Chapter Summary: Miranja helps defend Whiterun, she and Balgruuf comfort each other, then she goes home to comfort Lydia.

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It was midafternoon when Miranja returned to Whiterun, and so far everything seemed peaceful. She stopped in at Breezehome to let Tel and Lydia know she was back, and to be prepared to go to battle very soon, probably within the next day. She was ravenous, so she scarfed a wedge of apple pie because it was there and ready to eat. She asked Tel and Lydia if they would accompany her to Dragonsreach, and they were ready in moments. She didn't bother changing out of her scout armor, figuring she could do that after she completed her delivery to Balgruuf.

When they arrived at Dragonsreach, Balgruuf was not in his customary place, and neither were Proventus and Irileth. With mounting concern, she went straight to the stairs, where she could already hear Balgruuf's voice. An Imperial legate stood at the map table with him, and they were discussing preparations. Proventus and Irileth hovered nearby. So, Tullius had already sent reinforcements.

Miranja caught Balgruuf's eye and approached him with the axe. He was unsurprised that she was returning it. He introduced her to Legate Quentin Cipius, the officer in charge of operations. She'd scarcely acknowledged him when a soldier rushed in reporting that the Stormcloaks were attacking – with catapults and flaming projectiles. Already? It had been quiet not half an hour ago!

Miranja's blood ran cold, and a hot flush ran through her body immediately after. Before Balgruuf had even finished giving the order, she was bolting down the stairs, Tel and Lydia on her heels. From the viewpoint at the front of the wooden bridge to Dragonsreach, she could see smoke and flames in the city below, and in her horror all she could think was "Please, Lady Mara, don't let any civilians be hurt."

She ran all the way down to the hastily erected barricades at the city entrance at the bottom of the hill, where Legate Rikke was actually trying to give the men a pep talk. Miranja was in no mood to hear a damned pep talk when the siege had already begun. She jumped the barricades and started attacking the first Stormcloak she could find. After that, the rest was a bit of a blur to her later. She swung her sword at anything blue that moved. Arrows whizzed in both directions, and the clashing of weapons surrounded her. The barricades fell, and she and the others had to fall back to the drawbridge. They did manage to keep the Stormcloak soldiers out of the city, and they left a trail of bodies all the way up to the gates of the city. She didn't remember if Tel and Lydia came with her; she never even thought to look around for them, but they must have been there somewhere.

When all the Stormcloaks inside the barricades finally lay dead, she saw a couple of Stormcloaks running away. Everyone else stopped fighting and just let them go, but Miranja, still frenzied, chased one down and killed him, too. As she stabbed him, he asked, "What are you doing?" as if she was crazy, and maybe she really was at the time. She could have let him go like the rest of the jarl's men did; she just felt like they shouldn't leave any of them alive. But his words reached her soul, and she hated herself then. She dropped his body and wept for him, wept for her own feeling of damnation. She trudged with aching heart back up the path to the doors of the city, crying and counting the bodies of the men and women who had died for (she felt) no good reason. She wanted to remove their helmets, see their faces, but she didn't think her heart could take it.

She didn't know where Balgruuf had been during the battle, but she could hear his voice addressing the troops before she even reached the drawbridge. Once past the drawbridge, she could see that he was standing on the scaffolds overlooking the mishmash of Whiterun guards and Imperial soldiers in the little courtyard. Legate Rikke was there, without her helmet for the first time Miranja had ever seen., but she didn't see Tel or Lydia anywhere. Balgruuf gave a stirring victory speech, praising the men for their valor, and they ate it up, but she couldn't celebrate. She was glad they had kept the Stormcloaks out of their city, of course, but…

She ran back down the hill, looking more closely at the bodies. She couldn't find a single corpse in Imperial armor, and she couldn't find Tel or Lydia. Hoping that was a good sign, she headed back up to the city to see if they were already back inside the gates. This time she realized with surprise that Hadvar was there, and he spoke to her when he saw her.

"You made it! I expected to find you face down in the dirt."

Miranja's first reaction was indignance and anger, but then it occurred to her that guys tend to joke like that, and maybe that was how he meant it. She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and let it go. She smiled weakly.

But then he said, "I bet I killed more than you; I was counting."

Miranja was speechless, and she could only look at him for a moment in horror and disgust before turning away and heading for the doors.

After his speech, Balgruuf took Irileth and headed back to Dragonsreach, and Miranja followed them as far as the barricade at the top of the stairs between the Plains District and the Wind District. Severio Pelagia's house was destroyed, and over the barricade she could see that the arbor around the Gildergreen had partially fallen. She prayed that Severio hadn't been inside the house when it was bombed. She ran around checking the other buildings in the Plains District, and they all seemed fine. For a while, she was confused because she was still hearing flaming projectiles hurtling through the air, but nothing was falling around her. She eventually realized that her own fellow soldiers had erected catapults between the buildings and the city wall (where had those been hiding? brought by the Imperial reinforcements?) and were firing back in the direction of the Stormcloak camp. She doubted they were actually hitting anything; it was too far away.

