Past Honor

Adelaide could not see - but she could feel the Outsider's gaze.

The smell was Acrid

Adelaide slowly came to. She smelled death, and sewage. Her nostrils burned. She glanced up and saw a small face dangling above her own. Adelaide caught the figure - her hand clenched like a vise. The figure screamed. Adelaid stood. She felt rusted metal press into her back. Her spine bowed trying to fit in the claustrophobic sewer.

There was the creaking sound of a bow.

Adelaide looked over and saw a young boy brandishing the weapon. It was stamped with the city watch emblem. Obviously stolen. 

The arrow head did not waver.

Adelaide felt the rushing of ankle deep water under her. She could feel rivulets of pain no matter where she stood. The sewers was painful. "Tall boy bow?"

The young boy said nothing.

"That ignites. You'll burn your friend here if you loose."

The boy did not lower the bow.

Adelaide shifted and went to her knees. She did not let go of the girl who had been looting her. Something hard dug into her knee. The water turned her pants sodden.

"We didn't know, we thought you were dead!" the girl tried to explain.

Adelaide blinked and tried to let her senses build back up again.

The boy slowly lowered the bow. "Let my sister go – your things are right here."

"What happened to my family?"

The boy blinked. He looked away. "Let my sister go... and sit down." There was a sad compassion in that voice. It struck Adelaide as something of note.

She let go of the girl.

She sat down.

Rusted metal bit at her.

The sewage sloshed about her.

"We found you and your friends tied up... we thought you were all dead..."

Adelaide felt her breath shorten. "Where are they?"

"You don't want..."

"Where?"

The water fell away as Adelaide stood. She had to crouch in the cramped sewers. It didn't help her.

The boy bowed his head and pointed over to some bobbing things in the sewage.

Adelaide knelt down and looked at them. Anselmo's head was caved in. He died in the crash.

Will had a harpoon in his side. His eyes were wide.

Winifred had a bullet in her head.

The back of her head. 

A Rust Guard bullet.

She hadn't died in a rescue attempt.

"May the neighborhood outlive us... and your bones rest underneath it." The words felt like a veiled threat in her mouth now. And horrendously naïve. How can something unalive outlast something equally dead? How can your bones rest if you're walking dead anyways? She saw Winifred's hands were clenched. Clutching a whale tooth. 

She took it. 

Adelaide felt like she should say something, or do something, memorialize them. The painful sewer urged her to react with anger. Yet she just felt empty – defeated. They had all survived the fall of the Restorers... but she felt worse for them then. Felt that they had lost more back then, were more hurt back then...

Maybe she had let her family turn to ash.

Or maybe she had let herself turn to ash. 

"I'm sorry..." the two kids said softly. "We just... we need..."

Adelaide stood up. "It doesn't matter. I know this city. Take what you can." She tried to sound cold – strong. She hadn't felt strong since coming back to Dunwall. It didn't really matter how strong her body was. She felt as solid as embers floating in the wind.

"I need to get to the old distillery. Which way do I go?"

The boy sat up. "You can get in?"

Adelaide looked back. "Why?" Her voice was harsh but meant to be stoic.

"We need in." The young girl said, standing between her brother and Adelaide. Her voice dared Adelaide to ask why.

Adelaide did anyways. "Why?" The tone was slightly more inquisitive.

"I need the remedy inside."

"Ask Isaac for some rations."

"We can't."

"Why?"

"We're not in the neighborhood." The two children's voices echoed over the gurgling of the sewer.

"You're Dead Eels?"

"No."

Adelaide blinked, and felt the side of the sewer dig into her shoulder. She stooped more. She looked almost comical in such a small place. She felt it too. How small this place was. How huge and strong she should feel. How this place just made her feel out of place. "Then who..."

"We're from Hadrian's Street."

It was a war zone. Hadrian St. was between Dead Eels territory and Isaac's Rusted walls around his neighborhood.

"Why did you stay?"

"The distillery. They were making the spiritual remedy. Until the gunners took it."

Adelaide scoffed, "What does that blue..." She didn't realize the gunners were the Rust Guard. Though something deep inside her noted that fact.

"It keeps me from...not being me." The boy said.

Adelaide waited, a moment only, as if an explanation were coming.

The boy looked back.

Adelaide nodded. And pressed no more.

The siblings smiled wearily back.

Adelaide wondered what it had been she had been fighting for.

The sewers bit into her shoulder. Reminding her how useless she was down there.

Inside the city itself.

She looked at the bobbing bodies of the only family she had left.