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The morning was bright, the sun streaming in the windows. Corvo sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he blinked blearily. He yawned and stretched slowly; he was in no particular hurry, not any more. It had been years since Emily bullied him into retiring. He was her Lord Protector, but he was also old, his hair white. He was perfectly capable of doing his job; he might not be able to chase a man down or fight him hand to hand, but when it came to Emily’s protection, he wasn’t above cheating. After all, with time stopped around him, it wasn’t like he had to hurry to put down an assassin. All it took was one leisurely stroll and well-aimed thrust and there would be no more threat. Emily didn’t know that, of course. He tried to tell her time and time again how he managed to put her on the throne, but the words always stuck in his throat. He was never quite sure what stopped him: the thought of her reaction or the heavy weight of watchful (black as the deep) eyes, judging, waiting, watching to see what he would do. She didn’t need to know, so when she saw an old man who couldn’t protect her when worst came to worst, he just nodded. He’d been training his successor for years, and he would always be the one to stand behind the throne, watching, no matter how old he was. There was just another man mirroring him behind Emily’s other shoulder, should worst come to worst.
He was old and “infirm,” and if he showed up too early in the morning, Emily would fuss. She got it stuck in her head that because he was old he wasn’t allowed to work before 9 AM. He learned to spend the extra time up late at night, double and triple checking defenses and sleeping just a little bit later in the morning to make her happy.
Maybe that little bit of extra sleep was why he didn’t suspect anything at first. The sun was shining, but it was always up before him now. It wasn’t until his senses came fully back to him that he realized he was staring at what he hadn’t seen in years and years and years. The room was the same as ever: a tiny window to his left, a closet, a chest of drawers, all modest at his insistence. But the light bent strangely around the corners of the furniture. It all looked so warped. Even the sunlight streaming in through the window looked wrong; tinny and thin and unnatural.
(it looked like all those years ago when the hound’s pits disappeared and the void filled its place)
Corvo sprang from his bed, right hand clamped over the top of his left (the gloves he never forgets still lying on the dresser), and ran to the window. He expected to see nothingness continuing on into forever, floating islands of familiar scenes and whales swimming through the skies.
He saw the sea and rocks below.
He saw Dunwall Tower exactly as it should be.
Confused, panicked, not willing to admit what he knows must be the case (the void is bleeding through and there’s the weight of black-as-the-deep eyes and where is He), Corvo spins around.
He sees himself lying on the bed.
He doesn’t understand.
The Void bends the light and the world before the door opens, before Emily comes in looking ready to scold. She pauses, seeing him still asleep.
(maybe he is still asleep he’s only seen the void while asleep after all)
She smiles and shakes her head. It’s not like him to oversleep. She knows he stays up later now to compensate for sleeping in, he knows she knows, but they never discuss it. He can see it in her face that she thinks he was up far too late last night, that he was working too hard again. He can see a daughter’s love in her eyes as she goes over to touch his shoulder.
“Corvo, wake up,” she says in sing-song.
He doesn’t.
(but he has to this has to just be a dream it must)
He’s frozen to the spot. He couldn’t call out to her if he tried.
He watches her laugh.
“Come on, Corvo, or you don’t get to yell at me for going to meet with the High Overseer without you,” she says, a smile still on her face (please don’t let that smile fall please don’t let it drop).
Her brow furrows.
Her smile drops.
(no)
She shakes his shoulder, a note of urgency and worry climbing into her voice as she repeats his name.
The two begin to panic in time.
He watches, still frozen, still silent, as she begins to cry, as she falls beside his bed. He feels his throat tighten and his eyes begin to sting. The Void warps and twists around her, rippling in time with her sobs.
(he could never get her to stop crying as a baby)
(he can’t stop her crying now)
The panic and grief (for her) threaten to overwhelm him. The two begin to bubble higher. He starts to feel like a man drowning.
He feels the weight of two heavy, heavy eyes on the back of his neck.
It grounds him. It shouldn’t. It does.
