A Eulogy
Summary: "Please," he begs, "I don't want to die."
oOo
When the elevator doors close on his assistant, Decim pauses for a brief moment. There are things he needs to do; he has to prepare food for dinner, clean up the bar to receive his next guests. But he takes a moment to remember the months they've spent together; to remember all the lessons she's taught him. After all, it's the only chance he has.
Then that moment passes, and he is hurrying towards the phone by the bar.
He has to try, after all.
The phone rings precisely twice before she picks up. "What is it, Decim?" Nona sounds tired.
"I'm terribly sorry," He responds in his usual manner. "I was wondering if you would grant me a favor?"
"What favor?"
"I'd like a copy of my memories stored."
"A copy of… your memories? Why?" Nona asks, and the tone of confusion in her voice was almost believable.
Almost.
"Chiyuki," he responds.
It is not an answer. It is a prayer. His prayer, to the god who had left them.
There is a long silence, so long that Decim almost thinks Nona has hung up on him.
"There are rules in place for a reason," she finally says.
With barely a thought, he retrieves a dummy from his storage and gets to work.
"Decim?"
"I understand," Decim says, even though he doesn't. "Thank you very much."
oOo
They are like a dream to him; the guests that he has immortalized in his bar. When he has the time, he wishes he could remember their lives, but his memories have faded much in the way that dreams fade upon wakefulness.
But such is the life of an arbiter.
He stares at the pianist, forever playing the hauntingly beautiful background music for his bar. At the old woman, forever frozen in the act of creating an artistic masterpiece (but only because his talents did not include drawing). At the black-haired woman sitting next to the bar.
Who were they, in life and in Quindecim?
He can only dream of their lives.
But then his next guests are arriving. He is perusing their memories, noting their personalities, their habits, their situations. Little details that Nona kept chiding him to remember.
He has no time for dreams. He is an arbiter after all.
"Welcome to Quindecim."
He greets his guests as they walk out of the elevator. One, a girl barely out of college, who died in a car accident. The other, a middle-aged man who took his own life after a stretch of awful tragedies ended his world.
"Before we begin, I would like to ask, do either of you remember anything before you came here?"
Decim proceeds with his work, diligently explaining the situation to his guests. They do not appear to be difficult guests; they will not need any prompting. He hates using his hobby as a fear tactic anyways.
As the roulette finishes, he studies them. It is here that he obtains the first inkling of just where he might be sending his guests.
He frowns as he watches the girl panic upon seeing bowling as the choice of the roulette. She had been a hardworking, good person in life, if a little rough around the edges, and yet…
He takes a look through her memories once more. She had a quick temper. Easy to anger, and prone to violence when angered. It wasn't ever clear why she was angry. They seemed to be trivial things. Perhaps she was simply a petty person…? Or maybe she was faking her anger? Humans were quite susceptible to deception after all. And yet, unbidden, words lost to time play in his mind.
"People aren't as complex as you think they are. They're simple, and they get sad or angry over simple things. That's how they are."
He pauses, turning around slightly. The black haired woman seems to be smiling at him. Without conscious thought, he wipes it away.
"If you would please follow me, we can get started." He says briskly to his guests.
It's no time to be living in the past, after all.
oOo
It has been a while since he's seen a guest throw a bowling ball at another's head.
But that is how the game finishes, with one comatose middle-aged man and one desperate, scared girl. He steps forward, bowing.
"Congratulations, Ms. Tanaka. Congratulations on winning the game."
She is breathing heavily. There is no trace of joy in her expression.
"We're dead aren't we. We've died and this whole thing, this whole game was just- just some sort of sick joke."
He bows again. "I am terribly-"
"Can you fucking cut it out with the 'I am terribly sorry' line? You're- You're not sorry. Clearly, you're not, or else you wouldn't be doing this in the first place. Standing there watching two poor schmucks go along with your sick, twisted delusions. You were watching us; I saw you, standing there like some sort of God. Watching me almost commit murder to win this stupid game that doesn't even fucking matter." She's working herself up into a rage now.
