Archive of Our Own

Falkreath in summer is insufferably pretty. 

The pines stand too green, the air too sweet with sap and crushed needles, the sunlight too honest as it spills across their porch boards and turns the dust to gold. It is the sort of day that makes people believe the world is gentle. Miraak knows better. He has watched gentleness rot from the inside out. 

He watches her, instead. 

Not in the way he once watched enemies — measuring angles, exits, weaknesses to exploit. This is worse, in its own humiliating way: the steady attention of someone who knows exactly what to look for and hates that he knows it. 

Lilliandra spends the morning in her study. 

That's not unusual; it would be more unsettling if she didn’t. What changes is the shape of it. She doesn’t drift through the house with that restless, sharp energy that makes the air feel crowded. She doesn’t come out to declare an idea halfway-formed and then vanish again before he can respond. The Tower was built on silence; this house is not, and when she goes quiet the rooms feel wrong. 

He hears it in the small sounds. 

The scratch of a quill stops for longer stretches than it should. A chair leg drags and then goes still, as if she has sat down too quickly and regretted it. Once, late morning, there is a soft, angry huff — breath through teeth — and a single, clipped curse in Altmeri. 

When she finally emerges, it is with the careful composure she reserves for audiences. 

She moves as if her body is an object she is carrying rather than inhabiting. Shoulders set. Chin lifted. Hands occupied — always occupied — because if they are busy no one can see them tremble. She crosses the kitchen without looking at him, pours water, takes two sips, then sets the cup down too gently, as though the weight of it is negotiable. 

“Don’t,” he warns, because he’s already watching her reach for something on the counter that will require her to stretch. 

She pauses with her fingers hovering. For a fraction of a breath her expression flickers, irritated — at him, at herself, at the fact that he noticed. “I wasn’t going to—” 

“You were.” He keeps his voice flat, not an accusation, not comfort. Just fact. 

Her mouth flattens, but she withdraws her hand and makes a show of turning away, as if the choice was hers all along. She goes back toward the hallway, then stops as if remembering something and pivots too sharply— 

—and there it is. Not dramatic. Not a gasp. Just the smallest stall in her movement, the briefest hitch of balance. One hand goes to the doorframe with practiced casualness. Her fingers press into the wood. 

She thinks he won’t notice it. 

She forgets, sometimes, that he always does. 

He doesn’t follow her into the study. Not yet. He has learned that when she’s in this mood, hovering is a quick way to get bitten. So he lets the day pass in pieces: her footsteps above, then below, then out the back door with a book under one arm and a familiar stubborn set to her shoulders. 

Late afternoon, he finds her on the patio. 

She claimed the warmest patch of sunlight and set herself like a cat basking in the sun, boots kicked off, bare feet tucked beneath her. Her hair loose, curls caught in the light, and for anyone else it might have looked like peace. To Miraak it looks like strategy. 

Heat on sore muscles. Stillness, because stillness costs less than movement. 

She doesn’t look up when he steps outside. She does, however, shift her weight subtly — as though making room for him without admitting it. The little concession stirs something in his chest that he refuses to name. He lowers himself beside her, the boards warm beneath his palms, and watches the way she holds her spine. Too straight. Too controlled. As if relaxing would let something slip. 

“You are brooding,” she says, voice mild. 

“I am observing.” 

“That’s the same thing, said with a larger vocabulary.” 

He snorts, because she wants banter. Because banter is easier than admitting. 

She turns a page in her book without reading it. He can tell by the speed. Her eyes drift over lines that don’t really land. Every few minutes she adjusts her position in minute increments, never quite settling. She’s learned how to hide pain the way some people learn to hide knives. 

He has learned how to see it anyway. 

It's not only the physical strain. That would be simpler. An overused muscle, a bruised rib, a body sore from channelling too much magicka through mortal flesh. That kind of pain is honest, easy to heal; it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. 

This is layered. 

There is the ache in her joints and the slight stiffness through her middle that comes from the world insisting she is made of muscle and tendon and not simply will. There are the thin, invisible abrasions along her channels — magicka-strained that no salve can soothe because it is not the skin that has been rubbed raw, but the paths beneath it. 

And then there is another. The thing he does not have a clean name for, because naming it would require admitting that it exists between them like a knot in rope: ugly, functional, difficult to undo without cutting. 

Hermaeus Mora had killed him, had finally deemed him no longer useful to hold prisoner, especially when freedom had looked so close. That fact is still a thorn lodged behind Miraak’s ribs. 

He doesn't know what it felt like when she took his soul after that, when her dragon soul stole his. 

Miraak remembers, in a way that is more sensation than memory, the long wrong stretch of being held inside her like an object misfiled in a too-small drawer. Not trapped but present, threaded through her like a second pulse. Wrapped around her instincts. Tangled in places that had no names. Already full of stolen souls and the kind of magic that does not ask permission.

Then the second theft, worse than the first: the day she tore him back from death like ripping a page from a book that insisted it was finished. Not merely by reversing a shout that belonged to a god, to Alduin. That alone should have been an affront. 

But she did not only call him. 

She pulled. 

And when she pulled, she did it through the place their souls had tangled — through the knot made the day his soul had gone into her with no more consent than gravity. Through the thing that made them, in some small, ugly metaphysical sense, unfinished without the other. 

Miraak’s fingers curl against the warm porch boards. 

