One
A Shared Voice
Ulfric's scowl fared to siphon her malice-laden tongue. His boisterous tone is contorted by his grimacing mouth, crooning Acacia in crimson. She has not admitted a side, yet he's keen on the matter that she is nowhere near being his ally— let alone being unbiased. From how her delegations lie on the map, she has masqueraded her political bidding under the guise of a frugal peace treaty.
His staunch approach parrots every decision made and turns her curled knuckles white beneath the table. She can barely curtail her temper.
"You've given them more than they deserve or what's fair, Dovahkiin."
She can scarcely stifle a sigh or resist rolling her eyes. Behind her ebony helmet, she's allowed to display a dribble of annoyance. However, to anyone that looks upon her, she's as stoic and unbiased as they come. She offers more of her proposals, slighting him with each land distribution for the empire. Acacia gives Ulfric less land and smaller cities, dooming his occupancy to hold a lighter weight once battle resumes. Guising this under pure inconspicuous disquisition, he stews with each disinclined agreement.
He gives a scoff when addressing anything outside the war, mocking those around them, she thinks it is as though he were going to beat his chest and thu'um all of them all into oblivion. She raises a brow he can't see, yet she knows he knows she's unimpressed.
The meeting ends. Everyone gets up, grumbling about the greater good of Skyrim or the impending doom of dragon mayhem, yet he lingers in the room. She is the last to rise from her seat at the front of the table, the unspoken "Guest of Honor."
Standing beside her, he is attempting to intimidate her in height, to no success. She stands with her shoulders back, head tilted to look up at him. He may be as ruthless as the folk songs, the hushed stories, and the riveting rumors, yet she pays him little mind. She's not the girl with smoke engulfed lungs awaiting death as Alduin burned bodies into ash anymore.
The Dovah bow to her sword, still crisp remains filtered like gravel on her breastplate. Just as in his own from his fabled tale, her thu'um could rip him apart, limb from limb.
"Was there something further you wished to discuss?" She offers, mirroring his bravado. It disconcerts him, making him grunt out a response.
"Since you are a woman, perhaps it makes sense you would not understand how you've dealt me a poor hand."
The audacity of this bastard.
Perhaps she took his simplicity for a lack of intellect. He picked up on more than she intended.
"Ulfric, I was presenting you the fairest trade I could give. This is not political. It's about Alduin."
"Bullshit," he grumbles under his breath, only audible for her to hear.
She takes a breath as he leans into her, his alluding figure consuming the space around them. Many have left already, too preoccupied in preparation to pay them any mind. She assumes he has already told his puppet to wait outside without him.
"I thought you'd be of kin. You and I are not meant to yield to common men."
It's always down to this, isn't it? Nord Ulfric, the once supposed Dovahkiin Ulfric. If he can appeal to what one thing, he has in common with her, he credulously thinks he can win her over.
"I'm not," She replies through gritted teeth, passing by him in a sly shift of her shoulder. Her armor bumps into his, as her concealed eyes aim directly for the door.
He doesn't follow her, and she wonders if he will fight the war as he does in conversation. With a little tact, and far too much pride.
Two
Between Mouths
Acacia's joined the empire— yet the war is still relative in its infancy.
After defeating Alduin, the trip to Wilhelm is laborious and albeit slothful. She goes through companions like mead, as she dreads her exploits have made her humanity like the sword at her hilt. A weapon sharp, used for slaughter.
Dovah now bow at her voice, past warriors come from the dead to brawl beside her. Deals with Daedric gods leave her sated with diluted empathy. To have come this far, the war feels unfamiliar, almost irrelevant. The Greybeards had preached this in warning, that like her forefathers she may become so entrenched in her pursuit of power that she would lose sight of the common welfare.
She has become more reminiscent of her Dovah bloodline than her human counterpart— and it shows.
He is awaiting her at his throne, his silver band ring twisting between pinched fingers. It is not the first time she has traveled to his dwelling, and it would not be the last. The people he pledges his allegiance to are the same muttering anecdotes of his indifference, his spoils of grandeur. If you're not a Nord, he refuses to acknowledge you.
Yet here I am, and all he can do is sit there and see me.
In an abrupt movement, he shifts upright in his seat, gripping the ring in a coiled fist.
Ulfric bellows out, speaking from the barrel of his throat, "You are either naive or prodigious in your impolitic impropriety." He stops, considering her, before continuing, a hint of diversion lacing his words, "Coming here. An enemy of war."
Acacia sighs, behind her back his many spectators galvanize in their chatter, their cutlery as sharp as the diatribe they stare at her. She rolls her shoulders and raises her chin. If she could crush the skulls of dragons, then these men were nothing but tendon bit down between her teeth.
"I humbly inquire for your private audience, as I have a dire need to discuss with you…" Ulfric does not react, a bloated fog of quiet setting. The Jarl of Whiterun's axe weighs heavier at her hilt.
His emerald eyes narrow, his mouth forming a taut line.
She half expects him not to utter any response, for her to make the journey back to Whiterun empty-handed, having been imbued by his lack of humility.
