#then when i realized tumblr has no formatting I didn't bother with the iltalics i had

[doctorpariahdax]

Daud’s Last Day

     Last night the air had been so dry, even at the dock, that she thought he was going to cough up a lung. She could hear him even from above deck, coughing – nearly choking – so harshly that she could feel the rumble of his lungs inside of her own chest. For three months she watched as his health meandered between wellness and decline, for three months she listened at night to the sound of his breathing, for it overshadowed her own. Sometimes, Billie couldn’t tell if it was the rotting wood of the Dreadful Whale, or Daud’s chest that made the popping groans in the night.        Fondly, Billie could pull an image of Daud to mind from the thinnest memory, and it shined brightly behind her eyes. He was never ta;;, but there was a grandeur that surrounded a man as built as he was in his prime, drenched in the smells of cigars, hard liquor, and sweat stained clothes. The odor of piss was just what tagged along to any of the whalers on a bad day in the flooded district. He had seemed invincible back then. Maybe he would return secretly from a private endeavor, a scratch on his face or holding his wrist in a hurt fashion, but he never seemed to really bleed, like the rest of them did.        Billie thought that it was part of the Outsider’s curse, his mark that made Daud so imposing, impenetrable, and so cold. But she was just a recruit then. She had seen the horrors that men could inflict upon others as easily as themselves. She had never been a fragile girl, but she had been malleable. She knew it too. Perhaps that was part of the reason she endeavored to trust Delilah upon their meeting. Daud had seen that she could be molded like a lump of clay – and she partially hated him for it. Now though, in hidnsight, she had allowed such a cause of regret to afflict her with Delilah, even more easily than she had with Daud.        Billie wiped a hand across her face as she stared down upon her diary.               Thoughts like these could drive someone mad.        She wasn’t getting anything scribbled down in her seemingly useless journal. Anything of note was stored already in Daud’s mind, or he had helped Billie preparing ensembles of information, keypoints, targets, hand drawn maps...Her journal served no purpose as of yet. It meant nothing to keep her thoughts organized when it seemed two minds held the same information. With a start, Billie swung her head around and stared at the iron and mahogany door to her quarters, when she heard a familiar wheezing cough echo from the other side. Like a cat, Billie tuned her ears to ignore the creaking and the moaning of water against the ship’s sides, waiting for a signal.         Moments passed in relative silence and nothing came.         A swell of anger rose into the back of Billie’s throat, burning like bile.        “What am I doing?” Billie whispered to herself, and maybe Deidre, should she care to listen to complaints. “After all of this...what am I left with? What will we be left with?”        Billie didn’t know what the world held in store for itself should the Outsider die – if it was possible. And she doubted that Daud was even a slight step closer to such knowledge.       Billie had obeyed him without question back in the day. He was omniscient, omnipresent, you couldn’t hide anything from him – until Billie dared to try. She had always felt that there was some degree of mistrust between her and Daud as she grew and rose to his second in command. Betraying him gave her a confidence she hadn’t known since Deidre had first smiled at her, a confidence so rare like his smile or a small accolade for her performance on a mission. But it also sent a jarring pain up her spine, tormenting her with a headache of fear and paranoia.        She knew that he knew, he had always known. One of the strongest might rise up and try to upset the balance of power that simply held the hierarchy of the whalers in place – that had held all of their worlds’ in place. It was the only thing they knew, that they wanted to know. The whalers were a band of misfits, freaks, talentless polymaths, and criminal sweethearts. They all missed one thing in common, or had been betrayed by that one thing – family.       Daud offered them a home, food, purpose.       Daud had offered them a family, and Billie, like the rest of them, fell for his maneuvering. Even after Daud expelled her, and soon afterwards found himself having ‘disappeared’ from the underside of Dunwall, from the underside of the world seemingly, there was a constant pang somewhere deep in Billie’s stomach that she had lost something important. She had lost trust, she had lost her family. All of the whalers, all of her friends, they were now without a proverbial father, and their family shattered.       