He hates that he understands this. 

He hates that he can see the aftereffects in her like a pressure change before a storm: the faint irritability, the fatigue that sits behind her eyes, the way her patience thins at the edges because of pain. 

Lilliandra, of course, would hate it even more if he said any of that aloud. So he says nothing. He sits beside her in the sun and lets her pretend the page is interesting. 

A bee drifts lazily through the air between them, drunk on the sweetness of summer. Somewhere in the pines, a bird makes a rude, repetitive noise that sounds like mockery. 

She shifts again. A careful, incremental move that tries to masquerade as comfort. The muscles around her mouth tighten, then release. “You’re staring,” she says without looking up. 

“I am not.” 

She huffs, the sound nearly amused. “You are. You have a whole stare. It’s like being watched by a statue that disapproves of you.” 

He could tell her there's worse to be watched by. By gods. By eyes in the walls. By a Prince whose attention is a net you can’t see until you’re already tangled. But she knows this, and instead he says, “If I disapproved, you would know.” 

She turns a page again, too fast. A performance. She knows he knows. She does it anyway. 

“You’re tense,” she says, as if he is the problem to solve. “Are you planning to fight the weather?” 

“I am planning,” he replies, “to survive the evening without you doing something foolish.” 

Her lips twitch. “Define foolish.” 

He lets his gaze drop to her hands. They are clasped around the book with unnecessary force, knuckles pale for a moment before she remembers to relax them. 

Miraak can almost hear the way she does arithmetic with pain. This much now. This much later. This much I can ignore until morning.  

He hates that he recognizes it.  

It's not the pain itself — she has always been far too willing to bleed for her own ambitions — but this particular strain, this lingering soreness that arrives like a delayed echo after the fact.  

It has improved in the few weeks. It's no longer the raw, trembling aftermath of those first nights when even sitting too long left her exhausted, when she swallowed her weakness with bitter pride and dared him to comment.  

She catches him looking and deliberately loosens her grip, as if that proves something. “You are not subtle,” she says. 

“I am,” he says, “merely not indulging your lies.” 

That gets her, faintly. She exhales and finally lifts her eyes to him. In the light they are too bright, too clear. There are shadows beneath them that the summer cannot hide. “I’m not lying,” she says, measured. 

“You are always lying,” he corrects. “To everyone. Most often to yourself.” 

She makes a face at him, as if he has said something crude in company. “Gods, you’re unbearable.” 

He hums, an old sound of satisfaction he tries not to let become too fond. “And yet you keep me.” 

Her gaze flicks away again, but not before he sees the softening at the edges. The familiar concession: yes, she keeps him. Yes, she wants him kept. 

She shifts, and this time she cannot hide the wince. It’s slight — just a tightening around her eyes, a tiny breath caught. But it is enough. 

Then, in the calm tone he uses for spellwork and strategy and the things he refuses to admit are tenderness, he says, “Is it worse today?”  

Lilli’s mouth twists. She looks away toward the forests. “No,” she says immediately. A beat. “…Yes,” she amends, quieter, as if the word tastes like defeat. “I can handle it,” she adds, before he speaks again, because pride is her first reflex and only later does she remember he is not easily discouraged.  

Miraak inclines his head. “I didn't say you couldn’t.”  

She narrows her eyes. “Then why do you look like you’re about to start rearranging the world?”  

“I am considering rearranging a very small part of it,” he says, and keeps his tone mild on purpose. “The part where you attempt to sleep through pain out of spite.”  

Her mouth twists, and there it is — the beginning of a smile she tries to suppress. “It isn’t spite.”  

“It is,” he replies evenly. “But it is also… impressive.”  

A sound escapes her that might be laughter, if she allowed herself the luxury. “Don’t compliment me. It makes it harder to argue.”  

“Good.” He lets the word settle, then watches the light shift. 

The afternoon sun that had been full and brazen is already beginning to lean — sliding, slow and inevitable, toward the trees. The warmth on the porch boards thins at the edges. The bright patch Lilliandra claimed like territory shrinks by inches, retreating across the wood as if it has somewhere better to be. 

Lilli follows it without meaning to. 

Not with her feet — she’s too proud for that — but with the subtle angle of her spine, the way she tilts her shoulder toward the last of the heat, the small adjustments that keep her in the sun as long as possible. She's pretending she’s reading while rationing comfort like it’s a resource. 

She shifts again, just a fraction, chasing warmth with her shoulder. The collar of her shirt tugs. For a heartbeat, sunlight catches the faint bloom of bruising near her clavicle — old enough to be healing, dark enough to still matter. Her fingers rise immediately, casual as a blink, smoothing fabric back into place as if she has simply grown tired of the breeze. 

Miraak does not react. He does not need to. His mind is already doing what it does best: mapping. 

He also finds he hates the patience of it. The way she will make do with a thinning scrap of warmth rather than admit she wants more. 

“Come inside,” he says finally. 

Her head turns just enough for one eye to cut toward him. Suspicion first, always. “Why?” 

“Because the sun is leaving you,” he replies, as if this is the simplest thing in the world. “And you look ridiculous chasing it with your shoulders.” 

She scoffs, but the sound is tired, not sharp. “I’m not chasing anything.” 

He lifts his chin toward the porch boards where the warm patch has already crept away from her bare feet. “It disagrees.” 

