He expects her to come back. He isn't sure why he is so surprised when she doesn't; Elismyra had never been one for predictability.
The days following her departure from Markarth are tense, to put it mildly. Ondolemar sits and stews in the Keep with only the company of Twylleria and Gerenon and Igmund's infernal hounds. He does not watch the doors of Understone, does not mourn the loss of her touch or her kiss, as he is sure she will get halfway to wherever she's going and change her mind. There was a reason their kind chose a single partner for the entirety of their long lifespan.
Except she doesn't.
A week passes, and he tells himself it is nothing. That she is blowing off steam in some obscure corner of this frozen glacier of a wasteland and once her temper has cooled, she will return. The dragon in her soul could not be tamed, and he would be a fool to try; so he waits, and performs his duties to the Dominion as he always has. There are letters to write, heretics to hunt, politics to monitor. He is busy.
But it is not the same. Nothing is as it should be; his correspondence feels stilted and awkward, utterly devoid of his usual eloquence. Twylleria and Gerenon's bickering is more obnoxious than usual, their paltry attempts at elevating themselves through his good favor transparent, and he does not understand why. Flattery was an art, and he himself a master, and the attention of beautiful women was never something he tended to spurn.
Two weeks pass, and there is no word. He does not let himself think on it.
Try as he might, he cannot forget. Her words haunt him at the most inopportune times; he prowls the streets of Markarth in the dead of night, searching for evidence of heresy to placate Elenwen's increasingly volatile temper, and all he hears is, They all had lives.
He tells himself to ignore it. That she could not possibly understand why he believes what he does. That she is wrong, that the Dominion is the last great hope for Tamriel and for peace, and to accuse him of such… such monstrosity was uncalled for and ridiculous. He did what he had to do for the people. Their people, and their legacy. If the lesser minds of men and mer could not comprehend that, then it was not his problem.
A month. He begins to think she had meant it.
It is not a welcome realization by any means. Ondolemar lies awake in his quarters and seethes, furious with himself and her damnable stubbornness. She ought to go ahead and renounce her claim to any Altermi heritage and declare herself a full-blooded Nord, if she were so intent on refusing to see reason. He could have found her early, before she travelled too far from the city, if not for his pride and his confidence that she would come back. He wishes he had. He wishes he had followed her from Vlindril Hall that night and refused to let her leave, knowing now she truly meant every accusatory syllable she had spit at him.
He snorts as he throws his legs off the edge of his bed and drops his head into his hands. She would never let herself be contained, he knew that. She is a wild creature, bound by no one and no power but her own, and she reveled in it. He is not so arrogant as to think he could change her very soul, or leash the beast that courses through her blood. It was alluring, in a way, to know a woman so entirely free. It suited her well.
He never should have cornered her that day in the Keep. He should have kept his hands off, should have let her be, should have clamped his tongue between his teeth. He should have, he should have, he should have -
Standing, Ondolemar goes to his wardrobe and shrugs into a silk tunic, belting a malachite dagger to his hips. His room is too small, too confined; he needs the open air, heavy as it is with the smell of burnt silver, and he pads from his chambers with bare feet.
Markarth is silent, the night so still he is almost afraid to disturb it as he slips out of Understone Keep. He pauses, not entirely sure where he plans to go, and without any conscious effort on his part, his feet lead him to the Temple of Dibella.
He does not go inside. It is not the guidance of the Goddess of Beauty he desires, but it is comforting, he supposes, to be near a place of legitimate worship. So instead, he merely stares at the great golden doors of the Divine's temple, and moves to the balcony a short ways away. He can see the entire city below, and he watches the guards as they make their rounds.
I am not one of your people, Ondolemar. Not if that is how you see them.
He snarls to himself when her voice, unbidden once more, lances through the quiet of his mind to assault his conscience. Fool, he tells her ghost. Stubborn, blighted fool. You do not understand.
She owed her very existence to the Thalmor, to his organization. Without them, their ancestral home would be nothing but rubble, Alinor a faint memory in the minds of men and a place of eternal grief for the High Elves. He had fought the daedra himself, forced them back to their hellish plane and laughed in their faces as they died in his hands. He had seen it. She had not; she was not even born in the Isles. She could not know.
Would you have purged my line, if I had been in the Isles, he hears, Knowing what you do?
"Stop," he snarls aloud, because he knows the answer and he hates it. He would. He would have cut her down without a second thought if she had been there, because it was his duty. To preserve the lines, maintain the gossamer-thin claim to the Aldmer, to the Ehlnofey. To ignore such distinguished and proud heritage was a crime; he could not fathom it. The Oblivion Crisis had killed so many of his people, eroded the already-tenuous connection they had to their ancestors. It could not be lost.
He tells himself this to try and squelch the black stain of guilt he carries. It is a vain effort, because he hears her voice, remembers the fury of her words, and knows what he would have done. For the good of many, he would have killed her, never knowing who she might have been, what she would accomplish. And he would not have cared.
On this count, at least, she is right. The thought rankles; he loathes when he is wrong.
