The Nord and the Four-Eared Khajiit, About 20 years after Martin's death, as crimes are spreading, a No Options

[sford564]

Okay, I already posted this on fanfiction.net, but I've revised it a little now. Soooo... here it is. It starts out a little dark and gets lighter as it goes.


Chapter 1: Fulfilling a Promise

The Nord made his way through the forest toward the traveling entertainers’ carts. There were all sorts of low lives of every race in this little gathering. Some of the scum wanted to see the bear baiting or to bet on the pit fights. Others wanted to buy slaves. Others still came to have sex with or buy some of the kidnapped girls the travelers had with them.

Sure, slavery was illegal, but it didn’t matter as long as you didn’t get caught. After Emperor Martin’s sacrifice, everyone’s attention was focused on cleaning their world up again from the Oblivion scum and rebuilding it again. Then, when things began to settle down, the talk of the new emperor exploded into several skirmishes, until most citizens didn’t care who ruled, as long as the deaths stopped. Now that the new High Chancellor took over rule, things were peaceful again for the moment. Alas, though, with all the strife that had taken place, the High Chancellor didn’t have enough time or man power to take care of every problem across the land, which meant that slavers began to rise up here and there in various parts of the world.


The Nord shivered a little and pulled the cloak further over his head so that no one could see him as he rode up to the camp. He had promised the dying Khajiit that he’d find her daughter, but he never expected to find her in a place like this. Still, though, he didn’t have as hard a time finding her as he had expected. It seemed that the sight of the four-eared half breed Khajiit made a lot of stir in every town she was brought to.

As soon as he entered the camp, he was surrounded by a group of dangerous looking men. “I’m looking for a Khajiit half-breed. Four ears,” he informed them.

“We have nothing like that here,” one of the men told him, not liking the looks of the Nord.

“Ahhh, so you’re the one asking around, are you?” another asked.

“What do you want, stranger?”

“I want to buy her,” the Nord answered.

“She’s not for sale!”

“She will be,” the Nord assured, slipping off his horse next to them. The vagabonds backed away a little, as the Nord towered over most of them. “Take me to her,” he demanded. No one moved.

The Nord slipped off his hood, and everyone backed away even more, horrified. There was no real face on the Nord; instead, there were two black eyes and two ears in a mass of scarred and torn flesh. He looked inhuman enough to be one of the Oblivion spawns he had hunted many years ago.

“Now,” the Nord growled. The group instantly spilt away from him and one vagabond, too scared to disobey, made his way through camp – nearly running to get away from the Nord – to where the Four-eared Khajiit was locked.

There was a small group of laughing, jeering people in front of the cage. They didn’t even notice as the Nord walked behind them.

This post has been edited by sford564: Sep 5 2010, 07:12 AM

[sford564]

Chapter 14: Scars from the Past

After they had left town and were far enough away that the trees and mountains began to block their view of it, Mara asked, “Master mad at Four Ears?”

“No,” he replied icily.

“Master hate Four Ears.”

“No.”

The Khajiit’s ears fell across her head again.

“It has nothing to do with you,” he told her, his voice still laced with aggravation and anger. “It has to do with me.” Mara didn’t look up at him, as she wasn’t sure if she believed him or not.

The Nord’s hands clenched in and out of a fist. “Laws be damned!” he suddenly declared. “I wanted to beat the Breton’s face into the wall! I probably would have if it wouldn’t have gotten you in trouble, too. But just being with me you would have. Just being a ‘monster’ you would have.”

He sighed deeply and sat down on a big rock. He was sulking.

Mara observed him for a while before slipping off the horse and sitting on his lap. He grunted a little but allowed her on his legs.

“Why people not like master?”

After several moments of silence, he replied, “People are afraid of me.”

“Why?”

“Well look at me! I’m a monster! Look at my face! How can you not be scared by this?!”

Mara tilted her head from side to side to observe it. “Not pretty,” she told him at last. That only got a scoff from him. “But not scary – master too nice to be scary.”

“Will you stop calling me master?!”

Once again lowering her ears and bowing her head for a few seconds, Mara asked, “Nord?”

“Yes?”

“Can I touch?”

“Touch what?”

“Face.”

“No!”

“Why not?”

He scoffed slightly, explaining, “Sometimes, when it rains, water runs into the cuts. I can feel it run all the way down to the bone. They literally cut down to my cheekbones! It drives me crazy. To feel something go inside me like that – the wind, the rain, a bug, a chunk of food. Have you ever pushed a bug out of your face? Literally sitting inside your face?!”

He tore at his hair as he spoke, taking out large chunks of soft black hair as his fingers writhed from mental agony. Mara softly touched his hands.

“Master?” she whispered.

He allowed her to take his hands off his head and push them down to his side again. She slowly brought her finger up to his face and began to trace along the hideously large scars. Then she ran her hand across them to feel them more.

The Nord moved his head away from her.

The Khajiit slowly leaned over and kissed his cheek. He turned to her, questioningly, but she didn’t seem to notice much. She kissed him once more on that cheek and then on the other cheek. She kissed his forehead, and, as he had still not pushed away yet, she brought her lips down his scarred face in tiny kisses until she reached his lips. She softly pressed her little lips against his bottom lip. Still not satisfied, she pressed her lips against both of them in an awkward kiss.

