Archive of Our Own ^beta

He had fallen asleep in a dumpster.

Among the weeks old forgotten garbage that had receded into a mattress of grime the Boy curled himself upon. He braced against the walls of the metal housing that the dumpster provided and nestled beneath a rat stained and moth eaten shawl that could have been constituted as a blanket, long, long ago. The Boy would have sought refuge within the sewers, a place seldom visited by those that would chase him after he stole a stale loaf of bread, with the tunnels he could safely navigate through by following the quiet squeaks of rats to guide him to become unseen, a ghost, only a whisper on the wind to the odd vagrant or worker down within the wretched underbelly of the City with him. 

But such a common retreat is now a treacherous labyrinth with obstacles to match; Weepers, the City Watch, the dead and dying, drifters who had similar thoughts that the sewers would provide shelter against the turbulence of the streets, only to be met with the gnawing teeth of voracious rodents who strip the flesh from the bones, or the heavy boot of a Guard to the skull. It is a graveyard, with shambling, blood-stained, vomit expunging corpses to decorate its halls. The streets and sewers are alike in uncertainty, although each day is a risk of whether or not the Boy will have his heart stopped regardless. A coin toss, and each tomorrow is a precarious journey to traverse through, but a treasure the Boy knows to count each time. Others are not so lucky. 

He cannot be certain he will ever wake up whenever he sleeps—a healthy thought when he drifts, a healthy reminder to keep counting—and within this dumpster, he had the advantage of appearing as a corpse with rats scuttling upon his coiled form. An image such as that is enough to ward away any prying eyes and hands, the rats a bustling shield as they make nests against him. The dumpster is settled within an alleyway that has long since been deemed too much of a liability for the City Watch to patrol, an inconspicuous spot the Boy had observed upon the nights prior wherein he staved off sleep to ensure it was a location he could actually safely rest, and so he lays in a dumpster. And when he had listened with painfully aware ears at each and every sound, with muscles taut in the event he should jump and flee, he only found respite when the White Rat curled herself against his cheek, whiskers tickling his skin, and he had fallen to slumber. With the safety of her presence, with the indicator he, too, could follow suit after her in dreaming, had he fallen asleep as well, among rats, among garbage, in a forgotten alleyway.

.

.

.

He is going to die, he thinks.

He is going to die, he assumes with rapid, panicked thoughts, because the dead have risen.

The world has cracked, broken apart, shattered into innumerable pieces with floating islands of debris to show for this cosmic explosion. Water rises against gravity, fish swim in the air, the city is a fragmented, scattered puzzle with no hopes of reassembly with pieces that all float precariously above endless, unfathomable depths, with wind howling as a beckoning presence to leap. The Void is a place and entity that makes little sense to the rational mind, it exists upon its own terms regardless of what philosophers posit as science and fact, and the Boy cowers against the crumbling wall of a bisected building that has unraveled itself against the ceaseless weaving of the Void’s tapestry. And he is going to die, he thinks, as the White Rat stands at attention to gaze upon this figure that stands (floats, the Boy will belatedly realize) as a looming shadow. Her nose twitches with interest, the Boy’s back merges with the wall, and there is no escape.

Pale, pallid skin, and the Boy knows such a colour, upon the faces of fly enamored corpses, of when people merely fell and died where they stood, of when the body bags tore and revealed the skin of blanched remains. And this bone-white cadaver stands upright, moves, with a tilt of the head, with eyes that are black pools but gaze with focus, and the man is unquestionably deceased. But ancient, and somehow, through a feeling in his bones, does the Boy know this man is neither alive nor dead, something in between, with a harsh, ugly scar upon his throat that could act as a decapitation, contrasting so brightly against the sallow neck.   

“Hello, he who convenes with the plague-ridden rats.” The specter speaks, having arrived into existence so suddenly the Boy had felt his heart stop. “An odd choice of company, considering. But I suppose there’s little other alternatives, when others view you as so lowly as such rodents.”

His voice is mild, subdued, and he does not speak with a crackly, wheezy rasp one might expect from a walking (or, floating) dead man. It does nothing to quell the fear that has locked the Boy into a rigid posture, as he had stumbled with uncoordinated feet backwards against the wall behind him.

The man continues, expression similarly blank as his voice, with brows perpetually pinched together. “And you have always been treated as such. Small and insignificant, and yours is a story that paints a lonely tragedy. Just another body bag for the river to claim, if your corpse would be found at all. But you may be pivotal yet. And so I have brought you into the Void.” 

Onyx eyes render the Boy still in his trembling, tense where his feet have become stone, and he could not flee even if there were a place to escape. 

And deep, ancient black eyes peer into his own, and the Boy almost does not take notice of a burning beneath the skin, upon his left hand. His heart beats loudly in his ears, a thumping as if his head is being bludgeoned, but the man speaks through it. 

“I am the Outsider, and this is my Mark.” 

It glows as a flame on the skin of his hand, a tingling, prickling sensation beneath the flesh and stained on the surface. Deep, carved, and when the Boy is able to glimpse at this mark that has been woven within the very weaving of his skin, he knows already it will forever be a part of him. It is no brand, it is part of his body, now.

He looks upwards, back at dark eyes, cradling his newly afflicted hand, as he feels the raising of his hairs. Fire kindles itself through his veins, and the White Rat perks her ears at his gift, at how it becomes engraved into his very bones, how it sings in low tones.

“And with this gift, you may reach into the Void and share its powers. Use it as you see fit. But first, come find me.” The man—The Outsider, the Leviathan, says, before he disperses into a flash of smokey ink, and the Boy is left standing with wobbly knees.

He knows of the Outsider (who doesn’t, truly, even nameless street children know of the boogeyman), knows black eyes and sickly pale skin, knows of a being that takes the form of a man but is something much more than mere flesh. The monster under the bed, if the Boy had a bed.

He stands there, holding tight onto his marked hand so firmly he nearly bruises it, before the White Rat breaks him from his stupor with a nose to his cheek. He jolts, a sharp intake of breath that pierces his lungs like a knife, and he still stands in a world of broken earth and city, where time does not exist and understanding does not dwell.

It takes him longer, still, to move. To use once more his legs and feet, as he walks. Wobbles, stumbles, like a newborn foal, and the Outsider has spoken to him, and somehow, through the still rapid beating of his heart and the static of his mind, does he know that this is not a dream. That the Outsider has spoken to him, and it is true. That he is marked, and it is true.

Black magic, he knows, whispered in fear and awe, scowled and spat at by golden-faced Overseers with dogs that maul as the rats do. Black magic, the Void, that pulsates through his veins as ink, that is irreplaceably a part of him now. To use, to cultivate, and he stares at the Mark. Feels the embers of it still beat as a heart against his hand, until his own heart has settled to become in tune with it. 

Come find me, the Outsider said, and the Void is a ceaseless expanse of nothing and everything with the littering of solid earth that are too far apart to leap towards. He peers over the edge, immediately regrets it, the height an impossibility and one that instantly has his head spin at a dizzying pace. He steps back, and clenches his fists. The White Rat nuzzles his cheek. The distance between his lonesome island of floating city street to the next is too far to jump, the depths are so far to fall with no end in sight, and he briefly wonders if he would plummet for the rest of eternity, or suddenly come into unforgiving end with an uncaring stop against harsh earth. The White Rat continues her smoothing comfort, and the Mark beams as a coaxing serpent ready to strike, and he supposes—if the Outsider had wanted him dead, he would have done so already.

Unless, of course, the Leviathan is that torturer he has heard stories of. Of conversations eavesdropped from when he hid within the shadows as a pair of goading men stood at a fire, attempting to scare each other with increasingly gruesome stories of how the Outsider would flay his victims, feast upon their innards, have them burn for all eternity. 

It is a memory he wishes he hadn’t remembered at that current moment, as he feels his eye twitch.

The gap is too far to jump, the height so deep to fall, he feels the White Rat’s heart beat vibrates against his skin from where she is perched so firmly against where his neck meets his shoulder, and he wields the Outsider’s Mark. 

‘Disappeared, he did! One moment in front of me, the next, at the roof, in a flash!’ One guardsmen had regaled his co-workers of some encounter with the man with a whaling mask, as the Boy snuck close to the gutter. ‘In a blink. Just—whoosh! He just… I’m telling you, he was in front of me, and then he was gone. Don’t look at me like that, you bastard, I’m not drunk now, and I wasn’t drunk then!’

