This time when Thorunn passed through the village wrought with nostalgia, the civilians gave her their undivided attention. As they should, considering there was a beaten and bloodied man in Dark Brotherhood leathers sitting in front of her on the saddle of her stallion. Blood painted her own armor, not entirely the assassin's or her own. She wanted out of these furs as soon as possible.

She paid no mind to the villagers she passed, having her mind set on one location. The priest of Arkay she sought would no doubt be in the Hall of the Dead. The man in Thorunn's arms was slowly dying, his breathing coming in sharp, alarming intakes. She couldn't have him die like this. He didn't deserve to die of battle; he deserved to die on his knees at the hand of a man that was as inconvenient as the dirt beneath his shoes. As far as Thorunn knew, Runil was the only person remotely similar to a healer within Falkreath Hold.

Runil was a white-haired Altmer, never seen outside of his monk robes. He fought alongside the Aldmeri Dominion during the Great War, she knew from what her parents told her. The only thing that kept Thorunn from turning her nose up at him as she did all Aldmeri agents was that Runil was also a worshiper of Talos. It was true, then, that Talos's protection was mighty.

But politics and religion didn't quite matter right now. What mattered was that the elf was trained enough in Restoration magic to help Thorunn out. She reached the Hall of the Dead within moments and slowed Aegetha, then carefully climbed down from the stallion, strategically taking the assassin with her. She practically carried him into the building.

Runil was inside, bowed before a shrine to Arkay with his assistant, Kust, next to him. Both men uttered words of prayer too softly for Thorunn to make out. She hated to interrupt such a critical task to the Nine, but this was an emergency.

"Runil," she called as she kicked the door open, snatching his attention. His head whipped around and his eyes widened at the sight of her, growing even wider when he saw the body in her arms.

"Come, come," he ushered, jumping to his feet with surprising swiftness for his age. "Kust, get the bench. Hurry now." The Nordic assistant dressed in well-made Iron armor dragged a bench over to the middle of the room, and Thorunn placed the nobody onto it as gently as she could.

Runil's hands were deft and glowing with comforting pink magic as they hovered above the assassin's chest. The priest uttered incantations as he worked, a crease of concentration between his thin brows. Thorunn watched as life slowly returned to the nobody. His chest rose and fell more easily and color returned to his cheeks- what little he naturally had, anyway. His eyes did not open, but they fluttered softly beneath his lids as if he were dreaming. Thorunn found herself wondering what sort of pictures swam beneath them.

When Runil finished, he lowered his hands and regarded Thorunn pensively. "This man wears the armor of the Void," he said quietly. "Perhaps it is not within my right to ask, but why would you make an effort to save the life of an assassin?"

"The High King would prefer to bring justice to this man himself," Thorunn responded. There was a pinch of roboticness to her tone, as if this had been what she was programmed to say and not something of her own accord. This mechanical switch was something all soldiers had. They were weapons before they were people, and weapons did not think before they were swung.

Runil watched her uncertainly for a moment. "Ah," he said, the pieces of the puzzle sliding into place. "Vittoria Vici. Of course. The Stormcloaks are accused and this man is the only piece of evidence you have that her death was not done by Stormcloak hands."

Thorunn nodded slowly.

The High Elf took in a deep breath. "He will need rest before you put him back on a horse, and do not leave with him I recommend searching and relieving him of any weapons. These assassins are armed to the teeth in both poisons and weapons." He walked over to an end table, removing a wool cloak from the drawer and placing it at the nobody's feet. "Cover him up when you're finished. The nights of Skyrim are not generous." He turned, heading for the living quarters. He almost disappeared behind the doorway when he stopped and turned to face her for a last minute instruction. "Oh, and don't leave him unattended. You wouldn't want him waking up and sneaking off while you're asleep." With a dismissive nod, the priest vanished, and Kust soon followed.

Thorunn let out a heavy sigh, looking down at the slumbering assassin. The blood that stained his face and hair was drying, turning his blond hair a diluted red where the wound on his head lay. She supposed it wouldn't hurt to clean him up a bit. She was going to have to remove his armor to search him for weapons, anyway, and it was going to be a long night.

She took a cloth from her satchel and dipped it into a wash basin resting on Arkay's altar. She wrung it out before walking back to the assassin, sitting down on the edge of the bench and dabbing the blood off his face with surprising gentility. He didn't stir; instead, he seemed to melt at her touch, his comatose state relaxing even more. She continued to rub his face in soft, rhythmic gestures until his skin was free of any blood. She realized only then how porcelain and smooth his skin was underneath all that grime, blemished only by blond stubble on the lower half of his face.

Too bad, then, that he would die.

