Maul, it wasn't apt.

Maul was a one punch hitter. If he wanted you, you stopped and you answered or you joined your ancestors well before your time.

He was Maven's man. She was the mother he couldn't remember, the lover he never had and the family he never really wanted, the only one he ever answered to. She was a one-word hitter. Do. Go. Now.

They called him Maven's pit-wolf, though never to his face. One look from him could freeze the words in a preacher's mouth. If they were smart, crowds not only parted for Maul, they never gathered.

He watched and he listened and he knew. Oh he'd chat, but only if the price was right.

Riften was a part of him. He could walk the boardwalk, the docks and the Ratway, backwards in a Skooma haze. He knew all its residents, all their stories, all their secrets and all their shames.

He never felt fear or love or pain.

On occasion there was a girl in the bunkhouse who pleased him. She took his money, she never spoke and she did as he wished. It was as simple an act as swapping coin for mead at the Bee and Barb. He chose not to remember her name.

He had needs that he could not deny and hated that moment where he lost control, that one tiny betrayal of cursed vulnerability.

He never felt fear or love or pain, until today.

Today was the day he saw the swollen purple bruise on the girl's face and the bloodied cut on her lip. Today, he saw the tears brimming in her sky blue eyes and the look of desolation on her face.

In her tiny room she automatically undressed and Maul found himself noticing things as if for the first time; the small posy of mountain flowers on the bedside table, the smell of lavender rising from the worn covers, how neatly she folded her patched dress, the cascade of bruises across her shoulders and down her back, the shallow dagger's slice across her breast, red as a dark elf's eye.

She stood naked before him, silent tears running down her face and falling on her chest, dampening her wound and staining her belly pink.

He could not speak, he could not move. He felt an overwhelming conflict of rage and longing coursing through him that froze his thoughts.

"Who?" He finally managed to say.

She answered, the only words she'd ever shared.

He left her standing and ran, out of the bunkhouse, across the square, and through the door to the docks. The Fishery was his target and he could see his prey packing salmon into barrels. Maul lifted the man into the air and slammed his body down onto the hard edge of the curved wood.

He picked him up again and smashed his head against the staves. Blood streamed from the dark elf's broken face and he shrieked in pain and astonishment. Maul released him and he fell onto the slippery dock. Bending over him Mauls hands wrapped around the bloodied, dark throat.

Maul didn't see the swift movement of the Dunmer's arm, he didn't see the glint of the razor-sharp Elven dagger and he didn't know it was that which slid effortlessly into his side under the steel armour he always wore.

He did see the look of bitter fury that lit the mer's face and shone through the mess of blood and bone, he did see his own hands tighten and crush the elves' throat. He did see the moment the spark of life left the broken body which then lay heavy in his hands.

He also saw the dark stained, bloody boards of the jetty rise up towards him. He also felt a cold fear flood his heart as he realised this blood was his own and he tried and failed to fight the waterfall of roaring darkness that overwhelmed him.

Maul had never felt fear or love or pain, until today. Today, he felt them all.

Maul. His name was apt.