Maddo! Part the Second!

"You're a natural, Caleigh. You have the mark of Sithis himself. There's no point in running from it."

There was a long silence, punctuated only by her jagged, hitching breaths. I tried to remember how I felt after my first assassination, but it was too long ago, and our situations were too different. I was raised by the Brotherhood, and have called Sithis and the Night Mother my family since I could speak. The transformation I was witnessing in her was something completely alien to me.

"Why are you so upset about this?" I sat down completely then, dwarfing her on the floor.

"I just murdered a man!" Her eyes opened wide, clearly questioning my sanity.

"Yes. You ended the life of a murderer and a rapist. He's never going to hurt anyone ever again, and yet you're sitting there crying about it!"

Her breath caught, and she blinked several times in surprise. "What?"

"One fewer killer in the world, my dear. By your hand. How is that not helping? By ending his life, you may have saved others."

She wanted to believe me. I could see it in the tenseness in her shoulders, in how still the air around her had become. I had her, and we both knew it. Cautiously, I reached my hand out and rested it on her shoulder. After a moment, she resigned herself to taking comfort from a stranger and leaned into me gently. I threw one arm around her and began stroking her hair, taking the opportunity to bury my face in her coppery waves and inhale deeply. She smelled of the road, an aroma which mingled nicely with the thick iron scent of Rufio's blood below us. The warmth of her against me was invigorating. My hand settled on the bare skin between her shoulderblades left exposed by her gown, and she shivered in response to my touch. I hadn't felt this tense in years—not before a kill, not during a job gone bad. Every nerve of my body that was also in contact with hers was practically shrieking in excitement.

Discipline is something the Dark Brotherhood weaves into its members from their first day, but her proximity destroyed all my restraint. I wanted to taste her, to run my hands over her skin until she begged me to take her. I lowered my mouth to her shoulder and let my tongue play along the groove above the collarbone. She stiffened against me, but did not pull away. Soon I was nibbling her neck, slowly easing my hands down to her waist to pull her closer to me. I remember being vaguely aware that she was no longer crying, but she was still silent. So silent. As my hands caressed her face, neck, shoulders, slid down her back, all the tension slowly melted from her muscles. When my fingers lingered at the laces to her gown, she refused to look at me, but as I began to expose her body to the flickering candlelight, covering her newly bared skin with slow kisses, she at last gave a quiet gasp.

Soon she was completely naked, stripped of her blue velvet gown, free of all weaponry, curled in my lap like a child who had just woken up from a nightmare. The hem of my robe was saturated with Rufio's blood from the slowly growing pool developing beside us, and the thought of sullying her skin with it seemed suddenly detestable to me. Wrapping her in my arms, I picked her up and carried her to her hit's recently vacated bed. Her face was turned up to mine as I set her down. I moved in to at last kiss her as I had wanted to for months now, but her hands rose to my shoulders and gently stopped me. All action paused as she worked up the will to speak and I tried to remember how long it had been since someone had told me no, even indirectly. If I had cared less for her, or maybe if I had cared one iota more, I would have backhanded her for denying me.

“Take—take off your hood,” she murmured at last, and I stood frozen before her. It had been years since even another ranking member of the Brotherhood had seen me out of my robes and known who I was. Was I really going to reveal myself to a mere initiate?

When she saw that I would not do so myself, her hands reached up haltingly and carefully slid the cowl from my face. As the candlelight illuminated me clearly, she gasped again, this time in recognition, and shook her head. “I should have known.” But her eyes never left mine, and when I pressed my lips against hers she kissed me back with terrifying need. I meant to ask her where she recognized me from, to see if she knew just how long I had been following her, but when her fingers twined their way into my hair it seemed suddenly irrelevant. I shoved her over onto Rufio's bed, grabbing her by the wrists and pinning her against the faded fabric of the bedclothes. Her eyes slid shut as I bit at her neck. Her shoulders. When my tongue began to play over her breasts, she tossed her head back and arched into me.

