[h3]Echos of the Soul[/h3]
A Shaft and Dervs collab
[I]10th Midyear 4E208, Late Evening, Former Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary…[/I]

It was quiet in the mausoleum-like sanctuary, the rest, relaxation, and training area of Kerztar’s secret police force and Zaveed sat by the hearth going through pages of prisoner interment reports, searching for Bakih Al Nahel and comparing matching names to the written description he’d recorded after parting ways with Sirine, looking for the least Redguard looking Redguard of them all, and finding out that Sirine’s mother was an Imperial. He stopped for a few moments, feeling a headache coming on and as he pinched the bridge of his nose, he noticed that his hand was shaking. Looking at his disdainfully, he set down the papers on the end table and grasped his hand, feeling ashamed and angry at he was too weak to kill off lingering pain and emotional damage like he had so many men. It wasn’t as if he could take an axe to his own heart; his own dagger had proven to make those matters so much worse.

He stopped, inhaling slowly throw his nose and out through his mouth a few times, trying to calm himself down. The high he’d experienced from surviving the unsurvivable had worn off, and he was becoming increasingly aware of the little things that were putting him on edge. The grinding of a sword, people practicing magic, long shaped shadows… he was ill at ease and found himself snapping at his compatriots for minor infractions and comments, specifically how shitty he looked to be doing. 

“Well enough to open your entrails and feed them to Merrunz.” he’d snarled at one Bosmer, and the shattered glass near the walls of the room where he’d thrown glasses and bottles to get people to leave the common area were a sign of the tempest waiting within. He wasn’t in the mood to entertain, and he knew he wasn’t well; he needed to do his job, even if there was a toll he wasn’t quite seeing the scope of. 

He went to drink from the bottle of wine he had next to him and discovered he’d already consumed the whole thing. He grunted, annoyed, shoving it away with his fingers. It would be another projectile should someone disturb him, he decided.

He was still wearing the orange tunic Sirine gave him, and he’d given his armour to the blacksmith and tailor to mend while the company alchemist had given him a routine of healing potions to finish mending his aching and broken body. Breathing was harder when he strained himself, he’d noticed, and it hurt to bend down. He opened the tunic at the chest and ran his fingers along the diagonal slash, frowning as he recalled the nightmarish thing bringing the axe down upon him. He didn’t even see Gregor’s sword enter his body, on account of it being behind him, but a reason he felt so irritable today was one of the mages practicing shock magic was making him tense and flinch with the cackling of the lightning-like discharge. 

He opened one of his potions and he drank, not caring if it tasted like goat scrotum. It would help get rid of the bruising and swelling he still endured. He wanted to return to himself, who he was at his best. With any luck, Gregor died and wouldn't be shitting nightmares into alleyways ever again.

His blue eyes gazed into the flames, the yellow tongues of fire reminding him of Raelynn's golden hair. He was trying to reconcile what she'd done for him with what he did to [i]her.[/i]

[hr]
[I]Afternoon of the 13th…[/I]



The ghost town. Sevari was perched atop the dune on his horse, looking down on the ghost town in which the Sanctuary was hidden. Why was it always a ghost town or some equally spooky shit the Dark Brotherhood had to have? He coughed up something from his still-healing lungs and spat it to the side, kicking his spurs into his horse’s flanks and letting her amble into the ghost town.

He knew he was close when the horse began to huff and pound the dirt beneath her hooves, shaking her head in protest. No horse wanted to go near the door to the Sanctuary. As he walked up to it with his own two feet, he could imagine why. Through the skeletal hallways of the decrepit building, he found it. A door made of material that seemed to be solidified from the darkest spaces between stars. As it sensed Sevari’s presence, it spoke, “To whom shall I open, if I open at all…?”

It was like a chorus of whispers right in his head, that part of it, he never got over. Why they couldn’t just tear the door down and replace it with a door and regular fucking locks was beyond him. He coughed up a gob of bloody mucus and spat at the door, “Fuck off.”

