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firebastardextraordinaire · 2 days ago

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Happy Holidays, everyone <3 The last two months have been insane for me personally, but I managed to finish this just in time. Nothing too heavy or wild, just a breath of warmth. okay maybe a little angst but just a pinch. they're HEALING I need to write something where Lucien's inner Scrooge really comes out biting at some point, too hehe

@arnaerr @blackmetalsnake @skyrim-forever @cheesychickenwings @theladygrim @neloths-tea @heavy-metal-dick @wingedknightrose @devilbrakers @fruk-choosing-a-username @nuwanders @ray-elgatodormido @justafoxhound @dirty-bosmer @youthroad

+ R e a d o n A O 3 +

Fandom: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion [Lucien!Lives AU]

Characters: Lucien Lachance, Tatiana Vestalis [HoK, Silencer+Listener]

Relationships: Lucien Lachance/Tatiana Vestalis

Rating/General Warnings: Mature for brief sexuality and a few of Lucien's usual violent intrusive thoughts. For funsies :)

Summary:

For some, the festival of New Life is a joyous occasion marked by laughter, hope, happy reunions, and all manner of gift-giving, a time to embrace positive change and selflessness. For others, it's as pleasant as a fresh grave marker, highlighting all the year's wounds and struggles and losses. Lucien Lachance saw it as neither. To him, it's a waste of time and resources better spent on things that matter, like good blades and armor, supplies, training, or ceremonially honoring the Dread Father. It is a celebration of the weak by the weak. But this year is different. As he and his new Listener, his lover, struggle to adapt to their changing world after the horrors of Applewatch, he finds that there are indeed a few things worth celebrating - even alone in their dank, dreary fort.

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As a general rule, Lucien Lachance did not willingly celebrate the festival of New Life.

Oh, as simple child born to a simple cobbling and farming family, his young mind not yet comprehending the frivolity of it all, he had. His parents had saved for months to buy a little box of special red candles, cut pine boughs from the woods to adorn their cabin and barn, always kept one calf for themselves to slaughter and roast there in the depth of winter. The food and pine and the humble toys, he hadn’t minded. Livestock were meant to be slaughtered. Trees were meant to be cut; the wooden puzzle boxes his father bartered for utterly spellbound him. But the candles? As he grew, he began to resent those tiny lights. Resent that his parents insisted they tighten their belts and sell more of their hard-earned crops and his father’s shoes, all for a box of tapers that lasted a few weeks at best. Why should they suffer for a bit of wax and wick?

On the cusp of his teens, the bandits had come, and he fled to Cheydinhal’s streets, where he’s seen the truth of the blasted holiday: it was a squandering of time and money for most, a time where people who bickered all year turned blind eyes to resentments and naked wrongs for one night of the year, just to inexplicably start barking and hissing over them the following day. It was a time of distraction during which the strong manipulated the weak, the calloused beat down the callow. He stole more than his share of food and basic necessities on New Life and the bustling weeks that led up to it. But because he had to and could, not because of some inborn love of theft. Some of the other urchins celebrated with laughter and carousing and stolen drink, seizing a night of merrymaking of which life otherwise deprived them. Lucien did not. He watched, waited, and listened to them. Planning for one of them to think he was still the sniveling farmer’s child and an easy target.

It wasn’t long after that he discovered his birthright and purpose. The Dark Brotherhood took him in after murdering a fellow urchin for trying to steal his only pair of shoes. The Dark Brotherhood showed him that true families didn’t need a calendar holiday to express love and appreciation for one another. Vicente Valtieri, his tutor and adoptive father, reinforced the idea that New Life was nothing if not a knife to be twisted into the ribs of those who’d die anyway. He could celebrate it if he wished, for Sithis and the Night Mother were not the chapels and daedric cults that sought to control every aspect of their flocks’ lives, but he should never let such celebrations eclipse his duties or distract him from potential dangers. Through his teens, he typically spent the holiday alone, training or studying. Brothels, bars, and virtually everything else was more expensive. Charging nearly twice the price for the same loaf of bread or whore or flagon of ale? A man would have to be daft to be so played, and Lucien was by no means daft.

Ascending to Speakerhood cemented his feelings. Once he earned their respect, for he’d been disconcertingly young upon his promotion, he and his fellows on the Black Hand got on like blood on a good knife. But for all they had personally and professionally in common, his loathing of New Life was not among them. They understood that it and all its trappings and expectations were some of Sithis’s finest weapons. But, as Vicente had told him in his youth, Sithis had no qualms with mortal celebrations. And being part of the Black Hand carried as many demands as it did privileges.

