Unedited, but readable. :))

Uthgerd fingered the dented metal of her kneecap that got there a week before now. It was one of the first times she'd been scared, simply because she was with another person. She could weather anything. But with someone else...she was just afraid of the collateral damage. And now, knowing this she made sure no hand would slip, no foot fall on unstable ground.

Yet, she had let herself slip against her own friend instead of protecting her. The girl was half-dead because of her - and Uthgerd knew she was saying half just to be optimistic. The woman was going to die, and didn't have much time left, and Uthgerd couldn't even bring hersef to go and visit from the hate that would erupt - what else spewed outta that Elven mouth that day, when she raised her Dovah fists at Uthgerd? Uthgerd caressed the burnt piece of hair she recieved that day, too, and winced at accidentally touching the burn across her face, which was barely noticeable but hurt like you-know-what.

She straightened her butt against her creaking bones as she stood, and placed her hands on her hips, bending back slightly. Doing so, she was able to see the Companion's hideout Jorrvaskr behind her, and she snarled, straightening up to continue down the road that wasn't reminding her of child abuse.

Not that that was her darkest day, but it's one she wished she could wipe off her slate. And not to mention the Companions never said one thing about whether she could come back, afterwards. If she was accepted, they definitely didn't want her. "The Nines," she said in bliss at that stretch her bones received.

The bodies of Whiterun seemed hostile to her - if anyone'd know what she did, almost kill the Dovahkiin, her head could be expected to be nailed into the parchment of someone's bounty list. Uthgerd wasn't trying to get into this trouble. "Ahhh, by Talos, why in the world am I going through this?" she mumbled, seething glances into other's eyes, making sure they had nothing to say visually about her, because people's eyes said much in Whiterun, since they'd all known each other so well. "Please, Talos, just rain heavenly lightning down on me now..." she let the home of the Battleborns skittle across her vision before walking backwards and staring. "Shoot me, now."

She dragged a hand across her chest as if she was sheathing a throw over herself like she'd usually do when not wearing armor, a memory she often acted on from when she used to wear clothes and not fight on a regular basis, and punched on the door.

It opened, with a Olfrid Battle-born coming to greet her with a blonde, rough hand. "Uthgerd. Me as a Battleborn and the rest of us greet you well. I think even Idolaf wants to have another runner-up," he winked, and Idolaf's, the man of a similar blonde shade of hair's, raising a tankard in the background caught Uthgerd's eye. She shuddered, and Olfrid caught her staggering body by the elbow, asking if she was alright.

"Yeah...just don't want to see another drink...for a really long time," she now walked in, ushering him off her, with every step weighing her down from her hefty armor that just started taking its toll on her, and meanwhile the familiarity of the place burned her nostrils. Particularly, a part of this sickness she acquired from coming in here is, added onto the dizziness, that the ale made her stomach churn like curdling milk, and so she stepped out again. "I...uh, 'll come back later," Uthgerd announced to his disappointed face, while biting her lip at the communion she really needed at such a lonely part in her life and yet was about to neglect.

"I've, uh, never seen you this shaken-up," Olfrid said, emerging from his teeter in the doorway and closing the door behind him, now that he was outside. Uthged raised her brows, matter-of-factly at his announcement, one she'd rather he didn't emitt out like that. She didn't like people to admit her weaknesses, especially when they caught her off-guard. Desraim and her had that a lot in common.

"Now that you're out here alone with me, I can talk to you," she folded her arms, sighed, then explained, "I've never done this in my life."

He nodded, bobbing a drink in her direction, but yanked it back. "Humph. Yeah, I forgot. So what's this that got you beat for a drink?"

She smiled from his absent-mindedness, trailing her eyes along the graying blonde sideburns she hand't seen in a long time as she spoke. "Yeah," she said, coming back to the topic at hand, "So what I meant was: this was just like when I tried out for the Companions - I've never seen myself like that. I try to keep it to a fist fight, but ask you about about being up to one, to be genial about it, because I guess if you're calling for one, then you're gonna get what I think you're wanting. And you just have no hope."

"Other than the confusing jabber you just said, 're you actually talking in the second person for a reason?" He placed a hand on the doorpost, leaning in muse, and sipped his cup.

Uthgerd laughed hearty. "You'v' been reading those books, hm? Yeah, I talk first person, second, third, whatever gets my point across. But what I me'n is that I did that to somebody today. And I ain't never gonna get it back."

"Get what?" he asked, staring at her face, and about to touch it, with an intently curious look on his own. She swatted his hand away first, and grabbed it roughly.

"Yeah. I got that from the fight. It's sensitive. But you know I gave her?" She let his hand go.