It immediately began to rattle and grate open across the sandstone it was set in. “Sevari…”

“Mhm.” He stepped through and soon he was in the common room. This felt… odd. Just not right. Thunderhead and Two-Shafts weren’t here sharing drinks, Forosien wasn’t talking anybody’s ears off. He scanned the room, the sophomoric decor doing nothing to his mood anymore. That Lucky Lady statue had been decorated- or desecrated depending on who is asked- by Forosien and Saffi. He took a seat at the bar, grabbing up a corked bottle of wine.

He bit into the cork and yanked it loose, spitting it off somewhere in the room before he drank deeply, four long gulps of it. He wiped his lips and chin off on the sleeve of his coat, watching the candle’s flame dance. He was alone, content with it. He wondered if Zaveed was here yet. He hoped he was. He was the only reason he came back to this place.

“Sevari?” a voice came from the entranceway. Zaveed was wearing a house robe that left his chest, and the massive scar, quite visible. He was walking more in his usual stride, but less deliberate and confidently. He walked around to where Sevari was sitting, his face pale and etched with concern.

“I'd heard what happened… Bright Moons you made it back. Are you hurt?” he asked, grabbing the back of a chair, supporting his weight. “I was worried I'd lost you.” he admitted quietly, his state unfocused as he gazed at his brother.



“I…” he said, lips working unsuccessfully at forming around the words, but they just couldn’t. He’d killed an innocent man in his own home for the crime of defending it from a stranger, from him. He’d chosen Zaveed over his blood brother in Al-Aqqiyah. It was hard. It was a choice he never wanted to make.

Over the years, the fact that he hadn’t seen Suffian in so long, over 15 years. Now Hammerfell, in Al-Aqqiyah. He glanced at his sleeve, swallowing and gulping down another mouthful of wine when he saw a bit of blood still on the edge of his sleeve. It was a choice he never wanted to make. But he did.

“I’m glad you’re still alive.” Sevari said, looking at Zaveed and remembering Gregor’s words. That the child he knew was nowhere to be found in the man before him now. Sevari looked Zaveed up and down, the scar, his aura. Just… different now. But those blue eyes, there was a glint of the same eyes the orphan boy in Senchal had. “How… how are you? What happened?”

He dusted off a seat next to him, gesturing to it, “Sit, sit.” He said, the first genuine smile he had in a while, “I missed you.”

Zaveed sat slowly, feeling like he weighed a ton. He stared into the flames that reminded him so much of the girl his heart yearned for. “I more or less died.” he smiled ruefully. “It didn't take, I got better. Sevari…” he looked over to his brother, his eyes distraught. 

“Gregor nearly soul trapped me. I felt [i]myself[/i] being torn from my body. It was like being raped, but you know that nothing but eternal torment and then nothingness awaits. He's a conjurer, a talented mage. I tried to find Marassa and found him instead, one of my quarry in our hunt. I nearly had him, he was no match for me. Then…” 

Zaveed stared back into the fire, his companion for the past few nights that brought him calm. “He has monsters at his fingertips of the likes I’ve never seen. I saw the Dark Behind the World. I felt myself being pulled into that nightmare by the Bent Cats… my skin looked like theirs. Choking back a sob, he buried his face in his hands. “I shouldn't be alive.” he wheezed.

Lightning quick, he sent the candles hurtling into the wall in a clatter, standing and kicking his stool across the room. First Suffian and now this. He stood, shoulders heaving in rattling breaths, “I had him.” Sevari said, “I [i]had[/i] him. He was right [i]fucking[/i] there! I had him and I walked away from that necromancer [i]bastard![/i]”

“Sevari.” Zaveed's cracked voice cut through the tomb like room. “That's enough. All the better he yet lives, it was Raelynn who saved my life.” the Cathay said, soaked eyes staring pleasingly at his brother. “A life for a life. The score is settled and I am alive. Do not burden your heart with vengeance. Let go.”

“So what?” Sevari said, “We’re only going to make more scores [i]staying here.[/i] With the Dwemer. Everything I worked for is gone, now. There’s no more friends for me in the world after I did what I did in Al-Aqqiya, Zaveed. It’s just us. Just me.”

