#it's okay Daud can just stop time and save them if he needs to

[icedjuiceboxes]

New dishonored au bc I'm insane okay:

Billie being DH1!Emily royal protector

So.

While heirs to the throne get to choose their royal protector at the age 11, Jessamine and Corvo decides to let Emily choose her a year early. Especially with Corvo about to take his trip across with the Isles to find aid for the plague.

Hiram Burrows overhears this. He drags Billie lurk into the Tower and fabricates all the documents that says shes been with the watch for some time. Well accomplished- even saved the high overseer Campbell's life at some point. It's perfect- bring in Daud's right hand man to do recon right at the source in plain sight.

Corvo and Jess are none the wiser- Corvo double checks Billie's background, but finds little to argue with when he has testimonials from Burrows and Campbell. She's not a bad match, young, full of energy. can keep up with Emily.

Emily was tempted to argue with the choice, especially since she didn't get to choose, and worse of all Burrows picked Billie- a man Emily hates with all the fury a ten y/o could muster. She was tempted- but excitement won over being petty. And it did helped Billie mindlessly made a comment about Burrows, throwing him under the bus in favor to win Emily over.

So that was it. Billie joined Emily's side, and by extension, the empress' side as well while Corvo traveled the isles.

Emily showed Billie all the best hiding spots in the Tower, and all the ways she sneaks away to get away from lessons. When Billie wasn't needed, she reported back to Daud, every little detail the young empress was so kind to share.

At some point Delilah meets with Billie, knowing what she plans to do. They can all get what they want. Billie just needs to bring Emily to her after the assassination.

Despite learning to enjoy Emily's company and the life the Tower brought, Billie went through with it.

That day. Corvo came back early. It didn't stop them though. It was going to happened. Billie stood with the three in the gazebo, watching the waterlock. Emily was the first to point out the approaching whalers.

When they appeared, Corvo was quick to draw his sword. Billie simply stood in front of Jess and Emily, it wasn't time to drop the facade. Corvo was a force to be reckoned with, he didn't need Billie's help regardless.

When Daud showed up though. It was over. Time to drop the act. Thomas held Corvo in the air. Daud came face to face with her, the Empress behind her and Emily hugging her legs.

She stepped aside, taking Emily with her. As Daud took Jess by her neck, Billie was just barely quick enough to cover Emily's eyes, she being frozen in a state of fear and shock. As Jessamine's body fell to the floor, Billie's hand slipped off Emily's face. Emily stared up at her, emotionless and barely just choked out "You lied." Emily was spared the sight, but she wasn't oblivious to the sounds to put together what conspired.

Billie barely just managed to transverse in time with Thomas and Daud as Emily said those words.

Billie was still in charge of Emily after she and the whalers returned to HQ. Emily fought Billie, and had punch hard enough to leave bruises, before breaking down and screaming and crying and pleading for answers on Billie's betrayal. And then she fell asleep, exhausted. Billie had a choice. She could hand over Emily to the Pendletons, and follow Burrows plan. Or hand her over to Delilah, who powers Billie been borrowing over the last few months.

In the dead of the night. Billie left with Emily for the Brigmore Manor.

Long story short Delilah was insane, and Billie had to get Emily out. She regretted choosing Delilah, not that the Pendletons was a much better choice. She was stuck in between a rock and a hard place.

So there was Billie Lurk alone with Emily. Ally to no one. Burned every bridge she had. The whalers. The coven. The royal family.

Emily had no choice but to go wherever Billie took her, up against the whole entire city of dunwal.

[radjerda]

...just hope your Whalers actually get powers from the Arcane Bond, that would be rather key here.

[exalok]

Some Thoughts, as previously mentioned

specifically about daud, his aceness or non-aceness, how it relates to mine, and the limits of my writing -- partly in response to your letter, anonymous

under readmore because this might get long and so you can skip it if you’d rather

okay so. i would like to clarify that i’m going to say stuff that contradicts the things you said, and um, i don’t want you to feel bad about it? maybe you won’t and this is a silly disclaimer to lay down. or maybe you will but for other reasons than what i’m trying to avoid by saying this. what i mean to say is i did have an intention going in to most of my daud-fic, which isn’t the one you seem to believe, but also the author is dead and that intention doesn’t matter if it can’t be seen from the reader’s point of view

specifically, what i’m contradicting is “changing a character’s sexuality” -- i am going to explain my intention, and what i think the problems are with that intention, and if i remember to i will finish by reconnecting it all to what i think of the ace discourse (hopefully i won’t do this entirely backwards in an effort to contextualize)

to be honest the intentions were probably multiple and this is why i confuse myself and leave it unclear.

