[ It's work, to get the head off, head's never come off clean, no matter how often he does it. There's no neat way to remove them, never has been. Gets the blade in deep and jerks it backwards and forwards to cut tendons. Fingers sunk in to pull at skin out of the way as he worked. Would it have been like this, if they had? No, the heavy long axes. Attended more than a few executions, but the nobles would have wanted it painful, probably. Thinks the only reason Burrows left his face some days from the worst of it, so it would look less marred when they took his head and put it on a spike for the world to see.
Works, because it's easier than thinking, killing is killing is killing and the blade turns over too quick in his fingers in a little agitated gesture. That question is long, and it's full of memories. Jerks hard and doesn't mean it, doesn't mean to be vicious it's just, he cannot be furious with anything else, because what is it to that? he is full of it --
The head comes off. There's the sound of ripping flesh, sodden and tearing. Dead long enough that it doesn't spurt even if it flicks some with the crunch of blade on bones, heavy where it pulls free and it takes some strength to do it. No gush like a torrent, but it drips off his fingers, from the stump. Coats to the wrist and the blade. ] Cut down the middle would you? Neck to tail.
[ Turned his head, using his shoulder to wipe where it had splattered on his cheek some and it's more than that, the same as when Emily had been small, she didn't know better when she asked questions, neither did Jasper. Enough here, that maybe, it felt like, there was some obligation to answer rather than brush it off as nothing. Still, he takes his time about it the head, huge as it is, is unceremoniously dumped in the sink for the time being. Gets a bucket in the same moment, and comes back to shove it under where the stump of a neck was trickling blood. Still warm. Not that long dead. Spirits but he was sick of how blood felt on his hands because it was the only thing that felt warm anymore, and even then, the mark just glowed and glowed and glowed underneath it.
He goes back to work, then, slow even breaths, picks the slivers of calm out of it. ] A lot of reasons, things weren't... good before hand. Riots over food, the nobles -- [ and whilst Jasper cuts the line down the middle, he goes to a back leg, starts at it's knee and begins to cut a line up towards the middle along the inside of it's thigh. ] -- didn't want to share, a lot of politics that just made it worse, at some point, a whole district was flooded by the river because no one tended to the barriers. [ This cut is neater, even and careful as to not tear what would be good leather. ] Then the plague came, no one knows where from... [ Galvanni's offices, the doctor's notes. The plague had arrived with the rats and the rats had been introduced. Stages, it had been brought and he doesn't know why. ] -- thousands were dead in the first few weeks. It's fatal within a few days of contracting it, and it is messy. The infected cry blood, so they called them weepers, because they wept until they died. The skin dies and flies lay their eggs inside it, and crawl from it. The stink is wretched.
[ Turns the blade to curve around the muscle. ] Her Majesty sent me to ask for aide from the other isles, they in turn, blockaded the city to wait for us to die. There's been no trade in and out for the last six months. When the Lord Regent came into power, his method was to take all the infected and dump them in his newly made quarantine zone and forbid the passage of people between different areas. Kills anyone who breaks it, kills them for other reasons too. We have lights as this, [ he gestures with the knife where it finally slips free at the end of the cut, curls it around in a lazy circle at the lights above them. ] But it is for the rich. Most only see it in huge walls of electricity, that if you try to cross them, it turns you to ash, or pylons that pick out guards over civilians... they made men on great metal legs and bodies, and they use them to shoot arrows of fire at the infected to clear them out.
[ He goes on, it's not a eloquent story, it's not happy, it has no purpose, no beginning and it has no end, it's just simple and then, and then they began to close up the streets, and then the abbey took to the streets and accused all they could of witchcraft and set their dogs on people's throats, and then, and then, and then. Speaks with his head down and his eyes on his work and his fingers don't shake and his tone stays even and he might be describing it as if what he had seen had not happened to him. One leg and then the other, trusting that Jasper will do the other two without pause or needing instruction, the boy knew his work after all, and he was more than capable. As much praise as he could give easily, that he trusted anyone to be capable. Goes from the legs then, and it's the task of pulling the skin off the meat, the fat underneath. Running the flat of the blade underneath to pull it off in one long section. ]
[ Jasper does as he's told, all the while listening, listening closely and quietly. It's almost like hearing a ghost story told over a campfire in the woods, except the horror is the reality of Corvo's home, and the work they do is messy, bloody. It stains his left hand red and soaks into his right glove. The scent of it hangs in the air, and that coupled with what his rovermate describes is almost too much. He hasn't flinched since his first few tries at skinning, but at the description of the plague and weepers, he can taste stomach acid climbing up the walls of his throat. It was worse than his memories of mage plague, worse than his nightmares. Scents of mold and rot and salt water try to work their way into his lungs and choke him. Focusing on the work in front of him helps, but only to a small extent. He makes cuts, trying to remember, trying to be careful and not to shake or feel cold, trying to keep listening and take in all of what Dunwall is.
