This - this was a familiar feeling, even if Corvo wished it wasn't. Waking up slow, barely waking at all, knowing he was going to fall back to blackness at any moment. His hands woke up first. Prickling in his fingertips, at the callouses - only the new ones, not the old - and then slow awareness of the rest of him. How heavy his chest seems. How thick his tongue is in his mouth. The ache that runs along him and groans and sobs. But that isn't so bad: he's good at ignoring pain. His main talent, really. Anyone could fight if they had the training. The trick to it was to keep on fighting undistracted, and that, well, that was what he excelled at...
The last time had been far more pleasant. Not the first time he'd taken a bullet for Jessamine, just the first time the wound had festered despite the strictest care, and he had shrugged off the fever until the middle of some appointment with some nobleman, and despite focusing so very hard on Jessamine's words, he still found himself pulled down into cold black. And then he had woken up, just like this, slow and still half-drowning, but Jessamine had been at the bedside. The words she'd said stuck in his head. We need you here. He couldn't quite bring her face into view as she said it, but frowned, confused: she wasn't usually the type to use the royal plural. Both of us. Then she had taken his hand into her own, and placed it, gently, just below her stomach, and at that moment he had perfectly understood with terrifying clarity -
...at which point he had tried to get her out of the room just in case his fever was catching, and from eyewitnesses managed to tumble out of bed in a truly impressive manner, hitting the bedside table on his way down and adding a new bruise to his other injuries. The next time he flirted with consciousness, though, Jessamine had still been there, gently petting at his temple with the back of her knuckles and playing with his hair.
Nothing so pleasant this time around.
Women's voices. Murmuring and distant but with a certain lilt - servant-girls, he could tell. Not worth waking up for. The breath came out of his lips in a sigh and his aches yelled at him indignantly, like petulant children throwing tantrums about being ignored. Another voice, more refined but not quite refined enough to be a noblewoman (good: any noblewoman here would mean trouble). Familiar, now that he placed it. Callista Curnow. He opened his eyes, for whatever good that did, the world mostly brightness and blur.
"Don't sit up. Let me help you." Definitely Callista's voice. Her fingers lifting the back of his head up, and then something to his lips. He braced himself for the taste of Sokolov's health elixir - the stuff worked, mind, but it was medicine and tasted exactly as pleasant as one would expect - and found himself pleasantly surprised. Milky tea, luke-warm, a little on the strong side but that's what the milk was for, now, wasn't it? Enough to wash the dust and dryness and blood out of his mouth.
Of course he hated being this weak. But what choice did he have?
And it was only Callista's hand. Not Jessamine's. So after the final gulp, when the dark tugged at his shoulders again, he didn't fight it. By the time Callista told him to rest, he was already doing so.
For the fifth time that day, Cecelia resisted the impulse to dart into the small hidden way reserved for servants. Instead she reached up to adjust the collar on her new suit (smothering!) and planted her new boots (too tight, there'd be blisters on her heel) more firmly in the fancy carpet. Then she noticed a wrinkle on her blouse, and fussed with it in endless distress as if she expected to be forcibly removed from the royal keep for such a small transgression. She did not even notice Samuel, daring for once to amble in the main corridors, walking slowly towards her with a calm smile. "All gone well, I hope, Lady Pendleton?"
She desperately pawed at the bit of lace, looking ready to growl at it in frustration. Samuel looked at her expectantly before bringing his hand up to clear his throat and try again. "...Lady Pendleton? ...Cecelia."
Finally she jumped in recognition of her own name before immediately putting a hand to her temple. "I'm so sorry, you were calling for me! I'm sorry, it's just - it's very strange adjusting." At least around old Samuel she didn't have to worry about keeping the nervousness in her voice under control.
It seemed, after all, that everyone but Cecelia was taking the adjustment well. Treavor Pendleton's will had been mainly a rambling complaint against his brothers, but he had ended it simultaneously wanting to spite the bastard children of his brothers while not revealing his own illegitimate heirs. Instead he settled for what he wrote with obvious bitterness was considered the last true branch of Pendletons. Of course Treavor's Uncle Bartrand had been something of a local legend, having many mistresses but no wife despite a professed desire for one; Treavor laid out the last great secret in his final words. His uncle did have a wife. A red-headed shop girl, lower-middle-class to the bone. And Treavor's mother, the resident matriarch, had declared that it would be better for Bartrand to be seen as fickle and an affable womanizer than to actually reveal the elopement. The woman had been given an allowance each month, and Treavor had even heard the occasional update in a letter about his Cousin Celia.