He stands swiftly. Ushering her to the hall beside them, he beckons.
"Come."
She is almost unnerved at his manner, regarding her like an obedient dog. She feels the thu'um rumbling inside her chest, yet she refuses to be as archaic as him. She treads light behind him— sensing those wandering eyes are pillars of lead into the skin as they follow her retreating figure.
They hate me.
They can hate me as much as they like.
As long as they know to fear me.
He leads her into a quaint and dimly lit room, the center table covered in war paraphernalia. The honey-yellow glow of a handing lantern casts shadows over the faces of the two men waiting inside. Such as sand through her fingers she lets their glares pass through her. Ulfric dismisses them with a tilt of his head. She need not argue.
It is better if we are left alone.
However— despite herself, the recognition disseminates frissons. She swallows, faintly exhaling through her nostrils.
He shuts the door behind the men, and it offers a thump in closing. His presence is potent incense, consuming the room after they leave.
He glides over to the other end of the table opposite of her, and folding his arms over his chest, he peers dead into her eye.
"What is it, Dovahkiin?"
Without a moment to spare, she plucks the axe from her hilt and presents it on the table. After assaying it, his jade irises meet hers once more.
"The Jarl of Whiterun requested me to give you this. And this letter."
She withdraws the letter and holds it out for him across the table. The skin of his hands is like leather as they skim against hers. Another shiver streams down her spine. Surely the reason has to be the bitter cold coming in through the cracks of his stone fortress.
He reads it. She shifts her weight from foot to foot. He shakes his head and pushes the axe back over to her.
"There will be no use for this. My men will march upon Whiterun."
Of course.
He is without thought!
"Should you not consider your choice longer? You are choosing to unleash war upon an innocent city." She cannot quell the words as they breach past the barrier of her teeth.
How can he be so senseless?
He sneers, though not amused, and mutters low with gravel in his timbre, a threat meant for someone not outside this room.
"If they are not with me, they are against me."
Acacia crosses her arms and scoffs, "This is not a battle you can persist in. You should know where I will be when it takes place."
The frontline, having the heads of those imprudent enough to raise their sword in defiance. In their minds, the enemy is the empire, yet the last person to deliver them to their maker will be her.
"Why choose to fight for the empire—" he grumbles out, "you squander your potential."
"If that is your attempt at flattery, I would hate to see what your attempt at vengeance is. Perhaps just as feeble."
His fingers curl in.
He circles the table— and before she knows it, his hands are wrapped around her throat. Her armor helmet prevents him from directly seeing her eyes and yet she has watched every emotion wither and wane across his countenance. His jaw clenches, the indent between his brows deepening like a slivered cut.
She doesn't respond, letting him hold her throat in his hands. In the pit of her gut, something awakens from slumber, a burning ember in her core. She could unleash the bounds of her voice and splay him across the room in scraps. She doesn't.
The tenor of his tone weaves its thorns into her chest.
"Everyone else may speak of you with grandeur, but you are nothing but a woman with her head on a chopping block."
Her gauntleted fingers pull at his forearms, blasé. The simmers blister hotter within her. He is stoking her into flames.
"You and I both know who a man is only. Do you think you can defeat a true Dovahkiin? You have spent your whole life in pursuit of being me."
His stare widens— and she takes the moment of shock to tear his hands from her throat. He does not stagger backward, however; he remains close.
Acacia pulls off her helmet, her ashen mane cascading like madness over her face. The war paint beath her pale eyes coal-colored stains, smudged and bled down her cheeks.
She listens silently to his short intake of air as his eyes truly meet hers for the first time since the beginning. From the beginning, when she was younger, when both were prepped to die on the same block. Not a word is uttered for a moment too long.
He is not appalled as she had anticipated. If anything, his contemplation unravels her, it is as if he were just inches from the crown.
It happens before she can register it, the clank of her helmet against the stone floor, his fingers laced in the strands of her hair at the back of her neck, his mouth on hers. Her body was consumed in the flame, her mind numbed by bewildered awe. She hardly has time to register his movements, tongue pressed between her lips and in her mouth, his arm curling behind her back, pulling her nearer. The flurry of motion is all he is, a turning riptide, a cantankerous crack of thunder rushing in her ears. She gasps and he grunts, swirling his tongue around hers and half-moaning her name—not Dovahkiin— her name.
"Acacia."
She had never heard him say it, and she wish she would never know because now it is imprinted in her like hot coal seared into flesh.
He holsters her upright, trailing his kiss down her jaw to her neck. Her hands grip his cloak, the fur splaying between her coiled knuckles. She neither can push him away— nor pull him closer. The horror of realizing her resolve against even pursuing the latter makes her keen.
Ulfric's lips enclose her earlobe, his staunch bravado breaking on a syllable. He's incredulous.
"You're ceaseless in provoking me."
Acacia bites back a moan as his mouth puckers beneath her ear, sucking purple blossoms into her skin.
"You infuriate me." His fingers lace into her hair, tilting it to the side as his searing lips languish her neck. Fever sets in like she is being poisoned, her mind slurring, her body burning. His knee wedges between her legs, angled up to nestle between her thighs. There's too much metal to feel him press into her, and she may lose half her mind yearning for the sensation. She yanks him by his hair, pulling it in from her jaw.