"Yes." he says simply. "You are dead. I am terribly-"
He pauses at her expression.
"I had no choice, do you know that? I have to-I can't die. Can you even understand what I'm saying? Do you even know what it means to be alive and have the weight of the world on your shoulders? You just stand there with those- those dead eyes and you watch and you stare and you take mental notes and then- you know nothing about me." She barely pauses to take a breath.
"You don't know that my family gave everything they had to pay for college. That they're counting on me to support them when I graduate. That I work six hours a day and take classes on top of that so I barely get any sleep and that all I can think about is how I can send home enough money so that my parents and my little brother can make ends meet."
Of course, Decim has seen it all. But all the same, he knows that he has to send her on her way. Hardship could not cover up one's true self. There is a darkness in her soul, after all.
She rushes forward now, punching him with what little strength she still possesses.
"You don't understand me. You don't understand. You smile and you nod but you don't get it. You didn't live my life, so how could you understand?" She repeats over and over, anger giving way to desperation, her body racked with sobs. "What gives you the right? Who made it so that you could judge my life?"
There is a strange sense of familiarity with it all and Decim hesitates. There is a pain in his chest, and it is not from her fists. Then the moment passes, and Decim has a job to do.
"It's okay." He says soothingly, catching her arms and drawing her into a hug. "Everything will be okay. It will all be over soon. You have done very well."
When she has calmed, he sends her on her way into the void.
oOo
The man awakens after some time. He is groggy and disoriented and not a little confused by his surroundings. Decim patiently allows his memories assimilate.
He is calmer than the girl. There are less regrets, and there is an air of almost bittersweet happiness in his expression. "Finally, I can rest." He says. "Finally, I can see my Asuka again."
Decim is quiet. It is rare that his guests accept their situation. There are almost always regrets. Things left undone. Words left unsaid.
Decim has already begun taking down detailed notes of the man's appearance in his memory.
"I'm terribly sorry to have deceived you." he replies says, for lack of anything better to say.
The man simply waves his hand. "It is no matter. I figured it out long before that girl threw that bowling ball at me. There was only one place my memories were leading me, after all."
"One place?"
"Yes. Those flashbacks… I assume they were intentional? Well, they brought nothing but pain. Watching, helpless, as my wife and daughter succumbed to illness. Watching your business, the livelihood that you built with your own two hands, brick by brick, slowly fall while you're desperately trying to make ends meet; trying to pay off medical bills so that you have any hope of saving your family. Pray you will never have to experience such pain."
Decim says nothing. He feels as if he should. As if he should comfort him, much in the same way that he does for all his other guests who are far less accepting of their deaths.
But this is a pain that he does not know. For he has never lived. He has never loved.
They do not understand each other.
"I'm terribly sorry for your loss." He says.
"You're a quiet one aren't you? For all the staring and the threats, in the end, you don't really have much to say." The man muses. "But then again, I suppose there's not much to say to a dead man."
Decim almost lets him leave. He's made his judgement already; there is no reason to prolong his stay. But he is curious, and so for a split second, he breaks from his normal routine.
"Would you rather have lived, if given a second chance?"
The man pauses for only a split second.
"No." He says, before stepping into the elevator.
There will be no new additions in Quindecim tonight.
oOo
"It's been over two years now." Nona says reproachfully as she sips on her cocktail. "You shouldn't be making so many mistakes."
Decim bows. "I am terribly sorry. The girl, she had a darkness-"
Nona sighs, cutting him off without a word as she stared off into the distance at something far beyond Quindecim.
"Maybe I was wrong." It is barely a whisper, but Decim hears her words nonetheless.
He wants to ask what Nona means, but before he does, she has already drained her glass and is walking briskly towards the elevator, throwing a careless "Do better" over her shoulder.
Decim watches her go, and then begins cleaning up the bar. He is an arbiter, after all. There are guests coming.
oOo
The next time Decim sees Nona, she informs him that his time as an arbiter is coming to an end.