All of this hadn't caught Cecelia's attention as they read the will at the Hound Pits. And it certainly hadn't occurred to her why the reading was at the Hound Pits instead of anywhere more grand. She hadn't even felt right simply sitting there listening. Instead she polished the taps at the bar. The first time the barrister said her name she had been wholly focused on rubbing away a spot of tarnish. The second time she had raised her head. The third time it stopped seeming so much like a dream and more like terrifying reality.
Lady Cecelia Pendleton. Outsider's eyeteeth, she was never going to get used to that.
In fact that was more or less her plan: to go back to the Hound Pits and desperately remain in denial that she was anything more than just the red-headed girl who cleaned things from time to time. Well. Maybe she could upgrade to the red-headed woman who ran and owned the bar. That would be nice. She'd gone and presented herself to the Empress the way nobles were supposed to do, and Emily had been happy to see her (she'd helped the girl color in a few of her pictures from time to time, when Callista snuck away for a bath), and that was quite all the nobility she felt like doing today, if ever, thank you very much.
Samuel still wore that sneaky smile, as if about to chuckle softly to himself. It only grew wider as, by instinct, Cecelia reached up as if to snatch her cap off of her head before remembering she wasn't wearing it. "...You said Piero's here now, too? I know I'm already asking a favor having you ferry me back and forth to the Hound Pits, but if you don't mind spending a little more time -"
"I was already planning on it."
She breathed a sigh of relief, and began walking.
Piero's study was easy enough to find. His brand of scientific inquiry had a very particular smell, after all. The door was open, so she knocked at the doorframe.
"Who is it?"
"Miss Cecelia, sir."
"...Who?" Piero blinked owlishly, peering up from his work and adjusting his glasses. "Cecelia? Do I know a Cecelia? I don't think that I do...?"
She stepped into better view. "From the Hound Pits?" Piero stared with a blank lack of recognition. "We talked a few times? I helped to clean your rooms and such...?" She bit one side of her lip before motioning to the top of her head. "Imagine a cap. Right about here."
Finally Piero's eyes lit up. "Oh! Oh, oh, yes! There was, ah, something, some news about you recently, wasn't there? Something about..."
"Being the heir to the Pendleton, uh... fortune, as it is, yes. But that's not what I came to see you about, sir. It's about the arc pylon you built at the Hound Pits -"
He gave a long sigh. "Broken, is it? Slapdash finish out of necessity I suppose. It'll be at least a few weeks before - " He gestured, trying to get the word out. "Before I can even think of leaving here -"
"No, no, it's not broken!" She waved a hand before stopping herself. "Well, it was, for a bit. But I just cleaned everything and then re-hooked it up." There went that low-class twang in her voice again; she winced internally but kept going. "One of the cables was a bit frayed, so I replaced it, thought to do the same with the others - so that everything's a higher gauge. Tested it the next day when everyone was away, and the range has increased a good five yards on all sides, just from that change. I think it has, anyway. The only test subjects were some chickens the neighbors have on either side that keep wandering in and I'm afraid even on the lower power they were goners but made good soup and I'm babbling aren't I?" Cecelia winced hard before rubbing at her nose. "I, um, thought it might interest you, sir, since it was your invention and all. But I'm sure you've got better to do than listen to me talk. Sorry again. I'll just, ah..."
There was a new light in his eyes, now. "No! No, please, do come in, sit down." An odd thing. It was as if she had finally become a person to him. And not just a person, but an interesting one. "Larger gauge power cables, you say? Could you, ah, give me more details, or -"
"Certainly." Her heart fluttered high in her throat and she sat down, desperately trying to keep herself grounded in the material. "It was a copper alloy, braided on the inside..."
Drifting.
Voices. Men's, this time. Muffled through a mask, it seemed. Sharp smell of soot and burning, the start of new candle wick.
