ok so there's...A Lot of things happening here. i know that (at the time of me writing this) i still have 'grand words' to finish and edit, not to mention the frankly ridiculous backlog of prompts already in my inbox, but i saw someone else doing this challenge and it sounded so interesting that i couldn't resist. for those unfamiliar, the basic concept is participants get a 'bingo card' where each square is a prompt, and the goal is to fill them out in such an order that you get a bingo - or, if you're an overachiever like me, finish the card and do every prompt. the card i received is on my tumblr (yennas) if anyone's curious what prompts i got, and i'll be posting an updated version with every chapter crossing off the ones i've finished! y'all are also more than welcome to request some of the prompts with certain characters/pairings, though i'd ask that you limit the fandoms to witcher or dishonored, since that's just what i feel most comfortable writing right now
also, i know that right now with only this first prompt up there are no witcher fills even though it's in all the witcher feeds, but don't worry - i've already gotten several as prompts with witcher characters and have ideas for more! this is just the first idea i had that felt concrete enough that i thought i could write it the way it feels in my mind. in addition to chapter titles i'm going to list the prompt and the fandom so if y'all want to skip to a certain prompt when i've got more of them up, or only read for one of the fandoms, it'll be easy to do so –bel
The Empty Set (Dishonored – Wound That Would Not Heal)
The last thing she remembers seeing is Corvo's face.
Glazed over in the wash of red that covered her vision, it is, spotted with blood and with considerably more emotion in the expression than she is used to seeing out of him in public. And that is where they are, after all, right in the middle of the gazebo where anyone could come across them. She wants to reprimand him, remind him that the guards will be back at any moment and finding the Empress in the arms of her Royal Protector will only confirm the rumors that have been flying around court for the past decade. Neither of them needs that—but she knows, in the back of her mind, that it's a ridiculous thing to be thinking, that appearances shouldn't matter when she still feels the phantom blade twisting in her gut and she knows she only has moments left.
Emily. She needs to be thinking about Emily.
She is finding it increasingly difficult to think about anything at all.
~oOo~
The Outsider cuts her heart from her chest, and there, in the Void, the hole still bleeds.
~oOo~
The heart of a living thing, he calls it when he gives it to Corvo, but from where she is watching it doesn't look like one. He's….modified it, she supposes that's the word for it, until she can barely recognize it as human, let alone hers. But it has to be. Corvo grips it tighter in his hand and she feels the pull in her empty chest, tugging her towards him, coaxing words from somewhere deep in her. Things she doesn't know she knew.
And she knows—everything, suddenly, the force of the knowledge so strong that she can hardly breathe. (She tries not to think too hard about what it means that she still has some kind of physical form here. Thinking about that would lead to hope, something she can't afford.) Corvo's fingers, when he strengthens his hold on the heart—her heart—are slightly crooked, and even though she hasn't seen them, she is painfully aware of the new scars on his arms, of the burns. Six months in Coldridge Prison have not been kind to him. She wonders if he ever thought of her when he was there. In the way his eyes widen when he hears her whispers, the way he stumbles slightly, losing his footing every time she speaks, she finds her answer.
What have they done to you? Even as she says the words, feels her vocal chords shift and vibrate with them, they drift away, lost in the Void with the rest of her. She can feel pieces of herself dissolving slowly, starting at the corners of her consciousness and working their way inward towards the ragged edges of the wound. She doesn't know what she is becoming, but soon, she fears, there will be very little of Jessamine Kaldwin left.
~oOo~
Sometimes, he sleeps with her heart clutched in his hand, pulled close to his chest as though he wishes he could tear his own out and replace it with hers. Those are the only nights he sleeps peacefully. On those nights, she sits on what passes for ground in the Void, great slabs of some black rock she wouldn't be able to put a name to even if she cared to try, unbuttoning her blouse and pulling it far open enough that she can examine the dip between her breasts. It looks just as red and angry as it had the day the Outsider had put it there—the only time she's seen him, even here in his realm. (It seems, she thinks, that his apparent proclivity for meddling in the lives of humans, at least, if the Abbey is to be believed, does not extend to an interest in those already dead.) If she looks closely enough, she can see the slick sheen of her ribs through layers of muscle. If she runs her fingers around the edge of the hole, they come back red and damp.
Sometimes she tries to call out to—someone, anyone. Corvo, the Outsider, Emily. Just the thought of her daughter, taken by assassins and locked up who-knows-where, makes the hole pulse with pain, and she wonders if her own heart beats any more unevenly in return, if Corvo can tell the difference. He doesn't seem to be paying as much attention lately. His focus is unwaveringly on the living. She wonders if he simply can't allow himself the luxury of remembering her, if thinking about her for even one unguarded moment would mean breaking down completely.
