Elder Scroll series A New Dawn Rising

**This is a follow-up to my Trapped in the Clutches of Madness. I don't see myself doing much more with this, mostly because they are a scene and story that just coalesced in my head. This one in particular is just a little bit of fluff.**

A hard, insistent rapping pulled Valatta out of her hibernation-deep sleep. She glared sharpened bolts at the door hard enough the person on the other side might have actually felt the prick. Not enough, apparently, because they rapped again.

The woman grumbled on her next breath and shifted to try and extricate herself from the bed without waking her partner. The maneuver involved an overly complicated wiggling free of tangled limbs, a careful slide from beneath the covers without allowing a sweep of cold air to invade her partner's rest, all in the barely twenty inches of room she had between him and the wall. And finally a half drowsy clamber over his prone form, almost missing her last knee position and the opportunity to sprawl flat on the ground like a newborn.

'_Oh, that had better be Mehrunes Dagon back for a rematch or someone with a hot jug of coffee,'_ she hissed in her mind. _'Anyone else is getting a boot so far up their ass, they'll taste what I stepped in yesterday.'_

The room was as cold as a wedge this early with the building being this close to the water, and Valatta had already realized she was naked. So she jerked around and grabbed the first thing that came to her hand in order to answer the damned door without freezing or flashing anybody.

"What?" she said, with venom when the guy was neither the Daedric Prince of Destruction, nor bore a steaming anything. In fact, it was one of the Blades. That Baurus fella, the one who was trying to replace Martin's shadow, still in that Blades armor from yesterday.

The instant she opened the door and he saw her face, the man looked relieved beyond measure. "Thank the Nine, we thought we'd lost you! The Temple was empty by the time we arrived. We thought something had happened to you and we've been searching all night. Are you alright? What happened to—?" He stopped short like he'd unexpectedly hit a wall. Kinda had that same face, too.

"What?!" Valatta demanded. At this hour, she couldn't make sense of a word that was coming out of his mouth. And didn't she deserve to sleep in, even once? She had just saved the whole damned province! Was a few hours shut-eye after the fact too much to ask?

The young Blade cleared his throat and began again, "We were looking for… I thought—I mean, we thought… But I suppose I don't need to ask the rest now…do I?"

Valatta squinted at him angrily, trying to get the gears in her head to lose the grit of sleep and start turning properly. Baurus was relieved, but she couldn't quite figure through as to why. Then his eyes flicked down to her person meaningfully. She had to squint a couple of seconds more before she looked down to try and see what he meant. The robe she was holding around her very naked person was stained and a little torn here and there from the mad rush across the city yesterday in the midst of the battle. But that didn't disguise the purple velvet or the white fur trim or the fact that it was too big for her. Damn, this wasn't hers.

"Is he in there with you?" Baurus ventured hopefully.

Valatta looked up as her morning mind finally got a little traction. "Yeah."

"Is he alright?" The guy sounded worried again.

The woman's face cracked open with a yawn. "Ye-_aaaaaaauuuh_. What do you want?"

Baurus sighed like he'd been holding his breath. "You both disappeared after. We thought you might have… But you're alright. You're both alright, right?"

Valatta grimaced and pinched the bridge of her nose hard, just to try and encourage some blood flow to her brain. It was way too early for this. "Stop, stop, stop," she snapped. Small thoughts. "Let me get this straight. You were looking for me and Martin?"

"Yes, we were all—"

"Great. You found us. Now go away. We're sleeping." And she slammed the door right in his face. Way, way, waaaaay too early for drama. Life and death situations were yesterday. Today was sleep. No exceptions.

Valatta turned around and discovered she was no longer the only one awake in her little Waterfront shack. Martin's eyes were at half mast, with a contented smile brushed across his face. "Who was it?" he asked.

"Baurus. Worried," she remarked, yawning again.

Martin spoke with a little more sympathy than she had, "Well, I suppose we did just disappear after the battle."

"Yeah, I'm sure they were all out of their minds. Move over." She was not gonna play acrobat again if he was awake enough to make room for her on this side.

Martin chuckled and squirmed toward the wall. Valatta dropped her borrowed robe to the floor and climbed in with him, wrapping herself around the man in an effort to get back the comfy warm pocket she'd lost by answering the door. Martin himself draped an arm around her and took to running his hand up and down her back, the rhythm soothing any remaining irritation from Baurus's appearance.

She'd just about dozed off again when he said, "You know, we should probably get back to them. Duty and responsibility and all that."

Valatta said flatly, "Not yet." She couldn't muster the strength it took to lift her head from its nice resting place on his pectoral. But she did get her hand airborne and poked it into his chest, "We saved the world. I get you as my pillow. They can have you back when I'm done."