1) sex is fascinating in what it can show about two characters, and it’s meaty and physical without necessarily getting gory (though i enjoy toeing the line, dunno what that says about me), and it’s considered this Huge Thing by so many of my peers/family/etc or this average entirely normal thing by others of my peers/family/etc all at once and the problem with that heaping pile of contradiction is there is a lot for me to process but i absolutely cannot while anyone else is in the room for various reasons (embarrassment, fear, anxiety, incomprehension) and so the solution is facing it on my own, hence writing -- but also my entire brain latched on to dishonored and specifically corvo & daud, and they have become a comfortable little nook for me to explore otherwise daunting subjects with. the more i think on it the more i love using them both as a vehicle to explore various facets of identity (sexuality, gender, and i’m making forays into politics maybe)

2) i still like ace!daud. i want ace!daud. i want to figure him out. this is mostly difficult because to figure him out, to make him feel real while also being ace, i need to make him familiar to me -- because if i base myself on outside experience, on hearsay or stereotype, he will feel fake -- and i barely feel familiar to myself. i often don’t understand my own experience. i will simultaneously stare at the smallest little detail of my behavior and have the hardest time focusing on what the hell it means, like the most myopic brain analyst.

the result is i try to have both at once: daud as asexual, and not even necessarily demisexual -- daud not caring much for sex, not always even liking it -- but asking for it anyway for his own reasons, often twisty ones that he’s not necessarily aware of

part of this is because i still have a hard time understanding being sexual as, like, a full-time thing, and the only way i have of translating it is through awkward replays of stuff i’ve seen elsewhere (largely present in how i write corvo these days). there are so many parts that perplex me, and so many things that seem to be assumed in some narratives but not at all in others, and i don’t know what is because of focus and what is because of culture and what is because of reality and what the difference between all of those is anyway

part of it is because i can’t pick and choose to save my life and am forever cursed with making Weird Soup out of all the things i want to think about

conclusion: the intention that comes through is probably primarily the sex one, because that’s the most obvious when i refuse to use modern identity labels for a bunch of dudes who haven’t ever properly thought through that shit -- but also! sometimes! i write things that feel like they contradict how i see ace!daud! and those parts always end up feeling a little wrong, but they’re still there to be read and accepted as part of the narrative and they muddle my attempts even more

so. ace!daud discourse. that definitely existed in my vicinity, and as i automatically absorb most of the stuff that passes me by, yes, it did get to me a little. after all, my intentions are contradictory: i want to write the boning, and i want them to enjoy it, but i also want to explore what it might mean for daud not to like it after all. is that not, on some level, disrespectful? what about his taste for control, the giving and the imposition of it, and its relation to where and how he grew up, and the decisions he made later on? is it wrong for me to want it to make sense? am i thinking about it too hard?? that happens, but also i don’t know. i don’t have enough experience with any of it to have feelings or opinions about how i’m treating the subject beyond “yeah i like where this is going”

i am of the strong opinion that writers should write what they like, even if it’s shitty. i am also of the strong opinion that i’m responsible for trying to think through what i’m writing, and not completely trample people in the process. those two opinions don’t always coexist comfortably.

it doesn’t mean i’ll stop writing -- fuck no, i love words so goddamn much, and i love dishonored beyond reason, and i think that with time i’ll get somewhere where what i’m trying to do will make enough sense to me that i’ll be able to have it show up on the page -- but my early efforts will continue to exist as well, however self-contradictory they are in their underpinnings, and i guess sometimes i just need downtime to reevaluate the whole of my progress

i probably forgot where i was going with this partway through??? but i hope it mostly makes sense. have a glimpse of the gears, whoever managed to get to the end

(oh also i only recently decided to start compiling a little something where the intention actually is having daud not be ace so i can see what i’ll do with that now that i have a bit more understanding under my belt -- they’re very stupid about it, as they usually are)

here’s to hashing out one’s feelings about shit they wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole in real life!!! /sets off fireworks, throws confetti, jumps onto a sled and disappears

[luckydicekirby]

*predicatable* the daudsider fic where daud gets killed by hc corvo...

LMAO honestly thank you i love talking about this fic…the original idea behind this was realizing that if Corvo kills Daud at the end of Brigmore Witches, it’s by cutting his throat. And that’s how the Outsider died, so obviously they should talk about it! Weirdly this ended up being kind of an afterthought in the fic itself, which is mostly just Daud being gay and sad, as is his legal right. I guess this is the only time I’ve really written Daud POV. Or actually Daud at all? I tend to mention him a lot in fics as a rhetorical device but he never really shows up, oops. 

wrapped around your ankles over the waterfall, for anyone else playing along at home!

Never let it be said that Corvo Attano doesn’t know how to handle a knife. He makes it quick. Daud hardly feels the cut as it crosses his throat. He’s already fading when Corvo tosses him over the side of the building. He doesn’t feel himself hit the ground.

