Death for Life

Once

Giggles rang happily through out the small home in a quiet town. A toddler, no older than three, came running around the corner. Off-white bangs fell into his line of vision, but he ignored them in favor of investigating the kitchen. The warm smells he had come to associate with his mother's cooking drifted lazily from the large, metal box that sat in the far corner of the room.

To his ultimate delight, the grey gate that was meant to keep him out was on its side on the black kitchen tile. While slowly inching closer to the counters, he eyed each object curiously. Arthur was never allowed in the kitchen unless it was meal time, and even then it was only with his mother's watchful eye. His mind wandered to his most recent memory of his dearest mum.

She had come screaming and crying from the lavatory, tears spilling down her cheeks. The sound was enough to awaken his father, who Arthur had abandoned a few minutes prior. He had watched form behind the cream-coloured sofa as his father's face paled at the words falling from the woman's lips. Quicker than he had ever seen the man move, he slipped on a pair of sandals, gathered his wallet and keys from the grey ceramic bowl that had sat on the table near the door, and escorted his wife to the car.

Arthur glanced over his shoulder, green eyes dancing past the shattered remains on the floor to the white painted front door. They hadn't even asked him if he wanted to go.

It was with a definite pout that the boy approached the nearest counter. A tiny hand crawled along the countertop; pale fingers were stretched to their full length, His pout soured into a frown as he moved to the next counter. Surely his mother had not pushed everything out of his reach when she believed he would never get into the kitchen. Right?

He turned his attention on the counter beside the metal box. The white granite was cool to the touch, but it did not distract Arthur from the disappointment filling the place his excitement had once dwelled. The toddler straightened his spine, strained his ankles, and threw his arm out with al his might. His mouth fell open in surprise as the tips of his fingers caught the edge of something colder than the counter. His ankles gave out at the same moment he retracted his arm.

Arthur fell to the ground, but the pain was dismissed as he watched the shinny, metal thing curve elegantly in the air before turning towards his chest. He recognized it as the thing his mum used to cut up those yucky carrots she forced him to eat. The boy gasped as a large hand snatched the item out of the air a handful of centimeters short of piercing his chest.

"Whoa there," green met blue eyes hidden behind square lensed glasses, "You shouldn't be playing with knives, ya know?"

The boy floundered for something to say, his gaze shifting from the man to the metal object he had called a 'knives.'

"Red," he said, pointing at the coloured substance beginning to drip from the man's hand. He rose an eyebrow in question before he saw what the child did.

"Oh, this is why you shouldn't play with knives. You'll get nasty cuts and bleed." Arthur's small eyebrows pulled together tightly as he watched the man take the 'knives' in his clean hand and wipe it on the black trousers he wore. The boy decided then and there that his mother's insistence that his clothes were in fact not convenient kitchen towels was false.

"So what's your name, kid?" Arthur watched as the blue eyed man placed the shinny object back on the counter before he answered.

"Art'ur."

"Arthur," mused the man quietly, "Well, my name is Alfred, but if you call me 'Alfie" I'll have ta pinch ya." Alfred winked at Arthur with an easy going smile. Arthur would usually shy away from strangers, but he refused to do so now. Something in his gut told him that if he did, he would lose. Lose at what, he did not know.

"Alf-" the name died on his lips as the front door opened with a crash. He was quickly sidetracked from looking towards where the intruder was hurrying up the stairs as red began to bloom across the white button down shirt the man had. Alfred looked down at his chest and grimaced at the sight.

"I best be going," he said as he rose to his feet, "Be good-"

"Arthur!" He gasped in surprise as chilled hands caught his shoulders, turning him to face his visitor. The slightly overpowering scent of cigarettes burned his sensitive nose, but he did not resist as the woman searched his body for any possible owies.

"Oh Arthur," his aunt sighed heavily, pulling him into a hug, "What are you doing in here?"

"Talking to Alfie," he said.

"Who?" Arthur raise a hand and pointed rudely to where the man was only to discover he had disappeared.

A frown twisted his lips, "He's gone."

