The Murderer’s Son & The Silent Mouse
(Fan Lore / Headcanons)
When Brynjolf first arrived at Honorhall Orphanage, some of the children already knew who he was. After all, he was the son of a murderer who had recently been executed for his crimes. Naturally, he was either feared because of it, or bullied.
Unsurprinsingly, Brynjolf was a very angry little boy at that time, and often got into fights. Anyone would struggle after losing both parents, especially when constantly reminded that it was his father’s hand that ended his mother’s life. Understandably so, Brynjolf struggled a lot emotionally and was forced to suck it up. Some children were afraid of him, others weren’t, and only very few thought fighting was pointless when they all had to survive Grelod and the streets together…
Vex and Tonilia were two of the children who weren’t scared of him and didn’t hold him responsible for something he hadn’t done. And then there was N, who'd later become the baby of the bunch.
She arrived at Honorhall as a newborn when Brynjolf had just turned five, and Vex and Toni were about six and seven. Growing up being constantly told to “shut up” by a bitter old woman hadn’t given N the best start in life. It was especially grim, because Grelod did not exclude a baby in her punishments. A bitter note I don't want to dive into right now.
To the other children N was simply annoying: she cried too much, wailed too loudly, sobbed too often, and did all the normal things babies and toddlers do. Because she couldn’t defend herself and stuttered badly, she became an easy target…
It was easier to pick on the smallest. It was so much simpler to hit someone who wouldn't hit back.
So Brynjolf gladly hit back for her. And it wouldn't take too long, until Vex and Tonilia gladly joined his efforts defending the little one.
At first it was just another outlet for his own anger, but it quickly became his way of protecting her. He was too young. He didn't have words for it yet, but eventually seeing someone so small and defenseless being beaten over and over didn't sit right with his rather grey morale. And later on, it also turned into his way of saying thank you for something that never needed words nor gratification.
N grew up seeing Brynjolf as her best friend and one of the only three people in the orphanage who never bullied her, but always watched her back. Instead of snapping at her to speak better or faster, he was patient with her, helped her, and gently encouraged her to try again.
To N, Brynjolf was never “the murderer’s son.”
In fact, when she first heard the word she didn’t even know what a murderer was.
And even when she understood, she couldn’t understand why the others were so cruel to him about it.
To N, Bryn was simply Bryn! Her best friend ever!
And to Brynjolf, N was never an annoying nuisance, a weakling or a stupid crybaby.
She was his sweet little mouse — and for many years to follow, neither of the two had any idea that they'd be so much more… ❤️
Before you dive into all of me little story, we need to talk about the vanilla Thieves Guild timeline. Let’s be real: it’s a disaster. XD (chronological, logical, etc)
One example out of many: The whole ordeal with Gallus, Karliah, and Mercer. Twenty-five years of nobody checking the vault after Gallus died? Nobody noticed Mercer robbing them blind? For a human lifespan, that math just doesn't check out? It’s messy, full of plot holes, and I think it's a victim of game-design constraints. If you want a full, hilarious breakdown of how broken the guild’s logistics actually are Shamus Young’s deep dive covers the mess perfectly.
Since Bethesda never confirmed official ages and most online theories barely hold together, I figured: Might as well do whatever the tf I want and like best? So, I have a very different setup:
10-Year Gap: In this version of events, the Karliah and Gallus incident happened roughly 10 years ago—give or take. It’s still a long time to harbor a grudge, but it imo makes the guild's survival more believable.
If the guild had truly been in a 25-year decline, it would have collapsed long before the events of Skyrim, especially when the Guild feels like it's full of old ppl. So, everyone gets a little younger. Brynjolf sits around 30ish (In year 4E 201), and is roughly five years older than my OC, "N". Vex and Tonilia fall into a similar age range as Brynjolf.However, the major story here takes place from 174-200; and has its end during the Mercer ordeal in 201. So consider this "normal, no-chosen one, non Dovahkiin OC story" taking place BEFORE the Dragon-Crisis and reaching its final conclusion parallel to the events of the Dragonborn.
Then there is my orphanage headcanon and, f*ck yes, I'm a simp for this. Brynjolf, Vex, Tonilia, and N all grew up in the Riften Orphanage together. Delvin, being part of the previous generation, was one of the thieves who actively recruited them, kickstarting their careers and helping to shape the next generation of the guild.
As for the Dovahkiin: This is an intentional divergence from the game's main quest. There is no omnipotent Dragonborn coming to take over the guild. In this story, the Dovahkiin is an honorable warrior who joins the Companions and wants absolutely nothing to do with a bunch of thieves. He gets one or two honorable mentions at the very end of the story, but that’s it. (And those mentions will be in year 201; run parallel to the kill Mercer / Nightingale ark which also will have very different outcomes.)
I tried to make this version of Riften feel more organic and atmospheric. (? Unsure if this is the best way to word it. Pls excuse me, English is my second language. I'm German.)
SO: I really hope you can settle with this alternative version of events, embrace the changes, and enjoy.
This story focuses more on daily guild life, the struggles of ordinary people, and childhood friends turning into lovers. However, there's some drama, ordeals and quests too.
Shipping: Brynjolf x No One "N" (My Original Character) ~ ♡
Author's Note (For Chapters / Mechanics):
Some "quests" in this story involve recognizable events taking place earlier in time (before 4E 201), such as the contract on Grelod the Kind commissioned by Aventus Aretino, or the shaking down of Bersi in Riften. Because of this, certain paths are no longer available for the Dragonborn. Hope I managed to word all of this well; writing a disclaimer like this and pretending I have any idea how to be socially "acceptable" is much harder than writing a story.
Master Timeline -- (Still under construction; first chapters finished. To be updated later.)
Packing her supplies before dawn, she was gone long before the sun crested the wall. Hurriedly, she'd left word with Vekel on her way out — "Off doin' the rounds. Gatherin' flowers! Back in two-three days, k?" — slung her gear, took the south road. Nobody clocked it as unusual at first. She'd done solo runs before: a bear cave or two, a bandit hideout up by Stony Creek she snuck into and nearly got killed, the odd Nordic crypt where she'd ran for her life. And a night under open sky suited her better than a damp corner of the Ratway anyhow — given the choice, she took it most of the time. If she found something worth staying for, she stayed. So, Vekel passed the message along to whoever asked. Most didn't…
A few days later ~ Ratway, Cistern
Idle chatter around the bar, late afternoon. N's absence hadn't gone unnoticed over the past few days. Brynjolf had asked Vekel where the lass had taken herself off to, and Vekel had passed the message along while continuing to tally crates for the next shipment. "Two o' three days, she said. Apparently."
Well — it was the fourth, and though Brynjolf wasn't overly bothered, he put the question to the rest of the lot all the same.
"Anyone heard from our Mouse yet?" —
"Nah," grunted Thrynn, eyes on his card hand and a half-grin at Rune's expense. "She'll show. Always does."
"Nay. She'll likely turn up tomorrow," offered Niruin without breaking pace, stirring a small phial of muted blue with the careful hand of a man already nine deep into the week's invisibility potions — Guild community chest didn't fill itself. "Bet she's found something interesting. You know how she is." — "Aye, that I do." The Redhead chewed the inside of his cheek, conceded the point with a small shrug, drained the half-pint he still held in his hand. "Reckon she's perched up somewhere with a view and clean lost track of what day it is."
Unhurriedly, he turned away from the bar with the matter put to bed for now. Gallus had pulled him aside that morning with something that needed seeing to — a jeweller out of Whiterun, looking to "redistribute" a handful of his own pieces ahead of a poorly-timed audit. "Easy," he drawled. "The sort of job that falls to me by default, eh? A bit of smooth-talking, then back to Riften with the terms settled and a heavy deposit clinking in my satchel."
A few more days later ~
Ninth day out. Bryn rode in on a tired horse just before dusk, satchel sat low on his hip with the weight of his cut from the Whiterun mark — a respectable haul, fence already lined up by Tonilia, the jeweller now satisfied enough to vouch for the Guild's discretion at the next supper-table he found himself at. He took the back way in: across the graveyard, down the false crypt, through the yard's secret door and into the Cistern. Gallus was at his desk, focused on the ledger, when Bryn dropped into the chair across from him and gave him the gist in short measures — "Mark's settled, lad's paid up, took half down, half on delivery. Tonilia's got the fence end. Maven gets her finder's. Clean." — and logged the take in the ledger with the careful pencilwork Gallus liked to see. Then he rolled his shoulders, stretched his back out, and went looking for the Mouse. She wasn't at the bar. Wasn't in her sleeping corner. Wasn't down at the training dummies, wasn't in the alchemy alcove. Moments later, Vex came up the stairs from the lower pathways with a stack of empty crates under one arm; he caught her on the second step. "Hoy. Where's our Mouse?" — "Don't know. Hasn't come back yet," casually she shrugged her shoulders, balanced the crates on her hip, and looked at him with a raised brow. "Didn't she say she'd only be out for two-three days?" — "Aye. That she did." —
"Mhmm…"
Vex chewed it over for a beat, arms crossing over the crate top, the accusing edge slipping into her face that he'd known since they were both about waist-high. "Brynjolf?" — "Yes?" — "Have you been at Haelga's again?"
