#pen of dunwall

[bean-writes]

Using my favorite locations in video games to practice drawing ❤️

Today's location: Corvo's Room from the walkway [Dishonored]

(And above it, line art of the skyline of Kaldwin's Bridge and lower levels of Dunwall)

Here's the original:

[r-e-d-s-h-i-f-t]

"Honor"

[redadm1ral]

OC Directory

Throwing together a quick and dirty OC directory just to get things off the ground! This is a work in progress; more OCs, information, and decorative elements will be added later!

Dishonored

❁ MOIRA HAVELOCK // dressmaker ⋆ fashion designer ⋆ entrepreneur

Morley-born with deep Pandyssian roots, Moira hails from a small village about a week's ride from Wynnedown. After falling ill in childhood with a sickness from which she never fully recovers, Moira is barred from hard field work for most of her life and develops an early and intense interest in needlework. The Insurrection and subsequent famine drive her family to Dunwall, where she establishes her own business as a designer and dressmaker, eventually opening her own boutique in Drapers Ward. While in Dunwall, Moira meets Farley Havelock, then a promising young officer in the Imperial Navy, and marries him in 1805. Moira dies of complications related to lupus sometime between 1825-1831.

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❁ JASPER HAVELOCK // warfare overseer

The eldest son of Farley and Moira Havelock, born in Dunwall's Old Port District. Jasper is taken at the age of 10 to undergo the Trials of Aptitude. He completes the Trials and is stationed in Redmoor, Potterstead, and Whitecliff as a Warfare Overseer. While in Whitecliff, he courts and marries Victoria Hall, the eldest daughter of a wealthy and devout family. Jasper is transferred to Dunwall in 1836 and remains there with his family for the duration of the Plague Crisis. His fate (and thus, the fate of his wife and children) depends on chaos level...and the depth (and spitefulness) of High Overseer Martin's purges.

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❁ MATTHIAS HAVELOCK // whaler ⋆ artist ⋆ natural philosopher

The youngest son of Farley and Moira Havelock, the middle child lost in the shadow of his older brother. Matthias is a quiet child with little interest in his father's military exploits. His refusal to join the Imperial Navy in the place of his brother and his joining a whaling company (after failing an attempt at the Academy of Natural Philosophy) drives a wedge between him and his father, leading Matthias to be estranged from the family by 1837. Matthias survives the Plague Crisis and lives well into his older years.

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❁ SYLVIA HAVELOCK // equestrian ⋆ writer

The youngest child and only daughter of Farley and Moira Havelock. Born in the Tower District just months after Jasper's capture, Sylvia never knows her family's earlier financial struggles or the voice of her oldest brother. A child during her father's hunting years, Sylvia falls in love with horses and riding and dreams of being an equestrian in adulthood. (more to be added as I develop this character further) Sylvia survives the Plague Crisis and lives well into her older years.

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❁ SIAN O'FARRELL // factory worker ⋆ labor organizer ⋆ poet

The eldest daughter, the older sister, the stone, Sian is born and raised on a sheep farm in Morley with a pen in her hand. She never quite fits in among her community, and time not spent working on the farm and looking after her family is spent philosophizing, reading poetry and writing much of her own. When the Insurrection breaks out, Sian disguises herself as a man and joins her father to fight in the war. After the war ends and famine spells doom for their home village, Sian accompanies her family to Dunwall, where she works as a laborer in the city's many burgeoning factories. She dedicates her time to organizing some of Dunwall's earliest labor movements, writing poetry all the while. Sian survives the Plague Crisis and lives well into her older years, eventually retiring to the Morleyan countryside where her nephew, Matthias, looks after her.

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❁ JOSEF VLASÁK // (former) navy officer ⋆ confectioner ⋆ co-founder of Woodrow Trading Company

Born in the belly of the Old Port District, Joe is Farley's neighbor and closest childhood friend. He joins the Navy alongside Farley at the age of 16 and serves for well over a decade, achieving an officer's rank before leaving the Navy to start his own confectionery business sometime in the mid-1810s. He co-founds Woodrow Trading Company with his wife, Penelope Whitaker.* During the Plague Crisis, he makes money smuggling goods past the blockade. Joe becomes embroiled in the Loyalist Conspiracy as Farley's main supplier. He is eliminated by Corvo Attano during Farley's reign as Lord Regent.

*Penelope Whitaker (Penny) is an oc belonging to my dearest and most lovely partner, who is not on Tumblr.

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[valgeristik]

The thing about Dishonored that i like is...it sets a certain tone for the atmosphere, and if you don’t look, you miss how it actually is. If you asked me the first time, i would have told you that the sky is dark and cloudy when Corvo escapes Coldridge. But the thing is, its blue. The sky is blue, and it feels somewhat comforting

[bismorphine]

Casually rolls up 10 years late to the party

A quick doodle of the Knife and Phantom of Dunwall

[filiasart]

You could float a whaling ship on the blood I’ve spilled.

[ofvoidx]

THE SUNLIGHT THROUGH THE WINDOWS OF EMILY'S OFFICE FEELS SO WARM. it's so rare in dunwall too. dunwall's always been so grey. emily doesn't look up from what she's writing because she just KNOWS who it is. it's half this magical intuition, it's half because kassandra walks a certain way. emily never got to ask if kassandra also notices the same things. she still doesn't look up from the pen in her hand or the notebook under the pen. there's papers scattered all over her desk, notes, letters, newspapers. IT'S SUCH A CHAOTIC ORGANIZATION, it suits her so well.

maybe the weight of the words take a few moments to sink in because they're just laid bare without any cushion. this isn't spoken in the heat of a moment after passion nor is this spoken in the fright of a moment after desperation. THOSE WORDS ARE SIMPLY A TRUTH, as if it's really point out everything they are. not just one thing. not just a lover after heated passion, not just a partner after a frightening battle, but all of that and a friend too. maybe half of her thought kassandra would just leave through a window in her chambers and then she'd just live with the heartbreak like an old adversary. THEY'D CARRY EVERYTHING LIKE A DISTANT MEMORY, as if none of it happened. pen finally from her fingers with a small noise of disapproval on the notebook. there is a legitimate small shake of emily's hands that she hides by tucking them into her lap. she realizes she was chalking up heartbreak to something that would be small, when it actually immense and very painful. &, she just doesn't know what kassandra wants to hear or what to say, so she settles on what she wants. AS SELFISH AS THAT IS.

" — you don't have to leave, " emily can hide the shake in her hand, she just can't hide the shake in her voice ... or the tear forming at the corner of her eye.

the thought of leaving you terrifies me. — the memory police , [ @ofspvrta ]

[bean-writes]

I am very proud of this one. :)

The original:

Fun fact, I have sat on this rooftop for so long (for the ambience) while writing ILR, that the sound of rain ran out. Yep. I reached the end of the rain track.

Patreon

[r-e-d-s-h-i-f-t]

"Longshoreman"

[a3on12]

The One True Empress, Delilah Kaldwin

[stealingpotatoes]

because you’re mine

Ao3 link

Summary: In a quiet moment at the Hound Pits Pub, Emily asks Corvo who her father is. Corvo knows he has to tell her.

n/b: I wrote a fluffy Emily-accidentally-finds-out-about-Corvojess fic a while back, and while I LOVE that idea, I also love the idea of Corvo telling her after the whole assassination thing (and I think that that might be more canon compliant, considering this). So yeah… here’s that!

---

Corvo hated waiting between missions. 

Taking Lady Boyle out at her own party was a smart idea. There would be so many other masked men there that Corvo could slip right in, remove her from play, and slip out with no worry about the guards. It’d be a nice change from having to skulk past and knock out every City watchman in order to not be seen. Though the idea of going to one of those noble parties he hated so much wasn’t as nice a change. But he could do it. He’d probably been to more than a hundred of those. He could make it through one more. 

