Remember the strictures, citizen.

Indie Dishonored OC, multiverse/oc/canon/ friendly Non-Selective 𝓦𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓽𝓮𝓷 𝓫𝔂 𝓢𝓸𝓵

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried:

“If people are talking about us I feel like we should know. I already can’t see, it gets… frustrating, to not know what’s going on around you.” Someone who hadn’t lived this way their entire life probably couldn’t understand. Nearly all of Lothric’s childhood had been spent in his bed, or in the hospital, isolated from people his own age.

He was only given brief forays into the real world, when he was feeling well enough and Lorian would take him into town, and even then he could only perceive part of it. His world was built of snapshots and what he’d read in encyclopedias, and to have information withheld was like having a sheet pressed over his face. “Please… you can tell me. I don’t care if it’s bad, I just want to know what’s going on. You all know the truth, why does it matter?”

  Jonah stopped by a row of rosemary sprigs, leading the boy’s hands up their gentle spines. “Just because you can’t see doesn’t mean you’re blind to what’s around you. But I’m in no position to speak to you about your own experience. I’ll tell you.” A cold breeze rushed through the garden, combing the blooms back against their stems. Tucking them almost. 

  “People believe your brother conspired against your father under the influence of some dark presence. Or that both your brother and father have been corrupted by a force from the void. There’s enough evidence to suggest your father’s involvement with unsavory magics...” 

 The overseer plucked a leaf and crushed it between their fingers. “There are overseers in the abbey that suspect you to be that presence.” 

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried:

“No.” Lothric shakes his head, speaking softly, as if afraid to disturb the earthy quiet. “We’ve just gotten letters sometimes. They like their privacy.” That sounded less suspect than they’re probably both practicing some sort of witchcraft. Their aunt was, anyway, that Lothric was sure of just from the sound of her. She owned a whole lot of snakes and lived with another woman, and that was about all he knew.

“I’m sure people know by now, that something’s happened. What are they saying?” The governor’s manor burning down a the hands of the Abbey was hardly a minor event, but they’d been insulated from the gossip here. Lorian read Lothric the local news daily when it was interesting enough, and their father’s vanishing had been a hot topic for weeks. It was almost enough to make one feel important.

 “ Well, it’s time they make an appearance. This could be your chance to reconnect!” Jonah’s voice was hopeful, despite their growing frown. Lothric and his brother were treading on loose ground. One mistake and the earth gapes beneath them. The overseer could name a chorus of people hanging on the siblings misfortunes. Creeping, whispering- like rats scuttling in the dark. 

 But, why make the boy worry? “You shouldn’t pay mind to hearsay. Or gossip. It’s easy to weave stories when you don’t know all the facts. It’s easier still to let it spiral out of control. Until it twists the truth and corrupts the opinions of others. Whatever ‘people’ have to say isn’t important. What’s important is to study what has happened and come to understand it.” 

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried:

What a sweet creature… Lothric smiles sadly at it, gently urging it back onto a nearby leaf. “That’s just how people are. People here who’ve got money… All they do is plot to ruin each other while pretending to be nice.” He’d attended enough gatherings, dragged along by his father when there was no option to leave him at home, to know how people living in his financial bracket operated. He heard all of it, what they plotted in rooms they thought were secure, and might have been if not for the rats, the moths, the beetles that could enter through the cracks. 

“….maybe our aunt or uncle on our mother’s side could help,” he murmurs. “We don’t really talk to them, but I’m sure they’re out there somewhere.”

 Jonah grasped the clutches of his chair and drove the boy forward. Passing by tangled flowers and vines.The smell of dark, fertile earth grew stronger here. Almost overpowering the salt spray of the sea. “You could. Strange, your brother never mentioned having any family from your mother’s side. Have you met them?” 

  The overseer probed casually, ignoring the sharp curiosity nipping at their heels. “Maybe they’ll show themselves soon enough.” 

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried:

“Sure.” Lothric puts his hand out, letting Jonah place the little slug on his palm. He holds it up to his face, squinting, hoping to make out its colors. Plenty of people would just squish them, but they provided a valuable service, eating decaying leaves. Lorian had always made it a point to impart their mother’s love of all living things onto his brother, even for the smallest and slimiest creatures. 

He lets the slug crawl up his pointer finger, perching at the tip, extending its tiny body. “Really, not even if we paid them? We’ll have the money when we figure out what to do with our father’s estate… I’m afraid the rest of his family won’t be happy about it, though. But I don’t see what they can do. My brother’s old enough to inherit it but they’ll probably try to say he’s crazy and not worthy of it.”

