To the victor all the spoils
Author's warning:
This story is M and will contain initial non-consent, Stockholm Syndrome, sexuality, many situations that will be in the grey-scales of morality, and a convoluted plot that is an elaborate excuse to write explicit sexy scenes, thus refrain from reading if you know it may offend you or make you too uneasy!
This story was supposed to just be a dramatic one-shot with an unsettling vibe and instead it overflowed to cover more or less ten chapters (that I will post after a good ol' revision)! I did not have the evil heart to leave both of them in such dismal misery and so I slowly turned the plot towards a more soft ending.
1.
(Nir)
She had always believed Miraak's plan in the end was to kill her, to devour her own dragon soul.
That was why she did everything in her power that month in Solstheim to locate him, even daring to make a pact with a conniving Daedric Lord in order to reach the Summit of Apocrypha.
The Last Dragonborn was ready to fight the First to the death.
She had always thought that otherwise she would never have gotten rid of him.
She should have known better.
With hindsight, there were little dissonant details in his actions that should have risen some suspicion, but from the very beginning she got side-tracked by his constant taunts. He had goaded her on until the very end.
"Fate decreed that you had to die so that I could win my freedom."
He had led her to believe so, doing little to correct her assumptions.
While their swords clashed in an impasse of brute strength, Miraak's voice reverberated from his mask in an unnaturally soft manner, almost like he was revealing to her some sort of confession, a strident contrast to the raw force he exerted in combat.
She hadn't perceived it then, the truth he was concealing, yet offering her with that simple, seemingly plain statement.
She had been too naïve then, or not twisted enough to understand his behaviour.
There had been a fleeting moment when she experienced the giddy taste of near victory, lending her enough energy for a final push, and make him fall back with a flurry of blades.
"This cannot be. I am master of my own fate!"
In his hiss there was a strange touch of resentment. She mistook it at first for concealed panic—then he turned the tables.
"Kruziikrel, ziil los dii du!"
Her body already ached with fatigue when she watched, horrified, how the dragon evaporated in a luminous mist and replenished his adversary with new strength.
"Ah, now we can finish this."
In his voice there was an odd fluctuation of lurking eagerness and something not so identifiable.
It was only a matter of time before he got her cornered. She was too exhausted to keep up with him like before.
She shut her eyes and waited for the final strike, the mortal stab that would steal away her life.
And she realized with bitterness that she would experience it too, now, the answer to the question he had once so casually laid to her.
"Do you ever wonder if it hurts, having your soul ripped out like that?"
It happened during their second encounter. She should have noticed how his body flinched after he turned toward her, but she was too angry to catch such detail at that time, too preoccupied with her stolen dragon soul to care about anything else.
The winter wind blew violently against the barren and snowy mountain peaks, but she marched resolute, step after step, toward his ethereal projection.
With the hood down, her long red hair floated around in disarray, matching the wild emotions that distorted her angry visage. She had lost her Hevnoraak mask during the recent fight, when the dragon had shouted a Fus-Ro-Dah so powerful it had almost thrown her down the nearest precipice.
As she could not hurt his intangible form, she resorted to verbally venting her righteous fury, just a few feet away from his masked face.
She was going to yell a chain of such vivid profanities that even a chief bandit would have blushed at hearing them, when he surprised her, uttering with a strange softness that unexpected question before vanishing away.
She lost the count of how many times she had cursed the moment she lost that mask. If she had known what that insignificant event would have unleashed, she would have replaced it with another mask, and not donned a pretty circlet like she did during that fateful final battle.
It did not matter in the end, however. She discovered much later that the damage done that day would not have been mended so easily.
"Send him back where he came from. He can await my arrival with the rest of Tamriel."
In retrospect she found it funny, that at their first accidental meeting he had surmised the Last Dragonborn to be a man.
Normally she would have given the matter but a fleeting thought, she was so used to Nordic sexism by then, but it insidiously stung her pride, poisoning her common sense.
