"Judgment": A Dishonored Fanfic

Chapter 17

Later that day, she was pacing back and forth in her room worriedly, trying to think of what to do for the best. She'd drunk so much honey and camomile tea that she'd probably spend the next week attached to the toilet, and she was still as tightly-wound as a lute string. She supposed that there was only so much relaxing that it could manage.
While she felt much, much better about technically being plagued, there was also the small matter of how to get her cure officially tested without raising public panic or undue gossip. Isolating white blood cells was rather tricky, and she hadn't the equipment to do it on such a massive scale. Furthermore, there was what to tell Corvo and Daud, who were probably due back soon from the Hound Pits. That was what was causing her to wear out a long strip of carpet in her living room.
In a word, they'd both be devastated. Specially after Corvo had told her to not use herself in further experiments.
So therefore, she was trying to think of a way to avoid that.
The thought of lying to him caused her something very close to physical pain, but he'd be much happier. If they then had sex and he also got sick, or Daud, they'd catch her out.
Most likely never forgive her, too.
Not having sex would send the wrong signals, compounding the problem further, and she didn't think she'd be able to convincingly say that the cure was within the rat. That was only partially true- she'd only done that to save the rat. It was costing her a lot now.
The indecision was killing her. After an hour of pacing, deliberation and crying, she was still no better off.
And then, someone knocked on her door.
Time had run out.

   "Only me." Corvo cane into the room, closing the door and walking over to her. "Been looking for you everywhere." He then paused, seeing a pained expression, pink, slightly-puffy eyes and a pink face, and his intended words vanished. "What's wrong?"
She stood there, mouth open, unsure of what to say. It was like the Outsider had taken her voice again.
Corvo moved closer, reaching for her shoulders. "Elaine? Something's the matter, I know it is. What's wrong? You can tell me, whatever it is."
She then broke, and started crying. "I'm sorry," she said behind shaking hands over her mouth, "I'm so sorry."
   "Wha- hey." He embraced her. She was shaking like a leaf. "Come on, don't be upset...I can't help if you don't tell me. We'll sort it out, okay? Shhh..."
He comforted her the best he could, mind racing with thinking of what the problem could possibly be, and eventually, she began to calm down and cling to him less tightly. By this point, he'd thought of one reason that would fit the bill and explain her extreme reaction, but he was hoping that it wasn't true.
She was only gently shaking now, so he tried asking her.
   "Elaine, please. What's happened?"
   "...I've made the vaccine for the plague." She said quietly.
Normally, he'd be overjoyed at that. But those words confirmed his worst fear at the same time. "...it's in you, isn't it?"
He felt her nod. "Th-the Outsider said that I'm immune, but..."
   "What?" He'd barely recovered from the first shock, and she was now saying that she's actually immune? "Like us, you mean?"
   "Yeah. I might feel a bit off, but...I won't die."
   "Thank God..." He squeezed her in his arms at the news, beyond relieved to know that he wasn't going to lose her. "Well, that's great news, so...why are you so upset?"
   "It was an accident." She ploughed on. "I was injecting the rat with a couple of cells, and...and it twitched and wriggled its leg and I jumped and got some of it on me..."
   "Steady on, love, breathe. Slow down a touch."
   "I did not give it to myself, Corvo, you have to believe me!" She was now starting to get wound up again, words sounding as if they themselves were filling with tears.
Now he understood why she was so upset. Her promise.
   "Shhh..." He said gently. "It's okay, I believe you, come on. I know you wouldn't. I know."
They stood there, in silence, holding each other.
   "...my angel." He whispered after a few moments, and gently moved her face to look at his. "You kept it, okay? You kept your promise, it wasn't your fault."
She nodded. "Yeah. I just-"
   "It's okay." He kissed her forehead. "It'll be alright. Me and Daud are immune, remember? As long as you don't do anything that could spread it to anyone else, it'll be alright."
   "Yeah." She took a steadying breath, and nodded again. "Yeah, I just...I didn't know what to do. I injected the rat too, I wanted to save it...I thought that maybe, I could just tell you about the rat to save all this but I couldn't...I couldn't do it."
   "I'm glad." He smiled. "I'd much rather have the truth."
   "Even this? I've just put you through hell."
   "...even this." He smiled again. "I think you've also solved our second problem, if the rat has some of your blood too."
She processed that for a second or two, then her eyes widened.
   "...you're right." She said. "How did I miss that?"
   "Well, you were upset. You thought that I'd think that you'd broken your promise to me. But you really haven't. Okay?"
She nodded. "Yeah."
   "You've done the right thing. You've saved us. I knew you would."
She smiled at last, just a little. "If we can manage to get it to the people, yeah. I'm stuck there."
   "I bet that if we put our heads together, we can soon come up with a solution for that, too." He kissed her, and they embraced again. "Everything will be alright, you'll see."
At that moment, Daud came charging into the room.
   "Where the fuck have...oh." He paused. "What's wrong?"
Corvo looked at Elaine briefly, then looked at Daud. "It's good news, but you may not think it at first."
Daud came running over. "Tell me." He demanded.
A couple of minutes later, Elaine was getting cuddles from Daud as well. He'd gone from worry to cold shock to surprise to relief in less than a minute, and was left feeling...awed, mostly.
That was how he reckoned it felt.
   "...you don't do things by halves." He eventually joked.
Elaine smiled, wiping one last tear from her face.
   "None of that now," Daud said, kissing her cheek as both men rested a supportive arm around her shoulders. "Unless it's from happiness, I don't wanna see any more tears from you for a fucking lifetime. Or else."
She managed a short laugh. "I'll try."
   "You better."
They both kissed her then, Corvo on the neck and Daud on the cheek. She finally felt able to let it go, and tell herself that actually, everything was fine.
   "Now I just need my other problems solving." She said then.
   "What are they?" Daud asked as he also moved to her neck.
   "Well, I've now got to take my antibodies and make a vaccine from them. It'd needed to be tested to make sure it's safe for humans, and, I'd need to make thousands of doses as well as get the whole thing approved by an official medical body. I'm not sure if I could just walk up to someone and tell them that I'm the cure without them booking me into the nearest asylum."
   "That's...wow, that could be a tall order." He then paused. "What about here, too? I mean, we're immune but nobody else round here is. If we separate you from everyone else, people might end up figuring it out."
   "What do you need to avoid?" Corvo asked her.
She thought. "It's more or less all about fluids. I can't have any of mine transferring onto someone. So no sharing drinks, no sneezing on them, not even a kiss on the cheek. It won't be forever, cos' I'll be wiping the cells out. Good few days at least, to be safe."
   "I might have a plan for that." Corvo said. "We need to say all this to Emily. She's got to be kept in the loop on this."
Elaine nodded. "Yeah, absolutely."
   "Are you okay enough to do it now? You're still shaking."
   "We can cure that." Daud said with a wink.
Elaine smiled. "I'll be fine. I'm much better than I was."
   "Let's go, then." Corvo said.