My Random Skyrim Stories

Flowers for her Hair (Vilkas) 1

(Vilkas/Dragonborn-Harbinger: trying out the trope of an OC that the twins have known since they were kids.)

It was late First Seed, the weather was bitterly cold... but not quite as bitter as Vilkas's mood...
He'd just overheard his brother talking to their Harbinger... well half-overheard... without his beast blood he didn't hear things through the stone walls quite as clearly as he used to, but he'd heard enough...
They'd been discussing an amulet of Mara.
Vilkas was now sitting in his room trying to figure out how he could have been so blind all these years.
He'd never realized his brother was interested in the Harbinger...
...and he'd never realized that that would bother him...

Belle...

Belle had only been their Harbinger for about a year... but Vilkas and Farkas had known her for most of their lives.
She grew up in Whiterun... she was the daughter of a shopkeeper... she was only two years younger than Vilkas and Farkas, but somehow Vilkas had always seen her as such a child... she was small for a Nord, short and slim, but she had perfectly Nordic, thick golden hair; a fair, pink complexion, and honey-brown, gold-flecked eyes...
When they were children she would always go out to the fields to pick flowers and other ingredients for her mother's potions...
Her mother's only rule about that was that she had to stay where the guards could see her, and she couldn't go alone.
She usually took Lydia with her— Lydia was a year older, and built more like a Nord child would normally be. She was also relatively skilled with a dagger since her parents were both guards... but frequently, Vilkas and Farkas got to go... sometimes it was all four of them.
They used to pretend they were body guards and Belle and Lydia were princesses... back before Vilkas and Farkas were old enough to officially join the Companions...

As they got a little older, their game shifted (mostly at Lydia's prompting) from warriors guarding princesses to Companions fighting alongside warrior princesses, and they'd gone on several epic imaginary adventures, definitely straying far from the sight of the guards.
It got them in trouble with Belle's parents on several occasions, but Belle never minded. She was always so carefree with a smile on her face...

Belle had joined the Companions a few years after Vilkas and Farkas had been raised into the Circle. The Jarl had turned her away from joining the Whiterun Guard with Lydia because of her small stature. Vilkas had been surprised Kodlak had accepted her, but he said he could see a certain strength of spirit about her... what an understatement that had been...
They discovered she was Dragonborn a few years after that...
She'd saved Whiterun and been named Thane. She specifically requested her best friend for a housecarl, and then she and Lydia had gone off on real epic adventures and saved the world.

When they came back Belle led the Companions to victory over the Silver Hand and freed them from Hircine's curse...
Kodlak had named her his successor, which Vilkas had no complaint with... and yet when he looked at her, he still always saw little Belle...
The little shopkeepers' daughter who used to pick flowers and laugh as she skipped through the fields chasing butterflies...

Now that he thought back, Vilkas remembered when she'd first started turning heads at the Mare... when those straight-cut little girls' dresses started hanging differently on her as her figure filled out... when her mother bought her her first corset and dresses that were actually cut to fit her...
Ysmir she'd been a sight then... dancing around with red flowers in her golden hair... smiling at everyone...

He remembered when she'd started apprenticing as a blacksmith along with Adrienne under her mother... and then when she'd made her own leather armor and asked Aela to teach her...

He remembered the first time he'd seen her take down a dragon... he and Farkas had been out hunting, they'd smelled the fire and death on the air, and then Vilkas had smelled Belle... she always smelled of flowers, and, fittingly, it had been dragon-tongue in her hair that day...
The brothers had frantically run to assist her only to find she didn't need help... she and Lydia shot the beast from the sky and then Belle ran her skyforge steel sword into its eye. Seeing her completely engulfed in gold as she absorbed the dragon soul had taken Vilkas's breath away...
Then Belle had looked up at them and laughed about how lucky it was they were here, because now they had two strong men to help them carry all the scales and bones back home.

She always had some kind of flower in her hair and a smile on her face...
She was adorable... and then she was beautiful... and then she was fearsome... and then she was all three at once.
And somehow Vilkas had missed that realization until it was too late.
Vilkas had somehow not only missed the apparent developing relationship between his brother and his little Belle, but he'd been entirely blind to his own feelings...
When had it even started? Farkas used to get bored of just watching her collect things back when they were young... there had even been days Vilkas had been the only one to go with her and Farkas had stayed with Lydia and watched the guards train...
When had that changed?

It didn't make sense... Vilkas was supposed to be the one who knew his brother best, and he was supposed to be the smart one... how could he have missed that they'd been falling in love with the same woman all these years?