So our gods promise; CH 2: The Stove

Notes: (Chapter 1 on AO3 here) This only took a year and a couple days to update. Those are rookie numbers!

There’s blood under Juniper’s fingernails. 

“If it weren’t for you—” Ralof starts, voice low and harsh. 

“What? Would they have listened? Those dogs only see an Imperial uniform and they start foaming at the mouth,” Hadvar responds in kind. 

The both of them walk in front of Juniper like hissing and spitting barriers. Guarding her from whatever horrors will jump out at them next. Juniper supposes she should be glad they’ve stopped threatening to kill each other. 

“We ran and they gave up chase. We should just be glad for that,” Juniper cuts in before Ralof says something equally sharp. 

An hour they’ve walked through the underbelly of Helgen that Juniper remembers from the game. The broad strokes of her memory are correct, they rush through a supply room, they end up in a torture chamber (she isn’t going to think about that until she’s alone to cry), and there’s a room full of pacing stormcloaks ready to try and kill Juniper and Hadvar. 

But in between are much longer corridors, many more dusty storage rooms, and the occasional pairs of desperate soldiers from each side of the civil war. No stormcloaks or imperials seem to have teamed up to get out of the village like Juniper’s group has. All of them seem keen to try and attack them. 

In fact, there are so many stormcloaks that Juniper has a sneaking suspicion that they were here to free their high king. She doesn’t remember so many being on the carts. 

The smell of mildew fills Juniper’s nose as they walk through the wet cave, a torch in Hadvar’s hand leading their way.

They just have to fight the frost spiders and the bear. Then they’re free. 

Free to do what, though? Juniper has nothing in this world besides the clothes on her back and the things she’s picked up since waking up. Her fingers ache against the wood of her pilfered bow, sweating. She hasn’t had to use the sword yet. It bounces against her thigh with every step, shining in the torchlight. 

The roof of the cave shakes and dirt and water droplets fall around them. A roar calls distantly, echoing through the cavern. There’s no thu’um to it. Only animal rage.

“It’s roaring less often,” Ralof says, casting his eyes up to the ceiling with a frown. 

“He’s getting bored. There’s probably not anyone left to burn,” Juniper mutters darkly. They turn around a bend in the small cave that looks familiar. An unlit candle sits on the ledge, along with a lichen covered skeleton. 

“Did you dream that it would crush that bridge back there? Cave in the ceiling?” Ralof asks, looking back at Juniper. His tone takes a more measured quality, less aggressive than when he speaks to Hadvar. He’s got a new scratch on his face from a gauntlett-ed punch he just barely scraped past earlier.

Both he and Hadvar are bruised and worse for wear, compared to Juniper. Her worst ailments are sore shoulders and exhaustion from all the adrenaline spikes. 

Thank fucking god she was able to convince them to both go into the keep with her. Lying so much is a small price to pay for all three of their lives. 

“I had a feeling. I don’t know, this has all been disconcerting,” Juniper replies. 

“That’s one way to put it,” Hadvar huffs a small, strained laugh. 

The mildew smell around them intensifies, mixing with a slow creeping scent of rot. Juniper’s skin crawls the longer they walk. 

Spiders. Why did it have to be spiders? Juniper hates spiders! This is just the cherry on the top of a shit cake day. 

“Can you smell that?” Juniper asks, adjusting her hold on her bow and itching to grab one of her arrows.

“Something is denning nearby,” Hadvar replies, drawing his sword. 

Juniper looks up, and decides that she’ll be keeping her eyes on the ceiling until she can see the sun again. She’s nauseous with the idea of one of the arachnids falling on top of her.

“Draugr?” Ralof asks. His axe is in hand seconds after Hadvar pulls his own weapon. 

“There’s no crypts down here. The Empire would have cleared them out.” Hadvar shakes his head, red hair jumping with the motion.

A few tense minutes pass, only the sound of the crackling torch in Hadvar’s hand and their echoing steps to accompany them. Juniper grabs an arrow from her quiver and nocks it, careful not to draw yet. 

They come to a steep part of the cave that leads into a webbed entrance to a larger cavern. Sunlight streams in from holes in the cavern ceiling making the silvery webs all through the room shine. 