 It wriggled across Lothric’s skin and up his pointer finger. Traces of gold shining against the light, speckling it’s body like precious stone. The slug stretched out and wondered at it’s perch. What sort of plant was this? 

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt to write them a letter. Once your brother’s things are sorted I could pass their names by him...” Jonah paused, troubled suddenly. “Are you not on good terms with the rest of your family?” They prodded one of the slug’s eyes and watched how it furled. A miraculous creature. Nothing like it could be found in the cold, Tyvian wilds. “It’s hard to imagine a family snatching each other’s belongings. Then again, Gristol is different...” 

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried:

Lothric reaches out to touch the pillowy surface of the flowers, with all their little blossoms, leaning his face in close enough to make out the individual blooms. How many of those witches had actually been what people claimed they were? Jonah didn’t seem like they wanted to talk about it, so he doesn’t ask. Not yet. 

“I did, but they stopped coming… Same as the nurses. Nobody wanted to work in our house anymore. No matter how much my brother offered to pay them…” A few had taken the bait, but after a few visits they’d refused to come back. Getting Lothric to the hospital was not always easy, so Lorian had learned all he could about nursing. It had only furthered their isolation, probably fed into the rumors about the two of them, and what went on in their tucked-away manor. 

 “That’s a shame. Have you ever thought of furthering your education? Now that you’re out of the manor-” Jonah doubted they would have stayed either. Caged inside the belly of that house...Would it have taken them as well? Scorching them with it’s unnatural slime. “I’d offer the services of a few tutors I know. But they’re all Tyvian. Too stubborn to leave their towns and travel south.” 

 The overseer bent low and caught something wriggling between the blooms. They picked it up, letting it crawl atop their palm. “The garden’s riddled with these slugs. I guess the rain lures them out of the ground. Want to hold it?” 

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried:

Lothric waves the lavender bloom in front of his nose, tickling his own cheeks. It seems so long ago that he was fading in and out of consciousness in front of the fire as the ghosts of Lorian and Jonah’s voices drifted around him. The thick tar-black darkness that seemed to ooze from the walls like frankincense. Lorian had promised him they would never live in a place like that again, that tomb of a house. Spring was trying its hardest to arrive, but the winter’s chill would not yet loosen its teeth.

“If your job is archiving, why did they send you to us?” It could have simply been that there was nobody else, or that it was a delicate situation that required somebody sympathetic. Not like the brusque fellow officer who’d disappeared. Lothric had never learned what had happened to him. He hadn’t asked. Probably better off not knowing. “…I understand if you’re not supposed to talk about it.”

“I wasn’t always an archivist. Three years back I traveled Gristol as a sanctioned witch hunter of the abbey...I am still called upon sometimes. Once a hunter always a hunter.” Jonah left it at that. It’d been some time, but the scent of smoking shrapnel was fresh on their mind. Stringing along a ghostly pain up their wounded leg. “Here we are. This is the start of the garden proper.” 

 Jonah wheeled Lothric closer to the Hydrangeas peeking up from the low fences. They’d grown into a mixture of lush blues and pinks. Sometimes clashing in the same flower. “Did you have tutors growing up, Lothric?” 

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried:

If only he’d brought his glasses… They were buried somewhere with the luggage Lorian had thrown together. He doesn’t need them to feel the brush of the delicate petals under his nose, the perfumey scent, the gulls screaming as they reeled in the cold, cloudless sky. 

Escape occurs to him, of course it does. Jonah could turn their back and he’d be gone… but there is no cage with sturdier bars than the known fact that he has nowhere to go. He wouldn’t survive a day without Lorian, and Lorian needed him too, in his own way. It’s only an errant thought, like those that mothers sometimes claimed to have when they held their children on balconies, and such thoughts were frowned upon in a place like this. 

“Thank you…” he says softly.  “If I bring a few into my room maybe it won’t smell so much like mothballs… Do you like it here, Jonah? Do you like being an Overseer, and doing all these things you do?”

 “I don’t stay in an outpost for very long. But I can definitely say this has been one of the most welcoming. I’m not from this isle, you see. So it makes for some awkward situations...Still, I’ve learned to make a home out of the backseat of a carriage. So I don’t grieve being constantly on the road.” Jonah passed a hand through the lavender blooms, picking them to later perfume Lothric’s cell. “I do enjoy my work. Archiving is a pleasant change from what I used to do.” 

