To be clear, I am NOT playing the Death of the Outsider dlc if he actually dies in it. No matter the story surrounding it, the Outsider to me is the single most interesting character in the series and to kill him...

Anyways, the idea of Billie going after the Outsider though gave me this idea. What if the Outsider "dying" was just him faking his death? After all, he lives for what is interesting and after 4000 of intervening in the world, maybe he decided to take a break and go somewhere else for a few centuries. This story is born of that concept.

NOTE:

1) The Outsider is slightly OOC simply because I'm writing him a bit more human than in the first game. The developer has stated that their reason for the markedly different portrayal of the Outsider in Dishonored 2 is because they realized, in hindsight, they'd made the original Outsider more aloof and omnipotent feeling than they liked. He's meant to be personable, otherworldly, but still personable. So while the Outsider still monologues and overthinks things in a detached way, he will also act more human than he did in the original.

2) I allude to the Outsider being pan ( though far more interested in men ) however it will NOT play a big role in this story. He will NOT be shipped with Ciel as the point of this story is to focus on how they develop a more familial relationship and what they go through together. As for the Outsider being pan, I chose that because, like I talk about in the story, if the Outsider does have a sexuality I'm pretty sure its just "who's interesting to me" as that's how he decides basically everything else in his life. As such, pan. Plus, as the Prince of Tyvia play you find everywhere and the letter between the two Overseers in the first game show, even if being gay/not-straight is taboo in the Church, its not a rare thing or big issue for the common folk.

Sorry for the long A/N, just wanted to get this all out of the way before we start. With that, enjoy!

His Uncle, Godly

Chapter I: Your Life Has Taken Quite a Turn, Has't It?

She had thought she had killed him. It amused the Outsider to no end that she, Billie, even after having lived through two coups that were fueled by his meddling in the affairs of the world, would think he was so…. Powerless? Easy to get rid of? He wasn't sure exactly what to call his resilience in this case, for it was not of his own volition by any means.

Did she not think that in the course of 4000 years he had not attempted to commit suicide somehow? He had been a mere boy when he had been thrown into the Void's embrace, not even of age and a starved street rat. All who listened to the Void's whispers eventually went insane much like Delilah had, and he was the chief sinner in that regard. He had not been in his right mind in thousands of years, even if he had learned to hide it. It was hard to fully enjoy oneself and the chaos wrought if you weren't at least nominally in the right mind when it happened.

So yes, he had tried to kill himself before, as surprising as it sounds. Immortality and losing your humanity was not as fun as it sounds. The only issue for him- or anyone for that matter -is that which is given to the Void never is left un-scarred, and the more complete the sacrifice, the less of what was truly you remained. He may be human in appearance, but he had long since lost his organs and blood, and any soul contained within, the things that one who was truly alive would have, and his original personality and moods had been twisted beyond recognition.

The Outsider could create the facsimile of what was human of course, he was the Void and the Void was him. To change his form to look like what a human should be like was little more than a thought and a bit of will. He'd done it before when he had seduced interesting followers when he was a younger god in hopes of having a somewhat normal human relationship for once as opposed to the insane cultists he usually attracted.

Young men and women … well woman, the Outsider thought with a shudder. He'd vowed to never try that little experiment in his still not understood sexuality again. Delilah was not the first witch he'd created, but he knew better this time to do anything more than watch her and her fights with Daud and Corvo. The Outsider wasn't sure who he would've been attracted to had he not been joined to the Void, but now attraction for him was admittedly more about how interesting you were. The one exception was that he refused to feel anything more than passing curiosity for women. Delilah was not the first to have taken advantage of him.

Besides, the young men of the world were so much more fun to tease, in an age when they were expected to marry young lasses and ladies.

Regardless, Bonnie's futile attempts to render him from the Void had left him with a purely brilliant moment of clarity- what better chance would he have to fake his death? What better chance would there be to leave the world alone for a few centuries, let it stew and then later come back and see what had happened. There were a million worlds the Void was connected to that he could visit in the meantime, and it would be far more interesting than continuing this game he played with Bonnie to its sad futile completion.

The only "problem" would be that he would have to take on a human guise and leave the Void for those few centuries, in case some fool stumbled into the Void while he was gone. He had made sure to bury the evidence of the rituals used by Delilah and Billie to both gain his power and "end" him so he was not too concerned about someone adding their essence to him like Delilah had.

