A faint crying upstairs interrupted his thoughts, bringing him back to the present day. He lifted his gaze up from the book he forgot he was reading, staring up at the door leading to the bedroom. He waited for a little while, hoping she would wake up and take care of it. But a minute passed, there were no creaking footsteps, and the crying only rose in intensity. With a resigned grunt, he closed the book and stood up, lazily making his way to the second floor.

It was especially moments like these that he wanted to travel back in time and beat himself to death for his stupidity.

Then again, he couldn't blame himself. He couldn't even blame the Last for it. He doubted any of them saw it coming. Which was pretty much the epitome of their existence, if one stopped to think about it.

Although it had been her, indeed, the one that gave it the final push.

He repeated that to himself whenever they laid down in bed, after another heated session of thrashing, and biting and fighting to conquest the top. As if to excuse himself of what had just happened and what he knew would occur again.

It had taken half a year of that strange, confusing phase in their relationship for them to snap.

He had met a few of her so called friends at that point. Whether she trusted him enough or felt prepared to take him down had he tried anything, he couldn't tell. The meetings would normally happen in small taverns, by the side of some forgotten road. There was once a redguard and a small imperial, their faces half-hidden under hoods and their unusual red and black attires partially showing under their travelling coats. He watched their interactions from another table, normally choosing to stay out of her rendezvous. They seemed rather cheerful to see her, the imperial perhaps way too cheerful for his patience. Was he prancing? And her smile during said meetings was exactly the same she wore that time she fell - he pushed her - to the stream by the side of the road. She truly cared for these people, he would muse to himself, with certain disdain. Cared way too deeply, for someone whose life had been defined by death and bloodshed. Should know better.

That's why, when it happened, her reaction was to be expected. She had received a few letters from a panting courier, just as they were about to leave, a day when the weather had forced them to stay at one of those inns by the road. Some of the letters were running late, since the dovahkiins hadn't really stopped travelling for more than one day and the weather hadn't been any help. She chose to open them later, wanting to make up for the time lost.

It was only that night, when they had already settled up the camp, that she read them. He had noticed it in her expression, her body suddenly going stiff. One of the letters carried bad news, and she wasn't ready for them. But there was no crying, nor any signal of her internal struggle apart from the fact that she didn't 'grant' him with one of her fire-chats, instead choosing to go to sleep early. He couldn't stop himself from peeking a look at the discarded letters. Something about a inheritance, a woman's name he didn't recognize followed by 'death'. He didn't think of it as such a big deal. People lived and people died. Some of them earlier than expected. She should feel lucky, being granted by birthright with an unlimited lifespan, that every dragon soul she claimed kept stretching. So he shrugged it off, leaving her to deal with it however she thought fitting, and went to sleep.

His rest was however cut short, awoken by a rustling sound. The sound of someone nearing their camping site. He stood up, ready to get rid of whoever tried to sneak on them so he could go back to sleep, his body sore from the cold weather that soaked him even through the thick furs.

He didn't expect to see her standing- no, more like swaying from one side to the other, hands strongly gripping her hair back and her cheeks lightly glistening under the moonlight. Her shoulders shook at irregular intervals, and she bit her lower lip hard enough to draw a thin line of blood.

He sighed, lying back down, trying to ignore her.

A futile attempt, that was.

Not even five minutes later he was pushing himself out from under the furs, angrily throwing them aside. He couldn't place what got to him. Why should he care in the slightest and lose precious sleep over the fact she was pathetically wailing herself to shreds for a lesser being, for someone who was probably one of the many that left her behind, an ungrateful rat that had done nothing for her during all those conflicting years.

When she wheeled around, startled, looking at him with a expression darting from shock to disbelief, he realized a little too late that he had probably yelled out loud his thoughts. And she didn't take it well, for she started yelling right back at him things about not knowing a goddamned thing about what he was talking about, about him being nothing but a heartless, selfish son of a bitch- and then abruptly depicting herself as things far worse than she had ever called him. Muttering something about lost time, and being too late, and so forth- he had stopped listening, screaming at her in return, feeling a foreign fire rising right from his very core taking over his reason. At some point she was shoving at him, and he pushed her back, and she started to shout, punching his chest as if he was that fucking letter.

And suddenly her teeth were on his neck, her hands painfully tugging at his hair while the other violently pulled down his robes. And he'll be damned, he'll be damned for that single moment his hands didn't push her away, instead rudely flushing their bodies together, his nails digging through the thin layer of leather covering her lower back, searching for her flesh, wanting to draw blood.

Their mouths didn't touch once, and there were no cried names, no romance, just cussing and cries and a constant struggle to remain on top while they mercilessly crushed each other against the dirty and uncomfortable forest ground.

The following morning hadn't been as awkward as he had expected. She even seemed relieved, rather than embarrassed, as if a giant weight had been lifted from her shoulders. There was still sadness in her features, but at least she had stopped crying like a child. He decided he would be nothing less, and acted natural as they put their clothes back on, gathered their belongings and went back on the road, leaving that night behind.

Regardless of his centuries old wisdom, he was surprised at the lack of anything afterwards. No change of routine, no difference in their interactions. Especially when, thinking of it as an isolated occurrence, hardly two weeks later it happened again.

There was an ancient dragon, they fought, they won, and she was ecstatic. She pushed him against the word wall and they consumed each other on the hard stone floor. Same way as the last time, if not rougher.


He stopped himself right there, before his thoughts diverged towards the distracting details, focusing on the task at hand. He quietly entered the upstairs bedroom, taking a look first at the bed, the blankets delicately rising and falling in compass with her deep, calm breathing. So she was still asleep. He shook his head, amazed at how she had survived all those years sleeping out in the open if this, screeching, it could be called nothing else, didn't wake her up. Being sick was no excuse.

Miraak approached the wooden crib she had built weeks before. The source of all his headaches had somehow managed to get tangled up in the sheets, and was erratically waving his little, grossly short and chubby arms around, that tiny face crumpled and red while he kept crying his lungs out of their throat. Every damned night the same.

The proud dovah had a hard time believing he had started his life like this. Helpless and clumsy and needy of every attention.

He took a deep breath, bending over the crib with a tks and a 'okay, just... how...' as he clumsily freed those pudgy limbs - he sometimes worried she over-fed the poor creature, it couldn't be normal, all that fat in such a small being - and then nervously slid his hands under the toddler. He knew he had to hold the head with one hand, that much he had listened, but he had no idea what to do with the other. Damn it. Hell, he was so small, he could easily lift him in only one of his large hands. He decided to rest the baby's little bottom on his other hand, and then slowly and carefully, feeling like he could break if he added too much pressure, lifted up the small sack of tears and snot. He wished he would just stop those pitiful 'hmmmm' and 'weeeeh', or at least stop moving so damn much, he was going to fucking drop him- the atmoran took a deep breath, not to lose his temper, quickly steadying his arms and bringing the child's small form closer to his chest.

He stared down at the crying little bug. It would have been so easy, back then, to simply free himself from the whole thing. Maybe if things had stayed the same. Maybe if all had truly stayed as shameless rutting, to be forgotten the morning after. But things were never easy with her around.

It's all she had ever done since the moment she busted into his life. Put his world upside down, step by step.

But he had been the culprit that time. Never had he internally cursed at himself so much until he had met her. He couldn't help but to reminisce once again, as he searched for a chair to sit down with the child.