1A/N: Surprise! This isn't a Hobbit fic. If you haven't played Dishonored, here be spoilers. MAJOR spoilers. Read ahead at your own risk.
This fic is dedicated to Felix, whose neverending talking about this game led me to play it and it is the best video game in the world.
Corvo stares at the rat.
He is used to rats, now; they do not frighten him. Thanks to the Outsider, he has actually become one of them more than once. He can summon them at will, even. He knows them, and in a way, he respects them. But he does not love them.
Slowly, he picks up a brick from the floor, and swiftly, he crushes the rat.
Pain sears through Corvo's skull, and he drops the brick and presses both hands against his forehead. His ears are ringing, and even with his eyes closed, the world is a shimmering white. He waits for it to fade, and when it does, he lowers his hands and peers up at the wooden boards that cover the opening to his prison. Then he looks down at the bricks surrounding him, one of which is freshly stained with blood.
This shouldn't be hard.
He grabs a brick and pushes himself up to his feet, but his knees buckle, and he finds himself back on the dirty floor. The brick falls from his hand and lands with a clank that is painfully loud.
Betrayed, disgraced, attacked, imprisoned again. He has been here before. In fact, it has only been a few days; his hands only stopped shaking two days ago (though they do not shake when he wields a blade). He holds his hands up and watches them. They are not shaking now. He thinks about the sound of the rat's bones crunching when he killed it. He does not think about how satisfying that sound was.
Except he does.
A flash of urgency overtakes Corvo so heavily that he lets out a small, startled curse. He has to get out. He has to get back. He has to set things in order.
"Emily," he whispers, and he grabs the brick again and pulls himself to his feet, pressing one hand against the dirty wall to keep himself upright. It takes a few tries, but he breaks the boards and blinks out. The sudden hurtling forward is too much, though, and he drops to his hands and knees and vomits onto the metal floor. Wiping his mouth, he sits back on his feet and watches it drip through the grate. Disgusting. But his stomach feels better.
His hands are shaking.
He pushes himself to his feet anyway, stumbling a little as a high-pitched whine surrounds him and the world turns white. Blearily, he looks around for something solid to defend himself with. The powers from the Outsider are formidable, of course, but he likes something tangible, something that can cut or pierce or crush. Not because he likes the feeling of slicing through flesh and bone, of course—never that—but because it keeps him grounded and aware. He is not in a dream; he is not in his mind; this is real. He still is not sure he believes that. He thinks about slicing through flesh and bone. He does not think about how satisfying it feels.
Except he does.
"Emily," he whispers again, and he somehow gets his feet moving in the direction of a table by the wall, where he saw a glint of metal. He is rewarded with an assassin's blade, and he briefly examines the other things on the table and takes what he needs. He wants his things back. He misses his own blade.
"What are you doing, Corvo?" Emily had asked one night, sitting on his bed with her stockinged feet swinging back and forth, watching him.
"I'm sharpening my knife," he replied, keeping his eyes on his task. He spied a small piece of white fabric stained with red stuck to the hilt and picked it off hastily.
"So you can kill faster," Emily said. It was not a question. Corvo paused, startled. Sometimes he forgot how perceptive Emily was. He started working again.
"Well," he said, and then words failed him and he didn't say anything else.
"It's okay, Corvo," said Emily lightly, scooting closer and linking her right arm through his left. "You're killing bad people, right? They deserve it. I understand."
Corvo pressed his lips together and took a deep breath, feeling a tightness growing in his chest. Jessamine would not have wanted her daughter to speak like this.
"Wasn't Callista looking for you, Emily?" he asked quietly.
"Oh, all right," said Emily, sounding resigned. She unlinked her arm from his and hopped off the bed. "I'll talk to you later, Corvo!"
When Emily ran out of the room, Corvo stopped working on his blade and finally looked up, staring at the doorway through which she had just gone.
"This is for Emily," Corvo whispers to himself. "It's all for her. Make her safe. Make her safe."
The truth is that they don't all deserve it. Some of them do—Hiram Burrows certainly did, of that he is sure—but he had a choice. He always had a choice, and he chose to kill. He doesn't let himself think about why.
"Sometimes when you come home, you smell like blood," Emily had told him the last time he came back. Right before he was poisoned. That time, he knew he smelled like blood, because it was all over him. He could not hide that from Emily. He had not left many guards alive on his mission to eliminate the Lord Regent, and he had felt nothing when he took their lives.
