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They don’t have time to do this often. Jessamine is busy, of course; and whatever Jessamine is, Corvo is too. But she tries to find moments, when she can. “Let’s be lost together for a while, Corvo,” she says, just like always, her hand in Corvo’s hair. She has an old book of folktales from Pandyssia in her other hand. Jessamine has a determined fondness for the mythologies of anywhere other than Dunwall. The places she’ll probably never get to see.
She used to ask Corvo about Serkonos, until he finally had to admit how little he truly remembered. Serkonos is where Corvo had another life. He wasn’t the Royal Protector, there. He was another person entirely.
Corvo isn’t really listening. Jessamine is speaking of the moon, a story giving meaning to its changes. She pauses, her hand stilling in Corvo’s hair.
“Corvo?” she asks, a thread of uncertainty running through her voice. And Corvo begins to feel cold, shadows creeping in at the edges of his vision. His instincts are screaming at him to stand up, to defend the Empress--
“Is this what you dream about?” the Outsider asks.
The Outsider’s voice from Jessamine’s mouth. Jessamine, who is six months dead. Corvo closes his eyes, tries to call the dream back, but the moment is gone. He can hear the singing of the Void in his ear, wind where there should only be the soft footfalls of servants.
“Don't do that,” he says, his voice rough.
Jessamine--but no, it's the Outsider--but it looks just like her--tilts his head. “You'll have to explain,” he says. The hand in Corvo’s hair has started moving again, much more stiffly than the Jessamine that Corvo had dreamed of.
“Like hell.” It's hard to contemplate violence against the Outsider when he's wearing Jessamine’s face. It doesn't matter, anyway. Corvo can never move when the Outsider calls him to the Void. Even, it seems, when he was pulled there from his own dreams. “Do you barge into the dreams of everyone you've marked?”
“Not usually. There's a very narrow range of them, you see: violence, sex, the world bathed in flames.” The Outsider blinks, and then Jessamine’s eyes are ink dark, alien in her face. “I don't believe I've seen many dreams quite this...banal. It's not what I would have expected from a man who just ended a six month stint in Coldridge.”
“Thanks. I do try my best. Stop wearing the Empress’s face.”
“Why?” The Outsider’s smile is out of place on Jessamine’s face. For all that she was, she was never cruel. “Does it bother you, Corvo?”
Corvo has tried not to antagonize the Outsider, in whatever small ways he can. He visits his shrines. He stays silent and obedient in the Void. He causes problems for the Overseers when given the opportunity. But he isn't used to being baited by a god. “Yes, I fucking mind,” he says. “I'm sorry if it's not interesting, but I was at peace, for once. If Jess--if the Empress is gone, she's gone. I don't want--” Corvo cuts himself off. What he doesn't want is his memories of Jessamine mixed up with the horror of his life now. The sneaking around, the rats, the Outsider’s voice, whispering in his ear.
The Outsider laughs. Jessamine dissolves, and his face is his own again. He puts down the book, and it too dissipates into nothing. “On the contrary,” he says, “it's quite fascinating.” He picks up Corvo’s left hand, rubbing his thumb over his Mark. His hand is very cold. “Your mind could be consumed by blood and revenge. No one would blame you, considering all that you've endured. And yet instead, your mind calls you here. To the things that you have lost. Why do you torture yourself this way, by dwelling on what you will never have again? Were Sullivan’s irons not enough? Won't it only be worse when you wake?”
“Do you really think it could make it any worse? The morning will be terrible no matter what I dream.” He’ll wake up, and Havelock will send him on another mission. He’ll spend another long day in the streets of Dunwall, trying his best not to die, trying to claw this city one step closer to stability. “If I remember the way things used to be--if I think that maybe, they could be just a little bit like that again--it feels like it could be worth it.” It doesn't always. Corvo doesn't say that, though he's not sure that means the Outsider won't hear it.
“I see,” the Outsider says. “Thank you, Corvo.” He squeezes Corvo’s hand, and his Mark flares bright. Corvo blinks, and Jessamine is above him again, turning a page.
“Corvo?” she asks. “Are you all right?”
“I'm fine,” he says, leaning back into her hand. “I just have a lot on my mind.” It feels as though there’s something on the tip of his tongue, but it slips away. He closes his eyes and soaks in the warmth of Jessamine’s voice. It would be nice, he thinks, if they could stay here always. Lost together.