And could that be true, could a person simply… Whoosh, disappear, and appear elsewhere? Could it be true, that the Outsider exists as a physical entity. The Boy looks down at his Mark. He looks to the gap before him. If he was meant to die, he would have been a corpse already, surely, is what he tells himself, to reign in a whirlwind of nerves that suddenly seek to have him bend at the waist and heave his insides outwards.

He looks to the ledge he wishes to jump to. Imagines himself upon its surface, lifts his left hand that is caressed with a warm hold and—

Whoosh, in a flash, in a blink, and the Boy immediately bends at the waist, and heaves. The sudden displacement brings him to nausea, and for once, it is beneficial to him to have an empty stomach, as he heaves, but nothing more, and the dizziness soon disperses. The White Rat has her claws curled tightly upon his tattered jacket, her fur raised in surprise at such a sudden change, before she decompresses and lets out a small squeak of amazement.

He looks down at the Mark. Looks over his shoulder, at where he once stood, at the gap he jumped, of the gap he safely landed, and looks back down at the Mark. The warmth sprouted from its usage fades slowly, and if the Boy knew how it felt, he would have said it was reminiscent of a thumb massaging his knuckles.

Come find me, the Outsider had said, and he had given the Boy the tools to do so. 

“The world has never been kind to you, little one.” The Outsider says when he finds him, whooshing all the way. “Nor to the rats you associate with. Seek the ancient runes that bear my Mark, and the shrines birthed in my name, to further explore the powers I have given you.” 

The Outsider tilts his head, continues, and while the Boy cannot discern pupils, he knows the Outsider glances at the White Rat. “You know to listen and observe, to become unseen and tricky, just as your plague bitten friends. You have always harked their calls and learned well from your teachers. The one you carry against your heart will aid you in finding these runes, so heed her well, for she has many secrets to tell.”

She tilts her head back at the Outsider, before twitching her nose at the Boy. He blinks at the Outsider, and the Leviathan gives his parting remark.

“Now return back to your lonely world. Use what I have given you however you please, as have the others before you, and know that I will be watching, with great interest.”

And with that, the Boy wakes in a dumpster. So suddenly brought into awareness, that he jolted upwards with a splintered gasp and startled the rats that had been resting prior. 

He knew already it wasn’t a dream, but when he scrambles to see if the Mark still exists on his hand, he is given a sudden, heart-stopping thrill, at seeing its black outlines existing within his skin.

There are no ridges nor indents or any indicator the Mark is a foreign thing placed against his skin, when the Boy rubs his fingers across it. Merely skin across skin, the only blemishes being the scars that the Boy had received prior.  

He rubs his other hand against it, caresses it, holds it as a sweet tart he was able to snatch and keep his own, an invaluable treasure. Marked, and witches are burned at the stake, heretics are taken away and never seen again, and he remembers hiding in the wall of a crumbling house when Overseers had suddenly traversed through. They had spoke of black magic, of how they read the splayed innards of heretics to understand the Outsider ('that black eyed bastard,') and his deep, dark magic. The Boy wonders, against his will, if the Overseers would tear his flesh apart, break his ribs open, and splay outwards his intestines as some horrible wall decoration to muse upon. He wonders what his torn flesh and broken bones could tell the Abbey and their ilk, what secrets of the Void it could whisper, if one knew how to listen. 

'It courses as stardust in your blood, a humming of your bones, and you are held by the very fabric of existence.’ says the White Rat, after he had learned to listen, after he nearly cracked his skull open in surprise by jumping backwards into the wall from hearing her voice for the first time. ‘When you are returned to oblivion as all things do, it will be with a familiar embrace.’

Her voice comes as if whispered in his ear, no matter her distance, and he knew at an instant that the Outsider gave her her voice. Her rodent lips do not move, but she looks at him with focused, crimson eyes, and he has always trusted her. 

‘You no longer need to be small. You carry the Void within you.’ 

The Boy flexes his fist. He turns his head skywards, to the gaps between rooftops, of places that would have been inaccessible, and he thinks of the Void. He remembers the gaps between floating islands, and how he could jump impossible distances. The White Rat settles within her home, the Boy’s breast pocket above his heart, and he wonders what more he could do.

He wonders if the Outsider watches at the current moment. He wonders if the warmth that emanates from his Mark is him.

In a blink.

And he is no longer where he stood, but somewhere else entirely, from one rooftop, to the next, from one barred windowsill, to the loose entrance, to the chimney, to the dining table, to the stored cans of days old food, to the streets, to a kindled fire and desperately hounding miry beans from a stolen tin. 

‘The city is built on bones, ancient, unfathomable bones of the great creatures of the deep. And it grows still, from the bones of those who weep blood.’

He nods as he listens to her. Although he might not understand each sentence, he knows well to listen to each and every tell and sound. He scoops a bean from the can, extends it for her to eat, before continuing to satiate his hunger, listening for any footfalls of any unwanted guests at this alley.

‘Faster than any hound, you are now. You can reach where birds can, crawl where rats go, and I smell, down the street and from a balcony, soup that is ripe for your taking.’

And the corners of his lips move upwards, the old tin of beans long devoured, a meager feast that would have been a lucky swipe for the day. But he can fly now, can’t he?  

It’s a feeling he has never felt before. Fire in the blood, a readiness that could act as an intoxication, as he feels the Mark pulsate, and he does not remember the last time he was not hungry.

‘Crushed beneath unrelenting heel, and many rats have met their end with trampled bones and blood to stain the ground. He sees you as a rat. They all do. Through these times of strife, they long to feel powerful. They long to have you under them, under their heel and crushed.’

She speaks from his breast pocket, nuzzled safely away as the familiar quartet saunter closer. He knows not of any of their names, only that these boys always bring with them the breakage of skin, the spillage of blood, bruises and broken bone. 

On instinct, he froze, from where he was crouched feeding rats crumbs of a stolen loaf, when they rounded the corner and found him. They had their mouths break into wide, toothy grins of yellowed teeth with eyes that lit up as predators do when they find prey. From past experiences learned, did the Boy suddenly stand with a burst of the need to flee, to disappear among the shadows and rats. And they would always chase after him, hooting and hollering, promising to leave him wallowing within the gutter with a new wound to tend to and blood to clean. So he stumbled backwards, with panicked legs that nearly made him trip over himself, heart clenched so hard it hurt behind his ribs, shoulders so hunched it reached his ears, and the energy to run was so overpowering he momentarily forgot what exists upon his left hand.

He stops with a heavy halt, fists clenched so tightly he feels his nails break the skin of his palm, and his breaths have been brought to a shallow pace with sweat already starting to grace his back. He could flee. In a blink of the eye. He could run, and become scarce, as he has always done, as he has always known. But he remembers his Mark, remembers brightly when he had been beaten until unconsciousness by these very boys, remembers the scars he still holds from them and he remembers the Mark.  

His knees tremble. His fists likewise. His mouth has gone dry, and he could run still, and he knows, now, he can be guaranteed escape thanks to his gift. Thanks to the Outsider. But he knows, now, he need not have to run. Thanks to the Outsider.

Their grins widen. A pair share a look of glee, as they think the Boy foolish enough to attempt to stand and fight, four against one, and they wish to snap his arms in two.

“Hey there, little rat. Been wonderin’ where ya been. Come on, ratty, didn’t ya miss us? We missed you. Ain’t that right, fellas?” Sneers the leader, approaching closer at a casual pace. With each step nearer, the Boy’s hairs raise further, his heart beats faster until it deafens him.

“Ratty-boy, don’tcha know you’re my favourite? C’mon, c’mere and give me a hug, yeah?” Says another that trails behind the leader. He snickers, as do his compatriots, as one of them cracks his knuckles.

‘He likes the way you bleed. He enjoys it when you cry.’

The Boy grinds his teeth. And they had all laughed and spat at his quivering, whimpering form, mocking how he wheezed with blood pooled within his mouth and a dislodged tooth. 

The Boy raises his left hand. The rats he had been feeding suddenly still, as they perk with pricked ears and twitching noses. A chill accosts the Boy as the air around him stills just as the neighboring rats do, and he reaches inwards—into that deep, dark primordial place. A shiver courses through him, the Mark glows, his limbs still tremble and he could still run. Could flee, but he feels the rats listen to him.

The leader wrinkles his nose, scoffs, “What’cha doing there, rat? You got that little white thing with ya? Bet it’d taste good over a fire, hah!”

It crackles through his very bones, like thunder in the clouds, and she whispers with comforting words:

‘Let them feast.’

