Death Defying

Once upon a time there was Space, and there was Time, and there was Void.

Three beings of the most immense of power. For every step, they took the place they had found themselves born into grew another step bigger. Each moment they were there the strands of seconds and minutes weaved itself together into a ticking rhythm that only they could hear. Each breath they took was consumed by nothingness and darkness.

They didn’t talk. They didn’t need to. There was just Void and Time and Space. It was like that for a long time. The three walking, with only each other for company and the relentless emptiness they made.

Time went on, Space made its way through, and Void just watched it all. Calm. Peaceful. Boring. Empty.

Until it wasn’t.

One moment there was just Space and Void and Time. And the next there was Life.

So small and weak and fragile as the first things, tiny incredible wriggling things were birthed on some insignificant bit of solid matter that Space had played with and so callously threw away an eternity ago. The three entities for the first time in a long time stopped their aimless journey to crouch and watch these things in a manner of awe. A little form like them, looking so tiny and weak and fragile, with soft features in contrast to their own hardened, angular ones, watched the trio equally as curious.

Space with his hands gestured at the strange new sight as if to ask, ‘Did you do this?’

Life, because that was the other’s name, they knew it even without asking, gave a quick bob of the head. A sign of an affirmative.

Time let out a puff of breath, eager and impatient to see these new forms grow. To all of their dismay, all but two shriveled up and stopped moving entirely. Void sighed and bent down closer to the unmoving things, ready to poke them awake but thin hands of white got there first.

Void looked up and faltered. Space and Time had taken a step back at the appearance of the newcomer. Life made a stifled noise that soon the entities would know as grief.

Death knelt down, picking up the corpses in his hands and squeezed.

The first thing he thought when he opened his eyes was, ‘The colors were too loud.’

The second thing he thinks is, ‘There’s something awfully wrong here.’

There is no third thing. Instead, it’s the feeling of dawning horror and betrayal as he remembers what had happened, what has been done, who have cast him from his pedestal of blood and bone. There is pain and empty hollowness that echoes and gnaws inside him and he doesn’t understand. Doesn’t understand why he’s woken in the first place, doesn’t understand where he is, doesn’t understand why he feels.. less of himself.

It’s the confusion that leads to fear, and it overwhelms him. It rises and crashes onto him as he fails to comprehend what has happened to him. Consuming him. There is not much room for thought for a while.

The soft microscopic squelch in the hands of this small entity pierced the empty silence painfully. When he opened his hand there were the broken remains of what had been living and two faint pinpricks of light.

Slowly, gently, hesitantly Death held out the small lights out to Life, who took it curious and wary at once. The older trio watched the exchange fascinated. Life tentatively cupped the small orbs in her hands, covering them up with her fingers before once again unveiling two funny looking squirmy things.

Death makes a face, confusion and slight disgust at what had happened to his pretty lights. Life smiles, a soft huffing sound comes from her mouth. Space silently offers more compressed matter to the smaller beings, and Time lets the matter age quickly and eagerly. Void watches on, indulgent.

He’s in a house. Human-made he assumes. Life would have enjoyed the irony of such a punishment. Forcing her own brother to be shackled to a hated mortal’s living quarters like some common waylaid spirit. The humor would be obvious if it wasn’t so crushing. Like ripping open a rib cage to rub the gaping wound with salt and lemons before setting it on fire.

It’s a nice house though. He’s not sure if this is considered standard or extravagant or even lower class in this particular universe but at least they had the decency not to let him wake in a dump or a wasteland or anything like that. Small mercies. He’ll have to remember that the next time he sees his fellow entities. Won’t stop him from exacting his vengeance but he’ll be quick about it. Merciless but not brutal.

Last time he was too soft. Too sentimental with the beings that were as close to a ‘family’ as it got. Too weak handed. Next time he won’t make the same mistake.

It became something of entertainment to these entities. Growing and building. Breaking and killing. Again and again and again.

Solid matter turned to rocks. Rocks turned to larger rocks. And so on and so on until they became planets.

They made balls of flames to decorate the darkness and scattered them across the void, they called them stars, and in between the stars and planets and matter, they let Space reign. Gasses upon gasses was strung up with a wave of his hand, a light flick to drape water around the bare planets, blank slates of potential for Life and Death to frolic and play. Time coaxing them on.

Life made the little things wriggle and move and live. She was the most beloved of the five as she was the one who gave breath to the most fascinating of creatures. Death was the silent counterpart to Life, trailing behind as he left a mess of destruction and corpses, picking and choosing the unsuitable ones to take from, with Void not too far behind to clean it up.

Void was the one who was closest to Death. Both were cast in the same black nothingness, covered by the same darkness, hollowed by the same empty, gaping hole. It was they that watched from the sidelines as worlds began to grow and life began to flourish and the places where nothingness became something else. They watched creatures of water grow fins and bones, watched as they no longer were of water and soon became beings on the land and the sea.

As Life grew, Death grew. Time grew, and Space grew. It seemed only Void was being left behind. Watching.

Chaos came the moment Life loosened the reigns to her playthings and let them become her sons and daughters. Chaos came like a whirlwind, but nothing quite so meek. The creatures known as dinosaurs were crushed to a fiery, terrible end and life took a great step back from their evolutionary journey. Death fluttered around animatedly trying to pick up all the lights with his pale hands with Void aiding in his unspoken mission without a word whilst Space crudely tried to weave a pocket of extra space just to contain the scattered souls.

Once the destruction came to a halt, Order stepped into existence. Taking one look at the mess and panic and confusion, and in that instant knew his place in the world. Coaxing Life from her grief to once again focus on her creatures, helping Death and Void collect the fallen beings to put into this new, empty universe Space had made, putting out any fires too big and smoothing anything too ruffled. Chaos wasn’t pleased with his handiwork being dismissed in such a manner and quickly the two were always separated, but never too far behind one another.

And once again, the world turned. With everyone but one turning with it.

He walks through the house, thinking thoughts of death and betrayal and victory drenched in blood. He finds his feet moving for him, purposeful with a knowledge that their owner knew nothing of. He doesn’t realize what’s happening until he reaches the end of a hall that opens up to what he thinks is the main entrance room.

He doesn’t know why he’s lead himself here, but he finds himself waiting. He doesn’t have to wait long.

Love came next. And the world became all the more brighter and the more tragic with it.

Space and Time found solace in the familial love they find between entities, they derive happiness in the bonds they have weaved and created that encases them all. Void declares he feels the same way, but no one notices how his eyes linger over one entity over the others. Life fell in love with her children, she was always fond of them but now that fondness pales in comparison as she acquaints herself with the vivid seasonal emotions she harbors. Chaos loved the concept of love, and the destruction it could bring. Order couldn’t help but be fond of the way love brought people together, their clashing unique personalities settling down in a sort of compromised balance over time. Death found a strange respect for those who even he, even death couldn’t part.

Knowledge seemed to have been always there. Watching, observing, but the moment Love spread, even Knowledge could not go unscathed from Love’s grasp and soon joined the others. After all, there is nothing more fascinatingly illogical as love.

A man and a woman walk in. He fights the urge to sneer at the couple but soon realizes that they don’t see him and hence, let’s every single ounce of hatred and disdain show on his usually cold features. Fucking humans. Disgusting suits of flesh and fat that taint the worlds with acrid smoke and oils.

They’re smiling and laughing and cooing in high pitched tones that he hopes were not how they actually sounded like. There’s a bundle in the woman’s arms and he realizes with great disgust that it’s a baby. He walks up to the new family, they barely even shiver at his presence despite him exuding enough power that would bring the strongest angels to their knees, and he looks blandly at the tiny thing they are so engrossed by.

Magic, like all the others, just appeared. A small spark there. An irregularity here. A miracle over there. And with Magic came Fate. Fate who weaved the strands of time, the lives of the living, the love in their hearts, the deaths to come, all into a beautiful story to entertain and manipulate.

And so the world turned.

As expected, it’s squishy looking and gross. It’s squinty eyed and pink, but as he came closer, it opened its eyes looking straight at him. Boring brown eyes.

Unexpectedly he felt almost charmed by it.

Before he even realized it, he was reaching out to try touch the tiny mortal baby. Catching himself midway through the act, he manages to resist, aborting the movement and stepping quickly back. What he did after wasn’t running away though. It was a tactical retreat. He refuses to fall any deeper into whatever sick, twisted traps his so-called ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ have set for him.

The world soon turned into a galaxy. A galaxy turned into a universe. A universe becomes a multiverse, fit with alternatives and what ifs and maybes.

The void of nothingness was slowly being filled by Space and Time and everything in it. Void was getting smaller, weaker. The first to understand it’s mortality. The first to find fear in it.

“I don’t want to die.” He confesses softly. Death sits next to him and carefully doesn’t look at Void in favor of playing with his new favorite toy- his name was Greden, and his soul was as green as the first spring leaf and shimmered gold in the right light.

“No one ever does.” Death says sadly.

“I’m scared.” Void whispers. “What would become of me.”

“You shouldn’t be.” Death replies. His pale bony hands are fiddling with Greden, stretching the soul, laying its story bare before rolling it back into a ball again. He examines Greden until satisfied, and pops it into his mouth. Greden tastes sharp like mint, and sweet like apples, and warm like afternoon sunlight. Death can feel the moment the darkness inside him curls up around Greden and consumes him, takes him apart in every shape and form, reconstructing itself into something else. Something empty and blank. New. “I will take care of you.”

