Middas, 17th of Hearthfire, 4E 201

As the party stepped through the city gates, Yngve directed them to Candlehearth Hall, in the center of the city. That would be the place to find food and beds, he explained to them. During the day, they would easily find the Palace of the Kings, where they could go if they still wanted to join the Stormcloak militia.

Meanwhile, the very moment Yngve began to walk through the city, it seemed, he was greeted with a scene: Rolff Stone-Fist and Angernor Once-Honored – two men whose names Yngve only knew because they were well known for causing trouble – harassing a Dunmer woman he recognized as Suvaris Atheron. The two ran their mouths at her as Yngve approached, but left as soon as he got close.

"Again?" he asked Suvaris.

"Still," she replied exasperatedly. Yngve sighed in annoyance.

"Who in Oblivion would even think you were a spy?" he asked, a bit incredulously. "You work for clan Shatter-Shield, in direct competition with the East Empire Company. Successfully, too, last I heard."

"Some of these Nords will come up with any excuse to despise us," she said with a bitter laugh. "Surely you know that by now."

"Still," Yngve said, trailing off after a moment. He wasn't sure how to continue without sounding like a child, whining that the world wasn't fair. "I'll see what I can do," he offered, and Suvaris gave him a bleak smile.

"You were born to the wrong city, child," she replied kindly, as she then went about her business and Yngve walked toward home.

As Yngve stepped into the Palace of the Kings, he was glad to be out of the biting wind. He was still in his travel gear, still hooded, with his clothing giving away nothing of his identity. His father was talking to Galmar, as Yngve slowly approached. They didn't seem to have noticed yet that he had entered.

"Balgruuf won't give us a straight answer," Galmar was saying.

"He'll come around…" Ulfric replied.

"Don't be so sure of that," Galmar cautioned. "We've intercepted couriers from Solitude. The Empire's been putting a great deal of pressure on Whiterun." At this, Ulfric sighed and held his head in his hand.

"And what would you have me do?" Ulfric asked. "They have my son."

"All the more reason you should be shoving a sword through his gullet," Galmar growled.

"It isn't that simple," Ulfric replied.

"How long are you going to wait?" Galmar asked.

They both paused, and it seemed like neither knew what to say. Though Yngve had always been light footed, he could hear his soft footfalls steadily echoing against the great stone walls of the hall as he slowly walked forward.

"You think I need to send Balgruuf a stronger message," Ulfric finally said, resuming the discussion.

"Taking his city and leaving him in disgrace would make a more powerful statement, don't you think?" Galmar said, as Yngve finally came to stand before his father's throne. Both fell silent and looked at him curiously, or maybe in disbelief that anyone would just enter and approach so boldly. Jorleif, the steward, broke the tense silence.

"What do you need? The Jarl isn't receiving visitors right now," Jorleif said sternly.

Yngve, not knowing what to say after all that had happened, simply removed his hood.

As they all finally looked on his face, Yngve could see relief wash over his father's entire being. Ulfric rose from his throne and pulled Yngve into a tight embrace, and Yngve realized he had been holding his breath. When they let go, Ulfric's face looked years younger, and his eyes shone with moisture.

As soon as his father let go, Yngve was pulled in by Jorleif, exclaiming how happy they were to see him again. Then he was roughly embraced in one arm by Galmar, grunting a welcome in his ear.

"You're home," Ulfric said, sounding as if he wasn't sure he believed it.

"We were certain that Balgruuf still had you," Galmar explained. "When he told us you had escaped his custody, we sent search parties to his hold. And when you didn't turn up anywhere, we thought he had to be lying." Suddenly, Yngve was surrounded on all sides by questions.

"Where were you?"

"What happened?"

"How did you get here on your own?"

He had no idea who to answer first, or where to even begin answering any of those questions. Tired from his journey and overjoyed by the prospect of finally being at home, he felt his mind becoming overwhelmed. Finally, a fourth voice cut through the din to save him – that of Sifnar, their head cook.

"That's enough," Sifnar announced firmly. "Yngve's traveled all the way home from Whiterun. He'll still be here tomorrow, and the next day, so for now we've all got to give him some space. Let him eat, wash, and rest, and save your questions for another day." As if in agreement, Hilde barked pointedly, as she slowly trotted over to Yngve and sat at his feet.

Before anyone could protest, Sifnar was ushering Yngve out of the hall and up the stairs, with Hilde close behind. Yngve could vaguely hear Sifnar asking him if he would prefer a hot meal first, or if he would rather have hot water brought to his room for a bath first. But when Yngve went into his own room and saw his own bed, he lost the will to keep paying attention to anything but sleep.