-
It’s been--Corvo doesn’t know how long it’s been. He doesn’t know how often they’re feeding him, and no light seeps in, this far down into Coldridge. It’s hard to keep the days straight.
For a while, he’d barely thought of anything, save for the image of Jessamine’s corpse. He hadn’t listened to what his jailers said to him. It felt as if they were speaking from very far away. An audiograph turned too low to hear.
Things are beginning to fade back in. Now, for instance. Burrows is here again, talking to Sullivan, asking why Corvo hasn’t signed the confession yet.
Confession? Corvo thinks. Or asks, maybe. Burrows seems to hear him. He stalks forward, takes Corvo by the hair. Right. He’s bound to a chair, lip bleeding sluggishly from where Sullivan hit him. There’s the tell-tale crackle of the fire coming from somewhere to Corvo’s right, the iron being heated.
“It’s a very simple document,” Burrows is saying. “Confess to your crimes, Corvo. Your heart will be easier for it.”
Corvo laughs. Imagine. Burrows, of all people, talking about taking a weight from his heart.
Burrows drops him in disgust, and Corvo’s head falls, hanging down. “Have it your way. I’m sure you won’t take much more of Sullivan’s convincing.”
Corvo laughs again. A man like Burrows doesn’t know anything about pain. He’s still laughing at the first brush of the iron against his skin, but he cuts himself off abruptly. Not at the flare of pain he was expecting, of heat, blistering his skin. The iron--he knows it was on the fire, he could hear it--is cold against his skin.
There are hands in his hair again, raising his head to look up. The Outsider peers down at him, the iron held loosely in his other hand.
“Six months, you spent in this place,” he says. “I’m surprised to find you returning here.”
“Six months,” Corvo agrees. His voice is as rough and mangled as it was in Coldridge. “I’d be more surprised if I didn’t return.”
“I know all about the scars that pain can leave, both in the body and in the mind,” the Outsider tells him. “It lingers, longer than anything else: love and hatred and regret are towers long turned to dust before the memory of pain has even begun to be weathered. Did you ever think about giving in?”
“They would have only tried to execute me sooner.”
“But at least you could have rested.”
“I knew they had Emily. I saw her be taken. If I died--”
“Then there would be nothing left to protect her. Of course. A half starved man, tortured nearly to death in Coldridge Prison, the savior of a young Empress.”
Corvo grins. He can taste the blood on his teeth. There’s still something like adrenaline coursing through his veins. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”
The Outsider--smiles back at him. It sits oddly on his face. “That you are,” he says. “And I would prefer that you remain that way. True rest will go a long way towards achieving that goal.” He pats Corvo on the cheek, and taps the iron against his bonds. They fade away into smoke. Corvo rubs at his wrists, and when he next looks up the Outsider is gone. The iron is in Corvo’s hand. Burrows and Sullivan are standing in front of him, Burrows discomfited, Sullivan narrow eyed.
Corvo sighs. He stands. He uses the iron to choke both of them easily enough, leaving their bodies slumped unconscious on the ground. Afterwards he slumps back in Sullivan’s chair, putting his feet up on the desk, and wonders what the Outsider expected of him. To torture them in turn? He examines the iron, still in his hand, and tosses it to the side.
He eyes the audiograph machine on the desk. It almost seems to glow in his vision. Well, alright. He hits play. Through the filter of the audiograph, the Outsider’s voice almost sounds clearer. He’s--reading a story. It’s even one that Corvo knows. The Lonely Rat Boy.
Corvo closes his eyes and listens.
-
Corvo hands Jessamine the letter, ice in his stomach and bile in his throat.
This memory has faded, with time and with use, soft and weathered like old paper. Corvo is never granted the luxury of thinking that it’s real--he always knows what’s about to happen. That standing here, with Jessamine and Emily at his side, he’s about to watch the Empress die.
Jessamine drops the letter. Looks out towards the sea. And then Emily points towards the rooftops.
The assassins are quick. Corvo fumbles for his pistol, raises it, tries to find a target. He’ll miss. He always misses, every time, the assassins vanishing before he can fire.
Except he doesn’t. The Knife of Dunwall never arrives. Instead Corvo cocks his gun, and turns towards Jessamine. He takes her by the throat, the way that Daud did, pushes her up against a column of the gazebo and presses his pistol to her stomach.