(if the sea wants to drown him He will have to do it Himself)
In time, Emily finishes crying. She calls for the guards, for her new Lord Protector, who was standing outside the door, carefully, mindfully, the entire time. The day passes. Days pass, weeks pass. Arrangements are made. Tears are shed. He never sleeps (a dead man can’t) but he never leaves Emily alone. He knows she can’t feel his presence through the veil of the Void, can’t hear it when he talks to her, but when she has nightmares one night, and he whispers that it will all be okay, and she quiets, he likes to fool himself that she can (maybe He’s helping He owes him that much after all). There is another Lord Protector, but that will never mean that Corvo has given up his duty. He doesn’t know why he’s here (of course he does it’s one last show), why he’s caught between the Void and the world he knows, but he will do what he can with what he has (he always does).
He’s the Lord Protector.
He won’t leave his charge.
So Corvo shadows her day and night, through the days before the funeral and until the end of the service. It’s grand, befitting of the Lord Protector. Emily argued, knew he wouldn’t want it, but caved when the advisers and overseers convinced her that this was necessary pomp. She kept her face schooled through the entire service. She hadn’t kept it schooled when she saw his hand a few days earlier. She knew the Mark (everyone knows the mark). She clutched his cold hand and bent over it.
She whispered, “Oh, Corvo,” in tones sadder than whale song.
She pulled his gloves on for one last time and refused to let anyone else touch him.
She knew how he hated the pageantry, the falseness of court. She knew he would hate the funeral they were going to have to hold. She knew the praise that would come from his worst enemies during the eulogy, how people would all but sing his name for putting Emily the Wise on the throne, for all he had done. That was why, when she pulled his gloves on one last time, she made her promise.
“You were so quiet and careful with your words, but you told me they were snakes,” she muttered to his cold, still self, clutching his cold, still, gloved hand. “You apologized, because I was young, because it was a hard lesson to learn, but you told me they were snakes. Anyone could be—the people with the nicest smiles and prettiest words and the roughest of them all. I remember nodding and pretending it was hard to hear. You didn’t want to say it—you had this look on your face, a sour-lemon frown and the saddest eyes. You didn’t want to say it but you didn’t want me to not know.
“I already knew, Corvo. I remembered the Pendletons and the Lord Regent and Havelock. I knew, but you wanted to tell me, and you were so serious. You liked to think I was so naïve—I was then, I know that, but never as much as you thought. I always knew they were snakes, Corvo, and they won’t be the last thing you see. I have to let them stand over you and lie about how they all loved you. I can’t stop that. But they can’t stop me from giving you better. You deserve it. You deserve so much more, but I can give you this.
“I won’t let the last thing you hear be snakes.”
She found everyone she could. She sent her Lord Protector to deliver her notes. Cecilia, Callista, Piero. It was small, and private, with only people who cared. It started during the middle of the night, the hours of shadows, when he worked, when he did what he had to for the very people gathered. There were no Overseers and there was no shrine. They each stood in turn and offered their own words. They made him sound better than he was. There were tears. He stood far in the back, carefully fighting the sting in his eyes and the bubbling of grief (if the sea wants to drown him He will have to do it Himself) and even more carefully ignoring the weight of waiting, watching (black as the deep) eyes. The small, small unceremonious ceremony was winding to a close as the sun rose. Emily spoke last. She told him and the rest gathered that they began this in the dark they way they began all those years ago. She said they would end in the light of a new day, the day Corvo helped rise. Out of words, she went to the casket, tears in her eyes, carefully pressed a kiss to the body’s forehead.
The Void pressed a ghost of it to his.
Emily swallowed hard, took a small step back, and went to close the lid.
And she froze in place.
The tiny surprise it caused faded quickly. He was going to come sooner or later. Corvo knew He would have something to say. But He wasn’t the person moving between the mourners.
