"You can't do that," Lync says, legs crossed, floating upside down, face completely void of expression. "Say you feel bad for what you did and expect forgiveness, just like that. That's not how things work."
Hydron scrunches his face, confused, and twists his hands through his hair, hard enough to rip it out if he were real.
"What do you mean? Isn't that what fixes things? Apologizing?"
"I'm dead, Hydron." He flinches, remembering what he did, and Lync rolls his eyes at him, scoffing. "There's nothing you can do to fix that."
A bell chimes in the back of his skull, echoing in this realm of silence, and the empty blackness grows white. Hydron jumps up, not understanding what's happening, and Lync just continues to stare at him, bored.
"Try finding a way to apologize that isn't meaningless, next time."
The bell chimes again, and again, and they both fade from Death's grasp.
Life begins anew.
Hydron's first word is 'sorry.'
In every life, things shift, and change, but some things stay the same.
Hydron says 'sorry' before he knows what the word means. He never gets the chance to learn, in most lives. But still, something buzzes in the back of his head, those few rare times where he says it. Someone's expecting something of him.
The question of 'expecting what?' slips from his mind before it's even half thought out, brushed away into the wind.
((
He is given the life of a housecat.
Sleek furred and delicate, his owners luxuriate love upon him, giving him a calm rest in life he needed. A break from the turmoil written out for him.
He escapes from his home one day, and catches a crow, killing it in his jaws. As the birds breath leaves its lungs, a semblance to sorrow burns through his mind, though his feline self cannot comprehend it.
Ignoring the cycle of nature, and his animalistic instincts, he drops the dead crow to the ground, and flees.
Thirty-five minutes later, a truck hits him, and he dies.
A single daffodil grows upon his grave.))
((
When Hydron is walking home from school, complaining to a classmate on the phone about how absolutely unfair the science teacher is, and if his grades drop any further his father is going to lose his mind, he bumps into another boy, harshly.
The boys hair is bright pink, and he's clutching a crow in his arms, its wing clearly broken. He stumbles, when he's walked into, and nearly drops the injured bird, catching himself at the last second, and gives Hydron a hateful glare.
The look burns in his chest, and Hydron almost apologizes to the stranger, but the words choke in his throat, and he feels as though doing so would be horribly wrong. Instead, he stumbles out a watch where you're going, and practically runs off, heart racing for reasons he couldn't understand.
Crows appear wherever he is for the next week straight.
Everywhere he goes, they laugh at him when he trips, scream when he insults or hurts another person, and create a massive, sun blocking, cawing frenzy when his father hits him.
When he throws himself off a bridge fifteen feet above a lake, twelve days later, the boys glare sticks deep in his mind, even though Hydron had forgotten him. Crows flock to where he stands, and not one of them makes a single cry as he falls to the water.
The last words he thinks echo in another's voice.
'Try again, Hydron.'))
"Hello!" The cashier chimes, grinning at Hydron as he walks into the flower shop. His hair is bright pink, his eyes thickly lined in mascara, and Hydron shouldn't find him as beautiful as he does.
Hydron can't help but stare at him, for a moment, caught mid-step towards the roses. What an interesting person, managing to combine pink hair and green clothes and still come off as the cutest boy Hydron has ever seen, despite the colors being a hideous combination. The children at his old school would mock this boy. He loves it.
"Is there anything I can help you with?" The cashier -Lync, his name tag says- asks him, head tilted slightly, as if he knew exactly how to pose to make Hydrons chest burn with some unfathomable feeling.
"Yes, actually," Hydron replies, slowly, collecting his words as he attempts to calm down his heart, beating harsher in his chest than this infatuation warranted. "Are there any flowers in this shop that pop life into a dreary home? I had an idea for the bouquet I'd wanted, but seem to have lost all thought when I saw your wonderful face."
A worker in the staff room bursts into high, hyena-esque laughter, cutting through Hydron's skull until another person in the back tells him to shut up, and Hydron is confused over the response, because he was just telling the truth, and really, he delivered that line wonderfully.
But Lync continues to grin at him, and nods, collecting together some flowers at Hydrons approval, and makes a bouquet of alstroemeria, and daffodils.
He places them upon his nightstand, and whenever he looks at them, a burning in his chest and skull nearly overwhelms him to the point of passing out.
((
He is born into a world of monsters. They plague the streets for decades, destroying any hope for peace in this life.
His Father, loving as always, assigns him to a team of Hunters, people who make a living off of finding the beasts, and killing them, the only thing preventing total extermination of their race, using the mark of the daffodil as their symbol. The saviors of a broken world, Hydron in no way belongs to them, and they know it as well as he does.
He receives no training. His Father insists he doesn't need any. His teammates snarl at him when they think he isn't looking.
When a beast thirty feet tall, skull long and misshapen, comes tearing towards him with massive claws on his third night, eight limbs carrying it too fast for Hydron to escape, all he can do is piss himself, and let the beast tear through his flesh.
The last thing he sees is a crow, flying off into the distance, and a Hunter with pink hair running towards him, daffodil badge contrasting brightly on the blackening surroundings of Hydrons vision.
