Time to dust off the ol' Fanfiction account and write something up for once, for a fandom that I've never written for at all, at a time of night when I'm supposed to be sleeping.
This is a bit of one way of looking at the Outsider, but I'm also afraid I might have stretched a bit.
Hope you enjoy! And if not, that's fine too. I'm sure you'll find something else to enjoy!
There is an all manner of things drifting in the infinite waste of the Void. He knows all of them, all at once.
He can wander the numerous rotting wooden compartments of a sunken ship, its broken planks scattered in the emptiness around it, and at the same time, he'll be aware of a tiny, rusting key floating at the far reaches of the realm. Discarded jewelry, muddied love letters, raggedy dolls, worn-out playing cards, old coins-they all eventually end up littering the Void.
Once, during the dry season, the wind fanned a tiny flame into a roaring blaze that claimed an entire district. One of its streets found its way into the Void, its solitary lamp post dutifully illuminating its blackened cobblestones.
He doesn't mind; it saves him the trouble of conjuring up phantasms to fill the Void himself. Objects with history, with attachments, are much more preferable. The desperate ones, like the dolls with their moth-bitten dresses, crying out for human affection, are particularly fascinating.
As time passes, his collection grows and grows. When even his Marked ones seem intent on boring him with their trivial activities, he can still open his mind to the Void, letting each object unwind its spool of memories for him to comb through. On these days, he feels a spark of something that might be pride, could be pride, but not pride at all.
Items appear out of nowhere, and they leave just as suddenly. A scrap of paper once found its way into his hands. He studied it closely, wrinkling his nose at its crude charcoal drawing of a man fishing. Through it, he caught a glimpse of a girl humming as she lovingly drew her father with fingers grubby from charcoal dust. The paper lingered in the Void for a few years before he was no longer aware of its existence. The girl had reclaimed it from the bottom of a drawer. It was with a strange irony that the Outsider smiled as he realized that he would have to hide his collection from human eyes, lest he lose it.
And so, the decades passed on, as did some of his Marked. He only marked those with potential, the ones with so many strands of possibilities in their grasps; the ones who weren't so clever led eventful, but short, lives. They burned up all the threads they held until there was nothing left to set fire to but themselves.
Ah well, they still provided a good show.
And Corvo? The most promising by far. A slain empress, her abducted child, and the implicated Royal Protector. It's the set-up for what could easily be the collapse of an entire empire, the effects of which would be felt worldwide. He thinks of the street abandoned after a fire, and it's not too much of a stretch to imagine a district lost to the plague sinking into the Void.
The Outsider does not hesitate to tweak the empress's heart, nor does he waste any time searing his brand onto the back of Corvo's left hand. The Royal Protector's hiss is almost inaudible compared to the brand's, but the suspicious look he sends the Outsider speaks volumes. No matter. Not all of the Marked had been fond of him, but regardless, none of them refused his gift.
For the next few days, the Outsider expects piles of dead bodies, their connections cut by Corvo's sharpened blade, their personal affects piling into the Void.
No. Instead, he watches as Corvo takes pains to avoid conflict, never feigns deafness when asked for help. Where the Marked of the past would weigh their options, Corvo's first instinct is to dive in and save. The Outsider is...surprised? And then, he is surprised that he can still be surprised.
As a result, when Corvo stumbles onto the shrine in Granny Rags's backyard, he makes sure to express this feeling as best he can. Corvo inclines his head towards him, but his body is turned almost halfway away from the shrine. He seems impatient to go on with his business, and so the Outsider cuts his speech short and sends him on his way.
In the other futures tied to Corvo, the Outsider catches glimpses of Dunwall rotting from the inside out, the plague gutting the city of its inhabitants. Emily Kaldwin is missing in some of them; in others, something is missing in her.
In this future, Emily Kaldwin is lost no more. She is restored to the throne, and the trickle of objects, plague victim memorabilia, flowing into the Void slows down. In the face of one of his Marked fashioning such riveting miracles, the Outsider finds that he could care less about his collection of forgotten things.
Empress Emily arranges a campaign to clear out the abandoned apartment buildings outside the Distillery District, and things start to go missing in the Void. A journal with yellowing pages that was once there might disappear the next day, spotted by some enthusiastic volunteer. Even this the Outsider does not mind. Trivial, everyday objects hold no meaning to him anymore, not when Corvo has constructed a shrine to him in one of the castle's secret passages. It's draped in luxuriant, purple silk, but a thin layer of dust soon settles onto its unlit candles.
The Lord Protector visits the shrine every day, even lingering on some occasions.
Then, one day, he arrives, lugging a sack behind him. He lays out runes and bone charms one by one at the shrine until the collective murmuring and whispering grows to an unbearably haunting volume.
"Don't misunderstand. I knew it wouldn't be so easy," Corvo says, and they're the first words that he's spoken at a shrine. He speaks them while brushing the carved charms into a bag like so much rubbish. He draws the bag closed by a string to silence the charms before looking up again, a determined set to his jaw.
"I am thankful for your 'gift', but I did none of it for your entertainment."
And with that, Corvo turns and leaves, the scuffling of his boots resounding in the empty passageway. Over the next few days, the runes and bone charms are scattered throughout Dunwall in dark, miserable places. Neither the Overseers, who doggedly try to destroy every charm with his mark on it, nor the industries of Dunwall, which burn countless whales for fuel, have ever come this close to offending him.
For the first time in his existence, a shrine drifts in the endless wastes of the Void.
When he touches it, there's only the faint memory of Corvo followed by nothing but musty air and darkness.