Ronald never wanted to be known for being early, and couldn't afford to be late, so walked into the office just as the clock hands ticked to 9:00. The Collections associate was the first desk he came across, and today housed a tall blond with a mass of curls and freckles to share. After he stated his name, she handed him his death ledger all prepped with today's list. Ronald took it with a flourish and wink, then moved on so the reaper who came in behind him could get his assignment. Dispatch was a well-oiled machine, even more so nowadays that William T. Spears was the head manager. That man might be incapable of human emotion, but he knew damn well how to run an agency and keep everyone in line.

Except for Grell, whose only accomplishment to date was no longer being a temp, despite coming in as a senior officer. She was always a wild card, and said wild card was currently bouncing toward Ronald with all the excitement of a kid at Christmas but with far, far more teeth visible than one. Ronald raised a hand in greeting as she slid to a stop just in front of him.

"Senior Sutcliff! Did your clock break? You're actually on time."

"Oh, my sweet summer child," Grell cooed, slinging an arm over Ronald's shoulder and pulling him into a half-hug. "Haven't you seen your list today?"

"If you're excited I assume it's something big and gory." Ronald flipped his book to the current page. They both glanced down. There was just one name for his entire shift, and he had been partnered with Grell for it. "Is this a mistake? It looks like a rookie's list." He was long past this kiddie stuff, taking hours on one soul and having a senior officer holding his hand.

Grell couldn't contain her excitement and spun away to produce her own assignment. She was practically vibrating as she presented the list to him. Same details, only one name for the entire shift.

Ronald tried to recall who they must have pissed off to get such tedious work, but was drawing a blank. He thought that he, at least, had been good. He couldn't say how Grell had been, but she was rarely if ever good. She must have done something and implicated him. Dammit, wasn't the senior supposed to be the one keeping the junior out of trouble?

When comprehension refused to dawn on his face, Grell huffed and yanked back her list. "You're still a rookie in my eyes, Ronnie, but you're my rookie, so I've got to look out for you. Whenever you get this kind of assignment, it can only mean one thing." She glanced around, then dragged him to their shared office, biting her lip so hard on what it meant that blood was beading around the sharp angles of her teeth. Grell licked it away before she whispered, "Coma."

"Coma?" he echoed.

She pulled him down into his seat and perched on the edge of his desk. "Honestly, what are they teaching kids these days? This is - " Grell's hands spun wildly, grasping for the word. "This is a rite of passage! I heard the higher ups talking about it, so had to come in early. You're becoming a true reaper today. Oh, I'm so proud of you, Ronnie!" She leaned down to throw her arms around his shoulders and was lucky neither of them fell over.

He'd never heard of any such rites, not even at the water cooler or when bitching about work at parties. This was probably a rite like 'going toe-to-toe with a demon and a deserter' was a rite - in other words, something Grell and Grell alone considered a profound and important part of the job, so he'd have to steel himself for the unexpected and probably illegal. "I still have no clue what you're talking about."

"Oh, right, right. Silly me," Grell hit herself lightly on the head with her knuckles. "They don't teach these things in class, do they? But what time is it?" Without asking, she checked Ronald's watch. "We really should be there a little early. Let me get ready, and I'll tell you at the hospital."

She danced out to retrieve her scythe, leaving Ronald sitting at his desk and wondering what sort of horrible thing could get Grell out not only on time, but early.

They arrived at the hospital without any trouble, and found the room just as easily. For how Grell was acting, Ronald expected a bit more trouble and a lot more violence, but it really was just a quiet, simple collection.

The curtains were drawn and the door was shut, leaving them in a deep gloom punctuated by the flickering starlight of machinery. The room seemed entirely removed from the rest of the hospital, which was brighter than day and had a constant, droning murmur throughout, even this early in the morning. The only sounds here were the beeping of monitors and the pneumatic hiss of things Ronald didn't even know. Grell was immediately captivated by all the equipment, and Ronald had to clear his throat to catch her attention. If he hadn't seen her in action, he'd have to wonder how someone so scatterbrained could become a senior officer.

"What did you want to tell me?"

"Oh, right. Sit down, Ronnie-kins, and let Auntie Grell tell you a story." She sat herself down on the edge of the woman's bed and patted her shin as though expecting him to sit at her feet. He chose one of the uncomfortable hospital chairs instead.