Corvo had grown used to the Void in the past weeks. He grew accustomed to the bend of the light and the ripples caused by every person that moved, a tiny warning of what was to come. Even now, the dust motes, hanging stiff in the air, were surrounded by the tiniest waves. Every tiny movement stirred the Void.
This man didn’t.
But his left hand glowed bright beneath his glove.
The gray hair slowed him, but it still only took Corvo a moment to recognize the man whom he’d pickpocketed all those years ago, the man he robbed instead of murdering.
It took Corvo even less time to recognize the skull-like mask that hung from his fingers.
Daud walked with quiet surety through the motionless, oblivious mourners.
“I don’t know what’s on the other side, Corvo,” the assassin said as he came to a halt in front of the casket. “I don’t know if you can hear me or see what they’re doing for you. I don’t really want to know.”
Daud carefully moved Emily’s fingers to open the casket fully. He began carefully pulling off the body’s gloves.
“I wasn’t going to come. I’ve been in Serkonos. You shut down the Whalers well enough years ago, and I wasn’t going to stop you. I’m not much of one for the quiet life, but it’s grown on me. Besides, I think we both know how it feels to want to escape notice sometimes.”
Daud tucked the gloves into his pocket.
“I had a dream weeks ago. Just enough time for me to get here. It was of this funeral. I owe you, Corvo. I know what I did to you, but I can only imagine what it must have cost you to let me go. I doubt it will mean much, but that was the one job I regret taking.
“I think He knew I wanted to repay you. At least a little. He always knows too much—you understand. And no one Emily gathered for you does. They don’t know what He’s like. The least I could do was make sure someone was here who understood.”
Daud fished a bone charm from his pocket and slid it into the pocket of the Lord Protector’s coat.
“To find what you’re looking for. It was damn useful for finding misplaced documents or extra bolts, but I think you need it more than I do.”
He laid the mask on the body’s chest and folded the ungloved hands over it.
“To remind you, wherever you are, that you did something good in this shit world. You didn’t waste what He gave you. They know the good you did; the whole Empire knows the good you did. But only a few of us know how badly it could have gone if you were just a little less of a good man.”
Daud moved Emily back to her former position, slid the casket lid into her hand, and curled her fingers around it. He began walking away.
“Rest well, Corvo. You earned it.”
As he stared after the assassin, the casket lid swung closed.
And nothing changed.
Men were fetched to bury the casket in the light of the new day. Paving stones were replaced. A headstone was added. The mourners left, touching Emily’s shoulder in condolences. Emily was left alone. She walked to her chair, which had been set right where her mother had died so, so long ago (he would never forget), and pulled out a doll. It was the one Corvo had given her, years and years ago. It was a gift, before he left to search for a cure (why wouldn’t jessamine send someone else anyone else). It was to remember him by while he was gone. It was for her to stop crying. She places it on the headstone.
(if the sea wants to drown him He’ll have to do it Himself)
“My dear Corvo.”
The voice is quiet in his ear, but closer than he’d ever heard it.
Corvo can feel the Outsider beside him, a heaviness, the pressure of the sea on a drowning man.
For the first time since he woke to find the light curving, Corvo speaks.
“Why?”
His voice rasps. It sounds as it did when he first left the prison. The memories swim before him for just a moment before fading, but they leave panic in their wake.
(if the sea wants to drown him He’ll have to do it Himself)
He doesn’t force the words past his throat (why did he have to watch them mourn why bring him so close to drowning why). He doesn’t bother. He knows that He will know. Daud was right; He always knows too much.
The Outsider stares at him with eyes as black as the deep, as heavy as the sea, and Corvo can’t bring himself to meet them. He stares instead at the doll Emily left.
“In hopes that you might begin to understand a scrap of what you’re worth.”
He freezes. He looks at the other.
But he doesn’t look so other, not anymore. The world Corvo knew is beginning to fade. For the first time, the two of them stand in the Void together, without the veil and its strangeness in between.
The Outsider smiles, and it is not the toothy grin of an anglerfish. It is the smile of the whale—full of power and danger that hides gentleness. And for once, the gentleness seeps through.