Sorry, he thinks, and he's not sure why.))
((
He summons a demon.
He is bruised, and pained, and uses the blood running from the nose his father broke again to help the summoning. Tears run down his face, and he can barely hold up his body with his one un-broken arm.
And he summons a demon.
He was hoping for an angel, but the pink haired abomination in front of him could be nothing but a creature of death, covered in pitch black feathers, and wearing the skull of a giant crow.
Something about it seems so familiar Hydron could scream.
(He knew he didn't deserve an angel, anyways. He doesn't know why he dared to hope when he was always let down.)
The demon looks at him, head tilted, blue eyes wide and startled, before it grins razor blades, and asks Hydron what he wants.
What Hydron wants, above all else, is to be happy.
It laughs at him, sharp and painful, and grows, the screams of savage crows echoing through Hydron's skull.
"Wish granted."
And his head is ripped off his shoulders.))
"I'm back!" Hydron calls, as he enters the shop for what he believes is the fifth time this month. "I know it's hardly been any time at all, but I just couldn't stay away from your wonderful- oh."
Lync isn't at the cash register, this time.
Instead it's a large man with pale red hair, staring at him with his eyebrows furrowed, and Hydron feels as though his head is going to explode.
"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't recall you ever being here before. Perhaps you're confusing this place with one you visited before?" The man says to him, and something, everything about that statement feels so wrong, Hydron nearly collapses from the sheer horror flooding him.
And then Lync pops out from the staff room, grin stretching across his face, and relief fills him. Of course he had been here before. How could he have doubted that, when he feels as though he knows Lync in his very soul?
"Here for more flowers you don't remember needing, Hydron?" Lync asks, teasingly, and holds up a daffodil in his hand.
"Actually," Hydron says, watching as Lync put the flower in his front pocket, bright head blooming form his chest like a spot of sunshine. "I came here to ask you out. Coffee?"
Lync's grin stretches wide across his face, and Hydron imagines Lync could kill him with it.
"Is it alright if I leave you here, Volt?" Lync asks his co-worker, already midway to the door.
"Always abandoning your work for higher sights," Volt says, head shaking, and he sighs. "Have fun."
When Lync grabs his hand, Hydron's heart pounds in a happier way than it had before.
((
Hydron is walking through his high school's halls, tired and stressing over how he was going to explain his latest failed test to his father, when a bright flash of pink in the corner of his eye makes him stop in the middle of moving down the first stair.
When he turns his head around, his eyes catch sight of the cutest, prettiest boy he's ever seen, and his heart weeps.
The boy looks towards him, catching his stare, and grins when Hydrons attempt to greet him -perfect as always in his head- comes out a shaky and barely audible hello.
The boy starts walking towards him, but gravity catches up to Hydron before he could reach, and Hydron stumbles, and falls down the entire twelve stair flight, cracking his skull.
His last thought echo's in another's voice.
'Dumbass.' ))
"I know you from somewhere, don't I."
Lync pauses, mid-step to the TV in his apartment, and turns to Hydron, raising an eyebrow.
"That's an odd way to flirt with someone you've known for over two months, my dude."
"No, I mean," he frowns, unsure how to phrase his words. "I feel like I've known you in... a different reality?"
He glances to the jug of daffodils resting on Lyncs windowsill, and feels part of the fuzz in the back of his mind clear up.
"I feel as though I knew you in a different life, and I hurt you." A pause. "You and that other red-haired cashier."
Lync hums, and turns on Mario Kart, throwing a controller to Hydron. He fumbles the catch, and it whacks him in the face.
"Always a clumsy dumbass." Lync laughs, as he plops down next to Hydron on the couch, swinging his feet into his lap. "You'd die tripping on the stairs."
Hydron scowls. "Would not."
"Would too!" Lync gives him a light kick, and Hydron pouts, giving up as he selects Princess Peach for his character.
They play through a few races, Hydron losing in dead last while Lync beats him in first as always, a victorious middle finger and out stuck tongue shown Hydrons way to mock his defeat.
When he asks if he made up for what he did, Lync laughs at him, and tells him to get back to sucking dick at childrens racing games.
It's nice, Hydron thinks.
He wonders if this is what happiness feels like.
Hydron's deaths are always painful. Gorey, aggressive, violent, or slow, he leads himself speedily towards a vile end, some part of him always looking for a punishment for crimes he cannot remember, always hoping to finally correct to wrongs he caused others through his own sufferings, to finally have his apologies accepted.
At first the deaths were punishments for the pain he had caused in his first life, but balance was achieved, and by the time he begun gathering daffodils, Life was already telling him to let go and start anew.
Hydron kisses Lync, softly on his mouth, and presses their foreheads together.
"I'll find you again," he whispers. "The next life I'm in. I'll look for you, even if I can't remember you, and I'll find you."
"I love you," he says, voice always shaking no matter how many times he says the words. Lync grins, and says,
"Don't keep me waiting."
In time, balance is always achieved.
Life continues on.