Chapter Text
The serving staff mills about entrance hall, the Emperor and his daughter standing above on the next landing, leaning against the rails. The voices from below blend into an excited murmur as eyes focus on the pocket watches clutched in hand. Jessamine watches with anticipation, a grin spreading across her face. Her father remains stoic, and only the barest twitch of his iron gray mustache betrays his amusement when they start counting the seconds.
“Three!”
He heart leaps into her throat, and she clutches at the bauble hanging from her neck, eyes glimmering with excitement as she watches.
“Two!”
She glances back to see both Royal Protectors standing stiffly side by side a short distance behind. Lady Protector Francine is as impassive as ever, her grizzled hands clasped over the pommel of her saber and her mouth set in a grim line below hooked nose and gray eyes. She looks as much like some bird of prey as ever, and she watches her Emperor with the eyes of a hawk. Corvo looks nervous, and only grimaces when Jessamine makes eye contact. He doesn’t share her enthusiasm.
“One!”
The maids, butlers, cooks, and guards below tense, and a light touch on her arm draws Jessamine’s attention back to her father, who now looks upon her with crinkled blue eyes. He kisses her on the cheek as the crowd below takes in a deep breath as one and waits, hands clasped with their neighbors’.
A bell sounds in the distance, tolling midnight in the Abbey. This is quickly followed by the festive booms and claps of fireworks over the river. The servants cheer, and throw their towels, dusters, and caps in the air. Jessamine grins.
“Have fun,” her father tells her quietly, and he cups a wrinkled hand over her cheek. “Be safe.”
“I will, Father,” she promises, but then she is turning away, and running towards her room as fast as her feet can carry her. As she darts past the Protectors, she sees Corvo open his mouth, hand raised as if to stop her, but he falters as she flies by. A glance over her shoulder shows he has crossed his arms while Lady Francine lectures him quietly. Good. Maybe she’ll talk some sense into him.
She makes it to her room in barely two minutes, and soars directly to the wardrobe. She had a costume made, and it had been delivered a week past. The work was gorgeous, a formfitting soft beige suit and a beautiful, sweeping red cape trimmed with feathers, bisected into two trailing lengths just below her shoulder blades. It was a simple outfit, but magnificent all the same. It was the mask that she adored most, though. This she kept in a box on her vanity, taking it out at every opportunity and trying it on, admiring herself in the mirror. Now she wears it for the main event.
When she emerges from her room, Corvo is waiting, still in uniform.
“I wish you wouldn’t-“ he tries, but a raised hand cuts him off. He replaces the rest of his sentence with an exasperated sigh.
“It’s the Fugue Feast,” Jessamine scolds quietly. “I’m eighteen; it’s about time I actually participate.”
“That’s exactly my point! It’s not safe. It’s your first, you don’t understand…”
“It’s not safe for me here,” she retorts, marching off toward the main stair. She won’t let him ruin her fun. She barely hears him trailing after her, his footsteps somehow nearly silent on the hardwood floors. “The law is all but void during the Feast, and the guards are all gone. If somebody wanted to kidnap or assassinate me, this is the first place they would look, and they would find very little resistance.”
“Do you really think me so useless?” Corvo asks then, and the hurt in his voice makes her stop and turn. She removes her mask, and with her free hand pulls her Protector down to her level so she can leave a hasty kiss on his lips. His frown softens slightly, but he still stares at her with the level of concerned concentration that has the maids talking about their relationship being more than that of a Lady and her bodyguard when they think no one can hear.
“Of course not, but you must see the folly. I’ll be safest if I mingle with the others.”
“At least let me follow you.”
“And advertise to the world that it’s me? No.” They stand there for a moment, neither saying anything; it is a silent battle as Jessamine resists Corvo’s pleading expression and stares him down. Eventually his gaze drops, and she knows she has won. She takes his hand in hers. “It’s just two days, Corvo. I’ll be fine. If you want to make me happy, do this- go enjoy yourself. Don’t think of me.”
“Impossible,” he mutters, and this time it is he who steals the kiss, catching her by surprise. It is chaste, but sweet. “You are beautiful,” he breathes when their lips part. and He takes the mask from her hand, now slung behind his neck, and he takes a small step back to place it for her. The tooled leather fits elegantly to the contours of her face.
“Kingsparrow,” Corvo remarks, finally placating her with the hint of a smile.
