When Mourning Comes

Markarth was a dismal place, she decided.

Every time Elismyra arrived at the city, with its sloping walkways, labyrinthian staircases, and blood of silver, she felt a little piece of herself die. And every time the huge golden dwemer gates boomed shut behind her, somewhat forebodingly, she couldn't stop that little flinch. Yet she came anyway, because she knew she had to.

Lydia wondered why she did this to herself. Vilkas outright questioned if she was masochistic. Brynjolf used to offer to come with her, but the gestures stopped long ago. Babette said she seemed colder than the Void itself. Paarthurnax told her it disrupted her meditation.

The streets were quiet as she slipped back her traveling hood. The stalls were closed and Margret's blood had been scrubbed away many moons ago, although the smell lingered on some days. The High Elf, eyes closed, breathed a deep sigh before shrouding herself in shadow and making her way towards the Understone Keep.

It was far too late for the normal citizens of the Reach to be up and about, so Elismyra encountered no one on her familiar trek. As she walked, she had the fleeting thought that no matter how many times her feet took this path, her steps never seemed to lighten or stop echoing through the dark emptiness of the city. The loneliness, too, never seemed to loosen its grip.

The roar of the waterfall ahead washed away any other thoughts that might have tried to tack on to the end of the previous one. Elismyra let out a long breath through her nose and imagined what it would be like to stand under it. Would it force the burdens off her shoulders and sweep them downstream? Or would it crush her under its own powerful rage? She didn't know. She didn't care. All that she wanted was to slip into his room and be gone again. She hated this place.

Understone Keep was still in its perpetual, about-to-fall-apart shape as she slid the doors closed behind her. It too was devoid of life, the jarl and all his pets sleeping peacefully in their beds. She had half a mind to kill them all while they slept, even the scatterbrained Calcelmo, despite their kinship. They didn't know what they had lost. They didn't care. Most of Skyrim was glad to be rid of him, she was sure.

She knew Ondolemar had no mourners. She knew that if she was caught here, she would either be chased off or run through, thane or no, and not for trespassing either. Elismyra allowed herself a small snort of contempt as she ghosted up the steps, listening to the faint sound of water dripping somewhere off in the personal quarters. She had no doubt Thongvor was spitting on Igmund's name for giving her the title in the first place, and was shocked he hadn't revoked it when...

The Altmer fingered the small parcel in her hands, hidden beneath her cloak as she turned left on the plateau beneath the jarl's throne. As always, no one was there to witness her monthly pilgrimage. Although she did hear every now and then, when she was in the city for business, the gossip if someone happened to go into his room and see what she had done.

Elismyra liked to think of herself as a creature of little emotion. She tried her damndest to come off that way, because at her core, it was her true nature. But every time the golden door to his quarters opened and shut in the dead of night, with no one there to see and judge and create some hideous rumor, that elf, that creature everyone labeled dragonborn, vanished, and Elismyra the she-elf took her place.

This time was no different. The door to his room had not even shut all the way before she felt the first tear fall. Everything was just as she had left it last month: his stone bed was empty and clean; all the shelves were cleared away and his chests emptied of every last cobweb; and his coffin, propped up against the wall. It was empty too, save for his robes and the amulet she had stolen for him, because he was the only one in this city to ever show her some respect.

And her paintings.

Elismyra drew the small canvas out from beneath her robes as she took a shuddering breath and allowed herself to look about the room. The first time she had come here, after the invasion, the sight of all his things gone and every shred of evidence that said he had existed removed, her temper had abandoned her. Her Voice had ricocheted off the walls of the keep for hours as she railed against the filthy Silver-Bloods and their ancestors, against the whole city, against Ulfric and his impossible ego. She had been thrown from the place in chains, forced to spend the night in that skeever-hole of a mine. That night, after tossing and turning and refusing to let herself shed a tear, she had decided it could not be so.

Now, as Elismyra allowed the tears to fall, she could read the story of his life, painted by her own hand. On a table, shoved into a nook, a huge depiction of his acceptance into the Embassy. There, his skin was golden and beautiful, his eyes the green of leaves in spring.

On the bed, a recreation of his Akatosh amulet, the very one he always seemed to have on and that was currently lying at the bottom of his casket. The tip was chipped away where the wood had grown old and it was faintly discolored, but against his dark robes, it was positively vibrant.

At the foot of the bed sat another large canvas. It was one of her most elaborate works, one she was quite proud of. There, she saw him, with his elbow propped up on a table, an uneven smirk in his eyes and on his lips, as lightening webbed between his fingers. In the background stood Igmund and Calcelmo. It was the day he had been stationed in Markarth.

There were dozens of these paintings scattered about the room. He was not in all of them; some were merely scenes he had described to her, like the peace council where the White-Gold Concordant was signed. He had said he was never really in favor of it, but he still had been there. She almost smiled at this; Ondolemar could the play the haughty Thalmor bastard along with the best of them when he wanted to, but she had seen the core of humanity, of compassion, that he tried to so desperately hide under the dark robes: Ogmund, still walking the streets even after she had stolen his amulet; his wide eyes when he caught her skulking around in Elenwen's chest in the Embassy, but not raising the alarm; the touch of his healing magic after he found her by the road, naked and gasping after transforming from beast to elf, and yet he did not shun her; him absentmindedly stroking one of Igmund's dogs as he wrote out his correspondence to the Isles.

He had not deserved to die.

Elismyra sank down on his bed and bowed her head, clutching the latest painting to her as she let herself mourn. It was never meant to happen this way; she had tried everything to avoid this, but Ulfric and Tullius, the barbaric men they were, had not been satisfied when she claimed she had better things to do than join their war, such as slay the godsdamned dragon that was going to devour their world.