It's injustice such as he's never experienced.
He keeps cutting. The skin peels back easily under his fingers as Corvo goes on to tell him about the witches, the dogs, the men who kill the sick in the streets. And then, and then... and when the list of unfathomable cruelties doesn't seem like it will ever end, suddenly it does. When Corvo falls silent his words still hang heavily in the air for almost as long as he spoke. Heavy as the smell of blood. Even then it's not long enough for Jasper to let it all sink in. Only the sound of skin being ripped up from flesh fills the confined space. It's not a pleasant sound, but after all that was said, it's almost appropriate.
It's a few minutes more before Jasper finds his voice again. ]
I'm... I'm real sorry, Corvo...
[ What else can even be said to that? Only what he knows, from what little he can relate to a place such as Dunwall. ]
Those nobles... they sound like Yafaiyans. When the mage plague started to spread they kept their borders shut tighter than ever, even though their forest is full of good medicine. They don't care for anyone outside their woods, and the lords and ladies only care about improvin' their own standin', not the people they're supposed to represent. Elves there are broken up into blood castes. Gold, that's the royal family, silver's the nobles, and bronze is everyone else. There used to be copper at the bottom, but they ran from that Yafaiya and found a different forest far away, set up a new way of livin'... those're my ancestors.
[ The first large piece of leather comes off clean. It's moved aside. Jasper would help him tan it later. For now he continues watching Corvo, listening to his instructions and moving as he does. He's still trying to be precise, trying to be helpful. Trying to shake the salty chill threatening to ensnare his senses. ]
If I could take you and your da-... your... Lady Emily... if I could take you both to Erden and away from all that... maybe not to the forests, but Nilarion proper. The human kings and queens rulin' there now aren't so bad. You'd probly like Jhalir. They got lights like these, but not just for the rich. Or maybe Khemar. Their politics were messy durin' the mage plague, but the new king there is a good man, from what I heard. Eccentric, but good. Khemar's an island, foggy and grey but quiet and calm. Bet you'd like the fishing villages.
[ A spark of realization flickers across his face, and he halts his knife for a moment. Probably for the better, because he still feels a cold he can't quite explain, and his hands still tremble slightly. ]
Maybe after I get my familiar back from the CDC, I could...
[ After a few more planets, a few more worlds destroyed, perhaps he could make a different request. He could ask for Corvo and his Emily to go someplace peaceful, like Khemar. ]
[ He is calm, calm, calm in his slow exhale, inhale, and steady as waves in his motions, the long length of his story, grows more and more detached as it goes, talks of the gang wars, the filthy rich stink of whale oil, their long, long mournful cries that echoed up sometimes, when the river was still. It is Dunwall, and it is not home, but it is all he knows now, the starving hunger in his belly is the same starving hunger of the city, that does not cease no matter how much he eats and craves, because it seems only fair for the day they will be devoured. Does not tremble, does not shake, moves like old things, like pre-written things because he knows blood at least, where he has grown so foreign to kindness, for all his time here. It still unsettled him, not sure to make of it, what Jasper is saying in it's entirety. Frowning down at his work, blade caught against bone and he jerks it back and forth in long actions to tug at the socket, rip at it.
