Heir Apparent

Chapter Four - Loss

Jessamine emerged from her chambers for the first time in over two weeks, on the day of her father, Emperor Euhorn's funeral. She surfaced with a pistol in hand and only one place on her mind – the shooting range. It had taken four men to subdue her after the gunshot in the ballroom, and the very sight of the de facto Serkonian Lord Protector evoked a response that made words run dry and her bones rattle with anger. Subsequently, he was not to go near her indefinitely, not that it mattered since no one else was either. Galen postponed his retirement out of pity to fulfil the Lord Protector requirements from as far away as he could, and for as long as it was needed. He could retire again if at some point, Jessamine allowed the Serkonian to take over the role, or she and the Lord Regent found a suitable replacement.

He wasn't guilty of anything, is what they had said, which enraged Jessamine. She wanted something or someone to make things... tangible, as if everything she was feeling was justifiable in some concrete way.

Many of the watch, but mostly the maids found it difficult to conceal their shocked expressions, but she had expected them to talk as soon as she set foot outside of her room. Galen, of all people, was also taken aback, and it took until she was half way down the hall to the stairs for the sight to fully register. "Milady," he exclaimed once caught up, but Jessamine had already begun to cut him off.

"Leave me." She snapped, her words meant well, but for a woman who felt as if her heart were splitting in two, they stung like poison. He cleared his throat nervously, the request would have been denied under any other circumstance. But Galen knew Jessamine, and he knew that she wasn't asking him for a favour, she was telling him what she needed. So without an audible word, he stopped following her and watched as Jessamine took the first few steps towards braving a new path.

He knew that before she could move on, Jessamine would need to make amends. His eyes wandered over to the Lord Regents office, where the Serkonian would likely be, at this time.

When she reached the grounds, soldiers and keepers all feared of interrupting her step. The range stood on the edge between the cliff face overlooking the ocean, tucked away towards the back of Dunwall Tower. Each gunshot from the range felt as if they were piercing her heart, and when she arrived at the range, the first thing she did was order the stunned men present to leave. They hurriedly bid her farewell, and hustled out of the area in obedience, talking amongst each other.

She found it hard to comprehend how the feeling of abandonment caused her to push people away in a desperate cry for help. She had never realized until lately how much grief felt so much like fear.

She grabbed the pistol from her holster and took aim. It was a tight, wavering grasp, and when she pulled the trigger, the bullet ricocheted violently off of the metal guard rails behind the targets. Feeling her anger reach a breaking point, she jammed another bullet inside the chamber and locked the bolt. She strode aggressively towards the target, firing again. It pierced the furthest ring just barely, but before she had time to react or to load another round, she heard the click of a gun hammer behind her. It fired directly past her, and almost through the centre of the target. When she whirled around in shock, the face that awaited her was one that caused her words to catch in her throat and die on her lips.

"It isn't safe to be alone, you know." Corvo said with his eyes transfixed on the target, hardened and almost visceral. There was an undercurrent of a Serkonian accent in his overall tone. One would have to be absolutely daft to miss the palpable tension present in the room, which was thick enough to cut with a knife. Jessamine wasn't sure if it were possible to feel any more abashed, but she did and right then, she felt as fragile as a house of cards. The only way she knew to protect herself was with unnatural harshness and brevity.

"I see, I'll have the Captain put you on the next ship to Serkonos," said Jessamine, her shoulder firmly colliding with Corvo as she brushed past him. Her eyes did not so much as offer a careless glance, "leave me now." Jessamine finished, and then she busied herself with picking out bullets from the several open containers beside her.

Corvo took a moment to brave her venom, and then spoke again, "Your Majesty –"

"You killed him!" She screamed, hastily and sloppily pointing the unloaded pistol directly at Corvo's chest, her words struck him like lightning. He was visibly taken aback, but his eyes practically wept of empathy even though she didn't see it, she couldn't see much at that moment. They both knew it was an empty threat, but Jessamine found it hard to rationalize her fear at that moment.

