Cicero made his way back down the dark pathway through the forest in a daze. The world seemed quiet around him, though he could hear birds chirping and the trees rustling in the wind. His thoughts were on his mother and the dread task he'd been given. In order to join the Dark Brotherhood he had to kill her. His feet seemed to retrace his earlier steps automatically. It was nearly evening when he entered Bruma by the northern gates and stumbled his way home.
"Mother?" he called, pushing the front door open. No answer. She must still be at the market. The boy took a deep breath and relaxed, relieved to be in his own home, safe. He descended the stairs to his bedroom and cleaned the dried blood off his neck. Just a little nick, but the smallest holes always seem to bleed the most. Then he found his knapsack and filled it with the things he would want to take with him to the Sanctuary: his vials of skeever-poison, his favorite book on stealth techniques, a toy fox he'd had since he was a baby. He sat down on the bed, intending to read until suppertime, but, exhausted by his adventure with the Dark Brotherhood, he instead slumped over, asleep.
"Cicero?" his mother's voice woke him, calling from upstairs, "Are you home?"
Cicero rubbed his eyes and went upstairs to help his mother with dinner. Helvia was a good woman and a good cook, Cicero especially liked when she would bake sweetrolls on his birthday.
Usually, Cicero would tell his mother all about his daily adventures while he helped her in the kitchen without prompting, but he was uncharacteristically quiet throughout the evening, answering his mother's questions with simple, one-word answers, and he excused himself to bed early.
"Are you feeling alright, Cicero?" his mother asked as he slunk to his bedroom. He hadn't eaten much, even though she suspected he had missed his lunch, and his brow was sweaty.
"I'm fine, mother," he lied and disappeared into the basement.
Cicero dropped onto his bed. He picked up his knife and looked it over in his hands. He wanted to be an assassin, to know how it felt to kill. But his own mother? He began to work on a plan, how he would do it. Wait until Mother falls asleep, he reasoned, so she won't scream. I'll cut her throat like Uncle Tullius showed me on that deer last fall, then once she's dead I'll cut out her heart and run away. Again he felt a wave of nausea but a knock at the wall interrupted him. He put his knife away quickly and jumped under his bedcovers.
"Come in!" he said, a little too fast and a little too loud. There was no door, his mother always rapped on the wooden wall before she entered his basement lair.
Helvia entered and smiled reassuringly at her sweet little son, already in his bed.
"Are you sure you don't need anything?" she asked. Cicero nodded nervously. His mother laughed gently. "Alright, if you say so."
Her smile was the most beautiful thing Cicero had ever seen. He squished his eyes shut afraid he might lose his resolve if he looked at her any longer, pushing away the urge to throw his arms around her and cry, telling her all about Talitha, the Sanctuary, and their Leader's dark request. Helvia pulled the covers up and tucked her boy in, kissing him softly on the forehead.
"Goodnight, cor meum. I love you."
Tears threatened to well up in the boy's eyes, but he couldn't find his voice to answer her. Helvia patted Cicero lovingly and blew out his lamp before going upstairs.
Cicero laid awake in bed, torturing over his plan again and again, coming up with alternatives at every foreseeable flaw. Once he determined enough time had passed for his mother to have fallen asleep, he crept quietly out of his bed, took his little knife and swept across the room and up to his mother's bedside, almost tripping on the loose stair, remembering only then he had promised to fix it, realizing neither of them would ever use these stairs again. He left his knapsack at the top of the stairs and slunk toward his mother's room. The house was dark, very dark, but he had long ago memorized the layout of his home and expertly avoided every piece of furniture and squeaky floorboard. He pushed the master bedroom door open, slowly so as not to make the hinges groan, and slipped inside. His mother lay asleep in her bed, a lamp still lit on her end table making her features jump and flicker like those of a ghost.
I'm going to join the Dark Brotherhood, Cicero reminded himself, I want to be one of them. He took a deep breath and put his knife against his mother's throat. A solitary tear rolled down his cheek.
"I love you too, mother," he whispered.
"Cicero?" His mother woke up when she felt his tear fall on her hand. A moment of realization passed over both mother and child, a look of horror growing on Helvia's face as she beheld her son's expression of pained resolve.
A quick pull of the knife severed his mother's throat, cutting her scream into a mangled choke as the life quickly bled from her. Cicero forced his own horrified feeling into the back reaches of his mind and replaced it with a feeling of accomplishment. His mother was dead. That was part one. He set to work on part two, blood soaking his hands, the bed, the floor as he cut. He removed his mother's heart, taking care to not damage it too badly, wrapped it in his best handkerchief, and placed it into the wooden lockbox his uncle had sent him from the Imperial City. When Cicero turned back to retrieve his knife and saw what he had done he almost screamed. His mother, his own, beautiful mother, lay dead and mutilated in a growing pool of her own blood, blood that now soaked Cicero up to the elbows and down to his knees. Panic began to scratch at his brain and nausea tickled his stomach. Knowing if he broke down now he would never make it to the Sanctuary, Cicero snatched the lockbox and knife and rushed out of the house, only stopping to snatch up his knapsack.
Into the cold, dark, street Cicero stepped. The air chilled the wet blood dripping from him and made him shiver, but he did not, would not, stop until he was behind the big, scary, Black Door. His breaths came quick and hard as he found the loose rock behind his house, slick hands slipping as he pushed it out of place, crawling through the city wall and into the outside world. Though the moons were bright and he had a good memory for maps, he found the entrance to the hidden pathway difficult to spot, and if he had been only a little less panicked would have missed it entirely, adrenaline the only thing fueling his ability to find it at all. He crashed along, running until he felt as if his heart and lungs would burst. Only when the walls of Bruma were far behind him did he come to a pause, the strong smell of his mother's blood, its slimy caress against his skin, and the last image of his mother's body hit the boy all at once and he doubled over, vomiting forcefully into the dirt. After taking a moment to catch his shaking breath, Cicero wiped his mouth and carried on through the woods to the clearing, the Sanctuary, and the Dark Brotherhood.