Makes a soft ah and for awhile, it is all the acknowledgement there is that he has been spoken to, that Jasper had made reply. Leaves blade sunk into the beast and twists magic against around his fingers, hovering on the edge of something far, far worse if he were to let that slip just a little, but doesn't. Not yet, soon -- long breath out and that's the part he had not told, wonders if Jasper could understand that too. The same quiet acceptance and he isn't sure, but the violence is a little too inherent in him. Gets fingers around and where it has been loosened by the blade, there is an ugly ripping noise, and a leg comes off at the knee. ]
It sounds... beautiful. [ In a way he doesn't know, can't fathom -- might have once, wasn't sure. Forests, fair kind rulers, and a smattering things beyond that. Old stories, the way people spoke of Euhorn's and -- ah, now, of Jessamine's reign. Kind, but eccentric, and that pulls a small smile, for Jasper or memories it doesn't matter much really, stays a minute longer and --
-- he holds it there, fine as a old wine on the tip of his tongue. He could take Emily, like he wished in every fever dream moment. Wrap her up like when she was no more than a small child in his arms and left gum marks on his fingers and gurgled papa at him without knowing why she should never say such things. He could bury the things that should stay dead, and Emily could have sun in her eyes and he might feel it on his skin, would it be like Serkonos? Would it have that feel of things untainted that for once the light could trickle down to even the depths and pits and damp cruel places. It would not have that taint of things given up on it, it would be the day Jessamine stood there full with child in the morning sun looking out on the view she favored so much, and he was so sick with love of her, with duty bound up in her that was worse than all of it, and all those long days were sharp with promise.
For that second, it's possible, it's probable, it's a hope and he dearly, dearly needed something to hope for anymore that wasn't -- ] I would, you are right, I would like that. Lady Emily would like it to.
[ But, no, he can't, and he cannot put it to words in a way that is simple, the same as when Wade had asked -- is this really what he wanted. He cannot let go and he cannot forgive and he cannot see past his own failings, he cannot want beyond that, otherwise, otherwise he might break for the future he was never going to have now. The moose leg is set aside as slowly and the idea of an idea fades in the gesture, held and dismissed... and was this how Jessamine felt? This power was too much, there was an Empire in his hands and it was choking him. How did she bare it?
By sacrificing, by always, always giving up. Steady hands, steady eyes, steady heart ( steady as a heart beat ) and there's a jerk of his head and the smile goes. ]
But I cannot. What I want has no bearing. Lady Emily is to be Empress Emily Kaldwin the First, [ and the words in that order sit so odd and flat and wrong on his tongue, she is Empress from the minute her mother died, but she is his little girl, and she will never be a child again, he has failed the most fervent of Jessamine's wishes, it twists over his gut and if he wants to cry for anything, it is for that. Grief that is a fresh as the first wound, the first burn and maybe if they had not burned him, he might just grieve like others did, and that might be relief, but spirits, he can't stop, he can't breathe, he can't, he can't, he can't ] -- she is heir, and what they stole, what they took from her when they butchered her mother and locked her away, I can't ever give her that back, but I can give her the Empire that is rightfully hers. The power that they did this all for. [ He is tired, he is broken, and he wills his body to move because it must, because someone has to, and there's the sink in of fingers into flesh like he wants to press into the Regent's greedy little eyes, into the wet soft press of his mouth, and all Corvo wants to know in that second all over again is if his skin will make the soft ripping sound that the beasts skin make when he guts him open the same, peels him back and the air will smell the same, heady with blood and death and he will bleed life back into the corners that the Spymaster had taken it from. It is not enough, and it will have to do. ] There is nothing else for me. So do not give something so precious to where it will be wasted.
[ He doesn't speak of his home for so many reasons, he cannot bear to and it is mistake, even for guilt over what he did to Jasper, to ever answer any of this. He knows because he feels like the men he possesses, like the dogs and the fish and the birds maybe if he dreamed of flying, wrong in his own skin. Shallow thick-fast breaths and the rage so blistering it's the only thing hotter than the searing of his own flesh, it's foreign as void, but it is in his skin and he cannot get it out, and he sinks into it with no other options. ( Idly, thinks of Shepard, how her mind cracked open under his fingers, he took her breaths and moved her legs and it was mercifully because it was not this, she was dying and it was a thousand, thousand times a relief because he was dying too and it would all just go away, why does this not just all go away? )
[ He looks up from where his bloodied hands shake, and it's a good thing because he catches that rare sight. Corvo is smiling. Really smiling, and he realizes it's something he's never seen before, not in all the months spent living together in fourteen's close quarters. It has been only a short time, especially by his standards, but this is still a first. Jasper notes the far-off look in his crinkled eyes, and wherever his mind and memories have taken him, he truly does look happy. For a few minutes the cold he was feeling starts to thaw and his hands are steady again. He steals a half-smile for himself and goes back to cutting at the opposite knee, glancing at Corvo every now and then to make sure he's still pleased with the idea.