Acacia cannot speak— as if the birthing of cowardice consumes her for the first time in many a month. She cannot let it be known out loud, but her hands speak for her, gripping her boots and tugging them off one by one. He makes haste with her— choosing wisely not to prod at her choice, merely mirroring her impulse, unbuckling the strap of her weaponry from her waist, prying down the armor strapped to her ankles, her thighs. Her exposed flesh would chill from the sudden exposure to cold if it were not for his hands cupping her thighs, sealing the heat within her.
Ulfric's eyes are ponderous— exploring the strain of her muscles and the curved ugly lines of scars embedded above her knee. His fingers are like wilting rose stems over the skin, the deep callouses of his finger pads scratchy and rough. Her head tilts back and she bites her ebony armor knuckle. He does not touch her there— even though she had suspected he would be the type to plunge his fingers into her without prior prepping— without thought.
His forefinger graces itself in swimming circles around her clit, his thumb slicked by her glistened outer lips. She sees his smile; she hears it in the lull of his cooing voice when he leans in against her ear.
"You're dripping."
It's too horrible to acknowledge, but she feels it cascade down her thigh. She blames it on anything— having not pleasured herself in months, having not been touched in maybe years by someone else— anything… anything but having to do with him.
He infuriates me.
The smug demeanor, the leather scent of his skin, and the smoky haze drifting over his stare. She grabs at his cloak in two fists full of fur. He is unbalanced, so he slumps to his knees in surprise as push down onto his shoulders with all her might.
Her hands tremble a bit as he looks up at her, confused. She takes his chin in her palm, anchoring his stare with hers.
"Clean it up."
His nostrils flare. There is a pause, and she wonders if she has wedged too far under the skin. His eyebrows deepen and without unlatching his stare from hers, he leans in between her thighs, his tongue flat against the former drip on her inner thigh. He slowly drags his tongue until his mouth hovers over her cunt, breathing hot and fanning out over it.
He's waiting for something, but she's not going to say please.
Curling her fingers into his hair, she tugs him into her core, nestling him there. His mouth opens wantonly, tongue swirling around her clit, before sucking it between his lips.
She muffles a moan forming deep in her throat, humming in tremors from her senses being engulfed in shivering silk. He laps at her cunt, burrowing his tongue between her lips and fucking her with it. She groans out his name and she feels him grin.
Gripping him tighter, closer, the urge coils within her, building and building. She cannot resist grinding her cunt against his face, taking him for all he's worth. Electricity tinges in her veins and feels herself going blank. He feels it too.
"Belong… mmmff. To… me," his muffled words hum against her core, and she feels herself snap, oblivion exploding behind her eyelids, expanding like long electric tendrils through her body. He pants her name like a prayer to his God, her cunt like milk and honey he's thirsty to drink. Her knees buckle, and he clutches her backside, his fingernails digging into the soft flesh.
Mere moments pass after it's over before loud solid footfalls echo through the hall behind the closed door she is perched against. Her eyes snap open in horror, her hands immediately dropping their vice grip on his hair.
"DON'T COME IN HERE," he bellows out, almost as loud as his thu'um, ferocious enough as if he'd murder whoever set foot in the hall. A gasp and footsteps peddle away just as quickly as they came.
The loud clanking of boots echoes down the hall behind the door, and it's enough to rid her of her haze. She shoves him off like a pickpocket, as she wheezes slightly from the amount of overstimulation. She hadn't been touched in… well.
He's dazed as well, but the howling of his discernment is barely audible to her as his servant patters away quickly from the hallway again.
They both linger in silence.
She makes work of pulling on her clothes, each piece of armor strapped in too tight, like wedging stone into flesh. The pain reminds her of where she is, what she has done. She can't even feel shame, all emotion seems to dissipate into steam when she sees his face, still slick from her cum. He smears the back of his hand with it, smiling at her.
It is a knowing smile. As if she were the one on her knees just now, sucking his cock kind of smile. He may have bowed down to her, but he's won.
She is sure of this, yet—
He doesn't seem content or sated for long. He seems almost reluctant, and soft. Such a word never seemed to come to mind describing the man.
"Join me," he murmurs, and yet he makes no move to touch her again, "you've unraveled me. I would be less of a man if I didn't admit it."
Acacia swallows.
"End the war, and I'd consider…"
It's not the answer he wanted, and it shows. He scrubs at his beard, slouched against the table. His eyes stray from hers.
He gives her a crude laugh.
"On your terms?"
It is not a question.
"It will end on my terms; regardless of your decision," she states, and he smiles unkind, dragging his nails over his hair, his jaw clenching.
"You leave here— you cement yourself as the enemy."
That word feels foreign, strange now that he's confessed and appears so soft now. But he says it with ferocity, through grit and restraint.
"You'll regret this," he states, the last effort to get her to consider.
She crouches down, her hands on her helmet. She places it back over her head, her countenance now concealed from his prying stare. Her hand creaks the door open.
"We both will."