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Chapter Text

Daud watched Dunwall disappear for long after it had gone, staring where it had shadowed the horizon dark from the heavy smog on its flanks. His hands clenched around the ship’s railings because damn it, twelve years! Twelve years of peace, stood behind Emily’s throne at Corvo’s side; Whalers flickering about overhead as they came and went, searching the whole city for trouble.

Twelve years keeping Corvo’s daughter safe, guarding her from the assassins who rose to take Daud's place; ears to the ground for the whispers that some lord or lady was going to take a stab at the empress. Twelve years helping Emily make the world better, clawing their way inch by inch as Daud shut people up with the flash of a blade, the murmur of a secret they didn’t want told. Twelve years at Corvo’s side, making up for the death of his lover with service, his own love - not in Jessamine’s place, never there, but always at his side.

All of it wasted. All that work undone by one bitch with a Mark and a god complex.

Or, no, maybe not wasted - they’d kept Emily alive and happy, after all - but- Daud sighed, harsh and short because he was annoyed. He looked to the floor where far below Corvo was making their room safe, poking around as a rat in its hidden corners to make sure there wasn’t any trick to the help they were being given, any catch. He’d run out of places to search before long, would sit on the bed and stare at his hands wondering what he’d done wrong, listing on his fingers all the places he never thought to check for threat. Wondering how he’d never heard of Delilah, how he’d ever thought Granny Rags - long dead, now, after making the mistake of going after Slackjaw and bringing the whole of the Whalers and Corvo down on her - the biggest threat the Outsider could send.

And he’d never listen to Daud telling him that Corvo had done the best he could, that Tyvia and Serkonos were vassal states and had bigger things to worry about in their own courts than the empress in hers. That Morley was getting used to being one, too, however slowly. That if anyone should have known about Delilah - her power black and oily as it ripped Corvo’s Mark from his hand, tearing the Bond and the pain of it a shock through the Whalers’ whole web and aching deep in Daud's bones - then it was Daud. How Granny Rags would always have been a threat if she’d been left alive, that Slackjaw was an ally of the crown, and if she’d been willing to go against him then why would she stop there? There wasn’t shame in thinking she was dangerous.

Daud sighed again, looked back to where the sea met the sky, to the clouds heavy and cold with rain overhead. He felt along the tears where Corvo and his Whalers should be, those ragged edges aching in the bones of his hand, stinging inside his blood; Corvo torn from him, and some of the others… Daud closed his eyes against it.

He didn’t want to think about them dead. Didn’t want to think about Thomas organising what was left and taking the bodies back to their old base at Rudshore, a funeral for all the novices caught on the blades of those clockwork soldiers, cut down protecting each other. Digging in and turning their teeth to anyone who came close, but staying just below Delilah’s notice, never enough of a threat to get attention. He hoped.

He made the web hum, reaching out for all the Whalers still alive. Thomas and Rulfio and Finn echoed back loud and clear, Thomas loudest of all - a joyous bounce that Daud was still alive, was making sure he was okay. The rest just an echo, and Daud breathed out because Void, they were still there too. They were still there, alive even as the bonds stretched thin, too-taut, and Daud thought they would be fine until he got back because to think anything else would kill him, and he didn’t have the nerves left for that.

The clouds opened out, rain starting to fall, and Daud turned from where Dunwall had been and retreated to the room in the belly of the Dreadful Wale where Corvo was waiting.

-:-

Daud woke in the cramped little cabin, frowning at Corvo’s space empty by his side, and at the foot of the bed where he’d warmed Daud’s feet as a wolfhound left cold. Looked to the walls and cursed, because of course the Outsider was going to show his face now of all times - a whale swimming lazily just beyond the stone pathway leading out into the waiting Void, its smiling eye filling up the hole blown through the hull.

But there’d be no leaving until Daud met with him so he got out of bed, pulled his red spymaster’s coat more comfortably around his shoulders, and followed the twisting pathways the Void laid out for him. Through the recent past - turning his eyes away from the novices spitted on the clockworks’ blades, blood glittering in the Void's cold light - Luca Abele’s smile ugly on his face as he stood beside Delilah and watched a Grand Guard gutting one of the nobles - and even away from Corvo, trapped inside that plant Delilah summoned and howling, soundless from his ruined throat, as she stole the Mark from him.

He rubbed his own Mark, even though Daud knew Corvo didn’t have one to feel it, and continued on; pausing at an island where Emily, frozen in stone, stood. The island was crumbling into the hungry Void, splinters of its stone hovering, eerie; Daud grimaced at Emily, looked away from her fearful face because she’d known about Corvo’s Mark - he’d never hidden it from her - but she didn’t know the true power behind it, the truth about witches and why they were the only thing Daud agreed with the Abbey on.

She’d done well in her first real fight, Daud thought. Unpracticed and hesitant, falling into formal stances too easily because she wasn’t used to the flow of true battle as Corvo was, but she’d done very well; easily catching the blade Daud ripped out of one of the Grand Guard’s hands and thrown to her, guarding his back when the closing circle of the Guard took Corvo from his side and unafraid of the blood her slice across a Guard’s belly sent splattering across her boots.

Emily had been a bit more of a distraction to the Guard than any real threat to them, true, but that wasn’t any bad thing. It was only a shame she was stuck in stone for that, sense losing out to anger as Corvo jerked and twisted in pain when the Bond was ripped apart and Daud grit his teeth against the stabbing pain and hid the glow in his Mark as best he could because the two of them losing their powers was infinitely more dangerous; she'd lunged for Delilah because Emily never could stand it when Corvo was hurt.

Daud had promised Corvo they would get her back, no matter what, and he nodded to Emily frozen in the Void even though she was only a reflection of the real thing, trapped in stone in the waking world, because they would save her again. Damn Dunwall and all the empire if it came to that - Corvo wasn’t a man who was meant to outlive his child and Daud didn’t want to see how he’d cope if he did.

Onwards again, and towards the end of the path was the Outsider waiting, smiling coldly, on a tiny island hovering over a patch of sea whose waves crashed, frozen, against its base. “Well, well,” He said. “Another empress lost to one of my Marked; the first to you, the Knife of Dunwall, and the second to Delilah Copperspoon.”

“Can we skip this?” Said Daud, crossing his arms. “I fucked up, I know.”

The Outsider’s smile widened; he tilted his head. “Do you know? I warned you, long ago, that there are more threats to an empress than just the nobles in her court. Dear Corvo’s saved her from assassin’s blades, spilling his blood so hers wouldn’t, and you’ve saved her in hunting down the secrets in the dark, turning them into their own kind of knives to keep the aristocracy loyal. But maybe,” The Outsider said, turning to the Void yawning endlessly in front of them, “Living in the Tower has made you soft. There is more to the world than just Gristol, Daud; more hidden corners and more secrets to know than just what your Whalers find in Dunwall’s back alleys and black markets.”

He walked across the edge of the island, scattered pebbles tiny and smooth shivering and pushed out of the way by his shadows trailing after him, shifting and formless where it flowed from his shoulders. Daud set himself more stubbornly; he was too damn old to be impressed by the Outsider’s theatrics the way he had when he’d been young, trapped in the Pit’s cages and biting at the bars to be let loose.

The Outsider eyed Daud from the corners of his eyes, still smiling, arms held behind his back. Daud glared back. “You think I’m stupid?” Daud said. “Yes, I fucked up. I made a mistake and now Emily’s a statue and Corvo doesn’t have a Mark. We’re in the middle of nowhere going to Serkonos to work out how to win the empire back, all because I thought Gristol was the bigger threat. I know all that.”

“Corvo said the same,” Said the Outsider. He looked back to the Void, the whale sweeping past the island they stood on. “And I’ll tell you what I told him; Delilah Copperspoon was born a pawn, an unwanted bastard daughter of a man who made a mistake in grief. But she’s clever, and she was born with a charisma and a cunning that made people fall at her feet and fawn. In other worlds she would have stolen Emily’s body and left her soul here, lost forever in the farthest reaches in the Void; in some she succeeds, and Corvo’s left to cut down the woman he doesn’t know wearing his daughter’s face. In others you kill her, or doom her to the fate she would have given Emily. It's rare she ever succeeds, for very long.”

The Void around his shoulders twisted, the shadows drawing tight around his feet as worlds took shape in its farthest reaches. Daud rubbed his Mark, shivered in the cold left behind where Corvo should have been, the Void pressing in heavy in dull pain like it was poking an old bruise.

”But here?” The Outsider glanced at Daud again, black eyes half-lidded, lips pressed thin. “In your world she was smart enough to know that it would never work - that Corvo was so devoted to his child and the crown that he would kill her even if he killed himself doing it. So she bided her time, gathered her allies and her coven around her in Serkonos while you went soft in the comforts of the Tower and forgot about the dark places outside its walls.”

Daud bared his teeth at the Outsider, hissing low in his throat because damn him, “I know that! How about you start going on about how you could have warned us, maybe?”

“I don’t interfere with what my Marked do with my gifts,” The Outsider murmured. “You of all people would know about that, wouldn't you? Knife of Dunwall who could sail a whaling ship on all the blood you've spilled.” He walked across the edge of the island again, circling. Disappeared and reformed on a large boulder hovering over the depths of the Void. “But Delilah’s playing with magic mortals aren’t meant to play with,” He said. “The same magic that made me. And I don’t like it. So, just this once, I'm interfering; I have another gift for you.”

The Mark burned- Daud hissed and grabbed at it, staring at the golden light flowing through the black lines branded on his skin. The sting of it ached, made his skin too tight, too stiff; pulling painfully when Daud flexed his fingers, working the tendons drawn tight loose.

“What have you done to it?”

“A gift for you,” Said the Outsider, watching coldly. His head tilted. “And for Corvo - the Bond has been returned to you.” He stayed quiet a moment, watching as Daud worked out the last of the aches in his Marked hand. “Duke Luca Abele has made Serkonos worse and worse for the silver blood in its veins, bleeding it dry to feed himself. The bloodflies in its forgotten slums are hungry; you might pull your homeland back from the edge, or you might doom it.” He turned his back to Daud, watching the whale drifting languidly through the islands and spires of stone. “I’ll be watching to see which you choose.”

Chapter Text

Corvo’s Mark was back - the black ink stark on his dark-skinned hand.

Daud stroked his fingers across it, looked to Corvo’s sleeping face on the pillow as he smiled a little in his dreams, nuzzling into Daud’s shoulder as a familiar little echo of want thrummed across their repaired Bond. Void; barely a day and he’d missed that touch, the fur and feathers a phantom beneath his fingers, teeth around his wrist but holding, not biting - careful to never hurt.

Around them the ship groaned, bobbing restlessly in the water. Daud listened for a while, watched a rat chew on the canvas coverings of some crates shoved into their too-small room, the light from lit lamps in the corridor flickering from below the door. Listened to Corvo breathe, steady and quiet against Daud’s skin, curled up tight beneath the ratty blankets. He traced those familiar lines with his thumb, the soft gold-blue light of Void-magic glowing under Corvo’s skin, as Daud settled himself more comfortably in the narrow bed, stretching out legs cramped from how he’d had to fold himself up just to fit next to Corvo. Lifted Corvo’s hand to his mouth for a kiss and laced his fingers with Corvo’s, tucking it back beneath their rough blankets because he was chilled from the cold air of their tiny cabin.

Corvo was back - there when Daud reached for his Whaler thread, making their bond thick and strong hum between them.

One of the only things Daud would thank the Outsider for; one of the only things he should thank him for, Daud supposed, and he huffed a laugh as he rolled to his back and stared at the ceiling. It probably said something very pathetic about him that Daud didn’t like not having the bond - any of them. That he liked that the Whalers were always there, that Corvo was always there, if Daud needed any of them. Even with the Whaler threads pulled too-taut; too stretched to be of any use, like overdrawn elastic.

He stroked Corvo’s hair, the thick curls catching on his fingers. Rubbed his thumb over Corvo’s ear the way he did when Corvo was a hound, asleep at his feet or stood at his side - taller and ganglier than any other wolfhound, towering over the beasts the Overseers had at their feet - as he nosed into Daud’s hand for a pet, calming beneath the touch when he snarled at a nobleman who didn’t need to see his teeth yet . Daud smiled to himself as he curled fingers beneath Corvo’s bearded jaw and Corvo lifted his chin, murmuring voicelessly; he was such a cat, too.

Daud pressed a kiss to Corvo’s cheek as he got out of bed, gave his jaw a last bump of his knuckles in a caress - stroked fingers across his own Mark just to see Corvo smile in his dreams again - and went to put on his shirt and jacket; pulled on some pants and trousers he’d abandoned on some crates and fished out his boots sprawled out by Corvo’s lined neatly under the sink, and shut the door carefully behind him as he left for the cargo hold.

The corridors of the ship were narrow, too close and the layout too confusing, even after more than a day used to them; he came to the stairs leading to the engine room deep in the belly of the ship and growled to himself, snarling at the squeaking floorboards because every damn time! Beggars couldn't be choosers, Said Corvo one evening, laughing his ugly, wheezing laugh. We're lucky to have this piece of shit at all. He'd only laughed again when Daud sneered at him and said it was all well and good for him to say - he got to fly around a bird whenever the weather let him.

Daud scowled at the walls when the ship groaned, iron creaking beneath its own weight, and at the bucket he nearly knocked over where it had been left on the corner, catching the water leaking from overhead. He hated travelling across the sea.

He hated even more pushing open the wide doors of the cargo hold and seeing Billie, her head snapping to him.

“Daud,” She said, looked to the plate of breakfast she was setting down on the little table. “I… didn’t expect you up so early. Good morning.” She stepped back, head held low beneath the shadows of the crates piled toweringly high all around; lower at the weight of the Arcane Bond a phantom pull at Daud’s Mark - long dead and gone, now - and at all that had been between them, once. “Is Attano awake yet? I can make him something too.”

Daud sat at the tiny table and dragged over the newspaper; stared at the picture of the Crown Killer. “No. He’s not.”

“Ah,” Billie said, leaving for the little kitchen nearby. Daud turned the light up on the little lamp on the table to see the page properly, but he wasn’t really reading the words. “We’re docked in Bastillian if you want to get anything. Word from Dunwall about you and the Lord Protector won’t have spread far just yet, and you’re Serkonan. Won’t look twice at you.” She started pottering around, cracking eggs into a pan and frying some bacon and sausages. Watched it cook.

There was an advert for some puppies in the newspaper, some purebred Serkonan wolfhounds, or so it claimed; not bred for the Abbey’s Overseers but for guarding homes instead. Tempting - once they reclaimed the empire it would be nice to have some young dogs around again - but Corvo on the ship was bad enough when he was a hound, ears pressed flat against the rocking of the boat and the rain hitting the deck, pacing around and around because there was too little room for him to stretch out his long legs. Otherwise there wasn’t much of note, but Daud kept staring at it anyway as he ate, the food turning to ash in his mouth as he listened to Billie make her own breakfast, stroking his thumb across his Mark and sighing, relieved, when Corvo’s echoed back.

Billie slammed her spatula on the counter, metal ringing against metal. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” She demanded, hissing from behind her clenched teeth.

Daud turned a page. “What do you want me to say?”

“That I’m lying about who I am?” She said. “About what we did to Jessamine - to Corvo? That I nearly destroyed the Whalers? That I nearly killed you because I thought you were weak, and I thought everyone else was weak for not taking the opportunity to take over?” Daud heard Billie swallow, a lump clicking in her throat. “That it’s my fault Delilah’s taken the throne?” She added quietly. “Because I was too slow getting to Dunwall to warn you?”

The ship creaked. Groaned. Rolled with the tides and the waves throwing themselves against its flank. Daud put down the paper and looked to Billie stood with her head bowed against her sins at the stove, her eye closed as she clutched the stump of her arm. His mouth pressed thin against everything he wanted to say, all the anger and slow-burn fury and bitter hurts insults lodged between his teeth.

Daud worked loose his jaw, swallowing all that anger and fury and bitter hurt. “I said everything I needed to say to you twelve years ago,” He told her, watched her grimace and look away. “I don’t think I need to repeat it.”

“I think you do.”

“Then I love you,” Daud said. “You were the best of all of the Whalers. You were my favourite, out of all of them, and when I died you were always going to be my replacement. But you turned on us, because you were as greedy and short-sighted as I was, and you thought you could use the Abbey when we both know they would have killed you, too. And I’m angry that you betrayed us, and I’m still angry; at you for what you nearly did, and at myself because even after everything, after all you’ve done and all this time I still love you, and I always will because you were my Billie.” Billie shuddered, head hanging lower. Daud sighed, looked to his breakfast half-eaten and cold on his plate. “And because I love you, I let you live on the condition I never wanted to see you again.”

Billie nodded, took up the spatula again and continued cooking. Daud went back to staring at the newspaper while the ship creaked and groaned all around, its hull shuddering against the beating of Bastillian’s waves. He turned his nose up at the smell of food, a little twist of nausea tight in his gut going tighter; crawling high until it had climbed into his throat.

“You should worry more about Corvo, Meagan,” Daud said after a long while. Billie startled.

“Why?”

Daud sneered at her. “Take a wild guess,” He said. “You helped abduct his daughter and murder his lover. You’ve put my life in danger and would have killed me if your conscience hadn’t got to you same as mine got to me. You’re lying to him about all of that, and he hates people lying to him at the best of times.”

“And he’s forgiven you for killing the empress and stealing his kid?” Billie demanded.

“Unlike you,” Daud told her primly, turning another page in the paper, “I don’t lie to him, and I never have. I was honest with him right from the start. I don’t want or deserve forgiveness, and it’s not something Corvo can ever do. But I’ve proved to him that even if it came too late because I was too stupid to listen to the warning bells ringing in my head I am sorry, and I’ve changed.” He turned another page, wrinkled his nose at the newspaper because there was no page to turn and set it down. “You haven’t.” He heaved himself to his feet and took up the half-full plate, carefully balancing the knife and fork on it as he made his way to the doors, Corvo still asleep in bed just beyond but waking slowly. He'd said his piece.

Billie watched him go from beneath her lashes, jaw working around whatever it was she wanted to say.

“So that’s it, then?” She spat, suddenly fierce; a scowl dark in her voice, anger dangerous like a knife’s edge but what she was angry at - Daud or his words or any of the things she'd done still skulking in her shadow -Daud didn’t care to work out. “You’re just leaving it at that?”

Daud shoved one of the doors open with his shoulder and paused on the threshold, grit his teeth at the care for Billie still worming around inside his chest, burrowing inside the meat of his heart. “You’re alive because I loved you,” Daud told her again. “I won’t tell him who you are because I still do, and he’ll be hurt I didn’t but he’ll understand because he’d do the same for Emily.”

Daud hesitated a moment, closed his eyes and grit his teeth against what he knew was true, what would happen whether he liked it or not. Silently snarled at the silence Billie was leaving between them, because he hated not having anything to say to her, having to fight to take the words from the places in his heart that still belonged to her, where care had wormed its way deepest, instead of the old anger drumming in his blood.

”If I were you” Daud said, “I’d tell him who you are, and what you are, sooner rather than later. The longer you wait the more likely it is he’ll kill you for betraying his trust, and if it comes to that I’ll be on his side, not yours.”

Chapter Text

Karnaca was a hard fortnight’s travel from Dunwall, crawling along Serkonos’ northern coast and docking at every port along the way to sell enough goods to buy whale oil, which the damn ship guzzled down like water.

It didn’t help that once the announcement was out that Corvo was wanted by the empire again he had to hide as Meagan’s pet cat while Daud was shoved overboard to hide in the water where people would never look; curled up in her arms with scruffy brown-black fur all fluffed out threateningly at the Grand Guard officers poking through the hold looking for human him, hissing voicelessly. The inspections only took up even more time, time they had to make up at night which was just another annoyance on top of everything else.

Corvo the cat paced restlessly around the Dreadful Wale, hunting the rats and mice and eating them joylessly just for something to do, because he wasn’t really a cat and he didn’t share their lazy sleeping away the days, and Daud smiled grimly at him; enviously. At least Corvo got to trot through the towns or fly around a bird, swiping fish whenever he was hungry and just as likely to swipe gold and statues to help pay for oil. Daud had to stay on the leaky piece of shit tub while its rusting hull groaned, the grating creak of the metal droning too-loud inside his ears.

But slowly, bit by bit, they crawled their way somewhat south and mostly east to the mouth of the Grand Serkonan Canal, then chugged along its waters curving around the base of mountain foothills; stopping at every town grown up like mushrooms at the canal’s sides where there, at least, Daud got to walk around a bit. News was slower to reach such small towns, who were occupied more with the grape-harvest and never paid very much attention to the empire besides. And Daud was Serkonan, unlike the workers coming down from Morley and Gristol; he didn’t look out-of-place enough for them to care.

Further east again, keeping to the deeper waters just off the rocky coast that was too close to patrolling naval guardships for the pirates to try them, too far for the guards to care about them, and there! Karnaca!

Billie brought them to a stop well away from the harbour as Daud let Corvo perch on his arm to study the wide sweep of the city, lights bright in the dawn’s grey half-light. Corvo’s feathers bristled in delight as he clicked his beak, plucking Daud’s sleeve impatiently to be held higher so Daud lifted him up, deciding not to complain just this once; he’d missed his homeland too. Missed the forests thick on Shindaerey Peak's slopes where it towered over Karnaca, the sea air that didn’t carry the stink of factory smoke and greenish smog. Missed the colours, mostly; the sea and sky so endlessly blue, the dense green of wooded foothills, the gentle gold-yellow glow of the city lights. Dunwall was so very, very drab.

“Void,” Daud told Corvo, “How long has it been since we were last here? It’s changed so much.”

Not that he’d expected it not to - several decades was a long time to leave, after all - but it was a lot… bigger than when he’d left, and the Addermire institute out on that tiny island in the middle of the sea was new. Didn’t that old solarium used to be haunted? Daud remembered that the fishermen used to hate it, whispering those old superstitions the Abbey had never crushed in Serkonos that even the seabirds had refused to nest there - taking instead to Serkonos’ high cliffs beaten by waves that swept eggs and chicks out to sea and to the headlands where nests were easy prey for the foxes and the bloodflies and even the hungry poor, if they were desperate enough.

He shook his head, brought Corvo down while he flicked his wings and pressed into Daud’s petting hand, melting into a cat to slither from his arms and landing as a dog, nails clicking tap tap tap against the old wooden floorboards as he followed Daud down into the cargo bay. He was human when he held the wide doors open for Daud, eyes shadowed above his gentle smile as he tipped his head to where Billie was waiting by the map.

Come on, He said. The sooner we start the sooner we get Emily back. Not all of us are old fucks who have to go so slow, He added, grinning bright and brighter at the face Daud made at him. Old man! Said Corvo, a laugh in the twist of his fingers. But he softened as he rest his hand on Daud’s shoulder, thumb tracing the messy stitching of his tough old coat. But then you’ve always been a miserable bastard, haven’t you? You could still be forty nine and I wouldn’t know it.

“What’s with all the old jokes this morning?” Daud groused. “Feeling insecure, Corvo dear?”

Corvo shrugged, leaning his hip against the table while Daud took a seat. What can I say? He said, I’m a sentimental fuck, and I’m getting old too. Coming home’s just making it worse. Corvo nodded to Billie before Daud could say anything, hand settling warm back on Daud’s arm, rubbing the edge of his thumb over Daud’s ancient red coat, so Daud decided to forgive him just this once and turned to Billie too. You said you know about the Crown Killer?

“Crown Killer,” Said Daud before Billie could remind Corvo, again, that she didn’t know nearly enough sign to understand him. “You said you had information. What is it?”

Billie glanced at Daud, once, but turned her attention back to Corvo as she nodded at the paper by his hip. “Before we start, you should know there’s been another murder. Don’t know who - didn’t look too closely - but it’s one of the nobles in Cullero. First to support Delilah as empress since she took the throne, so I hear, and the empire’s framing it as your work. ‘The Ghost is watching’ was written nearby.”

In blood, I’m guessing.

Daud picked up the paper, looked to the image of the Crown Killer on its front. “‘Course it is,” He told Corvo. “Whoever this is, they want people frightened. Using your old nickname from the plague just means more trouble for us,” He added, grumbling just to make Corvo smile a little at his tone. Daud looked back to Billie. “What I want to know is why we’re in Karnaca, not Cullero, if the last murder took place on the other side of the country.”

“Because whoever it is doesn’t operate from Cullero,” She said, sat up from her seat on the tiny crate and pointed out the Addermire Institute tiny on the map she’d drawn up, circled in bright red. “Far as I can tell, they work from here. Remember Sokolov?” Billie asked Corvo, who nodded at her. “He’s been travelling with me. Old man loved Karnaca. But he came home after a dinner somewhere looking shocked, and if he’s told you any stories you know what that takes. Right as we got the whale oil for a trip up to Dunwall to warn you about Delilah he was abducted; the hatch ripped open and Sokolov screamed.”

From behind the map’s board she pulled out a file, thick with loose papers, and set it down on the table next to Corvo, rifling through it. “I didn’t catch much more than a blur, but I followed right up to the shoreline.” From the file she pulled out a page of notes, handed it to Corvo, who held it low for Daud to read. “No one’s allowed inside Addermire anymore. The Duke closed it since the murders started, keeps it under a close watch. ‘The alchemist Hypatia is a valuable asset’, he says. ‘Until the Crown Killer is apprehended she remains safe, and no one is to bother her’. And with this new Cullero murder, well-" Billie shrugged, "-Entire city’s on edge. I can take you to the docks, and that’s as far as I can go - there’s a watchtower on Addermire you’ll have to disable if you want picking up. Otherwise, you’re making your own way back.”

And what do you get for helping us? Asked Corvo, and he glanced between she and Daud while Daud spoke for him. There’s bad blood between you, obviously - I’m mute, not stupid - and I doubt you’re doing it out of the goodness of your heart. I like knowing what I’m paying, for the help we’re getting.

“Have I given you a reason not to trust me?” Asked Billie, cool and flat.

“No,” Daud told her, before Corvo could start with any of the swears and insults building up in his ruined throat, hands twitching with the urge to say them. “But nobody trusts blindly, either. Not us. Especially not me, and you know damn well why.”

Billie stared at Corvo a moment, gaze flicking across his scarred his cheeks, his jaw set below his scruffy beard. Remembered, eye glancing to the side from the shame Daud remembered feeling himself all those long years ago when Corvo was a Pandyssian cat huge and scruffy, roaring silently, in defence of his child, his empress. Remembered that he had been a wolfhound beaten and bloody and brought in from the cold - watched warily because Daud was one of the ones who’d kicked his ribs and he might still snap for it - once before, and he might prove just as temperamental now as a homeless stray. That even with his greying hair, the scars still awful beneath his clothes that pulled tight in the wrong weather, Corvo was dangerous.

That Corvo - eyes black as the Void in his harsh, strange face gone harsher with age, wrinkles carved deep from smiles and scowls - was not any other old man like Daud was. That there were wolf’s teeth behind his thin lips, cat’s claws curling into his palms. That the Void singing in his blood was older than the Outsider’s Mark black on his hand, inherited long before the stones in Karnaca’s streets were ever laid down over the ash from the Great Burning when the kings of old took control of what was left.

She looked away, cleared her throat, and turned back to them. “No,” She agreed, nodding. “No, I suppose you’re not.” She shuffled a little, scuffing her feet against the floor and rubbing her missing eye, clutching impulsively at the missing stump. Her jaw tightened, just the once, before she sighed. “I want the empress back on the throne,” She said, and she held Corvo’s too-dark gaze. “She’s young, but she’s good. Better than Delilah could ever hope to be, I think. And I want Sokolov back, Lord Protector; he’s a fool old man, but he’s my fool old man." Billie's jaw tightened. "And maybe I’m selfish," She murmured. "Maybe I’ve done things I’m not proud of, things worse than most, and I want to make up for it by helping you like Daud must have done, if you're... together.”

Billie shook her head, rubbed her missing eye again and cleared her throat, stood and stalked to the cargo doors. “I’ll go get the skiff. Come up when you’re ready.”

Chapter Text

Despite the Grand Guard swarming the streets, muttering about the Cullero murder and who The Ghost could possibly be, it was easy enough to get around - a crow who flew overhead, scanning the streets with sharp eyes, made it almost disappointingly easy to take to the rooftops like those dark days so long ago, flitting through Dunwall’s shadowed streets following that familiar darting shape wherever it led.

But it wasn’t exactly the same, which in some ways made it so much better. There was no half-mad dash in the brief pause after a guardsman had turned his gaze away, heart hammering against the cage of his chest and tamping down on the magic rising through his Mark in the vague paranoia that came to all Marked, or those who had bonecharms in their pocket or fixed to their belt; breath held as an overseer passed by, trying desperately to quiet the faint song of the Void before those Overseers with music boxes happened to catch a note and started to play.

It was a leisurely walk, that was all - watching Corvo riding high on thermals, looking to and fro across all the city sheltered by the Karnacan bay, as Daud ambled along; meeting Corvo wherever he alighted and turned human again for him to talk about all he’d seen that might prove useful. A sharp pull on Daud’s Mark like a warning caw for a Grand Guardsman coming too close for comfort, and otherwise the gentle hum of contentment, the feel of the cool breeze through Corvo’s feathers just beneath his palm in that phantom touch.

And it was almost fun to walk along the seafront paths together, too, before the Grand Guard protecting the streets forced him into a few short Transverses to the rooftops; arm in arm like those eccentric old bastards long widowed and even longer friends. It was bizarre, true, to turn to Corvo and see his strange face smoothed out into something a little more ordinary, dark skin paled a little over the bones of his face not quite so sharp or harshly angled. But it was still Corvo, still his smile twisted in amusement as Daud complained about people not even looking twice at him despite being stood right next to his own wanted poster, his image right next to Corvo’s on that board in broad daylight just as he walked right beside Corvo down the streets warmed by the Serkonan sun.