. . .

Turdas, 18th of Hearthfire, 4E 201

Yngve slept late into the morning, and when he did wake, the first thing he noticed was the familiar presence of his housecarl, who had been guarding Yngve for all of his fourteen years. It wasn't long before a palace servant was looking in to check on him. Seeing him awake, the servant left his room and returned immediately with a basin of water, and Yngve washed his face and hair.

"Tymver, get out," Yngve said to his housecarl as he finished combing out his hair and was ready to change his clothes.

Tymver took his orders from the Jarl, which meant that – in Yngve's opinion – he often acted more like a jailer than a body guard. In response to Yngve's request, Tymver remained in the room, but turned around to face a corner. Annoyed, Yngve changed as quickly as he could, to get it over with. Tymver was a tower of a man, and by now Yngve knew quite well that there simply was no moving Tymver unless Tymver was inclined to move.

When another servant came, he asked to have his food brought to his room, and sighed in annoyance at himself when he thought about it. After all his eagerness to get home, as far as he had traveled, now that he had made it back he was avoiding his father. But he didn't feel himself ready to talk about where he had gone and what he had been doing. He didn't know what to say. It wasn't that he would lie about it, but he needed to present the truth in the right way.

On top of that, aside from Whiterun and Northwatch, there was still the matter of how and why Yngve had been traveling with the militia in the first place. To Yngve's knowledge, his father had no idea he had even been there until they were both captured in the Imperial ambush and taken to Helgen. He was going to have to try to excuse all of it. As these thoughts all swirled around his head, Yngve let out a long, frustrated groan.

"You sound like a wounded animal," Tymver commented, still facing the corner.

"I'm never going to be allowed outside the palace again, am I?" Yngve asked hopelessly. "Oh, by the way, you can turn back around now," he added gloomily.

"Your father can't keep you shut up inside forever," Tymver said as he turned back around. "Even he knows that."

"He's sure never acted like it," Yngve grumbled.

"Come, now, I don't think you're being fair," Tymver said gently.

"Yeah, well it's not your job to think about that, is it?" Yngve cut him off.

An awkward silence hung in the air for several moments. Yngve had never spoken so rudely to Tymver before, or to anyone who worked in the palace. Tymver only stood silently, his eyes looking off into the opposite corner at nothing in particular.

"I'm sorry," Yngve muttered awkwardly.

"It's alright. You seem agitated," Tymver answered evenly.

"I… don't know what to do," Yngve admitted. "I know my father's going to have questions."

"Any father would," Tymver interjected, nodding sagely.

"Yeah," Yngve agreed. "I don't know how I should answer them. I'm dreading the whole situation. I… guess I'm afraid he'll be angry."

Tymver thought on it a moment. Yngve tried to think of some way to cast his wild adventure in a positive light, but in the end he couldn't come up with anything that he thought would make his father understand why he had done some of the things he had. Even Yngve sometimes still wasn't sure, himself. Tymver broke the silence before Yngve's thoughts could totally consume him.

"Whatever the questions," Tymver began, "if you were asking me, I'd advise honesty."

"You're joking, right?" Yngve asked, looking to Tymver as though he had three arms.

"No," Tymver answered. "You may find that, even if he is angry about some of it, your father understands you better than you realize."

That afternoon, Yngve continued to awkwardly avoid his father, still unready to face the storm he thought would follow. Although his father had never been unreasonably harsh or strict with him in the past, Yngve had never given him any reason to. He had always been polite, and usually followed all the rules set forth for him (although he had been known to ditch Tymver from time to time – but this was done for boring, mundane privacy, and never to go anyplace he wasn't allowed to be). Yngve's anxiety stemmed partly from the fact that he had defied a command his father had given to him explicitly, and in doing so he had put himself into real, mortal danger – the very thing, he knew, that his father had been trying to avoid by keeping Yngve guarded and at home.

"I'm just not ready to face him yet," Yngve said. Tymver nodded.

"Take a day to rest, then. Your father isn't going anywhere right away," Tymver advised. "And neither are you," he added.

. . .