"Corvo."
Another voice from another place. Smooth indigo and dreaming blue, the start of a new cigarette.
Daud sat down heavily across from him. All that exhaustion in one simple movement - knees splaying so he could rest his elbows on them, and then his hands clasped in front of him, shoulders shrugging over, head bowed.
Corvo's sword was still in his neck. It dripped blood in a steady pulsing, splashing loud onto the floor.
"Corvo." A nod. A greeting of one man in the same trade to the other.
"Daud." Only polite to return such a gesture, after all.
This was the Void. He knew because he could walk without pain, and did so, circling back and forth. Daud did not raise his head, instead sucking in a cigarette breath (half-hissing through the wound in his neck) and blowing out the smoke (which scurried out of his neck along the knifeblade). The tip of it glowed red-orange in contrast to all the cool tones of the Void.
"I was already booked for passage to Serkonos," Daud confessed without any prompting. "To go live out my days quietly. To be an old man, I suppose. I was going to find an established vineyard. Buy it. Perhaps a young wife and a young dog, to complete the picture, if I ever felt I deserved such happiness. Bottle my own wine, and buy all my sausages at the market so I would never have to take a knife to a living thing again." There was such weariness in his voice that it was overwhelming to merely hear it. "I was going to send you a bottle, you know. Without a note or a mark, but as a thanks."
The assassin raised his head, finally looking up at Corvo. "The Outsider had a different idea of what I should do, though."
"You could have fought him." Corvo realized that perhaps his tone was too harsh, but this, after all, was the man who had killed his Jessamine. He had spared Daud to the private hell of his own guilt. That didn't mean he had to be polite to the man.
"I tried. Didn't succeed." Another puff of the cigarette. Smoke scurried along his collar from the hole in his neck. He raised his head and nailed Corvo with an iron stare. "Which is why you have to fight much harder than I did, Corvo."
The pleasant blue-purple of the Void was looking more distant. Blurring at black to the edges. That sensation of falling backwards again. "...What?"
"Fight. You have to fight -" Urgency the likes of which he had never heard before. Then there was Daud's calloused lips moving, but Jessamine's voice (much closer to him, just behind his shoulder, pleading in his ear) - "please, get up and fight -!"
He had half a heartbeat of confusion left before pain ripped through him.
Of course Samuel had to stop and see Emily, because he was Samuel. He felt himself oddly humbled to be a friend of the young Empress, and he was always sure to pay her proper respect. Bowing, especially. Perhaps he was less shabby than he had been before, and he was grateful for the new waistcoat, but to think that just a simple boatman was among those the Empress counted as a friend... well. If he was other people, it would have perhaps gone to his head. As it was, he was simply Samuel, not dwelling on his feelings of being inadequate as best he could, instead quietly amazed at Emily's preferences.
But the young Empress was very busy, of course, and could spare only a few minutes. That was quite fine. He understood.
He was even getting used to walking in the lavish corridors instead of the small byways left for servants. The guards - all of them trained by Corvo - smiled at him, and he smiled back. Enough to make a man put on airs.
There was a flash of uniforms at the end of the hallway, though - three men, politely hurrying. One turned back and he clearly saw an Overseer's mask, and the group as a whole sped up. Samuel wasn't a knowledgeable man, and he knew that - or, rather, he was not learned. He could tell you about the Wrenhaven river, but he did not have Sokolov's grasp of natural philosophy or mechanics, and that suited him just fine. But he knew the pace of a guilty man when he saw him.
He caught the eye of one of the guards and jerked his head towards where the Overseers had just retreated. "Abbey of the Everyman have some business with the Empress today?"
"Them? Oh, no." The guard reached up to idly scratch the back of his neck in thought. "Came to offer some prayers for the Lord Protector's speedy recovery. Nice of them, I thought, though I don't know what good it'll do."
The sentence soaked in, and Samuel's hands curled instinctively into fists as he became aware of what exactly that meant. And, with a whispered curse of such a vile nature that if the Overseers had been there he would have been looking at a hefty fine, he started in to the best sprint he could manage, heading towards Corvo's room across the palace.
Pain.
