~'*'~
1838
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17th Day, Month of Earth, 1838
It takes Daud three days of trying to fix the rickety outhouse to make it a suitable food storage space for him to finally admit he has no idea what he's doing. He's an ex-assassin, not a carpenter.
Over the past month he has made frequent trips to the nearby villages and the closest town, Baskano, picking up books on everything from farming to wine making. He devours knowledge as he once devoured contracts but reading can only go so far and his limited library of books is hardly extensive. Nor can it teach a skill.
Setting his tools aside, Daud reaches up to wipe his brow, standing in the shade of the broken building. It hasn't fallen down, which is something, but his mismatched repairs leave much to be desired.
"You've fixed it." The voice behind him makes him jump but it's only Amelia. Daud knows he should be more worried that she was able to sneak up on him so easily but lethargy has settled in his bones from the long hours of toil and he can't find the energy to be concerned when he's too busy being amazed that she has actually approached him.
"Barely," he grumbles in reply. Beside him Amelia shrugs.
"It's got character," Amelia murmurs softly, subtly avoiding eye contact, "so what?"
The smile that twitches onto his face surprises him and for a moment they stare at the outhouse together in silence. Then Amelia's stomach growls and startles them both. Daud glances down at her just in time to catch the blush creeping across tanned cheeks.
"Lunch?" he offers, daring to breach the gap between them for the first time since arriving.
Amelia nods and he turns to head back to the main house but freezes when a small hand reaches out, fingers brushing up against the mark of the Outsider before curling to grasp his hand. Daud's shocked gaze meets Amelia's own but this time she doesn't shy away and glares back just as firmly, daring him to react. Daud can also see the tense way she's holding herself, like a skittish animal, ready to jump and run, expecting rejection.
He can't bring himself to pull away, Void be damned. He's always had a soft spot for kids.
So instead he relaxes into it, grips her hand back lightly and amuses himself with the surprise that flashes across her face. Amelia had made herself scarce since their arrival. Daud had let her. She was grieving and Daud had respected her need for space but it appeared that her need for human comfort had finally won over.
They made their way back the house side-by-side and hand in hand.
~'*'~
21st Day, Month of Earth, 1838
"So what's your first name Mr. Daud?"
Glancing up from his book Daud eyed Amelia across the table and found her gazing unseeingly at absently stirring her vegetable stew. She had never once complained at the strictly vegetarian diet Daud now adhered to, though he knew she had taken to hunting around the edges of the vineyard because he had occasionally come across her setting traps.
Not that he had ever seen evidence of her kills. For his sake after the road incident Amelia had dealt with them far from his sight.
"What's got you so curious?" He is careful to temper his voice to prevent scaring her off, their conversations are still short and tentative and she still scampers off to hide most of the time, only really appearing for food. Part of him thinks that she hasn't forgiven him for taking her away from her brother's body.
"Nothin'," she mumbles, "'s just that you know lots of things and I don't know much of anything. 'Specially since I can't read all them fancy books. Don't seem fair." Sheepishly she sends a longing look at the hardback in his hands.
Daud, for his part, wonders why it had never occurred to him that Amelia couldn't read. It's a mistake he resolves to deal with as soon as he manages to navigate a conversation with her without screwing up.
"Maybe my name's embarrassing," he replies, aiming for nonchalance. It does the trick because her expression quickly morphs into the cheeky grin he remembers from their defence lessons.
"Is it?" Amelia looks like the cat that just got the cream.
Daud can already tell he's going to regret this. Then again what difference is one more thing to regret make amongst the hundreds he already has?
~'*'~
8th Day, Month of Harvest, 1838
"Jasper?"
"No."
"Fitzgerald?"
"No."
"Egbert?"
"Shut up."
"Humphrey?"
"Amelia."
"Archibald?"
"Seriously?"
~'*'~
14th Day, Month of Harvest, 1838
"Valentine?"
Daud lets his head drop into his hand, massaging his temple where he can feel another headache building. It's official. Never mind taking out a contract on the empress, encouraging Amelia's questioning is the stupidest thing he's ever done.
Turning to glare at her, which has exactly zero effect, he finally abandons his attempts to detangle the grape plants from the overgrown weeds.
"Are you ever going to stop?"
"Nope." Amelia, the little shit, grins from her perch upon a nearby fencepost, swinging her legs in the gentle breeze.
"You could at least make yourself useful." Daud gestures at the battleground in front of him.
"Where's the fun in that?" Amelia asks, still grinning. "I'll help if you tell me."
Daud lets out an exasperated sigh and turns back to the grape vines. At least the Whalers had taken their share of the workload in return for the shelter and food he provided them. His headache is quickly growing from a throbbing pain to a blinding one under the beating sun.