You’ve never been to one without Jess, an unwelcome voice in his mind reminded him. He pressed his lips to a thin line. He could make it through one more party, even without her. He had to do it. He had to for her, to cut Burrows’ funding and get one step closer to ending his reign of tyranny. To get her justice.

But the real issue was waiting . He had to wait until the night of the party. It was so very soon -- only tomorrow evening -- but it felt too far away. There was too much time to think about things he didn’t want to think about, too much empty space. The waiting between missions was the worst part about them. 

He thought it should have been missions themselves; pushing himself like that after six months of prison and pain should have been a bad thing. But on missions, he could distract himself from everything by focusing on the objective and nothing else. Finally not feeling useless and weak, finally feeling like he was doing something to fix things. To make up for his failure that day, and everything that had happened afterwards. 

In times like this, in between, the feelings of restless uselessness crept back in. He’d had plenty of quiet moments to think in Coldridge; he didn’t need any more. He was doing nothing to help. Nothing to get justice, nothing to get Emily back home and on her rightful throne. Right now, he was sitting on his bed in the Hound Pits and sharpening his sword. He hardly used it on missions, but maintaining his weapons and training himself was a good way to pass the time. It was the best thing he could do to try and abate the useless feeling. Preparing himself for the mission ahead, making sure he would succeed. If he did want to use his sword, he couldn’t have it being blunt or failing to open. He couldn’t leave anything to chance. 

His thoughts were interrupted by quiet and familiar footsteps coming from the stairwell. Corvo allowed himself a small smile. He knew those steps almost as well as he knew his own. 

Knowing Emily, she was trying to move as quietly as she could -- trying to copy his own near-silent footsteps. She’d spent hours trying to perfect it back home, and was always annoyed when he could still hear her small footsteps coming, and when he could still sneak up on her. 

The tread got closer and stopped where his room began. “Hi Corvo.” 

Corvo glanced behind him, pretending to have only just noticed her in the doorway, holding some paper and pens in her small hands, and smiled at her, “Hey Em.”

She smiled back. “Can I come in here and draw?” 

“Are you done with your lessons?” Corvo asked, despite knowing they would be by now. He had to remind her that her lessons were important, even if now they seemed like a silly thing to be concerned with. 

Emily dropped her shoulders dramatically, “Yes. They were so boring.” She walked further into the room and plopped herself on the floor, evidently taking his question as a yes. She knew by now he would never deny her his company. 

Corvo folded his sword in one practiced motion, not wanting weapons out when Emily was in the room, and caught her interested look at the blade. Swords and fighting -- particularly him fighting -- had always interested her. Certainly more than her lessons with Callista did. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find that Emily had tried to ask Piero for her own version, though Emily wasn’t going to be fighting with anything but wooden sticks for a long time. Hopefully she would never have to touch a blade, despite how much he knew she wanted to be a fighter like him. He didn’t want her to be like him. Anything like him. 

“I just had history.” Emily laid out the paper and crayons on the wooden floor in between her and Corvo’s feet. “Callista was teaching me about some of the past Emperors and Empresses and dynasties.”  

Corvo placed his sword hilt down by his side and leaned forward, “Anyone not boring?” 

Emily kept looking down at her paper, and brushed a finger over her crayons, trying to pick the right colour to start with. “Some interesting ones. Some really not .”

Corvo gave Emily a slight huff and a smile. 

Emily perked up and looked at Corvo, “I did learn about my grandfather, Emperor Euhorn.”

Did you learn he was a bit of an asshole? Corvo thought, but luckily didn’t say out loud. “What’d you learn about him?” 

“Um… that he was the first of the Kaldwin rulers and he became Emperor in 1803, after a regency that started in 1801,” Emily turned back to her pens and picked a blue one. She set to drawing, “A bit like me. I’ll be Empress after a regency too.” 

“Mm,” Corvo agreed, his mouth a thin line. It seemed strange to compare the two events. Then, he’d been a boy of just five, playing in the streets of Karnaca. Dunwall and everything that happened there had seemed so far away and inconsequential to him. If only he’d known. Now… now its events were practically carved onto his skin... 

Corvo shook his head slightly, not ready to let himself go down that line of thought. To distract himself, he tried to get a better look at Emily’s paper. He couldn’t quite see what Emily was drawing yet. It looked like the beginnings of a building, perhaps. He loved her drawings. He just about preferred them to the perfect portraits hung around the Tower… though he might have been a little biased. Ok, he was definitely biased. 

Emily suddenly stopped drawing. She set her pen down, but didn’t look up from the floor, and she sighed in a way that made her sound a decade older than she was. “Learning about my grandfather made me think… Mother always said she would tell me about my father when I was older. But… she’s gone now and she… can’t tell me,” Emily’s gaze remained blank on the floor.  

As Emily spoke, Corvo’s heart felt like it shattered into a million pieces. An uncomfortably familiar feeling now, it seemed. He could ignore how everything made him feel, but any time Emily said something about it all that happened, the flood of emotions threatened to break through the dam of control he’d built. 

She can’t tell me. Corvo thought of the Heart, that continuous echoing beat in the back of his mind. Her voice, but not her. Emily wouldn’t be able to hear or see it anyway. Only the Void-touched could. People like him. People like the assassins. She can’t tell me.

“Corvo, do you know who my father is?” Emily looked up from the floor finally, up at him, “Because you were always with Mother… so maybe you… know .”

Her question caught Corvo completely off guard. 

He had been asked that near same question -- you’re almost always by Her Majesty’s side, you must know who the princess’ father is -- many times before, by prying nobles and gossips who thought he might share the secret when his Empress wouldn’t. But he never did. He usually insisted he didn’t know, though sometimes he would simply say he was sworn to secrecy, just to annoy people with the idea that he knew something they didn’t. 

But he couldn’t lie to Emily. He couldn’t deny her this. Not now. Not when she’d lost her mother; Corvo couldn’t let her believe she was an orphan, couldn’t let her believe that the secret had died with her mother. She needed her father. She needed… she needed Corvo . 

Just tell her. Tell her. 

He couldn’t silence the voice in his head that was telling him that Emily deserved a better father than him. It was true; she did. She deserved a man who could openly be her father, not a lowborn Serkonan like him. She deserved someone who could have saved her mother, not the ex-Royal Protector who had failed in the worst way imaginable. 

But he was what she had. He couldn’t change that. He didn’t want to change that. He loved Emily with every fibre of his being, and she… she was his daughter. Void, he could barely think the words; how was he meant to say them aloud to tell Emily? 

This was hardly how he’d imagined telling her. He’d thought it would be when she was a little older, he thought it would be in Dunwall Tower, he thought it would be him and Jess telling her. Maybe he could wait. The latter was impossible, but the first two -- he could wait until they’d reclaimed Dunwall Tower and everything was as okay as it could be to tell her. Or he could tell her now. Or--

“You do know…” Emily said slowly and quietly, furrowing her brow. Corvo realised he’d hesitated too long to make the choice. She was a smart girl, she knew he knew. 

Tell her. “Yes… I do.” 

Emily’s brown eyes widened. Jessamine had always said Emily’s eyes were just like his own. It would have been a comfort, something nice to see in his daughter, if he hadn’t always been so stressed about someone finding out about him and Jessamine because of them. “Please tell me. Please, Corvo.”

Corvo moved his hand behind his back so Emily wouldn’t see the glow of the Mark and activated Dark Vision, glancing at the door and the room through it. Nobody was there to hear the secret. He wanted to think he could trust the Loyalists not to listen in on him -- or even trust the Loyalists full stop -- but something was off about them, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He hoped it was just his own paranoia born from Burrows’ betrayal, but he wasn’t going to let his guard down too far. 