In the end despite so long estranged from it Karnaca was still Daud’s Karnaca, and Corvo’s Karnaca. Between them they both knew the city as if they’d never left it - the ancient tunes hummed by workers cutting up fish the same songs Daud remembered from his days running wild, before he was taken away to be a dog in the Pits, just as Corvo remembered them, fingertips drumming out their beat against his leg because he couldn’t hum.

Corvo knocked his shoulder against Daud's, head tipped close with a grin. Penny for your thoughts?

"What, am I not allowed to enjoy my lunch now?" Corvo continued to smile, soft under the gentle Serkonan sun. Daud tore off a piece of his bread, gave it to Corvo because he was about as subtle as a punch to the jaw when he was hungry and eyeing Daud's plate. "Just thinking, Corvo," He said. "About Karnaca. It's nice to be back."

Daud looked to the Karnacan sea glittering in the bay, blue and deep and endless across the wide sweep of the horizon. The jewel at the end of the world; their homeland, and here they were sat side by side on top of a street light, sharing stolen bread before they set off for Addermire tiny beneath the huge sweep of the storm rolling in on too-hot winds, because they weren't welcome anywhere else. Criminals fighting against an empire and trying to save Corvo's daughter, again.

Daud almost laughed. Hell, maybe he should because on top of that here he was enjoying it; part of him wanting to stay on the warm streets arm in arm with Corvo and dropping down into the black market they found, idly looking over the bolts and bullets while Corvo laughed at Daud complaining that he wished he’d thought to grab Rickard before running to Meagan’s ship, if these were the best they could get from Serkonos’ underground. Part of him wanting to take Corvo to the rooftop of the building rising high at their back and stretch him out under that gentle sun high overhead, kissing his smiling mouth and giving the gulls screeching overhead something to really squawk at.

He dropped his hand to Corvo's leg, rubbed his thumb across the strange bumps of his kneecap broken and healed wrong and broken again, tracing those familiar shapes under his palm. Solid and real and warmed by the sun, Corvo's brows quirked in bemusement as he gnawed on a chunk of stolen cheese.

Maybe when it was all over, they could stay. Maybe when every last enemy to the throne was routed, rotting in Coldridge. Maybe when Emily was a little older, more secure with the crown on her head, the empire at her feet. Maybe one day, that future an island vague in the reaches of the Void, Corvo would retire and Daud would follow him here to the end of the world; taking up a vineyard with all the Whalers to tend to the grapes and being terrible at it because they were spies and assassins, not labourers; picking up every stray piece of gossip they heard and sending it on to their replacements because Corvo was a father before he was anything else, could be a geriatric old fuck but would still take up arms for Emily. Daud kissed Corvo's cheek, just because he liked the thought of it.

Now I know something's wrong, Said Corvo, sharp teeth flashing in a grin. You're smiling. You never smile.

"Must be going blind, then. Maybe we should get you a pair of glasses; I've seen you squinting at those reports of yours. Those little round spectacles that are all the rage with 'gentlemen of refined tastes'."

Oh fuck you! Corvo laughed, shoving him. Daud grabbed his arm, his shoulder - heart giving an awful leap in his chest and the bastard laughed harder! It was one time, Daud. One! And I was tired. He pulled Daud a little closer, shifting to make a little more room on the street light for Daud to sit safely. His mouth twisted as he looked to Daud's hand, dropping back to its place on Corvo's knee. Are you okay? He asked, dark eyes gentled by concern over the signs held close. We did leave our Whalers behind. Void, Rulfio might be a fucking idiot but damn I miss him. He scratched his chin. Heard anything from them?

Daud sighed as he looked to his lunch, shoved the last few bits of it in his mouth before Corvo thought to get another look in. "Nothing," He said. "The Bonds are stretched too thin - they might not even be able to access the Void anymore. But at this point no news is better than some news. As long as they lay low and listen to Thomas like I told them to, Delilah won't..."

They'll be fine, Said Corvo. We taught them well.

They would be fine - Daud knew that. It didn't help the tight knot of anxiety in his guts, twisting and roiling like sickness - leaping up and lodging in his throat whenever he thought about them all alone too long, thought about them in Delilah's Dunwall and under the shadow of the Tower, having to hide like rats because she was hunting Daud first and foremost, but maybe she'd realise that Daud would drop everything and run to their side if there was even a twinge of pain in one of the Whalers' threads. But it was enough to know they’d be fine, in its way. It was.

He shook it off - best to not dwell when they had a long list of enemies here in the south to get rid of first - and looked back to the sea. Enjoyed the cold breeze, and enjoyed even more the smell of salt and spices and fish, and of Serkonan stews and soups and roasting bough lizards; the old familiar smells sparking memories he'd thought long forgotten of running across the dockyards, picking locks and showing other children those flashy little tricks with his knife he'd learned from sailors and pirates. Enjoyed a lot more than even that Corvo leaned against him, warm against his side in that threadbare old master Whaler coat, patched to buggery because Corvo couldn't bear to replace it.

Corvo tapped his leg for attention. Do you still have that whalebone you picked up earlier? He asked, even though he knew perfectly well that Daud did still have it, forgotten in his pocket. The one you got from that dead whale they hauled in this morning? I know you said you wanted to sell it, but it looked a bit nice for that, don’t you think?

Corvo handled it like it was Tyvian bone china when Daud did as he really wanted and handed it over, carefully looking over the chunk of vertebrae but what for, Daud didn't know. It was just bone, far as he could tell; humming quietly with the Void, yes, but all whalebone did that. A flaw? The colour? It was still a little bloody, maybe, but otherwise it seemed perfectly normal.

I've been thinking, Corvo said. I should start making bonecharms again, get back into it. Corvo smiled as he traced the bone, glancing at Daud over its sharp ridge. My grandmother taught me, and my sister. Our mother hated it, tried to throw them away when we weren’t home but my sister caught her the only time she tried. Wasn't too bad at it, either, but I never got the hang of luck charms. Stopped when I came to Dunwall, though - too close to the Abbey. And Jess tolerated a lot from me, with the Void and all that shit, but runecraft would have been a step too far, I think.

He turned the whalebone into the sunlight, peering closely as he turned it this way and that, put it to his ear to better listen to its song, then running his fingers across it, tracing shapes Daud didn't know but were still vaguely familiar from the charms humming on his belt about sleep darts he could retrieve, the shadows carrying him swiftly.

What do you think? Asked Corvo, holding it out for Daud to look. I should make you one. A little protection charm, nothing too strong - I could never get the hang of black bonecharms.

"Would it stop you if I said no?"

No, Corvo allowed with another smile. But if I fuck up I'll throw any corrupted charms I make overboard, because I love you. He held it up to his ear again, eyes closed to listen properly and fingers drumming out a strange beat, tidal slow, against the back of Daud’s hand. It’ll make a good protection charm. Ward away bloodflies, maybe? He shook his head, dropped it into his own pocket. I’ll have another listen back at the ship. Want to set off?

Not really, Daud thought, but he clapped his hand on Corvo’s leg and levered himself to his feet using Corvo’s shoulder, stretching out a little stiffness in his back. “Come on then,” He said, pulling up Corvo after him and calling power to his Mark for a Transverse to the rooftops, “Sooner we get to Addermire sooner we can get Sokolov. I don’t want to try our luck with the skiff in that storm coming in.”

Carefully, they picked their way across the rooftops to Addermire Station, Corvo flying high overhead with the occasional friendly brush of his wings against Daud's head.

Chapter Text

Addermire was… empty.

Oh, the lower floors were all full of Guardsmen milling around, never looking up at the shadows darting overhead - they never looked up, it would be funny if it wasn’t so damn useful - and when they checked it the watchtower was happily sweeping the little dock for people brave or desperate enough to stop by. It wasn’t empty empty, echoing and hollow and death-sweet in every corner - rot crawling along the mouldering wallpaper and crumbling plaster, damp black and spotted in every wall bordering windows - but, well…

They didn’t try their luck going through the front doors, took instead to the roof and slipping inside Addermire properly through a tiny maintenance room at the top of the lift, and Daud hunched low in the echoing silence of the upper corridors and hallways; even his footsteps, heavier than Corvo’s light tread, muffled by the dust and dirty carpets long worn down. Corvo’s hands stayed close, tightening into fists at every guardsman’s shout muffled from outside, darting out reflexive and frightened as a shout for Daud’s arm when the rotting timbers beneath the floors gave way beneath his foot.

There was an eerie hush that Daud didn’t like, heavy over Hypatia’s office when they poked through it and heavier still when they made their way down to Recuperation, the abandoned offices guarding those large doors eerily empty. A hush that was the familiar death-quiet of Dunwall’s plague-ridden streets but softened into the dusty sort of weight that hung over all the nobles’ attics he’d hidden in, blade half-drawn from its sheath and listening intently for footfalls far below while a long-dead ancestor glared at him from her painting.

Recuperation was worse; the droning, endless hum of bloodflies grating in Daud’s ears and making Corvo grimace and shake his head, trying to scrub away the burrowing drone. The shadows of the bloodflies’ fleshy nests made of the dead crawled dark and heavy across the floor, fallen plaster from the ceiling crumbling underfoot.

Corvo held up his wristbow, nodding to the dead man grimacing up at the ceiling in that death-rictus that came to anyone killed by bloodfly venom, and at the incendiary bolts abandoned by his hand. Try burning them out? He said, and wrinkled his nose at the nests. Don’t think we’ll be able to sneak through here.

“What other choice do we have?” Daud told him, stooping to pick up a few bolts and loading them. “Let’s just hope Sokolov’s corpse didn’t make any of these.”

They burned the nests as they passed through, picking up the incendiary bolts scattered across the floor from that poor sod stung to death and throwing bottles of Orbon rum and High-proof liqour, the grating buzz of the bloodflies turning sharp and angry and fuck, Daud had never seen an infestation so bad. He knew the bloodflies were awful, had seen the corpses of and watched someone stung to death by them long ago when Dunwall was just some foreign city he knew from a map, but the nests had always been tiny things made by one or two bloodflies from stray mutts and cats and rats. Never these; the nests filling up the entire corridor and swarms of the bloodflies scores strong tending them.

Daud tried not to think about how many bodies must have gone into making them. The too-rich, fleshy-red glow of the nests said he wouldn’t like the answer.

Even though Corvo made sure to burn every last active nest and Daud unsheathed his sword and smashed up the dead ones just in case, he still slammed shut the doors to Hypatia’s lab on the few bloodflies behind them humming passively. “I hate you,” Said Daud, and he let go of a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

They’re only bloodflies, Said Corvo, stopped at the top of some stairs and frowning a little in bemusement. Batista used to be full of them. Go slow and mind the nests. Easy. Me and my sister used to throw rocks at them when we were young.

Daud shuddered, because they weren’t only bloodflies. They were parasites, worse than tapeworms and ticks and lice and those freaky fucking mushrooms from Pandyssia Sokolov once did a lecture on, that infected insects and took over their brains to force them to drown themselves so the mushrooms could grow from the corpse. At least Daud didn’t have to see a tapeworm, and lice and ticks were too small to see clearly. A bloodfly was unfairly huge, and loud, and really couldn’t be ignored with their long, pointy faces and gossamer wings making that awful drone and their legs.

He shuddered again, and pushed away from the door. “I don’t trust anything with more legs than a chair,” He said. “Why do you think I stayed in Dunwall for so long after I escaped the fighting pits? It’s the only good thing about it.”

What about me?

“You’re Serkonan,” Said Daud. “You don’t count. And no,” He added, “The Whalers don’t count either.”

Corvo shook his head, his smile gentle and fond. Come on, Said Corvo, still a little bemused but at least willing to mostly turn away from Daud’s hatred of bloodflies, and tipped his head to the stairs to their left leading down into Hypatia’s lab. Sooner we find out where Sokolov is the sooner we can leave. I don’t actually like this shithole any more than you do.

Daud led the way downstairs, Corvo ducked below the archway into the huge, empty lab, and there; small and slight and bird-like Hypatia pottering about at the worktops against the wall, poking and pulling at the guts in a bloodfly spread out across a board. Daud wrinkled his nose at the rot-sweet smell of death heavy and cloying in the air, sticking in the back of his throat, but loyally followed Corvo deeper into the too-bright room, wincing at the stark light beating down. Gently, Corvo touched Hypatia’s shoulders - startling her into turning around.

“Oh,” She said, brown eyes as vague as her soft mumble as she looked up at Corvo towering high. “I… didn’t see you. Do I know you? Are you a… a patient of mine?” She shook her head, rubbing at her temple with a frown at herself. “I’m sorry, I should know that, shouldn’t I? I’ve been... forgetting things lately.”

We’re looking for the Crown Killer, Said Corvo, with a tip of his head to Daud leaned against a nearby counter, admiring some of the reagent bottles. From what little he knew about Sokolov the old man would admire them, or at least be as close as he ever came to admiring. We think they might be a patient of yours, do you know anything about it? He touched Hypatia’s shoulders again when she kept shaking her head and mumbling to herself. The Crown Killer, He repeated gently when her dulled eyes flicked back to him, but he may as well have been talking to a wall.

Hypatia stepped close to Corvo, out from under his hands keeping her attention on him. “A mute,” She murmured softly. “Born, yes? There’s no scar on your throat. I’m sorry, I can’t help for that, it’s- is someone calling for me?” She glanced towards the wall far across her too-clean lab. “I could have sworn- The Crown Killer! You wanted to know about the Crown Killer. That name came from the papers.”

“And Sokolov?” Asked Daud, holding Corvo’s wrist to keep him from speaking over him while Hypatia went back to poking through the dead bloodfly. “We think he might have been here for a while. Know anything about it?”

Hypatia frowned to herself again. “Sokolov, yes, I knew him - he was my teacher. A long time ago. Do you hear that? But I don’t-” She frowned to herself again, a little furrow between her brows. “Oh, yes!” She said triumphantly. “He was here for a little while - she brought him in - but... they went away. To see Kirin Jindosh, I think, but Sokolov never really liked him so I’m not sure why he’d- hello?” She looked to a wooden door on the other side of the room that, when Daud glanced to it, seemed to lead to some sort of storage room. “He hasn’t been by since. I don’t... think he has, anyway.”

Corvo spared Daud a glance, nose wrinkled, when Hypatia handed him a string of bloodfly guts, and he dropped it in a bin at his foot overflowing with dead bloodflies. “I’m sorry I can’t help you much more,” Hypatia mumbled, rubbing her cheek and leaving a little smear of blood across her face. “It’s... been hard to focus lately.”

Thank you, Said Corvo, You’ve been a big help.

He took Daud’s elbow and led him further into the lab, through the door to the little storeroom; glancing over his shoulder at Hypatia while she continued to mumble to herself and poke through the bloodfly corpse all the while. Daud kept quiet - there was something in the thin line of Corvo’s mouth, harsh lines carved deep and shadowed under the bright light, that said he’d noticed something.

I think there’s something back here , Said Corvo, the signs held close like a whisper, urgent and big to be understood. I heard something. Someone’s alive, but…

“Victim of the Crown Killer?”

I don’t know , Corvo said, the signs held closer, more hidden; meant only for Daud. His mouth thinned a little more. Fuck, I don’t know. Something’s not right with Hypatia. I know you hate the newspaper, but I’ve been reading about her. She was focused, driven. She wanted to help the miners, really help them. But here she’s… I think something’s wrong, Daud.

Daud drew him further into the storage room, its walls stained yellow by age and a lack of care, paint long worn away, tiles fallen and broken on the floor, scattered across worktops. He kicked aside a few bottles and flasks fallen to the floor to send them clattering further into the dark, stayed close to Corvo leaned on the wall beside the doorway.

“If you say there’s something wrong with her," Daud told him, "There’s something wrong.” In the other room Hypatia snarled something to herself, sharp and high as a wolfhound. She yelped in pain, and her soft voice went sharp as a snarl as she scolded herself, mad with fury. “Think the duke’s been keeping her under lock and key because she’s connected to the Crown Killer somehow?”

Corvo froze when someone coughed, sword half-drawn from its sheath; dropped it back into its sheath on his hip as knelt at the side of a cot Daud hadn’t noticed where a man, bloodied and bruised, coughed weakly again, hand flapping to get their attention. Daud would bet every coin he had that the face below the bandages wrapped thickly around his head was so utterly mangled that those bandages, old and stained black by blood, was the only thing holding it together. The poor sod coughed again.

Fuck, Said Corvo, which made the man laugh.

“You should see some of the Crown Killer’s other victims if you think this is bad,” He said, wheezing a half-laugh. “I’m Vasco. Listen, quickly - there’s not much time; Hypatia’s the Crown Killer - calls herself Grim Alex when she’s like that. Side effects of some flawed serum she developed.” He coughed again, wetly; breath rattling inside his chest. “She’s a good woman, Hypatia.” He wheezed, smiling faintly for her. “The miners would die without her. Hell, maybe the whole of Karnaca would.”

Hypatia, in the other room, scolded herself, loud and furious; voice raw and scratchy, a howl just beneath it like a wild animal gone mad from bloodfly fever. She yelped in pain again, and on the window above Vasco’s cot stained blood-black her shadow started to pace, short and sharp and animal.

“Grim Alex,” Hurried Vasco, teeth bared against the agony of speaking but reaching out to clutch Corvo’s arm, one desperate eye rolling up to hold Daud’s gaze. “She... she’s making Hypatia take more of the flawed serum. But there’s a counterserum, in my safe. My notes are there to make it. Please. Please save her - Hypatia’s a good woman. Hurry, she’s-”

Hypatia howled.

Chapter Text

“You want to cure Hypatia?”

Yes, Corvo nodded.

“When you know shit all about alchemy? And after she threw a filing cabinet at us?” Daud added, adjusting the weight of the Grand Guard captain on his shoulder as he lugged her along, looking for somewhere safe to stash her. “We know where Sokolov is, maybe we should just cut our losses and go.” Corvo scowled at him as he dropped his own guard on top of a bookcase, reaching down to haul Daud’s up. “Corvo, she threw a filing cabinet at us. We’re damn lucky we haven’t broken anything. She tortured and murdered that Vasco, I think she’s killed some of the patients here, and she’s the Crown Killer.”

Primly, Corvo looked down at the little note he’d pulled from Vasco’s body and put the code into the heavy safe. If you want to go, Said Corvo, in between rummaging through the safe, Go. From what I know about her she seems like a good woman, and if I fuck up and kill her then I fuck up and kill her, and we leave. I’m not going to ask for your permission, Love.

“Oh don’t start, Corvo,” Daud huffed. “Being all sweet to get your way. That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” From the safe Corvo pulled out a journal, old and worn; Daud glared at his back because damn it, if all it was was some alchemist going mad from fumes then fine, there wasn’t much she could have done to hurt them.

Hypatia was a scholar - no strength in her arms, no training in the way she could lash out. When she had violent patients, mad with some fever or brain rot or whatever it was she was asked to treat, chairs and tables had leather straps to bind about their wrists and ankles to hold them down; she didn’t have to rely on her own meager weight. There wasn’t much she could have done to either of them.

But Grim Alex, and Daud bared his teeth at the plush rug underfoot and at the Serkonan wood bookcases rising high all around as he paced the tiny office because fuck, that was nonsense he didn’t want to get into. He didn’t want to have to see Corvo go up against that kind of cold, feral madness, snarling at each other as she hissed low and slick as oil, an ugly grin stretched around a snarl, about how very nice it would be to rip Corvo’s leg from its socket and fuck herself with his femur, or drown Daud in his own blood, or make Corvo watch as Daud was stung to death by a bloodfly trapped in a cup on his belly.

Grim Alex had remembered Hypatia talking to them. She’d paced around the upper level of the lab sniffing into every dusty corner as she hunted them, and she’d mumbled a lot of ideas to herself, hunger rough-edged in her voice, about the very best ways to hurt them.

Corvo, finished thumbing through Vasco’s journal, stalked across the hall to the little lab next door and Daud followed; paced back and forth in there, too, because like hell was he going to leave Corvo alone with that thing riding in Hypatia’s body running around, snarling into every half-hidden alcove like a mad dog. He kept watch from the doorway of the lab as Corvo drew blood from the corpse killed by bloodflies, and as he started to make the cure because yes, Corvo could take care of himself. Of course he could, Daud thought as the mixture, heated by the roaring bunsen burner, started to bubble nastily. He was Corvo. One of the best swordsmen in the Isles, the Outsider’s Mark clear and black on his hand, magic old in his blood stronger still.

But…

Daud crept close, and held Corvo’s hip; rubbed his thumb along that jutting bone, gentle because Corvo had been hit by that cabinet flying through the window, launched by Grim Alex’s feral strength. It had thudded into his side, the corner stabbing deep into his hip; he was limping, and pretending he wasn’t, from the bruise blooming dark and deep even after a mouthful of elixir taking away the worst of the pain. It didn’t matter that he was alright, Daud closed his eyes and gently held Corvo closer because maybe this time he wouldn’t. Maybe Grim Alex and her mad, feral strength, the botched elixir making her too strong, too quick, would be too close a match.

A normal person wasn’t any challenge for him, but Grim Alex riding along inside Hypatia’s head wasn’t any normal person.

The cure, or what Vasco hoped was a cure, was shadowed dark and oily in the syringe, viscous and ugly as Corvo squeezed the plunger a little and a little drop slid down its sharp needle. Daud hugged him close a moment, before he could go haring off the way he always did because a lifetime of turning into birds and dogs and enormous Pandyssian cats had trained him out of being afraid for himself.

Daud, Said Corvo, a warning thinness to his lips as he pulled away just enough to speak.

“Don’t, Corvo,” Daud said, and he leaned his forehead against Corvo’s shoulder, rubbed his hands down his back - shoulders to narrow wolf’s hips where bruising was blooming dark and ugly. “I’m not going to argue with you. But for once listen to me, because I- I’m frightened for you, alright? I don't trust her not to hurt you. And I don't trust that cure." He ran his hands down Corvo's back again, eyes closed at the feel of him, solid and real and very, very easy to hurt. There were lines of scars over a decade old criss-crossing his back like the ropes of a fisherman's net, thick and raised and bumping Daud's palms. They should have reminded Corvo that magic ancient in his blood didn't make him any less mortal. "So just… pretend I didn’t tell you that, and stay safe, alright?” Daud told him, and stepped back; squared his shoulders and nodded to the glass doors where, just beyond, was the lift that would take them down to Grim Alex pacing short and sharp and restless in the too-bright lights of Hypatia’s lab, “Let’s go.”

They hid in the halls’ doorway a few moments, Corvo for once human as he peeked over Daud’s shoulder at the two Grand Guards sat playing dice on the stairs, and a Transverse took them right next to the lift, still safely hidden as they slipped inside and Daud pressed the button for Recuperation.

The lift shuddered, took them up with the cables groaning overhead. The Guards jumped at the noise, and laughed, a thread of fear just beneath it, at their uneasiness in Addermire's wide, empty halls. Daud looked to Corvo, his lovely, strange face hardened beneath his hood into that emotionless, eerie mask of his when there was a job he didn’t particularly want to do, but had to. Those familiar lines around his black eyes, his thin mouth - wrinkles carved deep made deeper, shadowed by the lift’s spluttering light - weren’t quite so comforting to see when his hand was wrapped tight around Daud’s wrist, crushing it in a flinch when the lift jerked to a stop and Daud followed close on his heels back through Recuperation.

Daud half-drew his sword from its sheath on his belt as they passed through the shadows of the bloodflies’ broken nests; held its hilt tight in his hand as he Transversed to the iron beams bridging the two sides of the upper floor of Hypatia’s lab. His wristbow he loaded with a broadhead bolt, and trained it on Grim Alex stalking among the tables, sniffing with delight at the corpses strewn on their tops. Corvo glanced at it, displeased but resigned to Daud at least taking that precaution since he wouldn't let Daud have the infinitely better precaution of just leaving, and he nodded when Daud told him, Ready.

Grim Alex went still, abruptly poised like a hunting hound - like Corvo as a dog when he found a rat and froze, waiting to see if it would bolt before he could snap it up - and grinned, teeth gleaming in the lab's lights beating down harsh and stark. The blood thick around her mouth, caked on her hands, her arms, was burned oil-black under that light.

Corvo slunk on his silent cat’s feet, light as shadows,  along the other beam bridging the two sides of the lab's upper floor, close enough to one of the lights he could turn into something small and hide behind it if he needed to, but just far enough it wasn't in his way as he watched Grim Alex hunt - head tilted bird-like, lovely black eyes wolf-keen as he waited for her to turn around, back to him so he could drop down safely behind her; the syringe, needle gleaming sharp as the gifted blade a decade old on his hip, held tight in his hand.

They waited, and Daud's hand tight around the hilt of his sword, choking right up against the bolster, shook a little. But he'd been an assassin before he was Corvo's, and his aim on Grim Alex was steady. They'd done this often enough the routine of it was familiar; Daud guarding Corvo's back, always, when they rifled through some nobleman's house looking for blackmail and conspiracy, and those rare hunts when they both remembered they'd been assassins, once, and stalked some idiot hungry for the crown through half of Dunwall before he made the mistake of walking into a deserted alley, or into reach for their blades or bolts. Grim Alex wasn't a noblewoman, but she was against Emily either way and that helped; she was just like any of those others they'd killed for Corvo's daughter as they waited for her path to take her under Corvo's shadow.

And it was familiar, when he did drop down. Grim Alex's patrol of the lab took her under Corvo's beam, a footstep away from where he would land, and she made the mistake of turning her back, just the once as she snarled at a bloodfly that had dared come drifting in from Recuperation; Corvo dropped down from his iron beam and shoved the needle into her shoulder, deeper and deeper as he pressed in the plunger and Grim Alex flung herself away from the sharp sting. An echo of the soft whisper of Corvo’s cloak rustling like his dark bird's feathers and the cure slid through Grim Alex’s veins, a wash of colour through her cheeks.

Twelve years was a long time to have yet to learn to have more faith in Corvo, and Daud breathed out slow and shaky, kept his wristbow locked on Grim Alex as her venom-yellow eyes widened.

“No. No!” Grim Alex howled, and she twisted with a snarl, clawing at Corvo’s eyes, his throat; those long-reaching arms just missing as Corvo flinched and Grim Alex fell to the floor, scrabbling at her shoulder with another howl, pain and fury and outrage and agony. “ No no no!” She wailed, and lunged for Corvo again; her swipes neatly side-stepped. “I don’t want to go! Not back to sleep! I- I need...”

Hypatia blinked, eased herself up enough to lean heavy on her elbow; sat up properly with Corvo’s help, his hands gentle around her arms, and she frowned at Corvo kneeling down at her side. “Hello again,” She said, soft and gentle. “Did you need something? I’m afraid I might have overexerted myself today - I’ve not been feeling very well lately. Maybe I contracted something, working with infectious samples?”

“You were being poisoned,” Said Daud, dropping down from his beam and hiding the shake in his fingers, that fear still tight around his heart, by taking the bolt from his wristbow and slipping it back into the pouch on his bandolier. “But Corvo made a cure so you should be better.”

Hypatia only blinked at him, so Daud helped Corvo take Hypatia to a clean cot nearby for her to sleep off the last of Grim Alex lurking in her corners - there in bloodshot eyes and hair snarled all around her face - and spoke for him when she seemed a little too muddled to follow his hands. “Stop by our ship The Dreadful Wale,” Said Daud, while Corvo went to steal an audiograph slip and poke through a little office Daud hadn’t noticed. “If you need a place to stay. Can't say I'm happy about it, but the Minister of Domestic Affairs is a stubborn git at the best of times. Best not to argue with him.”

Corvo, a crow, fluttered to Daud’s shoulder with an audiograph slip held in his beak, presented with a sardonic little bob like all the bows nobles visiting the tower did for Emily when they wanted something they couldn’t get on their own and turned excessively worried about the difficulties running an empire, perhaps they could take on some of the strain?

Daud flicked his beak with a huff of a laugh, and stroked the soft feathers of his throat because what a ridiculous man to be in love with - curing an alchemist driven to a kind of madness that made her delight in suffering like it was an everyday chore, and having the gall to tease Daud for worrying about him after - and turned instead to the sea, dark beneath the storm rolling across the sky. He tipped his head to a shuttered hole leading outside, stepped through to perch on the top of some pipes climbing along the walls.

“Come on, let’s go” Daud said, and his Mark burned with the Void flowing through it, time twisting around his hand as it slowed to a crawl, ready to be released as the stormclouds dark overhead rumbled, its shadow heavy over the Dreadful Wale tiny in the distance where Billie was waiting with the skiff.

Chapter Text

Kirin Jindosh was a mantis of a man, his eyes in the newspaper’s silvergraph image of him raptor-sharp like Corvo’s, but with none of the warmth that sparked in their black depths. Long and thin and as strange-looking as Corvo, too - eyes high and wide-set in his thin face, faint creases in the corners of his lipless mouth that betrayed a habit of smirking condescension, thin-boned and skinny as an insect - but somehow his handsomeness not half so appealing (though Daud did have to admit he was biased).

The papers all said he was as cold and fathomless as the Void, bewildered by the human need for food and rest. He was the man who invented those clockworks that assaulted the Tower with Delilah, those awful machines that’d killed Whalers, snapping the Arcane Bonds with every sweep of its too-many blades, and gutted half the districts outside before Daud and Corvo fled.

Daud would have been perfectly happy to throw him overboard and leave it at that but, of course, he’d made the mistake of letting Corvo do what he wanted, and now they’d let that mantis aboard the Dreadful Wale; tied to a chair with a nasty bruise blooming on the back of his head while Hypatia made sure he didn’t die from some concussion or other - clucking over the imprints of massive claws on his chest, his back.

But Corvo had brought him in alive, carried in a harpy owl’s lethal-huge talons. They may as well use him.

Billie, leaned against the crates beside the, eyed Jindosh with a sneer while Corvo ate, stealing Daud’s potatoes when he thought Daud wasn’t looking. “Are you sure bringing him in alive was a good idea?” She asked, and rubbed her brow with a wince. “I don’t think an ally of Delilah’s is going to be any sort of friend of ours.”