"Huh? What d'you mean?" drawled he as he raked a hand through his hair. "Why's that even relevant?" — "Oh. Nothin'," whistled the Blonde tunelessly, hoisted her crates back up, and sauntered off in the direction of the cellar door without looking back. Bewildered, he watched her go a moment longer than he meant to, then let the matter rest. He left the emptied satchel in his footlocker, scrubbed the road-dust off at the basin, and headed back out the way he'd come — through the graveyard, up into the city to ask around if someone'd have seen No One.
2nd Rain's Hand — Cistern, Gallus's table
Bryn knocked on the study door, waited for the come-in, and stepped through. Gallus was at the desk with one of his books open, a clay cup of tea steaming at his elbow, a wax candle going down slow in the holder. Quietly he shut the door behind him, asking, "Got a minute?" —
"Always, Brynjolf. Take a seat."
Taking a breath, she sat down and eventually said the things he hadn't said out loud yet to anyone directly. "It's Mouse." — "Aye, I'd gathered. Go on" — "Her bein' gone a day or two — that's nothing. Off doin' her thing? Normal, eh? Gone longer than she said — fine. Nothing unheard of. We all know how she is. Find something shiny, lose track while watching the clouds."
Slowly, Brynjolf scrubbed a hand down his face, sighing deeply, "But this long? Gallus, I —" He stopped. Started again, much plainer this time: "Call me daft. But somethin's wrong. I can feel it sitting wrong in me gut. Hasn't sat right for three days now."
Composedly, Gallus set his cup down, folded his hands on the desk top, and looked at him for a longer moment. "You're not daft, lad. There's nothing daft about looking out for one of your own. It's what keeps the Guild upright when nothing else does — that we care for each other before we care for the take." Taking a breath and another sip of his cup of tea before it'd run cold, he went on,"And you care for her. You always have. That's no secret to anyone in this Guild, least of all me." Bryn held his gaze for a beat, then dropped it to his boots and said nothing. There was nothing to say to that. Gallus wasn't wrong.
"The shill run can wait a few days. The Maven matter's not due back until next week — I'll handle the early word myself if she sends. What else have you got on the books?" — "Whiterun fence is settled. Nothing else 'til the new moon." — "Then when I'm not needed," Bryn said, lifting his head, "I'll go find her."
With a short, respectful nod — same one he'd given Gallus since he was about thirteen and mostly elbows and bad ideas — he excused himself.
Lost in his own thoughts, Gallus considered him a moment longer with a specific look he reserved for matters he'd settled in his heart long before he settled them in his head. It all reminded him of himself, when he was a young man and met the friend that later would become the love of his life: Karliah. Smiling to himself, he picked his cup back up, took a sip and went on with his work…
2nd–3rd Rain's Hand — North of Riften
Riften woke up wet. Rain hammered the canal boards, fog hung low over the lake, every wooden eave dripping into the alleys below. Bryn was in the saddle before most of the city had finished cursing the weather — hood up, cloak heavy on his shoulders, south gate behind him by sunrise. First day yielded nothing. He worked past Treva's Watch and out into the boglands beyond, drawing wide circles outwards from the road. Every farmhand, every charcoal-burner, every trapper riding double in oilskin got the same description: Sixteen years old. Rosé-coloured hair, blue eyes, plugs in her earlobes, a long red scarf from Hammerfell round her neck. Sweet sort. Looks younger than she is.
Every time the same answer: a shaken head and a Sorry, friend.
Footpaths cold. Leads non-existent. He slept rough at the verge of a hawthorn break, woke at first light with the rain slowly fading and swung the search wider.
The young thief worked in lazy circles outward from anywhere with a kitchen smoke. By afternoon of the second day he was a few paces north of the Orc-hold Largashbur — the painted skulls and lashed bones along the palisade visible through the trees — when the next thread of smoke pulled him off the road and down a deer trail. The cabin was set behind a screen of pine and birch: low roof, peat banked against the north wall, a row of fox and ermine traps drying along the side of the shed. An old huntress stepped out before he'd dismounted properly. Lean as a hunting hound. Lined face, sharp eyes. She heard him out, head cocked, while a kettle quietly boiled over her fire pit. "Aye," she said, after he'd reached the haircolour in his description. "Aye, I seen a young lady with rosé hair and a red scarf the length twice of an arm. Bought some smoked venison off me — paid in coin, said please an' thank you, more polite than the lot of 'em that pass through here in a season. Quiet thing." Vaguely she gestured with her chin, benevolent pointing Brynjolf into a direction. "Headed north-west when she left me. Towards the old Dwemer place. Told me as much when I asked her — most folk don't go that way, so I got curious. Two days back. Mebbe three?"
Relief hit him like a fist to the chest. Brynjolf thanked her and left some coin on her table. He let the bay mare pick up a hard trot the moment the cabin was out of sight, and the worry he'd been wrestling down for two days came back up his throat in a new shape.
'A Dwemer ruin, Mouse. A bloody Dwemer ruin? Alone? What in the Name of the Eight are you doing, eh?' —
The thought ran circles in his head as he rode. Could've been a Falmer arrow in her back, fired from a dark she didn't see into. Could've been a Centurion blade through her ribs before she had time to draw her bow. Could've been a fall down an unmapped shaft in the dark, nobody to even mark the spot where she went. Could've been a hundred quiet ways for a small clever girl to go missing for good in a place like that. Fraught, he clenched his jaw, urged the mare faster up the rising ground. 'Whatever y' after, lass — it better be worth it.'
4th Rain's Hand, morning — Avanchnzel, outside
The horse picked the last mile by smell, threading between root and stone, as the clearing in front of the great Dwemer doors came into view round the bend, and Bryn pulled up short. A camp. Perched on an upper balcony. Neat as anything he'd ever set himself. Small canvas tent, stakes driven firm. Bedroll dry and rolled. Fire pit with the morning's embers still alive, a flat slab over the coals with two strips of honey-glazed peasant hissing on it. Half a dozen leather pouches lined up by the tent flap, organised by weight. And sitting on a rock with her back to him, scarf bright as a flag, was Mouse — entirely intact, picking gemstones out of a bag one at a time and sorting them into piles. Sapphires. Garnets. Rubies. An uncut emerald the size of a thumb. He didn't say a word for a full breath, because the relief hit so hard he had to grip the saddle horn before he dismounted.
Muffled, without making a sound, Brynjolf stopped about three feet behind her and took a deep breath. Today, he'd let the Salesman-mask drop into place the way he'd worn it a hundred times for jobs and marks. Casually, he cocked his head and said, drawl thick as honey: "Well, blimey— look at this. Sweet little holiday camp you've set up here, eh? Reckon there's a piece of that pheasant for an old friend, or am I to ride back to Riften on an empty stomach after I've been out here for days, looking for — You!" "SHOR'S — arse. Brynjolf!"
Long before he'd finished the sentence, she was off the rock — two-handed launch, gemstones scattering off her lap, dagger half-drawn from her hip before her brain caught up with her ears. Cursing, the flat of her palm slammed to her chest, the dagger sliding back into its sheath unused: "Wakin' Skeever! Mate, ya' want me droppin' dead out here, or what?! Sneakin' up like —"
Hand off her chest, she pressed it flat over the side of her neck like she was checking she still had a pulse. " — wait? Y' angry? What's the face for?"
The friendly mask was already gone. Brynjolf watched her get her breath back with his arms crossed and the muscle in his jaw working. He took a step closer. Then another. His eyes raked the clearing as he came on — the neat tent, the bedroll, the pouches, the roasting bird, the gemstones, gods, the gemstones on the ground at her feet —
"Twelve days," he started, not making much of a secret out of his frustration. "Brynnnn— Come on. Ya' ain't really mad at me, are ya? Pleeaseeee ~ Let me explain ~" — "Been worried sick about you! Was sure a bear finally got its bloody revenge on you, or that you'd run into trouble—bandits, scum, the worst kind of people — "
"Bryn. M'sorry. I —" —
"Pictured you lying in a ditch somewhere, cold, starving, or worse! In pain, bleeding out, needing help and too stubborn to send a damn letter!"