“How?”

Death can feel the new soul in his throat, struggling to get out. It’s struggling to live anew. Pitiful. Hurtful. He coughs it out anyway. It’s white and smooth and beautifully, boringly blank. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Void says. “You are just doing what you were here to do.”

“If it helps,” Death murmurs softly, “I’m scared too.”

Void looks at Death; their eyes are both completely black. The only difference is Void’s eyes are never ending holes of nothingness while Death’s is seas of shadows and darkness. It’s so similar yet not even close to the same.

“We aren’t like the rest of them.” Void whispers, his blackened hand brushing bone white. Death looks down at the contact. “We are different, far greater than any of them. Stronger. I was the beginning, and you will be the end.”

“I know.” Black fingers curl around white ones. Idly Death notes how different their hands are to the humans that seem to thrive on the earths they’ve seen, different to the other entities that seemed to have adapted far more than them. Longer, no nails, pointed at the tips till they look like claws, talons, daggers. “That’s why I’m scared.”

He walks away. He does not go far. It is like he is trapped in this construction, trapped with the human couple and their accursed offspring. He is enraged, and he is stricken with the cruelty of it all but most of all he is scared.

He does not know where he is, how long he has slumbered, what world he is in. Why he is trapped in this place when there were far worse prisons he should have been thrown in, he doesn’t know. What punishments await him. How long must he suffer?

Screaming at nothing and everything and hoping for something, he screams, and he yells, and he wails. His voice does not grow hoarse, and he is incapable of becoming physically weary, but he cannot stand his own shouting being responded with nothing. He is scared and alone and defeated.

In the background, the human baby is crying like there is no tomorrow. And he thinks bitterly to himself that at least someone here can cry where he could not.

“He’s dying.”

Death gazes at the dark form of Void. He’s smaller. Thinner. Just standing in the middle of a barren hole stained red. A war used to be there seconds ago. Now there wasn’t.

“He is.” He agrees.

Time’s face falls for a moment, crumples into something tired and sad at the confirmation. There’s not much to say. The time for Void is running out, slipping like sand through fingers. “He loves you.”

“He does.” He agrees again.

There’s a pause.

“Do you-?” The older entity starts.

“I.. I don’t know.” Death hesitates. “Maybe I do.”

Another pause. It’s longer. Heavier.

“I’m sorry.” Time finally says. Death’s mouth curls upwards in something like a smile, but it’s far more jagged and angry than any smile should be.

“I’m the one who should be saying that.”

He takes weeks to work his rage out, his fear, his denial. It is hard. When he is intangible, and nothing crumbles or breaks with his hand like he is so used too. It makes him angrier, more fearful, his tension grows higher and higher like a caged wildfire that burns hotter and hotter, trying to find something in its wrath to bring destruction to.

But there is nothing for him. The best he can do is punch and stomp the earth he is allowed to stand on, like some petulant child throwing a tantrum. It is humiliating. It is exhausting.

He does not know how he could deal with this absolute helplessness for long.

For now, he needs to forget about his resentment, his hatred, his revenge. His so-called ‘family’ is powerful individually but together, well, it is despairing to say that he will be like this for a while. They could not kill him so trapping him like this, in the slips of different worlds and realms and universes where he can do no harm, it is a smart move.

When he is freed, he will repay them just as intelligently.

But right now he needs to figure out how.

“I love you.”

“You have terrible timing.”

“Will you kiss me?”

“What?”

“I’ve seen those humans do it. It’s a sign of affection. Love.”

“Void...”

“Please. For me.”

Void looks so weak. As everything slowly fleshed out, the entity inversely becomes slowly intangible. It hurts looking at him, well, Death thinks this is what hurt feels like. It’s like the screams of the burning echoing inside his chest and the grating sobs of the bereaved scraping in his head. It’s uncomfortable and instinctively he hates it. Maybe this is hurt. Or maybe this is his love. Maybe to him, it’s supposed to be the same thing.

“Okay.” Death says. “For you.”

Void tastes like the feeling of falling down forever, regretful and scared and unfinished.

The family is called the Fenwicks. There is Stanley Fenwick. Stanley is a policeman and ex-military. He is also very into omelets because every time he is in charge of the morning meal the man seems to be incapable of making anything that doesn’t involve eggs and a saucepan. They don’t even look like very good omelets. When Stanley Fenwick is in charge of the morning meal, there is a relatively strong chance they end up having cereal.

There is Julia Fenwick. She is a stay at home mother who, according to her conversations on the telephone, thinks that Denise is a ‘man-stealing bitch’ and that Kayla, ‘needs to get over the fact that Dennis left her for that woman,’ and that ‘Dennis has gone missing for a suspiciously long time, have you heard any word of him since then?’ and ‘Did you hear that Denise was found dead yesterday? How dreadful, especially with Dennis still missing and all.’

Julia should probably get some new friends. Julia should definitely get some new friends.

“How could you?” Life spits. She’s disgusted and angry at him. Death cannot look at her. He concentrates on the feeling of Void on his lips and the thrum of Void’s being in himself.

Void is, was, something less than nothing. Void is the blackest black, the darkest hue. Death is barely anything to that. Death is shadow and bones and the end. Just a shade lighter, a shade darker, but in the end, they were the same obscure stain in the fabric of everything.

It was inevitable for them to be together. It was what had always been coming.

He still cannot stop feeling emptier than ever before.

“It had to be done.”

And so the world turned.

Then there is Michelle Fenwick. She is a tiny baby, and she enjoys crying, chewing on Mr. Baaap the stuffed sheep, and eerily being able to follow every move he makes.

He stares down at the baby, and the baby stares back. It seems there are exceptions to his invisibility. He’s not exactly happy about it. Babies are useless garbling things that will not help him solve his plight. Babies also take forever to grow into something that does not require another person to change them every time they mess themselves.

“Stop it.” He orders, “Stop looking at me like that. I command you.”

Michelle Fenwick ignores him and very seriously, pushed her hand into her drooling mouth instead.

Humans were the most fascinating creatures. In every single world they seem to manage to form, they were persistent, they were resourceful, and they were resilient.

Squishy and fleshy, no fur, feather, or scale to protect them yet there they stand when true monsters would rise and fall. They were lovers and fighters and scholars and adventurers.

But to Death, most of all, they were killers. Murderers.

He watches them hurt each other, their kin, their blood, their loves and their own selves. He watches their last few moments of their lives, the tears, the heartache, the betrayals, the pain, the hurt, and then it’s gone. It’s gone because Death takes it all away.

He watches them end themselves, end others, end the world they lived on.

He watches them new and reborn, smiling so ignorantly at what was to come.

Death watches and takes, and he heals those broken souls, tarnished and hurt and warped by life. Makes them forget their diseased prejudices, soothes away any illness, takes away any regret or fears that plagued them. In his own way, he is making the world turn, he is doing what he is meant to be doing, and he is integral.

Sometimes though he would look at a blank, white soul and imagine eyes darker than black watching him, seeing him start to doubt.

He sat down in the corner of the living room, watching like how he used to when he had been powerful and invincible and greater than any simple god. But instead of watching blood be shed or bodies fall, he watches the Fenwick couple try and get their child to move its chubby wriggling limbs into something useful, like crawling.

“Come on sweetie.” Julia Fenwick coos. Stanley Fenwick, still wearing his uniform, is clapping ridiculously and making high pitched gibberish noises with his mouth. It is very embarrassing, but they turned off the television, so there was nothing else to watch.

Michelle gurgles amusedly as she watches her parents act even crazier than they usually did around her presence.

“They look like idiots don’t they?” He agrees with Michelle who immediately searches for him as he spoke. It surprises him how easily the infant hones onto him, like a homing missile to a third world country.

“Oh look, Stanley, she’s crawling! She’s doing it!” The woman exclaims loudly as her husband fumbles for the camera in a manner that doesn’t bode well for the safety of whatever precinct he works in. Michelle, in a look of intense concentration, was slowly making the correct movements for a successful crawl. She manages to wobbly shuffle through the carpeting, one leg ahead, one hand, the other leg, the other hand, again and again- until she gives a frustrated huff of impatience and decides rolling is a far less exhaustive manner of transport.

“Ga!” She shrieks when she stops, and she waves a sticky fist in the air in triumph.

Michelle looks up at him expectantly, and he is unsure what the baby thinks she is going to get from him, “Do not look so victorious, you didn’t even make it half way.” He protested as she waves her fist again, demandingly. “I have seen people literally break their backs for my praise do not think I give it out so easily for babes who could barely move their limbs in a somewhat competent manner.”

The fist waves harder and large brown eyes began to water.

“What is she doing?” Stanley Fenwick whispers loudly. “She’s waving at the corner, should I move her?”

“I don’t know,” Julia Fenwick replies in a normal voice because she is only slightly less ridiculous than her partner in matrimony.

He looks at the couple and then at the insistent child at his feet, “Shoo.” He very sternly tells her. “Your parents might think you are one of those possessed demon children in those tacky movies your mother so enjoys watching. Shoo, child, shoo.”

Michelle, as usual, does not concede to his demands nor his reasonableness. Babies are irritating that way. “Fine.” He sighs long-sufferingly, and he has suffered for a very long time so he knows how to do it well. “For a tiny flesh lump you sure.. did reasonably.”