For a heartbeat she looks — actually looks — and something in her expression pinches, annoyed at the betrayal of physics. 

Miraak doesn’t pounce on it. He doesn’t make it into victory. He just says, quieter, “Heat helps. Let it help properly, before you spend the night turning your pain into an argument with the mattress.” 

Her mouth twists. “You're obsessed with this.” 

“If you sleep poorly, you will be unbearable tomorrow. I'm thinking of my own wellbeing.” 

She barely hides a smile with a scoff and a roll of her eyes. “Liar.” 

“Hm.” He pauses, then suggests, mild on purpose, “Hot water, it's helped relax that pain before.” 

The argument rises in her out of reflex; he can see it gather. Then she exhales and lets it go, as if even fighting would cost too much. Instead, she leans her head back and closes her eyes for a moment, letting the sunlight hit her face like a blessing she doesn’t deserve. 

When she opens them again, her voice is quieter. “Fine,” she says, as if granting him an indulgence. “But if you start hovering like a priest at a funeral, I will drown you.” 

“I expect nothing less from you.” 

Miraak stands first, collects the boots she had discarded, and offers his hand like he’s done this before — because he has. It's not the first, nor will it be the last. That's the thing that keeps any thread of guilt from ever settling. It keeps moving, reshaping itself. 

Her fingers slide into his. Warm from the sun. Slightly unsteady. “You could just admit,” she says, pushing herself up carefully, “that you like bossing me around.” 

He steadies her without comment, letting her take as much weight as she needs while pretending it’s nothing. “I do,” he says. “But that's not the point.” 

She arches a brow, lips curving faintly. “No?” 

He looks up at her and allows himself the smallest truth he can manage — something that won’t spook her pride, something that won’t crack him open. 

“You sleep better,” he admits. For a heartbeat, her expression softens in a way that makes his chest ache. 

Then she scoffs, because she is incapable of letting tenderness sit unmocked. “Tragic,” she says, and squeezes his hand once, quick and secret. “Lead the way, then. O patient statue.” 

He leads. 

And if his thumb brushes her knuckles as they walk inside — if his grip tightens a fraction when she stumbles on the threshold — if he keeps his steps slower than usual to match hers— 

—he tells himself it is only efficiency. He is very good at lying. 

He leads, and the house swallows the last of the sun behind them. 

The tub sits where she put it when she had the house built over a year ago — copper beaten into a long oval, an iron band around the outside where she etched a neat runic chain for enchantment. It's a patient thing. It does nothing until given something to work on. 

He fetches water the ordinary way: bucket from the cistern by the back steps, shoulder and hand and the slow slosh of weight. He prefers it this way. He prefers the reminder that bodies do work and are warmed honestly by it. The floorboards creak in familiar complaint as he carries each bucket in and tips it over the rim; the first pour blooms a cool scent, the third is enough to wake the magic, the fourth fills comfortably. 

A faint hum stirs along the ring. Heat lifts off the surface in thin threads. Steam ghosts the small window and begins to turn the mirror to fog. 

He places a folded towel on the stool by the tub and another near the hearth to warm; sets out soap and oil and the comb she pretends not to care about and always reaches for anyway. He lays simple linen on the chair: a soft shirt, loose trousers — no buttons, no hooks. Nothing that bites. 

“Bossy,” she murmurs from the doorway, the word round with tired amusement. 

She has not moved far without him. Good. Pride is a poor railing. He crosses the room and offers his hand again; she takes it without theatrics this time, and he guides her to the stool. 

“I’m not washing my hair,” she says, already anticipating him. “Not tonight.” 

“Then we keep it dry,” he answers, as if the plan were his. “Up.” 

She gives him a look that is half challenge, half concession, and turns on the stool so her back is to him. He steps behind her and sinks into the small, practical ritual of helping. It's easier if he thinks of it that way: a sequence. He slides the comb from root to end, patient, feeling for snags. Her hair is heavy with summer, warm from the sun, carrying the faint smell of resin and smoke and the crushed green of the porch. 

“Pins,” he says softly. 

She presses a handful into his palm without looking. Her palm is warm when she drops the pins into it — too warm from sun and bath-room steam — and his thumb brushes the base of hers by accident. The skin there is rubbed raw, a callus torn open in a way that speaks less of swords than stubborn hours at a desk. 

He closes his fingers around the pins as if they are the only thing he meant to take. He twists the curls up off her neck, not tight — he has learned what gives her a headache — and nests them high, securing the coil so it will survive steam. She exhales when the weight lifts. Not a sound of relief, exactly. Something near it. 

“Mm,” she says, conceding nothing and everything. 

He does not let his hands fall yet; instead one lingers at the nape of her, feeling the warmth of her. Then he steps around to face her. 

She raises her hands to loosen the first tie of her shirt and fails to keep the wince off her face. He is already there. He works the knot with careful fingers until the fabric slackens. 

There is no shock in what he sees. Only the data of the day arranged into a fact. 

No binder. No wrapping.  

None of the careful compression she sometimes wears beneath her clothes when she wants her shape to align with her mood, when she wants control over how the world reads her. Lilliandra is many things, and one of them is meticulous — when she has the strength for it.  

Tonight, she has not even attempted it.  

The absence lands in him like a stone dropped into still water. Not because he cares what she looks like — he has long since learned that he wants her in every version and form she chooses to be. It's what it means. 

