Title: Bound
Summary: Short story about how Lucien Lachance was bound to the Dark Brotherhood after death. Lucien/OFC
A/N: Thanks for reading. Review please.
Bound
"The Night Mother has named me Listener," she whispered into the night. He could see her trembling, whether from the snow in her hair or the news she brought he didn't know. The moonlight played so well across her dunmer skin, giving her almost a blue sheen. His silence went on too long. A wolf howled eerily in the distance. Shadowmere gave a whinny and pawed the ground. "Lucien, please say something."
"What should I say?" he asked from behind, watching the pale slope of her neck as she swallowed. "That I'm angry? That I'm proud? My Silencer is now Listener. You've benefited from my death. How should I feel? Should ghosts feel?"
She turned around, and there was raw pain in her eyes. "I don't want it. Position, power, none of it I want. I didn't plan this. You know that!"
"I didn't accuse you, did I?"
"You do," she argued bitterly, tucking a bit of hair behind her ear. "You do it with every word that comes out of your mouth. Some part of you thinks that it was my fault you died. Even if I did wrestle with the Divines themselves to bind you to the physical world, even if I did wear down Shadowmere's hooves to reach you in time, you think I wasn't fast enough."
He laughed; he couldn't help it. After so many years, she was still so completely ignorant of the inner machinations of his mind. "So arrogant…" he whispered and reached out a hand, sliding it through her hair. For a split moment, he felt the strands between his fingertips, felt the silken texture. Then it was gone. He was too weak a spirit to alter anything in the physical world, but he would grow in time. All it would take was time.
"That's your guilt you feel," he said in her ear, so cold he raised the hair on the back of her neck. "You imagine these things. In death, I could care less what happened that night. Here there is no anger. No pain."
"Not right now," she murmured. "As you grow stronger, your feelings will come back. You'll come to hate me and Arquen for what she did and what I didn't do."
Arquen…that was a name that brought his anger to a head. The murderous bitch whose dagger sliced open his insides and made him watch as his own intestines spilled all over the floor. A rage came over him for a split second, but it passed quickly. A sleepy haze spread through him—exhaustion. Such a minute amount of emotion had tired him out.
"Don't assume," he breathed quietly, drifting so that he was at her side. Snowy plains stretched out before them. An arching temple glowed with firelight in the distance, nearly obscured by the falling flurries. It would be a day's ride through the building snow before she would reach civilization. Dangers lurked in the wilderness. Her life was always at stake. As Listener, it would be even more so, though he hoped the Black Hand would protect her.
"I'm afraid," she admitted to him, biting her lower lip which was still split open from days before. She healed slowly and scarred often.
"I would think you foolish if you weren't," he said. The Listener was the most important person in the Black Hand. She would speak to the Night Mother, receive orders to kill. She was a conduit through which the mother could communicate with Her children. That was the greatest honor afforded to members of the Dark Brotherhood, and he was proud.
She turned and drew a knife. He watched absently as she slid the serrated edge across the palm of her hand, blood welling up and spilling over in thick droplets. It stained the snow, dark and rich, as it ran over the tips of her fingers, soaking her entire hand. From her waist, she produced a fairly new scroll and unrolled it. "I"m going to bind you, Lucien," she told him, "to this scroll."
He peered over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow. "A summoning scroll? You don't think that will become tiresome?"
"I will leave it in the Sanctuary," she explained, "to be handed down to Black Hand members only when I die. No one underneath will touch it."
"And if a clever thief steals me away? If I sit moldering in a study for a few centuries?"
She cocked her head to the side as if considering this. The snow was melting against her hair, and he could see her shivering in the cold. "Then you will sit moldering in a study for a few centuries," she said at last and pressed her wounded palm to the parchment until the blood soaked through. Blue light erupted around her arm, hair blown back from an invisible force. Lucien felt a tug around his middle before a pain so excruciating he thought Arquen was tearing out his liver again took over. He fell to his knees, biting his incorporeal lower lip to keep from crying out before he couldn't hold his shape or form anymore. He vanished instantly.
When she called him back, he had no idea how long he'd been gone. The dizziness and general apathy was back, but he felt tethered. Controlled. He felt as though he were at home. She tucked the scroll back into her belt and mounted Shadowmere with him at her side.
Just before he disappeared back into the mist, she looked at him with her mesmerizing liquid eyes. "I love you," she said, and she never summoned him again.