When We Dream

• Posted by ilanisilver July 28, 2019 - Filed in TSC: Skyrim - 1,236 views

  

   

  Kaidan floated on his back, his arms at his sides. He relaxed on waves that gently bore his body up and down. Warmth sank into his skin, and the golden light of the sun pierced his eyelids. He didn’t care—it felt good.

   

  He was dreaming. Or dead, he wasn’t sure which. But it had to be one of the two, and he’d figure it out when—if—he woke, to the sound of lightning and ringing metal and the drip-drip-drip of water slowly leaking into his prison, flooding it little by little, day by day. The wizard told him they’d leave him there, let the river take him along with the sinking Imperial fort, if he refused to tell them what he knew. Even though he had, every time they’d asked. He’d been nothing but honest. I know nothing, he’d said. Whispered. Screamed.

   

  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

   

  It didn’t matter. It never mattered.

   

  Something creaked, and footsteps padded nearby. Kaidan froze. He could almost see the wizard’s black robes swirling in the darkness, see the table scattered with metal implements. They knocked around and clinked together, metal on metal. And the footsteps drew closer.

   

  Kaidan groaned and opened his eyes.

   

  

   

  Livia tensed where she’d crouched at the fireside, staring at her kettle and trying to ignore the noise coming from her bedroom. Her coffee needed only a few more minutes for perfection. The man from the prison had stirred again, but she didn’t expect him to wake just yet—he’d been groaning and thrashing in his sleep since she’d brought him home from the abandoned prison near Mixwater Mill.

   

  Near.

   

  She hadn’t been so far off course after all, just crossed the river when she shouldn’t have, and ended up a mere half mile from where she’d meant to go. Livia stared into the flames, watching the steam from the pot rise and swirl into the fire.

   

  If the storm hadn’t knocked her off course, if she’d made it to Mixwater and on to Winterhold…well, she’d be back in Winterhold. With her friends, her colleagues. And studying restoration magic instead of practicing it on a living man.

   

  And two others, two she’d killed by her own power…would still be alive. Well, technically it was J’Zargo’s power, since he’d created the scrolls she’d used, but guilt didn’t lessen on technicalities, and the two Dominion agents were no less dead.

   

  Her first kills. Draugr didn’t count. Falmer didn’t count. Her brother would tell her Thalmor didn’t count either, but he hadn’t been there, had he? He hadn’t seen the surprise—the shock—in their eyes, when they realized the lighting and fire surrounding them would be the last thing they’d ever see. He hadn’t watched those eyes dim, and their bodies fall lifeless to the ground, charred beyond recognition.

   

  The man groaned again, and Livia straightened. So, she’d killed, and she’d own it, but the man into whom she’d been pouring all the power she could muster for nearly a week was still alive. And if she’d made it to Winterhold as she’d planned, if she’d not gotten lost and chased by a saber cat into that gorge…

   

  Livia picked up a poker and dragged it through the fire, breaking up charred wood and spreading embers behind the cooking stone. She was done with what ifs, she decided. Time to think about why—why was the man chained up in the first place? She was ashamed to admit she’d not considered it before setting him free and carting him back to her home. And why had the Thalmor, of all beings in Tamriel, been holding him in what amounted to a ramshackle sewer?

   

  Before she’d moved to Winterhold, she’d never given much thought to the Dominion at all. Having grown up a Black-Briar in the Rift, they didn’t trouble her overmuch. But living at the College and dealing with Ancano’s looming presence every day had turned her wary. And what they’d done to that man did nothing to allay her growing fears.

   

  She poured her coffee and moved to the kitchen to add cream and sugar, stirring lazily and watching the hot liquid turn from black to caramel to a smooth milky white. She tapped her spoon against the mug and dropped it on the sideboard. It knocked against the sugar bowl and fell to the floor, but Livia barely noticed.

   

  What would happen after he healed? When he finally woke? She’d given no thought to that over the past week. He was simply a patient, a life within her care and her control. She had one charge as a healer, and it wasn’t to ask questions. But now…

   

  She’d brought Dominion business into her home, and a mystery besides. The very idea sent chills up her spine and goosebumps prickling her arms. She knew nothing about the man—he could be an assassin. The armor she’d recovered from the prison suggested a martial occupation, if not a military one, given its lack of uniform or insignia. Maybe a mercenary. Or a thug. Or a…

   

  Vampire.