You, Said Corvo, pointing his fork at her, Sent us out in the middle of the night without dinner. This is your fault. Daud smiled; Corvo had complained all the way to Jindosh’s mansion about being sent out into the cold and wet without even a piece of bread. Daud had lost track of him, sometimes, only to look to the nearest bin or abandoned apartment and found him eating anything vaguely edible, or crunching through a few rats in that awful, hideous way of his. Corvo snagged Billie’s half-eaten fish from her abandoned plate, shoved it into his mouth to drop his fork and speak. Besides, He added, He’s not really Delilah’s friend either. I found a few of his audiographs; he just wants his clockworks, and he thinks she’s the way to go to get them. He might be a complete arse who tortured Sokolov, but Sokolov tested plague cures on people so can we really judge?

Hypatia, carefully, dabbed some antiseptic on the thin cut below Jindosh’s hair, neatly splitting the bruise in two. Jindosh hissed a little, shifted away from the sting, but didn’t wake.

“I don’t trust him,” Billie growled. He fingers curled against her leg, going for her belt where a sword didn’t hang anymore, brass butt and bolster scuffed and dented from years of use but the blade-edge clean and sharp for a quick slice through a mark’s throat. “You saw what he did to Sokolov. You know how he treats his staff - everyone talks about it.”

Jindosh could be useful, Daud supposed, chewing thoughtfully on a carrot. He would know more about Delilah’s plans than anyone else would, and if nothing else Daud trusted Corvo’s instinct that he could be an ally because Daud had been a victim of that instinct too, and he liked to think he’d done right by Corvo enough to justify that. With Sokolov and Hypatia safe on board the ship there’d be someone keeping an eye on him at all times, and while he was their prisoner Jindosh wouldn’t be working on those clockworks. And the ones already built wouldn’t have the one man qualified to do it maintaining them.

But he was also Kirin Jindosh. Daud had been the one to look for Sokolov, and he’d found that poor old sod deep in the heart of Jindosh’s mansion; trapped by a clockwork patrolling outside the walls of his cell. A frail old man curled up on a thin mattress with a bedframe that squeaked with Sokolov’s every shallow, shuddering breath. A frail old man safe, now, inside his bedroom who would have Hypatia at his side all night because there was a chance - just a chance, small and distant, or so Hypatia claimed, but it wasn’t good either way - he wouldn’t make it, but without Jindosh doing his very best to beat him into submission he wouldn’t have needed to be rescued, or have Hypatia sit with him to make sure he didn’t up and die after all the effort they’d made to find him.

And Sokolov had been Jindosh’s mentor, once. Everyone knew it; brilliant Sokolov who had a falling out with his most gifted student who had fled back to Serkonos and made a name for himself there just to spite everyone. Hypatia had been fond as she gently felt along the bones in his hands, looking for breaks in the fragile bones, so he couldn’t have been a particularly terrible teacher; anyone who could allow their former teacher, maybe not friendly but at least not outright enemies, to be bruised and beaten, hollows between ribs stabbing through his thin skin shadowed dark and hungry, those bruises darker still, wasn’t anyone they should want to work with.

Daud gave Corvo his plate when he’d finished eating, as he always did; watched Corvo eat the few scraps of food Daud had left, and nodded to himself. “We don’t need him to be any friend of ours,” He said. “If he’s half as smart as they say he is he’ll work with us to bring Delilah down. And if he doesn’t we kill him.”

“Doesn’t it seem a bit… drastic to kill him?” Murmured Hypatia, carefully putting away her materials into her medical kit.

Billie snorted, and clutched the stump of her elbow like arms crossed stubbornly, as sullen as the boyish scrap of a thing following in his shadow who’d turned petulant every time Daud had Thomas take her to a trainer instead of let her follow him on a job. “Not drastic enough,” She muttered.

“If he doesn’t cooperate then we’ve got no choice,” Said Daud, and turned his scowl on Billie. “Otherwise he stays safe and unharmed unless we-” He gestured between he and Corvo, “-Say so. We got Sokolov back for you safe and sound,” He added when Billie opened her mouth, and she fell back against the crates with that mulish wrinkle of her nose still familiar, even over a decade later. “We’ve done what you wanted. We might not be the best conspirators in the Isles, but believe it or not we know what we’re doing, and we’ve overthrown a regent before. Or are you forgetting that?”

Billie’s lips wrinkled back, irritation or frustration or disgust or shame, or maybe all of them, Daud didn’t care; he held her gaze, burning out from her dark eye, and he did it easily because if he could hold Corvo’s gaze, those black eyes bright with anger above wolf’s teeth shining even brighter in his snarl, those few times they argued, then he could hers even through his heart twisting up into his throat, old fury rusted and hard as a blade-edge stabbing deep.

“And are you forgetting the empress you overthrew before that?” She demanded, and her eye flicked to Corvo frozen at the table, just the once; just enough to make rage flash like lightning through his blood, burning across his Mark.

Daud grabbed Corvo, stopped short his lunge as Billie flinched hard - took a quick look around and good, Hypatia had wisely retreated to Sokolov’s room; she didn’t need to know about Corvo’s power, see the wolf’s teeth suddenly sharp and cramped into his human mouth bared in obvious threat, gleaming like a blade under the stark light. Don’t you dare! He said, hands snapping through the words, big and made jagged by fury. Don’t you fucking dare bring that up when you don’t know what happened!

Anyone with a bit of sense would have stood down; Corvo’s Mark burned bright gold, the Bond humming loud and clear between them, rumbling like the wolf’s snarl Corvo couldn’t make but still there in his bared hound's teeth, claws curling into his palm, and he was just barely held back. He was exhausted, tiredness bruised dark around his eyes, bags heavy; the hollows Coldridge had left in him still dark and deep under the harsh light, all sharp angles and blades as his shoulders mantled around his ears like bird's spread wings, hackles bristling. Billie should walk away, and Daud should bow his head to her truth even if he didn’t like it being spat at him like venom.

Neither of them had the sense to do that.

“I know enough to say he murdered her,” Said Billie, low and dark as a sneer twisted her mouth.

Daud snagged Corvo’s crow foot as he changed quick as a shadow and held him under his arm, crushed against Daud’s chest to still his wings. “Corvo decided to look past it,” Said Daud, teeth gritted against Corvo’s thrashing. “Fucking Void, Corvo, enough! I’ve proved I’ve changed. I’m not that idiot I used to be, and if it’s good enough for him then don’t you dare try to throw what I did in his face!”

Billie flung her hands into the air. “So that makes it all okay, does it?” She demanded. “You’re all forgiven for murdering his lover and abducting his child, and working with Burrows? It’s all piss in the wind now that Corvo thinks you aren’t as much of a bloodthirsty-”

She hit the crates hard enough to rattle them, pained shout echoing in the cargo hold, when Corvo slipped from Daud’s grasp and went for her again, and Daud let him; his cat’s teeth long and lethal, too-bright in his mouth against his black fur, bared with a rattling, voiceless hiss deep in his ruined throat as he paced, hackles risen up along his shoulders and long tail lashing from side to side. Corvo’s long, white claws clicking against the wooden floors was its own kind of spoken fury, lower and more dangerous than any snarl.

Daud stroked Corvo’s soft, scruffy fur. ”I’ve owned up to what I did,” He murmured, dropping his hand to Corvo’s head, gently rubbing one small, round ear pressed flat against his skull. “I told him everything, and he accepted that. Not one of us on this damn ship is a saint - we've all got bodies in our pasts here. But at least I don't pretend I don't have them. At least I've been honest, and owned up to it all. Have you?” Corvo went still. "Have you, Meagan?" He demanded. "Because as far as I can see you're still pretending you're better than me; hiding behind that new name of yours like you weren't just as much of a murderer as I was." Billie hissed at him, viper-sharp, and said nothing. “So,” Said Daud, “Shall I tell him? Or do I have to tell you again that whatever you used to be to me, as close as you were to being my daughter same as Thomas my son, means fuck all now after what you did?”

Nothing; Billie gave not an inch of ground. She eyed Corvo’s claws flexing against the ground, the snarl wrinkling his mouth and protective fury bright in his dark, shadowed eyes, and after a moment she turned her gaze back to Daud. “Don’t you dare,” She hissed, venom-bitter.

“Then remember the debt you owe me,” Daud told her. “And remember that you aren’t in any sort of place to judge us after all that you’ve done.”

The fur still bristling on Corvo’s shoulders melted away as he rose up on human feet, face as harsh and cold as the sea-cliffs of Tyvia; thumb gently stroking across the back of Daud’s hand, defiance in every finger knotted with his as they turned to the cargo hold’s doors and left for their tiny bedroom beyond. He nodded when Daud shook his head, neatly side-stepping the rusted bucket half-full on the floor catching water from a leak overhead - for all his many sins Daud kept his word, always had, and even to Billie he still would.

Even when loyalty to Corvo was stronger, and side by side on their cramped, narrow bed Daud shared just a little of who Meagan really was; told him, in fits as starts as fury bitter as old blood fought with the care for her still knocking around in his chest like the loose bolt in the ship's engine, just enough that he knew she’d been involved with the Whalers, and that after the Overseer attack, before they’d rescued Corvo, none of them had wanted her to stay.

Chapter Text

Daud watched Corvo carve the whalebone, cleaned of blood and pale in Corvo’s hands, bright against his dark skin. His brows furrowed as he tilted his head this way and that to listen to its song, soft and humming and faintly muffled from behind the veil separating the waking world from the Void. Corvo hovered the blade of the knife over it, touched it here and there and then decided not to take any bone from it. Every sliver he did take made the song a little bit clearer, and made him tilt his head again to hear it better, putting it to his ear with a frown.

It’s muffled because it’s dead, Said Corvo, setting the whalebone and knife on his knees to speak. Bone from something that’s still alive is easier to carve - it can be convinced to sing however I want it to - but it’s much weaker. Dead bone already has a song it wants to sing, but once I knock all the crap off and get to the bits connected to the Void it’s louder, and stronger. He held it out. Here, He said. Listen.

Obligingly, Daud held it to his ear. “It just sounds like whalebone,” He said, and handed it back for Corvo to keep carving. “Nothing special about it, far as I can tell. You sure it’s ‘singing’ all that? I thought only finished charms said anything.”

It wants to protect, Said Corvo, taking up the knife again and scraping away another layer of bone. Iron will let it do that better - won’t block the song. He frowned at it. You really don’t hear it? It’s pulling on the Void already. Daud shook his head. Strange. I thought everyone could. Grandmother was the best at hearing what song it was singing, could tell what spell it was soon as she picked up a piece.

Daud shrugged as he sat beside Corvo’s chair on the ship’s railing, because clearly making bonecharms wasn't anything he would ever be good at, and looked out at Karnaca glowing a soft gold under the storm clouds heavy and dark overhead. Even the lights were muted beneath its weight, dim and distant in the fog drifting through its streets, blown in from the water on the stiff sea breeze, but even smothered by the awful weather that had threatened for two days and had yet to break it was beautiful; Serkonos’ storms were always nicer than Dunwall’s, whose rains in the autumn and winter months left everything dirty, covered in soot and dust and a thin film of oil.

Vaguely, he remembered being afraid of Serkonos’ summer storms, the rain beating the deck of his mother’s ship hard enough it seemed like a hundred thousand monsters were trying to claw their way in, the howling wind their frustrated rage when they hadn’t broken through yet . His mother had soothed him with songs whose words he barely remembered, let him share her bed when the storms were worst.

But for now the weather was dry enough, and the dark clouds over the darker sea churning restless and choppy was only the threat of a storm, not the storm itself raging, and Daud shook the thoughts away as Corvo tapped his leg to get his attention; nodding to the doors across the deck where Billie was bringing out Jindosh.

His arms were, of course, bound at the wrist, but he’d been left unblindfolded because he was smart enough to guess why he’d been stolen from his home, that clockwork monstrosity of a house hidden by the thick fog curling through the Prieto forest’s canopy, and why should they bother hiding where he was? The Dreadful Wale was far enough out to sea he couldn’t swim to shore or shout for a passing boat to rescue him, and the dense mist hid everything well enough anyway.

Billie shoved Jindosh down into a chair, stepped back with her hand resting on the hilt of a borrowed knife hanging from her belt. Idly, Corvo shaved away another layer of bone, dark eyes all the darker in the gloom.

“Ah,” Said Jindosh with a thin smile, entirely unperturbed. “We’re playing this game, are we? Shall I pretend to look frightened now or later?”

Billie circled, a slow stalk around Jindosh’s chair as he only continued to smile at them, bland and unconcerned. “Who said anything about playing?” Said Billie, low and dark, and her knife flashed in the dim, cold light.

“Straight to the point, I see,” Said Jindosh, delighted. “Good - I do so hate wasting time on unnecessary chatter. What shall it be first, hmm? If you’re looking to take a finger or two I’m afraid an accident a long time ago did the work for you-” He wiggled his mechanical thumb and forefinger, “-But I assure you all I’ll be just as grieved by the loss of those prosthetics as I was the original flesh and bone. Untie me and I’ll even spread my hand out on a chopping block for you. Or perhaps you’d like some of my toes? In which case might I recommend taking the hallux - it will make my escape that much more difficult, you see.”

So I guess threatening to gut you isn’t going to work, then? Said Corvo. He shaved away another layer of bone, the steel of his knife flashing coldly. Don’t know if this is going to be more or less fun that way,

Jindosh stared at Corvo’s hands. “The Royal Protector, a mute,” He murmured, studying Corvo’s face with interest suddenly bright in his eyes, gaze flicking to Corvo's stubbled throat. “Unfortunately for you,” Jindosh said, “I don’t understand a single word of what you just said. But I assume you’re marvelling at my lack of concern, for which allow me to enlighten you. I’ve no doubt that if you wanted me gone you would have spared yourselves the trouble of bringing me to your humble little ship. So, I have something you want, and there are two things in my possession that anyone might go to the trouble of abducting me; clockworks, which I doubt, or information, of which I have a great deal.”

“You’re so sure of that,” Said Billie, and she adjusted her grip around the handle of her long, lethal knife, “That you’re staking your life on it?”

“Of course,” Jindosh told her. “It was obvious that the escaped Lord Protector and Royal Spymaster would attempt to overthrow Delilah, and they would do so here in Karnaca given that Delilah’s only true allies are located here; Hypatia’s disappearance confirmed it. It was a reasonable deduction, then, that they would enter my mansion for both Sokolov and myself, though admittedly I anticipated a more… messy outcome.”

Billie’s hand tightened around the hilt of her knife. “It can still be arranged.”

”Since I am, of course, alive,” Said Jindosh, blithely forging on, “You must want something from me. Something I may or may not be prepared to give. All depending, of course, on what you can offer me, and what I am prepared to offer you.” He smiled at Billie, showing teeth when she only scowled at him all the more. “It will be irritating, true, to have my life’s work interrupted by my death, but I’ve an amateur interest in the scientific examination of the Void and I am quite content with losing my life if I am able to explore it when I’m dead. Violence, however gruesome, will be only a temporary thing before I inevitably irritate you enough to kill me.”

Jindosh leaned back in his seat with another, wider smile as Billie snarled at him and ripped the knife from its sheath, and Daud enjoyed the little flicker of worry that went across his face when Daud caught her blade on his, angled to send it harmlessly skating off to the side and just as easily torn from her hand.

“Enough!” Said Daud as Billie stumbled back, and he handed the knife to Corvo, who rest it across his knees, to keep it safe from her. “We agreed he wouldn’t be harmed-” Billie hissed at him. No! He said, the signs sharp, hidden from Jindosh smiling blandly in the chair because Daud didn’t know whether or not to trust his word that he didn’t understand them. Billie certainly knew enough that she would, even if she tried to turn her eye away from him. I don’t care what he’s done to Sokolov. The old man’s alive, and that’s all that matters. If you can’t control yourself I’ll have Corvo take you to the Cargo Hold and I’ll do this on my own.

Billie held Daud’s gaze a moment. “You’re going to trust him ?” She snarled, low and dark, too quiet for Jindosh to hear. “After supporting Delilah ?”

Daud shrugged, because what choice was there? Sokolov was in bad shape and could barely even speak, Hypatia only had snatches of Grim Alex’s memories and even the ones she did have were mostly filled with blood and gore and anything that wasn’t even remotely useful, and he and Corvo needed to get rid of the rest of Delilah’s allies before she sent reinforcements. The sooner they were done with her allies the sooner Delilah would be vulnerable, and the sooner she was gone and the world was set to rights.

“If it’s of any interest to you,” Said Jindosh helpfully, “I am entirely prepared to negotiate.”

Disgust curled her lips, and Billie huffed and stalked away to the doors leading to the depths of the ship, muttering about a leak in the pipes she needed to fix. “No loyalty to our new empress?” Said Daud, moving to stand at Corvo’s side again and resting his hand gentle on the back of Corvo’s neck. Rubbed his thumb across the tight muscle, drawn so taut it felt like petting iron. “Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised - you turned on Emily, too.”

“Business, my friend,” Said Jindosh with a smile. “Only business. Emily the Just was aptly named and she proved a wise enough ruler, though her predecessor set quite the low bar so I suppose that isn’t any real compliment. I assure you, Lord Protector, I bear her no ill will,” He told Corvo. “But, unfortunately for her, Delilah commissioned some of my soldiers and, unlike the rest of the rabble who think a few smiles and murmurs about their connections will land them a discount, she had the money to pay for them. Funding my research is hard enough without turning down a contract, you understand?” He sighed, and shook his head a little sadly. “I’d hoped she might be willing to enable my research - allow the clockworks to reach new heights - but alas, Delilah has been less amenable than I’d hoped. Such a shame she prefers her paintings and her carved bones and the esoteric texts that are frightfully unscientific, and has such disdain for my clockworks.”

Can’t fucking blame her, Corvo said.

Jindosh ignored him. “So you see,” He said, “We might strike a deal after all, and all the trouble you’ve gone through to bring me here won’t be for naught. I can provide you with as much information about Delilah and her allies as you could ever need or want, for the small price of the empress supporting my research once she's returned to the throne. Quite the bargain, I think.”

Corvo shrugged when Daud looked to him. I don’t think she’d be all that happy with it - we all saw what they did in the Tower, He said, But she might give him a grant or two if we ask her to, just to see what happens. Void, she would let him experiment just to make the nobles nervous.

Daud didn’t know - Emily was Corvo's daughter but Daud's boss, and even after all this time he didn't quite know her well enough to speak for her - but he squared his shoulders and turned back to a bemused Jindosh with a nod, because if Emily didn’t want to support his research and he and Corvo failed in their end of the bargain they could kill him like they probably should have in the first place; if his information was good and Delilah's allies were gone then they'd got all they needed from him, and Emily could justifiably have him thrown in Coldridge for supporting a usurper.

“Deal.”

Chapter Text

Daud listened to the storm for a while, thunder rolling through the overhead clouds dark and as grim as all of Serkonos’ summer storms were grim; black and angry, all the fury of an entire ocean, from Karnaca’s gentle bay to the ice cliffs of the far south rising high over the sea, flung all at once at the coast. Muted a little by the Dreadful Wale’s hull, but still loud in his ears. Two days it had been threatening and finally, freshly turned in for the night, it had broken, raging and furious even as Daud drifted off.

And now, here in the dead of night night, it woke him with an ache in his bones, itching in his scars.

He scrubbed at his eyes, rubbed his mouth, and hoped that the Outsider was having a good laugh there in the Void, watching Daud cursing him too quietly to wake Corvo restless at his side; his own aches and pains making themselves known, simple old age and ancient battle wounds and the torture still stark and awful on his skin; lashes thick and ugly and bumping against Daud’s palms when he stroked Corvo’s back, neat white lines down those arms wrapped loose around Daud’s chest faded but not gone, not yet and probably not ever.

Corvo’s icy hands twitched, fingers folding into shapes in his own version of sleep-talking, and fell still when Daud kept petting him, warm hand wrapped around his elbow that bitterly remembered being wrenched harshly whenever Corvo mis-aimed a jump and caught a ledge by his fingertips, stroked across Corvo’s long flank to curl fingers gently around his hip where the paler skin hidden from the sun had bruised black and ugly from Hypatia’s filing cabinet. Daud nosed into the soft curls of Corvo’s hair; even with the storm playing havoc on his bones he was feeling remarkably indulgent, love and affection and absolute adoration of the stupid fool at his side knotted around his heart.

Hypatia, sleeping in a chair beside Sokolov’s bed to keep an eye on him, snored loudly. Sokolov snored louder still, echoing down the empty halls and nearly drowning out the rumbling thunder rolling through the sky.

Daud pulled Corvo a little more comfortably into his side, without so many of his pointed bones stabbing into him, and kept petting his back, his shoulders; smoothing away the gooseflesh prickling across his skin, the chill bristling the islands of dark hair between the scars on his arms and Daud smoothed those down too.

Corvo hadn't had an easy night of it; not an hour asleep and he woke Daud by hurling himself at the sink with a retch, bringing up everything in his stomach from dinner to bile to nothing, the muscles of his strong shoulders pulled tight, overdrawn as a bowstring as Delilah’s oily, poisonous magic prickled across Corvo’s Mark. Pulled into the Void by Delilah, not the Outsider; stranded in a part of it twisted and corrupted by her wants and magic. Plants instead of whales, the even Void’s cold light dirtied by her touch.

And Corvo wasn’t able to handle the Void corrupted like that, wasn’t meant to walk across the islands of stone held in place by mortal whim. He’d said, signs small and held close like a mumble, that it was the utter stillness that unsettled him, made the power in his blood twist and boil and desperately reach out for the familiarity of a Void as changeable as the sea. Said that the Void reflected the real world, was changed by it just as water changed, it wasn’t meant to be frozen into the shapes Delilah wanted but that the real world didn’t have, showing him things that were probably only real in Delilah's mind.

It took an hour for the death-pale pallor of his skin to darken back into its usual lovely colour, and Daud pressed his mouth to Corvo’s head because it had taken a lot longer than that for him to be able to shift and change as he should.

The storm picked up a little, just for a moment - rain beating down so hard it sounded like a hail of bolts hitting the ship, loud against his ear even through the thick wall. The ship creaked and groaned and complained, icy wind slipping through cracks in their room’s porthole, and Daud shook away his thoughts, burrowing down into the threadbare blankets and thin pillows, their little nest of warmth sinking in on all sides; he should sleep while he could.

Tides rushing in his ears loud as tinnitus and shadows twisting and squirming across the floor like a carpet of plague-rats wouldn’t let him.

“Well,” Said the Outsider, smiling blandly, “Haven’t you been busy?”, and Daud fell back against the pillows and closed his eyes. He wasn’t in the Void - he knew that much - so the Outsider couldn’t actually force him to do anything. If he pretended not to know he was there for long enough the Outsider would get bored and leave.

“You aren’t half as subtle as you like to pretend, Daud,” The Outsider murmured, floating on top of some of the crates piled high nearby. He crossed his legs, hands folded neatly on his knees. “So far you and dear Corvo have come, in so little time. So far you will go over the next few days. But Delilah has been watching, Daud; she knows two allies are gone, and more will fall. For the first time in decades she feels fear.” His head tilted, bird-like. His black eyes gleamed, amusement and malice bright in their endless depths. “Do you take comfort in it, Daud? You know that an enemy who fears you means you stand a chance of succeeding. The old masters of the fighting pits taught you that.”

Daud flung his arm over his eyes. “It’s too early in the morning for this shit. Go away.”

The Outsider’s smile only widened, shadows twisting around his shoulders. “And here I was going to give you some help,” He said. The Outsider shook his head with a long, dragging sigh. “Dearest Corvo loves you, Daud. I do wonder why, sometimes.” He looked away when Daud glared at him, idle as he rubbed his mouth with his long fingers, staring at the wall above the door like the rust and rivets fascinated him. “Easier to know why you love him. Such a loyal man, to fight an empire twice for the people he loves. He would fight an empire for you, too - would cross the Void itself just to see you and your Whalers safe.”

“I already know that.”

“Do you know?” Asked the Outsider, and his eyes were fathomless as he watched Daud’s hand stroking Corvo’s hair, his shoulders where the old scars from Coldridge were healed best, the faded pink bright against his dark skin. He turned to watch the wall again, head tilted to listen to the rain. “I suppose you would know, when the difference between a man who would fight tooth and nail for you and a man who wouldn’t might leave you with a knife in your back. The pit masters taught you that, too.”

Corvo twitched in his dreams, curled up a little more tightly beneath the blankets against the aches flaring up in his scars as another rumble of thunder rolled across the sky, twisting in Daud’s own scars as he grit his teeth against the pain. He settled under Daud’s petting hand, nuzzling into his throat as his icy feet stroked over Daud’s calves.

“You already know what we’d do for each other,” Murmured Daud, watching Corvo wrinkle his nose like a tiny snarl, hands twitching into signs. “If it came to that. If you’re here for a reason get on with it, and if you’re just here to annoy me then well done, you can fuck off now.”

Thunder boomed again, and Corvo flinched. Daud wondered if he was imagining the Outsider’s eyes softening a little as he watched.

“Delilah has pulled him into the Void,” Said the Outsider, unusually quiet. “I suspected she would be able to - I warned you that she was playing with magic mortals aren’t meant to play with, toying with the forces of the Void that were used to make me.” He rubbed his mouth, black eyes keen as he watched Daud’s hand still stroking across Corvo’s shoulders. “He’s safe enough from her,” He said, just as Daud started wondering if he might need to slip into Corvo’s dream and stab Delilah from there if she tried again, and Daud scowled at him because he hated the Outsider reading his mind. “The Void refuses her, when it can. But her power comes from her past, and now she’s shown him it in the hopes it might poison him as it did her.”

Corvo had said as much, curled up tight in bed against Daud’s side, tucked under his arm. Delilah Copperspoon a half-sister of Jessamine, and Jessamine said she remembered playing with her in the Tower - even Daud had heard her, vague and muffled and echoing down the Bond burning bright on their hands, had watched her hold Corvo’s hand resting on Daud’s chest, her own light on his hair. Whether or not it was true or Delilah had lied about it so often she believed herself Daud didn’t know, and Jessamine didn’t know either; she wasn’t even certain if Delilah truly was related by blood or not.

Daud had shared a glance with her when she wondered, guilt and shame she didn’t deserve dark in her voice, if Delilah’s hatred venom-bitter was all her fault when she was only a child when Delilah was thrown out of the Tower. Met the eyes of that vague shadow he saw but couldn’t quite see and said that if it was anyone’s fault it was Delilah’s, and if she was ruthless enough to butcher anyone in her way as even the newspapers couldn’t quite hide she was doing then it was inevitable she would have been ruthless enough to overthrow Jessamine herself even if she’d never been tossed to the streets.

The Outsider leaned back against the crates, legs idly crossed as he folded his hands neatly across his knees, head tilted. ”You, Daud, made tools out of your pain - used it to slip past the warden of the cells and killed the masters who tortured you; made yourself stronger and faster so the ones you hadn’t had time to kill couldn’t capture you again. Delilah's power comes from the bitterness of a broken dream, a fantasy where she’s an empress beloved by all and rules from Gristol to the wastes of Pandyssia, and everywhere in between. And the obsession and spite to see it fulfilled.”

Corvo hissed a little through his teeth, dangerous as a snake’s bone-dry rattle, and Daud kept stroking him, smoothing down his back starting to arch like a bristling cat’s; gently took Corvo’s large hand, fingers knotting as tightly together as his stiff joints would allow, and pressed a kiss to the Mark glowing faintly on its back, the magic in his skin tasting like lightning and the storm’s sea air. Maybe a few kisses and a cuddle wasn’t any sort of real help against the storm playing havoc with his bones, the scars Coldridge had left on him pulled taut and his fingers the torturer had broken too stiff to bend properly, but Corvo went a little bit more lax against Daud’s side, breathed out a little of the tension tight at his shoulders against Daud’s throat where he’d tucked his face.

“So she’s deluded,” Daud said. “Thinks she’ll make decent empress and gutting half the nobles in the empire is the way to do it. Why should I care?”

“Delusion is its own kind of power, Daud,” Said the Outsider. “It was delusion when mortal men first saw a breaching whale and thought he could hunt it, and now they’ve made such an art of it there aren’t many whales left to breach. It was delusion when a mother threw herself at the gates barring entry to a plague-dead district in Dunwall, but then she found a way through and protected her last living child all through the plague until Piero and Sokolov’s cure rescued the both of them. It was delusion when I convinced you that you could save yourself from an eternity as a lost soul wandering the depths of the Void, but here you are.”

The Outsider stood, floating an inch above the floor as he crossed his arms, idle as he watched Corvo start to fidget a little more, thunder rolling across the sky and beating against Daud's joints. “Delilah is immortal, Daud,” He murmured. “When she decided that Corvo would cut her down if she wore Emily Kaldwin’s face, even if the blow would kill him with her, she ripped her soul from her chest and bound it to a vessel of dead bones and magic so that she never could be cut down.” The shadows at his feet, flowing around his shoulders, drew close as the Outsider smiled. “So I’ll give you a hint, Daud; a hint you will tell dear Corvo and that he will guess at and won’t truly understand until tomorrow when he rescues Aramis Stilton from himself. A soul prefers the cage of flesh to the cage of bone, and I wonder if Corvo believes restoring the empire is worth the price of Delilah’s.”

Chapter Text

By morning the storm was gone, or so Billie and Sokolov said - Corvo didn’t poke Daud awake until the evening because the long, awful night left them too exhausted to bother waking up earlier. But the coming night’s cool air was pleasant enough against Daud’s shaved cheeks, drifting gently in from the water through the opened portholes, and Billie had made one of Serkonos’ best-known stews, thickly spiced, so at least Corvo was happy as he chewed through a few chunks of beef, stealing Jindosh’s bread whenever he turned to talk to Hypatia stiff at his side.

It was… not exactly nice. Sitting at a table with Sokolov was never fun, because he shared life stories at the drop of a hat and his life stories were better told when everyone around him, including himself, was blackout drunk, and with Jindosh opposite him, whose every word dripped with venom and whose every snide curl of his mouth invited someone to punch it, it was all… Also not nice.