Corvo tries not to kill, when he can help it. He can’t always. And sometimes, even when he could avoid it, he kills anyway. In the name of expediency, of getting out alive. So he knows what it feels like to end someone’s life; to watch the light fade from their eyes, the energy from their limbs, until there is nothing left but a husk, useful only to rats. He knows what will happen when he pulls the trigger. But Corvo is used to killing those who never see it coming. Who are already dead at his feet by the time they might have realized anything is amiss.
Jessamine’s eyes are wide. Betrayed. Her mouth moves, shaping Emily’s name, and Corvo shoots her. He steps back, lets her fall the way that Daud did, leaving her to bleed out on the ground.
He turns and sees Emily, standing still and frightened behind him. “Corvo?” she asks. “Corvo, I don’t understand…” She takes one step back as he comes towards her, but she freezes when he raises the gun, presses it against her temple. She squeezes her eyes shut, and--
--is gone. Corvo’s pistol is pointed at the Outsider instead, pressed against his chest. He reaches out and takes it, pulling it easily from Corvo’s grasp. Corvo stumbles back, falls. Feels blood soaking into his slacks. Jessamine’s blood, the blood that he spilled, if he could have just been faster, if he’d seen the signs, if he’d been there with her, while Burrows was plotting--
“You never could have saved her,” the Outsider says. He is examining the gun, tilting it this way and that, peering at each mechanism. He points it and fires it into the distance. The gazebo around them shatters, falling to pieces and leaving them surrounded only by Void. The blood soaking into Corvo’s clothes remains. “You know that. But you don’t imagine worlds in which you could. What brings you here, then, to a world in which you betrayed her, a world just as impossible as one in which she lived?”
“I don’t know.” Corvo’s hands are shaking. He wants to wake up, to face only the blood he’s actually spilled. He wants to thank the Outsider, for stopping him from shooting Emily. Or to scream at him, for letting him shoot Jessamine.
“You don’t dream about saving her.” The Outsider drops Corvo’s gun, no longer interested, and it dissipates into nothing before it can hit the ground. “Is this about Daud?”
Corvo shakes his head.
“There’s no use lying to me, Corvo,” the Outsider says, sounding almost fond. “Do you wish you had killed him?” The Void shifts. Between them Corvo sees himself, knife to Daud’s throat. “It would have been very easy. I don’t know that Daud himself truly expected you to listen to his plea.”
“There’s been enough killing,” Corvo says. “Like you said. Killing Daud wouldn’t save her. He was just--a pawn. He can’t unmake his choice.”
“No,” the Outsider says. “Nothing would save her. But here you are--dreaming that it was you who killed her. That does not speak of a mind at ease. Why is that?”
“Shut up,” Corvo says. “I don’t want to talk about Jessamine, or about Daud. I want to wake up.”
“If you didn’t want to talk about Jessamine,” the Outsider reasons, “then you would not have found yourself here, bathed in her blood.”
Corvo breathes in and out carefully through his nose. His hands are balled into fists at his sides, but he is not, not going to punch the Outsider. The bastard would probably only think it was interesting, anyway. “I know I couldn’t save her,” he says instead, through his teeth. “You’ve made that very clear.” It was one of the first things he saw in the Void. That scrap of paper, telling him YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER, over and over, a knife in Corvo’s already broken heart.
“People speak of salt in wounds,” the Outsider says. “It’s true that it does cause pain. But it also brings about healing, wards off infection. It causes you pain, to accept that the Empress is dead, that nothing you could have done would have saved her. That killing Daud would not have brought her back. You are a great man, Corvo, and history does bend to your whims in so many ways--but not in this. If you cannot bring yourself to understand this, it will crush you as surely as the sea.”
Corvo looks down at his bloodied hands. “What makes you think I haven’t been crushed by it already?”
The Outsider kneels down before Corvo. The blood, Corvo notes sourly, doesn’t deign to soil his clothes. “Because you spared Daud,” he says. “Even without knowing all that I know. You don’t believe you made the wrong choice, and yet you will tie yourself into knots over it. Crushed men, Corvo, do not wonder about their choices.”
“Sounds easier.”
The Outsider waves a hand, dismissive. “Easy paths are uninteresting,” he says. “You insist on taking the hardest ones, time and time again. Every time, I think that perhaps you will give in. But you don’t. It would be a shame to let your regrets consume you, the way that Daud has. Don’t dream of this again.”