Then he patted the baby’s head lightly.

The worlds are turning. The worlds are turning and things are changing, growing. The worlds are turning and things keep living and things keep dying. The clock ticks, the spaces grow, new laws are made, new laws are broken, there is more knowledge and there is more love.

There is also more death. Too much for Death.

“Order,” He says one day, “I need help.”

He stares at his hand wonderingly. He hasn’t felt anything substantial other than the ground he treads on. He has not felt the soft licks of the wind brushing his skin, the heavy heat of the sun nor the bitter bite of a winter’s cold. He’s run through walls, fallen through furniture, and thank god he could float like a proper ghost could or getting up to the second floor would have been an impossible nightmare. Sometimes he would forget he wasn’t on the ground level and he’ll just drop straight through the floor with a startled noise that he’s glad no one but a baby who won’t remember any of it could hear.

And if the baby does remember, well, he has technically killed infants for far less.

But when he patted Michelle’s tiny head, he had felt... something. The feeling was vague, his hand failed to give him the detail of her wispy strands of brown hair, he could barely register the softness of her skin or the heat from her body. All he could gather was that there had been something solid and real and there in his hands.

It seems Michelle Fenwick is more important to the grand scheme of things than he realized.

Order, like many of the others, has taken to an even more human form. He wears a three-piece suit and eyes of the same shade of gray, and his hair is slicked back and severe, a dark copper color peppered with hints of age. He has chosen to emulate an accountant or a lawyer with his clothing, it suits him well. The entity looks surprised at Death. Death does not speak often, Death is always there but he is the shadow that always follows.

“Whatever is the matter?” Order asks, he narrows his eyes, “Did Chaos do something with the world filled with birds? Because I had told him that convincing them of the concept of fried chicken was-”

“No.” Death says, but he is amused. Chaos and Death were good partners in crime, even dare he say it ‘friendly’ to one another. Being with Chaos, is what Death had always thought being drunk would feel like, a whirlwind of odd and humorous shenanigans that would be looked upon with fond but no less genuine regret as it leaves behind a headache and an ugly mess of consequences. “It is nothing to do with Chaos. Technically.” He amended because it was a little to do with Chaos, and Order can spot an untruth before it even reaches your mind.

Order seems to relax at this reassurance. “Then what is the problem?”

Death looks down at his hands, bony and knife sharp, in something almost like shyness. “I.. need help.” He confesses, “My way is too inefficient, ineffective.”

Order blinked his gray eyes to convey surprise. “I didn’t realize; you are doing a very competent job. It is hard to believe you are struggling.”

“Thank you,” Death stares harder at his hands, he feels odd at the casual compliment thrown his way. He does not know if he should reciprocate the compliment. He decides to ignore it, his pressing issues come first. “I have been on top of things but the worlds are multiplying with every decision, every action, every choice of every single being. Death still happens but I’m losing track of where the souls are going, I can’t keep watch over everything.”

“It’s too much.” Order summarizes, he sympathizes with his fellow entity. It is difficult to keep order, to feel new rules and regulations course through his mind all the time. There are times where he just wants to sit for a millennium and feel nothing, think nothing. He could not imagine the burden of feeling vaguely every death happening, a never ending constant stream of death in the back of his mind as easy as blood flows through veins. Even Order does not think he could bear to manage something as immense as death all alone.

All alone.

Well, who said they had to do it all alone?

“I think I have an idea.” Order says, and he grins in a way that makes Death shiver. At that moment Order looked far too similar to his counterpart.

“You all disgust me, and I hope this house crashes onto all of you.” He mutters.

“Bubububububu.” Michelle warbles. A truck rolling in her hands.

“I hate you.” He says pointedly. “You are a gross infant that is going to grow up into a disgusting human being with hopefully better hygiene practices and yet somehow I am being forced to rely on you, and possibly only you, to save me.”

“Ba!” Michelle squeals, throwing the toy through him. He is not impressed at all.

“I’m doomed aren’t I?”

She giggles.

Life was surprisingly supportive of the idea. She laughs and claps her hands and a garden blooms somewhere in the world she was looking over. “That sounds fantastic.” Life enthuses, “I would be glad to help.”

Magic too is intrigued, Knowledge following behind her and soon everyone has come together for this project. Death is unsure when was the last time he had seen everyone at one shared setting. Was it when they had watched the first organism- a green furry little thing with three tails and seven eyes- bring forth magic into the world? Or was it after the devastation of the first horrifying requiem of the Great second war of the sixty-third Earth? It doesn’t matter. It has been far too long.

He feels, settled. Content.

“Brother,” Space calls out to him as he weaved a new realm to reside on, Life and Magic are sitting next to the man as they try to construct a higher being. From their loud chattering, it seems the two had decided on something with wings. “Come take a look at this.”

Time smiles at Death as he watches over another heated argument between Order and Chaos. Love is laughing at something that Fate had said, but both took a moment to greet Death cheerily with a warmth that had nothing to do with the surrounding temperature.

Knowledge pats his back and walks with him to see what Space has devised. “You are not the only one who has secretly enjoyed the renewed companionship.” She murmurs, voice as quiet as the flipping of paper and Death for the first time finds his mouth stretched across his face in what could be loosely defined as a smile.

Not alone.

He gets bad days. They are mostly bad days. Shitty, horrible days where he stands in a corner and dry heaves as he is suffocated by what has happened to him and the sheer rage he is consumed with until it exhausts him. In some ways, the loneliness that settles around him afterward is even more stifling.

He has always been an outcast, but he’s realized now that he had never been so alone.

Heaven was made. And subsequently, many other Heavens for many other worlds soon followed. Death and Order took charge of every single one, Order created the rules, adjusting them according to the world they watched over, and Death enforced them.

Death was fond of the angels that came with these new realms. Much fonder of them than any human or person that resides in the living. Soldiers who followed their orders with such devoted loyalty and love, but still with enough free will to have personalities. They were... ideal.

The angels, for the most part, seemed to be fond of Death as well, which was fortunate because they certainly were not fond of Order. Like, at all. Even Archangel Michael, who had been created with Order in mind disliked him greatly, though he is polite enough not to show it too visibly.

“It seems Order, brother dear, my little fuddy-duddy,” Chaos drawls, already earning the visible ire of his counterpart, “Your new little playthings think your attitude is absolute garbage.”

“I don’t think they would say that,” Death tries to reason quietly but Chaos just laughs, his hair is like a sandstorm today, violently whipping about in his amusement.

“But it is implied, after all, they do not call him ‘Father’ as they have taken to calling you.”

“That is- that is not my fault.” Death defends weakly, it was Life and Love who had given the winged creatures such an idea, but Death had not stopped it from spreading. He had been too secretly pleased with being wanted over the rest of the more popular entities.

“Like you could have done better.” Order sneers. Death knows Order does not appreciate or even enjoy the presence of angels, half as much as he enjoys their ability to follow orders, and would not have been offended at all if it had been anyone but Chaos accusing him of this.

“I could’ve.” Chaos proclaims confidently, his eyes flashing orange challengingly.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, asshole.”

And so commenced the greatest intergalactic war for the next sixteen thousand years. However, in terms of mortality, it would only come second to the war that comes after it.

Michelle always cries in the background on those days. It is oddly comforting now.

Heaven has fallen, Heaven has triumphed and Heaven has split. So many worlds had become battlefields, so many stained with broken feathers and blood, so many Heavens ruined beyond repair. Death watches what was meant to be his be ripped up to pieces by the hands of others.

It is not like Heaven was his. It was every entity’s right to have a say over the realms just as he had a right to the living domain. They all helped create this, formed every angel, pieced together every wing. They all had a place, and a role, and a right.

But, Death bitterly thought as he scooped more of the beaten and bloodied winged creatures into his hands, some clearly had more than others.

“For god’s sakes, shoo you vile little girl, this is my corner, shoo.”

Michelle is not shooed away. Instead, she sits at his feet and curls up onto the floor like a particularly ugly cat. He stares at the innocently oblivious child, sleeping so soundly, so easily by him.

He doesn’t understand this feeling bubbling in his chest cavity but he thinks he could grow used to it.

Sixteen thousand years and finally the Heavenly realms broke into two, and thus Hell was created.

Stanley Fenwick is left alone with his daughter for the weekend. Julia Fenwick has gone out with some of her non-murderous friends for a spa trip of some sort. Stanley had kissed his wife’s cheek, wished her a fun time and assured her that he would be completely capable of keeping Michelle alive for two and a half days.

Stanley Fenwick is a liar who stared at Michelle for an hour because he had no idea how to proceed.

He watches in the corner of the room as he usually does. It has become almost entertaining, watching the family slowly accommodate the new life form. Stanley especially so. Stanley is better than television. Even the good kind.

“Well.” Stanley starts awkwardly, “What do you want to do kiddo?”

Predictably Michelle does not respond back coherently.

Stanley, however, nods seriously and says, “I see,” before getting up and getting Mr. Baap. “Is this what you want?” Stanley asks as he shakes the stuffed top in front of the infant as enticingly as possible.

And, oh, Michelle really could see the entity then, because the look of utter deadpanned condescension and contempt on her face as she looked at her father was strikingly familiar. She opens her tiny little mouth, gaze steady, and says her first word. She says it with confidence and utter dignity.

“Shoo, chald, shoo.”

She even does the hand waving to emphasize the point.