But there was Hypatia keeping the peace, sat in the no-man’s-land between Jindosh and Sokolov, and Billie being quiet at the head of the table - sullen but silent after a sneered, “Bad night? Maybe you’ve been sleeping on goose feathers too long,” - and more importantly Corvo was warm against his side, head tipped close to listen, for Daud to talk to; voice low and rumbling just to enjoy the way Corvo’s black eyes darkened with delight. The bump of his toes against Daud’s tough old boots and the smirk twisting his mouth was an invitation to leave the dinner table behind and retreat back to bed below the deck, but Daud shook his head; they had work to do, and he stroked the inside of Corvo’s knee to apologise for it because he did, desperately, want to leave Sokolov to his glaring and Jindosh to his smirking and Billie to her glowering at everyone and everything.

Corvo stole Daud’s food, then, so Daud just shoved the bowl at him and distracted Sokolov for long enough for Corvo to steal from him, too. Sokolov coughed a laugh into a fist. “That’s the Corvo I know,” He rasped. “Here I thought some years under your belt would make you stop stealing my carrots.”

“He’s doing well,” Hypatia told Corvo, sipping delicately at a spoonful of stew, when Sokolov went back to sniping at Jindosh. “For a man his age he’s doing remarkably well. Being back in a familiar space has done him wonders. I only wish Addermire wasn’t locked down after my… disappearance - I had some notes on a mixture that could have helped him a great deal. But he’s doing well.” She smiled, breathed out slow and even and not exactly unhappy, mouth thin as she dragged her spoon through her food. “Just as I am. Thank you, by the way,” Hypatia added, and she held Daud’s gaze, and Corvo’s in turn, while Sokolov argued with Jindosh about some theory or other on the Void. “Both of you.”

Corvo waved away her thanks, gnawing on a bread crust, because it wasn’t entirely altruism that had Corvo spare her and the altruism that did spare her was because Daud was a soft touch for Corvo, and Corvo hated killing at the best of times. She was more useful alive, certainly - a friendly healer was never a bad thing to have - and, of course, Corvo was right in that she would help the people of Serkonos as best she could. She was one of the few good people out there, besides Corvo at Daud’s side chewing on a slice of cheese he’d stolen from Billie’s abandoned plate, and the empress frozen in stone in far away Dunwall.

But neither of them were squeamish about killing, either, and if Grim Alex had turned around too soon, heard Corvo landing behind her and flinched away, then she’d have had about three feet of sword shoved through her throat and they wouldn’t have thought any more about it. Daud had sworn off of killing, true - kept to it for twelve years - but when it came down to it he would choose Corvo over his oath and damn whatever happened to Daud for it. He had done it to Granny Rags, he had done it to the nameless swathes of Dunwall's stupidest gangs, he would have done it to Hypatia.

Daud rubbed his thumb across the back of Corvo's neck; Corvo was worth breaking his own oath. Jessamine, her heart beating softly in Corvo's pocket, might not even hate him for it.

From behind the crates stacked high all around Billie dragged out the map, Stilton’s mansion in Batista and the Royal Conservatory in the Cyria gardens circled in bright red and with Jindosh’s mansion and Addermire crossed out, and slammed her palm on the table hard enough to make their spoons rattle. “Right,” She said, and held Jindosh’s amused, mantis-cold eyes. “You’re alive, you’re fed, you’re getting a place to sleep when Hypatia’s settled in her new apartment. We had a deal, now it's your turn. What do you know about Aramis Stilton and Breanna Ashworth?”

“Ah,” Said Jindosh, taking a sip of Serkonan red wine and wrinkling his nose with an unhappy little moue, because as well as stealing Jindosh himself Corvo had also, somehow, squirrelled away a bottle or two of his wine - one of them hidden under their bed. “It’s that time already? And I was just starting to enjoy myself. Sokolov makes quite the conversationalist when he wants to be.”

Sokolov snorted to himself. “Surprisingly,” He muttered, “People turn agreeable when they aren’t a prisoner and beaten to an inch of their life. Fancy that.”

Billie’s glowering darkened.

“Alright,” Said Jindosh with a smile, showing her his empty hands. Sokolov scoffed at him, and downed his entire glass of brandy just to spite Hypatia wincing at him. “Very well. If there’s anything I’ve neglected to mention, do feel free to ask once I’ve finished.”

Grudgingly, Daud did have to be fair and admit that Jindosh held nothing back; he shared everything he understood about the ritual in Stilton’s mansion that drove him mad, that ripping out of Delilah’s soul and housing it safely inside an effigy made of bone; whale oil and blood mixed and written into runes scrawled across the floor that Jindosh couldn’t understand but that apparently, hissing through his teeth as Jindosh described them, Corvo did.

(It’s just dangerous magic, Corvo said, hands hidden under the table as much as they could be, when Daud asked him about it. His mouth thinned. Fucking soul magic - she couldn’t have chosen anything worse. Void, even necromancy would be better. Jindosh had watched, raptor’s eyes narrowed, when Daud stroked his thumb along a scar carved deep and long along Corvo’s forearm to remind him to keep explaining. She’s anchored her soul to the Void to stop it from tearing itself apart, and that’s not fucking good, for anyone. Not even her. It’s anyone’s guess if her magic’s stronger or it’ll turn on her because of it.)

(“Here’s hoping the Void’ll do us a favour and kill her,” Daud murmured, “Just up and-” His hand mimed Delilah bursting with a pop, and Corvo barked a voiceless wheeze of laughter.)

Jindosh didn’t know how to release Delilah’s soul from the effigy, which was irritating, and even more irritating he hadn’t actually been paying attention when Delilah told Abele where to keep it safe - caught up instead in trying to decipher the runes they’d scrawled across the floor. But from what Daud had heard of Abele and seen of Karnaca’s streets it was probably just locked safely in his house; Abele didn’t seem to have any kind of imagination.

But Jindosh did at least also say that Breanna, for Delilah, was trying to take control of the Abbey through the Oracular Order, which Daud didn’t particularly give a shit about - the Abbey could all hang as far as he was concerned - but anything that pissed off Delilah he was happy to do, and swapping out a few focusing lenses in a machine seemed easy enough. And even if Jindosh didn’t know exactly where Delilah’s effigy was he knew enough to say that either Breanna or Stilton would know, and that Breanna most certainly had to go if they didn’t want a swarm of angry witches as vicious as bloodflies to hunt them down. It was more than Sokolov knew, clearly - he was scowling at his brandy like the drink had offended him.

“Easy enough,” Said Jindosh with a smile, taking a sip of his wine, “For men of your… talents, I’m sure.”

Corvo’s jaw worked a little, and he tapped Daud’s hand resting on Corvo's bony knee. I can poke around Batista if you like, He said. While you work on Ashworth. See if I can’t find out what the Abbey knows about Stilton - no point both of us pissing around with one witch, even if she is Delilah's. His mouth twisted as he sighed, Fuck, It'll take some work getting into that bunker - one way in, one way out, and I heard it's not in the best shape as is. Meet me there? I have a place to stay, and it'll be easier than just going back and forth all the time. Corvo shrugged, scratching his greying scruff of beard. It's probably a bit of a shithole by now, He said, But you lived in the Flooded District so you don’t get to complain.

Daud nodded, because he didn’t really care either way but leaving the ship with it's walls groaning in agony every time a wave gently lapped at the hull seemed like an excellent idea, and stood to follow Billie to the skiff, Corvo with him; hand warm on Daud’s wrist as Billie dragged open the doors. He'd take a few transversals to the crossbeam of the mast as he always did, because it was a good enough hiding place to turn into a crow on such a small, cramped ship, and with any luck he'd safely reach the Dust District without some poor, starving fool on the way thinking that even a skinny carrion bird like Corvo would make a decent meal - that seemed to be the way their luck was going if Corvo was killed.

“Hypatia, keep an eye on him,” Said Billie, tipping her head to Jindosh, and Hypatia nodded and mumbled of course at her back. “And make sure he doesn’t let Sokolov kill him while we’re gone just to spite me, I don’t need another mess of his to clean up.”

Jindosh took another long sip of his wine, smile slow and almost indulgent as he tapped his lips in thought; Billie shuddered, grimacing in disgust, and shouldered open the doors even more. Jindosh’s raptor’s gaze grated against Daud’s hand where it rest against Corvo’s back, and Daud rubbed his thumb across the sharp bone of Corvo’s hip barely softened by his shirt and lifted his chin in a dare to say anything about it. “Would I ever do such a thing?” Jindosh asked, and very pointedly ignored Sokolov’s immediate yes. “Breaking the bloodfly tank was an accident, I promise you. And haven’t I been honest with you so far?”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Said Daud. “Let’s go. I want to make it to the station before the last carriages stop for the night.”

Jindosh smiled a little wider, eyes half-lidded in amusement and head tilted. He nodded to himself. “You know," He murmured, eyeing Daud, "For the former Knife of Dunwall you’ve been remarkably accommodating. I’d expected to lose an ear, at least, yet here we are - all of us having dinner together. Oh, I haven’t had this much fun in years,” He sighed. Jindosh shook his head, poked through a pocket on his coat. "Here," He said, "I may have remembered something useful for you.”

From his pocket he held out a stun mine, cobbled together from bits and pieces he’d scavenged. It glowed softly in his hand, the dull light at its centre flickering. “Breanna has one of those bonecharms I can see on your belt. If you use that ingenious crossbow on your wrist the bolt will turn into a swarm of bloodflies, which we can all agree is a terrible fate to befall you, after the hospitality you’ve given me. And for rescuing me from our beloved duke’s absolutely inane, rambling letters, I suppose; truly, I thank you for that. Think of it,” He told Billie, narrow-eyed in suspicion at Daud’s side, ”As a peace-offering. Apparently even I am not far enough above gratitude to use it on all of you.”

The stun mine weighed heavy in his pocket as Billie guided the skiff through the Karnacan bay’s choppy water, cold under his hand as he watched Corvo a dark shadow tiny against the bruise-dark dusk sky carving through the stiff breeze; following at least until the wide, yawning mouth of the Grand canal branching off through the city, when Billie turned down into a tunnel and Daud couldn’t see him. It hummed faintly beneath his fingers, waiting, but didn’t spark or misfire, didn’t loose the electricity tight-wound as a spring at its heart. It just sat there in his pocket, calm and placid as Corvo the rat whenever he took shelter in Daud's coat.

Far across Karnaca, pale against the trees, the Royal Conservatory loomed, and Daud gripped tight the stun mine, its rounded edges digging bluntly into his fingers. Ashworth was as good as any victim to see if Jindosh was as good as his word. And Jindosh, if he was playing them all for fools and his word was worth less than the tiny pieces of scrap and refuse the mine was made of, was just as good as a warning.

Chapter Text

Daud lugged along the last of the five bloody witches who’d been hovering around Jindosh’s contraption, and felt a little curl of black satisfaction when he dropped her safely on top of the bookcase and her head banged hard against it. He gave a cursory glance to the other bookcases, just to make sure they wouldn’t go sliding off the side and die after all the effort he’d made to make sure they’d be safe, and a few quick hops took him to the wide, sweeping wing of a stuffed owl suspended in the middle of the hall. Unlike its poor cousin perched on a rock in the middle of the floor, it still had feathers.

It had been almost disappointingly easy to get in, he thought, hauling himself onto the back of an owl higher up because he’d spied an open window into the floor above Ashworth’s office. They’d left other windows open to the streets, bold enough in Karnaca on its own, and the few witches he’d found scattered about were mostly idle, chewing on food and pencils and one the handle of her sword in boredom. There was no one patrolling the halls, no guards at the doors except the soldiers in the streets outside, and the most trouble he’d run into was a copy of Delilah’s plant in the main entranceway, the one that had held Corvo in Dunwall, and that one was easily enough dealt with - it might have swiped at him, and glowed with Delilah’s sickly, poisonous magic, but it was a plant all the same and Daud had yet to meet one that didn’t burn.

It was laughable just how they unprepared they were for anyone who decided enough was enough and had the skills to back it up. Had grown comfortable, as they lounged like basking cats on anything they could sit on, in the way the nobles they complained about were comfortable; arrogant in their ownership of the place and secure in that arrogance because who would dare tell them no? They were their own little queens of the palace they’d made of the Conservatory, pretending the finery of it was all for them instead of the patrons it had been meant to host as they made nests anywhere they pleased like rats burrowing into the walls. What shadow would dare poke its nose into their little kingdom, what ghost who could stop time and listened to their incessant bitching in between elixirs had the balls to hunt down the queen of queens?

Daud perched on the railing, leaning over as far as he dared to listen to Ashworth grovel at the feet of Delilah’s statue while her undead wolfhounds panted raggedly at her side. He decided to be grateful that Jindosh had warned him of those particular little tricks, the gravehounds and the statue both; might have had a heart attack otherwise, and then where would he be? Haunting Corvo and suffering for however many years Corvo had left because he’d never let Daud hear the end of it.

The back of his neck prickled, even expecting it, when Delilah asked, “And Jindosh? Any word from him?”

And Daud couldn’t help the way his lip curled at her cold, oily voice, palm itching to wrap around the handle of his sword as he remembered her speaking to Corvo in that tone as she took the Mark from him, severing their bond in an agony that rippled out across the whole Whaler web - that sneering thing that was almost the whining, arrogant petulance of the very richest children, demanding everything she wanted be given immediately. Wondered if Delilah knew what her voice said about her, the entitlement bitter as hatred in it strange for someone Corvo and Jessamine’s spirit said had been a street rat.

But then maybe Daud had been around street rats too long; blinded by his own life as one, and by Corvo and their Whalers both. Maybe they were all the outliers, the rare rats that were grateful to have what they did, and didn’t think skyward or dream of bigger things when all they needed was contained in the walls of Dunwall Tower, sheltered and fed and safe in the shadow of the throne; heads held high without the empire’s crown weighing them down.

Ashworth sighed a little, pacing back and forth. “None,” She said. “He’s disappeared, completely. The girls have found no trace of him, and the Void is… uncooperative, at the moment. From my scrying I can only tell you that he’s still alive.” She sighed again under Delilah’s displeased silence, a tiny huff and a nervous little waver to it. “As for the Royal Protector and Spymaster, there’s been no trace of them either. If they’re in Serkonos at all they’ve been remarkably quiet.” Delilah humphed, and Ashworth hurried, “The girls will keep an eye out for them, too, of course. Deliver them safe into your hands as you wished, my empress.”

Delilah was silent a moment. One of the gravehounds ambled into view, licking the floor with a tongue half rotten in its jaws, and Daud pressed his face into his sleeve because how in the fucking Void did Ashworth keep them around, shedding flakes of rotting flesh the way live dogs shed fur and carrying the cloying, sour-sweet reek of death everywhere they went? And he’d thought Corvo’s wet fur bad whenever he came trotting into Daud’s office after Rulfio pestered him into playing on the beach with the rest of the off-duty Whalers.

“It’s no real loss,” Said Delilah, eventually. “I suspect we’d had everything we needed from Jindosh, and Hypatia, anyway - I doubt they would have been of any use to us for much longer. But I want double the watch for Attano and Daud. If they overthrew Burrows so easily, I will not stand for them attempting to overthrow me, even if my rule is secure in Dunwall, now.”

“At once, my empress,” Said Ashworth.

“And what of our project?” Delilah demanded. “How close are you to seizing the Oracular Order? Dunwall’s Abbey has been bothersome of late, and I want them gone. They claim that without proof of my parentage my rule isn’t legitimate. Lovers of the former empress!” She spat, biting and harsh, “Casting doubt on my rule and trusting their flocks to follow, the conniving fools. I’ve greater legitimacy than she ever had, Attano her father and that usurper Jessamine her mother! I want them silenced, Breanna; how close are you to it?”

Ashworth paced, short and sharp and quick, almost bouncing. One of the dead wolfhounds yelped as she kicked it out of the way. “Very close,” Ashworth breathed. “I shared a dream with one of them; we walked through the garden of her childhood home, full of flowers and trees, and we drank water from a fountain together. Jindosh wanted to tinker with it further; thicker lenses, thinner, glass of different crystal structure. Without him interfering I’ll be able to work on it further, and a little more fine tuning and the Order will be ours, - for you the Abbey will be dissolved from the inside, burned to ashes as they always should have been.”

Careful to not activate it - it was a patchwork thing of bits and pieces, Daud wasn’t going to push his luck and handle it as easily as he would a normal one - Daud pulled Jindosh’s stun mine from his pocket and let power burn across his Mark, time caught and slowing around his fingers but not loosed, not yet; held like bolt in his crossbow, drawn and waiting and tension screaming in the string, Mark burning all the way down to his bones.

“Excellent,” Said Delilah. “I look forward to seeing it once it’s completed, and everything here is settled.”

One of the gravehounds ambled back towards the desk, skinny tail waving from side to side as it stuck its snout in the bin, rooting through for scraps to snap up even though Daud would bet his every last coin that it didn’t actually need to eat, being dead and all. If it didn’t smell like the reanimated corpse it was Daud would almost have called the thing cute as it found half a sandwich and snapped it up.

Daud blinked, Dark Vision sliding across his eyes with a faint headache behind them, and watched Ashworth kneeling at Delilah’s feet. She looked up, and even watching her sillhouette he couldn’t hear it but he heard the click of her swallowing, loud in the silence. “When will you visit, Delilah?” Asked Ashworth, soft and quiet as a whisper. “I’ve missed you so, and it’s been so long since we’ve had any time to ourselves.”

“Hmm? Oh, soon,” Said Delilah, distantly, and maybe she didn’t notice or maybe she didn’t care about the disappointment and hurt in Ashworth’s hanging head, the low slump of her shoulders. “I’ve things to get in order here before I can join you again. You’ll wait a while, my dearest, but oh, the night we’ll have when I join you. We’ll use that machine together, walk through the dreams of the Oracular Sisters and corrupt them together.”

Ashworth bowed as much as she could, knelt at the statue’s feet. “Of course, my empress,” She murmured. “I’ll start work on the machine in the morning.”

Delilah didn’t answer. Quietly, Daud loosed the magic burning in his hand, aching and humming with whalesong in his bones, and partway to standing Ashworth froze. He jumped down from the railing, frozen time crawling across his skin as slimy as hagfish as he fell - caught himself on the chandelier suspended from the ceiling high above and let himself fall further; stuck the stun mine on the floor between beside Ashworth's desk chair and dashed back up the stairs, time slipping from his hold, starting slowly.

Daud fell against a lab’s worktable, grimacing as he flexed his hand cramped with the last of the magic fading from the Mark; the stun mine clicked, very softly, and beneath the whip-sharp crack of electricity Ashworth’s shout of surprise was cut short. Jindosh’s faulty lenses were also, mercifully, nearby and he scooped them into his pocket, trotted down the stairs and stopped at the landing with the unnecessarily tall bookcases looming at his back. The gravehounds were just as easy to deal with - a crossbow bolt to destroy their rotting bodies, and another to get rid of the skull, and Daud could scoop up Ashworth and drag her along without any bother.

If any of the witches on the floor below, flopped over a bench like they weren’t sure how to sit on it, noticed Ashworth’s sleeping body dropped to the floor with an echoing thud, they didn’t show it.

The machine, Jindosh said, was supposed to deepen Ashworth’s connection to the Void in small, controlled bursts, without having to resort to tearing out her soul to do it, to influence the dreams of the sisters of the Order. He said nothing about the corpses of the sisters in some bizarre mockery of a funeral coffin, bones bared for anyone to have a peek if they were fucked up enough to want to. Daud grimaced at them as he swapped out the lenses for the faulty ones, thought vaguely about sending a letter to some high-up lackey in the Abbey about it because yes, he didn’t particularly like or care for the Abbey, but the dead still deserved some respect.

But the living were fair game, and Daud kicked Ashworth into the circle of glowing runes scrawled in whale oil on the floor, connecting Ashworth’s magic to the souls of the still-living sisters through the dead women’s bones, and pushed down the lever of Jindosh’s machine. Satisfaction curled black and delighted around his heart, curving his mouth into a bland smile when Ashworth’s wide, frightened eyes met his.

“No,” She breathed, magic falling from her soul, shed like those gravehounds shed flesh; consumed by the hungry, vicious Void. “No. No, no, no!” She whirled to her feet, snarling and hissing like a cat, claws outstretched, fury bright with violence burning in her dark eyes that once might have been lovely and spat at him like snake did venom. But she froze like anyone else Daud pressed the edge of his sword to her throat, sharp enough even the gentle pressure of its cold touch cut a long, thin scratch across her skin. “You didn’t. You wouldn’t.”

Daud put a cigarette between his lips, lit it one handed and breathed deep. “Try me,” He said, and the smoke blew across her face.

“The Void,” Said Ashworth, stepping away, scanning the floor like she could find magic in the floorboards, darting this way and that. “The Void, where is it? I could touch it, I could see it, where has it gone? My Delilah, where are you? You were… You were right there, where-?” She turned on Daud, another snarl twisting her lips. “You! What did you do? What did you do?”

“Didn’t our dear new empress Delilah just ask about me?” Daud smiled, and enjoyed the way Ashworth paled, horror in eyes wide with understanding; she hadn’t even noticed him. Daud took another lazy drag of his cigarette. “Now you’ve got something to tell her, don’t you?” He said, and Ashworth stared at the smoke curling from his mouth like she could see the words as he spoke them, read them as her hands trembled and her breath caught in her throat. “Spymaster Daud alive and well in his home city, an old fuck not that fit for sneaking about through a witch hideout and I still got in and severed your connection to the Void without any of you lovely ladies noticing me. Do you think she’d be pleased, Ashworth?”

Ashworth shivered, her eyes still locked on Daud’s as he took a step closer, another and another until he loomed over her, magic curling blue-gold around his hand and only the long, lethal blade of his sword between them. “You’ve ruined me, do you understand?" Ashworth wailed. "You’ve ruined me! All I would do for Delilah, all the love she would have given me for what I could offer! And now I’m nothing!”

“Suppose so,” Daud agreed mildly, and sheathed his sword, took another drag of his cigarette. “I’d offer to tell her myself,” He told her, “Just to see the face she’d make. But I don’t actually care enough to do that.”

“What?”

Daud breathed out the smoke into Ashworth’s face, smile gentle as he watched her stand there, still inside the circle of runes; helpless without magic and aged and sad beyond that, her hand gripping the sword at her hip unpracticed. “Believe it or not, not everyone has a fanatic loyalty to the crown. I’m not here because I want revenge, or because I care about you or the witches. I don’t even care about the blood you’ve spilled helping Delilah get the throne - Void knows I’ve shed my fair share of it, in my time.” He shook his head, dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out. “I’m here because Corvo’s my lover, and I want to help him. No more, no less.”

He turned away from Ashworth tiny under the looming shadow of the machine, looked to the doors a floor up that would take him back the way he came, that pathway through abandoned apartments safely above and out of sight of the guards patrolling the streets. “You can tell her that, if you like,” He said, watching her from the corner of his eyes. “And you can tell her that if she fucks about with Corvo’s dreams again I’ll strip her of magic same as I did you and throw her into Coldridge for the rats. She might even be Burrows’ cellmate - they’ll have some common ground, won’t they?”

Ashworth bowed her head, teeth gritted, hands shaking, but what could she do stood there alone before her machine, more alone still in the years to come after Delilah would abandon her? Daud didn't care; Karnaca's witches were gone and he had Corvo to look for, trotting through Batista's narrow, crowded streets watching for his lovely black eyes dark as the endless spaces between the stars glittering overhead.

Chapter Text

Batista was… quiet as Daud walked down its dusty streets. Left dark by broken streetlights glowing weak and dull against the dark, and most not even lit at all. His quiet footsteps should have echoed, carried by the still, dead air far along the road he walked down and flung it out over the rest of the city spread out at the foot of the mountain cliffs.

Should have. Instead there was only dust muffling him, hung heavy enough in the air that Daud pulled out an ancient scarf a Whaler had given him and wrapped it around his mouth and nose. A silent stream of miners trudged towards the road that would take them to the silver mines pockmarking the base of Shindaerey Peak, that looming mountain casting its heavy shadow across Karnaca. Daud followed them, not quite in step and far from their line, and if they noticed they didn’t glance at him, didn’t care when he walked with them at least as far as a street corner.

A twinge of pity pulled low in Daud’s chest; what a place to live.

But there was light in Batista; a pub with wide doors open to the street spilling golden lamplight across the broken stones, and inside there was food and drink for only a handful of coins, a barman and waitresses with sad, knowing eyes but friendly words for the miners, greeting most by name. And it might have been shabby, all mismatched chairs and scuffed tables propped up with bricks and books, but Daud watched the lines carved deep and weathered on the miners’ faces ease a little as they slumped into those mismatched chairs, laughing at the songs mocking Luca Abele started by the two musicians on a stage shoved in a corner and continued by everyone else. Voices left rough and scratchy by the dust all cursed their dear duke, kept up a low murmur while the musicians tuned their instruments, rising to shouts of jeers and dismay and victory for a game of dice in the corner.

The dust storm that blew through the streets, howling and screaming and beating against everything in its path, didn’t reach inside, and even with so many people piled in already it seemed there was always room for more as the miners outside fled for the safety of it, scarves and rags tied around their mouths and cursing Luca Abele all over again.

Daud fought his way to a table by the doors, not even big enough for the two people it was apparently meant to sit - certainly not the miners broad-shouldered as bulls, sprawling out in exhaustion in their own chairs groaning dangerously beneath their weight - but, still, by the doors. He rubbed his thumb across the back of his hand, the Mark warming a little at the touch; phantom fur and feathers warm under his fingers, and an echo down the Bond from Corvo answering.

A man a table over, secure against the wall at his back same as Daud was against his, glanced over when Daud ordered food for Corvo as well as himself; coughed out a chuckle into his fist when Daud lifted his chin in a dare for him to say anything about being a new, unfriendly face in the crowd. “Well,” He said, showing empty hands tinged a greyish purple-blue, and his voice scraped raw and rough out of his throat, the edge of a wheeze in every word. “You ain’t a miner, that’s for damn sure. You one o’ Paolo’s?” He coughed into his hand again, wiped it on his ancient, faded top stained dark and dirty by the dust. “Not that I’ve got a bad word t’ say ‘gainst ‘em, mind. He’s the only thing keeping Batista together.”

“Not a Howler,” Said Daud, and eyed the man. He seemed… genuine enough, brown eyes honest in his handsome, heavy-jawed face, cheeks clean-shaven and dark hair muddied pale with grey. There was no tension in his broad, sloped shoulders, no tightness around his mouth to betray a lie. “Just someone who’s here on business, waiting for his partner to show up.”

“Only reason for anyone to come to the Dust District on business is if they’ve got dealing’s with old Stilton ‘round the corner there,” Said the man, eyes narrowed as he rubbed his face with his stiff-fingered hand. “And Stilton don’t take visitors from anyone - up and went mad one day, and dear old Luca Abele took over from ‘im an’ started runnin’ the place into the ground. And don’ think you can just go waltzin’ in through the front door, neither,” He added. “Jindosh built a lock fer it - no one ‘cept Stilton an’ the Howlers get in or out.”

Daud thanked the woman who set down his food, pushed some extra coins into her hand as he started to eat. “Not here to harm Stilton,” Daud told him, and watched some of the suspicious lines ease in the man’s face.

“Well,” The man grunted, easing back in his seat. The legs of his chair creaked in protest. “Good. Stilton’s a damn good man. Or was, anyway. Cared for us lads in his mines, you know; might not be much of an inventor, not like that freak Jindosh, but what he kitted us out with came in damn handy down there.” He shoved his arm across Daud’s table, either not noticing or just ignoring Daud shifting away from him. “See this blue in my skin? Didn’t come in ‘till Stilton was gone an’ that cockhead Abele put his dick in things. Can’t close my hand anymore, palm too roughed up to feel anythin’. Damn lucky my boys got good jobs, weren’ stuck down there like I was.”

The man drew his arm back. Daud, carefully, set back down his bowl of food, idly rubbing his Mark warming again. The man watched Daud eat a moment. “If you really ain’t here to hurt Stilton.” He said, “An’ you really ain’t one of the Howlers, it won’ kill you to ask a favour of Paolo. Man might be vicious as a cornered rat but he honours his deals with folk. He’ll help you out.”

Daud grunted, his Mark warming again, and he turned from the miner to look out across the street. "Sound like you're recruiting for him," He said. "No, thanks. I've got my own people that need looking after." A cat, eyes glowing in the dark, sat in a doorstep, dark-furred and scruffy. Its ear flicked, just the once, and Daud watched it stalk into the shadows cast deep and dark by a spluttering street light, long tail held high. Daud’s Mark warmed again; the cat blurred as it ambled towards Daud, fur and shadows twisting, bones stretching, and Corvo ducked through the wide doors open to the street, grin wide and bright as he flung himself into the seat Daud left him.

He slammed a piece of paper down on the table, hands held out in triumphant ta-da!

Daud ate another spoonful. “Eat,” He said, shoving Corvo’s food towards him. Corvo jabbed his finger into the paper impatiently. “Yes, Corvo, I see it. It’s a piece of paper. Are you going to explain or am I supposed to be a mind reader now?”

Jindosh built the lock to Stilton’s mansion, Said Corvo, the signs huge with delight, teeth shining white in his smile; bright against the pub’s smokey gloom. I heard the Overseers managed to steal the riddle answer so I went poking through their base. Nicked it right off Byrne’s desk! He coughed out his awful laugh - the miner winced at the sound. Daud scowled at Corvo. I was a dog, Daud, He said. Couldn’t tell the difference between me and the others, and the other hounds were nice enough.

“And if they’d caught you?” Corvo shrugged, black eyes giddy-bright, and Daud sighed because what could he do? Corvo was safe enough as long as the overseers didn’t have any music boxes on hand; a bird or a rat or a ragged, scarred old tomcat was a harmless, common little thing, and Daud thought that not even the Overseers were big enough zealots to cut a bloody swathe through flocks of pigeons or swarms of rats just on the off-chance one of them was Corvo. Daud shoved Corvo’s food at him again. “Eat, Corvo,” He said. “Suppose I can’t complain - you’re alive, and you aren’t hurt?"

