Hello everyone! :)

My life's been exploding recently, and so what do I do to cope? I write and play Skyrim, of course! :D Sometimes I even do both at once :3

And I got such a positive response from my other pre-HAT story, this one just begged to be written. I hope you all aren't regretting that now ;)

There are some spoilers for Honor Among Thieves: The Unwilling Nightingale here, but not too terribly many, I don't think. And they're not too terribly large, either.

In any event, I hope you all enjoy. And don't ask me how long this'll be—probably a three- or fourshot, if that exists.

Onward.

-)

"Welp, I guess that's it, then," I said with an air of finality. I glanced about the room—from Aela the Huntress, sitting stiff-backed on the stairs, to Farkas, leaning against one of the pillars in Jorrvaskr (the one with the glass warhammer on it), to Vilkas, whose tankard was in real danger of being crushed between his hands, and whose hair was falling in his eyes because he couldn't look at me—and I threw up a hand, slamming a tankard down with the other. My smooth, Elven cadence seemed distinctly out of place here in Jorrvaskr, the Mead Hall of the Companions. "Guess I'll go tell Odahviing that…"

"You're not going anywhere yet," Vilkas interrupted, catching me by the arm before I'd made it even three steps. Even without his werewolf reflexes, the boy moved like lightning.

I wrenched my arm out of his grasp, and lucky for him, he hadn't been holding on very tightly. "And why not? I only have until dawn."

"If you go at all," Aela reminded distantly.

The darkness of Jorrvaskr is so familiar to me, now, and yet it seemed right then to be more like a crushing blackness than a familiar embrace. "I have to go," I reminded them all. "There is no one else."

"And why not one of us?" Farkas asked. He or his twin would go in my stead in a heartbeat, and we all knew it.

"Because you're not Dragonborn," I reminded him as gently as I could (I'm not too terribly good at that sort of thing). "Because you haven't taken the evil that is Dragonrend into yourself, and you don't have to. Because only the Dragonborn can defeat Alduin—it is her destiny. Because one being is not worth any more than another. Because the life of one woman—no matter whom she may be—is not more important than the life of the nation that took her in when she had nothing. Because Alduin needs to die, Farkas, and I'm the only one to do it."

"This is suicide!" Vilkas hissed, and I swear, I could see his heart breaking.

"This is how it has to be," I told him, unable to look my love in the eye.

"Dragons aren't Daedra," Aela reminded me, still staring into the dregs of her tankard. "There is no fate here, no 'must' and 'need to.'"

I snorted half-heartedly. "You have it backwards, Shield-Sister. With the Dovah, there is only fate, time, and duty. With the Daedra, there are agreements, bargains…"

"Morwyn," Farkas interrupted in a quiet voice, "please don't."

I wanted to tell him that my name was actually Tiberia, and that I needed to do this as much for myself as for Skyrim. My given name was like mud within my House, within my Great House, and maybe this would at least clear it a bit in my death. Enough to bury me in Necrom, surely? Or in my family's mausoleum? My sister Avalon, she would forgive me, at least a little, wouldn't she? She was always the level-headed one, the honest one. It's what made her a first-rate assassin.

But I told him none of those things. "And I suppose next you'll be appealing to the Harbinger?" A title I hadn't even wanted but took out of duty and a love for the Companions, and for Kodlak.

"If that's what it takes," Vilkas interjected fiercely. He was fighting a losing battle, and he knew it.

I threw up both of my hands. "What is it you want me to say, my friend? The cards are all out on the table! Paarthurnax told me the Dovahkiin has to kill Alduin—and that's me. The Greybeards told me about Dragonrend, which is an inherently evil Shout but it does its job and does it well. And I learned Dragonrend because who the hell else is going to? And I've fought Alduin once, and I won. He's weakened, he's wounded, and now I have the perfect opportunity to hit him while he's down! Why am I hesitating?"

"Because you'll die!" Vilkas shouted, and in that moment, everything stopped.

It wasn't that he had no love for Skyrim; it was that he held such great love for me. He'd actually proposed the other night, if you can believe it. And it wasn't spite that forced me to refuse, or a lack of love, and it wasn't that I didn't want to say yes. It was because I'd spoken with the Greybeards the week before, and learned about all this. Learned Dragonrend, learned I had to defeat Alduin, and learned that my oldest allies, the Blades, refused to help me unless I killed Paarthurnax—my only advisor. Knowing I had to travel to Sovngarde, knowing I had to face the World-Eater… I was going to die. I knew I was. And I refused to break his heart like that.

"I'm too stubborn for that nonsense," I said when my heart started beating again, but the room could tell I didn't mean it like I usually did.It was one thing to joke like that when facing bandits; it was another entirely when facing the World-Eater.

Vilkas snorted and no doubt had some bitter retort, but his twin said, before he could, "How is it that you do not fear death?"

I smiled wanly. "Because Dunmer know that death is not an ending, my friend, but a beginning."

"So that's it, then?" Vilkas barked. "You're going to go off on some suicidal mission because…!"

"Vilkas!" Aela interrupted, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Be at peace, Shield-Brother!"