She checked Breezehome, and Tel and Lydia were already there, no worse for the wear. She told them to go ahead and stay there, that she was going up to Dragonsreach to look for Balgruuf. Sure, he had made a stirring victory speech to bolster the men's morale, but if she knew him, he too was having disturbing mixed feelings about what had just happened. They had kept their people, if not their buildings, safe, and killed many sons and daughters of Skyrim. There would be pain, healing, and rebuilding ahead, and while the battle was won, the war still wasn't over. There would be more death and destruction.

The guards didn't want to move the barricade at the entrance to the Dragonsreach bridge. Miranja was incensed and impatient. "I'm the fucking Thane, you assholes! Let me through! I need to see the Jarl!" She glared daggers at them, and they hurriedly moved the barricade, replacing it the moment she'd passed.

She found Balgruuf already lying in bed, but he wasn't asleep. His face was wet, and he didn't seem surprised or angry that Miranja had come unbidden to his room. He asked her to close the doors, and she did, then she went to sit on the edge of his bed. He sat up long enough for her to get comfortable sitting on his pillow with her back against the wall, then he lay back down and laid his head in her lap, wrapping his arm around her legs.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, she thought. She stroked his hair and his face until he had poured out all his pain. He sat up and dried his eyes, then moved up to sit next to her. He turned to her and kissed her, sucking his breath in through his mouth between kisses because his nose was stuffed up.

Neither of them spoke; their hearts knew each other in those moments. His kisses grew more insistent, and her body responded. He tugged at her clothing, so she stood up and undressed while he did the same sitting on the bed. He lay back down on his back and she straddled his hips, laying her body down on top of his, stroking his hair and kissing him again as he fitted himself against her and entered her body.

For only the second time in their year-and-a-half long friendship, they made love, holding each other tightly, and something about comforting each other with their bodies seemed to cause them both to climax pretty quickly. She lay down beside him, holding his head against her shoulder, stroking his hair. She felt humbled and honored by his sharing of his vulnerability; surely there were precious few people who had ever seen him show any sort of weakness. She stayed with him until he fell asleep, then she used his washbasin to have a quick wash-up, dressed, and went back to Breezehome.

At home, Tel and Lydia were waiting up for her, and they'd even warmed a kettle of water so she could bathe and wash away the battle sweat. Miranja didn't know why she was surprised at this, but she was quite thankful for her dear friends and their foresight. She felt dirty and damned and numb. The man she had stabbed to death still haunted her and tore at her heart. The only light was from the hearth fire and an oil lamp on the dining table, and she found the dim but warm light comforting.

"Why are you guys still up?"

"You're kidding, right?" Lydia responded. Miranja noted that her eyes were red and a bit puffy; she'd obviously been crying earlier but had gotten herself together. "Between the battle earlier and then wanting to make sure you made it home okay, there's no way I could sleep. How's Jarl Balgruuf?"

"Dealing, I guess. He was as upset as I was about so many lives being wasted out there today, and the damage to our fine city."

"Yeah, it was horrible," Lydia said quietly. Her own sadness was evident in her voice.

"We talked about it while you were gone," Tel put in from his place at the dining table as Lydia set the wash tub between the hearth and the corner table and helped Miranja out of her armor.

"What a way to get to know someone," Lydia remarked dolefully.

"Surviving a horrific experience together is bound to help you bond with someone," Miranja observed as she started washing the smoky smell from her hair. "I know the circumstances suck, but I'm glad you two had a chance to get a little closer."

She washed the rest of herself, except her back: Lydia gently washed her back for her, dropping kisses on her shoulders and stroking her hair, not even caring that Tel was watching from across the room. "How are you doing now?" Miranja asked Lydia, twisting to see her face.

Lydia came around to face her, and Miranja's heart ached when she saw the tears tracing shiny trails down her cheeks. Her own eyes filled with tears, and she placed her cool, damp palm on Lydia's cheek as they silently communicated their pain for a long moment. Neither of them had ever seen a battle like that before, nor did they want to see one again.

Miranja kissed Lydia once, softly, then gave a small, sad smile before reaching for the drying cloth on the table. If Lydia stayed at Breezehome, then, gods willing, she wouldn't have to see any more battle. But Miranja knew there would be more in her own near future, and she dreaded it.

She left the washtub and her dirty scout armor to be dealt with tomorrow – or whenever. She had to report back to General Tullius tomorrow, and Lydia, she suspected, would be helping with cleanup around the city. Laundry was low on the priorities list. Wrapped in her towel, she let herself be escorted up to bed. She hugged Lydia before they went to their separate rooms, and Tel went on ahead to get undressed himself.

As with Balgruuf, Miranja didn't feel the need to talk with Tel when they snuggled up under the furs together. They held each other as long as it was comfortable, then settled into more comfortable positions for sleep, still touching each other by pressing their backsides against each other and twining their feet and ankles. Before Miranja drifted off, she prayed to the gods for strength for the exhausted guards who would still have to stay up and keep watch through the night, and that she would have a dreamless sleep.