"- Wha'?" he said, face construed in confusion.

"I got 'er this," she took out her knife, and spun the handle between her thumb and index, like a top. She hmphed at the rust that had started to form on it, and took out a cloth from her pocket and started to wipe the knife. On second thought, she responded, "I'm gonna need to sharpen this later," before she started to open the door again.

The air was warm and stinky with the sweat of men, something her adrenaline did not make her notice, before.

This sickness of hers, nerves, must have had rushed from her, she imagined, and into the floor of the walkway outside, or something. She was feeling better, enough to high five some of the big guys in there, and shoulder-bump the misses. They said how much they missed her - (and Desraim) - and how they wanted them to come back sometime - and of course, talk snottily to the Graymanes whenever the couple - (Desraim and her) - saw those traitors, and Uthgerd wanted so badly to gloat in their confidence of these iconic travellers (she and Desraim), however, couldn't without feeling off. Couldn't even sit in here without feeling off, but the sickness had just reverted back to her stomach again and did not overtake her whole body, like before, now. She subsequently sat down next to Idolaf, the idiot, midst all the storytelling instead of near Olfrid who she knew knew she was on to something and so therefore she couldn't sit next to without being reminded of that conversation that heightened his suspicions of what was going on with her (that they just had). It was a teaser of her situation. For now, it was good getting up with the gang again, on recent things. But maybe the story she told him would marinate in his mind, and give him some reasoning before he decides to do anything stupid.

The idiot Idolaf wanted to drink her to her embarrassment, but it always happened the other way around, and since round three he's always been desiring more, the competitive failure. She'd give him the best drinking time of his life, alright, after she spikes his Nordic mead. Then he'll have the best intoxication of his life, and will never want to get drunk again, she chuckled at the realization of how great that would be. But she could digress that being an option: because he can drink like a horse. "I admit (should I now say we or I, Uthgerd thought, have been overdue? or I can just say...) ...it's been an overdue travel on many different things, to many different things, for many different things..." she finally decided on saying to the 'lazed crowd in the large, crushed-pepper lobby.

"Hey, where is she, then? She's not the type I'd think would miss out on a conversation," Idolaf and his bulky voice then boomed at the not-present-girl's convivial reputation, his bearded, yellow grin topping it all off in something that Desraim would call 'handsome', but Uthgerd just despised as arrogant. He smiled at everything he thought he was right at or clever at asking, however this subject wasn't a clever moment to be asking about, now. And in consequence, the only time she did like him when he was sober - not just unalcoholically, but when his face was stuck too far up his butt in sadness to care about a darn thing - then he was fun to talk to.

Right after his smart remark, but really it was curious one, however it annoyed Uthgerd to the eenth calibur because she really didn't want to talk about it, and he also knew something was up and therefore asked and so was considerably being smart about it, actually, when she thought about it, Olfrid cut in, knowing the desires of everyone to know this piece of information that she didn't want to disclose. "I'd like to talk to you all about that later, but let Uthgerd have her peace, and please, don't disturb us until I say it's alright," Olfrid said, his eyes boring holes into her and meanwhile everyone groaned and got up to leave. "I am not happy, whatever this news is you're trying to bring. And I think I know," he paused, as the room was emptier than she'd ever seen it and he was looking around, "what it is...." He tightened his knuckles against the armrest of the clan's deer hide couch, complete with tufts of white hair trimming its edges, which he was meshing his fingers into now.

"I - I didn't mean to do it," she said, after they'd all left, and she didn't allow him time to cut her off, either. "I just...I can't..." Something wet dripped on her face, and she wiped them off angrily with her gauntlet, with a grunt, scraping her brow accidentally, those tears. Uthgerd tensed, her triceps peering beneath her mail, under her shoulder pads. As she sat, she shuffled her position in the well-worn couch, biting on her jaw.

"You did...what to her?!" Olfrid said, that daddy-like protection coming off of him like the foul odor of some of the deer that have just lain there that she and Desraim have been killed for days ago for food or target practice.

"I didn't do anything. She was gonna kill me!" Uthgerd said, her voice up a pitch now since she was being put on the slab. A moment of her fiddling with the sounds her gauntlets made when smashed together, she finally emerged from it saying, breathing with difficulty, "I had to protect myself."

Battle-born rose up, flipping the couch he had sat on - which meant in half that time he had to get up in order to do it, which Uthgerd didn't even see - and she took her protective stance of a flinch-into-battle-stance.

His dirty-blonde chin leveled up and down from the breaths he was taking, and at that moment, Uthgerd's heart made a hernia in her chest she was sure. She pounced sideways, waiting for the attack in motion instead of daring it in her still-suit.