Ignoring it was Corvo's best talent, but this would not be denied. White-hot. Searing. Not enough room to think. Noise, so much noise - he was screaming - he was screaming? Yes, that was him. Tasted copper-bitter-tang - must be blood. Couldn't breathe. Chest too heavy. Smothering. Pain closing in and choking him and smothering -
No. He had to fight this.
The world pitched and swooned. He grabbed a fistful of blanket and tugged hard, and then lurched forward. He was out of the bed now. Progress. Still couldn't breathe. He tried - focusing on it - and choked. Bitter taste flooded his mouth - more blood. World threatened to fade into blank static. He would have to figure out breathing later - more problems now.
The room - something in the room...
Everything was blurring. He was... crying? That had to be it. The pain was making him (it hurt it hurt it hurt) and he was barely aware of it, much less able to control it. Finally his body dragged in a breath, searing his lungs. It came out a scream. It hurts it hurts it hurts - for a moment nothing else, no space for anything else, just the pain. Each warbling note was like a thousand blades tearing through him in long, rusty strokes, blunted edges managing to hack through muscle and bone alike and leaving cold white fire in their wake. He was being split open. He was being torn to pieces. He could not do this for much longer.
It would be so easy to just lay his head down and listen to the something that told him it would stop hurting if he gave up -
No. He had promised Jessamine to fight.
One hand, trembling, up in the air. It came down to drag against the carpet - grip and pull. He had promised Jessamine.
And the song - he knew what it was now. Overseer's music-box. Rippling and growling and tearing at him, pulling him in a thousand directions all at once. It hurts it hurts it hurts -
No, he had to keep going forward - closer to it - he could do something about it if only it was in reach -
Pain was good, he tried to tell himself - pain would keep him awake - the darkness was already tugging at him, though, with new finality -
Another rippling note struck true and his trembling hand dropped. It forced another cry from him, and this turned into a desperate gasp. So much blood on his lips, so much blood, he couldn't breathe, it was all smothering him - no, he had to fight harder, but he couldn't, he couldn't - fingers stretched outward in desperation - if he could reach - if -
A blur of movement - a familiar voice shouting his name - the music box fell to the floor and its last note seared through him before something heavy was brought down on top of it. The thing creaked out one more note before being bashed again, and it was finally silent.
The pain wasn't gone. The ache remained in its wake. But part of it was finished. His mouth was full of blood, now, and he couldn't focus enough to do anything about it; his lungs were crying out for air... and his head was so heavy - too heavy to hold up - the dark was coming for him...
Samuel stood there in mild shock for a few heartbeats. Sure, he had been a navyman once, but he was not usually taken to violence. Not usually. He had still flung open the door, pulled the music box off of the side table, and picked up the table to bash it a few times until it was finished, and it was oddly satisfying to kill the thing. The light little table - an elegantly carved thing - probably had a few chips in it now. Someone else could figure that out later, because right now Samuel didn't even make sure it stayed upright in his haste.
That was an awful lot of blood.
With a wet rasp, Corvo went limp. He'd made good time trying to get at the Overseer's music-box for a man who was mostly dead. And Samuel could see the whole layout of the trap - they'd tied the music-box's wind-up handle back with string and left a candle burning just underneath it, so they could be away before it burned through the twine and it began to play. More importantly, that meant that Corvo had only been subjected to a few minutes instead of a full ten or more. And if this had happened with only a few minutes... Well. Samuel had heard that the Overseers used only the most mathematically pure notes in order to forge a weapon against the Outsider and all who bore his mark. He'd just not suspected that it was this effective.
Corvo was ragdoll limp as Samuel shook his shoulder. "Corvo?" He finally turned the man over, trying to be as gentle as he could. Blood was freely coming from Corvo's nose and mouth, sticking red to his teeth and lips. And Corvo had been weeping freely in pain. The first time Samuel had seen such a thing. Tears of happiness, yes, just barely perched at the corners of Corvo's eyes once he knew that Emily was safe and with him. But the man had always shrugged off injuries as if they were nothing - he was notorious for it, if you asked the royal guards. And here he was, weeping.
Without even thinking, Samuel reached out to wipe the tears off of his face.