But he's not. The mood quickly sinks, darkening all over again. Jasper's hands stop and his ears lower sadly at the refusal, though he tries to keep the disappointment from showing on his face. He listens to all the reasons why, and while he could make an argument against this... he can understand, too. He's having difficulty putting all the pieces together, but it sounds like Lady Emily had everything taken from her, her mother, throne, and even Corvo now that he's been consigned. But maybe she would still have a chance at taking back what was rightfully hers. A chance. Jasper had everything taken from him before he was even born, and there had been nothing else for him except to bring down the one responsible. Consignment will not stop Corvo, and it will not stop him either.
He says nothing, but the cold creeping in his veins has returned, and his fingers are trembling again. Corvo managed to cut the knee off clean, but Jasper is struggling. There is something ringing in his ears, and it grows louder as his rovermate continues to twist swirling blue magic around the mark on his hand. It sounds almost melodic, but broken... like wailing dimmed underwater. His fingers slip on blood. ]
Ah-!
[ Jasper gasps lightly as he drops the knife in a bloody splatter, gripping a cut on his left hand. It's followed by a sharp inhale and a wince. He's bleeding, covered in blood already, but it's not difficult to tell where the moose blood stops and his starts. There's a distinct shimmer to it. The cut isn't very deep, but it is long on the side of his hand, and clumsily made. ]
S-sorry, I thought I heard-
[ No. He stops. Better to not mention what he heard, because there is nothing around that could've caused it. It is just strange, to hear the cries of the whales Corvo described out of his dreams. ]
[ It's the call of waves so deep below the ocean, long and mournful, so many of their own dead and deep calleth unto deep. Their songs were old songs, their great wide eyes and it wracked through him so often than he had long stopped noticing it now. The six months here, the few days of home.
He almost doesn't hear the sharp sound of Jasper's cry out, but he hears the clatter of blade, because he always hears that, fine tuned to it and for that second he's a bow string pulled tight.
Too much attention to miss that slip, and he'd been avoiding this. Since the Outsider he'd been avoiding this but it hadn't gone away, and it wouldn't get better it never did. That was the problem with void, with Dunwall, with him. It crept too far under skin. ]
Whalesong and children's screams. Cradle songs and and bones gnawed by teeth. [ he sucks in a breath like this is some long death stroke. ] You heard it didn't you? You keep hearing it. It's in your dreams too.
[ His words are measured, he doesn't move closer because he knows, right then, he's the worst thing.
[ Jasper freezes where he kneels, holding the cut on his hand closed tightly as he can. Seconds tick by as he stares at his bunkmate, unable to hide horrified eyes. It's as if Corvo reached into his dreams and pulled forth the horrors he can't describe, things he has been seeing and smelling and hearing in the dark ever since the shuttle crash on Ajna. Terrifying, unexplainable and foreign things that were then amplified by a chance encounter with a stranger on Selena, a man who could float and had eyes black as void. He had been warned not to speak with that man.
He still hadn't told Corvo that he did.
The startlingly accurate description is what paralyzes him. Yes, he won't admit to it, but yes to everything. To the whalsongs and screams, the grinding of bone on bone and the screeching of rats. It's the sound of his own blood dripping on the floor, splashing in droplets to the blood already there in puddles, that snaps him out of his sudden and horrified stupor. ]
I-it's fine. It'll be fine. I'll go... go see Anders, y-yeah.
[ He's assuming Anders is a Blue team healer in Medical. The name keeps coming up in that sort of context. He gets to his feet, awkwardly and wobbling and still clutching his bleeding hand, but he stands. He doesn't look at Corvo, can't look, before turning on his heel as fast and heading out faster. He would go to Medical, and maybe if this Anders was there, would go to him like Corvo said. But he would only be there about the cut. He would avoid confronting the stuff of his nightmares as long as possible, because that's all they are... nightmares. Only nightmares, only bad dreams.
He repeats the mantra in his thoughts all the way to Medical. ]
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Works, because it's easier than thinking, killing is killing is killing and the blade turns over too quick in his fingers in a little agitated gesture. That question is long, and it's full of memories. Jerks hard and doesn't mean it, doesn't mean to be vicious it's just, he cannot be furious with anything else, because what is it to that? he is full of it --
The head comes off. There's the sound of ripping flesh, sodden and tearing. Dead long enough that it doesn't spurt even if it flicks some with the crunch of blade on bones, heavy where it pulls free and it takes some strength to do it. No gush like a torrent, but it drips off his fingers, from the stump. Coats to the wrist and the blade. ] Cut down the middle would you? Neck to tail.