The damp trails I left on her skin glimmered in the dim light of the room as I took a moment to pause and admire her. When I let her wrists go, she tugged at my robe insistently, though her eyes remained shut. I undressed without fanfare, experiencing a thrill as my skin realized it was no longer clothed. Oh, Night Mother, this girl made me feel like I was on fire. My brain was overcome by fog, and the only coherent thoughts I could conjure were telling me to bury my head between her legs and break her silence entirely.

When I leaned to gently pushed her knees apart, her eyes came open, and she lifted her head to stare at me. I stood naked before her, unashamed that it was clear how much I wanted her. As she watched me, I slid my hand up her inner thigh and began to work her clit with my thumb. She bit her lip, her hips bucked slightly, but still she remained silent. My fingers dropped lower, exploring the extent of just how wet I, or perhaps Rufio's death, had made her. If I chose to enter her now, it would be effortless. But first, I decided to taste her. Falling to my knees, I ran my tongue hungrily across the flesh my hands had just teased, licking and flicking at her most sensitive spots in an effort to elicit a noise from her. Though her fingers dug into the bedclothes, she did not make a sound. When she came, she bit into her hand so hard it drew blood, so strong was her desire to deprive me of her voice.

The sight of her, back arched, teeth buried into her own skin, covered in a thin sheen of sweat, but still silently riding out her orgasm was enough to make me incoherent with rage. I wanted to hear her! Grabbing her by the legs, I dragged her to the edge of the bed and flipped her over before she was quite sure of what had happened. Her hands moved to find purchase and lift herself off the bed as she felt her knees hit the floor, but I was faster than she and restrained her by pressing her wrists into the small of her back. She looked back over her shoulder at me, a sight which made my nerves scream with desire, and began to struggle to wrench her hands free from my grasp.

“No!” I snapped, grabbing at the belt of my robe where it lay on the floor and quickly binding her hands together, leaving enough leather free for me to hold on to it and keep her mostly immobilized. She was about to glare at me until she felt my fingers caressing the back of her thigh, then instead wilted back against the bed. Her nerves had rendered her incapable of resistance. I positioned myself behind her, keeping ahold of her wrists just in case. She was going to make noise for me whether she wanted to or not. I coaxed her legs apart with teasing fingers and pushed into her smoothly, resisting the urge to groan in ecstacy as she enveloped me.

One thrust was all it took to realize I was not her only lover, and for the first few seconds I was inside her I battled the overwhelming urge to find and personally murder every man she'd ever been with. If they were still alive, that is. But she felt too warm and soft for me to be distracted long, and soon I was holding her by the hips, forcing myself into her with a steady rhythm. Without hands free to steady her, each of my thrusts sent her hard against the bed. When she began to push back to meet me, she was able to keep herself stable with her legs. Her face was pressed sideways against the bed, eyes shut, lip bitten. Still silent. It didn't matter how roughly I pushed into her. Even when she winced in pain she kept completely quiet.

Fine. I grabbed her restrained wrists in one hand, leaning back and using her weight to balance me as my other hand wound back. I smacked her on her exposed rump as hard as I could, the sound of the impact echoing against the stone walls of the room. Again, and again I struck her, until I could see even in the dim light of the room that her skin was glowing red and angry. I lost count of the number of times the sound of her being spanked resounded through the room. I had no idea how long the tears streaked her face. All I know is that when I paused so that I could listen I found her breathing ragged with pleasure. And when I leaned forward again to tease at her nipples with my fingers, the groan I elicited from her returned my sanity to me. I bit at her back with a low moan, reveling in the sounds she made in response.

A few thrusts later, I felt her tighten around me, and she came with a series of loud gasps, the sound made thick by tears. I wanted to keep going, to make her come again and again until her voice was hoarse, but there was no way I would be able to hold off. Seconds after she fell silent again I finished within her, groaning and shuddering, clutching at her hips for support. The muscles in my back and legs felt wobbly and weak, and I collapsed against her, panting. Her freshly-spanked skin startled me with the heat my blows had pooled within her skin.

The room was hot but silent, filled with the scent of sex and iron, so thick it made my mouth feel dry and unclean. I pulled away from her and slumped onto the edge of the bed, chest heaving, but she remained still against the bed. A glance to my left told me she was crying silently.