So for nearly twenty years, Lucien suffered through the annual New Life gatherings Banus and Alval Ulvani hosted in Leyawiin, swapping gossip and tales of the year as he sipped nightshade-spiked wine and sampled the flaky, delicately salted canapes and truffle hors-d’oeuvres, the admittedly succulent roasts and petit-fours enrobed in rich, velvety chocolate. With the patience of winter waiting for summer to die, he endured the inevitable gift exchange in the hopes of acquiring something useful for his trouble—a new dagger, garments enchanted against wear and weapons, or other suitable accoutrements for an assassin. Seeing his fellows so harmoniously casual with one another pleased him—if a Family could not laugh and relax together in times of calm, how could they function in times of crisis?—but the parties themselves were like a stubborn, stinging rash he couldn’t avoid.

Pine garlands studded with mistletoe and poinsettia and scarlet nightshade would wither and become dirt. Promises and smiles could be just as false on New Life as on any other night. Time squandered on feasting, fucking, or drinking until one thought they’d spent the night feasting and fucking, was better spent on study, training, or other more practical pursuits. Rich food and drink sustained the body just as well as bland. Although Banus and Alval had traditionally prepared the fare, the cost to procure such a lavish spread, in his mind, should’ve been put toward new armor, weapons, or the varied minutiae that greased each Sanctuary’s gears: foodstuffs, medical and alchemical supplies, oils and waxes for the toothy tools of the Dark Brotherhood’s trade, the crafting of incense to compliment rituals, formal ceremonies, or blood-offerings to Sithis. Sensible things. Unless luring in and lulling a target was involved, most anything and everything seemed a sounder investment than things as frivolous as a party.

Had he not seen his absence as a grave disrespect to the Hand and insult to their Dread Father and Night Mother, he would’ve declined each gilt invitation. They were a Family, and good Families sacrificed of themselves for each other.

Beyond the notion of waste, celebrating the festival of New Life seemed nonsensical. From his professional perspective, more lives ended than began, and with far greater rapidity and ease—that, he knew better than most anyone else, and was reminded with every ache in his shoulder and tugging in scars on his face, left arm, and stomach. In terms of personal taste, it seemed little more than a cultural impetus for those otherwise too indolent or indecisive to turn over life’s proverbial leaves. They required a calendrical excuse to seize new opportunities, redress wrongs, show care for loved ones, or cut ties that choked them. Such fools were chaff on Cyrodiil’s threshing floor.

So it was with a twitch of annoyance that he learned Tatiana—his friend, lover, savior and now charge—indulged in New Life’s wintry festivities. The cynical, pragmatic corner of his mind told him he should be grateful she was not at full strength. Were she herself, he’d thought when she asked him to accompany her to town for what she called, “holiday errands,” she might’ve attempted to drape the whole fort in pine wreaths, ribbons, and holly sprigs. He shouldn’t have expected anything less from someone who’d exorcised and restored a whole manor with marble, lace, velvet, lush paintings, and enchanted roses.

Like the aches of old injuries, he’d ignored those nattering dislikes as he let her cling to his elbow on the downhill walk through the woods that morning. Tatiana was his Listener, above all else. He could not disobey her no matter how he might wish. But beyond that, he respected and cared for her even more than he cared for the rest of the Hand. Through her bloodied possession by the Umbra sword, she’d seen sense and hunted down the traitor. She’d vouched for Lucien at Applewatch. Saved his life nearly at the cost of her own. That meant far more to him than the finest knife or most lovingly crafted poisoner’s kit.

And after what she’d endured these last six months? For her sake and the Family’s? He would’ve found a way to drag the stars from the sky if she asked. A little trip to and from Cheydinhal’s evergreen-draped market, allowing a few decorations to the kitchens, and helping her knead dough in the fort’s kitchen, was a trivial favor indeed.

In mutually contented silence, they sat together before the kitchen’s great fireplace. Sans the mage-lit candelabra on the long work counter behind them, it was the night’s only light. Being large enough to roast a side of beef, it easily lit half the long, lofty room, casting it in crimson and orange that glared viciously off the pans, pots, knives, and pokers bracketed to the opposite wall. Fragrant pine garland festooned the mantle, studded with pinecones and berries like those trimming half the town. Stew simmered in a fat pot over the flames while a pan of dark, hearty bread and a skillet of sautéed liver stayed warm on the hearth. This was good fare, he thought. Simple, nourishing fare that broke neither one’s budget nor back in preparing. Without Ungolim, how did the others feast, far to the south in Leyawiin? Had Banus sprung for the edible gold dust Alval had garnished the cakes with a few years back, seeking to honor his life and service to Sithis?

He snorted softly. Alval had lived lavishly, yes, but Lucien decided the dunmer would’ve preferred they incinerate an orphanage in his memory.

“You’ve that look on your face,” Tatiana said in a small, hoarse voice.

Lucien blinked away from the hourglass atop the mantle. The sand had finally reached the bottommost line engraved on the glass head. He looked over at her, cold sliding through his gut.

