Chapter Text
Daud does not glorify his work.
He is an assassin, as plain and simple as that could have been. But as life would have it, it wasn't so simple in the end, when a little girl started screaming for her mother and he found himself wondering what went wrong.
Regret. Guilt. A wrong turn made unnoticed. These are not things that he has thought about for a very long time.
Inside his head is not where he wants to be. It is not a place that he would want anyone else to be in, either.
But Corvo, Corvo. He leaps forward with the rage of a feral creature set loose, snapping at the heels of his enemies with sharp teeth, honed instinct and the delusion of justice at his back.
Corvo can keep his delusions if it helps him sleep at night. If he even sleeps at all. Daud has been close enough to madness, drank deeply enough from the Outsider’s outstretched palm to know about the things that exist where nothing should.
Daud cannot afford to be distracted these thoughts.
*
"I ask for my life," Daud says. He does not expect Corvo to spare him.
When Corvo pulls off the mask with a slow and deliberate sweep, the look in his eyes is hungry and the smile that snakes across his face is cruel. This is not the same man Daud left behind, crumpled and despairing by a dying empress.
"You want me to spare you? Do you think dying will be penance enough?"
It hurts to move.
Corvo's hand is tight on his neck, fingernails digging into his skin hard enough to mark. "You should know better than I, that only the undeserving die early.”
"You're lucky, Daud. I haven't got the time to deal with you so I have one surprise for you," he says and there is a strange sound of delight in his voice. "Your life."
A cruel beast plays with its prey. This is not a mercy.