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For as hard as the Abbey of the Everyman tries to divorce the arcane and the mundane, it is an innately paradoxical position, a serpent biting its own tail in retribution for a perceived slight. Life began in the tidepools, miniature abysses where the very threads of existence danced in patterns too complex to comprehend. Life began, then, in the Void.
And there it remained for so long that even as animals — not so different from the hagfish of the Wrenhaven — hauled themselves ashore for the first time, they carried the Void with them in their veins and tissues. Their children are always born swaddled in it. They have distanced themselves from the depths that cradled them, yet their blood will always sing back to their oldest home.
The Outsider was not there for those first cautious steps, tender bellies against dry stone and sand at the edges of the world. Not in the same way that he exists now, roughly human-shaped and almost human-minded and full of human concepts like entertainment and a lack thereof. It is easier to worship and revile something when it shares traits with you, and so the Void that has been there to watch the birth of stars was eventually tethered to a who and a what and, on occasion, where and when. That came much, much later. Still, he can remember the experience devoid of impressions, and he imagines that losing things which once lived within himself would have felt the same then as it does now.
He has not lost Corvo. His Mark still sits on the back of a deft hand, his power still keeps poison and exhaustion at bay. But there is little need, now, for the intimacy they had shared before. Corvo no longer draws the Void upon himself to move faster, further, more confident. Hidden shrines in Dunwall's attics and basements remain hidden, their whalebone treasures untouched by chosen fingers.
This is the price of peacetime, of reconstruction. The Outsider has seen this cycle before, playing out across humanity. Revolutions happen in days, their aftermaths in years. Stability is slow work, dreadfully boring and predictable, and Corvo's intent was never to entertain; he is interesting, always, but he is not a performer. That is what the Outsider enjoys about watching him. His actions are made with sincere purpose, whatever that may look like. And in the weeks that become months after little Emily becomes Empress, that purpose does not require the tools the Outsider provided.
Unusual, for his Marked to set aside their power and not pick it up soon after. This space and peace after intensity is where it creeps in, the boredom and urge to push, until it drives them to madness. Nevertheless, Corvo lets his Mark remain dim. It is not a rejection, merely a redirection. And yet, it makes the parts of the Outsider that are human-shaped and human-minded… darker. Displeased. Jealous.
It does not help that the Abbey and its overseers swarm Dunwall Tower like rats once they appoint a new High Overseer. After losing two in such short succession at the carefully-unspoken influence of the Lord Protector, both sides are eager to pretend they can get along. There are futures where this fails, where the Isles are torn apart in bloody wars. There are futures where one consumes the other — these are the most probable, the Abbey already halfway an arm of the throne. The Void contains all of them.
The Void does not hate the Abbey, because even frightened and snarling and clawing at their own flesh, they were still born of what they claim they despise. They will still return to it in the end. But the Outsider is capable of, at the very least, finding them all profoundly annoying.
So he sits in shadows and corners and the rot that creeps along the stones of the Tower, and he observes. Listens as the overseers speak their honeyed words to the tiny Empress, promising protection from the very forces that have already harmed and saved her without the Abbey ever knowing. Watches their eyes narrow when they look at his Marked, though they cannot see the brand beneath the dark leather gloves Corvo prefers. Revels, just a little, in singing to them when they sleep and noting which ones listen.
Corvo is on edge. Attuned as he is, he can surely sense the Outsider's attention on the Tower as the visit drags on into its second week. Poor, dear Corvo, so very worried — not for himself, should he be discovered, but for the consequences upon Emily.
It would be amusing, perhaps, to force that particular confrontation. If she asked it of him, or if they hurt her, Corvo would destroy the Abbey brick by brick. He would be creative, entertaining once more. The Void wrapped around him close as flesh, all his intensity narrowed to a point fine enough to split atoms. The Abbey would tremble to its foundations at the sight of him, would call him the Outsider's wolfhound, a demon wearing the skin of a man and the face of death itself. The charms and runes locked away in their dry dungeons would be bathed in blood and song again. Corvo would be his again, heresy no longer a concern with all the enforcers dead.
But there is interest to be had in the way things are poised to play out unimpeded, and the Outsider does not wish to be so cruel to Corvo. Not when there are other ways to re-establish his claim.
He invites himself into Corvo's dreams one night in that second week, after a celebratory banquet where wine ran like water and even the gold-masked zealots made pleasant conversation. It isn't the alcohol that makes sleep come so easily — on duty, the Lord Protector drinks only water, and sparingly even that — but the natural consequence of sleeping too little too often, relying on the subtle power of the Mark to stay upright. Corvo's eyes shut nearly as soon as he climbs into his bed, dressed in a simple shirt and trousers.
