What kind soul made the vote among the other two kind souls, yesterday (I don't know what day that was...I wrote this a little before today)? I am thankful for you all for voting. But so I know who votes, if I don't know you, please include your name down in the comments section so I may follow you and congratulate your awesomeness, and do whatever else may cross my mind when thinking of your beautiful name. Thanks for everybody for reading, too! This being my 33rd chapter, you've come a long way, and it will pay off (if you haven't felt that, yet) for you. I'm happy for all of you.

And the Greenday song I posted called "21 Guns" and this chapter just go together so well, so I added it ^^ P.S. And anybody like Ninja Gaiden? I need to play some more of that, buy my own perhaps :) ...And I didn't edit this much at all. :) I put that picture of Idolaf up there, though, with the song :)

The man sure did follow. Uthgerd's diaphragm was playing puppet with her chest, and she had no control over anything...the zone, she was there...again?

"No, I can't have this!" she yelled honestly in the hot air of the Battleborn Clan's lobby. A bunch of incoming bodies normally acted as an internal heater for the roomy house even when it was almost several degrees below outside. And the most important part about all these trivial scenic details? They actually really didn't matter. Because her head was going to be on a, hahaha. Enough: this was a too really important time to be joking.

Uthgerd could've almost hyperventilated, because her breathing didn't want to listen to her signals of "calm down" and her eyes were darting around, looking for things...if he lunged at her again, she could direct him into the fireplace. But...he was a Battle-born. She didn't want to do this, again, make someone on bad terms with her, neither the half of the population of Whiterun (as you could see, Uthgerd was exaggerating the clan members' numbers). But at least she could go to the Greymanes, if all went bad, though she also believed also they were kiss-ups. She didn't want anyone on her team that didn't know how to fight for a cause, and who only wanted to keep things the same and go against the flow, because someone had threatened the order. The flow Uthgerd felt was the Empire taking over, and the new rules being followed.

The time Uthgerd went into Markath with Desraim and the investigations were taking place for unlawful worship there, Uthgerd held a smug but complying face as she saw the interrogators pass her and Desraim because she understood the implications of such a lawbreaking action of worship of Dwremer gods, however, the government was just hard to keep up when every Tamriel inhabitant had his or her own God and didn't want to follow simple physical rules. So it wasn't wise to have so a personal right around, and better to sacrifice at least a bit of individuality for the sake of a unified empire, because the Stormcloaks don't understand that this kingdom was almost at its end. The unity of Tamriel is really only getting worse with the Stormcloaks around eating it from inside of Skyrim, and the Greymanes don't understand that, but support the Stormcloaks instead, anyway. Anyhow, if all Sovngarde breaks lose, Uthgerd was teaming up with Desraim, who was the Dragonborn. Hey, that made a lot of sense...that's the rumored place she is to go to defeat the evil dragon Alduin that will devour the world, so she should be in check if it all had happened to come here, Uthgerd chuckled inside. But not when Olfrid had begun to walk to her so slowly that she hadn't noticed he was right in front of her face.

"I'm going to ask you again," he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. What, he had got the sniffles over Desraim, too? Aw, so sweet...but that's not going to make me think you're not still going to knock my head off, you brute, thought Uthgerd, who braced herself by standing up to him with her hands at her sides, chest poked out, and head raised level to his view. She wouldn't flinch if he decided to do anything. I did that to Desraim, resist, but it didn't last very long, she reminisced, but shook the encounter out of her thoughts. Looked like she was never gonna quit fighting.

"Do you really want to know, you fat milk drinker?" Uthgerd called to him and answering his question, her tongue rolling without a brake. "I could shove this war axe up your butt so badly you won't have to ask any more questions," she reached her hilt and retracted the shiny green metal damager. Then balanced its helter-skelter weight while she was including her other hand onto its hilt.

Her breaths took so much out of her - and it was ridiculous; she was in her body, could feel every self-automated response, but felt it wasn't her actually doing it all. She felt something else had taken over her, and she was sure of it. And the axe, when she finally dragged it to the floor, was as useless as a toothpick as she looked tiredly at Olfrid, with respect, and finally a leveled sense of confidence, all the while a minor apology taking over her features. The hostility had slipped away, unapparent on her now stilling and taller countenance, and on her melting frown that pulled her eyebrows together, now. All in good timing. She gasped almost silently in surprise of what had ensued between them both so far.

"But of course, you could kick me out, first. I just came for refuge, Olfrid," she continued her thoughts to him. "And you wanted to hear the rest of the story - so here it is," she said as his expression started to lighten up, and his breath on her made her feel uncomfortable and slightly calm at the same time, his closeness healing the loneliness that had infected her today, "that me and Desraim had a relationship that went awry and she wanted to kill me the day she saw my face again. Being a Dragonborn and all, her days have been busy, but because of business I can't announce, we've been on unhealthy terms and she just broke because of it when she glimpsed me at the Mare. I was helping her up because she seemed she'd passed out from dehydration or fatigue. And now I look back and think I should've left her there. She didn't want anything to do with me, I can see, and I can take that," she rubbed her chin while Olfrid's hand tickled his knife hilt, then fell away from its engraved design.