   

  The word flitted through her mind, and she snorted and pushed it away. Of course he was no vampire—his vitals proved that easy enough. But she admitted to momentary panic back at the prison when he’d glared up at her, his eyes wet and angry and…red.

   

  Not Dunmer red, not shaped like a Dunmer’s eyes either—all slants and curves and irises like great red marbles popped in their sockets. No, his eyes were human, but red as berries against white snow, in a face that…

   

  A face that defied everything she knew about racial taxonomy, at least what she’d seen and studied in Skyrim. His brow and cheekbones weren’t carved into crags and quarries like a Nord’s, or rounded like her own Imperial visage, but gently sloped and curved. But not so…alien…for lack of a better word, like any of the Elven races. His face lacked Elven broadness of brow and narrowness of chin. His lips full, not thin. His nose low-bridged and round of nostril.

   

  His hair—once she’d washed out layers of dirt and grease and blood— shone black as night and thick and straight as a horse’s mane. Livia chewed at the inside of her lip and idly played with a messy curl that lay over one shoulder. No, the man was a mystery, more than likely a dangerous one, and one she wanted healed and out of her house, the sooner the better.

   

  She picked up her cup and sipped the hot, creamy concoction, and padded in stockinged feet to her bedroom. It took her eyes a second or two to process what she saw—he was awake. His eyes were open at least, and he’d propped himself up against her headboard. But he stared, straight ahead at the fire on the far wall. He didn’t move, not when she walked slowly over to a table to set her coffee down, and not when she cautiously crossed his field of vision to stand on the other side of the room, near her desk covered with potions and dressings rather than books and scrolls.

   

  Livia cleared her throat. “Good morning,” she said, softly.

   

  The man’s chest moved more quickly after she spoke, and his breath didn’t rattle or wheeze. A good sign. She took a step closer to the bed, and another. “Brynjar?”

   

  He turned his head, but his eyes stayed glued to the fire.

   

  “Is that your name? Brynjar? You said it in your sleep.” Livia knew it was a foolish question. Why would he call out his own name in his sleep? But it was all she had to go on, and it was better than nothing, provided the enigmatic Brynjar wasn’t the reason he ended up in a Thalmor death camp in the first place.

   

  With that in mind, Livia took a step back and waited. The man drew a deep, rambling breath and exhaled, and slowly, excruciatingly slowly as if he were fighting the movement, fighting his own will, turned his eyes toward her voice. His eyes widened and he swallowed and coughed. “You…it’s you,” he said in a raspy, dry voice.

   

  Livia nodded. She wasn’t sure what to say, how to let him know he was in no danger without bringing all that danger back to the forefront of his mind. What if he had no memory of the prison, no memory of what he’d been through, all the pain and misery. Bone and blood and stinking, diseased flesh flashed screaming through her mind, and Livia shoved it away.

   

  “I, ah…yeah,” she began, and took a tiny step toward the bed. “My name’s Livia, and you’re in my house.” She fished for words, something else to say. You’re not in that prison anymore, and there are no Thalmor here. No guards, no soldiers. She couldn’t say any of that, not until she knew more. So she smiled and said exactly what she meant him to know. “You’re safe.”

   

  He stared up at her for a heartbeat or two, and then turned back to the fire and closed his eyes. Livia sighed and walked over to retrieve her coffee. She sipped at it and waited. For something, anything. A movement, a word. But his eyes stayed shut, and his breath grew smooth and even.

   

  “Damn,” Livia swore under her breath, and took another sip of coffee. At least he was waking, that was good, and it was bound to be a slow process. She turned to a bookshelf near the door and looked for something to read, her finger pausing on a thick, green spine. Her brother had given her a beautifully bound copy of Palla—both volumes—for her twentieth birthday and she’d read it hundreds of times over the past three years. She’d not grown tired of it yet.

   

  Book in one hand and coffee in the other, she sat down in the chair next to her bed and waited for her patient to wake. Again.