"Are ghosts real?" Billie asks one morning, and she immediately cringes at how childish the words sound coming out of her mouth.
The boy who was once the Outsider opens his eyes slowly to look at her. He is in the middle of eating an apricot tartlet, a new food to him in this newly human life, and his fingers and face are sticky with the sugary glaze. His blissful expression suggests he appreciates the taste a lot more than the jellied eels and brined hagfish he's had so far, and it takes a few seconds for him to focus enough to respond to Billie's words. "Ghosts," he repeats blandly.
She shrugs to keep herself from cringing again. "Spirits of the dead come back from the Void," she explains with a wave of her hand. "There's always been stories – murdered lovers back for revenge, old abandoned houses being haunted. Can any of that actually happen?"
The boy takes another bite and chews slowly, tilting his head to one side as he considers the question. "Restless spirits linger in the Void. Only the very few who died with no regrets fade away without trouble. I admit I never paid any of them much mind in all the time I was there. I suppose the stronger spirits might push through the cracks sometimes, slipping out in the places where the Void splinters against this world." He stops and gives Billie a sharp look, says, "You've seen something."
She looks away and nods, though it clearly wasn't a question.
He sets the tart aside carefully and puts his elbows on the table in front of him, leaning forward with an intensely curious look on his face. "What have you seen?" he asks.
Billie gives him a weak glare and grumbles, "I'm sure you can guess."
It didn't really bother her at first, catching these glimpses of Daud as she tried to go about her life. She's seen so much death that she can hardly remember a time when she wasn't haunted by ghosts of some kind, friends and lovers and people killed by her own hands for coin. Even this many years on she still sees Deirdre, when she's tired enough or drunk enough that the dreams and memories creep into her reality, and Daud hadn't even been dead the first time she saw his ghost. She was always spotting scarred men in deep red coats vanishing down the alleys of Karnaca in those first few months after she left Dunwall.
This, though, is not the same thing; she realized that quickly enough. This isn't her tired, paranoid mind putting old memories onto a passing stranger with similar features. She sees Daud as she last saw him in the Void, flickering and fading, muttering over all the regrets in his life. She sees him on empty streets right in front of her, not just in a crowd out of the corner of her eye.
"It makes some sense," the boy is saying, drawing Billie's attention back to him. "His spirit was very strong and very restless, and you can see the cracks of the Void easier than most. There are many of them here in Serkonos, as we're still so close to the entrance within the mines."
"More holes in the world," she mutters to herself, looking down at her right arm and the shattered pieces of the Void holding it all together. They had to flee from that place quickly when she pulled the Outsider from his ancient prison. They had to run far to escape their pursuers, and she couldn't afford to look back. She wonders how that strange place looks now, weeks out with the Eyeless cult rapidly losing power. Is it empty of its dangers? Does it still sit open for anyone to wander in? Or anyone to wander out?
A hand grasps suddenly at her other arm, holding tight to the wrist that is still flesh. "Billie," the boy says firmly, "do not go looking for the cracks in the world. That you made it out of the Void once is incredible, and I wouldn't bet on you managing it again. Let him rest. He'll find his peace soon enough. They all do."
She meets his gaze for several long seconds, noting how serious he looks, the hint of genuine concern in his face. Then she scoffs and pulls her hand away, wiping it on the front of her shirt. "Your hands are filthy," she says. "Hurry and finish that thing so you can go wash up. I'm not taking you out in public like this."
He makes a face at her, looking for once like the child he appears to be, and shoves the last sugary bite into his mouth.
As he heads off to clean his hands, Billie stands up with a sigh. "We'll go down to the docks tonight and start talking to the smugglers," she tells him. "I'm tired of Serkonos, anyway."
When next she sees the ghost, a flickering figure in the crowds along the piers, staring after her as her ship drifts out to sea, Billie turns away.
Farewell, Daud, she thinks for the last time.