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Jessamine talks enough for the both of them. It's not hard, given Corvo doesn't talk at all but she knows him, knows him down to the bones so he lets her speak for him but never over him. Emily is born with the knack, knowing when he's not impressed and talking out his thoughts with him, never for him. It's mysterious, they say. He only talks to Jessamine, the hand signals all mean something different depending on the person, he doesn't speak because he's magic, he wears high collars because of the scar on his throat.
Only one of those is true.
Now, he screams, silent and loud all at once.
"That's eerie." Burrows mutters, waving a hand at the man holding the poker. He bears down and Corvo sobs, doesn't bother to hide it. You stop being proud after a few days, beg and promise them anything they want to hear. But they don't care. A confession is beyond him, a written one even more so because his arms are a mangled, burned mess. They didn't think it through.
They should've just let the torturer do his thing, he knows what he's doing. But no, they had to take charge, had to give directions. He can't feel two of the fingers on his left hand.
They dump him back in his cell and he curls in on himself, around the new burns and cuts and bruises and wishes he had a voice with which to shout because there's something unsatisfying about not being able to scream.
----
"Hello Corvo," The Outsider starts, and Corvo pretends he can't hear him. The bandages on his arms aren't visible in the Void, the scars black against his skin. He feels heavy, like every movement slides through three versions of him until it reaches the current one.
"Your life has taken a turn, has it not? The Empress is dead, her precious daughter Emily is lost somewhere in the city and you," he pauses, as if waiting for a response. Corvo can't give him one, and he seems to just-
Stop.
"Yes, I am aware that you're unable to respond verbally to what I'm saying, but you could at least make an effort to think something other than that I'm a pompous asshole. It is rather distracting."
A bark of silent laughter slides up his throat and gets caught. The Outsider looks pleased.
"If you will allow me to continue."
Go ahead he thinks, and very deliberately provides a musical accompaniment at the back of his mind, a terrible sitar player he'd heard in the alleyways of Serkonos's myriad underground pathways. Just to test him, just to see-
"Allow me to continue uninterrupted, if you would?"
No. Now he can 'talk', here in the void, he's never being quiet again.
---
Samuel makes an effort to understand. He's a good man, the boatman, and when he doesn't understand he waits patiently for Corvo to write down the meaning. Never forgets.
Soon, conversations are possible. Pendleton talks right over the top of him at all times, Havelock is too wrapped up in his tortured hero act and Piero could give less of a shit. Callista, she tries. She smiles at him sometimes and doesn't get offended when he doesn't smile back. She sits with him late at night and unwinds the bandages on his hands, teaches him ways to test his strength that don't require hurting himself in response.
She says nothing about the mark on the back of his hand and he teaches her the signs for run, for escape and for friend.
"You talk more than you let on," she says, and Samuel laughs into his beer. "You're loud."
He'll be louder when he finds Emily. He's itching to get out there but can't stay out of bed for more than three hours at a time. It was a miracle he got out prison at all, let alone unseen. Now he knows about the Outsider, he knows he had help.
When he finds Emily, a lot will change.
---
Callista asks for his help. She's halting and awkward when she does so, fingers twitching into the signs for "please" every few seconds and he loves her for that, a slow burning thing that has him reaching out and folding her close, pressing a warm hand at the back of her neck. He's not an assassin but he will be if they need it, for her and Samuel who gave him back a part of his voice. Emily's in the forefront of his mind but hours later when he's using magic he never thought possible and crouched on the delicate edge of a window, looking at the spilled wine below him, he allows himself a smile.
The mask hides his face. The gloves hide his 'voice', not that anyone would understand anyway, but there's a conversation at the back of his mind and an Outsider beyond even that talking about poetic justice in amused tones so he follows Campbell down, down, down and ignores the niggling feeling that he's forgetting something.
He's felt it since he let Martin out of the stocks, let the man talk at him and wander off like a lost lamb. It doesn't take long for Campbell to betray Curnow and even less time for him to get a sleep dart right in the man's neck.
"I know you," Curnow says, and Corvo forces his hands to still, not to betray him. The man knows him, knows how he talks and what he says sometimes, too many shared beers and half a dozen awkward, stilted conversations between them.
He takes Thaddeus upstairs instead and burns a heavy mark into his face, feels a sick satisfaction through the scars peppering his arms, his back, his stomach and the backs of his knees. They still hurt when he stands still for too long.