Thankfully Amelia stays silent the rest of the afternoon, wandering off to check her traps when her boredom reached extreme levels.
Daud works late into the afternoon, ignoring his aching head as best he can and stumbles back to the house hours later than usual with a bone-deep tiredness plaguing his steps. He is no stranger to working himself into exhaustion, prefers it even. When he's so tired that he can't think straight he can't relive the last few moment of the empresses life as a waking nightmare, can't summon the imagination required to picture the years of blood on his hands.
It's a welcome relief.
In his drowsy state he misses the concerned look Amelia shoots him when the fingers holding his spoon tremble as he tries not to drift off to sleep at the table.
He wakes the following morning in his bed with no memory of how he got there.
~'*'~
19th Day, Month of Harvest, 1838
Smoke curls lazily in the early evening air as Daud takes another deep drag of his cigarette. It's one of the few luxuries he's allowed himself in his self-imposed exile. The vineyard is slowly beginning to reflect his efforts to repair it and a basket of grapes now sits in the outhouse from one the few vines that hadn't been so choked with weeds.
Letting out a slow breath he slumps comfortably onto the bench he has pulled to rest outside the house and watches the sunset. The land is blessedly silent save the sounds of twilight wildlife and for the first time in years Daud lets down his guard and relaxes fully.
The crackle of a page turning draws his attention back to Amelia. She's slowly working her way through the children's picture book he picked up in Baskano a few days ago. One day he'll teach her to read properly, she's a quick learner he knows, but not yet, he's growing too attached too quickly and he can't afford to let that happen again.
Shaking away his thoughts he brings the cigarette back to his lips and takes another drag with a sigh of pleasure.
"Those things'll kill you." Amelia accuses him softly without looking up from her book.
"Maybe." He considers the cigarette in his grasp for a moment and shrugs. "I never expected to live long enough for it to be a concern." He takes a particularly long drag to punctuate his point.
Amelia gives him a shrewd look for the comment. Daud may not have told her about his past but she's far from stupid. A part of him suspects she knows what he was before he stumbled into her life.
"Well now that you will you should stop." Immediately, he bristles.
"Don't tell me how to live my life," Daud snarls, feeling the familiar build-up of rage, "you know nothing about me." Beside him Amelia flinches at the harshness in his voice and at the suddenly predatory nature of his posture. It should make him feel terrible. Perhaps it's a measure of his character that he doesn't.
The rest of the evening passes in uncomfortable silence.
~'*'~
20th Day, Month of Harvest, 1838
Amelia doesn't appear for breakfast and for one horrible moment Daud thinks that he's scared her off. A quick glance into her room shows it to be empty and it's only when he spots her silhouette at the bottom of the vineyard that he pauses, heart pounding.
Slumping against the wall he contents himself with watching her slow progress between her traps for a few minutes before heading inside and setting aside some of the leftover food as an offering.
When Daud returns from the work he has been doing on the outhouse Amelia is nowhere to be found but the food is gone, he eats dinner alone and is deafened by the emptiness across from him. Mentally, he makes a note to quick up some pencils and paper the next time he heads out for supplies because screw it, he's already too fucking attached.
~'*'~
26th Day, Month of Harvest, 1838
In the end Daud can't help but wonder why it hadn't happened sooner. Baskano is a small town, but as with all towns it has its criminals and gangs and the beating mid-day sun forces him to duck into a quiet alleyway before he faints from the heat.
Only to find that the end of the alley is blocked off by the bulk of two gang members and Daud doesn't need to look behind him to know that the escape route behind him is blocked as well. He's been trying to avoid conflict considering how well the last time he wielded a knife went, but with a sigh resigns himself to a fight and lets his bag drop to the floor.
Of course, the street thugs don't know who he is. They probably think he is a simple farmer. They are not expecting the Knife of Dunwall. Daud slips easily into a defensive stance and it is perhaps a testimony to the lack of resistance these men have had that this doesn't make them nervous.
For a few moments there is a tense silence then the nearest thug strikes.
Or, at least, he tries to. Daud disarms him easily and with a well-placed punch and a twist has the thug in a Tyvian chokehold. With the application of pressure on his windpipe the thugs goes down easily, sinking into an unconscious heap and now Daud has a dagger. The men blocking the ends of the alley that had been paralysed in shock by his sudden action unfreeze themselves at the sight of their friend on the ground and attack all at once.
It is four against one, but Daud has dealt with worst odds and come out unscathed. It's harder trying to non-lethally deal with the aggressors but not impossible and although Daud may not have been in a fight for six months muscle memory kicks in.