Corvo's eyes were just barely open. Samuel could see the other man's irises for only a moment before they rolled back in his head, leaving only a sliver of white to stare into. He gave another sticky rasp, dragging in a breath with some difficulty, and his half-breath out rattled in his chest. It was a sound Samuel had heard before. "Corvo!" He shook the other man by the shoulders. "You - go get Sokolov - or Piero - run and get both!"
Well, he was just a humble boatman, but somebody had to be in charge, hadn't they?
The guard obediently set off at a run.
Cecelia was in the middle of describing some detail of the alloy mix of the new wiring, hands in the air to help her talk, Piero watching with mouth slightly agape in a way that made her very pleased with herself. But the guard at the door interrupted her. To be precise, he was running so fast he didn't seem to have entirely thought through the idea of stopping, and half-collided with the door.
"Mr. Piero, sir - you're needed - " He panted, trying to get words out. "The Overseers did -" He shook his head, impatient with his own wordiness. "Corvo's in a bad way!"
Cecelia was up before Piero was, and they set off at a jog even as the guard ran on to find Sokolov. Two corridors along, Piero cursed, muttered something about his bag and went as if he was going to double back - but Cecelia put up a hand to stop him. "The brown one, isn't it? I'll get it - go on, go!"
If she had captured his interest earlier, it seemed that plea captured something entirely different. She didn't know what to make of the light in his eyes but there was a new approval there, she thought, as if she had just demonstrated her compassion in a way that he understood. She didn't understand it at that moment, of course. It came to her about three days later as she found herself staring at the ceiling while unable to sleep. And at that time, it didn't help things because it made her heart beat fast and her toes curl and she had to hide her blush under her blankets although there was nobody else around. But that was then.
For now, she ran. And when she finally arrived at Corvo's room, she had to pause in fright.
Corvo was there on the floor, yes - back arched, hands out stiff, pushing him up in irregular and twitching movements. His head was thrown back, jaw tight in what could only be described as something like agony. He twisted and writhed in flinching movements. Underneath his skin, it was easy to pinpoint each muscle going haywire as he trembled and shook.
"Don't - keep your distance, Miss Cecelia," Piero warned. "Don't want you getting hurt. Don't want Corvo getting hurt, either, but nothing we can do right now while he's having a fit."
Despite this, Samuel was at Corvo's other shoulder, trying intermittently to hold the other man down. The fit passed all at once, Corvo suddenly going limp like a puppet with the strings cut. Samuel managed to guide his head more gently to the floor. There was red underneath each of his bandages - she could only imagine how the stitches had gotten pulled and stretched. But now Corvo was very still after the seizure, unnaturally so, and it took until Samuel leaned in to press his ear up against Corvo's chest to listen before she realized what was wrong. His chest wasn't rising and falling. His mouth wasn't open. There was blood coming from it still, and from his nose, but his eyes were closed and his lips, underneath the rivulets of blood, were heading towards a cool paleness. In fact the color seemed to have entirely dropped out of his skin, especially his face, leaving him dead and surprisingly corpse-like.
"His heart's still beating, at least -" Samuel shook his head in distress. "I don't hear him breathing. I didn't before the fit, either."
Piero nervously adjusted his glasses in increasingly evident anxiousness before he grabbed for his bag and started to go through its contents with feverish intensity. Different little tools - bits and bobs - a delicate-looking needle case, a row of glass bottles - finally he came up with something impractically bulky with a triumphant cry. A pair of bellows, with an odd-shaped piece at the end.
Samuel looked at him as politely as he could, but it was quite evident that the boatman thought that Piero had gone mad.
From the snort in the hall, he wasn't alone. Sokolov, limping slightly (arthritis, he would loudly grumble later) was making his own way up the hall with his own supplies. "I suppose that fashionable quackery suits you, Piero."
"It is not quackery!" Piero snapped back in irritation. "It is the latest advancement in -"
"Absolute nonsense." Sokolov cut him off with a scowl before frowning more deeply and looking at Corvo on the floor. "No breath, no life. His heart may still be going but it's only a matter of minutes until he's dead. I don't suppose he'd want someone from the Abbey to give the rites, given that tattoo on his hand..."