"Bryn… Please? Dun do that!! — Is not like that, really. It's —"
"Twelve. Days. Not a word. Not a runner. Vekel telling me you said: off doin' the rounds. Mouse?"
Stepping into her space, he shook his head, a dark laugh cutting through the quiet as he stared at her with sheer disbelief at the utter ruthlessness of it. His voice stayed level. That was the worst part.
"And then I find you here. Tucked up like a proper outdoorsman and with a stash that'd choke a Skooma dealer's income. Alone. Outside a Dwemer ruin."
Realising he wasn't actually angry but deeply hurt, all the fight drained out of her as her jaw set. Her shoulders dropped, her defensive stance crumbled into a small, heavy slump. She didn't look him in the eye—instead, her gaze slipped to the floor, her fingers tightening around the handle of her bucket until her knuckles turned white.
"M' sixteen now? Ain't a kid no more— I had me runs on me own before. Like I said: Dun worry about me. I got 'tis!" —
"Aye, you're sixteen. Reckon that makes a difference?"
Once again, he took one step closer as his voice dropped lower instead of louder. "You could be forty, N. Could be a Nord twice me size with a beard down to me boots. Wouldn't change a damn thing. This —" he gestured at the ruin, at the camp, at her "— this is reckless. Could've asked. Could've taken me, taken Vex, taken any of us. Was a reckless lad myself once — I get it. But there's a line between reckless and bloody lifeless, and you walked right past it without looking."
Staring down at her boots, she felt the full weight of her silence as any room for defense vanished. He wasn't wrong. Feeling rather small, she swallowed hard, the sudden dread of having disappointed her friend tightening in her chest while she looked for a way to make up for it. "Didn't mean to make ya' worried… Really. Got so excited when I cracked it open and fully lost track of everything. M' sorry. Really…"
"Y'know? That's the bit that scares me, lass," his voice cut through the space between them, quiet and flat. "You didn't mean to. You just didn't think."
Letting the silence sit, he took a slow look around the clearing again, more deliberately this time — and the longer he looked, the harder it got to stay upset. The camp was clean. The loot was sorted by carry-weight and value. He spotted a row of small chalk marks on the rock near the tent flap, Guild shadowmarks for safe, cache, empty. She'd been running it all professionally, as if she were already decades in the business. Shor's beard, the lass had been running it like a Guild safehouse, he thought. The pride snuck up on him sideways and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep it off his face, especially when he glanced at her puppy-eyes, still staring at the floor in hopes of him not being angry for too long. Unhurriedly but slightly baffled, the Redhead sat down on the rock beside her, helping himself to a piece of the freshly roasted honey-glazed pheasant. "Alright. Show me what ya' got, then. What's all this about?"
Handing over the map she'd drawn, her jaw was still set as he unfolded it. Without breaking his focus, he didn't speak for a long time, simply studying her work and everything she'd gathered about the ruins so far. It was good. By the Eight, it was good!!!
Hand-drawn on waxed parchment, every hallway was measured by pacing, every pressure plate and tripwire pencilled in its exact spot, every enemy crossing marked with a chalked X.
Shadowmarks dotted the edges — safe by a small alcove where she'd slept once, empty over rooms she'd already cleared, cache over rooms still holding something worth a return trip.
A separate corner was reserved for sections she couldn't reach yet: gated passages, sealed doors, the mechanisms she'd pencilled around without solving.
"Can't crack 'em yet. Think's something's missin'," she muttered, watching his face. "Dun have the knack for that one there. Goin' back when I figure it out." And then, biggest of all, ringed twice in red wax pencil: a huge chamber off a side passage, with a single note beside it in her cramped handwriting:
DO NOT — followed by a bigger one — armoured — nearly killed me twice, need to outsmart that thing.
Blinking, he read that line three times, before setting the map aside, asking:
"Mouse? Sweetheart?" —
"Aye?"
"There's a Centurion?"
"Yah. Pretty rough, that one."
"And it nearly killed you. Twice." —
"Yah, but did ya' see the markings?" —
"I did. Don't change topic on me. Have you lost your mind? You nearly got yourself killed!?! " —
"I didn't though. So?" quipped she, shrugging it off. "Anyway. Goin' back in today. Gotta get somethin' out like as soon as possible. There's 'tis one thing: Got me eyes on a special kind o' gyro the big one's guardin'. Won't be lookin' so smug if I leave it sittin' there. And then… Well, have y' seen the gems?"
Weighing the options in his hands, he stared at her while. Well, Mouse had grown some guts. It made him proud but also slightly concerned. Afterall, he knew that smile on her face. The raw excitement, the reckless drive for adventure and a good time where one came home considerably wealthier or dead. Very much aware of the fact that she was going whether he agreed or not, he felt like he had little choice in the matter. And forcing her to wait for backup would only mean she’d slip out the next night without him. Choosing the only deal he could actually keep, he leaned forward.
"Right. Here's how it goes. We go in. Together. We're a team, no? So, we get your gyro. We get out. And then you come home with me to Riften and you don't go wandering off solo into anything bigger'n a sheep pen for the next six months. Are we clear?"
"Six is harsh. Besides, m'not a kid. Stop treatin' me like one."
"Six. Or I'll have Delvin fart on your tent. Besideeees… I know you're no longer a kid. You still behave like one."
Snorting despite herself, she stuck out a small hand. "M'not. N' yer just a stingy mudcrab. So, we goin'?"
"Shor's — Y'know what? Sit down, have a bite of the peasant you roasted. Gather some supplies, and then we go. Deal?"
Grumbling right on cue, her stomach loudly agreed with Brynjolf, who returned the noise with laughter and a pat down on the seat next to him.
"See? You probably forgot to eat counting gems, eh?"
5th Rain's Hand — Inside Avanchnzel
(I struggled with this part because of language skills; I'll revise and improve once my writing skills improved again)
Down the first lift she went ahead of him, hand-signal over her shoulder where she'd left a shadowmark in white chalk — safe — and Brynjolf followed without question. The ruin opened up around them in old gold and verdigris, dust hanging in the shafts of light from above. He'd been in two other Dwemer places in his life. Both times he'd come out lighter than he went in, mostly because they'd been mapped at his elbow by people older and meaner than him. This one was being mapped at his elbow by a sixteen-year-old in a red scarf, and within ten minutes he'd stopped second-guessing her once. That little brat moved through the place like she lived there. Pressure plates skirted without breaking stride, a soundless tap to the doorframe each time they entered a new chamber — cleared, I've been in.
Tripwires she pointed out at thigh-height with two fingers and a flick of her chin. Where she stopped, he stopped. Where she went low, he went lower. Once, she put a flat hand back against his chest without looking — held them both still — and a beat later a small mechanical creak settled somewhere overhead and went quiet again. She nodded, dropped the hand, kept walking.
Shor's beard, Mouse, he thought, falling in behind her shoulder, Delvin's gonna lose his bloody mind over this.
They moved fast where her mapping was good — long stretches of corridor where she'd already pulled the trip-mechanisms and stripped the rooms clean, and the only sounds were their boots on the metalwork and her quiet hum when she thought he couldn't hear. They moved slow where she hadn't been before. Twice they had to backtrack: once because the bridge she'd planned to cross had a fresh Falmer crossing-mark on it that hadn't been there a week ago, once because she'd lost a memorised turn in the dim and stood for a long thirty seconds with her eyes shut, retracing it in her head before she set off again, exactly correct. Brynjolf let her do it. Watched her do it. Filed it under things to tell Vex over a pint when we get out of here, and not before.
Three hours in and he was making mental notes the way Gallus did — not to teach her, but to learn. And by the time they came to the side passage and the Falmer crawl-hole she'd chiselled wider on her previous visits, Bryn would've followed her into Oblivion itself if she'd told him the way through.
She wormed through the crawl-hole first, Bryn after her with a soft curse for his shoulders. They came up on the far side and into a hall the size of a Riften warehouse. Dwemer gold and verdigris, vaulted high, two galleries of catwalks running parallel above the main floor with rusted lifts at either end. Steam-lamps long dead — the only light from a vent shaft somewhere in the ceiling, falling in pale gold slats across the central platform. And there, on the platform: the Centurion.
Asleep. Or whatever the Dwemer called it.
One knee down, head bowed, arms folded across its chest like a praying knight.
Vapour curled lazily from a seam at its spine. Every few seconds the great chest gave one slow, deep hiss — the sound of a furnace banked low, ready to roar.
