It's been years.

It's been years, and she hasn't seen them. Fiona doesn't know what they look like, doesn't remember their voices. Sometimes she forgets the shape of Liam's face. Instead, she memorizes their handwriting, and looks forward to every letter, running her fingers over each letter and privately memorizing all the words they use that she doesn't know the meaning of. It's a shock, then, when she gets a letter clearly done up on a typewriter. Where would any of them get one of those-

But it's not any of her siblings. It's one of the professors, the one Lip always complains about. She remembers his name, knows he looks down at her family, thinks they're trash. She reads the letter three times over, hears about how her brother is going to be expelled, the smartest one of them, the one she dared to brag about to Corvo. How he's going to rot behind bars in a filthy prison for years, and if he survives that, what then? He'll end up a drunk like his father, eking out a miserable existence on the wharf.

Fiona reads the letter, carefully folds it up, and begins to cry.

She has duties to attend to. The Lord Protector is out on one of his jaunts, and she doesn't have to, but she always tries to bring him some scrap of food and clean water for when he returns. It's a point of pride that she notices when he's gone, can guess where he'll return, from a lifetime of service. Most girls don't last as long as she does, don't notice the patterns. She's already set out the food, and is quietly waiting in one of his favorite parlors, she can't be crying. No one can see her cry.

She puts her head in her hands, takes a deep breath, and stills her nerves. Her face is wet, and she's sure her eyes are red, but at least she's no longer weeping.