“Father does always call me his little bird,” she says with a laugh, and then she dances away, as carefree and wild as the creature she chose to dress as, her cape billowing like wings behind her.
The Feast both terrifies and enraptures, Jessamine quickly discovers. The first few hours are spent in a fervor, lost in the crowded streets, being handed strange drinks that taste of cinnamon, Tyvian spices, and strange ingredients she can’t identify by men with faces painted in a blur of colors.
The world starts to spin soon enough, and the whale oil lamps glow just a little brighter than she remembered. They leave light trails in the air as their bearers weave through the dark masses of people. She hears a gunshot, but the crowd only hushes for a moment before escalating to a roar again. There is a man she vaguely recognizes as a guard screwing another in an Overseer uniform against a wall. She gapes, transfixed, for only a moment before she is distracted. Jessamine is passed a bottle by a woman in green with a dreamy, glazed look in her eyes, and she takes a sip of the burning liquor before passing it on to her neighbor, a man with a mask like a spotted cat. As she floats among her people, delicate hands brush her waist, her breasts, and she finds herself kissing a white painted woman with crimson lips. When she has had her fill, the woman moves on, leaving behind only the taste of cloves.
Somebody lights a flare, and the kingsparrow covers her eyes against the sudden stabbing pain the light brings. Suddenly feeling very ill, she stumbles with eyes still shielded into the nearest alley, barely pulling her mask up in time before vomiting behind a dumpster. The rats watch her for a moment before squeaking and scuttling away, and their voices are like a foghorn in her ears.
The euphoria leaves her, replaced by uncertainty. She couldn’t go back to Dunwall Tower like this; Corvo would never let her out of his sight again. Drunk and crashing down from the high whatever drugs she had been slipped had taken her to, Jessamine stumbles out the other end of the alley into a much emptier street. There is a trio of women sitting in a row on the edge of a raised sidewalk, and a pair of men leaning against each other as they staggered along.
Jessamine suppresses a groan as she lurches along in their wake, looking around for a safe place she could sleep the worst of this off. Maybe Corvo was right, and this was all a horrible idea. She could get murdered out here by some idiot who had no clue who she even was.
“Lost, little bird?” A voice asks from a balcony, and she looks up, hand pressed against her temple in an attempt to ward off the vertigo. Leaning against the railing is a man only a few years her senior. He wears no face paint, and he has no mask or costume. His face is long; there is a scar slanting across his forehead and cheek on one side, and his jaw is squared, giving him the solid look of a man who has been in a few fights and won. His shoulders are broad and muscular from years of hard labor. He seems like he’s a fisherman, maybe, or a dock worker. He also seems sober, but if the bottle in his hand is any indication, he’s working on that. Jessamine doesn’t know what to say him, so she says nothing all.
The man isn’t offended; he takes a swig of whatever’s in his bottle and then uses it to gesture to a building across the street.
“That one’s empty, if you’re looking for a place to stay the night. Man who lives there is fucking the neighbor’s wife and won’t be back until the Feast is over.”
“What if the neighbor comes back?”
The man smiles coldly; his words drip with condescension.
“He won’t. He’s with the couple next door.”
“Oh,” she replies, eyes a little wide and uncertain what to say. He just drains his bottle, and stands upright. She doesn’t thank him, and he doesn’t welcome her, but he does nod before he vanishes back inside his own building.
The door is unlocked when she tries it, and it seems like nobody has been here before her. Using the walls to keep steady, Jessamine finds the stairs and slowly hauls herself to the second story. It is there she discovers the master bedroom, and a washroom. She washes the foul taste of bile and alcohol from her mouth with water from the tap, and then pokes her head into the bedroom. It is empty, and if the man told the truth, she would be undisturbed. Regardless, she had nowhere else to go.
She was asleep within seconds of her head hitting the pillow.
Dawn’s light does nothing to wake her; it is the slamming of the door that jolts Jessamine awake.
“Shit!” she finds herself hissing as she rolls from the bed with a distinct lack of grace, still fully dressed but for her mask, which she finds on the floor a few feet away. “Shit!” Corvo would scold her if he heard her speaking this way. Privately, of course, and gently, in that subservient manner he had mastered over the years and saved for when he really wanted her to listen.