Of course what was truly amusing was the fact that those spells really had no power over the Void anymore. Well, Delilah's did, which was why he made sure to destroy evidence of what she did . The last thing he needed was more people crowding his body. It was a good bit simpler to add a bit of yourself into the Void. But as for trying to control him or the Void and then trying to end him?

When he had been sacrificed the Void had no master or will. It was truly little more than a power source. However, those fool cultists, by fusing him to the Void itself, gave the Void a Voice, a Will, and a Hand with which to carry out its newly imagined and formed plans. He truly meant it when he said he was the Void. One could no more wrestle away control of the Void from him than they could destroy gravity or other laws of physics. Call it the Outsider's Law.

Now though, as he looked at the gates he formed to the worlds beyond his homeworld hesitance struck him. Not out of fear, but rather which to go? There were so many interesting worlds at his fingertips, so many place he could head to and have his fun in while he waited for his homeworld to spiral out of control (for though many saw the Void as a force of chaos, it was the other side of the coin that was the Other World. Without its care, the Isles and the other continents would soon find their world much different than expected).

The Outsider considered what he planned to do. Going to a world and declaring himself a god, while exciting, would be far too obvious and would be too forward for his tastes. He'd spent millennia skulking in the shadows of the Other World and he was too used to that to do anything else yet.

He briefly turned his thoughts to what powers he would use. His signature teleporting was a must, and he had access to all of his followers abilities and then some, from Daud's Transversal, to Corvo's Possession, from Delilah's coven abilities, to his favorite Rat Boy's rat swarms. Indeed, he could do any one of those things and more- if he wished to live openly though, with little attention, he needed a place with people as eclectic as him.

Looking through the worlds the Void was connected to, his attentions landed on one where he could feel some sort of power radiating from. The Outsider could tell it was some sort of summoning ritual, and a supernatural being had been called forth. Well, no reason not to at least see what this world was like and if it would be a good fit.

He stepped through the portal, exiting in a room filled with blood and cultists. The scene caught in his throat. How familiar this was scenario was for him.

"Think carefully, for once you make the choice to reject the faith the gates of paradise will forever be closed to you." The Outsider looked at the crow curiously. That was a demon wasn't it. He'd forgotten how odd demons were. And, frankly, how annoying. The Outsider had killed the ones who'd intruded in his home dimension fairly early on.

They were a menace, like the rampant vermin the Outsider often gifted his followers control over. No matter how he warned them, these demons kept interfering with his interesting people. And that he couldn't allow. Besides, he still had a fondness for humans and to see them erased like that didn't sit right with him.

The crow demon was talking to a young boy, the one on the sacrificial table. Much like the Outsider thousand of years prior, this boy was being sacrificed for some reason, but this time it was about to backfire on his tormentors. The boy the demon was trying to eat looked at the being with scorn, "Do you think one of the faith would have summoned a being like you?"

"I'll ask one more time- do you wish to from a contract with me-?"

The Outsider decided to interfere at this moment, "Well if you ask me, I wouldn't." The two beings looked at him startled, neither having realized he was there. The Outsider walked over the feathers lying around, before teleporting to the boy's side.

He stopped time for a moment, taking the time to look over what his gift of foresight told him. He didn't have perfect prophecy and know what exactly humans would do, but he could see what possibilities the future held. From them, he could glean what had happened to someone in their past. This boy's last few months of captivity made the Outsider pause. To be so terribly treated at such a young age…. He re-started time.

"Hello, Ciel. Life has taken quite the turn for you, hasn't it? Parents dead, forced into slavery and bought like cattle. Branded by your tormentors- now here you are, on the cusp of changing the world, or at least your country, in big ways. In this moment you were destined to lose something- be it your life or your soul." The Outsider straightened, casting a cold glance at the demon.

"However, I do hate demons, so I decided to interfere with fate. Our souls are quite precious aren't they? I lost my humanity long ago and I can tell you its much less fun than you'd expect." Ciel was quietly staring at him in shock as the demon was glaring at him.

"I came to the boy first." The demon growled at him, his form seemingly shifting for half a second.

The Outsider barely spared him a glance. "Perhaps, but then he'd lose his soul. A sad fate for anyone, and so uninteresting. How better would it be to see how you react when given power over your fate," He said to Ciel now.

"What do you mean?" The boy demanded. "Are you not a demon?"

