A/N: This is my first fic in a long time, and my first Dishonored fic to boot, so it is much appreciated if you take the time to read and give constructive criticism. I know that I change tenses a lot, seemingly at random, but this is because I feel the Outsider views time as something nonlinear and fluid, and often gets the past, present, and future confused when telling a story. If too many people find it jarring I will change it. I wasn't really sure of a lot of things but that is what feedback is for! I want to also thank all of the editors at the Dishonored wiki, without your filling in the gaps in my knowledge this never would have been written. Thank you for reading!

I do not own Dishonored or any of its characters.


Miss Vera Dubhghoill.

Born in Morley. Will marry Lord Moray.

Not yet does she know this. The thread of her life is tangled and uncertain.

With my interference little is certain. And I will undoubtedly interfere, but not just yet.

Carelessly she will bring ruin with her quiet footsteps, calamity with her enigmatic smile.

Poems, paintings, even an opera will be created over her.

All of this will happen even before she meets me.

Now it is 1780. With her fair perfumed hands she spreads a crisp sheet of stationary in front of her and lifts the fountain pen. Miss Vera Dubhghoill is fifteen, a mere child with sharp, observing eyes and long dark hair. She is spoken of in hushed whispers across the aristocratic circles in Dunwall, for she has caught the fancy of Alexy Olaskir, who has been Emperor of the Isles since before she was born.

Her father is one of the Emperor's most trusted accountants, and the Dubhghoill family is well-respected at court. As Vera blossomed into a young lady the Emperor found himself transfixed by her beauty, spellbound by every soft, deliberate word out of her pink little mouth.

The Emperor had been a widow for twenty-odd years. Crowned at a young age, married his childhood sweetheart, and watched her slowly die of consumption as he spent the people's money on the best physicians and healers from Serkonos, Morley, and Tyvia to no avail. Little Polina Olaskir had dark hair and dark eyes, much like Vera, and a sweet, gentle temperament, much unlike Vera. Neither her age nor her temperament stopped him from proposing to Vera at a ball on that warm summer night in the Month of Nets.

She told him she would consider it.

"Oh, Vera, how proud you must be! Don't you know what this means for our family?"

Her mother and sisters had been positively giddy after hearing the news. I could see everything that happened, already knew the girl's answer, but I waited. Young Vera smiled serenely and made the first strokes on the paper in the carefully composed cursive that only a young girl could write.

"Dearest mother, I will never finish this letter with your watchful eye over my shoulder," she said calmly, hiding the words with her small hands and giggling childishly. Her eyes sparkled with amusement.

Every single one of her coquettish actions had a purpose.

It was all a game to her. Vera had her own plans.

This was something her mother would never understand.

But I understood. I knew she could become far more powerful than the wife of an Emperor, or even as Empress herself.

Could become.

But would she?

Even to me her future was uncertain.

Vera was unpredictable; even her family did not know what she was about to do.

"Have you told your father yet? Oh, but of course the Lord Emperor has already asked his permission!" Suddenly her mother's voice grew loud and harsh as she looked around for the maid. "Missy! By the Outsider, where is that useless girl?"

Missy, who was invisible unless called upon, rushed out of breath from the kitchen.

Lady Dubhghoill sent the meek little maid on an errand to purchase from the butcher the finest cut of whatever he had slaughtered that same day, and the most expensive vintage available in Dunwall. Then she beamed at her precious little Vera, forgetting that she always liked her siblings better.

"We will dine like royalty tonight, and every night from now on!"

Vera simply found her mother's avarice quaint. She continued to write with that knowing smile, enjoying the attention.

Her sisters circled her and questioned Vera about the first, second, and third time she danced with the Emperor, if he was kind, what it was like to look into his gentle eyes, his scent (rosewater, according to Vera).

"Who will be your royal protector?"

"Only the Emperor needs a royal protector, Lillia."

"He's so much older than you, isn't he?"

"Oh, yes. Very much."

"Like Grandfather?"

"Not quite that old!"

For the first time in a while, there was merriment and laughter in the Dubhghoill household. It would be the last time for a long while, too.

The only one of her family who came close to understanding Vera was her older brother, Jereth Dubhghoill. He stood in the dark, silent the entire time, and only now turned and retired to the study to work on his manifesto on factory conditions and child labor, calling for mandatory standards for workers and homes for orphans among other proposed solutions to social problems in the cities, paid for by an estate tax proposed for the very wealthy, his own family included of course. If published, his work would be distributed as pamphlets to the common folk who would eventually start a revolution, with many of his reforms instated. But he will die immediately after he completes his work, and it will sink with the passenger ship that Jereth Dubhghoill will board returning from Samara on the second week of the Month of Harvest, 1784. His radical ideas will die with him as the water strips away his flesh and his bones disintegrate into dust at the bottom of the sea as his name is completely forgotten. This is how his fate will play out, as I see it, so long as the sun continues to rise and set and there is water in the ocean. None of them know this yet, for they do not see what I see.