Billie still, even after fifteen years couldn’t help but think that it was her fault that nearly a hundred faceless souls had lost the closest thing they had to acceptance and love.         Lurk was brought out of her guilt ridden contemplation at the sound of scuffling. She thought it was a water rat loose in the kitchen with how faint and sharp the sounds were. The quiet came back in a breath and Billie nearly relaxed, considering trying to write pointless information in her journal when she felt the boards of the lower deck vibrate slightly, a thunder of weight collapsing outsider of her door.       Her head snapped back to the door, and within moments, she heard the coughing.       Bolting from her seat and pushing the heavy cast iron door open so quickly it threw Billie off balance she ran feverishly outside her cabin.     Panic raised the hairs on her neck and arms when the cot beside her door was empty. None of the lanterns were lit and dawn was still several hours from breaking. “Daud!” she yelled into the darkness as she took precarious steps towards the sound of his lungs collapsing. “DAUD!”        Billie’s bare feet rushed towards the stern of the lower deck, near the coal burner, and paused just before she nearly fell onto Daud’s twisted legs. In the darkness next to the fire from the burner she could just make out his form, and sense his motions.       It was a wonder he was still conscious. Daud’s breathing was expending enough energy to keep a campfire lit through a storm. He was hyperventilating, but it was deep and intermittent with horrible coughing. It wasn’t a wet cough, like the kind sounds that came of pneumonia or tuberculosis – she thanked whatever gods there might be aside from the cold bastard who watches with apathy from the void – but Billie could feel something heavier than spittle rising from Daud’s lips with each heaving breath.       His body was stiff, almost like a bone and he shook like a leaf on a dying branch. He lay on his side, holding his legs close to his chest and one arm wrapped around his torso. His other hand was extended into the darkness beyond the burner. He was without his jacket or leather overshirt, just the stained off white sleeveless shirt he wore beneath and his slacks and socks. He shivered violently, but it was hot below deck, even at night.        “Daud!” Billie fell to her knees and tried to straighten the man out, at least turn his violently convulsing form to his back and hold his neck between her hands. “Daud, what is it? Daud! Daud god damnit what’s the matter? What’s wrong?! Daud? Daud look at me!”          There was once an old man who lived on the street next to Diedre’s favorite corner who was bedbound. Diedre had told Billie that before his daughter came to look after him and the house that he walked with twitches. His legs spasmed and his hands shook, it got to the point where he couldn’t write his own name. Diedre had told Billie it was some kind of disease. You lose coordination, your memory faltered….It all had to do with the spine, with the brain. Something that only natural philosophers truly had the opportunity to examine understand.          The only time Billie had seen the man was when the city watch was bringing his body out from the house, and preparing to send it to the academy for study. The man’s eyes had been rolled back, white as river stone. Billie couldn’t see Daud’s eyes, but about the place where they should be there was a pale color, not dark where one would intuitively be able to see the iris and the pupil. Billie didn’t know if she could muster the will to scream, and it’s not as though anyone could hear her or be able to help.           She smelled burning meat to her left and reached for Daud’s hand that was extended into darkness, repulsing as the scent of molten skin. A siren seemed to go off in Billie’s ears, her eyes becoming attuned to the dark. She held Daud’s burned hand close to her and dove her own free hand beneath the coal burner, hissing in brief as her shoulder was burned, but grinning madly in desperation as she felt a cylinder of glass brush against the tips of her fingernails.           He had been reaching for something. Something that drove him from bed. Billie all but shoved her body beneath the burner, the heat from the metal radiated against her skin and scorched her from proximity alone. She let out a cry as she pushed against the burner and grabbed with desperate might around the floor until her hands wrapped around the glass again. She pulled back, burned, and stared ferociously at the small glass container she held in the palm of her hand.            Daud’s body twitched beneath her and her pain suddenly faded. She sprang so quickly from Daud she was worried that she had kicked him and she ran into the kitchen, grabbing the closest match she could find in her sparse drawers and tore the lantern from it’s nook on the ceiling. Even without the light from the lantern she was nearly sure she knew what the vial was. <5α,6α> -7,8-didehydro- 4,5-epoxy-17-methylmorphinan-3,6-diol.         “Fuck.”         With the lantern in hand the the vial carefully folded into her palm Billie darted from the kitchen towards Daud’s cot. Beneath it there was a small container.         He had come onto the ship with nothing in his possession, and after three months there had been small amenities he had required. Horse bristle and baking soda for his teeth, which smelled constantly of tonsil stones, a small curved knife for nails and loose skin, and a small black compartment with metal latches on the side.         It was something Billie had to search for in some time, it wasn’t cheap, even to those that used it in their professions.         Billie had stolen it from a small practice in Karnaca, but given the circumstances, the theft felt less of a crime and more of a necessity. It was a steel syringe. The needle was wide and the container was thicker, but it could be cleaned and easily sanitized. Given how often Billie had needed to put it to use in recent weeks, despite how painful it was compared to a smaller needle, it was worth the extra trouble of taking it.          Billie fumbled for a half moment as she emptied the contents of the vial into the syringe, and adjusted the filter measurements for the medicine in the dim light of the lantern. She could hear Daud’s restless body throwing itself harshly against the floor.         It had never been this horrible before, but in this state not even bone shattering exhaustion would keep Daud’s body still.         Billie grabbed the lantern, put the syringe in her mouth and practically jumped down to Daud’s side, pinning his corpse rigid arms to his side with her knees, and held his stiff neck straight her one of her arms. She muttered false reassurances to him, hushing him, counting down from three quickly before placing the syringe with some force into the flesh of his exposed shoulder, his muscles and veins bulged – even without much medical practice and his convulsions, it didn’t take much effort to align the needle and his veins. She dropped the syringe after she removed it from his arm, holding his head between her two hands, slowly watching the whites of his eyes disappear beneath eyelids as his body eventually came to a still. His breathing gruff but at an even pace.            Billie gently climbed off of him, and took a moment to lean against the wall by the burner, comforted by its warmth and shrinking her form into the quiet blackness of night. Her breath quivered with anxiety for only a minute, as it was all she could afford, before gingerly lifting Daud’s head again, cradling his neck and shoulders against her chest, and dragged him carefully and as easily as she could across the floor to her quarters, lying him down in the bed. She covered the blankets over his chest and dragged her wooden chair to the head of the bedside. Billie spent the next five hours with her hand on his forehead, occasionally straying down to his neck, watching his pulse. The liquid that spurted from his mouth during his twitches was a dark red, flecked with black.           It spotted her arms, her face, and it smelled like offal.          She didn’t dare leave his side until he woke up, not until she could be sure she gave him an unworrying amount of morphine. The last thing she wanted to do was send him off to a final sleep.         She needed him.         Or more, he needed this – one last condolence.         He had to pay off this debt before he could sleep. It was beyond feasibly important. This was a matter of corruption. The Outsider could create another ‘Daud’, it was necessary to his own peace – even Billie’s – that the Outsider didn’t get the opportunity to.          Dawn well had passed before Daud opened his eyes. Bloodshot and yellowed from exhaustion, much like Billie’s, Daud tried to blink to clear his vision and his dry lips parted to call out to Billie. He was feverish, as he had been for the past few nights, but his consciousness lifted a weight from Lurk’s chest that had pulled her heart down into her stomach all night.        Billie rose and went to fetch a bowl of hot water and a clean rag, wiping the black and bloodied spittle from her arms and face before returning to clean what remained of it from the corners of Daud’s mouth. Billie fixed them creamed oats, but Daud had returned to fervent sleep. She ate alone, and stared at his paling face, wondering if he knew – if he truly knew – if he accepted what was happening to him.           The black spittle was common from collapsed lungs and blood pooling in the tissues of the chest and esophagus, the cough even more common, and the rancid smell was what came most naturally to the human body when its expiration date came to a close.          