“Spiders!” Ralof hisses.

Arachnophobia is a terrible thing to have in a situation like this. 

Ralof and Hadvar both rush forward, brandishing their weapons at the chittering spiders in the cavern. They’re fucking huge, the size of dogs and with too many eyes. 

Animal fear crawls up Juniper’s body in a flash flood, quickly drawing her bow and looking for a target. 

It’s been years since she’s used a bow regularly and her muscles strain at the draw weight of the longbow. Below Ralof has slammed his axe into the carapace of one of the spiders with a sickening crunch. There’s five spiders that Juniper can see, onto two a good distance away from the two men fighting them. 

Juniper aims at one of the far spiders, tracking its skittering movement towards Ralof, then releases. 

The spider makes a shrieking noise when the arrow smacks into its eyes, hairy limbs twitching and locking, curling inward. 

“Never seen a mage use a bow!” Ralof comments from where he’s ripping his axe out of a spider.

One of the spiders lurches towards Ralof, jumping into the air like a fucked up jumping spider mote huge. Before it can dig its mandibles into the nord, though, Hadvar bashes it with his imperial shield. 

“Plenty of mages are good at shooting!” Juniper finds herself saying through numb lips, fumbling as she quickly pulls another iron arrow from her quiver and nocks it. Everything is too loud, too slow.

“They shoot fire more than arrows—“ Ralof says in a grunt as he axes another spider. “—and they wear robes. You haven’t got any robes!”

Why is he making commentary? Is this normal in this world? Wry battle banter in the middle of fighting spiders?

From the hole in the ceiling, a behemoth spider jumps down, so heavy that Juniper can feel the ground reverberating when it lands. 

It's the size of a small car. Juniper is going to throw up. Is that the only one?? There had been three in the game! 

“Shor’s bones!” Hadvar hisses, ducking under a glob of venom being shot from the huge spider’s terrible maws. “I’d have preferred snakes!”

Ralof makes an affirmative noise in the back of his throat.

Juniper feels like she’s going to pass out. 

Y’know, the last time she had to kill a spider at her house it was barely the size of a pinky nail, and she still spent twenty minutes trying to corner it through her fear. 

Ten feet away, the huge spider tries to take a bite out of Hadvar’s face and get’s a shield bash for its trouble. It barely staggers. 

Juniper draws her arrow back with shaking hands and a cold sweat on her brow, somehow more terrified now than when a dragon was shooting fire near her earlier. 

“The legs!” Ralof shouts at Hadvar, before hacking off one of the creature’s aforementioned legs. It makes a shrieking noise of pain, stumbling and trying to regain its balance. 

Two of the little spiders are still alive, scurrying by their large friend. Juniper should take them out before they distract Ralof and Hadvar. 

Juniper takes a steadying breath, flexes her hands to will them to stop shaking, and aims. 

Thunk. One small spider goes down. Hadvar curses as he avoids venom spraying from the huge spider’s mouth. 

Another arrow. Her muscles strain, shoulder burning as she draws back. She latches onto the feeling, using the pain to ground herself. She feels sweat drip cold down the side of her neck and looses. It misses, hitting the ground and grazing the last small spider’s leg. 

“Fuck,” Juniper mutters, already drawing another. 

Ralof takes a spray of poison across the arm in return for cutting off one of the big spider’s legs. He barely grunts, then shouts. “The eyes, Haddy!”

Hadvar slams his shield into the spider’s face twice as it slumps over lopsided with a strange screech. He looks furious. “Shut your mouth!”

Juniper aims, then releases. Her arrow hits the small spider before it can launch itself at Hadvar’s legs, killing it. 

Hadvar sinks his sword into the large spider’s eyes with a mighty stab. It makes a disconcerting crunch noise as the spider twitches and seizes away from him. 

“Don’t call me Haddy,” Hadvar says as he pants, jerking a hand and pulling his sword from the car-sized spider. 

“But you’re so brave, Haddy. My hero,” Ralof says, sounding pained as he looks down at his blistering forearm. 