[ Turned his head, using his shoulder to wipe where it had splattered on his cheek some and it's more than that, the same as when Emily had been small, she didn't know better when she asked questions, neither did Jasper. Enough here, that maybe, it felt like, there was some obligation to answer rather than brush it off as nothing. Still, he takes his time about it the head, huge as it is, is unceremoniously dumped in the sink for the time being. Gets a bucket in the same moment, and comes back to shove it under where the stump of a neck was trickling blood. Still warm. Not that long dead. Spirits but he was sick of how blood felt on his hands because it was the only thing that felt warm anymore, and even then, the mark just glowed and glowed and glowed underneath it.
He goes back to work, then, slow even breaths, picks the slivers of calm out of it. ] A lot of reasons, things weren't... good before hand. Riots over food, the nobles -- [ and whilst Jasper cuts the line down the middle, he goes to a back leg, starts at it's knee and begins to cut a line up towards the middle along the inside of it's thigh. ] -- didn't want to share, a lot of politics that just made it worse, at some point, a whole district was flooded by the river because no one tended to the barriers. [ This cut is neater, even and careful as to not tear what would be good leather. ] Then the plague came, no one knows where from... [ Galvanni's offices, the doctor's notes. The plague had arrived with the rats and the rats had been introduced. Stages, it had been brought and he doesn't know why. ] -- thousands were dead in the first few weeks. It's fatal within a few days of contracting it, and it is messy. The infected cry blood, so they called them weepers, because they wept until they died. The skin dies and flies lay their eggs inside it, and crawl from it. The stink is wretched.
[ Turns the blade to curve around the muscle. ] Her Majesty sent me to ask for aide from the other isles, they in turn, blockaded the city to wait for us to die. There's been no trade in and out for the last six months. When the Lord Regent came into power, his method was to take all the infected and dump them in his newly made quarantine zone and forbid the passage of people between different areas. Kills anyone who breaks it, kills them for other reasons too. We have lights as this, [ he gestures with the knife where it finally slips free at the end of the cut, curls it around in a lazy circle at the lights above them. ] But it is for the rich. Most only see it in huge walls of electricity, that if you try to cross them, it turns you to ash, or pylons that pick out guards over civilians... they made men on great metal legs and bodies, and they use them to shoot arrows of fire at the infected to clear them out.
[ He goes on, it's not a eloquent story, it's not happy, it has no purpose, no beginning and it has no end, it's just simple and then, and then they began to close up the streets, and then the abbey took to the streets and accused all they could of witchcraft and set their dogs on people's throats, and then, and then, and then. Speaks with his head down and his eyes on his work and his fingers don't shake and his tone stays even and he might be describing it as if what he had seen had not happened to him. One leg and then the other, trusting that Jasper will do the other two without pause or needing instruction, the boy knew his work after all, and he was more than capable. As much praise as he could give easily, that he trusted anyone to be capable. Goes from the legs then, and it's the task of pulling the skin off the meat, the fat underneath. Running the flat of the blade underneath to pull it off in one long section. ]
no subject
It's injustice such as he's never experienced.
He keeps cutting. The skin peels back easily under his fingers as Corvo goes on to tell him about the witches, the dogs, the men who kill the sick in the streets. And then, and then... and when the list of unfathomable cruelties doesn't seem like it will ever end, suddenly it does. When Corvo falls silent his words still hang heavily in the air for almost as long as he spoke. Heavy as the smell of blood. Even then it's not long enough for Jasper to let it all sink in. Only the sound of skin being ripped up from flesh fills the confined space. It's not a pleasant sound, but after all that was said, it's almost appropriate.
It's a few minutes more before Jasper finds his voice again. ]
I'm... I'm real sorry, Corvo...
[ What else can even be said to that? Only what he knows, from what little he can relate to a place such as Dunwall. ]
Those nobles... they sound like Yafaiyans. When the mage plague started to spread they kept their borders shut tighter than ever, even though their forest is full of good medicine. They don't care for anyone outside their woods, and the lords and ladies only care about improvin' their own standin', not the people they're supposed to represent. Elves there are broken up into blood castes. Gold, that's the royal family, silver's the nobles, and bronze is everyone else. There used to be copper at the bottom, but they ran from that Yafaiya and found a different forest far away, set up a new way of livin'... those're my ancestors.
