Emily the Red AU

Tagged as Corvo Attano, Emily Kaldwin, Billie Lurk

Creator: Eels

Description:

i have been thinking about that drawing i did and i didn't really register that i'd made her coat red at first but now i have been Thinking about how an Emily the Red would work aka, Emily the raised assassin

so like, dh1 starts normally. Daud and Billie grab Emily, Corvo goes to Coldridge, everything looks great. except daud actually goes oh no midway through the mission, not afterwards during his depression coma. He looks at Emily with Billie holding her tight by the arm as they they materialize two districts away to regroup and assess their losses, and she's furious and sobbing and scared and in that moment he realizes he can't follow through on the rest of the job. So he takes Em back to their base and refuses to hand her over to the Pendletons. At this point he hasn't had any realization of Consequences yet, but has a gut-wrenching feeling that maybe killing Jessamine was different (bc the outsider visited!! hello!!!) and all of that will hit him for real in the next couple weeks. But he has this connection moment with seeing Em and seeing himself and his childhood reflected in what he's done, rather than just delegating moving out of his sight to his men and never seeing her beyond that moment

So they stick her in a secure nicer room in Rudshore, and Billie is FURIOUS with him. Absolutely livid, which is the initial push for her allying with Delilah rather than just seeing him mope after the assassination.

After a day or so Burrows finds out that the Pendletons don't have her yet, and is like hey Daud, what the fuck. He deflects and lies that he did actually deliver her to the Pendletons, because what reason would he have not to - it's nothing he hasn't done before, and that was what he was paid to do. He also manages to plant some sort of evidence that casts their loyalties into doubt, and sends Burrows on a wild goose chase - he'd planned on "hiding" the empress until it was convenient, but now he's like oh shit i actually have to track her down

From this point, for Daud and Billie things continue as they do in KoD except the heir to the empire is locked in a fucking rudshore apartment secured by the whalers and Daud cannot be budged on doing anything with her - he's just paralyzed. Em has a terrible time because she knows these are the people who killed her mother, and she doesn't understand why she's still here or what they want. The whalers don't use their powers around her and take off their masks at least because Daud's ordered them to spare her that bare minimum if they can. Maybe some of the younger ones, like early teens, manage to provide some sort of minimum social interaction. It's something similar to the golden cat but worse, and more isolated, and a bit darker with the whole early childhood trauma piece. her anger issues start earlier here, i think

So meanwhile, Corvo escapes from Coldridge and joins the loyalists as usual. When they decode Campbell's black book, instead of pointing to the Golden Cat, they lay out the self-destructive paranoia and suspicion that's festered amongst the coup members about where emily has actually gone. Corvo's dh1 missions center around breaking apart the truth from the lies about her location - only Corvo learns that nobody knows

Corvo starts to lose it a bit, slipping into hc as the missions go on and getting angrier and angrier at everyone around him. the loyalists are useless, none of his targets can tell him a damn thing, where the fuck has his daughter gone? Is she dead? He cannot allow the possibility that she's dead too but it haunts him. he gets reckless and aggressive and slips into super destructive coping mechanisms, not having the comfort of her there to provide direction and duty and meaning after Coldridge to have a path out from all the horrible experiences of the last six months. Not even Samuel can quite get through to him, though he's still the one point of minor comfort in all this

The loyalists see Corvo getting seriously unhinged while actually around the pub, not just out on missions like in regular HC, to the point that they know if they aren't able to send him after her for real and soon he'll blow up in their faces instead because he's a loaded gun with nowhere to point. Given that they're pretty certain at this point that she's gone-gone but Corvo hasn't accepted that, they decide to get rid of the problem before he turns on them

they poison him, Samuel takes him to the flooded district, Daud finds him.

Corvo cuts his way to Daud's office like a bloodhound after prey because he's been realizing with cold certainty that if there's one person who can tell him where Emily went after that day after the gazebo, it's Daud. But the man is a damn shadow. To have him here, now, within his trembling white-knuckled grasp - it's his last chance and he's going to drag what Daud knows about where Emily went out of him with his sword buried through his cursed void marked hand.

At the end, Daud begs for mercy. The Heart makes Corvo pause just long enough to listen to his speech, but he's still so furious. He asks Daud where Emily is and Daud explains what happened, that he couldn't give her to the Pendletons, that he hadn't cared what they'd do with her because a job was a job but he saw her and just couldn't

Corvo asks where she is now, desperate, horribly desperate hope in his heart.

And Daud says, "I don't know."

Because Billie took her, barely a week before Corvo got there.

Billie had been drawn in by Delilah, but more quickly and wholeheartedly than in canon because of the extra fact that Daud was keeping Emily there and she saw that as an INCREDIBLE tactical error, which in so many ways it 100% was. In exchange for helping Billie take over the whalers, Delilah wants Emily brought to Brigmore - she's her aunt, after all, and shouldn't she be with family? Billie eventually gains more witch powers than just the scream, and learns through whispers from the witches what Delilah's actual plan is for possessing Emily. It doesn't sit quite right with her, but many things about this don't, especially seeing Daud pursue his LC path in KoD. She keeps pushing those reservations down.

Fulfilling Delilah's request is hard, because Daud has Emily incredibly well guarded. The girl is crafty as all hell and the empress besides. They plan to fulfill both ends of their bargain at the same time - Delilah helps Billie confront Daud and take over the whalers and at that point Billie will bring Emily to her.

Things go wrong, of course, but thankfully Emily's prison-apartment is separate from the base proper and passed over by the Overseers. Billie realizes that she was wrong. Daud spares her and she vanishes - but makes a quick pit stop before booking passage out of Dunwall. She's furious at herself and at Delilah in equal measure and the she simply can't let Delilah have Emily too after all this. She didn't even have time to tell Daud about her real plan, but removing Emily from the equation at least physically has to count for something, right? Hopefully Daud will take care of the rest - the old man is hell bent enough on deciphering the mystery that she has to believe he'll manage.

So Billie takes Emily and goes. Billie's had barely any contact with her since the assassination, too busy with other things to bother stopping at the apartment beyond checking in on the security. Emily despises Billie simply for what she represents. She's learned to hate quietly in the last six months. She doesn't understand where they're going or why, but it's clear that something big has changed. Billie sits her down and explains everything in a way that's honestly pretty shitty and not kid appropriate - your Protector is dead (she hadn't gotten news of his pre-execution escape before bouncing), Burrows wanted to puppet you on the throne but Daud said no and that's why you were locked up, a witch was after you, this is the only safe way. You have to stick with me now.

