So I wasn't going to write any notes on this one because it kinda speaks for itself, but I actually can't stop fangirling over the end of this stupid chapter. May and Vilkas are literally perfect, I cannot, goodbye.

Anyway, I hope you adore these two as much as I do because the next chapter, at the very least, is all them :]

topside

Her abrupt return to consciousness is accompanied by an overwhelming ache. Her spine feels tied in tidy knots; her muscles jump and crawl without her consent. She feels as though she's spent the last fortnight sleeping on a pile of rocks, and her desire to sit up is quickly quelled by a sharp stab of pain from her left shoulder. She opens her eyes and, carefully, turns her head: it, at least, doesn't throb, as she seems to have a pillow of sorts. A few feet to her right is a dusty rock wall—suddenly, she remembers where she is and why she hurts. She remembers finding the necromancer's journals, then Vilkas screaming her name, then a burst of agony and a feeling of utter helplessness. She had tried to heal herself: even as poison coursed through her veins, she had called on every vestige of strength to muster up a weak healing spell, but the poison burning through her body had been too much for her feeble magic. She remembers slipping into black unconsciousness with fear clawing at her heart even as Vilkas held her in his strong hands.

She looks to the left then, wondering where Vilkas is, and tries to ignore a terror rising in her chest: what if he had left her there, alone in that dank cave, to die? The answer becomes apparent immediately: a small but merry fire crackles a safe distance away. She watches the copper flames dance and spark for a few moments before noticing a dark figure beyond the fire. She can make out the silhouette of Vilkas's broad shoulders, and their rhythmic rise and fall tells her that he's asleep. She tries again to sit up, feeling the pinch of hunger in her gut; though she braces herself for the inevitable pain from her filleted shoulder, she can't hold back a gasp of surprise as her body protests her movement. Almost before the noise has escaped her mouth, she hears a rustle across the fire, and Vilkas scrambles into the flickering firelight.

"You're awake," he rasps, and she notes that, even though he'd just been asleep, dark bags hang from his lower lashes.

"No, I'm sleep walking," she retorts through gritted teeth, trying to get a good view of her injured shoulder. It's just then that she realizes she's been stripped of her cuirass: naught but her breastband covers her torso.

"I had to get to the cut," Vilkas grunts by way of explanation, though she hadn't questioned his motives. "I'm no healer, but I did what I could."

She scrutinizes the bandage he'd affixed to her arm: to call it rudimentary would be an unkind exaggeration, but it seems to have done its job: excepting a few rusty red patches, the fabric is still the dusty blue of the dress he'd ripped it from. While she examines his handiwork, he moves away from her, out of the ring of firelight, and she looks up and strains to follow his movement. He returns quickly, his arms laden with bottles, plants, and a fresh swathe of fabric.

"What are you doing?" She asks, understandably suspicious as he eyes various ingredients and tosses them into an awaiting mortar.

"Making another potion," he responds, tone distracted. He pauses then, and his dark eyes flick up to meet hers. "Am I doing it wrong?" She leans forward slightly and peers into the mortar: wheat, a rock warbler egg, and a butterfly wing wait to be mixed into a paste.

"No," she replies, surprise evident in her voice. Nodding, he snatches up the pestle and begins working the ingredients together. His movements are choppy and unfamiliar, and she watches, brows knit together in confusion. "I didn't realize you knew alchemy," she says after a moment.

"I don't." His answer is blunt, and his lips twitch into a lopsided smirk. "I found your recipes in one of your journals when I was looking through your potions. Even a simple Nord like me can mix a few things together." He finishes his work with a few more rough, strong strokes of the pestle, then carefully sets it aside and meets her eyes.

"Lie down." She wants to argue, to snap at him for daring to give her orders, but his words are so strong and his voice so sure, she finds herself obeying without question. He shifts to his knees at her side and leans over her, big hands gentle as he tugs at the edges of her bandage. She sucks in a breath as the dried blood pulls at her wound, and his lips set in a thin, worried line, but he continues his work. She crooks her neck in an attempt to see the gash in her shoulder, and what she sees surprises her. The cut itself is not particularly deep, but it's coated with dried blood, and the exposed muscle beneath is an unhealthy gray color.

"I don't think it's supposed to look like that," Vilkas mutters as he scoops some of the paste onto the tips of his thick fingers.

"It's not," she agrees, leaning up in an effort to get a better view. Almost immediately, his free hand is on her good shoulder, firmly pushing her back onto the ground. She flicks her gaze to his face, then, and watches his brow furrow in concentration as he applies the paste to her wound. She hisses with pain, and his jaw clenches.

"Did I mix it wrong?" He asks, voice tight, and she shakes her head quickly.

"No, it's right. It just hurts like a bitch. Keep going." She tries to keep her voice steady and looks away this time as he bends back to his work.

