The main reason I went against this particular path was that Ralof shipping was, and is, a bit over-saturated in the fic community. While true that I have never done it, I didn't see enough reason to throw my fic on that huge pile too. Here is how things could have been if I had gone a different route.

Apocrypha #1: Gold-Bear.

Windhelm was a place where one could easily get into a routine. It was too cold for spontaneity. Nils from the inn would come down every morning to chop his wood, the merchants would make their way to their stalls, and the guards would patrol everywhere except the Grey Quarter. The Stormcloaks in the city mostly kept to the Palace, before heading out to the camps all across Eastmarch. Ulfric wanted his troops strong enough to endure the cold, for once the Empire was driven out they would largely be on their own.

As the Stone-Fist said, the Stormcloaks weren't all career soldiers. They were farmers, tailors, hunters, men and women from all walks of life. Ralof, for instance, had been a mill worker before he headed the call of northern steel. At first, his Whiterun accent had annoyed many of his fellow Stormcloaks as Balgruuf still refused to pick a side in the war. But he did the work given to him, and he refused to be talked down to by anyone, even their officers. It earned him more than one bruised eye, but also respect. In skirmishes with the Legion, his tactical mind and ability to direct his battle fury earned him glory.

Respect and glory were all a Nord would need to live, were the world a kinder place. But the Rift's support provided them with more than enough food to fill their bellies. The Rift's perpetual autumn allowed them to be growing food constantly. If Ulfric cared to—he could win the war by doing nothing, Whiterun struggled to grow food enough for themselves, and none of the truly Imperial Holds had adequate farmland to feed their people. A lot of the intelligence Ralof saw come to Windhelm from captured Imperial couriers was that the Empire had to import basically all their food.

Cyrodiil's farmland was abundant, Ralof noted with cold logic, but it couldn't support its own population, plus High Rock, and half of Skyrim at the same time. Once the harvest was done, Imperial stockpiles would deplete far, far sooner than the next harvest was to begin.

The former mill worker at first thought that such thoughts were unsuitable for a foot soldier, but one time he had confessed thinking such things to the Stone-Fist in the rare time he was out in the field, Galmar had refuted his notion.

"Lad, we'll need folk like you when Skyrim is ours. You and others like you will look outward, see our strengths and our enemy's weaknesses, and put us on the path we need to be. Keep thinking like that, and if the gods favor you, you might just be a Jarl."

Then he cuffed Ralof so hard the younger Nord's neck popped, and shouted at him to get back to work—the latrine wasn't going to dig itself.

Sometime in the last days of summer, Ralof noted a strange Khajiit in orange and purple wandering around camp. The guards never seemed able to catch him when Ralof pointed him out—it was like they only saw the cat with one eye. One such time, he watched the Khajiit dodge many an arrow and Stormcloak sentry's tackle attempts, only to find an elderly Nord in the same outfit standing next to him.

"Hiya!" The elder threw his arm over Ralof's shoulder and guided him into the Stormcloak's tent. "I can't help but notice you're a decent man, sort of stick-in-the-mud but not too stuck, reasonably attractive, and unmarried."

"Who in the Void are you?!" Ralof tried to escape but found the stranger far stronger than him. Or rather, every time Ralof tried to free himself, his arms and back lost all their power and it was as if he were a babe.

"It's okay, fives rarely know what a ten looks like." He paused and patted Ralof's armored chest with his other hand. "That was rude of me, I'm sorry. You're easily a seven, but I have to place myself higher than you because then I can make jokes to my brothers about finding someone almost as attractive as myself for my boy."

Ralof, confused and angry, wound up his arm to punch the man and ended up punching himself in the face. Repeatedly. After the first time, he tried to stop but he just couldn't stop punching himself in the face.

The stranger released Ralof and shoved him onto his own cot, then sat down on a chair made of cut wheels of cheese. "I love it when I get to pull the 'hitting yourself' gag. Except when I don't. But even then it helps drive the point home." Suddenly, the man's voice went low and carried a very clear edge of menace. "Ye ain't in Kansas anymore, laddie."

Indeed, even though the floor and furniture of Ralof's tent were there, they were most certainly not inside his tent. They were on a moor, shrouded in fog, with twisted trees every so often. Off to one side was a human skeleton with its feet covered in glittering red shoes, half buried under the ruins of a house.

"Where-"

"Don't finish asking that. Yer head might explode if I decide to provide the answer via a means that your body doesn't have the sensory processing organs to understand. Always so messy." From nowhere, the stranger produced a cane and spun it between his fingers. "Now that I have you one-on-one, I'd like to ask you some questions. Or wait! How about I give you the answers, and you give me the question?!"

The favor of the gods, Ralof learned that day, was not necessarily a good thing.

