Unrequited... Not?
Chapter 1
Two outcasts: one by intent and one by necessity, neither out of choice. One devoutly faithless, the other faithfully devout, neither one of them belonging with their ancestors. One flees his past, the other cannot escape her destiny. One lonely, one alone... Until they find one another. Their love could last a thousand years, and I believe it will.
- Mara, The Lost Dovakhin Prophecies.
Wyrmsong Waterfell took a deep breath, and the Dragonborn released the power for which she had become known for across all of Skyrim and beyond – the power of her Voice:
"FUSS—RO-DAH!"
Suddenly eyes wide in horror she realised that her companion, Erandur, had stepped right into the path of her Thu-um! Her lips parted; eyes wide she howled his name.
"ERANDUR?!
She was about to also scream 'Why?!' and curse him for his stupidity except that the answer to that question was immediately clear (before even her tongue had completed his name) by his becoming haloed in arcing, sparking, angular purple-white light.
The cunning Master Necromancer must have launched a lightning bolt just as Wyrmsong had shouted at her with Unrelenting Force... Although at least the hollow-eyed woman was dead shortly thereafter; Erandur's body would not have protected her from Wyrmsong's Thu'um the way it had blocked the Master Necromancer's bolt of lightning for Wyrmsong. Thu-ums, being a dragon magic that seemingly tied directly into the forces of Nirn itself, were stopped only by the bones of Nirn itself; by solid rock.
Alas, Erandur and Wyrmsong had already taken strike after strike of various spells shortly beforehand without healing. He'd known it, she'd known it - affirmed by the exchange of several worried looks aforehand - and the woman had proven mastery at more than necromancy when they fought. She had been relentless and, well, very pissed off.
The master had apparently not been 'home' when they cleared out her fetid lair and the corpse-wielding followers that lived there. Of course with no introductions (each black-robed member springing into combat instantly) she nor Erandur had had any clue that anyone from the group had been missing when they left.
From her cries of 'My children! You killed them!' one could presume the Master Necromancer had held nothing back. In fact it occurred to the Dragonborn that truthfully she and the Master Necromancer really should have both died a moment ago. It would surely have been worthy of at least one Nordic song: dying in battle that way, locked in mortal combat of magick versus Thu-um...
They should have, would have, both been dead by now but for Erandur: Ever-present and ever-observant Erandur.
In that split second he must have seen the likelihood of that outcome, and too late to stop the Master Necromancer from casting. Perhaps he had not the magicka left to do anything else? He hadn't even put up a barrier.
He had simply... Stepped into the path of the lightning bolt... and taken it.
Didn't he know I was about to Shout?!
Very probably he had - for they had by now spent long enough battling together that Erandur well knew Wyrmsong was Dragonborn. Moreover he almost certainly knew how long it took her to recover her voice between Shouts. Yes: very probably he had known... And he had still stepped right into the path of her Shout to stop that lightning bolt.
Receiving the Master Necromancer's lightning bolt and Wyrmsong's Thu-um at the same time? That could well have been enough to kill even the toughest warriors - even in circumstances where those warriors were not previously injured as he had been.
Wyrmsong gulped down the cold guilt: admittedly Erandur really wasn't the toughest of warriors she could have picked to accompany her on errands and her travels. She had known this already and yet she had still decided to take him with her.
Why?!
- Because she had arrogantly imagined that she could give him a better life than the one he'd told her he had planned for himself after they met. Better than the one where he spent the rest of his days praying to Mara in a cold, dark tower above the chambers in which his darkest memories lay, along with the bodies of the friends he'd betrayed and then returned later to kill for to redeem himself of their collective folly involving the Daedric Lord Vaermina to save the town of Dawnstar…
She had thought that having him accompany her at least would be better than that.
But is it really any better if he ends up prematurely dead?!
At least in that decrepit old fort he would have been safe. Perhaps now he might think he'd better have stayed there!
- He had perhaps only offered his help out of honour because of the debt he felt towards her for her assistance in aiding him in his own quest.
- Or perhaps he had only ever followed her because she had asked it of him.
I should have known better! I should have-
All of these thoughts flashed through Wyrmsong's mind in a frantic haze as reflexes thrust her forward to catch Erandur's twirling and limpened body and save his head from likely some or other rock-hiding-in-the-snow as he flopped thereafter, sack-of-flour like, into her arms.
Immediately she had one arm about him and with the other she was gulping down her very last mixed stamina and health potion – a not particularly potent one that she had forgotten for being in such a small bottle (the only potion besides 'restore magicka' ones that she had left). That potion would do no good for Erandur (far too small) but it would at least recover her own vigor enough for her to be able to carry him.
She knew from experience that she would recover from her own injuries in due time, with sleep and a good meal (if she could just get out of this damnable cold), but Erandur would die if he was bleeding in this frigid place, where heat was as much a person's lifeblood as their blood itself. Both would be lost by bleeding.
She quickly gulped down a 'vigorous' Magicka potion too and tossed the empty bottle aside, then hovered her hand above Erandur's chest and quickly cast Healing Hands.
