Author's Note: Here is Chapter 1, longer than the first one (just because I conjoined the 'original' next chapters with this one) and even though the things that happen in this chapter aren't very different than the original, the characters may be more... eh, believable isn't the right word. Altered, different, changed. Just character-wise.

I definitely improvised the dialogue with NPCs. It's too bad I don't have Oblivion with me. Huff.

-~O~-

Chapter 1: The Sisters

-~O~-

Silent as a shadow, she took an arrow noiselessly from the quiver she had put on this morning. Keen as an eagle's eye, she put the arrow upon the string of the bow, her favourite elm one that wasn't too heavy nor too light, and no taller than she was. Quick as lightning.

The arrow pierced through the wind, but Linne could not say the same about the woman who dodged the attack. Linne saw her smile, heard her chuckle, and disappointed with her archery skills, Linne went over to the woman.

"Your sneaking is admirable, but even a lowly thief could do better," Niera said, approaching Linne's hideout all the same. Her sister's eyes were slightly covered by the leather hood she was wearing, which made Linne wonder just how her sister could have spotted the arrow in the first place. Her sneaking wasn't that horrible, was it?

Linne huffed and rolled her eyes, which only encouraged her sister's teasing, "You'll be better, maybe in two years. Then probably the Night Mother would accept you."

Forget bows and arrows, Linne hit her sister's shoulder in a jesting manner. "I still can't understand why I'm not allowed to live with you in the Sanctuary. I know everything there is to know about the Dark Brotherhood, and I'm not even a member."

"Hush," Niera silenced her sister. Linne looked around to find nobody on the road to home, to Cheydinhal, but did not speak any more about the secret organisation. "You don't know everything about it yet, little sister. In time you will, but until then, you will keep that mouth of yours closed when anybody asks about us and the Dark Brotherhood," her sister spoke, barely a whisper, but Linne heard everything she needed to be told. Sometimes, Niera would just love to berate her and remind her how Linne was only a girl barely grown, thirteen and not worthy of the title assassin.

Sometimes, Linne would like to smack Niera's head. She's a member of the Dark Brotherhood, so why can't Linne, her own sister, be a member too? It was unfair. But remembering that perhaps Niera was correct, and Linne wasn't exactly ready to kill anyone... she bit her lip. "I will."

"Good," her sister said, looking deep into her eyes. Linne felt a shiver run down her back, as she always had whenever Niera stared at her with those deep blue eyes. It was as if she could look into her soul, expose every secrets and lies that Linne had. But Niera smiled, put a hand on her sister's shoulder, and Linne knew she found nothing she wanted to know inside. "I'm proud of you, sister, don't you forget that. But some things come first before family."

"Father used to say nothing comes before family."

"But he isn't here, is he?" asked Niera, her smile vanishing in an instant. I shouldn't have said that. "He's in the Void with Sithis, an honour not many deserves. And we will both get that honour when we die, Linne."

"Not before I'm in the Brotherhood, though." Linne crossed her arms, daring her courage and her sister to reply. Niera chuckled and squinted up to the sky while Linne looked down to the ground, her bravery diminishing with every second the stillness continued.

In what felt like centuries, Niera answered finally, "You do not need to be in the Dark Brotherhood to earn such a blessing, Linne. Anybody who serves Sithis in their own ways is a child of the Dread Father and the Night Mother." Not even waiting for Linne's response to that, Niera walked away to continue her journey towards Cheydinhal.

Linne had no choice but to follow. She took the arrow that missed her sister—by inches— from the ground and began the quiet walk to the only home she remembered.

"By the way," her sister started once Linne was beside her, "what exactly was your intention, shooting people off from a bush?"

"Oh, trust me, it was not to kill anyone," Linne tried, but Niera still frowned. Why did I even do that in the first place? "I was just practicing, and then you sort of... went in the way."

"Went in the way? It certainly doesn't seem like it."

Linne looked down and waited for the usual scolding, her face flushed with embarrassment. What exactly was she thinking when she thought that shooting arrows to random by-passers was a good idea? Even when technically, she didn't intend to shoot the by-passers, just the trees nearby them just to scare them off.

Maybe she liked the trouble.

Niera sighed as if she read her mind, "Was it one of your foolish decisions where you don't even think it through?"

Linne winced at the tone her sister used, so doing the only reasonable thing she could, Linne started to explain slowly, "I was just practicing my archery, Niera, I didn't intend to kill anybody—"

"Yes, practicing archery by hiding behind a bush and shooting in the direction of the road," her sister interrupted, stopping completely. Linne turned to look at Niera, scowling underneath her shrouded hood, and looked away at the sight of her. "That's what you lack all this time, so that the Night Mother never considered accepting you. You never think about what you do and its consequences. Don't you think that the Dark Brotherhood chooses to do everything without considering the chain of actions that will follow..." her sister's voice trembled, quieted down to a whisper, before finally closing her mouth. She did that thing again, where she stared into Linne's soul, baiting her sister's reaction.

