Dishonored
PG-13 (dark themes, corpses, etc)
Corvo Attano, the Outsider (gen)
830 words

crossing the heart line

jukeboxhound

When Corvo walks through the interrogation room with the key to his cell warm in his hand, the coals in the brazier are still hot and the floor still spattered with blood. The blood is tacky and sticks to the soles of his boots in the way her blood still stains his hands, six months too late.

When Corvo later stands a breath away behind a guard, his hand slides down the hilt of his borrowed sword, fingers catching on the little imperfections in the tanned hide. He imagines the smooth arc of his arm rising up and around with the scream of half-atrophied muscle, arterial spray painting his face and sword and floor tiles, the meaty thud of dead flesh hitting the ground. They'd laughed when he sobbed, taken bets with whiskey and coin on how long he'd last before retreating into unconsciousness.

His arm rises up in a smooth arc and around the guard's throat, feeling the flutter of muscle and tendon as the guard tries desperately to draw breath. The sword remains clean and tucked in its scabbard as he hides the body in a dark corner, still whole and unhurt.

…

The Void makes him feel like he's standing outside of his body and watching it go through the motions of being human. He raises a hand and for an instant it's a blur, like time can't decide whether it's a striking fist or an outstretched hand or if it's all of these things at once. He's looking at the world through a pane of glass and heartbreak and time that doesn't pass, and he doesn't recognize his own face.

…

Corvo crouches on a third-floor balcony overlooking Clavering Boulevard. His pulse never changes when he narrows in on a target, even though the anger slithers through his veins like a cold snake, like a crazed filthy rat running through narrow tunnels. The scars on his body ache to see these targets in clean uniforms walking tall and arrogant, and the despair of six months in a pit with only devils for company howls. It shrieks for the spatter of blood over the graffiti of a dying city. It screams for him to infect these tall, arrogant targets with the coldness curled in his belly, delivered on the point of a silent bolt.

But he doesn't. He tells himself that he doesn't kill every goddamn target because she wouldn't want him to. He reminds himself that Emily shouldn't begin her reign on a foundation of corpses infected by something much more ruthless than plague. Truth is: it isn't true. Not entirely. Instead it's the pain of watching murderers and torturers walk away that Corvo holds close, wraps tightly around his heart whenever he finds a moment of stillness. He's gotten very used to torture, after all, but now it's on his own terms. Control. Choice. Freedom.

How fascinating, the Outsider whispers to him from the mouths of rats in a dark alley, and the brand on Corvo's hand burns like needles sliding deep under the skin. I have seen irrational depths of forgiveness in human hearts, and I have seen great empires crumble under the weight of a single man's hatred. But this, Corvo…yes, how fascinating indeed.

…

Time bends and space is crossed in the flicker of an eyelid, walls become as insubstantial as open doorways –

You look down on these men who refuse to examine the shadows, and they never know that you hold their existence in the palm of your hand, choosing whether they should live or die, says the Outsider from the blackened lips of a corpse lying crumpled in an abandoned apartment. That is the power of a god.

Corvo replies in a disused rasp, half-hoping the Outsider will take back the mark, half-terrified that he will, I never asked for it. You never gave me a choice.

The corpse has too many teeth. How very mortal of you to believe such a thing exists.

Which is a lie, there's almost always a choice (sign the confession or let them tear more screams from you, slaughter them all or slaughter none) and the Outsider goes on, A man may have any number of fates, Corvo, but they are all predestined. You only choose which one.

What if someone chooses it for you? Aren't I the one choosing the fates of so many others?

Corvo drops an unconscious guard beside the corpse, well out of view from the broken windows and the patrols outside. The guard will live, though when he wakes up he'll probably wish he hadn't. It's as far as Corvo allows the howling coldness inside him to go.

You've become your own judge and jury, says the Outsider. Will you also become your own executioner?

Corvo slides out the window onto a pipe to wait for the unconscious guard's partner to turn his back, hearing a pulse and a whisper from the mutilated heart in his coat.

All men are fated to die one way or another, Corvo. Just make sure yours is interesting.