Corvo deactivated Dark Vision, letting the world shift back to its normal colours and gave Emily a sure look, “It still has to be a secret.”

Emily sat up straighter, so very eager to learn the truth. “Yes. I promise. I promise I’ll keep it a secret.” 

Corvo nodded. Maybe there wasn’t any point in keeping it a secret anymore, but old habits died very hard, and the anxiety was still pooling in his stomach.

Emily continued to look up at him hopefully, waiting. Say it . Tell her. She needs to know.

“I-” the words didn’t want to leave his mouth. He took a quick breath in- “It’s me. I’m your father.”

“What?” Emily’s mouth was open in shock. She was expecting someone better than you, Corvo thought. But then her expression spread into a grin, and the thought melted away, “Really?!”

“Really.”

“You’re actually my father?” Emily said, the grin still wide on her face. It hit Corvo that she wanted it to be him. She was happy that it was him. Despite everything.  

“Mm. And you’re actually my daughter,” Corvo couldn’t help stop himself from smiling as he spoke. 

Emily was up off the floor and hugging him in the blink of an eye, her arms tight around his shoulders and her face half-shoved into his coat collar. Corvo closed his arms around her small body and shut his eyes, focusing on the feel of Emily -- his daughter -- safe and sound in his arms. 

They pulled away from each other after a few seconds and Emily continued to beam up at him. Corvo didn’t think he deserved that smile, but he would easily die a hundred times over for it.  

“I knew it. I knew it was you.” 

Corvo thought of all the times Emily had tried to convince him and Jess to get together, and didn’t completely think she was lying.  

“This whole time… you were...” Emily glanced down. “You’re my father,” she repeated with a grin at Corvo. 

Corvo’s chest ached with love. He couldn’t stop smiling back at her. “Yeah, I am.” And I’m the luckiest man alive to have you as my daughter. 

It almost seemed like Emily smiled more  after he confirmed it again.

Corvo quickly tried to look more serious, “But remember, you can’t tell the others. Including Callista.”

Emily nodded, then shut her mouth and squished her lips together to illustrate ‘my lips are sealed’ . 

Corvo gave her an affirmative half-smile. I love you so much.

Emily glanced to the side and paused for a short second. “I know it’s a secret, but could I call you father when it’s just us?” She looked up at him with pleading eyes, “Please?” 

The ache of love in his chest grew stronger. Corvo hesitated for a moment. He nodded, not sure he could actually form words through his emotions to say yes. 

Emily grinned. “Father,” she all but whispered, trying it out. Then she went in for another surprisingly strong hug. “I love you, father.”

Corvo hoped his daughter couldn’t tell how close he was to crying. “I love you too, Emily.” 

[of-tatooine]

honor him. | chapter 2 - red crosses

the thought of assassinating her troubles you and he needs to know.

This one would be different.

There was a reason everyone on the street fled for their dear lives at the sight of him, his blade reflecting his scar under the moonlight for all to see. They did not call him the Knife of Dunwall for nothing - his stone-cold heart and blood, dead-silent movements and ability to take lives like he was a reaper through wheat gave him the recognition. He had done this countless of times before, with and without the wretched mark on his left hand. Fulfilled contracts, asked for extra coin for his trouble without feeling an inch of remorse as he washed some noble’s blood off of his hands.

It was not common for him to hesitate, for him to reconsider any deal he made as an assassin. Ever since he came to the unforgiving streets of Dunwall, killing and taking heads for favors or some other ulterior motive had been the reason he was still alive.

She had just been a contract, after all. Kill and get paid. In and out quick, without any survivors, just the way Daud had done things all along.

Then why did his thoughts stall for a minute, every time he thought of the contract in his pocket that Burrows made him sign?  Why did the mark on his hand cease to glow as he pictured the Empress and her little heir, governing the Isles the best they could inside the Dunwall Tower?

As his darkened gray eyes looked over the damp streets and molding rooftops of the Flooded District, the whale songs echoing in his mind did not cease to remind him that the otherwise fortune of coin would never be worth Jessamine Kaldwin’s blood on his hands. He could never mute the screams of her daughter, ringing in his ears for years to come, if he were to take her life away in front of her juvenile eyes.

It was only natural for an assassin of his caliber to let go of his feeling of guilt - at this age and experience, with all types of blood coating his leather-gloved hands, Daud was not even sure if there was enough heart left in him, maybe he was not even capable of feeling it anymore. Sure, some missions had been harder to forget than others, keeping him up at the night of, knowing he was serving only to some noble bastard’s needs and wants - the next day he would be back to business as usual as he cleaned his sword.

With every step taken in the streets of the capitol of the Empire, every poster plastered on the brick walls, every bust and every painting and every monument after the Kaldwin name, he knew the memory of her death would hurt his skin like a burning fire.

“I can’t do it.”

Words he wanted to say for a long time but never could were spoken out as the feminine voice echoed through his quarters. Words he never thought he would hear from you. There were very few people who were allowed to step into his chambers unannounced and uninvited - being one of those who had the privilege, you made your way up the stairs where he usually slept.

It was Daud’s day to be surprised, it seemed, as he turned around to be faced with your bare face, sans the vapor mask you usually sported around the compound. All those years working alongside the assassin had not changed your pure and simple beauty, he would think - you had still been the girl he had taken under his wing from Karnaca, with the ever-lasting talent for sword fighting and the burning fire in your eyes.

Somehow, you had managed to keep a piece of you whole inside despite the cruelties you have indicted upon others, emotions and traits that defined who you were as a human - something Daud wished he knew how to do better.

“Sit down,” the older assassin would say in his usually gruff voice, this time etched with a slight concern as he pulled a chair out for you, as he opted to sit down on a nearby shipping crate facing you. You obliged with a silent nod - the mere gesture itself suggested he had been thinking about the same thing but did not want to admit it.

He had to look strong for his assassins, after all. Just like he had been all these years as he trained them all. He had to be undefeated for you, so you would have someone to look up to, to follow after. To kill and die for.

The assassination of an Empress to send the Empire reeling into the hands of dirty conspirators was not exactly the example you wanted to follow.

“Daud...” you started with a solemn voice as you looked up to meet his eyes, his arms folded on his chest. It was at that moment he noticed the redness in your eyes - you had trouble sleeping last night, maybe had not slept at all. “I’ve been... thinking. About what would happen to us after tomorrow. What would happen to you.”

The assassin shifted ever so slightly on his feet as he adjusted his sitting position, leaning a bit closer to your frame on the chair, your arms crossed although not in a threatening stance. “Haven’t I taught you enough to know that I will not fail a contract?”

You knew. You knew too damn well. He would go to the ends of his means to execute, capture, neutralize - whatever cruel action he was getting paid for. The huge board downstairs in his office was adorned with portraits with red crosses, if anyone needed proof of just what the man could do. “This time, I’m worried about what will happen if you don’t fail.”

Piercing orbs stared into his darker ones, able to spot the slight glimmer of doubt, of concern in them. Then they spotted the edge of the paper visible through his red leather overcoat. Daud ran a hand over his face, his mark glowing in the lightest shades of orange as he did so. A low sigh leaving his lips.

“The Empress will be dead tomorrow with the heir delivered to Burrows. Campbell and him can reap what they sow themselves - that’s none of our business. You understand me?”

Daud tried so hard, and succeeded, to not show any signs of weakness as he spoke in a stern manner, the words only aimed to make you focus on the task at hand and not distract yourself with any and all consequences that may come their way. It was not your vendetta to fulfill - you had been merely an agent to greater means in the scheme. That was what Daud had been telling himself since the day he picked up that pen and signed at the offices of the Royal Spymaster.

