Note: Thanks for reading and reviewing! Trigger warning for death and violence. Hadvar is adorable and my precious little sweet roll.

…

Sky and Fire

The run to Helgen had been more than successful. The Keep itself was relatively intact, no bandits had camped in the ruins, and the four women hauled enough luxury provisions to extend Balgruuf's veneer of wealth by a good few months. Lia hadn't discovered anything particularly new about Alduin's attack but she believed she had a few good ideas on how to combat a dragon in an urban setting like Whiterun.

They were trundling through Riverwood now as Hadvar was making his farewells to his family. Lia sighed and stopped the wagon she was driving; he'd know where the Alto wine, Colovian brandy and garum sauce came from, but there was nothing to be done. "Need a lift to Whiterun?" she asked as the huscarl and mercenaries stared at her.

"Please," Hadvar said, looking up to the westering sky. "Dare I ask?"

"The Legion's ordinary supplies are still intact and ready to be salvaged," Lia told him defensively. "This is just the officers' personal stuff, mostly Legate Julia's."

Hadvar grunted as he climbed onto the wagon. "Bribing Balgruuf?"

"More like repaying him. He's given me his personal protection while we research the dragon problem."

"If anyone has the time and resources to look into the dragons, it's him," Hadvar conceded after she'd flipped the reins to get the old carthorse moving again. "I'll let Legate Rikke know. She's always enjoyed your cooking."

"She was a childhood friend of my mother's," Lia murmured as she guided the wagon along the switchback path that went past the waterfall.

The Quaestor sighed. "Why didn't you join the Legion? Your parents were Blades-"

"My grandfather was Arius Aurelius and the Emperor allowed his death at the hands of the Thalmor because he was planning to take the Ruby Throne," Lia interrupted acidly, uncaring that there were two women with opaque agendas on the wagon with her.

"Oh." To Hadvar's credit, the stunned expression was momentary. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Lia said with a sigh as she looked towards the black outline of Whiterun in the distance. "The Empire's still a better option than Ulfric and his goons."

"On that we'll agree." Hadvar sighed heavily. He was a good man, one who carried the burden of being a true Nord who watched his kinsmen die over who sat on a throne. "What will you do when this is over?"

"The civil war or the dragons?"

"Both."

"I don't know," Lia admitted. "I've never imagined my life beyond the Prophecy of the Dragonborn."

"Well, the gods won't abandon us," Hadvar assured her with more faith than she herself possessed. "You should look to the future – your future, Lia."

"And what of you, Quaestor?" Lia retorted, turning the question about. "You're already Rikke's right-hand man, I hear. Going to climb up the ranks of the Legion?"

"I only signed up for a term because my father did," the Legionnaire responded calmly. It was a hard thing to rattle or even anger Hadvar; Lia remembered that from Helgen. "That land in Falkreath's still for sale – or maybe Breezehome. Has Jarl Balgruuf sold that house yet, Lydia?"

The huscarl blinked, awakening from the doze she'd fallen into. "No," she said. "Legion Quaestor could become an officer in the Whiterun guard if he wanted."

"I'd sooner hang up my sword if I have a choice," Hadvar replied to the offer. "Maybe settle down with a good woman, if she was interested."

"I'm sure you could have your choice of any single woman in Skyrim," Lia told him, meaning every word. Hadvar was a fine man and a true Nord – but not one of those blood-soaked fools in the Stormcloaks.

"And a few not-so-single ones," Uthgerd noted approvingly as they reached the crossroad where the roads to Dawnstar, Windhelm and Whiterun met.

"Only one woman I'm interested in," Hadvar murmured, brown eyes flicking in Lia's direction.

She stopped the wagon, the horse snorting its discontent at being out at night, and stared at the heavy-shouldered Nord. "Wait, what?"

My mother is a rebel, my family was unofficially executed for treason and I'm about two steps off a milkdrinker, Lia thought as her hands gripped the reins tightly. Hadvar, you can do so much better.

The Quaestor regarded her thoughtfully as an awkward silence descended upon the wagon before jerking his head at Uthgerd. "Can you drive a wagon?" At the disgraced warrior's nod, he jumped off the wagon. "Lia, walk with me please."

Lydia glanced at Lia and the Bruma Nord smiled apologetically. "I'll be fine," she told the huscarl. "Get these supplies to your uncle."

Handing the reins over to Uthgerd, she climbed down from the wagon, the rough linen of her plain brown dress – she saved the clothing Balgruuf gave her for court days – catching on the splintered wood before she unhooked her skirt. This was going to be an awkward talk but Hadvar… Well, he deserved honesty.