And he has fire in his blood, red in his vision, and the roaring cry of his heart is drowned by the screeching of a thousand tiny mouths that itch to tear flesh. It releases as a violent gust of wind, electrifying every part of him, and there are rats, countless rats, too many rats, that appear as a sudden armada from his ire. And he feels each and every one of them. Each and every thirst for hunger. Every breath, every instinct to tear, and the swarm charges. 

The boys’ faces morph. At an instant, terror, of the purest, most naked kind, no longer ugly sneers but rather wide eyes of fear that reek off them as a physical presence. They have no moment to react, no time to turn tail and flee, before the rats are upon them.

The tearing of cloth and flesh is louder than their screams. It is a sickening choir that becomes the only thing the Boy hears, the sounds that will follow him into his dreams, with the vision of four teenage boys rendered red, too red, with skin ripped off in clumps, with flailing arms and legs, and screams, and screams, and screams.

They are overpowered easily. With a mere raised hand. The White Rat has peeked from her pocket home, watching as well, as four boys become corpses, as screams become wet gurgles, as entrails are spilled and eyes gorged, and they become unrecognizable by artful rat claws and teeth.

The screams cease. Dull thumps replace them, as red (so red) bodies collapse. The scuttling of rats and the clashing of teeth continue, a banquet for the attending rodents, greedy and ceaseless in their hunger. And the Boy stands where he is, with his arm raised still, although the Mark has long since ceased in its glow. He stands, frozen with a fluttering chest, breaths grown raggedy as torn paper, and he gulps on air with what feels like collapsing lungs. And there lies four dead, mangled bodies, eaten and ravaged by rats.

It feels like an age, before his arm falls. Out of the strain to keep it upright, than anything else. Rats contort as a single entity that continues to devour, and the Boy’s knees buckle. He nearly falls where he stands but he catches himself, and vomits onto the dirty pavement.

The bodies are still warm. From where he stands, the Boy discerns steam rising from their exposed insides as rats move as a writhing mound to continue dining. The sharp sounds of mangled viscera is a sound he will never forget, the sight of skinned, screaming bodies one he’ll never forget as it becomes seared into his mind for all eternity.

He heaves. Straightens himself, bobs his throat as he watches flesh picked from bone until all rats have their fill. Until there is barely a corpse, and he admires, peripherally, the great efficiency the rats have. He swallows, thickly, and while he may have expunged his lunch, he gives a trembling smile to know that each and every rat is content and full.

And they’re very, very much dead. He ruminates on that, as he stares blankly at what a pool of blood has been painted, splattered by a thousand tiny feet in all directions. He smells the acid of his vomit, intertwined with the deep copper of the air, and he no longer will be beaten into a gutter. 

It’s a dizzying thought. It nearly has him tumble.

He hopes the Outsider was watching.

When he feels the shrine’s call, when he listens to the White Rat’s directions, he scrambles towards the coaxing altar with a hurried step, near breathless, when he reaches a forgotten pedestal nestled behind a wall of some abandoned district.

When the world turns dark and he feels an icy chill creep through his spine, he looks upwards with wide eyes as the Outsider’s form takes shape, and the Leviathan speaks.

“For far too long, you’ve been lesser. Been beaten, been starved. Your little title of ‘Rat Boy’ is an apt name, little one, with a legion of gnawing, voracious mouths at your beck and call. Will you continue hiding, fleeing, trusting the shadows, or will you summon a swarm to make quick work of anyone and everything, I wonder.” 

The Outsider tilts his head, regards the Boy with that blank expression and crossed arms.

“The bite of a rat would have been a death sentence, this day and age. Destined to bleed from the eyes, curled upon the stone and forgotten about.” The Outsider continues, and the Boy gives a dry swallow, feeling the tingle of a newly inflicted wound at his hand, a rat eager to take his finger when he had been trying to feed it. The Outsider remains stark. “Be careful still, there are those that would delight in slicing you open upon their examination table, to see how you are so immune to the plague. It is within your best interest that it never comes to that.” 

Without thinking, does the Boy give a stilted jerk of the head that constitutes as a nod. He understands. Those that are larger prey on the weak. His muscles tense when he opens his mouth with quivering lips, before closing them, before opening once more with only a pitiful squeak leaving him, prompting the Boy to wince.

Others would strike him across the face for such stuttering. The Outsider does no such thing, but the Boy’s shoulders are still stiff in anticipation as his face falls downwards to pierce a stare at the Outsider’s boots on instinct. 

“You wish to speak, so say your part.” The Outsider’s voice comes, still stark, free of any callous sneering the Boy would expect. The Boy lifts his head with wide, blinking eyes, and black eyes peer back, expectant.

The Boy blinks. Straightens himself, puffs his chest, and tries again.

Through a physical effort, through battling the words through the cage of his voice, is he able to spout a feeble: “T-Thank you.”

His voice is whittled, a broken whisper, speech a precarious thing to indulge upon when any sound could make him a target. He winces, again, at the sound of it, and ducks his head once more. He catches sight of the Mark when his face is lowered, and raises his head again as he lifts a shaky left hand.

“For.. Uhm, for,” He attempts, his voice petering as his throat closes for him, and what a meager thanks. What a pathetic gesture of gratitude, and he rendered four boys into mauled corpses, and yet cannot say proper thanks. He wishes for that strike across the face, to center him, to startle out more than a fragmented murmur as he bites down on his lower lip harshly.

The Outsider speaks. With the same tone, the same expression, and completely unbothered.

“Strikingly polite, for someone abandoned and raised on the streets. There are many who I gift who would never say such a thing. Many others who would praise my name. Many, many more who would do all manner of disgusting acts to gain my attention, and many, many more who would delight in seeing me destroyed. When you further your journey, which will you become?” 

And the world returns as shattering glass. The Outsider disappears. And the Boy is left standing as a statue with stolen breath, staring where the Outsider had floated. Breathing returns at its own accord, as he takes in a shuddering inhale that cascades through his entire being. 

The Outsider watches over him, and he is Marked.

"Attention, Dunwall citizens. The assassin, Corvo, responsible for the murder of our fair Empress and the disappearance of Lady Emily, heir to the throne, has temporarily escaped state custody. Any evidence as to his whereabouts must be delivered to the City Watch at once."

The High Streets are a hazardous route that the Boy would otherwise avoid, for he has no hopes in stepping no more than a few feet before getting accosted by the City Watch and bluebloods with their nose turned skywards and disgust in their eyes. It is a radical, stark difference, their streets of cleanliness, versus the alleyways of grime and rats, and the places where the affluent dwell are high risk, but high reward.

He would be targeted in an instant, has been targeted in an instant, if he were foolish enough to merely stroll inwards. His clothes are months old and unclean, frayed and appropriately ratty, the river water only doing so much when he is able to bath once a week, if that, with skin scarred and stained. His shoes are of different sizes, with one’s sole hanging by a mere thread. A loud interloper is he, and one that would be (has had been) kicked as the stray he is. 

Moments wherein the Boy have ventured forth into such certain danger were ones fraught with desperation; a hunger that grew to his bones, with limbs trembling and dark spots cornering his vision, and it was only due to the fact highborn savages dare not sully their fancy dress when he had escaped through the sewers with a desperate clutch of breads and jewelry that he escaped at all. But he had hid himself for a week afterwards, knowing from experience that the richer, the heavier the grudge. 

It is a dangerous, otherworldly place, inhabited by finely dressed men and women who snarl with the same ugly maul of a hound. It is not a place he would traverse lightly. But there is food, money, a surplus, even he knows such, and his Mark glows with a certain warmth.

He can kill four teenage boys, he can kill men, who wield blades and guns and tower over him with boots that can crack bone, and he can kill them. He can feed the rats. Ensure they grow plump and render this entire district to fall to its knees.

A tantalizing prospect. 

‘How dare you be born alone and abandoned, forced to hide and steal.’ The White Rat says, a twinge of a curling lip and bared teeth peeking through. ‘They crush rats underneath their heels, but they pillage and plunder as you do, if not moreso, what makes them so different?’

A very, very tantalizing prospect, as he crouches within the shadows of Clavering Boulevard and surveys the patrol of City Watch pacing their route. They could all become red, so red.

‘And they would fall, and you would bestow upon us a great banquet.’ She whispers, nuzzling his cheek. ‘But you are not impervious to the sharpness of a blade or the piercing of a bullet. I wish not that you would be the next feast to dine upon. There are many routes for us rats to take and still be unseen, in and out, and you’ve grown fast, grown agile.’

