#;; when i get you Jessamine you WILL be rattled

[navxry]

Hmm I’m pretty undecided but I’d go with E3$ (*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)

I had to backtrack and see what E3$ is and the way I lost it at the 🌈 among us I cannot

Jessamine when I GET YOU

[theheartsmistakes]

The Last Night Part IV

(Author’s Notes: Does anyone even read this part? I’m going to pretend like you all do... Hello everyone! Here is the next installment of my Jordelia fan-fiction based on the characters created by the amazing Cassandra Clare in her trilogy Chain of Gold. This is really turning into what the cool kids call a “slow burn”. I never intended it to have such an extensive plot, but this quarantine is really bring forth my imagination. Anyway, if you enjoyed this please give it a like, reblog, comment, or feel free to just pop in and say hi. As always, thank you for reading! Happy and safe quarantine to you all. P.S. I have added an original character “Martin” for the selfish reason that I didn’t want to kill Cyril. Please forgive the inconsistency.)

Here is Part I

Here is Part II

Here is Part III

Part IV

“Maybe he should lie down?”

“I don’t need to lie down, mother,” said James, not unkindly, but with a bit of annoyance. “He’s removing a bracelet, not my arm.”

“If you don’t remain still,” said Magnus, his dark eyebrows glistened with flecks of glitter when he arched them, “it might well be.”

Magnus stood in front of James in the center of the Institute library with James’s hand suspended between them while the warlock focused his attention on the seemingly inconsequential silver band that adorned James’s wrist. If one were looking from afar without any context at all it might appear comical. Flecks of blue light danced from Magnus’s fingertips causing the silver to rattle against James’s skin. He wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light or if the bracelet had begun to glow. No. It was most certainly glowing and hot. It rattled and spun until it became so hot that James ripped his arm away on instinct. 

Magnus looked up, resigned and slightly paled. “It’s a much more powerful spell than I initially realized.” 

“How do you mean?” Will asked from where he sat on the desk under the arched stain glass window cut and stained to look like the angel Raziel rising up to the heavens. Rain hit the glass as thunder crackled against the Institute’s walls rattling the crystal chandelier above them. “Will it come off?”

“It’s the strangest thing.” Magnus picked up James’s wrist again. “An absolute work of genius, actually. It’s as if it’s alive and it’s fighting against my magic.”

“Well I’ve had quite enough.” Lucie stood up from the floor where she had been petting Church in long, absentminded strokes. The cat gave a placid meow when she’d stopped. She smoothed out her dress and walked towards the door. “There seems to be only one thing left to do.”

“What’s that?” Matthew asked from where he stood in front of the door, blocking her way. He seemed more steady than his usual self. His hand wasn’t twitching where it held the door frame; his eyes remained focused and clear. They had all wondered what brought on his sudden sobriety. It seemed after one conversation with her father and he’d dropped the sauce like one of his waist coats that he deemed “out of style”. Will had that effect on people. It was best not to question it.

“I’m going to collect Grace Blackthorn and drag her here so that she can ask James to remove the bracelet her-bloody-self.” Lucie came to a stop in front of Matthew. It may have been the shadows cast across his face, but Matthew almost appeared afraid.

“No, Lucie, we aren’t sure what Grace is capable of,” said Tessa. “You said only moments ago that she confessed the truth about the bracelet, but you failed to think to bring her here to remove it?”

Lucie’s mouth opened in defense, but closed as if she forgot what she intended to say. She turned back to Matthew with a quizzical grimace. “Why didn’t we bring Grace back with us?”

“She—“ Matthew raised a pale eyebrow. “I must say I don’t recall.”

Lucie turned her back against the wall and crossed her arms over chest. Heat radiated to her face despite the chill that surrounded the room. Anxiety prickled underneath her skin like the desire to run as far and as fast as she could. 

It’d been a whole day since she last spoke to Cordelia. They’d stood in the foray of her Aunt Cecily’s home after having walked in on her brother ravishing Grace Blackthorn against a wall. It was not an image that would soon evaporate from her memories. A blind rage filled her so suddenly that she feared she might have blacked out for a moment. When she came to, the walls behind James and Grace started to ripple and crease as translucent figures emerged from the atrocious paisley wallpaper. Their fleshless hands reached for the disentangled couple when Cordelia wrapped her hand around Lucie’s wrist and the door closed between them. 

No one had seen anything. Not even her brother whose eyes were fastened on Cordelia. No one knew the dark depths to which her power could reach��� not even herself. 

“I know you’re upset, darling,” said Tessa, from beside her daughter now, “but have faith that Magnus can remove the bracelet and we will figure this all out.”

“We don’t have time for faith and waiting.” Lucie dropped her arms back to her sides. “Cordelia is on her way to Idris and after what James did, she’s likely to rune her room with wards not even the Angel himself can get through.” 

James grimaced. Good, she thought. He deserves to be in pain.

“That doesn’t sound like Cordelia to me,” said Tessa and pressed a hand to Lucie’s cheek. “You’re warm darling, are you feeling alright?”

“I’m fine.” Lucie insisted. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment I think I’ll pop into the kitchen for a glass of water while I have faith and wait.”

Tessa looked resigned. “Maybe someone should go with you.”

“It’s only down the hall,” said Lucie, skirting past her mother towards the now empty doorway. Matthew stood beside James, an arm around his shoulder, as the two of them studied the bracelet. Matthew said something in James’s ear that brought a small smile to her brother’s face. Whatever they had fought about only days ago, it seemed not to matter now. Or if it did, other things took precedence at the moment. 

Tears stung her eyes as she turned from the scene and exited the room.

The framed pictures on the hallway walls rattled with the thunder. Lucie stopped to readjust one that had tilted slightly of her sitting in a deep purple velvet arm chair studying a book. She secretly hated the likeness— not because it didn’t capture her respectfully— but because of the memory of it. She had to sit for nearly four hours listening to the artist drone on about his holiday in the Americas while her brother clashed swords with Matthew in the training room next door. 

“Chin up, dear.” Bridget would say from time to time. “You’ll look like a potato.”

Lucie left the photo off center and pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen. To her relief, it was empty. Bridget was probably in her room reading or minding the Institute’s many chores. The kitchen always smelt like rosemary, freshly baked loaves, and exotic spices. It was heavenly and had an instant calming effect on Lucie. Memories of being a child and helping Bridget beat dough with her tiny fists until she was covered in flour from her mess of mousy brown curls to her apron came to mind. What she wouldn’t give to have a mound of dough to beat now.

Lucie walked around the center island, covered in a thin layer of flour, to the cupboard that housed the glassware and pulled a cup from the shelf. The pitcher of cold water sat beside the sink; she filled her cup to the brim and took a sip when a slight chill brushed against the exposed skin on the back of her neck. 

“Not now, Jessamine.” Lucie stared down into her reflection in the cup. The soft wispy hair around her face stood out in delicate curls she’d inherited from her father. A leaf sat tucked behind her ear. The coal she’d lined her eyes with had run making her eyes appear wide and fatigued. 

“Should I return later then?”

The cup fell from her hands and shattered at her feet, but she hardly seemed to notice. She spun around and faced the voice. “Jesse.”

A smile curved at the corner of his mouth. His straight black hair fell against his pale skin and swept across his green eyes that studied her from across the room.

“Where have you been?” The shattered glass crushed under her shoes as she moved forward to meet him. An uncontrollable desire to grab him around the shoulders and collapse into him made it difficult for her to breath evenly. She knew she couldn’t; that it wasn’t possible anymore, but reality rarely dissolved desire. 

“Tracking my fugitive mother,” said Jesse, his lips curled over his teeth. “I thought how hard could it possibly be to find a woman who still chooses to wear an enormous Victorian bird hat? Well, it turns out that it’s extremely difficult. If you needed me why didn’t you summon me sooner?”

Lucie averted her eyes to the ink stain marks on her fingers. “I promised I wouldn’t.”

After commanding him against his will to take her to James, she’d made a promise not only to him, but to herself to never command him to do anything again. That included summoning him to her even when she longed to just hear his voice. 

“It’s alright, Lucie.” Jesse stepped towards her but stopped. “Why did you summon me now?”

She looked up aghast. “I didn’t.”

“I heard you,” said Jesse, his expression softened. “It was faint but I heard you.”

Lucie shook her head. “Jesse, I promise you that I did not, or if I had, I hadn’t meant to.”

Jesse opened his mouth to reply when he looked to the kitchen doors. “Someone’s coming.” 

Lucie waited for the doors to swing open to reveal her mother, or father, or Matthew coming to retrieve her after being gone for too long. The air in front of the door rippled, like heat rising on pavement, until the form of a man materialized out of the haze. He was dressed in a rain soaked driver’s uniform, but his back was bent out of shape and his right leg curved out at an unnatural angle.

“Martin?” Lucie balked, recognizing the man that has driven her carriage since she was a child.

Lucie and Jesse both moved towards the ghost from either side of the room. The water that dripped from his coat splashed onto the floor and instantly dissolved into mist. 

“What’s happened to you?” Lucie demanded.

Martin looked between them as if he wasn’t all together sure how he’d come to be standing in front of them. “I was told by others that you would be able to see me; that you would be able to help.” He looked down at his hands. “I feel so strange. Everything and nothing at the same time.”

“Martin?” Tears sprang to her eyes as she realized that he was dead; a ghost standing in her kitchen as he had all of her life. Always casually slipping in to steal a fresh biscuit behind Bridget’s back with only crumbs and Lucie’s giggles left to give him away. He would listen to her stories on long drives and praise her for her prose. He’d laugh in all the right places and made her promise to sign a copy of her first published work, so he could keep it on his mantle. “What happened to you?”

“I was taking Mr. and Miss Carstairs to the London Portal when we were attacked.”

“Cordelia.” Lucie rushed forward. “Where is Cordelia?”

“I don’t know—“ Martin’s body began to flicker and wain, “I don’t have much time. I’m not supposed to be here, you see, but I fear something terrible may have happened. Something truly, truly terrible.”

Lucie burst through the library doors, the hem of her dress wet from her cup of water and her face noticeably pale.

The previous occupants of the room where joined by three more: Christopher stood beside Magnus surveying the bracelet and Thomas towered next to Matthew. Anna Lightwood was holding Church like a baby beside the fireplace. They all looked to her as she entered.

“It’s Cordelia.” Lucie shouted, her hand gripped the wall to keep her stable. “She’s been attacked.”

The room fell silent except for the small yet noticeable ting of metal hitting stone. Lucie’s eyes, along with everyone else’s, looked down at James’s feet where the bracelet now rested half on the toe of his boot and half on the floor. 

[whumperfly-andcry]

Ok so I don’t know if any of you have read The Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare (prequels to The Mortal Instruments series) but I’ve been rereading all the Shadowhunters Chronicles books I have and it has really good whump. This was some of the first whump that I read and reread and bookmarked and everything.

The focus (at least for me) is James “Jem” Carstairs. He is a 17 year old Shadowhunter (humans with some angel blood who protect normal people from demons & the demon world). He is kind, calm, and gentle, always patient, even with his parabatai (think adoptive sibling bound by a powerful ceremony that allows them to feel each other’s pain and sort of become one) who is sometimes a pain in the ass. He is brave, strong, and intelligent, but is also proud, and doesn’t like it when people worry about him. He is especially secretive about his illness.

When he was only twelve, he was tortured and forced to become addicted to a substance called yin fen (based on opium). It turns his eyes and hair silver. If he stops taking it, he goes into withdrawal and would eventually die, but the more he takes, the sicker he gets. It will eventually, inevitably kill him. Anyways, enjoy some excerpts :)

-

So, first time we hear about Jem (excluding the prologue) is at dinner, and we get introduced to the idea of his illness.

“And Jem?”

Charlott’s look was warning, but “Jem is unwell” was all she said. “He’s having one of his days.

“He’s always having one of his days.” Jessamine sounded disgusted.

(77)

So later, the mc meets him. It’s nighttime. He’s playing violin and she interrupts him and inquires as to why he wasn’t at dinner. He says that he was feeling tired, but he’s better now. Then later, when Will, his parabatai, comes back, it’s revealed that he is more sick than he let on.

“Thomas,” Jem began—and doubled up, suddenly racked with an explosive fit of coughing so violent that he slid from the steamer trunk to crouch on his knees. Too shocked to move, Tessa could only stare as Will—his expansive drunkenness seeming to vanish in a split second—sprang off the bed and knelt down by Jem, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“James,” he said quietly. “Where is it?”

Jem held up a hand to ward him off. Racking gasps shook his thin frame. “I don’t need it—I’m all right—”

He coughed again, and a fine spray of red splattered the floor in front of him. Blood.

Will’s hand tightened on his friend’s shoulder; Tessa saw the knuckles whiten. “Where is it? Where did you put it?”

Jem waved his hand feebly toward the bed. “On—,” he gasped. “On the mantle—in the box—the silver one—”

“I’ll get it, then.” It was as gently as Tessa had ever heard Will say anything. “Stay here.”

“As if I’d go anywhere.” Jem scrubbed the back of his hand across his mouth; it came away with red streaking the open-eye Mark.

(119)

Anyways you can understand how awesome that scene is... I love Will and Jem’s dynamic. In the morning, he seems better (because he took some of the yin fen). Later, a character refers to his illness as a disability scornfully, and we get protective Will. The next quotable part is a bit later.

There were times, when the illness was at its worst, when all the color drained even from his eyes, leaving them horribly pale, nearly white, with that black speck of pupil in the center like a speck of black ash on snow. It was times like that when he also became delirious. Will had held Jem down while h’ed thrashed about and cried out in another language and his eye s had rolled back into his head, and every time it happened, Will thought that this was it, and Jem was really going to die this time. He sometimes thought about what he would do afterward, but he couldn’t imagine it, any more than he could look back and remember his life before he had come to the Institute. Neither bore thinking about for very long.

(281-282)

And then possibly the best scene in the Clockwork Angel, where Jem has taken Tessa for a walk to comfort her, and they are ambushed. He has not taken yin fen recently, and the fight weakens him. This is a long one, so I’ll skip some bits.

Jem and Tess reached the steps at the end of the bridge, and Jem kept a tight grip on Tessa’s hand as they hurtled down the stairs. Her boots slipped on he damp stone, and he caught her, his cane clattering awkwardly against her back; she felt his chest rise and fall against hers, hard, as if he were gasping. But he couldn’t be out of breath, could he? He was a Shadowhunter. the Codex said they could run for miles. Jem pulled away, and she saw that his face was tight, as if he were in pain.

...

Tessa seized hold of Jem’s arm. His skinw as burning hot to the touch; she cold feel it through his clothes. “Come on.”

With a groan he let her pull him toward the front door of the church; he was staggering, and leaning on her heavily, his breath rattling in his chest. They lurched up the steps, Jem sliding out of her grip almost the moment they reached the top stem. He hit the ground on his knees, choking coughs rippling through him, his whole body spasming.

... 

He tried to rise to his feet, but his knees gave out; he slumped to the ground, blood running from the corners of his mouth. The cane had rolled from his hand, almost to Tessa’s feet.

...

Henry darted after them with Charlotte on his heels, but Will, dropping his weapon, turned and raced back to the steps. “What happened? he shouted at Tessa. She stared, too dazed to answer. His voice rose, tinged with furious panic. “Are you hurt? Where’s Jem?”

“I”m not hurt,” she whispered. “But Jem, he collapsed. There.” She pointed to where Jem lay, crumpled in the shadows beside the door.

Will’s face went blank, like a slate wiped clean of chalk. Without looking at her again he raced up the stairs and dropped down by Jem, saying something in a low voice. When there was no reply, Will raised his head, shouting for Thomas to come help him carry Jem, and shouting something else, something else, something Tessa couldn’t make out through her dizziness.