He does not admit to anyone how utterly proud he had felt at that moment.

In the end, when all was said and destroyed, Death was still working with Heaven and Order. It just happened that now he also had an identical role in Hell with Chaos, because according to Chaos, ‘It wasn’t fair that Order gets to spend more time with Death. Now that I have half of Heaven, it’s only logical I get half of Death as well.’ Also, it seemed the newly named demons were just as fond of working with Chaos as the angels had been to Order.

Death is remarkably unimpressed. Flattered but unimpressed. Death feels only slightly better knowing everybody else is just as pleased. Which is to say, not at all.

Still, splitting Heaven to make Hell had admittedly made things far more efficient. All the bad little souls could be given the karma they never got when they were alive before they got reborn, and Chaos and the other fallen angels can work off their own issues with them instead of the general universe as a whole. It is mainly the fact that Chaos is finally being kept busy that had been the selling point of the whole idea.

Death does not mourn the loss of those that had died, nor the blackened, broken wings of the fallen, and if he does, he does not do it loudly as he does not do it for long. He moves on as everyone else does and he tries not to look back.

He insists on creating a new being, a ‘God’ for every new Heaven and Hell, for Death no longer wishes to take the role of ‘Father’ anymore. He does not ever want to deal with such loss again. He can not. Will not.

And so the world turns.

He has realized he no longer loathes the Fenwicks. He doesn’t imagine their indefinite execution anymore, he doesn’t wish to skewer Julia Fenwick with his claws and force Stanley Fenwick to choke on his own bullets while their baby lays dead in her lacy bed. Sometimes he does, but it is less. Which is better. For them. He is unsure about what it means for him. How quickly he is changing.

He tells himself that he does not want the responsibility. That he does not care about anything. Caring is heartbreak and effort and waste. He does not care. He does not.

He tells it to himself again and again.

One day he will stop, he will stop because he won’t need to say it again anymore.

One day he will stop and it’ll be the day he won’t care. He won’t hurt.

Michelle can walk now. Kind of. Her preferred method of mobility is still rolling but she has learned the basic strategy of walking. He watches her squeal and giggle and cry. She looks at him with amazement and awe and with a smile no other human, no other mortal, has ever spared for the likes of him. It is so sweet and bright and so open, that he feels guilty just looking at her. Guilty that he hoards every last one of those looks possessively into his memory as if he was some pathetic creature desperate for love.

Death devours his first world. It’s a small little planet full of simple beings that had slowly stagnated into something ugly. Tastes of cinnamon and oats and honey bubble foremost on his tongue, the striking flavors the people there had shared. But Death can taste the subtle nuances, each individual flavor, unique in experience, can be relished if he focuses hard enough. So many souls brim inside him, and they fill him, alight the darkness inside himself with their soft glows. Death finds it intoxicatingly heady, drunk on the feeling of satisfaction and fullness that he never knew he needed until now.

Death still gives back the souls, it is his duty to keep the balance on his side. He does it even if emptying each soul feels like he is scraping the inside of his torso with his dagger like claws, hollowing him back into emptiness once again. It aches and echoes inside him, but he ignores it.

Death does what he must do.

He knows he is being manipulated. And it sickens him at how well it is working. It is like something in him has shifted to make way for this little human girl. To welcome her.

Death does not tell anyone how utterly starving he feels afterward. Death is silent. Death is an end to itself, he shall not seek to incur more than he should. Death is no more, and Death shall be no less.

It is who he is.

He is becoming dependent on Michelle, the only thing that could see him and is too young to comprehend his horrific appearance. She does not scream when he lengthens his knife-like fingers into long, wicked claws when the fathomless holes of darkness that is his eyes zero in on her with the intensity of a predator, when his teeth sharpen and his tongue made of oil and ash flicker out as he licks his thin lips menacingly. She does not scream when he appears so hideous, so monstrous, deformed. She does not scream when he is so himself. And he finds himself distressingly grateful for such simple acceptance at such a superficial thing.

But he does not care for anything. He is not supposed to care about anything. Not anymore.

And it is pathetic. He is pathetic.

This has to stop.

He doesn’t want it to though.

Death is not fazed. He does not care anymore that a country will perish because of one selfish pig’s actions. He will not blink an eye when a mother kills one of her own flesh and blood in a drugged haze. He will not spare the boy being beaten to death in the schoolyard as cruel children cheer in the background. Death does not falter or flinch. This is his role, this is what he does. Death is not the means to an end, but it is the end itself.

It still haunts him though. The overwhelming madness that burns impatiently inside him, the lust to kill and consume and destroy. He remembers hurting his brothers and sisters, burning down worlds, razing them until it was just ash and stone and death. He remembers the screams and the tears and the begging. He remembers saying everything he had planned to say, cruel and cutting and harsh enough to make even the more self-entitled of his fellow entities flinch with guilts and regrets. He remembers feeling so good doing all those things.

It haunts him. Echoes in him.

He wishes he could’ve done more. Hurt more. Killed more. Saved more.

What Death does do is relish the deaths he does bring. The deaths he personally steps in to make. He takes his time, soaks in the screams, revels in the blood he spills onto the earth. A pig suitably stuffed and roasted, a woman pumped to the brim with pills until they spill from every hole in a bloody and poisonous bile, a bully beaten and skewered to a flagpole. Death relishes it all, he laughs in their fear and he feels powerful and finally like he can do something.

He can do more. He can do so much more.

Sometimes he will sit in the corner. Just.. sit. Watching the Fenwick house in all its sickening domestic glory. He will watch and try to summon up his disgust and hatred and disdain for humanity, for everything. He is good at that. It is as easy as the motions of breathing the air around him.

If air had been poisonously hot, acrid smog that would scratch spitefully down his throat before curling heavily into the pits of his being. But that is okay. He is used to swallowing it down. In making it a part of him. Filling him up, keeping him whole. Like a human cigarette, it is vile but heady in its addiction.

But then he will see Julia Fenwick lovingly kiss her husband goodbye, or Stanley Fenwick say something reluctantly amusing with that crooked smile of his, or just any number of things, and everything just.. dissipates. The heat of anger cooled and the vicious grip of his hatred loosened, leaving him once again feeling empty and alone and vulnerable.

Sometimes he will sit in the corner and watch the Fenwick house in all its sickening domestic glory and wish he was part of it too.

Sometimes Michelle will roll over in times of particularly melancholy thoughts and cuddle up to his form, her body solid in a world where nothing else is. She will gurgle and bat at his fingers like a tiny hairless pet. Sometimes she will try cover his eyes in an embarrassing attempt at peek a boo.

Every time, he lets her.

“What are you doing?” Life asks appalled. She is horrified as Death steps back from his newest artwork and looks at her.

“I am having fun.” Death says simply, “Like you have always been.”

She gags at the bloody macabre sculpture filled with limbs and organs and tinsel. “This is disgusting,” She says venomously. Life looks at Death with tears and revulsion in her eyes, “Stop this, right now brother.”

Death finds himself for the first time getting angry, truly angry at his counterpart, “Why?” Death challenges, “Why should I stop when no one else seems to? People have died because of Love, of Knowledge, because Fate commands it to be because you had brought life to some monstrous creature that you’ve set on to some poor unsuspecting group. And I have to watch it all as every single one of you moves on to the next fanciful idea in your heads.”

Life rears back as if she had been slapped, Death does not argue back, he is the calm mediator, he is as neutral as can be. She did not expect this.. resentment. This caustic, harsh malice that she has never heard from her counterpart before. It strikes a chord in Life like the first time Death crushed her creations so easily. It is something she might have always felt, but it has never felt more real until now.

“You fear me.” Death realizes as he searches her face for an answer her mouth does not bring. He is surprised at his own resignation to it like he had always somehow known. It enrages him, the infuriation washing over his pain and hurt and misery. “Fine.” He spits. “I no longer care.”

Michelle is warmer now.

At first, he is worried that she is ill, a fever perhaps. But she is fine and energetically loud like usual. And if it is not her, the only other reason is him. He has gotten better, his sense of heat has come to him, if vaguely. A reward for good behavior perhaps.

He would be immensely offended and suitably as outraged at the thought of he was not too busy holding Michelle’s warm body tight to his chest. There has always been a calming comfort in Michelle, anchoring his being with her bright presence

“Cuddle.” Michelle croons delightedly as she snuggles closer into his chest.

“Hugs.” He corrects because he does not ‘do’ cuddles.

He does not.

And if he wraps his long arms tighter around the little girl and nuzzles at her hair in that way that always makes her giggle, well, that is still perfectly in the realm of ‘not cuddling’.

Death is a liar. He cares. He cares too much. And he thinks this must be what dying slowly feels like.

He wonders how he must look. From royalty of the nth degree where he once stood proudly amongst the corpses and bloodshed, and now he has fallen down to the point where the only thing that he has a claim on is the corners of the Fenwick household. And even then, that claim has been recently usurped by a f*cking ugly vase with bamboo in it.

“You do not fit with the feng shui of this room.” He tells the vase spitefully as he stands in front of the new parasitic furniture that preys on his favorite corner in the living room. Then with narrowed eyes, he turns to the bamboo, “And you, this is an all-American household, you fail to even fit with the decor. I hope disgusting insects infect your water and you die rotting from the inside out.”

