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Dunwall stank. It rose off the water and stuck to the air, it clung in his hair. Sewage, rotting meat (human, animal, everything in between), and under it centuries of general decay.
He loved it. He loved every stinking mouthful. Other things he loved: the uneven cobbles beneath his feet, the heaviness of the smog when you had to live under it, the way that the buildings mattered more now that he wouldn’t outlast them all. How the ugly skyline loomed when you didn’t have the power to rise up and see that it had been nothing all along.
Also eating.
Billie grabbed his arm when he lingered too long on a corner, made the irritated noise in her throat that said she really didn’t have time for his weirdness. “People are looking.”
“So let them.”
“This is Dunwall. When things happen here, the Empress hears about it fast. Probably from her father too…”
“… Yes, well.” He adjusted his coat- thick and woollen and not the one he’d brought out of the Void which Billie had described as ‘too thin to keep in a goddamn flea’ and sold back in Karnaca. With the collar pulled up his face was almost hidden. “That… yes. Might be for the best.”
It was a sore spot. He wasn’t entirely sure how they’d react to seeing him- how anyone he’d known in his previous un-life would react to him being what he was now. Emily and Corvo has been allies, of a sort, but Emily served the Empire and Corvo served Emily. And he- an apparently declawed god- was an unknown quantity. If they were smart they’d kill him. Or catch him, give him to whichever wretch was following in Sokolov’s footsteps now to cut up.
He might have been judging them too harshly, but then they were only human. Discreet was the way to go.
“Stop sulking.”
He glanced at Billie, wanting to say that he hadn’t been sulking, that he wasn’t a child-but responding would be almost validating it. He was above that. He’d seen centuries of centuries pass, he’d known the song of the deep ones and spoken to eternity. If he sulked, it was because he knew the depraved depths of humanity, because he’d tasted the vile breath of-
“Stop it.”
“I wasn’t sulking.”
Damn.
Billie’s eyebrow twitched. That was as close as she’d got to smiling since they’d arrived. He watched it out of the corner if his eye, wondering if he should be offended.
She wasn’t what he’d expected. To be fair though, he hadn’t really bothered to think about her at all until she’d decided to murder him.
Billie Lurk: street kid to urban mercenary to captain to failed captain to whatever she was now. Babysitter to a god? When she’d had the choice, she’d saved him. When he’d taken his second first breath, she’d caught him and brought him into the light. She could have left him lost. She’d helped him down the mountain, almost carrying him when the worst of the hunger hit (his body had been starving when he’d left it, and it wasn’t like the Ritual Hold catered). He’d expected her to dump him as soon as they reached Karnaca, but she hadn’t and then she hadn’t vanished during the night either. When she’d made arrangements she’d included him. She’d clothed him. Bought him food. And he’d stuck with her because there was nothing better to do.
If he’d been stupid enough to think her, well, charitably it could be called ‘kindness’ had anything to do with him he might have been… what? Claustrophobic? Amused?
But he wasn’t. He was- he’d been- the Outsider. He might not have been able to see into her soul, his memories of her past might have faded to shadows with the rest of his godhood, but he knew her like he knew everyone. She’d lost people, and she longed to prove that she could save them too. That was why she was helping him now. She cared about herself and only herself because she was human and that was how they worked. Thinking anything else was wilful blindness.
And he might have loved his new mortality and the weightless-heavy burden of it but he wouldn’t be sentimental about humanity. All that got you was pain, and probably another slit throat.
He wasn’t sure Billie felt the same way. That surprised him. She should know how the world was by now.
“Why come to Dunwall?” He’d asked her on the ship, and she’d said something amounting to ‘unfinished business’, though she’d call that wording melodramatic.
And now she was leading them down alleys and over bridges, keeping to the edges and avoiding eyes. He copied her and though it had been a long time since he’d had to try not to be noticed, his body remembered how to do it. How to walk like you didn’t matter.
For it, he thought with a chill somewhere between delight and sudden, strange horror, it had only been days.
