A/N: Hey, everyone! I just wanna apologise for any typos in advance, considering that I wrote the entire three-shot on my iPod. =P Anyway, The Elder Scrolls and any characters, places, items etc do not belong to me but Bethesda, blah blah blah.
Reviewing stops the Oblivion crisis, bee tee dubs, if you haven't finished the Main Quest yet. You don't really wanna spend your time collecting wolf testicles for Martin, so this is the easy way out, right?
She dismounted from the dangerous-looking black horse and spent a few moments gazing at the ruined farm in front of her. Daedric fire from an old Oblivion gate had reduced the fence to little more than an iron gate in the mud. The garden was overgrown, the family's ancient graves nearly indifferent from the surrounding landscape. The walls of the hovel were severely weather-beaten and gray with age, but the door seemed to be in good shape.
A lump formed in her throat as she thought of what the walls contained. How many years had it been? And how many years had it taken for her to muster up the courage and selflessness needed for this task? Sithis would probably disapprove, but even worse, he would definitely not be pleased to see her…
She would accept the consequences. She had reminded herself this repeatedly on the long journey from Cheydinhal to this lonely farm in the Jerall Mountains… Her black steed seemed to sense her hesitation and whinnied softly. The noise distracted the woman from her reveries and took a step forward, her jaw set. The wind whistled through the barren trees, and a shriveled apple fell from one of the ancient branches.
She picked it out of the snow and smiled. Applewatch. Before she placed her hand on the door's handle, she bit into the withered fruit and smiled. No juice flew out of her bite mark. Only rotted, dry fruit-flesh lay exposed, brown and dead.
The door flew open faster than she'd anticipated. She focused on wiping her black boots on the floor, closing the door shut behind her, gazing at the skeleton of a dog lying in the corner, rather than looking up. She inspected the bones more closely. Dark brown hair still clung to it in some places. Smiling, she stroked the dead animal as if it were sleeping. The dog's name had once been Jake, she knew.
Finally, she was unable to postpone looking at him. She could feel his lifeless eyes looking at her from beyond the Void. She straightened up from the jumble of bones and gazed at the mutilated corpse suspended from a rope tied to the roof's beams.
She stepped closer, navigating her way around the old bloodstains, her black robe making a lonely whisk noise as she moved. Eventually, she came to a stop right in front of it and crouched down so her nose was level with his, rather than the scratch marks of where his genitals had once been.
"Hello, Speaker." Her voice sounded lush in this death-scented place. "It's been years, I know. Years of you dwelling in Sithis' realm of death…How horrible is it there, I wonder? Or how beautiful…" She rocked back on her heels like a child and shook her hair back from its hood.
"I know you have always reproved me for being less worshipful of Sithis than I ought to be. Don't misunderstand, for you know I love our Father more than any other god, man or creature alive or dead…"
She smiled then, a bright comparison to the corpse's own mouth, which was stretched wide in pain and horror and reddened by blood. "Except you, of course…I love you as much as I do the Void…" Standing up and shaking cobwebs from her robe, she whipped out a scroll.
"I love you enough to call you back from Sithis and replace your festering corpse with my own, fresher one," she said in a dangerous voice, as if daring the dead man to object to her decision. He probably did, she thought with a sad smirk; she could sense his disapproval from beyond the grave.
"Well, there's nothing you can do about it now," she said, raising her voice against the winds that had erupted from the ancient scroll. "I am alive and am able to make my own decisions, Lucien Lachance!" Her voice cracked with the feel of his unused name on her tongue. It evoked memories of happier days, with blood spilled for fun and not for vengeance. It evoked memories of dark nights in the fort he called a home; nights that caused those old ruins to echo with the sounds of his name again and again…
A loud sob ripping through her startled her into realizing the room was silent. The winds had stopped and the room was deathly quiet again. The odor of blood was gone, though…As was Lachance's corpse that had hung from the rafters for so many years…
"Red Cat." Red jolted again at the sound of her Silencer nickname. Red Catius, that was her given name. When Lucien had appointed her as his private assassin, the moniker had formed and was eventually used by all the Brotherhood.
A silent predator that toys with its kill before introducing it to a painful demise, Lucien had amusedly remarked when she completed her first contract for him. Like a cat, you slink in the darkness as if you were born in it. You do the Night Mother proud, Red.
Red carefully turned around, her silver-streaked black hair twirling around her in the movement. Lucien Lachance stood before her, robed in the Black Hand attire she'd laid on the ground upon her arrival. The hood barely concealed his look of unspeakable wrath.
"By Sithis, what have you done?!" He said in a low, dangerous voice. The phrase reminded her of when, just days before his death, he had caught her in Bravil with her hands drenched in the previous Listener's blood. This time, however, she did not have a look of guilt or confusion upon her face. "Are you oblivious to the incredible rage that is filling Sithis right now? May He be merciful upon your tainted soul, Red! You have meddled with forces of Sithis' own power! Do you think yourself to be a god?!"
