Rose of Anarchy
Disclaimer: I do not own Dishonored. Dishonored is the property of Arkane Studios.
"Delilah." He whispered, his horse voice and the white daylight lulling him out of his tormented sleep. He groaned and sat up, slumped oh his lumpy bed with a groggy slouch. His heavy burdens returned to his shoulders and chest with the awakening of recognition.
His back was out again. Daud clenched his shoulder-blades straight, hissing as the movement pinched the healing slash across his back. He let out a sigh, lying back down and looking through the shambled ceiling with all the creases on his face clenching in thought. It was well past the cold of morning, the air still fresh, but warm.
After Thomas dealt with the girl, he would send him out to collect information. It would probably take a while for him to return with results.
The heaviness got tighter when he realized he had been picturing the memory of red cloth subconsciously. Billie Lurk had betrayed him, and he had spared her. Whether it was in weakness or self-control he did not know. It still felt unsettling to have Thomas in her place, although he did the job well, with a loyalty she had never displayed. He was the correct choice, as he had already repeatedly proven himself well deserving.
After a moment of time, he finally got up off the bed and pulled on his clothes. He stepped down the stairs and went to his office, picking up his blade and settling down on the floor with a rag to clean the drying blood off it's sharp edge. It was comfortable within his grip. Second nature, and the instrument of his sins.
Some of his fresher whalers were up and practicing outside, chatting amiably. It wasn't quite wise, so soon after the overseer's surge, but still flooded him with an unusual sense of peace in it's normalcy. Although normalcy was an illusion in such times of plague and rot.
The Empress.
He could drown in the swallowing guilt that had become familiar, if he let himself, but tried instead to shake the emotion from his thoughts. He had to focus on Delilah and find her, or face his fate. Daud sighed heavily and wiped his hands, his body feeling very old as he reached his audio graph player.
The straps of her hard dress shoes were rubbing against her blistering ankles, and her head was still throbbing from the lack of food, as Rosemary was led through a worn hallway below to a dim basement room and pushed down by both her shoulders on a creaky chair. Chester took both her wrists and tied them tightly with a cloth behind her, but grabbed her arm when she tugged on them in reflex. Thomas pulled up a rotting crate and sat down straight-backed on it, facing her with the wide yellow lenses of his mask.
"Rosemary," He started immediately, his voice intimidating with authority. Well, straight to business and the sooner that she could get this over with; despite what awaited her after. She was tired of being yanked around.
"How did you find yourself within the Flooded District?"
"Is that what this place is called?" She hesitated, startled by how weak her voice sounded. Thomas nodded.
"You wouldn't believe me."
"That is not for you to decide. Tell us now." He ordered firmly. Chester moved to hang beside him with intrigue.
She inhaled deeply for a moment, before responding quickly in fear of backlash.
"I'm not from here, I'm from somewhere else. I got taken here somehow, sucked in through some type of portal."
Thomas glanced at Chester, and then turned back. "The Outsider took you from somewhere else?" He sized up her ruined clothing. "I did notice it's difference. From where? Tyvia? The Pandyssian Continent?"
"No." She said quietly. "I've never heard of those places before, or any outsider. I'm from the United States."
"There is no such place recorded." Chester stated, suspicion in his tone.
"Because it's in a different world" He didn't seem to react, beyond tensing his shoulders, but she didn't have any way of telling his expressions underneath the mask.
"When did this happen?" Thomas demanded forcefully, leaning closer.
"A bit before you captured me. I got sucked into the portal after I picked up that carved bone and it branded the mark into my hand. Then I woke up here."
Thomas crossed his arms, silent for a second. He glanced at Chester again and some wordless communication passed between them before he touched his arm and they blinked out. Rosemary felt her chest tighten and her jaw clench, fearing she had said too much, or the wrong thing. She waited in the silence, trying to keep her panic under control, until they returned.
"Now." Thomas said pointedly, not sitting down on the box, but coming straight up to her, his height hanging over her. It made her tremble. "You do speak the truth?"
"Yes." Rosemary tried to say with conviction, but it came out weaker than she intended. Had that really been what had happened, or something else, and she just couldn't remember?
"If you are not, we will find out." His voice lowered and the volume became quieter, giving it a deadly quality. She nodded.
"Lastly for now, where did you find the rune?" Rosemary looked at him questioningly. "The carved bone that you spoke of before." He explained.
"It was lying in the mud of a lake, beside a dead whale with weird liquid coming out of a gash in it's stomach. Whales aren't supposed to be in lakes."
