Sundas, 11th of Hearthfire, 4E202

The three of them walked out of the palace and into the daylight. Before them stretched the wooden bridge, and beyond that, the steps leading down to the city. A cool breeze swept out of the azure sky.

Deirdre felt like she was emerging from the cave beneath Helgen, walking out into incongruent sunshine. If she turned back, she would see the looming ash cloud.

The doors closed behind them with a resounding thud. She remembered the distorted boom preceding the dragon's arrival, as she'd knelt helplessly before the execution block. She felt the earth-shaking rumble of the dragon's great weight colliding with the tower above her head. She felt tremors in her hands. She felt like someone had compressed her lungs between iron clamps. She heard her breaths getting shorter.

"Truly pitiful. A disgrace to your soul," disparaged the dragon from her month-old dream, as if it could see her now. The words swirled inside her skull.

Truly pitiful, pitiful, pitiful—

Her eyes stung hot as her throat closed up. On her left stood Vilkas, on her right, Kodlak, and they seemed to grow distant despite not moving. The bridge, the breeze, the sky; it all felt far away. It felt like one of her nightmares. She wanted to wake up. To find Gerdur sitting on her bed with a calm word and a ready embrace.

She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes and curled her fingers into fists, fighting to draw air through the tightness in her throat, the paralysis in her chest. She couldn't breathe. She sank to the ground in a crouch, the tempo of her heartbeat increasing, as if the dragon were really behind her, above her, all around her, threatening to rain fire on Riverwood, on Gerdur and Hod and her short-lived life. The air turned stale in her lungs.

"Or has Bormahu hidden your being too deeply within that sad, little shell?"

Where was Gerdur? Why couldn't she have Gerdur?

Sad, little shell; pitiful; disgrace—

Gerdur was gone. It was over. It wasn't a dream. The dragon had appeared like death itself and the headsman's axe had swung. Jarl Balgruuf couldn't—wouldn't?—do anything. She felt the press of a boot in her back; her head fell into the curved niche; in the basket sat the heads of Gerdur and Hod. She couldn't speak. She couldn't breathe.

Truly pitiful, a disgrace—

A hand fell on her shoulder. It felt both tangible and abstract, as if half of herself had left her body to observe it from the outside.

"Hey," came Vilkas's voice. "Keep … keep it together, now. We'll help you figure something out."

Vaguely, she realized she needed to calm down. She was humiliating herself; where had all her righteous fury gone? She wasn't in Helgen, Gerdur and Hod weren't dead, and her life was not in danger.

But they may as well have been dead. And she may as well have been in Helgen. She would never see them again, and for the second time, she had nothing but a terrifying void where her life should have been. She had nothing without Gerdur and Hod. She was nothing without them.

Sobs began to escape her in uncontrollable heaves, between painful gasps of air. She felt lightheaded. The dragon was going to swallow her whole; the headsman's axe was going to fall; Gerdur and Hod were gone—

The hand on her shoulder strengthened its grip.

"Deirdre, you need to breathe."

She shook her head. Not so much in rejection of his words, but as an admission that they were impossible.

Vilkas made a nervous, aggravated noise. "Let's go back to Jorrvaskr. Can you walk?"

The hand on her shoulder moved to take her arm, and another took her opposite wrist, pulling it away from her face. Somehow she was standing, the ground blurry and tilted beneath her. When Vilkas took her left hand, her fingers clenched around his like a reflex. Among everything else that felt warped and dreamlike, his hand stood out as solid. An anchor. She tried to focus on it.

"Come on," Vilkas said, beginning to walk. Her feet were forced into motion, pulled along as if by a larger tugboat, and they crossed the bridge toward the city.

The main hall of Jorrvaskr was noisy when they walked in. Everyone had taken the previous day off for the archery tournament, which meant no one was away on an overnight contract. Aela, Njada, and Ria were all sitting in the sparring pit, arguing, while Torvar and Athis were arm wrestling at the dining table, and Skjor and Farkas were in the sitting area having a conversation in their low, gravelly voices. Farkas was cleaning his sword, but he stopped as he looked at them. The rest of the room, save for Torvar and Athis, stopped as well.

Aela shoved herself up off the ground. She took one look at Deirdre—distraught, crying, struggling to breathe around the crying—and strode over to take her from Vilkas without comment. To his immense relief.

As Aela led the girl toward the stairs to the basement, Vilkas trudged to the sitting area and dropped into a chair opposite his brother. He propped his elbows on his knees and lifted both hands to massage his temples.

"I take it things didn't go well with the Jarl?" Skjor said.

Vilkas ground his teeth. To think he'd gotten up this morning assuming the day would be an easy one. Ha.