Enjoy this, he signs. Enjoy your new life.
The black book is heavy in his coat pocket and Emily is that little bit closer.
---
They send him down to take care of the weepers in the basement and Corvo tries not to resent the fact that a hardened military man is too scared to go down and choke out a couple of sick people. The mask, Piero says, filters out a lot of the sickness that permeates the city but Corvo's not sure how long he'll have if he gets a mouthful of blood so he makes sure to sidle up behind them and put them out of their shambling misery slowly. Gently.
Callista helps him wash his coat later, gloves up to her elbows and mask over her face. Havelock, Martin and Pendleton are talking amongst themselves downstairs, secretive in a strange way and Corvo listens more than people think he does, catches onto more than they want. People talk around him because he doesn't talk at them, tell him secrets they would never, ever tell another living soul.
He writes things down, sometimes. Has entire conversations through paper and pen. Jessamine used to make a game of it, leave him notes around the place and he misses her with a sudden ferocity that leaves him gasping, staggering against the wall and sinking to his knees.
He gets up after a while, wipes his face and heads downstairs to find out where to go next. Martin talks at him, Havelock talks at him and Pendleton asks him to kill his brothers which is a fucking mess and a half. He doesn't trust any of them, can't trust them but they say they know where Emily is, are sending him straight to get her so he holds his own counsel, nods in the right places and when he walks into the city he takes a detour straight to the only man in the Dunwall who knows what's really going on.
Slackjaw wants something. Everyone wants something but this'll be easy enough; he doesn't say he's already been in the building, already opened the safe. Doesn't say that there's an old lady living in the city who would probably benefit from having less asshole thugs knocking on her door. The rune is heavy in his pocket and he can hear the Outsider, hear his mocking commentary underlying everything. But if it's a way to avoid killing people unnecessarily, of keeping a part of him human-
He's killed men before. Defending, attacking, he's well versed in the way a body slumps, a puppet with the strings cut. No stranger to blood, no stranger to the heavy weight a death leaves on your mind. The parts of you it strips away. Emily deserves a protector who is a whole person, not fragments of torture interspersed with intense bouts of rage but he can only give her what he is and hope she'll find a way to love him through it.
He doesn't trust Pendleton. Doesn't trust any of them. So when he sneaks through the back door and slides his way inside the Golden Cat, Slackjaw's promise weighs heavily on his mind. Through the smoke and the frankly oppressive heat of the steam that leaves him sweltering in his jacket he learns that Emily is locked upstairs, has been for six months and he wants to scream.
He does so, muffling the silent shout uselessly in the arm of his jacket, biting down hard enough to make his teeth hurt. He doesn't bother with kindness when he walks up behind the Madam and hits her upside the head. She's not dead but he leaves her where she falls, steals her key and storms up the stairs.
It's a wonder nobody sees him. It's a wonder nobody hears him. Later, he'll remember the way the tattooscartattoo on the back of his hand burned, how the only cool parts on his skin were the fingers he couldn't feel. Now, he throws open the door and hauls the mask off in short order,holds open his arms and sobs into Emily's hair when she winds her little arms around his neck and cries.
"Don't worry about me, Corvo, I can take care of myself." She says as she slips out the door and he watches her to go with something akin to panic. What if she's caught, what if she gets hurt, what if the weepers find her what if anyone but Samuel finds her on her way back? The low grade panic steadily climbs, leaves him feeling numb, awful and sick as he gets a combination he doesn't need for a man who'd sell him up the river for a chance at a little more territory and eventually, when he stalks out of the Cat and makes his way back through the city towards the river, he's finding it hard to breathe.
Emily's in the boat when he gets there and Samuel says nothing about the way they hold onto each other the entire trip back to the Hound Pits Pub.
----
Conversations are a novelty. Callista and Samuel tried but Emily, Emily. She understands him in a way nobody but the Outsider pretends to and he laughs more in the days following her recovery than he has in nearly a year. Emily is-
Emily is damaged. She screams in her sleep. She cries, pretends she doesn't cry and cries again. She has her own bed but she doesn't sleep in it, sleeps in his instead so he takes the chair some nights and sits there and holds her others, rocks her gently and whispers silent against her hair. He can't comfort her with sound so he comforts her with touch. She holds his hand as often as she can, tiny fingers grasping his and he tries not to think about just grabbing her and running.