The Void welcomes him eagerly, hungrily. Swallows the entirety of his bedchambers inside the pocket of liminal existence he occupies, different from the waking world only in that the light spilling through the windows and the vanished ceiling is the color of eternity.
Corvo opens his eyes and sits up. He takes stock of the situation quickly, rapid darts of his gaze around the room before his body relaxes at the realization of where he is. So few are capable of finding comfort here. It feels too much like drowning, reaching into the same deep fears everything that breathes has of that life-giving process becoming… interrupted. Even among those with an affinity, only the leviathans and the Marked are truly at ease in the Void.
"Hello, Corvo." The Outsider places himself at the foot of Corvo's bed, sitting cross-legged like little Emily so often does. "You've been busy. The overseers are quite a curious bunch, aren't they?"
Some of them suspect him a witch, or some other brand of heretic. None of them could begin to fathom the truth. Still, they pry and dig with their words and their eyes, hoping to glimpse some evidence of sin. He has been on his best behavior.
"So you have been watching," Corvo replies.
"I see everything," the Outsider says lightly. The Void sees everything, always, in all of the knotted branches of time. The Outsider knows all of that, but watching is different. "I see their dreams. They are frightened of what I might do to them. Of what you might be. Whose you might be."
Corvo flexes his Marked left hand, a small enough movement that it might well be subconscious. Still, the motion warms a space long since hollow and cold.
"Why did you bring me here?" he asks. "Just felt like chatting?"
"I never told you," the Outsider says lighty, "how fortunate you are, dear Corvo. The Abbey sees my hand in every minor act of chaos, but so few are truly mine. Yet here you are, Marked and just beyond their reach. It would drive them mad if they could confirm their worst suspicions."
Tension stiffens the Lord Protector's spine. "No. Emily has worked too hard to—"
"You misunderstand me." The Outsider rearranges, now standing by the bedside, close enough to cup Corvo's lovely face in his hand, to turn it upwards. He so enjoys viewing those eyes from beneath such soft lashes. "I do not mean my words as a threat, merely an appreciation. You continue to prove fascinating, my dear. I chose well with you."
There's the quietest of sounds as Corvo swallows. For all his impeccable control over his body, there are things that he cannot repress. He is a man. He is a very loyal man, whose life has been such that love and lust and loyalty run braided together through his mind more often than not.
The Outsider does not require all three from his Marked, nor does he particularly desire the first two. He rarely even asks them for the last — if he wished for acolytes, he has them in spades in the miniature cults which populate half-flooded basements and dark shadows. But with Corvo, he finds himself hungry to have it all, to wind himself so deeply into that tangle of fundamental impulses that his sign will be branded on each of them. He must go slowly, slowly, to not sever such cords.
"Come here," he whispers, and Corvo obeys.
The kiss is soft, almost tender. Physical touch is a rare thing for the Lord Protector, as guarded and cautious as he needs to be. Even this is enough to make him sag into the hand still cradling his cheek, eyes closing.
"I…" Corvo says, warm air from his mouth blooming over cold skin. He does not finish his sentence. It would have been don't know what you want from me, rough with wariness and hunger.
"Nothing you do not wish to give," says the Outsider. Oh, he could take by force if he wished to; could break that clever mind into glittering shrapnel, leave behind something dangerous and beautiful and utterly useless for anything more than destruction. What a dreadful waste that would be, to ruin someone made unique by restraint. Better to have this by choice, particularly when that path is so easy. "Consider this a reward, Corvo. You have done well."
That makes the man shudder, breath catching. Praise and pleasure, one and the same. The Outsider kisses him again on the brow.
"What would you like?"
"I don't know," Corvo admits, after a length of silence.
"Then just relax, my dear." The Outsider slips his other hand into Corvo's hair. Longer than the court finds fashionable for a man in this era. Long enough to tug at while petting through it, pulling another soft noise out. "We will not be disturbed here. Not by overseers, not by assassins. You are relieved of your duties."
It's a small motion, the way Corvo's shoulders sag, but it is a heavy one. The weight of an empire dropping away, if only for a little while. How pleasant, to know that something so fundamental can be let go, if only the Outsider tells him he may.
"Good," the Outsider says.
He pauses to consider. This angle, Corvo half-risen in his bed and the Outsider standing beside him, is not quite ideal. He withdraws his hands and steps back and Corvo follows, off the bed, across the carpet dyed black by the strange lighting of the Void, to the soft armchair by the fireplace that Corvo so rarely uses. When Emily is troubled by nightmares and comes to him seeking comfort, he sits there and cradles her like she is half her age.
The Outsider settles into the chair. He does not say anything, though Corvo kneels at his feet anyway. Passes his thumb along the line of Corvo's cheekbone once more, then brings it down to softly parted lips. Corvo accepts it without hesitation, opening his mouth further to let the digit rest on his tongue.