He had collapsed frontwards into her arms against her chest as he fell. She noticed that her hand around his back snagged on a rough patch of his Ebony armour as she tried to steady him for to heal. When she glanced down at her glove and lifted a finger to inspect, she could tell it was slightly charcoaled: the ebony plate around his back had been charred from where the charge had come through his armour from the front...
Panicked, she jostled him awkwardly (still healing with her other hand) so as to see his front. Her face paled to a near-green light-grey in abject terror when doing so revealed the vicious blackened hole through the front of his armour. Deeper inward still, blood seeped from charred flesh and bone was visible, only partially obscured by the whirling pale yellow of the healing spell.
The sight of his wound would have left her shivering with shock even had she not already been chilled by the cold abounding around her. It was a struggle not to pass out for the nausea it induced, for she really thought he was dead, right there and then.
Tears stung her eyes in the biting cold wind that blasted her from seemingly every direction. She wanted to sob, to howl and cry..! She would do none of those things however, for Wyrmsong Waterfell was someone far, far too resourceful to let grief rob her of her concentration when she needed it most.
Not now!
She would not falter. She would not break this healing spell to mourn prematurely, would not break it until it was undeniably certain that 'mourning' was all that remained for her to do, however dire things looked right now and no matter how pointless her efforts might otherwise seem.
She mentally grasped for solutions, ideas... Some way to save him. She had none at all… until inspiration sparked:
"Mara!" She murmured to herself, before mustering her resolve and crying out the louder.
Commandingly, with every ounce of conviction she had ever had she yelled into the blizzard:
"Mara let me save him… let him live!"
She had never pleaded for anything in her life so the Aedra had best be paying attention.
It was his faith that she appealed to, for she kept none for herself: she being one of the 'faithless' few in this world.
Wyrmsong's 'lack of faith' was nevertheless different to that which someone else might profess. Hers was never because she didn't believe that Aedra and Daedra were real or as powerful as stories told, but rather because she knew with the conviction of blatant personal experience both that Aedra and Daedra were real, and that they were powerful.
What had made her faithless was that in Wyrmsong's humble opinion, those with greater power should have (by default) a responsibility to use it for good (never simply for their own personal gratification or narrowly-focused ideal), and the conviction to act accordingly regardless of praise or thanks because that was the right thing to do. Wyrmsong believed that if a god couldn't competently accomplish that, then they shouldn't have that kind of power in the first place.
She therefore objected to 'worship' on basic principle:
Wyrmsong would worship and praise nobody for merely fulfilling what she saw as being someone's basic duty of care towards those lacking the same power, those with whom such powers could not be responsibly be shared…
(Clavicus Vile being the perfect example of a Daedra who ignored the latter – he loved tricking feeble mortals into asking him to share his power with them when it was clearly obvious they couldn't possibly be responsible with it, could thereafter only do harm to themselves or others upon using it.)
That being said, she was nevertheless at least as pragmatic as she was faithless.
She was never one to refuse help when she could get it, and she knew that out of all of them, the Aedra Mara might be moved to intervene in this situation. Wyrmsong certainly had nothing to lose in trying. She was painfully aware that Erandur's being alive for any further moments certainly would be little thanks to her own doing.
She beseeched the goddess he worshipped to save their shared and most loyal follower. Mara damned well ought to care about his fate if as Erandur had claimed, he was a priest of Mara, and had been blessed for having had Mara appear before him… Surely?
"Please!"
She tried to sound forceful but fair. She tried not to sob or sound desperate, no matter how much the latter was true. Her hand hovered above his body as she continued healing, refusing to give up.
A painfully long few moments later (during which Wyrmsong did not draw breath), Erandur's body convulsed. He suddenly gurgled for air, and Wyrmsong was overwhelmed with instantaneous gratitude and relief. She had no idea if Mara had done this or not, but she intended to be as humble as she would if the Aedra had intervened.
Wyrmsong might well be faithless in worship, but 'gratitude' and 'humility' she would express unflinchingly. In her eyes neither need be connected to worship, rather she believed that both were acts of basic decency on the part of those who received any and all benefit from any given situation. Gratitude for gratitude's sake, and humility likewise.
- Credit where credit was due, and if you didn't know to whom it was due, you need only make sure at least you kept none unduly for yourself (pay it forwards).
"Thank you..." She whispered, breathlessly.
Scarcely able to breathe thereafter for shock piling upon shock, she uttered those words softly and quietly over and over again until finally able, she sobbed a breath. Tears rolled down her cheek as she hugged Erandur closer (still healing), droplets spattering and frosting onto Erandur's Ebony helmet as they threatened even to freeze upon her own cheeks as well.
Erandur's first breaths were raspy and laboured as someone near drowning. He shivered violently.
He was still alive, somehow, but given the grievous wound and additional internal bleeding caused by her Thu-um, who knew for how long? This may only be a brief reprieve. He was coughing up something into his helmet that trickled wetly down the collar of his Ebony armour in a slightly darker stream – hard to tell by moonlight what it was, but her heart sank: it was almost certainly blood. She needed to move him, and quickly.
Wyrmsong remembered then that there was (of course!) shelter nearby, if only she could get him there.