There is a mellow absence of feeling that overcomes someone when they truly think about oblivion, about their natural return to nonexistence…. It did require some form of naive sentimentality about one’s life, and it was for that reason that Billie wondered if Daud feared his own death. Was he to be trapped in the void? A place that did and did not exist?           Would he exist, or not? Would it matter? Would he even know?           Daud’s hand tremored once again as Billie ate her creamed oats, watching him, stroking his burning forehead.          His nerves were on fire, grasping at any sense they could feel, and to not much success.          They stayed like this, in Billie’s cabin for nearly half the day. She had left to relieve herself in the afternoon and found her cabin empty. She came up to him from behind, as he clutched harshly onto the railing of the stairs. She helped him into a leisure chair she kept at the aft of the main deck, against a wall, cornered by a small desk littered with studies and plans she had drawn with Daud weeks past for her mission into the bank. She returned and helped him dress, in his leather overshirt and short wool coat.          It was warm, perhaps even hot but Daud insisted he felt chilled. Billie tried to pretend her understanding smile was without worry, but there was a part of her that knew he could see through the facade, and she felt guilty thinking of the consequences of his physical state.         He insisted she get rest before her mission, ate the cold creamed oats and insisted on having whiskey and the black box close at hand.        “One or the other.” She responded. It was dangerous to mix such a strong compound of morphine, much less any opiod  with liquor. She laughed to herself, unsurprised, when he took the whiskey.          From late afternoon until the setting of the sun in the evening, Daud had been left to his own devices upon the deck.         When Billie found him she thought for a moment, staring at his pallid figure, that there might have been a smile hidden in the cracked blue lips. She woke him to speak of the plans, but his mind was ...quiet.          His attention seemed to be employed elsewhere as his lips moved to speak at Billie, he stared off at the waters, facing the setting sun clouded by dust and industrial pollution. The smell of burning blubber and whale oil flittered through even the crisp sea breeze. It was an annoyance to Billie, she had always been accustomed to the smell of industry.            Daud seemed almost comforted by it.           Understandably so. He was back home. And the smell of Dunwall’s whaling refineries had followed him from his hayday back to the southern isle.              Just as Billie had.          She exhausted every possible outcome to the bank, and in doing so exhausted Daud’s voice with retaliation of contingencies. He had faith in her, that much was apparent, but Billie had never pulled a job as big as this one, even back in her prime at Dunwall without the aid of a few whalers, much less without directly being aided by Daud.           His body hesitated into f faintness as he bid her “Go...”. It was half hearted, almost a request.           Billie took the near empty whiskey glass from his hand and placed it near the bottle on the desk. She straightened his shoulders and helped his head lean against the plush leather of the leisure chair. His eyes closed as if it were a reflex.           A dark thought crossed Lurk’s mind, and she pushed it back, at least until she had set foot on the dock, Daud out of her sight. She stroked some lose hairs back onto his head and gently clasped her palm onto the side of his neck, like she had done to comfort Diedre when -           Billie left without a word.           And within the hour as she reached for the knife that made the Outsider deep within the quiet walls of the Dolores’ Bank, Billie sighed. Her breath was heavy, almost as if she were breathing for two. Her chest collapsed, but she thought nothing of it. Merely adrenaline.           When the Outsider appeared before her, she knew that her single addled breath hadn’t been her own.           There was some side affect from the arcane bond, although it had been broken so long ago by force of will. When the Outsider spoke the words that shook her to her core – allthough she expected to hear their value at some point soon….just not from him, she knew that the arcane bond had been broken at circumstance this time.            She found him, lying still and tremorless in the chair.           His head was back, skewed tiredly to one side, his hands with a loose grip on the arms of the chair. It was...wrong...to move him so suddenly. He was finally able to rest.            Billie dried her face and sat upon the ground next to his feet, grabbing the bottle of whiskey that was left unfinished, and a cigar she had left for him that was barely lit. She sat with him and watched the sun set before she began work on his  pyre.