Grudgingly, she has to admit that he's astonishingly gentle. His hands are most inelegant, with thick, stubby fingers and rough palms as big as her face—perfect for gripping the hilt of a sword, but hardly suited to precision work; nonetheless, she barely feels his fingers through the burn of the healing salve. She takes advantage of his concentration to really look at him: his eyes are heavy and bloodshot from lack of sleep, and the prickling of facial hair he usually sports has grown into a dark scruff. She furrows her brow.

"How long was I out?" She asks. He's finished applying the salve and has moved on to re-bandaging the cut.

"A little over a week," he replies distractedly, carefully winding the fabric around her shoulder.

"A week?" She repeats, eyes widening. She realizes, all at once, that he's been looking after her all that time, and she feels her pulse quicken. Before setting out on this job, she would have sworn that Vilkas would be happy to let her rot in a cave; now, though, she's completely at his mercy. "I'm surprised you have any ingredients left," she manages after a moment.

"I used up what was in your bag pretty quickly," he admits. "When I went to get the horses, though, I found some more in your saddlebags." As he speaks, he gestures vaguely to his left, and she sees now that their saddlebags are piled in a corner.

"You really need to eat now that you're awake," he says, standing abruptly and wiping his hands on his trousers. "It was all I could do to get you to drink occasionally while you were unconscious." As she eases herself into a sitting position, he crosses to fire and positions a cooking pot over the flames. She watches him busy himself with preparing their meal.

"Thank you," she says after a moment, and he looks up at her sharply, expression surprised. "I don't think I would've survived this without your help."

"Mmm," he grunts, returning his attention to the food. "I would've been useless without all your recipes."

"Lucky I took Ma's cookbook before I left Cyrodiil, I guess," she replies wryly, and he glances at her once more, this time calculating.

"Ralof mentioned the Imperials picked you up crossing the border. What were you doing in Cyrodiil?"

She's quiet for a long moment, toying with the mortar and pestle he'd left by her side, and he goes back to cooking, clearly expecting her to dodge his question, as she usually does whenever she feels he's getting too personal. Instead, she sighs and looks up at him.

"I grew up in Cyrodiil," she finally says, and he arches his brows in surprise.

"But… You're a Nord, not an Imperial."

"My mother's family was all from Skyrim. My aunt married an Imperial and moved to Cyrodiil, so when Ma found out she was pregnant with me, she went to live with them."

"And your father? Was he a Nord?"

"I don't know." Her voice is quiet, and he pauses in his work to look at her. "I never met him, but I don't think he was Nordic. All Ma would ever tell me was that he was an instructor at the College of Winterhold, and there are very few Nords there."

"Your father was a mage?" Vilkas's words carry a surprised tone, though, given her aptitude for magic, it would make sense for mages to be in her lineage. "And your mother, too? That's why she knew so much about alchemy?" Mayenor shakes her head.

"Ma was an alchemist. She couldn't cast a spell to save her life, but she had an alchemy shop in Winterhold before the Great Collapse. She stuck around afterward, to cater to the College, and that's how she met my father. She knew she couldn't afford to raise me on her own, though, so she closed the shop and moved to Cyrodiil with her sister."

"So what brought you to Skyrim, then?" He gets the food to cooking, then settles down a few feet to her right, eyeing her curiously.

"I always felt something pulling me back to Skyrim. Call it heritage or whatever you want, Cyrodiil never really felt like home to me. Once Ma died, I had no reason to stay anymore. I took my uncle's hunting bow and all the gold I'd saved up from working on the farms and hopped on the first carriage headed this way."

"I don't understand how you got caught up in the Stormcloak raid." Mayenor's lips twist into a smirk.

"I was impatient," she admits. "I'd waited by whole life to come to Skyrim, but somehow I'd failed to realize I'd need papers to cross the border. It would've put me behind a whole year to wait for the proper documents, so I travelled through the woods along the border a ways and tried to cross on my own. Somehow I managed to choose the exact spot that Ulfric and his men were gathering. General Tullius rounded me up with the rest of them and nothing I said could change their minds." She gives a short laugh. "Have you ever seen the Stormcloaks? They hardly let women fight for them. Especially not teenaged farmhands from the Imperial capitol."

"So you worked on a farm in Cyrodiil?"

"Several. Picking crops, planting seeds… Whatever they needed."

"Then… Who taught you to fight?" She looks up at him sharply, and the fierceness that had faded from her eyes springs back to life. He's beginning to recognize the glimmer as the fiery pride that keeps her going.

"I taught myself. And I'm damn good, no matter what you say. I fought my way out of Helgen, then from Rorikstead to Winterhold. I spent a year at the College learning magic and teaching myself to survive alone in Skyrim, then went back to Rorikstead looking for work."

