The old wooden door creaked open, revealing a man clad in blue with a sad, lost expression on his face.
The other man in the room coughed up blood as he turned to look at the doorway. "Here to torture me more, Stormcloak?" He asked, his voice hoarse and defeated. He feebly pulled at his binds as the Stormcloak walked closer, but it was no use.
Dear Talos, I'm going to die here, thought the young man.
The Stormcloak man stopped in front of the Imperial, letting out a pained sigh.
"What do you fight for, boy?" asked the weathered soldier.
The question caught the Imperial by such surprise; he coughed up more blood with a long, scratchy hack. He raised his head to look at the Stormcloak, to see if this as another one of their twisted games, but the man wielding only a question in his tired eyes.
"For a unified Skyrim…for…a unified…Empire," he choked out, breathing hard from the effort, the words limp and weak, a mirror image of the man struggling to say them. Empty.
Meaningless.
"That's what they shoved down your throat, boy. Maybe General Tullius fights for those things. Maybe his Legates fight for those things. But you? My boy, you don't fight for nothing. You're just a soldier."
A flicker of curiosity blocked out the pain in the Imperial's eyes for a moment as he searched the Stormcloak's face.
"Don't you fight..for..Talos? For..a free..Skyrim? That's what..they say..-" The Imperial's breath went ragged and he clutched his stomach, eyes lost again in a pool of pain. His labored breathing was the only sound in the room until the Stormcloak unexpectedly drew his sword.
The Imperial couldn't even struggle.
Everything was over, anyway.
As the Stormcloak advanced, the Imperial rasped out one last word: "Talos." And ducked his head for death.
To have his binds cut.
"Ulfric Stormcloak might fight for those things, boy. Maybe his closest generals, maybe the Stormcloak Jarls- but me? Boy, I fight. I fight to keep my family safe."
The Imperial grabbed the stone floor in front of him, panting, but listening to the Stormcloak with vigor. The man saved his life- maybe he just needed someone to listen to him. Not like the Imperial was fit to go anywhere, anyway.
"And what does that get me? A dead Jarl Balgruuf. The Jarl who allowed me to join the city guard after my farm had a bad year so I could feed my children. A country in…madness. Young men coughing up blood in the basement of a tower."
The man paused, rummaging around in his pack to pull out a potion of vigorous healing. "Drink," he instructed, watching as the Imperial's shaking hands pulled the cork out of the bottle and drank the liquid like a dying man, watched as the Imperial's pain-clouded eyes unfogged some, and watched as the boy managed to sit up properly. The Stormcloak was tired of watching.
"Look at you, boy. A Nord like me. We're all people in the Divine's eyes. The elves, the cats- we're all people. Nords shouldn't be fighting Nords because I wear blue and you wear red. We should be fighting the Thalmor, if anything.." The Stormcloak trailed off again, this time producing a shiny key from his pocket and dropping it next to the empty healing potion.
"Go, boy. Run far away from this torture chamber."
The Imperial fingered the key, and stood on wobbly, weak legs, but hesitated to leave. "If..you hate the fighting so much..why don't you unenlist?" The courage and curiosity bubbled at his half healed voice, the young soldier in him showing through. The older Stormcloak stared at the blood still on his uniform, hearing the boy's question repeat over and over in his head. Why didn't he unenlist?
"You can't unenlist from war, boy," said the Stormcloak quietly. "War drags the whole world into battle."
The Imperial made to leave. He couldn't stand the stench of dried blood, the sight of the wall he had been chained to. It was too much coupled with these thoughts; he thought he had something to fight for.
Now he knew nothing, other than the need to run, run into the setting sun and never turn around again.
He spurred a Stormcloak horse hard in the belly with his bloody feet and rode off into setting darkness.
The walls of Solitude loomed in the distance, its formidable fortress walls showing no sign of love, or home. Not like the one he'd had in Shor's Stone.
Not like the one he watched, helplessly, from the hill burning with his little girl inside as he ran and dragged a dusty pickaxe.
But his soldiers housed there. This meant safety.
He approached the stable master, clucking to the grey mare and patting her on the neck. "Stablemaster!" He called, shifting his weight to dismount.
"Yassir?"
"Treat this girl nicely. I owe her my life a million times over."
"Of course, soldier."
The Imperial nodded his thanks and patted the horse once more before setting off for the barracks. He needed a drink. He needed a bed.
And he needed to get out of the damn bloody clothes before he got sick again.
"There's going to be an execution," the whole town whispered. "I a-hear'd em sayin' so."
The Imperial man paid little attention to the gossip. Every once in awhile, some maid or shopkeeper who visited the barracks or went to see one of the higher-ups came out sproutin' stories of executions and death and plots and deceit like beanstalks sprout beans.
So when someone shouted "Death to the Stormcloaks!" and threw open the gates with a satisfied flourish, it startled the Imperial man.
"Eh..Gohrald?" He asked, nudging the soldier standing beside him guzzling mead. "What in Oblivion is going on?"
Gohrald snorted. "Execution. Death to the rebels and all that."
The Imperial man's face set into a worried line. "I didn't hear about no execution."
"Been all over the town for days, boy. Some Stormcloak torture tower was found and all the rebels captured."
The Imperial's eyes scanned the line of blue-so many, so many 'rebels'- feeling his stomach both fall through the earth and soar into the sky simultaneously. He was nearly sick on the pavement, barely choking down the conflicting emotions when he remembered his explicit orders not to mess up another damn uniform. His tortures, his assaliants- the people who sucked the life and fight from him traipsed by, hands bound in chains.
The Imperial didn't want to watch the crowd anymore.
He couldn't tear his eyes away. Some he knew by name. That hardy maiden, there, was Tessa, who brought him gruel and bread once a day. There was Hurfing, one of the torturers- he'd watched the bastard choke another Imperial to death. To hell with him.
And then, in the crowd, he spotted a face like a weathered map, with the tiny imprint of a smile on his face.
"He can't see me," thought the Imperial boy, heart sinking low. They can't- I have to stop-He saved-
"Ranmir." Came a whisper, soft and stout. "Look here, boy."
"How- do you-.."
"Shh, boy." The man held a finger to his lips as he trudged slowly along with the other captives. "Do not worry yourself with these things. Go, drink mead and be young." The crowd started sweeping the Stormcloak man away, and Ranmir desperately called out to him.
"Wait! Wait!" His cries were drowned out by the chanting of 'Justice!' from the townsfolk behind him. Franticly, the young man shouted with all his force, "Why are you smiling, brother?"
Miraculously, over the din, Ranmir heard something that stung him deep down in the soul.
"Because!" The man shouted, his grin spread across his face, his life twinkling behind blue eyes.
"In death, they don't expect you to choose a side."