(335-340)

And then the aftermath, pages 346 to about 355. Anyways, all of this to say I absolutely adore this book, the opportunities for whump and hurt/comfort with Jem and Will and Tessa. There is more, but I don’t want to make this post too unbearably long. I highly encourage reading the whole book though! The whump for Jem gets only better in books two and three, and I can’t wait to get to them now that I know what whump is ;)

[bronanlynch]

I enjoyed doing this last week so this is. a thing now I guess. click through for roundup of whatever media I’ve been into in the past week (will normally be on thursdays I think bc that’s the day I’m usually free but my schedule this week was weird) (inspired by the tuesday again thing that @girlfriendsofthegalaxy does)

listening: the new Mountain Goats album Getting Into Knives is very fun and full of bops, for a given value of both “fun” and “bops” because it’s The Mountain Goats so it does have that edge of depression but quite a few of the songs are a bit more. cheerful? than a lot of their other stuff, for lack of a better word

favorite track is probably The Rat Queen

listening (podcast edition): this very fun episode of Overinvested tearing apart the new movie adaptation of Rebecca which I have not seen and was not planning on seeing but I do enjoy people smartly analyzing why things aren’t good and also I do love discussions about Gothic romance

reading: The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall is probably a very good book that someone else will enjoy very much, as lots of people whose opinions I generally trust already have enjoyed it. and I possibly will enjoy more if I give it another chance, once I’ve gotten over being disappointed that it wasn’t what I was looking for right now. the premise is neat! the worldbuilding is cool! the characters are interesting! mermaids, witches, and seas are three of my favorite things and also there are pirates, my other fave thing!

the reason I bounced off of it so hard is that I kept seeing it hyped up as a trans/nonbinary book, and then felt kinda let down when I started reading it and realized that the main character whom I’ve seen described as genderqueer is 1) dressing as a guy because someone else suggested it for safety reasons and 2) this was several years before the story starts and this character still refers to herself exclusively (disclaimer that I didn’t read the full thing but. as far as I got and also I skimmed toward the ending) as she and by her feminine birthname. and those things are fine, that’s a valid gender story, nonbinary people can absolutely keep their old pronouns and names and it doesn’t make them any less nonbinary, but the way it was framed in the parts that I read felt to me more like the old classic ‘girl dresses as guy for plot reasons’ thing, which isn’t something I personally wanted to read more of right now, especially not when I went in expecting something that would resonate more with my gender experience

watching: I’ve been rewatching Leverage, since I only ever watched the first season many years ago because that’s what was free on hulu at the time, and the thing that’s really getting to me is how fundamentally hopeful it is. like, yeah, sure, the premise of it is about how capitalism is designed to fuck people over and there is A Lot about specifically health insurance being really really awful. so there are parts of it that are a lil bit too real, but then at the end of the day they always win and punish the rich capitalists and help their victims and it’s just. nice to see that kind of happy ending

the specific episode I’m having lots of thoughts about is the Mile High Job, which is about the team is trying to protect a potential corporate whistleblower from being murdered by her coworker while on an airplane. at first they’re not sure what’s going on because they weren’t expecting two people from the corporation to be on that flight, so they don’t know which person is the one they should be focusing on. one of them is an anxious younger woman and the other is an extremely generic man, and from the moment they decided that the woman was the one they had to protect I was dreading the plot twist of “no actually you just helped her take out her target and you should’ve been protecting the other guy” which would’ve felt just. so mean-spirited and cynical but it’s the kind of thing I expect from media I guess. and then once it was clear that nope, that twist wasn’t going to happen, I expected her to turn around at the end and be like “actually no I’m not gonna testify against the corporation because I’ve realized how dangerous it is.” and I kind of hate that I’ve become so jaded by both media and also the real world that I’m so ready to expect the most cynical option, because I’m not used to stories about how even though the system is corrupt and oppressive and exploitative, people can still help each and they do and sometimes they make things better

playing: got back into playing Dishonored after taking a couple weeks off because I got stuck and frustrated and also kept playing for too long at a time and giving myself headaches. Lady Boyle’s Last Party (which I am going to completely and entirely spoil so if you don’t want that this is your warning) is probably the mission that I have the strongest mixed feelings about. I love the approach to the party, I love the concept of sneaking into a masquerade ball, I love signing the guestbook with your actual legal wanted fugitive name while wearing the mask that you commit all of your crimes in, I love a good fancy party mission I cannot stress that enough it’s the sexiest possible setting

HOWEVER. trying to sneak around upstairs fucking sucks because the ceilings aren’t high enough for there to be places to hide, like convenient hanging lamps or pipes to blink up to. my least favorite room in this entire game is that art gallery because you can get on top of the cases and you think you’re safe because you’re Up but then the guards spot you instantly and sound the alarm and the entire party shuts down and then you let them kill you so that you can go back to your last save

ADDITIONALLY, fuck the nonlethal option for this one. I hate it so much and feel so incredibly gross about choosing it but I also feel extremely not great about tricking her into meeting me alone and then actually assassinating her. the conversation is so uncomfortable that I tried to be like “actually no nevermind” which causes her to think you’re weird and creepy and she has the guards ““throw you out”“ which apparently in Dunwall is just how you say that she’s gonna have the guards murder you. but anyway. she's a shitty rich lady but she doesn't deserve either of the things that could happen to her and she's only a target because she's sleeping w a guy who sucks. she hasn’t done anything! she isn’t actually responsible for what happened to Jessamine or Emily! which works on a narrative level in my opinion because this is the last mission before you go after the lord regent and it’s becoming clear that the loyalists are just using Corvo for their own agenda and don’t actually care about Jessamine. but it’s still unpleasant to be the one enacting it, y’know?

also on a narrative level, I really like the concept of doing a clean hands run except killing each of the actual targets, because I feel like that would be a cool inversion of the trope where the hero kills a bunch of mooks and then refuses to kill the big bad because murder is wrong. on a gameplay level, I’m still gonna do the nonlethal options because I refuse to risk getting the bad ending, and I’m proud of the fact that I haven’t killed anyone since getting out of prison. I do wanna do a high chaos playthrough at some point though just to see how it goes, since I went low chaos last time too

sorry for writing an entire essay about Dishonored but. the funniest thing from that mission is that apparently if you get spotted by one of the maids in the basement where you are not supposed to be (the guards will immediately attack if they see you) instead of raising the alarm she just says “welcome to the party.” love that solidarity.

making: none of my cosplay stuff is at an especially picture-worthy stage and I didn’t get pictures of the pesto I made for dinner last night so there’s not gonna be much that’s interesting here but I did go to Spirit Halloween after Halloween when everything was on clearance and got a bunch of stuff that I’m gonna use for cosplay eventually

writing: soon I will finish the Eddis/Attolia Queen’s Thief fic that’s been rattling around in my brain ever since I finished the last book. hopefully.

[rowankingsleyy]

Like this if you want to plot with Rowan and I’ll come ramble

NAME: ROWAN JESSAMINE KINGSLEY

NICKNAMES: Ro, Winnie (close friends only)

AGE: 28

PRONOUNS: She/Her

OCCUPATION: Published Author/Freelance Baker

HEIGHT: 5′1

BIRTHDAY: May 11th, 1992

ZODIAC SIGN: Taurus

PARENTS: Cassandra and Tony Kingsley

SIBLINGS: Damien Kingsley

ALIGNMENT: Neutral Good

MBTI: ISFJ

MORE UNDER THE READ MORE =)

TW: domestic violence, sexual assault, anxiety, eating disorders, mention of death, illness, drugs

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

Rowan was born to Cassandra and Tony Kingsley in the early summer of 1992, at which point things were already strained between the two-some because of Tony’s alcohol problem and Cassie’s generally meek personality.

Rowan’s brother took a leading role in her care from a very young age, not just because her dad was useless, but also because their mother was so distracted by her need to please Tony that she dropped the ball often.

Both her brother and her saw things they certainly shouldn’t have, were told things that no children should be told, and occasionally went without for no reason other than Tony liking control, but he never hurt them physically.  However, he did hurt their mother.  

Less than a year after her brother turned 18 and moved out of the house, their mother died of an aneurysm suddenly and unexpectedly.

Despite how Rowan’s father treated her mother, the loss of her broke him and send him on a 3 month bender that only ended because he was booked with vehicular manslaughter and his 3rd DWI.

Luckily, Rowan only spent a few weeks in foster care before the court allowed her brother to assume custody over her.

From the moment her brother joined, the Valencia became her family.  The women, wives and daughters of the organization were the people who taught her everything she knows about being a girl, doing make up, doing her hair, navigating boys.  (This is probably why she went through a blue eyeshadow phase at 17)

Rowan is a textbook overachiever and perfectionist, she always had all As, was always in 6 clubs, and held officer positions in every single one including the dance team.  While she did hold officer positions, she never really was one to take front and center--she prefers the positions of the people behind the scenes keeping things together.  (secretary, treasurer, anything that has to do with organizational skills.

While over her high school years she wrote a lot, and even published one of her short stories in a local newspaper, she didn’t write her first full novel until she went away to college at 18.  No one ever read that novel, it hit the trash during its 5th round of editing.

At 18 she received a full scholarship to the University of Nevada--Reno and left Red Ridge for the first time to go to school first time.  She lived in the dorms all 4.5 years and graduated with a degree in English, minoring in Psychology.

If you ever ask Rowan what she’s afraid of, she’ll tell you losing control again.  She notes two prominent times of completely losing control over her life, one fairly recent, and the other while she was away at college.  While she was away, she went out fairly often with her friends and one night someone slipped something into her drink.  Nothing happened, she made it home without incident, but the way it made her feel, the way she felt victimized or the potential of being so set her off.  She had two drop three of her classes and extend her time in college an extra semester because of how hard she spun out, trying to control things that she wouldn’t typically even think about.  She started her senior year 20 pounds lighter with 0% of the friends she had started her Junior year with.

While she was away at college her brother became a father, which meant frequent trips home to visit and help out with her niece who quickly meant enough to her to be her own.    

She returned home from school at 23 and worked in a bakery until she could live off of her cookie business (at 25 her cookie business was self sufficient).  

While she was growing her bakery cookie business, she began writing her first professional novel and completed it at 26.  She sold it that very same year, and published it at 27.

While it changed her life or the better and got her foot in the door with the publishing world, publishing her book also led to the the single most traumatizing thing she has ever experienced.  

While she was marketing her book, the marketing manager became very demanding of Rowan and her time, which often led to them being together very late at night.  One night, while out of town for a book reading, he pushed himself on Rowan.  This assault led to the second occurrence of Rowan losing complete control and her life suffering because of it.

After the assault, Rowan threatened to blow the whistle, and in return he threatened her career so she is still with that publishing company with him as her marketing manager.  

As of now, Rowan is in the process of getting her second book published, filling in as mom as best she can for her niece, running her cookie business and holding cookie classes, and trying to make amends for the bonds she broke when she spun out last.

TENDENCIES

Because of how contentious Rowan’s early childhood was, she has a pretty anxious mind that is always running on 100.  Her thoughts come a mile a minute and they can be pretty difficult to stop.  Melatonin is her best friend.  

When she loses control over things in her life (hELLO we meet again control-less childhood) she controls everything she can, and that manifests differently every time.  Controlling what she eats to the point of malnourishment, controlling every single word of what she’s writing, putting herself on lockdown until whatever she’s working on is      p e r f e c t.  

She fixates on her mistakes, in high school if she answered to the wrong name during roll she would be thinking about it for the rest of the day.

She bakes in excess when she’s trying to think through something, the measurements and muscle memory movements help calm her brain into being able to process whatever is on her mind.

She’s always been a writer, from the very first time she had to write in her 4th grade ELA class.  That only grew through Middle and High School creative writing classes.  She’s always loved exploring the stories and that it was something that she could perfect through six or seven round of editing.

Sticky notes cover her bedroom walls because of how quickly her thoughts come and go, her ideas for books do NOT come in order and she can often be found starring at her walls with her little scribbles trying to figure out what order they should go in.

For someone who would be considered the ‘bright & shiny’ type, she has a thing for researching and watching shows about serial killers.  She can rattle off facts like its her day job.  

Because of how quiet she can be, sometimes folks assume she’s innocent or that she doesn’t know anything, but in reality the opposite is true.  She’s spent so much time watching and analyzing everyone and everything that she knows much more that she lets on or that any civilian should.

She learned how to play guitar in college (not very well) and is a pretty damn good singer, but she’d never be the type to want to be front and center in front of a crowd.  She mostly uses these talents as a means to an end in writing mini stories with lyrics.  It appeases her in the in between period of having finished a book and being able to start a new one.

All floral, all the time.  Enough said.

GENUINELY afraid of birds and giant frogs

I’ll probably add to this it’s 1am and I’m tired.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

**ex boyfriend, who she really fucked up with.  message for more**

high school friends/enemies

someone who works in the bakery with her

women who influenced her growing up within Valencia

Valencia members who are like family

someone who mentored her in her baking

friends she lost when she spun out during college

literally anything

ESTABLISHED CONNECTIONS

wherever i go, you bring me home Damien Kingsley// her brother.  her parent.  rowan is extremely close to her brother, as kids they were all each other had.  he’s done everything he could to give her a normal childhood, to make up for her parents’ lapses.  she would do just about anything for him or his daughter.  

can't stop staring, at those oceans eyes, burning cities, and napalm skies. fifteen flares inside those ocean eyes Lev Yegorov// no title.  but he’s the only man who has ever quieted her brain long enough for her to both lose her breath and catch it.  they’ve kissed a few times and have something comparable to a magnetic field between them, but lev broke it off out of respect for her brother.

i'll stand up with you forever, i'll be there for you through it all Natalie Cassadaga// her sister.  they may not have grown up together, they bonded to an extent that would have been unfathomable had she not experienced it.  barring childhood, they’re sisters, no buts.

i’m a mess, i’m a loser, i’m a hater, i’m a user Freddie Dawson// her confidant.  this is the only person outside of nat who gets to see rowan admit to being a mess.  freddie gets the 100% honest version of rowan, usually with a little bit of liquid courage.

you can leave me in the dark if that's all I get from you ??????? OPEN // her ex.  they dated in secret for 8 months before her assault.  when she spun out after the assault, she didn’t tell him and she pushed him away.  she fucked up the relationship, but she’s a little bitter about how easily he gave up on her.  

'cause they’re gonna tell you all the rules to break, to take away that light OPEN // her roommate.  the boldness to rowan’s softness.  how different they are makes them work, they bring balance to each other (and rationalize the one another when they go too far).  

If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a baby Rowan picture, here.

[julianxsantiago]

1 UNREAD MESSAGE

He hadn’t been avoiding it. He didn’t know it existed. Checking email had been the last thing on his mind. The final days of Identity were within sight, only to bring The Boy Venus to his workload. He couldn’t allow anyone else touching Jessamine’s hard work, tainting his vision, or worse: letting it slip through the cracks that so many other projects went through when their stars got cancelled mid-production. That could be Tomas. That could be Claudia’s reputation. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.  

Jessamine, you fucking cabrón, why would you do this? What did we talk about? What did I tell you? About Miguel? About drugs? Stay away. Stay away. Stay AWAY.

Questions he had resigned himself to being left unanswered. This was par for the course. This was Luis again. He had tried so hard to keep him alive. Did he not try hard enough with Jess? They were roomed together and he couldn’t stop it. He let his friend die.

He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.

1 UNREAD MESSAGE

Jessamine’s username was at the top of the list. The personal e-mail account Julian used to stay away from Prometheus’ servers. He stared at it, cursor hovering over it for one second before clicking it open, tearing through his chest as he read.

Dear Julian,

Fuck. That sounds pretty fucking final. And pretty fucking pretentious. I guess pretentious is fitting though. Weirdly. But now I’m just rambling. 

I hope they don’t find this. You can delete it once you’ve read it, if you like. I don’t want you to remember me like this but -- I want you to remember me. Just… think about who I was, if that’s any better. If you even want to remember me. And if you want to forget, I can’t stop you. Still rambling. 

I’m sorry. I’m sorry to leave you behind, I’m sorry I gave up, I’m sorry to hurt you -- ​you’ve been hurt enough. I don’t want to add to that. Honestly, I’m not sure whether I’m a bigger burden alive or dead. Though by the time you’re reading this, I don’t suppose it’ll matter that much. You can be the judge of it. Anyway, ​I’m sorry. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave you, or the Boy Venus (or Tomas, in a weird way. He’s a good kid. He’ll need your help). But I am so tired of fighting. I keep thinking, ​when will this be over, please let it be over. You know, I used to run away from home when my parents were fighting. Escape. It felt good, to get away from it all -- but I still remembered it. I remember ​everything. So I guess that’s what I’m doing now. Running away from life. Running away from all those memories. 

My dad killed himself, I think. I don’t know, maybe he just accidentally overdosed then drowned in the bath. That’s something I wish I could forget: his face, all dead and distorted under the water. I guess I am following in the family business, fucking everything up for everyone I��ve ever touched and checking out before I can make up for it. At least I won’t be able to hurt you anymore once I’m dead. If you grieve, it’ll lessen. It has to. 

I don’t know why I’m telling you this, except -- it has to be you, doesn’t it? You’re the one I have to tell not to grieve too much for me, not to hold on to me too much. Please, don’t let me hurt you. I can’t stay but I really don’t fucking want to hurt you.  

Shit, I’m crying now. I don’t want to go. If you read this before -- please, come and get me. ​Please, you did it on the roof, I wasn’t kidding, please do it again. I’m scared. But I ​can’t ​ stay. I guess this part is a bit like the shit part in awards speeches when they thank their mom and their dealer and whoever the fuck else, except now I apologise to all the people I screwed over.

If you see Claire around, tell her I loved her. I know she didn’t love me back, but -- fuck, I always fall in love with my friends. I wasn’t even her best friend, but she meant ​so much ​ to me, I wish I’d had the balls to tell her. But that bridge was burnt a while ago. Little firecracker, she was ​married, but I still loved her -- you know when you love someone so much it hurts? Every time I saw her, it was like someone fucking stabbed me.

And Carys. Fuck, I think I killed her. I-- when we worked together, I thought we were unstoppable, I loved her so much and I think I broke her. She always wanted to go one better, go a bit deeper, and all I did was push her over the edge. We met up, a few weeks before she died and she said she was ​fine ​ and I shouldn’t have been so stupid, I just swallowed it, then she was ​dead. She laid herself out beautifully, just how I would’ve done it. All that red, and they took photos of it, but I think that’s what she wanted, to be remembered.

Fuck. I don’t want to do this anymore. I want ​you. Sorry. Just my rotten fucking luck again. Falling in love with someone who doesn’t or can’t return it.

It hurts, just like Claire, it fucking ​hurts ​ loving you and I wouldn’t have it any other way because you make me feel human, hurting is what it is to be human and when you grabbed me on that rooftop, that was love, I wish you’d done it harder, I wish you’d left a bruise. I wish you’d scarred me and I’d have something to remember you by, even when I’m buried you’d still have left a mark on me. Don’t let them cremate me, please, don’t forget me. And if love is hurt, maybe I should want you to grieve for me, but please don’t. You already hold on to Luis too much, I don’t want to be another ghost that haunts you.

I’ll be watching over you, ok? When you want to give up, and I know it’s hypocritical because giving up is what I’m doing right now, but when you want to give up, when you want to cry, when you’re happy too, I’ll be with you. I hope there is an afterlife, I hope I become a ghost, just so I can be with you. Even if all that hurt is what I’m running from, I could take it all for you.

I guess what I’m saying is, you should stop reading here, because this ​isn’t your fault ​ . Please, stop reading here, but I have to get this down somewhere, so just skip the rest of this email. 

