title: the sins of the father
prompt: DB finds a baby dragon and raises it
character: halycon [khajiit db]/ j'zargo /drem-askk-hind [peace-love-hope]
summary: It felt heavy in her lap. She didn't want it. No, not now. Khajiit bore cubs, not this monstrosity. But she couldn't walk away now. The Dovah in her hummed loudly with approval as she sighed and stroked it lovingly. The sins of the father were not the sins of the child.
notes: spoilers for Dark Brotherhood questline, kinda sorta maybe? Also, I took some freedom with how Khajiit families work and baby dragons and all that. I've not written in forever, and I'm horrible at finishing chaptered fics. Let's hope this gets somewhere, eh?
the sins of the father
(are not those of the child)
She growled as the rain fell, quickly gaining force from a soft summer shower to a full on storm. Of course, Falkreath and its stupid weather. She let out a hiss as a raindrop hit her nose.
"Khajiit would rather have the warm desert sands than nasty Skyrim mud in her fur. This one hates getting mud off her armor," she muttered darkly, as she glanced at her Shrouded Armor, noticing several splotches of mud on her boots and darting up her leggings. She flicked her tail angrily. What assassin would be so carelessly stupid to get mud all over the place? If Astrid were still alive, she'd scold her for her carelessness.
A small twinge of sadness pulled at her. Astrid. She may have been a traitor, but she had acted out of a sense of protectiveness for her family. The Khajiit sighed and shook her head. Back home in Elsweyr, family was sacred. A pride was a pride, regardless of one member's actions. The only difference between Astrid's sense of family and her own was simply that her pride would have died fighting together, instead of offering one as a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter.
She walked slower, dwelling on her thoughts.
A pride of her own. She had dreamt of that once upon a time. Back home, she had been sweet on a merchant apprentice from Riverhold. Kha'thal, that was his name. He was a handsome Khajiit, black fur and vivid silver markings, and the most inquistive golden eyes she had seen. She remembered how the silver along his mouth would seem to dance as he laughed at her stories. She had, for a while, entertained the idea of a pride with him. She had imagined one or two cubs, with her white fur and his silver, her sense of humour and his intelligence. Oh, she had wanted that. The gods, however, had another fate in store. Kha'thal had been murdered in a skooma scandal, and with him, her hopes for a pride of her own. Her parents and pride members had died when she was a cub, and now Kha'thal had left her, too. She had nothing left.
Her hopes and dreams dashed, she had left for Skyrim, to see Ri'saad, Kha'thal's uncle. She had wanted an escape, a way to work and forget. Instead, she had gotten into a mess with Dragons and a civil war.
But Kha'thal and Elsweyr were a million lifetimes ago. She had a pride now. Sort of. She was Listener, and she was in charge of her Family. Though they were not Khajiit, they were hers. Their loyalty was as strong as any pride's back home, and that was good enough, she thought. If it were not for the fact that she had demons to deal with at Falkreath's old sanctuary, she would be with her pride now.
Her ears perked up, hearing the tell-tale roar of a dragon in the distance, and her hands went directly for her daedric bow. A dragon always seemed to haunt the old sanctuary, and given her current mood and anger at the weather, the winged lizard seemed like an excellent chance to let off some pent up aggression.
She crouched and made her way to some nearby bushes, eyes scanning the sky for any signs of the beast. Her tail quivered with excitement. The last time she had faced a dragon, her kill had been stolen from her by Cicero, and she had been quite upset at letting the fool make the killing blow. "Time for this one to redeem herself," she whispered with glee.
The roaring grew louder. It was coming closer.
She waited, arrow steady, and thoughts of dragonscale armor dancing in her mind. Perhaps she could convince Adrienne to help her design a tail piece.
The frost dragon roared once more and flew into view. She whispered a brief prayer to Sithis, and let her arrow fly. It missed, but the dragon fell to the ground, empty eyes staring at her as she felt the humming wind, saw the flesh burn and heard the crackle as its soul was absorbed.
She frowned. She had missed, and one arrow, even if it had hit, was never enough to fell a dragon, especially a frost dragon. What had happened?