He's not sure what to make of the news. His tenure is short. Too short, in fact. Most arbiters lasted decades. Even Quin had made it to ten years before being carted off to the information processing bureau.
It worries him. Has he done something so drastically wrong that he is unable to be an arbiter anymore?
He asks, but Nona keeps mum on the subject.
He pays extra attention to his judgements now. He wants to make sure that each one is right. That each person is sent to where they belong. He wants to prove that he is a good arbiter. He hopes that Nona will change her mind.
In the end though, after a long day, he is almost unsurprised to see Nona walk into the bar, trailed by a young man whom he presumes is his replacement.
"This is Quintus." Nona says without preamble. "He'll be taking over here."
Quintus inclines his head.
Decim doesn't say anything. There is something welling up inside him. He simply nods his head to his replacement, and swiftly walks towards the elevator.
Behind him, the music falters. The immortal guests freeze. The others, though, don't even pay attention.
Nona, after brief instructions to Quintus, follows Decim to the elevator.
Clavis doesn't say a word as they enter. He simply presses the button for the ninetieth floor, and they are on their way.
"Where...am I going?" Decim asks.
Nona and Clavis exchange a glance.
"To rest." Nona finally says.
Something else is rising within him now. His eyes dart around the elevator, but there is no way out. Before he is able to even do anything, Nona's fist has already connected with his temple.
He blacks out.
oOo
When he opens his eyes again, he's on the stone altar of Nona Ginta. Nona is sitting there, watching him carefully. Something deep and primal is rising within him. His body tenses. It is a feeling he has never experienced before.
Nona asks quietly, "How do you feel, Decim?"
There is a tender note to her voice that he has never heard before. It sounds almost as if she cares. It is enough for him to tell the truth.
"I-" he pauses. "I don't-I don't want to-to go."
Nona's eyes are sad as she gently presses a hand to his forehead.
Suddenly, his world shifts and he remembers.
This feeling… it is emotion that he feels. There is anger and sadness and fear. There are memories too, of the thousands of guests he has received. He remembers them all. Emi the pianist. Sachiko the artist.
Chiyuki.
His heart swells with understanding.
"There are as many emotions as there are people. The fragility of someone who lets their anger get the best of them… The strength to overcome fear because of love."
He knows them now. Each of his guests. There is wetness on his cheeks, a sharp pain in his chest as he recalls their judgements.
The good. The bad. The ugly.
He is sobbing.
He has forgotten so many things. How could he have forgotten? How could he have let her lessons be in vain? How could he have failed so many? He had been so sure in his rightness when he judged, secure in his belief that his view of his guests was the correct one.
Yet, he hadn't even scratched the surface.
He turns to face Nona once more only to find her staring back at him, a glint in her eyes he doesn't quite like. He tries to sit up, but finds that his body no longer obeys him. And then the fear is there again.
"Please." he begs. "I don't want to die."
Nona closes her eyes.
"It's not fair." she says, her voice a mixture of bitterness and frustration. "Oculus asks us to judge, to decide the fate of those we cannot truly comprehend. We lack the tools to properly judge. And yet, I can tell just by watching you now that you would know. You could understand our guests, better than any arbiter. Why doesn't he see that?"
"Nona-"
She cuts him off.
"Instead, he insists on his rules. His regulations and deadlines. He insists on hindering the process."
Nona looks at him, and he is stunned to see the light reflecting off the tears in her eyes.
"When I created you, Decim, I wanted to change things for the better. I had high hopes and dreams that my experiment would work. That human emotions planted into an arbiter would prove to result in better judgements for the deceased. I wish I could have succeeded, but Oculus gave me six months. I tried, but... I'm sorry Decim. Oculus has left me no choice."
"Nona," he gasps. "I- please."
He could do better. He could fix what he did wrong. He understands now.
But there is only regret in her expression.
"You have done very well."
She leans forward; there's a featherlight touch on his forehead and that's the end of it all.
fin