I think I could take it all with you. If I had you. I do. I do, I keep reminding myself of that, but do you know it? Do you even want me around? It isn’t your fault, it isn’t your fault, this is a me problem, not a you problem, but -- ​god, I wish I had you. Properly. I wish you’d hold me and bruise me and be with me forever and I hope you don’t find me in time because if I live through this I don’t want you to force yourself to love me because that won’t be real love and I’ll be hurting you but I have to say it, I have to beg you, if this is my ghost talking then that’s very fucking fitting. Because I was too proud to beg, but I’m doing it now. ​Please, please, if you ever loved me in any way, please come and find me, even if you don’t get here in time to save me it would be salvation enough if you would just hold me.

Please don’t forget me. Don’t let me be forgotten. But don’t let me hurt you.

I guess I finally get to say it: I love you, Julian Santiago, and we’re going to see each other again in a better place someday and I’m waiting there for you. Don’t follow me too soon, will you? 

Give them hell for me, Jess

The laptop stared back. The screen was white. Drowned out by Julian’s vision unfocused, fingertips pressing into his scalp to somehow draw it back, force himself out of a mind that seemed hollowed out. Any conscious thought was not in English, dragged out of the very basics from his mother tongue in fragmented pieces, trying to be filled by those equally as jagged pieces from Jess’ email that rattled around. Words were replaced by images, snapshots replaced by memories, running through him like a projection reel.

Jess on the rooftop, how he snatched him back, how he threatened him if he’d do it again. What did it look from his perspective?

He knew now. He wished he didn’t.

Mierda.

The laptop shuts closed in a whirlwind while Julian swallows, eyes shut with his thumbs pressing into the lids. There is sickness swimming in the pit of his stomach, bile made of regret and hatred, and it’s all towards Prometheus.

It will never end. Not like this.

Jess. You were robbed of love so many times you didn’t know in the end what it was. You were burning alive here, and no matter how much you screamed, no one heard you.

It has to end. It has to burn. It has to die.

A knock on the door lifts his head. It brings with it a box. The timing couldn’t be worse. Yet it couldn’t be better the moment he tears it open like he needs the distraction. A Smith and Wesson is inside, bringing with it narrowed eyes. He goes backwards, reading the note that he immediately bypassed.

Santiago-

My condolences for your loss. End your pain or play nice, will you? It’s interfering with your work.

-Sebastian Steele

[sympathyfortheblinderdevil]

Serious Things: Chapter 4

Chapters 1, 2, 3

While on the road to meet Capone, Arthur meets Mollie and finds that he has a connection with her. Tommy acts like a diva when he finds out that some things are beyond his control.

Arthur doesn’t get enough fic love, and I seek to change that.

Mollie shows Arthur something that makes him wonder if she could be the one to save him from himself.

Mollie had dressed for the path that they would walk on their adventure. Her hair was braided into two plaits and tied up with a dark blue bandanna. She had on a shirt that she hadn’t worn in a couple of years because she didn’t want to wear any of her “good” clothes where they were going. She had gained a little weight since she had last worn it, and her breasts strained at the buttons, but she didn’t think Arthur would mind. Her curves filled out her denim overalls which were tucked into a pair of tattered lace-up work boots.

Arthur had to stifle a laugh when she came out of her bedroom. “I’m sorry, love, but those boots!” he wheezed.

Mollie arched an eyebrow at him and warned, “Well, look at how you’re dressed! You won’t be laughing when you are plumb eat up with chigger bites and I’m checking your balls for ticks.”

“Checking my balls for what?” he sputtered and looked down at his attire: a plain cotton shirt with no collar, his usual brown trousers, and a pair of oxford shoes. He became more serious as the meaning of her words settled on him. “And what’s wrong with my clothes?”

“Ticks. And you don’t want to leave the bottoms of your pants open. I’ll find a pair of my brother’s boots for you to borrow. You can tuck your pants into them. Where we are going, there are things that crawl and bite and will keep you awake for weeks scratching like a hound dog. It’s best to limit possible points of entry.”

With Arthur properly suited and booted, they set out across the scrubby field behind Mollie’s house. Arthur carried a gunny sack that Mollie had packed with cheese sandwiches, homemade pickles, and jars of icy well water. The field was lush with sage grass and hay up to the waist, and she hastened across it, leading Arthur to the wooded thicket beyond. He could now understand why she was dressed the way she was and why she had insisted on his wearing her brother’s boots.

After they had walked for a while, Arthur asked, “Are there snakes out here, Mollie?”

“Not many,” she answered, with a sideways glance.

Arthur quickened his pace, practically running until they reached the coolness of the woods. Mollie caught up with him, giggling as she collapsed, sitting on the ground beside him. They settled under the canopy of shady trees while they caught their breath, and Mollie took the gunny sack from Arthur. She pulled out a jar of water and took a drink, offering it to Arthur when she was finished. It was still cold from deep in the ground from which it was pulled.

“You’re a hard man, Mr. Shelby. Don’t tell me that you are afraid of snakes.”

“Nah, they’d take one look at these boots and slither off in the other direction.” Arthur took a drink and passed the jar back to Mollie, stealing a sidelong glance at the way her shirt skimmed over her damp skin.

He then looked up into the treetops, and as he took in his new surroundings she studied his face. He had a rough handsomeness that she had never seen the likes of before. His freckle-dusted complexion and deep blue eyes didn’t seem to go with his inky black lashes, but she was glad that they did. The contrast was mesmerizing. She gingerly traced a scar that ran from his eyebrow to his cheekbone, then leaned up to kiss it. His eyes fluttered closed and he took a deep breath.

“I like it here. It’s peaceful,” he exhaled.

“I do too. It reminds me of being on the road when times were good. My ma would take me foraging. We’d find berries, greens, mint for tea, then we’d take it all back to camp. My pa would make a big deal of it all, going on and on about how I had found it with my sight. He really made me feel special.”

“Do you miss him?”

“I miss the way that he used to be. Before everything was about money, and deals, and fighting.”

Arthur got a faraway look in his eyes. “I used to fight…quite a lot. Now I just run the matches.”

“Why’d you stop?”

He looked at her, searching her face for a sign if he should give an honest answer. Something in her eyes told him that she’d understand. “I killed a boy.”

“Oh.”

“Does that scare you?”

“No,” she quietly replied, and took his hand. She ran her thumb over his scarred knuckles. “Honey, we’ve all done things that we’re not proud of, things that we regret. But when I look at you, I see a soul worthy of redemption.”

As she spoke, she moved closer and closer to him until he could feel her breath caress his cheek. Her plush red lips gently kissed his jawline, and his eyelids drifted shut. At that moment, if all the rest of the world fell away it would be alright with him. Still, after a moment of peace, the nagging memory of all of his bad deeds came creeping into his thoughts. He felt that he could never escape the judgment that would surely come for all of the beatings, the cuttings, and the murders he had committed in his short lifetime.

He dropped his head down to his chest and sighed. “Oh, Mollie. If that were the only horrible thing that I had done…” After a moment he cleared his throat and pulled one of her braids. “So. Are you going to tell me where we are going?”

She grinned at his obvious attempt to lighten the mood. “No. You’ll have to wait and see,” she teased while she pushed herself up off the ground and dusted off the seat of her overalls. “But we need to get moving if we are going to be back in time for me to cook supper for Y'all.”

They picked their way through the woods for what seemed like hours, stopping from time to time to rest or just to talk. Mollie kept the conversation light, and Arthur could not remember a time when he had felt so free. He was weightless. All of his worries with his family, with the business, with the noise inside of his head, was gone. All that remained was the soft laughter and tender touch of the girl who was walking beside him.

“Are you hungry yet?” her voice broke into his thoughts.

“Yeah, I am.”

“Good, because we are almost there. It’s a long way to go for a picnic, but I think that you’ll find that it was worth the trek.”

She jogged ahead of him, looking back over her shoulder and shouting, “Come on!” as she bounced toward a break in the tree line.

When they reached the clearing, he was amazed by the sight before him. Majestic granite columns rose skyward into nothingness. Pieces of walls, here and there, seemingly held up by the honeysuckle vines that twirled their way around the crumbling red bricks. Arched windows that once held stained glass were draped with bougainvillea and yellow jessamine. She had brought him to a ruined church.

Cicadas rattled in an unrelenting ebb and flow as Arthur made his way to the crumbling steps where Mollie stood. Strands of her auburn hair had escaped her bandanna and fanned out in wisps around her head, catching the sunlight and glowing. She looked like an angel.

She put her arms around his neck when he reached her. “Do you like it?”

“It’s amazing. I mean, we have these in England, but not like this.”

They stepped inside and he whispered, “What happened here?”

“Your tribe helped us redecorate the first time it was gutted,” she playfully replied as she led him further into the decaying bones of the church, “but it was destroyed for good when Sherman came through on his march to the sea.”

“During your Civil War.”

“Yeah.” She stopped, and Arthur stood beside her, still holding her hand. Mollie stared wistfully into the trees beyond the ruins. Spanish moss cascaded thickly from every branch. Arthur’s eyes followed her own, and when she turned to look at him she couldn’t help but smile at the placid warmth she saw on his face.

She rested her head against his shoulder and quietly spoke, “It’s strange how a place like this, a place that saw so much violence and destruction can become beautiful, even peaceful over time.”

“Like a sort of redemption?” he mused, and he leaned his head over onto hers.

Mollie brought his hand to her lips, tenderly kissed his scarred knuckles, and whispered, “Yes, and I believe that people are the same way.”

[laur-rants]

Fic Update -- Wolfbann

Chapter 14 - With an Uneasy Truce

Fandom: Dishonored Ship: Corvo/Daud, Past Jessamine/Corvo Rated: Mature Chapter Synopsis: Wolf Dads finally meet and have a semi-successful chat.

*Note: The read more may not appear for mobile users. For this, I sincerely apologize. The best way to avoid this is to blacklist #long post

AO3 Link

Previous :: First :: Next

Emily was there waiting for Daud when he returned from below decks, Lizzy Stride behind him. Lizzy scowled down at the girl, lip curling just enough to show pointed teeth, but Daud remained unperturbed by Emily's presence just outside the cabin door, as if he expected her.

“You talked with Daud at length,” Emily said, feigning professionalism. “May I borrow him for the duration of the trip?”

Daud's lip twitched as his eyebrow raised at Lizzy, waiting for the pirate’s response. Lizzy just sniffed, tattooed arms folding against her chest.

“Don’t be so disgustingly formal with me, kid. And sure; we're almost there anyway.” She rolled her eyes and waved Daud off. “Nobles.”

“Your teeth are fake imitations of the real thing,” Emily told her darkly, reveling in the way the captain sneered again and turned back to her cabin.

“Double pay, Daud,” she growled as the assassin steered Emily away, smirking all the while.

“Diplomacy is something you will need to learn soon, Emily,” he softly purred to her. Once they were out of earshot, her classic frown formed as she looked up at Daud, her gaze all but accusing.

“I don't like her.”

“She is being kind enough to offer us safe passage through flooded waters.”

“Only because you paid her to.”

“You will learn you don't have to like the people you exchange coin with, but it helps to be cordial with them, at the very least.”

“Were you cordial with the person who gave you coin to kill my mother?”

Daud stiffened from head to toe. Emily bit at her lip, her real anger bubbling up, threatening to leak from her eyes and down her cheeks. She looked away from Daud's face, instead watching the rushing waters swirl about the Undine. When Daud put a hand on her shoulder, she didn't flinch away.

“No. I hate him more than anyone else in the Isles, Emily,” he snarled out. “And when I see him again, I won't need coin to motivate me to rip his jaw from his throat.”

Her chest heaved. “Then why? Why did you do it?”

“Why anyone else does terrible things: because of a lie.”

Daud deflated next to her. He motioned her over to a seat on the main deck; she followed and sat down next to him. Emily watched him with a careful eye, catching the tension of his shoulders, the pull of his neck muscles, the turning of his gloved hands.

“Hiram Burrows was your mother's spymaster, and he was good at his job. Too good. Your mother trusted him when she shouldn't have and I can't blame her, because I did too.” He licked his lips before meeting Emily gaze for gaze.

“I’d worked with Burrows before and while I never liked the smell of the man, his targets always had it coming. Perhaps they were rapists, or pedohpiles, or enemies of the state. No matter the case, there was always extra motivation for me, one outside of coin. So when Burrows’ spy came and found me while he was scouring the Isles, proposing the Empress's death would save the city… I bought it. I believed it.

“But as soon as my claws killed Jessamine and injured Corvo, my problems only doubled and it was too late to realize the bad business transaction. Burrows was back in town, demanding explanations on my improvisation, wanting to know if I could do more -- eliminate more -- for coin. He never asked me to kill you, but… it was enough to get suspicious and when I get suspicious, I dig around. I'm an assassin, but information is just as much my business as killing. What I found wasn't good, and I regret every bit of buying into his schemes and agreeing to be his tool. While I wish I could've given back the coin of your mother's death, most of it went into keeping you safe. Better it have a good use than be tossed to the bottom of the Wrenhaven.”

Emily squirmed, shoving her hands under her thin legs. Her eyes darted, looking around for a distraction before finding Daud again. “So, what did you find?” she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“A conspiracy against the crown. One that would have led to your disposal and the Isles falling into the power of men who were just that scared of being ruled by a woman.”

“Why haven't you killed him, then?” Emily asked, angry for a reason she couldn't quite place. “Couldn't you have just done your assassin thing on Burrows, too?”

Daud's lip twitched, his face darkening with a feral energy.

“Because killing takes time,” Daud rumbled to her. “And to make it worth the while, to make a death mean something, means doing it right.” He folded his hands and took a breath. “In the meantime, keeping you safe has been my main priority. I promised to get you back to Corvo, safely.”

Emily mulled this over, tired thoughts pulling at her mind. She sighed dramatically, looking Daud up and down, as if trying to decide her feelings on everything.

“So. You are planning to kill the Lord Regent, then?”

Daud laughed. His shoulders shook with it; it wasn't loud, and it wasn't full of mirth, but it was genuine, which Emily took note of. When he met her eye again, his smile was still there, his fangs heavy in the set of his jaw, his claws sprouting from his interlaced gloved fingers.

“Yes, Emily. I've been planning his demise for months.”

“Can I help?”

Daud blinked, his smile dying as he adjusted in his spot. Emily's face didn't waver; she remained stony, serious, unmoving until Daud gave her a proper answer.

“I can't decide that, Emily.”

“Who can, then? If not you?”

“Corvo will,” he said, nodding over Emily's shoulder. She turned; behind them the crumbling buildings and waterlogged streets of the Rudshore District loomed, growing larger with every passing second. Her eyes widened at the sight, as if she looked hard enough she'd see him standing there, ready to finally take her home.

“When we get back he'll be waiting for us, and what he decides to do with me will determine how we all move forward.”

------

“So there will be a bit of procedure we'll try to follow when they arrive, and I advise on conversing to Daud before, ah, trying to kill him.”

Corvo only half-listened to Thomas as he talked coolly in Corvo's ears, the words meaningless as he watched the small boat returning from the shadow of the Undine, a pirate trawler moored out on the Wrenhaven proper. His jaw tightened knowing that Emily had been on a gang ship of all things, but he'd pushed those feelings aside as soon as the skiff had gone out to fetch the returning party. After that he waited, unmoving, until the boat returned to port down the way from the Commerce building.

It was getting to be evening. The wind was picking up; Corvo pulled his reacquired Protector coat close, to the best of his one-armed ability. He hadn't expected to meet Daud handicapped-- but then again, nothing he had envisioned about this moment was close to correct, especially not the fact that Daud would be bringing him Emily, at his own behest, even…

“Corvo? Sir? Are you listening?”

Corvo turned and grunted, moving away from Thomas, shoving the questioning mind out of his own. He couldn't let himself trust any of them, not until Emily was with him again, not until she was back on the throne, not until he knew exactly what to do with the man who had killed-

A flurry of color flitted in Corvo's peripheral. His head shot over, seeing red disappear just to reappear again. Thomas moved from his position behind him; he dissolved into ash, transversing forward to intercept Daud first. A flash of light and Void and then Daud was suddenly there, standing just outside of his office, his silhouette partially visible to Corvo. The glint of the assassin's eye caught in the dying sun suddenly Corvo's body seized, begging to spring into action to confront the man who had single-handedly destroyed his life--

But he was stopped short of action. Something small had disengaged from Daud and was running straight at him, wrapped in leather and smelling of lilacs and hitting him in the midriff like a sledgehammer.

“Corvo!”

Small hands grabbed at his coat and his breath was knocked from him-- not from force of impact but from the inability to breathe, to even grasp the fact that this was real. His free hand wrapped around the thin body hidden under all those layers, pulling them close, his knee hitting wood so that arms could wrap more easily around his neck, causing his side to flare painfully but he didn't care, he didn't care because she was finally here.

“Emily . It’s really you.”

The words were a whisper, like a prayer on the wind. He winced, hissing painfully as she was pulled away, fixing her hair behind her ears, rattling off question after question, are you alright, what happened to your arm, you look so tired, Corvo I have so much to tell you I thought you were DEAD--

He smiled at her, his chest rumbling with relief as she poked and prodded and rabbled, pulling at his too-long hair, noting his too-thin frame, and his only response to all her inquiries was to pull her in again, kissing at her forehead as she clung to him, never missing a beat in her scattered speech.

“I missed you too, Emily,” he managed to mumble and she choked out a laugh, nuzzling into his neck, a bandaged hand petting at his damp hair. He breathed deep, sighing out, and wished for all of eternity he never had to leave her side again.

A throat cleared.

Corvo bristled, claws gripping protectively at Emily's coat, but it was Emily who was the one pulling away, looking over her shoulder, grinning all the while.

“Thomas! Thomas, look! Corvo is here!”

Thomas let out a small laugh, nodding curtly.

“He certainly is, Emily. But, if I may interject…”

They both looked over. From where he waited near his desk, Daud loomed, watching the two of them from a distance. On reflex Corvo defensively stiffened-- but then a small, cool hand landed his cheek. He pulled his eyes to Emily as she leaned over to carefully whisper in his ear.