Ralof's superior officer had assumed he was lying when he told her. Then she saw the evidence and instructed him to go into Windhelm and tell the Commander there what he had told her. So he went to Windhelm, to the Palace of the Kings, and told the third in command of the Stormcloak army, a man with the glory-soaked name 'Thrice-Pierced', and he disbelieved Ralof until shown the evidence.

And then Ralof had the honor of meeting the Jarl, Ulfric Stormcloak himself. He was a tall, heavyset man who looked like he could legitimately tear Ralof in half at any moment. And he looked confused and annoyed at being summoned to his Palace's courtyard.

Seeing eighty wagons, heavy with gold bars imprinted with the mark of a trio of howling faces overlaid upon each other, Ulfric's annoyance faded but his confusion did not. Ysarald Thrice-Pierced offered no further explanation to the Jarl but pointed to Ralof as if he was in and of himself the answer.

"Where did you get this gold, lad?" Jarl Ulfric was easily old enough to be Ralof's father but aged well. He spoke in a soothing rumble—Ralof, at last, believed the women's talk that it was wonderful just to hear the man speak. "I don't think you could take an entire convoy on your own, but you're a Son of Skyrim. We achieve the impossible."

Ralof's heart grew inside his chest on hearing Ulfric refer to himself and Ralof with 'we'. The Stormcloak footsoldier took the scaled horn helmet from his head and held it in his hands while he replied to Ulfric. "My Jarl, it… the gold is mine. I have agreed to an arranged marriage into a rich family and…. I got a frankly ridiculous dowry for my part. Far, far too much for me and mine to spend in our lifetimes. So…," Ralof scratched the back of his neck as Ulfric stared at him intently, "I couldn't think of anything better to do with it than give back to the cause that has helped me."

The Jarl was silent, then looked over the wagons. Ralof watched the Jarl's mouth move slightly, then pieced together that he was counting them. When Ulfric turned back to Ralof, he opened his mouth as if he was about to speak. Then he stopped halfway and turned to Ysarald. "How much can each other those wagons carry?"

"Eight hundred pounds, Ulfric," said Thrice-Pierced with his arms crossed.

The Jarl's face screwed up as he did mental math, Ralof knew the look well for his brother-in-law made the same expression. "That's sixty-four thousand pounds of gold." Ulfric pinched his nose, then looked at Ralof, the carts, and Ralof again, completely bewildered. "I thank you for your contribution, but Shor's bones lad, whose daughter did you marry to get this much gold?!"

"Well," Ralof said and rotated his helmet in his hands slightly. "There's… some problems on that front. First thing, well, they're… I'm marrying a son, so that's the first thing."

Ulfric flapped his hand at Ralof, dismissive. "I have no problem with that. What else?"

To answer that, Ralof unrolled a bit of parchment with the portrait of his husband-to-be and handed it to the Jarl. On the parchment was depicted a maneless Khajiit, rather cute but still… a Khajiit. The strangest part of his appearance was his fashion. His sleeves were detached, and held up by some strange garter-belt setup for his arms!

Ulfric took a deep breath through his nose and exhaled a sigh. "I'm disappointed, but I can… accept this, I suppose." The Jarl handed the parchment back to Ralof, who avoided his gaze. "Is that all?"

"No, Jarl Ulfric," Ralof sighed as he rolled the portrait up and put it into his pocket once more. "According to… my betrothed's father, the Thalmor have decided to make him their 'honored guest'. My future father-in-law wants them to not get what they want. So… I need to go into Imperial territory, and either get this cat over on our side of Skyrim or kill my way through some Elves to get at him?"

Ulfric's gaze was inscrutable, and Ralof braced himself for the Jarl to laugh at his stupid task. But instead, the Jarl let out a ragged breath. "Any enemy of the Thalmor is a friend of Skyrim. For your contribution, I name you Golden-Bear. I'll talk with Galmar, and we'll give you some men to lead in this task of yours."

Ralof had a surname, he realized. Given to him by the rightful High-King of Skyrim. The thought made him feel like he was walking on clouds—he didn't realize exactly what Ulfric had said beyond that until the Jarl departed for the interior of the Palace.

Ralof and his troupe of men made their way across Eastmarch, through the Pale, and over the swamps of Hjaalmarch, to finally find the Khajiit they'd been sent to retrieve. Thirty fighting men had been given to Ralof's command, his first command, and while a few gave Ralof friendly grief about 'buying his commission', the pay raise that they'd all seen from his massive donation earned him some respect. It also helped that Ralof was completely unafraid to headbutt anyone that made a serious attempt at insubordination.

The Khajiit, as it turned out, was either ridiculously short or a child. Both options earned some jeers from his men and were promptly headbutted out of them. For whatever reason, the cat was traveling in a carriage from Morthal to Solitude. The Imperials had just been hit by some cataclysm, so they were holed up in their city—the Stormcloak band could travel through the unimportant Hold's land with impunity. Especially since the monsters hunting the night had been destroyed.