Corvo opens his mouth. Closes it again. Gathers himself, resisting the unbidden urge to laugh. “You do know how dreams work, don’t you?”
“You won’t dream about that which you do not dwell on,” the Outsider says, with the surety of someone who hasn’t dreamed in a very long time. “Now. It’s getting late.”
“Who’s fault is--” Corvo begins, but before he can finish the Void is gone, and he opens his eyes to find his hideout in the Flooded District, cold and clammy around him, just the same as it was when he went to sleep. Just a few hour’s rest, before returning to the Hound Pits Pub.
Corvo looks down at the Mark, dull and inert on his hand. He could just--leave, couldn’t he? Daud said he wanted to leave this city. Corvo could too. He’s never quite belonged here. He doesn’t have to face the bastards that betrayed him.
He can’t even really consider it. It would be the same as if he’d shot Emily in the head himself. Corvo sighs, and readies his weapons. The Outsider is wrong. There isn’t an easier path. This is the only one he has.
-
Jessamine is laughing as she pulls off her rings, one by one. “Bertrand Boyle’s face,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you said that to him.”
Corvo shrugs, hands in his pockets, but he can’t help but grin. It’s been a surprisingly good night. Corvo doesn’t usually enjoy state dinners. Jessamine does, to an extent--she says they remind her of a good chess game, pleasant in the moment, in the trenches of strategy, but exhausting after the fact, once the game is over. But Boyle had made a fool of himself, and Corvo indulged, for once, and took advantage of the weakness. He’s not particularly skilled at cutting slights. He wasn’t made for court life. But he did manage to make the man storm out of a dinner being held in his own honor.
Jessamine had only glanced at him, the barest hint of a smile on her lips. Now, divested of her rings, she hooks her arms around Corvo’s neck and smiles up at him, dazzling in the serious way that she has. “Thank you,” she says. “I was sure he would overstay his welcome by hours.” She pushes his hair out of his eyes and leans up further. Corvo dips his head and lets her kiss him, soft and comfortable. She tastes like the bright Serkonian wine they’d served with dinner. It’s been a good night. There are no outstanding threats to the Empress, save Bertrand Boyle’s terrible manners, and the servants know well enough to turn a blind eye to the Royal Protector’s sleeping arrangements. Jessamine’s lips are--
Cold, against his. Her mouth tastes like metal, not wine. And when Corvo leans back, forcing himself to move slowly, her eyes are wide and black, unblinking as they watch Corvo.
Outsider’s fucking eyes, Corvo thinks. The bedroom around them hasn’t changed, and Corvo finds that he can still move his arms. He presses firmly against Jessamine’s shoulders, pushing her back. Darkness pools around her, and then the Outsider is standing in her place. Corvo finds that he can’t push him back. It’s like trying to shove a mountain.
“My apologies,” the Outsider says. “You did say you didn’t like it when I take her form. I’d forgotten.”
“Did you.” Corvo doesn’t buy it. The Outsider seems unbothered; he looks around the room with interest.
“You’d think an Empress’s chambers would be more elaborate. But Jessamine Kaldwin didn’t like that sort of thing, did she? She enjoyed luxury as much as anyone else, but she preferred those that she could comfortably ignore. Silent servants, expensive fabrics without garish patterns. A Royal Protector who would give his life for hers out of love, so that she could pretend it wasn’t because of his duty.”
“I’m really not in the mood.” Corvo is tired, for all that he’s clearly dreaming. He toes out of the nice shoes he’d worn for the dinner and sits down on Jessamine’s bed. He presses both hands to his face.
When he looks back up, a small part of him--the flickering flame that never quite goes out, the thing that got him through every cursed day at the Hound Pits Pub--thinks that perhaps the Outsider will have left, leaving Jessamine in his place. But the Outsider is still there, only closer now, crouching in front of him. “Will you take this ache in your chest to your grave, I wonder?”
“Seems like it. Surely you’ve seen enough grief for hundreds of lifetimes.”
The Outsider tilts his head. “I have. But I often think, my dear Corvo, that you underestimate your own singularity.”
“Singularity in losing my--someone I love? In Dunwall?” Corvo scoffs.