“He’s okay. He just wants to talk to you.”

Corvo turned into her, stricken with indecision.

“You're sure?”

She nodded into his ear… before shrugging against his shoulder and shaking her head, hugging him tight. Corvo sighed, defeated, and finally straightened back up, Emily's hand slipping into his own. He turned a glowering stare on Thomas, who shifted under his gaze.

“You keep her where I can see her,” he snarled. “If you even think about killing her behind my back-”

“My Whalers value their lives and the lives of young Emily too much to do something so ludicrously stupid , Attano.”

Corvo snarled, a palpable thing that rippled through everyone in the room. At his side, Emily squeezed his hand before letting go and trotting over to stand near Thomas. Thomas looked nervously between the two of them; Emily caught Corvo's eye and nodded.

“I promise, Corvo. I'll be okay.”

Corvo swallowed his pride. He nodded to Thomas who nodded back, understanding. Emily never took her eyes off him as he strode over to the desk at the other side of the room.

Daud wasn't even looking at Corvo as he approached; instead, the man was clearing papers, organizing files, his eyes sharp on every note. And yet with every step, Corvo felt more and more like he was being suffocated. He saw the man of Daud, but he also sensed the shadow of what he was, of what they both were, beings too large for the skin that contained them. He stopped in front of the desk. Daud paused in his sorting.

Corvo swallowed. His good hand flexed nervously.

“Th-”

“You're hurt,” Daud growled out. Corvo's mouth snapped shut and he huffed, self-conscious. “What happened?”

“Nothing of concern,” Corvo shot back, defensive. Daud snorted out a laugh.

“You can't use your left arm. Can you even use your magic?”

Corvo shifted. Daud sighed, and went back to his documents.

“I'll take that as a no. So, what was it? Did you run into Vera Moray on your way here?”

“I ran into an old wolf, yes. Granny Rags?” Daud made a noncommittal sound, and Corvo continued, “If it makes you feel smug, your Whalers were the ones to pull me out of her nest.”

Daud looked up, meeting Corvo's eye for just a moment. Corvo's insides chilled and he swallowed, feeling the creep of the beast just under the surface, before Daud was looking away again, the force of his gaze leaving Corvo to stare off elsewhere. Corvo tried his best to resume breathing unseen, tried not to show how effected he was by a simple gaze…

They were both silent for a time. Corvo swallowed, fidgeted, before Daud was back in the present, straightening up and giving Corvo his attention. Corvo twitched at the sudden movement, matching Daud's behavior.

“According to Thomas, it was a close shave,” Daud said, before he walked around the desk, closing in on Corvo. Corvo stiffened and Daud frowned at him, casting a critical eye on his bandages. The fraction of a height advantage didn't bring Corvo any solace under the overwhelming power of that stare.

“Your injury isn't going to heal easily. You were lucky it happened while you were a wolf-- she would have ripped your arm right off if you had tried to face her as a human.” His eyes flicked across Corvo's sling. Corvo resisted the urge to flinch back.

“This certainly complicates things,” Daud murmured, seeming to resist his own urge to reach out and inspect Corvo's arm further. Instead he let his hand rest on his chin, thinking. “Do you have a plan, moving forward?”

Corvo's static-filled mind finally caught up with itself. He glared at Daud, shaking his head.

“A plan?” He choked out. He could feel a dam being broken in his chest and everything poured out through it. “A fucking plan? I was attacked, wrongfully imprisoned, was tortured for two months, turned into a monster to escape, and I have spent the last week talking to a black-eyed god and dealing with this-” he gestured wildly to his whole body “- and you're asking if I have a Void-damned plan?” Corvo could feel his teeth growing heavy and he snarled, pinching the bridge of his nose to try and keep himself under control.

“The only thing I planned on was wringing the life out of the person who killed Jessamine and I can't even do that because…” he choked on his words, glancing over his shoulder, where Emily watched him between conversation with Thomas. “...because that man brought me Emily, and I have no clue what to do with that, anymore.”

He hated sounding so defeated. He clenched his jaw, his mind in turmoil as emotions fought for control inside him. Emily was safe, she was here, but why and how, he still didn't understand.

It didn't feel like a victory yet.

“Corvo.” Daud called to him and he turned, hating how quickly he reacted to Daud's voice. The assassin sighed and the weight of everything was suddenly shared between them, unsaid. As soon as their gazes caught Daud let it go, glancing off before coming back. His left hand clenched and he took a step toward the broken Protector. “I can show you what happened. If it will help you… make a decision.”

Corvo stared at him, never looking away even as his brow furrowed. Daud swallowed, his left hand going clawed as it burned with magic. He held it out, inviting.

Corvo looked at the hand, his thoughts immediately visualizing those deadly fingers dripping with blood -- rivers running down his arms, the Empress dead where she landed --

But Emily was still alive. All because of those gnarled, dark claws keeping her safe.

Corvo set his jaw, lifted his right hand, and grasped at Daud's wrist.

It took a tentative second before Daud's mind reached out to his but as soon as that door was opened, the wave that crashed into Corvo caused him to stagger. Thoughts, memories, emotions, decisions -- it all assaulted him and he felt his body tighten under the onslaught. Daud gripped at him, keeping him grounded, even as colors flooded his mind’s eye, threatening to sweep him away. The apology from Daud was felt more than said, and then finally everything started to align and the memories replayed back to him. He saw Daud telling the twins to retrieve Emily, Emily returning safely to the Flooded District, the disposal of the Pendleton Twins and the news of Corvo's escape, of Delilah being defeated after she took Emily, sealing her and her magic and then he was back to now, where Daud was watching him hug Emily, a strange warmth filling his chest and realizing it was Daud's emotion, not his own, that he was experiencing.

The emotion was heady, an overwhelming relief -- but then the memory was warping, changing, like time itself was being reversed until --

Hiram Burrows was below him, pacing a room frantically from where he watched and stalked in the shadow of a chandelier. He knew the room well; it was right above the Spymaster chambers in the main hall where the Tower’s court was held, but now the room had morphed, the energy frantic as maids and servants scattered about, the guards were doubled, and the newly erected arc pylons kept the threat of attack at bay.

He watched Hiram carefully, his hatred seething, close to boiling over, but his willed his hand to stay. He couldn't afford to sink his jaws into that vulnerable neck, not yet. There was a process to the hunt. That's what made it so delicious in the end.

No, he was here for a greater prize: evidence. His left hand clenched, alive with the arcane and in the next moment he was being pulled through the Void, up through the rafters again until he was one with the shadows, melting away unnoticed as everyone scrambled to deal with power changing hands, of the Empress being dead, of Emily being missing--

The chatter died behind him as he slithered through the door leading to the announcer's room. The man spoke of the news-- of the Royal Protector being behind bars for his crimes, of the continued absence of the fair Empress's daughter, of new curfews and orders given by the City Watch in the wake of a worsening plague. He paid no mind as he brought his clawed hand down, stopping time with the deft grace that only comes from years of practice. He leapt to the announcer, knowing Burrows had been in this room as recently as this morning. And there it was-- the perfect audiograph to steal, right where the Lord Regent left it.

He grabbed the recording card and slid it into a pocket on his bandolier just as time resumed. He turned his wolfish head to the announcer and grinned, all flashing teeth, and the man gasped, swiftly pissing himself.

“Send the Lord Regent my regards,” he said, the low rumble flowing off lips morphed into a snout that curled up at the frightened man. In the next moment, he was holding time still again; he left without a sound, clear of the Tower well before the patrols came around, confident in being the sole holder of the greatest weapon against the Lord Regent's regime.

Hiram Burrows would rue the day he made the Knife of Dunwall his personal puppet.

Corvo gasped back into reality, limbs shaking as he returned to his own body, to his own being. He heaved in air, his skin clammy with sweat as Daud pulled his forehead away, giving Corvo the necessary breathing room. Daud tried to pull further back but Corvo dug his claws into Daud's arm, locking him down and refusing to let him go just yet.

Somewhere, softly, he heard Emily cry out his name.

“What-” Corvo snarled out, “was that?”

It had felt so real, so visceral, like he truly had been in Daud's place as he infiltrated the Tower just to collect -- what, an audiograph? A very important audiograph, one that meant the turning of a tide--

Daud's steely gaze bored into him, never wavering.

“It's a trump card,” Daud told him carefully. “A way to not only get Emily back onto the throne, but to undermine everyone involved in the coup-- a coup I was used to cause and you were used to scapegoat. It's a way to beat them for good, Corvo, a way to destroy everything they built and avenge her in the process.”

Corvo breathed, clamping his eyes closed, hearing the words Daud was telling him and seeing the memory replay behind his lids. But still--

“You have it? You have the evidence?”

“Yes,” Daud growled out, his triumphant boiling hatred alive in Corvo's mind. “I hate what happened and I regret what I did, but I hate that man so much more for making a fool of me, for causing all of this to happen in the first place.”

Corvo swallowed, still gripping too tight to Daud's arm, the other marked wolf still loathe to pull away and if anything, clung on all the harder himself.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Corvo finally conceded, his own emotions burning with the same shared convictions. “Do you have a plan?”

Daud's mouth pulled into a wicked, toothy grin.

“Yes.”

------

Thunder rumbled across a darkening sky and Geoff huffed against the wind, holding the door of the Hound Pits Pub open for Samuel Beechworth as he rushed back inside, hoping to beat an incoming wall of rain.

“No sign of him yet, Sam?” Geoff asked solemnly, though his voice held a hint of hope. That hope died as Sam shook his head, his heavy eyes looking even sadder than usual.

“ ‘Fraid not, sir,” Sam said, pulling his lapels in against the cold. “And I don't think we'll see him until morning if this weather worsens.”

Geoff sighed, his jaw set as he closed the door to the elements. The pub retained its warmth in temperature but not in spirits; as he turned to face Callista and Cecilia, the other awake residents, they all collectively saddened.

It had been almost two days. And still, there wasn't hide or hair of Corvo Attano.

To be honest, the man -- or wolfman, these days -- had only been gone for around 24 hours, but he was impossible to reach after returning empty-handed from the Golden Cat. Which meant nobody could get him to talk, to even come down to eat, s o they had left him up there to brood and wallow, hoping he would return to mingle amongst the other residents on his own time. But then the next morning rolled around and Callista brought him breakfast, it remained untouched. A quick search of the attic revealed that Corvo was gone, leaving none of them with any idea where he had run off to.

So all they could do was sit around and wait with the hope he'd eventually return.

Geoff, luckily, had the patience for waiting. He was a man of the law, after all. One didn't become a soldier without enduring endless days standing at attention or enter law enforcement without the occasional stakeout. The same could not be said about other Pub residents, however.

“Are you both absolutely sure?” Callista asked as she puttered over, fretting over Geoff's clothing where fat heavy raindrops had struck patterns into his City Watch jacket. “Is there nothing? No signs, no clues?”

“Not sure what kind of clues a magical whale-wolf leaves behind,” Geoff said shrugging. “And besides, I thought his whole expertise rested in stealth, anyway?”

Callista groaned, displeased. “I just don't like it. What if he ran into trouble? On other missions, Sam was there to give him a convenient escape route. Now, the water is too rough, the river is flooding, and there's no way Sam can even think about going out in this.”

“He's also survived the worst prison in the Isles,” Geoff said, trying to quell his niece's fears. “And he's done more in a week than most men do in a month. Spirits, he even saved me. Give a man some credit.”

She pursed her lips, unconvinced but unable to refute. She puffed her cheeks, letting the air out roughly.

“I guess I just worry. If he's gone, then what about the Empress's daughter? Who will find her, if he fails? What will happen to the city then?”

Geoff watched her pace, sad that he couldn't do more. So he simply did the only thing he could; he pulled her into a hug, one which she quickly leaned into reciprocated.

“We just gotta hold out for now. I know it's frustrating to be powerless in finding him, but let's give him another day.” Geoff gently pulled away and offered her a smile. “Besides, it's quite late. You need your sleep more than you need to be worrying about a wayward Royal Protector.”

She rolled her eyes. “I'm an adult, uncle,” she retorted, “I can choose my own sleeping schedule.” But still she exhaled, looking away and out at the heavy drops hitting the pub windows. “But you are right; my mind is too addled. Perhaps some sleep will help make sense of things.”

She pecked his cheek goodnight and then slowly climbed the stairs to her room. Geoff watched her disappear, running a hand through his hair.

“For her sake, I hope Corvo shows up soon.”

“For everyone's sake, I do too,” Sam muttered softly, eyes all too knowing. Geoff nodded in agreement; they'd all been here, in this dingy little safe harbor, briefly filled with hope ever since Corvo reappeared, but now? What good was that hope, if it was lying in a gutter somewhere, drowned like a rat?

Best not to think about that. Geoff consoled himself with the knowledge that he didn't really even know if a fabled whale-wolf could die in a gutter, let alone from a little rain.

Perhaps he could use some rest soon too.

Thunder cracked close enough to rattle the windows and Geoff twitched, waiting for the moment to pass. As soon as it did, he heard the sound of rain increase for just a moment before dying down again with the sound of a creaked, closed door. Geoff's throat caught and his hand flew to his pistol--

--Just to catch Corvo fucking Attano holding his right hand up, sucking in a breath at the barrel pointed directly at his chest.

Geoff cursed, fumbling the gun back into its holster.

“Corvo! What in the Void-”

“Good to see you too, Curnow,” he said with a tired twitch of his mouth. It was only as Geoff neared that he realized Corvo was an absolute mess; his left arm was bandaged and in a sling, while his clothes were drenched and his eyes tired. Still, there was an easiness in his stance that wasn't there before, nor in small smile gracing his features.

“May I introduce you to Emily Kaldwin? You may have already met.”

Geoff, Cecilia and Sam all collectively gaped as the lithe form of the Empress's daughter appeared from behind Corvo, looking around at all of them in turn. She waved softly, looking tired, with a bandaged hand and thick jacket about her shoulders but none the worse for wear.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said softly. “Thank you for helping Corvo.”

“I, um, the pleasure is all ours, Emily,” Geoff sputtered. He looked from Emily to Corvo, disbelieving. Corvo huffed out a laugh, watching his reaction. As Emily said hello to Samuel, Geoff closed the gap, grabbing Corvo's hand and hissing to him in shock.

“You found her? Where in the Void--?”

“It's a long story,” Corvo coughed out in that shattered voice of his, “but to make it short, an ally was keeping her safe. He has a plan for taking back the throne, and I'm willing to trust he'll see it through.”

Geoff perked significantly.

“Excellent! Are they here, then? And who is this ally, exactly?”

“That would be me, Curnow,” growled out a deep voice. Geoff looked over to see sharp eyes and even sharper scars marring a severe face and slicked back hair. He fixed black gloves over the sleeves of a red coat and Geoff felt his throat dry up and close.

“Geoff, this is Daud, better known as the Knife of Dunwall. He and his men are hoping to stay here while we work on how to retake the throne and bring Hiram Burrows to justice.”

Geoff stared at Corvo. He gaped at Daud. Then he finally collected himself, willing his voice to work.

“Really? Him?!”

[exalok]

Prince!Daud AU, part 14 (repost)

Air dragged into and back out of his lungs. Molasses-slow, numbing his mouth. His fingers pricked like he had stuck his hands into a sack full of pins.

He inhaled. Exhaled. Inhaled again.

“What about–” His throat clicked with an involuntary swallow. “– Emily?”

Daud watched him, uncomprehending, the letter loose in his grip.

“J... Jess's daughter?” he tried again. “Is she–?” It was so cold in here. Had someone left the window open? He couldn't take his eyes off the Prince to check.

Daud shook his head, gaze flickering to the letter and back. “– It doesn't say.”

Corvo moved forward. The Prince stayed stuck in place, feet planted. Something burning spreading across Corvo's shoulder – Right. Sunlight through the window. He snatched the letter from the Prince's hands.

It was short, concise: a string of words across the center of the page. The Empress is dead. Port blockaded. Nothing from CR. Ty. The part of him still occupied with understanding rather than reacting filed away the knowledge that the Prince had had spies all the way in Dunwall. Daud watched him, arms useless and open, backed against the desk. Outside the window lay the sea and the shining carcass of the city; beyond that, mountain and hill and tilled field torn through by the great canal; and beyond that, gray cloud, rain, the breathing of an empire. The letter fell to the ground.

“Corvo,” said that thin pale mouth.

“I need to get to Dunwall,” Corvo said, and walked back through the door.

Burrows should have kept her safe. He had dozens of people scattered across the Isles, whispering in his ear about a chess piece moving here, another there, and informants in every corner of the city – yet he had missed this one. Someone had gotten through. Something had gone wrong.

Corvo's heels rattled down the stairs, one then two at a time, servants dodging out of his way to hug the walls. Burrows was a snake, smarmy and split-tongued and unrepentantly disdainful towards anyone from outside the borders of his precious Gristol, but he was mostly competent; if this had happened, it must have been betrayal – a double agent keeping back information – someone turned from the inside – or skill and forethought beyond even what the Spymaster could prevent.

Corvo stopped, abrupt, in the middle of the courtyard. What if– No. He hadn't been gone so long. Surely Sokolov and the rest of the natural philosophers had made progress. Surely they were still laying off whoever came in with a fever or a persistent cough, despite what– what she'd said about the cruelty of it, how she hated, hated seeing them go, and she gave them enough pay to last them a few months – no. She hadn't gone the slow, withering way of those he had seen with raw-red wrists and ankles chained to their beds, lined up in the hospitals, before the madness spread too far for the Empress to consider visiting the sick.

Footsteps on stone, and a voice, “Attano,” and a strong hand holding his upper arm. “What do you think you're doing,” said those gray eyes.

Corvo jerked out of his grasp. “I need to get to Dunwall.” He started forward again.

The footsteps followed him.

“And what will you do once you arrive?” The path from the courtyard to the dock was laid with slabs of smooth white stone; they clacked under the strike of his heels. He still couldn't see the pier, hidden by the rise of land before the beach.