There is like, something subtly wrong with the rhythm of this paragraph, it reads a little flat? Two of these sentences need to be combined and then I think it would be fine. Riveting commentary I know.

When Daud contemplated death—a common enough way to kill time, for an assassin—he liked to think it might bring him peace. Foolish, to expect that peace was something he could ever have.

Daud, I think maybe thinking about dying all the time is a YOU thing.

He opens his eyes. He’s lying on stone. The Outsider peers down at him, and around them the Void is no different than it’s ever been, gray and cool and harsh.

“It was a very pretty speech,” he says. “But Corvo Attano heard enough pretty words for a lifetime when he lived in Dunwall Tower. He spent his days learning that they only ever hid viciousness and cruelty, knives poorly sheathed. The Loyalists toasted him eloquently before they poured poison down his throat. Why should he have believed yours to be any different?”

I leaned more into like, shrine-style speeches than I usually do in the Outsider’s dialogue here, probably because that kind of dialogue makes him sound like an asshole. It’s SO fun to write. 

Daud sits up and presses a hand to his neck, the place where Corvo’s knife cleaved his skin in two. His hand comes away bloody. It looks almost black in the gloom of the Void.

“You saved me,” he says, voice shredded to pieces, and the Outsider laughs.

God the kind of implied hopefulness of this is really crushing, huh.

“I don’t take sides,” he says. The lying bastard. The moment Corvo Attano was Marked, the moment the Outsider decided he was special, the outcome of this day was decided. “You’re dying, Daud, your life slipping out from between your fingers. A fitting end for a man who spent his life spilling a river of blood. I wonder what you’ll do with these final moments. Curse my name?”

“Fuck you.”

Walked right into that one my dude. Also “I don’t take sides” NEVER stops being funny unfortunately. And ‘spilling a river of blood’ I think is just straight up from one high chaos Outsider shrine speech or another.

“Always so predictable,” the Outsider muses, and Daud hates him, hates himself, hates the sick curdling feeling he always gets in his gut when the Outsider sounds disappointed. Sounds bored. The same sickness that stayed with him for fifteen years while the Outsider ignored him, until Daud blundered his way into Corvo Attano’s life and suddenly became interesting again. 

That’s being in love, Daud. Sorry, in your case it’s terminal!

“You begged him for your life. I admit, Daud, that surprised me. And Corvo refused to give it to you. Your one last request denied. How does that feel, Daud? Like justice? Like redemption?”

And this is like, endgame narration style dialogue. Good times.

It feels like blood sliding through Daud’s fingers, spilling down his coat. Dozens of people have bled on this coat. Jessamine Kaldwin did. And now Daud will be the last. “It doesn’t matter. It’s done.”

He wants it to be done. He wants the peace he knows he doesn’t deserve, but even now the Outsider won’t leave him alone, staring at him with his too dark eyes. It itches like bloodflies under his skin, the Outsider’s eyes on him, and yet Daud has never been able to hate it the way he should. He’s always craved it, as if he’s no better than the likes of Vera Moray, crooning to her rats about the black-eyed boy who will abandon her. Who abandons everyone, in time.

On the bright side, number of times Daud has made a guy into soup is still zero, so you’re still doing okay.

Corvo will feel like this one day. The thought should console Daud. It doesn’t.

“Of course it matters, Daud,” says the Outsider. He kneels down beside him and presses his hand against his throat, under Daud’s own. It’s cold, shocking enough that Daud starts, and the bastard laughs at that too. The Outsider has never touched him before. He would remember. “History is determined by men like Corvo Attano. By the men who kill Empresses and the men who take revenge. He could have let you live. He almost did. That future still hangs in the balance. A fish hooked but fighting against it. Soon enough it will have swum away.”

I love a good weird Outsider metaphor.

“So let me go,” Daud says.

The Outsider runs his thumb along the edges of Daud��s wound. It should hurt. It does hurt. Daud doesn’t try to move away. “My throat was cut, once,” he says. “The day that I was made what I am. It’s a terrible way to die. I can’t remember how I felt about it. I was going to do what you did. I was going to beg for my life. But they never gave me the chance.”

He must be telling the truth. This close, Daud can see the scar.

See I like, wrote the bit about them dying the same way and then all the subsequent dialogue I wanted to write was like, unrelated depressing gay bullshit, so I just went with that. I do like “I can’t remember how I felt about it”, it gets at everything that’s so fucked up about the Outsider’s like, whole existence. The most fun way to write the Outsider imo is just as a dude who fundamentally does not understand the human experience of anything, including his own literal human experiences.

The Outsider draws his hand back, covered now in Daud’s blood. Daud knows precisely how much blood the human body can hold, and he’s bled too much for anywhere but the Void.

I was like what am I talking about, is knowing about blood anatomy and assassin thing, but actually I think this is a joke (“joke”) about him having gone to college. 