Once Emily realizes that Billie isn't going to kill her, the have explosive arguments. Emily knows that she can't shake Billie. She's older, stronger, and a trained tracker and killer even without her powers. And Billie does keep her safe: from the sailor with the predatory leer on their ship out of Dunwall who sees a 25-years-young woman and an even younger girl desperate and vulnerable, from the muggers and thieves in the back alleys of Karnaca once they arrive in Serkonos, and all manner of other threats. Emily pushes every button she can as she starts getting older and Billie slowly begins including her on plans for jobs, leveraging having a young girl who no one will look at and see the Empress anymore - just an urchin, or a child in need of help, or a prettily lying face. She starts going by Lela when Billie changes to Meagan. She learns to forget who she was before because it doesn't matter and wishing for it hurts too much.

Billie, for her part, manages to stay her hand with Emily when she's angry or they're fighting because she's sworn that she won't become her birth father. After two years she purchases the Dreadful Wale and it becomes home. The next year she starts training Emily: how to hold a knife, how to tread quietly, how to case an apartment or shop and leap across the rooftops at night. She has to be able to defend herself, after all. Often the training ends up being at three in the morning, or during dinner, or while fixing the skiff's engine together. If the deadly intent in 14-year-old Emily's eyes is a bit too feral and real when she ambushes Meagan only to be disarmed and slammed on the deck, it doesn't bother Billie. She understands.

Their relationship is strained and underpinned with pain, but also genuinely one of caregiver and adoptive child in many ways. They can't share where they've come from with anyone else. Billie becomes Emily's model for how to survive and make your mark in the world. After all, what use are the systems that failed to keep her safe even as a royal child in the safest fortress in the Empire? It's worthless - you only have yourself and if you want something, you have to take it.

Plus, Emily starts getting good. Billie can truly rely on her now for somewhat tricky jobs. She kills her first man out of desperation at sixteen and Billie holds her as she rocks and sits with her shoulders locked up in the galley until the tears dry. She tells her about killing Radanis Abele and how she learned to weather the weight of taking lives with the Whalers (but never about Dierdre - she hasn't earned Emily's understanding or comfort and never will).

For all their similarities, however, Billie knows their situations are not and never will be truly the same. She chose to follow Daud. Emily had no choice, though the reasons for her still staying now are more complex. She'll always remember the embers of anger that never go out in Emily's eyes, even when they held each other that night. Maybe someday Emily will get the better of her, like Daud had always expected of Billie.

Back in Dunwall, Corvo is absolutely furious with Daud. Five days earlier and he'd have had Emily right then and there, and now she's been whisked away again. Plus, if Daud had actually handed her over to the Pendletons, he would have found her weeks ago. It's not ultimately the pain of Corvo's blade driven through Daud's forearm that pulls Billie's name out of his mouth when Corvo demands it despite him not wanting him to hound her, but the knowledge that if he doesn't tell him he'll just force it out the next Whaler he sees. Corvo demands more, because he wants to know why Billie took her, too - not just where, which Daud clearly can't help with.

Daud ends up having to explain their falling out, and what he assumes (correctly) was Billie's reasoning for taking her, which by necessity includes Delilah and her plan. Corvo drags the whole story out of him, which ends with Daud assuring him that he's "taken care of her." Learning about what Daud was doing this whole time is the only thing that saves his life, the Heart's insight alone not enough counteract Corvo's anger. Corvo thinks that if his hands do violence, then he can live the different dream in his heart without them. He cuts off Daud's marked hand, throws it to the hagfish, and leaves him there bleeding on the floor.

When he makes it back to the Hound Pits, all the loyalists have given up the cause and are gone except for Cecelia, who wants to try to keep the pub. Things are getting truly desperate in Dunwall, and they've used their remaining funds and connections to get the hell out. Cecelia obliges Corvo to stay there as long as he needs or until it's not safe anymore. Corvo doesn't even know where to start - all his investigations into routes out of Dunwall and the smugglers that move people along them turn up nothing, which is infuriating and yet perhaps not unexpected, given Billie's skill set and who trained her. He spends several weeks in his own depression wallow until the Outsider pops in to say hello and marvels at how unlikely all this was. The cryptic things he says regarding Emily and the unknown futures of all involved gets his ass into gear.

Corvo leaves a collapsing Dunwall and takes Burrows out as a final "fuck you" on the way (I'm imagining the poisoning in this AU happens before then, since Corvo starts spiraling p quickly throughout the preceding missions). No plan, nothing to restore by killing him, just paying him back for the world of hurt he started. He starts traveling, first to Driscol where many refugees have ended up and then beyond. For years. He becomes a ghost of who he used to be, trudging on over the years on a hope that seems slimmer and slimmer as time goes on - even he has to admit that at this point.

Back in Serkonos, Meagan meets Stilton (at a queer event of course because you can pry that hc from my cold dead hands). He's doing alright during the crackdown and managing to continue advocating effectively for the miners, despite the heavy pressure on Theodanis from the crown for more silver production. After not too long she introduces 17 year old Emily to him as well. Emily takes a while to warm up to him and get over her hard-wired suspicions, but once she realizes he's genuinely disarming and not above some discrete breaking of the rules she loves him. His home in Batista becomes a regular pitstop for her, especially when Meagan is smuggling goods between other cities on jobs she still deems "too dangerous" for Emily. Emily's a good sailor now and has traveled good chunks of the coast with Meagan, but they do spend most of their time in and around Karnaca.

Emily holds a lot of resentment towards the new Emperor (her mother never would have done what he's doing, but it hurts to even think about that), and gets in a lot of scrapes with the soldiers permanently stationed now in Karnaca from Dunwall to keep Serkonos under control, despite Theodanis's efforts to make things as easy as possible for his people. She and Meagan, of course, argue over it and the need to keep a low profile. She doesn't know that Batista is the place where Corvo grew up, but it's slowly become hers too. She has connections, finally, and other people she knows who share her dislike for the way things stand. She finally bucks some of Meagan's authority and convinces her to let her live shoreside in an abandoned apartment she's claimed for herself and fortified. The people in the area know not to fuck with her, and that she'll do dirty work for enough coin if she's not already busy working with her... older sister? The Fosters' relationship has always been unclear. Things largely hold over these four years, until Emily is 20. Meagan keeps training her until Emily starts winning more often than she loses, but she always helps Meagan up after that fire flickers in her eyes.