Vilkas drew in a sharp breath, forcing his breathing to regulate. It was one of his old tactics for keeping the Beast Blood intact—one that he'd taught to me, and I still employed because I still had the wolf raging in my blood. I wasn't quite ready to give that up, but now, I wished I had. I didn't want to go to the Hunting Grounds when I died. Though really, I wasn't sure where I belonged. Aetherius was what made the most sense—that or Sheogorath's realm, the Shivering Isles—but that seemed like such a boring afterlife. Sovngarde, if it proved to be real and what the Nords held to be true, seemed much more appealing. Even to the Elf in me.

All grew quiet, but uneasily so. We sat around the fire in our usual spots then, with tankards of mead between our hands. Aela still sat on the stairs, her knees drawn up against her chest. Farkas was sitting with his back to a pillar near her, his elbow resting on one knee and his tankard in the other hand. I sat cross-legged on the table just above the fire, my tankard steadily warming between my hands. And Vilkas was in one of the chairs on my left, staring unblinkingly into the firepit.

"Is this how you really want to spend tonight?" Vilkas asked quietly, breaking the unsettling silence. "Truly?"

I spared him a glance as I thought about it. "No, actually, it isn't. Let's celebrate."

"Celebrate what?" Aela asked sharply. It was her defense mechanism for coping with loss. We knew that from all that had happened with Skjor.

"Anything," I said, setting my tankard down once again and hopping to my feet, "nothing. Life, love, liberty…" I jumped across the firepit, landing on my feet before the stairs. I was barefoot, now, in the clothes that went under my Daedric Armor. "…pick something."

Across the room, Vilkas was shaking his head. "You're mad, Morwyn."

I snorted. "You know you love it."

Farkas and Aela howled at that one, and Vilkas flushed crimson. "Where did that come from?" Farkas asked, still laughing.

I shrugged. "Oblivion if I know. Now come on. Let's round up the rest of the Companions."

-)

The rest of that night was spent in a drunken haze in the Bannered Mare. The Twins, Aela, and I, we were the Circle, the leaders of the Companions, which for all intents and purposes was a Warriors' Guild. After Kodlak Whitemane had died, I had been named Harbinger, which was something between a de facto and de jure leader. This was technically because I was in charge of no one. My Shield-Siblings merely respected my advice and tended to follow my supposed wisdom in most things.

And so Ria, Njada Stone-Arm, Athis, and Torvar were all perfectly happy to follow the Harbinger's orders that night. The whole lot of us drank and sang bawdy Nord drinking songs, and Athis and I combined could remember a few Dunmeri ones. We brawled for fun, and the rest of the tavern took bets on who would win. We celebrated the life that Talos grants his warriors, that Mehrunes Dagon grants his instruments. But it was all hollow.

Vilkas didn't let me out of his sight the entire evening—though more accurately, I suppose I should say his lap. Athis and Njada are always going at it, even more often than Vilkas and me are, but their stupid arguments tonight seemed forced, as though they couldn't quite bring themselves to care this night. Little Ria, the Imperial, looked about ready to burst into tears at the slightest provocation, and so the kind-hearted Farkas Jergenson looked after her for most of the evening. Torvar was trying to be his usual self, the drunken ass, but even he couldn't bring himself to be anything but sober that night, at least in demeanor. And Aela excused herself earlier than she normally would have, claiming exhaustion and a migraine. The full moons were calling to her, if I had to bet.

They all knew this was transient, that this would end. And the next morning, I would be gone. No matter how much they needed a Harbinger, and no matter how fond they had grown of the Little Elf they called Shield-Sister.

We stumbled back home, drunk as lords, and fell into our own beds. I had the Harbinger's Quarters by rights, and the rest of the Circle had their own rooms. The Whelps (and those who simply weren't Circle or Whelps) crashed in one large, barracks-style room at the end of the undercroft hall.

I tossed and turned in my bed for a while, unable to sleep. I polished both my armor and my dual swords twice in that interim, waiting to Vaermina to come over me, but she never did. A rising fear was swelling up from somewhere deep within me, a sort of terror. This was it. I was a dead woman walking. This would be my last sunrise, tomorrow.

Would anyone miss me, after I was gone? I mean, really miss me? Sure, the Companions would grieve over their lost Harbinger, but a new one (by which I mean Vilkas) would rise, take my place, and I would soon be a hearthside legend, told to make children behave and around bandit fires to keep warm. It was right and just for a Dragonborn to lay down her life in pursuit of justice, right? No one seemed to need me for anything except fetch quests, anyway.

Except Vilkas.

That wayward thought slammed into me with the force of a raging mammoth. You should be with him, the honest voice in the back of my head told me. What are you doing? This rising terror, this innate fear… another soul can always chase fear away. That's why Men and Mer are communal creatures, why we aren't meant to live alone.

As if I were controlled by some celestial puppetmaster, I stood and began the trek over to Vilkas' room. I knew he'd be awake. The man is a chronic insomniac, as much with the Beast Blood as without it. I padded silently through the halls, though I didn't really need to. I didn't need the werewolf's hearing to know that everyone else was dead asleep. A night of drinking will do that.