“You think that everyone has your capacity to love, and continue loving, without even the contemplation of betrayal.” The Outsider reaches out, pressing cool fingers to Corvo’s cheek. He’s clean-shaven here. Jessamine had liked that. He tilts Corvo’s face up, so that he has to meet the Outsider’s dark eyes. “Your loyalty extends beyond death. It has no end. How curious. I think I like that.” He takes hold of Corvo’s jaw, implacable. Much, he thinks traitorously, the way that Jessamine used to touch him, used to do everything: with the unthinking knowledge that she would be obeyed.
Jessamine had been given the obedience due to an Empress her entire life. She was used to it. And she could always see into Corvo’s heart, anyway. The Outsider has his endless years of life, and he can see into Corvo’s head. He must know that Corvo will let himself be pulled forward, will let the Outsider kiss him, nothing of Jessamine in it now. He tastes like raw copper, and Corvo thinks he might be leaving bruises on his jaw. He wonders if he’ll have them when he wakes.
“I have your Mark,” Corvo says, when the Outsider pulls back, begins instead to study Corvo’s face intently. “You helped me save Emily. If it’s my loyalty you want, you have it.”
“Of course,” the Outsider says. “I expect nothing less. I only want to try it out for myself. I’ve never had that, before.”
“Had what?”
“Someone whose loss I would grieve.” Corvo stares at him. The Outsider has left a hand at his throat, his thumb rubbing idly at the hinge of Corvo’s jaw. “I lose everything, in time. I have never been able to mourn. I think that I might like to. The world will be so much the lesser for your loss, Corvo. It feels like only an eyeblink away. I don't often mind, when my marked fade away. It is only the natural order of things. But when you fade…” He brushes his thumb across Corvo’s cheek. “I will mind it very much indeed.”
Corvo closes his eyes. Swallows. “It’s not pleasant,” he says. “It’s forever. The rest of your neverending life. You really want that?”
He feels the Outsider’s hand move as he shrugs. “Apathy is beginning to lose its appeal. And caring--that’s what saved you from becoming only one of many, another mindless killer let loose on Dunwall’s streets, bloodthirsty for revenge. Perhaps caring will save me from a much worse fate.”
Corvo sighs. He leans into the Outsider’s hand. It’s nice, to know that here, in his dream, in the Void, there’s no one he needs to protect.
And someone will grieve for his death. No matter what else happens. Whether Emily manages to keep hold of her throne, whether the both of them end up dead, floating face down in the river. It’s the most security Corvo has ever felt. Perhaps the most anyone can hope to find, in a place like Dunwall.
The Outsider tugs him forward again. Corvo goes, pressing a hand to the Outsider’s chest, the place where his heart should be.
-
Corvo wakes in a bedchamber not unlike the one in his dream. The Outsider had been right: the Empress’s chambers were never very different from any other room in Dunwall Tower.
He gets up and goes to the one locked cabinet he keeps in his room. The situation is precarious, in the wake of Emily’s ascension to Empress, but Corvo’s chambers are probably the safest place in all of Dunwall. There’s only one thing he feels the need to keep behind lock and key.
Jessamine’s heart has quieted some, as of late. Perhaps she can sense that her daughter is safe now. Corvo hopes that she can. He sits down on the floor, leaning back against his bed, holding the Heart in both hands.
“I wish you could see her,” he tells it. “She’s being so strong, in the face of everything. She’s going to do right by this city. I can tell.” The Heart pulses, once. Corvo can feel the movement in his own chest, painful.
“When I die,” he says, “leave my heart be.” He knows the Outsider can hear him. He squeezes the Heart one more time, listens to Jessamine’s soft voice. I have forgotten this place, it says. But it has not forgotten me.
He could ask the Outsider to free her. He might even succeed. But the thought of losing this last scrap of Jessamine, of never hearing her true voice again, only the distorted version that he finds in his dreams--
“I’ll do what I like with your heart,” says the Outsider. Corvo jerks his head up, but there is nobody around. Only the voice. He sighs, and stands. He tucks the Heart away, safe in its cabinet. Wonders if she minds, being left alone.
Corvo doesn’t honestly think that she can tell.
It is only fair, he supposes. There's no sense in him getting any more peace than Jessamine is granted. And it is fitting, too, that the Outsider should have the very last of Corvo, when it's all done. Like a whalebone charm: the small, final remains of a creature that was once great.
“You could never be so common,” says the Outsider. Always listening. Insurance that Corvo will never be lost and alone again.
Corvo smiles. He raises his hand, presses his lips to the Mark, and closes his eyes against the way it burns.