[ The first large piece of leather comes off clean. It's moved aside. Jasper would help him tan it later. For now he continues watching Corvo, listening to his instructions and moving as he does. He's still trying to be precise, trying to be helpful. Trying to shake the salty chill threatening to ensnare his senses. ]
If I could take you and your da-... your... Lady Emily... if I could take you both to Erden and away from all that... maybe not to the forests, but Nilarion proper. The human kings and queens rulin' there now aren't so bad. You'd probly like Jhalir. They got lights like these, but not just for the rich. Or maybe Khemar. Their politics were messy durin' the mage plague, but the new king there is a good man, from what I heard. Eccentric, but good. Khemar's an island, foggy and grey but quiet and calm. Bet you'd like the fishing villages.
[ A spark of realization flickers across his face, and he halts his knife for a moment. Probably for the better, because he still feels a cold he can't quite explain, and his hands still tremble slightly. ]
Maybe after I get my familiar back from the CDC, I could...
[ After a few more planets, a few more worlds destroyed, perhaps he could make a different request. He could ask for Corvo and his Emily to go someplace peaceful, like Khemar. ]
no subject
Makes a soft ah and for awhile, it is all the acknowledgement there is that he has been spoken to, that Jasper had made reply. Leaves blade sunk into the beast and twists magic against around his fingers, hovering on the edge of something far, far worse if he were to let that slip just a little, but doesn't. Not yet, soon -- long breath out and that's the part he had not told, wonders if Jasper could understand that too. The same quiet acceptance and he isn't sure, but the violence is a little too inherent in him. Gets fingers around and where it has been loosened by the blade, there is an ugly ripping noise, and a leg comes off at the knee. ]
It sounds... beautiful. [ In a way he doesn't know, can't fathom -- might have once, wasn't sure. Forests, fair kind rulers, and a smattering things beyond that. Old stories, the way people spoke of Euhorn's and -- ah, now, of Jessamine's reign. Kind, but eccentric, and that pulls a small smile, for Jasper or memories it doesn't matter much really, stays a minute longer and --
-- he holds it there, fine as a old wine on the tip of his tongue. He could take Emily, like he wished in every fever dream moment. Wrap her up like when she was no more than a small child in his arms and left gum marks on his fingers and gurgled papa at him without knowing why she should never say such things. He could bury the things that should stay dead, and Emily could have sun in her eyes and he might feel it on his skin, would it be like Serkonos? Would it have that feel of things untainted that for once the light could trickle down to even the depths and pits and damp cruel places. It would not have that taint of things given up on it, it would be the day Jessamine stood there full with child in the morning sun looking out on the view she favored so much, and he was so sick with love of her, with duty bound up in her that was worse than all of it, and all those long days were sharp with promise.
For that second, it's possible, it's probable, it's a hope and he dearly, dearly needed something to hope for anymore that wasn't -- ] I would, you are right, I would like that. Lady Emily would like it to.
[ But, no, he can't, and he cannot put it to words in a way that is simple, the same as when Wade had asked -- is this really what he wanted. He cannot let go and he cannot forgive and he cannot see past his own failings, he cannot want beyond that, otherwise, otherwise he might break for the future he was never going to have now. The moose leg is set aside as slowly and the idea of an idea fades in the gesture, held and dismissed... and was this how Jessamine felt? This power was too much, there was an Empire in his hands and it was choking him. How did she bare it?
By sacrificing, by always, always giving up. Steady hands, steady eyes, steady heart ( steady as a heart beat ) and there's a jerk of his head and the smile goes. ]
But I cannot. What I want has no bearing. Lady Emily is to be Empress Emily Kaldwin the First, [ and the words in that order sit so odd and flat and wrong on his tongue, she is Empress from the minute her mother died, but she is his little girl, and she will never be a child again, he has failed the most fervent of Jessamine's wishes, it twists over his gut and if he wants to cry for anything, it is for that. Grief that is a fresh as the first wound, the first burn and maybe if they had not burned him, he might just grieve like others did, and that might be relief, but spirits, he can't stop, he can't breathe, he can't, he can't, he can't ] -- she is heir, and what they stole, what they took from her when they butchered her mother and locked her away, I can't ever give her that back, but I can give her the Empire that is rightfully hers. The power that they did this all for. [ He is tired, he is broken, and he wills his body to move because it must, because someone has to, and there's the sink in of fingers into flesh like he wants to press into the Regent's greedy little eyes, into the wet soft press of his mouth, and all Corvo wants to know in that second all over again is if his skin will make the soft ripping sound that the beasts skin make when he guts him open the same, peels him back and the air will smell the same, heady with blood and death and he will bleed life back into the corners that the Spymaster had taken it from. It is not enough, and it will have to do. ] There is nothing else for me. So do not give something so precious to where it will be wasted.