Michelle watches the exchange curiously. He refuses to be ashamed at this. The girl needs to know you need to stand up for yourself. Even if it is against furniture. Okay no, he is very much shamed. “Do not judge me, Michelle.” He commands her, “This is literally all I have.”

She stares at him. Then at the vase with the damned bamboo. Then back at him. Then she crawls over till she’s right next to the decorative container, looks back at him again and does something that could only be described as the baby version of a full body tackle against the vase. It topples and crashes onto the floor. There’s a crack in the vase and the water inside has now gone everywhere.

Michelle sits next to the utter mess with a look of pure and unadulterated innocence on her face.

“You.. are officially my favorite thing in the universe right now.” He says.

They do not replace the vase.

He does not care. He does not care. Caring is heartbreak and effort and waste. He does not care. He does not.

Again, and again, and again.

He tells it to himself.

He does not care. He will not care. He will never care. Not again. Never again.

It hurts too much.

He does not care.

He looks in the mirror and sees himself. The anger, the distress, the grief, it does not show on his face, does not grow into weary lines like a mortal, he has no scars, no cracks, no marks. His hair is shadows, curling black mist, his eyes, consuming whirlpools of hungry darkness, his mouth is full of ugly jagged spikes and his tongue is an inky, long oily thing that at best can be described as absolutely terrifying.

He has never been particularly shamed on his looks. He has never understood the others’ need to make themselves look like a lesser being, to change from their beautiful, majestic grandeur into something so... limited. To pander their bodies into something softer and constricting and so vulnerable when they were limitless infinities of power.

He has always been how he has always been.

Maybe that had been the problem.

“You need to stop brother,” Space cautions as he stares at the hopeless devoid planet that had once flourished brightly a decade ago. Now even the worms in the ground have curled up and withered, and the only things left are poisonous writhing grubs that feed on what detritus left. “This is not you, it is not who you are.”

“What am I then brother?” Death asks as he sits on a pile of corpses, waiting for the red sun to rise on this world’s final day. “I am Death, this is what I do.”

“You are Death, but you do not seek it.” Space says firmly, “You are not the means to an end, you may bring death but you do not kill, brother please, see reason. This is not what you do. This cannot keep going.”

“I grow weary of your nonsense Space,” Death sneers, “You do not control what I do, you do not know who I am and you do not even want to understand why.”

Space looks at him, his eyes are galaxies and his hair is weaved from the fire of stars, he looks infinite and yet so small. “I do not.” He agrees softly, “I do not know and I do not understand and I certainly do not control you. But,” And he gives the other entity one last pleading look, “I know at least that you are not like this.”

Death grits his teeth, sharp and black, as he scoffs. “Then you obviously know nothing about me.”

He takes a few days before settling on his new appearance. Staring at the mirror, trying to make himself look a little more presentable, a little more human, a little less him. It was nice to have something to do, something to distract himself with from his wallowing self-pity and fluctuating bitter rage and every second of hollow emptiness that threatens to engulf him.

To be honest, he is utterly relieved he still has enough power to alter his physical form. The shadows around him will curl around his feet but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot control them with his will. Flowers do not wither under his gaze and a simple summoning of the dead seems to no longer be so possible. Worst of all, there is no reassuring electric hum of the infinity of souls that buzz passing underneath his skin like blood in a mortal’s veins, souls that are his metaphorical lifeblood.

Just another one of the many things taken away from him.

Order stands in the middle of a war. Buildings that scrape the sky have toppled and ash is the new color of the earth as everything slowly descends into anarchy. There is the sound of gunshots and shouting, and the taste of tears and blood in the air.

Death and Chaos were laughing like it was the funniest joke in the world.

“Chaos!” Order bellows, he is completely enraged. This world had been a painstaking project of his, with this city the epitome of it, a perfect utopia built from the ground up. After so many attempts, so many worlds and universes and galaxies that had fallen into dystopian ruins, he had been close, so close to finding that delicate balance. The perfect ratio. Absolute order.

And it has been brought down ruthlessly like a stack of cards.

He summons up a spear into his hands, feeling the heavy weight and thrumming energy of his own frustrations in it before throwing it unrepentantly at his counterpart. Chaos howls in pain as the weapon digs through his skin, straight through his shoulder, the howl quickly dissolves into manic laughter though. Simple weapons are no match for a primordial force after all.

“As always Order, you do know how to make a simple ‘hello’ so wonderfully memorable,” Chaos wheezes because simple weapon or not, the spear was constructed by an entity and getting stabbed still hurt dammit. Death does nothing as he stands next to his injured brother, he does not even turn to offer his aid. The image does not sit right with Order but he ignores it in favor of shouting at his counterpart.

“What have you done, you primitive walnut-brained hybrid?! You knew how long I have worked on this, we had a goddamn deal you wouldn’t actively do anything to this place you absolute-”

“I was the one who suggested this.” Death cuts in, he is cold, his face shows no repentence nor the usual expression of guilt that he used to wear when he pairs off with Chaos.

Order shuts his mouth hard, his lips are pressed thinly in a fine line as he observes him. Death, in turn, stares back levelly.

“You are not lying.” Order says in a quiet, confused voice. “But.. that can’t,”

“Can’t what?” Chaos smirks as he throws the bloodied spear off to the ground away from him. “Big bro Death’s finally seen the light Order, he’s decided to break away from the boring and join the fun side with me.”

“Death is not like you!” Order shouts, he focuses back on the monochrome entity pleadingly, “Brother, you are not like him. There are rules, order that you, we, need to follow. Ones that are ingrained in us, ones that we should never, ever break. Do not do this brother, do not break yours.”

“My rules have kept me weak, complacent.” Death says, his voice is sharp, clipped, like the snapping of bones, “I have followed a role where all I do is be subservient, trodden upon and given nothing but disdain in return.”

His hair is the darkest shadows of the coldest nights and it flares around him, swirling violently as he grins an ugly, lifeless grin.

“So forgive me if I have lost my faith in your petty restrictions.”

He tries an animal form first. That maybe he can shed his humanoid skin completely, choosing something primitive and more in tune with themselves. He yearns for a simpler time hence a simpler form.

It does not work well.

There were too many organisms that roamed the earth, much less all of existence, and admittedly, decisiveness was not a strong point of his. He is fond of a canine’s loyalty to their pack, respectful of a feline’s pride, marvels at the intelligence of a raven, favors the beautiful deadliness of a serpent.

What he ends up with is some sort of hell beast.

He wears the skull of a wolf with a sharp, jaggedly cracked horn curling up from his forehead and his body is completely blackened like a burned corpse, shadows faintly emanating from every surface as it tries to mimic fur. The body is slim and elegantly poised like a cat’s, though his tail is sharper, scaled and far too revealing of his inner thoughts for his liking. Large inky wings drape across his back like a cape and instead of paws he had thought to retain some semblance to his talons would’ve been more practical.

He looks into the mirror, at himself with his dark fathomless eyes that now hold a small white circle in each that are his irises. A tribute to the pure souls he brings to the world, glowing fiercely against the black surrounding them. He looks powerful and wicked and ready to devastate some good old-fashioned villages.

It’s not bad. Not bad at all.

And then Michelle decides to roll by and stare at him. He turns to the infant because like it or not, she will be the only audience he has for the time being and somehow he suspects her opinion is worth more than he thinks to his own ego. He puffs out his chest and straightens his spine as he strikes an intimidatingly majestic pose in front of her.

Michelle looks suitably impressed as she surveys his new form. She stares at him very seriously, brown eyes flickering up and down his body, assessing, before giving one decisive nod and pointing firmly in his direction.

“U’corn.” She decides firmly.

He sighs but it is vaguely amused. The child had a strange little mind, not that he could fault her considering she constantly saw a man in the corner of the room who was, for all intents and purposes, not really there. Nonetheless, it is back to the drawing board.

The unicorns are being hunted down everywhere. Not just them but all magical creatures. Feared and tracked down like simple beasts to kill, to maim, to use.

Magic is crying. Her tears make enchanted lakes and holy water and miracle medicines which too, quickly dry up in the face of greed and lusts for more.

Death stands next to her. “Awful isn’t it?” He says conversationally, “Mortals are such greedy little things. Humans especially are quite unforgiving.”

“What did you do?” She sobs out accusingly, her rainbow colored fingernails are scratching at her face in her grief. Magic had not handled such a loss since the witch trials.

“Me?” He asks innocently, but it lacks any real emotional inflection to be remotely believable, “Why I didn’t do anything, dear sister.” The last word Death says is sarcastic, his belief in the bonds they share slowly rotting away.

“Liar!” She cries, and maybe a millennium ago Death would have tried comforting her, apologizing, anything. She had been one of his favorites. So bright-eyed and bushy tailed and bubbling with laughter.

Magic was always smiling and full of good words for everyone. Death had always admired her for that ever glowing optimism. Envious even.

“Well, I may have said a few things here and there,” He admits easily, “But what I did was merely speed up the inevitable. I haven’t done anything that wouldn’t have eventually be done.”

Now all he wants to do is make her feel as dark and cynical as he does.

And if he took a bit too long to change back from hell beast to humanoid, well, it certainly wasn’t because he was doing something as degrading as playing pet to a toddler.

He no longer tells himself to stop caring.

He has stopped doing that ages ago.

“What sort of person do you want me to be?” He asks because he cannot deny now how much this little girl’s opinion means to him now. It is the only opinion other than his own that is literally worth anything to him right now.