"Once upon a time, comas were just the things of fairy tales. A princess pricks her finger, or eats a poisoned apple, and falls into a magical, death-like slumber. In real life, if anyone was injured enough to fall comatose, they'd likely fall dead sooner. But science became a thing, and medical science got better and better at keeping people alive, in body if not spirit. Magical slumbers became head trauma or blood clots or a hundred other very unmagical things. People really are so fragile." Grell sighed, eyes distant, fingers twining with the woman's thin, brown hair. Everything about her was washed out, especially compared to the spill of red Grell's own hair provided.

"Anyway, they learned to fight death, claim back those who she'd try to take. That's why that new rule was instated, where we have to wait a full hour before collecting, in case valiant doctors manage to resuscitate the dead. Coming back without a record - it's as bad as having no soul."

Ronald had never questioned the memo announcing that update, though he'd heard all the griping from the Collections division. They still sent out assignments, but for people to die and show up in St Peter's ledger, then disappear from it again was causing havoc on the system. They still hadn't found a long-term solution. "But what does that have to do with," he checked his list. "Emily Jean Roget, who's due to die ten minutes from now?"

"I read she's already died and came back, when she was first admitted. So we don't want her to pull that stunt again. Records look awful when they're yanked around so, and do a number on our scythes. Just imagine what a comatose person's looks like."

"What do they look like?"

"I can't just tell you. Education never ends in the classroom," Grell said almost chidingly. "What do you think comas are?"

"Sleeping?" Ronald asked hesitantly. Grell was far more interested in science and medicine than he was, so she'd know better than him. This whole thing was right up her alley.

"In a way, yes. And what do you do when you sleep?"

He knew that one. "You dream."

"What do you think a person who's been sleeping for - six months, poor girl - dreams about?"

Ronald shrugged. Dreams were just jumbled records. Like all reapers, he no longer had a cinematic record, so he hadn't had a dream since he'd been alive. Sometimes he'd come across flickers of particularly memorable dreams in the records of those he reaped, like they'd been written on twice-over, but they were just another memory to judge.

Grell shrugged, too. "I've never reaped a coma patient before, either. It's something to think about, though."

"Aw, what!" Ronald said just as Emily Jean Roget flat-lined. Grell jumped up from the bed to stand beside Ronald as medical personnel rushed into the room, blinding them as they turned on the lights.

"I thought you'd done this before," he grumbled as Grell watched the clock. They still had an hour. Grell's hand came to rest on his shoulder, warm in its leather glove. She was one of the few reapers Ronald could ever describe as physically warm. Everyone else was cool and spectral, and he sometimes wondered if she spent her free time rubbing her hands together to generate heat.

"I've heard stories, is all. Reaping used to be simple. You lived, you died. Now you live, you die, you might or might not come back, you can do that repeatedly. Doctors can actually intentionally kill you and revive you. You can sleep forever and never experience life. Or with so many people crowding the world, the divine scheme glitches, and you're suddenly living someone else's life." Grell's gaze turned distant again, not really seeing the dead girl before them. Ronald shifted uncomfortable from foot to foot, not sure where Grell's mind had wandered to as she trailed off.

He cleared his throat and tried for flippant as he said, "I don't care about back in your day, geezer. Tell me about the stories."

"Excuse me!" Grell squawked and curled one hand, swiveling to face Ronald and shake her fist in his face. He smiled, relieved to have her back. Grell could go to such dark places, but she was also his mentor and friend. He had to look out for her like she did him. "I'll have you know I am the youngest I'll ever be."

Ronald held up his hands in surrender. "Sorry, sorry. Not a day over a century, yeah?"

"Damn right," Grell said as she flicked her fingers at him, just barely hitting his glasses, and lowered her hand. Ronald knew Grell wouldn't actually hit him as she was far more prone to being hit, but for a moment there he flinched. "Dreams are really interesting. They last only a few minutes or an hour, in starts and stops, but feel like they've gone on for years or seconds. Everything happens in an instance, and an eternity. It's almost like immortality. Time doesn't exist in dreams."

"People don't die when they're dreaming," Ronald said. He remembered at least that much from school. When alive everyone heard some version of 'if you die in your dreams, you die in real life,' and the instructors had to dispel that and many, many other falsehoods in the first year.

"Not usually." Grell nodded at Emily, and Ronald turned to regard her still form behind all the living souls.

"She was dreaming when she died?"

"Maybe. Comas aren't normal like sleep, even we don't really know what happens during them. If it isn't death, researchers don't care." Grell made a very rude, very dismissive sound at the idea. "But I heard this from a friend in Belfast who knew a team who had to reap a coma patient." She leaned in close to whisper and Ronald reflexively did so too, though none of the humans could see or hear them. "He wasn't dead. At least not all of him."