She gazed at him coolly with her hands folded behind her back. She could feel them turning slightly numb from the effects of the spell she'd woven upon him.
Her look did nothing to calm the fires in his eyes. If anything, they only increased them. "You dare look upon me with such impertinence?" Lucien growled. "I thought you had your blasphemous moments, Red, but this crosses every line. Do you think yourself exempt from the Tenants? From Sithis' word?"
No, I don't Lucien," she said quietly, averting her eyes. "In fact, I am following Sithis' law to the word." Red looked up, matching his fierce gaze. "You are free from death, Lucien. I will take your place here in Applewatch."
He laughed once, a bitter, unamused sound. "You're going to die by your own hand?"
She shook her head. "The spell that freed you now binds me to the site of your death. Unless another is willing to take my place, I will remain here forever." I love you, she added silently, hoping the emotion wouldn't show too strongly in her eyes.
He noticed, though, and the angry fires died from his eyes. An unfathomable look fixed itself in them as he looked at her, trying to read her.
"And this is how you are going to repay Sithis?" he finally asked. "By being dead for someone else's sake?"
"I won't be dead."
"You'll be as good as it," he said in disgust. Red felt her heart sink. "I served Sithis all my life, and in death I continued to serve him." Lucien shook his head. "And you wish to take my place and have me serve Sithis in life some more?!"
"Yes."
"You are mad."
"I love you." The words came out unbidden, but she made no gesture to try and take them back. They seemed to stop his flow of reproach, though, at least for now. He only looked at her with his dark brown eyes, rather sadly.
"You are wasting your life. You are still young; you could serve our Father in other ways." His look softened even more. "You could serve yourself and others."
Red Cat laughed, the sound caressing the rooms' corners hesitantly. It had been so long since any joyous sounds (or sounds of life at all) had entered this house. "We are not as young as we used to be, Speaker." The formal title she used to address him seemed distant and hurt him, but he could see what she meant. Lines of gray faintly spiderwebbed her once jet-black hair. She had darker shadows under her eyes.
She had dried tears on her cheeks. Tears that were years old. Lucien took a deep, rattling breath, still unused to the taste of air.
"How long am I permitted to stay here?"
Her look was sorrowful. "Twenty-four hours. You may come again next year. If you wish, of course," she added, a little hastily.
'Assassins should never be hasty,' he might have scolded her years ago. Now, however, the lecture in his thoughts was one of not hurrying the day they had left. She had always been a lively, spirited girl, he recalled wistfully, but fierce, merciless and cruel in a fight. He looked at her aging face and felt warmth enter his icy heart. It had been so long since he had felt the taste of life on his tongue. He was still angry at her for breaking the contract all Brothers and Sisters had with Sithis after death, but it was impossible to not be touched by such a selfless act, even made by an assassin.
Though Lucien averted his eyes, Red held her gaze. She wanted to kiss him, knew he'd never let her. Instead, she sat on the creaky chair located next to the dusty fireplace and turned her back to him, wondering if he would leave.
A ferocious wind howled around the farm. She watched the windows shake with their force, pretending she couldn't hear the Speaker's breathing.
"Twenty-three hours," she said almost to herself. She could almost hear him battling inside himself, wanting to stay with her but knowing it would be a disgrace to Sithis if he showed love to someone other than Him so soon after his resurrection. Between herself and their religion, Red knew whom Lucien would choose.
She drew out the withered apple again and bit into it. This time, a single drop of dusty juice emerged, like blood welling from a long-dead corpse. Her bites sounded loud in the silence, and she knew Lucien had made his decision.
Unexpectedly, he was beside her, and cupped one half of it in his gloved hand. Red looked at the ten fingers on the apple, five of them gloved and feminine, five of them gloved and masculine. He took a bite on the other side of the shriveled fruit and swallowed the piece whole. He placed his free hand on her cheek and turned her face towards him, and for a second she thought he really was going to do it, he really was going to kiss her—
And then his hand was gone andshe was the only person in the room, an aging woman holding a dead plant. She heard him saddle up the horse and climb on. Without moving, she called, "I'll see you next year."
She knew he would return, and that knowledge kept her calm and collected as she bit into the apple again. With a knife drawn from her robe, she carved out the portion that his lips and teeth had touched and placed it in a flowerpot whose only other occupant was a wilted flower. The remainder of the core she flew into the fireplace. Red threw a small fireball at it where it erupted into flames, sending smoke scented with apple death into the sky.
Down the trail already a mile away, Lucien Lachance smelled the smoky fruit on the air and smiled.
Inside the lonely farm of Applewatch, Red Cat crossed her legs on the chair with a smile on her face as well. Content to spend the rest of her life dealing with Sithis' poorly-concealed rage. Content to spend eternity luring travelers to their deaths to keep Him happy. Content to speak with a long-dead dog as her only companion for the next three-hundred and sixty-four days.
Content to spend that one day with him, when he came again.