She tries to shame him again, her voice rising in the back of his mind but he silences it sharply. The purges carried out in the Isles had been… trying. He had lost friends. Whole dynasties had been wiped away, names forgotten and ignored for something that now seemed so fragile. It occurs to him, standing atop the city he hated with every fibre of his being, that by all accounts his courtship with her had been a sin. His own standards demanded he seek out a pure line, sire children that could claim the Aldermi legends as their own. Elismyra could not, and if it did not infuriate him to his very core, the unfairness of it all, he would have laughed at the irony.
Ondolemar shoves away from the stone railing and curses, frustrated and confused. So much for clearing his head; he is more worked up now than when he had left the Keep. He decides to return, before he loses any more ground to himself.
His nightly walks to the peak of the city quickly become habit as the weeks drag on and she refuses to return. Ondolemar is too exhausted to be angry; he sleeps little, and with the tide of the war surging in favor the Empire, his responsibilities increase ten-fold. Missives from the Embassy begin to pile up on his desk, and soon enough he is so swamped with work he almost forgets to miss her.
Three and a half months after she left, Elenwen herself visits Markarth. Ondolemar is waiting for her at the city gates, and for the first time he notices how very waspish the woman is. He'd always thought her sharp-tongued, but now, he finds no purpose in her attitude.
"Ambassador," he greets her formally, sketching a brief bow, and Elenwen acknowledges him with a tight nod. "I assume your journey was enjoyable?" He knows for a fact it wasn't, and the corners of his mouth twitch when she scowls at him.
"I am in no mood for your games, Ondolemar," she snaps at him, and he acquiesces with his own tip of the head. "What news from the Reach?"
"The Forsworn have been driven beyond the Karth River," he tells her blandly as they march through the city gates. The guards do their best to ignore them. "Many of the larger cells have disappeared into the mountains to the north; we think they are retreating to Haafingar."
"Excellent," Elenwen says. "Imperial soldiers have been stationed at Dragon's Bridge. I will speak to the Jarl about fortifying Karthwasten with our own troops."
He is fairly certain Igmund would rather die than have one more Dominion soul within his borders, but Ondolemar bites his tongue. If she wants to spend hours arguing in circles with the old man, then that is her prerogative. He needs to see the local alchemist anyhow for a sleeping draught.
"And the Dragonborn?" the Ambassador asks as they pass the waterfall and climb the stairs to Understone Keep. "Any news of her whereabouts?"
He has expected the question and is prepared for it. He does not falter as he intones, "No. My spies have told me nothing, and her house here remains empty."
"Hmph." Elenwen furrows her sharp brows, and they pause below the grand staircase. Her voice is barely above a whisper, and he strains to hear her. "We must locate her as quickly as possible; she is becoming a menace."
He feels an eyebrow climb up his forehead. It is good he practiced his speeches before she arrived. "How so?"
"Whole patrols gone missing, intelligence stolen. She burned the Embassy to the ground."
He is not prepared for that. "What?"
"You remember last Wintersbreath, when we were infiltrated and Rulindil was murdered?"
As Rulindil flogged me for no other reason than he could?
He only barely avoids gritting his teeth, and it irks him to no end. "Yes."
"It was her, then and now. I am sure of it. No one else would have been able to bypass our security so easily." The Ambassador snorts. "She likely stole a uniform and walked right in."
That sounds like something she would do. "How many did we lose?"
"Nine," Elenwen grits, and he call feel the pure, utter hatred rolling from her in waves. "Three soldiers, five wizards, and an interrogator."
The numbers give him pause. "No staff?" There were far more in the Embassy serving as help then there were actual Thalmor agents.
"No staff."
He almost smirks. He should have known.
Ondolemar knows he should be incensed, completely enraged by her attack on his associates, but as he leaves Elenwen to her business with the Jarl, he finds he cannot be, if it means she is still alive somewhere. Such a simple fact is more infuriating than the death of his headquarters, and the thought only serves to anger him further.
He does not want this, has absolutely no desire to waver from the people who had been his life for more than one hundred years. All for the blustering, hot-headed insults and accusations of one single, rebellious Altmer woman who was less elf than beast. She is everything he should hate, everything he should want to see extinguished, and yet he can't because he had been stupid and foolish enough to love her.
That night, he finds himself at the entrance of Cidnah Mine. He is no longer barefoot, his dagger replaced by an enchanted malachite sword, crackling with sparks. He does not wear his robes. He wishes to be recognized by none save one.
Ogmund's cell is the last, squeezed between the jagged surface of the mine's wall and that of a gaunt Imperial. The woman inside does not raise her head to look at him, and he sees the tell-tale welts of a whip along the back of her neck. His heart stutters in his chest and he cannot breathe, unable to look for more than a moment; one instant it is a grimey, slim human woman, and the next she is golden-skinned, with crimson hair hanging limply in front of her face.
When Ondolemar halts in front of Ogmund's prison, unsure what he means to say or why, exactly, he is there, the Nord inside starts with blatant shock before it melts into molten fury. "What?" he spits from his filthy bedroll, the rags covering him ripped and worn. "Come to gloat?"