Then Theodanis dies, Luca becomes Duke, and things get bad - Luca is nasty, and has no spine when it comes to what Dunwall wants. Emily starts taking the lives of imperial soldiers who get in her way as she goes about her business without much regret, sometimes even picking a way because they'll be there. Batista earns its Dust District moniker. A new group called the Howlers comes together in opposition to what's essentially become a Gristolian occupation and Emily nearly joins when her friend Mindy invites her, but Meagan has a stern talk with her about it. No gangs. Meagan won't compromise on it. Emily hates it, but has to admit that Meagan is right. If she's learned anything in her life, it's that obligations and affiliations only weigh you down for when you'll inevitably need to cut and run. All they can really rely on is each other, despite their... complications.

And then, two years later, Stilton disappears.

Meagan and Emily go to try to find him. Something is obviously horribly wrong at the manor, and then things go horribly wrong for them too when they're made. The air is wrong and makes Emily's head hurt and there's a taste in the back of her mouth she can't identify but gives her flashbacks of pure terror, and Meagan is clearly unsettled too. There are too many guards - a shocking number, frankly. Emily earns a nasty scar across her face, from her lip to her left ear. Meagan loses her eye and by the time they manage to escape, her arm is mangled beyond saving. When they finally make it back to the Wale Emily's the one who performs the amputation. She barely holds it together until Meagan's finally resting in her cabin, then bandages all her own wounds. She has no idea if Meagan will survive.

(sidenote, no sokolov here because Meagan having a strong relationship with him would be too risky with Emily around. She probably still has him as a contact, though.)

Emily falls fitfully asleep, exhausted, just as morning twilight rolls around. When she wakes, she finds herself in the Void.

The Outsider speaks about how how she's on the razor-thin edge of a mystery that's darkened the background of her story her whole life, just close enough to reach out and touch it. A mystery that's been played out by people much older than her who all thought themselves in control. And really, control is so fleeting, isn't it? Does she feel pain, not knowing if she'll lose what family she has left--if the woman now called Meagan Foster, who took her all those years ago, can even be called her family? He's so curious what she'll do. The futures he sees from her are wonderfully twisting, and braided so beautifully with others'.

He offers her his mark. She takes it.

(oh yo sidenote but Emily TOTALLY has tattoos from Mindy in this au. overall she's generally grittier and more world-worn looking based on y'know. everything. no skincare routine like in canon girl pls tell me ur secrets)

Emily takes the mark because she knows so well what it feels like to be powerless. She's spent her whole life getting sharper, faster, harder, but there's always someone or something stronger than her who brings it all crashing down and she didn't expect to feel so desperate over Meagan. She's fantasized so many times about killing her herself over the last twelve years, but now that she's nearly bleeding out on a bunk Emily realizes that she'd stopped being able to truly stomach that some time ago. It feels like a terrible betrayal of her childhood self's rage and pain. But, more than anything else she doesn't want to be cut adrift and alone, no matter how complicated her and Meagan's ties are, and perhaps that's truer to young Emily than anything else could possibly be. She knows that the man who killed her mother and kept her trapped in Rudshore for those six terrible months was marked. She knows what he did with that power, and that he made Meagan who she is. But she doesn't care - she wants it anyway. Because if the Outsider gives her his power too, no one can ever hurt her again.

Meagan recovers. It's slow and agonizing, but after a week her fever breaks and she's able to stay lucid. When Emily is changing her bandages, she asks if her hand is alright - aside from her face, Emily doesn't need to cover her wounds anymore. Emily's "it's fine" reaction immediately tips Meagan off because she knows when she's lying through her teeth. She grudgingly shows her and Meagan is just... gutted.

Meagan thought they'd both gotten away from all of it - no more black magic, no more meddling from the black eyed bastard. She'd heard enough about him from Daud to be worried at the interest he's shown. But there's not much she can do about it, and so she focuses on what's next.

Meagan shifts full-time to smuggling after the loss of her arm and spends more and more time out at sea away from Karnaca. Emily starts taking on bigger and riskier jobs on shore to fill the gap that Meagan can't make up anymore, occasionally sending money to help fix the Wale and buy other things she needs when she's in port. The state of things in the Dust District nosedives with Stilton gone and the Howlers and the Abbey start fighting for control.

Within months whispers start growing about a woman who stalks Karnaca at night, forming out of the dust that blows down from Shindaerey Peak before vanishing just as quickly, leaving blood in the street. Soldiers from Gristol stationed to "keep the peace" and Overseers sent by the Abbey, now a main pillar of the new Emperor's power, fall most often to her blade. They call her the Shadow of Old Batista. Elderly women and sun-weathered men who remember the whispered stories of their grandparents say that an old Serkonan legend has come back to fight against the Empire's yoke on Serkonos - Morley's rebellion has inspired separatist cells here. Emily doesn't bother correcting them.

Her primary motivation is still coin and survival, but she can afford to become more picky with her work once people realize she can do what would be impossible for others. She also raises her prices accordingly. The first time someone approaches her to kill a man for coin she says no. The second time it's Mindy and she says yes, because the man is a horrible human being and removing him from his position of power would be no different than the lives she's already taken when the Guard or the overseers get in her way on less murderous jobs.

Paolo is killed in a skirmish when Emily is 24 (without the benefit of Granny Rags' hand) and Mindy takes over the Howlers. Mindy becomes a consistent though not frequent source of work for Emily that matches her moral sense of who she will and will not kill. The Howlers take over the Dust District under her leadership and helped by a couple well-paid jobs Emily undertakes, turning it into a magnet for Karnacan separatists willing to play by their rules. Emily still is not part of the Howlers, but their interests align enough and their personal relationship allows her to operate freely in the area. Mindy discovering that she's marked and the Shadow of Old Batista doesn't hurt, either. Mindy's always been fascinated by the occult. With the district in Howler control, Emily cashes in a favor and has Mindy help her disassemble a portion of Stilton's windbreak to get inside and find out what happened to him (In this case the person with the code giving him food, etc. wasn't a Howler but someone paid by Lu/ca to keep an eye). She gets in and gets out as fast as she possibly can because the way the place dampens her powers terrifies her. Meagan accepts him on board, though he barely seems to recognize he's even been moved.