Corvo shook his head. I’m fine, He said, in between shoving food into his mouth. There were a few witches poking around near my old apartment, but they started dropping like flies before I could knock them out so I assume Ashworth’s gone?

The miner at Daud’s back shook his head, heaving himself to his feet, knees groaning in protest, and trudged and pushed his way through the dense crowd to talk with some older men by the bar; accepting a drink from the one, smile small and sad as he toasted the end of a rude little ditty the singers on stage had been coaxed into performing. “All sorted,” Daud said, and Corvo nodded. “No magic of her own anymore, and luckily for us the witches take their magic from her not Delilah; with any luck all the witches in Karnaca are harmless, now.” Corvo nodded again, and there was pride bright and pleased in his eyes as he tipped his head to the doors and the dark, narrow streets waiting beyond. Daud followed, didn’t bother keeping track of where Corvo took him because he’d never remember anyway - Dunwall’s streets were ingrained in his head already, and he didn’t have the room or the will to add Batista to it when he had Corvo to lead him.

The night was cool - quiet, just the hiss of wind and clouds of dust drifting through the streets, no light in the buildings grown close and crowded, cramped and twisted to fill every space they could lean into. It was nice, Daud thought, to walk side by side without fear of overseers or the Grand Guard, Corvo’s big hand warm in his, and nicer still to see Corvo at home, confidence in the set of his shoulders, his long, loping strides - head high and eerie black eyes softened as he ducked into an alleyway Daud hadn’t noticed, dragged him down a shortcut he would never have known about. His home, more than Dunwall Tower was, and perhaps ever had been.

Fuck, Corvo laughed, ducking down an alleyway and transversing to the top of a vent below a boarded widow, perching like a bird. How many times did I come home like this? Mother must have had a heart attack every time. Come on, He said, tipping his head to the window, reappearing on its other side. This way, before the dust storms start again.

The boards, when Daud followed Corvo to the vent, were old and rotted, practically falling apart already, and they gave way easily to Corvo yanking on them from the inside, crumbling in his hands. The apartment inside wasn’t much better, dust thick and spilled into small piles under the broken windows, plaster broken and crumbling from the walls, even the timbers in the ceiling so rotted they had collapsed under their own weight, blocking half a hallway.

But it was dry, and the taps in the broken sink turned on and the water that came through the pipes was clean. When Corvo shoved open a bedroom door and stepped inside there was a relatively clean bed built long to fit someone of Corvo’s lanky height, and an unbroken window to keep out the dust starting to come howling down from the mountain and the mines, screaming past the eaves and beating against the walls, and when Daud kicked off his boots and sprawled across it the bed was comfortable enough.

He patted his chest. “Come here,” He said, and reached for Corvo drawing close, smile soft and adoring. “It’s been a long day. Those witches gave me the run around the Conservatory for hours.”

Corvo snorted a laugh, but he put a knee on the bed and heaved himself up, too light to be a pain even human when he draped himself across Daud like a blanket, head tucked under Daud’s chin and cold hands shoved under his shirt to rest against his skin. All bird bones and kitten fluff somehow making its way into Daud’s mouth when he kissed his head, Marks glowing warm and soft against the nighttime dark, and Daud stroked Corvo’s long, bony back, fingers curled around his shoulder.

Chapter Text

Stilton’s manor was… awful.

It had borne the worst of the dust storms that howled through Batista regular as clockwork, kicked up by explosions shuddering out from deep underground. A place that used to be grand and beautiful - Daud and Corvo saw it as it was meant to be, after all, slipping between past and present as they did through the Outsider’s timepiece with such unnatural ease Daud was determined to forget it as soon as they retreated back to the ship; all rich hardwood panelling and matching tables, glasses sparkling like crystals and chandeliers dripping with diamonds.

They passed through rooms full of workmen, busily renovating for yet another month as Stilton hurried to keep up with aristocrats’ changing whims, unwilling to work people to death just to show off his fancy dining room and just as unable to harden his heart against the need to do it. He deserved admiration, after all - creeping along in the shadows and slipping between times Daud listened, and Corvo listened, and between them they learned that not one servant had a bad word to say about him.

It was more than anyone else who spent more money on a day’s casual shopping than a common miner would ever see in his life could say.

But that Stilton was gone, lost to the echoing reaches of Void bleeding through the cracks of the house, and the man left behind didn’t have enough of himself to care that his mansion was falling to pieces all around him, the piano he played as convulsive as a flinch left out of tune from from damp and cold pulling the strings.

Daud kicked aside shards of broken glass from bottles flung to the stained, peeling walls in Stilton’s rambling madness. Stepped over the dogs they shot with sleep darts, and gently choked out the nest keepers shuffling through clouds of bloodflies and limply raising their arms for the bloodflies to strip flesh from bone and fortify their nests, servant’s clothes hanging tattered and torn from their skeletal frames. Watched with a slimy trail of sickness in his gut as Corvo burned out the bloodfly nests themselves where they filled whole corridors and rooms. Tried not to wonder which of the servants and guards they hid from in the past had fallen to them, and who they’d left behind if they had.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it, not by far.

Whatever it was Delilah had done in the depths of Stilton’s house, that ritual the poor fool they’d knocked out and left to sleep off the dart serum had been driven to madness by, she’d fucked something up royally; Daud’s Mark itched with numbness, pins and needles prickling in the skin stained by the Outsider’s gift, and he kept a wary eye on Corvo because the sickly wrongness of Stilton’s mansion left him a little less himself, eyes blurred and hands trembling a little as he plodded along in Daud’s wake.

He swallowed the urge to take Corvo back to his apartment, the Outsider’s timepiece left to rot with Stilton and his mansion, flung to the walls to lie shattered on the floor, because Daud was selfish, would be the first to say so, and he didn’t trust the grey pallor beneath the rich darkness of Corvo’s skin, the bloodshot whites of his eyes showing too starkly. He didn’t know enough about Corvo’s family gifts to trust when Corvo said he was fine, knew Corvo too well to not trust his word.

The words still clicked against his teeth as he helped Corvo to a hiding spot high above the patrolling guards and input the code for the ritual room they’d criss-crossed a mansion and years of time to find, the droning, endless whalesong-murmur of the Void bleeding through holes in the world burrowing into his skull.

But that was done, and even as he watched for a stumble, a shake of his head that said Corvo really wasn’t as alright as he pretended, Daud allowed himself the luxury of leaning against a small table that may or may not have been real, watching Corvo stalking around Stilton’s ritual room.

It was, Daud thought as his table flickered between having a vase of flowers and having a lamp, was a little like being the mouse friend of a cat watching him hunting birds, sniffing intently at a feather; not afraid of him, necessarily, and amused more than anything else, but very well aware it could have been a tuft of his fur the cat was sniffing, his corpse to later be batted by paws in play and half-heartedly gnawed on.

There was certainly something of a cat about him now, circling the small chamber on noiseless feet; head low between his shoulders, ears pricked, dark eyes unmoving as he watched the vague imprint of Delilah and the rest acting out again and again and again the ritual to rip out Delilah’s soul, faint and stuttering as an old memory half-forgotten.

And again Delilah stepped into the ritual circle, Ashworth on her one side and Abele on her other, gentle as they led her to the centre where strings of runes and words Daud couldn’t even begin to understand had been scribbled across the floor, connecting Delilah’s followers to her and Delilah herself to her effigy; storm-dark eyes wide and empty, unseeing and vague and reflecting light that wasn’t there. She drifted, almost, in Abele and Ashworth’s grip - like she’d float away on the howling winds of the Void without them to gently push her to her knees before her effigy.

Fitting, Daud laughed to himself, that the awful broken puppet of a thing made of stolen bones and dead blood, a heart not Delilah’s suspended by briars inside a chest whose ribs had been ripped open like some mangled imitation of wings, was meant to represent her. Perhaps even more fitting that Jindosh had been the only one to notice; lips curled in a faint, cold smile as he murmured the irony of it.

“Enough,” Said Delilah, soft as a whisper but steely, too; a command hard and unyielding that Ashworth and Abele heeded, jumping to their places as Delilah knelt on the cold marble floor, gauzy dress spilling liquid as water around her knees, low neckline hung lower from her neck - she may as well have worn nothing for all the good the billowing dress did her. “I don’t sense Stilton,” She said, lips faintly pursed, and she shook her head with a quiet sigh. “No matter - he’s too soft for something like this. There’s enough people already. Are we ready to begin?”

“Yes, my empress,” Said Ashworth, bowing deep as Abele quivered like an excitable lapdog and mumbled to himself about how the ritual was more exciting than any orgy he’d ever been to. Why and how Abele had been invited to orgies Daud didn’t know; he might not have been that bad to look at, no Corvo certainly but pleasant in his own way, but to be looked at was about all he was good for. He had nothing else to be attracted to.

Corvo stepped through Abele’s colourless shade to peer intently into Delilah’s eyes, watching the knife flashing cold in Delilah’s hand, the sharp blade long and thin and tapered to a narrow point, circular guard ornate and delicate, engraved with vines and flowers, but no pommel on its end - a tool more than a weapon, as much as any such blade could be considered a tool for work outside of death. For all that the blade was razor thin and perfect for stabbing it was too fragile for Daud’s kind of dirty work, and entirely useless for almost all of Corvo’s.

The dress slipped lower around Delilah’s shoulders, neckline sagging until the pale skin over her heart was bared. Delilah raised the blade slow and careful, pressed its tip into the skin between ribs; a bead of blood black as oil rolled over her breast, and Delilah tipped her head back with a long sigh, eyes slipping closed as the runes around her glowed a little brighter.

Daud winced, as he had every time, when Delilah stabbed through her own chest, clean through to her heart.

She’s gone to the Void, Said Corvo, stepping delicately away from the phantom spray of blood as Delilah slumped back, long-fingered hand falling limply from the handle of her dagger still embedded in her chest. The runes that tied Delilah’s dying body to her followers glowed brightly through the spreading rivers of blood. Nearly dead but not quite there. Alive enough to still have a hold on this world. Smart, but there’s a reason magic like this is so rare.

“What are the runes for?”

Keeping her alive as long as possible, Corvo said, crouching down to read. Feeding off them- He nodded to Ashworth quietly steeling herself, hands held out towards Delilah and the effigy both, -To get a few extra minutes. Soul-tearing and anchoring has to be done quickly, before the body’s dead. But you get one chance at it. Fuck up and you’re gone.

Daud didn’t bother to watch as Delilah’s soul was ripped away from the Void - half of it, according to Corvo, anchored there, and the rest sitting inside the heart of the effigy, caged and safe inside the cradling wings of bone and whale-skin. He had heard so many times already Delilah stepping up to it and cupping the low, wide cheekbones of the rictus-grinning skull of the effigy, seen too often her cold smile gently curving her lips as she murmured thanks to her mother’s bones for one last favour, smile growing wider and colder still as she hissed thanks for the traitor witch who so selflessly donated the heart beating again with the ragged pieces of Delilah’s soul.

He had seen enough, in his time. Corvo might have been the one who’d grown up with the old ways of Serkonos, those old forgotten rituals still alive through him; he might have been the one with his dead lover’s heart whispering to him in his pocket, murmuring Delilah’s sins and her own to him as if between Daud, Jessamine, and Delilah she was the one who had to atone, had to seek absolution from the only good soul in the room; he might have been the man this whole mess was arranged for, the Outsider amusing himself at Corvo’s expense, but Daud had seen too many people like Delilah - hated the thought but couldn’t help but think he had been someone like Delilah - to care about that, anymore.

Perhaps it was selfish, to turn his gaze from the ghost of his enemy, the usurper when her plans finally started coming together, and look to Corvo wolf-lean and beautiful, but Daud had never pretended he wasn’t selfish. He remembered too keenly a time when he would have jumped at the chance to be immortal, invulnerable; drunk on the Outsider’s gift and tired of being hunted, no dog to be shoved into an arena but a wolf, lean and strong.

He was here for Corvo, after all; an extra pair of hands and a listening ear and a warm body to curl up against late at night. Delilah and her teeth bared in a smile with no warmth had no room in Daud’s world that had long since narrowed to his family.

Daud tipped his head to the stairs as Delilah whirled around the ritual room, as quick and sharp as the blade she pulled from her heart and brandished at people she couldn’t see, soaked with her own blood and snarling into every half-shadowed corner that whoever she could feel lurking in time’s waters would live to regret drawing her attention, and Corvo followed him.

The mansion was at least clean when they strode from the ritual room locked in that time so long ago, though Daud wasn’t quite so sure the servants’ raptor’s eyes narrowed in suspicion at them was any improvement. But there were no bodies to step over, no dust piled high to stumble through, and the servants watched but he and Corvo weren’t actually stopped as they breathed in clean air blowing down cold from Shindaerey Peak.

“Found what we needed?” He asked, scratching his Mark and baring his teeth at the numb weight of the Bond he got in return. “I want to get home - feels like the Overseer’s music boxes are playing in my head.”

Think so, Said Corvo, and he rubbed his face, stumbling across the threshold as Daud guided him into the courtyard. His sigh stuttered out of his chest. I’ll need a few days to look into this - the magic she’s using is… rare. I’ll see if one of my great great aunts is still around - she knows more about this kind of magic than most people... should.

Corvo stumbled again, the hand he pressed to his head shaking. Didn’t even pull away from Daud’s grip keeping him upright and shit, shit, shit Daud should really, really learn not to listen to Corvo about how well he was feeling, it always ended like this; Corvo’s legs giving out, crumpling beneath him and only Daud keeping him from hitting the floor.

Chapter Text

Daud’s fingers trembled as he struck the match, again and again and again until the fourth time it burst into life and lit the cigarette between his lips. He breathed in the smoke, eyes closed as it burned the back of his throat and sat heavy in his chest, and when he blew it out into Corvo’s kitchen he felt a little bit better, a little bit more himself.

He knew he should have pushed Corvo into leaving. He knew it. And now it was his fault Corvo was dead asleep on his childhood bed, pale and drawn and grey beneath the darkness of his skin; all the shadows cast by his bones jabbing through his skin too dark, too deep, all the scars twisted and ugly from Coldridge too stark, too much - torture a decade gone still hurting him even now, pain a rictus on Corvo’s lovely face as the weather and the Void, and time itself mangled in Stilton’s house, played havoc on those old, ill-healed wounds.

He’d wondered, deep in the back of his head, what Stilton’s manor was doing to Corvo. He was as much a part of the Void as the whales singing in the coldest Tyvian waters, and when the weight of the veil settled as heavy and cloying across their souls as the music from Overseer’s boxes Daud had known it couldn’t mean anything good, not when its weight smothered the quiet humming of even the bonecharms on their belts.

He should have sent Corvo home, and victory tasted more bitter than the ash Daud tapped into the sink; took another drag, another and another until his hands stopped shaking and the cigarette had burned down to the stub, singeing his fingers. It took two cigarettes to calm.

Daud poked through the cupboards, dusty and thick with cobwebs, when he was done, but didn’t find anything to eat. The bathroom, then, but whether it was Corvo’s sister or another relative or duke Theodanis’ officials so long ago they’d cleaned the place out thoroughly of any medicine a thief might take a fancy at. Good of them, but Daud cursed them anyway because he wanted something to do to help - it hurt to admit it but anything was better than to watch than Corvo lying there, almost dead, and Daud hated the thought but he wasn’t good at lying, not to anyone and especially not himself.

Guilt churned like sickness in his gut, claws hooked into his ribs and dragging open Daud’s chest, and he slumped against the bath thoroughly disgusted with himself. He wanted to chew through a mountain of food he didn’t have to cook or pay for, he wanted someone who knew what was going on to take charge, and he wanted to go to sleep and wake with Corvo well again. And he shouldn’t want that, he should want to sit in vigil at Corvo’s bedside with one hand holding his and the fingers of the other pressed to his pulse, always watching for any flicker in his heartbeat.

Void, what a man Corvo had chosen for his lover. Daud looked into the mirror over the sink and laughed at the old ruin of a man staring back, scrubbed at his face with a grimace of a smile - perhaps he should have expected it. Of course an assassin wouldn’t have been put out by the blood and death their lives brought, even if he’d sworn off doing the wetwork himself; this was the real test, and he didn’t think he was doing all that well.

What was Corvo thinking, taking a murderer for his lover?

But no. No. He didn’t wallow. He allowed himself time for the empress to sit and mope, and after Billie betrayed them he gathered up the Whalers and set out to fix his mistake as much as the murder of the one good ruler of the empire and ruining her family could ever be fixed.

Daud, took a breath, held it as he squared his shoulders and met the eyes of his reflection staring back at him, and strode into Corvo’s bedroom. Two hours of being pathetic was enough; Corvo needed care, and Daud would be damned if he’d let himself turn into one of those fops who flapped about uselessly at their sick lover’s bedside.

Boots, first; nearly as old and worn as Daud’s, repaired and re-soled so many times they were barely the same pair anymore, and Daud slid them from Corvo’s feet, left them by the door for when Corvo would wake. Smoothed down Corvo’s socks all full of holes, took off his belt because the few times he’d fallen asleep with it on he complained about the buckle digging into his stomach in the morning. Sword, too - the scabbard hung from the bedpost with the hilt in easy reach. His Whaler coat last, hung from the doorknob, pocket heavy with the weight of a dead woman’s heart who whispered secrets.

Daud pressed his fingers below Corvo’s jaw; his pulse beat steadily, tap tap tapping against the pads of Daud’s fingers, and he bowed his head in thanks to the Outsider. It was probably only by his grace that the weight of the veil torn open in Stilton’s mansion hadn’t killed Corvo there and then, and Daud was many things but ungrateful had never been one of them.

He swallowed all the words he wanted to say, to the Outsider keeping watch there behind the world or to Corvo deathly still there on the bed or maybe even to them both, and kicked off his own boots, shrugged off his own coat as he settled against Corvo’s side. Corvo’s heart was strong, its beat steady beneath Daud’s ear against his ribs, Daud’s hand where it rested on Corvo’s chest.

Corvo would be alright. He would.

-:-

Daud stayed awake through the night, Daud’s head on Corvo’s chest rising and falling with his every breath even and deep, face smoothing out as whatever pain was playing havoc on him slowly bled away.

But Corvo stayed asleep, twitching and mumbling soundlessly in his dreams, and Daud kept himself awake with a cigarette dangling from his fingers; forgetting it in his hand until it burned him and he dropped it into a bowl he’d been using as an ashtray, relighting another, and another, and another all through those long, long hours.

-:-

Daud could compliment empress Jessamine on many, many things. Her daughter, her taste in men, her ability to put up with noble fuckwits who thought all the world was narrowed to whatever was inside their eastate’s walls, as if they were the only people who mattered and everyone else was just so much refuse under their shoes to be scraped off at the door. Mostly, though, he could compliment her on not pissing about and already standing there on the island of stone looking out over the cold expanses of the Void with him, without preamble or ceremony.

“My time is coming to an end,” She said, to Daud and to herself and maybe to the endless Void, too; her voice ringing and clear even through the Void’s winds howling past the eaves of their island’s shelter, that curving stone wall protecting them both from the worst of the cold. “Am I ready to go? I’m tired.”

She hovered the way the Outsider did, glowing soft as a star against the Void’s waters. Her wound was still there, unhealed on her stomach - wet with blood, even after all this time, or maybe in spite of all this time, it was hard to tell with the Void - but she seemed… calm when she turned to him. There was no anger bitter as hatred in her dark eyes, no curled, thinned lips as she studied him awkwardly stood in her shadow, though she had every right to have.

“But Corvo won’t let go of me so easily,” She sighed, and didn’t seem to care when Daud stood beside her, watching a whale swim past a nearby island bright and warm with lamplight, Daud and Corvo and Emily and the Whalers all crowded together at a table, a proper family dinner like the hundreds that had already happened but the grey starting to come into Corvo’s hair bleaching more of his beard, Thomas sat at Daud’s side just starting to show some wrinkles around his smiling eyes. “He won’t let go of you so easily, either. He will look for any way to keep you with him just a little longer, will ask every member of his family if they can help, and in the end you will fall asleep in his arms, his bed, and you will not wake again.”

“And we’ll wait for him,” Daud told her, arms crossed across his chest. “Just because you won’t be able to speak to him after all this doesn’t mean you’ll leave him behind. Neither of us will.”

“You know what will happen.”

“I don’t,” Daud told her, and his fingers itched for another cigarette. “Not really, anyway. But the Outsider told me some, and I can guess the rest. Corvo...”

It wasn’t an easy choice to make, to choose between his empress and his child. Either he let Jessamine go - give up on her there in the pocket over his own heart, under the pillow on his side of the bed so she could murmur to him late at night when he couldn’t sleep and either didn’t know or care that Daud was awake with him - and have a chance at saving Emily, or he let the empire fall to ruin under Delilah’s rule and try to get Emily back without the safety of Delilah’s death.

It was a choice Corvo would make, of course; a choice that Daud knew he would make. There was nothing Corvo wouldn’t do for Emily, no piece of himself he wouldn’t give away just to see her safe, and Daud would be there for him, because being willing to do it didn't mean that giving up parts of himself didn't hurt; didn't make him wake in the middle of the night choking under the weight of all he'd done.

Daud had done it before, after all; taking in a wreckage of a man and helping him put his world back into some sort of order. Maybe he’d need to do it again, another decade down the line, another and another if they lasted that long.

If Corvo survived the night, and Jessamine’s head tilted as Daud grimaced, flicked his hand annoyingly empty of a cigarette; eyes cold and narrowed as she read the secrets of Daud’s heart, listened to the Void whispering in a voice only she and the Outsider could hear.

“He’s safe,” She said, and Daud grimaced at her, too, for reading him so easily, as if Daud should ever be so easy to read, and looked out into the waters of the Void with him, watching a whale drift through the islands of stone and vague futures taking shape. “The Outsider gives his Mark to few, and always expects them to misuse it - as you did. It exhausted him, watching the blood you chose to shed, as it exhausted him all the others. But Corvo surprised him, his kindness of a kind, his mercy and acceptance and love for you; because of it he came to care for Corvo. It is dim, and distant - muffled by the Void - but is is there. The Veil Delilah tore in Stilton's mansion weakened him, but the Void behind it will make him well - you have my word.”

Daud let himself breathe out, because he didn’t like the Outsider, didn’t trust him as far as he could spit, but after so many years by Corvo's side Daud had learned to trust her, her whispers of the black secrets in a nobleman's heart the few times Daud asked for her judgment. She'd yet to be wrong.

"Corvo is safe," Jessamine said again, and stayed quiet by his side for a moment. Watched him staring out into the depths of the Void where pieces of Delilah lurked. “And he loves you,” She said, as if it was a surprise, a revelation, the world shattering under her feet as if she wasn’t hovering over the stone ground of the Void already shattered. “For a long time I never understood why; too angry and bitter. Was I to forgive you what you did, because he saw a man even I couldn’t? Was I to wish him happiness when I could never forget the feel of your blade? Your face as it slid into me?”

Daud looked away.

“You are ashamed of it, Daud,” Jessamine said, and her eyes burned, mouth pressed stubbornly thin. “Here in the beginning and end of all things I can see you, and you bow your head to your sins. Here where everything that has been and everything that will be takes shape I have watched you atone, you and a hundred thousand other Dauds to a hundred thousand other Corvos and Emilys. It is… enough, I think.”

The whale watched them back, its huge, black eye far too human as it swam close to their little shelter. “I didn’t come here for you to forgive me,” Said Daud, arms crossed across his chest. He scuffed the ground with his toe. “I just wanted to know Corvo was safe, that’s all; it’s the only thing the both of us care about. I don’t deserve anything else.”

“I wasn’t looking to forgive you,” Jessamine murmured. “I know you don’t deserve it. But you do deserve understanding. And I do, now - Corvo would have done the same for Emily and I, too. But... I am tired, Daud,” She sighed, and Daud looked away from the misery dark in her eyes, her head bowed by the weight of it. “The Outsider would have spared him the pain, if he could, but for the man who would undo plans years in the making there is no pain Delilah would not cause, even if she doesn't know. My gift, and my curse," She said. "The burden that is not his to carry; he will be glad to be free of the weight eventually. If to be trapped here waiting for Corvo will bring an end to the usurper that has harmed my daughter then there is no fate I would welcome more; but I have a favour to ask of you, first.

"Delilah watches the sunrise from the bedroom I shared with Corvo so long ago, and she smiles at the empire she has at last taken from her dear sister. She does not deserve to watch another."

Chapter Text

The bed was cold when Daud woke, but Corvo was there, black eyes smiling and soft, when he burst into the kitchen with his heart near to hammering out of his chest.

I made coffee, Corvo said, pointing to a percolator that hadn’t been there before, sat beside a mug on the counter. Daud poured himself a cup, warmed his hands on it as he breathed in the steam, took a sip; gritty and thick and bitter, but better than what Billie made, that weak and watery swill left to cool and reheated again and again and again. And I’m fine, before you ask. Just a headache, He said, eyes narrowing as Daud opened his mouth. I’m fine, Daud.

And Daud nodded, too tired to disagree, hiding the shaking of his hands in his grip around the coffee too much to care if Corvo was telling the truth. Only nodded again under Corvo’s gaze waiting for an insistence that wouldn’t come, and the breath he blew across his drink trembled, just a little bit, in relief that Jessamine hadn’t lied to him.

“Alright,” He said, and looked out through the half-open blinds into the street below, cold with the overcast morning but clean, people milling about. Safe from silver dust and being worked to death in the mines. “Alright,” He sighed, and Corvo’s hand was warm when he reached across the table for it, broad and strong and fine-boned, Corvo solid and real and alive in his arms when he pressed up against Corvo’s back where he’d sat on a stool, pressed his face into Corvo’s throat where his pulse beat steady and strong against his lips.

Jessamine hadn’t lied just to spite him, she hadn’t, and Daud murmured his thanks into Corvo’s skin where he knew she would hear, her heart tucked away out of sight and behind the world in the pocket on his chest. Corvo was alright, and he breathed out the tension tight in his shoulders, squeezed Corvo close and pressed a kiss to his throat just to feel his heartbeat again, again and again and again even when Daud’s stubble scraped the thin skin raw, Corvo’s beard itching against his cheek.

Corvo was alright, and he’d known he was going to be, would have made him alright come hell or high water or the Outsider’s infinite ire, but...

It was nice for it to be real, now. More real than the word of a murdered woman’s soul made it, anyway, and they stayed there for a long while; locked together, Corvo pressing back into the tight hold, big hand warmed from his own cup of coffee gentle on Daud’s, turning his head just enough to kiss Daud in return.

Thank you, Corvo said, mouthing the words into his skin, and Daud cleared his throat as he stepped back and leaned against the counter, picked up his coffee.

“Don’t worry about it,” Daud told him, and winced at how his voice scraped raw out his throat. Cleared it, coughed into his fist, said, “It was nothing you haven’t done for me,” And rubbed his face with a sigh just to pretend he hadn’t seen Corvo’s retort that a small stab wound wasn’t the same as a coma. “We should get back to the ship soon,” He murmured; grimaced at the way that sounded, heavy and slow with reluctance, the ache just starting to twist into life behind his ribs wanting to stay far away from that leaky old tub out past the harbour.

They needed to get back to Dunwall soon, before Delilah entrenched herself more deeply, but he stared around Corvo’s tiny apartment, that two bedroom and narrow kitchen tucked away they stood in shoebox of a home, and something low in his gut pulled. Looked to Corvo’s black eyes bruised by exhaustion, skinny frame just starting to edge back into gaunt; all skin clinging to bone and too-loose shirts again, hollowed out and tired and old, damn it - the both of them were.

What was stopping them from abandoning Jindosh to Billie’s mercy, and living out here instead? Just until Corvo stopped looking like an imitation of the ghost of a man Daud had rescued from Coldridge, shadows between his ribs where healthy meat should be and too beaten down for the bright, feral spark to burn in his eyes. The idea of it was there, after all, in Corvo sat at the table nursing his own cup of coffee, greying beard more ragged than usual, the wrinkles carved deep and harsh in his face darker than ever in the gentle, warm lamplight as he winced and rubbed the fading bands of scars around his wrists. 

Daud sipped his coffee. Corvo would never listen - would never rest when there was his daughter to save, first, no matter what he did to himself doing it. And Daud would warn him, and Corvo would ignore the warning, and the next time he collapsed in a mansion’s courtyard Daud would be there to catch him and hurry him to the nearest safe shelter as always. Corvo did the same, there at his side to drag him to the Royal Physician whenever a troublesome noble had a fruit knife hidden up his sleeve, or unusually dutiful, keen-eyed guards swarming his estate’s grounds and corridors.

So he shook the thoughts away, looked to Corvo’s hands tapping the table for attention. I’ll meet you there, Corvo said, and there was something raw and bleeding deep in the darkness of his eyes, an old wound on his heart that had never healed. There’s something I want to look into first. Before we make a move on Abele.

“You want to know if Jessamine can be saved.”

I’m going to try.

Daud grimaced into his drink, took Corvo’s hand to quiet him, rubbed his thumb across the tendons standing out through his skin. “I know. Just… Don’t get your hopes up. Please. I don’t-” He shook his head, downed the last of his coffee gone cold in the mug. “She said her time’s coming to end, Corvo. She came to talk to me last night. Said that she’s happy to go as long as Delilah is dealt with. You’ve done enough for her.”

I’m going to try, Daud, Corvo repeated, and Daud kissed away the wrinkle carved deep and dark and unhappy on his brow as he passed by.

“Then take all the time you need,” Daud told him, and Corvo’s harsh face eased, eyes softening until even the raw, decade old wound Daud had left on his heart wasn’t quite so raw, was almost starting to heal properly. “I needed to ask Meagan what she knows about the duke’s mansion, anyway. I’ll wait for you.”