He does not let the thought show anywhere his face. He treats the next fastening like any other puzzle. Cloth loosens under his hands, slides. He moves slowly so he doesn’t jostle sore muscle; he keeps his touch deliberate enough to be read as purpose, not pity. “Tell me if I pull,” he says. 

“You won’t,” she says, a little thick, and then, quieter, “I’ll tell you.” 

He nods. He doesn’t look away. When the last tie gives, he helps her step out of her pants. A breath catches and releases. 

She glances toward the water, then back at him, eyes wry. “If you drop a single curl in there,” she says, chin tipping toward the hair he has pinned, “I will call down every hex-word I know.” 

He almost smiles. “You'll be too relaxed to form them.” 

“Hubris.” 

“Experience.” 

He braces the tub with one hand and gives her the other. She places her foot on the rim, careful, testing. The enchantment’s warmth brushes her skin, and some small defense loosens in her face. He feels it like weather changing against his palm. 

She steps. He holds. The water climbs her calf and shin, and the room breathes with the first real sound of relief. He remains where he is: the point of balance, the used and useful hand she can lean on until the heat takes over the work. 

He stays at the edge of the tub until her breathing changes. 

It's subtle — so subtle most people would miss it. Even at rest, there is tension in the way she holds herself, like a bow left strung too long. Heat loosens that. Not all at once, not dramatically. It simply steals the fight from her muscles one careful thread at a time. 

Steam gathers in the corners of the room. It beads on his forearms where his sleeves are rolled, dampens the loose hair at his temples. The enchanted ring around the tub hums low and steady, content with its task. Outside, the summer evening presses against the window with the bright insistence of living things. 

Lilli sinks another inch, shoulders easing down into the water, and this time the exhale that leaves her is honest. She tilts her head back and closes her eyes for a moment, letting heat lap at her collarbones. Her mouth softens, the line of her jaw unclenching like she has forgotten she was holding it. 

“Better?” he asks, because it is safer than asking anything else. 

A pause. Then, with the faintest reluctance, she nods. “Annoyingly.” 

He huffs. “Good.” 

She opens one eye and looks at him like she is seeing through the shield he is pretending is his face. “You’re going to stand there the whole time, aren’t you?” 

He doesn’t dignify that with an answer. He does, however, shift his weight and lean his hip against the counter, arms crossing — an imitation of casualness. He's never been good at looking like someone who belongs in a domestic space. 

Lilli watches him for another heartbeat, then lets her gaze drift to the fogging mirror and the candlelight turned soft by steam. She moves again, smaller this time, not the careful, pained increments from earlier, but a slow slide into comfort. The water ripples against copper with a pleasant, hollow sound. 

“You should sit,” she says. 

“I'm fine,” he replies automatically. 

She makes an unimpressed noise. “That’s my line.” 

“It's a foolish line.” 

“Still mine.” 

He takes the same stool she had sat on, brings it closer, and sits. The heat of the room wraps around them. The quiet does, too — not the brittle silence of Apocrypha, but the living kind. The kind that holds without demanding. 

Lilli’s fingers drift through the water lazily, tracing circles she doesn’t need. Her wet hand taps once against the rim, droplets falling lazily. Miraak’s gaze tracks the movement without permission. 

“You carried four buckets,” she says, voice mild. “If you wanted to impress me, you could have just taken your shirt off like a normal person.” 

His eyes flick up. “Is that what impresses you nowadays?” 

“Only if it's you.” Her mouth quirks. “But mostly I enjoy watching you pretend you’re above the mundane.” 

He snorts. “This is not mundane. This is survival.” 

“Of what.” 

He looks at her, dry. “You.” 

She laughs, quietly. It is warmer than the steam. 

He tells himself he is satisfied by that. That he has succeeded in his goal: warmth, relief, quiet. That he is simply watching the evidence of heat doing what heat does to strained flesh. 

But his mind does not stay where he orders it. 

It drifts, despite him — back to green light and torn air, to the sensation of being dragged through himself. Back to the knot that has no right to exist, because no one should be able to hold a soul the way she held his. Back to the fact of her body’s quiet rebellion today: the pauses, the careful movements, the missing wrapping beneath her clothes. 

A debt. A cost. A— 

“You can stop that,” she says, softer. 

Miraak stills. 

He meets her gaze. Water beads on her lashes; steam has flushed her cheeks. The heat has made her look almost gentle, like a version of herself the world rarely earns. Her eyes are sharp anyway. 

“Stop what?” he asks, because he cannot pretend he doesn’t know. 

She lifts one wet hand and makes a vague, circling gesture near her temple. “That. The spiraling. It’s loud. It doesn't suit you at all.” Her fingers drip as she lets her hand fall back into the water. “Much rather you feel grateful, or annoyed, or smug. Whatever you like.” 

He holds her gaze, and the thing in his chest twists like a hooked fish. He does not know how to put the truth into language that will not turn it into a weapon. 

She watches him try. Her expression softens — not into mercy, exactly, but into something like understanding. “I chose to bring you back,” she says, and there is iron under the warmth. “And would do it again. Do not make my chosen pain about you.” 

The words land cleanly. Not a comfort. A boundary. 

Miraak’s jaw tightens. He hates being corrected. He hates being told what to do. 

He hates that she is right. 