His laughter shook her head a little and Valatta couldn't help but smile with him. "You save all of Tamriel and that is all you want."

"I'm a woman of simple tastes," she said, not moving an inch.

"You're probably going to get a title out of all this," he remarked. "A place in court. A fancy sword and armor."

"Put 'em with the others. I've named my boon and I'm sticking with it," Valatta said, snuggling more firmly into where she'd pressed herself against him. He hugged her tighter and laughed again. And when it tapered off, the quiet turned the room back into a proper refuge, buffering them from everything beyond the walls.

Outside, the capital was probably scrambling with damage control and cleanup. The citizens were trying to figure out what in Oblivion had happened the day before, while every Blade and soldier and politician within the stone walls clambered to account for the vanished Emperor and his Champion. Let them. Maybe she should have felt guilty worrying all those folks so much. But…nope. The two of them had done enough for the Empire in the last several months. Nothing but doing this and that to stave off the end of the world before it was too late. They were owed today. And even if they weren't, she was taking it anyway.

"Valatta?"

The woman groaned as her return to sleep was detoured…again. "_Whaaaaat_?"

"Marry me."

It took a second for those two words to work their way to her brain. But when they did, her eyes snapped wide open. "What?"

Martin leaned nearer, kissed her forehead, and repeated, "Marry me."

She scrambled up to lean her arms on his chest and get a look at his face. "Are you trying to be funny? 'Cause that's not funny."

The man smiled, but not out of humor. "I'm not joking. Marry me."

Valatta stared at him, the wheels in her head catching sporadically as she processed what he was saying. "Mm-mm," she insisted, shaking her head with wide eyes. "Bad idea. Never get approval. Not a chance anyone would go for that."

"Why not?" he asked, completely unperturbed by her reservations. "You're a hero. You've done more for Tamriel than anyone else in a thousand years. How could anyone refuse?"

"Plenty of reasons," she snapped. She counted them out against his chest, "Low born. No social status, at all. I've got the social graces of a small minotaur. The temper of an angry spriggan. Have I mentioned I've got no name?"

Martin took the hand she'd been stabbing at his chest and held it tight. "And I was raised a farmer's son, became a mage, turned to Daedra worship and would have spent the rest of my life a priest if not for those assassinations. I don't know anything more about being noble born than you do. We could work it out together. And if you're worried about the name," he lifted her hand and kissed it, "you can have mine."

Valatta had stood firm in the face of assassin cultists, fanatic Daedra worshipers, two Daedric Princes. But she was panicking now. "No! I'm…I'm not Empress material. You have to marry a lady or a noblewoman or a—"

"Valatta," he said firmly. Her mouth closed and she looked at Martin like a deer in the lamplight. "I went into a Daedric realm to get you back. What makes you think I won't face down the Elder Council to marry you?" She didn't have an answer for him on that. "You are a hero of the Empire. You've faced impossible odds in order to save Tamriel and me. You rallied the people in the worst of times. What makes you think they wouldn't follow you now?" He massaged the hand he held. "Valatta, I couldn't have done this without you. You are my strength. And I know I'm going to need you now more than ever."

"And if I start a war with my table manners? What then? This isn't just the Blades or Ocata, we're talking about. I'll have to deal with…diplomats and nobles. Politicians!"

She was serious, but Martin just grinned. "We'll figure it out. And I think the Empire could use a firm hand right now, anyway. Jauffre made it pretty clear the alliances were in a bad way. And who is going to start a war with the woman who's defeated a Daedric Prince?"

"Two," she corrected him on impulse.

"Exactly." Martin raised her hand to his lips again. "Valatta, I love you. You talked about boons for saving the Empire. Well, here's mine: if I'm going to be Emperor, I want you at my side. I will marry no one but you."

Valatta stared at him. She was his strength? He seemed pretty resolute on his own right now. She sat all the way up and curled her knees to her chest, jamming her head against them. "This is gonna turn out really bad. Really, really bad."

Martin followed her to a sitting position, keeping the blanket folded over his own bare body, "Am I to take it that you don't want to marry me?"

"It's not that!" she leapt to say. The triumphant smile on his face made her have to turn away or else cry. "I'm going to ruin you. I'm not good enough for something like this. For someone like you."

"Someone like me? Valatta, I couldn't do better than you." Martin reached for her waist and maneuvered her around to face him. "Do you want to marry me? If the Empire and the throne had nothing to do with it, would you marry me?"

"Yes, but—"

"But nothing." He kissed her quickly to keep her from protesting. "We'll figure the rest of it out. We've done it so far. Compared to fighting Dagon, running the Empire will be easy."