Sevari took another stool and set it down next to Zaveed, gulping down a mouthful of wine. He rubbed at his face, sighing, “I want to find Marassa.” He said, his voice low, “I want to just make sure she’s safe and then disappear. Retire in Stros M’kai. Even Yneslea or Esroniet, no more Penitus Oculatus, no more revenge, just live my days peacefully. Quietly.”

Zaveed stood, finding a white Alinor wine by the Lucky Lady statue with his gaze and walked over to it, plucking it up with care. “I have an asset working the tavern drunks for gossip about Marassa's whereabouts as we speak. In exchange, I am trying to find where they are detaining her brother. Seems I'm not the only one with a missing sibling.” he said, pulling the cork with a claw and setting it on the statue’s hand. He drank deeply before slumping against the dias.

“What did you do in Al-Aqqiya, brother? You look as haunted as I feel.” Zaveed asked, the bottle reaching his lips once more.

“He made me choose. Suffian, my blood brother. He made me choose between the mission, between revenge, and you.” Sevari shook his head and looked at his hands, “I never wanted that. To choose between my families. But I did. I’m wanted everywhere now.”

“I Killed him. I made the choice.” Sevari said, “I thought I’d never see him again and have to choose between you and him after all these years. I Killed him and held him as he died and I’m the last of my blood. He didn’t even look like I remember him. Vengeance changed him even more than it did me.”

Zaveed sighed, muttering quietly. “Damn it all.” he had no emotional connection to Sevari's biological family and he only knew of Suffian by name. The thought that Zaveed's existence caused that chaos and forced Sevari to choose left a bloodied knot in his gut. “You could have went with him. It's what you wanted, isn't it? Your blood family?” he shook his head, crossing the floor towards Sevari. 

“You don't owe me anything. You barely know who I am anymore, either. Just a few damned weeks where we've barely talked to each other as family or friends. For what it's worth, it hurts to hear that you were forced to make that choice, that you lost everything you hoped to have back.” Zaveed drank again, setting it on the table. Not knowing what else to do, he wrapped his arms around Sevari in a tight embrace. “I’m sorry.

“You're all I have left in this world, you and Marassa. I know what vengeance can cost  a man, and you never deserved to pay that price.” Zaveed said softly.

Sevari trembled under Zaveed’s embrace and his words. This was the first time in years that he had been shown something other than cold professionalism or anger. Even Suffian didn’t treat him like family after everything. He held back a choking sob and squeezed Zaveed’s arm. “We always have a choice.” He said, quietly, “Always. I was never close to my blood family, besides my mother and Suffian. My mother is dead and Suffian has become a man I barely could see the old him in.”

“If I don’t have you or Marassa, Zaveed.” He took a breath and whimpered out another sob he tried everything to hold back, “I have nothing left. I wasn’t lying to Marassa when I told her the price on my head meant death if I ever set foot in Dominion territory again. The money I gave you was so bloody I was relieved to be rid of it. An outlaw in three countries, a traitor of both the Dominion, Elsweyr, and now the Empire. And my own [i]damn blood.[/i]”

“Everything has crumbled in my hands.” He took Zaveed in an embrace, “This family is all I have to go to.”

“We don't  have to worry about bloody coin any longer; the sea did an admirable job washing that clean. We have several decades of catching up to do. I'm not planning on going anywhere, even if Marassa chooses her duty and comfortable life over us. I’m at peace with that. Come, join me by the fire.” Zaveed said, pulling away from Sevari with a reassuring smile and a hand on his shoulder. 

Zaveed grabbed his wine and sat down in his customary seat once more, propping his leg up on a box. He felt more like his usual self, albeit more sentimental and grateful for Sevari having finally coming around to the brother Zaveed had missed. “I always felt blood didn't mean shit when it came to family. You and I don't share a drop of blood, but you're no different in my eyes than Marassa. Hopefully mother choked to death on a cock, the whore.” he said, drinking back the bottle. 

