All the Tomorrows in the World

I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that's real...
what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away, in the end...

(Trent Reznor/Johnny Cash, "Hurt")

Vivian couldn't sleep. She lay awake in the dark on her camp bed, watching shadows flicker over the thin beams of moonlight from the cracks in the kitchen shutters, moving uneasily every few moments, listening to Shavee's soft breathing, scarcely perceptible next door in the bedroom, the door of which had been left wide open. The cabin, borrowed from a friend, was far up in the mountains, and there was nothing to be heard from outside other than the faint rustle of leaves in the night wind.

I'll look like such a wreck in the morning, she thought miserably. Shavee will think that I'm ill. Or that I really don't want her here. But the more she begged her body to settle down into sleep, the more stubbornly it resisted. Scene after scene floated up from the depths of her mind, not the dull, routine images she tried to evoke to quiet herself, but unrefined lust, no less provocative for being imagined. No matter how desperately she tried, Vivian could not will them to silence and darkness.

Stop it, stop it, stop it... You're going to spoil everything. Stop, stop, stop... She realized she was close to panic. Touch herself, bring herself off, to relieve her tension so that she could sleep? Her panties, the only thing that she was wearing, besides an old blouse, were soaking. This could only end one way. But she couldn't even run an idle finger along her inner thigh without having to choke back a scream. If she tried anything to ease herself, she'd make enough noise to wake the dead.

And now with all the wakefulness and worry, she had to take a leak. She knew she'd have to get up and deal with that one sooner rather than later. Of all her body's organs, her bladder was the only one that could give her sex a run for the money when it came to making its demands heard. The latrine was outside, a few minutes' walk, to keep the smells away from the cabin. Time to go and go. Maybe the night air would help.

Walking was torture, but Vivian made it out of the cabin without collapsing, although she had to to part company with her soaked panties almost immediately. Any touch down there was unendurable; she walked awkwardly, keeping her legs as far apart as possible. There was no audience, she knew, not for miles, and besides, no one other than the friend who owned the place knew that she and Shahvee were there. The only possible observers were a few friendly birds and animals, their ad hoc but effective alarm system, and none of them cared whether she had her knickers on or not.

One problem resolved but not much happier for that, Vivian sat in the latrine with the door shut, in the dark, trying to think. She was afraid to go back to the house. No self-control, she muttered to herself. I always spoil things. Can't pace myself. Can't wait. Can't keep control. Right from the beginning it had been like that. Even as a teenager in High Rock, she'd had a reputation of devouring her lovers, scaring off women twice her age with the intensity of her passion and the depth of her need. After she came to Skyrim it had been more of the same, right up to Serana who had loved her more passionately than anyone she had ever known, but who had broken in the end despite that. And now she looked to be setting a new speed record with Shahvee, with a good chance she'd chase her off before they'd even had a chance to become lovers. I'm no good for anything except killing people, Vivian thought, sitting miserable in the piss-scented gloom. I have the dead part down pat. Never was any good with the living. No wonder my longest relationship has been with one of the undead. But not even Serana could stand me forever.

As if to confirm her fears, her hand crept between her legs almost without her noticing it, her fingertips exploring. Leaning forward, she moaned softly, fuck...fuck..., the first word a curse on her own uncontrollable passions, the second quickly transforming to lust as she realized with despair and desire that there was no stopping now, that her hands and her mind were no longer her own.

She thrust into her body as if she were stabbing a sword into an enemy, two fingers of her right hand, then three, then all four, as far as she could force them. She'd frightened Serana by how rough she was when she pleasured herself. "Like a horny teenage boy's first time with some dumb virgin who has no idea what to do other than open her legs and close her eyes," Serana had said once, with more sadness than reproach in her voice. Vivian recalled how gentle Serana had been with her own ageless body, and with hers: dancing fingertips and tongue that led the passion rather than spurring it forward mercilessly, a firmer hand sometimes but only when called for and never for too long. The only cries she had ever called forth were those of pleasure. She had responded with an equal gentleness when exploring Serana, but with herself she was never anything but merciless.