There are muted sounds of laughter coming from downstairs. Jessamine tugs the mask over her features, then creeps to the spiral staircase, suddenly glad she had puked up so much of the alcohol she had drank last night, sparing her the worst of her hangover. All she has to show for her night out is a moderate headache, with none of the nausea or dizziness some of her previous forays into drink had resulted in.
She slithers down the stairs with all the stealth she can manage, pressed flat against the banister. When she reaches the bottom, she realizes the laughter has been replaced by the creaking of wood and soft moans. “Outsider’s eyes, these people are insatiable!” she hisses to herself after she nips through the kitchen and peeks through a doorway to find a couple going at it on the dining room table. Their backs are to her; the woman’s skirts are hiked high, and she is bent over the aged oak by a man in half of a dark suit. His trousers are bunched around one ankle. His partner lets out a small gasp with every stroke.
Jessamine watches spellbound until the man gives a shuddering groan, pressing hard into his partner as he clutches at her hips. She snaps out of it, face flushed, and quickly slips through the door she was spying from and darts across the room to let herself out the front door.
And she discovers herself in the middle of an impromptu street ball.
Judging by the length of the shadows, it is almost sunset again. The crowds from the previous night have evidently spread out and cleaned up, as she sees significantly less body paint and more masks. Somebody has rigged the speakers that hang over the streets to play dancing music, and while many partygoers stand to the side drinking their whiskey and wine, and some are pairing up to fornicate in alleys or slip away to empty homes, there are also any number of whirling couples in the middle of the lane, dancing fervently to the tune, their bodies held what would be considered scandalously close any other day of the year.
The smell of food distracts her from the spectacle. She hasn’t eaten since supper the night before, and it would be wise to get something in her stomach if she was going to drink again. She squeezes past a circle of drunken socialites and makes her way to a table of food. A man with no shirt stands behind it, his skin painted blue-black but for a white hand-print on his chest. Seeing her eying the spread, he waves her over.
“You are a pretty one. Ten pence and you can have your fill, love,” he says, stretching out a hand. He is wearing gloves with webbing between the fingers. His eyes are startlingly pale against his darkened skin, and he makes her uncomfortable, but the food looks good. She reaches into her cleavage for a coin, and drops it into his hand. He presses the skin-warmed metal to his lips, marking it black with his kiss. Before he decides to talk to her again, she takes what looks like a meat pie from a stack, and a slightly bruised Tyvian pear before vanishing into the fray. The pie is delicious, slightly spicy, and the fruit counterbalances with its sweetness. Somebody hands her a tin cup filled with brandy. The drink’s flavor is tainted with a hint of something like rust.
When she glimpses a familiar face in the crowd, she abandons interest in her food. Eyes glued to the receding figure of the man, she presses the half-eaten pie into the hands of a drunk sprawled at the foot of a wall, and chases after him.
Jessamine catches the man’s arm as he’s trying to move past a knot of people. Startled, he stiffens, looking back to see who is stopping him. When he sees her mask, his anger becomes confusion, and he is too bewildered to resist when she drags him out into the flock of dancers, placing one of his hands at her waist and the other in her own.
She is somewhat surprised to discover the man can dance. His steps are light, if somewhat rigid, and she can’t tell if he’s enjoying himself, but at least they aren’t stepping on each other.
“I never thanked you,” Jessamine tells him as he continues to stare at her.
“You never had to,” he replies somewhat curtly. Not enjoying himself, then.
They dance a minute longer, and when he tries to step away at the end of a song, she tightens her hold on him, forcing him to stay for another.
“What I don’t understand,” she says when he remains stubbornly silent, “is why everyone in the city seems to be celebrating but you. Where is your costume?”
“What makes you think this isn’t a costume?” he asks gravely. Jessamine frowns slightly, and the hand at his shoulder moves to trace the jagged scar on his face. As if her touch is fire, he tilts his head away with a jerk. Almost lifting her off her feet, he leads her to the side of the dance and firmly pushes her away. “I’m not the kind of man you want to dance with. Go find your Royal Protector and dance with him.”
He tries to leave again, but she is fast, and she plants herself in front of him, one hand pressed flat against his chest to hold him in place.
“How do you know who I am? Do I know you?”
He laughs, but it’s not a happy sound.
“No, you wouldn’t. But it’s my business to know people like you. Trust me, you want nothing to do with me. Pretend we never met.”
“Why tell me this?”
