Corvo hadn't felt this insatiable since Jessamine, and it was probably progress that that thought was without guilt. Though he still felt a little guilty trying to find reasons for Elizabeth to stay a little longer. Breakfast at least, but then he'd had to ask who her target was, and her answer hung in the air for a heartbeat before he'd responded:

"Let me help."

Elizabeth's head snapped up. "What?"

"No one knows Dunwall the way I do," Corvo pointed out. He couldn't go into detail. Not about his spy network or his methods. But he could still help. "I can help you find him."

"He's mine." Elizabeth sat up straighter, holding his gaze with steel in her narrowed eyes. Elizabeth was resigned, face drawn and body tense and Corvo could see the anger in the set of her jaw.

"You're going to kill him."

"And if I said yes?"

Corvo thought about the question she'd posed last night. How far he'd go to save Emily. What he hadn't said was that he would have burned the Empire to the ground if it was necessary to save her. "I'll still help you find him."

"...Really?" Some of the anger faded, though Elizabeth remained tense. "Why?"

"Why do you want him dead?"

Elizabeth stood,folding her arms over her breasts and moving towards the window. He followed her with his eyes, admiring the way the sunlight haloed her and made her skin glow.

"I don't know how to explain any of it. I don't really want to, not… not yet. All I'm willing to say is that he's hurt people, and he's probably still doing so. He needs to face justice and the only way I'll feel justice is served is to watch him bleeding to death on the ground."

She'd folded in on herself, her shoulders hunched over, and she looked so small and frail. Corvo knew that was an illusion, but that even the strongest person had moments of weakness. He didn't know how that man had hurt her and he didn't want to try and guess. But he'd been there, been in that place of loss and despair where all he wanted was to make those responsible suffer. "We'll find him, and you'll make him bleed."

Turning and looking at him with a shadowed expression, Elizabeth squared her shoulders. "He's either going by Comstock or DeWitt. He's a crack shot, and brutal. I have a picture."

Corvo glanced to where her dress had been discarded. "I trust you have something more appropriate for this kind of work?"

Her smile was cold. Corvo wondered if he'd ever see her warmth again or if what he had seen had been some kind of hallucination. Even Elizabeth's voice had a chill to it as she replied, "I've got something."

"Meet me at the docks tonight. Around ten."

Elizabeth slipped past him, skin brushing his side before she picked up her dress. Corvo watched her pull it on, then helped with the laces of her corset. She turned around, looking up at him before placing her hand on his cheek, leaning up to kiss his jaw. "Thank you. I'll see you at ten."

She carefully placed the picture on the table as she left. Corvo watched her go, trying not to think about how chilly his chambers seemed in her absence. There were more important things to puzzle through. Like who to contact, and what bribes and threats he'd need to gather the information.

He approached the table and picked up the picture. "Damn. Easy to find...but the rest is going to be harder."

Dunwall's fashion often reminded Elizabeth of some strange cross between England's and Columbia's. But the boots were comfortable, and the black trousers paired with a dark blue vest over a black shirt made her look almost dashing. She tied her hair back, palmed a knife into a sheathe on her belt and checked the lockpicks in her gloves. Then, after one last check of herself she slung her pack over her shoulder and left her inn room for the last time.

Elizabeth didn't like the docks. She didn't like the smell, or the sight of the dead and dying whales. Whales were beautiful creatures and to see them like this broke her heart, no matter how strange they looked, with their tendrils in place of fins. But this was where Corvo said to meet him, so this was where she would go.

If she could find him at all amid the flickering lamp lights and the shadows of the night that obscured any number of terrors. But Elizabeth was a terror herself, and she'd long ago forgotten what it was like to be afraid.

Movement startled her, and she spun to her left, knife in one hand and pistol in the other. The man was down the street, and then he was in front of her with a face like death and-

"It's me."

She lowered her weapons at the sound of Corvo's voice, hissing. "Are you trying to get shot?"

"You look good." Corvo pulled his mask off, and she relaxed a fraction, admiring his coat before shaking herself out of it to focus on the mission and his words, "I know where he is, but he's not going by Comstock or DeWitt."

"Then who?" Unlike most of her prey, he'd known she'd come for him. He'd slipped between worlds, one of the few who had.

"Lutece."

Her grip on her weapons tightened, her vision going momentarily red. "Oh of course."

Corvo raised an eyebrow, but continued. "He's an Overseer, came in from Karnaca six months ago."

An Overseer. Elizabeth frowned, actually surprised at how surprised she was. "I believe that. He's a religious bigot on top of everything else, and …"

She trailed off, realizing she was blaspheming in front of a local. But Corvo shook his head. "Like calls to like. I understand."

"Does this change anything?"

"No."

"So where is he?"

"He's got a compound just outside the city." Corvo nodded to the North, and fixed his mask back into place. He offered her something.

It was like he was some kind of Reaper, a manifestation of death and justice. Elizabeth wanted to know more; she thought she could fall in love with him if she had the time and the chance to.

After this mission. After the next. She could come back. She could find out. She could rest. She'd have earned her rest.

"How will we get there." She took what he offered: A simple mask to pull over her head. Which she did, as he led her to a boat.

"We'll take this a few miles up the river, then go over land."

She got into the boat, saying nothing. Neither did Corvo, the only sound the motor and water lapping on the side of the boat as they traveled. Elizabeth allowed herself to turn inward, to reflect. To prepare herself for what she had to do.

When she opened her eyes, the world was grey around the edges. The only color to be seen was the man sitting in front of her in the boat. Not Corvo. Booker.

Her Booker. Asshole and friend and father and savior and the cause of all of her problems. The man she'd helped drown to break the cycle. So she was seeing things now.

"You don't have to do this, y'know. You can end this here. Find some kind of peace."

