When Giotto died it was to the sound of chimes ringing in the distance. He had once entertained the thought that he might be surrounded by his children or his family when he died, perhaps his wife had she not passed on a year earlier, but it was for naught. He was alone when his spirit left his body, when his body succumbed to his age. It was summer when he took his last breath, the air thick and the sound of cicadas all too loud. The heat bore down on him and he was alone in his room, gray hair framing his face and his orange eyes, glowing with the light of his dying will even so many years later, gazing upon the wooden ceiling of his home. Chimes rung then, a gentle breeze blowing past that shook the bells hanging outside the door. He thinks that perhaps the sound was naught but his imagination, his dying thoughts bringing to life the ringing tone in his ears. Then he closes his eyes and lets go.

That was how Giotto died.

It didn't end there. There was a swirling disordering sensation were he was afloat in a great sea, waves crashing on distant shores and the wind roaring in his ears. A storm raged around him, rain pounding down and the sea rising and rising and rising with great hundred meter tall waves. And then, just when he was sure that he might drown, when he wondered if this was his own personal hell sent to torture him for the mistakes of his youth, it stopped.

He's left standing on his own in the middle of a plain stone path, shadows all around him and a paper lantern in his hand. He looked down at himself, wondering on his appearance. He was young again, the wrinkles and brown spots gone. The ache in his joints and the tiredness clinging to his limbs having disappeared as if it was nothing more than a distant dream. He breathed in wonder, shifting where he stood, before looking forward and walking.

Giotto wasn't sure where he's going, only that he needed to walk. He couldn't see anything, not with the endless abyss wrapped around him and the only visible thing being the stone steps before him. So he walked, following the path and wondering where it lead.

As Giotto walked he had no real sense of time. It was an eternity and it was an instant, a thousand steps and just two or three or thirty million. It threw him, offset his equilibrium, and wondered him all at once. This was the afterlife? This was death?

"Hello."

A voice broke through Giotto's thoughts and he paused in his walking. He looked to one side, following the sound of the voice and expecting to see nothing. No doubt it was his own mind playing tricks upon him, filling the nothing with something and trying to make sense of what could not be comprehended. But no, there was a person sitting there. Sat upon a rock was a person. Their form shifted and shifted, like mist slipping through his fingers. Giotto likened it to one of Daemon's illusions. The ones where he made something from nothing and nothing from something, where he altered the very fabric of reality and left everything up for interpretation. And didn't that sting? He still remembered the days where they had been friends. They were still friends, Giotto supposed, but the betrayal of his mist struck him and marred his soul even so many years after the event had come to pass.

He missed his friend.

The one thing that stayed consistent throughout all the changes was their eyes. They were green like nothing Giotto had known before then, an emerald deeper than any other. So unnaturally bright they were. The rest of their form changed and swirled, their skin darkening and lightening and their gender switching back and forth. One moment their hair was long, black and disheveled and the next it was short, blond and neatly cut.

"Who are you?" Giotto asked, curiosity taking the better of him. Perhaps he shouldn't have spoken and should have just kept walking, kept moving, kept going. But no, he spoke to this stranger, this odd being that was everyone and no one all at once, that may be an angel or a demon, a god or a devil. Who should tell him if this being was something dangerous, that might devour his soul and then move onwards to his next meal.

"Who am I?" The being murmured, their eyes glowing. They were so green, so very very green. How was it such a color should ever exist? "I've been called many names before. Everything from Yama to Arawn. The Egyptians once called me Osiris and the Greeks named me Hades. The Japanese have refer to me as Shinigami and the English call me reaper. You may call me Death."

Giotto supposed that a chill should have run down his spine, that he should have felt the cold kiss meeting such a thing as Death would have brought about, but he wasn't hit with any such feeling. No he felt at home, at peace with this figure.

"You are Death?" Giotto asked, resisting the urge to fidget where he stood and taking this ever changing figure before him in with his own mortal eyes, "Why do you feel familiar?"

Because they did. They felt as his own mother would, as if this incomprehensible being was as close to him as his best friend. It couldn't be so, for as intimately as Giotto had once known the thing that was death, as much as he had courted the dangers that would lead to such a state, he had never met the being who sat before him before then.

They smiled, sad and solemn and melancholy in nature, "Ah. That is because I am familiar to you. I am familiar to all. Death is the end of all things; everything shall eventually fall into my embrace. I have no need to give chase when all wander my way eventually."

"Is there really no way to avoid you?" Giotto asked and immediately regretted his words. He waited for some kind of negative consequence for his words, but was met with amusement in the eyes of the shinigami instead.

"There is no way. Even those who claim to be immortal shall wander my way eventually. I, too, shall disappear one day. I'll disappear and be replaced by another, by the next version of Death."