"You're a good father, Corvo." Callista says late one night, when Corvo's running his fingers through Emily's hair, letting the little girl sleep against his chest. The Tower's far enough removed that he can pretend, just for a moment, that there's nobody around to bother them. There's no plague. There's nothing waiting for them but the promise of a new day. Callista has been keeping the days as normal as she can for Emily but the little girl is broken in a hundred tiny ways and it's taking more effort than anyone thought just to hold her together.
Thank You, he signs, knuckles brushing the underside of his chin and Callista doesn't say a word when he falls asleep there, hand heavy on Emily's back and nose buried in her hair.
---
Corvo talks to the Outsider in his dreams. It's a wonder that the God (entity, whatever he wants to be known as) takes the time out of his very busy schedule of floating there and looking important to talk to him at all but he seems to value his input to a degree. They argue about things that don't matter, Corvo making aborted movements with his hands to sign things he doesn't need to and the Outsider smiling each time he remembers that he can just shout an opposing thought in his head.
It's cruel, in a way. He wakes and wishes he had a voice outside of his own mind, wonders what it would've sounded like now he's grown. A blade and a natural proclivity for silence means that anyone who would've heard his voice is long since dead.
Emily looks up from her drawing when he walks in and talks to him like he can answer back immediately, without need for translation. He loves her like his heart is on fire.
---
Sokolov is a monster. Corvo's hands shake as he hefts him onto his shoulder, resists the urge to throw him into the river. Barely. He lets the poor girl out of the cage and tries not to think about the ramifications of it, of the experiments Sokolov was doing in the name of finding a cure. He was always fucked up and so secure in his position that he thought nobody could touch him and Corvo hated him every time Emily caught a cold, every time Jessamine said she felt a little weaker than the day before.
Putting him in a cage seems fitting and Corvo deposits him there happily, makes sure Emily doesn't know he's there. But talking to the man when he wakes is-
The Outsider tells him things sometimes. He's not human, so he doesn't have human concerns. What people do in his name doesn't really bother him. He's bored by it, to be honest, and people use him as an excuse to do terrible things to each other. Sokolov, desperately searching for a way to feel special, has done more than most.
Bribery works and Corvo doesn't bother pretending to say anything as he tosses the bottle of alcohol into the cage. Sokolov smiles at him, something awful sitting right behind his eyes and Corvo waits.
Patient.
Disgusted, but patient.
Later, he'll wish he hadn't.
---
Pendleton sets him up. The duel is a nasty surprise that reminds him that nobody tells him anything and he wants to throw things, specifically Pendleton, right out a window. Instead, he switches the gun for a sleep dart, stops time with the flick of a hand and the liberal application of willpower and sends the poor bastard straight to sleep. The silent scream of frustration is hidden by the mask even as he makes his way up the stairs and there's something vindictive in the way he signs his name in the guest book in the hallway.
Finding the right Boyle is easier than it sounds. People talk around him, and his silent acceptance of whatever they say makes them just keep talking which isn't necessarily a good thing. He learns more about the proclivities of the rich than he ever wanted to know, wants to burn the mansion down in half a hour but he learns which Boyle is the right one with enough time to come up with a plan of his own.
He corners her upstairs, handwritten note explaining a couple of things. The man waiting in the basement who will wait and wait and wait and eventually leave without his prize. A gentle set of instructions backed by the steel in his hand and the knowledge that if this woman stays, Emily will never be safe.
She slides the mask off her face, he slides the mask off his and she looks at him for a long, hard moment. Stares at his eyes for so long he has to force himself not to look away.
"You'll leave my sisters be?" She asks, and Corvo's slow, deliberate nod seems to reassure her of something. "Okay."
He waits for her to leave, sitting in a chair in the corner, and wonders how his life became this much of a mess.
---
The Tower is-
The Tower was home. The first home he'd had in a long, long time but Jessamine had made it somewhere he wanted to be, rather than somewhere he worked. It looks different now, too many sharp edges and too much between him and the memories of chasing a little girl through the hallways, listening to her laughter echo off the walls.
Hiram is going to die. There's only so much kindness Corvo has left and all of it is taken up by a little girl who cries herself to sleep every night and dreams of a void where she doesn't exist. It's a gift, he knows, from the Outsider. A space where she can hear her mother talk.
