Dreadful Wales after mission party

Tagged as Billie Lurk, Emily Kaldwin, Alexandria Hypatia, Anton Sokolov, Aramis Stilton

Creator: Eels

Description:

after hours crew hangouts on deck with alcohol hold such a special place in my heart and like, sensory memories and shit so the gang decompressing on the wale like mid-game after stilton's is just like pop! It's in my brain

Specifically in light of em having just returned from doing time shit and being like WHAT? HUH? Oh things are like, actually BETTER now in ways I didn't necessarily anticipate, but then she remembers the notes by billie insinuating she got injured that night, and is like... ough.

But she's also got this melancholy of wishing she had the luxury of being able to change the past for herself, too, but knowing that it's impossible. And also, at that point in the game, realizing that even if she had the opportunity to do that, she wouldn't. Because the past is the past, and she's doing things right now, damn it, and things are going to be different if she has any say in the matter. Giving meagan that gift is maybe enough, and she decides not to say anything to Meagan about it, to gently, discretely lift one small burden of pain from this woman who's clearly gone through more than she lets on. As a way of thanks, maybe, but also because she would hope that someone would do the same for her if given the chance

So everyone slowly coalesces on deck, and stilton brings out his expensive liquor, and meagan sets up an audiograph and argues over music choices with sokolov who's being an ass as usual, and fuck it hypatia is there too because stilton invited her and she couldn't turn him down

We get to see a window into meagan and stilton's relationship - he's a good dancer but a bit ham fisted, and drags her into dancing with him and they reminisce about being each others' beards when meagan first came to karnaca, and they'd met at underground queer events at peoples' homes

Sokolov passes out before the sun even hits the horizon because he's old and can't hold his liquor anymore, but not after getting in an argument with hypatia that she just eviscerates him in without even realizing it in her polite and caring way

they've made up a bit awkwardly after the whole "i kidnapped you from your cabin through the hatch" situation, over the time that she was staying on board. She's doing much better now staying at Lucia's and reconnecting with Stilton, but Addermire is a touchy subject, and Sokolov at least has the grace not to bring it up and ruin the mood

He nods off before the sun dips below the horizon, and she and meagan get him off to bed

Em watches everything from the top of a crate, nursing a very slow glass of whiskey, smiling to herself but it never quite makes it fully to her lips

She's genuinely happy in this sunset-washed moment, with the world suddenly a bit more malleable than she thought it was, and people tangibly better for what she's done, and she realizes just how much she needs that after weeks of crawling through back alleys and bloodfly nests and avoiding people who want her dead or worse and god, worst of all, the waiting between missions

But she also can't forget what she's left behind, even if she puts it from her mind for now, and the others can tell. Stilton, charming and down-to-earth, coaxes her up for a dance with gentle flattery and is gracious when she corrects him, swapping to lead mid-audiograph. Meagan just laughs, and hearing that from her is still so strange

Em does loosen up, with the whisky's help, and feels like she can breathe because she trusts these people, more than she ever did anyone at court, despite what she knows what some of them have done and the conspicuous gaps where she doesn't know what they've done

but that's okay, she thinks, because they're real. and she knows them as herself, just Emily, ultimately, stripped of pretense, despite what they're doing together here, this little rebel cell, and the world as it exists beyond the wale.

She manages to get Hypatia to dance, too, with some good-natured haranguing from Stilton. She's terrible.

Billie declines when Hypatia and Stilton try to pressure her too, but they give it up quickly enough when it's clear she won't budge. The stars are starting to prick through the sky and they're warm and tipsy from the laughter, and the audiograph has played through a frankly infuriating number of times, anyways, so Stilton goes off to toss Meagan's cabin up on the bridge for others. She tells him not to find anything too incriminating, and they laugh, and settle into the quite of just the waves against the hull and the seabirds

Hypatia settles in at the makeshift table of boards and crates and pours herself another drink, looking up and tracing constellations. Meagan taps out a cigar. She asks if Emily wants one.