“What would you have said?” Daud asks. He can’t look away from the Outsider’s hand.

The Outsider ignores him. He takes Daud’s jaw in his hand, smearing blood across his cheekbone, and tilts it to the side. He speaks into Daud’s ear. “Was it all my fault, Daud? Whispering in your ear, making you think you were somehow important?”

Does the Outsider ignore this question because he’s a bitch or because I couldn’t think of an answer? Who can say! 

Also the Outsider actually literally whispering in his ear is the kind of dramatic bullshit I fully believe he would do.

“You’re such a little shit,” Daud growls, and he has both hands fisted in the Outsider’s coat before he can think, before he can remember all the reasons that he has never dared touch the Outsider, no matter how much he loathes him.

“loathes” lol ok

The Outsider watches him, and does not let him go. They would be breathing the same air, if either of them were breathing anymore. “With my Mark, you thought you were going to change things. And you have.”

I still go back and forth about whether Mark/Marked should be capitalized. This ambiguity is the Outsider’s greatest crime.

I can no longer remember if there’s any canon basis for Daud ever having wanted to change the world for the better; it is my sacred duty to assume that everyone’s a sad former idealist though.

“From where I stand, the world looks exactly the same.”

“You killed an Empress, and saved her daughter. History peeled away from the curve of your blade like skin from a knife. I gave you what you wanted, Daud: the power to make your own regrets.”

Oh god what a gross metaphor. I like it a lot but also, yikes.

The Outsider slides his grip from Daud’s jaw back to his hair, and he yanks his head back. Daud chokes on nothing. He can feel blood dripping down his throat, can taste it on the back of his tongue. He clenches his fingers, and finds them too weak to hold onto the Outsider’s coat any longer.

Oh sorry I forgot the other reason I wrote this fic, “being kinda horny for people getting their throat cut” apparently. Like this blocking is so gross but, unfortunately.

“Are you going to let me die?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” The Outsider tilts his head. He looks curious. “Death made me what I am. I wonder what it would make of you.”

“A corpse,” Daud tells him.

“Daud,” says the Outsider, still so fucking disappointed. “Your problem has always been that you lack a grander vision.”

“Dead is dead.”

“Not when it happened to me.”

“I saw what was in Attano’s coat. If you make me into a thing like you did to the Empress—”

“If I wanted to cut out your heart, you would sit still and let me,” the Outsider says. “You can try to hide it with all the anger in the world, Daud, but you would do anything for me.” His voice is dispassionate, as if he were not filleting Daud to the very bone with his words.

I remember that I added this line in while editing, because Ruby got mad at me about it. “If I wanted to cut out your heart, you would let me” IS the most sarahcore thing I’ve ever written probably. Play to your strengths I guess!

Also can you imagine like, Daud style heart lines. Just miserable.

“A word from me after fifteen years, and you picked yourself up out of your guilt and grief to scour Dunwall from end to end. You didn’t have to kill Delilah to save Emily Kaldwin. You killed her because you were jealous. You thought you could kill Corvo too. But after you’d already murdered his dear Jessamine, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it.”

“Shut up,” Daud says. A rasp from his ruined throat.

The Outsider kisses him, cold lips and colder tongue, and Daud makes the same noise people make when he slides a knife between their ribs.

I am pretty happy with how the tone of this fic is basically ‘getting stabbed but in a sexy way except you still very much got stabbed’. Seems right for the ship!

There’s blood on the Outsider’s mouth when he lets Daud go. Daud wants to kiss him again more than he wants to live.

God what a depressing line. I like it a lot but hey Daud? You good???

“You should let me die. You should give Attano what he wants.”

“But I am,” the Outsider says. He touches Daud’s cheek, like the parody of a lover. “Corvo wanted his revenge. But more than that, he wants to be the kind of man above needing it. The kind of man who can raise his daughter well, and teach her to be kind, and good, and all the things that Empresses should be.”

Of course. Daud bleeding out before him, and it’s all about Corvo fucking Attano. “So you’re going to save me for Attano’s sake.”

Daud is miserable and jealous: the fic.

“I told you,” the Outsider says, eyes more pitiless than the sea. “I haven’t decided yet.”

This line…is really good. I love a good snappy ending line and this is probably the best one I’ve ever gotten, tbh. nailed it past sarah! there’s also like, no universe where this fic ends in a less weird and ambiguous way, because like frankly I can’t even figure out what that would be. Like where do you go from here. Nowhere, you live in this terrible moment forever!

Anyway, sorry that the only daudsider fic I’ve ever written is mega depressing and half about the Outsider also being in love with Corvo, but he’s VERY mean to Daud so surely that makes up for it!

[srrrokka]

WIP game - the word is “run”

[Give me a word and I’ll Quote it from my Fic WIPs!]

