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ANNOUNCEMENTS: UPDATED 12/16/2017

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Most mornings didn't lend themselves to lying about. There was no shortage of tasks to do, even without setting foot off his own land. It took all four of them to finish digging out the cellar, and a dank and nasty job that was, especially when they got an infestation of skeevers right after for their trouble. Clearing land for a new wing was no easy task, either, but with four sets of hands to work, it went faster than he expected.

There was frost on the ground the morning they dug clay for the walls. He hadn't expected it to be a clean job by any means, but once the morning chill faded and they hit on a pocket of wet clay that oozed more than clung, it got filthier almost at once. Blaise pitched a handful of the slop at Lucia, who stood aghast as the muck dripped down the front of her dress and plopped back to the ground.

The sharp chide on his tongue faded the second Lucia shrieked indignation and flung a handful of clay back at Blaise's face, and it was all over from there. They slipped and scrambled and fell in the clay, laughing and shouting with such equal fervor he couldn't be sure if it was play or war or both. When he tried to catch Lucia from falling as she stumbled, she only pulled him face-first into the muck. He froze, up to his elbows in slime, hardly able to believe it—staggered by a little girl, when legions of draugr couldn't manage the job—and when he looked up at the sound of shocked laughter Lydia was both the only one upright and the last one clean, so it seemed only right to seize her by the ankle and pull her into the mess, too.

But as he was laughing at the look on her face the dark swoop of a shadow sliced past them, the rattle in the world that meant dragon shook around them, and the moment's foolishness died all at once. He reached for his axe but it wasn't there, and his stomach dropped at the realization. It was inside, by his armor, a hundred paces away. Four sets of hands, he thought dimly, and none of them held a weapon. "Inside!" he snapped, and the children scrambled to obey.

The slippery clay had been entertaining moments before but now it seemed a malign thing, working against them from spite. Lucia scrambled free, then Lydia, but as the dragon wheeled above them and Shouted to set the trees over their head crackling like new torches, Blaise slipped and fell, and couldn't make it to his feet before the air went hot and licks of flame came down from above. "Pa!"

Torn between lunging in the direction of his axe and in the direction of his boy, he only hesitated a moment. A Shout in the dragon's direction iced the trees over so they hissed like snakes above, and he seized Blaise and ran him toward the house so quickly the boy's feet hardly touched the ground.

Lydia was waiting in the doorway with his axe, and there was nothing to do but fight. He'd run into more difficult battles but not unarmored, not with the dragon setting fire to the roof he'd built with his own two hands. Chickens clucked alarm as he backed away from a gout of flame and he almost tripped over them into the pen, his arms flying out wide to catch himself.

Once he forced the dragon to land, the fight went faster. When it was done and the dragon fell—on top of the woodpile, he thought tiredly as the dragon's soul fused into his own, the world skewing hot with colors he had no names for, what a chore that will be to haul off. It seemed a strange thought, more bitter than he knew how to take. The half of him that belonged to the war and the half of him that belonged at home made for an ugly whole, forced together like this. He could be strong enough for one side, or for the other. Both sides together, now. That was different.

It has to end, he thought as he took in the sight of his shaken children. The burden of responsibility weighed like a mountain on his shoulders. It has to end.

This has always been awesome, but now you're weaving it into the larger story and it's AWESOME. Seriously, the fact that I felt personally violated by a dragon attack on their lovely peaceful oasis of a home is a measure of how good this is. IT'S ON NOW, ALDUIN.

Incidentally, of all the descriptions of dragon-soul-absorption out there, the world skewing hot with colors he had no names for may be my favorite. Especially when juxtaposed with the utterly mundane thought of what a pain it's going to be to haul a dragon corpse off the woodpile. :)

OP here!
Thank you a!a, I was so happy when this got filled, and it's so GOOD!
Gah! SO MUCH CUTENESS!

(Sorry for the delay, and thank you to the anons that commented, you are lovely.)
___

In the dark before dawn he stole away from the manor, quiet as a sneak-thief. Once his gear was stowed in his saddlebags he looked in on Blaise and Lucia, sleeping soundly even over the whistling of the wind that blew in through new gaps in the roof above. He pulled the blankets over them more securely and watched them nestle down into the warmth, and after a long moment's quiet he headed back down the stairs without waking them, to where Lydia waited with his axe. "I'll be back when I can," he promised, and didn't say, if I can. "It might not be soon."

"I'm not going anywhere," she said, and with lingering look at his axe added, "But I have to say, I wish I could."

"I wish you could too," he admitted, already weary at the thought. It had been simpler before, fighting together, knowing with every step he took into danger that he wasn't alone. There would be no such reassurance in the battles ahead of him. "But…"

She followed his gaze upward to where the children slept, and sighed. "But." When they said their goodbyes she handed over a parcel with the usual array of salves and poultices, and afterward he headed for the road, toward High Hrothgar, and an end.

**

It seemed like something out of a legend, when he heard talk about it later: the peace accord forged, the dragon yoked, Sovngarde welcoming him in. The bards left out rather a lot, he thought: they didn't sing of the icy bite of winter as it roared in early and snarled his progress, or the miserable state of the roads that ate up days at a time, or how impatience had whetted his temper. In the bard-song and gossip there was no mention that he'd been so disgusted with the delay he'd nearly dragged Ulfric and Tullius both back to High Hrothgar like pigs on a rope, or how every day that passed had sharpened him to a strange bleak sternness, as foreign a thing as the dragon souls stretching themselves against his insides.