“You remember how I ended up in the streets of Aventa to begin with?”

Right after you uttered those words out of your lips, your tone noticeably softer yet your eyes glassy, was when he stopped. Jaw-clenched as vivid memories began roaming around his clouded mind like wolfhounds on loose. Memories that belonged to you, that you let him into a long time ago.

His usually domineering stance was slightly weakened as he took a deep breath, looking down on the rusty metal floor. This contract was proving to be one of the hardest things, if not the hardest, that he had to do during his entire life of sorrow and bloodshed - yet another decision loomed over in front of him.

Did he have the luxury to put his most-trusted protégé and killer on the sidelines for the mission of their lives?

If it had been anyone else but you, he would not.

Emotions, history and ethics did not mix well with the line of work they were in and every seasoned assassin knew so - hence why most of his Whalers kept their families, old lives and stories to themselves, if they had any.  But, you... he knew exactly where you were coming from. What you went through - he witnessed with his own bare eyes. How the fire in your eyes dimmed as you lost so much in your life. And how training with the assassins helped you win that spark of serving some purpose back in your orbs.  

He was going to stab a sword through an Empress the next day - if he indeed wanted to pursue his redemption, showing mercy and empathy to his favorite would be the start.

The man got up from his seat, determined, calmly walking over to the map of Dunwall Tower that was laid on over his bed - he must have been studying all possible strategies, playing out scenarios in his mind all night. Pointing to the furthest tower to the planned assault location, his tall frame partially turned to you. “You’re on watch duty tomorrow. No killing,” he ordered you, with a slight nod.

Even when his emotions had been willingly suppressed to prepare himself for the upcoming battle, you read through his actions and words. A man like Daud did not help you out by hugging you every single time you had doubts and telling you everything would be okay. He instead gave you a way out, some much needed leeway, however temporary it may be.

You accepted it with gratitude, sending him a faint smile accompanied by a nod as you got up from the chair.

“Thank you,” you would add in a whisper, your gloved hand gently lingering on his leather-covered arm for a moment before you took a quick glance at the map you had memorized over the past month, your boots slowly carrying you towards the double doors of his quarters.

Watching you leave with his stare softening, Daud ran his long fingers through his dark hair as your red-leather silhouette dissipated into thin air.

Tomorrow, he was going to initiate the fall of an Empire into ashes in the hands of some traitor dogs. All he could hope for was for someone to forgive him, somehow, at some point in time.

[xadoheandterra]

Title: Kismet; Lacuna Fandom: Dishonored Chapters: I Characters: Billie Lurk, the Outsider, Daud, Corvo Attano Tags: Time Travel, Void-fuckery, Post Death of the Outsider, WIP, Panic Attacks, Trauma, AU, Present Dishonored 1 Summary: He felt twisted sick, the air refused to stay in his lungs and his throat burned fiercely. He couldn't speak when for so long all he had were his words. He couldn't feel aside from cold familiarity that had been his life for so long...and his name--he knew it, it was there in the tip of his tongue, on the edge of his thoughts, and yet it was gone again. Taken from him. Stolen, yet not. The Void churned within him, but it was wrong. He hadn't felt like this in two years. He hadn't--this was all wrong. The Outsider was dead; he wasn't the Outsider anymore. Wasn't he?

Billie Lurk wakes up on her bed in the old Commerce Building ten days before her exile from the Whalers. She has a void eye and a void arm that only she can see, memories of events that haven't happened, powers she can't explain, and a connection to a boy who had once been an Eldritch whale deity whose name she knew but cannot speak, cannot think. Something had gone horribly wrong and the path of destiny irrevocably changed.

Corvo rested his back against the tower rooftop, lips pressed together as he listened to Emily make faint noises in her sleep. A part of him wanted to go into the room, to open the door and grab her and tell her it was okay now. He wanted to hold her close and fight back the nightmares that plagued her--but at the same time his stomach churned and his throat tightened and he started to panic. It's been almost seven months now--seven months since that day at the gazebo, since the blade pierced through Jessamine and the way the assassins clung to Emily--and how he could do nothing, suspended in the air by black magic--useless.

Tiredly Corvo scrubbed a hand down his face and turned his gaze up toward the sky. He raised his left hand and stared at the Mark there--the black lines so stark against the back of his hand. He blinked his eyes, and his vision switched to the strange void-gaze and he stared at his hand with these new eyes, stared at the way the Mark lit up, bright golden lines of voided light. Another blink and his vision returned to normal. Corvo clenched his fist and looked to the side, lips pressed thin.

Below, Emily's breath hitched and Corvo tilted his gaze downward, vision blinking back into that voided-sight so that he could check in on her--but she settled, shortly, and Corvo let the gaze settle back as he reached for the pen and sheaf of papers from within his pockets. With barely a thought Corvo tilted a knee up to be his temporary writing desk and began to scratch out his own thoughts. It was something he'd taken to in between the 'missions' these so-called Loyalists sent him on. With a grimace Corvo wrote his thoughts, his fears--everything.

For a while there was only the sound of his pen scratching against the papers, of the shuffle of the papers across his knees, and the faint sound of Emily's soft sounds in her sleep. Corvo wondered what Havelock would have him do next--who would Havelock command him to kill? He clenched the pen tightly as he thought about the Golden Cat, thought about the feel of blood between his fingers as he slit the Pendleton Twins' throats.  For a moment Corvo shuddered, stared at his fingers that looked to be covered in blood--remembered the cold fury in his chest, the sickness that burned within him at the thought of Emily--his daughter--being kept in such a place.

Had they touched her? Had they dared? His thoughts spiraled and Corvo forced himself to take breaths, forced himself to calm. They were dead and Emily was safe. Maybe not well, and maybe not for a while yet, but Corvo would see her there. He would see Burrows pay for it all--pay for what he did to Emily, pay for what he did to Jessamine, for the lies, for daring to even lay a hand on his daughter. The darkness, the cold violence in his heart surged up in his chest and the pen snapped in two between his fingers. Corvo stared blankly as the ink stained his hand, dribbled over his words and blurred them beyond recognition, and then sighed.

I'm sorry, Jess, Corvo thought, bitterly. He learned to control the violence for Jessamine, to direct it, hone it, better it until the violence that was his second nature at least didn't result in everyone who wronged those who cared for dead. He places a hand against his breast, against the Heart the Outsider gave him there, and for a moment he could hear her, hear Jessamine--

You were made for violence, but honed a softer touch....she...loved that about you.

Corvo's eyes burned as he took his hand away from his breast and began to gather up his ink stained papers with ink stained hands. Carefully he bundled them back into the pouches that they were stored in, and then breathed out slowly and focused his attention back toward Emily. Safe, he thought, hand once more to his breast.

She mourns still. That you have not spoken. That you leave her with strangers. She worries that soon she may lose you to the same darkness that she lost her mother. She cannot suffer it. She cannot lose a father too.

A sucked in breath and a shudder wracked Corvo's frame. He wheezed, and his throat burned from even that faint sound, and Corvo closed his eyes with a bitter turn of his lips and his heart crying Oh, Em with words he can't quite say just yet. Tiredly Corvo climbed to his feet, turned to head back to the attic to get at least some rest--who knew when the rest of these so-called Loyalists would demand his attention again, he should at least take an hour of sleep on the cot they'd given him, instead of sitting watch above Emily--and in the distance there was a visceral ripping, tearing, sour-note whale-song that made his Mark burn.