"I'm a soldier and I made a judgement call to try and protect the Emperor!" Corvo retaliated quickly, furiously, and for the first time, Jessamine remained quiet. Very few individuals questioned her authority, no matter how brash. "I had every opportunity to board the ship back to Serkonos, but I didn't, because I decided not to abandon my duty." He stepped closer, the selfish child of Jessamine wept and howled, and no-one could hear it but her. Echoing through her own mind like the haunting of a ghost that hasn't quite died and was fighting for its return to the substance. "Protecting the Emperor, and you, was my job, have you considered doing yours?"

"How... How dare you!" She shouted, but even as the words left her mouth, Jessamine, inside and out, sensed it was no use.

Sure enough, Corvo's voice cut through her mind like a knife, "being afraid, sacrifice," he said somberly, "that is what it means to be Empress, to be human." She found that her grip on the pistol was shaking.

Jessamine desperately clung to her anger like a shield that was quickly crumbling. How dare he lecture her about sacrifice, especially since this was the furthest thing from it? Her fingers were as stiff as metal against the handle of the gun, shaking violently in her grasp. Her face was resolute, but Jessamine felt she would shatter like glass at any minute. "You don't know the first thing about sacrifice," she practically demanded, the words stinging her throat as she spoke. She closed the space between them so that the only distance between their figures was the cold barrel of the pistol now pressed into Corvo's chest. "Sacrifice is a conscious decision to give up, surrender, a choice, damn it!" She shoved the pistol into him, causing him to inch backwards only slightly, but his body reaffirmed that he refused to move. "And you took it from me." Corvo searched her face; it was almost painful looking at her struggling gunmetal eyes, glassed over. "Do you know what that really is?" she demanded.

Corvo remained mute. Jessamine was angry, but slowly as she unraveled before his eyes he saw that she was afraid. Her chin was now relentlessly quivering, and a small wet trail stained her cheek. Jessamine managed to say only a single word before she felt as if her throat was closing, "loss."

The lonely child was a blubbering wreck as she held on to her last line of defence with all of her life force. But there was another hand on hers, a hand that threatened to break open her quiet sorrow as it removed the pistol from her grasp. Then Jessamine's vision failed her, the blinding white of the ocean, the glare of the impossibly huge sun, the bowl of the sky, it all melted together into one endless haze of light. The silence had shattered in the wake of her defeated childhood until her world became nothing but fright and submission.

Then, she bowed her head over the hands that held her pistol and began to cry. She gripped Corvo's fingers painfully hard, her body shuddering and heaving, wracked with sobs until she thought that hearts really did break, and that hers was breaking now.

When Jessamine had regained herself slightly, she looked up in an embarrassed, bleary haze to see Corvo trying to dry his hands. "I-I'm s-so sorry..." she sputtered, wiping her cheeks on her sleeves, disgusted with her actions and the childish wreck of herself she had presented. He didn't have to tell her that he understood, because they saw the same thought in each other's eyes.

"Are you implying that I don't understand loss, your majesty?" he said, suddenly, gently, as if rearranging his words. She could see the care in his face, hardened lines underneath the faintest hint of whiskers softened tenderly.

"N – No I'm not!" she said in a plea of submission for her selfishness. In her moments of newfound clarity, Jessamine wondered how she could have been so ignorant. She judged Corvo on the sum of his actions, not his person. What kind of leader should ever hope to be fair or just if they spend all their time falsely judging their people? She wasn't the only person in Gristol grieving, or angry, and Corvo had himself, imperceptibly reminded her of that fact.

"There is loss among the people of these isles that you will never know," he said, suddenly unable to look at the young Empress. "The most frightening loss I should hope you never experience is yourself." His words, although distant, somehow didn't feel impersonal, and settled into her broken demeanour like a balm. "Your attitude is infectious to the people of these isles; it's a symbol for them. Do you want to be a bitter Empress, filled with regret?" Jessamine shook her head and cast her eyes away. "Being strong is no more my job than it is yours, your majesty." He said.