You think you deserve pain, Serana had said once, when Vivian had impulsively tried to force her whole hand into her body and had ended up in agony, bleeding heavily. You can't make up for the people you kill by hurting yourself. It's war. You don't have a choice. Then Vivian had begun to cry, softly and hopelessly, and Serana had held her and whispered love and peace to her for hours, until she finally stopped sniffling and fell into a restless sleep.

It wasn't just her imagination. She did have things to answer for, she knew, all too well. She lost control on the battlefield as completely as she did in the bedroom. Earlier in the day that she had hurt herself so badly, Vivian remembered, she had led the attack on a Stormcloak fort, killing again and again in the savage trance that always waited to take her in combat, with bow and blade and even with her shield, bashing one hapless Stormcloak off the battlements to smash her head open in the courtyard far below. It was that woman's face that followed her the following night with Serana, that had stayed with her for night after night afterward, that had come back to her again now as she painfully pleasured herself. The Stormcloak woman had lost her helmet and seemed confused, parrying clumsily, stumbling with her head down. One of Vivian's first blows with the shield had broken her hand, and after that she had been all but helpless to defend herself. It would have been easy to whack her over the head with the flat of a sword, knock her out and make her a prisoner, but Vivian's blood-lust had taken command, as it always did. Instead, she had herded her dazed victim to the parapet and forced her over it, manhandling the larger woman almost gleefully, playing with her and feeding on her terror as she felt her death approaching.

Just before the woman went over the edge, she looked up, and Vivian saw her clearly for the first and only time. She was very young, short straw-blond hair, and her pale face was shining with tears. Her lips were moving, but nothing could be heard. Her expression was that of a frightened child, a hope against hope that someone would forgive and the cold certainty that no mercy was at hand. And she stank of shit; she had fouled herself in her fear, one last humiliation. She looked like a little girl who had had an accident and was terrified her mother would give her a whipping, Vivian thought afterward. She had fallen from the parapet with a soft wail, rather than a scream, and Vivian realized that she must have been crying too hard to make any louder protest at her fate.

Vivian hadn't gone down to the courtyard after the battle was over to take a final look at her prey, as was her usual custom with anyone she killed in such a deliberate and personal manner. It was just as well, since she learned, much later, from one of the soldiers who had been on burial duty, that the body they had found in the courtyard had landed head first on a spiked barrier and there was not enough left of its face to be recognizable.

She began to gasp loudly and tremble as she used more and more force on herself, and the image in her mind broke into fragments, sensations, sounds and smells as well as sights, one after the other and all of them familiar nightmares: a parade of those she had killed or had caused to be killed, come back to haunt her, remind her of her guilt, that she still existed and they did not. Remind her of what she owed them for being stabbed, shot, disemboweled, drowned, crushed, burned alive. She groaned and tossed her head violently, dangling right on the edge of climax, suspended between her body's lust for pleasure and her mind's demand for retribution, for pain. Finally, just as she felt her consciousness begin to slip away from her, she gritted her teeth and forced the index finger from her left hand up to join the four fingers of her right hand inside her. The response was a stab of agonizing pain that arched her back and twisted her face into a soundless scream, and then the chilling triumph as she came over and over again, half a dozen times at least, pleasure bought by pain, the guilty but incontestable victory of her living on when all those others had died horrible, painful deaths. She felt herself slide forward off the latrine seat to fall onto the rough wood of the outhouse floor, hit by a wave of dizziness and nausea in the stench and darkness, as she finally pulled her fingers free of herself and felt that both of her hands and the insides of her thighs were dripping wet, with her body's fluids, and she knew, with a last dark thought before everything faded to black, her blood as well.

-o-o-o-

One of the most frequent excuses people give for disliking Argonians has always been the alleged difficulty of reading their emotions. The gods have made them outwardly the most impassive of the Ten Races, largely by denying them the facial mobility that even the Khajiit share with men and elves. But this was no more than a lazy excuse for racism, Vivian had always felt. You could discover all that you needed to know and more from an Argonian's eyes, she told her friends impatiently, and from the tilt of his or her head. The signs weren't difficult to read, with a little practice, but most people were too lazy to bother.