 They passed beneath a few garden arches, thin and riddled with vines. Despite the cold spray from the sea, Jonah could still make out the buds just about to bloom in the fray of leaves. “Being an overseer is all I’ve known, really. So I can’t say if I would’ve chosen another life. It’s the only one I’ve lived. Well-” They chuckled then. “Except for being a child on a farm.” 

 Jonah instantly thought of Tyvia. The dark, wooden structure of their father’s farm. The pine nettles that stuck to their hair. Everything was ivory white around the mountains, except when spring came and turned the forest into a deep green. 

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried:

“…ah, alright.” That was fair, and he didn’t want to put his pets’ life in danger. They would just have to bear with captivity a little longer. Lothric pets them through the bars in apology, then lets Jonah wheel him out. He keeps his eyes on his folded hands, away from whatever expressions Jonah’s fellow officers wore. 

The air is full of the particular damp, bone-settling cold that one could only ever find near the ocean. His joints ache already, cold digging in like roots into crumbling stone, but he hadn’t come apart just yet. Wrapped up in his blankets, he’s warm enough, though every breath brings winter into his lungs, crisp enough blowing in from the sea not to carry the smog of the city.

The salt cleansed the air of the city. Weeding out it’s stench by way of wind and mist. While the folks inland drew in gusts of smoke, the brothers of the abbey breathed pure ocean. The taste of sea foam every present at the back of their palate. 

 No one looked at Lothric as he passed. Though if the youth could see, he’d only see shades of people standing against bright marble walls. As still as ghosts haunting the moors. “The gardens will feel a little warmer. We have roofs over some of the sections and plants that need to be kept at certain temperatures. We’ll see those last, so you can stay by the heaters longer.” 

Jonah wheeled him across the courtyard and beside hedges of lavender. Taking a moment to pluck a flower and place it in Lothric’s hand. “I’ve learned that lavender grows well near the sea. Fortunate, since they give the outpost a good smell.” 

[orderaboveall]

greyaandgold:

Marcus was understanding of the work the other was doing, and of the workload the archivists were dealing with. If his presence proved to be some sort of distraction, well, he had plenty of other duties to attend to that didn’t involve conversation.

Still, Jonah was right: those forward fools in the Academy were always trying to one-up one another, or prove eachother’s work wrong just so they could boast that their other theories were correct. Arrogance, that’s all it was. …Though he knew– most everyone knew– that not every Brother in the abbey was guiltless when it came to misplaced pride.

But he refocused his attention on why HE was there when his compatriot asked it of him.

“Right. I’m afraid I’ve come bearing another delivery of confiscated items from Potterstead, but I’ll be staying to help the recording of them.”

 Their expression was thankfully obscured. A frown playing subtly on their lips. “I see.” Jonah straightened once more and drew away from their book altogether. Quickly, they thumbed through a cluster of lists and slipped out a clipboard. “Well, I’m glad to have a new set of hands. First I’ll need you to sign onto the staff’s list so we can be sure who’s who. Who was present when, all those formalities. Oh, I’ll have to give you a few more things. Pens, papers...” 

 Jonah worried their gloves before perking up. Weaving themselves in and out from the other groups of overseers gathering around the tables. Only singled out by the brooch clutched upon their collar. “Usually this place is a little more organized, but now- under our present circumstances it’s harder to keep things in check. Here-” They placed a few papers and official forms wherein to register their findings.”- I’m sure this is all that you’ll be needing.” 

“Have you any experience with archiving? I’m sorry if you’ve worked here before and I just haven’t recognized you. But, it’s hard to keep track of your peers when you travel from outpost to outpost.” 

[whisperskat]

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried:

As Jonah walks out to talk to the nurses, Lothric gathers up his extra blankets around him. There hadn’t been time to collect all his winter things, so Lorian had only grabbed the essentials, feeling the fraying rope of the guillotine that seemed to hang above him. When Jonah returns, Lothric is well-bundled, wrapped in layers of light gray blankets like a caulk-flavored crepe.

“I can do it,” he says, shifting himself over to the side of the bed so he can pull himself into the chair, feeling for the cushion and armrests. This chair is smaller than his old one, and actually moves a bit as he sits, not such a monumentally heavy thing that it stayed put no matter what might shake it. He can only imagine poor Heather and Antimony watching him dolefully as he left, one of them rattling the cage door as they pushed their nose against it. “…can I take my rats? They won’t run away.”