"Perhaps he's shy," his aunt offered as she thought that the missing boy must have been an imaginary friend. Instead of reassuring him, her suggestion only confused Arthur. Alfred hadn't seemed shy as he often was, but had appeared to be quite content with talking to the toddler.

"Well," Arthur looked up as he was pulled to his feet, "Why don't you tell me about your friend while we go to my house and bake cookies!" She laughed softly at the bright smile that overtook the toddler's face.

"He had blue eyes!"

"Oh, like the ocean?"

"No."

"Like the sky?" The duo walked carefully through the shards of ceramic, unaware of the man in the next room. Alfred gritted his teeth, his injured hand pressed tightly against the gash in his chest. He struggled to hear what the child's answer would be. It was inconsequential, he knew, but it served to distract him from the sensation of drowning on his own blood.

After a pause in which he pulled on his trainers, Arthur answered with a bluntness that few retained beyond childhood, "Better."

The closing of the door prevented either human from hearing the first gurgled cough. Alfred brought up his free hand to his mouth, but let it drop as red stained his lips. He sank to the floor, his head hanging limply to the side. Unlike so many of his kind, he had yet to do the whole dying thing. The fact that doing so was not encouraged hardly had a hand in it. No, Alfred would guess that it was his age that was the reason for it. While everyone else had been around for nearly a thousand or more years, he was only 216 in human years.

Trembling fingers hooked around the frame of his glasses and pulled them off. They clattered to the ground, but their owner did not bother to retrieve them. He was a fool for sparing someone from their own death. Anyone he knew would say as much, but at least he had died for someone who had done no wrong. A child never deserved to choke to death on their own fluids, alone on a cold floor.

Alfred smirked brokenly as a feeling that was familiar and so terrifyingly alien began to tugged at his navel.

Arthur chewed nervously on the inside of his cheek. The toddler was being lead by the hand through a long, white walled hallway. Fluorescent lights buzzed quietly above his head in the silence, interrupted only by the sound of their feet on the linoleum. A small container of freshly baked cookies was tucked close to his side under his free arm. It had been three days since his adventure in the kitchen and he had not seen his parents since then. In fact, he hadn't seen Alfred either.

"Ready?" He nodded once, keeping his eyes fixed on the grey door. His aunt took a deep breath as if she was preparing for what was behind it. Arthur squeezed her hand harder and she pushed the door open slowly.

The room itself was rather unimpressive and windowless. That did not bother the boy. The sight of his mother laying between white bed sheets and connected to too many monitors for him to count, worried him.

"Mum," he murmured quietly as if the very sound of his voice would make the image of his mother's ashen face shatter. Long black curls fell onto her pillow as she turned her head to look at him, green eyes full of diluted warmth.

"Arthur." The toddler released his aunt and took off at a run down the hall. His mother's hand dropped back to her side while his aunt called after him. He pushed past doctors with hands full of charts and nurses hurrying from one room to the next. Few paid him any mind, but the few who did were easily distracted. Arthur gasped as he rounded yet another corner. To his right was a closet who's door was slightly ajar. His aunt's voice echoed through the hall and he made a quick choice.

The door shut silently behind, blocking him from his worried aunt's view as she streaked past. Bleach hung in the air along with the scent of dampness, but the toddler did not mind it. Arthur wrapped his thin arms around his knees while ducking his head into his knees. A soft jab in his chest forced him to lessen his hold. Sitting back, his hand reached into the depths of his navy blue coat. Carefully, he retrieved a pair of glasses.

His aunt had brought him back to his house when she found out that he would be staying a few nights with her. While she had been in his room, gathering his clothes, he had strayed into the sitting room. Near the deep brown chair his father preferred to read the paper in he had spotted the item. They were Alfred's, that much he knew for sure. Why they had been left behind or why they had two brown finger prints on them were a mystery.

Arthur closed his shaking hand around the square lensed glasses, curling over his knees in the process.

Alfred took a deep breath, urging his panicking mind to chill out. This was not the time for him to have a mental break down. Well, never was really the time for a complete and utter breakdown, but in this case it was even more important. He was getting off topic again.

