he is Algrim no longer, by his own consent. Everything cool and quiet and satisfied within him has been dried up and burnt away. He cannot touch him any longer. He cannot kiss his lips. It is not for him to be tender.

"Rest," he says, "Rest. We do not have long to wait."

The dark elves have waited millenia here without being mindful of the time. But the convergence is very near, and time is short for the likes of them. Malekith's body is weak; it takes a tremendous effort to raise his arm and he rests his hand against what once was his comrade's shoulder. His fingers trace the once-familiar planes of his face. Algrim feels the unnatural heat that courses within him now rally at the touch like a fanned flame; he sinks down and permits himself to be touched.

Memory will fail Algrim, as he ceases to be himself. He will succumb to the blaze inside him and he will forget. But he will not forget what he owes his king. Every vow he has ever sworn and upheld is renewed in that moment and carved on him again.