Loredas, 20th of Hearthfire, 4E 201

For another day and a half, Yngve had been carefully tiptoeing around his father's daily routine, managing to casually avoid encountering him at all. In this endeavor, Yngve spent most of his time in his own bedroom, taking his meals there and finding ways to entertain himself. He flipped through some of his favorite books, skimming over them with mild disinterest. He talked with Tymver, from time to time. He rearranged a number of his old childhood toys, small wooden animal figures, long since put on a shelf: a fox, a wolf, a hawk, a bear. He'd had many more, that had been lost, misplaced, or broken over the years. Among the four that remained were his two favorites: the fox and the bear. The bear, the symbol of the Stormcloak clan, he had always associated with his father: strong, willful, and formidable. The fox, Yngve had always admired, as a quick, cunning, and mischievous animal.

Finally, on Loredas afternoon, Yngve could no longer avoid the bear. As he sat sprawled out in a chair in his room, almost dozing off for an utter lack of mental stimulation, he was pulled back into his present reality by a firm knock at the door. After a brief pause, the door then opened, and Jorleif stepped in. Yngve looked helplessly up at Jorleif; he had been dreading this summons since he arrived home.

"It's time for you to come downstairs," Jorleif said. "Your father's had enough waiting."

This was all that Jorleif said, as he quickly turned back around and left the room immediately. Yngve turned his pleading gaze to Tymver, who looked back at him evenly.

"You want me to come with you?" Tymver asked. Yngve nodded. "Okay, let's go then."

Yngve slowly trudged down the stairs, with Tymver on his heels. He had expected his father to be in the main hall, but on entering through the door that connected the upstairs with the war room, was surprised to find him there instead. A small table with two chairs had been set up on the far corner of the room, where Ulfric was seated awaiting his son. Though a small detail, seeing his father in the war room, rather than where he was expected, startled Yngve and he stopped short, nearly causing Tymver to walk right into him. He stared at his father like a cornered animal, before Tymver gently nudged him forward into the room. Yngve took a few steps forward, as his father gestured toward the second chair, and cautiously sat down at the table.

"Tymver, leave us," Ulfric said calmly.

"As you wish, my Jarl," Tymver replied, exiting the room through the main hall as Yngve shot him a betrayed look.

Ulfric turned his attention back to Yngve, who went from looking at Tymver to looking at his own hands in his lap, thoroughly avoiding anything even beginning to resemble eye contact. For a few moments, Ulfric simply waited, giving his son an opportunity to acknowledge him. Yngve didn't, and instead looked at anything and everything except his father, becoming suddenly fascinated by a loose thread on one of his sleeves, a hangnail on one of his fingers, and a small scratch on the surface of the table they were sitting at. Finally, Ulfric lost patience for it, and broke the weighty silence hovering over them.

"Yngve, look at me," he said, more sharply than he had intended to.

Even Ulfric winced slightly at the sound of his own voice bouncing back off the walls at them. Yngve complied immediately, sitting up straight as his head snapped up and his eyes came to rest on his father's face. Ulfric's stern expression softened. In the days that had passed since the evening Yngve suddenly appeared in the main hall, Ulfric hadn't seen him once. He knew Yngve was avoiding him, and had granted him these few days, understanding that he needed them to rest and gather his thoughts about whatever had happened since Helgen and Whiterun. Now that he had finally come face to face with his son again, Ulfric felt the same wave of relief running through him that he had felt when Yngve came home days ago.

At the same time, however, Ulfric also found a feeling of deep frustration welling up within him. He hadn't realized that Yngve had been following him and his company until they had been caught in General Tullius's ambush. By that point, there was nothing he could do to protect him. Ulfric remembered the terror he felt in Helgen, watching what would have been his own child's murder, while he himself was bound and gagged and powerless to stop it. He remembered feeling a rising panic as he tried to order his son out of harm's way, and they were separated in the confusion of the dragon attack. He remembered receiving word from Balgruuf in Whiterun that Yngve was being held there, and then that Yngve had escaped and was missing. He remembered search parties from both Whiterun and Eastmarch combing Whiterun Hold and turning up nothing – not a single trace of Yngve anywhere. For the last month, Ulfric had no appetite and hardly slept. Everything he had lamented, everything that had confounded him, angered him, and maddened him during that month ultimately boiled down to one question.

"Why were you following us before that ambush?" Ulfric asked.

Yngve said nothing. He had followed his father to prove that he could; ultimately, he now realized, this served no purpose other than disobedience for its own sake. He had been told to stay in Windhelm that time, just as he had always been told to stay home, away from the guards, the soldiers, the barracks, and the war. He had felt frustrated, as though he was always disregarded as inherently less capable than not only his father, but also the soldiers in the militia. What had started out in his mind as a desire to prove himself capable of being involved in everything that was going on, had at some point been corrupted to become wanton defiance. Unable to find words to explain himself, and feeling ashamed about much of what had happened, Yngve simply shut up, and it was the wrong move.