The Outsider chuckled, "I'm sorry, I never did introduce myself. I am the Outsider, and one does not need to sacrifice their souls' for power. Not if the power is freely given. Consider this a contract of entertainment- because watching how this plays out will be most interesting."

He paced around the prone boy, "And no, I am no demon, a worm of a being that predictably preys off humans like a parasite for millennia. I'm offering you a way out because I find you interesting- unlike him who sees you as food."

Ciel's eyes searched the Outsider's own; though his were only endless pits of darkness, it oddly seemed to comfort the boy more. That only piqued the Outsider's already large interest in the boy.

"I accept your offer Outsider! Take my pain and etch it into my soul - prove that I am alive!" The boy practically roared.

The demon was furious now at losing a contract for such a good (as in good for demons to eat) soul and transformed into his human form, attempting to rush the Outsider- the demon gasped as a burst of wind blasted him away from the god, throwing him into the wall. The Outsider scoffed at him, and waved his hand.

Ciel cried out in pain as his hand was branded with the Outsider's mark. The pain proved to be too much for the boy and he blacked out. Well, that was unexpected. Usually the people he branded at least stayed awake, though the boy was in no good condition for this so he supposed he shouldn't have been too surprised.

It appeared the Outsider was going to have to do this himself. He looked around at the cultists he'd frozen in time and rolled his eyes. The Outsider wasn't going to try and understand why they were doing this- while some would think it would be interesting, in the end there are so many reasons you may want to sacrifice a child..

It didn't matter. In the end, they weren't interesting, and he needed to get his…. Hm, what relationship should he have with the boy. He didn't want to be as aloof as he'd been in his other world- because honestly, he'd already been doing that for millennia, it wasn't as interesting as staying with the boy in some official role. Perhaps he'd be the boy's guardian?

Whatever he was to the boy, he needed his newest distraction alive still. Within moments, thousands of rats overran the entirety of the cultists' base, ripping and tearing at flesh. He usually was not a fan of the easy path of killing, but he knew that no version of these cultists future left them escaping alive. Either by his hand or the demons', they would die. This way at least he could deny the demon their souls.

The Outsider gathered the boy into his arms before giving the demon, who'd finally recovered, a cold and hateful look exchanged between the two, "Do not come near him. I will let you live this one time but I've killed thousands of you before- I can and will do it again."

With that, the Outsider walked into the Void to quickly "warp" himself and Ciel to somewhere he could recover.

It was a good while later, when the boy woke up with a start, screaming and thrashing. The Outsider looked at him curiously- what was wrong? He walked over to him and Ciel whimpered as if he couldn't see him but rather his tormentors, murmuring something along the lines of, "Don't touch me!" The Outsider was…. Sort of at a lost.

He was a four thousand year old being that had dwelt primarily in solitude in the Void. Human interaction was admittedly not his strong point, and comforting children even more so. It seemed so out of character.

He really needed to decide what he wanted to do in this world. He'd spent so long being a puppet master- or rather, an instigator, for making everything follow his will would be boring. But here he was with a boy who'd he'd promise to give the power to change his destiny. He'd already defended the boy from a demon at that.

The whole point of this was to do something he wasn't used to, to try something new and different, and in a way…. What better way to do that than to actually try and form a relationship beyond just delivering the occasional monologue?

The Outsider tried to remember anything from his human life four millennia ago. He sat down next to the boy and called out to him, trying to draw him from the depths of his nightmares with his voice.

After a few stressful minutes of trying to do something, Ciel broke from his terror with a start. He was disoriented, obviously having fearfully thought he was trapped in his old cage. But when Ciel looked into his eyes, clarity suddenly entered the boy, "O-Outsider…."

With a grunt, Ciel tried to sit up only to stop and blush. The Outsider's head cocked to the side when he saw that. Why was the boy blushing- oh of course, The Outsider only had a blanket to cover him with. He supposed for humans being naked was an embarrassment.

"I am glad you are awake Ciel. You were trapped in that trauma- sad, but understandable for one in your position." He said, standing once again. Ciel shifted the blanket so it would more easily cover himself while he sat there and talked with the Outsider.

"W-Where are we?" Ciel asked, suddenly having gained awareness of the warped landscape of the world around him.

The Outsider hummed, "This is the Void, where I usually reside- another way to think of it is that you are in my true self. The form some humans deemed The Outsider is but a physical avatar I use to interact with the mortal plane. I am the Void and the Void is me."