He nods his head slowly, registering her words. He finds it almost impossible to believe that she wasn't born with a sword in her hands—her brute strength is enough to impress even the most seasoned warriors, despite his never ending protesting to the contrary—but it does explain a lot about her technique – or lack thereof. He doesn't ask her anymore about her past, still barely believing he'd been lucky to get even this much out of her; instead, he leans up to tend to the stew bubbling in the cooking pot.

"So what's your story?" Her voice is soft, and when he glances over his shoulder at her, she's peering up at him with those wide, green eyes. He doesn't answer for a long moment, instead taking an opportunity to just stare at her. Her hair is dirty and matted where it's come undone from its bun; her skin is ashen with blood loss; her cheeks and arms are streaked with dirt and dust. And yet somehow, in this most vulnerable situation, she looks older than he's ever seen.

"Da was a Companion," Vilkas mutters after a long while. "Don't know who our Ma was. Tilma said she heard crying at the main doors of Jorrvaskr one night, and when she went to look, me 'n Farkas were in a basket on the top step with a note. We were raised as Companions from the time we could walk. I've never known another life."

"You mean you've been in Whiterun your whole life?"

"Yeah. Except for doing jobs, I've never left the city." She stares at him, looking, for the first time, like she's speechless.

"You… You've never explored Skyrim? Or any of Tamriel? By the eight, Vilkas, you've even got a built-in follower in Farkas, and the two of younever just got on a horse and rode until you saw something that made you want to stop? You've never gone skulking through the woods, hoping you don't end up some werewolf's midnight snack, or climbed the Seven Thousand Steps to High Hrothgar, or seen how the people of Markarth managed to turn a bunch of crumbling ruins into a beautiful and thriving city?"

"Well… No."

"But why?"

It's his turn to be speechless then. He's never really considered the fact that there's a world to see outside Whiterun; the idea that he and Farkas could go off on their own and do whatever their heart desired had never even occurred to him. And yet, hearing her list with such disbelief all the things he's never seen in his own homeland, he finds himself asking the same question. Why hadn't he ever gone off on his own adventures? Almost thirty years of taking orders from Skjor, Aela, and Kodlak, and he'd never done a thing of his own volition.

"I'm a Companion," he finally replies, gruffly. "My place is in Jorrvaskr." He doesn't mention the newfound wanderlust that's blossoming in his chest, or that he longs to sat that lust with her.

"But—Skyrim is such an incredible place—" He cuts her off by thrusting a bowl of crude stew in her direction.

"Eat. You need your strength." She hesitates for a moment before dumbly accepting the food, but he can tell by the set of her jaw that's she's not done arguing.

They eat in a silence more comfortable than any they've shared before, and Vilkas allows his mind to wander for a while. Ever since she regained consciousness, Mayenor has been far more talkative than he'd ever dreamed she'd be with him, and he can't quite quell the excitement making his heart race. The thought that she might—finally—begin to think of him with the slightest bit of fondness fills his heart with naïve hope. Though he'll go to the grave swearing to the contrary, he had been plagued with thoughts of a life without her throughout her sickness, and he had decided, in a surprise even to himself, that he wasn't sure a life without her fiery presence was worth living.

While Vilkas is distracted, Mayenor tries to stand, wincing with pain as her sore muscles protest the now-unfamiliar movements. By the time she's off her knees, Vilkas is by her side, hovering. She notes with grim satisfaction that nursing her for so long hasn't given him the incorrect idea that she needs his help, but, even as she thinks this, she feels her knees buckling. He catches her deftly and gently lowers her back down to the ground, face a mask of concern. She scowls and does her best to shrug him off, but he stubbornly hold her down until she stops struggling.

"One bowl of stew doesn't make you well enough to move around on your own," he chides, sending her scowl deeper.

"Then tie me on my horse so we can get out of this stinking cave," she snaps in reply, and he shakes his head.

"You're still too ill to travel. We wouldn't even make it back to Falkreath with you in this state, and you know it." A grunt is her only reply, but she knows he's right. Even the small amount of activity she's done since awakening has left her feeling like she's fought an entire army on her own, but she certainly isn't going to let him know that.

"They'll be wondering about us back in Whiterun," she grumbles.

"You know they don't start worrying until half a fortnight has passed. We've got a few more days before they even think about us." She sighs, frustrated with both his persistent logic and her lack of strength. She feels one of his big hands around her elbow and looks up, surprised, to see him smiling.

"Be patient, whelp, and just enjoy the fact that you're alive. All of your adventures will still be waiting for you in a few days' time." His voice, though still rough and gravelly, is a soft murmur, and she feels herself relaxing partially from the surprise of hearing him sound so… nurturing. She's seen him be friendly with some of the other companions—namely Kodlak and Farkas—but she's never heard him so calm or even imagined it was possible. Under his supervision, she carefully raises herself into a sitting position, eyeing him suspiciously the whole time. He chuckles. "Don't look at me like that," he says, leaning back on his haunches so he's not in her personal space. "I can put my need to show you up aside for a little while in the name of saving your life." His eyes sparkle, and for once it's not with malice.