-:-

Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised him when, after Sokolov picked him up in the skiff, Daud shouldered his way into the cargo hold for a cup of Billie’s terrible coffee and she was hunched low behind the newspaper, two arms and two eyes but her scowl at Jindosh on the other side of the table just the same.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a greater surprise that something eased in Daud’s chest that rescuing Stilton and half of Karnaca from Delilah’s ritual had saved even Billie.

Daud shook the thought away, closed the cargo doors behind him as Jindosh looked up from whatever invention he was experimenting on with a smile, thin and cold. “Master Daud, alive and well,” He said. “I suppose my stun mine worked as intended, and didn’t shock you? I gave you my word I would help you, after all, and what would I be if I was not as good as my word?”

“Dead,” Billie grunted, and Jindosh turned his raptor’s smile on her.

Daud ignored their sniping at each other, settled stiffly on his seat as he warmed his hands on his cup. He was losing patience for the both of them, irritation and insults curling hot inside his throat, aching to be spat bitter as venom just to shut them up for ten Void-damned minutes , but Jindosh, at least, had been mildly helpful, and had yet to slit their throats, so Daud was feeling charitable enough to ignore them.

Just a few more weeks, he thought, though it sounded a little more like a prayer. A few more weeks on the leaky, groaning Dreadful Wale, and they would be in Dunwall, back with the Whalers whose Arcane Bonds were still strong, each thread in the web spanning out from his unbroken, and they would have Delilah dealt with. Daud back in his place with the Spymaster’s coat on his shoulders and Corvo pulling uncomfortably at the collar of his dark shirts, a proper bed to return to at the end of the way that wouldn’t leave aches in his neck.

Easy enough to get rid of Abele. There was no ignoring his mansion where it blighted the proud jut of the headland into the sea, cold and sharp and open, courtyard unwalled and the walls bold glass; daring any assassin to come calling. Outside, at least; perhaps the awful architecture would cause problems inside, leaving Corvo a rat clinging to a curtain rail and Daud uncomfortably wedged into the tiny space between bookcase and ceiling.

Daud closed his eyes as Jindosh leaned back in his chair, delight bright in his narrow face as Billie slammed the paper down. “Enough,” Daud said, and that, apparently, was enough to make them both of them quiet, though victory still glittered smug and cold in Jindosh’s dark eyes. “Abele’s mansion, is there anything I should know?”

“Unfortunately for you,” Said Jindosh, turning back to the tiny little machine on the table, “I was never invited into his home. More the pity - for him, less so myself. The duke fancied himself something of an architect, you see - razed the old Grand Palace to the ground and designed his new home himself. He claimed it was a ‘new look for a new age’, though from what patrons and commissioners blather on about during meetings he has ushered in a particularly ugly, gaudy age.” Jindosh shuddered delicately. “Yes,” He said, “I’m afraid you and your Lord Protector will have to brave the delights of Luca Abele’s vision for the future all alone.”

Wonderful.

Jindosh’s head tilted, eyes narrowed. “Though,” He murmured, and smiled at Billie scowling into the newspaper, “Perhaps you can ask our mutual friend for assistance - he certainly dislikes the duke enough to help again. Unless- Did your meeting with him go well? I do hope so, Stilton is one of my most steady sources of income, even if the problems he asks my help to solve are so trivial I fix them over afternoon tea. I would so hate to lose him.”

“Corvo and I learned enough,” Daud told him, and took a sip of his cooled coffee. Cleared his throat. “We know… We know enough to start planning, but for now he’s looking into alternatives. He’s not sure the price for Delilah’s soul is worth paying for, not the way it needs to be captured.”

“Is he?” Billie muttered, and something twisted inside her eyes as she glared over the paper, deep and dark as an old hurt. Anger, as if she had a right to know what they were doing, what Corvo was going to give up for his daughter, a right to know the secret heavy as a dead lover’s heart on his soul  when she refused to offer the secret just as heavy on hers. “Can’t imagine what kind of alternatives he needs for destroying this effigy.”

“Then don’t,” Said Daud, and he gathered up his cup of cold coffee to throw it into the sink in the kitchen, “Because I don’t know what to tell you, and he wouldn’t want you to know. Just be ready to move on Abele when he gives the word.”

Was there hurt, in Billie’s eyes? Still familiar from when she’d been young, a new Whaler newer still to the Arcane Bond but begging, even so, to come on jobs with him, left behind there in his ruin of an office with that stinging pain on her soul? Maybe not, maybe it was only the anger that he was leaving her behind again and again and again, closing the cargo hold doors in her face as he left to watch the overcast skies from the deck, ignoring the offer of peace that the opening of her ship to him was because shivering into the cold wind watching the clouds was easier than the hurt still aching inside his chest when he saw her face.

And maybe if it was only his secrets Daud would tell them, if only so she wouldn't ask. But they weren’t his secrets to tell, and maybe Billie could be trusted to keep Corvo’s, guilt and shame a decade old keeping them buried for decades more, but trust was a two way street and for as long as she lied every time she introduced herself as Meagan Foster she didn’t deserve to know. She didn’t deserve to listen to Jessamine speak, absolution for her murder offered in payment for help in securing her daughter’s reign, her husband’s happiness.

Billie Lurk had helped kill the empress, and Meagan Foster was helping to save another. They weren’t the same woman, and if she was honest in making amends she would kill Billie Lurk once and for all and drop the body at Corvo’s feet. Daud knew there wasn’t acceptance in anything less.

Chapter Text

Another storm rolled in, dark and heavy in the sky; sweeping across the water from Dunwall to the southern ice sheets, it seemed, and Daud watched it boil and seethe from the Dreadful Wale’s deck, listening to the ship groan and wheeze as the choppy waves beat against the rusted hull. The icy southern wind caught the smoke of his cigarette dangling over the creaking rail where the dark waters churned with anger, flinging it out across the waves with the falling ash, and Daud took a drag, held it a moment as he watched it burn slowly down to his fingers.

Watched Corvo carving whalebone across the deck, jaw clenched, fingers around his small knife white as the pieces of bone he shaved away, scowl dark as the stormclouds.

He’d found nothing. A hundred aunts and uncles and grandparents, cousins and nieces and nephews, branches of the tree so remote the gifts given by their blood were so minor they’d almost forgotten they had them. No one had an answer for the problem sat heavy in Corvo’s pocket, thumb rubbing across dead flesh in the only caress he could offer as he set down his knife and told Jessamine for the thousandth time that he loved her, that he would not lock her away forever in the Void, a lost spirit among thousands waiting for a partner to find them.

And Outsider’s eyes had he tried. Books and scrolls scattered through the cargo hold, or found and read by moonlight in nobleman’s houses and Overseers’ headquarters. A hundred thousand rituals written out and tossed to the sea to be eaten by the oceans’ hungry water. Lists of family members who could have helped, whittled down one after another as he either found them dead or found himself unwilling to put them in danger. Thought of ways to rip out the heart already housing Delilah’s soul and turning it against her - every trap had a release, Corvo said, he just had to find it; he’d been certain that there was a wire he could snip, a lever to pull and pop, the heart would release the soul.

Daud didn’t know enough to really help. Suggested using a lizard’s heart, or a rat’s - Delilah was easily either, or both, and it was easier to get than a pig’s or an ox’s - but no. A human soul was too big, even a piece torn away from the whole would just burn through it, if it even left for it in the first place. Suggested burning the effigy and the heart inside it, it would retreat to the closest whole it could and Delilah would know, would just house elsewhere. Suggested just throwing the effigy into the deepest, coldest waters off of Tyvia and killing Delilah’s body anyway, because what use was a soul without one? But that was no guarantee she would stay lost forever, and even a hundred years, a thousand, with her missing was too little for comfort.

He huffed a laugh, shook his head; The Outsider had said the price for Delilah’s soul was steep, weeks before the question had ever been asked.

Daud took another drag of his cigarette, closed his eyes against the pressure of the smoke inside his chest; it just didn’t seem fair that Jessamine was getting the short end of the stick again, her heart in Corvo’s hand the only thing they could really use unless they wanted to murder the first poor woman to cross their paths. Ground out the cigarette beneath his boot before it started singeing his fingers, rubbed his face because there was no easy answer, no help that Daud could give when he knew nothing of magic outside his Mark, the small scraps the Outsider had offered.

But there was one problem he could fix, even if Corvo hated it, another upset on a mountain of upsets, and Daud left his post for the wheelhouse a floor up, squeezing Corvo’s shoulder as he passed and lingering, just a moment, to let Corvo take his hand and squeeze back. Up the stairs, those two flights that made Sokolov grumble into his soup every evening, and there; he tapped his knuckles against the rails, and Billie whirled around at the hollow ring of it.

The lines at the corners of her dark eyes, carved on her forehead and between her brows, didn’t ease. Her lips pulled as Daud stood beside her, studying the familiar sharp lines of her in an unfamiliar woman, her name foreign in his mouth even as an ache pulling at Daud’s guts pulled a little less each time he looked at her and she still had her two eyes, her two arms.

“I know what you’re going to say,” She said; didn’t look when Daud sighed, just rubbed her thumb along the rough calluses on the side of her hand where the bolster of a Whaler’s sword had been familiar, once. “And no, I’m not going to tell him. It’s not the right time - you should know that better than anyone.”

“Is there a right time?” Daud demanded, and grit his teeth against anger crawling up his throat, oily and thick - clenched his hands into fists at his sides against the urge to just throttle some sense into her and be done with the whole mess. “Yes, Corvo’s upset right now. Yes, he’s going to lose something important to him just for the chance to get rid of Delilah. But he’s going to be furious with you whatever you do, whenever you tell him. I told you before, get it out of the way now.”

Her jaw tightened, and something black in Daud’s chest settled at the fury starting to spark in her eyes, something that Billie had wounded satisfied that she was being wounded in turn now, too, or at least will be wounded. Bitten and torn by Corvo’s anger, the stabbing pain of betrayal returned to her as Corvo hissed and snarled as Daud said he would. Because Daud had let her put it off and put it off, accepted however reluctantly that he had no right anymore to tell her what to do, but it was Corvo she was hurting more in the end and Daud would not stand for that.

If nothing else Corvo would be furious, and Daud could handle his fury. It was better Corvo bare his wolf’s teeth and snarl voicelessly through his ruined throat and flex his lethal cat’s claws than to watch him be gutted all over again by Jessamine’s final death, hollowed out and bleeding and split open for everyone to see; chest blown open and the space where his heart should be left empty by Jessamine’s loss all over again, as if the Outsider enjoyed watching Corvo become a ruin in his grief.

Better for Daud, too, for Corvo to be angry, than to wonder what he’d do without Jessamine between them. He’d grown used to her there, in Corvo’s thoughts, his heart.

Far below, out on the deck, Corvo give up on his carving, abandoning his knife and the whalebone on his seat and loping to the ship’s railing - watching the stormclouds as if he’d like to burst out of his human skin and fly in them for a little while, buffeted by wind and rain and thrown off course, flung far out to sea so that it would a while to make his way home again. A while before he’d have to lose his empress all over again.

Daud grit his teeth, squared his shoulders. “I’ve had enough,” He told Billie, and hated the ache in his chest, love for her still like a rat burrowed into his chest, gnawing away on his bones until the teeth marks would never smooth away. Hated even more the wideness of Billie’s eyes when she turned to him, surprise in the set of her mouth, as if he hadn’t warned her to do it on her own terms. “I’ve waited for you to do it on your own for weeks now, told you time and time again that waiting will make it worse. I’ve had enough - you’ll tell him who you are now, or I will.”

Billie looked to Corvo, there at the railings of the deck with his head bowed to the north where Dunwall waited, where his daughter had been born and raised and where Jessamine had been laid to rest with a tiny, rough-carved crow under her hand. Where Emily still waited, the Whalers, their home in Dunwall Tower of a single room with a single bed and two desks side by side messy with papers, Daud’s jackets hung up by Corvo’s coats, their shirts and socks so muddled together there was no telling whose was whose. Beautiful in the dark storm light, as haggard and old and striking as Serkonos’ sea-cliffs, feral and wild and strange but his kisses sweet.

She sighed, rubbed her mouth as she watched him. Looked to Daud unyielding and unsympathetic, Corvo’s lover of twelve years against every odd. “He really does love you,” She said; something low in her voice, but Daud couldn’t read it.

He’d never really been very good at reading her, had he? He’d have known she was going to betray him to the Overseers if he was. But then, what would he have done if he knew? He loved her too much to kill her, even now, even if he had to. Angry as he was with her, hurt and wounded and grieving for what could have been his daughter given enough time, he still loved her.

Daud looked out the window, his gut twisting as it always did at the sight of her face, different and older than it had been when she’d been by his side, in his shadow. She was not his Billie, and his loyalty was not to her. “He does,” Said Daud, “And because of it I’m not going to betray him another day by believing you when you tell me that today isn’t right. He deserves better than that, after what we put him through. After what Burrows and Coldridge did to him.”

Billie turned on him, whirling around the small cabin. “Don’t I deserve better?” She said, anger bright in the lamplight gleaming along her bared teeth. “I’ve been in exile, Daud. You put me in exile.” Billie hissed, a demand in the way she turned on him, hatred and hurt bitter as venom in her voice when she said, “Isn’t it enough that I’ve changed over these twelve years? Isn’t it enough I’ve served the empire, in my own way? Isn’t it enough that I’ve helped him now ?”

“It’s not for me to say,” Daud told her, risked a glance and grit his teeth against the ache high in his chest, love and anger and resentment and the desperate want to take her back under his wings, for her to be his Billie again. Such a mess he’d made of things. “Ask Corvo, because he’s going to find out sooner or later who you are, what you did. He already knows you aren’t who you say you are.” He looked away again, crossed his arms and hated himself for not thinking to keep his cigarette with him, even if it had been burned nearly to the filter.

Swallowed, but didn’t know if he was swallowing resentment at the corner she’d pushed him into or just platitudes, soft words to ease the new hurts he leaving on her soul.

“He asked about the day I killed the empress, once,” Daud murmured. “And I told him. All of it, everything.” Daud’s fingers itched for a cigarette. He crossed his arms, swallowed again. “I told him that for the Whalers I’d do it again, even knowing what it would do to me. Maybe because of what it would do, I don’t know.” He looked to her, there at his side, fury burning hot and dark in Billie’s familiar eyes in Meagan’s unfamiliar face, teeth gritted, head twisted away in shame. “He said thank you.”

The storm rumbled, quiet and distant.

“Tell him the truth,” Daud told her. “If you aren’t Billie Lurk, tell him the truth. You owe him that much.”

Chapter Text

The whalebone in Corvo’s hand gleamed under the storm’s sickly light, singing with its distant, muted song, though the tune was too muffled for Daud to hear what it could do. It was becoming clearer, though, with every layer Corvo shaved away; knife gleaming in his hand, curved and cold and sharp. He scratched out a symbol, and the song got louder and the lines darkened in a way that made Corvo… not relax but ease, a little - letting out a little sigh as he got to work refining it.

Fitting, Daud supposed, that the sky sat heavy and dark, the storm’s shadow cast long and deep across Karnaca and its waters. Must be the Outsider enjoying the show; there was his laughter in the wind sweeping across the Dreadful Wale’s deck, his delight in the dark waves churning and beating against the hull.

Corvo scraped away another layer of bone with the hooked blade, head tilted to listen, and used the point to deepen the rune he’d scratched out, dropping those little chips and curls of bone to the floor. The bonecharm was small; flat as the runes on the Outsider’s shrine but not much larger than Daud’s thumbnail, and shrinking quickly. Such a small little thing to sing so loudly, now, and shrinking smaller still as Corvo rounded out its edges, deepened the rune he’d carved until its lines darkened in a way that made the corner of his lips lift in triumph.

Such little things they both were in the shadow of the Outsider’s attention, but if Corvo heard him laughing there in the Void he didn’t show it, patiently working on the bonecharm.

Daud rubbed Corvo’s shoulder, that lean line of muscle below his coat gone tight and hard as iron when Daud told him Billie was finally, finally going to tell him the truth. About who she was, who she had been, why Daud was so, so, so angry with her that he was sick with it, love and hate and his own self-loathing muddied together into some bitter poison crawling up his throat, a snake crushing his heart in its oil-slick coils.

Daud had told him of Billie Lurk - that angry young woman brought in from the streets the way all of the Whalers had been, rewarding Daud’s care by betraying them to the Overseers - but he hadn’t been able to tell him the whole truth, hadn’t been allowed to explain why he spoke so harshly to Meagan Foster, who’d helped them so far; not when it was Billie’s place to do that.

Corvo had understood, thumb stroking gently across the back of Daud’s hand. Nodded when Daud had nothing else he was allowed to say; he’d been honest about the things Meagan Foster was holding from him, the things that Daud had shared just to spite her, though he wasn’t all that certain if his spite was because he loved her just a little less than he thought he did, or hated her a little more. Wondered if he’d held back from tying Meagan to Billie because he wanted to hear her say it. Wanted to hear her admit to the sins weighing heavy on her soul, old guilt rusted black as the dried blood on her hands from the dead Whalers’ she’d helped murder.

His gut still pulled, tight with nausea, when she slipped through the doors and trotted across the deck, pulling her coat tight around her shoulders against the biting wind starting to howl across the churning water. Perhaps he did still love her, at least enough to keep Billie Lurk a decade in the past. Perhaps it was just his love for Corvo, tensing a little more under his hand, pressing into Daud’s palm; his heart tightened a little then, too.

“Lord Protector,” Billie murmured, and her gaze caught on the blade in Corvo’s hand, curved and sharp and hard as his Pandyssian cat’s claws. Her throat bobbed with a swallow, eyes pleading when they met Daud’s but if she was expecting mercy, if she were begging him to call it off and give her more days to order her words, then Daud shook his head and disappointed her. “I...” She swallowed again - looked to Karnaca sheltered in the bay, envy in the anxious fumble of her fingers as though desperate to snatch at a sword whose weight hadn’t been hung from her hip in all the long weeks they’d been on her ship, run away with its edge wet with blood again. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

Daud said.

Billie let out a breath, nodded as she looked to her hands. Brushed her hair back from her face. “I thought he had. I…” She squared her shoulders, met Corvo’s flat, impassive gaze. “I respect you, Corvo. Before anything else you need to know that. I’d thought the stories from the plague were exaggerated, what you and Daud did during those months, but…”

Far across the water Karnaca glowed, soft and gentle in the shelter of Shindaerey Peak and the curve of its jungle foothills and the calmer blue waters of the bay. The Crown Killer had disappeared as quickly as it had come, its people said. Jindosh had stopped making the clockworks, and without him they fell apart; the Grand Guard only made of men again, and men could be beaten. The Howlers had given their thanks by making Batista safe again, protected from the worst of the nobles’ abuses because Paolo knew the worst and best of the world and he might have been hard and harsh, but he was fair, and he was friends with Stilton who ran the mines with kindness.

The bloodflies were weak with hunger, their nests made small without quite so many bodies to build from. Duke Abele had pulled official funding from the smoke-flash crews; Stilton and the fortune he didn’t seem to know what to do with kept them going.

”The two of you have turned Karnaca on its head without spilling a single drop of blood,” Billie said. “Void, you’ve turned the whole world on its head. Things haven’t been so hopeful here in years because of you. People are out in the streets again with the Howlers keeping the peace, and you’ve done it without bloodshed and I… I respect that, because I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Things that would get me arrested in Abbey confession.”

Daud told me that, too, Said Corvo, and his mouth had pressed thin, the harsh lines of his face carved deeper.

Billie nodded, looked to her fingers still twitching where a sword would hang, and met Corvo’s dark gaze. “My name is Billie Lurk,” She said, and she stood tall under the weight of Corvo’s dark eyes, stood firm against the threat in the shift in the muscles of his sword arm, the flex of his fingers around the hilt of his carving knife. “Twelve years ago I was a part of the Whalers, and I took part in the murder of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin on the orders of Royal Spymaster Hiram Burrows. It’s not anything I can apologise for, and I don’t think you’d want that, anyway, but you deserve the truth.”

The Mark burned, Bond screaming across the space between them; Daud stepped back, and wondered what the ache in his chest was when Corvo lunged, fur and feather and white, gleaming teeth flashing in the twisting shadows of him as he blurred across the deck; voiceless hiss rattling in his broken throat, louder than Billie’s cry as she fell hard against the floor, frozen beneath the touch of Corvo’s claws to her throat.

His hiss rattled again, sharp ears flat to his skull as he settled - a wolf and a Pandyssian cat mangled together, too many teeth bared in his hound’s snarling jaws, long cat’s tail lashing harsh and sharp as a whip as his black crows’ feathers bristled like hackles; fury and hate and old wounds shadowed in his black eyes; violence an honest threat in the press of his curved cat’s claws into her skin, blood welling bright against those bone-white talons.

Billie tucked her chin over her throat, turned her head away; her voice wobbled when she said, “I’m sorry, Corvo. For what I did. For lying to you.”

Corvo’s claws flexed, just the once, and he shoved himself away, whirling across the deck a man baring his wolf’s teeth, flexing his lethal cat’s claws. Oh you’re sorry? Daud said for him, though didn’t bother trying to sound angry; the sharp slash of his words did that well enough. You’re sorry for murdering my wife, you’re sorry for kidnapping my daughter, you’re sorry you killed our Whalers because the Overseers weren’t as reasonable as you thought they were? Well that’s fucking wonderful isn’t it!

He stalked across the deck, huffing and hissing and teeth bared in a snarl he couldn’t voice, footsteps echoing as Daud retreated to the railing; eyes locked on Corvo’s hands for when he’d speak again but unwilling to interfere, unwilling even more to watch Billie stumble to her feet, shrinking a little in on herself as she touched the scratches on her throat and stared at her fingers wet with blood.

Was it surprise in her eyes, or just fear? Probably not - she’d grown out of fear long before she took up shelter in Daud’s shadow, the favourite of his favourites. Perhaps it was just anger sparking dry and hot, burning through whatever patience she had; her hands tightened into fists at her sides, a challenge in the daring lift of her chin. She’d always been quick to it, not quite Corvo’s sudden bursts of it but frustration building into fury - rising heat that drew her up, made her brave when it would have been wiser to be a coward.

She’d have certainly been wise to back down now, alone against a wolf of a man still wounded and raw by the hurts she’d caused, and without Daud to intervene this time.

But if she’d been wise then they wouldn’t be in this mess, and Daud took out a cigarette, fingers trembling as he struck the match, as Corvo shoved her against the wall before she could dare say those words again, the truth she’d lashed out with weeks ago.

“Don’t,” Daud warned her, and Corvo’s hiss rattled in agreement, Mark burning bright and hot, the Bond humming with power as Daud’s glowed in shared anger. “I rescued him from Coldridge, I found where Burrows was keeping Emily and I took him to her. I’ve been the Royal Spymaster for ten years.” The smoke burned inside his chest, and Daud held it a few moments, let his irritation go with it when he breathed out; it wouldn’t do anyone any good for all three of them to be spitting furious. “I didn’t run away from the mess I made. I didn’t change my name and pretend to be someone else. I didn’t demand Corvo to forgive me just because he’s forgiven Thomas and Rulfio.”

Corvo shoved himself away again. Fuck this! He said, flinging his hands to the air. I’m going; I’ve had enough. He scooped up his sword in its scabbard where he’d left it by his chair, jerked the belt through the buckle as he shoved it on his hip. I’m going to the Grand Palace. Daud, get her ready to sail us back to Dunwall when I give the word, and ask Sokolov and Jindosh to make some more stun mines, you-…

He slowed, and there was something almost soft in his strange, harsh face. Something tired as his shoulders slumped beneath the weight on them, love for Jessamine and Daud and his daughter, his duty to them all, hanging heavy around his neck. The wind quieted, a little, the churning waters smoothing out; even the Outsider couldn’t take joy in that, in Corvo weary and tired, beard grey, old before his time even as his body stayed strong, magic slowing the wear and tear of fifty years.

His grip was gentle when Daud reached for his hand, held his cigarette between his lips to free his hands enough to ask, Do you want me to do it?

No, Corvo said, immediate and certain. No, you’ve done enough for me - more than enough. I’ve been an ungrateful fucking bastard these last few weeks; you deserve a break from me, and… He looked to Billie, mouth thinning as he sighed. Jessamine deserves rest, too. And you deserve not to be reminded of her all the time. Not because of me and this fucking Heart. He stepped back, rubbed his mouth as Billie watched them, brows low over her dark eyes, mouth set stubbornly. Tell her she’s not forgiven, He said. That an apology won’t get rid of her past or make anyone forget what happened. That if she’s actually sorry she’ll live the rest of her life with it the way you do.

He was a crow, then; fluttering up to Daud’s shoulder to settle just a moment before he flung himself out across the water, a tiny shadow against the sky as the storm’s winds carried him to the Grand Palace blighting its place on that headland reaching into the sea.

Chapter Text

The storm broke as the day wore on, Karnaca and the Dreadful Wale on the fading edges of its bay sheltered from the worst of it but still muted by the endless, droning beating of the wind and waves and rain. By night it eased, and by morning it broke again, raging with the Outsider’s fury or maybe just Delilah’s fury; the Void she’d claimed as hers was sickly, pale - choked by the twisting vines and trees she’d grown from the islands, and they creaked and groaned with the howling winds her rage stirred up.

She’d hissed and spat and told her sad story as if Daud hadn’t heard a hundred like them from the Whalers she’d killed, her history as the illegitimate, unwanted daughter of a nobleman father and her mother dead in a debtor’s prison as common as any of the children’s who’d found shelter in his ranks.

Did she want pity? She refused to be pitiable if she did, sharp as broken glass as she hurled insults and history long buried. Did she want him afraid of her, that fierce, spiteful thing bowed but unbroken, rising from rubbish and refuse until she commanded pieces of the Void itself, defied death? There’d have to be something worth being afraid of for that, and for all her power she wasn’t all that intimidating, at least in the Void that refused her, where it could. Unwilling to turn on Daud. Did she want understanding? She had a strange way of going about it.

Daud had no sympathy for her if she wanted any of that, not when Corvo’s history was worse and Daud’s worse still.

And maybe the Outsider’s affection for Corvo carried over - or perhaps he was just unwilling to dare risk Corvo’s anger if he failed to protect him - but her strange Void was rare in his dreams. More often it was the Outsider’s more familiar lands sturdy beneath his feet, quiet and calm and almost lovely without the Outsider hovering and spouting nonsense. It was almost nice, wandering the Void’s endless wastes, idly enjoying the other path his world could have taken; the Bond humming quietly as in another world he watched it be severed forever and he and Emily were left alone against the empire, bitter and angry at anything and everything and itching to use that to put an end to the usurper.

The few times Delilah dragged him back to her twisted world the ruff of feathers around her shoulders puffed out even more, irritation belied by such a familiar little tell Daud couldn’t help but to smile, and only irritating her more as he smirked. A small victory, Daud thought, turning his sword over and over in his hand as the storm picked up - unable to sleep in his empty bed with his empty heart, the rain hammering hard and merciless against the hull.

He sat alone in the dark as Billie paced the hallway outside, soft footsteps echoing loud as she paused by the door and pushed off again, again and again and again. Indecisive, anxious. As afraid as she never had been before, glancing into every shadow deep and dark in the cargo hold over silent, stilted meals, and unwilling to disturb the man who’d stepped back and stared at the blood bright against her dark skin. He’d made her unafraid, before; made her bold and bright enough she slipped into his office to diligently deliver reports or the Whalers’ cut of jobs no matter the hour, as trusting of him as she’d never let herself be for anyone else.

He didn't tell her that Corvo wasn't in, only stroked the fishscale patterning along his sword’s blade, rough against the pads of his fingers, testing the edge for chips and rolls with his thumbnail. Half surprised that his fingers didn’t come away wet with an empress’ blood, and more surprised still that it wasn’t still wet with blood in defence of an empress, slashing through the throat of a Grand Guardsman who hadn’t quite expected the old Wolf of Dunwall to still have teeth.

Looked to the porthole closed and secure against the storm howling across the water, rubbing his mouth as he wondered whether the rain making puddles and the wind flapping the crates’ canvas coverings and the awful chill brought with it would be worth leaving it open for Corvo. Swallowed anxiety sat hard and unmoving in his throat as he hoped Corvo had found warm shelter somewhere in Karnaca, and huffing a laugh to himself as he decided Corvo was probably sleeping in the Grand Palace, curled up safe and warm in some dusty hollow in the attic, quietly lonely.

Daud laughed. A melancholic old dog fearing for his reckless, extraordinary lover; he’d take any victory he could get.

-:-

Sokolov set a place for Corvo every evening, and his eyes were knowing when Corvo didn’t show but Daud took his share to their room, because he wasn’t gone, that week. Not really, anyway.

Billie kept her eyes on the sky and Jindosh worked at Sokolov’s side in their makeshift little lab, thin mouth pressed even thinner to hold all the questions he wouldn’t get answers for behind his teeth, and Daud was the only one to see him. The only one Corvo let see him where Daud spent his mornings smoking on the deck, watching the sunrise beneath clouds hanging dark and low.

A crow curving through the air, riding high on the blustering sea wind blowing in from the south, thermals rising hot from the water. A shadow in the sea, curling beneath the white-capped waves huge and long and serpentine - forcing his body into a shape that didn’t exist because that agony in his bones was easier to bear than betrayal. A rat climbing through the porthole Daud left open for him, sometimes a wolfhound to fit himself under Daud’s chin, fur stinking of wet dog and sea water, and sometimes just a man sat stiff and stern in the chair by the desk, black eyes cool and flat in the mask of his face, asking about the woman Daud had once been proud to call his daughter.