The Outsider appears and monologues about how something in Stilton broke that night like a cheap lock, teasing at threads but never outright saying anything about Delilah. You're so close, aren't you? But the shadows are still dancing beyond your fingertips.

Emily begins encountering strange women on her jobs who've clearly been touched by black magic. Something is shifting in Karnaca's underworld, and both she and Meagan know bad business when they smell it.

They plan a trap and catch one of them. She's reluctant at first, but caves after some... carefully applied pressure by Meagan and seeing Emily's mark. Her coven's leader is planning something big, and her name is Delilah. She's headed to Dunwall to make the world as it should be and there's nothing you can do to stop her, she says. Meagan and Emily dispose of her body in the harbor - this is someone neither of them can stand to let live to report back. Meagan hasn't taken a life in years.

Meagan starts making plans to sail for Dunwall Tower as soon as she can - something about how the witch said the world as it should be set every single alarm bell ringing in her head. And no, she will not let Emily come along. It's too dangerous, who knows what Delilah might still have planned for her after all these years of silence? What if she sees what she looks like now for one of her paintings, or gets a lock of her hair, or captures her? Emily is furious, how dare she still treat her like a child, but Meagan convinces her that not even her mark can keep her safe from what Delilah does. Does she want to become a shell of herself, a walking husk for Delilah while her soul withers in the cold of the void?

Meagan knows Emily hates being told to sit by and do nothing, especially by her, so she gives her a job: with this amount of witches, there'll be a coven. Whoever Delilah left behind to run it will be a valuable source of information if Emily can find her. Several years ago, Meagan had shared some very late news with Emily from an old Whaler contact she'd gotten back in touch with about how Daud had sealed Delilah in the Void. It had let them (Meagan, mostly, since Delilah's threat long became more of a boogeyman than something tangible for Emily) rest a bit easier recently. Maybe Delilah's lieutenant - potentially Ashworth, still - can shed some light on how she escaped the Void.

They say goodbye the next morning with grim determination. Emily makes Meagan promise to come back as soon as she can and to be careful. She can't fight like she used to and it's sure to be dangerious - hopefully she can at least get there in time to warn... someone. The Tower, if they'll listen, or others. Meagan makes Emily promise not to do anything stupid. They laugh. Emily watches the Wale go until it disappears past the arm of the harbor, then catapults up to the rooftops. She's got work to do.

Let's rewind to Corvo.

After leaving Dunwall, he spends only two months in Driscol before moving on. Emily clearly isn't there with the rest of the plague refugees. He travels amost systematically, combing through a location before moving on to the next. He keeps an ear to the ground for any mention his daughter - she's 10, 12, a full teenager now, she's got black hair like her mother, brown eyes, and she'd be tall, he thinks - he can only describe what he hopes she looks like. A version of her to whom the world has been kind, kinder than he knows he can expect. None of the handful of orphan girls with adoptive sisters or mothers or "charitable" employers he's directed to are Emily, and each time his hope dies a little more.

He also trawls for information about Billie Lurk, assassins for hire, and anyone with a notable interest in the occult. A hood that obscures his face and a flash of his mark goes a long way towards that last one. When he stays too long in Fraeport and is nearly killed by a squad of music box Overseers who'd been tracking the movements of a masked heretic he becomes far more cautious. Exhaustion is making him lose his edge, making him both more desperate and more fatalistic, and he doesn't want to admit it.

He lives in abandoned attics and the occasional nondescript inn when he needs a bath, paid for with stolen coin. He keeps his hair short and his beard trimmed less often than he should, and wears commoner's clothes with a sturdy pack for his equipment. Rumors of the Masked Felon still circulate as he travels, but quietly and few and far between since the mask is sometimes riskier than it is useful. His wounds from Coldridge - at least the physical ones - heal and scar and fade. The Outsider's last visit was the first night in Dabokva, monologuing about Corvo's search. The Heart slowly quiets until it fully ceases speaking, and two years after Emily was taken it vanishes. The despair of it drives him to tears. He's alone now, fully and truly. The only times he cries after that are when he wakes from nightmares.

His greatest regret is leaving the Flooded District without interrogating Daud's men, too delirious with poison and rage to think straight. The Whalers vanished like smoke, leaving him with truly nothing to work from starting out. They're his best leads if he can find them, he knows, and the first one he finds is Galia. She's in Bastillian, running security at a brothel. He knows who she is because she's been sloppy, letting slip her previous affiliations one too many times in half-jest to people in the city's underworld who are only too happy to tell Corvo with the help of coin or a blade to the throat. When he finds her she spits in his eye for "ruining Daud," so he cuts off a finger she tells him the truth, which is that she hated Lurk and has no idea where she's gone but would tell him if she knew so he could do worse to her. She doesn't know where any other Whalers are, either. He leaves her there. She's the most helpful of the handful of Whalers he does manage to track down after her, which is saying something.

Corvo passes briefly through Karnaca in 1846, but returning to Batista proves to be too much for him and so he stays in Campo Seta instead. He does some asking around, but after nine years of searching for Emily it's more out of habit now than anything else. He knows that any description he gives, if she's still alive, has an abysmal chance of matching. Nothing surfaces. He moves on. The Wale docks two days after he leaves, finally back from a months-long smuggling run.

He's crossed the entire Empire and then some, from the cold of Tyvia's north even back to Dunwall again. He's older and grayer and more tired than he thought possible. It's natural that he slows down and so he does, drifting unhurriedly from place to place more because he's forgotten how to stay somewhere, to have a home and a favorite pub and acquaintances and a life, than because he's pursuing a goal. In 1853 he finds himself in Dabokva, working at a shipyard simply for something to do in the early spring. Emily would be twenty-five. He'd spent her birthday looking out over the icy autumn sea and humming the lullaby Jess would sing to her whenever she was fussy as a baby, something remembered from another life. At some point in recent years it had become a mourning hymn, though he couldn't pinpoint when.