“I hate spiders,” Juniper says weakly, ignoring whatever the fuck those two have going on. She stumbles forwards into the chamber, inching widely around each of the spider corpses and glancing anxiously up at the ceiling. “We should never do this again.”

Hadvar laughs breathily, a little incredulous. “No, we shouldn’t.”

Ralof grunts in agreement. He pulls a healing potion from his belt and opens it one handed, tugging the stopper out with his teeth and spitting it somewhere to the left. 

Juniper thinks about all of the caves she’s sent her dragonborn plowing through over the past ten years. God. She’s absolutely going to have to do this again. Her face feels numb. 

“I bet there’s a bear in the next room,” Juniper says dully. 

There wasn’t a bear in the next chamber of the cave system. It was in the one after that. Bummer.

Juniper shuffles out of the cave entrance bracketed front and back by a stormcloak and an imperial soldier. There is a cooling bear corpse behind them, and the imperial soldier is limping. The circumstances are related.

Everything is bright, and the air smells like smoke. Like a forest fire is happening nearby. 

Juniper blinks, adjusting her eyes to the almost blinding beauty of Skyrim’s wilds. 

They’re surrounded by pines and birches and other stouter trees Juniper can’t recognize. The underbrush is covered with foliage, grasses and wildflowers swaying in the cold breeze. She expects to hear the sound of birds, but they’re nowhere to be found. The wind blows eerily in the forest’s subdued silence. 

Mountain ranges lie in the distance, both the throat of the world and the small range that separates Falkreath and Whiterun holds. She can see snow topping the mountain peaks. She’s never seen snow before. The sky is a too bright blue, broken only by the occasional, artful cloud.

“Juniper? Are you alright?” Hadvar asks behind her, a hesitant hand laying on her shoulder. 

She flinches, realizing she’d stopped to stare at the offensively beautiful landscape. It could only be better if she didn’t see the billowing smoke in the sky coming from Helgen’s corpse.

“Is it always this beautiful in Skyrim?” Juniper wonders, scanning the foliage for ingredients she remembers. There should be several patches of mountain flowers and lavender down the way to Riverwood. A small path is before them, thin, barely wide enough to count as one. Likely a rarely used hunter’s trail.

There’s a short pause, Ralof looking back at her with raised eyebrows. 

“That depends on your perspective,” Hadvar says, moving his hand from her shoulder to step around her. 

“We should go to Riverwood,” Ralof says finally, sliding his axe into the strap at his side and looking over at the recognizable mountain in the western distance, the one with Bleak Falls Barrow nestled on its side. 

“You want us both to go to Riverwood? Together? Are you mad?” Hadvar asks, sheathing his own blade. 

“What choice do we have? Neither of us are in a state to travel further than that.”

Ralof and Hadvar stare each other down, tension rising but not enough to snap. Juniper gets the feeling that they don’t want it to, otherwise they’d have started fighting each other earlier than this. 

Hadvar works his jaw, eyes flicking to look at the blue sash on Ralof, the pin of his fur cloak that has a roaring bear on it. 

“Take off that blue,” Hadvar says finally, fiddling with his imperial cape, fingers at the pin. 

“What?” Ralof says, aghast. He presses a protective hand to his padded armor. 

“We’re at the border of Whiterun. Balgruuf is a legion man, otherwise he’d have declared for the traitors already,” Hadvar continues, pulling his imperial pin free from his cloak and tossing it at Ralof. 

Ralof catches it, eyes widening. A calloused thumb rubbing over the face of the septim dragon engraved on the pin.

“I knew you still liked me, Haddy,” Ralof says, smiling thinly. 

Juniper feels like she’s watching something that she shouldn’t be. 

“How far is Riverwood?” she asks, before the two men before her have some kind of emotional catharsis and make out. Maybe she’s reading into things, but there is nothing heterosexual about whatever is going on here. Some real brokeback mountain energy.

Hadvar folds up his cloak, no use in keeping it now that he can’t pin it to himself. “A few hours walk, but it’s closer than Falkreath and safer besides.”

A few hours? Damn. Everything must be bigger here than it was in game. She supposes it was silly of her to assume otherwise. 