But once it was over the numb gray fog of war began to lift, relief drained away the worst of it, and he set his sights for home. Of course, after that, everything went wrong. Snow in the southern pass was so high and thick he couldn't ride through up by Helgen and had to turn back around. The horse went lame. Bears attacked, then spiders, then vampires, with numbers and ferocity unlike anything he'd ever seen. He limped into Whiterun sore and hungry, gave the Jarl the shortest report of his life, and was back on the road in an hour.

The brief afternoon thaw didn't last, and the land began to freeze again as the sun slid toward the horizon so that the snow crusted over with ice as the cold wind skimmed down from the hills. He navigated the last stretch of road with all the care he could manage, leading the poor horse slowly, the pair of them frozen and exhausted as they'd ever been. The sight of the manor through the trees seemed almost a dream, some paradise nestled in the hollow of the hills like it rested in the palm of a great hand, sheltered from the wind and the world.

"Pa!" he heard, and Blaise hurtled down the slope toward him, face lit with happiness. "You're back!"

He didn't get a chance to respond before the boy dashed off to the house, and in a moment Lucia and Lydia both emerged in a hurry. Lucia launched herself at him with a shout of "Pa!" and hugged him so hard he had to catch himself from falling over. He patted her shoulder, clumsy with fatigue, and when he looked to Lydia he could couldn't tell if the expression on her face was happiness or disbelief or both.

"Where were you?" she muttered when she finally made her way into his embrace, into the crook of his arm and then under it as she steered him toward the house.

Any number of answers would have been honest, but the one that made if off his tongue was, "Sovngarde."

She hesitated, the disbelief on her face draining away slowly as she looked at him. "I think you'd better come inside."

He made to sit down in the first chair they passed but Lydia led him on, up the stairway to bed. "You fixed the roof," he noted distantly, the lights beginning to waver in his vision, and then he fell into bed and slept until the next afternoon.

When he woke the house was empty, and silent save for the crackling of the fires. When he ventured outside he heard the children's voices through the trees, close and cheerful, and he found Lydia on the porch with a cup of hot wine that steamed in the air.

"You shouldn't have let me sleep so long," he told her, and took the wine when she offered it.

"I was going to let you sleep for longer," she said, wrapping up more warmly as he settled beside her on the bench. "You should have seen yourself. You looked half-dead when you came in."

"Only half?"

The children burst from the clearing and thundered up the steps to the porch, brimming over with questions: did he really fight more dragons and how big were they, and did he really ride one like they said in Whiterun, and they fixed the roof and it took days and days, and was he staying this time and would he play tag? A yes was on his tongue but Lydia said, "No," with a sternness any jarl would envy. "Let him rest. You two run along—unless it's time for chores?" It sounded like scamper. They scampered.

"I would have played," he protested under his breath once they ran off.

Lydia looked him over. "I thought you might need more time to rest."

Which meant he probably looked at least a quarter-dead, he considered, but if it meant rest, he couldn't complain. From up there he could see the children playing beneath the pines, weaving around the trunks in endless patterns of catch-and-chase-and-repeat. They scrambled over rocks and under boughs, dodging and shouting at one another and laughing all the while.

When he caught sight of their faces they were flushed, and bright with joy. So different, he thought, from how they'd been when he'd seen them first. All their fear, all their hopelessness had melted away like snow under the warmth of home and family. He relaxed against his wife's side, content as a cat, and took in the sight like a balm.

When the children's game brought them around again they galloped up the steps so the whole porch rang with the noise, and this time he reached out and seized hold of them both so they shrieked with surprise. "Got you!" he shouted, and Blaise wriggled loose almost at once.

But Lucia only laughed and watched him, and demanded, "Now what are you going to do?"

He hesitated, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"What are you going to do now that you've caught us?" she asked, face expectant as she hopped in place. Hopeful, he realized, even as the question brought him up short.

Run, he thought, she means are you going to run after them, but it was a different kind of truth that stirred inside him. Live, he thought as he got up to chase them, I'm going to live, and he did.

I love this fill so, so much. I hope you de-anon somewhere so I can fic-stalk everything you write. :)

Oh wow, anon, thank you! I actually did de-anon on this one and posted it here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/827598

That last line is perfection.

From start to finish, the most wonderful thing about this story has been the way you splice the fantastic and the mundane: the dead dragon falling on the woodpile, the grandiose quest delayed by banal but very real things like snowstorms. And the final effect of all that is a very playful but very thoughtful look at what a hero really is. Your Dragonborn isn't a larger-than-life figure. He's an ordinary man caught up in larger-than-life events, and he's more heroic for it.

tl;dr This story is beautiful and thought-provoking and gives me warm fuzzies without ever once getting mushy. I'm going to be coming back to this one for a while.

Thank you so much for the lovely compliment. I'm glad you found the story to your liking. It was a lot of fun to write.

I am so glad you filled this!

Thank you, OP! I was so hoping it would be to your liking.

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