The Stormcloak had become impatient. Her refusal to take a side had angered him, she was sure, injured his massive store of pride by denying an alliance with the legendary dragonborn. He had wanted the Reach, and he wanted it now. His assault on the city had surprised everyone, including some of his own advisors, and that alone had granted him the victory. No one was expecting the front gates to burst open and his fanatics to pour through, slaughtering the city guard and any who stood on their path to Understone Keep. Igmund had surrendered when he learned that his guard was no more, that his Empire was not there to save him. He was spared because of his title.

But Nords took no prisoners.

He had put up quite a fight, Calcelmo said when she came to find him. The wizard had been spared solely because of Igmund; the elderly jarl had bargained for his life, along with Faleen's and his steward's. The older Altmer had whispered, as he watched her face crumble as he told her the news, that, "I've never seen such a mastery of the arcane arts. He was the last one standing between them and Igmund." The old mage had placed a hand on her shoulder then. "I truly thought he would hold them off."

"Did you now," she had said, and hated the way her voice cracked.

Elismyra lifted her face and tried to steady her breathing. She had imagined it a million times; the bursts of fire, the hiss of electricity as it arched from soldier to soldier, felling many in one swoop. The walls of flame spraying from his hands; his magic had always seemed so beautiful to her. But the images always ended with a snap, his blood on the floor, and life fading from his green eyes as the humans kicked his corpse down the many stairs.

A memory, unbidden, rose in her mind as she stood, gently placing the newest painting, the smallest, next to the one of his Akatosh amulet.

"What would you do if you weren't in the Embassy, Ondolemar?"

He looked at her askance, twirling the thin stem of his wine glass between long gold fingers. "Why, I don't know. I've never considered it." He leaned back, studying her with his crooked smirk. "Why do you wish to know?"

She shrugged, mirroring his position. The inn was crowded and noisy, but she had bullied the innkeeper into giving them a private room upstairs. "I've often wondered what I would do if the Nords hadn't saddled me with this 'dragonborn' business." She gave a derisive snort. "Sometimes I wonder why they did, even though it was true. They hate us; I can't even imagine how big of a slap in the face it is to their traditions."

Ondolemar gave a short, loud laugh. "Ah, Elismyra," he said, sipping from his crystal glass. "Your humor is always quite…"

"Dry?" she offered.

"Yes," he chuckled. "That. Refreshingly so." He raised a brow at her, one corner of his mouth lifted higher than the other as he sat back, brilliant green eyes alight with a playfulness he rarely let himself indulge in. "But now you've sparked my curiosity," he said. "What would you do if you were not a legendary Nordic hero?"

Elismyra set down her own wine and leaned forward onto the table, lowering her lashes and smirking coyly at him. "Oh, I don't know," she drawled, tracing a finger around the rim of her glass. "Return home to Cyrodiil, maybe. Visit the Isles again and tour Alinor with my father; I could use a vacation, I suppose." She allowed her voice to dip an octave, her accent becoming more pronounced. "I've entertained the thought of marriage every now and then, as well."

The way his eyes darkened and his pupils blew wide sent thrills of molten heat down her spine. "Really," he mumbled. "I'd never have taken you for a housewife." His gravelly chortle at her scoff did things to her she had no way to describe. No other man had ever dragged these kinds of reactions from her. "Has anyone…particular caught your eye?"

She did not make any attempt to hide her gaze as it slid over him, down his long, lean body and back up to his angular face and white-blonde hair that just brushed his shoulders. He was everything she had envisioned for herself and more; she could do without the Thalmor affiliation and inflated ego, but even so…superiorly bred mer, indeed.

"I suppose so."

Elismyra was yanked from the memory with a gasp and shudder, and she slowly unfurled her clenched fingers from around her upper arms, where she had wrapped them over her chest as if to hold herself together to keep from falling to pieces. When she opened her eyes, she was bombarded with his image, his passions, his dreams and hopes that now were nothing more than wisps, vainly kept alive by a woman who feared to even show her own grief.

There was a void in her now. One that no amount of bloodshed or anger or solitude could fill.

The High Elf allowed herself one last glance around the small room, drinking in his face so she would not forget it, before sweeping back out into the keep with nothing more than a burning hatred to fuel her. Ulfric would die by her hand; this she had sworn to herself many months ago. The tide of the war was turning in favor of the Imperials, and each day brought them closer to Windhelm and her chance to exact her raging vengence. She would send his head back to Cyrodiil on a silver platter if it was the last thing she ever did. She had given everything for this country, had bled on its soil for a people that hated her because her ears were pointed. She had toiled and agonized and suffered for the land, the same one Ulfric was ripping apart because he 'cared'. She had given until there was nothing left to give, because as much as she loved Cyrodiil, as beautiful as the Isles were, Skyrim was her home.

And yet she had been denied this one happiness. For all her pain, all she had sacrificed, it was still not enough for the arrogant, damned Nords who spit on her and cursed her when she walked by because she was different.

As the gates of Markarth swung shut behind her, she leapt atop Shadowmere and spurred him into a furious gallop, the Amulet of Mara painting burning behind her eyes.

Ondolemar is rather interesting, despite his minor role. There's just something about him that doesn't scream 'Thalmor' to me. I've always liked him anyway because he wasn't overly obnoxious, as far as High Elves go, but I think there's a lot of potential for him to be something...rare. The fact that he's even nice (flirtatious, even, if you want to look at it that way) when you help him out, plus Ogmund not being carted off to Cidnah once you steal the evidence against him, kind of spurred this.

Reviews make me very happy, but I don't like to beg for them.