Please note that my WIPs are mostly a mess of notes, half written scenes, dialogue snippets, and so on, therefore this might look a wee bit weird.

 Marked by Many

He’s out of breath after the desperate run, he looks at the man in shock and tears his own mask off. “You’re Void touched,” he only manages.

________________________

 Amnesia AU

1) 

A man basically runs into Daud in a door of a building, he has a mask on and is panting. He curses under his breath, grabs Daud by the front of his coat, spins him around away from the door, and slams him against the wall. Daud is about to fight back when an explosion that has them both flinching throws an angry ball of fire through the entry to the building. The building Daud was meant to be inside of…

2)

Corvo: Aha, sure. Do you show this interest to every person you meet on the street? Listen, if you want something from me, say it and stop running circles. But, as far as I see it, I saved your skin and then you saved mine so we are done here. [The look he sends Daud is not quite a glare but definitely a warning]

________________________

 Offering of the Knife

D: Attano, you need a break.

C: I don’t remember asking for your opinion.

D: Call it a justified intervention.

C: [increasingly angry] I don’t need an intervention, I need to have this done.

D: [also increasingly angry] And you’re going to help no one by running yourself into the dirt.

C: [Inhales sharply to continue arguing but stops himself because he realises what he’s doing] You’re pissing me off because you’re right and I don’t want you to be.

D: [that reply throws him off incredibly]

C: Listen, I am expected to have it all resolved by yesterday. And unfortunately not only by my own volition. The entire court is stepping on my heels because I fucked up a second time in a very short time plus I am basically running this country right now, which doesn’t make them happy. They never liked me but recently they are having more and more reasons not to.

________________________

 Save Game

“Em…” Corvo’s voice is gentle but full of sadness. There it goes. The cat is out of the bag now. All of them. Emily runs up to him and hugs him as she cries into his shirt. He wishes he could hug her back but his arms are bound behind his back. “Shhhhh, Em… It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry.”

________________________

 Apocalypse AU

1)

Daud could feel the hot breath of the creature run down his neck and then something else joining it… Something uncomfortably warm and slick made a broad, wet stripe on his skin.

2)

[18/04, 21:21] VeeChaos: Daud calls out to Corvo, thinking he might be returning to his senses but Thomas is like “No, he’s not there, Daud.” And then after a cinematic pause… “Run!” And Corvo attacks them :3c

3)

Corvo’s body got a little confused because, due to how Void affected it, it’s basically running on empty. He doesn’t experience the hunger because of the music but also still can’t eat normal food.

________________________

 Soulmate AU

1)

His body jerked back up and into running faster than he could think of commanding it to. He just wanted to be home. Was it so much to ask? He wanted to hide and disappear. He wanted his mum to tell him it’s going to be alright. He wanted to hug her. He wanted this day to end…

2)

“I’ve spent 6 months in this chair. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy and, let’s face it, you’re not really anywhere close. So. Either you take my offer, and we can both leave this miserable hole, or you’re going to have a nice, long stay in your own cozy cell until I come up with something more agreeable.” Corvo’s eyes skip to the left, just above his shoulder, and for a beat blackness overtakes them again, just to return to his face with new intensity. “Time’s running out, Knife.”

________________________

 Scratch Session (work tile for Homestuckers)

1)

Corvo kills Jessamine and then remembers. Instead of running he stays, paralysed by shock and grief. Daud watches Jessamine die in his arms and then grabs Corvo by the front of his coat and just punches him in the face. Corvo doesn’t defend himself at all, Daud takes out a knife from his belt ready to stab the bastard through the heart where he stands. Daud pauses when he notices that the assassin is… crying.

And then Daud remembers.

They stand there for a moment taking in what just happened in the context of who they actually are until there are footsteps running up the stairs leading to the gazebo and Daud has half a mind to transverse them away from there before they both get arrested.

2)

Something Daud did not expect was an actual fight. The Whaler holding Oz runs out of Pull and so the Lord Protector joins the fight but is stormed by Whalers so Corvo is still on his own against Daud without any weapons. He is half blind because of the blood pouring into his eye and he pleads with Daud to stop.

________________________

 Soulmate AU: the fluffy edition

Jess finds out how good Paloma is with kids and she has this passing thought of ah so it runs in the family.

________________________

 TRC/DH1

Either way the Empress died because Pull still works on Corvo, but instead of being hurt after falling Corvo just gets up and continues fighting until Daud runs a sword through him and… nothing happens. Corvo looks Daud dead in the eye and the assassin takes a step back. his sword doesn’t have even a trace of blood on it.

________________________

 Blind AU

1)

Corvo woke up with a start in his small cot in the Flooded District. Cold sweat running down his back, his entire frame shaking like a leaf. He clasped a hand over his mouth as an anguished scream formed at the back of his throat. He curled up on himself, the other arm wrapping tightly around his chest where the shard pierced him. His head was swimming. He felt sick.