She’d drawn her legs up under her and clutched close the thickest woolen blanket he owned. In a borderline comical way, the sight reminded him of an argonian who’d poked their head through their shell. But there was little joy to be taken in the rest of her appearance. Not considering what she’d been before Umbra’s loss had ravaged her.

Her fair skin was now as pasty as a day-old corpse. Jagged memories and wasting haunted the softness of her face, giving her the air of a cursed portrait. Bruise-like shadows brooded beneath her slate-blue eyes, and her hair, once as lustrous as shadowy gold, seemed lank and lifeless even in the molten firelight. Despite the blanket’s thickness, her shoulders still seemed too sharp and narrow. Memories of the last months flashed across his mind’s eye—her lurching between panic and unprovoked rage and melancholy so complete he’d nearly had to force her to bathe, eat, and even Listen to the Night Mother’s summons in the fort’s hidden shrine. He’d held her shivering body close on the chilly nights she’d once adored, feminine curves sunken to disturbingly skeletal ridges and divots. That the theft of the sword had nearly broken her, that she’d allowed herself to keep it for as long as she had, paradoxically saddened and inflamed him. At her worst, loyalty to the Family and Listener’s post, an unspoken demand from the Night Mother, and his inborn need to repay her help at Applewatch were sometimes all that kept him from hurling her from the ramparts. Frantic as she’d been, the nastiest shadows of his mind suspected she’d have screamed bloody murder and crawled after him for vengeance.

His throat worked, dry and coarse as Hammerfell sand.

Yet after six agonizing months, Lucien knew the worst was behind them. Knew it in the cores of his bones as he’d known she’d save the Family the night they’d met. The flames had not scorched, but tempered her. Her flesh remained frail. Vulnerable. But her moods had stabilized and she no longer lashed out at him, no longer wept and screamed for Umbra’s godsdamned hilt. Her appetite had finally returned, and she tended her own needs. They walked the orchard and gently trained to begin reconditioning her body. Tonight, she’d offered to do most of the supper preparations, though her arms had trembled with effort by the time she’d kneaded the bread dough.

At the center of it all, like good gold and better blades peeking up through river silt, life had returned to her eyes. Sharp, inquisitive. And more stubborn than a daedroth carcass.

She needed time. Physical and emotional healing. Training to whet the beautifully wicked edges months of invalidity had blunted and rusted. Potions and healing magics would not cleanse her of this spiritual and emotional affliction. But she would recover in the name of loyalty, duty, and spite. She would Listen. She would lead the Family into the Void’s dark glory as none had before her. And Lucien would be honored to kiss her hands and feet after every step.

He smiled when her brows furrowed at his silence, her eyes refreshingly critical and curious. “What look is that, exactly?” he asked.

“Well, until now, it looked like the one you make when something disgusts you.”

Fair. Life offered plenty of disgusting matters. “Musing. That is all,” he replied.

“You, musing?” She scoffed and shifted in place. The fire spat as if it, too, doubted him. “Over what? How much hotter that fire would need to be to cremate remains?”

“Much hotter.”

“Scheming is more your style.”

“If there was point in scheming against something as intangible as a cultural mainstay, I would.” Leaning back slightly, he pulled his crimson night robe closer and crossed his arms, his mouth watering at the aroma of bread, rich lamb, onion, and stewing vegetables. “This is the first time I’ve spent New Life here, you know.” When she lifted a brow, he chuckled slightly. A recluse like himself confessing that he’d never spent a holiday at home in his haunted fort? Of course she’d doubt him. “Banus and Alval Ulvani hosted parties for the Black Hand in Leyawiin. A splendid affair for nobility, I suppose. Alval’s home was a stately place, clogged with food, drink, other such frills that soften what should be callous…I attended purely out of respect for our Family. I rather prefer this quiet.”

Tatiana’s throat worked at the mention of Ulvani’s name, and she averted her eyes in shame; guilt in being blind to Bellamont’s false Dead Drop orders still haunted her. Him, too, for his own complacency in not being more careful in monitoring them. He supposed he was simply still better at masking and ignoring it. “Me, too,” she said. After a moment, her nose wrinkled suddenly and she looked up. “I don’t suppose I could declare ‘Listener’s privilege’ and wriggle out of attending next year?”

“Attendance is technically optional, though it would be considered disrespectful not to. Rather like a queen skippng a nameday feast for one of her close advisors. Your recovery is the only reason I haven’t gone for their sake. In that sense, thank you for sparing me it.”

“Even with Umbra, they didn’t care for me half as much as you do. Without it?” She snorted and let the crackling fire finish the thought. “They’re some of the last people I’d want to spend a holiday with.”