They stood there silently, as if that were the only thing that ever needed to be said. There was no need for Jessamine to thank him, and after they finished embracing the quietness that stretched between them for what seemed like miles, Jessamine spoke: "How did you know –"

"The Lord Protector, Galen," Corvo quickly responded. "I was in the Lord Regents office, requesting for a return to Serkonos." Jessamine swallowed hard, and Corvo continued, "But Galen came and he convinced me to stay. He said he had never seen you like that before. When you left your chambers, you weren't Jessamine anymore." Jessamine felt her heart well up in her throat, "He begged me to stay; he said you were at the range, and –"

"Thank you," the young Empress silenced him. There was no need for a further explanation past reaffirming that there were people that cared about her, and it was as if nothing else mattered in the world. Corvo, Galen, her father and maybe even the citizens of Dunwall – they cared.

"Does he really want to retire that badly?" Jessamine remarked with fondness.

"Well, it wouldn't hurt to give him a break, Your Majesty."

The sun beat down against Euhorn's small white gazebo with a blaring intensity, and all of those in attendance for the funeral were haphazardly wiping beads of sweat from their foreheads and necks. The light danced carelessly against the pristine plaque in the western corner. It was nearing sunset now, the sky was mauve with dusty peach cotton wool clouds and the whole sky hung like an inverted bubble. The Lord Regent, the Captain and Galen all stood, tight lipped, waiting for Jessamine to speak. Behind her, Corvo watched intently.

Jessamine shifted her weight nervously, gazing towards the mouth of the ocean behind them. She knew this was it, this was where it ends, or begins, nobody could say. Stray ashen locks of her hair swayed in the unsteady, easy winds.

"In truth, I had not prepared anything for today," she spoke honestly and truly for the first time. "But I believe my father, and your beloved Emperor Euhorn Kaldwin prepared me for this for a long time." She trailed off, before regaining her clarity. She looked down briefly, expecting a paper full of important notes she should have been addressing, and almost smiled to herself. When she raised her head, she took several moments to silently, and placidly look at the faces of all those in attendance until one by one they all focused on her inquisitively. Galen was the first, matching her eyes, and then the Lord Regent, and finally the Captain, who instantly softened his expression.

"To me, Euhorn Kaldwin, was the finest Emperor Gristol could have asked for." Jessamine felt her heart catch in her throat; the palpable, brassy sunlight felt as if it would make her skin hot to the touch.

"I want Gristol to remember the Kaldwin's not as a line of tragedy, but as the line that unified the Isles, a line to be proud of." Said Jessamine, observing as a white capped wave crashed against a large rock in the distance, before quietly receding again. There was much to learn from the patterns of the ocean, the constant pull outwards and inwards, the perpetuating tides of balance which could both steal and give her joy. "In time, I only hope to be at least half the leader my father was," Jessamine retrieved from her pocket, the small box from her father, and removed the paper. She truly didn't know what it was she would find inside, but when she slid the lid off, those thoughts became instantly irrelevant.

She lifted the handwritten piece of paper off the top, revealing her father's golden pocket watch. Carefully inscribed with swirling dual swan detailing worn off by many years of handling, it ticked heartily as she clutched it in her hands and suddenly her face began to feel hot. Jessamine tried hard to focus on the written words; it was an excerpt from his favourite Tennyson poem – Ulysses.

"We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven." Jessamine addressed, her voice was oddly confident, but simultaneously humbling. "That which we are, we are." She glanced back at Corvo, her eyes practically begging that he agree – and he did. "One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will." No one could tell but him the smile that touched his lips, faint, and almost garish against his docile expression.

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

A/N: Before I hammered this one out, I spent some more time lurking Harvey Smith's twitter and I discovered that not only did her father die in her late teens, but Corvo was given to her before he died, and it was confirmed that Jessamine eventually harboured a deep love for Corvo. Considering Smith is the rule on Dishonored lore, I've been writing in de facto canon the entire time. It also gave me some inspiration on how to approach this aftermath of a chapter. The death of her father would be a huge turning point in Jessamine's life, and I wanted Jessamine's pain to be real without breaking character. Corvo, in turn, has more to say than he let's on.

Side note, I thrive on criticism, and I'm open to hearing it.