He swallows down a sudden bitterness, the physical manifestation of his ire he assumes, as the glow of his Mark lessens. He changes his sights, feels the Void glaze over his eyes, as his vision becomes dark, and he maps out the signatures of all living things nearby; guardsmen, the noble, rats. He discerns a route of entry, of exit, and a kitchen will be made bare and a tumultuous mess, when the rats break entry and indulge. 

The Boy delights in the maid’s screech when she enters the room and finds an impromptu infestation. And he finds infinite glee in the distending of his stomach when he had gorged himself, he finds comfort in the warmth in his gut, of the shiny offerings weighing his pockets, the stickiness of pastries that line his arms that will satiate him and the rats for days to come as he flees. 

He makes merry upon the rooftops near the Distillery, breathing full the cool air that whips past him as he inhales another jam filled pastry, filling his full stomach still, heedless to the growing of his bloating, because the tastes dance upon the tongue and he cannot stop himself. The thought that he may grow fat that his ribs no longer poke against the skin is a maddening thought that makes him giddy, feeling as though he could faint. 

Later, he hears it, when assorting his treasures and hiding them in caches spread throughout. A humming, a singing, a tune that instantly snatches his attention, and he knows he must find it. A shrine, just beyond the Distillery. Where that fabled Granny Rags lays.

‘Her blood sings a similar tune to you. Of the Void, of the Outsider. She carved the flesh of her kin to pieces in his name.’ The White Rat murmurs, when the Boy traverses over the walls to where the singing shrine stands, when they both hear the humming and speaking of a weathered old lady. 

He pauses, just beyond the threshold of the shrine, looking behind himself to where Granny Rags’s voice still repeats ‘Garbage, garbage, garbage,’ and pictures her taking a knife to him. He then pictures rats feasting on her form, smiles, and walks towards the shrine. 

The Void welcomes him in a cool embrace, and his smile widens when the Outsider takes shape and speaks.

“Tread lightly, little one. The one they call Granny Rags might not be so forgiving to wandering hands. You’ve never met her, never joined hands with other children to taunt her, but know she isn’t as frail as she looks. And you may find that not all rats are so inclined to revere you. Your flesh is the same as any other, and no matter your resistance to the plague, it will not save you from a particularly hungry rat swarm. And you will fall as any other with teeth gnawing on your bones.”

The Boy nods, though a chill runs through him at the thought. Trust is a farce, even among rodents. It is almost an unnatural thing to posit, but he has been bitten before. As his head moves, his stomach rumbles from its swell, and he can taste it still, upon his tongue, a sweet syrup that rendered him dumbfounded, from a pie he has never had before.

“I—I,” he starts with a sugary impulse. A wince surfaces against his will that has his mouth shut, and he still ducks his head on instinct.

The Outsider’s voice remains passive. “There exists an endless myriad who would kill to be where you stand. In my presence, sharing words. Many would consider it a privilege. Others, a curse. Me? I find it a pleasure, even when your words do not cooperate. Where do you stand?”

“I—” the Boy attempts again. He then blurts out words while staring upwards at black eyes, unable to stop thinking of the phrase‘a pleasure’: “I—have you ever tasted b-blueberry pie?”

And before the Outsider can make a response, the Boy continues in a mad rush.

“I never did.” He breathes, voice raspy from years of disuse. “Not until, until today. Until I could, could jump to the balcony, jump over p-people, and, uh, and s-snatch it. I don't think I’ve been... full before. It feels like I’m g-gonna burst.” 

And before the Boy can feel any indignity in this, the Outsider responds. “Hunger is an unwelcome friend to any street urchin. And while fancy men and women who have never known hardship grow fat in their ivory towers with food they have never cooked nor picked themselves, the pitiful rest must always beg for scraps. And must be content with such meager pickings, lest they be kicked as a whining dog.” 

The Boy nods, reverent. And the Outsider understands. He understands. The Boy will never forget the candied tart, a food never meant for the likes of him but one he was able to devour with greed, and it’ll stay with him until he, too, becomes rat food when death takes him whichever way. He hopes by then the taste will have diffused into his flesh, so the rats could taste it too when they eat him. 

“Do you—do you want some?” The Boy rambles without thought, hands suddenly clammy. “It’s tasty. D-Delicious. I’ve never—I’ve never eaten anything like it before.” 

He speaks without ruminating on the fact the Outsider is a ceaseless being. He likewise does not give himself a moment to think that such an offering pales in comparison to the fact Granny Rags slaughtered her own blood for the Leviathan. But the Boy could not give proper thanks before, and so the Boy is driven with a debilitating need to do so now. 

The Outsider tilts his head, as he usually does, and he says, “I have had men and hound, horses and oxen, sacrificed in my name. Not once, in such moments, has it ever garnered my attention. I have no need for such empty gestures of spilled blood and dying breaths. I can see forever, I am older than the city you walk in, I watch, and listen, as each living thing takes its first breath until it takes its last. And even I did not anticipate such a gracious offering of... blueberry pie.”

A flush presents itself on the Boy’s cheeks. The fact he offers mere pie starts to present itself. He clenches and unclenches his fists, but the Outsider has said it was gracious. He’s never had such a word directed at him. He’s certain it is a good word. Hopes it is. His face is red and embarrassment still coils itself around him, and he has no oxen to give the Outsider.

The Boy licks his lips, stutters, “Should I… L-Leave it at a shrine?”

“Do whatever you wish. Although, it may be better suited to be eaten by hungry mouths, little one.”

The Void recedes, and the Outsider is gone. City ambiance returns, and Granny Rags’s voice echoes closer. He breathes a deep breath. Feels the weight of gold in his pockets, and he’s heard how people will leave coins at the Abbey, leave offerings at shrines, and he quickly deposits a heavy jeweled necklace on the shrine, before receding back into the city streets.

“Attention Dunwall citizens. Thaddeus Campbell—formerly High Overseer—is no longer a citizen of Dunwall. He now bears the Heretic’s brand and by one of oldest traditions of the Abbey of the Everyman, it is now a minor criminal offence to offer this man aid or housing. In this time of spiritual crisis, the Overseers have initiated the Feast of Painted Kettles until a new High Overseer is chosen.”

A man with a skull for a face peers back towards the Boy, drawn upon a poster with bold, red letters. The etchings swirl as indistinguishable symbols, and while the Boy cannot read, he knows this poster means this skull-faced man is dangerous. And with a mask such as that, he can believe it.

He hears the tearing of flesh and the scuttling of a tiny mountain of claws, as a pair of the City Watch lay mangled with the stench of blood hanging heavy in the air as a smog. They sought to chase him as he hurried across the street, and they found their end underneath the stairs of an abandoned building as he scampered towards a familiar song at a shrine.

The world breaks, and he stands straighter when the Outsider speaks.

“Where will your hunger take you, little one? Where will their hunger take you, I wonder? The rats are an endless force, and an endless hunger. These men were paid to have blood on their hands, and you rendered them but mere food for the rats. Who else will choose to raise a hand against you, who else will you slay?”

The Boy thinks of the face of the felled guardsmen. Of the skin of his face being stripped by a mound of teeth, leaving a red mask, the peaking of the white of bone, with holes where his eyes had been as a rat sought deeper and squeezed through the socket. He thinks of a gnarled metal skull, seemingly haphazardly stitched together, peering through the dark.

“T-The,” he squeaks. “T-The masked one. F-From the p-posters. If he tries to k-kill me.”

And he would. And he’d take the mask, too. The skull faced man may be dangerous, but the Boy is stronger. He knows this. The Outsider will know it. 

The Outsider quirks a silent brow. “Perhaps.” He says. “But unlikely it should come to pass. The… Masked Felon, as he is known, may not share your same bloodlust. But it would be most interesting if your paths were to cross and he be made into nothing more than finely minced meat.”

And the Boy preens. He knows not what the word even means or if he was even capable of such a thing, but he preens, with a puffed chest, and he could. Into finely minced meat.

“I can do that.” He says with the most steady voice he has ever had, and pride is a foreign feeling. And it is—Well, the Outsider, who posits it is interesting.

“Careful. An ego can make you bloat as a corpse, and rot as one too.” 

The stench of blood and feasting rats return and the Boy can only blink when the Outsider is gone.

Careful. He knows how to be careful. He can be careful. The Outsider is not a liar, he thinks, with startling confidence in the thought.

He feels shadows at his back. Eyes that stare at him, but not ones that are a deep black.

His hair upon his nape stands on end when he feels them, and every time his shoulders hunch uncomfortably as his Mark begins to glow on impulse, should he flee or fight. But every time he turns to look, every time he summons the Void to cloud his vision to see through walls, even when he bends time to slow, there is no one. But he knows they’re there, at the edge of his vision. Disappearing when they know he feels them, disappearing too quickly. 