He couldn’t argue that. Though the Black Hand treated her with the respect and obedience due a Listener, their relationship was prickly at best. Belisarius, as adaptable and shrewd as ever, had readily acknowledged and apologized for his blindness to the Great Treachery and made overtures of friendship, offers of tutelage in magic and gifts of weapons and alchemical goods. Tatiana still regarded them with pronounced skepticism. Arquen openly detested her uncouth, albeit valid criticism of the Hand’s oversight and refusal to compromise. Banus shared Arquen’s views on Tatiana’s decorum, but also sneered at her history of succumbing to emotion and wallowing in libertine hedonism. Above all, they’d vocally denounced her obsession with and possession by Umbra during a private meeting with Lucien after Applewatch, demanding that she relinquish it for the sake of the Family.

They’d smile and chat with all the forced politesse of unwilling allies. Without the Tenets, he imagined any party they attended would involve a blasphemous dose of poison. Sithis willing their tempers would cool by this time next year.

“One day soon,” he promised, “they will see you at your best. And you will see them at theirs, too, if only you open your eyes.”

She shrugged noncommittally. “I’m not sure what my best is anymore. You and vengeance feel like the only constants left to me. Sometimes even those feel like eels trying to wriggle away from me.”

“If they remain after the fires you’ve withstood, they will remain always.” Sensing as much as saw her backsliding into misery, he leaned close, lips brushing the shell of her ear as he whispered, “Vengeance and a Speaker of the Black Hand…I can think of no finer bedfellows to take.”

The ghost of a blush threatened her wan face, fleeting yet unmistakable. “‘Fires’ seems like too gentle of a word. Near-lunacy? That feels more accurate.”

Delicately, he brushed long waves of hair behind her shoulder. “However you term it, my blade remains yours, and revenge, when you’re strong enough to take it, will strengthen you when nothing else can.”

She let that sink in a moment before finally nodding, the tendrils of her fringe swaying slightly at her cheek. “I don’t trust myself right now, but I trust you.”

Lucien’s gaze softened. That was all he needed to hear, all he needed to work with. A drowning sailor needed but one lifeline to be drawn from a riptide.

As she often did when scrambling for words, she scratched at the angry scar cutting across her forehead and down around her temple; her fingertips were red ruins, her nails chipped and jagged from her obsessive tearing at them. Haltingly, she began, “You’ve tolerated me when I would’ve broken my neck and left me on the roadside. After that, I’d cut the moon from the sky for you. When Banus next hosts one of these parties, we’ll both be there.” She smirked faintly. “Suffer with me, and I’ll happily suffer with you. Reciprocity and all that.”

Warmth unfurled in his chest, unbidden but pleasant. Misery adored company, as his father had often droned. “What is companionship without willing sacrifice?”

“The opening move to betrayal, in my experience. Consider yourself the lone exception.” The chair creaked as she unfolded her slippered feet from beneath her, moistening her lips as she glanced up at the hourglass. Bracing herself on the counter’s corner, she eased to her feet and kissed his cheek. Her smile faded as she turned to the fire.

The warmth of her kiss lingered pleasantly on Lucien’s skin. He studied her mounded silhouette before standing beside her. The silence congealed like cold snot. Words eluded him like skittish birds. These gestures of chaste affection felt like shoes forced onto the wrong feet, seemed as unsuitable as silks in sewers. In their brief, though torrid affair, sex had built sturdy bridges back to each other amidst anger, uncertainty, and her melancholic tendencies. It anchored them in lieu of the emotional intimacy that terrified them both; lust was familiar, predictable, safe. It was, he’d swiftly learned, one of the few coping mechanisms she’d had beyond Umbra’s bloodlust, driving her lecherous ventures during the tumult of the Oblivion Crisis. Were circumstances gentler, he didn’t doubt he’d have hitched up her robe and bent her over the counter by now, or she’d have knelt before him in his chair, moaning softly as she took him into her mouth and he fisted his hands in her hair. But she’d not been in a suitable physical or psychological state for such things, and now, with her health creeping back to her, her mind wholly her own and yet softer and more sentimental than the savage one that had drawn him to her, Lucien felt like a stranger wandering a far stranger land.

But he wasn’t walking them alone. Tatiana had literally and figuratively been at his side since his own convalescence. She walked her own strange lands, too, with her hand in his. All at once, it was their first New Life together and alone—her without Umbra and her relatives, and him without his fellows. He thanked the Night Mother for delivering them both.

Exhaling slowly, he curled an arm around her shoulder—softer than even the week before, but still thin, too thin beneath the blanket. As she leaned into him, tension melted from his shoulders and back, and the moment’s prickling uncertainty settled back into whispering calm. We make our own lives, he thought, watching time trickle through the weighty hourglass atop the mantle. Hints of cinnamon, clove, and the sweetness of sugar and vanilla seeped through the air. It reminded him of Antoinetta Marie’s work. He savagely quashed an upwelling of sorrow.

At last emptied of sand, the enchanted hourglass glittered with light. The sound of tiny invisible bells tinkled, swiftly lost in the spacious kitchen. Heat wavered the air before the nearest of the iron-doored ovens built into the wall. Folding the blanket on her chair, Tatiana grabbed the thick woolen mitts sitting by the bread; the hem of her black robe, warm, heavy velvet trimmed in lace, whispered on the flagstone as she walked.