"Submission comes easily to you. What would they say, those nobles and priests who fear you, if they knew?"
Around the intrusion, Corvo makes a derisive noise. His opinion on the thoughts of others is quite obvious.
"On some level, they perceive it already. The papers have called you a hound for years. They see loyalty and mistake it for foolishness." The Outsider pushes down on Corvo's tongue, presses the pad of his thumb against teeth. Such a juxtaposition of textures, soft and sharp, muscle and bone. Human teeth do not hold magic or charm carvings as well as those of leviathans, but that does not stop certain people from trying. "So much of Dunwall's machinery is fuelled by betrayal that your unwillingness to be selfish in predictable ways confuses them."
Very gently, Corvo exerts the pressure of a human jaw upon the thumb now lodged in the space beneath his tongue. It does not hurt. The Outsider can feel many human-like sensations, but he does not truly feel pain. And Corvo is being quite careful.
"Would you like more, my dear?" the Outsider asks.
The man at his feet blinks up at him, long and slow. For many animals, particularly those inclined to cohabitation with humans, such a gesture is a sign of trust. Somewhere, a cat curls against the sleeping body of the woman who feeds and loves it. Somewhere, a dog rouses in the night to alert its master of an intruder. In a place with neither a here nor a now, Corvo reaches a Marked hand to rest on the Outsider's knee.
"Very well," he murmurs.
Ancient, amniotic darkness pools in the shadows of the room, tucked alongside the stitches in cloth, cushioning the place where shin rests against carpet. It moves with the Outsider's will, gaining dimension and weight and texture until Corvo can feel the press of fingers on his skin. Around his throat, bared so beautifully in this place where life is a rarity. Down his back, lingering on scars with the fascinated intimacy of a lover in the candlelight.
For all the places the Outsider touches, he does not acknowledge the desire between Corvo's thighs. Anticipation breeds eagerness, though Corvo hardly needs the help. Just this has his breath quickening, saliva pooling in his mouth in response to a quirk of biology and hunger. His pupils are blown wide in a way that has little to do with the lighting.
The coil around his throat tightens slightly. Not enough to injure. Simply an exertion of pressure, of power, of possession. See, how I can hold your life in my hands and do as I please, how you will allow it. And the view of darkness against sweat-limned skin is worth appreciating.
There is a part of the Outsider, further from humanity than many of his other facets, which hungers to fill the open spaces of Corvo's body. It is the hunger of diffusion, of matter eager to fill a vacuum, of something which once held and filled every piece of the world now deprived — temporarily — of such closeness. He could drown Corvo in such a desire, flood his lungs until weighty nothingness poured from his mouth and nose and eyes. It is these impulses which, uncurbed, consume those who cradle carved whalebone to their breasts.
The Outsider is fairly certain that Corvo could persist through such a rough treatment, should he ask it. But he settles for replacing the thumb in Corvo's lovely open mouth with a tendril of darkness, and sends another probing beneath the well-worn fabric of the man's trousers. Not every empty space, perhaps, but the Void can be inside him for a little while.
Corvo, for his part, shudders and moans and drops his forehead against the Outsider's thigh. The Outsider pets at his hair gently, soothingly.
"Good boy." The praise is its own form of possession, too. Rare, from this tongue, because so rarely are humans worth it. "My Corvo. You've always been my favorite."
Face obscured, Corvo swallows around the Void worming its way down his throat. His hips twitch and jerk, as if uncertain how best to move to get what he wants. Perhaps still uncertain of what, exactly, that is. The Outsider knows. The Void within him knows.
When Corvo's pleasure peaks, he is in much the same position: kneeling, though pushed forward against the Outsider as closely as he can be, his face buried in the junction of thigh and hip and waist. The Outsider's hand remains in his hair, stroking and soothing as he settles, and the darkness still curls between cloth and skin in gentle undulations. There is truly something pleasant about this, sating both the human-shaped urges for contact and the Void's clawing desire for what it owns.
"As I said," the Outsider remarks, when enough time has passed that he knows Corvo will be listening, "a reward. An acceptable little gift, surely."
And Corvo, delightfully, laughs. "You have a strange idea of what makes a gift."
Which means he is grateful, and he is comfortable enough not to say so. Good. The Outsider winds a strand of hair around one finger, letting it twist and then untwist from the tension.
They will do this again. Not exactly this, but actions with the same wash of emotions over them. He will coax this sweet, relaxed state from Corvo with the intimacies humans so enjoy, and he will leave himself inside the darkness of lungs and guts and veins. And before the end — for in the end, it will no longer matter — Corvo will be his.