Fay Dunbar cannot exist in my head without Death. This is, honestly, a kind of interesting side effect of picking her out as the third sibling protag in NOPC. In NOPC, a lot of her growth is around being dead, around having been violently murdered and then just as violently ripped back to the living world by Harry's desperation.
Okay, you say, so that's one au, now what?
But NOPC is such a LARGE au, that it's really not "just one au". I've spent years rounding out these characters and picking their arcs and dynamics. Fay Dunbar is instrinctically linked to this version of herself, now. Faith Dunbar-Black IS Fay Dunbar, and that carries into any other au.
In DMFD, Fay is just as bright, she still lives above a morgue, but now she's the adopted kid and her parents don't foster. She goes out and befriends ghosts and hunts down horcruxes on ACCIDENT and is still best friends with Harry, even though it's an entirely separate au with a completely different premise and genre.
In Anerythristic, Fay is bright and violent and traumatized, but it wasn't HER who was viciously murdered, it was her sister, and she grows up, yes, but she never RECOVERS from that.
Even in TRTR, where she's barely showed up, she still operates as usual - incredibly bright and high energy, because she knows that if she's loud enough, people will ignore her. Her dad is still a mortician. Her childhood puzzles were piecing skulls back together for funerals.
No matter the au, if I'm writing Fay, she is Tied To Death. She is clever, and she is a liar. She is loud because if people see what she shows them, they won't look for what she doesn't. She is friendly and affectionate but she knows without trying the fastest way to kill you, and she's not above Doing So.
