Chapter Text
Although Corvo knows that Jessamine’s death will forever be more painful than any torture Burrows or Campbell can ever inflict on him, he can’t help but feel he deserves it all; every burn, every slap and every broken bone. The days of starvation and sleep deprivation and humiliation, he deserves it all. He doesn’t even know if Emily’s still alive. His only job had been to protect them and he couldn’t even manage that.
The next time he is dragged to the torture chamber, he spits at Burrows.
Burrows steps back for a moment, frozen at the audacity, slowly wipes it off with the back of his hand, then balls it up and delivers an earth-shattering blow directly to Corvo’s face. He feels his nose crunch beneath Burrow’s fist and cries out, feeling the familiar hot stream of blood pouring down his face and into his mouth, making him gag. Burrows looks to Morris Sullivan, Corvo’s primary tormentor, gives him an instruction that Corvo can’t hear over his own angry protests, then promptly leaves the torture chamber without so much as a second glance.
Corvo still has fear, but it is not for his own life - it is for Emily’s. If he knew without doubt that the assassin had killed Emily as well, his daughter, his own flesh and blood, he would have begged for death or constructed a more robust plan to get to Burrows or Campbell or Sullivan and kill them, damned be the consequences. But that sliver of hope, the dark shadow of ‘what if’ preserves him, for better or for worse. Somewhere deep in his bones and his guts, he knows he must survive.
The whole thing is undignified, but Corvo knows he lost the last of his dignity months ago. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches as Sullivan picks up something that glints in the scant fluorescent lighting and sharpens it on a grindstone. Too exhausted and broken even to turn his head, Corvo rests his head back, stares up at the huge banner ‘Order Will Prevail’ and lets it happen. He expects to lose a finger or a toe maybe, but not his tongue.
If the blood that poured into his gasping mouth from his broken nose was a trickle, then this is a burst dam, and it hurts so much more than Corvo ever could have imagined. Throughout his incarceration, he has vowed not to cry. He has screamed, yes, but as a seasoned bodyguard, he knows sometimes this is inevitable; the human body must find some outlet under even moderate pain but now he cries, a hysterical, unstable outbreak that momentarily stops Sullivan in his tracks as he walks away. He tries to call for Jessamine, for Emily, for his own mother, but only pathetic, shapeless, unintelligible gurgles come out.
He hates himself even more for it.
Sullivan, Corvo knows, has always been a psychopath and he expresses great pleasure in other people’s suffering. He hates himself for giving the man the pleasure of his own pain, but not as much as he hates himself for failing. Despite himself, Corvo watches as Sullivan stares at the tongue for a moment, this lifeless piece of meat, then tosses it into a bowl and discards it. Corvo weeps in pain and fury and the utter hopelessness of it all. He weeps for Jessamine and Emily.
At some point he fades out, either because of the pain or the blood loss or maybe even because he is now so broken that he can’t even force himself to care what they do with him anymore, and he wakes up in his cell once again, curled up in foetal.
He thinks of the only words that can bring him relief, and repeats them in his head; once, twice, thrice, and then into infinity like a mantra. He clings onto it like a life raft in a storm on the Wrenhaven, holds it close to himself and mutters and mumbles until it feels more like a protective spell to ward off his own crushing guilt.
Jessamine, Emily, Jessamine, Emily, Jessamine, Emily.