She isn't sure if she is imagining it, or if the mask has truly…changed him somehow. Made him not the Corvo Attano she had known, but some strange foreign thing, a man whose penchant for senseless violence is going to tear the whole city apart if he isn't careful. Somewhere deep down, past the ragged edges of her flesh, she knows she should care. It's her city that's crumbling, after all, her hard work that's going up in flames, washing away in rivers of plague-infected blood. But it's difficult for her to care about anything except the feeling of his rough fingers when he runs them over the heart, staring at the gears inside as if he will see her if he looks closely enough. These days, it is the only thing that tethers her to the world of the living.
~oOo~
One night, when he returns from the Boyle mansion and collapses onto his thin mattress in the attic of the Hound Pits, he is less reluctant to hold what is left of her. He presses his lips to the thin glass covering the hole in her heart and she can tell he is shaking. "I killed her," he whispers, his breath fogging the glass. "I killed her, Jessa. I didn't mean to. I just—she figured out who I was, and she would've screamed if I hadn't—"
He sighs, lets the hand holding her drop to the threadbare green blanket he's lying on top of. "More people would be dead if I hadn't done it," he says, more to himself than to her (does he even realize she can hear him, that some part of her consciousness still exists to hear in the first place? She doubts it). "It was the only way."
She can hardly feel the tip of her tongue anymore—the sensation in most of her extremities faded long ago, and she grows closer to true nothingness every day—but somewhere on it is a dry remark about how, after all the guards he's murdered or left unconscious to be eaten by rats, after he branded the High Overseer and left the Pendleton twins to rot in their own mine, after he's seen firsthand the drastic rise in the city's weeper population as a nearly direct result of his actions, it's killing Waverly Boyle, of all people, that has made him feel even the slightest bit of guilt. If she were alive she would have told him that, she's sure, but she's trying to focus on the sensation of his skin and she realizes, with something of a jolt, that he's not wearing his signet ring anymore.
It makes sense. He's the most wanted man in the Isles, and besides, they'd probably taken it from him before he even landed in Coldridge Prison anyway. But it's this, more than anything else, that makes her realize she will never get him back.
~oOo~
Only once had Jessamine Kaldwin visited Kingsparrow Island when she was alive, back when the construction on the lighthouse was just beginning, but even as she is now, a piece of preserved muscle tucked inside the Royal Protector's worn-down coat, she can feel that things are different. This is no longer just a lighthouse, it's a veritable fortress, with defenses to rival the Tower itself, and Corvo cuts through them all like they are nothing, reprogramming Sokolov's horrible devices with a skill she didn't know he possessed and leading the people he believes to be his enemies right into their traps. They die in instants, vaporized into nothing. They are not even people to him anymore, she thinks. Only obstacles.
Everyone knows you were screwing the Empress, she hears Treavor Pendleton say when Corvo finds him, badly hurt in the gatehouse. She never knew the youngest Pendleton in life; his brothers had been the ones in Parliament, and Treavor rarely appeared at functions where they were also in attendance. It is the first thing she has ever heard him say. It is also the last. The crossbow bolt that Corvo places neatly next to the bullet hole ensures that. She still has a body in this damned Void, even if she can barely feel it anymore, and when she looks down, the front of the shirt she is wearing—the shirt she died in—is soaked crimson.
The new High Overseer, Teague Martin, is the only one who does not die by Corvo's hand. By now, she is too tired to be surprised.
~oOo~
He saves Emily. She will give him that much. Without him, she would have been dragged right off the top of the lighthouse, dying with those who had conspired to save her. Corvo's coat is soaked through with more than just rain as Emily embraces him. It has only been a few months, but she looks….different than Jessamine remembers. Older, and not just in years.
"The others are all dead, aren't they?" Emily says. The sound of her voice is so familiar it makes what is left of her ache, but the tone is all wrong. The words are all wrong. And all she can do is watch, a sick dread rising where her heart used to be. "That's alright. I was going to have them killed anyway." She grips Corvo's hands tighter. "I'm going to be Empress."
Somewhere, deep in the Void, the hole that has burrowed its way into Jessamine Kaldwin pulsates and bleeds.
ever since i played this game for the first time, a couple things have really interested me: a high-chaos corvo who still neutralizes (almost) all of his targets through non-lethal means, and the idea that jessamine can definitely see everything that is going on, if parts of her are still present enough to be in the second game. this is kind of my first attempt to write about those things, but there will probably be more in he future. anyway i'll be over on tumblr crying about how jessamine deserved better if anyone would like to join me