Elizabeth said was nothing to say; Peace would not come for her until she'd finished her crusade. Then, and only then, could she rest. So she locked eyes with him and stared at him until he faded, leaving her alone with Corvo.

Something to look forward to, she decided. If she lived. If she didn't lose her mind in the process. So close, so close, so close.

"We're almost there," Corvo whispered, and soon enough the little boat came to a stop at a rickety, abandoned dock. He secured the boat, then offered her his hand to help her up.

She stared at it for a moment, weighing whether she wanted to climb out herself or accept the help. Then she took his hand and allowed herself to be helped out of the boat.

The Overseers were fanatics, a mindset that Elizabeth was familiar with. The man who'd raised her had been one, after all, a fact that Elizabeth mused on as they approached the compound.

The men she'd killed were all variations on the same themes.

They took up a position on a hill overlooking the compound. Corvo put his hand on her shoulder, and she looked at him as he whispered. "No witnesses."

It would be like that, then. She nodded. "I'm sorry."

"Hold onto me," Corvo said.

Elizabeth hesitated, before she wrapped her arm around him, an amused smile glinting in her eyes. "Not that I mind, but don't you think this can wait for after?"

Corvo just looked at her, expression hidden behind that terrible mask. And then it felt like they were falling sideways, shadows swirling around them. Elizabeth felt her stomach lurch, and had the vague sensation that something ancient was looking at her. But the feeling faded as she realized they were now perched outside a window on the third floor.

Her voice was a low hiss, "What the fuck?"

"I'll explain later." He nodded at the window. "Can you get that open?"

"Easily." Putting aside the six thousand questions that she wanted to ask, Elizabeth drew her knife, using it to jimmy the window open enough for them to lift it up the rest of the way. Stubbornly, Elizabeth made sure she went in first.

Inside, the only light came from a lamp at the end of a hallway. Crouching, Elizabeth tried to get her bearings. "Which way?"

"Left." Corvo went left, and Elizabeth followed, gripping her knife tightly as they came around a corner.

The central part of the building was open, each floor having a balcony that circled a central square on the first floor. Elizabeth counted six people; four on the first floor and two on the second. Corvo confirmed that count, holding up four fingers, and then two.

He drew a weapon, a blade that unfolded into a longer one. In a flash of darkness, he was gone.

Corvo dropped on top of a man on the second floor, his blade severing the man's brainstem. In a single smooth movement Corvo flipped back, spinning around and gutting the second before disappearing.

He reappeared on the first floor, and Elizabeth stared with both wonder and horror as he dispatched each man in turn. Smooth, efficient, trained.

God help anyone who threatened the Empress.

Elizabeth turned away as Corvo stayed on the first floor, investigating for anyone he might have missed. There was another corner that led away from the open area, and she used a mirror to peer around it, silently thanking Corvo for making this all go a lot quicker than it would have if she'd been alone.

There was a door, with a single guard. A woman, dark-haired and blue eyes, maybe the same age that Elizabeth had been that day everything had changed. Seven years ago? Four? Time all ran together and she couldn't remember what it felt like to just live.

Anger gripped her, irrational and hot. She pulled her mask down so the guard could see her face before she died, and darted forward, left hand closing over the woman's mouth, blood splattering Elizabeth's face as she opened up the guard's throat.

Quietly, carefully, she slid the twitching woman down to the ground, watching the panic and fear in her eyes as the light there faded.

And she felt so sick, but the only thing that mattered was ending Comstock.

Corvo knelt next to her, mask unreadable and yet she felt no judgement from him. Elizabeth could stay, she thought. There was something about Corvo, something that made him feel like a kindred soul. It might be nice to find out who she was, who she could become without her past weighing her down. Maybe when she came back.

"I'm ready," she whispered, and Corvo kicked the door open.

Elizabeth was moving, tearing holes in reality just in time for the bullet meant for Corvo to instead strike the shooter in the shoulder.

This one was more Booker than Comstock, but not really either of them. He had a mustache and the mutton chops that were so fashionable in Dunwall. People could change so much, and yet still be the same. Even drowning Booker hadn't erased every Comstock who'd hurt an Elizabeth and every Booker who'd done so as well.

There were, at least, some realities where Booker was a good man, who'd raised the good daughter that Elizabeth could never be. This man was not one of those.

He held his shoulder, staring at them with wide eyes as Corvo snapped his blade open and closed, watching, waiting. She couldn't read his face, but she could read his posture. He was waiting to know what crime this man had committed to turn her into this.

Elizabeth stepped forward, blood dripping from her knife, her smile painted red from the same source. "Do you know what happened to that girl? To your own daughter?"

"Anna-"

"You don't deserve to use that name." Elizabeth stopped, eyes flashing. "Do you want to know how she begged her father to come for her? How she died years later, penniless and alone and riddled with the pox?"

Comstock flinched, and Corvo tensed. But Elizabeth held up her hand. He was hers, he was hers and she might actually enjoy this one.

The folding blade snapped closed once more before Elizabeth felt Corvo press the hilt of his blade into her hand. She blinked once, looking at it, then at him, then finally at Comstock as she unfolded it with a deft flick of her wrist. The weight and balance was perfect.

"You can't keep chasing us," Comstock said, blood welling up under and between his fingers. "No matter how many of us you kill, how many of you there are, there are infinite probabilities. This is futile."

"Just one more after you," Elizabeth promised. "And I'm done. Its over."

Comstock's eyes fell to her left hand. Not to the blade she held, but her missing pinkie. He did something that sent a chill down her spine. She almost didn't notice the warm blood that started to dribble from her nose

He laughed. "Wrong hand."

Elizabeth didn't give him time to say anything else. Not even scream.