The Prince's boots followed alongside him. “Attano.” The path became wide steps, lodged in the side of the cliff, curving down to the gray line of the shore. Corvo kept moving: the solid wood of the steps, then shifting sand and rock, then creaking pier, sea water sucking at the posts, salt wind and empty bay. Of course. There was no–

Usually the dockmaster would send a message by radio, and the warehouses in Karnaca would send a ship, and aside from Reda's Corvo hadn't seen any remain for more than a couple of days –

There was no boat.

“Attano.”

He turned. “I'll swim across.”

“Don't be fucking stupid,” the Prince retorted. Corvo snarled, bristling, but that sharp face was unmoved, pinprick pupils in the midday sun.

He wasn't supposed to be here, in still-hot weather, with the smell of the sea and silver dust. He wasn't supposed to be guarding this man in his stark finery.

(He had crossed miles and miles of ocean for her. She had bade him go for the sake of her city, and he had obeyed, and he had abandoned her.)

He should never have left.

“I'm going to Dunwall,” he said, lip curling. She had needed him. She had needed him.

“You'll be a target for every noble-blooded rat in that city.” The Prince didn't shift, but the intent to do so was loud in the tension of his shoulders under the jacket, in the stiffness of his arms held at his sides. His gray eyes stared Corvo in the face. “They'll take you for a threat. Your... relationship with the Empress is common knowledge among the aristocrats –”

“You think that matters?” His teeth were bared, the funnel of his lungs only barely holding back a howl, and Daud flinched back as though whipped. “That what they think of me – of her – matters?”

The Prince's teeth gritted. “Yes,” he hissed, “it does. I've been fighting with politics much longer than you have.” His hand was at the sleeve of Corvo's coat, clenched like a vise; Corvo went to lever his wrist away – and at the first touch to his glove the Prince let go, staring at his own hand then stepping back, turned away, but still his eyes met Corvo's when he looked up again.

There was a moment where Corvo wanted to shout, to vomit the rage clattering in the trap of his ribs. Wanted to excoriate, strip skin to fit raw singing nerves, to shatter every confident bone in the political body before him. To raise his fists and invite a terrible violence into them.

(The light in those gray eyes was different. Hard, yes, but not with scorn. Brittle. Corvo thought he had never met the like, couldn't know what it was– and then, he felt he must – that he knew it with a peculiar kind of intimacy.

It was despair. It was fear.)

The moment passed. His spine felt stiff as a strung bow. Where there had been a scouring tangle Corvo was left with nothing but the cold hollow of its passing, taking up all the space from gut to sternum. He hardly knew how he could breathe around it.

“Then tell me,” he said, voice weak and harsh through the lock of his jaw. “Tell me what I must do.”

Anything. Anything – take the first boat to Dunwall and find out for himself what had happened, find his Empress and find Emily, send word to Burrows for permission to return, publicly renounce his old title, beg on his knees before Parliament – wait for news from the city, wait for the Regent to call the Isles to the funeral, wait for– for the next Empress– for Emily to take the throne, wait –

Wait here. Forever.

(Emily. Where was Emily. Emily. Emily. Emily.)

The look on the Prince's face was unfamiliar. Corvo wanted to call it calculating, but the corners of his mouth were too soft – and if it had been pity, it would have stirred the brutal depths of his anger. Instead he breathed. Listened. The stillness of a man asking for a mission.

“In Imperial matters, there is usually a smaller, private ceremony before the grand official one,” the Prince said, his aimless hands conspicuous. They hovered, uncertain; the left rested absently on the grip of his sword. Corvo watched them, and didn't look at his face. “You wouldn't be welcome, but... you served her for eleven years. You have a stake in this.”

Yes. Anything to get him in Dunwall. “When.”

“I'll have a ship readied.” There was nothing in his eyes, now. Had it been Corvo's own shaking heart reflected in their iris, like a silver-backed mirror? (What could make a Prince afraid?) “When word comes through the proper channels, we'll leave.”

“Fine.” He did not ask how many days it would take; didn't ask whether it would be weeks, or months, or what the proper channels were. He was the bodyguard, and he would follow the orders given to him. Corvo turned, empty. Dry salt spray scraped away under his soles as he walked. “When word comes.”

The Prince didn't try to hold him back.

The sky was cloudless, and white with sunlight. From the cliffs behind the palace, he watched the spread of the ocean, his mind as empty as his palms.

Dodge came to see him while the sun was still high. Corvo stood in the middle of the wide open terrace by the gallery, his sword hanging loose and unsheathed in his hand. He had considered practicing, to burn away the trembling in his nerves; instead he looked out to the cliffside, to the wind-twisted trees, and remembered the slope of Jessamine's shoulders in gray Dunwall sunlight as they walked the Tower gardens, the fall of her hair after her father's funeral, the delicate tilt of her neck at thirteen when she demanded he help her climb the only flowering tree in the courtyard. Emily would be about a month old by now. He had to brace against the desperate, surging need to believe she would one day turn thirteen and want to climb a tree.

“Corvo,” Dodge called, and Corvo turned to face him, his sword dragging a half-circle into the earth. There was hesitation clear on the bodyguard's face: tense hands, stance switching to flight-ready.

Corvo did nothing to calm that fear. He had no energy for kindness.

Yet Dodge hung back and watched him for no more than a couple of seconds before coming slowly forward, drawing to a stop a meter away.

“Thomas and Kay are with Daud,” he said. “You can... take your time.”

The words barely registered past that edge of wariness, Dodge's voice soothing and flat, like talking to a spooked horse. Corvo's teeth clenched. He stared Dodge in the eye, expressionless, until the bodyguard turned and left.

Watching his retreating back, the sound of waves crashing against cliff stone washed in and out of him. The smell of salt and soft rotting things. He couldn't remember why it had felt so familiar: in Batista everything had smelled of metal and dirt first and foremost, or old congealed blood and the sloughed insides of hundreds of fish when you got down near the docks. The sea had only been an afterthought.

As the afternoon strung out into evening, he sheathed his sword and faced the tall facade of the dining hall. It was about time he went back. He couldn't spend the whole day staring out to sea like some heartsick fishwife.

The inside of the palace was cold and quiet – though perhaps that was the loss of the sun, despite how he hadn't felt it while standing outside. Marble halls, trapping the coolness of the wind, heat sucked into the ground. It had looked riotous with color when he first arrived. None of that had gone – but he looked only at the black tips of his boots as he ascended, and the dark wood of the stair steps, and thought of every inch of the palace stripped bare to brick and mortar.

The Prince's doors were closed. Thomas stood to the side. They looked at each other across the hall, Corvo blank-faced, the bodyguard stiff and impassive.

“You're taking over?” Thomas asked, inflectionless. There was an unusual tilt to his head that Corvo couldn't interpret.

“Yes.”

Thomas opened the door and Corvo stepped through.

The Prince wasn't in sight, but the sound of running water filtered through the door to the bathroom. Corvo tried not to feel relieved that he would have a few more minutes to himself. He stood at the window first, looking through to the empty dock, though even from this vantage point a spine of land hid the shore. Beyond the mountains, the sun was setting. It stained the ocean in orange and red.

The desk was still littered with ongoing correspondence, and a new pack of letters had been left at the edge. Corvo picked up the handful, started leafing through them, checking off names from the list he had begun building in his time here – he knew a surprising amount of the ones in this stack – and only realized he'd been looking for something when he found the letter near the back. The ink was blue, the writing steady. The wax seal held the outline of a swan.

The envelope shook. The rest of the letters dropped back to the desk.

He couldn't– If he– Reading it now was a bad idea. He needed focus. He needed– He needed to breathe. His throat felt narrow as a reed. He folded the letter in two, and once more, careful, and tucked it into the pocket of his coat, careful, careful. He sat in the chair by the window.

The Prince came out of the bathroom. It was like the air had thickened, clear and dense; like time had forgotten the workings of its own gears. The Prince came out of the bathroom, and Corvo followed the gradual tread of his feet; he said something; Corvo looked at him, answered; and then the Prince was at his desk, reality stuttering. He wrote; annotated; said something else. Corvo watched nothing, and said nothing. The quiet congealed.

Night fell, at some point. The Prince slept. He must have gotten up; he must have undressed, and slipped under the covers. Corvo listened to his quiet breathing; his silence.

He brought out the letter.

His hands were clumsy, awkward. Like his skin was an ill-fitting glove.

Corvo dearest, and he held on for control of his breathing, the air shaking wildly in his lungs.

The moon is full outside my window and I wonder what you must be doing, in this moment, halfway across my empire. How much colder has it gotten in the weeks since you arrived? I have only ever heard of Karnaca as a land of warmth and sunlight, but surely you must feel the seasons as we do. Here the rain is like ice, and the roads sometimes freeze overnight, though we have not yet seen snow. I know it happens every year – but part of it, this cold, feels due to your not being here. I miss you terribly.

Despite winter coming on only one of my staff has begged off work for sickness, a secretary, though I hear one of the Tower Guard was sent home for coming in with a cough as well. I am safe, my dear. You will continue to worry anyway, because that is how you are; do what you must, but know I will still be here when you visi

His teeth were going to crack apart he was biting down so hard. He gently lowered the letter in his lap and dropped his head into one hand, fingers digging at the inner corners of his eyes, and let himself inhale a deep and shuddering breath. Held it in. Let the buzzing pain of the pressure ease the knot from his throat. His eyes stung when he drew his hand away, but because of his nails cutting in or something else he couldn't tell.

when you visit.

I see you are having no trouble getting attached. (And any other time he would smile and try to hide it, imagining the sly curve of her mouth, the inescapably expressive movement of her brow – but now he was afraid to imagine her face at all; afraid her eyes would belie the softness of the thought, and look at him hollow and dark.) Only terrible aside from the silence and the disapproving glares? I would ask when you mean to propose, dear friend, but I suppose you are already married. My heart is gladdened to hear the two of you get along. I know I rarely show it, but for a long time I doubted I had chosen the right course, even if you were the first to agree to it. Tell me, are you truly happy? I need you to be honest.

The thought of Sokolov ordering a child (my child) to sit still for a portrait made me laugh to no end, so I asked him. It took some convincing. I will be sending along the result as soon as he stops grumbling about domineering young women.

Every servant in the Tower marvels at her. She is hardly a month old, and doesn't do much besides look beautiful and stare endlessly at anything that moves, but still they go out of their way to spend a few minutes with her, speak a few words, touch her small hands. She will be loved. She is loved. Sometimes I think I hardly need more than that thought to sustain me through long days and longer nights.

I hope to see you soon.

Your Empress,

Jessamine Kaldwin

The room was quiet and still; the kind of stillness that might be struck, like a chord, and ring out with a deeper silence. Moonlight turned the paper a pale and glowing blue. He felt dizzy. Out of breath, head swimming – like her words had been an ocean and he had only now surfaced. The ink still shone, curls and loops, a thin scrawling thread.

He folded the letter back up into his coat. Across the bedroom, the Prince slept, his shape indistinct under the blanket. So defenseless it almost felt intimate. The bedroom window was too high up the building to aim through properly, and the sheer wall below would be unscalable to most – but Corvo could climb it. If he could, others must. How many nights had the Prince sunk into unconsciousness in this room, unprotected by his resting guards? He had survived through all of them.

And still, Corvo was here. In this chair grown familiar with use. Breathing air that smelled of brine rather than burned oil and rain. Was Dunwall saved at all? Did he care? The world had lost a gentle influence, a southern wind of change, and the ache of her passing was a bruise that wouldn't fade – would only deepen, and darken, and rot. In a moment of bilious bitterness, Corvo thought: better that the plague swallowed the city whole. Better that every eye in Gristol ran red than have her lowered in the ground.

All he could see of the Prince was a tuft of black hair, and the vulnerable slope from shoulder to waist. The line of his sword burned at his hip.

He did not sleep.

[k-xxiv]

There was one thing that was different, though. When she looked at Will now, she no longer felt any pain.

Will saw her then, and smiled through the hair that blew across his face. He reached up to push it back. “That’s a new dress, isn’t it?” he said as she came down the stairs. “Not one of Jessamine’s.”

She nodded, and waited resignedly for him to say something sarcastic, about her, Jessamine, the dress, or all three.

“It suits you. Odd that gray would make your eyes look blue, but it does.”

She looked at him in astonishment, but before she could do more than open her mouth to ask him if he was feeling all right, the carriage came rattling around the corner of the Institute with Cyril at the reins. He pulled up in front of the steps, and the door of the carriage opened; Charlotte was inside, wearing a wine-colored velvet dress and a hat with a sprig of dried flowers in it. She looked as nervous as Tessa had ever seen her. “Get in quickly,” she called, holding her hat on as she leaned out the door. “I think it’s going to rain.”

[ot4-official]

Soulmate AU

In which Jessamine and Oliver can hear each other’s thoughts ~

Whatever the lesson was that the teacher was teaching, she didn't care.  She wasn't paying attention.  Of course she'd receive a one hundred percent on the test, but for now she was bored in class. The faux wooden desktop was covered in blue ink from her anxious hands, but at least they were tasteful doodles rather than drawings of dicks or other reproductive organs. 

Thinking of dicks again, huh?  Of course he'd chime in now.  Jessamine's eyes rolled. Does your mind tune out until it hears a keyword that you're looking for?  Did you write a list?  She could feel excitement down the bond.  He was probably excited that she was actually being playful back with him. Wouldn't you like to know?  For the first time since meeting him, she decided she wouldn't mind meeting him.  Jessamine quickly wiped that thought from her head before he could receive it.  She knew he was respecting her wishes, because it would be very easy for him to just shout his name down the bond.  But as long as she didn't, he wouldn't do it. Besides, nothing would ever work between them.  He probably lived in England if his accent was anything to go by. She sighed, not knowing what to say back to him as she tapped her pen against the desk. Are you okay?  Jessamine supposed he probably caught her shift in mood from playful to sad, but she could write that off as anything.  She was usually sad anyways. Yeah, I'm alright.  Just a boring math lecture. She felt a spike of emotion, something between shock, hope, and fear. Yikes, are you okay?  She didn't have anything other to do than have a conversation with him right now. 

I, too, happen to be in a math class currently. Jessamine became confused from that statement.  If he lived in England, they would've been five hours ahead.  He would've been ending his class with math, but it could've been a late class. Taking a late math class?  A pang of sadness was felt down the bond, and Jessamine decided that this conversation was evoking too much emotion from both parties for her liking. So you do live in England?  He was not about to get an answer from her.  She'd think he'd know by now that she wasnt going to tell him anything about herself. That's for me to know. And me to find out? Now, I didn't say that, did I?  She enjoyed toying with him too much.  He seemed like a good guy.  Actually, he seemed like a great guy.  That's what she was afraid of.  All the ones who seemed great turned out to be trash.  ~ She was going to be late to her class, but if she had a nickel for every time she was late, she'd be a millionaire.  Her teachers didn't give her many tardies, if only because she was the only one who ever wrote interesting material for them.  She walked to the double set of doors, but just as she went to pull it open, someone coming from the other side shoved it open hard enough to send Jessamine flying backwards.  Her notebooks skidded to the side of her as her tailbone rattled enough to shock her whole spine. "Fuck." "Oh my god, I am so sorry.  Oh gosh, are you alright?  I'm so sorry.  Here,"  That was the same voice she heard in her head almost every day, there was no doubt about that.  Her eyes grew. "Wh-what, what, the, what the, h-hell.."  As she looked up at him, he looked down to her at the same time and seemed to come to the realization of who he had just run into.  "No... no w-way. No f-fu-fucking w-way."  Jessamine was not about to believe that her British soulmate lived in not only America, but the same city as her, and went to the same school as her. The bell rang through the school signaling that they would both be tardy, and everything that Jessamine knew of her soulmate knew that being late would practically give him hives. "I... I don't even..."  He ran his hands through his hair, and that was when Jessamine realized how hot he was.  Damn, he was perfect.  Tall, slightly tanned, dark hair, and glorious muscles.  His style was amazing too.  Not like he could say the same for her.  She was a mess. She was wearing a Henley shirt with a gray and black flannel over top, and on top of that a black raincoat.  She had ripped black jeans on and a pair of ratty red converse that she had happened to find at Goodwill. "Shouldn't you two get to class?"  Mrs. Taylor walked through a door, finding quite the sight before her with Jessamine still on the ground and her favorite student standing above her. "I- we- yeah. We'll get there." He didn't even look away from Jessamine as he replied to the old woman. She shook her head and left, the clicking of her heels echoing down the hallway. "Do you want to go get coffee? Please?"  If he was willing to skip class from her, then she knew she was important to him. "I'm still on the fucking ground."  She couldn't help the eye roll that happened.  But above that, she couldn't deny that she was excited. This person was handpicked for her, out of everyone in the world, he was hers.  But that could be a load of crap.  She knew they didn't always work.  It could be completely random, a random person selected. "Damnit I'm sorry, what kind of gentleman am I?" He held his hand out for her to take, and she took it, an immediate wave of something going through her mind that felt like everything just snapped into place.  Everything just felt right. She looked to him to see if he had felt something, but he just had a warm smile on his face. With her hand in his, and her eyes locked with his emerald irises, she decided it was too much.  She was only 17 and she had supposedly just met the person she was supposed to spend the rest of her life with. Her hand pulled from his grip, the cold air feeling just a little bit sharper out of his grasp. "I, I don't think I should get coffee. I have to go, go to class." She bent down and grabbed all of her stuff from the tiled floor. "Wait, no.  Please, I finally am meeting you, and we've been so close this whole time.  Please, let's just give it a try."  She tried to walk away but he followed her through the hallways like a wounded puppy. "That doesn't m-mean anything.  Just because some stupid force threw us, us, us together doesn't mean we have to be betrothed."  She thought of her parents, and their relationship despite the fact that they were supposed to be soulmates. Soulmates didn't exist.  Some people had inexplicable bonds between their minds, but that didn't mean they were the perfect pair to be wed and have children. She was not expected to be in a relationship with him, and she could think of more than a few ways to try and get that point across to him.  And most of them involved hurting his emotions.  Maybe if she hurt him hard enough, he'd stop talking to her.  She was trouble.  That's everything anyone ever thought when they looked at her.  And this preppy teenage boy needed to stay out of her path of destruction. "Hey, listen-"  She would not listen. "Looks like th-this is my c-class."  She slipped inside the door, praying that he wouldn't be ballsy enough to enter in after her.  Luckily he didn't, and Jessamine slid into the back of the classroom and put her head down on the desk.  This day was giving her a migraine.