But Linne stayed quiet, never looking at Niera, and kept her thoughts to herself. Niera looked at her for a few moments, before turning her head back to the road and briskly walked off.

The silence was almost too unbearable, and Linne didn't dare to walk next to her sister. She stayed a good few paces behind, looking at anything but the slowly appearing stables that resided outside Cheydinhal's gates.

They don't really hate each other. Niera always acted like this, taking out her anger to Linne, just to erase the guilt of murdering someone. Even Linne knew it would do no good, nor would it completely chase away the guilt of taking somebody's life that haunted Niera. Then Linne would repeat the same words Niera had said not an hour ago. They are in the Void now, the best place anyone could ever hope for after they die.

At least I think it is.

When Niera was not angry with Linne for any likely reason than the pressuring guilt of being an assassin, she was a kind sister, understanding Linne's carefree nature. Her words won't sting that long, won't hurt Linne so bad that she would cry over it at night. Linne was not a weeping baby anymore. She's already a woman grown, despite what Niera said.

But the words she said, The Night Mother never considered accepting you because of your carefree nature... it hit her harder than anything in her life, more than the death of her mother, and father...

Linne shook her head and cleared her face of any emotion as they neared Cheydinhal. She dared not speak a word ever since their last exchange, but thinking of the guilt of being a killer, and the Dark Brotherhood, and Linne's own wanting of joining, even if she was not 'worthy' or 'skilled' yet, Linne swallowed before finally asking, "What is it like being an assassin, Niera?"

For a few seconds, Linne was convinced that Niera chose to ignore the question or didn't hear, but suddenly her sister said, "There's no feeling in the world like it."

Linne nodded, and didn't ask anymore. She didn't want to anger Niera any longer, nor test her sister's patience.

She didn't need to, anyway, since Niera explained further, "To be an assassin, and one such a high caliber to be chosen by the Night Mother, you must be prepared and ready for the tasks you will face, and the life you will live. Hiding in the shadows, never known by the world, silent as a shadow, keen as an eagle's eye..."

"And quick as lightning," Linne completed. For the first time since their overall conversation, Niera smiled. Linne couldn't help but smile too. Seeing her sister smile like that always made her happy. She wanted to please her sister, not anger her like she usually did. It sometimes felt like Niera wanted that too.

"Exactly, little sister," Niera continued, "at least you've learned that." She stopped just a few meters away from the gate, where the guards and the stable workers couldn't see, and pulled out a simple burlap cloak from her pack. She covered herself with it, the green colour of it completely hiding the suspicious armour Niera wore underneath. Only after she tied the knot to secure the cloak, she continued to elaborate, "There really is no feeling like it. And when you're in the Dark Brotherhood, you have others like you to understand just how ethereal it all feels.

"The first time is always the one you'll enjoy greatest. Where you discover just how many ways you can end someone's life," her tone was a murmur, and they were walking slowly so that nobody could hear her, "and then when you find out you needed more. You wanted to kill another. And you get a contract from the Dark Brotherhood."

"But that's not how you joined, right? You didn't instantly get a contract."

Niera hesitated, "I... killed somebody that I knew needed to be killed. It was simple as that. But I was seen. Not by guards, or townspeople, but the Speaker who recruited me himself."

"Lucien Lachance."

Linne knew that name too well. Her sister thought that she didn't see the confrontation just because she was a mild six year old, but Linne could never forget that night. That night when they waited for father to come home from the Weynon Priory just outside Chorrol, after praying for their mother who died a month from that night.

Yet he never arrived, and Niera never slept. Linne dozed for a few minutes in their parlor before waking again. Niera sat on a bench, keeping a watchful eye for any signs of their father. Only when—if he arrived will she sleep soundly.

As she closed her eyes, and then opened them again, Linne caught a glimpse of the door opening ever so slightly, and her eyes wandered to the small, scared figure which was her sister, only five-and-ten at that time. She sat up more warily, and was shaking. "Who's there?" she called out, her voice quavering so much that Linne herself was afraid. It was very out of the norm that Niera did not radiate the strong confidence that she always had, but then she was just a vulnerable girl, waiting for her father to protect her.

For a second the door was open like that, and then it closed with a quiet click. Nobody even entered.

That was before a green vapor appeared just inches from Niera, and revealed a man wearing a robe that was black as night. Her sister stood up, but Linne didn't even have the energy to sit up. It was as if she was paralyzed.