“Yew.” Is what she says, for the third time.

He is starting to doubt the weight of Michelle’s opinion.

“Yes, me.” He scowls irritatedly, “Now what do you think of four eyes? I think it goes well with a pair of horns on the side but then again, it might come off a bit too spider-y..”

“No.” Michelle rejects. “Yew.” She repeats.

He narrows his eyes and his irises sharpen in an attempt to incite fear in the girl. Michelle is annoyingly unaffected by the effect. “Michelle, I am getting a little tired of you being unable to say shit.” He tells her sternly, “Make more sense or I will... do something.”

She huffs angrily and crawls closer toward him, patting his leg as firmly as a tiny infant could. “Yew, yew, yew.” She chants continuously.

He stares down at her.

“You want me.. to be me?”

Michelle gurgles in what he interprets as agreement.

He stares at the mirror, at his long sallow face, his inverted eyes, sharp teeth, looking all wicked and cruel with inhuman limbs. And he wants so badly to believe he has been proud of who he has been, what he is, but instead he hears the waver in his voice as he asks the little girl, “Are you sure?”

And she looks at him, with her big brown eyes and stupidly round chubby face, and she smiles.

It is all he really needs.

“I’m keeping the eyes though.”

All he gets in reply is a saliva filled raspberry.

He could have done without that.

“Hey bro,” Chaos shifts, for once looking unsure, “I’m all for chaos and stuff, don’t get me wrong, it’s what I do, but- isn’t this a bit overboard?”

Death looks at Chaos with no visible emotion. “I thought you loved pushing the limits.”

“There’s pushing limits and there’s completely annihilating a whole string of universes!” Chaos burst out as he threw his hands up in the air. “What you are doing isn’t funny, it isn’t clever or chaotic, it’s just simple destruction! Plain and simple!”

“You think I don’t know that?” Death answers eerily calm. “I am fully aware of what I’m doing.”

“You are off your rocker.”

“I assure you, my head has never felt more clear since I was created.”

“This is going too far! Death, this, this is too much.” Chaos hisses, his hair is a dusty whirlwind and it is swirling furiously with his agitation.

Eyes darker than any night sky bore into ones filled with a bright orange lightening storm, Death steps closer and Chaos steps back but he is too slow, they are chest to chest. Death, thin and almost skeletal, makes up for his lack of mass in height, looming high over the other entity as whispers menacingly, “Then leave Chaos.”

“Excuse me?”

“LEAVE!” Death screams, Chaos almost topples backward from the force of it, the untapped fury. It takes all he has to still stand straight in the face of Death.

“Come on,” Chaos chuckles nervous and with a quickly growing wariness, “you don’t really mean that. We are friends, partners in crime, amigos, brothers.”

“Is that what you thought?” Death questions curiously, Chaos stares at him.

“That’s, you don’t mean that.” But the entity looks increasingly unsure, frantic, desperate. Hurt.

Death does not notice. He is too busy in his mind, in his calling to notice.

“But I think I do,” He muses thoughtfully to himself.

If it feels true it must be true.

Right?

Michelle is learning how to talk. She is two now.

“This is wed.” She says confidently to him, rolling the apple toward the corner and beaming like she herself had discovered the fruit.

“Red.” He corrects.

“Wed.” She says.

“Red.”

“Wed.”

“Red.”

“Wed.”

“Re- oh you know what? Go suck on your apple. Where are your parents? Go tell them.” He says irritatedly. It is odd, thinking how he could go centuries without batting an eye, but two minutes of being forced to repeat himself to the verbal equivalent of a brick wall and he is starting to feel strain that should not exist between his temples. Maybe he is accommodating to the slow passage of time like a mortal, maybe he does not appreciate the inability to even teach a child a simple word. Either way, it is frustrating. “Tell them about your shiny red apple. Go. Shoo.”

The Tree of Knowledge is a beautiful thing. Every form is precious and well preserved and filled to the brim with secrets. It is one of the few things closest to being as infinite in a finite body that it can be. So hard to create that it is found in only a select few worlds, for not even the rules of alternating universes could apply and copy the Tree. Five hundred worlds it resides on.

And so five hundred worlds are set aflame.

Black fire that eats and consumes and devours everything set in its path. It cannot be extinguished by all the water in the universe, it cannot be extinguished at all, not until there is nothing left. Not a leaf, not a single word, not a single sound.

Death watches it all burn and the hollowness that lives eternally inside him is filled, if only for a moment, with all the souls and screams he has brought. He thinks he lives for that moment.

Knowledge appears in the sounds of pages being frantically flipped through, her usual composed appearance is absolutely haggard and wrecked as she immediately takes in everything, confirming already what she knows, what she has felt. Knowledge moans in pain as she curls up on herself like someone was taking a butter knife and disemboweling her with it. “No, no, no,” She wrings her hands and tears of blue ink fall from her face, staining her papery skin. “What have you done?!”

He tilts his head as he watches her groan in agony as another Tree falls. “I would hope you know, I did this specifically in mind for you.”

“You are addicted to death.” She accuses, “Stuck in a cycle of destruction.”

Death sneers, “The pain must be making you temporarily insane Knowledge. I am Death, how could I be addicted to death. Do not be absurd.”

She snarls back, “You are consumed by your own self brother! Tell me, why are you doing this?! For what reason?!”

“Isn’t it obvious?!” He yells, “The reason I’m doing this is-”

“Darling, how old was the Bakersfield kid before he started speaking sentences?” Stanley Fenwick asks.

Julia Fenwick hums thoughtfully. “Define sentences.”

“The proper stuff, with pronouns and adjectives and shit.”

“I think about three and a half or so, why?”

“Because Michelle just threw an apple at me and told me to ‘Go suck your shiny red apple daddy.’”

Julia bursts into laughter. “Do you know what this means, Stan?” She gasps out between fits of delighted giggles.

“The teenage rebellious phase I was dreading has come incredibly early?” Stanley suggests dryly.

“It means our daughter is a little genius!”

“Does it now darling?”

“Oh, go do what your daughter says and suck that apple.”

Stanley sulkily complies.

What was his reason?

Why was he doing this?

When will it end?

They do not notice the man of black and white standing in the corner. But if they could they would have seen his skeletal hand hiding a faint smile.

“You can still stop.” Fate tells him.

Death stares at her.

“I do not understand what you are talking about.” He says truthfully. He does not know what he is supposed to even stop, let alone how. It feels like he is falling, spiraling and it is too late for anyone now to stretch out their hands to reach him.

He is falling, but at the same time, he feels weightless and free.

“Then do not condone what we will have to do.” Fate warns, her eyes flash a silver gray like storm clouds on a sunny day, “You continue down this path, we will fight back, and you will not win.”

Death stares at her.

His hand twitches, itching and wanting to feel something wither in its grasp.

Fate is not necessary in the world. Everything can live on without adhering to a fate, a destiny, the universe can afford her passing. He can kill her so easily, watch her life seep from her eyes and taste her very being on his tongue...

“Do what you have to do.” Death grits out, and he turns to leave. His talons piercing his own palms as the clench around themselves. Shadows seep from where blood should be.

“Give me stowy.” Michelle demands.

“You mean, ‘Please, tell me a story’.” Grimm corrects. Knowing now that Michelle has taken to mastering the english language at an age younger than most pleases him. As expected for the mortal that will save him. “Manners are very important Michelle,” He instructs sternly. “They can get you far. Well, farther than without.”

“Give me stowy.” Michelle repeats, before amending with an impatient, “Please.”

He sighs from his corner but sits down on the ground anyway. “Good enough.” He says. She is two. He will let it slide.

The girl squeals as she immediately takes the monochrome man’s action of sitting as the go-ahead to clamber on top of him like a clumsy monkey. It is probably because he lets her that she now expects this as acceptable behavior. He is indulging her. “Stowy.”

“Yes, yes, I heard you the first time.” He sits and thinks what to tell her. It is the first time she has asked something like this from him. But apparently, the books in her room no longer satisfy her so now it is up to him to step up to the task. “I am not much of a storyteller.” He confesses. “So do not blame me if it is no good.”

Michelle hits him on the cheek with her chubby fist. It is like being hit by a dense, wet marshmallow. Even with his perception of touch muted he is sure that it would have still felt exactly the same, the action so weak. “That is pathetic. One day when you finally learn the art of running I shall teach you how to punch like a proper person.”

“Stowy.” Is all she replies with. Michelle Fenwick is an ungrateful little baby.

“Fine.” He huffs, amused despite himself. It is not his fault this baby he happens to be bound to is so endearing. He would kill anyone who said otherwise. “Let me tell you a tale about a human just like you. His name was Greden and-”

He just wants everything to end.

He has made three lists. There’s not much else to do, especially when Michelle has nap time and the Fenwick couple is renewing their marital vows.

The first one was all the numerous ways he can exact vengeance on his fellow entities before killing them all, then himself as he effectively ends everything. It was a very dramatic list. The latest idea involved tigers and fire and a giant hourglass to trap Time in because, irony. Also because being spiritually glued onto an infant equated to high exposure to a lot of Disney movies. Michelle likes Aladdin. He prefers Hercules.