[rowankingsleyy]

Like this if you want to plot with Rowan (we know we’re not new but we could always use new connections) =)

NAME: ROWAN JESSAMINE KINGSLEY

NICKNAMES: Ro, Winnie (close friends only)

AGE: 28

PRONOUNS: She/Her

OCCUPATION: Published Author/Freelance Baker

HEIGHT: 5′1

BIRTHDAY: May 11th, 1992

ZODIAC SIGN: Taurus

PARENTS: Cassandra and Tony Kingsley

SIBLINGS: Rett Kahale (half sibling)

ALIGNMENT: Neutral Good

MBTI: ISFJ

MORE UNDER THE READ MORE =)

TW: domestic violence, sexual assault, anxiety, eating disorders, mention of death, illness, drugs

SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

Rowan was born to Cassandra and Tony Kingsley in the early summer of 1992, at which point things were already strained between the two-some because of Tony’s alcohol problem and Cassie’s generally meek personality.

Rowan’s half-brother took a leading role in her care from a very young age, not just because her dad was useless, but also because their mother was so distracted by her need to please Tony that she dropped the ball often.

Both her brother and her saw things they certainly shouldn’t have, were told things that no children should be told, and occasionally went without for no reason other than Tony liking control, but he never hurt them physically.  However, he did hurt their mother.  

Less than a year after her brother turned 18 and moved out of the house, their mother died of an aneurysm suddenly and unexpectedly.

Despite how Rowan’s father treated her mother, the loss of her broke him and send him on a 3 month bender that only ended because he was booked with vehicular manslaughter and his 3rd DWI.

Luckily, Rowan only spent a few weeks in foster care before the court allowed her brother to assume custody over her.

From the moment her brother joined, the club became her family.  The wives and daughters of the club were the people who taught her everything she knows about being a girl, doing make up, doing her hair, navigating boys.  (This is probably why she went through a blue eyeshadow phase at 17)

Rowan is a textbook overachiever and perfectionist, she always had all As, was always in 6 clubs, and held officer positions in every single one including the dance team.  While she did hold officer positions, she never really was one to take front and center--she prefers the positions of the people behind the scenes keeping things together.  (secretary, treasurer, anything that has to do with organizational skills.

While over her high school years she wrote a lot, and even published one of her short stories in a local newspaper, she didn’t write her first full novel until she went away to college at 18.  No one ever read that novel, it hit the trash during its 5th round of editing. 

At 18 she received a full scholarship to UC Berkley and left Charming for the first time to go to school first time.  She lived in the dorms all 4.5 years and graduated with a degree in English, minoring in Psychology.

If you ever ask Rowan what she’s afraid of, she’ll tell you losing control again.  She notes two prominent times of completely losing control over her life, one fairly recent, and the other while she was away at college.  While she was away, she went out fairly often with her friends and one night someone slipped something into her drink.  Nothing happened, she made it home without incident, but the way it made her feel, the way she felt victimized or the potential of being so set her off.  She had two drop three of her classes and extend her time in college an extra semester because of how hard she spun out, trying to control things that she wouldn’t typically even think about.  She started her senior year 20 pounds lighter with 0% of the friends she had started her Junior year with.

While she was away at college her brother became a father, which meant frequent trips home to visit and help out with her niece who quickly meant enough to her to be her own.    

She returned home from school at 23 and worked in a bakery until she could live off of her cookie business (at 25 her cookie business was self sufficient).  

While she was growing her cookie business, she began writing her first professional novel and completed it at 26.  She sold it that very same year, and published it at 27.

While it changed her life or the better and got her foot in the door with the publishing world, publishing her book also led to the the single most traumatizing thing she has ever experienced.  

While she was marketing her book, the marketing manager became very demanding of Rowan and her time, which often led to them being together very late at night.  One night, while out of town for a book reading, he pushed himself on Rowan.  This assault led to the second occurance of Rowan losing complete control and her life suffering because of it.

After the assault, Rowan threatened to blow the whistle, and in return he threatened her career so she is still with that publishing company with him as her marketing manager.  

As of now, Rowan is in the process of getting her second book published, filling in as mom as best she can for her niece, running her cookie business and holding cookie classes, and trying to make amends for the bonds she broke when she spun out last.

TENDENCIES

Because of how contentious Rowan’s early childhood was, she has a pretty anxious mind that is always running on 100.  Her thoughts come a mile a minute and they can be pretty difficult to stop.  Melatonin is her best friend.  

When she loses control over things in her life (hELLO we meet again control-less childhood) she controls everything she can, and that manifests differently every time.  Controlling what she eats to the point of malnourishment, controlling every single word of what she’s writing, putting herself on lockdown until whatever she’s working on is      p e r f e c t.  

She fixates on her mistakes, in high school if she answered to the wrong name during roll she would be thinking about it for the rest of the day.

She bakes in excess when she’s trying to think through something, the measurements and muscle memory movements help calm her brain into being able to process whatever is on her mind.

She’s always been a writer, from the very first time she had to write in her 4th grade ELA class.  That only grew through Middle and High School creative writing classes.  She’s always loved exploring the stories and that it was something that she could perfect through six or seven round of editing.

Sticky notes cover her bedroom walls because of how quickly her thoughts come and go, her ideas for books do NOT come in order and she can often be found starring at her walls with her little scribbles trying to figure out what order they should go in.

For someone who would be considered the ‘bright & shiny’ type, she has a thing for researching and watching shows about serial killers.  She can rattle off facts like its her day job.  

Because of how quiet she can be, sometimes folks assume she’s innocent or that she doesn’t know anything, but in reality the opposite is true.  She’s spent so much time watching and analyzing everyone and everything that she knows much more that she lets on or that any civilian should.

She learned how to play guitar in college (not very well) and is a pretty damn good singer, but she’d never be the type to want to be front and center in front of a crowd.  She mostly uses these talents as a means to an end in writing mini stories with lyrics.  It appeases her in the in between period of having finished a book and being able to start a new one.

All floral, all the time.  Enough said.

GENUINELY afraid of birds and giant frogs

I’ll probably add to this it’s 1am and I’m tired.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

high school friends/enemies

someone who delivers cookies for her

women who influenced her growing up within the club

club members who are like family

someone who mentored her in her baking

friends she lost when she spun out during college

literally anything

ESTABLISHED CONNECTIONS

wherever i go, you bring me home Rett Kahale// her brother.  her parent.  rowan is extremely close to her brother, as kids they were all each other had.  he’s done everything he could to give her a normal childhood, to make up for her parents’ lapses.  she would do just about anything for him or his daughter.  

can't stop staring, at those oceans eyes, burning cities, and napalm skies. fifteen flares inside those ocean eyes Lev Finnerty// no title.  but he’s the only man who has ever quieted her brain long enough for her to both lose her breath and catch it.  they’ve kissed a few times and have something comparable to a magnetic field between them, but lev broke it off out of respect for her brother.

i'll stand up with you forever, i'll be there for you through it all Natalie Cassadaga// her sister.  they may not have grown up together, but because of how her brother took Nat in the very same way he did her they bonded to an extent that would have been unfathomable had she not experienced it.  barring childhood, they’re sisters, no buts.

i’m a mess, i’m a loser, i’m a hater, i’m a user Freddie Dawson// her confidant.  this is the only person outside of nat who gets to see rowan admit to being a mess.  freddie gets the 100% honest version of rowan, usually with a little bit of liquid courage.

you can leave me in the dark if that's all I get from you Maximo Sanchez // her ex.  they dated in secret for 8 months before her assault.  when she spun out after the assault, she didn’t tell him and she pushed him away.  she fucked up the relationship, but she’s a little bitter about how easily he gave up on her.  

you're ripped at every edge but you're a masterpiece Angela Hunter // the best friend.  an unlikely pair given their age difference.  regardless of the time that’s passed since angie left, they picked right back up like no time had lapsed. they did so without judgement or awkward pauses.  they eat, they drink, they gossip.  they support each other when needed.  rowan is considered an aunt to Lily.  lots of cookies and weed cupcakes to be had.

'cause they’re gonna tell you all the rules to break, to take away that light Leyla Aslan // her roommate.  the boldness to rowan’s softness.  how different they are makes them work, they bring balance to each other (and rationalize the one another when they go too far).  

If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a baby Rowan picture, here.

[laur-rants]

Fic Update – Wolfbann

Chapter 13 - With Starved Intentions

Fandom: Dishonored Ship: Corvo/Daud, Past Jessamine/Corvo Rated: Mature Chapter Synopsis: We roll back time to check in on Corvo.

*Note: The read more may not appear for mobile users. For this, I sincerely apologize. The best way to avoid this is to blacklist #long post

AO3 Link

Previous :: First :: Next

“Find me. Find Emily.”

Heavy feet hit wet stone, claws crashing into tile and cement high above the city. The beat of the Heart and his own breathing pounded in his ears, shaggy head shaking off rain just to have more fall down, rolling off his fur in waves. His chest heaved, hungering for air, as his senses spread out, combing every potential scent and sound for what he searched so desperately for.

Find Daud. Find Emily.

Despite his earlier eagerness, Corvo Attano needed to concede to the truth that this task of finding the leader of the Whalers was easier said than done.

His lip curled back and he growled out his frustrations as once again his senses led him down another dead end. It had been hours now of relentless scouring and it was sapping away all of his remaining energy in the process. At least his fur kept the rain off his skin-- but for how long? He shook his head again, more to stave off exhaustion than to clear his head of water.

A pack of rats glared up at him from the deserted alleyway, beady eyes watching him in the dark. He eyed them for only a moment before his hungry jaws were moving of their own accord, snapping for a plump rodent body. The rats scattered against his assault: a second attempt hit home and a fat bull rat crunched in his jaws, the sensation fulfilling a deep-seated need, his huge body rumbling in satisfaction.

Void, he was hungry. Enough so that even giant rats tasted like a delicacy.

The first went down easy and he started after another before he caught himself, his muscles seizing as he fought for control. He wasn't here on the streets of Dunwall, getting soaked in the first rains of the season, just to have a literal gutter feast. He needed to find Emily. There had to be a trail he could follow or-

Movement at his feet. His teeth flashed. Bone crunched and a tiny squeal was swallowed up into his jaws and down his throat once again.

The second rat tasted even better than the first did and his body groaned in relief.

Maybe I've pushed myself too hard, Corvo thought to himself, a primal side of his mind taking over with every step towards the next rat down the alley. I can't be of any use to Emily half-dead from exhaustion.

It was sound enough advice and a good enough excuse for him to coalesce into the shadows, chasing the next pack of a dozen brown-grey bodies.

Outsider's ass, he was starving.

“Careful, Corvo,” The Heart whispered in his ear, all but unheard. “The rats carry their own secrets.”

He heard the warning without it registering, his body already working towards its stomach-filling goal. His ears strained against the loud chorus of rain hitting stone and gravel and iron and instead listened for the tiny pitter-patter of feet on the ground, of the high-pitched shrieks of the rats as they traveled in their packs, looking for their own body to devour. The Void let his senses stretch, opening up the trails of the rats unseen by normal eyes, and he beelined to follow them down into the sewers and around multiple bends.

“There is much death down here,” the Heart whispered to him. “Both man and hound, all are feasts for the rats in the river.”

“Which will then be a feast for me,” Corvo growled back to it, brushing aside the disappointment he felt leaking through the connection he shared with the macabre device now lodged in his own chest. “And who are you to judge? You don't need to eat.”

“No judgement passes these lips,” the Heart responded back, “only truth.”

His nose curled back in annoyance; even if the Heart was part of the late Empress, it and Jessamine were barely alike. This fact didn't stop the constant ache of his own heart, knowing the Empress's was beating so close to his own once again.

Small feet scrabbled out of water and against crumbling brick. Corvo's head shot up, listening intently. Somehow, inexplicably, the Heart began to pulse faster.

Was he close? Had he accidentally stumbled on a lead?

The rats held their own secrets, after all.

Slowly, he slunk through the shadows, his huge body smoking like a silent, oily mass through the sewer, following the sounds of the rat pack. His stomach protested but he ignored it, his focus intent on whatever was making the Heart go haywire. Another bend rounded, until finally, Corvo caught up with his quarry.

It was definitely a rat pack-- and from the disgusting, wet sounds they were making, they were eating a drowned corpse. Corvo sneered, ears going back as his body whispered through the sewer opening and into a larger boiler area. At the far end stood a figure near a large furnace; hunched, thin, and feeding the rats in the low light. A soft humm was the only other sound aside from the chewing of the rats and the drip drip drip of the rainwater from above.

Corvo let out a breath -- his body demorphed on the exhale until he stood, human again, the Heart in his pocket as he pulled the mask out to cover his face. Now smaller, he hugged the wall, closing in on the figure the rats surrounded.

“Twenty-two, twenty-three, that's how many have come back to me,” the figure sang in a broken lilt, and as Corvo adjusted his lens he could see it was an elderly woman with a hunched back and greying, done-up hair. She wore the clothes of nobles, but from a bygone era and falling into deep disrepair. When she turned, he saw her eyes were glassed over, unseeing. His breath caught as she looked at him - through him - regardless.

“Where are the other lovelies, I wonder? Did they get caught in a trap, or shot by those nasty watch officers?” She stooped down a gnarled and scarred right hand: a white-furred, red-eyed rat ran up, sniffing and nuzzling her ear. “Infect them all, yes, just like my black-eyed groom said you would.”

Corvo jerked to a stop, breath catching. His body wished to flee but he stayed rooted to the spot. The Heart pounded out a panicked tune. Something wasn't right. This woman knew the Outsider, called him her groom...

He shouldn't be here. This wasn't the nest he was supposed to find.

“What's that my little one?” the old woman cooed as the rat sat on her shoulder, tickling her ear. “They were eaten? By those nasty overseer hounds? Or…”

She stopped. She turned. She took a deep breath in through her nose.

Corvo clenched his fist, gathering as much magic as he could muster.

“Did you bring a friend home, I won-” is all Corvo caught before time stopped, the color of the world draining as silence rushed in on him.

He heaved. His limbs shook as unexpected perspiration beaded under his mask. His hand wavered, his hold on the Void weaker with every passing, hanging second.

He was too tired, too drained -- too hungry. And stopping time was clearly beyond his limit.

Corvo took a step back and reality rushed back on him, sound and color and time hitting him at once as his body staggered. His foot barely hit the floor before he was bodily thrown, claws smashing into his mask with a head-rattling screech.

His head throbbed painfully as the world twisted. His own claws grew, scrambling for purchase on the soft floor of the room, shaking himself from the shock of the blow. Instantly dozens of bites stung into him, claws scraping across any part of his exposed flesh. He yelled out, throwing an arm; it was covered in rats, their beaded eyes bulging, teeth biting, ripping, clenching--

His claws dug into them and ripped two off his arm, just for another to replace them. They swarmed his back and his shoulders, biting at his mask, searching for weakness and openings. He fought with them all, growling, snarling, clawing, throwing-- anything to gain the upper hand. But they just kept coming, covering him, weighing him down until finally his body shuddered under the onslaught.

His form lurched, pulled, grew. The rats squealed in surprise as Corvo roared, bursting from the swarm, sending rats flying as his jaws snapped them out of the air. Bones crunched and rats fled at the sound of it, terrified of joining their dying brethren in the belly of this new beast.

But feeding was the last thing on Corvo's mind now. He seethed, anger coursing his vein as adrenaline pushed his transformed body into action, leaping free of the rats and their plague-ridden bites. He turned towards the door, to the way out, willing his legs to move, his body to turn to smoke.

The scream filling the air and the pungent odor of another was the only warning he had before he was rammed and thrown to the ground. The wind left him just as claws dug deep into the flesh of his deltoid, twisting and wrenching. He yowled, his right hand lashing out to grab the jaws of a greyed, ragged muzzle. Two glassy dead eyes glared through him, unseeing, mouth open and full of needled teeth as the other wolf laughed at him.

“Oh! It’s YOU! My lovelies brought me a real treat today!” That wild, deranged mind slammed into his and he recoiled, the scent of her reminding him of tiny cells and an executioner beating him to an inch of his life. “You, who destroyed my poor Sullivan's pretty face, I hoped so strongly for you to be led here, so I could properly punish you.

The old woman made for a thin, ragged, wolf-- body spindled and bony and greying out -- but her power was enormous. Corvo gaped under it, his own weakened form struggling against the combined weight of her mental and physical energy. He pushed her head back as she shrieked with laughter again, his own snarls completely drowned out. He ripped into the skin of her arm with his left hand, claws raking deep into the thin flesh and she screeched like a dying whale, finally pulling her claws from the joint of his shoulder. He panted, pushing her off of him, wasting no time before lunging on her, hoping to pin her down. He ignored the blood flowing hot down his arm as his jaws found an elbow and crunched.

The old hag screamed, clenching her fist. It glowed bright and Corvo gaped -- she had a mark too. He was stupefied by this fact for a second too long. Suddenly the sound of hundreds of pattering feet reached his ears, all getting louder, rushing their location. He looked, eyes widening and lip curling as a wave of rats appeared from all openings, all coming to the call of the witch-wolf, all under her command. He turned to swipe at the old wolf but she was gone, laughing from a corner of the huge room, humming out her awful tune even while in her hulking, spidery, form.