"Huh?"

"The reapers cut into him and records - not a record, records - started spilling out everywhere. All were distinct from each other. Most were still recording. Some were dead and rotted, like they'd ended years ago but nobody had ever collected. There were untold multitudes, and they were all his."

Ronald tried to picture what Grell was describing, coming up with something like a dense forest of streamers. It sounded so wrong. Multiple records, like multiple souls? That couldn't be possible. Even those who thought they were several people, and whose souls splintered into separate parts like he'd seen in diagrams, all came from the same root and ended at the same time. Abnormal records wasn't a field he'd ever been particularly interested in, though, so Ronald had little knowledge of what could or couldn't happen. But what little he did know said Grell was wrong.

"You're bullshitting me."

"I am not!" she said indignantly. "They tried to find the man's record, his proper record, and saw lives the man could never have lived rolling by with all the solidity of a real record. One of the reapers mistook a record that was still alive as the one they were looking for. After he - " her voice lowered again. " - after he watched it, he began hacking all the other records to pieces. He was screaming about things in the darkness, things hiding behind the records. He almost killed his partner, and did kill himself."

"Again?" Ronald said immediately. Though it was said like a joke, his voice cracked, ruining the quip. "I mean - other reapers had to have reaped comatose people before. It's not a rare occurrence anymore. If it was so dangerous, people would know."

"I'm just telling it as I heard it, Ronnie. Comas are strange - they might be different every time." Grell shrugged. "I also heard about a person whose record didn't begin. They were dead, and the reaper had no problem getting the record, but when it came time to watching it, the record went backwards forever. Past the person's birth, past the birth of their parents, on and on and on down history, prehistory, before the Earth was formed. It was kept under constant surveillance until it reached the beginning of time. And kept going. Nobody watches it now, but it's still going."

"Stop it, Grell!" Ronald hissed between gritted teeth. He had gooseflesh all up his arms, and he felt like someone was watching them. His gaze flicked around the room, but the bright lights and bustling people left little room for shadows or watchers. Unless they were invisible, like reapers. Or to reapers.

Grell just smiled, her teeth and eyes glinting brightly in the fluorescent lighting. She was dangerous, he reminded himself. Whatever dark thing Emily Jean Roget's soul now housed, Grell could handle it if need be. But she wouldn't shut up. "Even just the ones who were in comas for a few days have weird occurrences. One person's record looped and looped and looped, and they knew. In their soul, they knew how they were going to die, because they'd lived their life over and over in their sleep. Everything was identical, except there was a woman who kept getting closer and closer each loop. This woman wore a suit, glasses, and carried a scythe and a ledger. After harvesting the record, the reaper said she knew the future because she'd already lived it, just like the human. Then one day, she just disappeared. Maybe she found a way to break the loop. Or she got caught. But if she was death, what did she see getting closer? "

The room had grown quiet again while they'd been talking, engrossed in the stories. Fifty-six minutes had passed, and only a nurse was there anymore. No family had come to visit her. Ronald didn't know if she had any left. The lights were dimmed again, and Grell's eyes glowed like a cat's, ready to see this soul off to the underworld.

Then she stretched, fingers reaching for the ceiling like nothing was wrong. "If you're in a coma you can't even kill yourself to escape, so we'll never really know what goes on in them. Or maybe those who watched the records found out, and, well. We know what happened to them at least." With that, Grell lapsed into silence and returned her attention to the clock. She wasn't bothered by the implications, but Ronald was. He couldn't stop trying to fill in the blanks yet finding only an amorphous sense of dread instead.

Fifty nine minutes. She nudged Ronald toward the bed when it was clear he wasn't going to move on his own. "Don't worry. I'm right behind you."

He reached back just to be sure, and felt the warm leather of Grell's glove catch his hand. He imagined she was grinning, a look most people found unsettling but Ronald had grown to trust. It offered some comfort.

Everything seemed so much darker than it should be. Damn his scythe and the fact that he had to use it two-handed. With his free hand he checked his list.

Emily Jean Roget. Age: 23. Died March 19, 1948 of cerebral hemorrhaging. She was cute in her picture, eyes wide and chocolate brown, a smile on her face, not knowing that death lay only a few months into her future. Nobody knew their own death, and that was how they were able to smile and enjoy life. Ronald hoped it had been a good one, however short.

