I need you to look at me. We have to keep you awake.
Who: Corvo and Elizabeth What: Stuck in an elevator When: During the big quake Where: A building somewhere Status: Complete Rating: PG-13
It had taken a lot of convincing for Corvo to let Elizabeth leave her condo this week. While she was by no means a prisoner in some gilded tower, the sky was crazy and a little bit of caution was warranted. But life continued on, Elizabeth had a shoot, and now he was following her and trying not to stare at what she was wearing.
This was probably a mistake.
Not even Elizabeth had been sure they should be doing this shoot. At first she thought it would be cancelled, considering everything going on. But her Manager had assured her that the world wasn't ending and that, though it was a swimsuit shoot, it was all being handled indoors.
And since she had contractual obligations, there was really no getting out of it.
So there she was, walking through a building in a bikini that made her feel cold and self conscious. The only thing that made it worth it was that her bodyguard kept having to adjust his eyes upward when she turned around. She stopped and glanced behind her once to verify it.
And indeed, his eyes darted upward. Which was difficult from any angle, but he was a professional, and thus, he was going to remain professional. They could have given her a robe, but it wasn’t that far of a walk, he supposed. Just down the hall, and either up the stairs or into the elevator. It wasn’t clear which idea he dreaded more.
Not that her presence was something to dread, but usually she wore a little more. “I’m not an expert, but whoever picked that suit out knew how to flatter you best.”
That was good, right? Neutral? Was she cold. He was pretty sure she was cold…
It was definitely freezing in the building, and Elizabeth would have welcomed a robe if anyone had been kind enough to give her one. She smirked a bit as the flick of his eyes proved her point to herself, but ducked her head and blushed at his comment. She still wasn't used to anyone complimenting her on anything, but coming from someone Liz found so irresistibly handsome made her even more bashful.
When they got the elevator, Elizabeth hugged herself with her arms. "Maybe a run up the stairs would warm me up. This building is freezing." How many people really opted to take the stairs instead of the elevator? She didn't know, but being in an elevator and freezing cold while having to stand directly in Corvo's vicinity seemed like torture.
Elizabeth’s bashfulness only made her more maddeningly attractive to him, and he forced his eyes to stare at a particularly interesting spot on the elevator door. “The exercise couldn’t hurt me, but I’m sure they’d have something to say about you messing up your makeup or the swimsuit.”
There had to be something he could do. He should have grabbed his jacket. “I’m sorry I didn’t take my jacket. I can’t warm you up.”
"Oh no..." Elizabeth groaned. "You're right, I'd completely forgotten about that. Knowing my luck it'll smear and they'll end up sending me right back down here." Though if they did that, there was always the chance that she could at least pick up a jacket from the room they'd set up as her dressing area.
Still, they were already running just shy of late, and she hated it when she wasn't on time. Elizabeth smacked the elevator button with all the severity of someone expecting certain doom, and then shook her head at him. "Please, don't apologize. You're not my babysitter or my mother, no one put you in charge of keeping me warm. I should have made better choices and stood up for myself more."
After the life she'd lived, She was still learning how to do that.
“Your safety is my primary concern,” Corvo reminded her, clasping his hands behind his back and putting a respectable two feet between them. “Though if you came down with something and were bedridden, it would make my job a lot easier.”
Corvo turned towards her, an impish smile on his face. It seemed at once like it didn’t belong there, and yet it did.
They had maybe gone up 4 stories before the elevator shook. Metal tore and screamed and then they were falling. Corvo did the only thing he could, moving to Elizabeth and wrapping his arms around her, to make a shield for anything that might fall on them.
The elevator screeched again, coming to a sudden stop. The only sound was the creaking and groaning of metal, the light coming from sparks and several emergency lights that had managed to survive the fall.
And then the building shook again, something heavy crashing into the roof of the elevator, severely bending it. The elevator swung forward, out of the shaft and partly collapsing and crumbling on the floor.
The lights flickered as the elevator finally came to a complete stop, leaving them in darkness for a few seconds that felt to Elizabeth like an eternity. She'd screamed so loudly that her voice was hoarse, and the ghost of it was still echoing around the chamber.
Tears were streaming down her face, soaking into Corvo's shirt, and the part of her that wasn't completely terrified suddenly worried about the mess she was making. Makeup and hair were the last of their concerns, of course, and as the emergency lights flickered back on, she tried to steady her breathing. Everything hurt, especially the arm she'd thrown around him in a panic.
"Corvo?" she whispered, finding her voice again. She could feel his heart beating but she had no idea if he was okay.
It took a moment for sense to return to Corvo. His back and sides ached, and he couldn’t tell if he was bleeding. Either way, once he focused, he focused entirely on Elizabeth, pulling out his phone to use the flashlight and checking her for wounds. “I’m alright. Stay still, I need to check you for injuries. This might hurt.”
He pressed his hand into her ribs, and other places that might be broken or badly bruised. Trying to make her feel better, he joked, “Not how I imagined this kind of thing going with you.”