"A whale." He murmured thoughtfully, as if he understood it. He then leaned over, undoing the cloth, and walked over to Chester. "Follow us now." He ordered without glancing back.
Rosemary got up from the chair unsteadily. She was overtaken with nervousness, but at the same time relieved they were giving her some autonomy instead of dragging her arm. Her steps creaked on the decaying wood of the stairs as she hurried after them, afraid to get too close, but also afraid of what they may do if she trailed behind. They returned back up through the hallway and her shoulder brushed against the scrapes along the wall. Some looked like dark scuff-marks, from heavy pieces of furniture perhaps. Others were odd brown streaks she didn't want to observe too closely.
Her captors were walking faster than they had coming in, and she winced at every step further biting her shoes into her ankles. Why had she chosen that day to get dressed up? Well, at the time she didn't think she would have to do much walking. Thoughts like that in her first-world country of constant comfort and security now felt as far away as her world actually was. She would have to endure, and just bear with it. She probably wasn't going to get back any time soon.
When they arrived up, Chester pushed her through and closed the door behind. "Get her situated." Thomas told Chester. "I'm going to report." The broader man nodded, and he blinked away.
Chester told her to wait there for a minute and blinked away as well. Rosemary shook her head, still not used to watching people vanish in thin air. She was beginning to see the dynamic between them, these strange rouges. Thomas looked to be a superior of sorts, and by the sound of it, there was another higher up. He relied on Chester pretty closely, so perhaps that gave him rank- or at least influence within the mysterious group as well. How many were there? This collapsed building was extensive, but the group could still be only a few. They seemed pretty organized, however, and gave off the impression they had numbers.
She jumped when Chester returned, a jumble of cloth in his arms. "What if you accidentally re-materialize in the spot someone is standing on? Will you fuse?" She found herself blurting out, then took a step back, locking her jaw.
Chester's shoulders shook with a subtle chuckle. "Who knows. But I don't think it works that way. Has more to do with transporting through space, not slitting apart and coming back together." Rosemary nodded, shocked he had actually answered her question. It seemed so ...civil, compared to how she had been treated this whole time.
He stepped up to her, sticking out his arms to hand her the pile. She looked at the pile wearily, which were actually clothes, and then up at him, and he gestured with his wrist in permission. She slowly brought her hands forward and took it. She recognized the the thick gloves they wore on their hands, and then sized up the rest. Their uniform. The realization made a icy shiver run through her.
"Come with me now. I'll lead you to where you will sleep. It's temporary. You will move into more permanent quarters later on."
Rosemary could only manage a mute nod, trying to process the actuality and implications of just what she had gotten dragged into. He walked cross the room and they turned a corner going through a glass set of doors, and then up another couple flights of stairs to a corridor. He led her to the door on the end. It was a storage room filled with crates, fallen planks and dust littering the floor. There was a set of folded blankets and a mat against the wall, beside a sink. She was reminded of her thirst.
"We have no running water." Chester informed, when he saw her eyes fall on it. He took a bucket from the corner and set it down in the middle of the room. "For washing, but you have to boil the water first. There are wood stoves and soaps in the kitchen. Also food. It gets to be freezing in the night, so I recommend you heat coals."
"Is there a bathroom?" She asked.
"On one of the lower floors, the same one the kitchen is on. We have ceramic bowls and rags, but you are responsible for dumping and cleaning them after your use."
"Alright." She tried to keep her expression neutral.
"Change into those and see if they fit," Chester ordered, his tone with dismissal. "Those boots are the only women's set we have, so you're going to have to make them work. Get some food and rest for now. You're not allowed to explore the hideout beyond the areas I've already explained." He then blinked out.
She looked around again, taking in everything carefully, not knowing what to feel, before closing the door and locking it. She peeled of her ruined dress and shoes, folding them and putting them beside the mat.
When she picked up the dusty-brown trousers and white button shirt, she hesitated, before smelling them, expecting the scent of blood, or someone else. She got neither, and wearily pulled them on, buttoning up the shirt. She then pulled on the black heavy coat, gloves, socks, and then boots. She curled up on the mat, throwing the blankets around herself. "Why am I here?" She whispered faintly.
Oh boy am I rusty. I may rewrite this chapter at some point. Please tell me if Daud is OOC. I'm aware that Rosemary has little personality, so I'm working on developing one for her. The fic was plotless and hashed together hastily in the beginning.
The whole of the original timeline supposedly takes place over as little as around five days. It's too short for any sort of gradual character development, so I will extend it, hopefully in a way that wont disrupt canon too much.