Title: An Assassins Alphabet

Fandom: Elder Scrolls

Rating: Teen

Character: Lucien Lachance

Meme: Inspired by the Dragon Age Alphabet meme Combination_NC started on Tumblr.

Premise: Pick a character and write a short fic for every letter of the alphabet, exploring the character's relationships, memories...whatever you want.

Overview: A to Z on our favourite assassin Lucien Lachance.

A is for Apple

Lucien had always been rather fond of apples.

There was something about them, the smooth skin, the sweet flesh of the fruit yielding under his dagger, or his teeth. The taste was always surprising, a burst of flavour on his tongue, and the sound, the crunch of a crisp apple was incomparable.

He didn't know where his love of apple began, but he did have a vague memory of his mother, with her long black hair and kind, but tired brown eyes sitting on the bed beside him when he was ill, and cutting up a green apple for him. She sliced it into quarters, chopping away the core, and he would watch her through fevered dark eyes so like her own.

Jiselle Lachance was a kind soul, who deeply loved her son, taking care of him even after his worthless father abandoned them to travel north to Skyrim. She had not deserved to die, too poor to send for a proper healer, too far to travel to Bruma and the Temple there. Too weak to use the untrained magic in her Breton blood to heal herself. She had feared that gift, her birthright, but her son did not make the same mistake.

She died and Lucien left their little farm under the apple trees.

Or rather he had been forced to leave. With his mother's death he could no longer afford to keep the land, no longer tend and care for it. She died in summer, when the ground had thawed just enough to dig, and when he buried her he thought it was over. In time though a new family came to claim his home.

Their sons drove him off, his pack full with the sweet apples that only his farm seemed to provide.

All around Cyrodil and all around Skyrim, no matter if he was thieving for the Thieves guild, or harvesting souls for the Dark Brotherhood, apples could always be found, and always be easily stolen.

Easily poisoned. They seemed to have an aptitude for it...rather like him. He always had to be careful and precise in keeping his poisoned apples away from his larder. He had a fondness for the fruit, and would frequently taste the many varieties grown throughout Tamriel.

But none tasted as sweet as Applewatch Apples.

Mairin is a noisy eater.

Lucien grinds his spectral teeth together, not missing the sound of enamel crunching, nor the uncomfortable ache that inevitably follows. He misses some things about life, but the niggling aches and pains are not included.

Right now his Listener is sprawled ungracefully on her bedroll, blade close at hand, crunching noisily on the apple she's fished out of her pack. Some might find the sounds soothing, the rhythmic crunch and wet chewing, followed by swallowing, breathing and then biting again, but Lucien does not. The sight of her chewing is a reminder that he will never taste apple again.

"Listener..." He growls finally and his summoner looks up, pale blue eyes focusing questioningly on his spectral outline.

"Lucien..." she responds in kind, eyebrow arching slightly, "Do you need something brother?"

He likes that she just treats him like he is still a member of the Brotherhood, rather than a ghost lackey like so many of his summoners have been over the last 200 years.

"Your chewing is rather...excessive." Lucien drawls back, sliding an incorporeal hand through the log he is appearing to perch on, "It is loud."

"So?" Mairin is not making it easy for him, taking another large bite of the fruit and grinning at him with her mouth full.

Lucien scrunches his nose disapprovingly at her.

"It is the mark of an Assassin to favour silence." He reminds her, looking pointedly at the apple, "Your...mastication of your fruit, is hardly silent. Or even quiet,"

"Lucien..." Mairin gives him a fond but firm look, and he is yet again reminded of why she will be an excellent Listener. She has the commanding gaze already, "It is just an apple."

"As you wish My Listener." He responds with a sigh, shaking his head at her. The young woman takes another large and intentionally loud bite and then chews as audibly as she can. Lucien rolls his ghostly eyes at her.

"Did you like apples when you were alive?" She asks him now, distracted from her weighty thoughts by her spectral companion, "Or were you more of a cabbage man?"

"I found apples ideal for poisoning." Lucien informs her just arching an eyebrow as the woman sits up, "Their flavours were most conducive for...concealment of powerful toxins."

"An alchemist," Mairin laughs, plucking some springy wintergrass from beside her, "Should have figured. You seem like the obsessive, finicky type."

"Alchemy takes precision and methodic preparation."

"Yeah, yeah." The woman rolls her eyes, "Give me a bow and an arrow any day. Poisons are too chancy."

"Hence why poisoned apples are perfect," Lucien rejoins, "Every house has apples, and no one notices a poisoned one. It's subtle, elegant."

"It's chancy." Mairin repeats, eyeing him in a way that makes him feel a little wary, "Hmmmm..."

"What are you doing now My Listener?"

"Ten points if I get this apple core through your head."

Lucien glares at her.

Mairin grins back.

"What kind of apple is it?" he asks her, as she takes her final bite of the fruit, "It has been a while since I sampled one."

"I'll say..." Mairin chuckles, and tosses the apple core into the air, "Cyrodill, small farm near Bruma...There is a tree there that grows the reddest apples in Tamriel, sweet too."

Lucien is silent.

He remembers the small farm house, remembers the smell of apple trees, the crunch of snow on hard earth. He remembers the taste of apple on his tongue as black cloaked assassins burst into the building, silent and merciless as shadows.

He remembers the cold burn of steel, and then...he remembers the chill of the void.

Sithis allowed him to see his Silencer defeat the traitor Matthieu Bellamont, allowed him to see her return to his mutilated corpse, and bury him under an apple tree. She always understood him.

The Night Mother made the apples bloom red...the red of blood.

Mairin's blue eyes are on him, and for a moment he thinks he sees understanding in those cold depths. She knows more than she says does his Listener.

Then she pegs the apple through his ghostly head.

For a moment he thinks he can taste that sweet flavour that haunts him.

Then her laughter fills the air and he sighs at her fondly.

She is not his Silencer...but she reminds him of her.