Ralof shucks off the blue fabric wrapped over the front of his quilted armor, folding it just as carefully as Hadvar does his imperial cloak. 

“We’ll travel quickly, avoid any soldiers on the road.” Hadvar tucks his cloak under a bush, making a beckoning hand at Ralof’s blue fabric and shoving it next to his cloak once it’s handed to him. “Have you got a bounty on you, Juniper?”

“I’m not a criminal,” Juniper says. It doesn’t sound very convincing even to her ears, no matter the truth of it. 

“You lied to a general’s face,” Ralof’s tone is wry when he says so.

“More people should lie to generals, it keeps them humble.”

With Ralof as disguised as he can be, they start their trek to Riverwood. 

Juniper keeps expecting Alduin to appear as they walk, but he doesn’t, and that feels more unsettling than if she did see those black wings of death. 

—

Ralof feels naked without his stormcloak sash. He feels a traitor to have left his bear pin with it, roaring its displeasure and staring up at him in judgment. 

Hadvar’s imperial pin keeps his furred cloak tight around his neck, covering his armor. That probably marks him as an even greater traitor.

“So. The College of Winterhold,” Ralof says after a grueling thirty minutes of silence, trailing behind Hadvar and the woman. He’s been checking the sky and the road periodically, waiting. Any moment that band of Thalmor scum will come rolling down the road from Helgen. Any moment that beast of legend will come past the treeline and turn them all to smoking husks. 

“I hear it’s lovely in the summer,” the woman, Juniper, says blandly. She’s been looking at every plant they pass with sharp eyes, fingers twitching at her sides. An alchemist? Maybe. A mage? Not likely. 

Ralof stares at her sooty tunic and long brown hair. It’s shiny looking, like a merchant’s daughter’s hair should be. A softness to her cheeks that begets innocence and plentiful plates. He remembers thinking she was out of place on that carriage, too pretty, too clean.

But her eyes…no. There was something more to her story. He won’t pry, not while the battle-blood is still running through his arms and the air still smells like smoke. He can see burning men when he blinks. Hear the crackle of their skin.

“You’ll freeze in seconds just heading through Faroh’s Pass, between there and Windhelm. You’re too small,” Ralof observes.

Hadvar turns to look back at him. Disdain twists his friendly mouth into a scowl. Ralof thinks of when they were boys, ages ago. He remembers sifting through the river with Hadvar at his side, feet bare on the small smooth stones and trying to catch fish with their hands. 

Hadvar’s steel clasp burns like a brand at Ralof’s collar bone. He wants to rip it off and throw it at him. 

“You’ll need an escort,” Ralof says before Hadvar can say a thing. Juniper looks back at him with furrowed brows, frowning. Ralof continues. “I’ll need to go back to Windhelm soon.”

He doesn’t know why he offers it. Maybe it’s because Hadvar makes a sour face at it.

A bird sings in the pines, another answering its call in the distance. Ilinata swifts, from the sounds of their songs. Ralof smells the lush greenery of spring. And smoke. He’ll be smelling smoke for days. 

Juniper watches him for a long moment, even as her feet follow the path undeterred. Then she looks back to her front. When she stares at him, when she looks at anything, he gets an odd feeling in his chest. A knowing is etched into the skin around her eyes.

Or maybe it’s just fear, or sorrow, or horror at what they’ve all just witnessed. 

He can still feel her hand on his shoulder. He can still feel her pulling him back before the dragon slammed its head through the wall. He can still see her hands on the dirty horsethief’s back. 

“Worldeater,” she had whispered into Ralof’s back at the sight of the dragon.

Ralof does not ask.

“Let’s survive till the night, first,” Juniper says in the present. She reaches down and cuts a handful of lavender from where they stick into the road and tucks the stems into her belt.

Ralof’s eyes go back to the sky. “Aye. The night first.”

The road gets more familiar the lower the sun falls, eventually cresting behind the Bleak mountains as they get close to the White River. 

“I can hear the water,” Hadvar says quietly. He’s losing his bite. Ralof blames exhaustion.

“Are we close?” Juniper asks.