She looked upon his face a moment longer, not quite sure why. This man was a murderer. More than that, he was an assassin. Him and his like relished in the art of killing more than a poacher, but even so, there was something undeniably human in the way he held himself. Thorunn supposed he had to have been something before he was an assassin. That she was curious about such a mundane thing made her want to cringe. This is the enemy, she reminded herself as she stood up abruptly to freshen the washrag.

After cleaning his hair deliberately without looking at his face, she began peeling back his armor. She rarely wore light armor, and when she did, it was only to travel and it certainly didn't have this many confusing buckles. She found two daggers at the belt of his trousers beneath the armor that she didn't dare handle until she had gloves on. Handling the daggers of an assassin bare-handed was never a good idea, given the likelihood of them being painted with poison.

She had to lift him up to effectively remove the armor but, luckily, he didn't wake nor stir. It was hard for her to be gentle enough to keep him that way, having grown accustomed to blundering through every puzzle she'd been through in her life. She still wasn't sure if he was only sleeping or if he was in something akin to a coma. She prayed the former was not the case. They needed to be on their way to Solitude as soon as possible.

She discarded his armor by shoving it under a bench carelessly. With him laid out before her in nothing but a baggy white unlaced tunic and brown trousers, she could only see a few things of note: A necklace with ten capsules of poisons with various labels rested on his neck, which she removed carefully, not wanting any of the capsules to break, and the daggers at his waistband as well as small knives secured into bands around his bruised wrists.

She removed them all with gloved hands and turned away momentarily to add them to the pile of armor beneath the bench. When she turned back, the nobody's pale blue eyes were open, and his head was turned, watching her passively.

She jumped, but no noise left her mouth. "You're awake," she breathed, relaxing.

He said nothing, continuing to watch her.

She froze, standing rigid. What could she do? After watching him in such a peaceful state, she had a hard time not feeling like something intimate had occurred between them. Not the sort of intimacy she shared with Ulfric behind closed doors, of course, but like the feeling she got when she watched a dragon fly overhead without ever dipping low enough to pose any semblance of a threat.

"Why?" he said finally.

Her brow furrowed. "'Why' what?"

"Why am I awake?" He sat up a bit too quickly and Thorunn's hand instinctively moved to the hilt of her sword. He moved more slowly now, holding his hands up in surrender. She slowly removed her hand from the iron hilt, but her hand didn't move far. His eyes remained on hers the whole time. "What did you do to me? When you opened your... your mouth. What was that?"

The power a Dragonborn wielded was not commonly known, especially to those who did not seek it out. "It's called Shouting," she answered. "It's a weapon of the voice inherently used by dragons."

He chuckled softly, lowering his hands onto his lap. "Well, it hurts like hell," he quipped. He paused, eyes falling to the ground as he fiddled idly with his thumbs. "Dragon Queen. I wonder what the dragons think of that title being bestowed onto a human."

Thorunn shrugged. Sometimes she didn't know if she was human at all.

"Do you think they'll call you a usurper and try to kill you?" he asked thoughtfully.

She knew what he was taking a jab at, but she refused to humor him. "I doubt it," she replied.

The shadows cast by the candles danced on the wall, emanating a cozy lighting that bounced off of the nobody's pale eyes. For a while, he said nothing, his eyes refocusing on the ground. Thorunn never cared to know what was happening in a man's mind, but right now, she never wanted more than to hear another's thoughts.

"I'm going to die, aren't I?" he voiced softly.

Yes, she wanted to say, but the word never got past the knot in her throat. "I don't know," she answered. "It's not my decision."

He outright laughed at that. "Life and death is always a decision," The vulnerability in his tone had vanished, replaced by something cocky. "Right now, you hold my strings. What will you do with them?"

She arched a brow. "I will hand them to the king."

He scoffed. "I didn't expect the Dragonborn to be so submissive."

"Loyal is the appropriate term," Thorunn snapped impatiently. She was a lot of things. Submissive was never one of them, not even to Ulfric Stormcloak. Even so, she couldn't help but question herself. The Dragonborn bowed nor bent to no one. Had she been oblivious while she knelt to a mortal man?

When she snapped back, the nobody was smirking with satisfaction. He could see the battle waging in her expression. "I'll ask you again: what will you do with them?"

She knew what she was supposed to say now. "You don't call the shots here," she stated coldly. She sensed a game where there was one. "You are going to Solitude, and you are going to be judged by the High King. What you think of this will mean nothing when your head rolls from your body." She marched over and picked up the wool cloak, shoving it into his chest. "You're awake now. It's time to move."

He was still smiling by the time his back was facing her as he left the Hall of the Dead with Thorunn at his back.