2)

Corvo: It’s not perfect but it has to do. That’s all I have left. The thing with the Dark Vision is that it gives me shapes, it doesn’t give me details. I don’t know how yours works but… [he picks up one of the papers from the table] I see a page, the outline of it really, but not what’s on it. [he turns to the Whaler] I can see the outline of your face, your mouth, your eyes, but Thomas, I don’t actually know what you look like. I can’t tell the colour of your hair or eyes, I can’t see if you have scars, I can’t tell if you’re tired… I- [the dark vision runs out] as I said, it’s not bad, but it’s far, far from great…

[sparkledeerfr]

The Potter

“Gren?” He heard Adeline say after he had closed shop for the day. Of course he always left the front door unlocked just in case someone needed something (generally Hox), and theft was not a worry.  Adeline knew this, but she still knocked and waited for him to say “Come in” because she was her, and she would never intrude unless there was an emergency- in which case she would generally be yelling and kicking in the door.

(Read More Link)

Adeline walked carefully through his darkened shop, lit now only by the candle by him at his workshop at the back. She noticed that nearly every shelf was full to bursting with pottery of all types and beside him was even more, spilling onto tables and gathering at his feet.

This was exactly why she had come in - the man just did not stop, and it was beginning to worry her. She had asked Mochi about Grenfell, as he was the only person who seemed to know anything about the potter (aside from Pickles, who would lie for the fun of it), and he had explained that Gren had been trapped alone for a very long time and would ‘likely display some new and exciting neuroses’.

That was the meanest and least understanding thing she’d ever heard out of Mochi, but the weaver and the potter did not seem to much care for one another. Gren was the only person who made Mochi narrow his eyes in anger and suspicion- quite the feat when the clan contained Vice and Pickles.

Adeline walked up to where he was sitting and put a hand on the back of his chair. He was working on a large flower pot. “Um, Gren how many pots have you made?” His head shot up and he looked at her as though he didn’t understand the question. “Today I mean. How many pots have you made just today?”

Grenfell paused and looked around him, then to the collection at his feet. “I'm not certain. Fifty maybe?” He was wondering where she was going with this. What did it matter to her? He wasn't hurting anyone. In fact that's what he was trying to avoid.

“So is there anything else you like to do for fun? You know, to take a break?” She asked. Gren continued to think- she didn't sound suspicious or accusatory, more-

Worried. That was it. She was worried about him. He clamped his teeth together to avoid laughing but it really was ridiculous. “No,” he replied, and he could feel his eyes growing wider. He’d developed some unfortunate tics over the years, and keeping on top of them to make others more comfortable he wasn’t quite capable of. Not yet, anyway.

“Well how about you help us repair some of the houses and statues?” Adeline asked, leaning against his work table and scratching the side of her head. “I know its stone but you could probably patch it better than anyone.” Gren appreciated that she left out the ‘aside from Mochi’ that he knew she was thinking.

Ah, if only she knew the whole truth.

“I don't enjoy being in the city,” Gren said, turning back to his pot.

“Okay well is there maybe something aside from clay that you like working with? Maybe a way you could branch out and try something new?”

Gren paused again, clenching a hand involuntarily, looking back up to her and seeing those concerned blue eyes looking into his own pink ones. They had been born on exact opposite sides of the continent, they were exact opposite people, and yet here they were- one current and one former ruler of the city.

No she would hate being called a ruler, that would imply she was above anyone else. Yet another way they were opposites. This girl knew absolutely nothing but she was still willing to try, just as he was willing to learn to be a better person, if only just to avoid ending up where he did before.

Perhaps they could help one another after all.

“Yes I suppose branching out would be good. Is there anything you suggest?”

“Hm,” Adeline said, leaning back and looking at the ceiling. “Well there's ways you could expand the things you sell, but is there anything you've been wanting to try? If you're worried about the cost I could pay for materials.”

You precious, precious moron, Gren thought, then paused, wondering if that thought was mean or not. He supposed it was neither here nor there. Adeline merely took it as him mulling over ideas, especially as he took the time to appraise her. “You break your weapon fairly often don't you?”

She snorted and smiled at him. “Iiiii’mmmmm not the most careful fighter.”

“And you buy cheap weapons for the same reason you won't wear nice clothing- the money could be spent elsewhere in your mind.”

“Yeeaaaahhhh I mean it's not that important to me. I don’t need to be dressed up to do what I do,” she said with a shrug. “But I thought we were talking about you?”

“We are, in a way,” Grenfell said, turning and looking back to his half-finished pot. It was still slick with water, but now he was bored by it. He didn’t like being bored. “I’ll make you a present, and you can tell me if it's any good.”