Corvo turned and looked out to the ocean just as a dark shape fell through the a void-shaped tear in the sky and landed into the water with a loud splash. The buzzing made his teeth ache even as it eased, and then faded away all together. With lips pressed close Corvo blinked and let the void-gaze take his eyes even as he began to climb down from the tower and head toward the rocky shoreline. He could see a figure, distantly, struggle in the water. Drowning.

The Mark burned and without thought Corvo took in a breath and moved, between one blink of his eyes to the next he landed in the water, near the struggling figure. He dived down and reached out to grasp in the darkened water, to grab a shoulder that struggled and twisted. He pulled and pulled the stranger up and out of the water, and then blinked back to the shoreline. He let the void settle back out of his gaze, tried to ignore the searing pain that bloomed behind his eyes, and looked to whomever he'd grabbed. He looked and saw--

Impossible.

Corvo's eyes grew wide as he stared down at a young face, dark hair plastered down with water, hands scrambling against a bleeding throat. It was a face he knew, younger, softer, with clear blue Tyvian eyes--but a face he knew. A face he'd seen from only within the Void, normally with the black eyes of a God, but here blue eyes of a Tyvian and--red from his neck, bleeding--blood. The boy looked panicked, stricken, gasping for breath as blood covered his lips and his throat and his hands that struggled--stone creeped up along the side of his face and one eye went dark and then the boy went still, eyes rolled up into the back of his head and Corvo frantically moved to check for a pulse.

A fluttering beat, faint, but there. A human with the face of the Outsider, bleeding out in his arms. Corvo shook himself, grabbed the boy, and ignored the throbbing of his head as he pulled on more of the Void, more of the Mark, and blinked. Piero, he needed Piero. He needed Piero now.

Billie groaned as she woke; her arm throbbed, her eye hurt, but that wasn't anything new. They'd been painful for a while now, ever since Emily came back from Stilton and the dreams started up. The pain had eased when the Outsider grasped her, infused her with the void artifacts that gave her back ties to the Void, a chance to use its eldritch magic once more. It hadn't gone away, still lingering at the edges, but better. Exhausted Billie rubbed at her head as she sat up, exhaustion pulling at her bones. That too was familiar. She'd been tired for a while now; the world going to shit in a giftwrapped basket would do that to anyone, really.

"Your up late."

Billie blinked and raised her head, suddenly stiff and surprised by the familiar voice. She blinked rapidly as she stared at the unmasked, blond faced asshole that was Thomas. Except Thomas looked younger, more fit than he'd been when she last saw him as she hunted down Daud. He lacked the extra scar across his face, hair cropped short as he looked at her with undisguised amusement. He looked--he looked better. Less worn down by the world, by Daud's decisions, by his own guilt.

"Thomas?" Billie murmured, and as sleep further left her she realized that this--this wasn't the bolt-hole she'd taken up residence in, in Tyvia. This wasn't the run down shack with barely standing metal walls that she'd been sleeping in for the past few months. Sure there was water stains, evidence of damage, mold, but it was familiar in that distant, nostalgic memory way. The walls were crumbling, but reinforced despite the damage. Functional. Safe. These were the walls of the Flooded District, of the old Commerce Building in Dunwall. These were the walls the Whaler's had occupied once upon a time, at the height of their power and abilities.

Dunwall, the Flooded District, the Commerce Building--every moment of bitterness and regret in those months after the death of the Empress, how the good times came crashing down with that shit show of a job, and then further tumbled into the gutter heap following Daud's obsession with Delilah and Billie's own obsession that led to her betrayal that led to her fleeing with her life--Billie swallowed heavily and let herself slip into the strange-between world with Foresight. She drifted away from her body, used the Eye, and tried to focus.

This wasn't a Hollow. This wasn't a dream either, because she could see Galia down the hall talking with Rinaldo. Aeolos training with Kent. Daud pacing in his office. There were river krusts outside, bone charms were littered around like candy and even a few of them sang sour-sweet of corruption. Billie let herself snap back to her body and forced down the rise of panic. She wondered were--and then her thoughts caught, stumbled over a name she knows. It was his name and he'd given it to her, a sign of trust and now its gone. Billie forced down the panic at that because--he'd been with her, before she woke here. They'd been together, in Tyvia, looking into the way the world had broken and now she was here and she couldn't even think of a name she knew and Thomas was staring at her.

"Billie?" Thomas asked, stepped into the room, and Billie knew she was beginning to hyperventilate but she couldn't help it because this was the Flooded District, this was Dunwall during the tied-second darkest moment of her life and she couldn't even think of his name and after everything she'd done, all the choices she made, knowing what she knows that terrifies her. "Billie, breath with me," Thomas said, and his voice was steady.

Billie missed Thomas. It'd never been like it was after she'd been exiled from the Whalers. Even when they ran into each other in Karnaca, years later, it hadn't been the same. There'd be a stiff politeness between them, a distance and forced understanding. They knew each other once, were family once, but now were strangers and yet--Thomas said something, asked something about touching and Billie wasn't sure she said anything but Thomas reached out and grasped her, held her close and Billie swallowed heavily and fought back the tears as she tried to breath, tried to quell her beating heart.

As her heart began to calm Billie realized she saw Daud. As her breathing evened out she remembered how he paced his office, just a floor above her. She recalled him in his last moments, white-haired and unable to breath, fading away until his heart gave out, alone on the Dreadful Whale. She hadn't been there, too busy following his directions and hunting down a knife to be there and she regretted it so much. That she hadn't been there with him. She should've been there. She should've--Billie pulled out of Thomas grip and drifted into Foresight, drifted up and dropped a mark, snapped back to herself and then let Displace drag her along the tether to Daud.

Faintly Billie heard Thomas curse, surprised when she left him without a word, but she had to see it. She had to see Daud, she had to know. Was this some cruel dream, some trick of the broken Void? Or was this real, was she here, now, when shit was falling around her and she couldn't comprehend how good she had it. The shards of void-stone shattered around her, coalesced into her shape, and Billie stared at Daud who turned and stared at her in turn, face pulled into a scowl that quickly began to morph into something like concern. He wasn't so old anymore, younger, scarred face and not-quite-going-grey hair cropped short. He'd been pacing, looking over maps and notes and she can see marked off charts--a map of Timsh's estate being the current prominent set of papers splayed out.

"Daud," Billie breathed out, shaken, and she couldn't figure out what Daud's expression was now, except that he took a step forward.

"What happened?" Daud asked, and Billie opened her mouth when Thomas appeared at her side with a transversal, wisps of shadow and smoke coalescing into his form and Billie--Billie almost broke.

"You're here," she said instead, and Daud frowned. 

Thomas must've made some sort of gesture because Daud's face gentled a second later and he took a step forward and said, almost gently, "I'm here."

For a moment Billie struggled with her words, with what she wanted to ask--she glanced to the map. Timsh's estate. Had he gone there, yet? How soon before the Overseer's come to the Flooded District? How soon before her mistakes caught up to her?

Hoarsely Billie asked, "What day is it?"

"The fifteenth of High Cold," Thomas said, just behind and to the left of her. Billie stared at the map. The fifteenth of High Cold; she wracked her memory for when events took place. It was the 25th of High Cold when Billie had been exiled from the Whalers, when Delilah sent Overseer Hume into the Flooded District to hunt down Daud. They were still preparing, gathering intel, about Timsh. Daud hadn't gone to the estate yet. The High Overseer had already changed hands which meant either Emily was with Attano or would soon be with Attano.

It meant Delilah hadn't marked her yet. She'd only did so when it became closer to the assault on their base. It meant Billie had time. She closed her eyes and repeated the date--fifteenth of High Cold. She still couldn't tell if this were a dream or something else; it felt less real. Her eye and her arm throbbed and Billie glanced to her right. It struck her odd that Daud or Thomas hadn't said anything, actually. She looked at her arm, she could see the way the artifact fused at the stump where her elbow would've been. She manipulated the fingers, then glanced to Daud and Thomas again.

