The past few days have been trying.
The Outsider has always fantasized about material existence-- maybe more so in the past centuries than in the beginning, when they first cut his throat and cloaked him in nothingness. At least then he could remember what it was like. He has been more... connected in the past decades than he has in a long time, and hovering over the footsteps of the Marked gave him ample opportunity to imagine what it would be like. ‘It’ being anything-- to feel paint or blood on his hands, to stand in a busy crowd and feel the press of sound and bodies, to feel the sway of a boat underneath his feet. He could simulate these things, summoning mirages of them in the Void, but-- he knows all too well now-- it isn’t the same.
The constancy of the physical world is exhausting. The itch of fabric against his skin at all times, the humidity of the air, the scrapes on his arms and feet from the ocean floor: sensation tugs at his attention every second, relentlessly, and the fact that it doesn’t seem to bother anyone else disconcerts him. He has asked, before, what it is like to be real-- to have a body, and form, and warmth; no one he has asked, not Corvo or Delilah or Vera or any of the others, has ever told him that it feels like a plague of buzzing flies.
This makes him suspect it may be a personal problem. He’s not sure if that makes him feel better or worse: maybe, he hypothesizes, it will get better.
He certainly has no plans to leave. From the conversations he’s had, he seems to be alone in that view.
The Outsider has been sleeping-- a few hours awake, then asleep, then awake once more-- and that experience is just as novel as every other. The stinging at his attention, the picking at his thoughts, has calmed enough for him to think once more. He is curled up in his bed in the dark, locked away from any more ambushes (he’s expecting Delilah next, if his luck holds).
A bowl is in his lap, full of bits and pieces of an orange’s skin as he pulls it apart with one hand, and his holophone is propped against his knee. Over the course of the past twelve hours or so (at least the waking parts), he’s managed to get the hang of the swishing and flicking gestures, and the relationships of the pages and boxes to one another. He’s stunned by the amount of information compiled; he could spend weeks picking through it all.
He taps his way through a list of topics: maps, guidebooks, housing-- and when he selects housing, the screen lights up with names. That makes him sit up. He pops a piece or orange into his mouth, and carefully works through the list. He recognizes almost none of them-- but the names he does recognize make his pulse quicken. There’s Emily, of course-- and Billie, downstairs in his very own building. He hadn’t realized.
The Outsider hovers over Daud’s name, hesitating for some reason he’s not sure of, like he might smudge it out with his thumb, or fill the screen with the name. When he finally thumbs the list further down, his heart turns over in his throat.
Corvo Attano, Palilicium 6th floor.
The Outsider stares at the name for several long seconds-- for a moment he’s not sure if he can trust his eyes-- but finally he drops the holophone on the bed. The light of its smooth surface goes dim.
He pulls his knees up to his chest, leaning back against the headboard, and pops another piece of orange into his mouth thoughtfully.
The Sea of Crises is ambivalent about the weather this morning. (The Outsider only discovered that it was morning after heading out to the train; filtered through the seawater surrounding his room, the dawn light is almost indifferentiable from the darkness. He must have been napping on and off since sunset.)
The sun and rainclouds grapple with each other overhead, with a chilly wind biting past the thin gray sunlight. The Outsider is thankful to have dressed in layers, with some experimental pieces he bought while exploring the Sea of Nectar-- a buttoned black shirt, a dark hooded sweater, some denim trousers. (Half his clothes have been soiled by sand or seawater, and while he suspects there is a means of cleaning them, he has had more pressing concerns.)
He is not exactly trying to disguise himself, even with the hood pulled up over his head, but he supposes that if Daud didn’t recognize him at a glance, it would not be unlucky. He will be seeing Daud again soon enough; there’s no need to cause a scene in the lobby of the Palilicium. Although, he thinks, as he finds his way through the winding burgundy hallways to one of the iron and dark-wood elevators, a murder would not be out of place here.
The Outsider makes it to the sixth floor-- or rather, past the fourth floor, and Daud’s chambers-- unscathed.
He has not devoted much thought to what he intends to say.
But when it comes to Corvo, his plans and expectations have never mattered much.
One of the doors has Corvo’s name embossed above it, glimmering gold in the twilight that shrouds the hallways here. The Outsider knocks, twice.
