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He feels a part of his life wane and flicker with each visit. A further relapse into his mind, his thoughts, where only the other man remains. He converses with a cold shadow and marble skin. He speaks with distant tones, crosses his arms as if preparing for the disappointment he expects. He holds Corvo’s stares with coal black eyes; even smiles and dismisses his involvement with fascination.
A dirty word, that; an excuse for the branding of Corvo’s skin, an apparent excuse for the bitter feel of steel in a man’s abdomen because he knew too much.
How do you tread on eggshells with a man that doesn’t need to tread at all?
*
The visits began with coarse acceptance, the lulls in their conversations even larger than the words between them.
The nightmares began with a man with coal black eyes, singing to the rhythm of skittering rats.
*
A wake in a cold, hugging sweat; a chitter in his teeth because Corvo knows he’s afraid. He’s afraid of the man with nothing in his eyes, the man that steals Corvo away from his dreams with one simple excuse – fascination. He doesn’t even need an excuse; he doesn’t need Corvo to think of him of anything other than a monster. But for some reason, he does it anyway.
Maybe he wants Corvo to believe he’s slightly human.
But Corvo can’t think of anything else but the man looking at him that just didn’t belong there.
*
The man keeps him there, in a prison in his mind; sits him down in a broken office chair, speaks to him and just expects Corvo to listen.
Corvo learns of a man that killed a part of him every day, writes his secrets on pieces of stained paper and hides them in body bags. He hears of men that live by the blade, used only for slicing into helpless whales. He hears of little girls wanting to rule in fear, because that’s all they’ve ever known.
He hears, and he feels sick.
Then the visions began.
*
At first, he thought the blackness of the eyes was merely his imagination. He thought the colourless veins and cold demeanor was just a dream, a nightmare, a way to pass his exhaustion.
But then the man with the jet black eyes steals him away; demands him to leave Dunwall behind, to forget the tortured whales and suffering souls, to forget the never ending corruption running through the heart of the city.
But Corvo can’t just forget. He can’t forget the Empress that died in his arms, the feeling of a hot poker running through his right arm, the betrayal. To do so would tarnish the memory, to remove the people that meant the most in his life.
But exactly what life was he living?
*
The next time he visits, he’s holding a crown made of wildflowers. Wordlessly, he places it atop of Corvo’s head. He liked pretty things.
Then he’s gone, fleeting and impersonal as Corvo returns to his world full of machinery and royal clothes. His room seems smaller every day.
*
Slowly, the visits become shorter.
The Outsider (as Corvo had taken to naming him) arrived less frequently.
His dreams aren’t always invaded, but he still finds himself dreaming of a man that speaks to him in calm tones and looks into him with black eyes.
*
He appears once a month, a lack of apologies and a parody of sincerity in his smoky words. Corvo pretends he doesn’t care; sits there as the stories continued seamlessly, as if the absence never occurred.
The Outsider’s eyes seem a little faded.
Corvo tries not to notice.
*
He manifests in patches now; a gap in his arm, greyness to his eyes and a lack of any kind of smile. He lacks many things. Lacks the heart Corvo can feel beating in his marked hand, lacks the sincerity in Samuel’s words, lacks the things that make everyone human.
That was supposed to make him stronger, right?
*
The polluted tides had turned. The Outsider could barely move.
Corvo sat him down in a blue chair, told him stories of his youth; the dismissal of the love he tried to give, the failures of overconfidence.
*
He hoped that by sharing his losses he could soothe the pain.
*
The Outsider sat down in his faded chair for one last visit, all sluggish movements and glassy grey eyes. His skin was so worn now.
“Corvo,” he says, voice like church bells and stature of a tombstone, “thank you.”
*
Then Corvo wakes up, really wakes up, for the first time in an age. Emily’s newest pictures on his desk, coins under the table and decorating the ornate floor.
He moves, he breathes, he laughs, he hurts.
He is alive again.
His mind is youthful, it is empty.
It is just like everyone else's.
*
Sometimes he dreams of a handsome man with black eyes, but Corvo begins to doubt the man ever existed at all.