His body. That was strange. He didn’t feel comfortable in it; it didn’t quite fit. It had stayed behind after all. It was still the weak little orphan it had been. And he was… what? Not the Outsider anymore, obviously, but that meant more than losing his godhood and his title. He felt younger than he had in the Void, he felt less surefooted. Maybe that was the body’s doing, maybe it was changing him.
But that thought scared him so he ignored it. He liked experiencing the world, but that didn’t mean allowing those experiences to affect him. He would remain the creature he’d been. He was strong enough for that. He was better than that.
Billie’s steps had been fast and sharp, when she stopped it was almost sudden enough for him to crash into her. He opened his mouth to complain, then stopped quick when she saw the frozen rage in her eye.
She let out a breath.
He knew he’d been right about why they’d come here.
This was where it had happened. A cobbled slope beside a butcher's shop, a gutter smelling of blood.
He shouldn’t comment on how appropriate that was.
They stood for a few moments. He stayed quiet and watched her- watched her hands and jaw tighten, watched her shoulders move under her coat. It was easy to watch: he’d done it long enough to be an expert. He could have watched her petrified pain for days.
But then she made a noise like a snorted scream, muffled by her clenched teeth before it could even be heard, and her hand went for her gun. Pointed it across the street. The wind had picked up, blown a store overhang up and let the light hit the wall below, hit what was on the wall below.
A plaque. It was bronze, secured to the stone of the building so tightly that even Dunwall’s best and most destructive hadn’t been able to sell it as scrap.
It said, of course: ‘In Memory of Radanis Abele’. Below was a date. A statement of his importance and the place he would have held if he hadn’t been murdered. It didn’t say why he’d died. It didn’t say who’d done it.
Billie was shaking, teeth showing. Gun half raised to shoot the plaque down if she could and scar the metal if not. He stood a few steps back, still staring. A little thrilled. Something interesting was happening. He liked that.
Then-
“You!” Guards. Two of them, running fast. The gun had drawn their attention, but soon- if they hadn’t already- they’d recognise the woman holding it too. And there would be more of them, and she’d either end up bloody handed or captured. Billie pulled back to turn on them and he knew what she’d do and he knew what lay ahead, knew as if he was still what he’d been and he couldn’t let-
“Billie.” He put his hand on her arm. Her real arm. Felt her tense with the contact- and part of him realised that this was the first time he’d touched her without having to- while the rest did the practical thing and tugged at her to leave.
She could have shaken him off. Or killed him. Or just held her ground. He knew his body was no match for Billie Lurk.
But after a moment of wide-eyed anger, after a moment of him wondering just what on earth he’d do if this did turn violent- her muscles loosened and she started to run.
They weren’t chased far. A couple of streets and a dive into an alley and the footsteps behind them trailed off. He straightened, breathing hard. Billie’s face was stony, set behind her eyes.
“Stupid.” She muttered, barely audible. “So goddamn stupid.”
Rats scuttled around their feet. He slumped against the wall and watched her again.
He couldn’t do anything else. Couldn’t help.
Billie let out a breath, rubbed her face. He saw her force the rage- the rage at the guards, at Abele, at herself- down. He wondered if he’d ever feel so angry, and decided no. He’d rise above it.
“Come on. Back to the inn.”
Normally he’d have enjoyed the silent walk they started on, normally he’d have taken the chance to soak in the sights. But now he couldn’t focus on anything- anyone- but her.
If she’d been a normal person she might have been crying.
He remembered the thousands he’d seen in mourning. He thought of the sad ones, and the ones like Corvo who’d been powered by their grief. Billie was neither. She bottled.
It was a creeping surprise to realise that he didn’t like that part of him wanted to see her break.
“I’m… sorry about that.” She said suddenly and finally, not looking at him.
He tried not to look back. He failed. Billie must have felt it because she sighed again, one of her long suffering Billie sighs.
“If we’d been caught, you’d be the one to suffer more. Probably.”
“The Empress tried to thank you. She forgave you.” He reminded her without thinking, only realising after he’d said it that it had been been a mistake. Billy didn’t want to see the royals any more than he did. “I mean… if she were going to arrest you…”
Billie snorted. “Yeah, and do you think her father would feel the same?”
Honestly, he didn’t know. Corvo was a good man, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still a man.