He leans forward, elbows braced on his knees, and lets the steam blur the room around them until it is just her and the water and his own hands clenched together. 

“I am not making it about me,” he says, and even to his own ears it sounds like a lie. 

Lilli lifts an eyebrow. 

He exhales through his nose, slow. Tries again. “I am…,” he begins, and the word catches. He forces it through. “I am aware.” 

“Mm,” she says, unimpressed. “Try again.” 

There is something infuriatingly intimate about being coached like this. Miraak’s gaze drops to the waterline at her collarbone, to the small rise of her breath. He makes himself look back up. 

“I am grateful,” he says at last, the syllables tasting wrong in his mouth. “And I am—” He stops. He refuses the easier word. He chooses the truer one. “—angry.” 

Her brow raises. “At me?” 

“At the world,” he says, and there is more heat in it than the bath. “At the rules that demanded it. At whatever law decided you would pay and I would be the one… standing here.” 

Lilli studies him. The water laps once against the copper as she shifts, and he sees the moment her shoulders tighten — then ease again, deliberately. Her arms slip from the water, carefully folding over the lid of the tub, and her chin resting agaisnt them as she looks at him. “You’re allowed,” she says, quieter, “to be angry. Fits you far better than guilt.” 

“And you are allowed,” he returns, because if she can set a boundary, so can he, “to rest.” 

She makes a face. “I am resting.” 

“You are negotiating constantly,” he corrects. 

A small smile pulls at her mouth despite herself. “Fine,” she says, as if granting him permission. She moves back into the water, sinking a little deeper, letting the heat take her weight. Her eyelids lower. “I’ll rest.” 

Miraak watches her for a long moment, the candlelight wobbling in the steam, the enchantment humming its steady, low song. He does not stop being aware. He doesn't exactly stop being guilty. But he does, finally, stop fighting her boundary hard enough that it cuts her again. 

And when her breathing evens out — when the line between her brows smooths, when her fingers go slack in the water — he allows himself the smallest, most selfish thought, tucked where even she cannot pry it out of him: 

If she would do it again, then so would he. 

Not the resurrection. Not the violence of being dragged back. The care. The tending. The quiet insistence that she not endure alone. He stays, and lets the steam blur the world gentle for a while. 

He watches as the minutes go by. A comfortable quiet between them. Her eyes stay close; she would look asleep if not for the small movement of her hand through the water, because even in rest, she refuses to stay truly still.  

But the water does its work. 

Not perfectly. Nothing does, not when the strain runs deeper than muscle. But it softens the edges. It steals some of the sharpness from her posture and returns it to her eyes, which is — Miraak has learned — an improvement in every direction. 

When her face relaxes, when pain turns to fatigue, when the steam begins to thin and the candle stutters low, he stands. “Time,” he says. 

Lilli opens one eye, lashes dark with damp. “You sound like a jailer.” 

“I am,” he replies. “Get out.” 

She huffs, but there is no real bite in it. She shifts, slow, and the water sloshes gently against copper. The movement costs her more than she wants to admit; he sees it in the brief pause, the way her fingers flex against the rim as if rehearsing balance. The skin emerges flushed, beaded with water that catches the light and slides down in bright tracks. The room, heavy with heat, feels suddenly too small. 

Miraak steps closer without thinking. 

“I can—” she begins, then stops. 

He says nothing, letting her try until she gives in or he has no other choice. 

Her mouth tightens as she braces to stand, her shoulders tense like a warning. This is the moment that always reveals the lie. Sinking into heat is easy. Rising out of it is where pain waits with its teeth bared. 

She plants her feet on the tub’s bottom and pushes up. 

It’s not a dramatic stumble. It’s a tiny betrayal — knees that don’t straighten cleanly, a hip that catches, the slight shiver that runs through her as the cooler air bites damp skin. The steam clings to her, reluctant to let go, but it can’t disguise the way her breath catches hard at the top of the movement. 

Miraak’s hand is already there. 

Not gripping. Not claiming. Just bracing — firm at her forearm, then sliding to the side of her ribcage when her balance tips. His thumb spreads unconsciously, measuring the tremor beneath her skin. 

She feels it. She always feels it. Her gaze flicks to his hand, then up to his face, expression sharpened by pride even as her body asks for help. 

He keeps his eyes steady. Makes himself look bored. “What?” 

“Nothing,” she replies, shaking her head, and a laugh loosens something. He uses the moment to guide her forward, over the rim. He shifts her weight onto the rug like moving a heavy, delicate thing — slow, controlled, no sudden jolts. 

The first step onto the floor makes her suck in a breath through her teeth. 

Miraak’s grip tightens a fraction, not to restrain, but to anchor. “There,” he says, voice level. “Stay. Do not argue.” 

“As you wish, O tyrant.” 

He accepts the title without reaction and reaches for the warmed towel near the hearth, draping it around her shoulders. The extra heat makes her eyes flutter half-closed. 

He draws the towel down her arms and across her back with brisk efficiency, blotting water from skin that is flushed from heat. He doesn’t linger in ways that would turn this into something else. He makes each touch functional, as if he is simply restoring order to a problem. But his hands remember. They remember her body in pain; they remember her body in pleasure; they remember the shape of her and all the ways it has been used to pull him back into the world. 

Tonight, he refuses to let any of that become a demand. 