“It's strange, between the fear and the aches and the emotional tempest in my soul right now from my ordeal, I don't hate Gregor. It was him or me, and I underestimated him. I've become complacent in my older years.” Zaveed said with a terse smile. “I keep mulling over the past few weeks in my mind and heart, and I remember Raelynn most of all. She hates me with every fiber of her soul, but she saved me because she wanted to show me her compassion was something I could never take from her.” he held out his hand in front of him, the fire light leaking between turning fingers. “I nearly killed her lover and she still used much of her power to stabilize me, and she told me to leave her and her friends alone, that I live because of her. Do you think she was wrong to do this, after what I've done?” 

Sevari thought in that for a minute. He wiped his eye as he looked at the fire, taking in the warmth it offered. His mind meandered back to his conversations with Zaveed. We all have a choice, he’d said. Choices. It seemed a constant in Sevari’s life, everyone’s life that there’s always those few hard choices that make life what it is. Once they’re made, you can never go back. He frowned, sighed, leaned forward in his seat and propped his elbows on his knees, “We all have a choice, don’t we?” He said, “I guess it’ll be your choice to make her wrong or right in doing what she did.”

The words stirred something in Zaveed's heart. His own words had always meant picking an outcome for yourself, right or wrong. He'd never considered that when choices involved other people, they had a say in what it meant… what it was worth. He thought about that night, the ferocity in her eyes as she drove his dagger into his heart, the look of horrified resignation when she realized she couldn't go through with it, the furious frustration that grew from sparing his life. He lived because despite how much she hated him, she wouldn't sink to his level.

He felt filthy, degenerate. How would he cope with this time he should never of had, this chance to earn the gift she gave him. 

“Perhaps you are right. This is my chance to be better than I was, to pay it forward, as it were. But first, there is something I must do for my associate. It seems fair, a life for a life.” Zaveed mused, picking up the stack of prisoner portfolios he had taken out from processing, promising the cute clerk to bring them back and her something special for her willingness to turn a blind eye for an evening. “The thing is, Sevari… I don’t know what the right thing is anymore. I don’t know what it means to be whatever it was that she saw that was worth saving. It’s been eating at me, and I am no closer to an answer. I am still myself, that hasn’t changed, but how do I move past everything that’s come to define me like barnacles on the bottom of a ship?”

Sevari looked at his hands, “I’ve been chasing vengeance for 20 years, Zaveed. For half my life. Everything I did up until now has been for one goal.” He said, shaking his head, “The money I dropped in your lap was from years of robberies, smuggling drugs and artifacts, murder for money, extortion. I never stopped to ask myself if it was right. If that was what the people I was trying to avenge would want.”

“It isn’t so much throwing your sword away as much as it is what cause you pledge it to.” Sevari shrugged, “Men don’t become evil all at once. It’s a long, straight road down, until you stop to look back and it hurts your neck to crane it so high. Men change. I know it all too well.”

He shook his head, leaning back in his chair as he folded his hands in his lap. “I’ll never be the young boy who shared lamb with you and Marassa in Senchal.” His voice was low and forlorn, “But I can be the man who makes sure at least you and I get back to being as close as we were, and never losing myself again. It’s us, brother. [i]Fuck[/i] the rest.”

Zaveed chuckled in spite of himself. “I hope not, you were a bit of a cryer.” he said, smiling towards the flames. “Nothing will be the same, certainly. But I’m willing to try, at least, to do something different. You speak of your crimes like I’ve not been party to quite a number of rather high stakes actions against unwilling hands. I’ve lost track of the number of people I’ve killed, stolen from, extorted… you know, the kind of mischief that they sing about in bloody songs in taverns like it’s romantic but leave out the part where a man screams for his mother while his entrails are sewn across the deck of a ship he’d only been on a month. I won’t apologize for that time; Tamriel is not a kind place, and it chose us to follow a certain path that many consider unsavory. It doesn’t mean one is beholden to that path forever. Look where we are now; did you ever think we’d be having this conversation in a Dark Brotherhood sanctuary, generously serving what one might considered indentured servitude?” he scoffed, drinking until the bottle was empty and casually tossing it to the floor. “So, what then? What’s next? You know neither of us are ever going to find peace.”

“No. Maybe not.” Sevari said, frowning into the fire and stroking his beard, “We’ve been savages too long, I’ve got a price on my head in half of Tamriel. If I don’t die in a pool of my own blood in the middle of a road in a place no one knows my name, I’d be surprised.”