Perhaps that was why she kept antagonizing him at every chance, spurring him on, driven by a foolish desire to show him her real strength.
And he urged her on in his own twisted way.
She should have caught those subtle changes after their second conversation, but she did not.
"So you have slain Alduin... I could have slain him myself... You have no idea of the true power a Dragonborn can wield..."
She was too deafened by the growing echo of his initial dismissive derision.
From then a pattern was set. Every time she risked her life to slay a dragon, he would appear behind her back and steal her hard-earned prize.
Dozens of dragon souls, by her reckoning. Only at one point had she stopped to count.
Sometimes his projection would take shape just few inches behind her neck, to tease her with the brief illusion that finally—finally!—the dragon soul was flowing into her. Or so she thought.
"This dragon's soul belongs to me." He murmured that into her ear during one of their last meetings, his voice a soft, deep rumble, before she made the stupid decision to return to Solstheim.
Lydia had tried to warn her, that her one-sided competition—so the worried Housecarl had labelled it—was getting out of control.
"It takes a strong will to command a Dragon's soul. Perhaps you aren't as powerful as you think."
He started to openly tease her after their fifth encounter, when she tried to punch his incorporeal chest out of frustration, making a total fool of herself.
He did it on purpose, just to get her all riled up for his own dark amusement. Even though she knew that, the urge to rage at him was strong, especially when he just stood there and chuckled at her temper tantrums.
Lydia wasn't there that time, so she didn't take note of the obnoxious and patronizing cadence he used just to provoke her into accepting his unvoiced challenge.
She should have listened for once to her wise friend, and not have taken his bait.
All other tasks slowly fell second place to the maddening desire to snatch away the next dragon soul before he could.
At first she would merely delay her current mission if a dragon was unfortunate enough to be spotted flying in the skies. Then it devolved into active hunting, with the help of Delphine's maps.
"Thank you for your help. We will meet again soon."
Their brief interactions soon dwindled.
That time she almost grasped the picture of the situation she was in, when she mused, irritated, that his teasing threat almost sounded like he was looking forward to see her again. He was getting cocky, too, invading more and more of her personal space with his translucent, incorporeal form.
Perhaps she would have not been so clueless if his form had been tangible.
She brushed it off as the typical power game, aimed to display with arrogant confidence what a petty menace he considered her to be.
She had been a foolhardy, inexperienced young woman, too blinded by her insatiable need to prove herself and be recognized.
"I grow ever stronger, Dragonborn. One step closer to my return."
During their last verbal exchange, he stood only few inches from her chest and spoke to her with a low and soft guttural tone.
She deduced long ago, from his deep vocal timbre, his burly physique and tall height, that he was a Nord. She always believed herself to be tall enough for a Breton, but she barely reached his shoulders.
Even if she could not peek through the slits of his mask, that time she could feel it, a scorching gaze pinned on her little frame. It unnerved her, for the wrong reasons. She suddenly understood how foolish she had been for indulging their little game, but came to the wrong conclusion.
She told Lydia they would travel to Windhelm that same night.
She should have fled away to Cyrodiil.
"And here you are, just as I asked. How very kind of you.
I presume you've already seen some of what I've accomplished.
There is so, so much more to be done. I'm glad you're here."
An alarm bell should have chimed in her head, when he worded his greeting in that oddly gentle way. Her resentment and her certainties had grown tenfold, though, after the recent attack of that dragon, Krosulhah. The beast had claimed that the First had commanded her death. So she completely overlooked the fact that he welcomed her with unusual warmth, and instead stirred him up with her usual cheek.
"Then let us see who truly has the soul of the Dov."
She shouldn't have prodded the slumbering dragon.
Their first physical confrontation started with a paced exchange of lethal spells. She quickly discovered that he was well-versed in the destruction branch of magic and so chose to change tactics. They shifted to close combat when she unsheathed her familiar Daedric blades.
"I know things the Greybeards will never teach you."