He's rendered two unconscious with calculated blows before one of the thugs gets lucky. The sting of the knife stabbing into his side knocks him briefly off balance but the thug seems more surprised than Daud is to have gotten a hit in and Daud takes advantage of the hesitation to knock him out, promptly followed by the final gang member.
Adrenaline draining quickly, the dagger falls from Daud's suddenly nerveless fingers and an arm comes up to wrap protectively around his side, hand encountering a warm wetness that he doesn't need to see to identify.
Staggering back towards the street Daud braces an arm against the wall, blindly adjusts his clothing in an attempt to hide the growing blood-stain and steels himself for the long walk back to the vineyard.
Later, exhausted but safely back in home territory with Amelia nowhere in sight, biting back a curse at the sudden wave of pain because leaning down hurts Daud manages to extract the bottle of whisky from the bottom of the cupboard and sets it down alongside the rudimentary medical kit he has assembled.
Easing himself down into the chair, gritting his teeth against spikes of agony from the tear in his side, Daud works his way out of his blood-stained shirt, shaking fingers fumbling with the buttons. It takes a steadying breath before he can bring himself to look at the wound. The slice is deep, but short. It will need stitches. Daud decides to put aside the knowledge that he can apparently stand the sight of his own blood for consideration later.
Pulling the stopper from the bottle with his teeth he takes a fortifying gulp before tipping the alcohol to wash the cut out. It burns hot and sharp, his head tips back, straining against the pain, face twisted into a grimace as a groan escapes his lips. Taking short, heavy breaths he drops his gaze back down. Fresh blood is spilling out of the wound, but the whisky has washed away the dirt from the street and he knows from past experience that using alcohol reduces the chances of infection. Pressing a towel against the cut he rummages in the medical bag with his free hand.
Now comes the hard part.
Many times in his career, Daud has been thankful that his mother taught him about the herbs she used in her healing work and as his hand closes around a stoppered vial of dried Lichweed root he thanks her again. Popping one of the plants into his mouth he chews and waits for a few minutes, begins to feel the light numbness of the flowers pain-killing properties, then reaches for the needle. He holds the curved point over the candle to heat and wills his hands to stop shaking as he struggles to thread it.
Then, just in case, Daud grabs the wooden stick he had the sense to tuck into the medical bag and bites down on it.
The first stitch is a lesson in exquisite pain. It takes all he has not to scream and he squeezes his eyes shut against the darkness encroaching on his vision. The last time he did this had been after his fight with Attano and he doesn't remember it hurting this much, but he'd been used to pain back then and he hadn't spent an hour trudging through sweltering heat, slowly bleeding through a makeshift bandage. He'd also been considerably more drunk.
Forcing himself through the next few stitches is no better, the tug of the thread pulling through skin agonising, and by the time Daud gets to the last his hands are shaking again and he has to take a breather to calm the trembling enough to continue. Then, finally, he's dropping the needle into a basin of water, doing his best to wipe blood of his fingers.
It's not his neatest work, it'll scar, maybe even match the mess of marred flesh left by Attano's blade. With a bit of contortion Daud manages to wrap a fresh bandage around his chest, tying it tight with a grunt of pain and finally relaxing against the chair.
The wooden stick gets thrown to the side as Daud picks up the bottle of Old Dunwall Whisky and takes a long sip as a reward.
One sip becomes two and before he knows it he's drunk half the bottle, whether to numb the pain or the now constant ache in his chest he isn't sure. It's not really an excuse either way, though the drunken sleep he slips into is deep and free of dreams, so maybe it is a mercy.
When Daud wakes late that evening, it's to a blanket tucked around his bare chest and his things packed neatly away. The whisky is nowhere in sight.
~'*'~
27th Day, Month of Harvest, 1838
Amelia says nothing about the state in which she must have found him the previous night when she drops down opposite him for breakfast, nor does she mention the spectacular hangover he's nursing.
It's as though some barrier has been torn down between them. Maybe she's finally realised that he is just as mortal as she brother was, or that he too can make mistakes. Either way, rather than hiding away as she usually does she follows him when he heads out to work on the broken fences, bringing with her a plentiful supply of water and moving to hold up the heavier boards of wood for him whenever she catches a grimace between his brows.
That night he sits her down and writes out the alphabet for her, carefully sounding out each letter and guiding her hand as she tries to replicate the shapes.
When they finally head to bed, later than planned because Amelia was determined to get the letters right, she pauses at the bottom of the stairs.
"Thank you." The words are offered quietly.
"For what?"
"…everything." Daud swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. He has no response to that. "Goodnight Mr. Daud". She turns and heads up before he can shake himself out of his surprise to muster a reply.
Daud drifts fitfully to sleep that night, trying to ignore the way his chest ached in something not entirely unpleasant at the words.