Elizabeth winced as he pressed here and there, feeling like her entire body was one gigantic bruise, though she knew she was mostly unharmed. Or at least, she felt like she was mostly unharmed. But she hissed as she went to move her arm from where it'd been around his waist, and a cry escaped her mouth that she couldn't bite back.
Trying to get her mind off of that, or the panic still buzzing around in her chest, she changed her cry of pain into a laugh. "You imagine running your hands all over my half naked skin? For the- for the record, I do, too, and this definitely isn't how I dreamed about it."
At best, Elizabeth’s arm was sprained. Corvo thought it was probably a little worse than that. Fractured, but maybe not entirely broken. He carefully helped her reposition it, then looked around for something to use as a splint. A straight piece of metal and some wiring would suffice, so he started working on that.Luckily, he was a man of many skills.
“If you want to be accurate, there’s no half-naked about it.” If it kept her distracted from the pain, he’d say about anything.
"I... really?" Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and blinked at him a few times, honestly surprised at the admission. There were a few more sharp intakes of breath as he set her arm, though she tried her best not to sound like a complete weakling. She couldn't stop herself from quivering like a leaf. It was freezing in the elevator at the moment, Elizabeth was certain she'd never be warm again, and the pain made her want to rock herself in place. But they were in the middle of an emergency, and she needed to be brave.
So she watched his face as he worked on her arm, intent and worried and feathered with lines, and tried to pretend the arm wasn't hers. "Are you okay? You shielded me from the brunt of it..."
Her arm was broken, of course she was quivering. She was probably in shock and he’d have to do his level best to keep her awake. There was no cell signal. They were trapped here. Corvo pulled his shirt off, and used it to wrap around her to keep her warm.
“Bruises. Some slashes. I’ve had worse.” While he wasn’t covered in scars, he’d seen combat. A lot of it. He’d get a lot of new scars in his dreams…. “I need you to look at me. We have to keep you awake.”
"You've always got that tone in your voice..." Elizabeth trailed off, not exactly meeting his eyes but instead scanning over his torso for open wounds. What she found was muscle tone, hair in all the right places, and enough scars to make her daydream about things she'd only seen in movies. Laying in a bed with him naked, running her fingers over each one and asking for the story.
That made her drift of for a few moments into a lapse of daydreaming, but she snapped herself out of it and tried to focus her attention on his face. "Authority, I mean. I like it. Right now, it makes me feel as if we aren't going to die stuck in an elevator during the end of the world."
“We’re not going to die in this elevator,” Corvo promised. He cleared a place for them to sit maybe a little more comfortably. She needed a few minutes to get settled, before he could figure out a way to get them out. The elevator probably wouldn’t fall much farther. He hoped.
“I was military. Guess it happens.”
It was hard to get comfortable when you weren't actually sure how much of your life was currently hanging in the balance, but Elizabeth tried. Corvo made for good cuddling material, despite the fact that he was mostly made up of muscle. She tried not to rest against him too much, however, because he was still topless. There really was no safe place to rest her head.
She settled on his shoulder. "That explains the scars, I guess. How long did you serve before you decided on this?"
“Fifteen years, almost.I eventually took an early retirement. Wasn’t good for my pension, but I needed to be there for Emily,” Corvo leaned back, studying the ceiling. He couldn’t tell her the full truth. That his discharge had not been without strings. That he still took missions for the government, the kind that would make a normal person pale.
But he'd said more than he usually did, and that was the mention of a name she'd never heard before. "Who's... Emily? You've never mentioned her before." She sounded important, like family, or perhaps a spouse or girlfriend. But Corvo wore no wedding ring. She'd checked for that the first time she realised how attracted to him she was.
Not that anything about her attraction to him was at all appropriate, even then.
If it wasn’t appropriate for her, it was less so for him. Corvo sighed, realizing he’d revealed too much information. It was usually better to keep personal and private lives separate. But the cat was out of the bag. “Emily is my daughter. She’s just started college. She was nine when Jessamine died.”
No, that was never easy.
That confession stunned Elizabeth, and she fell silent for a moment. There was a pang deep inside her, nothing close to what he must have been feeling, but a hurt there. Like something had just punched her in the gut. Elizabeth wasn't sure what to say.
Eventually, she whispered, "I'm sorry. You don't have to talk about it."
For a long moment, Corvo said nothing. He leaned his cheek on the top of Elizabeth’s head. “It’s all right. Robbery gone wrong.”
Maybe someday he’d tell her the truth.
"It isn't alright, but I hope someday it will be. Just like I... hope we don't die in here. There's too much in my life I haven't gotten to do yet." They probably shouldn't have been talking that much, since there wasn't a lot of water with them and there was no way to know how much longer they'd be trapped.
Elizabeth let out a little sigh, and rested against Corvo. "I'm tired. I'm going to take a nap."
“You’ll get to do everything you want,” Corvo promised. Something about her words cut at him like a knife. It reminded him that Jessamine had never had that chance.
He’d do whatever he could to give Elizabeth that chance. “I promise.”