One night he's invited for drinks with some of the other yard workers, and he accepts since the nights are still cold and Tyvia's pubs are one of few points of warmth and light when the sun goes down so early. Three drinks in, conversation turns to the occult: bonecharms, curses, curatives and the like. One man actually has a charm on him, which he brings out once he determines that the crowd is friendly enough. It's well made. Very well made, to Corvo's eye, and he's made many in his time now. He asks where the man got it, and gets an address.

The woman who sold the yardworker his bonecharm, it turns out, didn't make it - that much is clear from Corvo's raid on her apartment. He comes back during the day to meet her. She tells him that the man who made it lives two districts over. A gunsmith by trade, but an information broker and dabbler in magic by night. Blond, in his late thirties. Goes by Thomas.

He could be a witch, Corvo knows, there's plenty of those scattered around the isles - but he could be a Whaler. That charm was made by someone who's used them before, has an in-practice understanding of how they work. Corvo pencils in an unannounced appointment with him.

Corvo visits the gunsmith at night, just after his shop closes - he sees him cleaning his tools through the lit window from the snowy street. Thomas is tall, scarred up on his arms, and moves like he knows how to fight. Corvo drops through a window and the look on the mans face when he recognizes the mask tells him all he needs to know. He doesn't try to run or fight, which is smart. But he does twitch for the blade hidden in his boot.

Thomas doesn't say it outright at first, but the way he reacts to the name Billie Lurk makes Corvo feel hope, real heart-pounding hope, in a way he hasn't in decades. Yes, Thomas knows her. Yes, he's been in contact with her. No - rats fill the workshop - yes, he knows where Corvo can find her. There's a dead drop in Karnaca where he sends letters.

Surprisingly, it takes hardly any violence to get Corvo what he needs. Thomas cares for Billie, clearly, but when Corvo snarls that he is going to tell him where she took his daughter there's also sharp realization and then pity in his eyes, and guilt touched with a loss of his own buried behind it all. He's even so courteous as to write the address down for him. Thomas could be lying, but Corvo doesn't think so. But he'll still need to move fast. The moment he leaves, he's sure Thomas will send a letter to race him there.

He boards the first steamer he finds headed south and bribes them with an outrageous sum of stolen coin to leave immediately. It's a longer trip than he'd like and there's irony in there, somewhere, that Billie went to Karnaca of all places. A day out from Serkonos , at the point where Corvo has shed all of his cold-weather clothes and can smell the salt and heat of the sun, the Outsider deigns to visit him again after all these years.

The void is... different. The Outsider seems different too, but he can't quite pinpoint how. He's infuriatingly cryptic as usual, talking about family and paths and if he'll recognize Emily for what she's grown to become if he does find her in his homeland, and how fascinating that would be to watch. But the fact that he's even appeared tells Corvo that he's headed in the right direction, so he focuses on that and most of the inscrutable monologuing goes mostly over his head - he's only focused on Emily, Emily, Emily, his girl is alive.

(A/N: Weird void shit with Delilah! Since Corvo is used to the void from DH1, and Sider is uh. agitated in DH2 because of it but still locks it down quite a bit in conversation and doesn't let on)

They land. He finds a welcoming attic and stakes out the drop point, tracks comings and goings, confirms the alias Meagan Foster and gets places this time. She's not here, out on a run to Gristol, they assume, but people expect she'll be back within the week if previous patterns stand. He asks about Emily, too, but people clam up - maybe it's fear, of what Lurk would do if they did? or he's pushed too far with his questioning? She's somewhere here, he knows it. The waiting is agonizing.

News breaks on the fifth day he's in Karnaca that there's been a coup. He doesn't care - at least until the name Delilah starts showing up on posters plastered all around the city by the Duke's men. Then, oh, then he's furious. Lurk going to Gristol can't have been a coincidence. He's certain it's something to do with Emily, based on what he knows about what happened when she vanished, and his hatred for Lurk only calcifies.

After several more days he sees the Wale come in.

It's twilight, perfect for approaching unseen after the docking activities have finished up. Corvo watches Lurk from the rooftops and assesses her as an easy target, what with the missing eye and arm, but reminds himself to be careful. She's the only one on board. No Emily. He's getting twitchy and his jaw is locked tight.

He blinks down, follows her in through a window in the wheelhouse and ghosts through the creaking companionways and mentally maps the place before locating Lurk walking out of the galley. He scuffs a boot just a hair too loudly and she whips around, dropping the pan she's carrying and going stiff with shock for a moment at the intrusion before whipping out a knife from who knows where and then they're in it.

She's overpowerable but tricky and it takes longer than he'd like to have her crashed up against the corkboard with his blade to her throat and his hand crushing her remaining wrist until her blade clatters to the ground. What did you do with Emily, he asks, and she goes wide eyed, and then flinches her attention over his shoulder for a fraction of a second and that's all that saves him from a bolt to the back of the head.

There's another woman, pounding down from on deck, blade out with murderous intent and calling for Meagan. She's lithe and tall, dressed in a dusty red coat cut angularly in the current fashion, slim cutoff pants, and sturdy black boots. Her dark hair has escaped its loose braid and flies back from her face and the fury is all in her equally dark eyes because the rest is covered by a bandana. A nasty scar starts over one cheekbone and plunges down behind the cloth. Fuck, but she's fast.

Corvo dodges back from the bolt, a near miss, and dances back from another strike as she closes. Lurk crumples, shouting. He doesn't want to deal with this. He reaches for the Void, feels it hum and crackle through his hand until he can grab at it and yanks time to a stop. The world goes gray and static. The woman, however, does not stop.

Fuck, he realizes. She's like Daud. She's marked. She reels too, taking in the sudden change before rounding on him and looking to Lurk. There's surprise and yes, some fear too flashing across her eyes before she shouts and comes back at him.

It probably feels like it lasts longer than it actually does, like all fights do. Her bladework is straight out of the alleys where Corvo grew up, but with nasty new twists and turns that indicate real practical training. He counters them with difficulty before analyzing her pattern and starting to gain the upper hand. Color and light and sound suck back into the world. Lurk yells and scrambles away but he has no attention he can spare for her because when he tries to blink and catch her, the woman shouts no! and bursts into a horror of shadow and claws and drags him back across the floor.

