I don't own Skyrim or The Elder Scrolls in any way. I will not profit from this story. I intend only to share my role-playing and imagination with other fans.
Tey Do Hun
"Silence becomes you," Astrid said. Athene heard her foot tapping on the edge of the shelves where she sat, but she didn't turn. She was looking at the three captives. She'd been ordered to decided who was meant to die, and kill them.
Athene was terrible at taking orders.
"It makes you seem mysterious."
Shut up, thought Athene. It wasn't that she so bad at taking orders, actually. It was that no matter what the person insisted, if they were telling her she had to do something she didn't want to do it. Even if it was something she would have done anyway.
Stubborn. Willful. Oh, a bunch of other things, she'd been called throughout her life.
When Astrid told her she had to kill one of the captives, Athene's first inclination had been to murder Astrid herself. She'd said someone had to die, right? So wouldn't that be following orders? It might teach the woman what a mistake she'd made, drugging Athene and hauling her from her camp beneath the cliffs around Whiterun to… wherever she was now. But it would be a short-lived lesson, so what was the point?
The captives babbled. The one on the left was a soldier for hire, and he was sure there were people who wanted him dead. The one on the right was a real piece of work. He was just about slimy with the evil he'd spread. Athene could smell it from there. And the one in the middle was a hard-working bitch of a mom who couldn't shut up even when she had a blade to her throat. Who had the mark of death above their head?
Well, all of them, of course. Astrid wouldn't have brought them all here unless they did. But should Athene kill them all to prove something to a woman she'd never met?
Whichever way she played it, she played into Astrid's hands. So she slit the throat of the kahjiit on the right, the one with the real sickness in his soul, and wiped her blade on his fur. Not because it was particularly useful for cleaning off blood, but because she wanted to hear–Yes, there it was. Astrid's low laugh that said she approved.
The more the woman thought she had Athene under her thumb, the better. Because if she really was the leader of the Dark Brotherhood there in Skyrim, she wasn't acting alone. Never alone.
Whereas alone was exactly what Athene had always been.