Nothing, or satisfaction?
Corvo shakes his head and pulls himself to the present. His head is raging with pain still, but every second he delays is another second Emily is in danger, and he has to save her. He blinks across the room to the ramp leading upward, where he can hear two of Daud's men speaking. He kills them before they notice he is there, and he tells himself he feels nothing.
"Emily," he whispers as he kills one.
"Emily," he whispers as he kills the other.
A smile flickers on his lips, but he suppresses it.
He blinks through buildings, through the air, cutting through Weepers and telling himself it is mercy, it is mercy, their lives are already so miserable and he is doing them a favor. The assassin's blade cuts well, but he misses his own; it cuts through flesh like it's butter, and he could use the extra help when his hands falter and his legs wobble still. He finds his gear at the bottom of the whale oil refinery, amid a massacre of Weepers, and he cannot hold back a short laugh as he drops the old blade in favor of his. His crossbow is a welcome sight, as well.
He blinks across the Flooded District and into Daud's territory; he spies Whalers on watch from his hiding place in the shadows, and he pulls out his crossbow. If he can eliminate them before they see him, it will make getting to Daud that much easier, and with Daud eliminated, his own life will be that much easier.
Wait. No. For Emily. Emily will be safe if Daud is gone.
Corvo sets a sleep dart in his crossbow and takes aim, but then the sharp whining starts again, and he cannot see through the brightness that seems to cut through his eyes. When it clears, he switches out the sleep dart for a regular bolt. He kills one Whaler, two, three, four. He imagines the sound of the bolts hitting their bodies, since he cannot hear it from this distance. He whispers Emily's name.
Inside the decrepit building Daud calls home, Corvo manages to cut off someone's arm. The man screams, but Corvo slits his throat quickly; after listening to the pained gurgling for a few moments, he slides his blade smoothly into the man's heart. He knows he should keep moving, but he pauses and looks at the severed arm on the floor with a detached curiosity. He kicks it gently, and then he moves on.
He forgets to whisper Emily's name.
He finds Daud, and as he listens outside the door, he hears that Daud is expecting him. Good. They will meet face-to-face, and they will fight, and Daud will die, and then Corvo will find Emily. He presses his forehead into the wood of the doorframe and squeezes his eyes shut, willing his knees to stop wobbling and the pain in his head to lessen. Neither of these things happens, but he steps into the room anyway.
The Whalers are easy, and he has no problem disposing of them in various ways, but Daud is a challenge. Corvo can use his Outsider-given powers on Daud's men, but Daud himself is far, far more experienced, has had the Outsider's Mark for years, and Corvo finds himself terrifyingly on the losing end of the fight. But somehow, though his vision goes white more than once and he even falls to his knees at one point, he finds himself standing over his kneeling enemy, breathing hard.
There is no way he won. Daud let him win. Corvo does not understand.
"I have one more surprise for you," Daud says. "I ask for my life."
Corvo nearly drops his blade. This time, his vision goes red instead of white. How dare this man ask for his life after what he has done? How dare he ask to be spared?
Daud is still talking, though, and Corvo is still listening. Daud talks about killing nobles—an experience with which Corvo is acquainted—and he seems to regret what he has done. Corvo is reeling. Daud regrets killing Jessamine.
And yet, she is still dead, and Corvo must protect her daughter.
"I've had enough killing," Daud finishes. "So my life is in your hands."
Corvo stares at Daud for a few moments. He thinks of Jessamine. He thinks of the nobles he has killed, the guards, even the Weepers, all in the name of Emily. To make her safe. And here is one Corvo must protect her from, and he has had enough of killing, he says. If he is telling the truth, Emily is already safe from him. Corvo looks into his eyes and sees something resigned there, something broken. He wonders if the Outsider has given him this gift. He knows he is telling the truth.
Corvo slits Daud's throat and tosses him off the building.
As he blinks away, he tells himself it was for Emily. If not for her, then for Jessamine. Regret does not absolve, he tells himself. He thinks about how she is avenged now. The web of conspiracy is eliminated, and Daud is dead. He does not think about how nicely, how smoothly the knife glided through Daud's throat, how satisfying the crunch of his bones was on the ground far below—a sound he is not sure he heard, a sound that may be the memory of a rat's bones under a brick in the bottom of a hole. But he does not think about that.
Except he does.
Daud had enough of killing.
Corvo has not.
He forgets to whisper Emily's name.