She reforms and slices for his throat. He rolls away. They pant and sweat, circling in the now-destroyed compartment, then one of them moves and it's split-second muscle memory and instinct again. Corvo reaches back to the Void and slams a glowing palm directly against the woman's gut when she dances just a hair too close and wind erupts, catapulting her back with a shriek and sending paper and wood and detritus up into the air like a bomb has gone off. She slams into the wall with a crack and slides to the floor, head down and already pushing slowly up on her elbows. The bandana slips off, unbound along with her now wild hair.

She staggers to stand and looks up at him with a bloody snarl and spins her sword back into her grip and-

It's Emily. Older, harder, sun-darkened, furious Emily but Emily all the same, those eyes are Jessamine's and the shadows of her face are younger reflections of what he's seen in his own over all these solitary years. It's Emily, and he can't move because his girl is right here, and then he can't move because there's a blade sunk through his side pinning him up against one of the cargo crates.

Everything just sort of... stops. They're both panting, hers nearly a growl. She's searching the dead facets of his mask for something, anything. Expecting resistance she's not getting, and he opens his mouth and asks, "Em?"

She shocks back as though slapped but doesn't move her hands from the blade. He dropped his sword at some point, but it only makes it easier to reach out and card trembling fingers through her sweaty hair. She flinches but doesn't pull away, brows drawn and mouth open now. Corvo hears the click of a pistol cocking and then it's pressed against his head and Lurk is asking who he is. Telling him to take off the mask. One of his hands falls to Emily's on her sword, the other he reaches up with and releases the catch. It falls to the floor with a sharp crack in the silence save for the creaking of the ship, and Emily looks at him and haltingly says, "...Corvo?"

"Em," he says, and she makes a choked sound and then Corvo's laughing and crying at the same time, grinning like a madman, and Emily is swearing and lowering him down and pulling out the sword. He feels it then and looks down - it's far off from center, only through muscle and skin, and he's survived far worse.

They patch him up, sit him on a cot and try to come down together from the panic and focus of the fight and he can't stop taking her in, trying to understand the woman the 10-year-old girl he knew has become without him. Emily truly cries when she asks him if he was searching for her all these years and he says yes, yes, he's never stopped looking despite how many people tried to stop him. She'd thought he was dead. They embrace and sway together for a long, long time. Her hair smells the same as it did when she was a child.

Corvo has so many questions, but fifteen years is so much to cover when he's barely gotten her back. Questions about Billie Lurk, who sat silent and closed-faced in a chair in the corner until it was clear he wasn't mortally wounded and then slipped discretely from the room. Questions about where she's been, what she's doing, what happened after she left Dunwall. How she learned to fight. The scar. Questions about why in the fucking void the Outsider's mark sits stark and black on the skin of her hand like it does on his. Questions about Delilah.

But all that can wait, for now. For now he's happy to just hold is daughter and feel her healthy and whole in his arms.

(Honestly i cant help but imagine corvo looking like absolute shit in this au. He’s been running all over the isles with little rest for years?? He don look too good.

Yeah he ain't lookin too ho. I imagine he hit rock bottom on self care like, 5 years prior to this maybe? And then did get his shit back together a little bit once he truly slowed down and was less manic with the travel. He was already pretty low in dh1. But he probs yoyo-ed several times. Dh1 was the pits tho. And immediately after when he realized she was like, gone gone. Theres immediate shock and trauma from dh1 things, and then the more long term bad stuff for him after because the longer he goes the harder it is to hang on to hope to find her. Maybe the first thing em says is "get a fucking haircut")

They fall asleep that night with Corvo bandaged up in the spare cabin and Emily slumped in the chair next to him, unwilling to leave his side. They're both tired and shaken, Emily still vaguely in shock and Corvo feeling the exhaustion of the last fifteen years finally shift into something like rest instead. Meagan doesn't come back in, but leaves two plates at the door for dinner. They both wake up in the Void.

The Outsider talks about stories braided like ocean currents and unlikely reunions occurring fifteen years too late. He gives Corvo back the Heart. Emily doesn't understand until she hears its voice. Let me see who our daughter has grown to become, it says, and Corvo gives the Heart to Emily to keep. The Outsider muses about whether the threat Delilah poses still to Emily, made worse by the throne she now sits on, will cause them to keep running or to turn and strike back, finally. Or if their ties to Karnaca will push them along instead. Delilah isn't done, yet.

When they wake Emily has several conversations. The first is her and Corvo sharing in broad strokes what happened to each of them since that day at the gazebo, including what Corvo learned from Daud. It's hard for Corvo, seeing that the version of her he'd hoped for, the version of her to whom the world had managed to been kind, never existed and that her hands too now carry blood. Emily is gutted that Corvo had come for her, but only days too late. The extent of his methods - though shared with a light touch - don't bother her. She's angry, mourning a version of herself who might have been but who she also couldn't even imagine being now, angry at Meagan and Daud and the coup conspirators and yes, even a bit at Corvo himself. But he never gave up. He did find her, and she'd rather have that than nothing at all. Another person she can trust.

Emily finally asks the question that's been burning since the Heart's whisper of our daughter and asks Corvo if he's her father. She'd always wished it but never allowed herself to truly hope it was true. His confirmation is quiet and strained and cautious. It puts them both over the edge again and it takes her a long time to finally drag herself away and leave him to his recovery.

Then she goes up on deck and shouts at Meagan, demanding why she lied to her about Corvo being dead. Meagan pushes back that she didn't know when they left Dunwall. Emily questions if she had known later, then, and not said anything. She comes clean that she had, two years ago when she re-established contact with an old Whaler in Dabokva who finally shared what happened to Daud and the gang after she'd left. She hadn't told Emily at the time because she knew how much it would hurt her, how it would re-open old wounds that would never realistically see closure thirteen years after the fact, not with how Gristol had gone to shit and the care the two of them had taken not to be discovered. But now, she promises, she won't get in the way of Corvo being here.

Meagan knows it's not her place to. Emily never chose to go with Meagan, and Corvo has more right to her trust than Meagan ever did. Corvo's presence dredges up old guilt and also makes Meagan feel threatened in her relationship to Emily in a way she never could have anticipated. Emily eventually cools down after storming off and comes back. She accepts Meagan's apology, though it still hurts. Meagan is still the one who's mostly raised her, however complicated and fraught their relationship, and she can't just drop the last fifteen years because a man she last knew when she was a child has found her again.

