If questioned, General Tullius didn't believe a ghost could ever walk through his door. But he'd also seen too much during his fifty-two years on Nirn, more than thirty of which spent in the Legion, to believe he had seen even a fraction of everything. And this was one of those times the gods sought to surprise him.
She didn't so much walk as stumble into Castle Dour, graceless unlike the woman Tullius remembered. Though officially only MIA, he had assumed her dead after the Great War ended, and privately grieved in his way for a girl with so much skill and unique fire who shouldn't just quietly smolder out in a gutter somewhere. That's when he knew he'd been doing this too long. Tullius didn't want to see her become another nameless casualty in their unwinnable war.
Yet here she was drunk as Sanguine a cocktail party, yes, but very much alive.
"Tullius!" she exclaimed, spreading her arms wide and smiling as if she had returned from a relaxing vacation ready to face the world again.
Legate Rikke looked at him pleadingly, desperate for some sort of order. He gestured for her to stand down; he would handle it.
"What are you doing here, Violette?" Tullius fought hard to keep his voice level. He was speaking to a ghost, after all.
The former spy took a few steps toward him, her stride unsteady but purposeful. "I figured we've got some catching up to do. You're still doing the whole...commanding thing, eh? You were always good at that."
"Go back to The Winking Skeever and sleep it off, Violette, before you embarrass yourself." he said in his most stern tone of voice, which he reserved solely for insolent soldiers and misbehaving grandchildren. "We have nothing to discuss until you are sober."
Violette folded her arms across her chest in defiance. The Imperial girl could be stubborn as a Nord sometimes. "And if I don't?"
"Then I will have you escorted out."
She scoffed in response. Her eyebrows rose slightly, calling his bluff.
Tullius motioned for two guards, who had been watching this whole scene unfold from their posts, to come over and show Violette to the dungeon. "But treat her respectfully, understand? She's not a criminal. If I hear otherwise, I'll have you both reassigned to Markarth."
The guards nodded, no doubt picturing themselves lying sleepless in beds made of hard stone. "Yes, General. We understand, sir."
They each took one of Violette's arms gently and began leading her away. Surprisingly, she did not struggle or curse. Instead she merely glared at him. But there was a sober betrayal in those eyes as well as anger. The anger struck a familiar chord, too. It ran far deeper than that moment, the aged indignation, mixed with hurt and left to ferment in some dark place inside her mind.
Tullius remembered feeling that same anger when the White-Gold Concordant was proposed, and their weakened Empire had no choice but to submit to whatever terms those damn Thalmor demanded. Losing the Great War meant they'd finally lost everything. Each casualty had been in vain.
The look Violette gave him now was that of a woman whose Emperor let her down.
)O(
He tried all day to forget that look, but it was almost as if she'd said to him: "Well? Why haven't you fixed this yet? What good is crushing a pathetic Nord rebellion when the real menace is already eating away at our Empire's heart?" Which, of course, was what he occasionally said to himself.
Tullius descended into the dungeon around noon, figuring Violette ought to be sobered up by then. He found her in a dark, unlocked cell. She seemed annoyed, but not furious like before.
"Honestly, after I spent five weeks in a Thalmor torture chamber, I'm insulted you thought your your little dungeon would teach me a lesson."
"They could have at least lit these torches for you." he replied tensely, ignoring her leading comment.
"A guard offered, but I declined; my head is pounding."
"I see. Did they bring you a meal?"
"Tomato soup and a fresh baked sweet roll, if you must know. I wasn't hungry." Violette said. Uneasy silence hung in the still heavily wine-scented air for a moment, then she added: "I've been inside my share of jails here in Skyrim, and not one serves baked goods or asks if the lighting is too bright for their hungover prisoner. You pulled strings for me, Tullius."
"Yes," he replied, looking at his shoes and feeling inexplicably embarrassed. "Why are you really in Skyrim, Violette? Where were you?"
The former spy ran a hand through her red hair, which had grown out over time and now was a knotted mes of split ends closely resembling a skeever nest. Besides that, though, she appeared more or less unchanged even after all these years. He theorized there must be some elf blood in the roots of her family tree. No one could honestly claim they were purely human anymore.
"I don't know. I feel like I haven't completely been anywhere. After the war I just sort of...wandered, I guess. I had no reason."
"No, you can't do this." Tullius murmured, his resolve crumbling. "You can't disappear for so long and then..."
"I want to join." Violette said.
"You...what?"
"I want to come back, fight this little war so that the big one doesn't seem like it was so meaningless, you know?"
"All right," he spoke evenly, regaining composure. "I just have one question. Why did you agree to spy for the Emperor? Your debt was long since repaid, but you joined anyway."
After a while, she answered: "I believed in the damn Empire. I suppose part of me still can't give up on it because here I am."
"Then I, uh, wouldn't mind having you on our side again, Violette."
She half-smiled. "Glad to hear it, General."