The man pressed his face into his palm harshly, determined to shove all the useless thoughts out. Light brown eyebrows pulled together over shut eyes as he tried to sort out just how he was going to survive the next eleven or so years. Sure, eleven measly years really did not seem like much to someone who was considered young at 216, but that didn't account for the situation he found himself in.

Alfred sighed heavily. Well, mentally he did. Physically…Alfred wasn't sure he currently existed physically. The man did his best to trade in the lightless void that surrounded him for the memory of a small park somewhere near Scranton. He had watched his first mortal die in that small city, but the park itself was beautiful. Towering trees waved in the light summer's breeze, blowing strands of his light brown hair off his sweaty face. It was so cool. Or perhaps that was just Alfred's imagination dressing up the trash littered playground. Either way, it wasn't working. What point was there in imagining the wind on your skin when you had no body?

None.

Right. Eleven years. He could do this.

Couldn't he?

Arthur rested his forehead against the glass window, watching the world roll by without interest. Today, they had put his mother in the ground where she could finally lay beside his father. He had looked on from the small crowd of black dressed mourners, but it hadn't truly affected him yet. No, he knew that the plunge into sorrow deeper than his young mind should have been able to comprehend was lying in wait. It would strike when he least needed it to.

The car smoothly turned onto a different street, barren trees blocking out any piece of the cemetery that remained. Eleven years. It had taken exactly eleven years for his life to unravel, leaving nothing but a despairingly sullen teenager behind. His mother had lost his baby brother that day so many years ago. It was over the miscarriage that she had stumbled into the hall and screamed for his father. Peter had not been her first miscarriage. There had been two before Arthur had been born. Each had a name.

Finlay had been the first to give up before he had even been delivered. His mother had been around five months when it happened. While his departure had haunted his mother's every waking moment, it was Liam who tore her heart apart. He had been born already dead at the ripe old age of nine months. It had taken the woman three years before she had dared to try again. That was when Arthur had come about. Even his arrival into the world had been rocky at best, but he had survived. His existence had given the young couple new hope. Peter, however, had served to crush said hope and burn down the world about Arthur's ears.

"We're here." The soft voice pulled him from his thoughts and the teen nodded once to his aunt, her brown eyes full of a worry she did not have the courage to speak about. Arthur opened the passenger door of the small car, stepping out into what sunlight penetrated the thin layer of cloud cover. His hair had yellowed into a more common shade of blond, but his eyes had kept their colour. If they were more guarded than they had any right to be, no one ever mentioned it aloud.

His aunt beat him to the dark red door of her tiny home and opened it slowly. He knew she was sneaking peeks at him over her shoulder and under her arm, but he refused to acknowledge it. She wasn't the first to stare and he knew she would not be the last. It was not often that a person was ejected from a car in a crash and lived to be the sole survivor. Arthur eyed the hard cast and flimsy sling his right arm resided in. The compound fracture was the final gift his mother had given him.

Lilacs filled the air inside the home and caused the fourteen year old to frown. The purple flower was his aunt's most beloved plant and its scent was one she preferred above all others. They had also been the same flowers that had decorated his mother's funeral. He hated the plant.

Taking the stairs two at a time, Arthur merely grunted in reply when his aunt called after him. He did not want to talk about what had happened or what was to happen to him. He had not wished to dwell on it when he was in the hospital alone at night and he most certainly did not wish to speak about it now. The peeling paint of his bedroom door shuddered when he slammed it shut.

Arthur cast his gaze about the room from his bed in the far corner to the short desk that had been pushed against the only window. With an annoyed huff, he turned back to the door and twisted the door knob. He had left his sketch book in the kitchen where he had been drawing before his aunt had taken him to the funeral. The door rattled, but it stayed shut when the door knob refused to be moved. Arthur tried again, only to sigh quietly. For as long as he could be bothered to recall, the door to his room always locked on its own. There was no way to open it without the skeleton key his aunt kept tied about her throat.

