Part I: A New Breath of Life

Chapter I


"I see… t-that there are no choices left…"

The Outsider had seen all possibilities, and each led to his demise, like this one. For this, he was secretly grateful. The pain and suffering over thousands of years had numbed him, and yet he still longed for a release from the Void which had taken him hostage, bending him to its will, to be its caretaker, its hand, its meddler, its mischievous god.

And yet Billie Lurk had chosen a rare possibility: one where The Outsider tasted life again, like sweet candy on his tongue, melting at a leisurely pace and leaving a strange stickiness at the back of his throat. It amused him beyond all end, he'd like to think, that a human would choose to free a god. Slowly, agonizingly slow, she caressed his face, each finger carving out its own path down the granite, gently, his terrified eyes locked on some unseen terror in the distance.

"After everything I've done, everything it's taken me to get my ass to the Void… And you're not even some horror that I have to face. You're at my mercy… but you've always been at the mercy of bad people, haven't you?"

Billie's words stung in The Outsider's ears, watching from a distance and yet never able to step a foot closer. Something about her actions, whichever path she chose to take, took his breath away, leaving curious, painted eyes to watch from afar. This was The Outsider's last interest, his last game, his last piece to play. Now, Billie Lurk was playing hers. Well, Billie? What are you going to choose?

With a step back, the woman clutched her prosthetic, Void-gifted arm over her new eye, trying to feel what she could not. Instead, only the reverberations of stone against stone, metal against metal resounded in her ears. Billie's dark eyes scanned over the imprisoned Sacrifice, holding her breath as she calculated what she would do next. In an instance of weakness, she decided.

"I've seen what you've wanted me to see, you black-eyed bastard, but…" Billie glanced away, letting her flesh hand drop from his face. Still, he screamed silently as he had been for all of his eternity, awaiting her answer. "You don't deserve this-No one deserves this." She looked away and towards Daud. His ghostly form flickered at her gaze, almost in shame, almost in embarrassment, tendrils of the Void licking up his sides and caressing him.

Turning away from the Sacrifice, Billie approached Daud, her worn and tired boots clopping on voidstone, each step reverberating on the still air around her. Was it even air? Was this even real? Everything here was so foreign to her, so ghostly, so cold. It was almost like a dream-a dream she wasn't ready to wake up from. She had a duty to carry out-Daud's last dying wish-and she was going to finish what she'd started whether she liked it or not. "Daud."

His eyes never lifted from his hands. They sat folded on his thighs, flickering like a broken projection. "Billie." Daud was no longer Daud. He was broken; He was lost.

But Billie sensed that Daud was more than that: The way his yellowed teeth ground, his pale lips quivered, and his dead eyes flicked along the age-old lines running over his ghostly flesh. Daud wanted revenge, and he wanted Billie to take it for him.

"What are you doing here, old man?" To Billie, it was a simple question, but to Daud it was more than that-it was rhetorical. It hit him like a punch in the gut.

"I accepted The Outsider's Mark like a greedy rat child," his rugged voice croaked, self-hatred flickering in his eyes. "I ran the rivers red with guilty and innocent blood alike. I did it for coin, Billie, with his Mark. I murdered an Empress for my old selfish desires, beginning a tale as dark as time itself. I killed Dunwall, Billie, with his help."

Billie understood where he was coming from. She had been full of her own hatred for the same reasons, for the same selfishness. "You did it to survive, Daud. The Whalers needed your guidance."

"The Whalers were blinded by me! You were blinded by me! It's all-! It's all his fault." Slowly, his flickering eyes slithered over to rest on the rigid form of the Sacrifice. "It's your final assignment from me, Billie Lurk. Kill The Outsider. Make sure he feels it."

"I won't."

Daud glanced up with malice, an electrical shiver rushing down Billie's spine. Their eyes were interlocked, and she found that she was unable to pry away. "And why not, Lurk?"

There was only one other time that he'd looked at her similarly, his eyes carmine with contempt and hurt. She'd regretted everything leading up to that decision that day, and she'll be making up for her guilt with the rest of her miserable life. He was the father figure she'd never had, and she'd betrayed him to a witch, to Delilah of all people, and for what? Even now she didn't know, but this time was different.

This time she didn't hesitate, even as his rat eyes bored down on her and judged. "Look at him, Daud-really look! He didn't ask for this-didn't ask for any of it." There was another way to end all of this. Daud just had to be convinced.

But the old assassin wasn't buying into her cheap card trick. With a disgruntled grunt, Daud twisted his apparition of a body, taking a long, uninterested glance at the Sacrifice, his upper lip turned up in disgust. All he saw was a god of mischief, ripe for the picking. He wanted to see The Outsider's blood stain the stone he was pinned to. It would make for a good end to his malevolent reign.

"Kill him, Billie," he drawled, the heat in his eyes seeping away as slowly as the last minutes of his life. "He doesn't have to beg for death in order for you to give it to him." In almost slow motion, Daud reached for the ancient artifact, his cold fingers pressing softly against the ice of the blade. It hummed at his touch, throbbing in the presence of the Void. This is where it belonged.