Valatta stared at Martin who looked stronger than she felt, while she was fighting the tears that were welling up in her eyes. Then she threw her arms around him and buried her head in his neck, choking down the sob that had bubbled up in her throat. "You think it's gonna be easy?" Valatta held on to him as if she might lose the chance at this forever. But her mouth kept trying to talk them both out of it. "That we're just gonna get married and rule the Empire and everything's gonna be just fine? That everyone's just gonna be fine with it? That they're all gonna say 'Yeah, sure. Let the last Septim marry a no-name mercenary whose also part Daedra'? You have to be some kind of idiot, Martin. You really do."

She blabbered on, lecturing him on social and political etiquette (or at least what she thought the etiquette must be), on the responsibility he had to carry on his line right, on how she couldn't possibly be what he needed. And all through the entire thing, Valatta held onto him tighter and tighter, more and more scared that what she was saying might make it through and she'd lose this chance that, deep down, she really, really wanted.

But Martin didn't move. He held on without a word, knowing perfectly well that she was venting the pressure that this proposal had created. She'd done it before, and sometimes she made very good points in the midst of it all. But apparently not this time. This time, he seemed to know she was just voicing her own self-doubt when presented with the seat of a ruler. So he held on and let her finish, willing and able to bear her through it.

Her emotionally ridden lecture at him about the behavior of an Emperor finally thinned but Valatta stayed there, viced around his neck, hiccupping on occasion but otherwise managing to keep herself quiet. By the Nine, she was furious at herself for actually crying on his shoulder like this. Even more so because Martin seemed completely fine with her doing it.

She waited until she could take two deep breaths in a row. Then told him, "When this goes south, I'm blaming you. Flat out."

"Is that a 'yes'?" Martin asked.

Valatta barely had the margin to nod with how hard she was hanging on, and the affirmative sound she attempted came out like a whimper more than anything else. But she got the point through because the man maneuvered her around onto his lap and returned her embrace just as completely.

"This was your idea, so you're gonna be the one to break it to everyone," Valatta insisted, trying to grapple something about all this back under control.

"Okay."

"And I'm not wearing a dress. You hear me? I don't care what people expect. I'm not doing it!"

"Of course."

"And…" Valatta hesitated, then slowly released her grip so she could draw back just enough to look him directly in those cloudy gray eyes. "I…I love you, Martin."

He beamed at her. "I love you, too, Valatta."

She kissed him quick before he could see the new tears forming up in her eyes. So much for being his strength.

"There is one more thing," the young Emperor said when they next had the space.

"More?" Hadn't this morning been eventful enough? She'd agreed to be Empress. The woman wasn't sure how much more news she could take.

Martin grinned, reached behind him and then over her head. The cold chill of a gold chain fell around her neck, closely followed by a heavy pendant that felt oddly warm. He'd put the Amulet of Kings around her neck. "What's this for?" Martin just kept smiling like he had a secret. Valatta's confusion turned to a glare. Then surprise. She grabbed the pendant and tugged. The chain held fast. "This isn't right. It's not supposed to—" The one time she'd tried to put the bloody thing on while in route to Chorrol after the Emperor had given it to her it had kept coming undone somehow.

Martin's smile broadened. "Only one of the Dragon Blood may wear the Amulet of Kings."

Valatta's brow furrowed, "But that doesn't explain…" She tugged at the Amulet again, trying to figure through what he was trying to get at. Was it because she'd agreed to marry him? That didn't seem to make sense.

Martin spared her the headache it would take to puzzle out his cryptic side and swept a hand over her stomach. "I'm not the last Septim anymore."

A pair of downbeats and Valatta's brow shot skyward, "But… It was just one night! I couldn't be…" Martin just kept beaming at her like he couldn't be more pleased.

The Septims and their foresight. She knew Martin knew things that he wasn't supposed to, or he saw things to come. He'd seen her before she appeared in Kvatch, had visions here or there throughout their entire journey that proved to be guidance and warnings. Even known how to summon the avatar of Akatosh to close Mundus off from Oblivion again. Given how he looked now, she wasn't going to argue that he knew she was with child. He was just too sure.

But something else occurred to her. "Is this why you want to marry me?" Valatta tried to keep herself level, and prayed that he didn't see how hurt she felt that he was just proposing out of some sense of moral duty after knocking her up—

"No," he said emphatically and hugged her close again. "But I thought it might be a good fallback if you said 'no'."

Valatta put her arms around his neck again and they held each other in a long embrace that, in one form or another, lasted all through the day. They'd have to rejoin the outside world before too long. And there would be a whole list of problems to greet them when they did. But right now, it was just the two of them. And a new dawn was rising.

**Leave a review before you go. Thanks for reading.**


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Elder Scroll series, Romance