"What happened, Billie?" it was Thomas who asked, Daud who looked at her concerned. "Did you hear something? See something?" A flicker of his fingers, and Billie narrowed her eyes at the gesture--something about rats?

"No--" Billie started, then shook her head. "--a dream. I think." She moved her hand again and Daud reached out and grasped it.

"Get me fisher," Daud said, and he rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand but said nothing about it. Billie pulled her hand back even as she heard Thomas disappear in a transversal. "Debrief, Billie." Billie licked her lips, and when she didn't say anything Daud frowned. "Was it the black eyed bastard?"

Billie flinched, pulled away--she'd forgotten for a second Daud's contentious relationship with--how he thought so little of--Billie shook her head and opened her mouth to say no, to say it wasn't--but her voice stole away from her in the say way her thoughts stuttered over where she would normally have his name. Actually it worried her, how she couldn't think it, couldn't speak it--but she knew it. It was like the name had been stolen again, but not quite at the same time. Billie swallowed and turned her head to the side, frowned as she thought about it. She raised her left hand and rubbed against her lips.

How had she woken here, Billie wondered. When they were together in Tyvia--there was a bunk, they'd shared space in the dilapidated shack that they worked out of. Had--whatever happened done something to--if it did she would be furious. They'd grown close, the two of them. She cared for the little boy; he'd been fifteen; a child. No matter how long he'd been a Void Entity after that there was still the scared little boy who lost his name. Who died. Who bled out on a ritual alter as the Void filled him up and froze him and--Billie swallowed, and then reached into herself. Reached for--for that tie between--for what he did that connected them.

Was he here? Was that why she knew the name but couldn't think or say it? Did she even have the arm and the eye or was she just so used to them that she imagined it so? Billie dove into that connection and felt it there--strong, fluttering, terror and in a second Billie snapped back to herself and sucked in a breath. Something was wrong. Something sour-sweet in the tie between her and--and the Outsider. It hurt to think of him as such but he was and wasn't--she was and wasn't too.

"Fuck," Billie hissed between her teeth and then jerked when a new pair of hands touched her and she stared at Fisher who flashed a penlight in her eyes. "Ow, shit, stop that I'm fine!" Billie pulled away.

"Was he talking to you?" Daud said, voice low, dangerous, and Billie looked at him incredulously.

"What?" Billie said. "No, I--" She'd been focused. How long had she been focused. She glanced to Thomas and saw how he fidgeted, worrying his lip between his teeth. Fisher flashed the penlight in her eyes again and she flinched away; Fisher's lips were pressed thin in that worried way the woman got, eyes narrowed in concentration. "Stop that. I'm fine."

"You keep trancing out on us, Billie," Thomas said, voice soft, worried.

"I was thinking," Billie snapped back. "You should try it sometime." Thomas jerked back, surprised.

"Lurk," Daud said, and he used that tone with that name that had Billie standing up straight suddenly at attention. "You will submit to an exam under Fisher."

"Daud I'm fine," Billie tried to assert, but Daud would not be dissuaded. She could tell that from the stubborn set of his jaw and she sighed, heavily. "It was just a dream." When Daud stood taller, sterner, Billie reasserted, "It was just a dream, Daud."

"You will submit for an exam," Daud said, voice low. "I will not have my second compromised."

Billie sucked in a breath through clenched teeth but nodded acquiescence. If anything it would give her more time to think and figure this out because this--something was wrong with it, and she couldn't name what. Her arm hurt. Her eye throbbed. It was wrong.

[horrorempathy]

🗣 emily

*          𝙼𝙴𝙼𝙴        [        𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚎𝚙𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 .       ]

“   𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚎 ,   ”        emily  breathes  out,   the  word  replacing  oxygen.   the  very  substance  she  exhales.    eyebrows  furrow,   she  puts  down  the  pen  that  was  in  her  hand.   this  far  too  fancy  thing  with  the  kaldwin  crest  engraved  into  the  top  of  it.   one  of  the  things  delilah  hadn’t  defiled.   it  was  too  small,   emily  found  it  cradled  safely  in the  corner  of  the  room,   somewhere  behind  a  dirty  mattress  a  gravehound  was  using  like  it  was  the  greatest  bed  it  had  ever  slept  on.    do  dead  things  need  to  feel  comfortable?     emily’s  gold  eyes  peer  upwards,   lips  pursing  from  the  smile  they  were  previously  in.    SHE’S  THINKING.

“   wait   -------------------   that  sounds  possessive.    what  i  mean  to  say  is  that  you’re  the  embodiment  of  home  &  that  is  forever  a  piece  of  me.    you  resemble  a  child’s  comfort  toy,   a  comfortable  bed  after  a  long  day  of  work,   a  fresh  drink  of  cold  water  or  the  first  bite  of  an  exquisite  fruit.   ”        emily’s  lips  quirk  back  into  a  smile,   one  that  almost  seems  to  cradle  all  the  innocence  she’s  lost  along  the  way  to  dunwall’s  stifling  city  &  it’s  power  hungry  mongrels.    as  a  child  without  parents,   it  was  easy  to  cradle  a  soft  toy  to  pretend  all  is  okay.     it’s  easier,   as  an  adult,   to  have  a  person  to  hold.    to  hold  without  pretending.

you  can’t  destroy  someone  who  has  people  she  trusts  with  every  ounce  of  her  &  who  are  people  that  would  rather  die  than  break  that  trust.

[madeinhistory-moved]

    The tip of the pen pressed to her lips, Murasaki stared at the paper in front of her. As much as she wanted to write, the words could not come to her. She supposed this was her own fault, her thoughts kept drifting towards the world around her. Dunwall was... decent, but it was not home to her. Not really.

    “Niamh,” she said softly, setting the pen down on her desk.” Do you miss your home?”

@intothewildsea && a welcome back starter || accepting

[septemberskye]

Angst/fluff prompt #78 - “You’re worth it.” Corvo/Daud pretty please :D

Head’s up: there’s on-screen bone-breaking in this one, but it’s not graphic.

Daud has words for whoever gathered the intelligence on Dapper Rodney. It’s true that he and the Roaring Boys are “poorly organized and supplied, with no detectable power structure” but “a minimal threat” they are not.  

He rattles the handcuffs.

Some half-wit (and he knows it wasn’t one of his Whalers, they would’ve given him an accurate report) is going to catch it if he can manage to get loose. He doesn’t like his chances, though.  

With the Geezer finally dead and buried, Rodney had the idea to form a gang of his own and started operating out of a tumbledown warehouse on the edge of Draper’s Ward. Daud had suspected the power vacuum left from the Hatters’ collapse was the only thing that let them last long enough to become a problem, and now he knows he was right, along with a few other things that aren’t very important at the moment.

He’d just meant to get out and stretch his legs a bit, investigate a little. He hadn’t even left a note to say where he was going, thinking he’d be back before he was missed. And it has been easy, so easy to sneak in, look around, and take some notes, all while perched safely up in the rafters.

Well. He thought.

Dapper Rodney has a tallboy.

The ground had started shaking and he recognized what it was immediately (though all the tallboys were supposed to be decommissioned and hauled off for scrap, how had the Roaring Boys gotten their hands on one?) and dropped his pen as he fumbled to get it put back in his pocket because he had to leave. He watched with mounting horror as it fell, tumbling end over end, and hit the ground, springing apart into so many incriminating pieces. It was a fancy one too, with little bits of gold here and there. Not the kind of thing that might blend into all the dirt on the floor.