“Can the lost little pup find his way, or will his bones rest here, to rot and decay?”

Corvo's mind raced as his body panicked, the old wolf’s laughter shaking around his skull as he leapt away and crawled upwards, over a huge processing tank. Steam sprouted as rats poured from holes in the piping, their wet fur matted and their teeth flashing as they honed in on him, screeching and squealing. All the while the old croon hummed her song, perched like a horrible, laughing gargoyle. Corvo snarled and smoked to another vantage point, the siege of rats crashing behind him.

He had to get to her and stop the song. Otherwise, the room would be drowned in the weight of rats and rainwater.

His blood trailed. The rodents greedily devoured each drop, thirsty for more as they snapped as his feet, his fur, his claws. Corvo bit at them in turn, throwing their mangled bodies to the floor, watching as their brethren swallowed them, still screaming. The distractions were small, too small to do much in stopping the onslaught because still they came, while the wolf hummed and howled and sang.

Still the rats lept and snapped and left more and more wounds, taking flesh bit by tiny bit. It was annoying. It was tiring and frustrating and soon his arm was burning from the constant movement, adrenaline and the fear of being eaten alive being the only things keeping him going, until--

He latched onto the old wolf, reaching for her just as the rats reached for his tail, his ankles, digging in their teeth just as he dug claws into her leg, dragging her down.

“If I go down, ” he snarled, triumphant, “you go down with me.”

“Never!” She screeched, long claws slashing from a gnarled, scarred hand, lashing against his grip again and again. He snarled and whined, the burning at his ankles mixing with the burning at his arms but he couldn't let go, he refused--

A flash of gold slammed into the witch, throwing her off her perch and out of Corvo's grasp. The song cut off -- without direction, the rats faltered, confused, swarming in circles and over the bodies of their fallen. Corvo gasped at the sudden loss of the witch-wolf from his mind, the pressure lifting like a curse. He pulled himself from the receding rats, panting, looking for the old wolf and whatever had attacked her.

A screech, a growl, a fight between white and gold as the witch tangled with a new wolf, fangs flashing and eyes glowing. Like a phantom it blinked in and out, striking hard and fast, before throwing her bodily into pressurized piping.

It was all too fast for his tired eyes to watch. His shoulder burned and he wobbled on his injuries, only his residual adrenaline keeping him upright. He panted, the magic of his lupine form misting away; the injuries persisted into his human state and he clutched his shoulder, hissing in pain.

A familiar mind brushed his and he staggered against it as the golden wolf appeared at his side. It's face was sharp and intent, its hazel eyes boring into Corvo's glassy, masked ones.

“Lord Attano,” it spoke to him, and Corvo was reminded of that mind from behind the wall, the one he chased across rooftops just yesterday, though it felt like ages ago. “I apologize for the delay. You were hard to find once Granny Rags got ahold of you.”

“Granny--” Corvo rasped out, his broken voice even more strained from his wounds. The wolf tossed his head and looked down; there the old witch battled with the same golden-furred wolf, near identical to the one standing next to him. “How--”

“My brother, Thomas,” the wolf clarified. “We won't be able to fend her off for long, and she really wants to kill you. Can you travel on your own?”

Corvo's mind reeled with questions, but the pain of his left deltoid made moving his whole arm a taxing chore. He clenched his fist, calling the Void, and nodded. “Enough to get out of here, at least.”

The wolf nodded once before blinking away. Corvo looked around, disoriented for a moment before spotting him on the above piping, leading out of the sewer. His fist clenched; with a whisper of Void he was following, up, up, leaving the angry screeching howls of Granny Rags behind. His entire arm was on fire but he didn't stop, not until they were finally out, the angry rain from the downpour hitting his face and filling his ears. The cold was a shock after the stifling humidity of the sewers below, and Corvo heaved, his whole head swimming. It was only then that he noticed the flooded area he had exited in, the dilapidated buildings reaching for the inky-brown sky, and the large brown wolf waiting for him.

His arms shook. His vision blurred. And he collapsed against the weight of the questions filling his head.

------

“Is he okay?”

“Did he wake up yet?”

“What will Daud say?”

“What about Emily?”

“Emily…”

Whispers -- of the Void, of whales, of voices -- drove him to waking. Consciousness came slowly, but as soon as it did, Corvo was jerking upright, chest seizing in panic as burning pain lanced up and down his left side.

“Lord Attano,” a muffled voice said in a hushed, nervous whisper. “Please, calm yourself or your stitches will stretch.”

Corvo breathed. He turned a wild eye on the man speaking to him only to find a whaler mask and jacket peering back at him, sitting at his bedside. The man's hand was outstretched, as if to catch Corvo should he falter, but he twitched back upon seeing the look on the Royal Protector's face. Corvo's lip rolled back, already feeling his teeth going heavy with fangs. The Whaler coughed, hrmmed, and leaned away.

“Apologies for startling you, but I really cannot afford to have you more damaged than you already are.” He shifted, before bowing his head slightly. “Perhaps this will make more sense if I try a different way--”

Corvo felt a tentative mind brush against his and he stiffened in response to the contact. His instinct was to recoil but this mind was familiar-- he knew this individual.

Corvo squinted. “It's you.”

The Whaler sagged in relief; he was surprisingly expressive for a person who kept his face hidden behind a mask. “Yes, it's me. Or should I say, I'm the one you came in contact with in the Distillery District, and who pulled you from Granny Rags.” He extended a gloved hand. “My name is Connor. It is a, ah , pleasure to make your formal acquaintance.”

More whispers tickled at the back of his skull like a persistent itch, coming and going like flies flitting in and out his vision. He looked down at the Whaler’s-- at Connor's outstretched hand and then looked to his left arm, stuck in the sling as it was. Connor picked up on the cue; he switched hands and Corvo shook it tentatively.

“Connor,” he rasped out. “I don't know if I want to thank you, or kill you.”

To his surprise, Connor chuckled, and a measurement of warm amusement trickled over their tendril of a connection.

“You'd be surprised at how many people meet me and say that exact line.”

Despite himself, Corvo's lip twitched. He looked down to his arm; most of his chest was done up, wrapped tight, the wound under the bandages still very tender. Connor twitched, catching his attention.

“Ah, Lord Attano, I'd leave that be if I were you,” Connor explained. “Misha did his best, but that old hag ripped right at the place where your shoulder meets your chest. You're going to need some time to recover from that.”

Corvo squinted, not understanding. “I recovered from gunshots and dog bites and torture wounds just fine,” he growled out, his voice scratchy and pained. “Why is this any different?”

“Well you were wounded by another marked whale-wolf,” Connor explained as if it was the most obvious thing. “Her magic is in the wound. It will take longer to heal, even for a Marked individual ike yourself.”

“I see.” Corvo swung his legs over the bed he was laying on, righting himself and ignoring the protests his whole left side gave him. The room he was in was cluttered and not the cleanest-- he saw tables on one end where another Whaler dallied in their work and elixirs and assassin's blades alike sat waiting. The shirt and pants he wore were new, as well as dry. He frowned at Connor.

“Where are my belongings?” He growled out. “As much as I appreciate your hospitality, I cannot stay here.” He moved to get up.

Connor stood just as fast, blocking his path. Even while in a pained hunch, Corvo noted he was taller than the Whaler. His eyebrows shot up -- just how old was this assassin?

“I’m well aware of your mission, Lord Attano, but I'm afraid you cannot leave just yet --”

“If you know my mission but keep me here against my will, then you will understand why I cannot guarantee your survival should I attempt-- and succeed -- in an escape,” he snarled, body bristling. The other Whaler stiffened, suddenly attuned to the conversation. Connor stilled as well, as if struck by an unseen force.

“We can't let you leave yet,” he gasped out, as if the mere action of going against Corvo's wishes was having an effect on him. “Because our Master is on his way back, and he has Emily with him.”

Corvo stopped breathing. His brain stuttered. The buzzing of so many unwanted voices rattled in his head until it was impossible to concentrate. Through the haze Connor's soft reassurance tugged him back to reality, buoying him like a lifeline. When he next focused in the Whaler, he saw the mask tugged off and in its place was the young face, dirty blonde hair, and hard hazel eyes of Connor looking back at him.

“Emily? She's here?”

Connor nodded, his sweat-sheened face unwavering in its conviction.

“She will be soon.”

“And your master?” Corvo choked out. “He's--?”

Connor swallowed.

“Yes, he's Daud, sir.” Then, he fidgeted. “Come on. You probably have a lot of questions that will need tending to.”

------

“The Rudshore District wasn't always our base operations. We only moved in a few years ago, before the plague began and after the gangs had cleared most of the leftover belongings. Once the area was well and truly abandoned, it was perfect for our interests.”

Corvo followed Connor carefully down from the infirmary, his whole side flaring with every misstep. He grimaced through it and Connor was patient enough, doubling back and filling the air with chatter as Corvo followed.

“I guess it makes sense that the assassins weren’t always here,” Corvo mused as Connor helped him transverse a particularly flooded building. Corvo huffed in annoyance once they reached the other side. Blinking through space on his own was one thing; transversing space as someone else's luggage was another nauseating sensation altogether. “This would be a lot easier if I could just use my mark to do this myself,” he rumbled out.

“Comes with an attack from Granny; her magic doesn't mesh well with ours. It will be worse for you because your whole arm was near incapacitated. Give it a few days and you'll be able to call for the Void properly.”

“How do you know this?”

“Experience,” was the simple response. Corvo nodded, hating the weariness of his limbs and his own ineffectiveness. It made sense that the greatest threat to an Outsider's monster would be another, different Outsider monster, but another question remained.

“Granny Rags has different magic? Doesn't it come from the Void through the mark, in exactly the same way?”

Connor stiffened, looking uncertain. “I'm not really sure how it works, but I guess it would be like Daud's bond; not all of us get the same powers despite the same origin. The Mark affects different people in different ways. Even your powers are different to Daud's, though very similar.”

Corvo chewed that over silently, flexing the fingers of his left hand from where they sat in their bandaged sling. The pain inflicted from the witch lingered, and the Void fled from his hand as a response.

“So where are we going now?” He queried, after some time spent navigating the buildings and large open spaces. Now that it was midday, the rains had ceased, making travel marginally easier.

“To the Commerce building,” Connor said, waving his hand toward the looming structure. “My brother is there waiting on us, and it's likely where Daud will be once he gets back. His office is on the third floor.”

“And Daud will have Emily with him?” Corvo growled out.

“Yes, I am certain he would not return to Rudshore without her.”

“Why did he care so much to kidnap her in the first place?”

Connor looked back shiftily, unease coloring his young features.

“I wouldn't necessarily call it a kidnapping. Thomas and I got express consent from Emily first and we exposed our true nature to gain her trust. If anything, we saved her from a cruel fate, at great potential cost to our own well-being.”

“You picked her up?”

Connor blinked. “Yes, Thomas and I were asked specifically to go and collect her and bring her unharmed to Daud.”

“So do you know what Burrows originally planned for Emily?”

Connor shook his head, carefully ducking under a passageway. “It’s unclear, but Daud knew enough to be spurred into action and sent us to pull her out of the Tower.” Corvo followed after him, hissing as his arm flared, prompting Connor to send him a mental apology. Corvo shoved it away and Connor stilled, acquiesced.

“Sorry,” he muttered out when Corvo straightened up. “It's…you'll come to understand it's involuntary.”

“Will I?” Corvo said, more defensive in his comeback than he planned to be. Connor sighed nonetheless.

“That is the eventual hope, Lord Attano. Otherwise, well…” he shrugged. “Come on. Thomas is this way.”

They traveled the rest of the way in silence, or whatever silence was in a place like the Whaler base. The buzz remained at the back oh his skull, coming and going like catching snippets of conversation while moving through a crowd. More than once Corvo peered over his shoulder, suspiciously eying one of the lingering Whalers before Connor was tugging him along again. They eventually reached the Chamber of Commerce; a huge building left to rot, with Jessamine's likeness standing sentinel out front. The Heart lurched painfully in his pocket; unseen by the Whalers, it hadn't been removed from his person like the rest of his belongings. It was oddly sobered; when Corvo silently inquired, it responded simply:

“Daud's men. They are shrouded from my sight, their secrets too numerous to speak aloud.”

As they entered the building proper, a single Whaler stood in a training ring, pacing lightly, looking the perfect picture of constrained agitation. Connor made a motion for Corvo stay put before hailing his companion. The Whaler immediately turned to him, striding over stiffly.

“Connor, how is he? And why aren't you wearing your mask, you can't just walk around withou-” the other Whaler stopped dead, the glassy eyes of his mask finding Corvo. The Lord Protector frowned, shifting uneasily before crossing the threshold.

“Lord Attano,” Connor started. “Allow me to introduce you to my twin, Thomas. He can answer any questions you might still have, to the best of his ability.” Thomas bowed, extending a hand to shake, which Corvo obliged.

“You both saved me from that witch, correct?” His voice rasped out, and Thomas was quick to answer with a nod. Corvo's eyes narrowed on both of them.

“Why?”

Thomas tilted his head. He studied Corvo for a moment, his expressionless mask unmoving. Corvo frowned, unsure why this was a difficult question, until finally--

“You're in the hidden base of the Whalers, Daud's assassin group, the extended arm of the Knife of Dunwall. We are all trained killers, Lord Attano--” Corvo visibly bristled and Thomas quickly changed tune “--but you're our guest here; the end goal was always to try and get you into the Flooded District intact. We saved you because we needed you to trust that even among killers, you have nothing to fear. At Daud's behest, you are safe.”

Corvo gaped at him. Connor sighed, his chest heaving.

“You could have led with that, you know,” he muttered to his brother, his own face sneering. Thomas stiffened, mulling that over.

“Ah, yes, I see how that came off as threatening. I simply meant to assure the factual gravity that no one will kill you, not even Daud. Our mission is simply to return Emily safely to you. We've kept her safe until you arrived, as promised.”

Corvo blinked at him, suddenly feeling the ache in his shoulder even more than he when he woke up.

“‘As promised?’ By who? Are you doing this all because Emily asked you to?”

Thomas tilted his head.

“Well no. Mostly, it's because you demanded Daud to.”

Corvo stared at them.

“What?” Corvo growled out, uncomprehending. “I never demanded Daud to do anything of the sort, I should want the man dead, not be looking to him for babysitting favors!”

Thomas studied Corvo curiously. “And yet, you gave him valuable information on Emily's location less than 24 hours ago. This allowed Daud to rush out in time to save her from an untimely end at the hands of a power-hungry and manipulative witch.”

Corvo gaped, his face flushing from anger and embarrassment. The Whalers had been privy to that conversation, he realized. It wasn't a secret; perhaps nothing between Daud and his men ever was.

But him? Corvo? Demanding Daud to keep a promise regarding Emily’s safety?

“But that was just a day ago,” Corvo rasped out, voice breaking as he didn't deny the truth of Thomas's statement. “I never spoke to Daud to tell him to do anything with Emily, not while in Coldridge--”

The look Connor and Thomas exchanged stopped his explanation short.

“About a week after the Empress's assassination we were asked, without explanation, to pick up Emily Kaldwin,” Thomas told him. “At the time, Daud’s request sounded crazy; fool-hearted. Now, however, we know that he turned you, however accidental that was, and since that moment his and your minds have been linking together. This means any stray thoughts or strong emotion you felt, Daud may have felt as well.”

Corvo's head unpleasantly buzzed. He swallowed thickly, the Heart pounding out a stuttered rhythm in his pocket. He remembered those moments of phantom emotion, like he wasn't alone -- perhaps because, for a long time now, he hadn't been.

Connor and Thomas both shifted, watching him warily.

“Was there anything you were thinking about strongly, during those early days in Coldridge?”

Corvo breathed. They knew. They knew because they couldn't not know, with their thoughts linked to Daud. They were just waiting for Corvo to confirm it.

“Emily,” he choked out finally, his ruined throat catching on every word. “I was only thinking about getting back to Emily.”

Thomas nodded, clean and sharp.

“Exactly.”

[laur-rants]

Fic Update - Steady the Sword Ch 3

Fandom: Dishonored Pairing: Corvo/Daud [eventually] Rating: Mature Warnings: Canon-Typical Violence Notes: Now with more Read-more!

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The Isle of Tyvia.

For as inhospitable as the land is, it commands quite a few major exports around the Isles. One of those exports is spirits and ales; Tyvian wine is a highly sought after drink, and is said to rival the tastes of even Cullero’s legendary grapes. And then there is Tyvian silk and jewelry, which was so fine the old Princes of Tyvia swore by the beauty and grace it exuded. Lumber is also a strong export, as is their blood ox, the largest in the Isles. Tyvia is also known for its people, who bring a culture so rich, it is said to be unlike any other. To be Tyvian is to be a breed apart.

But there is a lesser known export from Tyvian that is used all across the Empire: salt. Preserved deep in Tyvia’s cold heart, trapped in the glaciers and permafrost, lies some of the most flavorful and mineral-rich salt in the land. Only by mining through the ice caverns can the salt be extracted, a salt that is said to hold a rare and exquisite flavor that comes from the Void itself. Of course such claims are nonsense, but it keeps the salt in high demand, and keeps the labor encampments like Utyrka funded, year after year.

That doesn't make the work of extracting ice and salt from the mines any easier. It's a job which is so hazardous, it's easier for the High Judges to sequester the job of harvesting the mineral onto the backs of their prisoners, rather than to endanger the lives of its citizens. Utyrka still claims more lives than any other labor camp in Tyvia, the inmates succumbing to everything from hypothermia to illness to fatigue to madness.

All in the name of delicious, flavorful, affordable salt.

