#.... okay not really i mean ur psure shes dead now oop

[lizzystride-blog]

Headcanon: Her Noble Heart, feat. @hawksought

Kindness, joy and love. None of which are words associated with the lanky Pirate with her chiseled teeth and battered flesh. At a glance, Lizzy seems the sort who would kill you for a cigarette and be just fine with herself and in most cases, that assumption is correct. However, there is one person... Just one... One person who has seen a side to Lizzy that Stride herself didn’t realize existed within the same skin.

Ashe, a Nautical Noble of moderate renown. At first a tool to be used and but unintentionally so much more.

In the early years of Lizzy’s Dunwall experience, the fact that she needed some sort of advantage over her rivals became incredibly clear. It wasn’t good enough to attract the stragglers of life to her ranks nor was it enough to simply possess a ship when it came to putting the Eels on top. Lizzy struggled for weeks to simply remain in place when fortune finally favored her.

One lucky river-raid put her directly in the company of Ashe, the middle child of a family whose sole purpose seemed to be managing and manipulating who went where on the Wrenhaven River. The value of those potential Merchant Marine papers with her own name printed at the top was recognized immediately as she looked down upon the pale aristocrat kneeling on the planks of her own ship at the invader’s mercy. And so, a deal was struck immediately: Ashe’s life in exchange for papers that would give Lizzy the one-up she needed to cement the Dead Eels near the top of the underworlds hierarchy.

However, there had been a small... Catch.

Perhaps it was the way that the Noble’s eyes didn’t drip with fear, but widened with cautious wonder as she laid them upon Lizzy for the first time. Maybe it was the she conducted herself, wise with words however not so hardened that it was beyond her to laugh with a certain sincerity at a half baked quip from the Captain. Whatever the reason, Stride found herself somewhat curious of Ashe’s demeanor and agreed to meet her once more. This time, just the two of them well beyond the reach of both Eel and Guardsman.

It was an unlikely romance that was quick to spark, far from healthy and most certainly not intentional. If a soul had dared to mention such things to Lizzy in the past, she likely wouldn’t have believed such heretical nonsense herself; after all, the infamous Lizzy Stride, falling for a noble? Outright laughable! Potentially offensive! And yet it wasn’t long before Lizzy was skipping to every secreted rendezvous, with tales of her most recent adventure and bawdy tavern jokes prepared on her tongue.

 Ashe, she was addicting in all of the wrong ways. From the wonder that so visibly washed over her as Stride wove tales of places and experiences a noble like she could never hope to have to the way she knew how smile, how to pose, to strike up a powerful hunger that normally lay dormant within the pirate’s loins. The way Ashe knew how to coax out the softer things within the Morley brat, the tender touches and subtle, kinder influence that only she could offer.

Stride was drowning with this goodness when suddenly, every piece of it was shattered into ten thousand broken bits.

One careless visit that lead to a raid on Ashe’s home, guards looking for Stride herself, reminded the Captain of the very real danger that she herself represented. The duo agreed that their meetings ought to be fewer, farther in between and far, far from Ashe’s home. The decision twisted Lizzy’s innards more effectively than a knife.

As if that had not been enough however, with the Rat Plague now in full swing and the weight of Ashe’s supposed loss distracting her from Edgar’s schemes, it was less than one month before the Traitor enacted his mutiny and left his Captain wailing, kicking and screaming and on her way to Coldridge. Just another blow to accompany the many that waited for her behind those prison walls.

Thanks to Daud and his timely realization that he needed the Smuggler, Lizzy found herself freed from the abuses at the hands of the Guardsman two weeks after her capture and less than one day away from death. While the task that he had saved her for served as an adequate distraction from her Noble, it wasn’t long before Stride found herself once more without purpose; Daud’s favor eventually paid off and the Eels now larger in numbers and self sufficient enough that Lizzy needn’t pay direct attention at all times.

It was time... She needed to see her... But on the not so special night that Stride managed to slip away, wandering inland and sticking to shadows she now knew by heart, the pirate would be greeted by a sight that she had not been prepared for.

 At first, she could only stare in disbelief at the blackened windows, the newly erected signs that decorated the once lavish estate. Her heart, for as black and shriveled as it could be, wept silently as Lizzy struggled for an hour. Two. Three. More, to understand that The Plague, not a person, had stolen away from her not only Ashe, but the entire family. All within only, barely, two months.

Swallowing hard, Lizzy turned on her bare heels and abandoned those streets, smashing her eyes shut almost painfully so to blind herself to the last memories of her pale, yellow haired lover who spent too many nights with a smile on her face thanks to Stride. 

It was never meant to last, she knew that from the start. Yet the pain was unreal and Lizzy found herself growing all the more inhuman with her dealings, so determined to squash her emotions and hurt was she. It would be years before the pirate dared to look at another soul with kindness in her copper colored hues and smile without sadism dripping from her mangled maw. 

If only she had spared a moment to consider an alternative reality, the actual reality, of her lover’s absence. Perhaps if she had been a little more thorough... Had not given up on Ashe when she had seen what seemed to be an obvious end... She might have learned that not everything is what it outright seems.