The Scarred Rat (A Dishonored Fanfiction)

Chapter Two | A New Day Rising

With a heavy sigh, I get up from my bed, strap on my belt, and put my dagger, which was already in my hand, in the sheathe. I don't know how long I've been lying here tossing and turning. Was it only a few minutes? Or two hours? Either way, I can't fall asleep after everything that just happened. My legs are itching for movement, and not just on my bed. Quietly, I slip out of my small room and begin following the tin platforms toward the entrance of the hideout, only once I am able to jump off the platform to a nearby roof do I start my restless run for the night. I climb onto a higher roof, and then I'm off.

The sky is still dark around me as I run, the great moon casting my shadow long across the shingles. I jump up, across, and down to remain on top of the buildings along a path I have taken so many times in the short six months since I've been with Daud. My long braid trails behind me as the breeze I stir up plays with it, and I enjoy the coolness the air brings to my face. I can feel both my muscles and mind relaxing as I escape from the torment the hideout brought tonight, and I briefly wonder, what would have happened if Daud didn't reach me in time? I push that thought away as I push off the edge of the roof to jump across the gap to another one.

As I reach the last, most perfect roof that is higher than any of the surrounding ones, I sink down and lie on my back on the slant of the building with my arms behind my head. In the distance I stare at the three smokestacks lined up that soar into the air. The first one always seems dead, unmoving, no smoke rising up from it. However, the second and third smokestacks breathe out an infinite amount of smoke that join together before becoming the sky itself.

I don't think I will even know why, but gazing at these smokestacks is always so calming to me. I know I can come here if I'm ever angry or nervous, or even if I just want to relax. But the strange thing is, is that it only works with these smokestacks. There are a few smokestacks that are visible from the hideout's center that I've looked at like these, but it never gave me the same effect.

Perhaps, in a way, these three smokestacks remind me of my family. The first one my dad, who left my mother when I was a young age, and the other two my mother and brother, who are both victims of the rat plague. Perhaps I feel like they're still with me when I watch the smokestacks, even if I don't know it.

With my mind calming and freeing itself from the thoughts of the attack and paranoia of the Overseers returning, my eyes droop shut and I drift off to sleep.

~

My eyes flutter open as I become aware of the cool morning air pressing against my skin. My gaze immediately focuses on the smokestacks once again, and I smile. A dreamless, restful sleep. If only my sleep could always be like this.

I then hear a footstep on the shingles behind me, alertness forcing my night's peace away. Swiftly I get up, turn around, and grab my dagger, preparing to have to fight someone, but my muscles relax as I see it is a whaler.

"Daud thought you'd be here," he says, his voice muffled by his mask. I'm glad I don't have to wear one of those; I can barely tell the assassins apart because of them. "He wants you to see him in his chamber." With that said, he vanishes, leaving me to walk back to the hideout alone.

Perhaps to give me alone time to ponder on what Daud's going to say to me. What will it be this time? Stop trying to bribe the assassins to train me? Stop pestering him about going on assassination missions with him? Stop doing what he doesn't want me to do?

With my body now filled with anger, I sprint along the rooftops toward the hideout.

The only reason why I do the things I do is because he doesn't let me do them. He gave me a dagger the first night I came here, yet he refuses to train me properly. I live in a place swarming with assassins, yet he dismisses the idea of having me become one of his partners. Is it because I lack his shared powers that most of the other assassins have, being able to use transversals and tethering just like him? But a few whalers also lack powers. Could it be because of how young he thinks I am at sixteen years? I know for a fact that he has trained assassins just as old as me, and they've been successful in a majority of their missions. What could it be? I long to slash something with my dagger in anger.