He took advantage of their proximity, when their blades and his staff were locked in a power struggle, to flaunt his greater knowledge.
She was too concentrated in keeping her stance to catch the dark innuendo his smooth, deep intonation imprinted on the phrase.
To her ears it just sounded like his umpteenth attempt at mockery.
"Felling Alduin was a mighty deed."
She should have been paying more attention to what he kept saying.
"The Greybeards taught you well."
To the way he continued to praise her.
"You are strong. Stronger than I believed possible."
To the odd undertone that accompanied each assessment he shared with her.
She had been a fool, to just internally gloat over his acknowledgement of her strength, instead of hearing the husky tone he used.
His admissions and the defensive position he maintained during the fight spurred her to double her efforts, with little care of preserving her depleting endurance.
And then after she cornered him into shouting those four cursed words, he stopped to sweet-talk her. He went on full offensive.
"You fight valiantly against fate, but I am stronger here."
His voice thundered, amplified by his metallic mask, almost deranged as he charged.
He did not give her a chance to slip out of defence once. She was weary, her muscles too tired to ward off his brutal retaliation. She soon found herself knocked against a column, the blade of his poisoned sword grazing the pale skin of her neck. There was no need for him to state the obvious. She let her blades drop to the floor and closed her eyes in bitter defeat.
Then she yelled in surprise, when instead of receiving the final blow, she felt his hands roughly grab her arms and throw her at his feet. She reopened her eyes, wide like those of a caught deer, only to stare in utter disbelief at how his massive frame straddled her hips as he unbuckled his belt.
She didn't think, just shouted with all the remaining strength in her lungs.
Her unexpected Fus-Ro-Dah hurled him far enough to give her time to crawl some feet away, but a paralysing spell hit her bent form, the same one he used that time she unwittingly disturbed his wretched existence in Apocrypha and scrambled his plans to ruin.
"Did you think to escape me?"
His growl was feral. She could not move but to furiously blink the tears away.
He gripped his sword and tore with precise cuts the leather clasps of her armour and her modest undergarments, leaving her chest and legs completely exposed to his sight.
She blushed in shame as he perused her naked body. She could not see the expression on his face, but she caught the little twitches of arousal he was not able to repress.
He pulled off his gloves and carelessly threw them nearby, and his bare hands visibly quivered when they feverishly touched her pale, large breasts, as he gazed at them behind the black slits of his inexpressive mask.
He didn't take his own clothes off, just freed the thick hardness restrained beneath his trousers.
She was thunderstruck and disoriented at seeing his swollen erection.
Men did not react to her that way—they fled from her in fear. For the first time since her arrival in Skyrim, she was scared out of her wits, and she couldn't stop crying like a baby.
He did not give her a chance to digest the notion, or give her any warning, instead he spread her legs around his waist and entered her.
It burnt—how it burnt. Worse than all the planes of Oblivion put together.
She would have screamed at the top of her lungs if she weren't paralysed.
He stilled after he bottomed out, all his muscles tense. She thought the Divines still had some mercy for her.
He remained motionless for a long while, his masked face buried in the crook of her neck, his hands tightening around her soft thighs. She could hear his heavy, fast breathing, and a guttural moan escaped from his throat when he slowly started to rock his hips against hers, once, twice, then a gradually faster pace that got rougher, more frantic after each push.
She knew he was far gone when he groaned without restraint and buried himself in her with wild abandon, crushing her petite frame under his heavy bulk.
"Geh...undaargaar..."
It was surreal to hear that voice, his voice, moan with pleasure next to her ear.
He shivered uncontrollably and then collapsed over her. A strange, alien warmness spread through her lower, now sore abdomen.
She had no idea how long she stared blankly over his shoulder. Those two dragons were still flying in the greyish sky, while he lay on her, spent, still inside her, and she felt sick.
Dragon language:
Kruziikrel, ziil los dii du = Kruziikrel,your soul is mine to devour
Geh, undaargaar = Yes, finally