He's kept the heart from her. Doesn't talk to it himself. There's only so far he can go without breaking and that's one step too close to the edge. It talks to him sometimes, she talks to him sometimes and she's forgotten that he can't talk back. Rages against him in the early hours of the morning.
She's tucked into the pocket of his coat now, throbbing softly. He's taking her home.
Hiram walks through the halls like he owns them. Corvo shadows him, blinking from one space to the next and when he gets to his room he's confident, talking happily to himself about the plague and half a dozen other things that make Corvo's blood run cold, leave him staring at the closed door. His hands shake.
His hands shake.
He's never wished for a voice more than this moment. He wants to scream, wants to tell the man exactly what he thinks of him, wants to shout from the rooftops to the people in the city that THIS IS THE MAN YOU PUT YOUR TRUST IN HE IS A TRAITOR HE IS KILLING YOU ALL but he has to settle for opening the door slowly and stealing away every secret the man has whispered to himself in the dark.
And broadcasting it through the city on the system that'd been put in place to warn citizens of threats. Fitting, he supposes.
He leaves Hiram to himself and steals out the back door, tracing pathways he doubts anyone but he and Jessamine remember. He carries her with him, lets her heart beat in his pocket and screams, voiceless, into the dark corners of the Tower.
---
The betrayal doesn't surprise him. He supposes it should, but they let him put an excited Emily to bed, they let him drink and relax and give him a few hours where he doesn't have fear, so he supposes it was half decent of them. Samuel, though, he's a surprise.
Giving him time is probably the cruellest thing they've done.
---
Daud is different. Corvo'd imagined a certain kind of man but he sounds almost apologetic when he heaves Corvo up and into the cage. The heart thumps in his jacket and Corvo looks him in the eyes and sees a reflection he recognises, something that leaves him feeling cold and a little lost.
"I know you can't speak," he says and Corvo's a little bitter about the fact that everyone knows more and more about him each day. "But that doesn't mean you're not dangerous."
He can appreciate that, at least. A handsignal he vaguely recognises has the cage being lowered and Corvo's head lolls against the bars, poison still sliding through his veins.
He doesn't appreciate being dumped in a pit to sleep it off, but beggars can't be choosers and he's still got his clothes on at least, which he counts as a victory.
---
Breaking out is easier than it should be and he's pretty sure Daud really doesn't give a shit if he rots in there or not. His Whalers are almost pathetically easy to sneak past and when he gets his gear back it feels a little like he's human again.
The heart throbs in his breast pocket and he tries not to think about how scared Emily must be right now. If only he could have shouted a warning, something to alert someone who wasn't crazy to what was going on-
Hating himself for a situation he's not at fault for is stupid, but he's made it into an art. He berates himself for not seeing it sooner the entire time he's dodging guards and hiding from whalers and whatever else the world sees fit to throw at him and by the time he arrives at the hideout, or whatever it is they decide to call it when they're whispering about it in corners and thinking themselves stupidly clever, he's bloody, tired, annoyed and exhausted.
"I know your footsteps, Corvo," Daud says. Corvo smacks him over the head and steals his key. He doesn't have time for melodramatic bullshit.
---
Samuel apologises. It should be enough. It is enough, almost. He's no longer bitter, just resigned, and Samuel drops him off outside the lighthouse with his blessing and half a dozen extra sleep darts, so at least he's being helpful. Getting to the top of the lighthouse takes barely any time at all considering, and Havelock has clearly gone insane.
Pendleton's dead, slumped in his chair. Martin is dead, hand halfway to a glass. It's no wonder that they felt the need to retreat, what with Emily shouting about putting Havelock in time out and everyone in the city most likely out for their blood.
Don't trust a regent, he thinks. They'll try to steal the throne eventually.
Havelock doesn't look surprised to see him. "Are you going to kill me, Corvo?" He asks, and Corvo takes off his mask just so he can see the incredulous look on his face. He wants to, oh how he wants to but Emily is his main concern.
Havelock wants to talk about himself and Corvo lets him for as long as it takes to get the key to the little girl's prison and then smacks him upside the head with his sword, which is getting to be a bad habit.
"I knew you'd come for me!" Emily sobs when Corvo hauls the door open, and when he hefts her into his arms the heart in his breast pocket beats once and goes silent.
I love you, he signs against her back, and Emily cries just that little bit harder.
---
"My dear Corvo," The Outsider says in his dreams, and Corvo smiles as he thinks about music played in back alleys underground.