At least the mines are warmer than the surface during the months of Darkness and High Cold. The temperature is constant and damp, meaning work is not stalled or encumbered by weather. Instead, hazards such as cave-ins, getting lost in dead ends, being impaled from salt stalactites, and gaseous buildup of substances like carbon dioxide replace the intense wind, snow, and ice of the surface.

One of the more risky and dangerous tasks for miners is opening up new pathways and traversing recently-found caverns and passageways. Cave-ins can happen at any time during these jobs, and there is no guarantee of a safe return, even if a vein of salt can be found.

But it's a necessary job, and the one that Corvo and Zhukov currently have set before them.

“It's a small cavern," Stine explains as they make their way down the tunnels through the mines, the proper path illuminated by glowing lanterns.

Stine, as it turns out, is a large Tyvian woman, towering a whole head above Corvo. Her auburn hair is braided behind her head in two large pleats.

“The first team of the season discovered it as soon as they started digging, meaning they had to stop to report it and we lost a whole day's worth of work. And we'll lose even more if you two don't quickly travel through the cavern and discover what's on the other side.”

Zhukov nods, taking all the facts into account. Corvo listens as well; he's no stranger to mine work, but most of his time down here has been spent in the larger caverns, where extraction is slowly taking place. This task will be the complete opposite and involve straining through small openings and carefully checking each room before moving on.

If anything, it is exactly this kind of work that he excels at. As does the skinny, ex-spy Kristopher Zhukov.

It takes a good thirty minutes of careful trudging to get down into the part of the glacier where the new extraction tunnel had been discovered. Stine explains that this tunnel is one of the older mines, with nearly all of it being thoroughly explored.

“To even find a new cavern down here is as surprising as it is exciting,” she says as she hands them their gear. The cavern reverberates sound in an odd way, and Corvo winces at how the noise rattles in his ears. Stine pauses, watching him closely. “You gonna be okay for this, Attano?”

Zhukov looks at him as well, watching him with an undercurrent of worry. As the sound of their voices quiet, so does his head, allowing him to wave it off.

“Yeah,” he says. “Just a headache.”

“Well, let us know if it gets worse. Zhukov, let us know if you get one too. We don't need you two dying down here due to leaked gases.”

“No, no, it's the sound. Voices are weird and amplified.”

Stine visibly relaxed. “Oh, we have had reports of that in this cavern, but nothing long-lasting. I would advise not to stick around down there too long, for your ears’ sake.”

Both of them nod, readying themselves to head into the cavern opening before them. It's more a slice in between two slabs of ice than an opening, one that is just large enough for a grown man to slide into. Corvo can feel a breeze moving through, signaling the cavern opening up further in. He sees Zhukov ready a lantern on his side, taking a deep breath.

“I'll head in first, then.”

A rope connects him to Corvo, just in case of emergency; he tugs on it experimentally to test its strength before ducking down and crawling in the space.

Both Corvo and Stine wait a few ticks, listening for Zhukov and watching the length of his rope. After a few minutes of waiting, Zhukov calls back through the icy crack.

“All clear. You ready, Corvo?”

“As ready as I can be,” he calls back, and gathers his own gear and lamp.

“Myself and another guard, Pierce, will be here to wait for you. However, from this point forward, you're on your own.”

Corvo nods, his fist clenching. Without another word he turns and slides through the opening after Zhukov, slithering in like a snake through water.

It is easy, almost too easy, to drop right back into the old routine of crouching, sneaking, and sliding to fit between a space. In record time, he slips through the crack and steadies himself, looking up at Zhukov who is waiting for him at the other end. Zhukov offers a smile and a hand, which Corvo takes to pull himself upright.

“Doing alright so far, Attano?”

“Just another day chasing after Emily in Dunwall Tower,” he says casually, lifting his lantern to get a look around. The cavern is definitely larger on this end, but darker, lacking the wired electricity that lit the other side. The lights from their lanterns bounce all around the shining ice walls, distorting the view and disguising pathways and features. The ringing in his ears returns, a stubborn tinnitus that buzzes like a fly he can't swat away. He frowns, straining his senses, trying to place the direction of the sound when--

“You must miss her a lot.”

Corvo turns to look at Zhukov, who is watching him closely. His own lantern light bounces awkwardly around the room, making the shadows lengthen on his face. Corvo realizes belatedly that this is the first time he's even talked about or just mentioned Emily or Jessamine to anyone for over two years. It’s just been easier to keep it a secret from everyone.

“Yes.” His heart pangs painfully in his chest. “I write to her every now and then, when I'm allowed. She writes back. I miss her terribly.”

“I know she's your daughter.”

“I figured as much.”

“And I'm sorry for your loss--”

“Come on, let's search the room,” Corvo says, cutting Zhukov off, not unkindly.

With plenty of headroom in the cavern, Corvo has no trouble distancing himself from Zhukov. He walks a few smooth paces away, all the while sweeping his lantern around the room, looking for more potential passageways.

“I'm sorry,” Corvo softly hears from behind him. “I didn't mean to pry.”

Corvo's heart beats loudly in his ears, memories flooding back unbidden. He does his best to take a steadying breath.

“It's fine. I just don't want to talk about it right now.”

He doesn't want to think about the sad voice that had whispered to him when he didn't want it to. He doesn't want to think about how Emily is in Dunwall Tower and he ishere, with no idea how she's feeling or what she's doing. His mind thinks back to her face, wet with tears and full of shock, calling for Corvo as the Whalers dragged her away and Daud had put a blade in Jessamine's chest, stopping her heart.

The Outsider had called it a gift to give that heart back to him, to hear that damned melancholy whisper in his ear. He had hated that heart as much as he had loved feeling it beat next to his own, murmuring secrets and opening his ears to the songs of runes and bone charms.

Suddenly, like a living memory, that old familiar song registers to his ears, reverberating in his chest. A nearby object was resonating, calling to him like a siren. He swallows, shaking his head, trying not to listen or follow the sound.

“Zhukov, have you found anything yet?”

“Not yet. These chambers aren't usually this big, though. If there are any leads, we should find them--oh!”

Corvo turns, joining Zhukov on the other side of the cavern. Zhukov's lantern is high above his head; as Corvo nears, their combined light reveals a large section of the cavern, breaking off into multiple tunnels. Unlike the natural formations around them, however, these were all carved into the glacial wall, smooth and uniform. Corvo takes a step forward, examining one of the tunnels.

“Strange. Someone has been here before.”

“But how is that even possible? This cavern was just found yesterday and it's not on any records.”

“Well, clearly someone was here before, and I don't think they were here to harvest salt.”

“Have any idea which one we should travel down first?”

Corvo thinks for a moment, before taking a breath. He lets his left hand burn as he pulls for the Void, drawing it over his eyes. The whispers follow his movement and he watches the pulses of energy flow down each cavern passageway. However, even with his advanced vision, nothing can cut through the gloom of the tunnels or reveal any secrets to him. The four paths continue too deep into the glacier for his sight to see.

He pulls back and waves off the Void, the world returning to normal, the hues realigning correctly and the whisper on the wind leaving his ears. He goes back to Zhukov, waiting a few paces away. As he nears, the thin man takes a few steps back, his eyes shining with trepidation and excitement.

“You--you did a thing didn't you?”

“Yes, I used the Void to look into the darkness. It's one of my-- gifts.” Gifts, curses; they are all the same to the Outsider.

Zhukov let's out a whistle.

“See anything interesting?”

Corvo shakes his head. “The tunnels lead far into the cave; too far even for the Void to show me. We'll either have to pick one and follow it to the end or split up, but I don't really like either option.”

Zhukov shifts, thinking. “Well. I might have an idea.” Corvo raises an eyebrow at him, silently asking him to continue. Zhukov licks his lips and shifts again. “Remember how I said I had another secret?”

“Sure.”

“This is it.”

Corvo looks at him as Zhukov sweeps an arm towards the tunnels. After a concerned beat, Corvo looks back at Zhukov.

“I'm not sure I follow. These tunnels are your secret? Did you-- carve them out?”

Zhukov shakes his head hastily and then goes up to each tunnel in turn, speaking as he does so.

“No it's just-- have you ever heard of deja vú? It's the feeling of experiencing something before, even though it's the first time you're having the experience.” He turns his lantern back to Corvo. “I've never been here before, but I've been here before.”

Corvo can feel the hair on his neck prickle uncomfortably. He isn't sure he's liking the implication of this.

“In your dreams, I'm guessing.”

“I--yes.”

“And I'm there too, in your dreams, aren't I.”

“I'm afraid so.”

“Shit. Shit.”

He paces angrily, trying not to take it out on Zhukov, mind reeling with thoughts and questions. Chiefly, if Zhukov was having dreams, was the Outsider showing himself to Zhukov? And if so, why the hadn't the Outsider told Corvo of this development? Even when Pierro was getting his nightly Outsider dreams, Corvo was completely aware. He knew . But this? This was another level entirely.

“This is how you knew I had a Mark,” Corvo laughs bitterly. “ Spirits, the dreams showed me using my Mark.”

“Yes, I mean...I had suspected. I didn't know what it was, really. I didn't even think the dreams were real. I started getting them before I saw you at Utyrka.”

Corvo stops pacing and stands, hands on hips, shaking his head. “Great. Well, here we are. We can't go back to the guards empty-handed. We have no choice but to move forward. Do you know which one of these Void-damned tunnels we are supposed to take?”

Zhukov's breath hitches and he looks back at the tunnels, a small sound escaping him. Corvo gives himself space to calm down and just breathe. He runs his fingers through his long black hair, trying and failing to straighten out his thoughts. The Outsider was involved now. That changed everything. It had told Corvo that Zhukov had a secret, he just didn't think it was anything like...like this.

“Corvo?”

Corvo’s head shoots back up, looking for Zhukov. He is standing sheepishly by the tunnels; Corvo sighs and comes over to stand with him.

“You don't know, do you,” he provides, only slightly dismayed.

“It's more than that.” Zhukov inclines his head, moving his lantern towards the tunnels. “Do you remember how I said I might need your help? Well, do you…You hear it too, don't you?”

Corvo searches Zhukov’s face, tries to formulate his response.

“What do you hear, exactly, Zhukov?”

Zhukov looks down and away, pacing the tunnels. “It-- it sounds like a whale, but sad. Like something crying, anyway. Is this what the ancient music sounds like?”

Corvo doesn't grace Zhukov with the knowledge that the ancient music from the Overseers’ boxes is one of the last sound anyone wants to hear. Ever.

“Do you know where it's coming from?” Corvo asks instead.

Zhukov deliberates for a moment, before finally choosing the far right tunnel. He looks at Corvo, face worried but determined. “This one. It’s-- it's this one.”

“Alright then, let's get moving.”

Zhukov wastes no time leading the way. Corvo waves his left hand across his vision, pulling the Void with him, listening for the whispers and any secrets the tunnel might reveal to him. He waits a moment, ears straining, until finally he hears it: the faint call of the Void, filling him with dread but pulling him forward just the same.

With every second that passes, Corvo can't help but think he's making a huge mistake.

At the same time, he also has no choice but to press onward, each step taking him deeper into the glacial cavern. Ahead of him walks Zhukov, his lantern swaying from his belt, casting long shadows. The tunnel they have chosen is exceptionally long and winding, and if his gazing into the Void was to be believed, offers no change in scenery. There are no other branches to the tunnel and the walls never change. Sometimes the passage widens and other times they close in, sometimes so close Zhukov and Corvo have to move through one at time, squeezing carefully through each opening.

More than once Corvo thinks he hears the lamenting of a long-dead whale and fears they've somehow crossed into the Void itself, but they never emerge onto a large floating platform in space, to which Corvo is eternally grateful.

It is a good while of careful forward progress before Zhukov finally speaks up.

“So, your Mark. How'd you get it?”

Corvo can hear the nervousness coloring his words, so he obliges in the invitation to chat.

“Well, a group of people claiming to be my friends broke me out of Coldridge before I was sentenced to be executed for the false accusation of killing the Empress. When I went to sleep that night, the Outsider came to me and Marked me as a way to change my fate. Guess the black-eyed bastard thought I'd give It a good show.”

“And then you got Emily back on the throne?”

“Yes, and I killed everyone in my way who needed to be brought to justice. Like Burrows.”

“Did you ever find the actual killer?”

“Yes. I did. It was a hired assassin; Daud.”

“I know of that name; Hiram hired him many times for jobs. Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“What? Why?” Zhukov sounds genuinely surprised as he glances back at Corvo.

“I--”

But Corvo doesn't have a response ready, because something finally floats into his vision: an object, glowing somewhere in the distance.

And all at once, the sounds grows stronger, filling his head and his chest.

“Zhukov, do you hear that?”

Zhukov doesn't respond; it's like he knows what Corvo has seen, and his eyes grow wide, turning towards the ringing of the object.

“Zhukov, be careful, I think something is up ahead and it's what's making that sound.”

“You hear it calling for you, too? Or is it just me? I thought-- I hoped--”

Zhukov's tone is strange, far off, and suddenly he's surging forward, running down the length of the tunnel. Corvo yells to him, cursing as Zhukov loops out of view. Corvo has to blink forward in a bid to keep up, grabbing at Zhukov's shoulder.

“Zhukov, calm down, what--” Corvo gasps as they both enter into the final chamber. He lets go of Zhukov, fighting for breath as they cross over an invisible threshold.

It hits Corvo like a crossbow bolt, bringing him to his knees. The pressure of the room is immense, as if matter itself is bearing down on him. His head and chest both feel trapped in a vice; for a wild moment, he is back in the Overseer’s chambers, that damned music rendering him powerless, the force of the Void turned against him. In his ears, the whales cry as they die, their distress palpable as they cross to the Void, and his vision swims with tears.

Through it all, his lifts his head, managing a glance around the room. The only thing there besides them is a shrine, a nondescript thing in the middle of the glacier, and a table with something terrible there, waiting for the two them.

Caution, Corvo. There are things here more powerful and awful than even me.

Spirits, he's made a terrible mistake.

“Zhukov, Zhukov-- don't touch that thing.” The words come out as a gasp as the music fills him, drowning him. He takes a gulping breath, and another. His hand burns and smokes as he forces himself to stand back up and face Zhukov. The other man somehow has not fallen, and Corvo wonders if it's because he doesn't have a Mark, can't feel the powerful magic the same way Corvo can.

But a closer look shows Corvo he's not seeing Zhukov at all anymore, instead staring at a man possessed.

“Zhukov,” he starts a little more forcefully. “Zhukov, look at me.”

Zhukov is watching the shrine, his eyes huge, his limbs shaking. He is trembling not in fear, but excitement.

“This--this is it. The dreams showed me, but I didn't think-- and then you showed up and it's real it's actually real, we can escape…”

“Zhukov, whatever your dreams showed you, whatever the Outsider said, you don't have to listen to them.” Corvo tries to quell the desperation in his voice, tries to keep his eyes on Zhukov, and not whatever was awaiting them on that shrine. “There are other paths, ones we can't see, it may not play out like you think it will, please--”

“The Outsider didn't show me this, the Knife itself showed me this. It wanted me to find it, Corvo.” He pulls his eyes away to meet Corvo's, and Corvo doesn't like what he sees there. A cracked smile breaks Zhukov's face in two. “Don't you see? This was meant to happen. The Knife knew I would find you, that we would get this assignment. And now…”

“Knife?” Corvo's brain reels; had the Outsider ever mentioned a knife? A weapon of any kind? Before he can register, Zhukov is running, lunging forward, grabbing for the shrine.

“Zhukov, wait!” Corvo grabs for Zhukov's arm, hoping to stop his fall.

As he does, his eyes travel to land on the object of interest, waiting for them both on a pedestal of ice.

It's as if time slows. All his senses hone in on an ancient-looking blade, and try as he might, Corvo can't tear his eyes away. The knife itself is dual-bladed, joined at the hilt and split down the center. The runes carved in the bronze finish resonate with the Void, the sound filling his ears. The guard reminds Corvo briefly of an overseer’s saber, joining the two bronze blades together.

Corvo can hardly breathe, can hardly move as he feels the Knife focus on him as if it is watching him but suddenly Zhukov is there, is wrapping his hand around the hilt, shouting in triumph. It's far too late to react as Corvo watches the man lunge for him, ready to shove the blades into his shoulder. He catches a glimpse of wild eyes, of the madness gripping Zhukov as he cries out and swings upwards with the Knife.

Then, all at once, his arm stops.

Zhukov shudders, unable to move. He pulls his arm back, tries again. With a deafening shriek emanating out from the Knife, Zhukov's arm is forced to still, mid-swing.

“Wh--what?? But--”

Corvo watches, transfixed, as Zhukov seems unable to control his own body anymore. Zhukov yells, he thrashes, but no matter what happens, he cannot thrust the twin blades into Corvo. All the while, the Knife screams in his grasp, the sound a mixture of screeching metal and lamenting whalesong.

“No! This isn't what I saw! The dreams--I have to--” But Zhukov is cut off with a startled cry. The hand clutching the Knife starts turning into something akin to obsidian; It flakes and scrapes against itself, traveling straight up his arm. Zhukov screams, crying for help and Corvo has the horrid realization that the Knife is turning Zhukov into the Void itself.

“Corvo! Corvo please!”

Corvo lunges forward, the ringing making his ears bleed, and grabs for the Knife. The weapon lurches out of Zhukov’s grasp and jumps into Corvos hand, away from the now-cursed prisoner. Corvo tenses and waits for the worst, closing his eyes as he expects the same effect on his own hand.

But nothing happens.

No deafening roar greets his ears. No screeching metal, no pressure, no fingers turned to stone. Nothing at all greets his senses-- not even Zhukov, screaming in terror.

Corvo opens his eyes and takes a breath. In front of him stands Zhukov, frozen in his throes of agony. He is looking over Corvo's shoulder, his Void hand paused in its process of disintegration.

Next to him, hovering as if examining a statue stands the Outsider. The whale god turns a curious eye from Zhukov to Corvo who is holding the the Knife, frowning all the while.