‘They fly just as you do, disappearing into mist.’ The White Rat says, nose raised to smell the air. ‘They’ve been just as you are, small and hiding. But they’ve never been to the Void, like you.’

He glimpses only at a leather suit and the snouted profile of a whaling mask, and he swallows dryly. He’s heard the talk of them, the Whalers, and he knows they kill. But he kills too. 

He breathes a sigh of relief, not knowing he does so, nor the fact the tension in his shoulders lessen, when the world disappears at a shrine, and the Outsider appears to him.

“You may have carved out this dreary corner of Dunwall as your own to take and freely leave a trail of red in your wake, but that does not mean those from beyond cannot look in, and watch. There are others that share my gift. There are others who do as they please with my gift. And each, and every one of them, become fascinated when they see another with my Mark. You are being watched, and not only by me.” 

He knew as much, but to hear it come from the Outsider’s mouth is an undeniable confirmation. He may not have seen them properly, but he can imagine well the dark eye holes of a whaling mask, of voices muffled behind its snout. They appear not as humans, in his mind's eye, but instead similar to the wolfhounds with an elongated mouth to match.  

“Will t-they… hurt me?” He asks in a low voice, looking up at the Outsider.

The Outsider moves then. Walks slowly to circle and the Boy follows with his eyes. “They’ve all been hurt, beaten, stabbed, poisoned, but such is the line of their work. Grown stronger from it, would be their collective answer, a place of belonging and home in the act of spilling blood for coin. You may find kinship with them, truly, or wish their flesh to be stripped from their bones, as is your preferred method of slaying.”

“I’m being careful.” The Boy asserts, standing straighter. He can kill, but he knows not to make a path to follow back to him. “L-Like you said.” 

“And they know where to look, regardless of such a fact. You interest them, as you interest I. What will happen, when your paths finally cross, I wonder.” 

“I’ll kill them.”

The Outsider pauses his step. He looks downwards with a raised brow. “Is this being careful?” He asks dryly, and then continues paces. “They’ve experienced my gift longer than you have. Been alive, longer than you have. Spilled much, much more blood than you have. I see many great things, and there are scant outcomes, if at all, wherein you attack them, and live to tell it.” 

The Boy feels a cold shiver drip through his spine, as the White Rat resettles from where she had been perched on his shoulder. ‘Listen to him,’ she whispers. ‘Rabid dogs are always shot.’

He nods with a purpose at the Outsider. He knows how to listen.

“Okay,” He says, and then, feeling the need to puff out his chest: “I’m not afraid of them.”

“A healthy fear keeps the rats alive.” The Outsider muses, continuing to stroll, before he comes to a stop in front of the Boy as he looks down at him. “Keeps them from thinking they can foolishly take on a wolf and his pack.” 

“I—”

The Boy isn’t sure what he would’ve said, if the world didn't return. The Outsider disappears before he can say his part, some statement that he truly isn’t afraid, he has the Mark (‘and them too, fool’), but his words are snuffed in his throat, and he stands at an empty shrine.

‘It is advice, boy, not an insult.’ The White Rat quips with a small huff, and the Boy turns and leaves.

"Attention Citizens: This evening the streets adjacent to Pendleton Manor will be closed for a private ceremony following the tragic loss of two of our city's best and brightest, the Lords Custis and Morgan Pendleton. All holdings and Parliamentary votes now fall to Lord Treavor Pendleton, who asks for respect during this time of mourning."

He dreams of an impossible expanse with broken floating islands that sway endlessly in a sea of nothing, with large, extraordinary whales that lazily float in the distance. Larger than those the Boy has seen. Older, greater, with the presence that hints that they are explicitly different from those the Boy has seen brought into the harbour, but related all the same. He watches from the edge of cobbled street that abruptly halts into nothing as…well, nothing fills the horizon. Into the distance, made only a dark silhouette, is unmistakably a whale, but unfathomably large. Too big, too long, a contortion of the ones the Boy knows, too many fins, and while he cannot see them at this distance, he assumes too many eyes, too many teeth. 

It moves slowly. Before it disappears from sight altogether, and he wonders, briefly, if that was the Leviathan. He wonders then, briefly, how many forms the Outsider can take.

He dreams of a quiet, unending domain where all things are born from and then return to at death. He feels the sights of black eyes upon his back when he looks outwards at the great nothing, and the Boy’s slumbers have never been so peaceful before.

'Hound fight hound for coin, here. When one hound dies, it is thrown into the river for the fish to eat.’

He looks up at the poster that greets him, showing the portraits of two hounds. He cannot read the advertisement, but he can vividly picture each hound mauling each other until one lies still in a bloodied heap. He can smell it, too. 

Under the cover of darkness does the Boy arrive at the Hounds Pit Pub, unknowing to its name and heedless to the status of its current occupants. He sees an establishment scarcely populated, free of the City Watch, and vacant of his stubborn, whaling-clad shadows. The Mark glows as he uses void vision, and knows all inhabitants currently slumber.

So, he scurries inwards. Helps himself to an eager helping of canned fish and a package of nuts within the kitchens of the pub, pockets canned goods, before meandering outside under the moon’s embrace as the City’s loudspeaker drones intermittently.

‘The land is unnatural to him now, having spent most of his life in wavering vessels upon disgruntled waters.’ The White Rat imparts, as he peeked beneath a makeshift shelter and found an elderly man sleeping upon a cot. ‘Resting within a bed is too strange for him. Sometimes he sleeps in his boat instead.’

The Boy hums, steals a glance at the boat that is parked nearby at the river’s edge, before looking upwards at the tower that is connected to the Pub with scaffolding. A rune calls to him in the tower, and he heeds its song. 

He picks the lock of the window with a found hairclip, and sneaks himself inside. Two beds, two occupants, two women—No, one woman, one girl. He blinks down at her, the girl with pinched brows and balled fists, battling some unpleasant dream with tense shoulders. She wears what would have been a bright white gown, if the colours hadn’t been sullied with dirt and grime and unable to have a proper wash. She’s familiar, in a vague, back-of-the-mind sort of way, like he’s seen her before, like he should recognize her. He tilts his head, as the White Rat speaks from where she is perched on his shoulder.

‘Her clothes are not as bright nor clean as they once were. Her hair less finely combed, her nails holding dirt beneath them, and she exists as a foreigner in her own land. You can smell it on her, she is of highborn blood.’

So he instantly does not trust her. Already hadn’t, on principal, but tenfold now knowing she is—was?—a spoon-fed noble. He wrinkles his nose. The rune lays underneath her pillow, and he returns his attention to the priority at hand.

He snakes his hand beneath the pillow, beneath the girl’s head, watches how she twitches as he slowly inches forward. As his fingers touch the coarse bone of a whale, the corners of his lips twitch upwards.

But then—

The weight on the pillow shifts, he startles, as she startles, and the girl wakes with a sharp intake of breath, her eyes focusing to an alarming degree.

Each child is frozen for a split second, neither believing what they're seeing, before the girl opens her mouth and screams. 

It’s a screech that cuts the air as a banshee, loud and deafening against the stillness of the night. The Boy jerks backwards with the rune clutched to his chest, shoulders hunched and White Rat fleeing to his breast pocket, as the girl scrambles backwards on the bed.

He hears, rather than sees, the woman in the other bed gasp as she awakens. And he definitely hears, and feels, when the door is slammed open by an all too abrupt entrance of a man with a blade in hand.

The Boy does not dawdle. He is out the window and his Mark glows just as the man enters, having arrived far too quickly than what is remotely possible, with a left hand that possessed a similar glow.

(And Corvo would have pursued, but Emily is screaming, and he will not leave her.)

The Boy flees until he is beyond the barricade, until he hides within a section of collapsed sewer, until he is certain he is not being tailed after, with void vision becoming his primary sight, before his heart stills and his Mark no longer glows.

His knuckles have grown white holding the rune, and he lets out a breath. He’s safe. The rune is safe. 

He loiters at the Pub still. Enjoys the spacious quarters that the abandoned apartments across it allows, as he settles and watches. This place has food, a supply of it, the City Watch do not toll here, nor do the Whalers. It is… safer, than most areas.

And the Boy is Marked, should any trouble arise regardless. He’ll be fine.

“There was a boy! He was in the room, looking at me!” Emily whines, kicking her feet in frustration as she slumps in her seat from where she sits across Callista for one of her lessons. 