Someone walking past had noticed the pen scattered around, then he got the tallboy’s attention, and he’d been the one to actually see Daud. He imagines they wore about the same looks of surprise. And it had all been downhill from there—he’d abandoned stealth in favor of speed and tried to run, and then they all chased him, and then—

Well, it doesn’t matter how he got caught and he doesn’t want to think about it anyway, it’s pissing him off too much. Nothing like this has happened since Black Sally tried to put his eye out.

The Roaring Boys had a fun time roughing him up and crowing over his Mark, and now he’s handcuffed to a leaky pipe in a mostly-dark room, he might have a couple of cracked ribs, he certainly has more bruises than he wants to count, and the whole left side of his face hurts—Dapper Rodney has a vicious right hook. He doesn’t know what else they’re going to do to him—doesn’t think even they’ve figured it out yet—but he doubts it’ll be pleasant.

He just hopes they don’t try to ransom him to the Abbey.

He uses his Void gaze to get a better look at his surroundings. It’s some kind of storage room, there’s shelves on the opposite wall, maybe he could—no.  He can’t pull his hand out from behind himself far enough to tether anything helpful. There’s a big tool chest a few feet away he could probably get, but that would knock it over and get everyone’s attention.

There’s nothing for it, he supposes, and tries to just pull his hands through the cuffs.

He stops at that when he notices he’s chafed himself raw and leans on the pipe, grimacing at everything that hurts. He’s been an idiot, a thrice-damned fool, and now he’s paying the price.

A few minutes later, there’s voices outside. They go on for a little while, then there’s a sound like someone being shoved into the door and Daud hears, “Just do it, you piss-ant, I don’t need a reason!”

A scrawny, greasy character with the worst half-assed beard Daud’s ever seen comes stumbling in, adjusting his crumpled top hat and grumbling under his breath, but he stops when he realizes he’s being looked at and his lip curls. Daud tries to hide the hitch in his breathing as he saunters closer, not wanting to give him an easy target.

“Not so tough are you now, eh?” the man says in a thick Morley brogue. “Knife of Dunwall.”

Daud doesn’t dignify that with a response.

“You’re stuck.” He pokes Daud’s chest with a very grimy finger. “And we did that. Us, the Roaring Boys.”

“Are you sure?” The man’s probably scared of him, Daud thinks. His eyes keep flickering around like he’s half-expecting Daud to break loose and come for his throat, and he wouldn’t be trying so hard to gloat if he wasn’t at least a little afraid. If he can push him just far enough, he’ll go away.

“Shut up,” he snaps, but he doesn’t look so brave now. “We can take anybody that would come for you.”

“I doubt—” before Daud can even finish his sentence, the man rears back and hits him right in the solar plexus, hard. He doubles over as much as he can, breath leaving him all in a rush as most of his vision goes dark with spots, and fucking Void, that hurts.

“Shut up!”

Daud’s feeling very spiteful, and wants him to piss off and leave him alone, so he turns his hand and tethers the tool chest. Everything in it spills out all over the place and the man just about jumps out of his skin before he flushes an ugly red and grabs a pipe wrench.

Daud feels the bones in his calf break before the pain registers. Then it’s all he can do to stand somewhat upright as the man waves the wrench around and shouts, “None of that shit! You do it again and the other one goes, you hear?!”

“Hey!” Someone else looks in. “Leave him alone, the boss wants him one piece!”

“Leon just told me to—”

“Shut it! I don’t want any lip from you!”

He makes a rude gesture at whoever told him off and stalks out of the room, slamming the door behind him and muttering, “Fuckin’ witch…”

Daud eases himself onto the ground, breathing shallowly through gritted teeth. That did not go the way he’d planned.

Nothing is going the way he planned.

He’s not sure how long he sits there in the dark. Eventually he starts getting hungry and it finally sinks in that he’s going to miss dinner. Void, what’s Corvo going to think? Wyman? Emily? They’ve just started building a fragile trust, and now he’s gone off and left without a word to any of them, with no idea of when he might be back.

Or if.

He can’t even walk.

Fuck, unless the Roaring Boys try to give him to the government to collect the price that’s still technically on his head because he technically isn’t spymaster yet (unlikely) he might die still handcuffed to the pipe.

Oh, Void.

He feels a couple of tugs on the other end of the arcane bond—someone’s looking for him but he’s not going to take the bait, not even enough to check who it is. He’d need four, maybe five of them, all fully armed, to get out of this scrape and he can’t summon that many, especially not with the shape he’s in.

And—oh no.

If he dies, all the Whalers will know instantly (he thinks) because the bond will break. Leonid and Montgomery would take it especially hard, and he doesn’t want to—

He’s just going to have to get out.

Somehow.

As soon as he has the thought, the temperature in the room plummets, feeling like winter seawater, and Daud can see his breath fog in the little light there is until most of it is blotted out by a shadow that slowly grows denser.

“Oh, fuck,” he groans. “Not you.”

“Oh, Daud,” the Outsider says. Interestingly, he gives off a faint blue-purple light of his own. “What trouble you’re in this time.”

“Don’t remind me.”

He drifts closer, a few inches above the ground as always, and lays a hand on Daud’s calf, right above the break. He comes close to snapping at him for it, but his hand weighs nothing at all and is so cold it dampens the pain. “And yet you’re still so determined to escape—”

“I know,” Daud interrupts. He’s very short of patience and knows the Outsider won’t do anything worse than give him the silent treatment as punishment. “Are you going to do anything useful or just float there and talk?”

“Dapper Rodney found his tallboy by the Wrenhaven. It’s operator abandoned it, hoping no one would ever find out what he’d done, and he drowned when he tried to swim across the river. I suppose his wish was granted, in a way.”

Daud blinks. That’s…surprisingly straightforward, and gets rid of the worries that someone—an officer looking to flee the country, maybe—had sold it to the Roaring Boys.

Of course the Outsider has to go and ruin it.  

“Just how do you propose to escape? Your hands are bound, and unless you can fashion a splint and hobble off, I don’t see how—”

Daud grinds his teeth. He doesn’t want to hear it. “Can you do something helpful and go away?”  

“Hmm,” he says, and then he’s gone.

*****

Corvo, Emily decides, is worried.

It’s always hard to see on him, but he’s looking at every noise just a little too fast, and he fidgets with the silverware, running his thumb along the engraving. She’s certain it has something to do with Daud’s conspicuously empty chair. There’s a full place setting waiting for him, so his absence is probably unplanned, which would fit with Corvo’s nervousness. She knows they’re…close, even if she still can’t bring herself to like it. Or him.

She gives his chair a hard look, hoping he’s not gone strange again. He’d done that—holed up in his room or his office depending on the time, just about refusing to come out of either because of some odd sense of guilt. Corvo had been horribly worried when he found out, and now Emily has to live with the knowledge that they’ve started sharing a room.

Wyman comes in and sits down beside her, but she doesn’t feel like talking and mostly ignores them even though it makes her feel a bit badly, folding her hands in her lap and picking at the cuticles. Callista would scold her for it if she were here, but she’s not and can’t do anything about it, so there. In the corner of her eye, she can see Wyman glance between her, Corvo, and Daud’s empty chair, and they hum softly. They’re clever, they’ll figure it out.

Emily sighs and hears a strange not-sound, everything going muted like the room is full of treacle instead of air. She shivers, glances up, and the table—no, everything is grey, with a strange distortion making it all look just slightly wrong. She raises her eyes and gasps because there’s a person in Daud’s chair, a young man, dressed very nicely and sitting very upright. There’s darkness spilling off him like smoke, and his eyes are pitch black from edge to edge.

“Room for one more?” he asks, smiling slightly.

Corvo does not have the reaction Emily was expecting.