The fourteen year old deflated as he spun on his heel, throwing himself down onto the thin mattress of his bed. His knuckles brushed the wall and his foot smacked against the footboard, but he ignored that as he bounced once from the force of his fall much to his mixed delight and irritation. Arthur stared sightlessly up at the sky blue painted ceiling. His aunt had caved under much childish pouting and agreed to colour the previously white space. It wasn't quite the right shade, but it had been as close as he could get.

Scarred finger tips dug through the inside pocket of the boy's black jacket until they brushed against a long, warm item. Arthur retrieved the one thing that allowed him to believe that his meeting with that strange man had not been a dream. They were starting to wear, the black not quite as deep as it had once been and the lenses were lightly scuffed about the edges. Arthur placed the square lensed glasses on his face with his eyes closed as he sometimes did. He relaxed as the familiar weight made itself known to him and his permanent frown softened.

Over the years he had come to the realization that the strange man had saved his life. If Alfred had not caught that knife it would have cut into his tiny torso and he most likely would have bled to death before the paramedics could arrive. This was not the only thing he had come to know. The red that had spread across Alfred's dress shirt had been blood. The man had been injured, but he had no idea how.

"What's with the long face?" Arthur jackknifed at the sound of the voice, eyes popping open in shock. There, resting half in and half out of his window, was a young man. Pale brown hair hung about his eyes, but they failed to hide the shimmering blue.

"Alfie," the teen questioned as he approached the window in a manner similar to that of one walking towards a specter. Or at least, that was what Alfred thought. The man kept his casual smirk up until the young Brit was within reach. Faster than most could comprehend, he stretched out his arm and caught the tender flesh on the inside of Arthur's wrist between two fingers.

"W-hy," Arthur stuttered, cradling his injured wrist to his chest beside the one in the sling.

"I thought I told ya not to call me that," the man replied with the air of someone who had gained justice for a great wrong. Arthur outright scowled as the strange man pulled himself up, straining his upper arms in the process. One foot at a time, Alfred lowered himself into the teen's room without so much as a vague air of embarrassment.

"You can't just enter someone's bedroom like that," started the affronted boy.

"Oh, why not?"

"Because its improper," Arthur barked at the raised brow he had earned. Things may have been collapsing in his life, but the teen would not allow proper etiquette to be pushed aside.

The grin that roared to life along the man's lips infuriated the teenager. He moved to step forwards, unsure of just what he was planning on doing when his foot landed on a knocked over roll of twine. Gravity snatched him by his elbows and yanked him backwards as his balance was lost. The hardwood flooring was not particularly kind as he landed on it with a grunt.

"You know," Alfred started between chuckles, "You really should learn how to be more careful."

Arthur glared at the man as he squatted down to be a eyelevel with the teen. Uncertainty washed over the older male's face as he tipped his head to one side, and Arthur held still when he reached out. Alfred's fingers brushed against the left lens of the glasses, "Are those mine?"

"W-what if they are," Arthur asked, sitting as tall as he could upon the floor. He adjusted the spectacles so that they were no longer in danger of falling off his face, determined to make everything harder for the strange man no matter how small the situation was.

"It would explain why I ended up here once I was released." Arthur frowned at the way the man's words had trailed off to a whisper.

"Released? From where?" Alfred parted his lips to reply before the teen's question repeated in his head. Just where had he been? The dark hole had no true name that he was aware of, but how could he explain that to the human? Alfred knew that if their positions were switched he would not believe a word he would say. He watched the young English lad quietly. Had he not decided over the years that he would willingly explain everything that the teen would ask of him? That if the answer was within his reach, he would surrender it gladly.

"Alfred-"

"I call it the void," Arthur's brows knitted together in confusion at the name, "but I don't know what its actual name is, if it even has one. You see, I'm not like the rest of you. I will never die of natural causes. I will live forever unless I intervene in someone else's-"

Alfred looked up at the ceiling not far from their heads and sniffed the air once, "Do you smell smoke?"

Author's note: So this will be a three-shot? Is that a real term? If not, I hereby lay claim to the term three-shot. If you are confused on some things, then good. You are not supposed to understand anything more than what Arthur understands at any point in time. Though, you are more than free to guess.