Chapter Text
He should have been absolutely unremarkable, another face in the crowd of people Emily moved through. Tall, lanky, someone who hadn’t quite grown into his body yet, with a mess of black hair. For a moment, her heart stopped. A tiny skip, like a shock had rolled down her spine.
Impossible.
It had been months, and her mark was - his imprint had faded long ago, but the connection to the Void that nestled inside of her hadn’t quite died out. Still, her left hand flexed, as if she could feel the magic all over again.
It was day.
This was reality.
And when she caught his eyes?
They were not the bottomless pit she still dredged up in her sleep, but green. Bright and curious. Alive.
“Emily?”
She blinked and turned back to her father. A concerned look held firm in his eyes as he watched her. Her lips parted. She wanted to nod. She wanted to tell him that she had thought - well, what?
That the Outsider was in the crowd? That a boy had made her think of a god?
It sounded completely ridiculous.
The empress liked to think she wasn’t completely ridiculous. She wanted to dismiss what she had seen.
“Corvo, could you - just let them know I will be a few minutes late?”
His brow furrowed, but before he could pepper her with questions, she had already turned on her heel.
It was ridiculous. She was chasing a phantom at best, and some innocent man at worst. And yet, she couldn’t ignore her gut feeling, couldn’t push it to the back of her mind as some coincidence. It had been only a moment’s glance, but she pushed through the street anyway, in the direction she thought she had seen him go.
If it was the Outsider, then he was here for - well, she saw him. So he was here for her. Or for something he needed her for, at the very least.
No, this was stupid. She stood at the edge of a street, rubbing a hand over her forehead. There was nobody here, and this was just Dunwall. Not the Void. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t around, and she was going to have to accept that as the new reality of the world.
One last look, Emily told herself. And then she would rejoin her father before he made her afternoon meeting entirely too uncomfortable. Corvo had a way of staring at people like he was thinking of every way he could disarm and dismember them with the least amount of effort. Good for a Royal Protector, but he wasn’t much of a secretary.
The ghost of a smile tugged at her mouth at the thought, and then it promptly froze, torn between life and death.
Tall, lanky, pale as the moon, with a mop of hair that desperately needed a good brushing despite objections. It was him, and it was not him.
He watched her from the corner of the building he was leaning against, as still and silent as he would have been if he had pulled her from her dreams. But there was no mistaking the brightness of his gaze or the flicker of emotions that he didn’t seem able to tame. A frown, a twitchy smile, a grimace, as he tried to force his face to remain a mask of neutrality.
She was going mad.
His hands spread. In a shrug. In the awkward beckoning of an embrace. “The little empress.”
His voice had been colder before, had a bite to it that reminded her that he was not exactly human anymore. Maybe time had done that, maybe having his throat cut had done that. She couldn’t have been sure. There was no bite, but a cautious lilt all the same.
She crossed over to him, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him into the alley behind him. Human. He was human. Her brain was trying to piece this together as quickly as it could manage, and while she might not have dared to manhandle him before, she knew she could now. He stumbled after her into the low light of the alley.
“You’re alive,” Emily spat at him. It came out angrier than she meant it to be. She was more curious, more confused, than she was angry. He was alive. Human. Here.
The look he gave her, the pout of a boy who wasn’t used to being jerked around, was too much. She still had him by the collar of his ratty jacket, watching the downturn of his lip, the sigh on his tongue, the glare he narrowed at her. Boy. She kept using that word, but it didn’t fit something that hadn’t been one in thousands of years.
“I was freed.”
For the second time that day, she found herself dumbfounded. She didn’t like that feeling, being unable to find the proper words, the right explanation, anything at all to say. “That was possible?”
He nodded slowly. “It is surprising what humans will do to atone for their sins.” His fingers were warm when they pried hers gently off of him. Even in the shadows here, his eyes still shone brightly at her.
The fingers of her left hand twitched.
She still had her manners, all of that good upbringing, and resisted touching his face, feeling that warmth. But only barely.
“Why are you here?”
“To see you.”
“You seek the help of the Empress?”
“No.” The Outsider attempted a smile, a squiggle of a line across his mouth.
She had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing.
“I came to let the little empress know that I - I didn’t just disappear,” he told her.
The laugh dried up in her mouth. The tone was so soft, so serious. “And did you let all of your other marked ones know this?”
“Just you.”
She was important, he was saying. She could read between the lines. The message was equal parts uncomfortable and exciting. “You could have sent a letter.”
“You wouldn’t have believed it.”
That was true. She would have laughed and burned the paper in her office. She would have wondered who had thought the rumors were true enough to pose as the Outsider, who would dare to play such a trick. It would have been a good one, but not a believable one.
“Very well then,” Emily said. “You’ve come all this way, and I’m sure you’re hungry.”
“What?” His head tilted, and he made another face at her when her hand came up to tame his hair.
“Food. Humans eat, and you must be hungry. I want you to join me for lunch.”
Corvo could make her excuses, and she could make her excuses to him later. He’d understand, once she saw the face of her guest.
The Outsider (was it at all appropriate to call him that now? but she didn’t have a name for him, and he wasn’t offering anything to her) continued to stare at her. He was quiet, as if trying to see what was going on in her head, what he could pick up from her by watching. Old habits died hard, but she knew that all too well.
“You came all this way,” she continued. “So stay.”
“I won’t say no.” He didn’t say yes, either, but he still followed her through the alley when she started walking.