And sometimes - not often, but sometimes - it was just Corvo, curled around a dead woman’s heart as he pressed his lips to that thing of wires and dead flesh and told her everything he had no voice to say. Corvo who stayed quiet as they sat side-by-side on the narrow bed, and who held Daud’s hand or sharpened his gifted sword; no judgment in his harsh, weathered face as Daud shared in bits and pieces the things he’d never needed to say, about those awful few months after he’d murdered the empress and wondered whether it would have been better if he’d been killed for it; kinder, when his body would have spared Corvo Coldridge, the Whalers Bille's coup. Corvo who tucked his face into Daud’s throat and murmured a love he couldn’t voice to him, too, even with all the sins black on his soul, the blood he’d spilled an ocean crossed in spite of everything.

Just Corvo, half-falling through the window and flinging his Jessamine’s heart black and corrupted under the sink where it hissed insults at them both, Delilah’s voice cold as the howling winds of Tyvia; gathering Daud close and murmuring into the space between them that Daud was forgiven, that the blood rusted black on his hands was washed away by the waters of the Void where Jessamine was at peace, a lone star shining into the dark as she waited, patient, for her love to come home.

Just Corvo, sat with him as gutted and torn open as he; pressing his forehead to Daud’s in the shadows deep and dark of their little room on a liar’s ship, hand curling gentle around the back of his neck as Daud breathed out a tension he’d held since he’d killed the empress and wondered what to do with the empty space left behind where guilt had been.

Chapter Text

The sun rose, and fell, and Corvo was still there when Daud woke. Looked over from where he stood by the sink with a smile, small and sad, as he buttoned up his shirt and settled his sword on his hip, said for Daud to dress too. Brought him to the skiff and drove halfway across the water before Billie’d even noticed the roar of the motor. Daud didn’t ask why - he didn’t need to know, and something in Corvo’s eyes, glittering and urgent in the evening’s pale light, said he’d find out soon enough.

Past the docks where a team of butchers were packing away the last of the slabs of meat carved from a whale carcass, strips hung from ceilings to be salted and dried locked away in smokehouses as workers headed home. Crept further and further into the city, streets narrowed and dark, dirty, narrowing further still. But it was easier, too; the Grand Guard and the Abbey didn’t care to patrol the streets of lowly workers whose hard, harsh faces softened a little from suspicion when they called out a greeting and Daud answered them in kind.

And neither of them wore a uniform, had standard-issue weapons on their hips and used them just because they could; didn’t stop and shoot when a little old woman tottering down the street pulled out a piece of whalebone carved into a tiny leviathan and pressed her wrinkled lips to it, murmuring a prayer. He and Corvo weren’t there for them, and the workers knew it - allowed them to pass by, faces peering out from grimy windows and eyes following but no more threatening than that.

Under clouds hanging heavy and dark but the promise of a sunset at the edges of the world Daud followed, and in a small square shoved up against Batista’s sheer cliffs Corvo slowed; stopped in the pass between two apartment buildings quietly crumbling away. Bowed his head a moment to the alleyway yawning dark all around them, fingers indecisively tapping out the beat of the gentle song two performers were singing far behind them.

Slowly, he turned, and sat on some abandoned crates, gesturing for Daud to draw close but head still hanging - refusing to meet Daud’s eyes.

I’ve been thinking, He said, and Daud studied the lines tight around Corvo’s lovely mouth, his eerie eyes. The tension held tight in his shoulders, the stiffness of his fingers as he spoke. Anxiety swallowed with a click of his throat. We need to go against Delilah. Soon. He grimaced a little, spared Daud a glance just beneath his lashes. And I...

Daud said nothing. Corvo licked his lips, scuffed his palms on the knees of his trousers. How long have we been together, Daud, He said, Twelve years? It’s a long time. We’re old, we can’t- He sighed, harsh and short through his teeth, and started poking through his pockets. I’m selfish, He told Daud, in between his rummaging, I can’t help thinking something’s going to go wrong - something always goes tits up with this kind of thing - and I don’t-

From his pocket Corvo pulled out a ring, held out for Daud to look while Corvo watched, anxiety glittering in his dark eyes. He breathed out again, short and harsh through his nose. I love you, Corvo said, licked his lips as Daud took the ring from his palm. Just as much as I loved Jess. And I’m… I’m afraid, I’m fucking terrified of Delilah. I’m afraid for you. We’re old men, Daud, we’ve done well here but... Once was enough, and if I lose you, I don’t know what I… Corvo shook his head. It’s just a little charm, really - nothing special. He coughed into his fist, licked his lips again as he watched Daud turn over the little ring to stare at it at another angle. It’ll protect you from anything fatal. Once; after that it needs time to recharge. If she tries anything, if anything goes wrong, it’s- it’ll keep you safe.

It was a ring. Only a ring; simple and plain and the whalebone set into the band beautifully carved, the rune black and humming softly about twisting the Void into armour, a shield against whatever Daud needed protecting against. Daud stroked his thumb across it, feeling the grooves and the grain, little scratches from the carving knife, and closed his eyes against that song made soft and sweet by Corvo’s love humming warmly, soft as a fiddle’s gentle tune drifting through their dark, grim little alley.

The metal warmed quickly when it slid onto his finger, faint shadows twisting through the weave of his clothes, shifting and restless and formless, before it settled and faded. He flexed his hand, gripped the hilt of his sword, and the ring wasn’t loose and didn’t interfere with his grip. The magic warm against his skin hummed as Daud stroked the little bonecharm with his thumb, its singing loud and clear.

Corvo coughed again. Protection charm, He said, the signs stilted, awkward. That’s all it is.

“Corvo...”

It wasn’t all it was. He’d said that wasn’t what it was. It was fear he rarely admitted, love and care and the desperate urge to protect the ones he loved. Guilt that still hung heavy from the ruins of his heart, the Outsider warning long ago that if against everything Daud had done they came together then there would be no one after, he wouldn’t be able to have another. The only protection a Royal Protector could give a man as familiar to violence as he was.

It’s nothing, Corvo said flatly, scowling. Turned his face away, jerked it back with a hiss. Damn it, I love you, Daud, fuck knows why. I love your snoring and your receding hairline and your fucking terrible humour. I love you - He jabbed Daud’s chest, -And there’s no one else I want to spend the rest of my life with, alright?

Daud looked back to the ring, rubbed his thumb across the bonecharm set like a gemstone as it sang to him, as soft a sound as the one their Bond sang to him. He rubbed his Mark, watched Corvo’s glowing warmly at the touch. Marvelled at how such an extraordinary man could be so fucking stupid, to think Daud didn’t know him well enough to understand, wasn’t at all the kind of idiot to find offense in admitting fear for him.

He was old, hair gone grey and thinning, his bones creaking and groaning for all that he could still work. Indulging himself more and more in idle imaginings, enjoying the thought of maybe not retiring - neither of them could do that - but easing back, a little. Letting Thomas and Rulfio take over a little more. And he wasn’t Corvo, the Void in his blood and the Outsider quietly protective, keeping watch from the Void because he didn’t really want Corvo in danger, or at least not danger he couldn’t handle.

You’ve done enough for me, Corvo hurried, as though Daud wasn’t just struck dumb by the realisation many moments too late that oh Corvo, his dearest, extraordinary, ridiculous Corvo. Fuck, more than enough, these last twelve years, and it isn’t fair of me to ask you to do all that just because I’m still pissed over Jessamine, and I just want to keep you safe, love, I-

“Come here,” Said Daud.

-Don’t trust Delilah and I just can’t take the chance she’ll take you from me - losing Jess was bad enough and you’re just as important and I... Corvo’s eerie raptor’s eyes went wide, a flinch in his fingers like a stutter as he lurched up from his seat on the box and stepped close, head ducked low to stare at Daud’s face. What? He said, and Daud’s heart pulled in his chest, fondness and affection and slow-burn love glowing bright inside his chest.

“Come here,” He said, and caught Corvo’s large hand, slid his fingers from wrist to elbow. Stroked across the fading but never faded manacle scars, the awful white slashes making islands of the thick, dark hair of his arms; cupped the jabbing point of his elbow that seized in the wrong weather. Corvo swayed. “Thank you, Corvo.”

There was a promise in it, the ring. Of something or for something, Daud didn’t know, and maybe never would, but there was promise there, in the strength in iron and the love in bone; fur and feathers soft beneath the palm of his Marked hand as Daud cupped Corvo’s bearded cheek and kissed him, grabbed Corvo’s elbow and hauled him close chest-to-chest until Corvo’s warmth bled through, heart hammering against Daud’s.

Or perhaps there was a threat, to Delilah, her witches, the hundreds of thousands of vultures’ eyes who thought the grey-muzzled wolf of Dunwall a chink in the armour around the empress, the ageing lover of the Protector an easy target to weaken him. Perhaps there was neither, and it was only a ring, simple and plain; devotion given in a way obvious to the world when Corvo had no voice to say it, only affection in the twist of his fingers as Daud’s name changed to love.

The song the performers sung far behind them softened, the sunset spilled gold into the square outside.

“Come on,” Daud said, manhandling Corvo closer for a dance, arm around his wolf-narrow hips and hands held loose together; too close for the formal dances Emily had so long ago pushed them into learning for her, Daud’s cheek pressed to Corvo’s shoulder and Corvo’s lips resting gentle as a kiss at his temple, but when had anything about them ever been formal? They had never been made for marble halls and gilded ceilings, crystal glasses holding wines that cost more to buy than a working man could make in a year. They belonged here, shuffling to distant music in the shadows of forgotten places, tiny flowers growing like weeds through cracks in the concrete and creeping vines gently taking apart the ruins of the apartment buildings either side of their dark little alley. “My receding hairline and I want a dance if we’ve got to put up with your cold feet and shedding for the rest of our lives.”

Corvo couldn’t say anything, which was good - he was a soppy shit at the best of times, Daud’s name long since mangled into Love - but his smiling eyes, black as the endless spaces between stars, said everything important. He only rested his chin on Daud’s shoulder, letting Daud lead the dance; eyes closing as they swayed, the arms around Daud’s back in turn warm against the night chill as they danced in the shadows of the alley.

-:-

They weren’t on a rooftop, and the sun was not high overhead, and the seagulls were swarming the docks, still; squalling and squawking and squabbling over scraps of whalemeat left to rot in the water. Nowhere close enough to be outraged. But Corvo’s mouth was smiling under his, and he was stretched out across their coats and shirts on a thin, worn mattress in the crumbling ruins of the old apartment, the light of the sun burning over the sea gilding Corvo’s lovely, dark skin - gleaming along the bladed edge of a cheekbone, a clavicle, a scar.

Daud dropped his hand to Corvo’s thigh, felt the give in strong muscle bunching under his skin as Corvo shivered, arched up, mouth scraping across Daud’s smooth jaw until the bristles of his scruffy beard itched and burned a brand there for anyone to see. Settled his weight, pushed him down, and despaired at the giddy thrill that still shot through his gut, low and hot.

How many times had they fallen into bed like this? Corvo’s large, adoring hands framing Daud’s face, Daud stroking across bones broken and healed wrong and broken again, old scars making islands of dark hair bumping against his palms? Pressed a thumb to a nipple and laughing at the startled curse in the spasm of Corvo’s fingers, sucked bruising kisses into the skin stretched thin over the proud jut of his hipbones? How many times had he laughed against Corvo’s lips, felt him murmur sweet words and insults into the hollow of Daud’s throat?

Enough that Daud still loved Corvo pushing him off, rolling him to his back and a smirk glittering in his dark eyes as he bent low, enjoyed flinging a hand over his eyes and swearing at the first shocking slide of Corvo’s mouth over his cock. Lips and tongue dragging, messy and graceless and awkward as always, Corvo’s beard scraping the inside of his thighs, greying hairs left prickly and wet as he drooled, and it was Corvo, and Daud threaded his fingers through Corvo’s thick curls; laughed in delight at Corvo’s first convulsive swallow, the second, the third before Daud got the wits together to drag him back up.

Oh, he loved, adoration aching beside his heart as heat pulled tight his gut, and there was a reflection of it in Corvo’s teeth bright against his beard, a snarl and a smile all at once as he pushed Daud’s shoulders down into the mattress and kissed him as if there was something to prove, as if he wanted the imprint of Daud’s teeth against his lip to remind of him of something.

I love you, He said into Daud’s throat, murmuring against his skin, mouthing across the tendons. As if Daud needed the reminder, as if he could ever feel slighted by following in Corvo’s wake, thanklessly helping him with what needed to be done because that was the promise made when Daud gifted the patterned sword always hung at Corvo’s hip. What else was Daud to do? He loved the fool tangled with him, a crow and a wolf and Pandyssian cat all at once, and he was loved in return. There was no more to it than that, nothing else to be said when Corvo shuddered, rolled his hips, mouthed an urgent, Come on, against his jaw.

Daud stroked his hands up Corvo’s back, cupped the fine bone of his cheek to admire his raptor’s black eyes softened just for him, the gentle sunset gold along the blade-sharp line of his jaw and casting shadows deep and dark into the hungry hollows Coldridge had left him with. Harsh and weathered as Serkonos’ sea-cliffs, his blood older than the stones in the streets below, not so much a handsome or a pretty man but a striking one, and he was Daud’s to press kisses to as he had a hundred thousand times before.

And he felt along the long expanses of Corvo’s flank, tracing the shape of his strong bones jabbing through his skin with his thumb, and Corvo laughed his ugly, wheezing laugh because Daud knew, he knew he had the stupidest smile on his face; struck dumb by his own absolute adoration for the stupid, skinny, reckless, unfairly loyal fool above him tugging on Daud’s hair because he wanted the familiar, friendly slide of Daud’s mouth against his. Stroked Daud’s broad shoulders, fingers digging into muscle, because he adored Daud, too; adored the old Wolf of Dunwall, grizzled and grumpy and perhaps gone a bit too soft around the edges, Corvo’s strong fingers kneading into the old-man’s paunch of his belly, abusing his easy compliance by stealing kisses.

“Outsider’s fucking eyes,” Said Daud, and he didn’t bother to whisper it because a part of him - as hungry and greedy and desperate as the heat curling in his gut, the spaces where guilt whose weight he’d grown used to had been echoing hollowly - wanted the whole world to hear, wanted everywhere from the cold wastes of Tyvia to the humid-hot jungles of southern Pandyssia to know, “I love you.”

And it wasn’t a revelation, not really. Daud wet his fingers with stolen oil clear in the flask on the bedside table and it was the same song and dance they’d done for twelve years, petting Corvo inside and out, fingers curled just so to watch Corvo’s gut draw tight and hard, gasping a little at the surge of pleasure that make his cock drool in Daud’s hand. The same familiar squeeze when Corvo hissed between his teeth and dragged Daud dick-to-dick with him, hands snapping through the signs with an impatient scowl, Get on with it! Or I’ll kick you out, and Daud obliged; pushed inside with a long, low groan dragged from the depths of his guts where pleasure burned and came scraping its way out of his throat, muffled against Corvo’s jaw.

Twelve years they’d been side by side in the shadow cast by Dunwall’s throne, guilt a heavy chain binding them to a dead woman long gone, and not quite knowing what to do without it except to do what they’d always done with her collared around their throats, and protect Emily; remember what they were to each other in stolen nights they’d carved out for themselves in forgotten ruins where it was only Daud, and his hips rolling deep and slow as ocean tides, and Corvo stretched out below him, willingly held down by Daud’s grip on his hands either side of his head.

He groaned low and muddled against the back of Corvo’s head, kept pace with the burning heat of their Marks glowing together beating out its tidal rhythm; burning the brilliant gold-blue of the sun low over the water, bright along Corvo’s fine-boned hands that might once have been delicate as want thrummed through the Bond, fur and feathers and teeth against his wrist, his throat.

Fucked him quick, quicker - chasing the bladed edge to Corvo’s gasps, sick with the loop desire rising hot in his gut, drawn tight and tighter still as Corvo arched, and shuddered, and squeezed hard on Daud’s hands holding him down, down; magic bursting bright behind his eyes as he bit curses into Corvo’s shoulder, put a hand to Corvo’s cock and finished him off quick and rough, came right alongside and a beat after with Corvo’s name on his lips and his own pressed to his wrist where the Mark was slowly quieting.

He eased himself down, wincing as his back pulled but mostly magnanimous with the world as Corvo stretched out all his long limbs and tucked himself close. Enough to only huff - pretending annoyance because he couldn’t be bothered to muster up much more through vague satisfaction heavy inside his chest, glowing in the softly fading gold beneath the skin branded black by the Outsider’s mark - when Corvo patted the breaspocket of his coat crumpled beneath them and brought out his cigarettes and matchbox, lighting one for himself.

His ring hummed pleasantly on his hand when he stroked Corvo’s broad back, from wolf-narrow hips to strong shoulder.

“We’ll be alright,” Daud said, because even without the gift whose power sang loud and clear even to his untrained ear, the promise of something or for something in the shine of the iron band, he’d never aim for anything less, and Corvo tipped his head back with another little stretch of his legs. Breathed out smoke when he sighed that the sea breeze caught and flung out into the night’s pale dark.

We’ll be alright, He agreed.

Chapter Text

They crawled their way back up to Dunwall; a hard fortnight’s travel through the Grand Canal curving along the base of wooded mountain foothills and slopes cleared for vineyards, stopping at the towns grown along its sides to refuel where Corvo stood bold at Daud’s side in white cobblestoned streets and market squares, eyes quick and fingers quicker as he snatched coins and trinkets to buy whale oil - the news of the escaped Lord Protector and his Spymaster was old, stale, and none of the workers making wine cared to glance twice at the strange men in whaler’s coats, or cared very much about the goings on of the empire besides.

Meagan watched them, dark eyes narrowed at their boldness, but she stayed quiet - sullen at the wheel as Jindosh and Sokolov worked hard to keep the engine working at all, as quick to anger as they were to praise each other when Jindosh made an especially clever little tweak, or Sokolov made an even better one.

Daud didn’t know what she’d expected; if she’d been waiting for Jindosh to give her an excuse to throw him overboard, or for Daud to speak more than a word or two, or for Corvo to speak to her at all. He didn’t much care.

They made their way back north; leaving Karnaca's warm, bright waters and pale cliffs behind to chug slowly along Gristol’s grey, rocky coasts, and Dunwall loomed dark and grim from the heavy smog on its flanks. A corpse of a city, rot heavy in the still, dead air; steel supports the ribs of crumbling, collapsing buildings bared to a merciless sun hidden by sickly clouds. Even the harbours empty of ships, or boats thrown up - dashed to pieces in the streets or wrecked on rocks stabbing out through the water; the streets just as bare.

Daud watched the city creep closer - the Dreadful Wale’s engine rumbling loud, its roar echoing back from the thick fog - from the deck, and his hands clenched around the railing. A part of him, spoiled by Serkonos’ hot sun and gentle water, the forests jewel bright on Shindaerey Peak's gentle slopes, hadn’t wanted to come back.

But he rubbed his Mark with his thumb, plucked the strings of the web that tied him to his Whalers, and he closed his eyes with a sigh at the echoes that came back; they were alright. Corvo had told him they would be, and between the two of them and the lessons they’d taught them Daud knew they would be, but it was still nice to know. Still nice to feel the little flickers of warmth through skin branded black by the Mark; Finn and Thomas and Galia soft and serious, Rulfio’s joyous bounce, the children’s awe. Answering relief that they were all alive, that Daud and Corvo had been gone and had come back unhurt.

Meagan guided them into the port they’d left months ago - a stone's throw from the Tower dark against the sky and Rudshore rebuilt but still abandoned, left as a safehouse for the Whalers because no one wanted to reclaim it - and the last rumble of the motor echoed down dark, narrow streets choked by barricades and bodies, dried blood rusted on the stones, splashed dark against walls. Wolfhounds scarred and gaunt - gone feral without the Abbey’s tight leash - sniffed old bones long picked clean, and watched the Dreadful Wale coughing in the port with dark, hungry eyes.

Corvo touched Daud’s wrist and slipped away from his side, leaping to Dunwall’s docks a wolfhound tall and strong, grizzled and grey-muzzled and scarred. He stalked through the street with his head held high, elegant and long-legged, broad shoulders and narrow hips and easy, loping gait; the mangy hounds stood close together in the yawning mouth of an alley watched him, tongues lolling between sharp, white teeth, and when Corvo pointed his nose to Rudshore and showed his own teeth they parted to let him through, slinking away up the street towards the Tower rising high.

Meagan moored the ship, and studied Daud, a moment; he felt her eyes on him as he watched the pack of wolfhounds melt out of the mist and dark and bristle at him, but shifting uneasily as they sniffed the air, unwilling to come close and wisely cringing away when Daud held the hilt of his sword. Nodded to herself, grabbed his elbow and tipped her head to the crumbling wall of a warehouse; not so far away that Corvo wouldn’t be able to find him when he came back from his cursory scouting, but safely away from any eyes that might be peering out at them from the fog. Obligingly, he followed her into the shadow of the building, stepping around broken bricks scattered across the ground, leaned against the wall while she stood with her head bowed to the Dreadful Wale slowly bobbing in the water.

Meagan took a breath deep into her lungs, let it out slowly as she shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat. “We’ll be heading up to Tyvia after this,” She said. “Sokolov and I. Leave Jindosh here. The old man’s getting on in years, and he wants one last trip to his homeland before he kicks the bucket. After that..." She sighed again. "I don’t know. The old ship doesn’t have much left in it.”

The Dreadful Wale’s hull bore the brunt of its age, its metal a patchwork thing where those places beaten by the water worse had been cut out and new metal welded on, but not very well. Spotted with rust eating away at the welds and rivets. Its engine rattled, coughing and spluttering and old-age-ill despite Sokolov and Jindosh’s best efforts, and the rest of it wasn’t doing much better; battered and abused and badly made in the first place, several decades too old to serve as much as it had.

“No,” Daud agreed, because he may not know much about ships but it took anyone with eyes to know that it didn’t have long left. “It probably doesn’t.”

She nodded, and scuffed her toes against the ground, watching the water churn against the harbour walls. “Think there’s anything worth salvaging?” Asked Meagan, glancing up at him from beneath her hair, shoulders hunched and ah - that was why she wanted to talk to him, why there was anxiety in the wrinkles around her mouth, between her brows; nervousness in the fidgeting of her fingers in the pocket of her coat still familiar from when she’d been a young thing taking shelter in his shadow, desperate to learn all she could.

But she wasn’t that boyish scrap of skin and bones following him because he was one of the few gang leaders who didn’t care she’d killed a nobleman in defence of her Deirdre. She had grown up, become his Meagan; become that fierce young woman at his side who kept order and peace in the Whalers, was one of them and wasn’t one of them at the same time because they all knew she was the favourite who would have taken his place when he died. Too fierce to wait for him to die on his own, and she’d betrayed him, been exiled.

The woman at his side was too long estranged to be familiar, a friend; was too long familiar to be a stranger.

He pulled a cigarette from his pocket, lit it and took smoke deep into his lungs.

Was there anything worth salvaging, now? Was there good metal to take from a hull warped and twisted by decades at sea, eaten by rust and time until the disrepair was too much to handle, too much to fix?

“No,” Daud told her, and Meagan flinched a little, mouth twisting. “It’s past that. Long past it, now. Maybe years ago it would have been worth it, but it would still need breaking down first, and…” He sighed, looked to the sea dark beneath the heavy, yellowish clouds. His fingers itched to take Meagan’s hand, smooth away the misery dark in her face; he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, took the smoke deep into his chest. “I don’t think that kind of work is ever worth it. It’s too broken to make anything good come from it; you may as well get another ship.”

“Not that easy,” She said, and took a long drag from his cigarette when he offered it. “There’s a lot of memories. Good memories. It… helped.”

The sea turned, the Dreadful Wale heaved a little in the muddy water, groaning. “Are you talking about me or the ship?”

“Does it even matter anymore?”

Daud took another long drag, blew out the smoke from his nose. “I suppose not,” He said, and looked to her there at his side, and maybe in another world in the far reaches of the Void she would have still been his Billie, still a part of the Whalers and coming to love Corvo as they did, not quite how they loved Daud but, still, adoring him in their own way; Misha’s youngest children all sneaking away from their beds to see him because they’d had a nightmare and always claimed he gave the best hugs.

She could have sat with Rulfio and Thomas and Finn at the table and laughed as Corvo came down to breakfast with a sleepy Whaler child in his arms yet again. Could have rolled her eyes with Thomas when Rulfio gagged every time Daud and Corvo kissed or did something disgustingly sweet. Could have teased him that way she used to do about going soft in his old age, settling down at last with someone who’d changed the sign of his name from bastard to love. So many ‘could have’s, if Daud had noticed just a little bit more, been a little bit cleverer.

Daud held the smoke in his chest a moment, needing the weight of it. He didn’t regret, anymore, the way his life had gone. “Go get another ship,” Said Daud. “Find something to keep you around. You found Deidre, you found me, you found Sokolov and the Dreadful Wale. There’s enough in the world there’s always something else.”

“And if I want it to be you again?”

He laughed, bitter and humourless enough it made her flinch. “You ask that after the mess you made with Corvo? With me?” He shook his head. “No.” He said. “No, you put a stop to that ten years ago. Whatever you used to be to me is gone, Meagan. I might have changed, in these last twelve years, but I was never forgiving, and that hasn’t changed. What you did to us isn’t something I can ever look past, not then and not now. And the way you’ve been acting these last few weeks you don’t seem to want me to either.”

Meagan’s jaw clenched tight; didn’t ease as she took another drag of his cigarette. “So that’s it, then? It’s alright if Corvo overlooks you murdering his Jessamine, but you don’t give me the same pass?” She sighed, studied her hands that were about as bloody as Daud’s, that had left nearly as many bodies in her wake as his. “I did love you, you know. Even then.”

“I know,” Said Daud, and he looked to the horizon where dark sea met dark sky because he didn’t want to know what he’d feel if he looked at Meagan now. “But I’m not Corvo, and you didn’t kill just one person, did you? Seventeen died because of you. Five of them were children.”

“I didn’t-”

“What did you think was going to happen?” Daud demanded. “What, the Overseers were going to let them go just because they were young? They were heretics like the rest of us, and the Abbey doesn’t care if a heretic is six years or sixty.” Meagan flinched again, looked to her feet and Daud bared his teeth because it wasn’t enough. “They killed Chester.” He said, and something black in his heart curled, satisfied, when Meagan looked away, head hanging lower. “Four years old, dead because of you. We found him in the floodwater.”

Daud shook his head, ground out his cigarette on the wall at his back. “If you want to come back I’m not the one you need to convince. Not really. But after you killed seventeen of them, after you killed five of our youngest apprentices, I don’t think a single Whaler will let you leave  alive for a second time.”

“I suppose not,” Said Meagan. She stepped away, starting for the Dreadful Wale bobbing in the water as Corvo the crow swooped low through the street and landed on the arm Daud held out for him, feathers bristling at Meagan. “Good luck with Delilah, Lord Protector.” She said, and bowed her head to him; respect or admiration or, perhaps, something else.

Daud didn’t know, and as he gently brushed his knuckles through the feathers on Corvo’s breast he decided he didn’t care; Meagan Foster wasn’t Billie Lurk, and he had no reason to care for her.

“Can’t say it’s been a pleasure, but for what it’s worth if there’s another crisis you’ll have me and my ship behind you, if you need it. And...” She paused a moment. Looked to Daud smoothing down Corvo’s dark feathers. Shook her head, and there was something almost sad in her as she turned to her ship quietly groaning in the water, grief an old wound still raw a neat match for Daud’s, but healing, or at least will be. “Farewell, Daud,” She said.

Chapter Text

Thomas hugged him, when he and Corvo stepped into the old training room where the Whalers had all gathered. Sudden and fierce, shooting out from where he’d sat with his mask clattering across the floor; arms tight around Daud’s middle, head tucked under Daud’s chin - Thomas’ suspicious sniffle into Daud’s collar loud in the echoing silence he’d left behind.

Daud surprised himself by hugging back, pressing his cheek to the top of Thomas’ head. He’d missed them, and his heart ached with it.

And then there was Rulfio and Galia and Finn and Walter and Thorpe and Yuri and a hundred others all blurring together, crowding around. Rickard barely tall enough to clear Daud’s hip reaching up to clap his arm, Misha stood apart from the crowd beaming brightly through the dust and decay still clinging to the district. Ike lumbering through the door to poke and prod he and Corvo, and nodding, satisfied, when they weren’t hurt. An entire pack of children clinging to his legs for a moment before they scurried off to be scooped up by Corvo, cuddled close. Rulfio’s laugh carrying clear across the old, rusting walkways and ruined, gutted buildings.

It didn’t matter that he told them to be ready to move by midnight; Cook brought in food, the best that could be scavenged from the empty buildings all through the city left abandoned as people fled Delilah’s cruel-tight grip. A few others brought in lamps, warm and bright against the dark crowding outside the walls. Whiskey warm in chipped, cheap glasses, and cider heated over fires for the children darting across bridges and rooftops and fallen walls; several eagerly showing Daud their hands, pale copies of the Outsider’s Mark just starting to stain their skin and flicker faintly with gold-blue light when they concentrated.

Daud cooed obligingly, proudly; closed his eyes to the light and noise to enjoy the burn of whiskey down his throat, and enjoyed even more Corvo’s kiss that stole some of the taste from his lips. Corvo's dark eyes soft, and sad, and glittering with delight; Serkonos was their home, and maybe there would always be the pull in their blood calling them back to its shores but it wasn’t the same as here, as Rudshore bright and warm with fires and lamps and drink and Rulfio’s wailing along to the songs Javier picked out on the guitar he always seemed to pull out of nowhere and Rickard’s rough brogue and-

And he’d missed them, his Whalers. Missed his awful, rowdy, noisy little beasts singing along to the rude song Sean jabbed Javier into playing.

Daud stepped away, leaned against the railing of a balcony that creaked beneath his weight but didn’t give. Sipped his whiskey, warmth bleeding out, and lit a cigarette. Watched the krusts still filling the streets quietly shuffling and rattling to themselves in the silt left behind from the floodwater, trails of whale oil slipping cold and oily across the cobblestones where it still came spilling out from the refinery too far lost to the Wrenhaven to ever reclaim.