He supposed he should've expected the girl's come apart. She'd been bound to snap at some point, right? She'd been remarkably calm since he'd found her in the dungeon. Too calm. And remarkably brash in front of the Jarl. Too brash. He should've been braced for this.

But what was he supposed to have done about it? This was the problem with hysterics.

"We had good news and bad news from the Jarl," Kodlak answered Skjor. "Though I don't remember it being any of your business."

"Oh come on," piped up Njada. "Aela already told us everything."

"And we're curious," Ria added.

Farkas rumbled, "Vilkas is mad."

Vilkas felt the collective weight of several pairs of eyes fall on him. A repressed growl began building in his chest. He dropped his hands and glared at Farkas. And where the other members of the Circle would have glared back, and the Companions outside the Circle would have shrunk, Farkas just looked at him placidly.

Vilkas bit his tongue. He couldn't deny it. He was pissed, not just at the situation, but at himself for getting involved. For making himself responsible for Deirdre and then for being next to useless, and for having inadvertently accepted the burden of her grief. It shouldn't have been his job to deal with her tears; who was she to him? He should have slept in that morning, had a hot breakfast, and stayed home to sort paperwork—

He let out the growl and dropped his forehead into his hand. Ysmir. He couldn't have done that. But what were they supposed to do with her now?

As if in commiseration, his stomach released a growl to match his own. Before another word could be said, he stood, and headed for the kitchen.

Tilma was sitting on a stool next to the hearth, scrubbing potatoes. She looked particularly bent and shrunken in this posture, and it occurred to Vilkas that more than just her senses of smell and taste had aged over the years. At his entrance, though, she stopped and looked up, and her small eyes were as clear and alert as they'd ever been.

"Is there any breakfast left?" he blurted.

Tilma set her potato and bristle brush into the basket at her feet, rising stiffly and dusting off her hands on her apron. Her wrinkles puckered in sympathy as she observed him. "I have some gruel. Let me heat it up."

"Meat?" he asked, approaching the tall counter in the middle of the room.

She smiled a little. "I'll fry some bacon."

"Bread," Vilkas added.

She wheezed a chuckle. "Bread, please," she corrected.

"Bread, please."

She set a partially-sliced bread loaf before him along with a dish of butter and a knife, then went back to the hearth. Vilkas dragged a barrel up to the side of the counter to use as a chair, snatching the knife and scooping up a generous pat of butter.

"You've got a storm cloud over your head, lad," Tilma observed, hooking the pot of gruel over the hearth.

Vilkas was slathering butter over his bread slice, and grunted in response.

"They're not going to let her family go," Tilma guessed.

He exhaled. "No," he said curtly. The knife clacked against the counter as he set it down and took a bite of bread.

Tilma shook her head. "Not right," she muttered, lifting the lid of the gruel pot to stir the ladle sitting in it. "Not right at all."

"It's the law."

"That's what's not right about it."

Vilkas took another large bite, and said nothing. Tilma didn't speak again until the sizzle of frying meat had filled the kitchen.

"Aela says the lass is an orphan. Does she have somewhere to go now?"

Vilkas considered everything the Jarl's verdict entailed. The Empire wasn't about to give Deirdre the property they'd confiscated from two heretics. Even if they did relinquish the property, it wasn't as if Gerdur and Hod could sign it over to Deirdre from prison—or from a "reeducation facility," as the Thalmor sometimes called them. There was also the matter of their children. The Empire had custody of them, and Deirdre was homeless, so it wasn't as if she could reunite with them or take them in. And to top it all off, her former home had burned to the ground a year ago.

"I don't think so," he finally said.

Tilma hobbled over to set a steaming bowl and a plate of thick bacon cuts before him. "A shame she's not a warrior, hm?"

He gave her a questioning look. She patted the back of his hand.

"Most've you kids are orphans too," she reminded. "Seems we take in a lot of them."

Ah. She meant it was too bad Deirdre couldn't be a Companion. It was true; if she could fight, and prove her honor, they could have offered her a place to stay and work. But Jorrvaskr wasn't a charity house. It wasn't even a house, period. And the thought of Deirdre attempting to pass any of their initiation tests was sad to the point of comedy. Yes, it was a shame she wasn't a warrior. They could have solved at least some of her problems that way.

To Tilma's point, he gave a noncommittal grunt, and she went back to her potatoes as he tucked into his food.

He was slurping down the last bit of hot gruel when he heard a familiar gait approaching the kitchen. As he set his bowl down, Aela appeared in the entryway.

He watched her gaze fall on his last slice of bacon. He slapped a palm over it as she lurched forward with an outstretched hand. She bared her teeth and he huffed a growl. She crossed her arms.

