"I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means—except by getting off his back."
Leo Tolstoy, in: Anna Karenina (1875-77)
It is a crisp, clear winter morning as I walk between tombstones. My dress is thin, offering no heat whatsoever, but I don't need it, really. My footsteps are soundless, weightless, and barely leave prints in the snow. If you look closely enough, you might spot them though.
In my hands I carry a single rose. I don't really understand putting flowers on graves. Is it to make demise seem pretty instead of ugly? Is it to bring joy when it seems so far away? Is it to pay your respects to the dead? I suppose it's just another human custom I'll never grasp.
I slow my pace, and then stand in front of a gravestone. It's faded, corroded after decades of sitting here. Yet I can still see the name clearly, and when I read it my chest seems to warm, but that's probably my imagination.
I bend down and set the flower on the ground, and it is as white as the snow beneath it.
Five different events, five different times, five different circumstances, and five different souls thrown over my shoulder.
I stand back up, clasp my hands in front of me, and bow my head.
I saw him five times.
Death. There are so many theories about death. It puzzles many people. It frightens many people. It excites many people. Some think it will be painful, others think it will be as easy as falling asleep. Some have been on the brink of death. Others have been surrounded by it their whole lives. But some have never had to face death in the face and say, "Why me?" I often wonder if I should consider those sheltered people lucky or pitiable. Usually, I decide on a mix of both.
What of the face of death? Death is a skeleton dressed funnily so people are not terrified when they are finally at their demise. Death is a demon. Death is the devil. Death is a man. Death is your worst enemy. Death is your best friend. Death is you.
I like to think that I am the most humble, most human, and most chilling representation of death. In fact, I am the only representation of death. I am death. I travel through the years carrying souls over my shoulders, lifting them up, striding through the sunset. My boots leave footprints on the clouds, and my dress, tattered and worn, kicks up dust from the sky. I need a broom. So much dirt has accumulated over the years that it's getting hard for me to travel.
Actually, forget the broom. Get me a vacation. Or at least find me a raise.
The grass is soft as I walk across it. I am in Korea and due at a small hospital in about five minutes. I open the door but no one notices. I walk up the stairs but no one hears.
A small family is gathered around a bed. On it, an old man lies withered and wasted, unable to shit or piss without assistance, unable to talk, unable to hear or speak or see or breathe. He is only able to wait.
The year is 1941. I shove my way through the cluster of people. Stand at the man's side. I brush off my hands on my soiled skirt and run my fingers through my long, bushy, brunette hair.
"How can he just die like that?" a young man asks. He stands across from me, fists clenched. He has longish hair and a sweater on. "When death visits me," he vows, "I will fight him to the end." And I smile to myself because the young man is pretty stupid.
Over the years I have taught myself how to distract myself from the sadness and pain that surrounds me, consumes me, and tears whatever self I have left apart. I do not look at the people. I do not look at the souls, if what I carry are even souls. I do not look at where I am. I look at the events.
For example, today a woman is giving birth. A person whose soul I will eventually take came into the world today. It is, by society's standards, a girl; a lovely, beautiful girl with dark ebony hair and shadowy eyes. Wrapped in a blanket I sense her. I sense the new life. I sense it because it is taking away from me what I have fought hard to regain. It takes my energy. It takes my capacity to care. It takes my strength. "Another one?" I will sigh to myself. But of course there is another one. There will always be another one. Life never ends. It is I who should know this the best.
The old man is giving out. I turn to him. An anonymous woman mutters prayers under her breath. But it is futile, for the man stills. I hold my hand over his eyes and they slide shut, and to everyone else it looks as if he is falling asleep. It makes me wonder if death is that easy, if all it takes is closing your eyes. I wouldn't know.
The man's soul is lilac, translucent, and is shimmering. It spills out of every orifice, gathering above the body in a small human-shaped mass. Long ago, I thought this was beautiful. As I lean over, I wonder if the family can hear me. Can they hear my breath?—the beating of my black heart?—the rustle of my dress? The young man who earlier promised to battle me looks up, and I meet his gaze. He stares at me, and I stare back. I smile at him, and I don't wait to see his reaction.
I look up. There is a hole in the ceiling a little ways away: the perfect exit. I rise, looking over the small building, seeing the tiny village as a bird would. The clouds gather in large gray clumps, about to pour down rain. I step up on them, about to deposit this soul, this thing, whatever it is, onto the conveyor belt of eternity. Where it will go, I don't know. I'm only the messenger.
The land melts where it meets the sky, on the horizon, and that is where I head.