“We can be what we want during the Fugue Feast.” He gestures at the figures moving around them. “They take this opportunity to become wild and violent.” The man hesitates, and then adds, “What if I want to be tame for a couple of days?”
She regards him silently for a long second, and maybe she’s still a touch drunk, or maybe her meat pie had a special ingredient, because she moves her hand back to his shoulder and pulls him back into the dance. He still stares at her, but he doesn’t resist.
“But why?” he finally manages, and she looks at him through her sparrow mask like the answer should be obvious.
“The man who chooses to be kind and honest is a man worth knowing. Even,” she continues, cutting him off as he opens his mouth to protest, “if he’s only that man for two days.”
“I’m not sure that’s a wise sentiment,” he growls as she presses her body closer to his.
“Shut up,” she admonishes, laying her cheek against his shoulder. He smells of leather and steel and the sea. “You sound like Corvo when you gripe.”
“You’re too trusting; it’s going to kill you some day. I just told you I’m dangerous, and you-“
“Shut up. I am trying to enjoy myself.”
“I’m not your friend, Jessamine.”
“I’m not asking for a friend,” she replies, turning her face up to him again. They exchange looks, hers demanding, his almost scornful, but she is used to getting what she wants. She takes the lead of the dance, moving them closer to a wall, and then their dance changes to one as old as Man itself. Her leg twines around his, her hip grinding against him. He sucks in a bated breath, and she smirk. He scowls at her as if irritated she could elicit a reaction so easily, but it doesn’t keep his hands from exploring her body, following her curves. He is not gentle, but she doesn’t expect him to be. When she stands on tiptoe to kiss his throat, he catches her face in his hand, his calluses lightly scratching her jaw.
“No marks,” he warns, and she sees the shadow of a threat in his eyes, almost making her doubt her decision. Almost.
“No marks,” she agrees. “Is there somewhere…?” She trails off, but her meaning is clear. He leads her with a hand at the small of her back, pushing her in front of him towards the building he had called to her from early that morning. She tries the door, but it’s locked, and she’s about to turn around when the hand at her back cages her in, the man’s other hand inserting a key into the lock as he buries his face in her hair. The lock clicks as the bolt slides free, and while one hand turns the doorknob, the other moves to rest across Jessamine’s front, lightly pressing her against his body. She can feel his need at her back; she rubs herself against him, and takes delight in the way his fingers curl into the fabric of her costume.
They are barely inside when they let loose; as the door latches, she is fumbling at his belt; he has thrown her mask aside. He presses her back against the thin edge of the wall that separates the narrow stairway near the door from the rest of the main floor of the building, both breathing heavily as he unfastens her feathered cape, letting it fall unceremoniously to the floor. She lets out a startled yelp when he lifts her up, then hooks her legs around his back so he’s bearing her full weight.
He carries her slowly up the stairs this way, distracted halfway up when her grip on him tightens, grinding her heat against his with only a few layers of clothing in between. He groans, and she catches his lips in hers, muffling the sound.
The bedroom is not far from the stairs, and the distance is covered within seconds. The man all but dumps her onto the mattress, tearing at her top like a wild animal, and she assists, unbuttoning where she can and shrugging it off the first opportunity she gets. Underneath she wears only a sheer ivory camisole. He takes one breast in hand, running the rough pad of his thumb over her nipple through the fabric. Jessamine gasps at his touch, back arching against him. His touch is electric, and his smirk suggests he’s aware.
He pauses to toss his jacket aside, and pull his own shirt overhead, revealing his scarred, strongly muscled body. Her hands are on him before the shirt leaves his hand; she lightly runs her palms up his sides, around his arms, over his chest, feeling the muscle coiled under his skin as he tugs her boots and trousers off, leaving her in her underwear. She lets her hands fall to his pants again, but he bats her hands away and pushes her firmly back into the mattress as he sidled around the side of the bed.
“I-“ she starts, but her words turn to moans as he dips one hand under the waistband of her panties and gives her a single languid stroke across her clitoris, already well-lubricated with her own juices. Before she recovers, he pulls up the edge of her camisole with the other hand, and tweaks a nipple. She squeezes her eyes shut as he teases her, clutching the sheets. His hands ghost across her; his fingers dip between moist lips and make her shudder and twist in the most delicious ways.
“Stop,” Jessamine says abruptly, and he looks at her with an expression she can’t read. “I want you.”
