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She knew what she would find even before she boarded the Dreadful Wale. Somehow that made the task all the harder. The suspense was ruined. She wondered if the Outsider had only said it because he was trying to egg her on. She was getting closer now, to finding him, to doing the very impossible and killing a god. He must have been upset. The Outsider had minimal effect on the world he watched, only intervening in indirect ways. Telling her Daud had passed was the only way he could find to hurt her. Still, her feet remained heavy on the ground as she watched the waves lap at the sides of her ship. The Outsider was many things, but a liar was not one of them. She wanted to pretend if she never went on, Daud could still be alive. She imagined him pacing the dock, ready to chastize her for her tardiness as a cover up for how much he had worried about her while she had been gone. The thought brought a smile to her face, that vanished as quickly as it had formed. She liked to believe that Daud wouldn’t be dead until she saw it for herself, but she understood it wasn’t how the world worked.
He was where she had left him, sitting in the best chair she had on the ship. This didn’t come as a surprise. Daud had been looking bad when she left. She tried to ignore it. He had grown tired, even just from speaking to her as they went over the details of the heist. She noticed the way his fingers had twitched and knew it was because it irritated him to have to stay behind. Daud had always been a man of action. This whole God killing business was his idea and it left her second guessing why she was doing any of this in the first place. This was the reason he had gotten so weak. If he hadn’t been meddling in these godforsaken affairs, he wouldn’t have met the Eyeless. They wouldn’t have captured him, abused him until he was an inch from death. He wouldn’t have been strained an inch from death when she had found him. Freeing Daud just postponed the inevitable, Billie realized. She thought he could have recovered.
She should have told him to give it up then, but instead she promised to help. And why? Because she was afraid he would leave if she told him no, to do it anyway and get himself killed. She always saw him as the father she never had. When did things change so that she was now acting like the parent? She needed to be around him more than ever, but now he was absent.
“Daud,” She speaks. His skin was ashy, his eyes dark with lids heavy over them, staring off into the night sky, facing in the general direction of the bank. She could convince herself he is heavily in sleep. A chipped glass rested at his feet, contents spilled onto her deck. He had been drinking some of her good stock. Billie picks up the glass and chucks it with all her might into the ocean. “You stubborn old man!” She yells at the night sky. She wishes he was here to witness her anger. It was at him, for taking her booze and not sticking around long enough to be scolded by her. No, that wasn’t it. She didn’t give a shit about him drinking her most expensive stock. She just wanted him here. She wanted to have saved him, pulled him back from the brink of death the Eyeless had left him on. She kicks a barrel, nearby furniture, and whatever else happens to get in her way. She grunts to herself as her teeth clench tight. Eventually, she tires and the sun is past the horizon, leaving the world in complete darkness.
***
She rests in her bed but sleep is difficult to catch when she knows there’s a corpse on board. She is not about to throw Daud into the ocean, but is at a loss when she thinks about what to do with him. She wonders if she could stray the mission by a few days, turn ship and head towards the place where he had grown up. He never mentioned where he would like to be laid to rest. It was a question she had never considered, because it felt to her like Daud was never going to die. Reason told her that everyone would eventually, but somehow it had felt like Daud should have been the exception. Daud had never told her where exactly in Serkonos he had grown up in. He hasn’t told her a lot of things. There was a lot she never asked.
Her chest is heavy and Billie realizes she is crying.
***
Billie realizes her ship is stagnant. To get it back up and running again, it would take days, weeks even - and she was not sure how she was going to finance the repairs either. No, the Dreadful Wale was stuck in the harbor she had hid it in. She was stranded in Karnaca. She might as well finish what she had came here to do.
The golden glint of an audiograph caught her attention. It was not there before when she had left. Billie’s throat closed in on itself knowing what it would be. A farewell from Daud. His last words spoken to her that should have been said in person, but instead she had to have left him and done that stupid heist. Why didn’t she wait one more day so she could have been with him? She pocketed it for the time being, unable to bring herself to load it into the player and listen then.
She looked around at the mess that the ship had become. It had been a long, slow decay in the making. Even back when she sailed the Empress to Serkonos and back to Dunwall, things were falling apart. She did her best not to let Emily know she was struggling. Slowly things were breaking faster than she could fix them, and her money was running thin. It became a matter of choosing what she could do without, focusing on fixing what she absolutely needed. Sokolov gone. Emily still sore over past wounds, and she couldn’t say she blamed her. She even missed the doctor, Alexandria Hypatia, despite how brief of a time she lived on the ship. And now Daud. Such a big ship for one lonely person. Such a big mess and she was not sure she alone could clean it up. She feels pinpricks in her eyes, but Billie stifles them.
Billie never had a problem with being alone, but alone right now, she feels lost. She had been looking for direction when she had sought out Daud. When Daud first spoke of this god killing business, Billie had her doubts. She never believed in his cause, but helped him because it was Daud. Part of her wanted to abandon the mission in his absence. It would be the reasonable thing, she told herself. But she was stuck in Karnaca. She had no crew to speak of and her ship was in ruins. Billie had no other leads at the moment other than to go to the conservatory and continue the mission Daud sent her on. If it was his last wish, then she did not care if it was a fool’s errand she had no hope of completing or if she died during the process.
She would travel light and bring only what she needed. She gathers what coin she has left and rations to get her through a few days. Instinctively, she reaches towards her blade, the one she carried during the days her and Daud tore up Dunwall. She remembers the twin bladed knife, now concealed among the flesh of her void arm. That was all that could supposedly work on the Outsider. It was all she was going to need. She lays the iron blade to rest.
Billie grabs bottles of rum, nestling them beneath her arm as she carries the awkward sized load above deck. She uncorks them one by one, turning them over and watching as they spilled their contents with a glug onto her deck. She pauses as she spots Daud where she had last left him. Billie makes her way over.
“Good night, Old Man,” She leans and presses a kiss to his forehead, before covering him with a white sheet. She never told Daud that she loved him, but she always thought it had been understood between them both. She had felt Daud’s love for her on several occasions, the one that stood out the most - when he had forgiven her after she had betrayed him. Billie had been left feeling like a fool, and almost positive she deserved death right there and then. She would have been content with Daud choosing to kill her, but instead, he forgave her. Her banishment was expected after that. She was not sure how she could have continued to be around the other Whalers when the truth had been exposed, but without them, she had felt lost. But it was integral to her becoming who she was today. Daud gave her that chance to change, to forgive herself. She wondered if Daud had ever found the same for himself, or was it too late for him. She knew he had much on his mind in his final days. She knew what redemption meant for Daud, how far he would go to reach it. But he never made peace with himself.
She wasn’t going to let herself be like Daud. She lights her ship on fire, and with it, Daud as well. It was the best funeral she could think to give him. Farewell Daud.