The wagon trundled away as one of the city guards who patrolled this part of the road came closer to both eavesdrop and warm his hands on the brazier. Lia threw him a dark glance and cast Candlelight to surround her as she began the half-hour walk to the city, leaving Hadvar to catch up.

"I didn't mean to blurt it out like that," Hadvar confessed as they walked past Honningbrew Meadery. "I've… just had a few days to think about everything since Helgen and how you defied your own mother to warn me."

"You're too good a man to die like a nithing," Lia pointed out. "I don't make any claims to honour but the Stormsword… She has selective amnesia when it comes to particular oaths."

"You've got more honour than you know." The Quaestor sighed, his plain features stoic in the magical light. "I… understand if you're not interested, Lia."

"I never thought about it, honestly," Lia answered, hugging herself. "I had one mission: survive, no matter what, until I could tell the Dragonborn about Alduin's Wall and Sky Haven Temple in the Reach. Everything else came a distant second."

She grimaced as bad memories briefly surfaced before sinking back into the subconscious of her mind.

"Have you found the Dragonborn?" Hadvar asked cautiously.

"No. So far, haven't seen a dragon since Helgen." Lia looked involuntarily up at a sky studded with stars and filled by a fat Secunda and thin Masser. "If I hadn't seen those ruins in daylight, I could have almost convinced myself it was a horrid nightmare."

"Me too." Hadvar's gaze was momentarily bleak. "I will have nightmares for the rest of my life."

"I know that feeling," Lia agreed with a shudder. Too many memories for even her to forget.

"The Purge of Bruma is just a story used to whip up the Stormcloaks in Skyrim," Hadvar observed as Pelagia Farm came into view. "But it's a memory to you, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Lia's fists clenched. "Bruma is where decency goes to die and makes Riften look like the epitome of Nord honour."

"And yet you still warned me. I like to think Ralof would have killed me cleanly but your mother…" Hadvar shook his head. "I should have killed one of Ulfric's senior commanders but I couldn't stand to murder your mother in front of you. That you chose to join me instead of her gave me hope that…"

"I've always rather liked you," Lia told him. "I'd just never considered getting involved with anyone because everyone from the Thalmor to the Emperor wants a piece of my hide."

"Titus Mede is old and the Thalmor wouldn't expect you to marry some grunt of a Legionnaire," Hadvar pointed out with a hint of his typical dry wit. "You already know the Legion protects its own, Lia."

"You've a hell of a way of proposing," Lia said with a startled laugh.

"You seem like a practical woman." They were near where the road curved towards Whiterun.

"I have a duty to fulfil, Hadvar," Lia reminded him softly.

"And having a husband in the Legion will make it easier," Hadvar countered. In the light of the brazier, he was cast in shades of ochre and amber, his short hair burnished bronze. Not a handsome man but a good one, a man like all the other Legionnaires who died to protect the Empire.

That was where Grandfather went wrong, Lia realised as she stared into his ale-brown eyes. The Empire isn't its leaders but the ones who allow them to rule.

"Sure, why not?" Lia asked, trying to find a bit of humour in all of this. "I guess if I'm going to go kicking and screaming down the gullet of a dragon, I might as well get married beforehand."

And having a husband will neatly circumvent some of Balgruuf's plans, Lia thought as Hadvar smiled broadly. I am sick of being a pawn in everyone's games.

"You'll find the Dragonborn and they'll save us all," Hadvar announced.

"I hope so," Lia observed with a sigh. "I really hope so."

…

"When dealing with Imperials, appeal to their pragmatism and rationality," Legate Rikke always advised her subordinates. "Their honour revolves around the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people, which generally translates to them as trying to keep the status quo and co-opting others into their system. And it's worked – look at how Talos became Tiber Septim."

Hadvar hadn't missed the trace of calculation in those blue-green eyes as Lia considered his careful arguments. She'd been raised as an Imperial, more or less, even though she'd stepped into the role of hearthmistress as easily as breathing at Helgen. Now knowing the burden on her shoulders as the daughter of Blades and a descendant of the Hero of Kvatch, he understood why she'd missed – or wilfully ignored – the subtle signals he'd been giving her for the past five years.

The Quaestor cracked a smile at her. "So, any more inconvenient relatives I need to know about?"

"My uncle Irkand is a member of the Companions," Lia answered as she adjusted her shawl. "Before that, they called him the Executioner of the Blades."

