title: devour all the lights in the sky
summary: deep down in the dark, corvo the black seeks absolution. —corvamine, drabble.
word count: ~530
cw: implied gore
a/n:
you know when you bang out a vaguely abstract experimental thing in one hour at 3am and know you'll probably regret posting it when you wake up? yeahh
for high chaos week 2017 on tumblr
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Blood creeps between his fingers as he squeezes, hitting the floor in dark beads.
"Again. Speak again."
And listens. Listens close—closer—pressing the withered, wheezing thing to his ear and feeling the ailing pulse brush his cheek, leave a stain red as lipstick.
"Please. Speak again."
It will. If he's patient.
"Please." And he squeezes, again, the abused thing leaking more blood as the pressure splits more skin.
What would you have me say?
It's barely a sigh, a whisper on the fringe of his mind, but he seizes it. Closes his eyes, closes his fist, as he tries to pull the fluttering voice into clarity.
"Anything. Tell me anything."
Five sickly beats tick by, the only noise in the room. Then she speaks again, heavy and mournful as whalesong.
What could possibly be said, my love, to fix what you've poisoned?
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They call him the Black. For his deeds, or for the colour Dunwall becomes under his blade. It seems everywhere you turn the city is wreathed in funeral shrouds, and those who aren't sick or dead fear to step into the path of the new, black-robed Watch.
The Tower is veiled in black. He wants it that way. It keeps the place quiet.
Servants whisper.
Some say it's for his daughter. Killed in the coup, they say, wrapped in thorns and choked by the witch-queen. He speaks to her statue every night, they say. He makes promises. No one will hurt her again, he says. Jessamine will be glad.
Some say it's for her mother. That fifteen years weren't enough for the cracks in his heart and mind. He was never the same man, they say, after the empress died. After they threw him in that cell. Some parts never crawl back from the dark.
No one asks, of course. No one says much of anything at all to him anymore.
That's fine.
There are other voices to keep him company.
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"Tell me I chose right."
He's hollowed out everything. His cheeks, his eyes, his throne room. It's empty, always empty, apart from them.
His family. One, two, three. Small and fractured but safe. All he'd ever wanted was to keep them safe.
You wish me to absolve you?
He closes his eyes, resting his forehead against Emily's, and her face doesn't give when his thumb traces it: the jawline she took from him, the nose she took from Jessamine. "I need you to. Emily won't speak to me anymore."
The pulse weakens in his hand and the voice is wearier than ever.
I cannot absolve a man I do not know.
"You know me. You know why."
I know why, and I know it means nothing. Everything you have done means nothing.
"I protected her."
You condemned her, as you would have condemned me if you'd had a choice. But now I am beyond your grasp.
The heart flickers, and suddenly he cannot breathe.
"No. No."
Corvo, my love. My sorrow.
"I won't let you. Not again."
You already did. A hundred times over, you did.
His fingers close on empty air, and stone doesn't blink, and the room is still black.
There was never any blood.
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