“Allow me,” Lucien said, remembering how the kneading had turned her arms to rubber. He didn’t want her dropping the pan, wasting foodstuffs, and compounding her own frustrations.

“I’m fine,” she insisted with refreshing sharpness. “‘Knead vigorously’ is nothing compared to ‘remove pan from oven.’” The long, twin scars on his cheek and neck tugged stiffly as he smirked and let her have her way. Recovery could seem a prison. Feeling useful smashed its bars as well as locks. Applewatch had taught him that as well as Vicente had taught him murder.

From the oven, she swept the pan to the towel folded on the work counter. Steam roiled off its contents, sugar, cinnamon, and clove a kick in his sinuses. He tightened the sash of his robe and joined her. Six plump cinnamon rolls stuffed the round pan, each golden brown, bigger than his fist, and as perfect as anything Marie had made.

Tatiana beamed down at the pan—not simply smiled, but beamed, the joy and pride shining in her eyes catching Lucien like a fishhook. Rather than the near-lunatic he’d tended since early summer or the cruelly cold killer he’d come to respect and lust after in the year prior, she suddenly seemed a child loosed in a luxury toy shop. Part of him thought the glitter of innocence suited her in an ironic fashion. Another thought it sullied her. Spoiled her.

Of that, he said nothing. The joy he’d known during her initiation as Listener, when he’d marked her with his blood and vowed to serve and protect her, when she’d looked up through half-lidded eyes and marked him with her blood, had all but overwhelmed him. Had the ceremony not demanded solemnity and reverence, he, too, would’ve trembled and grinned like the fool he’d vowed to never be.

Discarding her mitts, Tatiana flexed the stiffness from her fingers. “They’re perfect,” she breathed. “My grandmother’s recipe. She baked them for my sister and I on our nameday. And every holiday and visit, really. Even with the Vestalis House trying to trample each other, these always brought us together.” Snorting softly, she reached for the crock of icing across the counter. “If only for a few minutes. It was dangerously close to nice. Peaceful. I hated everything about those formal parties. I hated my sister and parents. But these made it all worth it.”

Lucien examined that in silence, noting the wistfulness in her eyes as she daubed generous portions of icing onto each roll. She hadn’t spoken of her relatives during their time together. Where her past muttered bitterly in bloody shadows, more immediate matters—threats to their lives, the Cheydinhal Family, and the Dark Brotherhood as a whole—had screamed for their attention. Lucien had had neither the time nor desire to exhume her past. Not when all of Cyrodiil knew she’d been jailed for a botched robbery, deserted by her Thieves’ Guild allies, and publicly disowned by her father, who’d later apologized and begged for her forgiveness after she became the Champion of Cyrodiil. All he’d needed to know was that they were greasy weasels and she was better off without them. She should let him save her the effort of hunting them.

The thought made his hand itch for his Blade of Woe. How lovely blood would look on her house’s teal and gold livery-,

Tatiana’s lip trembled, lashes fluttering. The display vanished in an instant, thrown behind a mask of practiced calm. But Lucien saw more than enough. Had those been…tears? Sorrow? A trick of the light? He stiffened. Fallout from the Purification was understandable. Excusable. Proper, even, to a certain extend. The Cheydinhal Sanctuary had grown to respect and love her, and unlike her own relatives, even the cagey M’raaj-dar would’ve gutted the Imperial Prison to free her. Lucien believed she knew that, deep down, even if she couldn’t admit it. Lucien had not openly wept for their brethren, but in the aftermath, he’d withdrawn even further than usual, often broken and healed his knuckles during savage training bouts. Every birth and transformation demanded blood and pain in exchange, after all. He would not overcome their loss without giving something in return.

But pining for a past long-trampled and muddied by time, over harmony with those who’d obviously held no real loyalty or love for her? That was neither appropriate nor sensible. It was childish. Hypocritical. Dangerous and in dire need of rebuke, for such unnecessary attachments risked distracting even the most seasoned Listener, and that invited peril into every house of Sithis.

Tatiana wished to celebrate New Life while clinging to an old one that had nearly hanged her? This was not the woman and weapon he’d grown to respect and adore, the one to whom he owed his second chance at life. With Umbra’s armor and animosity stripped away, what remained? A woman beaten so many times she’d learned to love the bruises. A callow recruit needing ironclad guidance. Lucien knew well how to excise such weakness. As a hatchling, Ocheeva had been disappointingly soft and prone to excessive empathy. Antoinetta Marie, too, in the months after he plucked her sniveling and feeble from the muck of the streets. He’d honed them like blades on a grindstone. Taught them to snip the dangerously loose threads of their hearts—or at least how to strangle others with them.