(in serkonos he heard tales of the outsider guiding lost children home)
(he heard tales of mercy for those he chose and terrible terrible punishment for others)
(he heard tales of mercy followed by punishment and vice versa)
(he heard but he never believed)
(which is silly)
(after all he’s seen what could be so impossible to believe)
“Dear Corvo,” the Outsider says in a voice like whalesong instead of a hurricane. “My dear fascinating, impossible Corvo. You listened to your Overseers too much. You listened to fools too much.”
The Outsider watches him with eyes as black as the deep, as heavy as the sea, and as soft as the breeze that only just ripples the sea.
“Everyone knew what you were worth except yourself. Cecilia, Callista, Piero. Daud. Samuel. Emily. Jessamine. Me. You were a good man in a terrible situation. Everyone knew you could do better—save you. You put everyone else first, even the men you hated. You are worth thousands of Havelocks and Pendletons.”
His throat began constricting. His eyes began to sting.
(if the sea wanted to drown him there was nothing he could do to stop it)
“You are so fascinating, my dear Corvo, because you do what other men would not. When left to rot, you didn’t save yourself; you saved the Empire. When give impossible power, you didn’t serve yourself; you served the people you loved. My dear, you are fascinating and impossible and so incredibly interesting because you are a good man. The snakes you warned Emily of couldn’t change that. The plague and the rats and death and darkness couldn’t change that. I couldn’t change that. And believe me, dear Corvo, I tried.”
Tears that taste like the salt of the sea run down his cheeks. The Outsider smiles again, with all the gentleness of the whales.
“You asked me why. That is why. You are the most fascinating human I have ever seen. You are the best man I have ever seen. You are the most deserving man that has born my Mark and of all men, you deserve a choice.”
He doesn’t understand.
The Outsider still bears that smile.
“The sea does not always sink ships. The winds do not always whip sails to shreds. Men do not always drown. There are countless days when the sea is still, when the winds blow favorably, and the leviathans pass harmlessly down below. I know what the Overseers would have you think of me. They are wrong. On the days when the sea is still, men can drown, or men can float.”
(he heard tales but never believed)
(maybe he should start)
“The choice is yours, my dear: drown or float. Eternity in the Void with me. I won’t behave. I won’t let your world slide by free of chaos forever. Order is so boring. But you aren’t. I won’t behave, but I will be less bored with you. I won’t be kind always. I will try to break you. I’ve done all I can to make you at least a little less of a good man. It hasn’t worked, but I could spend eternity trying. It won’t always be fun for you. It won’t always be rewarding in the end. If you end up broken into one thousand pieces, I won’t let you rest. I don’t know if you’re more or less interesting at your worst, if or when your goodness starts to fade. I do admit I’m dying to know. All that I do know is that you could never be boring.
“Or, you can rest. You are tired, dear Corvo. Duty and love can carry a good man a long way, but years and sorrows wear on a man. Your exhaustion is written in your very bones; you know it as well as I do.”
The Outsider pauses, tilts his head, considers him.
Corvo’s mind is still swimming.
“The world your Overseers promised you, full of perfection and the long missed faces of your loved ones, does not exist. The dead belong to another. You, who bear my mark, belong to me, and you are far too interesting to make the choice for. Regardless of what you decide, you will not see Jessamine again. Once Emily and the others die, you will not see them again either. But keeping you from your world entirely, forever, would be boring as well. I don’t promise to let you see them again, or to even bring you there while their hearts still beat. But I don’t promise not to.
“If I lay you to rest, my dear, it is forever. You’ll never wake. You’ll never see or feel again. You will sleep for eternity, until the Void itself ceases to be.”
(he heard the tales but never believed)
“On some days, the sea is still. On these days, men may float or they may drown. My dear Corvo, you have a choice. You may float or drown.”
(maybe he should start)
“It is up to you to decide which is floating and which is drowning.”