  The overseer stepped back, surprised by the fretting of his rats. They’d all but forgotten about Heather and Antimony. “I’m afraid you can’t. The outpost has a strict rule about animals. Nothing but our dogs are allowed to wander freely here.” Jonah bent down to face their beady eyes. One of them drew closer, roused by the reflection cast upon their mask. “They’ll be better off where no other officer can see them. While it’s been some years, the plague is still fresh in many of my brothers’ minds. They would try to kill them.” 

 Jonah pulled away, failing to notice how one of them followed the glint of their mask and climbed up the small bars. “They’re not cruel men. But they have their fears.” 

[orderaboveall]

"How do you feel about the opera?"

Ask my character “How do you feel about ______?”

 Jonah sighed, closing their book in a gentle fold. 

“I enjoy the experience of attending more than the show itself. There’s just something special about it…Getting the invitation, taking a seat among the lords and ladies. It’s so easy to forget who and what I am when it happens.” 

[ghostlywriterr]

Ardverikie. Scotland

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried:

All Lothric’s life he’d been acquainted with various sets of four walls, whether in his bedroom, the hospital, or parked in front of the fire of his living room, but he knew enough of the outside world to be aware of what he was missing. He could only sleep so much, and the outpost room was particularly dull and stifling. Felt like he’d been in here for years, even if it had been weeks, at most.

“I’d really like that. Do you think you could ask them now…?” Lorian wouldn’t be back for a while, and sleep wouldn’t come. He tilts his head against his pillow, looking toward the dark gray blur that was Jonah with his wet, pinkish eyes, and overall being just a little more obviously pitiful. It sometimes worked on his nurses in the past, back when he’d still had them, and it hadn’t just been Lorian doing everything. 

 Jonah let out a laugh. Muffled by the gold plating of their mask. “Of course.” They squeezed Lothric’s hand before pulling away altogether. Closing the door behind them with a soft clank. As expected, the nurses had been standing at the ready. Still apprehensive of their new patient and their possible connection with the void. 

 The overseer was stern and the nurses felt obliged to concede with their plans. Especially, since it meant taking a break from their ‘round the clock shifts. Quickly, they equipped Jonah with an emergency whistle and brought along a wheelchair. Easy enough to push so as to not worsen the officer’s limp. 

With everything fastened into place, Jonah maneuvered the chair into the cell. Only struggling whenever the wheels lagged against the smooth floor. “Alright, now that I have a chair...We need to get you ready for the cold.” They took one step toward Lothric, before pausing again.” Oh. Do you prefer if the nurses do this?” 

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried replied to your post “How do you feel about costume parties?”

lady boyle's last party is Iconic

It’s the reason I live and b r e a t h e. 

[orderaboveall]

How do you feel about costume parties?

Ask my character “How do you feel about ______?”

 Jonah visibly perked up. 

“I’ve only attended parties as an officer of the Abbey, never for leisure. So wearing costumes, dancing with guests and other activities have always been out of the question. Yet…I find costume parties to be exciting. While I myself can’t ‘dress up’ I can definitely appreciate the work put into making everyone’s outfits. They’re usually very creative, colorful and…Well, they’re just fun.” 

[orderaboveall]

cursedandcarried:

His poor brother… There was no respite for Lorian, even when he was not being called upon for more testimony, more questions about his father’s work and what had occurred in that shadowy manor, now little more than a soggy pile of ash. Not to mention the cough that had settled in his lungs, likely from the mold collected in the walls of the cellar. 

There was little Lothric could do to soothe him, other than to cooperate. He took his medicine and slept and did not tempt fate by possessing rats out of boredom. “…probably, but I almost always get sick, whether I go outside or not. If I wear enough layers I’ll be warm.” Could he ply Jonah’s sympathetic soul? He felt smothered in here, breathing the same air over and over.

He wouldn’t have to ply any harder. Jonah could feel the utter stillness of the room. How the shades drawn across the window muted the light from outside. Filtering it with hues of grey. 

It reminded Jonah of when they were wounded in battle. Left bedridden and lame. So much time spent looking at the walls and muttering to no one. Wishing for anything to happen. Eager to run out in a frenzy, despite the pain. Or to be gutted and done with... “I could speak with the nurses and your guards. You might not be able to get very far but, I could show you our garden.”