Billie didn't move, or even try to. Instead, she watched Daud with frosted eyes, regret bubbling underneath her expression of stone. She couldn't do as he asked. "He's suffering, Daud."

"Aren't we all?" His replies were more lazy, more drawn-out. His resolution was wavering, Billie saw, but it would take a bit more to convince him.

"Perhaps," she replied, softly, her flesh hand rising to his shoulder. To no surprise, it slid through his ghostly form like butter. He was cold, she thought numbly, much too cold. His lugubrious expression didn't help much to sooth matters, either.

Daud turned to her, his eyes flashing with an emotion Billie couldn't read, lips pursed. Still, he sat on his rigid island of resolution, unwilling to stand to the task that Billie wished of him. Why wouldn't she do it, if not for him but for the world? The Outsider was a plague to humanity, to the generations to come and to the generations that came before. It's about time that his meddling ended, Daud thought, but doubt had already began to eat away at him. He saw Billie's hand twitch near the ancient blade before willing it away, unable to trust herself to hold such a devastating weapon. He saw this and more, the Void allowing him insight only in that moment.

"You're difficult, Billie, but I guess there's no talking you out of it." When Daud stood, Billie watched the bloodlust swirl away, replaced by silent recognition. It was as if the husk of the bloodfly had peeled off, revealing something much more vulnerable underneath, if she prodded further. Almost immediately, she felt relieved. Why? She wasn't certain. The Outsider had pleaded to her without pleading, begged without begging, and she'd received him. Whether or not he'd tricked her had yet to be seen, but there was no turning back now.

She could feel his painted eyes boring into her back, watching her every move. He was near-nearer than she might have originally thought. The Outsider was always watching… even at his own funeral.

Daud sauntered toward the Sacrifice, his flickering, frosted eyes focused on nothing but the stone man's silent scream. This was the only way Billie would fulfill him, Daud knew. If he didn't do this, then Billie would leave, and The Outsider would be allowed to continue his mischievous reign.

"Ahh, Daud," The Outsider, appearing in a flurry of the Void, murmured in amusement, his head cocked to the side as he caressed his own frozen face, expression as stony as always. "You'll set me free, won't you? You were such an interesting Marked. I watched you murder for coin for decades, and you enjoyed it."

"Have your damned name," Daud growled, form flickering in a cacophony of black and white light, tones flickering and flashing all at once. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

"You hate me," the deity murmured, black eyes sliding over the assassin's face and toward Billie, locking on her expression, watching for cracks in the stone of her face. There were no weaknesses-at least, none that he could exploit.

Daud said nothing, his eyes revealing all.

"Then speak my name, Daud. Whisper it so I may be no more than a man, cursed to walk among the people I've seen only from afar, never allowed to touch." At once, The Outsider was gone, but never truly gone. Billie could still feel the intense burn of the watchful eyes. "Give me peace like Billie shall give you." It was his final request.

Before Daud could change his mind, he leaned forward, lips only inches from the Sacrifice's ear, and spoke the forgotten name.

It was over. Daud straightened and turned toward Billie, eyes stygian yet accepting. His fate was near. "Billie."

"Daud."

And then he was gone in a flash of light, the Sacrifice's stone face flaking to reveal The Outsider's face, boyish in nature, gasping for breath after four-thousand years of nothing but pain and death. Billie caught him in her arms, his legs noodle-like and unable to support his own weight for the moment. She watched in wonder as the black paint in his eyes peeled away, revealing pale green emeralds flicking about in uncertainty.

"I… I can taste blood in my mouth." He paused, inhaling deeply, his lungs still caked in stale air. "These eyes were closed for centuries… and yet I saw everything. I walked through the minds of generations. I've seen it all, and yet… to breathe, to no longer be on the outside looking in, it feels…" He never finished his poem.

Billie helped him back to his feet, almost stumbling herself. "I can take you out of here," she said to him, pressing a hand on his shoulder to keep him steady. "What is… No, what do I call you?" It must be strange, knowing what you know, seeing with old eyes all the secrets of the world. We've both seen the worst in people's hearts.

But in the end, I gave Daud peace, and maybe you can find some peace too.

"My name?" he mumbled, blinking the new eyes that had been gifted to him. They no longer held the universe, the cosmos. They held nothing but his own soul, and that somehow left him feeling much more content than he'd felt for a long time. "My name is Adonis."

The irony made his lips twitch.


AUTHOR NOTES

Hello! Welcome, welcome all! I'm excited to begin another story, as I was itching to write it. If you're wondering, I chose Adonis from Greek mythology for his 'beauty and desire' and also for the fact that he is categorized as a dying-and-rising god, as he was the mortal lover of Aphrodite before he was gored by an ox. I thought that it suited The Outsider very nicely… Also, as for the inspiration behind the name, I was thinking on the theme of self-reflection, and then I remembered the game mode, Discovery Tour, in Assassin's Creed Origins. It just felt so perfect!