more cicero thoughts because i've been thinking about this so much. this post will specifically focus on the dynamic between he and the night mother, and is sorta headcanon-based but i have so many thoughts and need to get them out.
i definitely think there's a lot to be said for how cicero's attachment to the night mother can almost be described as oedipal, but i also don't think it quite extends that far, nor do i think he hates her. i believe his experiences, his emotional attachment, his investment in her is religious devotion. it's worship. it's a deep and unwavering sense of loyalty and duty, to sithis, to the brotherhood, to the night mother.
yes, i do think he loves her. yes, i do think to some degree he despises her. wouldn't you? alone, for eight years, with nothing but a corpse you're expected to take care of every single day, to keep clean and sanctify, falling into routines, the only one to talk to who can never talk back? this also probably leads to an unhealthy degree of emotional projection on cicero's part towards her, but i won't get too into that here.
this desire to be chosen by her, then, must feel like release. it's relief from a silence never-ending, it's a sort of validation, a grasping back of hands he's been extending for eight long years. the silence he describes in his journal is cruel. it's rage, wrath, it's ever-present and makes him feel small. but then, as the years pass, he accepts the silence as all he will get. because even though he's done everything (the only survivor of two sanctuaries, three if you spare him. the only one who has tended her, devoted his entire being to her and worshiping she and sithis, carrying her casket from cyrodiil to skyrim and spending every damned day thinking about the night mother and sithis and his loyalty to them) he is not the listener. he knows. he knows he will never be the listener, the night mother has not chosen him (as he states, he remains "unworthy"), despite sacrificing everything.
still, he is the keeper and he would do anything for the night mother, even if it destroys him, because now she's all he has. he has nothing else attaching him to a former life, and he's devoted his entire life as keeper to her. he's reverent towards her because she's all he has, perhaps she's his god more than sithis in a way, because at least she's tangible. she is something dependent on him, and as such, he's codependent on her. and this devotion is religious and unholy. it's a mixture of hatred (feeling unworthy, feeling as though all his effort has gone unappreciated) and the intense love (she is quite literally a divine being to the dark brotherhood, tantamount to a mother mary - would this make him a Christ or a Magdalene or something else entirely? anyways) and the religious devotion and the earthly rage of not being enough. being passed over by her hand and her voice reaching someone who only just joined, or only recently became aware of the night mother.
frankly, in cicero's shoes, i'd lose my mind a little bit, too.
janainaart
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