[ He doesn't speak of his home for so many reasons, he cannot bear to and it is mistake, even for guilt over what he did to Jasper, to ever answer any of this. He knows because he feels like the men he possesses, like the dogs and the fish and the birds maybe if he dreamed of flying, wrong in his own skin. Shallow thick-fast breaths and the rage so blistering it's the only thing hotter than the searing of his own flesh, it's foreign as void, but it is in his skin and he cannot get it out, and he sinks into it with no other options. ( Idly, thinks of Shepard, how her mind cracked open under his fingers, he took her breaths and moved her legs and it was mercifully because it was not this, she was dying and it was a thousand, thousand times a relief because he was dying too and it would all just go away, why does this not just all go away? )
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But he's not. The mood quickly sinks, darkening all over again. Jasper's hands stop and his ears lower sadly at the refusal, though he tries to keep the disappointment from showing on his face. He listens to all the reasons why, and while he could make an argument against this... he can understand, too. He's having difficulty putting all the pieces together, but it sounds like Lady Emily had everything taken from her, her mother, throne, and even Corvo now that he's been consigned. But maybe she would still have a chance at taking back what was rightfully hers. A chance. Jasper had everything taken from him before he was even born, and there had been nothing else for him except to bring down the one responsible. Consignment will not stop Corvo, and it will not stop him either.
He says nothing, but the cold creeping in his veins has returned, and his fingers are trembling again. Corvo managed to cut the knee off clean, but Jasper is struggling. There is something ringing in his ears, and it grows louder as his rovermate continues to twist swirling blue magic around the mark on his hand. It sounds almost melodic, but broken... like wailing dimmed underwater. His fingers slip on blood. ]
Ah-!
[ Jasper gasps lightly as he drops the knife in a bloody splatter, gripping a cut on his left hand. It's followed by a sharp inhale and a wince. He's bleeding, covered in blood already, but it's not difficult to tell where the moose blood stops and his starts. There's a distinct shimmer to it. The cut isn't very deep, but it is long on the side of his hand, and clumsily made. ]
S-sorry, I thought I heard-
[ No. He stops. Better to not mention what he heard, because there is nothing around that could've caused it. It is just strange, to hear the cries of the whales Corvo described out of his dreams. ]
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He almost doesn't hear the sharp sound of Jasper's cry out, but he hears the clatter of blade, because he always hears that, fine tuned to it and for that second he's a bow string pulled tight.
Too much attention to miss that slip, and he'd been avoiding this. Since the Outsider he'd been avoiding this but it hadn't gone away, and it wouldn't get better it never did. That was the problem with void, with Dunwall, with him. It crept too far under skin. ]
Whalesong and children's screams. Cradle songs and and bones gnawed by teeth. [ he sucks in a breath like this is some long death stroke. ] You heard it didn't you? You keep hearing it. It's in your dreams too.
[ His words are measured, he doesn't move closer because he knows, right then, he's the worst thing.
But right now, he's the only thing. ]
We need to take you to see Anders.
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He still hadn't told Corvo that he did.
The startlingly accurate description is what paralyzes him. Yes, he won't admit to it, but yes to everything. To the whalsongs and screams, the grinding of bone on bone and the screeching of rats. It's the sound of his own blood dripping on the floor, splashing in droplets to the blood already there in puddles, that snaps him out of his sudden and horrified stupor. ]
I-it's fine. It'll be fine. I'll go... go see Anders, y-yeah.
[ He's assuming Anders is a Blue team healer in Medical. The name keeps coming up in that sort of context. He gets to his feet, awkwardly and wobbling and still clutching his bleeding hand, but he stands. He doesn't look at Corvo, can't look, before turning on his heel as fast and heading out faster. He would go to Medical, and maybe if this Anders was there, would go to him like Corvo said. But he would only be there about the cut. He would avoid confronting the stuff of his nightmares as long as possible, because that's all they are... nightmares. Only nightmares, only bad dreams.
He repeats the mantra in his thoughts all the way to Medical. ]