"The Irkand Aurelius?" Hadvar rubbed his hands excitedly like a little boy meeting his hero. "He told me once-"

The sky above them erupted in flame as a cry shattered the silence of the night. Hadvar drove Lia to the ground as a dragon passed overheard, belching fire at the western watchtower until Whiterun guards screamed.

"Get off me!" Lia snapped with an authority he never heard from the Legion cook. "We need to help the guards!"

Hadvar rose to his knees, trying not to give Lia a doubtful look. "We don't have the firepower to take that thing on."

Lia's face was grim and in it, Hadvar saw the harshness of her Akaviri ancestors, the ones who hunted dragons to almost extinction. "I have some talent for Destruction and Conjuration. If there was ever a time to use them, it's now."

And her left hand gestured, calling forth a graceful flame atronach as she stood up, while lightning crackled between the fingers of her right.

"Use your bow to aim for the wing-joints," Lia advised as she threw a Lightning Bolt the dragon's way, blue-white energy coruscating over a white-scaled hide. "When it's down, approach from the back but watch for the tail."

"Of course," Hadvar agreed as he unlimbered his bow. The dragon turned in their direction as one of the guards bolted for the city to get reinforcements.

"Zu'u fen krii hi nuz Zu'u qiilaanzin hin krilaan," the dragon said almost conversationally as it landed on the top of the tower. "I will kill you but I salute your bravery."

Lia retorted by directing her atronach to throw fire-bolts at the beast, who laughed mockingly and breathed fire in their direction. A Ward snapped up but the edges of the flame licked around it, stealing the air from Hadvar's lungs.

"Fall to me, dragon!" he yelled in defiance of the futile battle ahead of them.

"Niid," retorted the creature with an audible smirk in its voice.

In the flickering light of the burning ruins, Hadvar saw an eye. He nocked an arrow and aimed as Captain Aldis taught him, releasing the steel-headed projectile to land in the dragon's left orb.

"Good shot!" Lia hissed as the monster roared in pain and took to the skies.

Hadvar took the brief respite to wipe the sweat from his hands on his tunic as Lia downed a couple potions with a grimace. Her atronach vanished in a burst of purple-black light and she swore softly, calling forth another one.

"I know, the irony of a descendant of the Hero of Kvatch calling on Daedra isn't lost upon me," she quipped grimly. "But my ancestress wound up becoming the Daedric Prince of Madness. Would you believe that?"

"Explains your talent for Conjuration," Hadvar noted as the dragon sailed back around again for round two. "You… aren't a Daedric cultist, are you?"

"Gods, no," Lia answered disgustedly. "I've only called on my great-great-grandmother once and that was to save me from the Thalmor in Bruma."

She raised another Ward, showing a talent for Restoration, as the dragon strafed them with fire once more. But by the welcome battle cries Hadvar heard, the city guard of Whiterun was on its way.

"Thank the gods," she muttered. "I won't need to raise the corpses of the dead guards to help us."

"Thank the gods indeed," Hadvar echoed. This was a side he never expected the plump, lovely-eyed cook from Helgen to possess.

"I don't practice soul-trapping on sentient creatures and I only raise the dead in extremis," Lia told him quickly.

"Good to know," Hadvar said fervently. It was one thing to have a wife who conjured atronachs but another to be married to a necromancer.

"Come down here and fight, you overgrown lizard!" Irileth, Balgruuf's huscarl, bellowed with more courage than brains.

"Dreh hi lorot zey mey, Nerevarine?" the dragon retorted as it dove to breathe fire once more. "Do you think me a fool, Nerevarine?"

"No, but I think you'd make a wonderful pair of boots!" Irileth countered as she cast lightning magic.

"Use lightning spells on it," Lia ordered as she cast Lightning. "The Thu'um is magic, just a more primal kind, and it relies on the same energy as our spells!"

"Good to know!" Irileth shot back as she continued to pour lightning over the dragon.

Hadvar joined the guards in raining arrows on the beast until it crashed to the earth. After that it was a matter of butchery, two guards dying at the fangs of the dragon, and he started in surprise to see that the Companions had joined the fray without him knowing.

As the battered, crippled dragon stared hopelessly, the Hero-Twin Farkas decapitated it with one mighty strike.

"Dovahkiin? Niid!" With its last breath, the dragon cried despair – as had so many of its victims.

And gold-white light spiralled up and inwards, a gyre that tightened around Lia and gave her an aura of power as she screamed with pain towards the uncaring stars.

The Dragonborn had come and it was the last person Hadvar ever expected.