Bryn took a step back without thinking. N caught his sleeve before his heel could find the floor, pressed a single finger to her lips. No sound.
Attentive, she tipped her chin towards the far wall. Two sealed doorways, both ringed with Dwemer signets, each with a pillar puzzle set into the wall beside it — ancient sigils on rotating drums, a slot above for a missing key. She'd traced the dust around them on a previous visit. Couldn't crack them. Wouldn't, not today. The chamber the special gyro she was after sat in was through neither of those doors anyway. It was up the right-hand catwalk and across a narrow walkway that ran directly over the sleeping Centurion's head. Bryn looked at that path. Looked at the Centurion. Looked at her. She gave him a flat, don't-look back. They started for the lift. Quiet.
They almost made it. The lift's grate was three feet ahead of N's boot when something at the other end of the hall — low, scuttling, fast — exploded out of a side passage with a wet, hateful shriek. Falmer. Small one. Lost from its patrol, blind eyes wide, ears flicking towards anything that wasn't stone. It hadn't seen them. It had heard something, and was screaming about it. And that was all it took.
The Centurion's eyes flared like coals catching air. Steam exploded from its joints in a single violent rush; the seam at its spine widened with a metallic crank-crank-CLUNK, and the praying knight rose with all the grace of a tower coming up from a foundation. It took it three seconds to find the Falmer. The Falmer never made it to the corridor it had come from. One sweep of the serrated blade and the small grey body folded in half, sailed across the platform, struck a pillar with a sound that wasn't worth describing. The Centurion took another half-second to confirm the kill. Then those red coal-eyes turned. Found them and locked them.
"Ah, balls," Bryn breathed. He had his daggers in his hands before he'd finished saying it. "Well. Shit!" N was already moving for the lift cable — one quick scramble, fingers and boots — and up onto the lower catwalk. Bryn drove forward instead, into the Centurion's line of sight, low and fast, dagger-points wide. Get its head down. Keep it down. Buy her the high ground.
He went in shouting — "Hoy, you rusty tin can, eyes on me!" — slipped under the first wide blade-arc, came up on the inside, drove a parrying dagger between the great steel plates of the right calf and felt it bite.
Blade pulled. The Centurion lurched. He danced back before the foot came down where his ribs had been a quarter-second earlier. Came back in. Out. In again. Worked the same joint twice more, sparks coming off the seam each time, the Centurion now pivoting in slow, furious quarter-turns to keep him in front of it.
Above, N had already loosed her first three shafts. He heard them as much as saw them — the dry tunk of arrowhead off plating, plating, plating. She was hunting the throat-gap. He had to keep its chin up for her, had to keep its weight on the bad knee, had to keep its attention. Steel. More steel. He went in a fourth time, drove the dagger so deep into the calf-seam the hilt bit his palm, and twisted. The leg gave. Not all the way but enough. The Centurion sagged a hand's-breadth on the wounded side, head tipping back as it fought for balance — the throat-gap opening at last, exposed against the gold light from above.
"NOW, MOUSE!" he roared as she leaped from the lower catwalk to the upper one and cleared a gap a grown Nord would have hesitated at. Another jump landed her left boot square on the Centurion's pauldron, where she used the moment of contact as her brace, and put the arrow through the eye at point-blank range. Instantly, the thing folded.
And so did N.
The Centurion's final spasm — a single, dying buck as the great steam-heart blew its last in the chest cavity — threw her clean off the shoulder and across the gap. Violently, she struck the stone wall on her left side with the full weight of a Dwemer construct's death-throw behind her, dropped, didn't roll. Did not get up straight away.
"N! YOU ALRIGHT?!" Bryn was already running, dagger-hand still oily from the calf-seam, throat raw from shouting. "MOUSE — answer me — N!"
Long before the dust had settled, he was with her. No bones broken. Nothing through the skin. But her left shoulder was sitting wrong — high and out of socket, the joint shifted forward under her collarbone. She was awake and she was swearing. Both good signs. "Fuck me! Shitballs! Bloody — ARGH!! Gods! This — HURTS!!!!!"
"Don't move. Stay still, alright. You're making it worse… Hoy! Listen — I can fix this, lass. Done it on Vex three years back, done it on myself twice. Gonna be honest with you though — it's gonna suck" —
"Right. Just bloody —"
And he did it. No countdown. No warning. Just grabbing the arm the right way and one clean, controlled push-and-rotate motion while her mouth was still open shaping the word. The joint slid home with a wet, sick clunk and her swearing went up about three octaves, before it stopped abruptly.
"Why d'ya — without — Shitballs! Why didn't you warn me, jerk! Argh, that BITCH!!" —
"Better that way. Less time to brace, less to tear. Believe me. You want to get this over with fast. Sorry ~"
Untying his cloak from the throat-clasp, Bryn knelt at her good side and got to work. Folded the fabric into a long wedge, slid it under her arm, brought the ends up over her shoulder and across her chest, knotted them at her opposite collarbone — the sling Tonilia had taught him the years before, when they'd had a similar mess on the Cistern floor with Vex. He worked careful and quick. Talked her through it as he went, low and steady, the way one'd talk a spooked horse down off a fence. "That's it. Easy now, Mouse. Keep your breath slow for me — in through the nose, out the mouth, aye, like that. Good. There you go."
Eyes a little glassy from the wall-strike, she didn't protest but tracked him, jaw set against the throb in her shoulder. Didn't make a sound. Bryn knew that silence — same one she'd worn at thirteen with a split lip and Grelod's footsteps still ringing in her ears. He didn't acknowledge it. Didn't need her to know he'd recognised it. When the sling was tight, he sat back on his heels for a beat and looked at the dust in her pale hair, at the smear of soot across one cheek, at the way her good hand was still curled round the bowstring of her shortbow like it had grown there.
"Mouse," he said.
"Mm?"
"You did good in there. Bloody good. I been in two of these places, and I'd not have made it past the last corridor without you," he breathed, smiling encouragingly at her. "You read this ruin like Vex reads a lockface. I want you to know I clocked that. Every bit of it."
Too shy for direct eye contact, her cheeks flushed bright red and her mouth twitched at the corner, drawling, "Dun go soft on me, Bryn." —
"Aye, fair. But mind — that bit doesn't undo the other bit. You're not goin' wanderin' off into a Dwemer pit alone again, are we clear? Not 'til ya've got me beside you or Vex, or one of the lot. I won't sit through another twelve days like this, Mouse. I'd not survive a second round."
"Aye…. M' sorry… Please dun look at me like that," she said, queasy, quieter and considerably more flustered than three seconds ago. "K. I hear ya'."
𐔌՞. .՞𐦯
Emerging into the daylight hours later, they finally made it back to the surface with the gyro secured, one shoulder tightly strapped, both of them absolutely filthy. Surveying the clearing with fresh eyes, Brynjolf realised the hidden camp really was a small fortress. It was a rare haven where a thief could simply collapse and get a proper night's rest without the constant, exhausting need to sleep with one eye open.
Cooking leftover venison thoroughly, Brynjolf handed her the bigger portion, she didn't argue and both dug in as if they were starving. After dark, she crawled into the tent first. Ducking in after her a moment later, he found her already curled tight on her good side, the red scarf pulled all the way up over her nose.
"One blanket ain't ever enough for ye, eh, lass?"
"Shut it, m' a proper freeze-baby! Ain't got an ounce of that bleedin' Nord frost resistance, have I?"
"It's Rain's Hand, lass. It's no' that—"
"Swear to Shor's arse, if ya tell me it ain't chilly, imma lose it!"
"It's no' that chilly."
"Ah, really? Bryn? Really? Wonderin' why that may be the case for ya', no?" Playfully frustrated, she sighed, both grinning at the exchange.
"Sleep well, Mouse," Brynjolf said, laying down.
"Mhm. G'night," she grumbled, too tired to backlash at him for teasing her. Usually, she’d snap right back, demanding he drop the name, only to let out a frustrated, high-pitched squeak that made the teasing ten times worse. Tonight, though, the fight was entirely gone. Feeling her small, cool body pressing against his back seconds later, Brynjolf didn't even blink when she cuddled up closer. It was an old habit, a quiet routine they’d shared since they were children—as natural and unquestioned as sharing a meal. Feeling her immediately use him as a personal furnace, a brief smile flickered across his face in the dark before the sheer exhaustion of the day caught up to him. He fell asleep first for once, his steady, low snoring filling the small tent. It didn't bother her at all, just as it never bothered him that she was always freezing, already dead to the world as she leant into the warmth.
