Please enjoy my triumphant return to fanfiction after a 10-year hiatus. Don't forget to tip the waiter!
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WHY THEY CALL HIM DIRGE
The dibbity dang dampness of the Thieves' Guild dripped into the darkness; the smell of sewage wafted faintly through the ancient concrete or whatever the fuck old-ass rock material the walls were made of. Anyone without a death wish, or the desire to do 17,000 mindless quests with completely nonsensical narratives do you even pay your writing staff Jesus Christ, would probably look upon this place and go, "Yo dang."
But not a certain blonde bloke, stirring beneath his ratty bedsheets. The buff, slightly polygonal 40-something's bright blue eyes flickered open. For him, the day offered boundless possibility. He sat up, scratched his glorious mutton chops, and stretched with a mighty yawn.
"Oh boy!" the fellow exclaimed as he hopped out of bed, springing with the kinetics of a shitty fluorescent bouncy ball that you got at Galaxy Bowling in the 90s that you can't bring yourself to throw away for complex psychological reasons you'd rather not try to parse. "I hope somebody asks today!"
Every day, the man hoped someone asked. While the other members of his guild plotted heists and blackmailings and lies to tell a certain hero to get them to do all manner of inane tasks that DO NOT MAKE ANY RATIONAL SENSE IF YOU THINK ABOUT THEM FOR FIVE GODDAMN SECONDS1, our hero dwelt upon one thing – and one thing only- day in, day out. He strode through the weird sewage clubhouse zone toward his post, his mind humming with the thought that somebody might ask! Like literally, this is all the dude thinks about.
All the other thieves in the weird-ass cistern2 room parted like the red cliché as our hero approached, being really careful not to make eye contact. Another thief, let's say Rune, didn't recognize the guy at first and was like "Oh h-" but quickly cut himself off. But the blonde mutton-chopped fellow pounced upon his quarry.
"HI RUNE!" he fairly screamed. OK he literally screamed. Literal, actual screaming. Rune choked out a sob because his mental health is already frail enough, having to grapple constantly with being the guy who has this really interesting backstory that could serve as an endless font for good writing that they do literally ACTUALLY FUCKING DICK-ALL NOTHING WITH. Rune contorted his mouth into a grim tilde, eyes darting to the side, hoping that maybe the dude would forget he was there if he didn't make direct eye contact. But muttonchops bro continued to glare down at Rune with an aggressively optimistic grin that belonged on a high artillery Care Bear.
Rune replied, his voice barely a whisper. "H...i…" A pause. A very deliberate, ominous pause, a glaring empty space where you would ordinarily put the name of the person you were addressing. 'Maybe he'll forget about it today,' he thought, with intense foolishness. "Hi." Rune fell into a coughing fit, eyes squeezed shut,tears threatening to form. 'Oh please don't let him ask, oh please don't let him ask, oh please don't let him ask…'
"Say, Rune!" our hero began gamely. This was it! This was his moment! It was all he could do not to start jigging gaily with glee. "Do you know why they call m-"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" howled Rune, and leaped into the water. I am pretty sure there is water in this zone. Maybe there isn't? I mean –just to be clear- they are all in the room with the guild treasure chest and where you come down from the crypt thing. Maybe there isn't water but the fact is, I am completely indifferent toward accurately referencing the source material, here. Anyway, Rune made himself sink like a stone and hung out down there for hours, crying and composing fanfics about how cool his dad may or may not be cuz we'll never fucking know canonically, thanks Bethesda. That he didn't die for lack of oxygen was one of the smaller plot holes to ever go down in the Thieves Guild. Thanks Bethesda.
The guy's smile only flickered slightly. It didn't matter! The day was young! He hadn't even gotten to the loading screen on the way to work yet! Dirge loved loading screens, because they gave him plenty of time to fantasize about the perfect moment, the ideal context for someone asking, the details: the precise angle at which he would curl his lip, the optimal levels of manly asphalt to coat his voice in, all the cool little flips he could do with his hair. Yes, the loading screen on the way to work was one of the highlights of his day.