“We’ll see the guardian stones first, then only a half hour to Riverwood,” Ralof says, peering up at the mountains ahead of them and trying to spot Bleak Falls Barrow. 

“Is it true that those things give blessings? I heard about them in Cyrodiil. Glowing lights, strange abilities.” Juniper wiggles her fingers around for emphasis. 

“The warrior stone glows,” Hadvar says, pointedly not looking back. “Whether it truly gives you blessings, I’m not sure.”

Hadvar and Ralof had run off to play in the standing stones when they were boys, curious of things unknown and eager to hide from their minders. The warrior stone did glow. They’d both touched it together. 

How can a man say if such a thing worked when he’d touched it near twenty years ago? Ralof had certainly lived his life trying to be a skilled soldier, and he was better than most men with an axe or blade in hand. That’s why he’d been put on the High King’s personal guard. 

Ralof clenches his jaw, shamed all over again for his choices. For the pin, for Hadvar, and for choosing a path less honorable to save his own skin. But pride kills men as quick as a blade. He had suggested they go home. He cannot blame Hadvar for being shrewd.

Talos guide Jarl Ulfric. He must have gotten out, just as they have. He’ll see him again in Windhelm.

When they finally come upon the stones Ralof lets out a relieved breath. They look the same as the last he saw them, what must have been a year or two ago. The same as when he first saw them too. Maybe a little more moss hanging from the mage stone, a new bowl of wildflowers left in front of the warrior. The same ancient engravings, the same odd sense of peace when you stand near them. 

“The guardian stones. There’s thirteen in Skyrim. Only these three are together. At least, that’s what my uncle told me,” Hadvar explains for Juniper’s benefit. They come to a stop in front of them. Hadvar subtle-y stretching his injured leg and wincing. The last healing potion they’d had closed the wound, but it’d likely be paining him for days yet if he didn’t see a healer or find some more. 

The bank of the white river rushes some twenty feet away from them. It’s more of a wide stream, here. Water from the Bleaks and the Throat would feed into it past Riverwood and make it a proper river. 

“The warrior, the thief, and the mage,” Ralof lists, pointing to each with his good arm, eyeing the woman. “I have a guess which you’ll pick.”

“Who’s to say I’m picking one? Maybe I’m not interested in glowing rocks,” Juniper says. She’s eyeing them all the same. Her voice is good at speaking truth, but her eyes like to give away her lies. 

“It’s a local tradition. If you don’t, you’re insulting all the nords you come across,” Ralof offers with a smile.

“And you call me a bard. Don’t listen to him, he likes to lie. We need to hurry anyway. The village isn’t very far,” Hadvar interjects, giving Ralof a bemused look. 

Juniper steps up onto the platform the stones are laid upon before Ralof can defend himself. Lifts a hand and lays it squarely upon the thief stone with little preamble. 

Light bursts from the stone’s top, rising into the sky and past the clouds. The engravings are softer, not so shining that he has to look away. 

For a moment, Ralof wonders if that will attract the attention of a dragon. He glances over at Hadvar and can see the same thought playing over his face. 

“Maybe we don’t tell nords what stone you chose,” Ralof says.

Juniper stares at the stone for a long moment, mesmerized by the engravings. Her hand slides off of it as the lights fade. 

“I can always change it later,” Juniper says cryptically. And that’s that.

It’s almost sundown when Riverwood comes into view, small trails of smoke puffing from the chimneys of the homes and the people ambling as they finish their days. A rotten homesickness builds in Ralof’s chest before he stifles it. Eyes tracing the familiar edges of the mill, Alvor’s smithy, the Riverwood Trader.

And home, hidden behind the new growth of a cropping of pines. Gerdur’s home, now, Ralof supposes. Pa left the house to her, after all. 

At some point, the three of them started walking side by side, once the wilds gave way to a proper cobbled road. Juniper between Ralof and Hadvar, in the interest of no more blood being spilt before the day’s end. 

Tomorrow, of course, could be different. 

“This’ll be good,” Hadvar mutters grimly to himself. As they get closer to the village, and Ralof can see Alvor is still working at his forge. 