"Stingy," she said.

"Glutton," he threw back, lifting the bacon to his mouth and ripping it in half with his teeth. Then he remembered she should be with someone else, acting much less bothersome.

"What did you do with Deirdre?"

She uncrossed her arms and reached instead for what was left of the bread and butter. "I couldn't get her to calm down, so I gave her some Sleeping Tree Sap."

Vilkas choked on his bacon. Forcing it down, he rasped, "You gave her what?"

She bit into her bread with a shrug. "She was going to pass out anyway."

"She passed out?"

Aela rolled her eyes. "Calm down. A little Sleeping Tree Sap never hurt anybody."

"Unless you gave her so much she stopped breathing," he snapped. "What is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me?" she argued, pointing the breadknife into his face. "I didn't see you doing anything to console her, did I? No. That was me. And she was breathing just fine."

Vilkas threw one hand in the air and shoved the last bit of bacon into his mouth with the other. "Great. We killed her."

"I just said she was breathing!"

"Children, that's enough," Tilma interrupted. She got up from her stool again. "You don't really think she's so thoughtless, Vilkas? I'll go check on the lass for good measure."

Vilkas relaxed a bit. According to legend, long before she had become the caretaker of Jorrvaskr, decades before Vilkas and his brother had arrived, Tilma had worked as a nurse at the Temple of Kynareth. She didn't know healing magic, and her alchemy knowledge was outdated, but she would know what to check for nonetheless.

As Tilma shuffled out, Aela hmphed as if she'd won. "See? It's fine."

Vilkas said nothing. His full stomach had taken some of the edge off his nerves, and he felt himself getting drowsy. A rejoinder wasn't worth the energy.

"This is a mess," he muttered, almost to himself.

The statement gave Aela pause. She leaned onto the counter. "I couldn't get the story out of her. What happened with Balgruuf?"

Vilkas sighed. "She's free to go, and the Legion won't keep custody of Gerdur and Hod. But he can't get them released from the Thalmor. They're gone."

"And Kensley?"

He shook his head. "Didn't say much. He agreed he has no authority in Whiterun. Said he'd deal with him."

Aela scoffed and crossed her arms, fingers digging into the hard flesh of her biceps. "Right. Because he did such a good job dealing with him the first time around. I should just castrate the bast—"

Vilkas held up a hand. "I'm supposed to tell you, you're not allowed to hunt him down."

Her jaw dropped. "He said that?"

"Yes."

Aela let out a low snarl. "I should have just killed him back when he tried something with me."

The murder in her eyes was real. Vilkas stared at his empty bacon plate and also wished she'd killed him. If she had, none of this would have happened. And Deirdre would be in Riverwood, and he would be sitting contentedly having taken in an easy bounty and nothing more.

"Let's spar," Aela said suddenly. She slammed the breadknife point-first into the wood of the counter. "I need to hit something."

Vilkas gave her a flat look. "I'm tired."

Aela pounded the counter with her fist. The knife fell over. "Tough skeever scat. Spar with me."

"No."

"It'll wake you up."

"Aela."

"Do you want me to keep harassing you?"

He released a guttural, exasperated noise. He swiped a hand across the counter so it hit the knife and sent it flying over the edge and clanging to the floor. He rose aggressively to his feet.

"You're such a child," he griped, as he stormed past her.

She caught up and walked with him, habitually cracking her knuckles to dispel some of the taut tension rippling through her. And it occurred to Vilkas, at that moment, that it was easier to let someone beat the shit out of him than to comfort a crying girl.

Deirdre stood ankle-deep in a layer of freshly fallen snow. Her feet were cold and her stockings were wet. A handful of steps away, the ground she stood on dropped off into a sheer cliff. She approached the edge cautiously, looking out into a wide chasm, where the ground was too far away to see. A ponderous wind moaned as it fell past her and into the void.

A thousand feet across the chasm, a narrow, rocky island rose from the earth, nearly as high as the cliff upon which she stood, and on that stone island stood the most curious building she had ever seen. It consisted of three towers and a perimeter wall that followed the edge of the island, all made with the same polished, blue-gray stone. The towers were sleeker and more slender than something like Dragonsreach or the western watchtower of Whiterun. From the tallest of the three towers, at the center-rear of the island, a beam of shimmering blue light drifted steadily upward. The light only seemed to end where it met the drape of clouds overhead.

A strangely familiar sound joined the groan of the wind—an unearthly roar. Deirdre's heart quickened. She heard the booming beat of vast wings, and saw the coiling shape approaching through the sky.