Their exchange was murmurs that six-year-old Linne could not understand. Only the words kill, family, and murderer. The next few days, father never returned, and Linne had asked Niera where he was.

"He'll never return," she had said simply, her face blank as she gathered all her things and Linne's, and put them in their own respective bags. "I need to go, I will return, and then we will leave Chorrol forever. There will be no protests. We will never look back. Understand?"

Linne did not understand at that time, and pulled the assumption that Lucien Lachance had killed father. She hated the name, even though they only met seven years ago, and never saw each other again. He murdered her father, and that was certain.

Only Niera's voice interrupted her reverie, "My first kill was that day, when I promised you I will return to you and bring us to Cheydinhal."

No, that wasn't right. It sounded too odd to Linne, and the more the turned the sentence in her head, the more it made sense to her. "No, Lucien appeared the night before that, so he must've seen you kill someone. You murdered someone before that."

Niera frowned when she realised the flaw in her lie, and Linne caught on that she just confessed that she saw the exchange between Lucien and her. That was never supposed to come out. "So you saw? You heard what happened?"

"I didn't mean that—I mean, I did see what happened, but I didn't understand at that time—"

"No. No, it doesn't matter anymore," her sister cut off, breathing raggedly, "You wouldn't understand, even now. You never would." Niera was looking to her left, and then to her right, and then continued, "I need to leave you at the inn again. It's the best place I could give you apart from the chapel undercroft. I've already paid for your room, just remember—"

"Don't cause trouble, don't be foolish..." Linne trailed off. Niera nodded, and walked in a normal pace. Just when Linne thought she had pulled the kind-sister out from Niera, the Dark Brotherhood part of her took over and interrupted their most civilized conversation this day.

"I don't want you to get hurt," Niera began as she nodded at the guards who opened the gates for them, "and I don't want you in trouble."

"Or in jail," Linne offered with a grin, but Niera did not see nor hear.

After they went through the gate, Niera said one last farewell before walking towards the other road and disappeared underneath her Chameleon spell.

Well, the inn was better than hiding underneath the chapel.

Ocheeva greeted her as usual; a smile on her red and green scaled face, arms open as if to embrace someone, and Niera had to force a smile of her own in answer. "Welcome back, dear Sister! Have you taken care of Adamus Phillida?"

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't," Niera said with a pleased smile on her face, which the Argonian shared, "and I've put his finger—complete with the ring—inside his successor's desk."

Ocheeva's delight could have been hidden better. She chuckled in her raspy Argonian voice, "Very well done as usual, Niera. With Adamus out of the way, we've secured our family's safety, even in these troubled times. And with that, you've earned the title of assassin."

"Assassin." The Breton girl's face brightened if only for a while. "Wouldn't that mean there are chances I could be chosen as a Silencer?"

Ocheeva's smile also faltered as she reached inside her pocket, grabbing a pouch filled with approximately five hundred septims, as was promised. But in her hand there was another object; a piece of parchment. When she brought it closer for Niera to inspect, as she also gave the gold, Niera's face drained of all colour.

"It's from Lucien," Ocheeva said. Niera blinked unbelievably at the envelope the other woman was holding out to her, before taking it into her own hands. "It must be a matter of great import that he sends a message with a letter, dear Sister. He usually trusts us to tell his messages in person."

Niera cautiously tore the envelope's rim and took out the letter, looking into it with her eyes wide. She almost couldn't believe her fate was written on the paper. If this was anything out of her ability... what could she possibly do? Would

"Well?" Ocheeva said after Niera finished reading it the second time, the latter's heart beating in a concerning pace, "What does it say?"

For a while, Niera did not answer, instead still staring at the letter as if her life clung to it. And it did. Who would give away a secret that was as valuable as her life? "I could not say," was what she said before she dismissed herself and entered the Dark Brotherhood living quarters, thinking, what could Lachance possibly need from me?

It was then that she sat on her bed, not bothering to change into something more comfortable and fit for sleeping, that she put her suspicions and the letter together. This is it, she lied down on the bed, though sleep did not take her, and it seemed she would leave the Sanctuary without ever having a lie-down, I will become Lucien Lachance's Silencer.

She went out the Sanctuary when nobody was there to witness her run off, just a few hours after dusk.

-~O~-

I really didn't see how different Niera's character was when I was writing this. Only when I proofread it did I think, Holy cow, what happened to her? It's like she's got some serious issues. Heh, maybe it'll be better that way. I can just bet that writing her would be much fun.

Kathi With An I: Thank you! It's exactly the same with me when Unlikely Heroes was gone. When it was back and better than before, I was so happy because I could read Ivar's awesomeness again. Thanks again for the review!