“No,” he hisses, half-standing and pointing an accusing finger the intruder. “I told you, you’re not to talk to Emily, she’s had enough trouble without someone finding out you’ve spoken to her. She doesn’t need the Abbey breathing down her neck, they’d want Daud and I killed—”

“Relax, Corvo. I’ve halted time.”

Emily stares at him. What?

Corvo grits his teeth and sighs. “Why have you come?”

“Really, I thought you’d be more pleased to see me. I’ve just spoken to Daud—”

“Where is he?” The intruder levels him with a look like Corvo’s the rudest person he’s ever met, really, he cannot believe people these days, and he quiets. “I apologize.”

Now Emily stares at the intruder, because she’s realized she’s sitting across from the Outsider (she’s almost angry at herself for not figuring it out earlier, but she wasn’t exactly expecting the whale god to appear at her dinner table, of all places). The Outsider gives her a look like he’s read her thoughts, and she hurriedly looks away, unnerved.  

Wyman just stares, transfixed. The Outsider barely looks any older than them.

“Where is he?” Corvo asks again, his voice low and quiet like he’d much prefer to be louder.

“Draper’s Ward.”

*****

“So,” Slackjaw drawls. “You want me to round up a few of mine and go down to Draper’s with you ’n them”—he nods at the Whalers—“so you can pick up someone you’re sweet on while we beat all of Dapper Rodney’s within an inch of their lives.”

Corvo crosses his arms, wishing Slackjaw wasn’t quite so observant. All he’d called Daud was a friend. “Yes.”

Slackjaw sighs, considering. Then he levers himself off the edge of his desk and says, “Of course we’ll go. Rodney’s been pissing me off lately, anyway, he needs the lesson. Let me find a few of the boys.”

*****

Daud grits his teeth and tries to breathe deeply and slowly. Montgomery had explained to him once how shallow breaths did more harm than good, and it all made perfect sense at the time and sounded wonderfully logical, but he aches all over and it’s hard.

His calf hurts, his boot feeling strangling tight around it, and he’s grateful for the dribble of water leaking out of the pipe. It’s cool and distracting. His one consolation is that his ribs might not actually be cracked, just bruised, except when he thinks that, he starts to laugh.

He’s probably going to die, but at least his ribs are alright.  

Oh, Void.

At least no one else has come to bother him, that’s a small mercy. He closes his eyes and tries to get as comfortable as he can. He doubts he’s going anywhere.

A few minutes later, someone goes running past the door, boots pounding heavily. Then another person, and there’s a sound like a grenade’s gone off somewhere. He hears the tallboy stomp away, and things suddenly get much louder.  

Daud just stares at the sliver of light shining under the door. It sounds like there’s a full-fledged gang fight happening just outside the warehouse.

He sighs.

He certainly doesn’t want to be involved in it, and resignedly tries to pull his hands out of the cuffs again. He has no idea what he’ll do if it actually works this time, but he’d rather not be a sitting duck for whoever else has shown up to find. He supposes he doesn’t even really have to get away, just find someplace out of sight and hunker down long enough for the gangs to sort themselves out. Then he can summon Thomas and Tynan and have them help him while the Roaring Boys are distracted.

Of course, that plan goes about as well as all the others he’s made, and he’s still well and truly stuck.

A soft voice outside the room says, “He’s in here,” and Daud goes very still, thinking shit.

The door opens, and the person responsible is very short, they don’t look like any of the heavy-built thugs Dapper Rodney seems to favor, but he can’t make out any other details because the person is backlit. Then they turn their head, revealing a Whaler’s mask and what in the Void is Leonid thinking—

She steps aside, and Corvo comes in, followed by a slightly bow-legged figure that can only be Slackjaw. Corvo hurries toward him and drops to his knees, touches his face with gentle fingers and draws back when Daud flinches.

“Are you alright?”

“‘M fine.” Fine enough, at least. He’ll live. “They handcuffed me—”

Corvo glances up at Slackjaw, but he flaps a hand dismissively. “Relax, I brought my picks.”

He crouches down, knees popping loudly, and sets to work, finishing surprisingly quickly. The cuffs fall with a clank, and before he can protest, Corvo and Slackjaw have each taken one of his hands and heave him up like he doesn’t have broken bones.

He can’t stop the strangled, pained noise and gasping breath that follow, but at least they’re quick to catch on and rearrange him so he’s between the two of them with an arm draped their shoulders.

“Seems to me you’re not fine,” Slackjaw says cheerfully.

Daud rolls his eyes.

When she catches sight of him, Leonid bites her lip and furrows her brow, clearly worried, but she keeps her head. “This way,” she says, and starts walking. Daud’s proud of her.

She leads them past the worst of the fighting, though they do have to duck to the side and wait for Tynan and one of Slackjaw’s men to finish dealing with a few of the Roaring Boys. Then they’re out of the warehouse and hurrying down the street—though they’re still not very fast.

There’s a rail car waiting and Thomas helps bundle him into it, then they’re off. Daud leans into Corvo’s side, tucking his face against his neck, and he lets him, even wraps his arm around him to pull him closer. Daud has questions he’d like answered, but he’s exhausted.

Questions can wait.

*****

“It’s good to see you’re feeling better.”  

Daud pauses in demolishing his plate of peppercorn blood ox and potatoes long enough to glance up at him, then grunts and sets back into it like he’s not going to see food again for a month. Corvo pulls a chair up to the bed and lets him, they can talk when he’s done. Between the cast, the rings of bandages around his wrists, and the black eye, he looks terrible—but, Corvo tells himself, it could be much worse. This isn’t anything he can’t recover from, even if he will be sullen until Montgomery lets him get back to life as usual.

Eventually Daud lays his fork down and pushes the tray away, finished.

“What happened?” Corvo asks.

Daud sighs, frowns. “Thought I’d go see what the Roaring Boys were doing, the report I got said they weren’t good for much of anything, but I dropped my fucking pen and their tallboy saw me—and they modified it somehow, it doesn’t have the bow anymore—but they caught me and I think Dapper Rodney came from one of the illegal boxing rings, he acts like they do, and he did this.” He gestures at the black eye and Corvo nods, trying not to smile. He shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t, but Daud never rambles like this unless he’s had medication and it’s endearing.

“And then they stuck me in that damn room and one of them sent in some idiot to see if I was,” he waves one hand like he’s trying to grab words out of the air, “still alive, and I pissed him off so he broke my leg. And then the Outsider showed up so I told him to leave, I didn’t want to deal with him, and he did, and then you got there and now here I am.” He sits there silently for a moment, and then his eyes narrow. “Wait.”  

Corvo lets him think, wondering where his mind’s gone now.  

He points an accusing finger. “You brought Slackjaw, why didn’t you take the Watch? If anyone finds out you were there, you could—” Corvo tries to head him off, but Daud won’t have it. “No, you should’ve taken Curnow instead, if someone saw you were with Slackjaw you could get sent back to Coldridge, why did you—”

“Daud—”

“Why did you come at all?”

Corvo stills. Surely he can’t think—

“Daud, listen.” He catches his hands, giving him one less thing to distract himself with. “Listen to me. You’re worth it.” Daud tries to protest. “You are. And if something like this happens again, I will come for you again, alright?”

Daud looks stunned that he would say such a thing, like he doesn’t really believe it. “Alright.”  

“Do you want me to sleep here or in my room?” Corvo doesn’t want to run the risk of hurting him by shifting around in the night, what with the broken bones, but he’ll stay if Daud wants him to.

He falters. “Here.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.” He gives his hands a squeeze, rises from the chair, and leaves the room. Out in the hallway, he sighs and scrubs his hands over his face.

He and Daud will need to talk in the morning.