#also yes falk is elisif's cousin

[chamerionwrites]

Ooh, that list of prompts is excellent. There are so many that I would love to see you write, but I also feel like they're a bit "easy" in terms of how specifically they suggest a character or situation for you and Skyrim, haha. So... "submersion in cool water." :)

Legate Rikke bows to her when she steps through the door. It can hardly fail to escape her notice that Tullius does not.

“General,” Elisif says, and tries to keep the sharpness from her tone. Castle Dour is his territory, walls bannered inside with Imperial dragons even if the wolf of Haafingar flies from the tower. They might wear the same heraldic black-and-red, but she’s not naïve enough to think that the symbols mean the same thing.

Whatever some of her thanes may say.

Only Tullius was appointed by the Emperor. Only Tullius commands the army garrisoned in her city. And only Tullius has the power to refuse a jarl’s summons. She walked from the Blue Palace with only Falk to guard her, a simple fur robe and the cover of night as a cloak against city gossip. Like King Erling’s mistress, she thinks, and swallows a hot rush of anger. A queen is calm.

“Elisif,” he says, straightening from the map table with a frown of surprise. Good. “I’m very busy.”

“So you wrote in your letter,” she answers sweetly. “So I thought I would do you the courtesy of holding our meeting here.” Calm. Submerged in cool water.

~~~~~

When she is a girl two of her cousins dare her to swim to one of the islands in the Karth: upstream of the shipping channel, where the river is not yet reached its full broad-shouldered size and makes up for it with adolescent enthusiasm. She’s a strong swimmer; she almost makes it, before the midstream current captures her. Elisif strikes shore again almost a mile downriver, covered in the salt muck of a tidal marsh and sobbing with fury because Bjarni and Gunnar laugh at the mud in her hair. In relief more than mockery, she thinks later – but she can’t think it with the smithy-sound of her heart in her ears, still shaking with being seized and swept off by something beyond her control, the sense-memory of cold water closing over her head.

Falk shouts at his brothers with all the authority of the responsible eldest cousin and newly-minted Companion, Skyforge steel in his voice even if his beard is still coming in patchy. After, in the privacy of her room, Elisif’s mother shouts at her for making such a scene.

Three years later her parents send her to the Imperial City, as most Solitude merchants of rank do when their children reach sixteen summers. Elisif is dazzled, and frightened, and tries not to make a scene.

Even soot-stained with war the white marble walls are blinding. The markets are full of foreign food and the shops are stocked with beautiful foreign things: gowns weighted in the hem for a graceful glide, golden brooches worked like Niben lotuses, brandy and olives and tea brewed with orange rinds. Strange Hammerfell fruits that burn when they hit the tongue. Some of the boys compete over who can eat the most, but she doesn’t join in, because the Cyrods sniff at the rowdiness of Nords, and because Nibenese noblewomen are cool and contained and do not gobble hot peppers until sweat beads on their brows. She feels tall and awkward among them, overheated and overdressed in the southern sun. She wants to go home. She wants to meet everyone, and see everything. She wants to master the steps of the elegant Breton court waltzes. Lake Niben is murky and strange-smelling with the waste of the massive city, but it gleams invitingly on the surface, and when the clamor and current of a crowd catch at her she imagines swimming through it, cool and calm.

When she returns home she has a hundred plans. She’s going to eat bread with snowberry jam; she’s going to sleep comfortably under two layers of furs; she’s going to throw a snowball at her father. And yet Solitude is smaller than she remembers it. Mead tastes too sweet after drinking West Weald wines. Even court feels provincial and inelegant: drab dresses and winter-dark halls, nobles laughing too loudly at one another’s jokes. Her heart clenches when she sees the Khajiit caravans outside the city walls.

And then the prince looks at her from across the Blue Palace courtyard.

He knows Breton waltzes, and he believes it’s unfair to ban Khajiit from the cities, and he kisses her hand like a Colovian courtier.

~~~~~

“I’m afraid it will have to wait,” Tullius says. “The war—”

“Is consuming too many of Haafingar’s winter food stores!” The general cocks an eyebrow. Nordic temper, says his expression, and Elisif moderates her tone. Calm. “You cannot ignore my authority within the walls of my city.”

“With respect,” says Tullius, sounding merely impatient, “My authority derives from the Emperor. As does yours.” Falk shifts uneasily at her elbow. Across the room a frown flickers over the Legate’s face, so briefly Elisif can’t be sure it was even there.

Legate Rikke wears her heavy steel armor like summer robes, graceful as a shieldmaiden in a song. In another world, maybe Elisif would too. In another world she might have strapped a shield to her arm and dueled Ulfric Stormcloak herself: an oathbreaking murderer, a fool who thinks he’ll make peace by making war. A bitter old bear lashing out at anyone within reach, over a treaty signed before Torygg was even born.

(She wonders, sometimes, if they loved each other as well as she remembers. She thinks they did. But it all happened so fast, and they were so young, and already she feels much older. Older than Torygg ever was, though she won’t truly be for another four years yet.)

She’s not a fool. She knows that she hasn’t been mooted, is not technically yet a queen. She knows that this suits the Empire’s purposes perfectly: she is young, inexperienced, her claim to the throne resting only on right of marriage. Biddable, they assume. And if not, they could replace her with little fuss. Erikur is already gladhanding and spreading his gold around, along with rumors that poor little Elisif is in over her pretty head. Tullius has no such designs; he only ignores her, like a silly Nord girl asking questions she doesn’t understand.

Let him. She wants what Tullius wants – Ulfric’s head on a pike. Until the war is over, she can swim with the current.

Elisif takes a breath. “Very well, general,” she says, and feels Falk relax at her side. “We can discuss this matter at a later time.”