He shrugged, chuckling bitter, “I’ve robbed and killed through half of Tamriel, there’s no way I can man a counter at some general store in Skingrad.” He said, “There has to be some way we can leave this behind. The Dwemer, Hammerfell, all of this.”

“Well, one day I’ll find myself a ship of my own again. Could always use a first mate.” Zaveed offered with a casual shrug, throwing an arm over the chair. “My first love will always be the sea, a man is free there, no one cares who you are, just what you can do. I wish you could see it like I do, Sevari. It truly is a thing of wonder.”

“I’ve always been more of a bandit than a pirate. The gang all went our separate ways a few weeks before I showed up in your tavern asking after you.” He said, chuckling, “I rode away from that robbery with 3,000 septims. The Thalmor will never forgive me for robbing that war fund caravan.”

“Life on the roads is hard, rough, but the closeness of a gang is something I’ve missed for a bit. What’s Wayrest like nowadays?” He asked.

Zaveed clucked his tongue. “My, weren’t we just talking about change? Live a little. I promise I will only lightly tease you if you get sea-sick.” He grinned, looking over to the Ohmes-Raht. “Wayrest is as it has been for some time now, a Corsair Republic where captains come and go to ply their trade, recruit for their vessels, drink the town dry and whores make a fortune. It’s more or less paradise, as free as a man can be. If you think you are a rotten scoundrel, take a walk around Wayrest street’s any given night and you’ll feel like you’re a pious man. I never made my way there as much as I’d have liked, perhaps it was because a part of me took the whole privateer business and my letter of marquis from the Queen quite to heart, another part of me felt that flying under the same flag as Marassa kept me close to her.” His face scrunched into a frown as he sighed, resuming his vigil by the fire. “I’m doing everything I can to find her, I promise. I trust Sirine to do right by me, she already has. She helped clean me up and gave me new clothes after my brush with Gregor, and I paid her handsomely to get information on Marassa’s whereabouts. I promised her in turn to help find her own brother and to get her out of that shithole of a tavern she’s working at. Probably the first woman I paid without the intention of bedding, I’ll admit.”

“Ah, how saintly of you. You’re a changed man already, Zaveed.” Sevari smirked, “Do you need me to go back out there and work some taverns? Where was her brother last time she’d seen him?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Sevari; I might behead a homeless man for sport to keep up appearances.” Zaveed replied dryly before continuing, “Dwemer arrested him, same way we were caught. They were pirates caught out at sea when the hammer fell, if you’ll excuse my play on words. She thinks he’s alive, and the only way to know that for sure is to find out anything in this stack,” Zaveed patted down the pile of papers on the table next to him. “Matches his name and description. It’s what I’ve been doing for the past three days, recovering from my injuries outside… and up here.” he said, tapping his temple with a claw. 

“Do you know when they made landfall?” He asked, “I’m not telling you how to go about this. I want to find Marassa too. I could go back to Gilane, scour the taverns and inns for Marassa, bring some of the others? Only a matter of telling them to report her location back to me, tell them it’s a sensitive case.”

“I’m afraid not,” Zaveed admitted. “Just when the Dwemer first arrived, whenever that properly was. If you want to keep playing our hand close to the chest, maybe. I just want to see her safe, but I fear if she hears that a bunch of Ministry agents are questioning for her whereabouts, she’ll go so deep we’ll never see her again. I’m also concerned, possibly rightfully so, about the terrorists finding out about her again. If they find out she’s a person of interest to us, she’s as a good as dead.”

“So, it’s just us then.” He nodded, sucking his teeth, “Alright then. I’ve found people who didn’t want to be found before. Just a matter of getting to known insurgents, finding a lead on whatever cell condoned those attacks. I’ve got a score to settle with them anyway.”

“Very well. I’ve been sitting in this miserable heap for far too long as it is.” Zaveed said with a trace of a smile. “Shall we go get ready for a night on the town?”

“Dress to impress, Zaveed.” Sevari stood with a grunt, “I know I will.”