Just FYI, this is also posted on my ArchiveOfOurOwn account too. Same name, same story. Enjoy. And don't forget to comment please.
He looked like a broken bird when she had found him, laying in a mangled heap of red and black in the despicable ruins of Raldbthar, stiff and cold, twisted, shattered, an arrow splintered through his chest and his blood smeared down the wall he had struck and died against.
He had been gone too long, and their Mother sent her looking.
And she found him.
She bundled her beloved broken bird in a traveling cloak and took him home so they could properly mourn and buried him at the edge of Falkreath's cemetery.
Just another unmarked grave of a Brother.
Gaban.
Strange how that was her first thought.
Gaban, that squirrelly little Breton she had grown fond of.
Dead.
A hiss crept past lips that tasted hot and sweet like blood, head and shoulders and back and knees and elbows throbbing with pain, curled up at the bottom of an empty iron tomb that was chilled as death, still reeking of the corpse it had once contained.
Now all it held was her.
Slowly, she peeled herself away from the bottom, listening to the rush of water that echoed like thunder on the coffin, and with both feet firmly planted at the entrance, she heaved and pushed, gasping with surprise as the chamber began to flood and then with more effort, pushed open the solid doors to her freedom.
One of the old matrons had told her a story of the Red Tower when it erupted.
She had said that the cinders fell like snow in the wake of the horror.
It was a bitter elegy of savagery and eloquence that sang through the seeping darkness with unrivaled beauty, mysteries of curves and lines set in shades of grey visible from the gaps in what little remained of the cavern ceiling, hope clinging desperately to her like stagnate ink as she waded through the pool.
Hope.
But as she pulled herself onto the stones where Nightshade once grew, she called out into the darkness and the emptiness of her sanctuary echoed slowly back.
Silently, a droplet wobbled on the end of her nose.
And then fell.
Looking back, she saw the path of her escape, the broken stained glass the Night Mother's coffin had fallen through, and with haste, she wobbled to her feet.
Babette!
Nazir!
They had been the last names on her lips, calling out to them before the ceiling fell and she had jumped back. Stumbled over the Night Mother's body that laid crumpled on the ground, cut down from her display case to make it light enough to push through the window, and fell right into the Night Mother's place. The doors had closed upon her, and then she heard the crash.
And felt pain.
Then darkness came.
"Nazir!" she shouted, loud as she dared for caution of the Penitus Oculatus who might have lingered after the assault. "Babette!"
But there was only silence left for her, scratched into the earth like a message.