The real her was wane and waxy, like a mushroom. Ronald almost jumped back when he saw her eyes were open staring milky and pale up at the ceiling. Had she woken at some point? No, it must have been some sort of muscle spasm. He reflexively glanced up as though to see what her dead eyes saw. Ceiling tiles, nothing more. Of course.

Releasing Grell, Ronald materialized his scythe, balanced his list book on it, and pulled the ripcord. It purred to life, loud in the quiet of the room, and the record of Emily's life unspooled before them. There was only one, and Ronald let out a quiet sigh of relief as he began to watch. It had a beginning. Another relief. It was an unremarkable life, but pleasant, until the car hit her. She'd been aware even as its weight popped bone, skin, organs, as her body oozed out around her. Unnerving, but remarkable only in that she'd survived. The record was perfectly fine, not even suffering that supposed second-death damage Grell spoke of.

It turned abruptly to black, becoming an endless ribbon of nothingness coiling in her body like a snake. He found himself leaning in, actively searching out the monsters who supposedly existed in the dark, in some limbo of needing to see them and fearing that he would. What did the other reapers learn?

Grell's hands came up and slipped under Ronald's glasses to cover his eyes. He jerked against her, breath catching in his throat. Her skin was icy but soft against his eyelids, and while normally Ronald would protest being coddled (and also possibly written up for not doing his job correctly), Grell's stories had seriously unsettled him. He knew she was messing with him still, but if he couldn't see the six months of silence, he couldn't fret over what he might actually see. Ronald wasn't complaining.

It felt like the record unspooled forever, the quiet moth-wing whisper of its movements audible even over the sound of his scythe's engine. They stood in silence until Ronald heard the final flutter of the record. He let out a sigh of relief as Grell stepped back, and he cut the engine. Opening his list, he stamped 'Completed' on Emily's information. No comment. The ink smeared a little, and Ronald realized his hands were shaking.

Grell's own death list closed with a snap, and that brought his attention back to her. He felt like he was underwater, blood rushing in his ears, adrenaline thudding in a heart that no longer beat. Nothing had happened. It was completely normal.

"That wasn't anything like you told me about."

"Aw, were the stories too scary for my widdle junior?" Grell asked. From her expression, Ronald could tell she was trying not to grin. She failed almost immediately. "Like I said, they're just things I heard from other people. Campfire stories for reapers. But you did it! Your first abnormal reaping! You're no longer a rookie, rookie." She clapped, gloves muffling the sound.

Grell's enthusiasm helped bring back some normalcy, and as they left Ronald asked if she wanted to go out for coffee or something. He sort of wanted to hear more of these campfire stories, but in a place with a cozier (safer) atmosphere. Now that it was done, it was obvious they weren't real. Souls were unerringly predictable, but it was fun to imagine what lay beyond or after the glow of records.

"Are you asking me on a date?" she asked with a laugh. "It's nine o'clock, Ronnie. Past bedtime for this old geezer."

"Oh, right. Sweet dreams," Ronald said automatically, though his mind was caught up in the idea that twelve hours had passed since he'd first been assigned the reaping.

Her smile was a little more wane as she said, "I'm sure they will be."

Grell turned on her heel to head toward the apartments, then paused. Ronald was already looking at his watch. The reaper realm was in a constant state of mid-morning, and the only indication it was a different time were the clocks ticking away. Sure enough, it was past nine. They had spent their entire workday with just that one soul. It hadn't seemed nearly that long.

"Do you think Emily's still dreaming?" she asked. If she hadn't said anything, he might not have realized Grell was still there. He looked up.

"What?"

"Nothing. Bye, Ronnie." She waved over her shoulder at him and began to walk away.

Despite the sunlight warming the street, Ronald shivered as he checked his watch again. Still past nine. He recalled what Grell had said. Time doesn't exist in dreams. He watched until the minute hand clicked over once, then resolved to get a watch with a second hand later. One could never have too many watches, telling you that time passes, that it exists and you exist and this isn't a dream.

He almost wished he had seen the record through to the end, to prove to himself they were just stories.

No, he was being stupid. They were just stories. Grell even admitted it. Ronald shook away the thought and decided to get some coffee on his own. His fingers felt unnaturally cold, colder than Grell's had been in the hospital, and a cup of hot coffee should chase away the chill. He just needed to see people living their lives, to steep in the ordinary for a bit.

A/N: While atm this is complete, if I think up any other stories, I might turn this into a series.