“Welcome to the family,” I muttered, twisting to free her hands. Once they were unbound, she moved them as if she planned on lifting herself from the bed, but she remained face-down.

“What do I do now?” She asked at last, her voice barely audible over the rushing blood in my ears.

I told her about the abandoned house in Cheydinhal, about Ocheeva. She listened quietly for a moment, then sighed. “How am I supposed to get there with the Guard after me?”

I'd already thought about this. “I'll return before you do and frame one of the other citizens. There's a female Dunmer who has been outspoken against Ulrich for weeks now. She'll do nicely.”

“Why would you do that?”

I chuckled. “Because we need our Hero of Kvatch.”

Caleigh didn't respond, and silence stretched between us again. After a few minutes I quietly rose and dressed myself again. “I'll return tonight and take care of it. By the time you make it back, your name should be cleared and your home returned to you.” Her beating me to the city was an impossibility—I doubted she'd be able to keep in a saddle for at least a week, and even walking would be a slow endeavor.

She rolled over and sat up with a wince. “This Sanctuary, do you live there?”

“No. I merely oversee its operations when it is needed. I trust Ocheeva to do most of the work.”

I used the next span of silence to take my leave of her and the Inn together, hoping she'd have the sense to clean herself up and leave before Rufio's stone-cold corpse was discovered in the doorway to the room. The innkeeper was nowhere to be found as I left, so I assumed he'd gone to bed shortly before Caleigh began slicing Rufio into tiny bits.

An incomplete Oblivion fanfic for Maddo

For someone as well known-of as she, very little is known about her. The first time I saw her walking through the streets of Cheydinhal I wasn't impressed. She was slight, even for a Bosmer, with eyes so large they made her look far younger than she really was, and hair too short to be feminine. In her leathers, she looked just like any other wood elf stuck in a city. Out of place, awkward, and about two seconds from vaulting the city wall and fleeing into the gloom of the forests and the ruins. I found out later she had just been set loose from the Imperial Prison by the escaping late Emperor. No one seems to remember what she'd been arrested for, and as far as I know she never tells those who ask. Most Bosmers would have grabbed their bow and gone straight back to thieving, but she decided to run off and save Kvatch from the first Oblivion gate instead. I learned of her deeds through tavern gossip long before I saw her again and made the connection between the silk-clad warrior in front of me and the thief I had seen mere months before.

Caleigh is what she tells everyone to call her, but I have a feeling that is no more her name than Lucien Lachance is truly mine. At first I thought she might be a reformed murderer, but none of the signs are there. We've had members of the Brotherhood try to stop and lead a normal life, but they are rarely successful, even if we do let them live. The call to spill blood is too strong for our kind. But despite that, she's also not what common society would call “good,” even though much of what she has done is truly great. People say she has closed Oblivion gates outside of every town and city in the land, but I myself have seen her robbing people blind in the wee hours of the morning when the city was sleeping, safe in the knowledge that the Hero of Kvatch had come through once more. And while I know the Nine are weak, forgiving, the ease of her pilgrimage to become one of their Knights suggested to me that she had never taken a innocent life. In the end I decided that she was not, had never been, a killer. She was merely a wild one, an opportunist. But even then I could see that if something could bring her to our way of life she would be a tribute to the Night Mother herself. And so I waited in the shadows and kept listening at the inns so that when she was in town, I would be there to watch her and guide her if she were to fall from grace.

It didn't surprise me to hear that she was such an indispensable friend to Martin Septim, our short-lived martyr of an Emperor. Before his death, she was his lapdog. He remained safe in his Temple in the mountains, and she ran about the countryside doing his bidding on a unicorn, an honest-to-Sithis unicorn. I know the Bosmer have a way with animals, but even this one proved too much for her. The stablehands outside Cheydinhal both loved and hated her—loved her for her generous compensation for keeping the beast locked up against its will, and hated her for the sheer amount of work it took to keep a unicorn captive. After Martin died, she let it go and stole her horses when she needed to go from one city to another. Eventually, she disappeared from the city entirely, and I lost word of her for months. At the time it surprised me how much I cared.