Yes. This will be good. Ralof hopes dear Haddy’s uncle doesn’t bash Ralof’s blonde head in with his working hammer. He imagines the retired legionary smith wouldn’t be pleased to see him now. He knows the man didn’t understand the cause when he left to join the stormcloaks. He doubts that’s changed. 

His chest pangs at the thought of it, tight and gone as quick as it comes. He doesn’t want a quarrel with Alvor. He doesn’t hate the man, not after so long of knowing him.

But Ralof won’t go quietly if there’s any talk of dragging him to the nearest imperial outpost.

“Will you both be telling your families what happened separately?” Juniper asks suddenly. Ralof turns to look at her, eyes drawn to the ash on her cheeks as she glances between him and Hadvar. 

“Why?” Hadvar asks. His shoulders have started slumping, the call of safety too close to keep vigilant. 

Ralof admits his own legs grew tired an hour back. If that damn dragon shows its ugly maw again before Ralof get’s time in a bed, he won’t have the strength to run far. 

“It’ll be more expedient as a group, and we’ll be able to keep our story straight. We don’t want either of them getting the wrong idea of what you two’s involvement in escaping was, and that causing problems,” Juniper says shrewdly, looking back towards the village with an odd expression on her face. 

“And what about your involvement?” Ralof questions, curious.

“My involvement is that you both saw a weak young woman and overcame your political differences to help her get to safety from a dragon. Which very neatly keeps either of you from looking like you betrayed your commanders, bar the refusal to kill each other.”

Talos, this woman is certainly not a mage, and most certainly knew crossing the border was illegal, no matter how prettily she cried to General Tullius. Ralof laughs despite himself, a quick aching kind of laugh. More throat than humor. 

“We’ll speak together, then,” Hadvar says seriously, turning to meet Ralof’s eye.

Ralof nods. The entrance of the village approaches, and Ralof steels himself for one last stretch before rest. Gods, how he needs some damn rest. 

—

Riverwood is probably more disconcerting than Helgen, which really says something. Because Helgen was a burning shit show. 

The difference between the two is Juniper has only seen Helgen in a glorified cutscene. Burning, dying Helgen is only worth being in for about thirty minutes, and then it’s a smoldering husk for the rest of the game. 

That isn’t the case for Riverwood. 

A sleepy village surrounded by thick forests and mountains, cut through by a river just wide enough to support a lumber mill and local fishing. There’s a few more houses than Juniper remembers there being, but a lumber mill can't support itself with four workers. Hell, the population of the village in game couldn’t possibly support a general store. 

Juniper has been here, in this village, at least a thousand times. It’s a disconcerting thought.

She doesn’t have time to think too hard about it though. Her body aches, she’s dirty, the air is growing colder and colder with the dying sun, and—

“A dragon? You can’t be serious. All of Helgen? Burnt? Just like that?” Gerdur the logger says in a half incredulous half horrified tone. She looks like Ralof, blonde and blue eyed and with the same smile. Though she isn’t smiling right now.

Juniper is sat down fairly unceremoniously inside of Alvor the blacksmith’s house, sitting at a table surrounded by people she met in a game who have all forgotten she is there. 

Her pilfered longbow leans against the wall beside her. Her hand is cramping from having held it the past few hours, and she carefully stretches her fingers.

Juniper doesn’t really need to speak for this conversation. She’s not the initiator of all things in real life. Hadvar and Ralof can explain the situation themselves. She settles for taking in how much bigger the house is, and how there seems to be doors leading to more rooms. 

That’s nice. Juniper did always think it was awkward that a married couple was sleeping in the same room as their child. That seems like it could get inconvenient. 

Juniper slumps in her chair, blinking tired eyes as Alvor scrubs his blonde beard. 

“We could smell the smoke on the wind. It started this morning,” Alvor says practically. “Do you think there are other survivors? Or a chance that the dragon could come here?”

“We weren’t the only people trying to escape that village. I wouldn’t be surprised if the nearby holds all hear rumors of what happened within days,” Hadvar says, sitting at the table across from Juniper. The three survivors are all seated, leaving Gerdur and Alvor to pace. Sigrid stands by the fire, more observer than participant in the conversation.

