Note: Hey! It's been a very long time (and you are super not obligated to read this note, it's just me rambling about my motivations after four years of inactivity lol). I was checking an old email account and found a relatively new fave on this story, and I decided to try writing this again! I used to love writing fanfic (most was posted on an even older account than this one) but life happened and I fell out of it. Honestly I haven't written anything but essays and papers for school in at least three years. I still love Dishonored more than I love most things, and it may be fun to try and fit all the new lore from the second game and from D:DOTO into this little modern AU I was playing with!
I have an especially bad memory and therefore no idea what I was originally planning with this story, but I'd love to come up with something new. As of writing this note, I'm not even sure this chapter will be finished, let alone posted up, but I'm willing to give it the ol' college try!
Thanks for checking this out, and I hope maybe this time things go a little further.
The still of the night found Corvo shuffling quietly into his apartment, closing and locking the window behind him. He removed his mask, hanging it on his belt as he checked the front door to his home to be sure each lock was in place and that the slight dusting of flour he left just inside its threshold was unmolested. Corvo was a strict believer in phrases like "you can never be too careful" and "better safe than sorry," especially when it concerned the safety of his home and his daughter.
Satisfied with his findings, he turned away and walked deeper into the apartment, unbuttoning his hooded jacket as he went. It was a small and humble space, with sparse furnishings and plain white walls- a color designed to make the place look more open, but which only succeeded in making it seem emptier. The only decorations were drawings done by Emily, all recent- she had a habit of taping a piece of hers up if she deemed it worthy of her pride and her father's admiration, and subsequently tearing it down as soon as a day later upon feeling that her artistic skills have since improved, and that she was now capable of doing better. Corvo always pulled her rejected works from the trash when she wasn't looking, and kept them in a cardboard box in the back of the hallway closet. He was sure she knew it was there, but fortunately she seemed to appreciate the gesture enough to pretend not to have noticed.
Corvo walked into his bedroom and froze momentarily upon seeing a dark figure in the armchair next to his bed. He relaxed almost immediately- it was unmistakably Emily's figure there in the dark, her small silhouette slumped against an arm of the chair with her legs tucked beneath her as she mumbled almost inaudibly in her sleep. Corvo smiled, feeling adoration well up as a sweet pressure deep within his chest, although the feeling was made slightly colder by the knowledge that she had likely stayed up late, waiting for his return at his bedside.
As he stepped silently closer to her dark form, he hoped almost desperately that she hadn't come seeking solace after another night terror. Emily had been experiencing them at an alarming frequency after her mother died, and although they became fewer and fewer in the three years that had passed, they were still not entirely rare. Corvo had become accustomed to the unannounced arrival of his daughter to his bedside, shaking or in tears and giving vague and panicked descriptions of the strange, half-remembered imagery that had awoken her. Blood, rats, and unfamiliar symbols were common themes, along with the occasional and quite unsettling appearance of a disembodied, but still beating, human heart. Each night that Emily woke him, he would sit up and listen closely to her fear-fueled ramblings until they trailed off into nothing more than loud, uneven breathing. Then, he would wordlessly open his covers to her and he would spend the rest of the night blissfully asleep, feeling content with her warmth by his side despite the circumstances of her unfortunate affliction, for he was more assured in these moments than in any other that she was safe and alive.
Corvo resolved to make up for his absence, somehow- maybe he could rustle up something especially good for breakfast in the morning?- but momentarily he left his daughter untouched to make his way to the wall behind her. He knelt and pushed gently in at a certain point on this wall, only inches above the floor, and in doing so disturbed the panel there- a thin plank of wood, covered in a small layer of plaster and painted white, to look exactly like the wall around it. This panel was, Corvo hoped, invisible to the average, unobservant eye- and especially invisible to the eye of his landlord when the man came to inspect the apartment, if Corvo was fortunate. He pushed the panel to the side, granting him access to the small, private safe hidden within the wall. Although it was a mass of solid black for the lack of light in his bedroom, rendering the numbers on the safe's lock dial impossible to read, Corvo had opened this particular metal box enough times to easily do it blind when he had to. He was convinced, although he hadn't tried, that he could successfully enter his combination using only his teeth and the twist of his neck.
Thankfully, that was not at the moment necessary, as the door to the safe opened with no more than a quiet click beneath his fingertips, and Corvo laid his mask and the canvas bag holding his earnings from the night within. He pulled off his gloves and laid them on top of the mask, after feeling a brief and unfamiliar sense of discomfort from looking at the grinning metal skull that so often took the place of his own face. He spared a moment to study the small photograph taped to the inner side of the safe door, appreciating the sweet and subtle smile of the woman he loved and would love forever. When he felt satisfied that not a detail of her face had yet been forgotten to time, he swung the door of the safe shut, reset its dial to zero, and moved the wooden panel back into place over the hole in his wall, using a thin but strong thread attached to the panel's back to ensure that the fit was secure.
Corvo removed his jacket and hung it on his hat rack, which was placed intentionally, so that his coat, when in place, would block the view of this particular spot on his wall from anyone standing at his doorway. A somewhat weak and probably ineffective security measure, but Corvo felt that every tiny assurance worked towards a safer home, and was therefore worth the trouble. He removed his boots and left them at the base of the hat rack, and moved back to stand at the foot of his bed. When his gaze moved to Emily, he felt the weight of dark eyes peering at him from within the black.
"Daddy?" came a quiet question from the shape that was his daughter, a sound like a dying bird singing the notes of its last song, weak and nearly silent from exhaustion. Corvo wondered then how many times a man's heart could break in his lifetime, before the poor thing couldn't keep up anymore, and he would die inevitably and simultaneously from love and grief. When Emily was like this, afraid, sleepy, vulnerable, and impossibly small, she reminded him so immensely of her mother in the rare moments when she used to lean against his chest, whispering to him all her woes as silent tears hung from her lashes and ran down to pool beneath her chin- regrets about the last things she had said to her parents, worries about Emily's future, memories of the violence she had seen and the people who she had not been able to protect.
Corvo did then what he had always done for Jessamine, and did not waste a moment after hearing Emily's small, scared voice in the dark. He scooped his daughter gently into his arms and laid her beneath the covers of his bed, settling in next to her and pulling her into his side. He listened silently to her breathing, shaky at first, but quickly smoothing out to the cadence of a sleeping child. This night, the same as every night and every moment since Emily's birth, he was secure in the knowledge that her life was more precious than his own, and was more important to him than any other life in existence- even more so than his beloved Jessamine, small margin though it was. He was here reassured in his last surviving reason for living; his love for this girl was the fuel to the fire of his determination, and he would not allow any waste of her kindling as he worked towards her future. But now, lulled by her relaxed respiration and grounding presence, it took only seconds for Corvo to drift off to sleep himself.
He dreamed of crashing waves, and sun bleached bones, and dark, dark eyes.