Then why did pity rather than fierce disapproval tighten his chest? Why did he lack the words to chasten Tatiana? Because she was his Listener as well as his ward? Because they owed each other their lives? Because they shared his bed for far more than warmth?

Blinking back to awareness, he thanked Sithis for the distraction when she held the empty crock out to him. He took it to the washbasin without comment. The pump wailed as he heaved on its lever; the water sloshing into the metal basin was as frigid as the gales of Skyrim, and his hands tingled and stung when finished and dried them, the soft towel hanging on the cupboard seeming coarser than sandstone. As he’d hoped, the pain grounded him. Slammed shut the door that kept creaking open in his mind.

With spoons and deep stoneware bowls in hand, he pulled down his sleeves and turned back to the counter to find her leaning into the fireplace. Grimacing, she heaved the pot off its hook and onto the iron rack waiting on the hearth. She glanced between the counter and the weighty iron pot, yanked off her mits as a shamed flush crept over cheeks. “The bloody thing’s heavier than it looks,” she mumbled bitterly.

Help me, that pled, help me, but by the Void, don’t tell anyone. He wouldn’t. In his care, her secrets would remain such.

Taking the mitts, he carried the pot to the island counter. It wasn’t the biggest or heaviest pot in the kitchen—one could comfortably stew three large chickens and a sack of vegetables at once—but its contents would still feed them heartily for several days. Considering that he’d had to help her to and from the privy, baths, and the Listening shrine for almost a month, carrying the pot at all was phenomenal progress. Besides. Acknowledging one’s limits was a mark of wisdom. Shame came only in ignoring them. As she’d dutifully, almost obsessively, tended him in his infirmity at and after Applewatch, he’d continue tending her here—as any good Speaker or lover should.

She accepts aid far more readily than you did, he recalled dryly. Part of him had despised her for that doting care, her foolhardily skipping meals and avoiding sleep so she could answer his any need that might arise—like he was some worthless infant. The rest had hated himself for winding up in such a pitiful state of infirmity in the first place. She’d fed him and helped him drink at first, then washed and combed his hair, and as soon as he’d been able, he’d scowled until he swore his ruined face would split along her stitches. Though he’d been too weak to push her away, he’d sometimes snapped that he was perfectly bloody capable of this or that task even when a blind worm could see that he wasn’t. Yet for all his bitter animosity, she never lost patience with him. Never left him to his own devices when he truly needed help. Never held his bitterness against him. Returning her kindness and loyalty warmed him in a thousand discomfiting ways, but for the first time in his life as a Speaker, it was affection he lacked the heart to spurn.

When she brought the bread and shallow pan of liver to the counter, struggling but ultimately succeeding in cutting the crusty loaf, he smiled to himself. Portioned out most of the beef liver and onions for her, knowing she needed its goodness far more than he did. He’d drown Cyrodiil in blood if it would restore her to health. He wanted her strong and confident with blade and bow again, to be the Listener he knew she was, a harbinger of Sithis’s dark might that fiercely commanded, served, and protected the Family. His baser mind yearned to finally take her again, to hear her breathy sighs and see her smiling lustily up at him, to grit his teeth at the burning rake of her nails on his back and sides as he rode her to the edges of madness…

At that last thought, heat kindled under his belly. He hastily smeared extra butter on his bread and took their plates to the little table near the fire. Fitting, perhaps. Tatiana had had to quash lust for him during his recovery, too. She’d confessed nothing of the sort, but oh, he knew as he’d known she’d wanted him after the Purification. Her lingering glances and bitten lips, her hesitance in changing his bandages and the wounded, naked want in her eyes when their gazes met, all of it read like a boldfaced newspaper. Now more than ever, he believed Sithis and the Night Mother had tossed their bones together for good reason. That They’d restored both of their lives for more than salvaging the flotsam and jetsam that was Cheydinhal’s broken Family. They were meant to help each other. Be with each other as they forged their new lives from the shards of the old, walking the earth like revenants. He just wished the concept of companionship fit his hands as readily as a weapon.

Woodenly, he returned to open the pot, avoiding the scalding steam that billowed out. He filled their bowls with the dark, chunky stew. Their fingers brushed as she took hers from him, ivory on olive, callous and scar on callous and scar. “Thank you,” she said softly, hesitating before retreating to the table. She took the chair nearer to the fire.

“There’s no need to thank me. A Speaker’s duty to aid the Listener however they require. You know this. Any of the others would have done the same.” He joined her, pausing only for a quick thought in thanks to Sithis for permitting them such fare before taking up his spoon.