Then Hadvar turns to Juniper, his face taking a careful, measured quality. Like how one approaches a wild animal. 

“Do you think the dragon could come here, Juniper?” 

Juniper grimaces, not liking the way all eyes turn to her. 

“When did I become an expert on dragons?” Juniper asks rhetorically. There’s no bite to her words. She’s too tired to be biting. “Dragons seek power. If the dragon thinks power will come from burning down another hamlet, it will.”

Gerdur and Alvor look very discomforted by Juniper’s words. She regrets them almost immediately. 

“Jarl Balgruuf,” Alvor states, turning to Gerdur with a furrowed brow and a firm set to his lips. Gerdur nods.

So Juniper’s life will continue to follow the game. How nice. 

“Aye. The Jarl will need to know. One of you will need to tell him what you have seen. Riverwood is defenseless as is, since Falkreath declared for the Stormcloaks. We need the Jarl’s men back here, patrolling,” Gerdur explains, looking between Ralof, Hadvar and Juniper. 

“I can tell him,” Juniper says dully, because it’s expected. 

Of course, all four of the nords in the room turn and give her surprised looks, so maybe it wasn’t expected. Juniper is sure Akatosh expects it from her, so what does it matter? She’d much rather sleep in for days and wait for this all to be over, but that will just give Alduin more time to raise dragons and send more villages up in flames.

“Are you sure?” Hadvar asks, frowning. “I’ll need to go that way to get a carriage back to Solitude.”

Gerdur stiffens at the mention of Solitude, eye darting to Hadvar’s Imperial armor and to her brother. 

“Then come with me,” Juniper says with a sigh, reaching up and rubbing her eyes. “Someone has to do it. I suppose you can both come, if Ralof can pretend not to be a stormcloak for another few days.” 

“It would be wiser for the boy to head to Windhelm,” Alvor says. He looks impassive. 

“I’ve never been very wise,” Ralof says. “I’ll choose my own folly, Alvor.”

“Yes, you will.” There’s a slight twinge of something there in his voice, and Alvor gives Ralof a look that borders on disappointment. If you squint.

Juniper stands with a grunt, taking her bow into aching hand again. “Does the inn have a bath?”

“It does. Do you need spare clothes?” Sigrid says, finally breaking her silence.

“If you have any. I’ll need to wash these. Or burn them.” Juniper gestures to her ashy clothes, blood splattered on her sleeve from when Ralof cut off a man’s head. 

Nope. Not thinking about that. Bath first. 

Sigrid clucks her tongue, disappearing into one of the rooms. 

“Are you sure you want to inform the Jarl? I could do it alone,” Hadvar murmurs, looking up at her from his seat.

“No. It’ll have to be me. You both are too political of a courier for the Jarl. Better an unrelated bystander.” 

That’s a load of bullshit Juniper is tidying up to seem more reasonable. She can’t just say that she has a route she’s meant to follow and it doesn’t include handing off that work to Hadvar. Especially if she wants to establish a relationship with Jarl Balgruuf. Having a thaneship seems like it’d be helpful for her stupid fucking quest. 

Fuck. She’ll need to go to the Riverwood Trader and have Lucan complain about his lost artifact between now and leaving. Whenever it is that she’s leaving. She needs an alibi for rushing into a barrow for a future plot relevant stone tablet. 

Juniper is getting exhausted just thinking about this. Or maybe that’s from the running, walking and fighting. 

“Jarl Balgruuf is a good man. He won’t let his neutrality get in the way of listening to his people,” Gerdur disagrees.

Sigrid comes out with a dress and shift in hand before Juniper can try to waffle more. Thank god.

“They’re a bit big, and I’m sorry for that. Us nords are built a bit sturdier than you imperials!”

Everyone in this room is taller and at least a little bit more muscled than Juniper. She’d noticed the sturdiness, fake imperial or not. 

“Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate it,” Juniper says with as much politeness as she can muster. She turns to Ralof and Hadvar. “We’ll meet tomorrow and figure out when to leave, if you’re both fine with that. I bet you both need a few more potions before we start walking again.”