Fuck it, she thinks. Why not?

Soon enough she finds herself smoking over the side alongside Meagan, leaned against the rail with one foot up over the scupper. Karnaca's lights twinkle like fireflies out over the dusky water and the smoke is hot and heavy in Em's lungs, and Meagan's holding her cigar in her right hand, both eyes open, looking out, and then looking at her.

And Meagan asks her what's on her mind.

And really, ultimately, under everything, it's that her father isn't here with her, that she'd had to leave him behind, and after everything he's gone through for her, before she even knew he was her father, it feels like abandonment, and in this one moment she just... breaks a little. She wipes away a tear, possibly the first one she's shed since leaving Dunwall that wasn't out of sheer anger

And maybe it's the alcohol, maybe it's this strange new iteration of Meagan she's gotten to know tonight, but she actually opens up to Meagan and tells her that.

And they fucking talk about it!! Meagan's unreadable more often than not, but just having someone to listen is so so huge for Em. A new audiograph starts up, and Stilton and Hypatia start having their own quiet conversation at the table. After a while Emily gets quiet, having gotten it out of her system, Meagan just silently nodding and listening

And she asks, "Were you close with your father?"

And that gets a reaction, a sort of drawing-down of her face, and she takes a deep drag and looks out over the water and can't quite meet Emily's eyes, and something about that should seem strange, maybe, but she can't put her finger on it

Meagan tells her that they're estranged, but that he taught her everything she knows. That they both hurt each other, badly, and that it was ultimately her fault. That she knew Delilah, when she was Emily's age, and that she got involved where she shouldn't have, and by the time she realized what a snake she was it was too late. And in the way that Meagan says her name, Emily knows that Meagan hates Delilah with a previously unexposed burning anger.

She understands better, now, why Meagan was waiting in the harbor that day.

Emily's angry too all over again now, but the buzz of the alcohol turns her usual flaring rage into something fuzzier and more distant. She starts to draw into herself, but Meagan's not done - she says she's grateful that Emily's got a chance, a real chance, at Delilah. They're so close. And more than anything, that she has a chance to find her father again, and break Delilah's witchcraft and free him from his stone.

And if Meagan can do one thing, she wants to get Emily there.

By this point their cigars are burnt down to stubs and Stilton is rolling out blankets on deck in the warm night, and the taut moment passes. Hypatia calls for Meagan's help with finding something below deck and she goes, tossing her stub over the side

Stilton asks if she wants to sleep on deck and she accepts, and sooner than she knows it Meagan is gone to her cabin and she's passed out

They don't talk about their conversation again, but there's a different energy for the rest of the game. The building up of the relationships we don't see otherwise, knowing that the person waiting for Em at the end of the Duke's palace mission gets it, that sense of fiery determination with Delilah's soul in hand and now they're gonna go fuck her up

With Em finding out she's actually Billie, I'm not sure it would change that initial reaction much? Since that's such a hindbrain-driven gut reaction. But we never get to see Em actually process it???

I imagine she has this moment of going like, oh fuck now i know exactly what she was talking about that night, and extra oh fuck now what the Heart was telling me makes SENSE

maybe in the future she does maintain some sort of correspondence with her, not just fully cutting her off, since she now understands a lot of the complexity of billie's behavior. Plus, with Em's own development in this hc and becoming able to like, recognize and handle past trauma better, I think there's space for her to continue growing in that area? I think maybe billie could be a part of it, based on their relationship cultivated on the Wale. Like, recognizing what is and is not actually "betrayal?"

sokolov's out like a light until he gets up at the infuriatingly early time that all old people get up at, except only slightly later because of the drinking

stilton and hypatia and emily wake up with the dawn on deck and stilton and hypatia head back out on Stilton's boat. hypatia probably didn't sleep well, but rather than the usual obvious lie that she's fine, this time it could ACTUALLY have just been from sleeping on deck when she's used to a bed. Em still doesn't completely buy it tho