Her voice was grave, thick with stifled emotion. “On threat of damnation, yes. But you know I’m not talking about carrying the pot or walking me to the privy or not slitting my throat when I couldn’t stop sobbing and tearing at my arms. I’m talking about this.” She nodded at the stout candle sitting between them, redolent of earthy incense. “The pine and cinnamon rolls…it means more than I can say. Not the holiday itself. It’s whipped like a dead nag, harder and harder each year, it seems like. The price hikes and frantic runs at the market, the parties and forced cheer that chafe like sodden smallclothes. But…” She chewed her lip a moment, voice breaking before falling into a whisper. “What it represents is very precious to me. What it once meant to me. What it apparently still means to me in spite of everything.”

He narrowed his eyes slightly. She spoke as if something had deprived her of her meager celebrations. “And that is?”

“Acceptance. Harmony. The idea that no matter how terrible things became, someone would still care about me. For so long, that someone was my grandmother. She was ill when I was imprisoned and couldn’t visit me even if the guards would’ve permitted her. She’s dead, now. Died a few months into the Crisis, I...” Tears glittered in her eyes, spilled freely down her cheeks. “I didn’t even remember until about a week ago, Lucien. So much came flooding back, like the last of Umbra’s dams finally broke. I haven’t visited her. Gods, I didn’t even remember I liked the pine and candles and that I’d craved those cinnamon rolls. The recipe for them just…reappeared in my head with all sorts of memories of eating them.” She shook her head, gaze stuck on her stew. “What else can’t I remember? What else did that stupid sword take from me? Who am I really, without it?”

The words had barely tumbled out before her face turned flinty and she angrily dried her eyes on her sleeve.

Her lurch in emotion dropped through Lucien like a frozen stone, cold, hard, and miserable. All the honeyed words he’d poured for targets, things he knew battered romantics and bleeding hearts craved, soured and shriveled in his throat. He could not insult her with lies. Not even if he dared.

“That is for you to decide,” he admitted, nudging his bowl forward to lean forward and cross his arms on the table. His stare was hard, but not unkind. “But I see you as my Listener, my friend, lover, and a woman agonizing over a past she can neither change, nor reclaim. The person you were before Umbra is as irrelevant to you now as the one you were when you wielded it. Our Unholy Matron has named you Her champion and prophet, and Her graces have sustained you far more than any food, drink, or care would. That alone should concern you going forward.”

“But without it-,”

“Tatiana, you bested Umbra’s madness. Now, you risk succumbing to one of your own creation. For our Family’s sake if not your own, do not attempt to travel that road. As your Speaker, I will not allow it.”

Challenge flashed in her eyes, gutted her grief. Heartened, he stalwartly lifted his chin. That look declared that her despair was no longer complete, but echoes of old ways and shadows, foul knots that could be undone with time. It promised that her fires had guttered, but not been smothered. Good.

Yet when Lucien met her stare stone for stone, she crumbled like an apprentice under the scrutiny of their master, slouching and idly prodding chunks of sweet potato, parsnip, and beef through the velvety stew. “I know that, Lucien. Trust me, I know.” She snorted softly. “Sometimes, I think you’d drug me to protect me from some danger you felt I’d hurtle into.”

“Good, because I would without hesitation.”

She smiled to herself and picked at the crust of her bread before taking a bite. “I want to be a good Listener. I want to right my wrongs against the Family that took me in when no one else would. But what if a past I can’t remember repeats itself? What if something I can’t remember would save us all in the face of some other calamity?”

“History repeats only if you allow it,” he replied simply. “Though I fail to see how pining for good times with relatives who only seek your forgiveness to mend their own reputations helps anyone. As for what you remember, use it to your advantage. Cherish it if it’s precious to you, or study and learn from it if it was a mistake. Kill and bury that which distracts or ails you. What you don’t remember? It may return. It may not. Don’t waste time or effort seeking it either way. Were it relevant to you as a Listener, the Night Mother would reveal it to you if your own memory cannot, or some alternative.” He continued eating, quelling a twitch of annoyance at her childish waffling. People often needed tempered. Sometimes, they needed shoved into the lake. She’d survived tempering. Now, it was time to swim. “Whatever might be lost, you have your name, purpose, and our dear Night Mother. All else is immaterial."

“Much easier said than done.” She blew softly on a spoonful.

“Most anything in life is easier said than done. I could agonize over what I can’t remember of Applewatch. But what would that do if not distract me from present or future concerns? I took what I know—magicka burnout nearly killed you in your attempts to save me. I reconciled with our fellows, and we punished Bellamont as thoroughly as we could on this plane. And I moved forward. Both of us have learned from our mistakes. Both of us have crossed the threshold, wounded but victorious, of new lives. Will you return to wallow alone in the muck you escaped, or will you celebrate our victories and walk on with me?” Lucien canted his head slightly, flicking a disdainful sneer at the mantle garland. “In addition to your harmony and acceptance, is that not what this Void-forsaken holiday is about?”

“My parents would’ve said it was about family.”