It took no effort at all for Vivian to read Shahvee's eyes when she awoke in the mid-afternoon, not on the camp bed in the kitchen but tucked up warmly in the bedroom she had insisted Shahvee take on their first night here. They were red with tears. Shahvee had found Vivian unconscious in a pool of her own blood in the latrine. She had begun to cry then, and had cried through all the time since, as she carried Vivian back to the cabin, gently cleaned her up and bandaged her on the camp bed in the kitchen, and then settled her down for hours more rest in the bed that Shahvee herself had just left.

After she had finished, Shahvee had wrapped herself in a blanket and sat on the floor beside the bed, watching Vivian sleep. She knew there was nothing more she could do, at least right now, but every time she thought back on what had just happened, her eyes filled with tears again. I didn't know, she thought. None of us knew. What she has paid for being our great hero. We just took what she had to give, and never thought a moment about the price. Shahvee had been horrified to discover how many scars Vivian had on her body. But she realized at once that the damage she could see was less important than that which remained invisible to any but its bearer. Pain is written all over her, Shavee thought as she listened to Vivian breathe. She's all over scars inside too, all bloody and damaged, and none of us wanted to know. Easier just to have her do everything for us. She didn't want to bother anyone, but she's so near collapse. I love her. She'll kill herself. I can't let her die like this.

When Vivian opened her eyes again, she looked at Shahvee for a few moments, steadily, the only sound in the room the rustling of leaves from outside. Then Vivian slid her hand slowly forward, across the quilt, until Shahvee took it in both her hands and squeezed it gently.

"I'm so very sorry, Shahvee. I've spoiled our vacation." Vivian's voice was no more than a whisper.

"No...It's just that...why did you do something like that to yourself? If you wanted to be...held...you could have just come to me..." Shahvee's head was bent over their joined hands, and she was crying again, softly.

Vivian shook her head, violently, as if trying to throw off temptation.

"I always go too fast...Shahvee, I always mess things up that way...once I fucked a woman five minutes after we were introduced...and it never works out that way, not for long..."

She smiled sadly and held Shahvee's hand tightly.

"I wanted to do things better this time. Be a lady, and go slowly... I wanted it to last. I thought... I think you deserve it. Something more than just... You've become more than that to me...I feel good when you're with me, more complete... and I didn't just want to chase you away by coming on too strong...I was going to work up to it, take a few days... But I couldn't even sleep...so I tried to relieve myself and..." Her voice trailed off.

"But why did you hurt yourself so much? Why was there all the blood?"

Vivian hesitated. She had known this was coming, sooner or later. This was the part that truly frightened her. The part where she had to explain to Shahvee who she really was. She took a deep breath and answered.

"Because... I deserve it. It feels right. Not good, but right. I've... hurt so many others. Hurt them when I didn't need to. And I can't stop. Can't stop hurting them, can't stop hurting myself. That's what drove Serana crazy in the end. When she left me, she told me that it was just too hard to love someone who hated herself."

She paused for a moment and then added, in a flat, numb voice,

"I like to hurt people. Sometimes. And I do hurt them, a lot..."

Then she told Shahvee about the Stormcloak she had harried to her death, when there was no reason at all to kill other than her own passion for blood.

"I knocked her sword out of her hand and kicked it away, and after that, all she could do was hide behind her shield and try to dodge me. And I was playing, Shavee. That's the kind of person I am in a fight. Like a bored cat with a crippled mouse. I slammed her right up against the parapet and she was so terrified that she just emptied... everything... and I was furious with her then, for being so weak and stinking so badly, so to get back at her, I shoved her over the edge. I didn't even push her quickly. I did it bit by bit and she was crying so hard I could feel it through my shield arm when she tried to push back, but it only made me angrier with her. So I kept pushing until I saw her face, just before she fell... some stupid village princess who probably joined up because she thought Jarl Ulfric was cute, and had spent all her time in this backwoods fort, and had never really realized until now that people die in war... and now she knew she was going to die, not even a noble death, but a last agony in the dark, stinking of shit, and no one to see that she was brave and tried to do her duty. She was brave. Braver than I've ever been. She never begged for her life or groveled to me. She was a hopelessly bad soldier, but she wasn't a coward. But no one will ever know how brave she was except me, not her friends, not her family, not even Ulfric parked on his butt in Sovngarde, eating and boasting for the rest of eternity. I'll have her with me forever, but it won't teach me anything, because I am that sort of person on a battlefield. A monster, someone who frightens everyone to death, even her own side, who calls up demons and commands dragons and conjures things that don't even have a name in the world of light... The Queen of Death, someone called me once, and he was terrified when he found I'd overheard. But I wasn't angry. I just nodded my head and smiled a little smile to reassure him, and told him it was true, I didn't like it but it was true – and then I warned him to stay far, far away from me in a fight...