The first time I see him it is 1950. In another hospital, I make my way through parents sobbing in tears of joy and sadness. The floor is cluttered with nurses and doctors and the cries that signal new life and refreshing hope. I stop at the room numbered 213B. I open the door.
People are frantically trying to bring a woman back to life. A baby wails from somewhere and a man is panicked, yelling things in Korean as the doctors around him yell in English. Among the chaos it is hard to pinpoint where the father and child are. But I am not here for them—I am here for the mother.
I patiently push my way between the working bodies. Their efforts are wasted. The beautiful woman has a smile on her lips and tears still wet on her cheeks, the result of her last act in the world: seeing her son.
Her soul is a glittering, vibrant sky blue. She opens her eyes and looks at me. "I have no regrets," she says instantaneously. Her gaze turns to the ceiling. "I loved a wonderful man. I birthed a wonderful boy." She grins prettily. "I am happy with where I am going." I wonder if she knows that the mention of Heaven unsettles me. I hope she knows that I don't know if it exists or not.
I walk forward and hold her instead of throwing her over my shoulder. Usually I only hold children in my arms. But this woman is special.
The doctors are now slowing down, cleaning up, gathering their things. A male nurse comforts the husband as best as he can while an elderly female pays heed to the infant. It has pale skin and a mess of black hair.
It is him.
"Sollux," the thing in my arms says. I don't say anything, only walk to the window and open it. It's a gorgeous day in San Francisco. I step up on the windowsill.
"Hold on," I mutter. Usually I don't allow myself to talk. Usually, usually, usually—this woman's making me break all of my traditions. I push off of the ledge and rise above the city, up into the sky. I go past space, past anything. I step into oblivion and I bend down and let go of the woman. She floats off.
I turn around, about to head back. There are so many souls, so much to do, so little time, so little me. As I travel, the cry of a baby sticks in my ears. The tuff of obsidian hair imprints itself on my mind's eye.
As I walk into Berlin, Germany, I try to find an event to focus on. A grocery store is opening today. In ten minutes, someone will be murdered there.
The second time I am at a small funeral home. The boy is now seven. He has a lisp and hair that is cropped in the back. He has bicolored glasses, tinted in red and blue. He's wearing a fraying sweater and slacks and worn down shoes.
The room he is in has pasty white-grey walls and the ceiling seems to cave down. There are no windows and it stinks like rotting cheese. People are dressed in their mediocre best. The place is silent, save for a preaching man and a few coughs or cries here and there. The people are all plain and sick looking and poor. They all look grey. Everything is grey.
Sollux stands politely by his father at the service. His father is crying. Beside him there is a boy with strange white hair and red-purple eyes. He's wearing a suit that is too large for him, probably a hand-me-down. He already has smudges under his eyes that will only grow more prominent.
"Hey," Sollux whispers to the boy. The adults around them are too preoccupied to notice. "Why ith everyone crying?" he asks.
The boy looks at him angrily. His white hair is wavy and tangled. "Are you stupid?" he asks. "And what's with your voice?" Sollux blushes at the mention of his lisp and the mad boy looks back to his front. "Everyone's crying because my mom died, idiot."
"I'm thorry," Sollux whispers. The boy doesn't answer.
Slowly, slowly, I make my way to the front of the room. My eyes stay on the boy. Sollux. Don't linger, I tell myself. The room is cold and the small thing shivers and a force so powerful nearly knocks me to my feet.
It is not the protectiveness that makes me so surprised. It is the fact that I'm feeling anything at all, considering I've been numb for so long. I stop in the middle of the room. An old woman is beside me and a young man is on my right. The emotion drowns me, overpowers me so much that I pause. I stare at the child. Sollux is his name. Sollux Captor.
If his mother made me break rules, she is nothing compared to her son.
Immediately a woman next to Sollux's father falls down. I stare at the boy even as he cries out, even as his father gasps and hurries to his sister-in-law, who is the person who fell. I watch Sollux as he grips the snow-haired boy next to him. "Karkat!" he yells. Karkat tries to throw him off. "Karkat we're thuppothed to be friendth! I need you!" and Karkat stills. Sollux clutches his friend from behind, sobbing, pressing his forehead to the back of Karkat's neck. Karkat's hands slowly gravitate towards the ones latched around his waist, and he holds them in a tight grip. Finally, I look away.
Sollux's aunt is on the floor. A heart attack, everyone will later know. The preaching man tries to calm everyone. Someone died at a funeral. How peculiar.
The woman's consciousness is a blue, a darker color than her sister's, but still as rich and vibrant. She looks above her just as her sister did. "He will be fine," she murmurs, and whether she talks of her nephew or brother-in-law, I don't know.