The front door opens, and they all turn. A tall blonde girl steps through, bickering with a blonde boy right behind her. 

“—I told you they were all in here! Your pa is full of it,” the girl who must be Dorthe says, waving a hand at the assembled group of adults. She pauses, spotting Ralof and Hadvar. 

“Uncle Ralof!” the lanky boy who is almost definitely Frodnar shouts, rushing past Dorthe to jump into Ralof’s arms. 

Juniper winces, eyeing the irritated skin on Ralof’s arm from the spiders. He makes no show of discomfort though, grinning wide. 

“I’ll leave you all to it,” Juniper says quickly. 

She doesn’t leave any time to be drawn in further, swiftly sidestepping around Dorthe and through the door. Sounds of excited children and familial reunion cut off as she shuts the door behind her. 

—

Delphine the hidden Blade looks fairly unassuming where she leans at the counter of Riverwood’s inn. The inside is different from the game, a proper kitchen seems to be through a doorway behind the counter, and there’s a few more rooms. 

The room quiets when Juniper enters, Sven’s plucking of his lute and his song about a fair maiden pausing for just a second, before quickly resuming. 

Juniper comes to a stop in front of the counter, watching Delphine watch her. She’s just a little too sharp to be a normal innkeep, now that Juniper is looking at her. There’s a hardness to her eyes that she can’t quite hide. Easily disguised as a no nonsense persona, but not quite fitting.

“Evening, stranger,” Delphine says in greeting, giving Juniper an up and down look. “You need a room?”

“And a bath,” Juniper says, drawing a coin pouch from her pocket. She feels like shit, she probably looks like shit, and honestly things will only improve marginally from here. 

Delphine looks at Juniper for a long moment. Juniper can feel the eyes of the inn’s patrons on her back. 

“I’ll throw in the bath for free, you look like you’ve had a shit day,” Delphine says finally. “Thirty septims per night.”

More expensive than in game, but she supposes that makes sense. She pulls out her coin pouch of pilfered gold and counts the amount she needs. It would be very embarrassing if she had to slink back to Alvor’s house and beg permission to sleep on their floor. 

She just barely has enough, which is also another kind of embarrassing. Juniper Draper, survivor, liar, proud owner of what is now eighteen gold. Huzzah.

The Jarl had better pay her in cash for that stupid rock she’s going to lug to him. 

Juniper hands over the thirty coins and follows the woman to a small room on the side. It’s lightly furnished, just a bed, a small wardrobe and an end table. 

“We got a proper bath downstairs, the locals use it. I’ll get my cook to fill it up for you,” Delphine says bluntly as Juniper drops her small bag onto the floor and sits on the bed. “Welcome to Riverwood.”

Delphine shuts the door. The sudden silence in the tiny room is loud.

Juniper looks out into space, staring at the rough hewn wall. Her mind is empty, her entire body heavy like lead. 

Now would be a good time for her to go home. She’s done now. She’s ready to never play Skyrim again, actually, as long as it means she gets to wake up in her own bed. 

Juniper reaches up and presses her hands into her face, takes deep, shuddering breaths. She can smell the smoke. God, she just wants the smoke off of her. 

She’s probably never going home. She knew that, she knew it when she felt thu’um reverberating in her chest. It plucked at something deep inside her she’s never felt before, something that should be alien but isn’t. It feels three steps to the left of hunger, four steps to the right of self.

Her soul. A thing she didn’t even think existed before today. Something has changed in her fucking soul. 

Something brought her out of her nice, comfortable life she was building, and it shoved her into a hellscape. A beautiful, amazing hellscape, but still a hellscape. Everything wants you dead in Skyrim, and if it doesn’t, it’s lying. If it isn’t lying? Then it’s probably going to die to everything else. 

Juniper pulls her hands from her face, ignoring how wet they feel, and takes a deep breath. 

“Akatosh,” she whispers, barely audible as she stares up at the blurry ceiling. She has no idea how prayers work, especially not to gods she thought were fictional. “Did you do this to me? Why? Why me?”

Like most gods, real or fake, Akatosh ignores her. Typical.

—