"So you gutted her?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"Hehehe," he laughed, holding his stomach. "You're Uthgerd. Knew you well before you joined Dearaim. Eorland Gray-Mane talks about you sometimes, y'know. Ever since that incident -"

"Yeah, that incident. That's what happened, whatever happened during the incident happened then with her, and it almost did now. I'm not comfortable with that Greymane....um, Battle-born, sorry. Y'know, Eorland just confused me there. So," she said getting back to topic, "please stop doing things to make me angry. I can't control it."

"But you just did, didn't you? It was impressive, a swing of a warhammer, gracefully into its sling as gracefully out. It was almost like a show. You weren't going to try to...cut me in half, were you? Hahaha!"

Uthgerd blushed, and placed her hands on either side of her face from its color's embarrassing visibility. "Greymane - I mean, Battleborn -"

"Now stop getting me mixed up with those Greymanes!" Olfrid said, ataching his hands to her shoulders, for a point. "'Fore I get like you. Help me tidy up and make it look like nothing happened."

"But something did happen," Uthgerd stressed under his hands that were shaking her as he talked. The feeling of them was quite unnerving, when at first she was unsure what those hands of his might do. His look he now regarded her with brought that feeling in a stronger wave, and his words made it worse, emphasizing why he chose to look at her that way:

"Nothing. Now...if you want this house to stay together, and our relationships with you and others to be okay, just know I got so happy to hear the news of Desraim and you that I flipped over ma' couch. Capisce?"

She regarded the abused couch on the streaked sabre-cat carpet in essence of his words. "What did you get excited about?"

"Your newfound bounty of a hundred septims."

"Capisco."

After the sarcastic twinge of her voice faded, they all crowded back in upon the boom of his, and Idolaf swaggered in, too, and she said swaggered because it did seem like he was drunk. His unsteady, jerky movements, to keep himself from falling over (which she honestly admitted didn't sound anything like 'swagger') made Uthgerd annoyed that he couldn't hold his liquor. Oh, well. She smiled, rolling her shoulder and placing a hand on the area where Olfrid just had grabbed her. The deer couch stared back at her with its softness, warm appearance, now that it was settled back up, meanwhile, even though it didn't have eyes, and was the only witness other than Greym - Battle-born she meant - to what importance had just transpired inside the home behind its heavy inner, double doors of an oak tree's flesh. Uthgerd slid off her shoulder pads and gauntlets in a lightening attempt in both physicality and emotion, eyeing Olfrid suspiciously as he went to sipping his drink again and Idolaf, the other Battle-born, had staggered to Olfrid and grabbed his drink, playfully, but Olfrid was growling in annoyance and snatched it right back, instead.

Uthgerd stared in the cup of fermented grapes that sat in front of her nose on the table she stood over. Never want to see mead again...but most importantly, no alcohol of any form, not even wine...ugh. Could she give up this weird taste in sobriety, soon, after the release of nerves? She was still shaken-up after the fight which some tankard-grippers had swooned over, and the mead had stung her nostrils when she was getting her face beat to a pulp by Desraim - luckily, Desraim wasn't wearing anything on her fists, but her hands were still hard like the Dwarven armor she wore, a 'tough' synonym, in other words, since according to Desraim's bragging, the metal couldn't be melted down - and so this is why she was probably sick walking into the Battle-born's place in the first place: Battle 'born' men that were Nords were to have mead as no exception, and Uthgerd's body probably knew that before Uthgerd even knew alcohol was the new sin for her remembering and getting dragged back into a place of eternal consequence. She yawned in wondering what she can do here for how long, and how long it was before they would know her secret.

If he were helping her protect her secret, she he knew that he should be keeping them in the clan house, because if any of them gets to the Mare, like the Battle-borns surely do, they'll find out really quickly what happened. Dang, Uthgerd, she swallowed. What are you going to do? Maybe run, run to the nearest big city where you'll get lost and no one will find you. But before that, you've got to say hi to Desraim. Too bad I don't have a hundred septims in actuality, I could bribe basically the whole Mare to say nothing, or at least its owner to procure the information through her forcing her customers to speak of none of that which I bribed her to keep secret, and I would not have to bribe anyone else but her. What the heck, she closed her eyes, letting go for today, though. Olfrid forgave her. Olfrid would explain. Olfrid, Olfrid...

Her eyes closed shut and their laughs made her feel genial and warm inside, like she was at home again with a family, a guild.

That actually accepted her, and her radical behavior. Maybe she wasn't all that bad a monster: but she was one of the lesser of the evils paired with Desraim, and Uthgerd felt that if it wasn't that bad, she'd rather have it that way.