Dirge luxuriated his way through the loading screen and got to the room that I very definitely know has a whole bunch of water in it. For those of you who don't pay ample attention to Skyrim's riveting dialogue, Dirge is technically employed as the bouncer at the Ragged Flagon, the bar in the Thieves' Guild. I'm sure they definitely get a lot of randos coming in that require a bouncer, as their bar is centrally located in the middle of a secret society you can only access through going through the shitty sewer level, but whatever! Having a lot of downtime just meant he could plot his daily moment of glory.
He leaned against the counter, and the other patrons noticeably shifted away. He remained oblivious to this, wrapped up as he was in his delirious saccharine dreamland. "Oh boy!" The big dude bounced on his heels. "It could be time! It could almost be time..."
A couple of hours ticked by, with everyone steadfastly ignoring our hero, but his mind sang along undaunted. His throbbing optimism did not, could not lessen. He was a man with a storied, epic identity, and he would inform others of it in an utterly badass fashion. His heart soaring, he began to whistle a cheerful tune.
'That's what's so creepy about it all,' thought Vex (at least that's what I think her name is). 'He never stops being like that. He's just always so… fucking… perky.' Exactly as she thought this, the low rabble rabble of the bar was pierced by a gleeful giggle.
And, unable to contain herself anymore, the Babe Fox (or whatever the fuck her title is) made her fatal mistake: "Fucking gods, dude," she hissed.
Zoom! went Dirge, fairly teleporting over to, like, three inches from her face. "Hi Vex hi Vex hi Vex, HI!" he shouted, amidst the snickers of the other patrons. It really took every iota of Vex's willpower not to skewer him, because she was such a cool, three-dimensional femme fatale who does totally empowered violence and stuff. "Vex! Do you got anything you want to ask me?"
"No."
"Really?" That was OK! Our hero had a contingency plan for such instances as this, which was useful because these kinds of instances were basically all of them. Folks just needed a little prompting sometimes (all the time), to guide them to glorious destiny! "Cuz I've got a question for you." His grin widened, showing teeth cracked from many years' gritting them in gleeful anticipation. "Do you know why they call me-"
"No."
His beaming grin clenched with a great, uncomfortable power, like a python with constipation.
"No what? What do you mean no?"
"I'm not going to do this right now."
"But… Vex…" He smiled coyly. "Ireal-ly don't think you know-"
"Yeah, I'm not going to do this ever."
"DO YOU KNOW"
"Goddamn it-"
But it was too late. Our guy threw his head back and his arms wide and grinned toward the heavens, as if accompanied by a panoramic camera shot and a musical swell and a sensitive potential boyfriend played by Hugh Grant. "Do you know why they call me Dir-?"
"NOBODY FUCKING CALLS YOU THAT… CHADWICK."
At last, his resolve cracked. Chadwick's smile faded from his face with such thunderous impact you could nearly hear it crash across the floor made from indeterminable shitty rock-like material. "That's wrong… I have a backstory… a mythos..." The other patrons of the bar shifted nervously.
But Vex did not let up. Vex wasn't known as the cold heartless bitch of the guild for no reason, although it was mostly because she was literally one of two girls in the whole damn place and as the only blonde one, you pretty much end up being the designated bitch by default. Also because she liked stabbing people in the genitals3.
"You made that up. You've been saying that for, like, five years in the hopes that people will start calling you Dirge. Everyoneknows that! But nobody wants to point it out because-"
"Vex!" shouted Rando McFuckface, a beloved Thieves Guild patron that we doubtless all love and recognize from the hit video game. "No!"
But it was too late. With a mighty roar, Chadwick exploded, showering pink goo across the entire bar and coating the large pseudo-lake of water that was most certainly present in that particular game zone.
And that's why they call him Dirge.
1 How did the poison teleport from the big cask to the keg next door, instantaneously? Why does Karliah use the paralysis arrow to 'save me' from getting killed by Mercer when she could hav R?!
2What the fuck is a cistern, anyway?
3Essay question: Can you have a single genital? Why or why not?