"There, I've said it. It must sound awful. I'm not a good person, Shahvee. I wasn't that good before I came to Skyrim, and now... look what I am now. Happy to torture, happy to kill. Maybe I'm just evil all through. I don't know if I deserve to be loved by anyone."

Vivian's long speech exhausted her, and when she finished, her head sank back onto her pillow and her eyes closed. She was white as a sheet. It had been like confessing to a murder, and now she was waiting in fear for the verdict.

She had managed to surprise Shahvee, at least twice. The first surprise was that Vivian didn't realize that everyone knew all of this already. Her reputation on a battlefield was one of merciless terror, though nearly everyone on the Imperial side considered that a matter for praise rather than blame. The other surprise was how critically Vivian herself saw it, how she had never bought into her own myth, the way nearly every other famous leader had. How she still had a sense of right and wrong, even with everyone around her more than willing to say that every wrong she was ever guilty of was both right and just.

"Oh, Vivian...love doesn't come when you check off all the items on a list. When you come up to some standard. It's a much bigger mystery than that. The first time we met, you called me pretty, and I suppose when we tell the story, some people are going to think that it was calling me pretty that made me love you. Well, it was a surprise. I know I look all right for an Argonian, but that someone of another race should see me as attractive, as pretty... I'd never thought it might be possible... But that wasn't why I love you. I don't know why I love you. Only that I do."

At that, Vivian smiled again.

"The same here, Shahvee love. That's why I couldn't treat you as a casual relationship. You're something else. The one time I didn't need to restrain myself... but I tried to anyway... so that I could make an even bigger fool of myself... I feel like an idiot. But happy..."

She tried to sit up, but winced and fell back onto her pillow. Shahvee gently shook her head.

"You did a pretty good job on yourself down there, love. Nothing will be open for business in that neighbourhood for a couple of days at least. But I can wait. It's been years already. A few more days doesn't matter. Here, let me arrange a few things..."

She got up and disappeared into the kitchen, reappearing in a moment tugging the camp cot up beside Vivian's to form an impromptu double bed, not quite level, and not very sturdy, but at least they could lie side by side. She lay down, on her side facing Vivian, and pulled the blankets over them both. Then she reached out and touched Vivian's cheek, as gently as she could. Vivian was still smiling, her eyes closed. She took Shahvee's hand and began to kiss it, just as Shahvee had guessed she would, and whispered,

"So I didn't spoil our vacation after all. I love you."

"I love you too, Vivian," Shavee replied. "We both had a rough night last night. Let's get some more sleep now, and then we can start learning about each other. A couple of days before we try anything below the waist, but there's enough new to discover up top to keep us usefully employed, I think. I've never made love to a human before, and I want you to show me how to do it right."

"I've never been with an Argonian either, love. All I know is that everything in The Lusty Argonian Maid, except the title, is complete Dark Elf porno-fantasy bullshit. Can't wait to learn the truth..." She yawned loudly. "Until you told me you loved me... I hadn't realized how tense I was, how tired... Perhaps that's why I was being stupid..."

Vivian's voice trailed off and soon her steady, quiet breathing told Shahvee that she had fallen back into a deep sleep. Shahvee closed her own eyes then, whispering a few final words before she slept as well, for the first time side by side with the person she had dreamed of for so many years,

"Ravish me mercilessly, my love. But not until tomorrow. We have all the tomorrows in the world now."

- the end -