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Aziza: Isn't this great?
Aziza: The three of us saving Skyrim?
Aziza: *points at Mara* My Almost Grandma
Aziza: *points at Minerva* And my Vamp-ma!
Mara:...Did she just...? VAMP-ma?
Minerva: Vampire Grandma. I-it's something my granddaughter's twins started. Just ignore it. Please. I beg of you.
“I would very much like to know how my daughter came to be in the company of a vampire.”
No one could ever accuse Juliana Fides of being indirect, and Minerva, in spite of everything, was slightly cowed by the command the woman’s grey eyes bore as she sat at the table, distrust evident on her features. Small wonder that she was so direct, considering she was noble-born.
“What gave it away?” she asked jokingly, then regretted it at the cool look on Juliana’s face. Jests were not the way to her good graces. Clearing her throat, Minerva sat down in front of Juliana, careful not to move too quickly. “It’s a long story.”
“I see. Well, let’s start with you becoming a vampire.”
She said the word like a curse, and Minerva understood why. Any devout follower of the Divines in their right mind would avoid being around vampires, if not kill them immediately. Still, the implication stung. “I didn’t become anything,” Minerva said, frowning at the top of the table. Inhaling to steady herself in the tide of memory she explained, “I had my son at the start of the Fourth Era, when I was still human. Gaius grew to have a talent for magic and I thought it best to bring him to Winterhold. Along the way we fell into the company of a tribe of mercenaries.
“They became as family to us. My son later married the chief’s daughter, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Gaius was seventeen and we were applying his studies in more practical ways with the tribe. I’d heard of a coven living in the pass that connects Whiterun Hold and the Rift.
“I went to deal with them on my own. I hadn’t thought there were so many and I didn’t think to bring help. I killed them all but I’d been bitten and infected. I lay there dying for three days until I was able to get up…And realized my own sword was burning me.” She let her hand fall to the shining hilt at her side, and closed her eyes against the familiar burning of her flesh.
Juliana’s eyes widened in shock. “Great Mara’s mercy...”
Minerva took her hand away, forcing healing magic over her palm. At least in this form her magic was augmented. She continued, “I went back to the tribe’s camp. Gaius had been so terrified…The tribe was wary, but I earned their trust again by exercising control of my thirst.”
The woman nodded in understanding, brow knotted with sympathy. “And so with no cure, you lived on.”
Minerva felt a long-familiar lump rise in her throat at every painful memory. Every feeling of loneliness. “…At first I thought to use the time I’d been given to find Mara, but…I searched and began to fear she was lost forever. I had to think about Gaius…” A fresh wave of pain made her bow her head. “He died in my arms after a very long, wonderful life. More than I could ever have hoped for him. He was an old, withered man but all I could feel in my arms was the tiny babe the midwife handed me. One right after the other, all of my children gone, and now only Aziza and her mother are left.”
Aziza, who was doing everything she could to escape the chains placed on her since birth. Who rankled underneath Minerva’s gaze. Aziza, a dragon yearning for freedom.
“You’ve been protecting them all this time,” Juliana concluded in soft tones.
Minerva nodded, suddenly exhausted by the reality of her years. Still, she looked up at Juliana and smiled at her. “And now I’ve finally found Mara again. I don’t know if I’ll ever be human again, Lady Juliana, but I do know that I would give my life for her and my children.”
The house was in a bit of a confusion when Minerva entered. Of course it would be if a woman long thought to have been lost had suddenly appeared. Looking into her eyes, Minerva suddenly understood.
She kept her distance, the woman’s stoic façade betrayed by the slightest shake of her limbs that Minerva was able to notice. Her heartbeat quickened, pumping blood across her body in a way that had Minerva’s throat drying within seconds. Easily manageable, but Minerva felt more horror at herself for such an instinctual reaction. No matter what, she would never hurt this woman.
Lydia had explained that the woman claimed to be Mara’s mother, and Minerva only had to look at the woman’s cool grey eyes to find Mara there.
“You know something, don’t you?” the woman asked, her knuckles turning white as she clenched the back of a chair. “You know where I am? Where my daughter is?”
“And who is your daughter?”
The woman’s eyes filled with tears, and she blinked various times before continuing, “Mara. Red of hair with a pale complexion. Her eyes are like mine. Where is she? I-is she safe? Is she--”
Minerva held her hands up, answering, “She lives. I swear it. She’ll be here soon.” I hope.
Juliana’s frame nearly sagged in relief. “Thank the Divines…” Then she looked at Minerva, her gaze shrewd. “And…who are you?”