"No," the High Elf tells him, and his voice does not sound like his own. "I seek… information."
The Nord snorts, but his eyes are suddenly wild with poorly concealed fear, his large hands clenching on his knees, and all Ondolemar can see is a man who has nothing else to give. He is broken, shamed, forbidden from the warmth of the sun and condemned to inhale dust and debris until he chokes on it, and it galls him that he is perturbed by it. The man is a criminal, and he should not care.
Damn you, Elismyra, he thinks to himself, but there is no venom behind it.
"What do you want to know?" the Nord snaps, flexing his fingers over his bony knees. "I promise nothing."
For several long, tense seconds, Ondolemar does not know what to say. And then before the thought even fully forms in his mind, he hisses, "Tell me I was wrong."
Ogmund could not have looked more surprised if the elf had whipped out a lute and belted out every verse of Ragnar the Red. "What?" he gasps, going limp in his bewilderment. "You're not serious."
Ondolemar ignores him, sliding forward and clenching the iron bars of the cell in white-knuckled fists. "Tell me I was wrong. Tell me I should not have arrested you, that I should have left you be." He leans forward, aghast at what he is saying but his thoughts are a jumbled heap of words and hurt and longing, and he cannot slow them down. "Tell me you had a family somewhere that you loved, and I took it from you."
The silence that follows is so loud he can barely stand it. He still has not the foggiest idea of what he wants, why he needs this man to tell him to go fuck himself, but the desire is so strong he cannot contain it.
Ogmund stares at him, his wizened face and thick muscles slack in the wake of his awe. "Of course I think you were wrong, boy," the old man says. "You think I want to rot down in this pit?" And he puffs out his chest, looking him straight in the eye. "Talos is Divine, and just because you -"
"This isn't about Talos, you stupid old goat," Ondolemar snaps. "And don't call me boy; I'll see years to last you ten lifetimes." He steps away from the bars, suddenly unable to look at his face, and part of him chafes at the weakness; this is not what he wants, not what he has given his blood for, just so he could turn around and piss it all away. But the words come anyway, and he is sure he can feel her smiling somewhere. "Tell me you are a person, Ogmund."
"What do you think I am, a skeever?" the Nord grunts, getting to his feet and approaching the bars of his cell. His is far shorter than the Altmer, covered in a thick layer of grime and his hands are crusted with blood, old and new, but still, he raises his hands to place them where Ondolemar's had been only seconds prior. "Why are you here?"
"I don't know," the elf seethes. "I need - I want -"
"What? For me to forgive you? Not going to happen."
Ondolemar scoffs. "Of course not. I wouldn't."
And then he understands. He feels his eyes snap wide, hears himself gasp.
Groaning, Ondolemar turns his back to the man he had imprisoned, the one who had been the first cause for Elismyra to turn to him in disgust, braces his back against the iron cell, and slides to the floor. "Damn you," he repeats, this time aloud, and slams the wooden slats beneath him with his fist. "Damn you, Myra."
Ogmund's rumbling chuckle grates across all of his nerves. "Should have known there was a woman involved in this," he says. "Makes us do all sorts of crazy things."
"Don't comfort me," Ondolemar spits. "This is your fault."
"Hey, you came to see me, remember? Besides, if it's my doing that you've finally got your head out of your ass, well. I ain't gonna complain."
"Shut up," he retorts, hating the weakness in his voice. All those years in the Isles, all the demons he fought, everything he had achieved with the Dominion. Lost. "You broke the law. I was only doing my duty." Even to his own ears, it sounds hollow.
"Then why did you come? If you believed that, you wouldn't be here."
Silence reigns for a long moment. "I will not apologize," Ondolemar whispers, and pushes himself to his feet. "And I have one final question."
"Easiest Thalmor interrogation I've ever heard of. Ask."
"Would you have done the same to me, if our positions were reversed?" He turns to stare at Ogmund, directly into his face, grasping for one last shred of his old life. "Would you have turned me in?"
He knows Ogmund does not treat the question lightly, can see the gravity in the old man's eyes as he mulls over the implications of the inquiry. Ondolemar waits in impatient silence, entirely unsure of what answer he wants. Stone drizzles down onto the wooden planks beneath his feet, and he can hear the faint gusting of the midnight wind. It will storm tomorrow, he thinks.
"No man is greater than another," Ogmund finally murmurs, "Because of the circumstances of his birth."
The Altmer's pent up breath bursts from his chest in a shaky exhale, and with trembling hands, he takes the rough brass key from the pocket of his leggings. "Then," he says quietly, and his words are halted and awkward in their foreignness, "You do not belong here, either."
And with that, he opens the ancient lock, and Ogmund is freed.
"Leave the city," Ondolemar tells him, and his lips twist up in an ironic echo of a smirk. "I will not be far behind you."
"B - Ondolemar," Ogmund breathes, his deep voice hoarse in his utter shock. "I -" And then he catches himself, and straightens his shoulders. His eyes are clear, and there is no hatred in his voice. It sounds so very strange. "Thank you."