You don't play favourites with your marked ones because they are finite and you are not, but you don't ignore them either. In the sleepless blue of the Void they are the only landmarks to be found, and you remember their names even when you lose interest in them, even when their hearts stop beating.

You don't remember your own name, and something lost screams in agony over it.

You hear someone scream, and turn your attention to the landmark it came from. There is a past where you find him in prison, but it is not this one; you find him lying on a mattress in a run down bar, and you call him from it into the Void.

He does not say your name. In most forevers he never says a word; this is one where he can't.

You give him your mark and tell him to find you, and you let him jump and blink and fall until he does. He always finds you, no matter which forever you see.

Corvo. You give him the heart of an empress, and think him dear.

.

There are forevers where Corvo never uses your gifts again. There are forevers where he uses them to be an angel. You reward him in all of them.

This time there is blood under his fingernails and gunpowder etched into his skin, and he thanks you for it. He sleeps little but dreams often, relives broken bones and red-hot steel, and when he wakes shaking he remembers his mark, and he thanks you again. He tosses men into rivers of water and sewage and rats, and looks at his hand afterwards, thinking of you and your idea of kindness.

He will take revenge until his heart is still, and he will thank you for it every step of the way.

His violence should bore you. There are forevers where this is true.

In this forever you come to him after he gifts twin brothers to the Void. You lie down beside him on a mattress that can barely fit you both, and let him hold you tight as he tries to sleep.

His heart beats faster with the knowledge you are close by, and you know that he loves you.

.

You do not sleep, but you drift in something like it on occasion, and you remember strange hands offering you food and a place to stay, strange hands boiling water in which to bathe you, strange hands dressing you in strange clothes and strange jewellery. You remember being brought to the ocean. You remember a past where you avenged yourself with blood, and another where you avenged yourself with ignorance.

Disinterest is a weapon, when you know how to use it.

.

Corvo comes to you with another marked one's blood on his hands, and you lick it from his fingers as he fucks you, and you tell him all the reasons why Daud had your interest once, and all the reasons why Daud lost it.

You tell him innocence is as dull as guilt, and he spills inside you with a cry that should have been your name.

It should have been your name.

You still don't remember it, but you know his, and fill your mouth with it as he fills his mouth with you. Corvo, Corvo, Corvo. He found you in every forever.

You wish you knew how to make him keep you.

.

An old tyrant falls into the ocean, and a young one finds safety in Corvo's arms. You feel no envy for her. Soon the eyes of an empire will be on her, in a world that is not kind to little girls or empresses, and Corvo can only protect her skin. What lies beneath is rotting already.

His name will fade from history, or it won't. The Lord Protector gone rogue; a cautionary tale for wicked children, and another excuse to oppress foreign voices on Gristol's soil.

Emily will have Corvo's days, and you will have Corvo's nights.

.

There is always a plot to kill or dethrone Emily, and Corvo's hands stay busy even as arthritis starts to eat his bones and age dulls his sight. There are always new monsters in the shadows or under the bed, real or invented, even if the bed is now larger and softer than the one you first shared.

You grip Corvo's bedsheet in your hands, pull it over both your heads in a wave of cloth - and it is blue, of course it is blue - and you let him hide in the dark with you.

This is the forever where you map his scars with your lips and wonder when you started hiding too.

.

A god has no one to pray to, but when he falls asleep in your arms and his breath catches, you still try.

You know how forever ends, but you still try.