Summary:
Corvo goes to the Outsider asking about Piero's nightmares.
[CW: Cute animals and also Piero are put in peril in this but nothing bad happens to them.]
Notes:
This is an AU story I made up for why Piero has tormented mad scientist issues. I've only seen that referenced in fan works (and was told the heart has lines about it) so I dunno if there's other source material or lore for this or what it is.
-/
Corvo found that Piero had his share of nightmares too, bad spells that came and went.
Many nights he slept fitfully and with only short stretches where he seemed at peace.
On bad ones he clutched at the sheets and blankets, or lay limp and whimpered softly, and spoke strings of numbers and scientific notations. Sometimes he muttered in a harsh language Corvo had never heard before. I t might have been disturbing if Piero didn't look so lost and pitiful while he was doing it.
Corvo worried for him, in the futile way of watching someone he cared for suffer and being unable to remedy it. He'd had his own share of nights waking up screaming and tangled in blankets, he supposed Piero was affected by something similar. He might seem something closer to void-touched, but he was normal enough, more or less, when he was awake.
So he did what he could, tried to reassure Piero when he slept badly, held him and told him gently to hush when he seemed to get lost somewhere between sleep and startling awake.
His touch seemed to calm Piero, let him sleep easier. He had a growing suspicion it wasn't just the fondness they shared for one another.
One night Corvo woke and moved to gently pry Piero's fingernails away from his upper arm, and Piero had grabbed at his marked hand instead, holding it and drawing it close.
Corvo watched as the mark glowed faintly golden under his skin, a dimmer version of how it looked when he used spells. It didn't cause him to feel tired like spells did.
Piero lay still, breathing deep, his face wasn't quite peaceful but there was relief on it.
Corvo smiled at him slightly, shifting around to try and rest comfortably that way.
"I'll want that back in the morning, you know." He said very softly, faint amusement mixed with glad relief of his own.
"He's got black eyes, and a black heart, and a black tongue behind whale's teeth…" Piero muttered.
Corvo looked up at the ceiling. "And I think it's time I had a talk with someone."
--/
The next morning he set out into a deserted part of the city looking for a shrine. The Outsider had always shown up to comment on his actions or give cryptic advice or occasionally mock him when he found those.
This time it was more than that, when he touched the rune on the altar he found himself standing in the void, on the black stones and sections of white tile floating over nothingness.
"I know why you've come. This makes it easier for us to talk." The Outsider spoke behind him. "Curious that you find yourself drawn to another who works in my name. Although perhaps it isn't."
Corvo turned to face him. "Well I'm here to ask that you leave him alone." He frowned and the Outsider's impassive gaze. "Please."
"I only add my thoughts and directions on occasion to what he already hears. It is not in my power to change what you've come asking about."
"What is it then? What's… What's he hearing?"
"He is dying, but not by my hand."
Dying?
The word struck him like a shot, and it felt like something secure had suddenly become sand slipping through his fingers. Or blood.
"Have you grown so fond of him already?" The Outsider asked.
Corvo heard the words only faintly as he sank to the stones, sat with his legs folded, tried to find a point of stability in thoughts that had become a drowning black sea.
He'd lost so many people in recent months. Jessamine, Emily for a time, the tower guard he trusted to take over watching them when he had things to do elsewhere, other friends who'd spoken out against his imprisonment and the accusations against him. The thought of losing anyone else was like an open wound.
The Outsider sighed. "Of course. The man who protects. Whose life has been shaped by that duty almost utterly. Lost and seeking any similar purpose you can cling to."
"Is there nothing you can do?" He asked faintly.
The Outsider tilted his head, looked down at Corvo. Said nothing.
Corvo grimaced and shut his eyes, raked a hand through his hair.
The Outsider didn't speak for a long while. "I can't, but perhaps you can. Would you carry a debt?"
Corvo looked up at him.
"Not a terrible one. Nor one you can't repay, should you survive your present difficulties. I simply see no benefit in giving you the task at present."
"Explain it to me first." He hadn't lost his senses enough to not consider what he was about to agree to.
"I can offer you a chance at saving his life, one day. For now, I can forestall his death, though that… may come with its own unique risks. As for the void touch that claims him, others can perhaps find an answer. But it is not within my power to change that."
What was one more debt among so many others?
"Do you know why he was expelled from the academy? Why he ended up among these dregs of higher office who ask you to carry out their plans to restore the Empress?"
"Haven't asked." Corvo shook his head. He might have been curious in passing but it didn't seem like the sort of thing he should bring up.
"Kindness. As has often been something you've suffered the consequences of."
Corvo tilted his head slightly in acknowledgement. He had a few scars to show for attempts at doing what he thought was the right thing. He wondered what Piero had done.
The Outsider continued, pacing as he spoke, gesturing with his hands, occasionally stopping to give Corvo a glance as deep as night. "Seven years ago the learned men and women of the academy set out slake their bloody curiosity about the inner workings of leviathans."
"They procured test subjects. Twenty living adult whales and their young ones. The mothers kept sedated, but the young ones were kept awake and alert, left to sing mournful and frightened songs that no one would answer."