As the sun set they ate stagnant tasting pie in their room. Billie had decided on renting rather than squatting, saying that they’d be there two nights at the most, that they could afford it, that in Dunwall it was easier to blend into the crowds than go unnoticed. Now they had the luxury of four walls and a window. A rickety chair. A bed.
He’d never slept in one before. Billie let him have it without saying a word.
“It was a mistake coming here at all. A risk.” She was half talking to herself, and, still watching, he felt strangely intrusive. “I thought… I don’t know. Everything’s different now. Or it should be. I thought maybe seeing where it happened would make me feel different too. Waste of time. I should be over it.”
He chewed slowly. The meat and pastry were tastelessly grey. He’d never eaten anything better in his life, but that was true of every meal.
“Where next, then?”
It would help, he thought, to make her be practical.
Billie twisted her shoulders. “Don’t know. Maybe head north. Somewhere with less guards. Somewhere we can get around without being stared at.”
Though he’d probably ruined going unnoticed for her forever. She hadn’t mentioned what he’d done to her arm and eye. He wondered if she ever would.
There was an odd feeling on his skin and he startled, looked up to see Billie watching him. She turned away at once, taking off her glove and coat to fold under her head.
Her expression- what he’d seen of it- had that been pity? Concern? He was annoyed with himself for not knowing.
“Get to sleep.” Billie muttered from the floor. “You look exhausted.”
But he couldn’t. Sleep felt too close to the Void. Sleep felt like hands gripping at him and holding him down on a black stone.
The fear embarrassed him. It must have come from his body. He’d never been scared when he was a god.
He thought about Billie instead. Not deliberately, he started off thinking about Dunwall, which turned to the things he’d seen that day, which turned to The Thing he’d seen that day.
Deirdre was lucky to have someone still missing her after so many years.
Not many people had that, and less had it from someone like Billie.
She grunted in her sleep, and he sat up to look at her. Sleep made her smaller, made her younger. He looked and saw some of the child she’d been when everything had gone wrong.
Of all the people he’d known since he’d died, she mattered the least. The Outsider would never have given her his mark. She’d never change anyone’s world, except that she had. His. How had she managed that? And yet she’d done it, and she’d done it again and she was still doing it now. There were other people she could be helping. People who deserved it.
She’d stayed with him anyway. She stopped him from being alone anyway. Like turning on a switch he’d forgotten, he remembered how it felt to be alone and mortal. To know a bloody cult could cut you out of the world and the world wouldn’t even blink.
He pictured that young Billie Lurk alone too, crying over the body of the last person she’d loved and-
And the thought of that suffering falling on her pulled at something in him. The thought of Billie in pain, Billie who’d saved him and saved him again, hurt.
He wasn’t curious. He didn’t want to see what she’d do next. He was angry at the world that had done that to her. He was ashamed that he’d only watched. Her loneliness ached deep in him.
It was hard clay cracking under his ribs- a painful jolting breathless stab into his gut. Oh, he thought, I remember this now.
————
Dunwall stank, but it wasn’t as bad in the early morning. The city hadn’t had the chance to warm up to tepid yet, and the various butchers and smelters and sewage boilers were still asleep.
So, frustratingly, was Billie.
He wanted to shake her shoulder, but he wouldn’t stoop that low.
Instead, to distract himself, he went to the window and looked down onto the city. Watched a few kids pick though a dumpster and wondered if they’d find enough scraps to keep them alive.
He hoped so.
Behind him, Billie moved. He listened to her familiar waking-up noises- her yawn, her stretching back- and then listened to them stop. His stomach tensed. She’d seen it.
After a moment her quiet feet padded closer and she leaned against the window ledge beside him. He risked a look at her and caught her smiling. Just barely. It was a weary, sad sort of smile, but it was still a smile.
“Those were some long nails. Must have taken a while to pull them out.”
He shrugged, faking nonchalance. “It was old stone. It was crumbling.”
Behind them Abele’s memorial plaque lay on the floor. Removing it had taken him hours and left his hands scraped bare, his nails painfully chipped, his knuckles bruised. But then, humanity always hurt.
Sometimes it was worth it.