“Lady Emily,” Callista sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You were… Dreaming, thought you saw a boy.”

“I wasn’t! He went out the window, I saw him!”

“Then where did he go, Emily?” Callista lets out a hard breath and fixes Emily with an unamused look. “The only way in or out is through the river. If this were a real boy, we would have found him with our search.”

“He swam,” Emily says with a raised nose, and Callista huffs. “Or climbed the barricade! Or he’s in the sewers!”

“A child cannot climb the barricade. Nor swim in the river, he’d drown. The sewers are blocked off as well. You did not see a boy, Lady Emily.”

Emily groans, long and theatrical as she pouts. She turns to look up at Corvo, who had been standing by the sidelines and silently observing. “You believe me, don’t you, Corvo?” She asks. “He had a rat on his shoulder, too!”

Callista and Emily both implore Corvo. Corvo, predictably, takes Emily’s side when he gives a nod to her response.

‘His exhaustion is endless. To the bone he is weary, but he cannot sleep on the bed. None of his companions know he sleeps on the floor, the bed too alien, after months in a cell.’

It is him, that Masked Felon. The Boy has seen the face of metal he wears. The Boy peers from his vantage point from the roofs of the apartments at the occupants of the Pub. 

The White Rat lifts her nose, and sniffs, ‘He walks the Void as you do. He has spoken with the Outsider, and shares a gift.’

The spike of jealousy the Boy feels is completely preposterous, but he doesn’t know that. Can hardly parse the feeling, when he instead becomes interested in such a fact; Corvo, he’s been called by the company he keeps. Corvo Attano, the Empress’s murderer, and…  Emily, the Empress’s daughter.

There's a hefty reward for them both. More than the Boy could imagine. A palace’s worth, he’s dreamed. 

Not that he would turn them in. The City Watch would beat him to death (or try to) so they wouldn’t have to pay him the reward, if he were even able to convince them that he's found the fabled Corvo Attano and Emily Kaldwin in the first place.

Corvo Attano, the Royal Protector, the Empress’s murderer, who has Emily ride his shoulders while making noises from his mouth as the girl laughs.

“The… Masked Felon, as he is known, may not share your same bloodlust.” The Outsider had said, and the Boy believes him, will always believe the Outsider, as this Corvo cusps Emily’s cheeks and gives her forehead a kiss.

Not precisely how he imagined a murderer to treat his victim's child. 

He dreams of the Void, stark and unyielding, as he walks and uses transversals from one floating island to the next. It’s silent, as it always is, it’s empty, as it always is. He feels the gaze of black eyes on his back, and he murmurs to himself: 

“If this is where all the dead go, then where are they?”

“You do not need to see air to know it is there.”

The Outsider’s sudden voice does not have him jump. The Boy turns his head to look at his companion who has suddenly materialized from nothing, and the Outsider’s presence has always been there, like a warm summer’s breeze. From where there should have been fright from the sudden voice, the Boy has been given only familiarity, and he merely glances up at his companion.  

He looks outwards, at the horizon, and takes a deep inhale through his nose. He wrinkles it. Mutters, “Don’t smell like dead people.” 

The Void is without the now commonplace stench of decay and rot of bodies being piled and haphazardly deposed of that perverts within the City. The Boy remembers the moments wherein he had to lay and rest alongside the corpses, both bagged and bare, laying bloated only a few feet away, and drifting off into slumber by the sounds of rats indulging themselves. 

The air here, in the Void is—

Clean, the Boy supposes, in comparison. Although, he also muses, it probably isn’t an exceptional feat, considering the state of the City. He takes another deep breath, and decides to indulge in the cleanse.

The Outsider says, “As all things come to pass, from the greatest city to the tiniest rat, they will all pass through here. All are already part of it, as they breathe, whether aware of the fact or not. They’ll all merge together, truly made equal, before dispersing, allowing the cycle to begin anew.” 

The Boy nods, slowly, although cannot admit to fully understanding. He imagines the dead liquefying among each other in a heap that grows coagulated into a putrid, sticky mound. Like the corpses he finds piled onto each other in the sewers or river banks or alleys, separating into chunks and merging into one another.

“Like a soup.” He says sagely, musing upon the Void’s empty scenery and envisioning a never ending slew of the dead swirling around him in invisibility. At least it doesn’t stink.

“Spoken like a poet.” The Outsider says dryly.

The Boy cannot profess in knowing fully what a poet actually is. He assumes, from the context clues given to him, that it is someone who speaks about corpses.

The Boy sighs. Stares outwards for a moment once more, before looking back upwards to the Outsider, who looks impassively downwards at him.

“Does it…” The Boy starts, shifting on his feet, stealing a glance at the nothingness, before looking back at black eyes. “Don’t you get lonely… ?”

“Loneliness assumes I require companionship.”  

The Boy looks at him. The Outsider looks back. The Boy wonders if he should wake the White Rat that currently slumbers in his breast pocket, so the Outsider may hold her.

Instead, he asks with a squint, technically already knowing the answer, “Are you like air? Always watching, but people can’t see you?”

“Indeed.”

He already expected such an answer, and he supposes, if the Outsider always watches everyone at every and any moment, that he can’t be lonely. 

Still, the Boy thinks, in those moments wherein he wallowed upon the cold sidewalk, it was the rats, the White Rat, that always gave him kinship. The Boy knows already the White Rat would share her companionship. She would be at home on the Outsider’s shoulder, he can imagine it clearly. 

Through his silent introspection, does the Boy suddenly say, “The Abbey says you eat children.” 

“The Abbey says many fantastic things about me. People fear what they do not understand, so they weave whatever stories fit their rhetoric so they may find comfort in the false assumptions they’ve created, for they have control over them.” 

He looks at the Outsider. The Outsider looks back.

“... Do you eat children… ?”

“Only the ones that call me ‘black-eyed bastard’ one too many times.” 

And the Boy still looks at the Outsider, openly stares, gawks, perhaps, with wide blinking eyes. At first, it's due the fact he thinks he is given confirmation that the Outsider actually commits to such practices, and then, it's at the fact his brain is able to comprehend the Outsider actually, probably, made a joke.

The Boy snorts, a small harsh bark of laughter. He lets the rats feast on those that torment him, so he understands if the Outsider had an affinity for blood. He doesn’t judge. Too much.

Perhaps he requires a revisit and practice his spatial awareness, is what the Boy thinks when it happens: he had been admiring the general onset of slow decay of the apartments in bored reverie, musing upon where the day will take him and what he shall do, when he was abruptly made aware that there was a presence behind him as he inspected the walls.

His hackles were raised in an instant, the Mark glowing on instinct, and he was greeted with a bright white that contrasted so greatly with her surroundings, and that girl—Emily, Emily Kaldwin, heir to the throne—was standing before him.

She’s quiet, was his next thought, when she breaks into a wide grin. For a noble—for an Empress, he belatedly corrects—she strode with the careful step, despite the rest of her highborn ilk always loudly proclaiming their presence.

“I knew I’d find you here!” She exclaims with obvious excitement, and his Mark still glows as the White Rat peeks from her pocket home, awoken from her nap. 

She puffs her chest outwards, with hands triumphantly at her hips. Undeniably proud of herself, and the Boy looks, before darting his gaze towards all corners of the room; he could blink behind the girl and flee, disperse into a mound of rats and flee, summon a mound of rats and—and white would be red, and all nobles have always delighted in chasing him as frenzied hounds. An Empress is the leader of the pack. His Mark kindles beneath the skin.

“Don’t—Don’t go! Please? I’m not going to hurt you, promise!” And she noticed his frantic looking for an escape route. Shrewd as a rat. He can at least applaud her for that. She continues, her voice hurried. “I—I Haven’t seen another kid since, since… all this started. Where’d you come from? How old are you? What’s your name?”

He stares at her. Her expression is excited, with a smile and bright eyes, which all visibly falls when he continues to only stare, and ignore entirely her questions. 

She clears her voice and straightens herself, and she exclaims haughty in a voice that has obviously been rehearsed, “I’m Emily. A pleasure to meet you!” 

Emily—would the proper conduct be to call her ‘your Majesty’? He wonders how she would react if he spat at her direction. It would take a mere blink to out maneuver her—She suddenly takes a step forward with a hand outstretched, and the sudden action immediately prompts the Boy to take a step back on impulse with Mark glowing on instinct. 

She stiffens when he does so, with her arm extended like a rod, and he will not shake her hand. He makes no move to close the distance between them and instead watches intently as her face twitches. He stands where he is, without any motion, and she awkwardly keeps her smile on, as the silence stretches onwards between them with the walls creaking when the building settles.