I throw her over my shoulder, bent on not breaking anymore rules, though I desperately want to hold her in my arms. I don't think she'll mind, though, and as I walk between the panicked clutches of humans, I subconsciously look for Sollux. Outside, I finally see him. He and Karkat are curled into one another, crying. My dead black heart warms at the sight.
See? Even death has a heart.
Many years have passed between visit number two and visit number three. Sollux has been drafted into the army, as well as Karkat. Sollux is tall, lanky and awkward, even, but not bad looking. His hair is short still, but now he has bangs as well. His glasses are still bicolored—it seems he hasn't lost his penchant for red and blue.
His father is only forty-five, but he's always had heart problems. He coughs once.
Mr. Captor's soul is a dark, pretty green. Sollux scrambles onto the floor. He shakes his father's shoulder, begging him, pleading with him to wake up.
"Wake up, Dad," Sollux screams. "Papa, wake up!" But of course, Mr. Captor, Dad, Papa, does not wake up. Sollux forgets that the dead aren't sleeping, that they are in fact actually, quite truly, dead; which is unfortunate.
Karkat finds Sollux minutes later. He gasps, red-purple eyes growing wide. Sollux spins around, crazed. "Karkat!" he yells. "Karkat, you, we, I—"
"Sollux," Karkat says. He walks forward, eyes and voice both firm and unwavering. He sinks to his knees behind his friend. "Sollux," he repeats, and Sollux sobs and Karkat wraps his arms around his waist, continuing to repeat his name. He plants kisses along Sollux's shoulder, Sollux's neck, and it seems that their physical growth isn't the only thing I've missed over the years.
I turn back to the man. I check my metaphorical watch, and realize I'm running rather late. I bend down; pick up the green mist in my hands. Just as I throw him over my shoulder, Sollux freezes. He quiets. I wonder if he can smell my scent, hear my breath, or see my face. Apparently, he does. He looks straight into my eyes, just as his father had decades ago.
It is then that I turn around and walk away, pushing myself off of the front lawn and into the clouds. "I'll miss him," I hear the man in my arms say, and I don't answer.
An event, I remind myself. I look around at the earth below me. My sights set on Vietnam.
Karkat and Sollux, thankfully, are not yet there. Let's give them a few months. Let's give them a few more months of peace and serenity. Of sanity.
"Play dead," Sollux whispers shakily. His uniform is ruffled. Dirt is smudged on his face. "Play dead, Karkat. Play dead, play dead, play dead."
"It hurts," Karkat answers back, voice filled with agony. "It hurts." Tears leak from his eyes.
Under a bush, Sollux holds Karkat on top of him. Karkat's pant leg is torn, the skin burned and scraped off, revealing cooked muscle and milk-white bone. Karkat clenches his eyes shut. Dead bodies are all around them. Karkat bites down on Sollux's shoulder so he won't scream.
Karkat treads on my heart. My stomach twists with what is about to happen next. I busy myself with the other soldiers, but it won't stop the inevitable. Death waits for no man.
Karkat Vantas dies in his best friend's arms. His soul is a bright red and it sits up to greet me. He looks at his friend, who's falling apart.
"What an asshole," Karkat says fondly. He then turns to me and stands. I hold out my arms and he comes to me and I carry him off to the clouds.
As I touch ground, I look at Sollux, who is now in all truthfulness and earnest completely and irrevocably a large mess. An arm there, a foot there—he is not a man anymore. It amazes me how humans can continue to breathe after such horrible, awful things.
I would like to tell you that I wait for him, but events happen on their own accord, and there is nothing I can do to stop them.
A soldier from what most consider the enemy's side steps forward. He pushes the bush back and I watch, unable to do anything. He looks down at Sollux, at the mess before him. He smiles. He says something in a language that Sollux cannot understand.
A quick translation:
"Look, here's one more."
And then, a bang.
Sollux Captor dies unceremoniously. No one ever finds his body. His soul, his whatever, is yellow—a bright, cheerful yellow. He stands and he looks at me. I stare back, and I realize that I have been waiting for this. Damn you, Sollux Captor.
"Hello," I say. He doesn't answer. "I know you," I whisper.
"I know you too."
I hold out my hand. Sollux reaches over and takes it. We both look up to the sky, and we walk together, side by side.
A/N: I like messing around with the idea of Grim Reaper!Aradia. Something I quickly whipped up, it probably isn't that great, but I like it a lot. Very loosely based on The Book Thief (which is fucking amazing, everyone should read it, I'm currently rereading it for like the 12th time).