The next list is what he will do once he manages to wriggle out of this curse and before he destroys existence as one knows it. Trying to get drunk would be fun, he’s never managed it before but it would be interesting to do. He also seeks to reacquaint himself with the pleasures of the flesh, male mainly, though he is just as naturally attracted to women who are generally infertile. And he wants to try seeing how long a regular human being can stay locked in a black solid box before killing themselves. That’s pretty much all he has on this list: murder, sex, and booze. It’s a very solid plan.

Plus food. Food was always one of his more indulgent, less violent vices. The more heart-stoppingly unhealthier, the better. Triple bacon cheeseburgers, Fatty tuna, Roasted fois gras over some caramelized apple and freshly baked sourdough bread.

God, he misses food.

The last one is something he didn’t mean to make. It’s about Michelle. It’s the biggest list he has.

It has things like, that she enjoys strained apples in the morning and mushy peas in the evening. How fussy she tends to be if she doesn’t get a mid-morning nap. Her favorite thing to gnaw on was the left corner, always the left corner, of any sheet, fabric or pillow cover. That breaking things never fails to make her giggle.

That way she sleeps splayed out and ever fidgeting as if she makes it her eternal mission to touch every cold spot in her cot to taint it with her warmth.

That she loves pastel pink but highlighter green is a close second followed by the black color of his eyes.

How bright she smiles.

Love is crying. She is crying and it is heartbreaking.

“Oh Death, what have we done?” She whispers, “I can feel your heart and it is suffocating.”

“I do not have a heart.” Death tells her, firm and unmoving like a gravestone. But he says it softly, for even he feels vulnerable under her gaze. Love can conquer all after all. She is sweet as she is dangerous. “And if I did, it would never beat.”

“You know what I mean.” She says with a watery smile, Love wears the face of a middle aged mother, rosy cheeked and with a smile that could melt the heart of a glacier. It physically hurts trying to resist Love’s charms, her naturally endearing nature, but Death does. He turns away even if his being screams to do otherwise.

“I do not actually.” He lies.

He does know.

He just does not care.

He would’ve made a list of the possible ways to get out of this mess except he can’t think of any other than killing the one thing that grounds him, traps him in this house.

But he can’t.

He just,

He can’t.

The worlds keep turning. With their flimsy flowers and frolicking beasts, completely oblivious to how kind Death was. To allow these ignorant bunch of cells to feel the sun on their skin and their laughter fill the air. He let them free as his sister pleased and smiled when his sisters and brothers roamed free in the worlds they had created whilst he stayed in his darkness. He was patient and passive and listened to everyone’s complaints and moan and accusations for millennia on millennium.

Ignorant ingrates. The lot of them.

“You know there’s an alternative universe out there where everyone has wings.” He says one day idly. The girl sitting on his lap playing with a bright blue truck looks up at him surprised. He is surprised himself. Usually, it is not him who starts the conversation, by heart he has never been much of a conversationalist. Apparently being trapped with only a single being knowing of his existence can do wonders for his lacking social skills.

Michelle has already moved on from shock to contemplation. Her mind is an interesting little thing that he wishes to see into sometimes. She looks entranced by his words. “Wings?”

He nods. “They would, they would loosely represent someone’s soul, but the interpretation is difficult and there are always people who get wrongly judged because of them.” He gives a pointed look at the small girl sitting on his legs. “Yours would probably be a nice pretty blue, it would suit you.”

She wrinkles her nose in disagreement, “My wings would be candy canes.” She declares. “With blue buttons.”

That startles a bark of short laughter from him. It is hoarse and raspy from disuse. He has not laughed for.. for a very long time. “Candy canes and blue buttons.” He repeats, “How very unique, yes, that infinitely suits you better.”

“You are being selfish and spoiled, a human child’s temper tantrum.” Time tells him, scolds him.

“Really?” Death murmurs bemused, he no longer feels fear, feels the need to pander with his so-called family. They are weak and blind. He is not. He will show them all. “Can a temper tantrum do this?” He asks challengingly, as he lifts his hand, claw-like and cruelly sharp fingers delicately holding up a planet in his hands.

He can feel it, they both can, they all can. The lives on the planet he holds, bright and bumbling and so unaware they were running so dangerously low on time. Time reaches out toward him but he knows, they know, it is too late. Death opens his fingers so to drop the round thing onto his palm before closing his hand, crushing it all.

Time stumbles as a billion clocks stop ticking, hearts stop beating. While Death shivers at the feeling, revels in it, Time shudders as again he feels emptied, carved out, hollowed. Even universes, galaxies away they can hear Life scream in distraught agony as she is hit by the blow the hardest. It feels disgustingly empty, he loathes his brother for even subjecting them all to such a feeling.

Death just sighs, satisfied as he feels himself brim with his freshly reaped souls. He is killing more than Life can bring back into this world and he has realized how the surplus of souls has strengthened him, brought him closer to who he was meant to be, who he is destined to become. The entity smirked down at his weak, pathetic brother. To think that Time had been someone he had used to look up to, sought advice from. He feels something in him break away as he watches Time’s usual composed face crumble as he burns the insignificant planet to nothingness.

The girl looks up at the monochrome being and asks, “What color frog?”

“Make it pink.” He suggests. "You enjoy pink."

“No.” Michelle rejects viciously.

“Why not?”

“Because frogs are green. Not pink.”

He rolls his eyes. Honestly, why even bother asking him then? “You humans are taught such restricting things. ‘The sky is always blue,’ ‘The clouds are white,’ ‘The frog is green.’ You were given an imagination for a reason, use it, Michelle. Do not let society stifle the gift of creativity because you will choke and die in a very boring world indeed.”

Michelle frowns. “But frogs are green. Not pink.” She repeats, completely missing his words of wisdom. Children.

“Why?” He demands. “Why can’t the frogs be pink or purple or a nice teal color?”

“I.. dunno.”

“Don’t you like pink?”

“Of course!” She gasps, appalled he would think otherwise.

“Then make the frog pink,” Grimm tells her calmly. “Don’t be a conformist Michelle. It’s narrow-minded thinking like that which got prejudice and discrimination started. If we believed everything we are told, Hitler would have won your little earth war ten times over.”

She paused as she soaked it all in. Well, tried to. Michelle was only three-ish. And her drawing barely even constitutes as something with four legs anyway. “Can it have sparkles?”

He smiles, flashing his inky black shark teeth at the little girl.

"Now, you are talking.”

For once Death does not feel the rush, the exhilarated high he comes to associate with the utter carnage he brings. He does not feel full and whole and somebody. He feels emptier than ever before, worse than that...

He feels absolutely nothing.

“Hey darling,” Stanley Fenwick spoke, practically melting as he stepped back into his home to be greeted by his young daughter. “Oh honey bear, whattaya got there?”

“Izza Frog!” Michelle shouted.

“And what a pretty frog it is.” Stanley Fenwick agreed. “But why is it pink? Aren’t frogs supposed to be green baby?”

It was an innocent enough question, but the little girl’s lips wobbled and she whispered in a small horrified voice, “That’s what Hitler thought too.” And left the room with a confused and shocked father behind in there.

In the corner, an entity had his head on the wall as he shook with barely restrained laughter.

Death cannot handle this. Cannot handle going back to his pathetic, meager self, ever hollow. His whole body is humming with power, he is stronger, limitless, he should not be feeling like an outline with nothing filled in.

Somehow he is greater and profoundly less than ever.

“I’m a dwagon faiwee!”

“Not now sweetie, mummy’s on the phone.”

“Oh, ok.” She shuffled back out the room, her green dragon tail sliding sadly behind her. Her bumblebee wings jiggled every time she moved.

Michelle visibly brightened when she sees a tired Stanley Fenwick come through the door, his police uniform is ruffled and he has a small stack of papers in his hands.

“I’m a dwagon faiwee!” The little girl screams, jolting the man from his daze. He looks at her and gives a warm but apologetic smile.

“Not now princess, daddy has to work.” Michelle’s lip wobbles but she must have sensed her father’s weariness so she looks at the ground to hide her disappointment.

“Oh, ok.” She mumbles. Stanley Fenwick looks torn but gives her a kiss on the forehead and a firm ruffle of her hair, effectively messing up her dark brown curls.

“Sorry, kiddo.”

“S’ok.”

He sighed in the corner as he looked at her small figure, all sad and rejected. Julia Fenwick has inadvertently picked up a quite a business with her skill in desserts, and Stanley Fenwick had gotten some sort of promotion or an enemy of the higher ups because lately he has been piled with paperwork. So she is lonely because her family currently has no time for her. The parallels here were uncomfortable, to say the least. He tries to ignore that niggling feeling of unspoken words sitting at the back of his throat but soon they break out onto his lips. “What does a dragon fairy do Michelle?”

Michelle brightens almost immediately, she turns to the strange monochrome man in the corner and beams toothily.

“Well-” She starts and he wonders what demon contract he has just signed himself up for.

Where despair empties him, rage fills him like a tsunami of cutting ice. It fills up the space he is stricken with but it hurts him all the same, tears him apart from the inside out.

Why was he, the most powerful, the kindest, the most merciful one of them all despised and loathed and cursed? The mortals feared him, they made medicines at the cost of the lives of others just to escape from him. The ones filled with magic created spells and potions and stones of power. Only the scorned and the pitiful could see the refuge he truly was. Death would protect them from the harsh reality of life, let them rest their weary souls before showing them along their next lives, hopefully, better ones.

But then the worlds, every world, turns and Death is left behind.