Carriages didn't travel fast in Hjaalmarch for the sake of safety, so the thirty Stormcloaks were able to cross the land and find a spot to ambush the carriage. The carriage flew the colors of Solitude, so there was no hesitation from Ralof's archers in turning the horse and driver into pin-cushions, which resulted in the carriage tipping over onto its side from the horse's death throes.

In hindsight, it was a poor decision.

Ralof heard voices inside the carriage as they approached, a young man and a woman's. The man, Ralof presumed the Khajiit but he had no accent, was panicked and the woman attempted to calm him down.

"Yagraz—I can't see, they killed the driver, why would they let me-"

"Short-stuff, focus on staying alive I'm on my way. Vilkas you pile of jiggling custard, on your feet!"

When Ralof opened the carriage door, at a ninety-degree angle different than it should have been, he looked down to see a tiny Khajiit—roughly the size of a six-year-old boy, but clearly with a man's voice. It didn't take him long to see the family resemblance with the Nord who had arranged the marriage—the cat's eyes were milky white with only the faintest inkling of pupils moving around. In the cat's hands, he held a rectangle of Dwemer metal that cast a light on him and made it almost cute how the cat flicked back his ears and tried to make himself look smaller. All about him, bags that contained his effects were scattered around.

"Um. Hi?" The Khajiit, the spitting image of his portrait except for his eyes, waved awkwardly in Ralof's direction. The strange Dwemer device turned itself off as Ralof navigated his way into the flipped carriage. "I'm a member of the Jarl's court, good for a ransom? And-and tojay Khajiit are important to the caravans, they'll pay well for me?"

Ralof didn't let the cat's babbling get the better of him—the young man, boy, or whatever, was afraid he was going to be murdered. That fit with what the cat's father had told Ralof, a healing and enchanting mage who avoided combat when possible. While the 'tojay' made the case for his ransom, Ralof ended his babbling by picking the cat up under his arms, and lifting him up and out of the carriage and into the waiting hands of his second-in-command, Gunjar.

"Well, good news for your 'bride', Gold-Bear, the gods blinded this poor cat's eyes so he doesn't have to look at your face for the rest of his days!" Gunjar's humor worked a laugh out of the rest of the Stormcloaks and earned him a punch in the arm when Ralof had retrieved the blind cat's items.

The first night around the campfire, Ralof had some time to speak with his future husband. He'd expected the cat, Mohamara, to try and make a break but all the fight seemed to go out of him when Gunjar made his stupid joke. The cat had gone limp save for clutching the Dwemer metal rectangle to his chest at all times. He was so light that Ralof had no problems carting him around in his backpack, with the cat's head sticking out the top.

Once camp was set up, and his tent erected, Ralof set the cat on his bedroll and laid down on the moist Hjaalmarch soil alongside it. Neither said a word, Ralof because he was busy trying to think of what to say, and he guessed Mohamara because the cat was still afraid of being murdered. "So," the Nord started off, awkward as was to be expected. "Hi. I'm Ralof, your… um, husband I guess?"

Mohamara didn't say anything, but he tried to make himself even smaller. Already he had gone down from the size of a six-year-old to an overly large loaf of bread.

"Your Pa told me there would be… problems on your end. I get that, life ain't easy for folks of proper size, let alone for a man like you." Ralof reached out and made to touch the cat, but as if he could sense it Mohamara curled up on himself even more and let out a plaintive whimper. "Aw, come on. We haven't hurt you none, what's got you so scared?"

Ralof had expected something like what he was seeing, from what the cat's Pa had told him Mohamara was going to be a hot mess of emotions because of neglect. The strange god had likened it to being locked in a closet for the first sixteen years of a man's life.

At last, Mohamara spoke. His voice was in the same vein as its panicked tone in the carriage—this time, frail. Like he was fighting the urge to cry. "H-he said he'd find someone nice. I-I asked him to ask mom to approve the match too. And… you—that carriage driver didn't do anything wrong. He wasn't an Imperial soldier, he was just trying to survive. And you killed the horse, just because you wanted the Empire to hurt."

Ralof listened, in silence, while Mohamara talked. To him, it seemed bizarre that the cat was speaking like a Nord, and that he seemed about to cry his eyes out at any moment. But he didn't say anything yet.

"And… if both of them approved you, and you're like that, then I'm stuck in exactly the situation I wanted to avoid." The cat's shoulders shook in a way that Ralof knew meant he couldn't fight the impulse to cry anymore. "I spent all those years trying to accept dying alone as long as I didn't get matched with someone who'd hit me or do other bad things."

"But I haven't-"

"You killed someone just so you can hurt someone else!" The cat rolled over to face away from Ralof. "And I work for Elisif too. I'm a Haafingar native. Right now, all I'm thinking of is how long until you kill me to hurt Elisif and the Empire too."

Once again, Ralof realized in hindsight that he had made poor decisions.

- - -
Sixty-four thousand pounds of gold is Mohamara's canonical dowry, btw.