I know this already has a great fill in the form of The Wolf Queen Awakens, but I got hit with a plot so I figured I'd add another fill to this awesome prompt!
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Title: Dark Wings In The Cold Summary: Mercer Frey is dead and Karliah is free to thieve again but returning to a normal(ish) life after twenty-five years on the run is hard. It gets even harder when she brings down a dragon and takes its soul.
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Bare feet hit the cold stone floor, hands grabbed the bow beneath her bed, and she had reached for her pack before remembering that Mercer was dead.
Karliah slowly let out the breath she had sucked in as soon as she woke up and lowered herself back down to her bed. Her bow clattered to the floor unheeded and her knapsack had fallen over, sagging and empty after twenty-five years of never being properly unpacked.
“He’s dead,” she whispered to herself, making it real to dispel the shake in her hands. “He’s dead.”
These instances of waking up ready to run were slowly becoming less frequent, but they happened more often than Karliah would admit to anyone – actually, she hadn’t told anyone they happened at all, not even her fellow Nightingales. It was an instinct that would fade in time; twenty-five years was not an overwhelmingly long time to an elf.
Just long enough to forge certain habits, like never sleeping in the same bed twice. Every so often she punched about the stuffing of the mattress of her bed in Nightingale Hall to get rid of the shape of her sleeping body. Something that anyone else would see as normal, so familiar as not to be worth mentioning, was alien and uncomfortable to her.
Shadows shifted at the corners of her eyes and Karliah could have sworn she felt a hand touch her shoulder. At least she’d gotten over jumping at the very things that ought to be her most trusted friends. Now she could welcome shadows and think of Gallus rather than suspecting every shady corner of concealing Mercer.
Now she was free – to steal, to go to the Flagon, to walk around the Riften marketplace. Nocturnal was appeased and the Twilight Sepulchre was open to the Nightingales again. It was what she had waited twenty-five years for.
Which meant it was frustrating to say the least to become more and more aware with each passing day that she was not content. Her skin did not sit easily on her and her very blood itched and burned for… something.
Karliah had been trying to write it off as another legacy of Mercer’s persecution. If twenty-five years was enough to make her uncomfortable sleeping in the same bed twice then it was not a stretch that she would have to adjust to not living on the run, and even Karliah had to admit that she was not always the calmest of people. Her nerves had led her to make snap decisions on more than one occasion.
So she kept herself busy, running jobs for the Guild and re-establishing her name and contacts. Back in their heyday, she and Gallus had had contacts and fences in every city in Skyrim, and while the Guild was repairing much of that with the help of Annika, the young Nord who had helped Karliah clear her name, some things required a more… personal touch.
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timeasmymeasure
Dark Wings In The Cold 1a/?
Date: 2014-02-23 10:08 pm (UTC)--
Title: Dark Wings In The Cold
Summary: Mercer Frey is dead and Karliah is free to thieve again but returning to a normal(ish) life after twenty-five years on the run is hard. It gets even harder when she brings down a dragon and takes its soul.
--
Bare feet hit the cold stone floor, hands grabbed the bow beneath her bed, and she had reached for her pack before remembering that Mercer was dead.
Karliah slowly let out the breath she had sucked in as soon as she woke up and lowered herself back down to her bed. Her bow clattered to the floor unheeded and her knapsack had fallen over, sagging and empty after twenty-five years of never being properly unpacked.
“He’s dead,” she whispered to herself, making it real to dispel the shake in her hands. “He’s dead.”
These instances of waking up ready to run were slowly becoming less frequent, but they happened more often than Karliah would admit to anyone – actually, she hadn’t told anyone they happened at all, not even her fellow Nightingales. It was an instinct that would fade in time; twenty-five years was not an overwhelmingly long time to an elf.
Just long enough to forge certain habits, like never sleeping in the same bed twice. Every so often she punched about the stuffing of the mattress of her bed in Nightingale Hall to get rid of the shape of her sleeping body. Something that anyone else would see as normal, so familiar as not to be worth mentioning, was alien and uncomfortable to her.
Shadows shifted at the corners of her eyes and Karliah could have sworn she felt a hand touch her shoulder. At least she’d gotten over jumping at the very things that ought to be her most trusted friends. Now she could welcome shadows and think of Gallus rather than suspecting every shady corner of concealing Mercer.
Now she was free – to steal, to go to the Flagon, to walk around the Riften marketplace. Nocturnal was appeased and the Twilight Sepulchre was open to the Nightingales again. It was what she had waited twenty-five years for.
Which meant it was frustrating to say the least to become more and more aware with each passing day that she was not content. Her skin did not sit easily on her and her very blood itched and burned for… something.
Karliah had been trying to write it off as another legacy of Mercer’s persecution. If twenty-five years was enough to make her uncomfortable sleeping in the same bed twice then it was not a stretch that she would have to adjust to not living on the run, and even Karliah had to admit that she was not always the calmest of people. Her nerves had led her to make snap decisions on more than one occasion.
So she kept herself busy, running jobs for the Guild and re-establishing her name and contacts. Back in their heyday, she and Gallus had had contacts and fences in every city in Skyrim, and while the Guild was repairing much of that with the help of Annika, the young Nord who had helped Karliah clear her name, some things required a more… personal touch.