It was not the black dragon from Helgen, she could tell, not just because of its color but because it lacked the distinctive horns she recalled so vividly. It did not even appear to be the green dragon she had dreamed about a month ago; against the cool gray of the sky, this dragon's scales looked red.

As the dragon drew close to the structure on the rocky island, it opened wide its jaws and spewed a targeted jet of flame, tingeing the snow-covered landscape orange.

And yet, the second it attacked, the blue beam rising from the tallest tower flared brighter, and a massive burst of lightning shot from it. The red dragon was struck. Its wings momentarily failed; it dropped in the air before inelegantly righting itself, its cry echoing through the chasm. It furiously thrust its wings against gravity, circling higher in the air and angling itself for another attack.

Again the dragon breathed fire, concentrating the blast on the blue light, its flame more intense. The light flickered, but before it snuffed out completely, it was replaced by several, smaller bolts of lightning, these shooting up from further within the structure's walls.

Magic, Deirdre thought. She had never seen destruction magic in action.

From her cliff across the chasm, she watched the dragon trade volleys with what had to be many powerful mages within the strange structure. Faint flashes of light in every color of the rainbow bloomed from behind the walls. And the dragon … seemed to be struggling?

A particularly bright bolt of lightning struck the dragon's underside as it flew toward one of the shorter towers, and it fell, crashing atop the tower with a blood-curdling keen. Deirdre let slip a gasp.

Behind her sounded a new noise: more wing beats, closer, louder, clearer, than the ones across the chasm. She tore her gaze from the red dragon to see the looming, ebony terror descending toward the stretch of snow on which she stood. Her heart dropped into her stomach. She braced herself for the impact of the black dragon's landing. The earth shook, snow flying into the air, tossed up from the clawed feet and jagged wings.

It breathed an acrid, blistering breath across her face, stinging her cold skin. She flinched back.

"Wandering zii, without a thu'um," it spoke, steam rising from its maw into the chilled air. "Have you come to observe again?"

Observe? Is that what she was doing?

She supposed she was. The black dragon remained still, ruby eyes locked onto her. As if it truly wanted a reply. She drew a shallow draft of air into her lungs.

"I don't—know," she answered weakly.

The black slits in the dragon's eyes dilated. Its head rose higher, focusing on her from a different angle. "It speaks," the dragon rumbled. "Perhaps it will regain its thu'um yet."

Deirdre swallowed. This all felt too real. But why would this dragon speak to her, and not just once, but twice now? What did it want? Why her? Was she cursed, as a survivor of Helgen, to be haunted by it?

She fought to speak through the omnipresent dread the dragon inspired. "What do you mean? What is a thu'um? Why do you keep appearing to me?"

At that, a harsh, scraping sound, a facsimile of a laugh, emerged from the dragon's jaws. "Mey, how little you understand." It lowered its head again, like a cat hunching to fixate on a mouse. "I appear at no being's behest, little one. It is your restless zii, your soul, that seeks me. You are sizaan, lost, and I am the way."

Confused, Deirdre opened her mouth, but a piercing, agonized roar from across the chasm cut her off. She whirled as the black dragon's head lifted, and they saw the red dragon still atop the tower it had fallen to, its head and one wing thrashing violently. Smaller shapes, strange shapes, not quite humanoid, glowing with hues of blue and purple, surrounded it.

Deirdre realized the red dragon was done for. It had attacked an opponent with more than enough power to retaliate.

Above and behind her, the black dragon hissed. The wind carried to them another primal, desperate roar.

"Will you help him?" Deirdre asked.

"If he cannot best a few joorre, he is not worthy of the life I gave him."

Something inside her recoiled. She turned to the black dragon. "The life you gave him? Is—that dragon your child?"

Its eyes remained unblinkingly fixed on the demise of its kin. "Ignorant to a fault, aren't you, mal paal? I have no hatchlings. I raised his body from its temporary death, and called his zii from Bormahu's presence to live again."

Deirdre realized all but the wind had gone quiet. She glanced back across the chasm. The lights had stopped flashing. Crumpled, and still, the red dragon lay unmoving atop the tower. The wind moaned at her feet.

"Then … the other dragons that have appeared …"

The ground shivered as the black dragon began to move. When she looked to it, she saw that it was backing up, putting distance between itself and the edge of the cliff. Its wings rose and fell, stirring the air and the loose snow.

"I advise you to strengthen yourself, little one. Make yourself worthy of me."

With that, its wings swept upward, then launched the dragon forward with a powerful downward thrust. Deirdre threw herself backward; her foot slipped from the cliff. Gravity seized her. She threw out her arms, grasping nothing, as the shock of freefall struck her. The dragon passed overhead, momentarily blotting out the light, and the wind rushed past her ears in another death roar.

She woke with a jolt.