Giotto fell quiet as he listened to Death's words, contemplating them and turning them over in his head. He then spoke once more, quietly as if not to disturb the stillness of what lingered around them, "The next version of Death?"

"Indeed," Death said, "For all things must come to an end and Death is no exception to this. One day another shall take my place, shall find three things of power and take my place. But until then I shall stand under the name of Death."

They stood from their resting place, their form fading and then solidifying, a silvery cloak settling upon their shoulders. Their shape stopped shifting then and settled down unto one single appearance, that of a man not yet out of his teens. His hair was short and messy and dark. His skin was altogether too pale and littered with all sorts of scars. The one that stood out the most was the rune upon his forehead, one wish resembled a lightning bolt.

"Come," They (he?) spoke, stepping forward and away from the stone they had been sat upon since Giotto had first lay his eyes upon their form, "We must go."

"Go where?" Giotto questioned, wary of following the figure despite the sense of familiarity.

"To the sky." Death responded, "That is the fate that you asked for when you accepted your ring, remember?"

"Ring?" And for a moment, Giotto forgot. He could not remember what the metal had once felt like set upon his finger, what it looked like when it glimmered in the light of the sun. He forgot of the ring that Talbot had given him, the Vongola ring. But just as quickly (or was it slowly?) that he forgot he remembered. And he looked down at his hand and found it upon his finger, the weight of it all too familiar.

"How?" Giotto breathed in wonder. Wonder for he remembered giving the ring to Ricardo that day so long ago, that day when he decided to leave the group he had built to his cousin and find a new home in Japan. But here it was, innocently resting upon his finger.

"Who knows?" Death responded, sly smile upon his lips, "Nothing is very consistent here, it all depends upon your own perceptions. Perhaps it was always there and you could just not see it. Perhaps it is not there at all and you are just imagining it. It is quite difficult to tell in a place such as this one."

Giotto nodded numbly and followed after the manifestation of Death. He walked off the stone pathway and into the nothingness, but Giotto trailed after him despite there seemingly being no ground to walk upon.

Once more they walked and Giotto was at a loss as to how much time had passed. He supposed that such was the way this place worked, that your own perceptions were turned against you and nothing was ever certain. He knew that Daemon would have loved such a place, just as he knew that Lampo, G and Alaude would have hated it for its uncertainty.

As they walked the black slowly grew gray and then lightened into a white. It was as if they were walking through a great fog or wandering past a low hanging cloud. The ground grew wet and it seemed to Giotto that he stood upon an ocean, as impossible as that may sound.

Finally Death paused before Giotto. Giotto came to a stop behind him and then had a sudden intake of breath. For the fog finally cleared and the cloud drifted behind him, revealing to him the wide open planes of a salt water sea and the endless clear blue of the sky.

"It is the space within the rings," Death told him, "And it is the place where you should rest until the day should come that you and I might meet again. Your guardians each have their own place that is connected to this one. You may visit them whenever you wish. And one day your successors shall come here and join you in this space as well. Such is the fate of those who hold the Vongola rings."

Giotto tore his eyes away from the wide open skies and the still water they stood upon to look at Death once more, "I'm to stay here?"

"You are. Are you okay with that? That you must stay here for however many centuries it takes for the rings to no longer be a necessity?" Death's eyes glimmered as he spoke, so very green they shone.

"I can still see my family again, right? My guardians, they- I'll be able to speak with them again?"

"You will."

Resolution shone in Giotto's eyes, "Then this is fine. So long as I have them, then this place will be fine. I'll wait as long as I need to."

Death blinked at him, seeming so young in that moment despite the age that echoed in their eyes. Then he grinned and laughed.

"Of course! Of course! Then do as you may. I know you'll find the future events interesting. Watch it as a guardian of time should and view the world however you wish. Giotto, my friend, I shall look forward to the day that we might meet again."

He smiled, wide and sly, his eyes glimmering and shining. A wind swirled, a great gale ran past. Giotto was forced to shut his eyes and guard his face and when he opened them again, the being known as Death was nowhere to be seen.

Giotto stood there for a while longer, staring at the spot that Death had stood. He wondered where they had gone and when they would meet again.

"Giotto!"

G's voice called out to him, a voice he hadn't heard in so long. Giotto turned from where he stood to see the people he called family wandering up to him. They were all there, all of his guardians bar his mist. He ignored the twinge of guilt and regret that came at such a thought and smiled and waved back at them.

"Everyone!" He walked forward and towards them, gladly accepting eternity until the day should come that he might meet Death once again.

("Until we meet again, Giotto," Death whispered in his ears, the faintest voice that was only barely heard and accepted, "Until we meet again.")