“‘The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.’ The only Family that matters now is ours,” Lucien said. The old Imperial adage was a personal favorite of his, and one he’d often used with great success to twist the arms of doubtful or hesitant recruits. Fate might fashion the trappings of one’s life, but their choices and personal loyalties steeled or shattered them. His fate had been to die. To save him, Tatiana had chosen to pour her heart and soul out to a Mother she’d otherwise struggled to trust, and there he sat, healthy and whole.

Surprise blinked in her eyes at the axiom, then recognition and resignation. “Father used to say that. Well, the short, distorted version, anyway. ‘Blood is thicker than water.’ Something he used to shut my sister and I up to avoid embarrassing him at galas with his trade partners, or drag us together for supper.”

“Seems a charming fellow,” he drawled.

“In the professional sense, I think you’d actually get along. He’s just as coldly pragmatic as you,” she scoffed. “And I’d kill to spectate a chess match between you. But as you said. They don’t matter right now. I have an oath of vengeance against them that I didn’t forget. I have…our Mother. The rest of the Dark Brotherhood. An oath to protect and serve them. And I have you.”

Lucien’s still numb cheek tugged as he grinned. He’d set the hook—and more deeply than he’d first imagined. Some might say he should feel a twist of guilt for manipulating her. Absurd. He preferred to call it a Speaker’s counsel. Either way, it was for her own good, and for the Family’s.

Tatiana went on, “You chose to be here with me. Tonight and all the other nights before when it would’ve been so much easier to abandon me to madness or death. You frowned, but didn’t complain when I asked if I could hang some pine or make some old comfort foods and pick my favorite candles.” The tears in her eyes now were ones of affection and indescribable gratitude. “That’s a new and already a far better life than the one I had before you.”

And this life is far better than my previous one, came his shockingly sentimental thought. Damn his old self for letting the feeling lie, but he was happy.

Dipping his head slightly, he laid his hand over his heart. Her smile brightened. That was enough. Somehow, it was always enough for her.

They finished their meal in contented quiet, listening to the crackling fire and the steady ticking of the clockwork timepiece on the sideboard. Tatiana ate more than she had in days, leaving only a few crumbs of bread and shreds of beef, potato and onion behind. From the adjoining wine room, Lucien retrieved a bottle of dry, deep red, a splendid vintage from High Rock that Vicente had favored. He poured himself a glass. Tatiana politely declined, and when he returned to their table, she’d set a plump cinnamon roll before each of their chairs. She devoured hers, licking her fork clean. From the first bite, Lucien understood why she so loved them, in taste if not in sentiment. They were golden and flaky on the outside, yet soft and chewy, sweet and sharp with cinnamon on the inside, the robe of icing a perfect, velvety compliment. Vicente and even Alval would’ve approved. Antoinetta Marie would’ve cried out in delight. Gogron and Teinaava would’ve already noshed the rest of the pan—perhaps part of the pan in their gluttony.

Shutting his eyes, he sat back and sipped his wine. If he reached out into the darkness of his mind, if he prayed for the Night Mother to let him brush the unholy Void, sometimes he swore he could feel them. See them.

A few minutes later, breath whispered against his cheek, warm and scented with spice and hints of garlic. Two legs straddled his hips and the chair, with velvet and lace murmuring over his house shoes. Smiling, he opened his eyes to find Tatiana in his lap, her gaze familiarly seductive and a curious smear of icing at the corner of her parted lips. The deep V of her robe sagged between rivers of her hair, teasing the soft curves of her breasts. Heat and long-stifled want rushed between his legs, and his throat dried like baked clay.

But not so much as a murmur of that betrayed his veneer of calm. Without breaking her stare, he sipped his wine again. Barely tasted it. “Rather bold, considering your state.”

She set his glass on the table behind her and lazily coiled her arms around his neck. “Reciprocity, Speaker. You’re familiar with the concept. When you were recovering, you pleased me in what ways you could.” She dragged the pad of her index finger down his lips and chin, then his chest and stomach. “I’m not the waif I was a month ago. I’m well enough now for a little gift-giving.”

He raised a questioning brow. He trusted that she knew her limits, just as they’d known his in his recovery, but he respected her enough to give her room to retreat, even if he knew it wasn’t in her nature to do so. Not in this.

“Misery does love company on nights like these,” she added, touching her brow to his. He hummed low in his throat in answer.

Faint under his rising pulse and the gentle hush of her breath, his belt buckle snapped open. Shivers skittered up his thighs and back as she curled her fingers around his cock and stroked him. Slowly, oh, so, slowly. She swallowed his groan in a languid kiss; her lips and tongue were sweet with far more than dessert. Lucien clutched her like she’d clutched his blanket, offering his warmth, taking away her hurt and want and hunger for new beginnings, if only for these few fleeting moment.s.

This was the dawn of her new life. Their new life. They needed no wasteful feasting or forced, frivolous camaraderie to celebrate that.

#pterodactyl screaming!! I love them so much! murder mom and dad!!! beloved

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