"You mean you don't want to be put in your place by a cripple," she retorts, feeling an actual smile tugging at her lips. "Well, I guess I'll spare you the humiliation just this once. Seeing as you didn't let me rot down here." His chuckling continues, then turns into a single, genuine bark of laughter as he moves from his knees a sitting position beside her and turns his attention to the fire.

"You may be a whelp, but you're still my Shield-Sister," he informs her, turning his head to give her a solemn look. "I've got your back, just as you've got mine." She stares at him, a funny look in her eyes, even after he's looked away. He's trying to puzzle out the meaning of her expression when he feels something soft press against his cheek.

His head whips around to face her so quickly he's surprised it doesn't turn all the way back around; she arches an eyebrow at him, trying to look nonchalant, but that strange look still shines in her eyes.

"Did—Did you just kiss me?" He stammers, a calloused hand lifting to touch his cheek where her lips had just been.

"If you even want to call that a kiss," she scoffs in reply. "It was just to thank you for taking care of me, though I'd say you owed it to me after breaking my—Oh!"

Vilkas rarely finds himself at a loss for words. He rarely has an issue with not knowing how to handle a situation—that's Farkas' problem. He, on the other hand,is the suave one. So when Mayenor's kiss leaves him not only speechless but completely stunned, his mind races to decide on a course of action. In every other encounter the pair has ever shared, he's managed to keep a tight hold on his rampaging affections; this time, though, as she struggles to make a weak joke about his duties to her, all he can see is her full lips, cracked from dehydration, pushing and pulling to form words he couldn't care less about. Finally, it's too much; he rocks forward on his knees, cups her face in both his hands, and kisses her.

At first she's too surprised to respond, but he persists, the overwhelming bliss of a fantasy come to life clouding his thoughts. A few flurried heartbeats pass before she hesitantly returns his kiss, and the thought occurs to him, briefly, that she's only humoring him out of gratitude. But, as her fingers knot into his hair and her tongue skips across his bottom lip, he finds that he doesn't care. Their kisses grow from tentative to passionate, almost desperate, as the tension that's been building between them since the moment they met finally finds a release, and as Mayenor moves into his lap, Vilkas realizes he'll have to be the one to say no.

He separates her from him with a gentle hand on her good shoulder, and the look in her eyes—a scorching desire that's replaced whatever hesitations plagued her only moments before—nearly makes him lose control all over again.

"What is it?" She asks, breathless, as one hand rubs its way up his thigh. He swallows hard.

"Stop—we can't—" Her fingers walk from his leg to the bulge in his pants, and he quickly grabs her hand with his own. "You need to stop that," he finally manages, throat tight.

"You started this," she huffs, jerking her hand from his and beginning to move away. "I'm not one of those girls at the inn you can play your games with. You forget, I can and will kick your ass." As she gets to her knees and moves to stand, he grabs her arm and pulls her back to his lap, pressing a rough kiss to her jaw.

"I'm not playing games with you," he explains, resisting the urge to hold her close to his chest. "I'm trying to avoid regrets." She scowls at him.

"No, you're right, fucking a whelp would really damage your reputation, wouldn't it?" She spits out the words, and he feels indignation rise to replace the lust clouding his mind. He struggles not to make a retort that would ruin what little progress they've made.

"This isn't how I wanted this to happen," he explains through gritted teeth. "In some dirty cave buried under a mountain." Her scowl drops, then, and she gives him a curious look.

"How you wanted this to happen?" She repeats. "You… You wanted this? It's not just a life-or-death adrenaline rush?" She seems genuinely surprised, and he fidgets under her stare.

"I've always… admired you," he grunts, glaring at the ground. "You're… a good fighter." His glare rises to her face as he hears her laugh.

"A good fighter, huh?" She grins and leans forward to ghost a kiss across his lips. "I've heard much worse reasons to care about someone, I guess. Fine, have it your way. When we get back to Jorrvaskr, we can enjoy the fact that we're alive together." She slides off his lap with a lingering impish grin, and he feels his pulse quicken at the thought of what she has in store for him. He pushes aside his eager thoughts, though, when he sees her yawn.

"For now, though, let's focus on sleep," he tells her, voice stern. She rolls her eyes but obediently fluffs the pile of fabric she's been using for a pillow and lays down. Within minutes, she's fast asleep.

He gets up and finds more wood to add to the fire, then settles down to get some rest himself now that he's fairly sure she won't die in the night. Habitually, he lays between Mayenor and the cave's entrance, his sword tucked against him for easy access lest someone try to attack while they slept. As the exhaustion of the past week overwhelms him and he slips into his dreams, he feels Mayenor's fingers twine with his, and he smiles.