The Nord pulled away from her now. “Stop,” he instructed.

“Why?” Mara whispered.

“Because…it’s wrong.”

“Why?”

“It is. I came to save you. Not to use you.”

“Use Mara? What that?”

“It means that you’re venerable. You’re not used to people being nice to you. Treating you like you’re a human. So of course you’re going to feel that you like me. But you don’t really.”

Mara didn’t understand that, so she leaned over again and said, “Master could make Mara wife.”

“Mara!”

“Master said wife needed to want husband. Mara want Nord as husband.”

“It’s different Mara. It just is.”

“Master never marry Mara?”

“Never. …Well, probably never.”

“When?”

“When Mara has matured enough and seen more of the world so that she knows for sure that it’s me and not someone else she wants,” he explained, slipping into her way of talking. It was becoming easier and easier for him to do that lately.

“Who else Mara want?”

“Well anyone! You might find a nice Khajiit –”

“No! No! Mara no like Khajiit. Khajiit scare Mara.”

“Mara, you are a Khajiit…”

“Still scare Mara.”

The Nord sighed and, smiling, shook his head at her. “Does anything not scare you?”

“Nord.”

The Nord nodded.

“Master want to start travel?”

The Nord nodded again. Mara decided to walk beside him as they continued on their journey.

“Why so snow?”

“Because we’re in Skyrim now.”

“What Skyrim?”

“Where we are now.”

“It cold.”

“Yes, well we Nords like it.”

“Mara no like.”

The Nord smiled. They walked on for a ways before Mara asked him, “How face get hurt?”

The Nord’s face clouded. “I was always an ugly man, you know,” he confessed. “They told me when I was younger that I was dropped on my face as a wee babe, and it wouldn’t surprise me. And then, of course, I have these black eyes. You’re not the only one afraid of them. I was always told to tell people what I was thinking and feeling, because a man’s soul is read through his eyes, but not through mine. Mine hides my feelings and thoughts.”

“Not from Mara. Mara starting to understand Nord’s feelings.”

Ignoring this, the Nord continued, “Well, my father was a Blade. My mother died and he took me with him wherever he went. Then he died. The Blades took me, raised me. I became the ‘Little Nord’, and, when I was older, ‘the Nord’. They told me that somewhere in Skyrim I had a family estate and money waiting to be claimed, but I wanted to be a Blade. They told me to find my old home and see if the civilian life was for me. If it wasn’t and I came back to them, they would make me an official member of the Blades.

It was my greatest desire.

I was traveling through when I came to a little place called Hackdirt. The people there seemed weird, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I was tired and wanted to rest. I rented a bed at their inn.

I’m not sure what happened, but all I remember is falling asleep and then waking up to someone sneaking into my bedroom. There weren’t that many, so I could have easily killed them all, but…”

“But?”

“There was a mage among them. I’ve never felt such powerful magic; it knocked me out cold. The next thing I knew is that I was underground, tired to an altar, with some sort of magic barrier holding me down.


I don’t know what they were saying, for they talked in a language I never heard before. They had primitive weapons. They took a boar’s tusk and ran it across my cheeks. Both of them. And then… then… Well, you can see what they did. They were about to kill me, but the magic barrier must have worn off from all my struggles. I grabbed their leader and killed him with his own boar tusk.

I’m not sure how, but I was able to kill them and escape. I didn’t kill them all, unfortunately, because most ran as soon as they saw their leader fall.

I ran and ran. Somehow I made it out of the cavern and out of Hackdirt. I was found by another Nord. He brought me to safety.

It took months – over a year – for this to heal, even with the help and prayers of the monks. When my friends, my family – the only ones I had ever know – the Blades – saw me… well…they couldn’t even look at me. They were too disgusted and ashamed.

I wandered from town to town. No one wanted me there. No one wanted to help me. To look at me. Then I ran into the Nord again, Igor. He ran an inn up in Falkreath: Igor’s Inn.

We talked for a while and he helped me find my old ancestral home in Whiterun. It was Igor who introduced me to your mother. He found her starving in the Imperial City, sickly and dying, begging for little things of coins, so he took her with him. She acted as his assistant, and he gave her food and shelter.

Well, Jo Dar felt sorry for me, so she followed me instead. She helped me settle into my new house. She made me realize there was a reason to still live.

Alas, though, her illness got worse and worse, and nothing we gave her would help. Not the magic of the monks nor any of my potions. Only the gods can heal her, and they won’t.

She would always tell me about the little four-eared daughter of hers, but she never told me where you were. She always said, ‘Oh, somewhere. Somewhere. Someday her mama will see her again. Someday.’

It was only when she got so bad that we had to take her to the monastery to stay that she told me your story. As soon as she had her freedom, she traveled from city to city trying to find you or any news of you. She had no money or food, and when she got sick, she couldn’t even steal to keep herself alive.” He paused for several moments before telling her, “We’re going to be at Falkreath in a couple more days, and then it’s a two day and one night trip to Whiterun. Your mother is resting in the monastery there. When we get to Falkreath, we’ll stop by Igor’s Inn and see if he has any news about her. Mara, it is possible that your mother is already dead.”