Waking early the next morning, N's shoulder still sat stiff in its socket, but the pain was bearable — a day or two of going easy, a better healing potion and it would be good as new. After a quick breakfast over the embers, they ran a thorough second sweep through the corridors she'd already cleared. Bryn had an eye for the things she'd skimmed past — older Dwemer scrap of the sort a Riften pawn-broker would pay sober coin for, a half-rotten ledger tucked into a guard post that he flipped through for any name worth knowing and pocketed for Gallus's reading pile, a loose run of copper piping no one would miss. She had an eye for the things he'd have walked clean past — a soot-blackened recess behind a brazier with three small gemstones nested in the ash, a loose floor panel near the lift she'd been meaning to come back for.
What she didn't find was the one thing she'd actually been hoping for. She'd traced the corridors twice, checked every reading desk and metal cabinet the Falmer hadn't already smashed open, and the upgrade schematics stayed missing. She pulled out her map, marked two new chambers in red wax pencil — sealed sections she hadn't been able to reach yet, candidates for a return trip — and tucked it back into her satchel without comment. They left with more than she'd been able to carry back on her own. Two saddlebags' worth.
They came in through the south gate around mid-morning the following day. First thing Bryn did was find Niruin and Tonilia and quietly ask them to look at the shoulder when they had a moment. Second thing he did was haul N straight to Balimund's forge. She laid out what she'd brought — Dwemer ingots from the rubble, a battered length of ebony she'd been guarding, the fragmented schematic with its careful pencil-marks. Balimund whistled low through his teeth. "This is a piece of work, kid. You realise that, aye? That's some sort of Dwemer-ebony composite — never tried that, never heard that. Could be I ruin the lot trying." —
"Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. Got enough material there for ya' to ruin it three times an' still come out with a bow," she said excitedly. "So, ya'll do it? Take the commission?"
Smiling to himself, Bryn leant on the forge post and let them work it between them. Balimund chewed his lip, looked at the schematic again, and gave a short nod. "Two months. Closer to seven weeks if I'm lucky. And mind — base bow only. The upgrades on this drawing? I don't have the hand for that and you need the schematics for it. You'll need a Dwemer man. Markarth, most like." —
"Aye. Step one, mate. Step one's plenty."
"I've never seen a bow like this. Where did you find the prints anyway?"
"Mhmmm… they magically appeared on me desk?"
"Y'know what? Better I don't ask."
"Right, 'cause yer not gettin paid for askin' questions. Just… update me when ya' work on it, aye?" — "Aye. Can do."
7th Rain's Hand — Riften, Marketplace
The whole story came out in pieces over the next day or two — Bryn coaxing the rest of it out of her in the quiet stretches between work. Up on the warm tiles of Balimund's rooftop, late afternoon, a bottle of mead going slowly between them, N finally swore him to Guild silence and gave him the rest. Avanchnzel had been No One's private vault for over a year. She'd been quietly storing high-value finds there since autumn of 4E 189 — far enough from Riften that no rival fence would catch wind of it, close enough to reach in a day on foot. Anything she couldn't immediately move went into the stash, and she drew on it when she needed coin: for herself, for the Honorhall kids when Grelod kept them short, for the older orphans who'd aged out of the place and were sleeping rough behind the canal walls. Flower-selling and pickpocketing paid the day-to-day and a few extras. Avanchnzel paid the rest.
"Been tryna save coin, y'know? Like — a lot of it. The property ain't pricey, mate. It's makin' it liveable that swallows the gold." She passed him the bottle, drew her knees up.
Then came the bigger picture. Delvin had already had the talk with her: there was a corner of the Ratway he'd had his eye on for years and never quite been bothered to do anything with, and if she ever scraped together the coin for the lease, he'd cut her the deal himself. She wanted beds for the orphan kids that weren't Grelod's. She wanted a place that was hers — a kitchen of her own, so she could feed the lot of them when they wandered in. And then — here she went vague, a touch evasive — "A few other ideas, aye. Some good ones."
"Ah, c'mon, Mouse. I've known you since you wore nappies. Out with it." Huffing, she squinted sideways at him over the bottle. "Ain't tellin' ya'. There's a surprise for the lot o' ya' down the line. Wouldn't be a surprise if I spilled it now, would it?" —
"Fair enough," he murmured, taking the bottle back.
"But you realise you don't have to cook for us, aye?" —
"Aye, know that? Been over this a couple o' times, haven't we? Dun worry 'bout me! Ain't doin' it 'cause I have to. Doin' it 'cause I love ya' idiots. Gods." "Aww. We all love you too, Mouse!" Brynjolf grinned at her ear to ear, full salesman charm. "Now there's a confession." —
"Dun! Dun make that face again! I'll take it back. Y'all an annoying bunch of whimsies and the reason for me headache!"
"That's what family is for, eh?"
"That's why Avanchnzel pays for me mental health, Bryn."
"Ahhh, we aren't that bad. You've already said you love us!"
"And… I did take it back, so?"
"No, you didn't. Just admit it."
"Any witnesses to support ya' statement? No? Thought so," she grinned, and Brynjolf clicked his tongue, passing the bottle back at her.
Up went the market stall about two weeks later. Small painted board, a three-legged stool, a wicker basket of fresh-cut blooms from the area, and a handwritten sign in N's careful blockletters:
FLOWERS — 3 SEPTIMS A POSY, 4 FOR A WILDROSE, 10 FOR THE BOUQUET — WILL ACCEPT TRADE.
Half her buyers walked off a few coins lighter than they should. The Guild started using the underside of the basket as a dead-drop within the week — a chalk-mark on the stall leg meant something inside, collect by sundown. Every few days, she opened the stall, mood and weather depending, and worked the streets the rest of the time: a single sprig in each hand, threading through the market crowds with the wide-eyed please-sir-please-missus routine that had marks reaching for their belts before they'd worked out where their belts had gone. Within a fortnight the regulars knew the stall as well as Madesi's, and the Guild knew it twice as well as that.
Strolling past on the way to the Bee and Barb a few days in, Bryn made a great show of stopping at her basket. Picked over the wildroses with the considered care of a man choosing a wedding gift. Selected one additional sprig of Mountain Flower. Paid four septims for a three-septim posy without a word, dropped a wink her way, and walked off whistling. By the time he reached the inn door he was one flawless garnet richer, courtesy of the merchant whose elbow he'd brushed on the way past. He left two more gems under her stall basket on the way back…
Beyond Grelod's walls, Riften opened up. The orphans ran errands, picked up odd jobs, scavenged what the market wouldn't miss, and survived the way street children always had — by being useful and staying light on their feet. The Thieves Guild watched them as they did, partially with affection, partially with smiles. Here, among the thieves, the kids were tolerated.
They were fed, when there was a heel of bread spare. They gave them beer, which was not something children should drink, but at least it was fun, no?
Furthermore, a few of the older hands looked out for the strays in a loose, "unofficial" way — not always out of sentimentality, but because clever children made good informants, and the Guild always kept an eye on the long game. Two birds, one stone: feed the urchins, and grow the next batch of thieves out of them while they were at it.
To the children themselves, the bargain didn't look like a bargain. The Thieves were their heroes! Men and women who walked through Riften with coin in their pockets, mead in their cups, and nobody who'd dare lay a hand on them. To a kid sleeping on cold stone under Grelod's roof, that wasn't a profession. Hence, becoming part of the Guild turned into their biggest dream.
A thief was rich. A thief was fed. A thief picked locks and walked through the doors, and nobody slammed them into a closet for the night, right? Besides, there were worse career choices in this world to pursue. They could become cannibals, join a cult, worship Daedric Princes, or turn into bloodthirsty murderers. Becoming a thief? It was likely the lesser evil…
Bread and a bit of butter was usually offered from Vekel. Bearded, well into his time behind the bar of the Ragged Flagon — but he'd grown up at Honorhall himself, in the better years, long before Grelod's name had ever been stamped on the door. He'd never forgotten what the place felt like from the inside. Whenever a hungry-looking orphan turned up, Vekel handed over food without asking for a name. On the harder nights of midwinter, when the wind cut clean through the canals, he'd slip the smallest of them a cup of warm cider with a finger of something stronger stirred in to take the cold off.
Delvin Mallory told the same story from the other end. Much younger than Vekel and already with Guild ink high on his arm, he'd come through Honorhall in the in-between years — after Vekel's time, but before Grelod had taken the place over — and remembered it as what he kindly called "a shithole." The bitter joke between them, and others in the Guild or its associates, was that they'd been raised in the orphanage when it had been almost decent, only to watch the next lot raised by a monster. So they did what they could. Slipped coin. Slipped food. Slipped, every so often, a quiet word about which guard could be paid off and which one couldn't. And maybe that was the whole reason the Guild bothered with the strays at all. Most of its members had a story very like the children's own.
