He knocked on the door and had no answer.
He’d been at home relaxing after work one evening a few days earlier when he’d opened his door to a similar knock and found a balding Breton standing there. “I need to talk to you,” he’d said. And they had talked, for a long time. What he’d been told had made him angry at first, then profoundly sad and tired, tired to his bones.
“I don’t know what else to do,” the man had said. “I can’t do his job. It wouldn’t work. Do I look like the leadin’ type? Too many people know me, and besides, I need to keep the goods flowing. We need him and he’s just not respondin’ to anyone. Maybe he’ll talk to you.”
So he had gone to Riften. He had put his things in order and set off down the road.
He despised Riften. Almost everything about the place had bad memories associated with it. It ripped at his gut like a hagraven’s claws just thinking about Riften. He’d lost so much because of Riften. He’d gone there a few times in the past months, to visit friends, but even then it had been hard. There was so much there that represented everything he hated, even though he’d met people he liked very much. He didn’t want to go to Riften.
And yet, he was needed.
So he had gone to Riften. He had put on his armor, shouldered the greatsword he’d swung until his muscles had hardened, knowing that he never wanted to be weak again; and he had trudged down the road, killing wolves along the way.
He knocked on the door again. Still there was no answer.
He tried the knob, but the door was locked. So he sighed, looked around to be certain he wasn’t being watched, knelt down, and went to work on it. It didn’t take long before it clicked open. He smiled grimly. She’d never learned that he could do that, almost better than she could. You had to know the enemy first, before you could take him down, and the easiest way was to look at where he lived. He paused for a moment, his finger tracing the shadowmark scratched into the door. Guild.
He should have been shocked by what he found inside, but it was sadly familiar to him from personal experience. The house was a wreck, things pulled from shelves and left where they had fallen, intact or broken. It smelled like spoiled food and old sweat. The alchemical plants that had been carefully tended for so many months had wilted and shriveled; they might be saved but to his experienced eye they looked gone. The big man was in a dirty robe, slouched in a chair in front of the fire, surrounded by empty bottles, with one in his hand, his head drooped onto his chest. His beard had grown long, and the state of his hair revealed that he hadn’t bathed in a long time. Eyes flickered toward the door and then back to the fireplace. Well, that was something, at least.
He sighed, and started picking up the empty bottles, stacking them in an empty crate by the back door. “So it looks like you haven’t had anything to eat in awhile. Let’s see if we can get something going here. I’m a bit of an expert in this,” he said, waving his hand around the room, “and trust me, it isn’t going to do you any good.”
There was a grunt from the chair behind him. Good. A response.
He rustled around in the kitchen. He knew this kitchen well enough now to know where things were kept, and he had soon put together an apple-cabbage soup that wasn’t exciting, but would be nourishing. He pulled a seat over and sat down with a bowl of it.
“Ok. You need to eat. Can you do it yourself or do I have to help you?”
The green eyes that met his were dull, reddened. He shook his head.
“No.” It was a raspy sound.
“Yes. You have to eat. Listen, I have been through this more than once. You’re going to die if you don’t eat.”
“Good.”
He couldn’t help it, he got angry.
“Ysmir’s backside, Brynjolf, you can’t do this to yourself. People need you. If I could pull myself back together so can you.”
Brynjolf shook his head again.
He growled. I should be happy that you’re like this, he thought. I should be excited that the Thieves Guild is just going to crumble away because Delvin won’t take charge and you’re sitting here crawling into a bottle to die, but I’m not.
He cared about this man. He had cared about him from the moment they’d met months earlier, in Kynesgrove. There was something about him; his rough, unsavory, and frankly frightening exterior didn’t quite cover a deep pool of intelligence and kindness, fairness and loyalty that spoke to him. Yes, he thought. You’re my friend and I care about you, no matter how much it hurts.
“Yes, damn your hide,” he said. “Either you eat or I’ll force it down your gods damned throat. I don’t think you could take me right now, and I’ll do it if I have to.”
Brynjolf looked down at his left hand, clenched into a fist, and opened it slowly, fingers stiff as though he’d been holding them like that for weeks. Inside was an ornate ring, one that matched the ring he wore on his own hand. He looked up and cleared his throat.