I broke into her home in Cheydinhal one night out of curiosity and found all her belongings and books covered in dust. She had the sort of library only a person handy with a lock-pick could amass, and her walls and shelves were covered with mementos of whom I must assume were fallen comrades. There was far too much Blade gear there for it to be much else. I shut the door behind me, convinced she had likely moved on for good. In all honesty, I had almost forgotten her entirely when she stumbled back into the city covered in a thin film of road-dust. Every item she carried reeked of strong enchantment, and the material of her armor was something I'd never seen in the land before.

I wasn't sure at the time where she'd gone to, but it was obvious from the outset that she came back different. I'm still not sure if it was her failure to keep Martin alive that broke her, or if something got to her in her travels, but the Caleigh I stumbled upon in the Cheydinhal Dunmer bar, The Newlands Lodge, two months ago was not the Hero of Kvatch or the thief I'd seen skulking down the streets initially. At first she shut herself in her house and refused to have contact with anyone in the city. She was also conspicuously absent at Chapel. When she did leave her house, she was dressed quite finely, but she never went anywhere except the tavern. Caleigh was, slowly but surely, drowning herself in West Weald wine. Such a waste.

I think she would have carried on that way indefinitely if the City Watch hadn't started extorting citizens. The Dunmer don't know when to keep their lips sealed, I've always said, and soon the bar was rife with gossip. Elves being thrown out of their homes. Shop earnings garnished. Caleigh listened, and I watched her back grow stiff and her countenance grim, but she did not act. If Martin were alive, she would have stopped the problems before they reached the breaking point. And if she had acted, Aldos Othran would not have died so pointlessly. I've lived with a love of the glory within death for decades now, and even with my knowledge of its nuances I could find no beauty in his demise. A grieving drunkard, cut down without warning by a worthless guardsman who did not care enough to put effort into his work? It made my stomach turn, but I was not surprised. Caleigh heard the news, however, and for the first time since she returned from her travels her green eyes seemed alive again. Not with the good-natured interest I was used to seeing within them, but with a uncontrolled hatred that made her truly beautiful to me. She downed the last of her drink, clutched her sword, and slipped out of the bar unnoticed. Since no one even realized I was in the room, it was not difficult for me to follow her. Then again, it would not have been difficult for me to guess where she was going--Ulrich Leland, the Guard Captain responsible for the entire mess, was not what I would call a difficult man to find.

It took her less time to break into the barracks than I was expecting, even though I had seen her at work before. The first thing she did before slipping through the door was remove her shoes. Her dress must have had a substantial stealth enchant on it, because the instant she began sneaking to Ulrich's room I almost lost her. That one brief moment when I thought she had actually gotten away from me still sends a thrill through me when I think of it. As drunk as she was, and as soft as a two months of uselessness had made her, she was still a wonder to behold. She had clearly had practice, training even. She's never told me, but I would not be surprised to find she was a ranking member of the Thieves' Guild.

Ulrich was not there, but she settled in with a practiced patience and waited until his return. I have no idea how long it took because I was too busy studying how perfectly still she kept herself in the shadows by his bureau. As soon as his door was shut she fell upon him in a silent fury, dagger gleaming in the faint candlelight of his bedside table. He was dead before the blade pierced the flesh of his throat for the second time. The third time. Once she had finally sated herself his corpse was barely recognizable and her face was splattered with his blood. She stood in his quarters, panting, for several moments before collecting herself, looking down at her dress, and sighing in annoyance.

That was the moment I knew we had her. I had just seen her murder a man in cold blood, unfairly and without warning, and someone as used to the craft as I could tell the flush in her cheeks betrayed enjoyment, not shock, at what she had just done. The blade in her hand was red to the hilt and dripping and her face was laced with splatters of his blood, but her first concern was that she had ruined her dress. She was going to turn out to be a very tidy assassin if I played my part in the next few hours of her life properly.

