A/N: This is first in a short series of one-shots about the protagonists of Oblivion, Skyrim, Online, and maybe Morrowind. It's the more angsty version of what I think it means to be various ES heroes. This involves a few headcanons, but nothing to out of the ordinary, especially. This first one only mentions a single headcanon i have.

Also, sorry if it gets alittle wordy. I avoided using he/she pronouns or specifying a race because it's players choice as to what the main character is.

Anyway, enjoy.

The Dragon

They called their saviour Ysmir. They called their legend given life the Dragon of the North, Alduin's Bane, the Last Child of Akatosh, the Dawnbringer, and so much more. They called that young hero Dovahkiin, Dragonborn, though they didn't know what that meant.

They didn't know about the longing, the rage, the loneliness. Alduin has been worshipped as a god, and Ysmir was his equal, and it was a wretched existence for a near-god to be born as he was. Dragons were meant to fly, to dominate. They were not meant for the bodies of mortals, or the life of one.

That may have been the source of the hunger. Oh, how the Dragonborn hungered- and longed, and wanted. It was something carved into Ysmir's heart, something that made a hole in the dragonslayer's chest. The latter two- longing, wanting- stemmed from being mortal, and not; from being a dragon, and not. A person of two worlds who was apart of neither, and so always alone. Yes, Ysmir wanted and longed, simply because the hero was the only of Dovahkiin kind, and wished- with such ferocity it ached- that there was another who knew what that meant.

The hunger- most likely- came from a dragonsoul being trapped in such a obsolete body. The Dragon in Ysmir's chest hungered for power, for blood, for domination. It made the Child of Akatosh a restless person, or at least drove the dovahkiin to it. The hero got married, had kids, tried to settle down, and still could not remain still. Once the house was built and the surrounding area was safe, the Dawnbringer could stand only to return for a few days, before the dragon once again departed. In later years, it evolved somewhat; it was no longer restlessness, but running. Running and running, because after so long being still felt like going backward, and their was nothing but death that way.

But in the early years, after Alduin was dead and the hunger was still restlessness, it drove the wyrm to destiny. The Dawnguard was a worthy distraction from the loneliness and the hunger, and it earned the hero the title of Dawnbringer among the people of the Rift. After that, though, had come Miraak.

Miraak was a source of mixed feelings. The dragon longed to dominate the First Dragonborn like it had no wyrm other than Alduin, and Miraak's own actions was justification enough to give in to that desire. But Ysmir also longed for the company of this kindred soul. He was arrogant, and evil, but the Last had finally found another dragon made mortal- another being to populate the lonely in-between realm the Dragonborn found himself in.

At the summit of Apocrypha, the dragon's wants outweighed the man's fear of loneliness. The First didn't help his case- he was a dragon as well, only with a stronger lust for blood. And so the Dragonborn of Old was slaughtered by the Dragon of the North; the people of Skyrim had called Alduin the Destroyer, but only because they didn't know what Ysmir was capable of by the time he face Miraak.

Solstheim praised the Dragonborn for Miraak's destruction, because they didn't know that Solstheim was also the Last's downfall. Ysmir had not reached the final battle with his kin with Hermanus Mora's help, and along the way the hero had seen all the daedra knew, the evidence of what he could teach. The mark of the power he could bestow. And dragons- especially one who's soul had added tens, if not a hundred more dovah sils to his own- hungered for nothing like they did power.

Something changed in the Child of Akatosh when Miraak died. The Skaal gave their warning, but it would have never been enough. The temptation was there, and it grew only stronger as time passed. Ysmir returned home, sporadically raised children and stayed at Lakeview, but was changed. The parent and spouse battle the allure of the daedra's power by hunting bounties and killing dragons, and later battled the rage that slowly mounted from so often resisting what the dragon desired.

The Dragonborn was sure to never bring that rage home, though the path the Dawnbringer was going down now led to darkness. As the children grew, the path grew darker, the temptation of Apocrypha more irresistible. That was part of what made the transition from restlessness to running; now, Ysmir was running from becoming Alduin, from becoming Miraak, and the dragon knew it was only a matter of delaying that fate. There was no avoiding it.

After many years, when the children had moved away, when Ysmir's friends were growing old and dying one by one, the day came when the Child of Akatosh's humanities was forsaken. After decades together, the dragonslayer's spouse died, and with it what remained of the Last's resistance. The Dragon of the North had sworn to protect Skyrim from dragonkind, and with no reason to hold onto the parody of a human life, that rule now extended to the Dragonborn as well.

So Ysmir struggled to control the dragon instincts- the urge to destroy, the temptation to return to Apocrypha- long enough to hunt down the last wyverns. When their souls had been consumed, and the Last was more dragon than mortal, the Blade did one more service to Tamriel, and bent knee to Hermanus Mora, as Jurgen Windcaller and Miraak and so many others had.

The hunger and the rage and the loneliness played like distant memories as Ysmir opened the Black Book. The world would fall before Alduin's Bane and worship the legend as they had the World-Eater, and the Dragonborn knew that, and he looked back, across the ashlands and the sea towards Skyrim. And even though it destroyed him, he read the book and stepped into Apocrypha anyway.