But let us return to Vera Dubhghoill, whose future is not so clear.

She signs the letter with a flourish and waits for the ink to dry before folding it, always keeping her words and true intentions hidden. She drips red wax on the envelope and stamps it with the Dubhghoill family seal.

Vera's mother, the Lady Dubhghoill, accompanies her daughter to the post. She is chattering all the way about how marvelous their lives will soon be and other nonsense that Vera does not care about. Her attention is caught by a shaved ice vendor. A small tank of pale bluish whale oil powers the machine. Vera's eyes took this in, and I finally saw something impress the jaded girl. Shaved ice in the Month of Nets! Whale oil truly was the future, like everyone said.

"Mother, may I have ten coin for the postman?"

"It is only five coin to post your letter."

"I wish to give the carrier a generous tip. He is to be trusted with an historic letter, after all."

"Very well. But do not tarry too long."

Her mother waits outside. Returning only after spending the tip intended for the letter carrier on a strawberry shaved ice her mother is gossipping with another lady of the aristocracy. Vera was brimming with anticipation, waiting for the right moment.

"Oh, here arrives your daughter now! Pray tell, her father must be ecstatic."

"Indeed, Lady Brighton. But where have you found that charming brooch? You must tell me the name of the jeweler, so he may fashion a piece for Vera's wedding!"

"But of course! His name is Trystan, and he has a nice shop in Draper's Ward. Pray tell me that she is to be wed before the Fugue Feast. . ."

The ladies continued to chatter nonsense as Vera stood almost unnoticed, enjoying her shaved ice. All of these adults, trying to use this fifteen-year-old girl to their own ends. They deigned to dress her in fine silks and spoke of her as if she were non-sentient. An unfeeling, unthinking porcelain doll to be married off to a man old enough to be her father, only to further the family name. Not once had anyone asked Vera of her response; they only assumed she would readily say 'yes' as they had spent years training her to do to the first rich man of good breeding who asked. How disgusting people could be, but such is human nature. Their names and futures are faded and irrelevant to me, forgotten in time. I do not remember any more of what was spoken by them.

Finally, finally the Lady Brighton asked (or squeaked rather) how Vera worded her letter, after scolding her for being so fiendish to not allow her mother to help with its composition.

Vera grinned.

"I told him that his offer was ever so kind. I thanked him for the lovely words he spoke of me, and that his company was truly a delight. But I'm afraid I had to refuse his most generous proposal."

She closed her eyes, knowing what was to come next, though to her it was absolutely worth the positively horrified looks on the two ladies' faces. She knew that all of life is cause and effect. Her mother slapped her, hard, and Lady Brighton scurried off from whence she came. Lady Dubhghoill, in a rare moment of forgetting her social mores, proceeded to shout at her daughter for all to hear about how she has shamed the family name, how she has humiliated her mother, how her father would never be able to look the Emperor in the eye again.

"But mother, he is so... provincial!"

All of life is cause and effect.

Had Vera Dubhghoill accepted the Emperor's proposal, she would have produced a male heir within a year. Secure, safe, yet absolutely consumed by boredom. Eventually her son would ascend to the throne at a young age and Vera would instill in him her own shrewdness, ruling from the shadows. The Spider Queen, they would have called her. The Olaskir dynasty would continue and Jessamine Kaldwin would have lived her days a minor nobleman's daughter, unburdened by royal protocol and assassination attempts. She would have published novels under a pen name and married the famed swordsman and longtime friend Corvo Attano.

But Vera observed the Emperor, carefully considered his proposal, and ultimately refused an offer that others would have murdered for.

Instead, Alexy Olaskir will die in three years time, without producing an heir. Thirty-two years on the throne and his twin sister Larisa Olaskir will poison him in 1783. But only I know this. Those present at the fateful supper will say that he choked on a pheasant bone. His faithful hound ate the scraps from the Emperor's plate after it clattered to the floor, also falling ill and dying. Again those watching will insist that he dropped dead in grief upon seeing his fallen master. Only I will ever know the truth.

Vera Dubhghoill. Not yet a grown woman, and she already had the attention of an Emperor, and my attention, infinitely harder to steal than that of any ordinary monarch. All of life is cause and effect. The fate of the Isles had just been decided by a precocious fifteen-year-old girl.

She fascinated me.