Title: Cloak And Dagger
Pairing: Cracky gen fic, unless you tilt your head and look at it sideways; F!Dragonborn (Dunmer) and Mercer Frey
Spoilers: Mild ones for the Thieves' Guild questline; read at your own risk if you haven't gotten as far as 'Speaking With Silence'.
A/N: Delvin insists that everything in this fic is the gods' honest truth. The Dragonborn and Mercer Frey, of course, steadfastly deny it. Which party is correct, I'll leave up to you to decide- thieves, as we know, are all consummate liars.
Cloak And Dagger
Mercer Frey -Nightingale, de facto leader of the Thieves Guild, and leading candidate for 'Surliest Man Alive'- took a deep breath, counted to ten, and reminded himself that murdering Brynjolf's protege in full view of an audience would be imprudent. For the third time. In as many minutes.
The trip to Snow Veil Sanctum had started out well enough. If the sight of two heavily-armed thieves, marching purposefully out Riften's main gate in broad daylight, had raised a few eyebrows amongst the guard... well, they at least had the good sense to get out of the way and keep their collective mouths shut. The sun had been high, the clouds few, and the weather unusually warm for the end of Autumn.
It lasted until they were approximately three miles outside of Windhelm. The sun, trapped behind strata of darkening cloud, had caught its outline just as they crested the final snow-blanketed hill. Its dying rays threw the city into sharp black relief, and turned every hair on his companion's head to copper fire. If he'd been in any way sentimental, he might have considered the scene beautiful. As it was, he only caught her by the elbow and grumbled something about wanting to reach Snow Veil before they lost their daylight.
That, of course, was when the blizzard hit.
That sodding, crows-cursed blizzard. Mercer rubbed a hand across his brow, in a futile attempt to massage away the headache he could feel building there. It had come up out of the west like a fiend, without warning, slapping the duo in the face with a white so oppressively thick it obscured everything beyond a few inches away, and a cold so shockingly intense it drove the breath from his lungs.
Somehow, between a great deal of inventive swearing (Mercer), precise applications of Thu'um (his Dunmeri associate), and sheer floundering luck (both of them), they'd managed to fetch up against the outer walls of Windhelm itself. With the wind driving needle shards of ice through every exposed inch of flesh, and nightfall sweeping in like a hand, it was patently obvious they wouldn't make their destination until after the snow settled.
If it settled. Blizzards, Mercer reflected dourly into his ale, had been known to last for days. He'd never understand how the Nords could stand to livein this shit. And setback or not, he added internally, being holed up in Candlehearth Hall wouldn't have been nearly as annoying if not for his traveling companion's increasingly bizarre antics.
Nalvyna Sondryn was a lot of things. On the shorter side of average (as dark elves went), she was all slate-grey skin, soft edges and lithe enthusiasm, with a gentle rounding to her features that likely made her look younger than she actually was. The elf was a decent enough lockpicker, he supposed, and -if her friendly rivalry with Cynric and Neruin was any indication- a certifiable terror with a bow. She didn't lookmuch like a glittering alehouse legend... but then, he supposed, legends rarely did.
At that very moment, for example, she had one arm draped over a sallow-looking Breton in black (Sam something-or-other; Mercer hadn't been paying much attention), the other over a wayward member of the guard, and was swaying from side to side between them in a manner that was both hypnotic and smacking of inebriation. One eyelid drooped at half-mast as she pulled their heads in toward hers, the tone of her speech conspiratorial even if the volume was not.
"No, no, no, you... you don' unnerstand," she slurred, casting a wary glance at the ceiling. "She's allas watchin' me. Allas. Guidin' me wif these..." -the dark elf's fingers wiggled in illustration- "...giant, invisible hands. Makin' me DO STUFF. And then LAUGHING about it!"
Nal's eyes fixed blurrily on a spot somewhere above the tavern, jabbing an accusatory finger at it (and nearly dragging both herself, and her two companions, to the floor in the process). "I see you up there, you sadistic blue bitch!"
Mercer hunched his shoulders. Although he was vaguely impressed that she could manage to string a sentence together at all, her voice -belligerent and burred by alcohol- was not doing any wonders for his headache. He deftly cut the purse strings of a well-to-do patron as he passed by, catching and disappearing the pouch before it fell more than half an inch, and felt marginally better. "Yeah! Come down here 'n' say that!"
"Woman troubles?" The barmaid, Susannah, sashayed past the Guildmaster, nearly planting her cleavage in his face as she leaned down to take the empty bottle next to his arm. He glanced up at her with a disdainful frown that only deepened, lip curling, at her knowing wink.
"What makes you think that?" Somehow, Frey knew he was going to regret asking the question. Or doing anything, really, besides tossing her a few Septim and telling her to bugger off. The Nord flapped her washrag at him, smiling, and jerked her head at where Nalvyna was currently attempting to hang a spoon off the tip of her nose.
"Oh, it's just that you haven't taken your eyes off her since the two of you came in here." Clearly, the woman couldn't tell the difference between a look of interest, and one of 'I'm going to wear your scalp as a hat'.
"Also, you've stabbed the table a total of thirty-nine times." Smile."I counted."
Mercer glanced down at his hand, which, sure enough, was in the process of driving the tip of his Elven-forged dagger into the wood. It looked like a Khajiit had been sharpening its claws on the table. He blinked in confusion. When had that happened?
"I added it to your tab," Susannah told him, her smile widening, and moved on to the other patrons without a backward glance.
She didn't notice that her wrist was lighter by one jade-and-gold bracelet.
Growling under his breath, the Breton hauled himself up out of the chair and stalked toward the little crowd that had sprung up around his companion. Nal was regaling her audience with a very slurred account of what sounded like, of all things, 'giant enemy crabs', and he had to wait until she paused for breath before leaning over to speak in her ear.
"If you so much as breathe a wordof complaint about a fat head tomorrow," he ground out, savagely, "I'm going to toss you headfirst into the Sea of Ghosts." The threat was undermined somewhat, by the sallow Breton on her far side leaning over to nibble on the tip of her ear. The action elicited a shriek, more of surprise than of outrage, and she slugged the man in the shoulder before collapsing into a torrent of helpless, blushing laughter.
Mercer's jaw tightened, and he briefly considered driving his knife into the bastard's eye. Onetwothreefourfivesixsevene ightnine-
He settled for storming off to the lower levels of the inn, throwing his hands up in sheer exasperation as he went. Some time later, the Dragonborn followed, arms draped around Sam's neck as he kept a steadying hand on her waist.
When he opened the door, and the two of them stepped into the frozen, still-stormy outdoors, she squinted at her new friend a little more closely. Behind the fog of alcohol clouding her mind, she noticed that there was something different about him. Something that hadn't been there before. He looked quite a bit more black and red and... Daedric... than she remembered.
There was a long, pregnant pause as she scrutinized him (and tried to keep her footing at the same time. It was harder than it looked).
"...Huh. I am okay with thish," she decided, and dropped her head back onto his shoulder.
The two walked off, arm-in-arm, and in moments had disappeared into the blanket of airborne snow.