On those errands she'd run, little N met Karliah more than once. A Dunmer woman, soft-voiced, red-eyed, who moved through the Riften market the way a cat moved through a stable — elegant, quiet and always observant. Whenever the small girl spotted her between the stalls, her eyes lit up like oil lamps before she remembered to keep them down. Karliah might have taken to her out of plain patience. Might have seen too much of her own past in a small shaking thing trying to disappear behind Brynjolf's back.
Whatever the reason, she made a point of slowing down whenever they crossed paths — kept her hands visible, kept her voice low, never made a sudden movement N could have flinched at. "Hello, little one. Hands cold?" she greeted her, with N nodding but unable to respond.
"Hm. Here. This one's still warm. Mind the honey, yes — it's sticky and we don't want it getting stuck on your beautiful hair." Shakily, a small hand would creep out from behind Brynjolf's back, with two blue eyes looking at her as if she were a god. "T-t-t-thank y-y-y-y-ou…."
"You are very welcome. Take your time. I'm not in any hurry."
Vex had no interest in being mothered. What she wanted from the Guild was someone harder than herself to measure against, and she'd found it in Sapphire. The two of them took to each other like flame to oil. Sapphire was only a handful of years older but already had a knife on her belt and a faint scar across one cheekbone where someone had tried to teach her a lesson and lived to deeply regret it. The kid would sit cross-legged on a barrel behind the tavern, listening to Sapphire run her mouth about which mark in the market deserved what, while Vex counted the days until she'd be old enough to walk out of Honorhall and never look back. "Soon as I can lift me own keep, I'm gone. See if I care, stupid old bitch," she muttered once, kicking the heel of her boot against the barrel. "Gone, gone, gone. Ain't never settin' foot back in that place," little Vex rambled, to which Sapphire bared a tooth in something that could've resembled a smile.
Tonilia drifted, by contrast, towards quieter company. She'd worked out very young that the world ran on goods changing hands, and that the ones who kept the goods moving were the ones who never made a fuss about it. So she'd settle, on the long afternoons when she could slip away unnoticed, on the bench beside Dirge at the door of the Ragged Flagon, claiming her spot as if she were part of the Guild already and nobody had a right to say otherwise. Dirge didn't talk much at first. Tonilia didn't need him to and simply enjoyed the company. A wall of a man, with slow eyes and quiet hands — she watched the way he held a whole room without raising his voice once, and made notes. Years later, when she ran the Guild's fence operation, more than a little of it had been learned from a bouncer who didn't say five words in an afternoon.
And then there was the other man. The Imperial. To the children, at first, he was simply Karliah's friend — quietly dressed, soft on his feet, a smile that sat in the corners of his eyes more than on his mouth. What none of them knew, and wouldn't know for years, was that the standing order in the Guild was his: watch the strays. Feed them when you can. Pay them fair when they bring you something worth knowing. Never talk down to them. He moved through the Riften market without fanfare. He'd buy a posy of flowers he didn't need from whichever urchin had one to sell, pay above the asking, and walk on. Treating Brynjolf as one man to another, he'd stop and ask what the lad's opinion was on the price of cut gemstones that week, and listen to the answer like a councillor of the Hold consulting a known expert. "What ye reckon, lad — fair price, or fleecing?"
"Reckon he's fleecin' ye, sir. Madesi's got the same garnet down at his stall, cut better, half the asking."
"Is that so. Hm." Quietly, he curled the corner of his mouth in something between amusement and approval. "Useful to know. Saved me a fair bit of coin, that. Worth a couple of Septims, I'd say."
Five septims changed hands. The Imperial walked off whistling, glad he'd been able to help, and quietly sure the boy would share the coin with the other little one — the one with the rosé-hued hair who hardly spoke a word. Standing there with the coin warm in his palm, Brynjolf knew that this was what being seen by an adult felt like. And that this man, whoever he turned out to be, was someone he meant to grow up like.
Gallus Desidenius had always had a way with children. It left a bitter taste in his mouth, watching them sleep rough on the cold streets, but knowing what waited for them at Honorhall on the other end of the night was worse. A thief, aye. But a thief by code, not by greed — and a man who had decided, long before any of the four were old enough to ask why, that they were worth the long haul.
Whatever each of the children took from those quiet encounters — Karliah's patience, Vekel's bread, Delvin's slipped coin, Sapphire's hardness, Dirge's steady silence — Gallus's faith in them sat underneath it all. Word by word, Septim by Septim, errand by errand, the Guild was setting a future for them….
── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ─
Back to Master-Document: TES:V - Niemand Timeline - MASTER
For Story-Part click here: First Steps - N's Story
~ Lore Links
Naturally, the children of Honorhall did not spend much time indoors if they could help it and N quickly left what she called "House of Horror-Grelod." Riften's streets were preferable to the evil hag's company, and the city had a way of teaching things no orphanage ever could. It came to no surprise, that it had gotten especially bad, when Brynjolf, Vex and Tonilia were already with one foot in the Guild, and N was still too small, too young. Regardless, they moved in a loose pack — Brynjolf at the front, Vex sharp-eyed at his shoulder, Tonilia quieter but always watching, and N trailing behind, taking everything in with those enormous, careful eyes of hers. Eventually the smallest of the group moved into the Ratway, where she'd sleep in a quiet corner for the next few years. Not just any corner, mind. The Guild had seen to it without ever saying so out loud — a small alcove off one of the back tunnels, hidden from the main thoroughfare by a tangle of broken crates and a rusted iron grate she could pull shut from the inside. Inside, a bedroll, a sturdy little lantern, a stack of dry blankets, a worn rug Vex had nicked from somewhere unspecified, and a hook on the wall for her scarf. Warm enough. Dry enough. Safer than any cot at Honorhall had ever been. The standing invitation, never written down and never withdrawn, was that she was welcome in the Ragged Flagon whenever she liked, and Vekel had breakfast for her if she turned up before noon. However, she still couldn't leave the other kids behind, and sometimes willingly returned to Honorhall to share what she'd stolen from the streets, or what had come her way through the quiet kindness of the Guild.
With Maven Black-Briar as Riften's crimelord and the Guild keeping her sweet as their biggest client, everyone in the city knew how deep the rot ran — and that it ran deepest through the cleanest-looking pockets. Half of Riften, give or take, had at one point been a client of the Guild, or a mark, or framed for something they hadn't done, or paid handsomely to frame somebody else. That was the game and the children learned it before they learned how to properly count. They knew which alley sold Skooma and which one would get them gutted for asking. They knew where the Ratway entrances were and which routes were watched. They knew which guards looked the other way for a half-bottle of mead, and which ones turned a man in just to feel important. What separated the Guild from the guards, the merchants, and the Jarl's court was simple enough: the Guild moved as it pleased, so long as the work made coin. The Guild answered to nobody but itself — and its clients, and its purse, in that order.
The Thieves talked trade openly within its own walls, and N drank in every word of it. Brynjolf especially never tired of telling her about Gallus — sharp-eyed, soft-spoken, the cleverest man in Riften. He'd also taken up with a new mentor, a Breton called Mercer who was teaching him the harder end of the craft and who'd come to feel something like an older brother to him in the bargain. Vex talked locks and routes, already finding her edge. Tonilia talked fences and contacts, eyeing the trade Dirge had quietly been showing her. The three of them spoke about jobs by their bones — spotting a mark, cooling a stolen piece, splitting a cut, running a job clean.
They were learning the language of the trade the way other children learned their letters.
No One listened to all of it and embellished freely. Her versions of their imagined futures always carried considerably more gold, significantly more food, and at least one swimming pool's worth of sweet treats. The dreams grew bigger the older they grew. And as her three friends took their first real steps into apprenticeship, the dreams started to ache, too.
Technically, N was already on the Guild's books — Gallus had seen to that quietly, and everyone knew it — but at her age, with her stutter, with the Mouse still living closer to the surface than the thief did, she'd be waiting a few years yet before anyone put a proper job in her hands.
"Be patient, eh?" Brynjolf told her, more than once, ruffling her hair on his way past. "B-but s' no fair. I-I wanna p-play t-too!"
"Your name's on the slate, Mouse. They're not goin' to scrub it off. You just need to grow a bit, lass."
"M' n-not waitin' f-f-forever, Bryn."
"Aye. I know, I know. Give it some time. Go out have some fun."
"B-but I-I wann-a play w-with you n-now…."
"Why, I have some time. What do you want to play?"
It was a kindly meant answer and a true one, and No One hated it with the full furious heart of a child being told not yet.