She stepped toward the body, looting a few fallen scales for the armour she was planning and a nice, shiny emerald, and then turned and inspected the dragon body carefully. Why was a dragon always near this old sanctuary? Before she had become a full-fledged Sister of Sithis and Listener of the Night Mother, she had always seemed to arrive home bleeding and barely escaping from it. Several times, Anbjorn had escorted her home in his werewolf form. Seeing this dragon dead made her feel like she had lost another part of her past.
"Just one more tie to the old pride gone," she muttered to the corpse. The dragon's golden eyes stared into hers, and she felt a strange sense of sadness rise in her. The Dovah in her understood. It always had. She had killed several dragons since she had been discovered as the Dovahkiin, and each time, the small voice in her head comforted her. No one else knew what it was like to kill a dragon. No one understood the feelings she felt when she absorbed its soul. No one understood how she could feel like she lived a thousand years in a mere matter of seconds. They never saw villages burning to the ground, never felt the snap of human and mer bones between their jaws. They never felt the freedom of flight.
The voice did, however. The Dovah whispered, comforted, understood. She listened to it now.
'It needs you,' it whispered. 'Hurry. Look. Find it.'
She flicked her tail in annoyance. Now, of all times, the voice chose to be cryptic. How could she look when she didn't know what she was looking for? Still, the voice was usually never wrong, and as leader of her pride, she was used to being needed. Cicero and her pride often got into small squabbles and as Listener and leader, it was her job to fix them and soothe egos.
She scanned her surroundings. Why would a dragon lurk here? It was rainy almost all of the time, the mountains were cold, and the land had poor hunting. If anything, it would merely offer an excellent source of shelter and relative safety from hunters. It was almost a perfect spot for a dragon to hide.
The question remained though. What would a dragon have to hide?
Her eyes caught sight of movement on the mountain. A small gray-blue blur, really, darting quickly into a cavern in the mountainside.
'Hurry!' the voice urged. She decided she had found at a clue to what her Dovah was urging her to find, and very carefully, began to climb. She grinned. Having her claws made it easy to scale the ice-covered stone, and she soon found a narrow path she could walk on. Crouching low and right hand resting on one of her daedric swords' hilts, she sneaked her way to the cavern's entrance.
Small piles of bone littered the outside, and blood streaked across the floor.
She growled, blades drawn and ready. Falmer were common in the mountains, and this looked like a Falmer camp. Few believed they existed, and even fewer believed they made trips to the surface, but she had come across a few camps before. She knew just how deadly they could be if one was not prepared.
She sniffed the air, hunting carefully for that musky mildew stench that poured off the Falmer like ocean waves. Instead, her nose was hit with the metallic smell of blood and...something else. Something she couldn't quite place but smelled oddly familiar.
The sound of something scraping against stone caught her ears, and she quickly darted up onto a rock and made her way to the edge of stone overlooking the cavern entrance. She was an assassin, and she would not go down without taking a few with her. She crouched and waited, tail flicking with impatience. The sound drew closer, and she held her breath, blades ready for whatever came.
What stepped out into the sun was not what she had expected.
A frost dragon hatchling made its way to a bone pile and hungrily grabbed what appeared to be a leg bone. It laid down, one winged claw holding possessively onto the bone as it gnawed its way to the marrow, tail wrapped around itself.
'Here is what you seek. Help it, Dovahkiin,' the Dovah whispered to her, and she understood. The frost dragon that had always lurked near the sanctuary, it had a pride of its own. This was its cub.
"This one knows nothing of raising a dragon hatchling," she muttered to herself.
It was a small thing, a far cry from the many dragons she had killed. It was no larger than a newborn human cub, and she watched as it mewed hungrily at the sky.
Realization hit her again. The mother had been hunting dinner. This one had not yet learned to hunt. Obviously, it must have been a hunt gone wrong. She wondered if it had attempted to steal a mammoth from a giant. That would have accounted for it dying before she could kill it.
'It's a new-hatch. It hungers.' The Dovah whispered, and she nodded in agreement. A new-hatch. A dragon not yet able to fend for itself or hunt. Or use its Thu'um.
She carefully dropped down from her perch, eyes watching the new-hatch as she quietly reached into her pack and fished through the potions and items until she felt exactly what she was searching for. Eyes never leaving the dragon, she silently crept closer until she was a foot away from it.
She cleared her throat, and the new-hatch whipped its head toward her, eyes wide with fright as it drew its tail carefully around itself in an attempt of protection.