“You’re filthy.” She says suddenly, letting her arm fall to her side. She wrinkles her nose. “I can smell you from here. When’s the last time you had a bath? We have baths at the Pub. Running water, warm water, you should come over and get clean!”

He stays still. He stays staring. He’s never bathed in warm water.

“We have food too, of course, plenty to go around. We’ll share, of course, we have to help each other.” Emily quickly adds, edging a step forward, but halting when he takes a step back. “The others won’t hurt you, I’ll make sure of that. But they’re all good people anyway, you don’t have to hide out here, all alone, you can come with me!”

He remains impassive. She remains bright eyed and suspiciously exuberant. The City loudspeaker drones off in the distance.

She starts again, “I’ll leave a window, at the south side, open? For you to… sneak through. I’ll get a bath ready so you can clean yourself. I’ll leave you some bread, too! I won’t tell anyone else you’re here, promise!”

He doesn’t believe her, because he likes to think he isn’t an idiot. She shuffles on her feet, his continued silence a dispiriting display, but she keeps her head held high regardless. He supposes Empresses don’t mope, although he commends her for not throwing a tantrum by now, considering she hasn’t gotten her way.

She sighs. “I have to get going… Callista, my tutor, is looking for me… But I’ll leave that window open. Please, come over and visit? You’ll be safe with us.” Then she adds quickly: “Both of you!”

She nods at the White Rat still peeking from her abode, prompting the rodent to once more shield herself, and Emily visible pouts. She looks back at the Boy. Smiles, gives an unsure wave, and—

And she turns, scurries away, looking over her shoulder once as she does so, and she leaves. A quick usage of void vision shows that she does not linger, she simply scampers off, and rejoins the others at the Pub.

He continues watching and listening through the walls should she send any of her lackeys after him. But they all stay collected at their nest as the minutes tick, then hours, and the sun descends, and the Pub and apartments may be stationed right upon the banks of a river, but he hasn’t bathed in recent memory.

South side, she said?

South side, indeed, and a window is left precariously ajar for any lone child to creep into. 

He surveys through void vision, reflects on all positions of the occupants, weighs the distances of each person, and decides—He shall investigate this room. A bathroom, with a metal tub in its corner, the steam of the water long gone after cooling, but the water is clean. Soaps exist upon its rim, and when he smells them, he recoils at the sheer strength of floral fragrance. He sneezes. Next to the bath, there is a table, and upon the table, a folded pile of clothing. And on the clothing, a note.

He can only glance at the note and frown at it, but decides it cannot be of any importance.

If the Boy were literate, it would read:

“I know they’re a little big, but I hope these fit. Your current clothes are quite sad, if I may say so. Please, help yourself!

-Emily.”

But he cannot read, and disregards it all together. He uses void vision once more; scouts the locations of all occupants once more. None are near to where he stands. He tentatively dips his hand within the cool embrace of the water, muses on how clear it is, and he has used a bath, before, when he had been in the orphanage for the first few years of his life, before it crumbled, and he had to share with three other boys. Here, it is only him. To indulge within a bath, with soap he can keep.

He uses void vision again. The others are still a distance away. The White Rat crawls out of her pocket-home to station herself on the table next to the bath. She twitches her nose at him.

‘I shall keep watch.’ She promises, and the Boy is given the relief in order to bathe.

(He takes the soap, clothes and towels afterwards, just in case. And his skin is so bizarrely smooth afterwards, it doesn’t feel like his own.) 

He’s learned, since the first time, to anticipate her presence. He will not allow himself to be pounced upon, and is ready with feet poised to run when Emily arrives once more to where he dwells at the apartments.

She breaks into a grin, that grows wider still as she looks him up and down.

“You’re still here! And you’re wearing your new clothes!” She exclaims in triumph. “See, I told you I wouldn’t tell anyone. You can trust me. I even come bearing a peace offering.” 

She reveals from her pocket a tin, dented in its corners with a lid that does not properly close and it holds biscuits inside. She holds it out to him, face expectant as she nods to it, and he makes no move to take it. 

When the silence stretches on, where he simply stands where he is, she concedes and lays the tin onto the floor, pushes it towards his direction before stepping back. 

She licks her lips, places her hands on her hips, and says, “They’re… Admittedly a little stale. But not so bad! Here, you can have all of them.”

And within the no man’s land that exists between the two of them, the tin lays as a fancy lure. The Boy holds his ground, and the girl tilts her head.

“What’s your name?” She asks.

The Boy eyes the tin. Cannot read its labeling, but if he could, it would say ‘shortbread classic biscuits,’ with its imagery worn and chipped. He’s stolen that exact brand, he muses, and it was food the rats enjoyed as did he. He glances back up at Emily, to find her looking at him with the beginnings of a furrowed brow.

“Can you… Can you talk?”

He thinks about that for a moment. He could shake his head in the negative, and she could attempt to dance around a mute. Will have to, regardless, as speech is a difficult thing to summon in the presence of others, but he nods. Sure, he can talk. A labour to attempt each time with anything other than rats, as any sort of vocalization he could attempt could be used against him, as experience has taught him.

He continues being silent. Emily nods as well, slowly following his action.

“... Okay.” She says awkwardly, before pulling herself straighter to ask, “Do you have a name…?”

He thinks about that, as well, for a moment. He’s had one, what feels like an age ago, when the orphanage was still even a building, before the time when the only ones that wouldn’t strike him were the rats, before his name became moot entirely when he was just only known as that Lonely Rat Boy.

He gives a shrug. She looks at him for a moment.

“Well. How about him?” She asks, pointing to his chest.

The Boy looks down to see the White Rat peeking her head out from her pocket-home, and he looks back up to Emily to shake his head. He primarily shakes her head at the ‘him,’ but it works likewise as an answer regardless. She has no name. A title, sure, but no name. The last time he named a rat—Eddie—he was crushed underneath someone’s heel the day after and then feasted upon by his brothers.

Emily huffs. But undeterred still is she by his continued silence. She fills the air for him.

“That symbol, on your hand.” She says, pointing to his left hand, and the Boy immediately moves it so it is hidden behind his leg. Emily continues, slowly, before her confidence returns. “... Corvo has that too. Corvo is my friend, he wears that scary mask but he’s not scary. You may have seen his wanted posters? He was framed; He’s not a bad person. You can trust him too. He protects me. He’d protect you, too! So you should, you know, come over to the Pub.”

Another habitual moment of silence and awkward staring. He keeps his left hand hidden. The White Rat twitches her nose. Emily then opens her mouth.

And she speaks. And does not stop speaking. An eruption of words exit her mouth and the Boy is left blinking at her when he attempts to process it all. She walks as she does so, the gesturing of hands accompanying her words, and she speaks of Callista, Samuel, Piero, Lydia, Cecelia, Havelock, Pendleton and Martin, and how they’re all trustworthy people. Even though the last three men she mentions can be intimidating, but good men, still. She speaks of their personalities, how they speak, how Piero tinkers with machinery she too wishes to tinker with, but has to study geography with Callista and geography is so boring, and that she wants to see how whale oil explodes when thrown from her tower.

She speaks of Corvo, adamantly, passionately speaks of Corvo, and how she isn’t afraid to admit he is undoubtedly her favourite. That he’s a good man. That he had no hand in killing her mother, and she mentions, moreso to herself than him with a voice grown steely, that she is going to punish those that framed Corvo with all the power she has as Empress. And at that moment, he saw a mirror of himself, upon the moments when he ruminated on summoning a devouring swarm. And the Boy just listens.

She thanks him for that. For listening. And he can only really shrug in response. Emily takes her leave once she realizes how much time she has spent there, and scurries away, talking about how Callista is going to be mad at her.

Only when she leaves, does the Boy dine upon the biscuits.

The world breaks apart as the Void consumes everything, from the makeshift shrine he has hobbled together, with the rune he took from beneath Emily’s pillow as his offering. The Boy stands at attention when the Outsider takes shape, and listens when the Outsider speaks.

“While you laid hungry and sifting through the dirt for any scraps to eat with bone protruding through skin, did her Highness throw cake at her tutor in glee, heedless to her waste and of the hunger of those like you. And there was a chance she could’ve never noticed the plight of those who must sleep with rats, with her head held so high above the clouds. But she’s seen things one could be tempted to say no ten year old child should see, but you’ve already seen all those things tenfold.” 