“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the stool, so he doesn't have to fight her height and so she can continue with rest. 

She starts to object, then seems to reconsider when the effort of standing proves itself. She lowers onto it with a controlled slowness, jaw tight, and he watches the micro-flinch she can’t hide when her ribs compress.  

His gaze catches as he continues helping. 

There, just beneath the line of her collarbone, a bruise in the late stages of healing — yellow at the edges, darker at the center. Another along her ribs, half-hidden where she instinctively turns away from pressure. Faint mottling around her back and hip bone. The kind of marks that happen when someone lives inside danger and refuses to let it look like it touched them. 

Some of them he recognizes. 

A pale line along her shoulder where a blade had bitten too deep on the day he insisted she learn instead of simply surviving. A thin burn at her forearm from a spell misfire he watched happen and pretended didn’t make him worry. A scar at the edge of her ribs he is the cause of. A memory of his hands on her once, too hard, in anger that had nowhere else to go and she had returned the pain. He can still see her face: not afraid, only furious, and later — later, when she’d allowed him close again — she never mentioned the mark. As if refusing to name it would erase it. 

Other scars are newer and therefore unknown to him. 

A white seam at her thigh that speaks of Skyrim’s first year. A puckered mark near her ankle — frostbite, he thinks, from a night he wasn’t there to drag her indoors or keep her warm. Burn marks that she shrugged off as dragon fights — and that was something he could understand wholly. A tiny, neat dot at her side, like an arrow’s kiss. And then an ugly one opposite of her heart, a betrayal in the form of near-fatal arrow hit. 

He doesn’t know all the stories. He never will, unless she decides he deserves it. He has learned not to demand histories he didn't earn the right to hold — much like how he never gave her all the stories that are on his skin. 

His hands keep moving, because stopping would be an admission. 

He dries her shoulders, careful around the bruising. His thumb hovers for a fraction of a breath near the rib that makes her wince — a rusty instinct to soothe that he does not trust. He shifts his grip instead, changing the angle so the towel passes without pressing. 

Lilli’s gaze flicks to his face. His expression is neutral. It's the expression of a man completing a task. It's a lie he wears well. 

He reaches for her wrist, lifts her hand to dry beneath the fingers, and sees the faint rawness at the between her thumb and finger — callus torn slightly, as if she’s been gripping a quill or stylus too hard. Even pain becomes ink with her. 

The absurd tenderness of it hits him like a punch. He swallows it. His fingers pause anyway, betraying him — just a heartbeat too long, just enough for the air between them to sharpen. 

“Miraak.” Not a warning. Not a reprimand. A name used like a tether. 

He forces his hands to move again, brisker now, as if speed can disguise thought. 

Lilli’s mouth twists, not quite a smile. “You were staring.” 

“I was assessing.” 

“Assessing what?” 

He could say damage. He could say cost. He could say the evidence of what it took to pull me back out of death. There's an almost impulse to say I’m sorry, utterly stupid and useless and unlike him.  

He smothers it and reaches for her hair. 

It is still pinned. Not a curl has escaped. He checks anyway — fingers light at the coil, confirming dryness. He has earned the right to be smug about at least one thing tonight. 

“It managed to stay up,” she murmurs. 

“I am capable,” he says. 

“Mmm.” Her eyes slide closed. “Terrifyingly.” 

He makes a sound that isn’t quite a laugh, and lets his hand fall away from the coil of her pinned hair. The room is cooling around them; the steam has thinned, leaving her more solid — warm skin, damp edges, the clean scent of soap clinging close. 

“Stay,” he says. 

The smallest smirk appears, sleepy and fond. “I'm staying.” 

He kneels in front of her anyway. 

Not like a supplicant — like he does when something delicate needs steadiness. One knee to the rug, posture controlled, hands sure. He takes the towel again and draws it down her calf with slow pressure, firm enough to warm, gentle enough not to tug anything that hurts. Damp beads at the backs of her knees. He blots them away. His hands bracket her ankle to steady her, thumbs resting just above bone as if her body is a thing worth keeping intact. 

Head tipped, Lilli watches him quietly, mouth slightly parted. The banter falls away in the face of simple attention. Her fingers loosen at the collar of his shirt and then drift down, hovering — like she’s deciding where to put her hands without breaking the spell. 

He moves to her other leg, unhurried. His palms follow the long line of muscle and tendon with the sort of care he pretends is merely competent, as if he is mapping what will keep her comfortable, what will keep her here. 

Her foot relaxes in his hand when he lifts it. He dries the arch, the instep — small, meticulous work that should not feel intimate but of course is. When his thumb strokes once along the tendon at the back of her ankle, the tiniest shiver runs through her and she exhales like she’s remembering how to let herself be held. 

Her hand lands in his hair. 

Light at first — fingertips at his crown, threading gently as if testing whether he will flinch. He doesn’t. He leans into it almost imperceptibly, accepting the touch the way he accepts her commands: without making a show of it. 

Lilli’s gaze holds on him. Something soft and intent settles over her features, the kind of look she never gives the world at large. “Miraak,” she murmurs, and this time it isn’t a tether. It’s an invitation. 

He looks up. 

Her hands come to his face with careful decisiveness, palms warm against his cheeks, thumbs brushing the line of his trimmed beard as if she’s orienting him — here, look at me, stay with me. She leans forward and kisses him. 