Ciel suddenly looked like he wasn't sure if he should be uncomfortable or not. Being naked in a dimension that a god just said was an extension of himself would do that to a person. "I-I see. We will go back to my world though?"

"Of course. I merely was giving you a chance to recover here before we continue." The outsider shrugged.

"We?" The boy looked at him calculatingly, "You are joining me?"

The Outsider gave him a smile that he prayed to…. Well he supposed himself, wasn't creepy, "Of course. You have my attention and I desire to help you change your destiny- and it admittedly gets…. Lonely here, all by oneself." Really the word he would use is 'boring' but in a way, being bored and being lonely weren't that different from one another.

Ciel was surprised by this, and mulled it over. "Well you'll need a name. I cant just call you 'The Outsider' in my world," Ciel said with a smirk, as the idea was admittedly a bit funny.

The Outsider nodded, "Fair enough. But I have no name except that which has been given to me by humans. So, as the human I'm so interested in, what do you wish to call me?"

The boy thought for a moment, thinking, "Sebastian."

The Outsider inwardly winced. His ability of foresight let him see the possibilities the universe could (and in other dimensions did) go. Knowing that would've been the same name he would give the demon was annoying, but he could work with it.

"Perhaps something slightly different- how about Bastiaan? Its basically just a shortened version of that name." He suggested.

Ciel thought about it and nodded, "I like it. Now how are we going to explain your relationship to me? You cannot simply tell people you're a.. god that has deigned to follow me around." He snorted in amusement.

Bastiaan tilted his head, "Hm, you are rather clever. Or perhaps years without human interactions has dulled my ability to predict their responses more than I thought. Regardless, yes, hm…." Bastiaan considered what his options could be, "Tell me, was your father an only child?"

The boy across from him looked up in surprise, "Y-Yes? He was, why?"

"If your grandparents are dead as well, we could easily claim I am an uncle of yours, a child of the Phantomhive family that did not want to be part of the duties involved with the Phantomhive estate." Bastiaan explained thinking, "I then heard of the tragedy that had befallen my brother and I hurried to try and find my kidnapped nephew. Eventually I managed to find you and brought you back home."

Ciel was considering that, "Hm, that could work- wait…. What did you mean, home?" He asked curiously, "the manor was burning to the ground was it not?"

Bastiaan waved that aside, "I could always craft a section of the void to function as the interior of a house- a house that the average guest does not realize is bigger on the inside than the outside. Or, if you wanted, I could recreate your home for you."

The avatar of the void could see Ciel consider it before shaking his head slowly, "Though there are things I wish to recover from my home, it would pointless to try and create something that is gone. If I cling to the past like that…. My desire for selfish revenge and fear of death was what almost made me sell myself to a demon. Fostering such sentiments will do me no good"

Smiling, Bastiaan nodded, "I am impressed Ciel. You could have said you wanted your mansion back, clinging to something you could never recover. So many men have before you when thrown into this position. Putting it behind you may not change the past but it will let you evaluate yourself honestly. Besides, the Phantomhives did not end with your parents."

Ciel nodded, resolved not to recreate what he had lost to the fire, a bit more confident, "True. I have the duties of the family to carry out but- I can do more than that. I could make a company, I could become successful in my own right." The Boy declared proudly as Bastiaan smiled.

"You will need it as you lost quite a bit in the fire. Hopefully your parents were not foolish enough to store everything in one place." Bastiaan said solemnly, "Even if they didn't however, it may take time to recover everything; a business sounds like a wonderful way to retain your noble and monied status."

The boy was quiet. It was quite a lot to take in for any child. "I don't know if I will ever get the images out of my head. The guilt of surviving. The guilt of failing my parents and the children I was locked up with," Ciel murmured quietly, distracted.

Bastiaan moved over to Ciel and sat next to him. He knew he was of some comfort to the boy, his inhumanity somehow giving Ciel strength, "Rivers change course over many lifetimes, and eventually all bridges tumble down. Over that time, I find it strange how there's always a little more innocence left to lose. The road you've chosen won't be easy. But then again, how rare it is to find something that's truly good for you easily."

He looked at Ciel, who was watching him with wide eyes. He hummed before continuing, "Consider how easy it is to kill. When faced with men attempting to take your life, with men as cruel as the ones you've faced, how easy is it to simply kill them. You will have no sympathy for them, for the cruelty they've inflicted, the terror they've induced. You and many others could argue it was best for society."