The Boy nods at that, with a self righteous huff. If circumstances were different, would she ever really think to give him biscuits? Her mother certainly hadn’t.

“Nothing brings everyone together quite like a rat plague.” The Outsider says dryly. “Her dearest Corvo, her most loyal retainer, will see to it that no harm will befall upon her. He’s already lost one Empress. Already suffered six long months in a cold cell and being tortured in ways that would kill most men. But Corvo is a tenacious man who is dutiful to a fault, with plenty of thirst for vengeance.”

The Boy continues to nod as he listens. He does not want to know whatever misery Corvo experienced, although his mind conjures images of broken bone regardless. 

He asks, “Is that why you marked him?” 

“Quite. He can be very interesting, when he chooses to be.”

“Emily said he wouldn’t hurt me.” 

“And she speaks the truth she knows. Corvo’s idea of mercy so he may be free of blood on his hands may be oftentimes... brutal, but he is a man that would not raise a hand against a child such as yourself.” The Outsider tilts his head, and the Boy unknowingly tilts back. “Provided you are not a threat to Emily, of course.”   

He doesn’t… Well, he can’t rightly admit to openly disliking her, but he isn’t stupid enough to trust her, biscuits or no biscuits. His skin still feels eerily soft from the soap, like he’s become a sponge, and it's a feeling both foreign but soothing, and he has yet to try a proper warm bath. Emily can still keep windows open for him yet.

“I won’t hurt her.” He says, and it comes out like a promise.

“Then he will not hurt you.” The Outsider finishes, and the world returns once more.

When it is absolutely the time wherein Emily should be in her bed, is when she arrives instead at the apartments. And it is the time wherein the Boy should be out tentatively snooping, that he stays and waits for her to arrive, when he catches sight of her skulking silhouette through void vision. 

She treads lightly, he thinks, as he watches. That’s learned. It isn’t the step he usually associates with nobles, who walk constantly as if they have a stick up their ass. Her movements are reminiscent of his own, although (he thinks haughtily) not as refined. 

“You really don’t need to be afraid of any of them. But I… Understand, of course. They’re all strangers. And adults, too.” She mutters, picking the skin surrounding his nails when she has settled a few feet across from him, a banana her peace offering this round.

Emily’s voice is burdened by such a statement, and it is then that the Boy realizes she speaks from related life experiences, and she’s small. Hunched into herself with knees brought to her chest. And the others all stand tall, too tall. He sits quietly across from her, banana between them.

And, predictably, silence. Although she does not break it to ramble. When the quiet continues, as a smog in the air and Emily stares at nothing, does the Boy edge slowly closer, to take hold of the banana and then cradling it to his chest.

Emily beams at that, and he notices, for an Empress with servants at her beck and call, that she looks tired.

She doesn’t stay long, because she should be asleep, but even when she’s gone, the Boy already knows she will lay awake in her bed for the entirety of the night.

He dreams of the Void, ceaseless, unfathomable, and he walks upon its tattered shores, jumping, climbing, blinking, or looking away one moment, only to look back and see a path has been constructed for him. 

He continues traversing, listens to the empty ambiance of a wind that shouldn’t exist and stares outwards. 

“How far does it go?” He asks in the nothingness. 

“This is both the end, and the beginning. Forever and never, everything and nothing.” Responds the Outsider, suddenly beside him. 

“...It’s pretty big.” 

“Indeed. Some may even call it endless.” The Outsider nods, walking casually across the floating rock with hands clasped behind his back, and the Boy follows.

“Have you visited the other Isles?” The Boy chirps, skipping across the uneven surface of where they tread. “The Continent?”

“I am known by many names and many faces. You’ll find runes that bear my Mark and shrines made in my many, many names at all corners of the world, both known and unknown.”

The Boy nods. He wonders how true the stories of the other Isles and Continent are. He hadn’t believed that the Continent was truly as big as it was rumoured to be, because how could it fit with everything else? But now, having traversed through the Void, perhaps it is true.

Many names, many faces, and the Outsider is sometimes a man, sometimes a boy, sometimes only a shadow, and the Boy asks with great curiosity: “Are you really a winged serpent?” 

The Outsider looks down at him with a quirked brow. “What do your eyes tell you, my little friend?” 

They both stop their stroll, and the Outsider tilts his head as the Boy looks up at him. He squints. He sees pale, pallid skin. A stark face. Perpetual bags beneath dark eyes. A scar that rings around the entirety of the Outsider’s neck.

The Boy shrugs. “A corpse.”

The Outsider nods with a small, near imperceptible twitching of the lips. “Astute.” 

“I think you can be a winged serpent.” The Boy continues, walking once more, and the Outsider follows, as the Boy excitedly pantomimes his next set of words. “Or a hound with three heads! With infinite teeth! Fire in your belly! You could eat whales.”

“I find myself quite partial to the delectable offerings of blueberry pie, personally.”

The Boy turns his head so suddenly at the Outsider he nearly gives himself whiplash, as he abruptly halts his step.

“I could get you some.” He says quickly, eyes gleaming. “I-I know where to get you some. I’ll leave it at a shrine, I promise.”

Determination is a fire in his blood, so compelled is he to give a physical manifestation of gratitude for the Mark that rests on his left hand.

The Outsider responds with a flat, “Rarely do I ever heed the calls of offerings left for me, no matter how grand, for they are rarely an interesting affair. Even when a man slayed his own brother, turned obsessed from the voices he heard cooing to him from a bone charm, and he had painted the walls with his his and his brother’s blood, wishing to court me. I have no need for gifts. I am quite content in being the charitable one.” 

The Boy blinks at him. And he cannot rationalize how the Outsider could be so kind, and ask for nothing in return. 

“... Are you… are you sure?” The Boy feels obliged to ask with a furrowing brow.

“Indulge in these simple pleasures yourself, for you’ve always been barred from them. As I have already said: I have no need for them.”

Well. He supposes the Outsider is already dead. But, still.

“Well, if you say so…” The Boy trails, and when the Outsider does not answer, he shrugs. “You’re missing out.”

The Outsider hums a considering noise. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The Outsider continues walking, and the Boy follows, to ask what manner of terrible things lurk beneath the ocean waves, and if the Outsider watches them too. As he watches the Boy.

He dreams of the Void. An endless chasm, that he tentatively peers into as he leans over the edge from where he stands. He wrings his fingers with a knitted brow, and sees a grand plummet.

“What would happen if I fell?” He mutters softly. 

“Different things, for different moods.” The Outsider says, appearing a few short paces behind the Boy. “Fall for the rest of eternity, even as your hair turns grey and your skin wrinkled. Fall into the abyss, into darkness, return to the nothing from which you came from. Fall, but then be transported back to the place you previously stood, without a scratch.” 

The Boy twists around to look at the Outsider, gazes upon the permanent nature of pinched brows the Leviathan has, and ruminates on the answer. He stares blankly at the Outsider. Deploys, however unconsciously, a wide set of pleading eyes he usually uses when he needs to beg on the streets.

The Outsider tilts his head. Says, with what the Boy interprets as a soothing voice because it is spoken with a level tone, “If you happen to misstep and fall, the last outcome mentioned would happen to you.”

Transported, similar as a blink the Boy assumes, back to safety. His pleading eyes increase doubly so when he asks, “You’d catch me?”

“In a manner of speaking.” 

“You promise?” 

He says so with a quiet, vulnerable tone as he fiddles with his fingers, and completely misses the absurd quality of the current situation, because the Outsider speaks of catching him, and no one has ever done so before.

“You seek to test my integrity?” The Outsider asks.

The Boy blinks, and his face twists as he mutters with embarrassment, “...I don’t know what… that means…” 

He looks down, at his chewed nails and fingertips, at the scars that tatter his hands and at the Mark, before he glances back upwards when the Outsider speaks.

“Harm will not befall on you while you tread within the Void, my little friend. Even if you were to fall.” 

Something inside the Boy glows, something warm, and he has never felt it before, so he assumes it some sort of ailment. He lightly rubs at his chest to alleviate himself from this foreign feeling as he stands straighter and murmurs a quiet “... Thank you.” as he rubs at his chest absentmindedly.

The Outsider mutely nods. The Boy takes a glance back at the endless depths, before looking back to where the Outsider stands instead of floats.

“Can I get to float like you?” He asks, after a moment.

“If you continue to hone your craft, the doors which you may open are as endless as the Void.” The Outsider says, then shrugs. “So perhaps. In due time.” 

The Boy wants to float. Perhaps, if he uses blink very, very quickly in succession, he’ll be able to achieve such a feat.