She hunched over to hold him to her chest with all her might as she also continued healing with her other hand. She was advantaged by wearing light armour when she was certainly capable of bearing heavy armour but it was nonetheless still a strain enough to make her grimace.
She scoured their surroundings in a sweeping look to spot the small cave that they had just recently cleared, spying it through flurries of large snowflakes that threatened increasingly to obscure all cues of where they had been, even perhaps where they were. That hovel was by no means ideal, but Wyrmsong knew that at least the abode was otherwise safe
- It would be devoid of danger and could be made warm.
- It would be shielded from the wind, and it had some rudimentary supplies she had not had the space to pocket at the time.
- It had a supply of water, bowls to heat it in, clean cloths and a (rather bountiful) supply of bandages.
Her fingers found the Talos amulet she kept hidden in her left pocket and grabbed it. It had an extra long twine such that she could toss it around her neck even while fully armoured, which she quickly took advantage of. Whirlwind Sprint after Whirlwind Sprint she used the amulet and her Thu-um to cross (over-encumbered) the distance spanning the frozen gorge between where they'd been ambushed by the returning Necromancer master and her cave lair.
The wind screamed into her ears as much as is it ice-seared her face with each dash. It's lonely howl felt suddenly all the more lonely as Wyrmsong was reminded that she faced the prospect of once again travelling this land alone.
Such a thought would never have bothered her even so small a measure as so great a measure it now seemingly made her distraught. As such she felt like it was no reminder but rather more a threat - one she quickly realised she didn't like.
She had spent so very many years alone... Years when all she'd ever had to worry about was her own safety... Perhaps too many years alone.
Perhaps even if she happened to want the company now, her prior solitude was wont to make her dangerous to be around just about anyone who tried to oblige such a whimsical desire.
- She was a liability, was what she was.
At least she'd made it to the crookedly-hung and heavily weathered doors of the cave with that last exasperated and pained Shout. She dove inside with Erandur and slammed the doors with a kick of her boot behind her, grateful when she heard it latch.
One more Shout was yet required to reach the bed (and she was about to vomit). She managed it though, albeit flinging across the room at deadly speeds in her wake many a piece of light furniture, cutlery, ornament and bowl to say nothing of the human bones (thankfully long removed of their flesh and dried out).
She'd never used her Thu-um so frequently before, let alone managed to do so while also casting a spell. Straining from her physical and mental exertions almost brought up what little remained in her now near-empty stomach. She clamped her mouth shut and swallowed, breathing laboriously through her nostrils, and her eyes darted about; ears listening keenly to be sure that the area was still safe.
Erandur coughed again, and shivered.
"I've got you." She muttered to him distractedly, still feeling about to vomit. "Just hold on."
Satisfied the place was safe, she laid him down on the bed, kept one hand hovering over him to heal while with her other hand she downed an 'Ultimate' Magicka potion (her magicka was waning from exhaustion if nothing else). She flung fire in various directions to make sure all braziers and the hearthfire were re-lit to warm the room.
Finally she unbuckled and tore off her own helmet, flinging it neglectfully to the floor so as to better see the situation of his wounds...
...And winced.
Even with his armour still on, it was even worse than she had thought.
Reader notes/author request:
This is the beginning of a very long story. There's even a second I've already worked on. Who knows if I'll ever get it on here...
Nobody's going to do anything evil or nasty, but there may be the odd trigger here and there I will try to forewarn you at the top of every chapter. That said, when it comes to triggers I'll note that they'll not be for any perverse pleasure, nor will they be a trivialised/casual 'reliving' exercise, and they will be resolved with care and compassion.
This story will be (eventually) M rated whatever you think of it presently. It has a little bit of gore. It will have MA sex eventually, perhaps... Rules permitting (may need to check/receive advice on that). However...
Anything considered explicit that I do write I always write with a conscience. What I mean by that is that whatever I write I presume to set example, example which that no matter how we try, a child will still find a way to access. So... As I write, I always want to make that whatever example I thereafter set is a good one, and a healthy one, one that helps people understand themselves, understand others, and relate to one another in a healthy way (truthfully that goes for all the adults who read my works because the sad truth is that many of us are still learning, whatever age we are, including myself). At least that's my intention.
This is a love story through and through. I hope a few Erandur fans like it, although perhaps the characters I've given Erandur and FemDovah are unusual. Still, having written so much on this for so long, I felt perhaps I should begin to share it just in case someone out there appreciates it.
If anyone reading this knows of an Erandur/Femdovah story I might like from the style and presentation of my own, please message me and let me know (hoping you're allowed to put links in messages). I'm really late to the Skyrim fanfic party, so I have likely missed a lot of stories and 'searches' don't seem to give results I'd expect and often aren't consistent.
My tastes: I object to sexual assaults unless only in passing reference (I have no wish to live/relive any such thing, thank you), I'm disinterested in polygamy, and I'm not overly fond of immature poorly emotionally educated people pretending to be 'grown up' (that's my definition of what makes 'bad boys'/'bad girls', lol) - and that's just not how I see Erandur at all, alright?! ;) OK. Hope you enjoyed this. Look out for more.