"But," Bastiaan mused, "Consider how much harder it is to stick to the path of peace. To defend yourself, you must avoid a simple stab. Either knocking them out or through the cleverness of your words. One is easy and instinctive- the other requires conviction and determination. As a being that has seen the rise and fall of civilizations, I can tell you – the easy way is rarely the best thing for you."

"But they deserve it." Ciel said, confused and baffled. Was Bastiaan truly advocating mercy for abusers and murderers?

"If we were all held to what we deserve, you would not have been captured and tortured and they would've died for their other various crimes long ago," Bastiaan said with a shrug. "The world is not always fair nor a giver of what people deserve. But that is what allows humans to rise above their base nature. Allows them to be interesting."

A whale floating through the expanse almost distracted Ciel but his attention was soon riveted back on the god, "The idea of mercy is that Death is the worst punishment a man can endure, not because they are dead but because they can no longer seek salvation. A truly repentant man deserves the opportunity to turn from his sins, something Death does not allow. Killing is as much selfish as it is easy, for you deny them that opportunity. You place your opinion as the decider as to whether society can benefit from their existence- it sounds very selfish in those terms does it not?"

Ciel thought about what Bastiaan had said, eventually musing, "I don't agree that they shouldn't die for what they've done…. But I suppose I can see your point. Though I fear death, what I will endure over my life as a result of this could've been just as bad- I could've lost my soul. To no longer have the option to correct my mistakes, that is equally terrifying," Ciel said, the idea causing a shudder to run through him.

Bastiaan stood abruptly, "Indeed. Though while we can debate philosophy all we want, I believe we should clothe you. Then… well you have a better idea than me about that," He said, making his eyes turn into a normal human's eyes, a brilliant and striking blue.

Ciel stood up, carefully wrapped in his blanket to avoid exposure. He looked Bastiaan in the eyes before saying with complete seriousness and sincerity, "I like the other eyes better." As Ciel walked away, Bastiaan mentally was taken by surprise and left laughing.

Perhaps having a relationship with this boy would turn out much better than he had thought.

They ended up pilfering some more common clothes for Ciel instead of the super fancy threads he had been used to. A set of trousers, socks, shoes, and plain long-sleeved white shirt that had a couple buttons near the top with a vest over it. Bastiaan even found a newsie cap which he pulled over Ciel's head snugly, leaving the boy grumbling but accepting of the hat.

"I hope the commoner clothing is nothing too terrible for you Ciel." He said, double checking to make sure Ciel pulled it all on correctly. He knew the boy was unused to the ways of being a commoner, but it was a hurdle the boy would have to conquer.

"Tell me again why I must do this?" Ciel sighed, not entirely happy with the way the clothes fit him or the material they were made of.

Bastiaan smiled, "Besides the obvious fact that it is far less noticeable than living in a mansion? You are considered dead by your enemy most likely. Or at the very least out of their hair. Maintaining secrecy as long as possible is best in the long turn."

The two began walking down the street side by side; Ciel took his turn to speak, "We should get an apartment then. If you could then use your Void abilities to expand it we can use that as a base of operations." He proposed.

Bastiaan nodded, hands behind his back as he walked. "I will need to gather some staff in that case. People I can trust to keep our secret, both as protection but also for keeping the place tidy. I am no butler by any stretch of the term." He said somewhat sheepishly, some of his old human emotions being dragged up by living as a human.

Ciel smirked, "I suppose you are not. Perhaps we should have forced that demon to serve us." He laughed lightly, the sound musical despite the sad undertones.

"I would have been tempted to kill him every time I looked at him. I doubt I could have held myself back after so long," Bastiaan said with a small laugh, the action not something he was used to. When had he actually last laughed? Walking around as a human with this boy was affecting him more than he thought.

He took a moment to look through the alternate futures Ciel could've walked down and who his servants would've been. Bastiaan's eyes landed on one boy, whose hair had been shaved off and experimented on. This world certainly enjoyed its tragedies.

"I believe I know who your first servant will be. Shall we go pick them up?" Bastiaan spoke up and asked Ciel.

The boy nodded, making sure his hat was on as he smirked at the god, "Of course, uncle."

Bastiaan let out a bark of laughter and they disappeared.

Thanks for reading, please review if you enjoyed it or have suggestions for this story!