“You don’t need to make me any-”

“I want to,” Grenfell cut her off, glancing out the side of his eyes as she stiffened and realized she had lost this particular argument. Confidence- that was what she needed, and doubtless she didn’t receive any from that knife of a man Daud. Well he could help her with that. The trouble would be doing so without completely revealing himself. “I can’t promise it will be anything excellent, anyway.”

“You always make good things,” she says, reaching out to pat his shoulder reassuringly and then realizing she didn’t know him well enough to comfortably do so. She was too used to most everyone else in the city, who practically lived in her personal space. As she pauses and goes to reach her hand back Gren grabs it and lowers it to his shoulder.

“You don’t offend me, dear leader,” he says looking back to her with a wicked grin. “In the future, all you have to do is ask, for me or for others.”

“Good point,” she replies, patting his shoulder and feeling slightly uncomfortable about it. The man was strange, but she did appreciate his directness. “I look forward to seeing what you make. Have a good night, Gren.”

She left and Grenfell stared at the candle a moment, watching it drip wax down to the brass base it was held in. He sighed deeply and knew he would be taking a risk involving himself once again but Adeline was right, he needed to do something else or he would drive himself to the brink. And what better service than to your leader and your city?

He found the box of metal he’d been saving in storage and got to work.

[luckydicekirby]

fic commentary meme: your favorite part of white collar podcast fic, OR the hallucination scene(s) from bathymetry, orrrrr any part of I Really Am Your Color but that seems less likely

SHOCKINGLY i’m sure, hallucinations from bathymetry wins : P I love a good hallucination/dream sequence! A fact about me I’m sure we’re all unaware of. (My favorite bit of the white collar fic is of course everything El says; I have nothing productive to say about I Really Am Your Color other than ‘damn, still can’t believe that lipstick scene’.)

So this whole Brigmore segment/the back half of chapter 4 was added to the outline really late, because initially what I had written down was like. “They solve the attempted murder plot somehow” and that turned out not to be helpful! So I was like okay there’s a witch, so they must be at Brigmore, whatever, and then that ended up tying in really well with being able to poke at the central problem of Billie being unable to move on from her past. And so the blunt force way of getting at this was to have her LITERALLY confront their past and then handwave it with magic! And I really wanted an excuse to write Delilah.

Also this is way more interesting than doing my job and thus got long, oops. From Chapter 4 of Bathymetry.

“You should run,” says a voice from behind her, muffled.

Billie turns around. There’s a woman there wearing Billie’s old Whaler uniform, mask included. She’s a lot more solid that Billie’s visions usually are. Once Billie focuses on her, she doesn’t disappear. “You should run,” she says again, in Billie’s voice. “Before it’s too late. Before you get tangled up in something else you don’t understand.” 

“I’m not going to abandon her.” She’s talking to a ghost, but she can’t quite stop herself. Billie steps forward. She wonders what she would feel, if she reached out.

lol I actually FORGOT that this bit starts with Billie talking to her past self. obviously, I love it when people talk to their past selves. Mineshaft 2.txt baybee

Anyway part of what I wanted to accomplish on a character level while we were here was Billie very pointedly choosing not to run away--to no longer be the version of herself that would. So, the unsubtle way of doing that is just...having that version of herself explicitly tell her to do it! Externalizing internal conflict for fun and profit.

In my outline this whole scene is written as: “B: maybe has a Think about running away but like. She Isn’t Gonna--lol does Past Fake Memory Billie try to tell her to. OR fake memory delilah. Anyway she literally tells her past to fuck off, and...runs into Thackeray menacing C and O? And hard cut” so if you’ve ever wondered how elegant my outlines are: they aren’t. 

“You think I’m stupid,” says her ghost. “You think I let Delilah lead me around by the nose. Maybe I am. Maybe I did. But do you seriously think you’re any better? Please. You’ve been following around the fucking Empress like a puppy. She’s just a reckless, spoiled kid, and you look at her like she’s going to save you from yourself. That’s who we are now?”

Emily-Delilah comparisons are a fun way to make Billie really upset! Sometimes you’re in love with a woman whose mom you helped kill and who is also the niece of your Terrible Ex, And That’s Fine. Also, there’s something very ouch about your past self saying, disdainfully, oh, you think I’m stupid, don’t you?

“Shut up.” Billie steps forward, gets in her own face. It’s not very satisfying.

The ghost snorts. “We always were a sucker for a pretty face. Admit it. You haven’t changed at all. This is who we’ll always be.”

I think we can only assume that Billie making bad choices because a girl is pretty is canon.

“Say that to my fucking face,” Billie says, and the ghost laughs, and laughs, and takes off the mask. Except when she does, she isn’t Billie any longer.

In some universe where I had restraint, I would have Billie have to deal with EITHER her past self or Delilah, but not both. However, restraint is for suckers.

“Little Billie Lurk, lost without her master,” says Delilah, and she looks more real than Billie’s ghost ever could. 

