Outsider

The Outsider

The Outsider had been... confused at first (honestly he still was if he thought too much about it. So he didn’t if he could help it) but he’d learned that denying the Stranger only made them more determined in their convictions. He’d tried to dissuade them from entertaining his company at first (honestly stepping in when he’d been mobbed had been more than anything he’d expected. Kindness didn’t come freely in Arkham. No one stuck their neck out for another when the ones wielding the ax cared only for bloodshed, after all. He could have waved it away as a fluke, a dying ember of humanity and compassion and double middle fingers to society. A one-time hiccup. But they’d kept following him, chasing off the crowds when they ventured too close like some kind of rabid poodle. It shouldn’t have been charming). Regardless of his well reasoned arguments, the Stranger only stuck closer to his side out of… spite? To prove they could? A twisted sense of responsibility? There was no point trying to rationalize it, was there? Everyone in Arkham was insane. One way or another. He’d mostly accepted the fact that he’d garnered the undivided (and quite frankly intense) attention of the strangest and most alien creature he’d ever stumbled across. And he’d seen strangeness. Bloated corpses dragging themselves from even more bloated, grey water. Thick, slimy tendrils oozing across the shoreline, slapping across abandoned sand, seeking the faintest hint of warmth. Grey flesh buzzing with flies and maggots left to rot in the perpetual twilight. Bandages sticking to gaping, pus-filled wounds and the stench of sickness and decay. Hateful eyes, cataracted and grey, glaring from behind dusty crates and alleyways. Grey on grey. Washed Out. Bled out. Drained. Decaying. Dead and dying. He’d seen humanity fracture and crumble and cannibalize itself, and he’d stood as an outsider to all of that splintering chaos and felt fear, primal and sharp, beat against his mind and threaten to drag him down into shards of bleeding glass. He’d been swept up, drowned, in the madness, swept away by the fear, hatred, rage of it all that it’d been a miracle he found himself at all. Not that miracles happened in Arkham; there were no gods left to smile. And that was fine. The gods he’d met had not been inclined to smile, even before. A grimace perhaps, if fate was feeling magnanimous. But never a smile.

And yet the Stranger smiled at him.

Bright and blinding as the sun never could be anymore and perhaps tinged with a hint of madness. But genuine in its rawness nonetheless. He was… intrigued. Nearly enamored. Even as he melted into their shadow and followed their footsteps (he’d never been one to garner attention and how was the night to overshadow the sun?) he found himself perplexed by their respendence. They glowed as they traveled the grey streets, the fractured light behind their eyes tempered and tested against the abyss and all the more enticing because of it.

They had stared into the abyss and walked away with a sliver of their humanity. And they stood in the midst of the tide and reached out a hand to pull him from the tide. They had called him kin and had, somehow, managed to reach the small ember buried in his soul and feed the fading hope within. They had given him back purpose and intrigue and he studied them, trying to understand.

The Stranger smiled more than anyone trapped in Arkham. A baring of teeth that was a blatant threat. A sly upward tilt that left merchant pockets significantly lighter. A blank neutrality that distracted from the hollow eyes above. He’d seen them all at one point. But he’d never seen that soft amusement (the one he received the rare moments he drifted closer to pose a question) directed at anyone else.

The one he understood was the one that crept across their face when they were in combat. It was wild. Unhinged. Challenging the world to try and strike them down and reveling in the simple pleasure of surviving. He’d seen that look flash across their face when they stumbled across a wayward merchant trying to peddle off stolen goods.

They’d recognized the name carved into the knife’s blade; they’d been there when its owner drew it on them not even a fortnight before. They’d talked the youth down, helped him clear out a pack of feral dogs, and parted as almost-friends. Potential allies.

But the world was hell and not everyone made it to tomorrow. The Stranger had given him a casual hand sign to stay alert and turned that dangerous smile upon the unsuspecting merchant. The Outsider faded into the background and started to snoop.

Nothing was immediately wrong, but there was something clearly wrong. Whatever it was, didn’t matter in the end as the merchant’s last and fatal mistake had been a muttered curse as he caught sight of the Outsider. He’d managed to half draw his pistol before that curse died in his throat. He sputtered, breath bubbling up and foaming and dripping past purpling lips. Then the pistol slipped from his fingers to thud against the ashen earth. It wasn’t even worth taking and was probably still lying in that forgotten spit of land.

The Stranger merely tilted their head, eyes flinty, as a grin split open their face. It shouldn’t have eased the tension in his shoulders, there was a still-warm body in the dirt between them, but it did. Conflict was uncertain and even he wasn’t immune to a flintlock. To have so efficiently neutralized a threat… it was priceless, this contract bought and sealed by blood. They were allies now. They weren’t alone anymore. They’d both fought and bled to carve out a sense of normalcy and not even hell itself could move them now.

He finally had a place he belonged.