Sulking became something of a daily exercise. Vex caught her glaring at her own boots one afternoon and gave her shoulder a firm push. "Oi. Quit the face. You'll get your turn. And when you do, you'll be better than the lot of us, 'cause you've had longer to watch. Right?"
"HMPF!" grumbled N, prickly as ever.
And because waiting sucked and children had never been known for their abundance of patience, N's actual career in thievery started as modestly as such things could. A loaf of bread here, a few treats there — small things, opportunistic things, the sort of theft that hunger turns from a moral failing into basic arithmetic. Her first successful lift was a sweetroll from a market stall at the age of seven. She was so startled it worked that she dropped half of it running away and ate the other half so fast she nearly choked on it. Brynjolf didn't let her forget it for years — and made a show of celebrating her first big haul with proper ceremony, slipping her an extra biscuit from Vekel's tray and toasting her with a mug of milk at the Flagon. Anything to coax the Mouse a little further out of her hole. Her second theft was a single coin, lifted clean off Balimund's counter at the forge. Balimund saw the whole thing and pretended he didn't.
As she grew, food turned to coin, and coin turned to the occasional gem or trinket — small enough to pocket, valuable enough to be worth the risk. Where Brynjolf, Tonilia and Vex were now learning their craft from the Guild, they passed every scrap of it down to N. Spotting techniques. Hand positions. How to lift from a hanging purse without snagging the cord. They taught her in her own corner of the Ratway, by the light of the little oil lamp, all four of them huddled in the warmth that her small space somehow held better than the rest of the tunnels. None of them were skilled yet. All of them made the same mistakes any apprentice did — getting greedy, getting cocky, getting caught. Which meant running. Which they all, in fairly short order, became extremely good at.
"All part of the training, Mouse."
Brynjolf was seventeen, leaning against the wall of her alcove with the lazy ease he was already growing into, while a twelve-year-old N nursed a scraped elbow from the latest sprint out of the market. "You're lucky you're so awfully cute!! Guard practically apologised to you for catchin' you, eh? Maybe we should work that into the routine. Mouse looks up at 'em with the big eyes, Mouse stutters out a s-s-sorry, sir, Mouse walks off with their purse."
"Sh-shut it, B-Bryn. M' not cute!"
"Oh, no. You are. Sweetest little bean in all of Skyrim. We all know it."
"NO!!! I-I w-wanna b-be like V-Vex, or K-Karli!"
"You are perfect the way you are." — "HMPF!! Nuh-uh!"
E4 187: The Guild grew accustomed to the little one sleeping in the Ratway… or sneaking into Brynjolf's bed when she had another nightmare. Of all people, Delvin Mallory turned out to be the first to take her seriously in hand — entirely out of his own goodness, of course, and not, on any account, because Gallus had quietly suggested it over a pint the week before. So Delvin sat himself down with her and worked through the trade in the order he reckoned a child ought to learn it. How to lift a coin purse clean off a belt without snagging the cord. How to read a mark in three seconds flat. How to move through a crowd without leaving a trace of her own passage.
Out came a battered copy of his own shadowmark lecture, which he made her recite back at him until she could chalk the lot from memory. Patience was not Delvin's strongest suit, mind. He ran her ragged, paid her in little coin, bread crusts, and the occasional stolen sweetroll, whilst he made every lesson sound like a personal favour she ought to be grateful for. He was thorough. And the lass was a sharp little student.
Fighting the tiny metal picks, N found her hands shaking so hard the slim steel rattled uselessly against the keyway. Every iron mechanism wasn't just a lock—it was a heavy oak door slamming shut in her mind, trapping her in the dark all over again. The tighter her chest squeezed, the more her fingers fumbled, the panic slicking her palms until the tension wrench slipped entirely and clattered onto the floorboards. Knowing exactly what kind of ghosts were scratching at the inside of the mouse's head, Vex didn't waste time on pity or soften, useless tears. Being afraid and crying wouldn't help her. So, she swatted N’s trembling hands away from the practice box, leaning in close enough that her voice brooked no argument. "Look at it this way, N," grunted Vex with a sharp but steady tone. "It’s a puzzle. Not a sodding prison. Y'don't have to sit there weeping, waiting for some old hag to turn the key and let ya out. Solve the puzzle, and you're out. The faster y'crack it, the faster you're free. It’s just a game, see?"
Of course, miracles didn't happen by nightfall, but the shift was there. Dropping a heavy, grounding hand onto her shoulder, Vex kept her anchored, muttering at her to keep her breathing slow, while Delvin leaned over the workbench with a loose, dismissive shrug.
"Trifling little thing, innit?" muttered Delvin, tapping the iron casing with a dirty knuckle. "Nothing but a cheap tumbler, kid. Give it a gentle nudge, she'll give." Forcing a ragged breath past her teeth, little N tried again, her fingers still shaking but hell-bent on not letting them down. Minutes crawled by in a tense, sweating silence before a sharp, solid click finally cut through the quiet of the Cistern — marking the exact second the blind panic turned into something a little more focused. Between the two of them, they’d gone and taught her something neither cared to name out loud. Every closed door in Skyrim, every iron grate, every shackle hidden away in some dark cupboard—none of them could hold her. No more locking her into closets. Not ever again…
In due time, little-sister dynamic between Delvin and N built itself up slowly, almost entirely against Delvin's wishes. Vex had cornered him about it one evening over a drink — would he keep half an eye on the little one in particular, on jobs and around the Ragged Flagon, given she was still the smallest body in any room she walked into and still flinched at sudden movements. Delvin had agreed with whatever "grace" he could manage, and not at all because of the inconvenient crush he had on Vex. From there on, his affection for N expressed itself in the only register Delvin had — needling, teasing and mockery — leavened by a stubborn streak of protectiveness. Karliah often watched the dynamic from her corner booth and did not, at first, approve. Gallus would catch her frowning and tell her to let it run. Delvin had grown up with a brother and a sister of his own once and Gallus was sure he knew what he was doing…
The payoff on Delvin’s investment dropped right in summer, the year N turned thirteen. The Flagon was packed out nicely for lunch. Karliah had basically dragged Gallus up from the Cistern by the scruff of his neck, hauling him away from his ledgers just so the pair of them could get a bite, and now they were tucked into the corner booth, eating venison stew. Tonilia was ruling the roost at her usual stool with Sapphire right beside her. Vex sat at the back table with a stack of job sheets and a cup of something dark, practically glaring the parchment into doing what it was told. Brynjolf was propping up the bar with Mouse on the stool next to him. Hungrily, the lass shoved soup, bread and butter into her face with that single-minded thirteen-year-old focus while her boots were still nowhere near reaching the foot rail. And when Delvin barged in, mid-whinge about the price of mead in this bloody town, he clocked Mouse on the stool. That stupid grin tore right across his face, and Brynjolf bloody knew the bastard was about to open his mouth and ruin the quiet morning.
"Shor's bones, Mouse. They still don't reach, do they? At thirteen?"
"Sh-shut it, Delvin. M' not t-that s-small!"
"Just sayin', kid. Seen mudcrabs taller than you."
"M' not a k-kid 'nymore. Y-you… y-you… — Hmpf…."
Encouraged, he leaned both elbows on the bar beside her as his grin only widened. "Tell you what. We'll get you a stool with a little step on it. Like a grown-up. Carve your name in the wood — Mouse's High Chair. Embroidered cushion, even. All fancy, eh?! Property of the Tiniest Thief in Skyrim."
Prickly, Mouse stopped chewing. Slowly, she set her bread down on the bar and placed both her small hands flat beside it. Gathering all the courage she could muster up, she turned on her stool until she faced Delvin square-on— eye to eye. Huffing and blushing she drew in a breath that filled her up from the bottom of her ribs, and said — loud and clear, ringing to every corner of the room: "Yer a stinkin' Skeever's arsehole, Delvin Mallory!"
The whole room shattered. Everybody stopped dead, completely and utterly floored. Vekel’s polishing rag dropped into his basin with a wet slap that nobody even noticed. Tonilia inhaled her drink and went into a proper coughing fit, eyes streaming as she hammered one fist against the table. Sapphire’s head whipped round so fast the Guild actually heard her neck pop. Vex’s job sheet hit the floor, and for once, she didn't even bother to pick it up. Over in the corner booth, Karliah set her cup down with the slow, shaking care of a woman who’d nearly knocked it over. Beside her, Gallus stopped chewing, his jaw dropping as he lifted both eyebrows at Brynjolf in stately, unhurried disbelief. Brynjolf just pulled the exact same face right back at him, before shifting his gaze across the room. Delvin, meanwhile, slapped a hand over his heart, his eyes wide and sparkling, entirely stunned by what had just come out of the Mouse's mouth. "Gods… finally!"