That night they gather and actually get down to business. Delilah is still a problem, and Meagan hasn't even had a chance to share what she'd witnessed in Dunwall. Emily also has information to share from the Conservatory. Corvo takes some talking around, having far less personal stake in what Delilah's done, but the combination of his concern for Emily's wellbeing and being deeply unsettled about the current state of the Void are enough to have him agree to work with them. Specifically, to work with the woman who doesn't want to be called Billie Lurk anymore.

In Dunwall, Meagan watched from shadowed side streets as Luca Abele arrived at the Tower with his clockworks and only screams came back out, her letter of warning to the Emperor apparently unread or undelivered. Before leaving she gathered all the intelligence she could. Delilah is seemingly immortal, the Lady Protector having run her through to no effect before being locked in stone and then shattered. The Emperor languishes in Coldridge. Apparently Delilah had lamented that it wasn't his sweet cousin Emily sitting on the throne instead when she'd dragged him from it. It seems like she somehow still knows Emily is out there and still has some sort of fixation. Meagan isn't certain what Delilah's endgame is, but before she left she'd seen cartloads of pigment and canvas winding their way through through the rapidly crumbling city. It involves paintings, which is deeply worrying.

Emily, at least, can shed some light on the immortality when she shares what she found at the Conservatory. She'd overheard the witches in the coven mentioning a séance that was held at Stilton Manor three years ago during which she'd returned from the Void and done something to ensure she couldn't be killed, though the exact method wasn't known.

Emily and Meagan share a moment as that sinks in - whatever happened, it must have been what drove Stilton mad. The idea of going back to that void-dampened place unsettles her, especially given that the Duke cracked down on the manor's security after they broke in to collect Stilton despite the high cost of doing so in the now incredibly Crown-opposed Dust District. But if they can find some sort of clue there it's worth going. They may also find more about the co-conspirators. The Karnaca coven won't be much more of a threat, at least, with Emily having left them unconscious and stripped of their powers as well as removing Ashworth by more conventional means. She'd given the statue of the woman who must have been Delilah a very, very wide berth after seeing it come to life and speak with Ashworth.

Corvo takes a week or so to recover enough to work, and then they get down to business starting with A Crack in the Slab. All the DH2 missions are done with Em and Corvo working together and both with fully fleshed out power sets since they aren't recently marked (or re-marked). Together the three of them decide it's time to stop running and take care of the problem directly, since the threat Delilah poses now is only more intense than it was fifteen years ago. With two Marked, neither of whom Delilah knows are working against her yet, they might have a chance.

They start by talking to Stilton about the seance specifically, who Meagan had organized to stay at Lucia Pastor's apartment as a more long-term solution. Nothing he says is helpful. Then, working with Mindy and the Howlers to provide a distraction for the heavy guard presence around the Manor, they break in and start investigating. There's still blood stained deep into the floorboards from where Emily and Meagan nearly lost their lives breaking in the first time which is where the Outsider appears and gives them the Timepiece. They save Stilton and observe the seance, learning who the co-conspirators are in Karnaca and how to undo her immortality. Delilah still notices Emily in the flashback, except it's more of a freaky "oh hello girl, be careful what you stick your nose into" threatening thing that puts both her and Corvo super on edge. It also provides grounds for what Meagan overheard at the Tower about Delilah still bearing a grudge against Emily that seems fresher than it should.

After the mansion Emily is left with a strange set of overlapping memories and her scar is gone. She remembers more than Meagan, though, because she's marked. Meagan still apparently suffered some sort of job-related accident around the same time, but nothing requiring amputation and the loss of an eye, so she's fully functional when they return to the skiff. The Dust District looks better than it did with Stilton back but remains largely the same center of separatist sentiment that it was.

Next is Addermire. Emily recognized Hypatia from the séance because of the work she'd done for the miners, though something is clearly wrong and she hasn't been seen for months. Stilton also wants to get to the bottom of it. He's working with them to gather intelligence and plan now, though he isn't fully informed of the real reasons they want to take down Delilah and doesn't know about Em and Corvo's marks. They neutralize Grim Alex with the serum and bring her back to the Wale, and the rest of Hypatia's storyline happens as in canon.

Jindosh is their next target, but there's disagreement and uncertainty around what to do with him since Meagan and Emily have seen some of the improvements he's brought to Karnaca and Corvo knows a man being used as a tool when he sees one. They end up trapping him in his own house to be dealt with later once they break in and determine that while not really remorseful, he doesn't actually have a stake in the coup like Luca or the now-deceased Ashworth.

Emily and Corvo slowly get to know each other again over the course of the missions. Emily starts to learn who Corvo is in all his complications, no longer as the solid Royal Protector she knew through her naive child's eyes. He's calculating and efficient with his blade, only revealing himself when he has to and taking life as a bothersome necessity he'd rather avoid. He still protects her, too. She has a lingering uncertainty in how to interact with him, especially now knowing he's her biological father - it's a strange mixture of craving closeness but being uncertain of how much is too much to share or to ask of him, as well as negotiating the physical boundaries of a hug or a casual touch that were simple when she was ten but now feel both weightier and almost too fragile to even attempt sometimes. The sharp anger that always flares up in Corvo's eyes when she mentions Meagan doesn't help to simplify anything either, given her equally complex but very different feelings about that situation.

Meanwhile, Corvo deals with grief over never being there to see Emily grow up, and the strange whiplash of getting to know your child as an adult with her own methods and morals and way of clawing through life, many of them built on unfamiliar foundations from her relationship with Meagan - though others he recognizes intimately from also growing up on the edges of society in Batista despite having done so decades ago. The best times are when she swings fluid and free up onto a roof and breaks into a beaming smile, and although he knows she doesn't truly need him there anymore and is a competent adult woman on her own, she wants him there. The worst times are when he sees the flicker of her red coat and the way she leaps through the air with her blade poised just so and for a moment he thinks he's looking at Daud.

Delilah pulls Emily into the Void right before the Grand Palace mission. It’s the first and only time the actually really talk. She reveals that she’s Emily’s aunt and tells her story about what happened to her with Euhorn and Jessamine, and poses the question to Emily of what she thinks she’s really doing after hiding in fear all these years. Why does she care what Delilah does? She doesn’t even need Emily anymore, oh no, she’s got the throne already and moved on to bigger plans. She should just stay in Serkonos and let Delilah have what she wants.