Once — slow, deliberate, almost testing, like she’s reminding herself she can. 

Twice — deeper, a quiet insistence that turns his stillness into something lived-in. His hands remain at her ankle and heel, anchoring her, and her hands remain at his face, anchoring him right back. 

When she pulls away, she stays close enough that her breath brushes his mouth. “A shame,” she begins softly, voice threaded with languid amusement, “that I’m in no shape.” 

Miraak’s brow lifts a fraction. “A shame.” 

Her mouth curves, eyes half-lidded. “Mm. I can think of a few things,” she says, glancing pointedly down at him where he’s kneeling, “that would be very suited to this position.” 

The silence that follows is not awkward. It’s full. 

Miraak’s gaze stays on her, steady and dark with restrained amusement. “Can you now.” 

Lilli’s smile turns wicked, but it’s lazy wickedness, softened by warmth and fatigue. “Not tonight,” she admits, and it’s said like a promise rather than a disappointment. Her thumbs stroke his cheekbones once more, gentle. “Tonight you’re allowed to be… terrifyingly capable.” 

He hums, as if considering. “How generous of you.” 

“Don’t push it,” she murmurs, and kisses him again — brief, warm, meant to shut him up. 

He lets it. 

Then he eases her foot back down to the rug with infuriating care, like setting something precious in its proper place. He rises smoothly, because staying kneeling any longer will turn her joking into something neither of them has the patience to finish properly right now. 

He reaches for the linen he set out. Loose. Soft. Nothing that requires twisting or lifting arms too high. He offers the shirt first. 

She takes it, then pauses, staring at it as if it has personally offended her. “This is yours,” she says. 

“It's clothes,” he replies. “Put it on.” 

“This will swallow me.” 

“It will not.” His gaze skims her, deliberate, and he allows the smallest edge of amusement to enter his voice. “As if you're height would allow for it.” 

She makes a noise. “I'm not that tall.” 

“You are,” he insists, because it’s a familiar argument and he enjoys it for what it is — pointless, satisfying. “Put your arm through.” 

She obeys too quickly and immediately regrets it. The movement pulls at her chest, and her face tightens before she can smooth it away. Her stubbornness flares; she tries to muscle through the second sleeve anyway. 

Miraak steps in without asking. “Stop,” he says. 

“I’m fine.” 

“You're not.” He catches the hem and guides the sleeve gently over her hand, easing the fabric so it doesn’t snag or force her shoulder to lift higher than it can. His knuckles brush her wrist, then her palm. Her fingers curl around his once, automatic. 

She looks up at him, eyes narrowed — not with anger, but with that sharp, tired awareness that she cannot pretend with him the way she does with others. “You’re overcorrecting,” she murmurs. 

He continues adjusting the shirt, smoothing it down so it doesn’t cling damply. “You are underreacting.” He reaches for the trousers next. 

This time she doesn’t fight it. She lifts one leg; he guides the linen over her calf, careful not to tug too sharply at her knee. The motion is oddly intimate — an ancient man kneeling in a steamy bath room, dressing the woman who dragged him back from death — so he treats it like a chore. He focuses on the angles. The balance. The ease of movement. 

Lilli watches him with half-lidded eyes, looking like she’s drifting somewhere between annoyance and gratitude. “Are you satisfied?” she asks lightly. “Did you win? Did you successfully domesticate me?” 

He threads her other foot through, then helps her stands, tugging the waistband up and tying. “You're still dangerous,” he says. “You are simply slightly damp.” 

She gives a small, pleased sound, as if that is the correct compliment. 

He gathers the used towels with one hand, dumping them in a basket, and extinguishes the lights with the other. The room dims; the enchantment’s hum fades as the air cools. When he turns back, she is already tapping her foot, impatience returning now that heat has dulled the worst of the edge. 

The first step is steadier. Not perfect, but better. 

He offers his hand without ceremony. She takes it, equally unceremonious. 

They move down the hall together, their pace slower than his instincts prefer. The house is quiet around them — warm wood, faint scent of soap trailing from her skin, the night beginning to press at the windows with the steady hush of summer. Somewhere outside, a cricket starts up like a tiny, relentless metronome. 

Halfway to the bedroom, she speaks again, voice low, as if not wanting to wake the air. “You can stop hovering now,” she says. 

“I am not hovering.” 

She squeezes his hand once, quick. “You are. It’s fine.” 

Miraak’s jaw tightens, and he tries to turn the truth into something palatable. “I am ensuring you do not fall,” he says. 

“And if I do?” 

He looks at her. “Then I catch you.” The words come out too immediate. Too honest. 

For a heartbeat, she simply watches him — quiet, curls still pinned up, his shirt hanging on her like a barely oversized promise. The softness in her gaze is brief, like something she refuses to let sit too long. 

Then she tugs on his hand, pulling him the last steps to their door as if the conversation is over. “Good,” she says briskly. “Because I’m not walking all the way to the bed alone like some tragic heroine.” 

He follows, because of course he does. Because the night is not finished with them just yet. 

The bedroom is cooler than the bath room. The air here carries the faint scent of linen and old paper and the clean, smoky warmth of the hearth dying down. Moonlight peaks through the window in pale bars, turning the edges of furniture silver. The house is quieter at night, as if even the beams know to hold still. 

