#this is a /j but if daud wanted to fuck around and find out whats made the outsider it would be more accurate to his character

[srrrokka]

WIP game: worry!

[Give me a word and I’ll quote it from my fic WIPs]

Please note that my WIPs are mostly a mess of notes, half written scenes, dialogue snippets, and so on, therefore this might look a wee bit weird.

I think this one ended up having all the good bits somehow hahaha

 Tethered AU

1)

One of the men stood up from the table and approached him slowly. He looked completely unhurried, unconcerned with his guest’s state. “Poison. Don’t worry, it’s not going to kill you.”

Ah.

Corvo tried to get up, do something, anything, but all he managed was getting on his knees before the two men. One of them pushed his chin up with the tip of his sword.

“Maybe he should worry.” He remarked, looking down on him. “After all, our client explicitly wants him alive. For what, I wonder.”

The way he said it made Corvo shiver. Couple of possibilities passed his head and none of them were pleasant.

2)

A warm hand guides his head back up and Corvo is met with an expression he hadn’t seen on Daud’s face yet - worry, he’s worried for him.

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 Scratch Session

1)

What was unusual and somewhat worrying, he thought as he got up to find some clothes, was that he couldn’t remember his current life. It most often was something that was already there, something that he didn’t have to additionally remember, not even after recalling that he was from a completely different timeline. Not like his other memories from all the other lives that would return when they so pleased. It never happened before…

2)

He looked at his reflection critically, analysing the differences this new version of his life brought with it to his appearance. He seemed younger without his scar, without his broken nose, with skin smooth and unweathered by decades of working outside in the relentless Gristolian weather. The slimmer build of an aristocrat was something new but even as a royal he clearly didn’t let himself go. He sighed and closed the wardrobe slowly. He looked healthy, happy even. There were barely any worry lines on his face.

Was it weird to be jealous of your own life, Daud wondered, making his way through a small private library to his office.

________________________

 Witch Your Single Word (Token)

1)

Billie: Killian. Attano. Stop right this instant.

K: [curses under his breath. Corvo slowly stands up]

B: Attano, what is this supposed to be? And you better have a good explanation.

C: Might wanna ask someone that is actually required to answer you, *lieutenant* Lurk. [Spits some blood on the ground.]

B: [takes out her sword and turns to Corvo]

K: It was just a small, friendly quibble. Wasn’t it, Corvo? We just got a little carried away. We’re gonna go now, don’t worry about it. [Grabs Corvo under the arm and literally drags him away as fast as he can]

K: You. Have. Fucking. Balls. Or you’re just really stupid. She would literally shred you.

2)

K: Now you eat.

C: [takes his mask off and grabs the knife and bread to cut a slice]

K: are you alright, man? You haven’t tried to wreck anything in a surprisingly long time. Not that I’m particularly worried. Mostly suspicious.

C: [looks at Killian with his really hazy eyes] Yeah, I’m fine. [Looks right back at his hands, making a really crude sandwich]

K: [frowns] Bullshit. Have you seen yourself in the mirror recently? You look like you’re about to keel over. You better not be getting the plague…

C: [around his bread] I’m not, don’t worry. I think the marked are somehow immune anyway.

3)

Corvo looks up at Daud again, this time with a surprising calmness. The man looks tense, there’s a deep worry line between his eyebrows and his fist is wrapped tight around the token.

4)

He groans and folds over himself. There is a sound of a transversal right next to his bed. But he doesn’t look up, just makes another displeased sound and rolls one of his shoulders.

“Corvo? Are you alright?” Daud’s voice is filled with worry, he sits down at Corvo’s feet.

“Yeah,” Corvo’s voice is horribly gravelly and he clears his throat. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just- everything hurts.”

________________________

 Soulmate AU

1)

Corvo: Just make me walk again and I’ll worry about the rest later.

Kieran: Oh, you mean worry about it when you’re dead? Attano, you really are one foot in the grave. It’s a wonder you got this far with this nastiness in your system.

C: [huffs annoyed] Void, I don’t have the time for this…

K: None of us have time for dying.

2)

Daud: The amount of trust you put in me is somewhat worrying.

Corvo: Well, I wouldn’t mind being stabbed to death right about now. [when instead of coaxing a laugh out of Daud it only makes his frown deepen, he adds with a sigh:] It was a joke, Daud. I don’t know how true it is, but I like to believe you wouldn’t hurt me.

________________________

  Fugue Feast Story

“Maybe next time I should order a pear soda instead, hm?” His eyes slide to the man’s hip where he can see a small dagger attached at his belt. Long fingers clad in leather wrapped around his jaw and gently turned his head back to their owner.

“Don’t worry, it’s just for protection.” The man says, small smile dancing on his narrow lips. His thumb brushes along Corvo’s mouth and Corvo has the stupidest idea yet, he opens his mouth and licks on the gloved digit. The pupils of the red masked man widen and Corvo feels a burst of idiotic satisfaction.

________________________

 Blind AU

But the moment burst like a soap bubble when a trickle of blood suddenly poured out of Corvo’s nose. Corvo licked his upper lip reflexively and frowned. He touched it and looked at his fingers to confirm his suspicion. He sighed but didn’t look alarmed.

“It’s fine, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” He tried to reassure both Thomas and Daud who in the meantime approached the other two and was now having a closer look at Corvo with a deep frown on his face.

Out of lack of better options Corvo put the hem of his sleeve to his nose to soak up the blood that only started flowing heavier.

________________________

 Apocalypse AU

Anatole: [Picks up a small whale oil powered torch and checks the pupil reaction, while at it:] My biggest worry was that you might have a severe concussion. You’ve been unconscious for two days. But you seem to be quite fine. [She straightens with a smile] To come out of a fall like that with a couple bruises and a cut? [clicks her tongue and shakes her head] The Outsider must have a particular liking for you.

________________________

 DXMD fic

Jensen: Koller, who did this to you?

Koller: Wha- oh, this? That’s nothing, don’t worry about it, Jensen. I just had a little… bar brawl, you could say.

J: Koller…

K: Listen, Adam… I trust you, I really do, but- I just can’t talk with you about this, okay man? Unless, I really want to swim belly up with the fishes.

________________________

 Dark Matter

“Oh, no, no. Don’t worry. He won’t do anything.” Corvo’ s eyes don’t leave his double’s as he lifts his right arm, open palm up. A string of blackness appears in it and he closes his fingers around it. A blackness that wraps around Daud’s throat in a blink of an eye like a leash. He yanks on it hard enough to force the assassin to bow over with a startled grunt, his face now level with Corvo’s. “Will you, Daud?” He looks at him - grin too wide, eyes too black.

“Attano.” Daud barks out his name through clenched teeth. It’s a warning. It’s a reminder.

________________________

 Save Game

“Em…” Corvo’s voice is gentle but full of sadness. There it goes. The cat is out of the bag now. All of them. Emily runs up to him and hugs him as she cries into his shirt. He wishes he could hug her back but his arms are bound behind his back. “Shhhhh, Em… It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry.”

[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.