For Emily, this only solidifies that they need to act. The story about her mother hurts, but she knows what it feels like to have something taken away without cause and also has come to know very well that your parents aren’t all you thought they were when you were a child, so she sits with it and the fact that she’ll never know how true the story might be.

Regardless, two things still hold true: what Delilah and her allies have done has specifically impacted life in Karnaca in terrible ways, beyond what the previous Emperor was doing, and whatever “bigger plan” she has can’t bode well either. Plus, though she implied Emily had no reason to be worried about her, she and Corvo are still threats. They’ve been working against her and her allies, doing real damage. Whatever the method, Delilah will still work to destroy them and backing out now would be beyond foolish. Plus, Meagan still bears a deep grudge and that alone would be enough to propel the Wale to Dunwall when it’s time.

Em and Corvo head to the Grand Palace to reclaim the sliver of Delilah’s soul trapped there. Saying goodbye to Jessamine is hard but it’s made easier by the fact that they have each other. They choose to replace Luca with Armando, who takes the opportunity and is even more adamant than in canon that he’ll do as he sees fit and won’t be controlled. They’re content with that for now – Corvo, having seen the collapse of Dunwall without a head of state, talks Em around into it and assures her that, like Jindosh, they can work out what to do with Armando later. At least things under him won’t continue to actively worsen for now.

Meagan, Corvo, and Em set off for Dunwall to finish the job. The tension between Corvo and Meagan is still thick, but Corvo has to admit she’s been helpful, having taken a larger role in recon and investigation than in canon since she doesn’t need to hide her skills.

On the way the inevitable topic of what happens after they take care of Delilah comes up. None of them are doing this for “the Empire.” Emily, disaffected and raised rough, has no real desire for the throne. Corvo’s ties are to his daughter’s wellbeing alone at this point and has never cared for politics, so that’s fine with him. Meagan has always made her own way. An idea does, however, begin to turn in Emily’s mind.

The three take the Tower together, cutting through a shadow of a city none of them have seen in years. The witches provide little resistance. Meagan gets an uncomfortable taste under her tongue being surrounded by pigments and herbs and witchcraft once again, and she’s the one to provide the distraction in the old throne room with its massive oil painting of another world hung on the wall. They don’t bother trying to find a nonlethal method.

Meagan walks directly in the front door and sinks a crossbow bolt into Delilah’s chest. She’s absolutely titillated to find Billie Lurk come for revenge at last, but her moment of gloating creates the opening for Emily to slam Delilah’s soul back into her body. Corvo throws her halfway across the room with a blink assault when she attempts to step into the painting and they fight right there in the throne room until Delilah’s furious and desperate and her guard finally slips. Meagan deals the final blow with her old Whaler blade, then casts it aside. She doesn’t need it anymore now.

And with that, Emily no longer has a reason to hide. She looks at the now truly destroyed seat of power in the Empire and says you know what? That’s just fine. Her home is Serkonos now, regardless of where she was born. To her, nothing good has come from Dunwall in a long, long time.

They eventually pull Emily’s deposed distant cousin out of Coldridge and sit down to have a chat with him. Emily reveals who she and Corvo are, what they’re capable of, and threatens that she could rightfully take the throne from him, but she won’t. Not as long as he promises to pull the long hand of the Empire back from Serkonos and let the isle do as it wills on its own. He agrees.

They set sail on the Wale and leave the Emperor to try to cobble something back together from the wreckage that’s left. There’s already word of a second rebellion gaining real steam in Morley and so they know that it won’t take long for the entire system fall apart. He won’t be able to come back from two isles breaking off, not with most of the aristocracy, Abbey leadership, and the Guard dead for months.

Back in Karnaca, Emily gives Mindy word of the Emperor’s bargain and from there it spreads like wildfire. The separatist sentiment that blossomed under his reign and Luca’s tenure as duke has spread far beyond the Dust District and so the city is ready to take action. Armando is reluctant, but after a visit from Emily and Corvo he promises that he’ll work with the separatists on transitioning away from the duke being the seat of power and into something new.

Emily returns to her role as the Shadow of Old Batista, helping push out the Imperial forces who balk at the Emperor’s very uncharacteristic order to dissolve or return to Gristol and putting down opposition from those still loyal to the crown. The old women smile and say they knew they were right all along about the old Serkonan legends returning and what that meant for the isle. There’s another figure too alongside the Shadow, rarely seen but with a skull for a face, and so the mythology grows.

On the more above-board side, Corvo, Emily, and Billie make sure that Stilton, Hypatia, and Lucia pastor have a seat at the table in the new government. It’s a hard period, but they leave the actual politics to others and focus on the threats politicians can’t see coming or aren’t equipped to solve. Karnaca’s people are strong, and the city has Jindosh’s genius and its silver and the oceans and other rich resources, and so the city will, ultimately, pull through along with the rest of Serkonos into something better than the Empire.

The Outsider is utterly fascinated by it all.

Emily and Corvo purchase a small ship of their own and name it the Jessamine Emily captains and Corvo learns to sail, already handy with repairs from his time at the shipyards in Dabokva and elsewhere. They live life, finally free to savor the time they have to build their relationship and look to the future instead of being held in the clutches of the past. They still stay largely in Karnaca but travel where they’re needed as Mindy, who’s secured what used to be the Howlers a significant amount of input in shaping the city, notifies them about Imperial activity in other towns. The political changes he’s living through are beyond Corvo’s wildest imagination, even after the rat plague, but it feels right to be here where he grew up, finally feeling something like a home again, and to be here with his daughter. He never plans on leaving Serkonos again.

And Billie… Billie leaves. Delilah’s death freed her of the need to wear the mask that Meagan was, as did seeing “Lela” become Emily again upon Corvo’s arrival. It gets her thinking about someone who she had left behind too soon and what it would mean for her to find him again, as well. But she can’t tell either Emily or Corvo. Her role with Emily is done, her obligation fulfilled, though she tells Billie that she’s always welcome back to stay any time. Corvo clearly takes issue with that but holds his tongue. She knows how he thinks of her and her taking his daughter away has become far more complicated than just blame and hatred in the months they’ve spent working together.

So she goes and she looks for Daud.

She finds him in Cullero alone, missing a hand, tending a garden with clear eyes that flick to her when she just stands there dumbstruck at the gate, and then he invites her inside for tea.