For a Kink Meme prompt requesting a character believing they don't deserve to be happy. I needed a break from all the fluff. I know I said Ria's backstory would be next, but I'm still finishing/revising that, and this one just sort of... happened.
Warning: Canonical character death.
Monsters don't deserve to be happy.
That's what he'd always been told as a child, wasn't it? In children's tales, good must prevail. The hero must slay the beast, and save the town, and stop the maidens and children from dying. Monsters couldn't be heroes, or maidens, or children. Monsters had to die. They deserved to.
Sinding deserved to die.
He'd thought that maybe, just maybe, he could pretend he wasn't a monster. He could start life anew in Falkreath, work the farm and maybe find a wife. He wouldn't dare try for children, not with this curse that called him to hunt and doomed him to Oblivion.
And it was working so well. He'd at least found work down at Corpselight, with Mathies and Indara. They were so kind, and helpful, and forgiving when he made mistakes. Such lovely people, with a lovely farm and a lovely little daughter...
Lovely little Lavinia, with her lovely little throat.
A lovely little throat, filled with warm, pulsing blood.
Blood...
Sinding paced the cavern alone now, waiting until the hunters came. They'd come, as he knew they would. They'd come to kill him, and he hoped they'd win. He wasn't sure why that Bosmer had agreed to help him, except perhaps that she'd thought the town would be safer with him gone. And she was right.
A voice echoed through the cave, and Sinding snapped his neck to search for it. He didn't want to fight them, not really. But Hircine would have his hunt, and he was powerless to challenge it.
And that's all he ever was. Powerless. He was powerless to Hircine, to the transformations, to the ring.
Powerless most of all to lovely little Lavinia, and to the temptation of ripping out that lovely little throat. She'd always been afraid of the monsters beneath her bed, or so she told him. Perhaps she should have been afraid of the monster to whom she was telling these tales.
When the Bosmer from Falkreath showed up with the rest of the hunters, Sinding didn't wish to fight. She was right to kill him. But he fought, danced like a puppet on a string for the daedra that owned his soul, and died with a sword sticking from his chest. As the world darkened around him, all he could hear was Hircine's laughter.
Hircine may be happy, but a monster like Sinding could never be.