“Roggi, she’s left us, lad. She’s gone.”
Us. So he knows. I don’t know why I’m surprised. He could probably see it every time I looked at her.
“I know, Bryn. Delvin told me.”
The big man buried his head in his hands and began to weep, quietly at first and then a full-throated sobbing.
Roggi was stunned. He had never considered what it would be like to see Brynjolf cry, but there he was, crying as though his world had ended, his broad shoulders shaking with the effort of allowing the emotion to escape. Maybe it was that he was weak from lack of food and too much drink. Maybe it was too many years of a hard life and he was just too tired to fight it any more. Maybe it was just that they shared in this thing, and he knew that and could allow himself that bit of vulnerability. For whatever reason, the tears had finally caught up to him.
Roggi put the bowl of soup on the mantle, pulled his chair closer, and wrapped his arms around the big Nord’s shoulders, just holding him.
It was a familiar pain to Roggi, the pain of loss, the struggle to let go of it. He’d been there. It had taken him months before he’d been able to weep, months in which something had emerged from the depths of him and wrought bloody havoc on the thieves and bandits who had ruined his life. And then when he had been able to cry he’d done it for so long and so hard that the only thing that helped was drinking himself into a stupor so that he couldn’t feel anything at all. He didn’t know whether it was a familiar feeling for Brynjolf or not. It didn’t matter. Brynjolf needed to cry, before the rest of it killed him.
Because, as Maramal would tell any soul who came to him looking to be married, life in Skyrim was hard, and short.
After a time Roggi fed Brynjolf some soup, led him downstairs and set him in the tub, joining him to help him get cleaned up, because he was as weak as though he was ill. He washed Brynjolf’s hair and his back and trimmed back his hair and his beard. He found a couple of clean robes in the bedroom Brynjolf had shared with Dag and put himself in one and Bryn in the other, and then he led Brynjolf back upstairs and fed him more. Brynjolf didn’t speak again, but he at least acquiesced to being cared for. Maybe that’s a good sign, Roggi thought. Gods knew he’d had to take care of his brothers in the service often enough, when it got too much for them to take and they fell apart. He could surely do it again. He could do that much for his friend.
Brynjolf was beginning to look sleepy, as he began to sober up and the food warmed him from the inside out. Roggi watched him and pondered the absurd life they had.
Here was a man who should be his enemy, who represented everything he despised in the world, who did things he couldn’t abide, every day, and who had married the woman he loved. And yet that man had a big enough soul to know that they were all three inescapably tangled together, and to quietly accept it. He had known, from the very beginning. He had given her every chance in the world to change her mind, knowing that it was doomed from the start because none of the three of them could escape the others. He should hate me, Roggi thought. He should hate me with every fiber of his being, but he doesn’t. He treats me like a brother. And I care about him.
“Come on,” he said, rising and tugging on Brynjolf’s arm. “You need some sleep and so do I. It’s been a long day.”
Brynjolf nodded and followed Roggi down the stairs to his bedroom, then allowed himself to be tucked in. Roggi turned to leave for the small room that was across the hall, but a hand on his arm stopped him.
“No lad. Stay here tonight. I need to not be alone. I don’t want to do something foolish, and I’m afraid that I will.”
Roggi stood and looked at him for a long few moments. Was it this house, that made people ask him to stay? Then he nodded.
“All right.”
He untied his hair, slid into bed beside Brynjolf and lay looking at the canopy over it, acutely aware of being where she had slept every night, of her scent clinging to the pillow and the bedding. He pondered again how odd their lives had become. Between the two of them, though, it was very warm under the bedclothes, and he found himself drifting off when Brynjolf’s rumble woke him again.
“Lad.”
Lad, Roggi thought, amused. I’m probably almost as old as he is.
“Yes?”
“We’ll find her, won’t we?”
“I hope so, Bryn. We at least have to try. We’ll do it together, ok?”
“Mmmm.”
Later, motion woke him. Brynjolf was snoring gently, spooned against his back, one arm over him.
If it gives him some comfort, he thought, so be it. I don’t mind. We have work to do in the morning.
He smiled and went back to sleep.