The early night was cool; heavy with the darkness pressing in from Dunwall beyond. A shadow on a rooftop flickered away - a witch reporting to Delilah, because all of his Whalers were gathered behind him. Daud let her go, and watched the smoke trailing from the end of his cigarette, ashes falling from the end - Delilah wasn’t to live long enough to use it.

“Everything alright, sir?” Asked Thomas.

Such concern for his old man. Daud hoped Thomas’ birth father was sick with the knowledge that he’d lost out on a truly excellent son. “It’s nice to be back,” Was all Daud said, because Thomas already knew that pride burned bright in Daud’s heart for him, and offered the cigarette. “Karnaca was… difficult.”

Thomas took a drag, blew the smoke out long and slow. Passed it back. “Delilah? She’s been quiet these last few weeks, but we’ve seen her witches out patrolling. Looking for you and Corvo, we thought.” Daud grimaced. “Sir?”

“Some of it was her,” Daud said. Held the smoke a moment, heavy inside his chest. “We needed something to help kill her - she’d been using magic on herself, the kind that made Corvo wince - but undoing that took… paying a price. A steep one.” He licked his lips, looked to Thomas’ soft eyes watching him, honest concern in the crease between his brows. “But it wasn’t all her, it...”

He sighed, tapped the ash from the end of his cigarette and watched the wind fling it out across the street glowing bright with whale oil far below. “Billie rescued us, that day,” Daud said, and watched Thomas’ gentle face shutter, hard and steely as his whaler mask. “Took us to Karnaca, sheltered us on her ship the few weeks we were there. Helped us, as much as she could.” He huffed a laugh, and he wasn’t sure if he was bitter or not. “It was… strained.”

Thomas swallowed, old anger and hatred clicking in his throat. “I can send someone down to the harbour to fetch her if you’d like, sir.” He said, clipped and short. “Not all the men will be happy to have her back, but I can manage most of the complaints and it has been years since the Overseers, and if she wants to come back under a different none of the new men know who she is-” Daud held up his hand, and Thomas licked his lips, a little bemused. “Sir?”

“When Delilah’s dead,” Daud said, “She’ll be taking Sokolov back to Tyvia. If she’s got any sense she’ll be staying away from Dunwall.”

Thomas narrowed his eyes, not so much in suspicion or surprise, or even as if he was wondering just how much Daud'd had to drink or how many pieces of Billie were rotting at the bottom of the sea for him to be so magnanimous towards a betrayer. He'd certainly never been so kind to even leave one alive, before. “Sir?”

Daud looked to Rudshore. The ruined districts unofficially left as a safe house for the Whalers and the royals in their care; gutted and empty, steel beams bared like the ribs of some rotting carcass, some whale hauled ashore and left to rot.

It still felt too much like a reflection, Rudshore; a mirror. But there was life outside of vicious River krusts and hagfish and assassins, the buildings crumbling into the hungry river; creeping vines heavy with tiny, delicate summer flowers, grass growing through cracks and rubble, saplings taking root in the silt. Roosting birds and bats on the top floors, stray cats making colonies in offices.

They were growing past it, the ruins and the plague and the shadows cast by Daud’s worst mistake. Or maybe they were growing into it. One last building to fall, one last murder, one last payment for his soul, the life he'd made; atonement the only way he knew how.

“I'm selfish, Thomas.” Daud said, and offered his cigarette. It wasn't noticed; Thomas’ eyes still caught on Daud's face. “I cared for her. Once. Trusted her, once. But she threw that away, and even twelve years later she hasn't learned that there's consequences for her actions. That the blood on her soul isn't washed away by going by another name.” The krusts rattled. Thomas frowned when Daud smiled, touched his sleeve. “I know who's on my side, and who I want on my side. I might have raised her, Thomas, but I raised you too; and I'm too selfish not to choose the one who's been by my side all these years, helping me fix my mistakes.”

Thomas blinked at the cigarette Daud slipped between his fingers. “You did well keeping everyone safe while we were gone,” Daud said, brushing past him. “Take a few hours off, before we pay an upstart a social call; you've more than earned it.”

Chapter Text

The night wore on, dark and endless. Daud called all his Whalers fit for duty down to the river where Tynan was waiting, and their training and relative good sense had held; they’d been careful with the drink on offer, and even Rulfio sobered quickly as Daud and Corvo got them all into order and Tynan pushed away from shore.

He’d stolen a new ship for himself; a noble’s barge long but narrow, all dark wood walls and plush furnishings and lamps bright and warm against the dark as they crawled along the wide sweep of the Wrenhaven silvery under the moon glowing brilliant through breaking clouds. Warm and comfortable; enough space below deck for Rulfio and some of the others to sleep off what they’d drank across the long hours slipping through Dunwall’s canals, and more space still for all the Whalers to mill about out of the cold, sharpening their swords and testing their crossbows, watching the shadows yawning dark from the empty streets lining the Wrenhaven’s waters.

Daud checked, and Corvo checked, because there’d be no coming back from a mistake; all the Whalers had enough sleep darts and more to spare, and knew to capture the witches for prison whenever they could.

The wind whispered approval for it, that mercy-of-a-kind Corvo had taught him to give long ago, and when the clouds shifted the moon cast its light on witches watching them from rooftops. It murmured its praise louder still when Daud sent Whalers out to them, and watched them knock them out quickly and easily; there was space on Tynan’s ship for prisoners, too, and the Wrenhaven’s waters lapping gently against the hull murmured faintly when Daud said there was no need for more blood shed than he and Corvo were already planning.

Corvo’s sword shone, as bright as the moonlight on the water. Patterned and beautiful and strong, the whetstone singing across its lethal edge as Corvo sharpened it; his hand tight around the blackened heart beating dull and slow against his palm, spitting poison as if Corvo hadn’t already turned his ear from her counsel.

Twelve years old, that sword; a gift always meant to taste the blood of an imposter on the throne. It seemed fitting that it would be an empress’ end, instead of Burrows’. He and Corvo had always been too similar.

Faces peered out of the dark, all wide eyes and wary creeping through the rubble, broken bottles and stolen Overseer swords and loose bricks raised to strike but reluctant, for now, to strike - the Whalers were a force to be reckoned with, but their swords weren’t pointed at the frightened shadows flitting through Dunwall’s broken streets. They were allowed to pass - an old man puffing contentedly on his pipe, jaw and cheeks charred by ancient burns, raised his hand in welcome from the balcony of an apartment building leaning out over the water. Or maybe he raised his hand for attention; he shouted through the fog, “Guessin’ you lot’re fixing to ‘gainst that uppity tart in the Tower?”

“We are,” Said Rulfio cheerfully, balanced precariously on one of the chimneys rising high to keep watch. “Looking to join us? Think we might have some spare armour around here for you, and we never say ‘no’ to an extra gun, do we Daud sir?” He scratched beneath his mask. “Reckon that revolver you’ve got’ll be useful against witches.”

The old man laughed, and held up his old, worn revolver into the moonlight. Tugged on his white beard and laughed again. “This old thing?” He croaked, harsh as a raven’s bark. “Hah! Be surprised if it still works.” He shook his head, and stayed seated on the old iron balcony, watching them pass with pale, cloudy eyes. Daud wasn’t sure if he was talking about the revolver or himself, and then wondered if it really mattered in the end; his skin hung from his bones either way, papery and thin. Hands tough and gnarled as old stumps, matted and stiff with old scars, fingers curling tight into his palms. Sightless eyes keen and sharp in his leathery face.

“But you lot should know,” Said the old man, scratching his balding head. “if you really are fixin’ to pluck that wailing harpy, then them witches’ve closed the water lock. No one in, no one out, ‘cept them and the poor sods they drag with ‘em. And there’s been a lotta noise comin’ from there sayin’ there were people who really, really wanted out.”

He looked up at the silent, distant moon, stroking the scraggly scruff of his beard and the stubble of his moustache. The revolver gleamed in his lap. He nodded to himself as the wind whispered across the water, louder than the Wrenhaven’s murmuring. “The Overseers tried, you know,” He said. “Getting into the Tower. Killing that witch parking her skinny arse on a throne not hers to park her arse on and bringin’ our empress back.” He shuddered, rubbed his hands together with a shiver. “Heard the ruckus that lot made, going through the main road in - the one with the gate. Heard the ruckus they made trying to turn back. And the quiet left behind. Still open, by all accounts - broke the locks to get in, before they were all butchered.” The old man’s eyes, flashed, narrowed and hard as steel as he fixed them with his cloudy stare. “But you lot heard nothin’ from me.”

“Oh, of course,” Said Rulfio, hand on his heart as he bowed, arm sweeping out grand and elaborate. “The ramblings of an old man shouted at us from a balcony? Why would we listen to that? Causation not correlation and all that shit.”

“It’s ‘correlation not causation’, Rulfio,” Thomas said.

Rulfio blithely waved it away. “Same difference,” He said, and of course Thomas had to disagree, and under the old man’s blind eyes watching them go Tynan ferried them on through Dunwall’s narrow canals choked by bodies and barricades, the Outsider’s guiding hand helping them to the Tower’s gates in the vague light of the moon shining on the waters of the canals clear of rubble.

-:-

Delilah held court with statues and lifeless dogs in a throne room crumbling all around her, flowers climbing pillars reaching for the light shining through holes in the roof, feet propped up on rubble; reclining on the throne like she wasn’t only some street urchin who demanded the easy life of an empress and wasn’t willing to do the work that came with it. Stroked her lips with long, bony fingers as she surveyed the painting hung between two columns shimmering faintly - rattling in the whipping winds of the Void unwilling to obey the magic she’d cast in long, sweeping brushstrokes and riots of colour.

She might have been lovely, once - as the young friend of heiress Jessamine. Playing in the halls and corridors, sheltered the way other children of servants wished they could be with a mother better paid by the Kaldwin’s than any other noble would bother to; naughty and clever and too-quick by far, but good on the whole. Might have been. If the world had been less cruel perhaps still would be.

But if that young girl had ever been her then Delilah had long since killed her; poisoned her with bitter hatred and restless longing for things she’d never been owed; buried her under the thin curl of her black-painted mouth and icy, joyless smiles; left her behind in the Tower’s walls when she’d been thrown from it, and didn’t know how to be her again now that she had everything she’d always wanted.

A title, and a Tower, and a throne powering her vision for the future, and she still wasn’t satisfied.

The runes fixed to the throne sang softly together, an awful grating choir whose corrupted runes screamed rough and ragged - wailing silently into the dead air, howling into the endless empty space of the Void as their power rippled through the whale oil she’d splashed across the floor to the painting. Rictus grins and hollow eyes a neat match for Delilah and her head raised bold and proud on the throne, though their pain was muted, soothed, by the gentle hum of the normal runes on the throne’s other side.

Corvo slipped away, a rat slinking through the rubble and the grass growing through it, and Daud stepped forward. “Hello, your majesty.”

Delilah whirled to her feet, whalebone sword unsheathed and pointed at his heart. “Daud,” She spat, face wrinkled in a snarl, teeth bared, and started to circle him. “The Royal spymaster, meddling in affairs not his to meddle in, poking his nose into where it doesn’t belong. Weren’t you afraid,” She asked sweetly, sweeping lashes demurely low over her eyes, “Of it being bitten off? We witches might have been hiding like rats all these years but when we struck we gave you an awful bite, didn’t we? You weren’t expecting us to take away your dear, sweet Emily.”

Daud let his hand rest on his sword sheathed on his hip, and held Delilah’s gaze. “No,” He agreed, while Emily still howled in soundless fury where she’d been frozen in stone. “We weren’t expecting that. But then, you weren’t expecting us to be as much trouble as we ended up, were you? Burrows underestimated us, too - have you talked to him? He’s still there in Coldridge, if you’d like to.”

“Burrows was a fool!” Delilah spat, and Daud inclined his head in agreement; she wasn’t wrong. Delilah only hissed at him, whirled among the bodies frozen as stone that made up her court. “Oh, he would have made it so easy for me to take my rightful place; what’s a lowly regent to an empress?” She demanded. “They would have been begging me to replace him, and I would have dealt with the plague far sooner than that child did! And I would have left you alone too! You and your Whalers and that disgraceful Lord Protector of yours!”

“But no!” She said, and her teeth flashed in the pale moonlight shining down through holes in the roof, the sword pointed at Daud’s heart sharp and humming softly with the magic of the Void. “No, You had to put a little girl on the throne instead of me. You had to poke your nose into business that wasn’t yours and rip away my Breanna’s magic and make me get rid of her!”

Daud’s sword hissed from its sheath, gleaming in the dark, and he circled; Delilah mirrored him, and she didn’t see Corvo climbing the throne, reaching for the lowest of the corrupted runes and working it loose, dark little ears pressed flat against its wailing agony. “If you cared for her,” Daud said, “You could have kept her. I stayed by Corvo’s side when you took the Mark from him, after all. She loved you even without magic.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t stay,” Said Delilah, dark and low, voice scraping out of her throat. Her hand tightened around the hilt of her sword, fingers of her other hand flexing like claws with the magic wrapped around her fingers, sickly as the pieces of the Void she commanded. “Just like Jindosh didn’t stay, just like dearest Luca didn’t stay. Did your Corvo tell you what he did to Luca? Did he tell you that he’s in a sanitorium on Serkonos’ northern coast, locked away from the world he so loved for some imposter to take his place the way Jessamine Kaldwin took mine?”

“Did he tell you,” She demanded, and Daud stood impassive as she stepped close and snarled, rough and ragged as the wolfhounds feral in the streets, “That Luca was prescribed electroshock for his ‘delusions’? That he’ll be left a drooling idiot by the year’s end? OH YES!” She howled, and whirled away through the rubble and the finery and the frozen statues of men who’d disagreed with her - arms raised to the Void behind the world that she commanded. “The Void showed me! Breanna dead and Luca a simpleton, all because of him!”

The corrupted rune hit the floor with a soft thud, and when Delilah whirled around Corvo unfolded, stood tall and proud against Delilah’s rage whipping into fury, corrupted heart beating hard against his fingers, screen glowing, muscle reaching - shadows stretching, bridging space that never should have needed to be bridged, latching onto the hollow space where an empty heart beat and Delilah howled.

Chapter Text

There was an odd moment, in between Daud hitting the ground and the Heart in Corvo’s hand quietly dissolving into the Void. Too much air in his chest as Delilah’s soul leapt for the chance to make itself whole, punched out of him as he hit the ground and watched Delilah fold over herself, clutching the space where her heart was beating like she’d tear it out if she could. The Void behind the world holding still, breathless - the Outsider watching from the shadows, and maybe not even he was above the same curl of anxiety that dug its claws into Daud’s chest, swallowed with a click as Corvo stood strong against Delilah’s boiling rage bursting out from where her soul had tucked itself safely away.

A moment, where Corvo stood proud - all dark eyes and dark skin and dark hair, a shadow among shadows shining with the Outsider’s affection, the sword Daud had given him so long ago cold as sea-storms and just as lethal held easy and loose in his hand; its lazy flourish as much a taunt as the bird-like tilt of his head, as the amusement cold and joyless curling his thin lips. Magic bright and ancient burning across his Mark, wolf’s teeth bared in a grin gleaming in its gold-blue light. Power old in his blood and shining bright from the depths of his black eyes, passed down from a time long before the first stones of Serkonos’ streets had been laid down over the ashes of ancient cities.

A moment, where Daud sucked in a breath through his teeth and dragged himself to his feet, muscles in his back caught and seized around new bruises, where concern hummed along the Bond - worry a cold nose shoved into his chest, a crow’s beak combing through his hair - as Corvo stood unbowed and unbroken, and where Delilah curled her long fingers around the hilt of her sword, bared her teeth in matching challenge, and struck.

Vicious-quick and wailing her fury to the merciless Void hungry and waiting, almost too quick to dodge and Corvo didn’t try, catching the whalebone blade and parrying to the side, stumbling under the force of the hit as the narrow tip scraped through his shoulder but Delilah only whirled right back; striking wide and sweeping and clumsy, unpracticed, unfamiliar, but hard - too hard, too quick, to take advantage of the spaces her blows left bare. Wild eyes shining in her face, teeth bared in a challenge Corvo met - meeting her blow with his own and his blade screamed, louder than Delilah’s bark of surprise as she staggered, as Daud struck in turn and his sword scraped across her arm.

They circled her, mirrored as they’d always been mirrors of each other, swords crossed across their chests in a familiar guard. Watching her as Delilah’s hand tightened around the hilt and wondered which of them she’d kill first; fearlessly meeting Corvo’s too-black, too-intent stare; bold as she stood tall and strong under the weight of Daud’s damning gaze.

She struck, and Daud saw it, magic burning across the back of his hand as he slipped to the side, Delilah’s blade sweeping harmlessly through the space where he’d been and suddenly wasn’t and Corvo leapt - a wolfhound snarling soundlessly, bared teeth lethal as blades, blood bright and coppery dark against Delilah’s skin as Corvo bit down, tore through flesh and crunched through bone.

A cat, a wolf, a crow; blurring too fast to follow, all gleaming eyes and teeth bared in feral delight, claws white as bone catching on clothes and skin and tearing through, wide paws catching on delicate ankles and yanking, crow’s beak digging deep in stinging, distracting agony, fur and feathers and the Void’s twisting shadows soaked dark with blood as his jaws clamped tight and Delilah kicked and clawed at his eyes and nose.

But Corvo would not give, and Delilah twisted against the grip of his wolf’s teeth, wrenched herself away; swung with a feral shout and her blade scraped across Corvo’s skull, his yelp strangled in his throat that couldn’t speak. Delilah whirled, too quick to block, too fierce; Daud’s ring hummed, agitated, shadows woven across his skin and through his clothes drawn up, drawn out by the threat in Delilah’s whalebone sword raised high above her head, sweeping down, down, screaming through the air and thudding deep into the meat and bone of Daud’s hip and hand and-

And the power of Corvo’s rune caught the blow, shield sparking dark with fury as it bowed and broke and took the worst of the force with it. Daud staggered, and hissed, and Delilah stared with wide eyes as Daud grit his teeth against the bruising lodged deep in his leg shaking beneath him, pressed his good foot against the ground, and shoved his sword deep, deep, deeper still through Delilah’s gut and wrenched it out.

Her blood splashed against the tiles, bright and glittering and gleaming along the edge of Daud’s sword, soaked dark through her clothes; as ordinary as any common man’s, and when she fell to her knees she clutched the wound just as any ordinary woman did, terror in the shining whites of her watery eyes as she stared at her blood on her hands. Trembled, and shivered, and swayed just like any ordinary woman. Panted shallow, and quick, and frightened the way any ordinary woman did.

“No,” She murmured, and her voice rose to a wail when she cried, “No, no, no, no, NO!”

Daud collapsed against the rubble at his back, pain throbbing deep in his bones. His fingers refused to bend, wet with his blood where the blade had bitten his skin because the ring knew where the damage would be worst, and he closed his eyes against his heart leaping hard against the inside of his ribs. His leg shook beneath his weight, and when he heaved himself back upright Delilah stared at the two of them; at Corvo unfolding from a shadows half-blinded by the blood streaking down his face, tacky across his cheeks and wet in his eye, a stumble to his step that only Daud could ever notice.

She’d never expected to have her mortality again, bleeding out over her hands, pouring from her gut and her arm, never expected to ever have to face the Void without magic to command it, and there was the same helplessness of any other ordinary woman in her face, in another empress whose death still made Daud’s chest ache with the guilt lodged behind his heart, twisting in his guts.

But her snarl was her own when Corvo pressed his blade to her throat.

“Get on with it then!” She hissed, and bared her teeth in savage delight at the wounds she’d left on them in return - at the deep scratch over Corvo’s brow sure to scar, blood dripping from his fingers and staining dark his coat, his shirt, from a wound on his shoulder, and at Daud stood awkwardly, the shock of pain making weak his bruised leg and old age making him weaker even beyond that. “I’m not afraid of the Void, of the Outsider! He chose me as he chose you, he’ll turn on you just the same and in a hundred years, a thousand, my name will still be said! My whispers will echo down the ages! I’m not afraid!”

Daud grit his teeth against the sympathy lodged tight behind his ribs, because Delilah was afraid; staring at the lethal edge of Corvo’s sword, leaning away from its stinging bite against the pale skin of her throat and falling weakly to her elbows; chest heaving with the terror of the endless unknown reaches of the Void, the depths where only the dead and the whales could reach and its hungry waters casting the very worst souls of the world out into the howling wastes where they’d never find peace. Face drawn and pale, eyes wide with the sudden knowledge that she’d made an enemy of the last person she should ever have made an enemy of, that there was a reason Corvo was feared even when the most anyone saw of him was the mute shadow behind the throne, the gentle guardian of its empress.

Her blood still flowed across the floor, slipping past the rubble and the ruins she’d made of their home, resting against the cold stone Delilah had made of Emily.

Corvo’s jaw tightened, and it wasn’t sympathy and it wasn’t hatred and maybe it wasn’t even duty when he knelt over Delilah, knees soaking dark with her blood, and slid the blade deep into her heart. It wasn’t regret or satisfaction as he watched her die. Wasn’t respect when he bowed his head to her, murmured words he had no voice to speak and his fingers unmoving around the hilt of his sword. Wasn’t for the woman who died like any other when he looked to the sky and its moon whose light still sat heavy on his shoulders and whispered a prayer.

It wasn’t to the Outsider when Corvo bowed his head, hand falling limply from the hilt of his sword left in Delilah’s heart.

He shuddered when Daud reached for him, drew him to his feet. Hung his head between his shoulders, stared at his hands and the empress’ blood staining his palms, at Daud’s hands curling around his wrists, his elbows, cupping his jaw. Shivered at the dull warmth of Daud’s forehead pressed to his as they stood in the rubble and the blood and the passing of one era to the next, the ruins left in their wake because that was the only thing they could offer an empress resting in the Void, her daughter waiting to take her rightful place.

Corvo’s fingers curled into his palms, clutching at Daud’s coat sleeves, and he swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing along the long column of his stubbled throat. Breathed out slow and shaky - shallow.

They’d done it.

It made it alright for Daud to turn from him, then; staggering over to the fallen timbers of the roof and easing himself down, stretching out burning aches in his shoulders, his back. Emily had murmured, “Corvo?” Plaintive and soft, and Corvo went to her as he always would. Come hell or high water he would go to her, draw her close, fold her up and clutch her tight because he would always be that loyal old wolfhound on the deck of Tynan’s ancient, groaning ship, unwilling to let his daughter out of sight but trusting enough, even so, for Daud to watch over them.

It was as certain as the sunrise, that Corvo would drop everything for his daughter, would search through the rubble and ruins as a hollow wreckage of a man, raw grief and the vicious urge to protect bound together by wounds and scars stark and ugly; would overthrow a usurper to the throne twice and upending the whole world to do it; would kill for her, cold and unfeeling, the only mercy he would give in gifting an end that was quick.

It made it alright for Daud to give them their space, taking a rag from his pocket to clean his sword, pulling an elixir from his belt and taking a swig, wincing at the taste. Made it alright to look to the doors instead, and watch Thomas come creeping through, rare smile breaking bright through the usual stern set of his mouth as he rushed close and breaking brighter still when Daud clasped his arm, told him well done. To let himself sag and be fussed over as Thomas tutted disapproval over Daud’s wounds and summoned Ike.

They’d done it. Things were alright.

Chapter Text

The Void was quiet as Daud walked along its shifting paths. The howling wind not quite so howling, the mist and fog heavy in its waters denser than usual, the stone unravelling to lead him through his past and present and future more obliging than it should have been. Subdued, almost; the whales drifting through the Void’s depths hanging almost listless between the spires and islands of stone.

But he walked, because there was no leaving until the Outsider was satisfied; past Corvo a wolfhound quietly sleeping on a rug in front of the fireplace, greyer and more grizzled than ever, a deep nick in his ear and an unfamiliar scar ugly and shiny-new curving over his ribs. Past Emily on her throne, Thomas and Rulfio either side in the shadows where Daud and Corvo had stood for so long. Past an island not entirely formed, just a wooden floor breaking away into the Void, and a bedside table, and a tiny, rough-carved crow beside a vase of flowers.

The island where he’d wait for Corvo glowed warm and soft where Jessamine was sheltering beneath the wall curving over her, that shelter from the Void’s biting winds, but if she were really stood there or if it were only the vague impression of her soul, burning low and barely aware to last the long years before she’d see Corvo again, Daud didn’t know. Perhaps she wasn’t stood there, or else she wasn’t willing to see Daud again.

Daud didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t be willing to see himself either.

The Outsider stood on a fallen wall leaning over the sunless depths of the Void, arms crossed behind his back as he watched the drifting whales. He didn’t turn from the Void stretching endlessly on when Daud stepped up beside him, stood on the crumbling edge of a building bridging two boulders and crossed his arms over his own chest, studying the Outsider’s head held high and proud as a world vague in the distant fog took shape. The shadows a cloak around his shoulders rippled, just the once, and settled.

“Serkonos is safe,” Said the Outsider. “You and Corvo pulled it back from the edge Duke Luca Abele had pushed it to, and the rightful empress sits on the throne and rules with a kindness and a wisdom that will see her remembered long after you and her father are dead and forgotten. Well done; I thought you would.”

Daud huffed, snorted a laugh. “I’ll alert the Abbey in the morning, declare a national holiday. This has to be the first time you’re happy with me.”

“Happy,” The Outsider murmured, and his black eyes looked to Daud from their corners. “Yes, I am - in a way.” One of the whales drifted close, and its black, too-human eye was mournful. The Outsider watched it pass, impassive. “I watched you, all those years in Dunwall,” He said, his lip curling. “I watched you kill for coin, spilling blood to keep you and yours fed and damn whoever the victim’s death left behind. Killing for one nobleman one year, and him the next. Building business for yourself as people paid you to take revenge on each other for the crime you committed.”

The shadows drawn tight around his shoulders relaxed, a little. Easing down from irritation at Daud’s bloodied past. “I watched you soften,” The Outsider said quietly, and something glittered deep in his black eyes, “As you stood with Corvo and dear Corvo stood with you. He understood what you had done, even if forgiveness for your sins wasn’t his to give. I watched you protect him, and the empress, and make offerings for the souls you’d sent here, to guide them safely through the pathways of the dead.”

The whales circled, moaning low and mournful. “A shame,” Said the Outsider, “That I won’t see where you go afterwards.”

Daud grimaced, rubbed his mouth. He didn’t like the Outsider, not by any stretch of the imagination. He answered questions ten steps after the question had been asked, and more often than not didn’t answer at all. Sometimes he answered questions before there was even a question to ask, or asked things that had no answers. He was cryptic and tactless and for all his pretty words and disappointment in Daud’s choices, the blood he’d spilled, he’d given Daud his Mark knowing it would be misused, as so many others had misused it. He could have used the powers of the Void to stop Daud at any time, but hadn’t. He could have stopped Burrows from releasing the plague rats, but hadn’t. Could have spared so much suffering by leaving Delilah without magic, but hadn’t.

But he had helped, too. Pointed Daud to the path he should have seen and walked down long before he had. Protected Corvo from Delilah’s Void and the worst of the tatters of the Veil in Stilton’s mansion. Let him know that he’d helped put the world to rights, and that it might have only been one soul saved among hundreds he’d damned but he’d pushed Daud close to Corvo, and for twelve years they’d been happy together.

The Outsider was as close to a constant as the world ever came. It was... strange, to know that he had an end the same as everyone else.

“You’re dying?”

“In a way,” The Outsider murmured, smiling. “It will be a relief, to leave the Void. Four thousand years I’ve waited, watching empires rise and fall, giving power to the street rats living in city gutters the way I had. It had felt good, to watch the destruction they wreaked. I tired of it long before the city whose ashes and bones Dunwall and its empire was built on ever started to burn. And I’m… tired. Of this place. It will be interesting to see what my end is.”

He sighed, and around them the Void sighed with him, the whales and the howling winds and the spires and islands of stone. “It’s you who brings me peace,” He said. “The Daud of another world who fled to Serkonos when Corvo spared him, made bitter by guilt and the weight of all I’d let him do, and seeking to atone the only way he knows how.” There was almost an echo of wistfulness in his voice, for that other world far across the wastes. “What end would you give me, if you had the chance, Daud?” He asked. “Would you kill me? Or would you spare me, return me to the world I was cast from?”

The Void howled, but quietly. Older than all the worlds reflected as islands in its water. The whales drifted, listless and miserable.

Daud licked his lips. “I made a vow,” He said, and the Outsider grimaced.

“Yes,” He agreed. “You made a vow on the blade that killed Jessamine, and still use it to remind you of it. You made a vow to Corvo, when he taught you how to give it; carved into whalebone and set into an iron ring on his hand to match the one he gave you. You made a vow to Meagan Foster over tea as Emily the Wise made a deal with the genius inventor Kirin Jindosh, when you’d ran out of hurts to bare and asked her to never show her face at the Tower again, and told her that you will be satisfied knowing that she’s alive and well as the scars Corvo’s claws left behind stand as a warning and a reminder that she has not atoned as you have.”

The Outsider stood tall against the winds of the Void, still staring out across its endless depths with his lightless eyes. The shadows at his feet rippled and flowed, and there was something almost pleased about them. “You and your Corvo care for each other,” The Outsider murmured. “You will face the years together, and you will grow old, and when you die the Whalers will live on long after your name will be forgotten. Your Billie will sail to all corners of the world, serving the empire in her own way, and she will find a woman to stand beside her as Corvo stands with you and she’ll be happy. Your Thomas will guard the empress with his life and lead the Whalers, and his Mark will pass on the gifts I gave to you to the recruits that come after and all through the years after him as they protect the throne. No other ruler of the empire will fall to an assassin’s blade.”

His black eyes glittered. “Corvo will love you until the end of his days, and he’ll find you and Jessamine here in the Void, on that island,” He gestured to the one glowing softly with Jessamine’s light, “And the three of you will fade, at peace at last. A happier end than most.”

He looked back out into the Void, smiling faintly; satisfied, as much as the Void could ever let him feel. “Good luck, Daud.”