Gaius plodded—swordless, tired, and dejected—through the Plaza Of The Divines, the district of the city once known as Talos Plaza. [i]This place doesn't really change much, does it,[/i] he thought, aiming for the elegantly-worked door of dark wood and gold that sat by the inner circle next to the Akatosh statue that had replaced the former Talos piece. Fishing for a moment around his armor's gorget, he retrieved a heavy steel key. Placing it in the lock, he tried to turn it and found that it was stuck. He jimmied it for a few more moments before attempting to pull it out and finding it trapped in the lock.

What followed was about five minutes of trying to either turn the key, or pry it from the hungry lock. The streets were relatively empty, but the few that passed gave him odd looks; a large man in full armor trying desperately to open a door. The blasted thing finally turned with a heavy [i]clunk[/i], and the door slid open, leaving Gaius staring down the point of a particularly nasty-looking spear held by a defiantly glaring woman. After a moment, her look of anger gave way to one of puzzlement, and he batted the weapon aside with an armored hand, walking past her.

The estate looked much like he remembered it; given Helena's habit of rearranging things, the fact that it had remained constant for even the relatively short time he'd been in the mountains was nothing short of a miracle. To him, though, all that mattered was that he knew exactly where his favorite armchair was. Walking with Helena through the sitting room and dining hall, he arrived in his study, taking a seat in the beloved chair. He stripped his helmet off, revealing his close-cropped hair, and gave her a haggard smile. "Nice to see you too, Helena."

"What are you doing here, Gaius?" she asked, confused and mildly surprised. "I thought you weren't supposed to be back for weeks, at least."

He sighed. "Things got...complicated. We did something—I don't really know—and then the mountain [i]exploded[/i]."

She tapped the side of her cheek. Gaius smiled wanly at the familiar habit. "Well, there was that green light in the sky off to the north a while back...I wondered what that might've been. Are you telling me it was you blowing up a [i]mountain[/i]?"

"Looks that way, doesn't it?" he responded dryly, face twisted into a wry grin. After a moment, it fell again, leaving him with the same morose expression on his face that he'd been wearing up until then. "You know, Helena, much of our living is provided for by way of killing people. I'm a soldier, and I'm a damn good one at that. I have no qualms about taking a life when it's what needs to be done." He paused for a moment, beginning to strip away his armor.

"This, though..." he continued once he'd divested himself of the heavy plates, "these people weren't rebels. They weren't soldiers, they weren't fighters. By Talos, they were [i]archaeologists.[/i] They didn't know they were going to die."

"Gaius, tell me this," Helena cut in, voice characteristically serious. "Did you know what would happen when you triggered it?"

"No," he replied sullenly, immediately seeing where she was going with this.

"Did you have any way of knowing?"

"No," he muttered again.

"And, given the chance, would you have done the same thing over again?"

"No, no, no," he repeated.

"Then, my dear brother," she replied, a hard edge in her voice, "stop acting like a child. What's done is done. Move on and try to fix what happened instead of wallowing in an imagined prevention."

Gaius sighed again, dropping his head. "Thanks, Helena."

She shrugged. "It's what I do." She slung her arm around his broad shoulders. "Look, you're under a lot of stress. Don't tell anyone I said this, but you should go drinking tonight. As long as you keep yourself under control, you should be fine." She patted him as she walked back towards the stairs towards her office, where it seemed she'd been working. "You should go see Tolquist about getting a new sword made."

"He's still in Solitude, Helena!" He called after her. No response. He looked down at his large, callused hands. "She's right," he murmured. "A night of drinking will do me a world of good."

---

Gaius had never been the hedonistic type, but he'd hit his alcoholic event-horizon at about the moment when a mountain exploded above him. With that in mind, he departed the Milonem estate. Instead of his somewhat-iconic armor, he was wearing a fine tunic of pale green linen embroidered in gilt thread along the sleeves and hem above a pair of leather leggings. His heavy sabatons had been replaced with shoes of soft leather, and his empty swordbelt and Empire's Aegis had been returned to their place on the mantle. Tonight wasn't a night for combat. It was a night for fun.

As he walked down the street, greeting those he knew and engaging in small talk, he heard a subtle roar from off in the distance, one which gradually grew much louder as he grew closer to the source: the Merchant's Inn. He smiled despite himself. He'd been here many times in his younger days. A sign caught his eye, advertising an arm-wrestling-drinking contest. Gaius' smile widened as he saw the name on the sign, and he walked into the tavern. "Twenty septim, huh?" he chuckled. "Sounds like fun." He strode up to the bar, keeping an eye on Brynja's contests as he did so, and shaking his head at the poor sods that were currently getting their arms wrenched to the table by the Nord. He caught Cassius' eye, calling him over. The older man shook his head in wonder.

"Do my eyes deceive me, or has Gaius Milonem decided to grace my inn for the first time in years?"

Gaius wasted no time, dumping thirty shining coins on the bar between them, smiling wolfishly. "Ten for a Crown Ale, and twenty for Brynja the Giant." Belatedly, he realized that Latro was at the bar as well. He inclined his head. "Trying your luck, Latro?

Cassius scooped the coins up, replacing them with a frothing mug. "All yours, Gaius."

Gaius nodded at him, touching his fingers lightly to his forehead as a show of thanks, before shouldering through the crowd, taking the seat opposite Bryja and holding up the mug. "Cheers."