Lilliandra pauses on the threshold like she’s bracing for something. Just the small, private moment where she measures her body against the distance to the bed and decides what it will cost. 

Miraak waits; he does not tell her to hurry. He does not tell her he can carry her. If he says that, she'll make it a fight out of principle. So he stands, hand loose at his side, and pretends he is merely looking at the way the moonlight falls across the floorboards. 

She takes three steps in and exhales, annoyed at herself. 

“Don’t,” she mutters, preemptively. 

He arches a brow. “Don’t what.” 

She glares over her shoulder. “Don’t offer. Don’t look like you’re about to offer. You’re unbearable.” 

He lets his mouth tilt, the smallest hint of satisfaction. “You are imagining things.” 

“I’m not.” She reaches the bed and turns with too much dignity for someone who is clearly exhausted. “Sit.” 

It's not a request. 

He follows, because she asked. Because it costs him nothing and gives her the illusion of control. He sits at the edge of the mattress, watching her. 

Lilliandra moves to the other side of the bed and begins to undo her hair. She slowly, carefully, works the pins free one by one, sliding them out with careful fingers. A few curls spring loose immediately, rebellious. She swears under her breath and pushes them back, then gives up and lets them fall. Damp steam has softened them; they tumble around her shoulders in thick waves. 

She doesn’t look at him while she does it. When the last pin clinks into the dish on the nightstand, she stands still for a heartbeat, as if listening to her own body. 

Then she turns and climbs onto the mattress. 

The movement is deliberate, the kind that tries to disguise effort as grace. One knee, then the other, shifting weight in small increments so her ribs don’t protest too sharply. She makes it to the center of the bed and settles on her side with a controlled exhale. 

Miraak watches the strain she refuses to admit. He does not comment. 

Lilli, however, does not leave him a choice. She reaches out without warning and catches his wrist. Not hard. Not desperate. Just sure. An impatient, familiar claim: here, mine. “Come here,” she says. It is plain as any order he ever gave. It hits him in the chest anyway. 

“I am here,” he replies, because he is stupid and stubborn and cannot let her win too easily. 

She tightens her grip and tugs, trying to drag him off balance. Miraak lets it happen because she shouldn’t have to pull hard. He shifts onto the bed beside her, the mattress dipping under his weight, and she immediately scoots closer until her knees press against his thigh. 

Then closer. 

She wedges herself into the space between his body and the cool sheets like she has done a thousand times, like there is no question of where she belongs. Her head finds his shoulder. Her arm slides across his waist. Her breath warms the skin at the base of his throat. 

Miraak’s body goes still on instinct. For a moment he is back in places where touch was a warning. Where closeness meant a knife. Where the only time someone pressed into him was to push him down. Then she sighs — long, content, half-muffled against him — and the tension has nowhere to go but away. 

She is warm from the bath, skin still faintly scented of soap and steam. The linen shirt — his shirt — hangs loose on her, the collar slightly askew where the fabric drapes. It should look absurd. It looks… right. Like evidence of something domestic he never expected to possess. 

Lilli’s fingers curl into the cloth at his side, gathering it as if she’s anchoring herself. Her toes slide against his calf, seeking heat even though the night is mild. 

Miraak exhales slowly and lifts his arm. 

He does not hesitate. Not anymore. 

He folds her in with a measured care that pretends to be casual and is anything but. His hand settles at her upper back first, then slides down, palm spanning her ribs lightly — as if testing whether they’ll flinch. Her body tenses a fraction at the pressure, then eases when he adjusts, placing his hand more thoughtfully, avoiding a tender spot. 

“Better,” he murmurs, not a question. A confirmation. 

She makes a small sound of agreement, and it's so soft it could almost be sleep. 

For a long moment they lie like that in the hush. The hearth ticks faintly. Outside, the night insects continue their relentless chorus. The window frame creaks once, settling. Their breathing begins to sync the way it always does when she finally stops fighting rest. 

Lilli shifts, nudging her forehead under his jaw. Golden curls brush his skin, cool at first and then warming. Her mouth is near his throat when she speaks again, voice quiet enough that it feels like a secret. “You don’t have to hold yourself like that,” she says. 

He stiffens without meaning to, then forces himself to loosen. “Like what.” 

“Like you’re expecting something to try and take me away the moment I close my eyes.” Her fingers flex once in his shirt. “I’m still here.” 

He doesn’t answer right away. 

Because he remembers how easily the world did try to take her. How thin the line was between here and gone. How the cost of pulling him back had rippled through her body for days after, leaving bruises no one else could see. 

He presses his cheek lightly to the top of her head instead. 

Her sigh deepens. She shifts again until her leg drapes over his, possessive and unthinking. 

Miraak’s hand tightens at her back — barely. A promise, made with touch because words are clumsy and dangerous. 

She settles. The last of the day drains out of her in slow increments. 

And when her grip on his shirt loosens, when her breathing turns heavy and even, she gives him one final, sleepy tug as if to ensure he won’t attempt to stand and resume being a statue. 

He stays. 

Not because he owes her. 

Not because he is repaying a debt that can never be repaid. 

Because she reached for him. 

Because she asked. 

Because in this house — in this insufferably pretty summer, in this quiet bed, in the warmth she insisted was not about him — he belongs to her in the simplest way, and she belongs to him. 

The thought is both a comfort and a blade. 

He lets it be both, and holds her anyway.