After making use of Ulrich's mirror to get the worst of the blood off, she sneaked off back home and burned her dress in her fireplace without fanfare. I thought for a moment that she might be feeling a stab of remorse, but the look in her eyes as she watched the fabric ignite suggested older, far more bitter memories were associated with it. While the thin layers of the dress went up in smoke, she cleaned her weapon. Once the entire garment had turned to ash, she ate half a sweetroll and then went to bed to sleep off the rest of the wine coursing through her system.

As I always do before I decide to approach someone new, I watched how she slept. A worried killer will twitch, whimper, whine. Weakness will be etched into the slightest movement of his eyes under their lids, in the way he breathes. She had none of that, but slept on peacefully, face relaxed and unlined, breathing steady, chest rising and falling with the quiet rhythm of one who has not had an unusual day. One hour passed, then two, and still no nightmares occurred. When I woke her from her slumber and watched her take the same dagger that had just ended Ulrich's life into her hand, I could not help but smile.

"You sleep rather soundly for a murderer," I told her. “That's good. You'll need a clear conscience for what I'm about to propose.”

Normally the accused sputter denials at me, white-faced with terror, but she did not respond at all.

I invited her to join the Dark Brotherhood and told her of a contract I thought might be appropriate for her initiation. She remained absolutely silent for the entirety of the conversation, but her hand tightened around her dagger and for one glorious moment I thought she might attack me. I hadn't had a decent fight in years, and the hair on the back of my neck was telling me Caleigh might actually be a good enough fighter to prove a challenge. But her blade never unsheathed, nor did she turn the new weapon I bestowed upon her back on me, and I left her with a sense of bitter disappointment.

The contract I had given her was all wrong, I was sure, but it was all that was available at the time. Rufio was not obviously bad enough for her to be compelled to end his life. He looked too weak, and would react in terror instead of aggression if she confronted him while he was awake. Which she was sure to do, being who she was. I'd fumbled it, hoping that her sanguine acceptance of Ulrich's death meant this was nothing new to her, but her stony silence made me wonder if I was wrong. I told her if she made no move on Rufio I would never contact her again, and as I left was once more surprised to realize how much I would miss shadowing her. But I am a man of my word, as frustrating a trait as that may be.

My plan was to go home to Fort Farragut and return my focus to the administration of the Guild, but something made me decide to travel to the Inn of Ill Omen and take a room instead on the off-chance I had come to her at the right time. I was not worried about her recognizing me—outside of my Robe of the Hand, I am a very unassuming man. If I sit in the shadows of a tavern and quietly sip at my beer, neither she nor Rufio nor any Imperial Soldier to come in for a break will even notice I am there. I enjoy fading into the background, and was prepared to wait for two weeks if need be, just to make sure she wasn't coming after all. I would find out even if she completed the contract while I was not there, but I wanted to be. I wanted to see if and how she did it. I wanted to watch her fall completely.

Every time the door to that accursed inn opened something in my stomach stirred restlessly, but six full days went by before the person entering turned out to actually be her. Hair wild as always, cheeks flushed from a breakneck ride. She told me later the Guard had realized who killed Ulrich, forcing her to flee Cheydinhal on a stolen Legion horse. However, she has not yet realized I am the one who tipped off the Guard. And so she fled to the Inn of Ill Omen as I was hoping she would, bursting through the door at top speed in a blue gown, so comely that even the filthy old Nord innkeeper stood up straight and tried to preen. Those huge, wide eyes flicked about the room appraisingly, resting on me for an instant before I was dismissed. I was so glad to see her I had forgotten she wasn't supposed to recognize me. I'd thought I was too old to feel slighted.

“I'd like a room, please,” she murmured to the innkeeper.

“Plenty of rooms available,” he replied, much too loudly. I doubt he'd seen a woman of her caliber in years. “No one staying here these days except Ol' Rufio.”

She gave him a polite smile, which he took for encouragement to ramble. By the time she freed herself from his company, he'd given her all the information she needed to find him. Not that it was that hard. I'll never understand why so many people think moving into a basement room counts as going into hiding.

And then we had sex. >:D