"I asked you a question," Ulfric said sternly. "Why were you following us, when you were supposed to be here?"

"I, um," Yngve stuttered, still not even having a clear answer himself. "I don't know," he said, before he could stop himself. Yngve had rarely been in trouble growing up, because he rarely misbehaved. Still, one thing he knew with certainty from the handful of times he had been in this situation before, was that 'I don't know' was not an acceptable answer to this kind of question.

"You don't know," Ulfric repeated. His voice had quieted, and was now a low growl – another sign that Yngve knew to be unfavorable. Being yelled at had always been one thing, but the low voice was the one he found terrifying – the low voice meant you were really in trouble. Yngve dropped his gaze again to his hands, wringing in his lap, as his father spoke again.

"Do you have any idea – any idea at all – how much worry and trouble you caused by being where you weren't supposed to be?" Ulfric asked. When Yngve said nothing, he added, "I'm asking you."

"I… um… yes?" Yngve said unsurely. This entire conversation had been spiraling out of control from the beginning, as far as he was concerned. "…No," he said, finally.

"No," Ulfric agreed. "You probably don't. I'm not sure I get the impression that you've put any thought at all into how your actions affect the people who care about you."

"But, I was just trying to… to…" Yngve began, but couldn't finish. Even if he knew what he had been feeling, he struggled to get the words out of his mouth.

"To what?" Ulfric asked, when Yngve didn't finish his sentence. "Terrorize everyone in the palace?"

"No!" Yngve insisted. "Stop saying that!"

At this outburst, Ulfric realized that Yngve was starting to panic. In addition, they were only going in circles. As frustrated as he still was, whatever the root cause of Yngve's behavior had been, he would have to find it another day. In the meantime, however, there was one matter that could be settled. Ulfric drew a deep breath to calm himself.

"I wasn't trying to upset you," Ulfric finally said. "I'm sorry for that." Yngve's gaze slowly rose again as Ulfric continued to speak.

"I'm trying to understand what made you do something so…" he trailed off, searching for the right word.

"…Stupid?" Yngve asked sheepishly.

"Reckless," Ulfric said. "Everyone in this palace was looking for you, even before General Tullius ambushed and captured us. They thought you were dead."

"They… did?" Yngve asked. His father was right – he hadn't thought about this. It hadn't even occurred to him to think about it.

"I thought I was going to watch you die, and that horrified me," Ulfric admitted. "Then, when the dragon attacked, I was afraid you were going to die alone somewhere in the rubble of Helgen, and that horrified me more."

Yngve was a little taken aback at his father's directness on this point. Before the ambush and the dragon attack, Yngve had never thought about his own mortality. And even after that – his father was right – he hadn't thought about how it would affect anyone else.

"I spent the better part of a month terrified that I had lost you," Ulfric said. "And everyone else under this roof – Tymver, Galmar, Jorleif, Sifnar… everyone – had been worrying for even longer. We can discuss what you were thinking again some other day, but in the meantime, you owe a serious apology to everyone in this palace."

Yngve nodded, and the two sat together in silence for several moments while he reflected on everything that had been said. Now that his father had given him a perspective other than his own, Yngve agreed that he needed to apologize. He had acted rashly and completely disregarded them, he now realized. He began thinking about how he might approach and apologize to each person in the palace – from his father's steward, to the cooks, the maids, the guards, and anyone else he might not remember in this exact moment. At least he knew where he could start.

"Da," Yngve said after a few moments passed. "I'm sorry. I was being stupid and careless, and I caused you a lot of worry and stress. I didn't mean to, but… it was still wrong."

Still wearing a stern expression on his face, Ulfric stood from the table and gestured for Yngve to stand as well. He pulled Yngve into a hug, for the second time since his return, and held onto him for a long moment. He let go of the fears he had been carrying about his son's whereabouts and safety.

"It's alright now," Ulfric said, his tone softening. He of course cared deeply about his son. And despite everything that had happened recently, he knew Yngve to be a good kid. "We'll talk again about this after you've apologized to everyone and collected your thoughts."

For the rest of that evening, Yngve sought out each member of the palace's staff and apologized to them personally for all the trouble he had caused by running off like he had. This task carried over into the following day, when he also began delivering his apologies to the members of his father's court.

For several days thereafter, Yngve's life remained uneventful. He was still tired, both physically and mentally, from everything that had happened. He was also sure that the best thing for him to do was to stay out of his father's thoughts for a while. So, for the next few days, Yngve spent his time resting.