"Shh," she cooed softly, offering a piece of venison as a peace offering. "This one means no harm, little one."
The new-hatch eyed her carefully for a moment, then turned its head to the sky.
"Monah! Monah!" it cried, and she felt her heart break as the soul of the frost dragon stirred within her.
"She sleeps now, little one," she told it, edging closer and sitting the meat in front of it. She wished she could speak the dragon language well enough to tell it to eat, but the new-hatch turned to eye her again before sniffing the venison carefully, then gobbling it up in one bite.
She grinned. It was a start.
It crawled to her, and she kept one hand on a blade as she fished out a few more pieces of meat before offering it to the dragon. It ate quickly, each piece disappearing as soon as it entered its mouth. She watched with fascination.
No one, to her knowledge, had seen a new-hatch. She was the first. She studied it, watched as it ate. The sun reflected off of its blue tinted scales, reminding her of the snow-covered mountains of Winterhold. Silver stripes streaked across its wings and maw, and she was reminded of Kha'thal. It was a gorgeous dovah.
She had drifted off into dangerous territory, she noticed too late, when the new-hatch had stopped eating and laid one claw on her leg. Though not as powerful as the ones she had fought, the claws were still sharp enough to cut through armor. Her hand slowly began to unsheathe her blade.
The little one watched her with a curious look on its face.
"Monah?" it asked, nudging her with its head. When she didn't reply, it nudged her again. "Monah!" She offered it another piece of meat as she tried to figure out what to do.
'It needs a mother,' the Dovah whispered to her, and she agreed. But how would a Khajiit raise a dragon?
The new-hatch finished its meal and crawled into her lap, curling up as it yawned. It felt heavy in her lap. She didn't want it. No, not now. Khajiit bore cubs, not this monstrosity. But she couldn't walk away now. The Dovah in her hummed loudly with approval as she sighed and stroked it lovingly. The sins of the father were not the sins of the child, she reminded herself, and as the Dovahkiin, this little one and her were part of a very large pride. Prides stuck together.
This was a magickal beast, and in order to know how to properly care for it, she would need help. But who could she trust? Her Family, of course, but she doubted even Babette would know how to care for one. Whiterun sounded like a good option until she remembered that Farengar would most likely want to run experiments and then report it to Delphine, who would want it killed and its skull on her wall.
She growled softly, not wanting to disturb the sleeping new-hatch. Over her lifeless body. That would be the only way the Blades would get this dragon. It was hers, it was her pride, and she would protect it with her life, just as she did her Family. Paarthurnax and the Greybeards would help her, of course, but she would require more than them. Her dragon would be exploring.
She mentally ran through a list of the people she had connections with and grinned when she remembered one in particular.
Of course. The answer was simple. She should have thought of it sooner. She knew where to go.
Winterhold College would hold the answers she sought, and what she couldn't find there, she would discuss with the Greybeards. This little one would have a chance, she decided.
It hiccuped in its sleep and she smiled softly as she traced its wing membrane with her finger, mesmerized by how delicate it seemed. It needed a name. She wondered how dragons were named. Did they decide their own? Did they earn them? Did the pride mother decide? This little one seemed very much like a cub of her own race. She considered her options.
'In the days of old, some dragons gave themselves names. Others did not care, for they were Dovah and that was name enough. Some dragons were given names by the other races. This new-hatch has no name. Give it one to honor its blood and its future.'
She thought about the dragon tongue, thought of what words she did know. None seemed to fit. She dove deeper, consulted the souls of dragons she had absorbed. One in particular whispered to her.
Drem-Askk-Hind.
The words played in her mind.
Peace. Love. Hope.
She gazed at the dragon as she considered the name. It fit, she decided. It was everything she wanted for this new-hatch, for her pride.
Peace for it to find, Love for her and her pride to give it – and hopefully receive in return – and Hope that it would help pave a better future for her and her pride, for Skyrim.
"Dremaskkhind," she murmured as she stroked the spot inbetween its eyes. It cooed happily in its sleep before snuggling closer to her, and she softly smiled and wrapped an arm around it. She would let it rest for now, but soon, she and Dremaskkhind would need to head to Dawnstar Sanctuary. She had people to see and favors to call in.