She is used to getting what she wants, and it is all she says. She wriggles out of her underclothes as he takes off his trousers, and then he is in bed with her, mouth at her breast as her nails drag across his shoulders, through his hair. She can feel his cock hard and hot against her thigh; her legs instinctively spread, and he settles between them.
“Fuck me,” she demands between labored breaths, reaching down between them, but he catches her wrist, stopping her. She feels him smirk against her throat.
“I didn’t quite hear that. Did you want something?” She knows he wants her, but he wants her to beg even more, and the daughter of an emperor does not beg.
“Fuck me!” she repeats, squirming.
“You didn’t ask nicely.” Teeth scrape lightly across her skin.
“What happened to ‘tame?’”
“I haven’t stabbed you yet, have I?”
“I want you to stab me,” she all but snarls, seizing his engorged cock in the hand he hasn’t trapped and giving it a firm stroke that elicits a surprised grunt from her lover.
“Fine,” he mutters, letting go of her wrist in favor of her thigh, drawing her legs up and pushing deep into her. She winces, and lets out a quiet “ow!” and he laughs, but he also stops to let her body adjust to his girth.
When she digs her heels into his back, coupled with a coy kiss, he takes it as a sign that she’s ready, and sets a slow rhythm, thrusting deeply into her. There is no banter now. She runs her hand over his scarred face, examining each line through hazy eyes and feeling the length of each silvery line as her nerves light on fire, filling her core with a liquid, living heat. He lets her.
They move as one, quicker and harder, panting into each other’s necks, shoulders, mouths. Her nails scratch his back, and he growls “no marks,” but there’s no conviction there anymore, and she is too distracted to care.
He shifts his body slightly over hers, moving only the slightest bit up and forward, but the added friction is what drives her over the edge. She comes quietly, back arched almost painfully, head thrown back, lips parted, and his mouth is at her throat, kissing, sucking. He comes a moment later, emptying himself deep within her.
When they catch their breath, he lowers himself to her side. His hands graze her skin, almost reverent in their attention to every curve, every shadow. She presses herself against him, reveling in his smell now mixed with hers. They smell like the ocean and the palace gardens, like blood and sweat.
They drift off as the sun does, and the streets are almost silent.
The kingsparrow is alone in bed when she wakes, still naked but for the sheets she’s tangled in. For a split second she thinks she’s in her bedroom at the Tower, but even half asleep she knows that’s not right. Jessamine blinks, and stretches. Her muscles are sore.
She sees him leaning at the balcony railing once again when she drags herself upright, and the memories rush back like the tide. The doors to the balcony are open, and his back is to her. He had found trousers, but he still wears no shirt.
Swinging her legs off the mattress, she fishes around on the floor for clothes and finds his shirt there. She tugs it over herself, and satisfied that it covers to her thigh, she pads out to the balcony to stand next to him. They stand together for quite some time, watching people stumbling down the street, groaning and cursing as they try to get home.
“It never happened,” he finally says to her, eyes as cold and hard as the sea when he looks over at her.
“Of course,” she replies, folding her arms over her chest to fight off the slight chill in the air.
“No,” he says. “The hymn has been sung. The High Overseer has declared the new year. It didn’t happen.”
They stand together a while longer, but soon enough Jessamine turns away and puts on her own clothes. She considers saying goodbye, but decides against. When she goes, she leaves the mask on top of the twisted sheets. It is goodbye enough. She feels his eyes on her when she steps out the front door, but he does not call to her. The Fugue Feast is over, and they are strangers. They have never met.
Nobody recognizes her as she walks to the ferry. Their eyes are fixed on their feet, or are still glazed over with exhaustion and pain and the last dregs of alcohol in their systems. The boat captain says nothing when she boards, but hands her a flask as he casts off. She glances between it and him with a question in her eyes, and he grunts, “Infusion of willow, for all ills.” She takes a sip, and it’s bitter.
When the small craft is steered into the lock and lifted to ground level, she discovers Corvo is waiting for her, hanging around like a crow amongst house sparrows as the technicians work around him. At the sight of her, he is visibly relieved, and when he takes her hand to help her off the boat, something in Jessamine’s heart is lifted as well.
They walk side by side back to the Tower. She does not comment on the bags beneath his eyes. He says nothing of the mark high on her neck, even if she catches his eyes wandering to it until it finally fades away.
The Fugue Feast never happened, and life goes on.