“Michelle, baby? Where are- oh my,” Julia Fenwick giggled as she took in the sight. “Oh, Stan! Come here and see this,” she calls.

“Hmm?” Stanley Fenwick stumbles in, his hair askew and there is ink and dried saliva faintly on his face. He looks sleepily at the room before brightening visibly at the sight of his daughter. His daughter that is.. what is she doing?

“No elf!” Michelle shrieks happily as she points at her favorite corner with a teddy bear. They are not sure why their daughter loves the corner so much, but it is both adorable as it is disturbing. “Ah, no!” She screams as she begins running with her tiny legs across the room, turning and twisting and jumping over strewn pillows like someone was actually on her heels.

“Hey, Stan?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Imaginary friend aside, we are doing okay right?”

Stanley looks fondly at his wife and kisses her gently on the lips. In the background, he can hear the sound of the soft padding of running feet and giggles filling the air. “Yeah darling,” he murmurs as he pulls back from the kiss, “We’re doing okay.”

“I will deep fwy you elf and eat your bwain wif lemon ’n thyme!”

“...Maybe a little less cooking shows.” Stanley amends and Julia giggles.

Things happen, stuff is invented, discoveries are made, breakthroughs come through. Some worlds are so technologically advanced it impresses even Knowledge, while others are so simple and so in tune with nature that it gives Life hope. There are the post-apocalyptic worlds, the worlds completely filled with water, the worlds where everyone physically has bird wings and worlds where magic runs more rampant than the plague. They are all turning and changing and growing and multiplying and turning.

And Death is so sick of it all.

It had been growing, festering, for a long time now and Death knows it. He is tired of playing the scapegoat. He is infuriated that he must pick up everyone’s messes despite the fact he is the most powerful being of them all. He is exhausted at being hated and feared and having people do everything in their grasp to get away from him even though he is saving them, he is saving them from their horrible pitiful lives and their stupid little worries and their sad tiny little problems and they are all ungrateful. His brothers and sisters, the angels and demons, those arrogant human worms, everything, scum, all of them.

His strength was returning.

It started during dinner time. Michelle was making a mess as usual. He would too if he had to eat what she was having. Ugh.

Stanley Fenwick was telling the family about his day, and Julia Fenwick was fetching dessert- a homemade Italian tiramisu that made the entity truly envious at any organism with working taste buds and the ability to use them. God, he missed taste. He missed a lot of things. But seriously, food is pretty high up there.

Michelle was blabbering on a storm as she banged her hands happily on her little table-chair construction, tiny fingers squelching bits of banana and beetroot between themselves. It is disgusting. He is appalled at himself for thinking for one second that it was endearing. He still thinks it is disgusting. Just.. endearingly so.

He watches her intently, maybe even fondly if he is capable of feeling so. It is because of this that he sees the wobble of the high chair. Not the minute vibrations from the infant's playful ministrations with food, but a genuine, concerning shift in the chair, threatening to fall and topple to the side. He does not even think about it, he steps up to stand behind Michelle to steady her seat.

It did not even occur to him until a few minutes later that he could feel the smooth, solid form of plastic beneath his touch. He holds his breath in his nonexistent lungs like it was all that was stopping him from slipping back into nothingness and he doesn’t move a single iota until the plates were cleared and Michelle was lifted from the seat.

He holds it until he slowly, reverently releases his hold on the high chair. His ribcage feels like they have been sewed tightly together and the cavity inside him is practically itching in expectation.

The chair remains completely still, untouched. And disappointment washes over him.

Maybe he has grown delusional upon everything else.

He will show them. And they will rue crossing him. They will weep and they will beg and then when all hope is lost, he will show them mercy and forgiveness and they will understand. They will understand how they have hurt him and disrespected him and then they can all move on and be stronger together.

But first, everything must die.

“Huh.” Stanley says as he takes a sip of freshly brewed morning coffee, looking at the pieces of what used to be a high chair. One of the legs had come off. It must have fallen during the night.

Death is inevitable. He is inevitable.

He is Death.

One day Michelle came up to him and asked, “What’s yew name?” Like she had never considered up until this point he had one.

White pupils look down at the small girl, unblinking, without an answer. Michelle Fenwick was not deterred. The man of black and white wasn’t surprised. Four or so years of watching the rambunctious, intelligent girl by the corner do wonders in understanding said, child. He could go off somewhere else of course, not anywhere thirty feet away from the girl but there was nothing necessarily anchoring him to those bright, young, brown eyes either. Except maybe for the one single fact that those were apparently the only eyes on this planet that could see him.

“It’s not good to stare.” Michelle pointed out, and the tall skeletal being purposely gave one slow, steady blink before reverting back to doing his usual routine of fuck all. Michelle, as if sensing the mock for what it was, scowled and crossed her arms petulantly like the child she was. “If you won’t tell me your name I’ll give you one.” She threatened, making it sound like the worst thing imaginable to inflict upon the nightmare creature poorly disguised as a man.

Amused, he stayed silent, stiller than stone. Whiter than bone. If it weren’t for the shadows that played around him, the black snake-like hair decorating his head and the darkness where the whites of his eyes should’ve been, Michelle would think him as a sculpture of snow and ice, carved by an artist of abstract modern tastes.

Of course, he wasn’t. A statue made out of ice would have caved by now, this being just stayed annoyingly silent.

Narrowing her eyes, the girl slowly brought her hand up, fingers formed to point directly at the other. There’s a tense sort of silence between them. Child pointing, nightmare man just standing there. Then, like a guillotine, Michelle slashed through the vacuum of sound. “Choc’late Thunder.” She declares solemnly.

Instantaneously the taller man’s striking features curdle and sour, taken aback but such piss poor naming choice. The cheeky young Fenwick girl had to clasp her little hands over her mouth to stop herself shrieking from laughter. From the narrowing of invertedly colored eyes, it was obviously not working. Not that Michelle really cared, this was probably the best reaction she’s ever prodded out of the pale-faced man and the pride and satisfaction were like fireworks in her stomach.

“I would rather you very much did not.” The being replied. His voice was deep and soft and hoarse. Like black velvet, but after years and years of being trapped in some freezer with a feral animal clawing at it. Though he did not always sound like a jazz singer on his deathbed, the being could always come up with the most amazing voices when he wanted to. He was a better storyteller than her daddy or mummy ever was.

Michelle’s face broke into a wide smile. It was a cheeky, mischievous grin that made the being narrow his eyes.

“Stwawberry Sugar,” Michelle suggests, her face being threatened to be split apart with her own smiling mouth. Insolent brat.

“You know very well what I think of such a name.” The being scowls with no real heat. Michelle knows that he doesn’t exude any heat at all, he is very cold, hence it is her duty to warm him up with hugs.

“Michael Bwon.” She shoots.

“Bland. Try again.” The taller of the pair shoots back, quick as gunfire. He is always so quiet in the corner, but, much to the child’s delight, once she gets him to start talking he won’t stop till she leaves.

“Jack Spawwow.”

The being frowns and raises a hairless eyebrow. “Do I look like a pirate to you?” He asks. He then frowns harder, “And how do you even know who he is? You are like, three.”

The shadows around him lengthen and curl around his body menacingly, his hair following suit, flaring up like a black fire but with the consistency of ink. The sharp features of his appearance are highlighted in a way that made him cross the odd horrific beauty he threads so carefully on and nosedives straight to bone-chillingly terrifying.

Michelle, used to the sight of his unique form since birth, was annoyingly undeterred. Instead, she is constantly fascinated and visibly restraining herself from touching the stray tendrils of shadow. It is not exactly the response the other was going for.

“Grimm, two 'm's.” Michelle declared decidedly. “Since you are so grumpy.”

The bring blinked slowly. It wasn’t a common human name, and he admittedly liked the connotations and the symbolic irony of this oblivious little mortal naming him, of all people, that. This mortal wth her bright eyes and the cutesy little family and the most rebellious little smirk he’s ever seen on a youth. Looking at this tiny, tiny little girl, filled with a bright ball of fire under soft flesh and breakable bones, he thinks, maybe he could let himself be named. For Michelle.

“Grimm,” Grimm says slowly, tasting it in the lilts of his voice still rough from disuse. He hates that somehow his body has recently taken to more human aspects on top of everything he’s being subjected to. But, as he tried stretching his own mouth to curl upwards in an attempt to mimic the smaller mortal, the entity decided maybe he hates his situation a little less than before. “Grimm. I think I like that.”

Maybe he can do this.

Death has not lost. He is Death, they need him. They will not be able to kill him. He is death, he is the end of all, the end of everything. Death screams this, as he staggers towards his fellow entities, his friends, companions, that he had once called his family.

Space, Time, Life, Chaos, Order, Love, Knowledge, Magic, and Fate surround him, they encircle him as the ground beneath them shakes and Death is pushed onto his knees, enraged and defiant. “You cannot defeat me.” Death says he will not scream again, will not give them the pleasure of seeing himself writhe as he feels his very essence start to burn and crackle like lightning. “You cannot defeat me, and when I will come back I will destroy you all.”

They all gaze at him with pity as they look down at him like he is a broken thing that should have been replaced eons ago. He hates it, he hates them.

It is the last feeling he holds onto before he falls into darkness.

“Goodbye, Death.”

Michelle grins, wide and toothy, and sticks her tiny little hand out.

“Hello, Grimm.”

And so the worlds turn.