Piero resolutely ignored Sokolov, wrestling with the bellows, placing the end of them over Corvo's mouth. "Samuel, if you'd hold that in place..."
"You can't seriously be about to try it!" Sokolov scoffed. "Even if I did subscribe to that nonsense, it's only for drowning victims -"
"It's not as if there's anything to lose!" Piero snapped back at him. The younger man's voice was shaking somewhat, but he quickly went back to fumbling with the contraption.
Cecelia watched him for a moment before crouching down beside Corvo as well, somewhat startling both men. "I'll pump the bellows, if you need a hand -"
"That's very kind of you, Miss Cecelia, thank you," Piero muttered in haste before giving her a nod. His own hand fluttered around Corvo before finally landing at the other man's neck, pressing his fingertips at the pulse point.
The bellows were obviously new, given how stiff they were, but Cecelia did not even think of complaining. Instead she watched as the bellows filled, and then she pressed the two halves together - and Corvo's chest rose. Piero's free hand hovered there, gently pressing down before nodding again at Cecelia. Samuel held Corvo's head in place with a miserable sort of seriousness. Perhaps they were forcing breaths down his throat, but evidently some good was being done, judging how some of the color came back into his cheeks.
By the fifth breath, Cecelia paused to shrug her shoulders, mentally preparing to do this the rest of the night - or longer - if needed. They were interrupted by a small strangled spluttering. In surprise, Samuel lifted the mask attached to the bellows up, and Corvo gave a rasping gasp - which turned into one breath, and then another. They were wet with blood and labored, but he was breathing.
Piero gave a dizzy laugh. "It worked! It actually worked..."
"Indeed it did." Sokolov's growling tone came from the doorway, but after a moment, his voice was kind and as near to praise as Cecelia had ever heard it. "One of the few times I'm happy to be wrong. For the Empress' sake."
Samuel sat back on his heels and sighed in relief, though he still watched each breath nervously. And one thing was quite clear: whatever progress Corvo had made was now gone. He had seemed almost ready to be conscious, up and talking while sipping tea, sleeping in a more restorative manner than simply being unconscious as he had been at first as the poison worked through his system. But now he was pale with dark circles underneath his eyes and oddly, worryingly limp. Breathing was not easy. And his expression was one of pain, even now. At least it had stopped flowing quite so easily, but some breaths were especially rasping, and left flecks of blood on his lips.
"Samuel," Piero said softly, "would you help me move him up to the bed? And..." He lifted up his glasses to rub at his eyes. "If one of you guards could ask the kitchens to bring up some tea, it would be appreciated. I have a feeling this is going to be a... a long night."
Jessamine was smiling down at him.
"I'm so proud of you," she murmured, tone cooing softly. Her hand, so delicate and perfect, reached down to cup his cheek. "So very proud of you, my Corvo. You can rest now." Her voice was melodic and each note seemed to resonate in his bones. And she was wearing a lovely new suit of purple-blue.
"No," he answered after a long moment of thought.
The kind expression on her face froze, and her eyes narrowed in quiet cruelty. "What did you say, love?"
"No." This was the Void, he knew it, but his tongue was still clumsy in his mouth. So he was slow and deliberate. "You're not her."
She stared at him a few more moments, her hand still on his cheek. She turned it, twisting her fingers so that her fingernails brushed against his skin. They stood there waiting. He expected her to scrape them down hard and scratch him deeply at any moment. Instead, she began to laugh, closing her eyes as her mouth opened to pour out mirth, and the hand on his cheek became... became something else. A puff of something cold as marble.
Those eyes he loved opened to be something entirely different. Flat black. And the Outsider smiled down at him, a wolfish and hungry expression, with all the kindness of a butcher's knife.
"Well done, my most interesting Corvo," he nearly purred. "I would have been very..." The Outsider reached out his hand, two fingers extended... "Terribly..." His fingers brushed against Corvo's forehead... "Very miserably disappointed... if you had fallen for that." At the word fallen, the Outsider pushed. For an instant it only seemed to be a nudge. But something rushed below him, tugging him backwards. He wanted to claw at the air to try and find a foothold back up - he wanted to cry out, even if he had nothing to say - he wanted to fight -
But the black took him too quickly.