I knocked softly on his door. It opened a moment later, and a very confused Nord was standing in the doorframe then. This could look like so many things, I belatedly realized, but Vilkas knew me better than that… right? "Mind if I come in?" I asked, belated Elven manners catching up to me.

"No, of course not," Vilkas replied at once, gesturing for me to step inside.

I heard him shut the door behind me, and I glanced about. There was a candle burning on his desk, and his journal open to a blank page sitting just below it. "Are you all right, Morwyn?" he asked, his rough, Nordic cadence making me jump. How he and Farkas don't have the same accent, I'll never know.

"Yeah," I said, and I could feel myself dropping into the thousand-yard stare. "I just…" I stopped. "I can't be alone right now."

Vilkas nodded his understanding, and pulled me into a hug. The wolf in me loved his oh-so familiar scent, like pine and steel and vitality. "You don't have to go, you know," he said quietly, his voice little more than a rumble in his exhaustion and proximity to my ear. "You can stay with me as long as you like."

I snorted at that. "Vilkas…"

"I'm sorry. I had to try." He released me.

I let out a breath and collapsed to the floor, my back resting against the bare wall near the door. Vilkas claimed a spot beside me, not saying anything. The smoke from the candle across the way was making my eyes water, and the darkness in front of my face wavered. "You think it's true that legends never die?" I asked quietly after one long moment.

Vilkas paused to consider this. His silvery-grey eyes glinted in the darkness. "I think we still talk about Ysgramor, eh? And you always say, to speak the name of the dead is to make them live again."

I studied his face by the flickering light of the jar candle a moment. "So you have been listening to me."

His face spit into a smile. It was such a rarity from the dour twin that it lit up his whole face. "Of course I have, Lady Morwyn."

I laughed at that, and though it was more breath than laugh, it was a start. "Good to know you're not always an ice-brain."

He snorted and slid an arm around my waist in a sideways hug. The fact that he left it there was something else entirely. "And as for your first question, the World-Eater hasn't died, either, and he's a legend."

"Come now, my friend. Call him by his proper name—Alduin. Fear of a name is useless, after all."

"I will call him by his name when he's safely in the ground. Names have no power..."

"Names have a lot of power, Nord," I interrupted. "More than you even know."

Vilkas paused, just now putting two and two together. "Morwyn isn't your given name," he asked quietly, "is it?"

I shook my head. "No, it isn't. It's my family name."

Vilkas cocked his head to better study me, the way wild wolves do when puzzled. "So what is your given name?"

"I can't…" I began, then I stopped. If I were going to be remembered at all, it should be the right way. I drew in a deep breath and said, "It's Tiberia. Tiberia Morwyn. I'm named after Talos. No, I don't know why."

"Tiberia…" Vilkas tested the name, studying me. Then he smiled. "You never seemed like a 'Morwyn' to me, anyway."

"Yeah, well…" I tried to be flippant, but it wasn't working.

"I think I know why you're here," Vilkas said at the hitch.

"Oh? And why's that?"

"You're scared."

"Bullshit!"

He laughed, truly laughed. He had to clap a hand over his mouth to keep from waking up our Shield-Siblings. "There's the woman I love!" he said to me, tugging me closer to him so that he could kiss me. "I was beginning to wonder where she'd run off to," he added once we broke apart.

"Sovngarde," I said automatically, and the mirth drained from his features.

"Morwyn… no, Tiberia, I…" We locked eyes, the crimson and the silver, and something unspoken passed between us.

-)

Prying myself out of Vilkas' arms the next morning was the most difficult thing I think I've ever had to do. I was safe here, warm here, happy here—loved, here. I had a chance to be happy, really happy. And I was about to throw it all away for a nation of people who spat on me when I passed because my ears were pointed and my skin was blue. Not all Nords are like that—clearly, not all Nords are like that—but enough are that I stay away from cities like Windhelm and Riften.

I sat at his desk, and I wrote him a goodbye in his journal. He'd be sure to see it when he awoke, and I couldn't risk someone else reading it by mistake. Too much had happened between the dour twin and me to not say goodbye at all. I slipped out the door with one last glance thrown back to the man who'd taught me no, they weren't all the same. It was mostly just the elves that used you.

I dressed in my Daedric Armor, grateful that I didn't need help buckling it shut. I snapped my swordbelt across my hips, filled a pack with some healing potions and some necessary trip essentials, and slid my boots on, ready to face whatever came next.

And when I released Odahviing, when I settled behind his head as he took to the skies, when I saw that my Shield-Siblings had gathered on the steps leading from the Gildergreen Plaza to Jorrvaskr to see me off, the words I'd written bounced around my skull as though burned there:

Vilkas—

My words are so meaningless—what can I say? I love you, I'm sorry, I wish you all the best. Remember me, but please, don't sing praise. Forget me, but please, carry my memory with you. All that's good in me now, I learned from the Companions, and especially you, and I hope you know that. I'll tell Shor to keep an eye out for you, and maybe Sheogorath will let me skip over sometime, eh?

I don't think I need to tell a Nord what happens when Sovngarde beckons.

All my love,

Tiberia Morwyn