"They were set to be cut up. One, and another, and another. And every night the songs would grow fewer."
"He wasn't allowed to do the work, but he was to watch, to document. It might have been considered the scientific discovery of the century, what he was set to find. But he felt sorry for the whales. Felt it wasn't right. Wished he could have done something to help them."
"He would go down to their pens at night, out on the platform." The Outsider leaned forward, arms crossed, black eyes wide. "And the songs got into his head. He let them free. A hundred and thirty thousand coin worth of effort to catch them, placed at his feet. As he stood before the head of the research team, weeping and tormented, unable to quite account for what he'd done."
"And every night since, he has heard them. whispering secrets none in this world were meant to know, pleas for salvation of their dying kind. Did you know that when the last whale dies in this world, it will end? Slowly, perhaps, but it will slide into dissolution and calamity nonetheless. That end is inevitable, by the way. But the actions of whalers are set to speed it along faster than is meant to, and as a consequence someone will have to stop them."
The Outsider looked up, at the great gliding shape of a leviathan overhead.
"Perhaps Piero Joplin will be the one to save them. Be the one to ensure this world lasts a few thousand centuries longer by speeding up the wheels of progress faster than they were ever intended to turn. But it will cost him his life to get that close."
"His life or the world, is that it?" Corvo asked. It seemed too big of an idea to even begin to fully grasp. But he suspected he already knew what answer he would have to give. It wasn't a choice he could make. This wasn't a choice at all.
"No. I'm not telling you stories to make you suffer, you do that well enough on your own. Piero is far from the only one set to accomplish that end. In another fifty years, another philosopher will have the chance, and survive the experience. If not him, then in seventy, it will be a scientist by the name of Jaskel Harper, or Dhezaven Richa, or Gloria Kaldwin... or a dozen others."
The Outsider looked over Corvo's shoulder and his eyes became distant. He seemed to be considering something carefully. "In... ninety three years from now, the discovery will be in every textbook. As unremarkable as any other commonplace amenity, the inventor just a name memorized by schoolchildren and the type of people who think they can impress others with facts."
"Hmmh. He'd like his name in the history books, for sure."
"Tell him I said it's not the only way."
Corvo closed his eyes and let out a long breath, finally finding his thoughts at peace. "What do I owe you for this?"
"I will ask you to do something for me, someday. I have not decided what. Something suited to your unique talents."
The air of casual menace that was always in the Outsider's words made that more chilling than it should have been, but Corvo looked into his dark eyes. Felt sure he already knew his answer.
The Outsider held out a hand and something coalesced there from black shards and smoke. He walked over and handed it to Corvo.
It was an hourglass encased inside a heavy chunk of polished crystal, the falling black sand inside it frozen in place. Writing in a language he didn't recognize hovered in a spiral around it.
"Is this important? Um… should I worry about breaking it?"
The Outsider stood back and looked down at him. "You may need to, someday. It will not protect Piero from every form of death, and it may make it very hard, should an accident befall him."
"What happens if I die while I'm out trying to set things right?"
"Then your debt is cancelled, and that object ceases to exist."
Corvo turned the polished crystal over in his hands, peering at the symbols in it. Worried about how he would keep it safe, whether it might get lost, what would happen if...
"I can take it back for safekeeping, if you like, but I suggest you give it to Piero. It will help him to have it close, and he will know what it means, in a way. Will know to keep it safe. It might help him understand, if you try to explain."
That was going to be an interesting conversation, Corvo thought, if he lived long enough to have it. He wasn't about to try while there was so much worry he might not make it back from his missions for the Loyalists. And it would have been too much to lay on someone he'd only just gotten to know.
"You're being remarkably helpful today."
"I'd rather not have to have you hunted down and killed, should you decide to start putting cities to the torch."
He looked at the Outsider.
"It is far from a strong possibility that you would get pushed that far, but things like that have happened before, to my marked. Your people had legends about one such case, I believe."
Had . He stood and carefully replaced the mask in his pocket with the chunk of crystal, frowning and not meeting the Outsider's eyes. He looked at the stones. At the empty blueness. "Thank you for your help. Can you send me ba-
"ck now…" He spoke into the dusty sunlight of a room hung with curtains and scribbled with writing. Crystal lamps glowed purple in the shadows.
--/
Corvo returned to the Hound Pits and unloaded a bag of scavenged components on Piero's work bench, feathers and scraps of metal and spools of wire.
He took out the chunk of crystal out of his pocket and set it there too.
"Oh, what'd you bring back? Did you get the…" Piero spotted the crystal and moved to pick it up, the rest forgotten. "What is this?"
"Found it out in the city, thought you might like it."
"Its…" Piero paused for a long while, seeming almost lost in trance. Then he blinked and turned it over, peering closely at the grains of sand inside the hourglass. "I think its broken, but... I do like it, thank you."
"Maybe it's art?" Corvo put an arm over his shoulder, and Piero leaned toward him affectionately.
"It does seem special." Piero said quietly. "I'll be sure to put it somewhere safe."