Writing Delilah dialogue is VERY fun. I really like the cadence of the first line here.

Delilah never looked like she belonged in the real world. She was like what Billie imagined the Void would be like, long before she ever set foot there. Otherworldly and regal and terrifying. “So convinced that you’ve changed. What would Daud say? Oh, that’s right. He doesn’t say anything anymore. You left him in the Void. You didn’t even bother to do the one thing he’d asked of you in fifteen years. 

And of course my other fav thing to do in this fic, bring Daud up so I can be mean about him! And have Billie deal with her guilt about him/decide not to be like him, I guess. But mostly to be mean. 

The both of you were always pathetic, trying so hard to wash away the blood on your hands. You haven’t figured out that it always ends in blood. You’ll never learn that lesson if you don’t let the Kaldwin girl go.”

“It doesn’t have to,” Billie says. “It’s a choice. It’s always a choice.”

This also leans into one of the themes of this fic aka “what I think doto was about”, that you can’t blame other people for your own choices, and that at some point you have to admit that murder isn’t gonna solve your problems. (or more poetically, breaking cycles of violence.)

Delilah steps forward, reaching out to cup Billie’s cheek. Emily touched her there earlier today, and Billie leaned into it, and now she’s somewhere in this house, and Billie has to find her—

Ah yes, the romantic face touch! Also, Billie snapping out of the hallucination a little bit by thinking/worrying about Emily here is important--the need to save Emily is the way she leads herself out of being figuratively and literally stuck in the past. Because that’s romantic, to me personally.

“I thought about asking you to join us,” Delilah says, thumb running across Billie’s cheek. “I would have if you hadn’t taken the first ship out, getting away from this place as fast as you could. Even after you betrayed me to Daud. There was always something about you. That fire in your eyes. Ambition and longing and the knowledge that you were owed more than the hand you’d been dealt. Maybe it’s the same thing Emily sees in you.”

“Now you’re really just trying to piss me off.” Billie barely even thought about it, but the twin-bladed knife is back in her hands. 

Delilah laughs. “You think you’re strong enough to kill me now? I don’t think so. You put on such a good show, Billie, but I know you’ve always been weak.”

Delilah explicitly laying out the idea that turning away from violence makes you weak, so that Billie can immediately refute it.

Her grip tightens on the knife.

She wants to make Delilah bleed. That’s what this knife was meant for. 

There’s some sort of throughline about the twin-bladed knife being a symbol of the aforementioned cycles of violence that is a little weak because I only decided to do it like, 2/3 of the way through the story, but that’s why Billie giving it to Emily ends up being a big deal in the next few chapters. Had I edited this story all at once instead of in chunks, I would’ve gone back and laid some groundwork for it earlier.

That’s what it wanted to do to the Outsider, but the Outsider didn’t deserve it. Delilah does. Delilah deserves everything Billie can give her. Delilah tried to kill Emily twice, and the first time Billie didn’t even know, didn’t even think to try to stop her. There’s still time for her to make up for that.

Billie really WANTS to fight her but...

Delilah’s form flickers, and for a moment, Billie can see the empty manor behind her. 

“Well?” Delilah demands.

Delilah’s gone. Emily made sure of it. And Emily didn’t kill her: she’s always been clever enough to find the ways to give people what they deserve without spilling their blood. 

(low chaos is hot, apparently!)

And she’s going to get a bullet between the eyes if Billie doesn’t find her soon.

“I don’t have time for this,” Billie says. She shrugs off Delilah’s ghost, and turns away.

...she deliberately chooses to focus on the present/Emily instead of the past. Romance! Character development! Yeah! Anyway, this is pretty much the point of the scene--Billie choosing not to, say, do what Daud might have done, and try to get revenge on someone who isn’t even there. I actually had a hard time writing the scenes later where she gets together with Emily, because these were the emotional beats I was planning to hit and then I did them early and had to find new ones.

“She’ll never forgive you,” Delilah says. The same crooning voice she always had, because she isn’t here anymore. She’s gone. Billie’s never going to see her again.

Billie vaults over a banister and doesn’t look back. 

Void, she hates this fucking house. The place echoes, and her eyes keep trying to lie to her, and she is so sick and tired of shit like this. She thought it would be over when she dealt with the Outsider, but it’s never really over, is it. There will always be bad people, but Billie isn’t at their mercy anymore. And she’ll die before she lets Emily be, either. 

And this is a deliberate echo of a doto line-- “you’ve always been at the mercy of bad people, haven’t you?”, which Billie says about the Outsider when she finds his body in the void. I love the doto thing of drawing parallels between Billie and the Outsider and so I do it a lot in this fic. Thackery and Flint being an Overseer and a witch is kind of an attempt to draw this parallel out further--they were at the mercy of bad people too.