“Minerva Saturnius,” she told Mara’s mother. “And…I’ve known your daughter a very long time.”
Minerva didn’t see the deep set wrinkles on the old man’s face as she drew her hand across his brow. She could hear the faltering course of blood in his veins, the sound driving pain through her chest where her heart should have been beating.
She was alone with him, Little Mini being attended to in the room across the hall by her son and grandsons. She was ill, and Minerva knew she would not survive for long.
For now Minerva sat on the edge of the bed, drawing shuddering breaths as tears ran down her cheeks. She looked at the man’s wrinkled face but didn’t see it. Her son, agonizing in his bed, looked like a little boy in her mind’s eye. A smooth-cheeked boy whose round green eyes always searched for her.
Martin Gaius was ninety-seven, and he seemed to have lived many lifetimes. He lost Inga nearly forty years ago, and his son Cesare nine years after. Minerva saw her son through every loss and joy of his miraculously long life.
Now he was slipping away from her, every breath a struggle. It couldn’t be, not her baby boy, not the light of her life. Her hand shook as she drew the white tendrils of hair away from his face, not wanting to see the failing old man who had taken her boy’s place.
He opened his eyes, both of them rheumy and glassy as they gazed at her. Minerva smiled gratefully, wishing she could make her tears disappear. He knew her. Her son knew her.
He whispered, “Mother…”
“Shh, yes darling, I’m right here,” she said softly, carefully gathering his upper body into her arms to hold him close. She supported his head and hummed as she did when he was a child, just as she had for her granddaughter, her great-grandson, and both her great-great-grandsons. All of them her children, hers to love and protect for as long as she carried this curse, until she was free to join Martin again.
Minerva smiled into Martin Gaius’ wispy hair. “A hundred years. You gave me a century of joy, you know that my son?”
“So long,” she heard him mumble.
Gods he sounded so weak and his pulse grew fainter. “…You’ll see your father. You’ll see a man with kind eyes and a wonderful smile. When you see him, tell him I’ll be with you both soon…and that I swear to protect our children until I close my eyes for the last time and I finally enter Aetherius.”
He chuckled softly, “We’ll wait for you.”
“Yes, yes you will.” She held him there, smiling with her eyes closed and pretending he was still a baby. He was light enough that it was easy, having lost so much weight in the past few years. She felt his weight and returned to that day when he was born and she held him for the first time. He had been her happiness, a reason to live, to love, to be happy that she lived to tell the tale.
Martin Gaius exhaled against her shoulder and she heard the last beat of his heart. Then nothing.
Minerva clutched his body and the memory of his knowing gaze when he first saw her. Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she saw the expression of perfect trust on his face when he held her hand. She whimpered when she remembered his joy when he held his firstborn in his arms.
Her son was gone. She’d held him as he was born and as he died, going beyond her reach, and suddenly Minerva was back in the Temple of the One, bereft of the one she loved.
She wept for the entire night, unable to let her boy go even when Petros, Cassio, and Silas entered to find her there. Then, as the sun rose, she finally fell into a fitful sleep.
She awoke the next evening beside her namesake, looking into her tearful eyes and holding on to her frail hands.
She remembered her son was dead. It was such a simple thought. Minerva’s son was dead.
She looked outside and saw that the moons were gone.
Both facts made her question whether the world would ever be whole again.
"Where the fuck did that clown come from?" M3
(…Vampire!Minerva AU, when the three of them are in Skyrim with Aziza xD)
It happened on the trek back south from Dawnstar, where Minerva and Mara had happily gotten rid of that nuisance Silus Vesuius. Martin had shown slight disapproval, of course, but there was no denying the fury in his eyes at the sight of the Mythic Dawn banners hanging from the house.
Aziza was in the lead, careful to be as subtle as she could possibly be. Dawnstar was Stormcloak-ruled, and her Imperial sympathies were known, so Jarl Skald was less than cordial as he could have been when she was around.
The wind picked up and Minerva caught the two mingled scents. “Hang on.” Her three companions halted as she sniffed the air. “…A human and a werewolf. They’re…bleeding.”
Mara and Aziza nocked their arrows while Martin readied a spell. Werewolves were not to be taken lightly.
They heard a voice, high-pitched and gleeful, race across the snow. “Ooh, did I cut the poor puppy? Cicero is so sorry…NOT!”
They would have gone after them but…the sight was so strange. A man in a jester’s costume ran across the snowy field, clutching his side with a malicious smile on his face. Hot on his heels was…a man in mid-transformation. They both left a trail of blood.
As soon as they were gone, Mara exclaimed, “Where the fuck did that clown come from?!”