"THAT'S MY GIRL!" Vex shouted, completely losing her cool. Forgetting all about her usual stony face, she nearly jumped across the room to throw her arms round the lass, with Tonilia hot on her heels. "I'M SO PROUD OF YOU! OH MOUSE!!! You just called him an arsehole?!"
Brynjolf had to set his tankard down as the grin breaking across his face came up out of him like a sunrise, followed by the deep, helpless laugh of a man who’d been waiting just as long as Vex and Tonilia had: "Shor's beard, Mouse — at noon — in public — Vex, did y' hear that?! Y' hear what she said? Didn't even stutter this time!!"
"The whole Rift heard it, Bryn. I'm gettin' it carved into the bar."
"Shor's balls, this has gotta be the happiest day of me life! Look at you, callin' me a stinkin' Skeever's arsehole, eh? Oi! You write that down?!" cheered Delvin, genuinely overjoyed that someone, anyone — and of all people him — had finally dragged the first damn fight out of her. "Mouse is growin' some teeth!"
Meanwhile, Mouse had pulled her scarf up over the lower half of her face, the scarlet of the fabric matching her skin tone exactly. Somewhere between mortified and thrilled, she was shocked, unable to believe she’d actually managed to open her mouth and say something like that. Peeking once over the top of the scarf at the room, she caught how many of them were grinning back, and promptly yanked it up over her eyes too.
It took a good few minutes for everyone to calm down, and Vekel promptly declared, "Right, a proper pint of mead on the house!"
Delvin's face had gone, somewhere in the middle of all the noise, from flabbergasted to genuinely, helplessly proud. The grin he gave her now was softer than the one he'd come in with. Before she could stop him, he yanked her right off the stool, hauling her into a massive hug with her feet off the floor, and shook her as if she were a little plushie. "Look at our baby! She's all grown up! Swear is like raising watching me own child!!"
Setting her down again, he ruffled her hair, making her squeak and duck. Being bratty, she swatted at him but missed his hand by half a foot, which set the Guild off all over again."AND NOW SHE'S SLAPPING ME TOO?!"
"DELVIN! YOU - YOU –"
"ME WHAT?! ME WHAT???! SAY IT!"
"ARSEHOLE!" — "YES!! GOOD GIRL!!"
Lastly, from the corner booth came the most unexpected sound of all: Gallus laughed too. A warm, surprised, helpless sound from somewhere deep in his chest, followed by Karliah, who’d also been cracking up. Wiping the corner of one eye with a knuckle, Gallus shook his head, as he smugly told his partner, "See? Told you so. Delvin's got this."
First ever actual insult without stuttering:
Tirdas – 22nd. First Seed - 4E 187 – Exactly at 12.34 noon!!!
We finally did it, Chat!!!
By the time the two made it to Whiterun, Nivethia was a mix of pure depression and anxiety with a dash of humor to cover it all up. The adventurer that had walked beside her the entire time make sure she got fed and got into a bed in the Bannered Mare before heading up to Dragonsreach to speak with the Jarl.
“My Jarl, I am answering your summons,” he says, finally taking off his helm. Striking blue eyes and a deep golden blond head of hair are shown after this. It was a standard Nord look, but it suited the adventurer.
“Ah, yes, Falkrvar. There is business in Whiterun that Maven Black-Briar has gotten mixed into and I need you to deliver the letter. It contains fragile information that I cannot trust a courier with and I want you to set out at dawn,” the Jarl says, holding out a folded paper.
“Read it if you must, but tell anyone, Dragonborn, and I will have every guard possible on your tail.”
“Noted, Balgruff.” The Nord pulls out a bag with a note taped to it. “And give this to a girl named Nivethia if she comes by after I leave, would you?”
The Dragonborn took the letter and walked out of the palace, toward the inn he had just left. The innkeep told him that there were no empty rooms, but the one that held his friend had plenty of space for a bedroll.
Falkrvar accepted the offer and bought some Honningbrew mead before heading up the steps. Sure it was hard to fall asleep in the same room as a stranger, but she pulled no moves on him while they were travelling, so he deemed her safe enough to sleep around.
By the next morning, Nivethia was still asleep, but she did have a new item resting in her hands. Well, he assumed it was new, but it looked a little battered. It was a child’s doll with an obviously hand-made dress made with beautiful navy blue fabrics.
It made Falkrvar grin a little bit because it was sweet that she cared enough for a doll to care for it like she seems to. But what he didn’t know was that it wasn’t even hers; it was her brother’s.
However, before anyone can do anything else, her eyes open suddenly, startling the Dragonborn. “You’ve been there a while,” she states, not moving any muscle but her mouth and eyes. “You gonna move or what?”
“Ahem,” he clears his throat, “Yes, I’m going to move. Actually I have to head to Riften for a mission and wanted to know if you were coming with me.”
Sure, it was a lie, but her company wasn’t bad.
“I should settle down for a while, sorry. I don’t remember the last time I actually visited Whiterun for anything more than trading, so I’ll stay here a while.” She sighs, her face turning into one of sadness as she sits up. “Although, your company is delightful, so I hope you’ll visit again.”
It wasn’t meant as a flirty remark, but the Dragonborn took it that way and his face turned a bright red. “Oh, uh, definitely.”
The elf giggles as her eyes move to look at the blushing face of Falkrvar. “I didn’t mean it like that. I simply enjoy having you around, I’m not interested. No offense.”
Still unable to stop blushing, the Nord puts his helm back on. “None taken.”
He leaves just as the elf is getting up from her bed and placing the doll back in her pack with a faint smile that made her fall deeper into the darkness furling around her. The darkness in her mind spoke of true comfort, the comfort in death and reuniting with her brother and her parents, but she wouldn’t give in. The darkness was there once before, when her parents died and her brother kept her from giving in.
However, without her brother there to guide her, it was difficult for her to even look at the doll that was lying limp in her scarred hand. Her parents were old, frail people that somehow had two children in their later years two years apart. They died of their old age known as the people who had given two kids the world before their untimely demise.
Nivethia blinks away her tears and wipes at her face to rid of tears that had already fallen down to the bed sheets. Sure, her life was bad, but she lived and that made it worth living: the fact she could survive.
If she could survive, then her life was worth living to see what the Gods had in store for her and she would keep living until she took her final breath - naturally or otherwise, but not by her own hand.
With her pack hanging off her shoulder, the elf nabs her bow and arrows from under her bed and hooks them to her back before heading downstairs, thanking Hulda for the generous stay, and creeping outside. She could find easy work here as a hunter for Anoriath or repairing bows for his brother, but she would have to find housing with one of her old friends: Ysolda.
Seeking the young woman out, she is quickly found by Carlotta’s market stall. “Ysolda!” Nivethia calls, smiling. “Hi, it’s been a while.”
“Thia! Oh, it’s been so long. What brings you back here?” the redhead asks, a faint smile painting her face along with worried eyes.
“Well, an incident happened and… Glandir, he went to the Gods before he should’ve. And I’ve decided to settle here until my mind is functioning properly, but I don’t have a place to stay. I was hoping I could stay with you, or if you could guide me toward someone other than Hulda.”
“I hope you realize she stoned, darling,” Carlotta says, meeting Nivethia’s golden eyes. “I don’t have much space, but you could always speak to the Jarl’s housecarl to see if she’ll let you talk to him. He might let you into Breezehome.”
“Ah, thank you, Carlotta.” Nivethia’s respect of Ysolda plummeted after that interaction. Drugs weren’t her forte at all. Mostly because her brother threatened to beat her so much that she went to the Gods and back if she ever did them herself.
And now, despite the overwhelming weight of her loved-one’s death sitting on her shoulders, she’s still caring for herself and going toward finding a place to stay.
She would be forever grateful that she lived, but forever regret she couldn’t exact revenge like she wanted. Of course, Nivethia would never be the same, but she was changing all the time; growing and maturing as time went on.
However, after that night, she had to grow from the experience all too quickly.
—
So, here’s my baby Thia again. The next chapter will be roughly half a year after this one because I cannot write her like this again. It makes me too sad and I just don’t have the inspiration to keep going with her like this.
And, yes, Falkrvar isn’t all-mighty and emotionless.
I tried.
I don’t know why the Nords are so into elves when they express how much they hate them but… Oh whale.
I HAVE GIVEN UP.
(Not.)
And here’s a link: https://www.wattpad.com/story/155624586-sea-of-whispering-ghosts
