Author's Note: This is the combination of a fic idea I have for about 6 months now, and a sudden idea that sprouted in relation to my other fic and that I immediately saw I couldn't fit there. So instead of making 2 fics, I made one.

If by some reason you're familiar with my fic "Reasons to smile" and my tendency to have multiple fics allign in the same 'headcanon canonverse', this is different! This story takes place in canonverse, but it's fully unrelated to the headcanon I follow on my other fic.

also, I've never seen the shinigami ova so I don't really know if there's much 'offiicial' info on their society but I've been hanging around enterprise/company canteens too much lately and I could only picture this scenario lol.

warnings: some mentions of death and suicide dealt with lightheartedness between Shinigami.

Disclaimer: obviously don't own Kuroshitsuji.

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One of the joys of being alive after dying was to learn new interesting things. Ordinary soul retrieval work hardly satisfied him; Othello had definitely found his true calling in the forensics department. All the knowledge and discoveries! The investigation of transcendental mysteries his poor human self could never have solved, no matter how hard he could have tried - just take the simplest mystery of them all, the very fact that his suicide would lead to a literal sentence of redemption. Who'd have thought?

Starting from that very fact: Wasn't it just so interesting that death brought a continuation to life? This was meant to be a penance, but it was so wonderful. And the cinematic records? Wonderful! Boring after a while, sure, but their investigations did provide crucial intel for the widdest variety of mysteries.

Othello was lucky to have several coworkers who shared his enthusiasm for all matters of discovery. For curiosity sake, however, he was bound to relentlessly seek for different demographics - different insights and opinions - different people. And new people were discoveries on their own, weren't they? With all their interesting knowledges and personalities? Othello categorized most in fashion-groups (another form of compiling knowledge and learning if his initial assumptions based on observation equalled personality):
- ecstatic-newcomers;
- major-depressed-newcomers;
- somber-depressives;
- enthusiastic-jollys;
- transcendal-fossiles;
- evolution-skeptics;
- genuine-weirdos;
Just to name a few.

Whether they liked it or not, they would give Othello what he wanted: their opinions, their experiences, bits of whom they were.

That week, it was the turn of an "evolution-skeptic" - roughly speaking, Othello attributed that initial label to those Grim Reapers that had been Grim Reapers for so long, you could feel the eons of piled up knowledge gathering so much dust it almost made them gleam. Some of them, rather than become enthusiastic-jollys (like himself) or genuine-weirdos (well... arguably like himself), were just a blank faced, emotionally disattached and disabled fountains of wisdom. Some often borderlined the somber-depressives, just with an added amount of time-induced indifference. Othello loved to pick their brains and get their takes on the subjects of the week.

His target stood out even amongst the rows of heads of all the sitting coworkers on the long rows of tables, the pleasant clutter of voices and tableware as they ate their lunches in the industrial-sized canteen. Othello had spotted him several times through the years, always kept to himself, always alone; always in black, always with the same hairdo (definitely not one for evolving, apparently). Othello doubted he had ever heard his voice before. He had a regal aura to him; was it some remnant of his human life persona, or something acquired from aeons as a Grim Reaper? Was he really as depressive as he appeared to be?

Questions, questions.

"Othello...! Where are you going?" one of his forensics' coworkers still tried to call him in vain. Othello not only pretended not to hear, he was already gliding away far enough to actually be believable he hadn't heard her voice, leaving his group and their table to another one further ahead; the long table had several scattered empty seats, like holes on a colorful fabric, but Othello's aim was the very end of the table, where the fabric had a very wide gap of empty seats surrounding a lonely black and white figure.

"Mind if I join you?" Othello asked, smiling widely and warmly and throwing himself to the empty chair before the coworker could even have time to lift his eyes; he did, but for around half a second before his gaze returned to his food. "My name is Othello. Pleasure!"

The coworker didn't reply. Othello had done this enough times before to be intimidated or unmotivated by the lack of response.

"I hope I'm not bothering you. I've been brainstorming on a subject and I think you'll be just the right person to give me some helpful insight. Oh, by the way, I never got your name?"

The coworker looked over the thin frames of his glasses. Even his eyelashes were white, or silver, like his cascade of hair. He was quite a handsome chap, and up close that gleam of pilled up knowledge accumulating dust was even more palpable. He must be pretty ancient!

"So! We at the forensics department have been investigating different reactions to deadly weapons. What factors allow different endurances on different people? In the cinematic records of the souls you have retrieved, surely you have encountered more than one instance where one person survived the same exact injury that in turn killed another person? What do you personally gather from this? What caused one death, but didn't cause another? Or rather, why?"

Othello took a spoonful of curry and stuffed it to his mouth, waiting patiently. The coworker didn't even move his fork from the same place it had been left on since the moment Othello had appeared. Othello kept chewing, picking up the pace as the seconds dragged and the coworker didn't give him any sort of acknowledgement - he had turned his eyes away again. Was he perhaps a foreign Grim Reaper? It hadn't occured to him before, but even if that was the case, the fellow would have learned English by now, certainly.

"Perhaps my wording was not the best one. This subject is fascinating because it ties with the bounds of cinematic records and the soul files and the fated lifespans of human beings! Otherwise, why wouldn't an electrical voltage of a lightning strike obliterate the heart of one person, and do so with another? It was expected to be as deadly to both. This happens with sickness as well, but I haven't yet ventured that field, my coworker is researching on that one. Even if the variables of chance come into the equation together with the factors of fate, it's fascinating! Look at our example! What method did you use to take your life?"

Half expecting the silence, Othello fueled himself with a renewed spoonful, talking with his mouth still half full. "Me, I failed the first time! And I was quite meticulous on the dosages, but on my case it didn't work. Probably it was one that worked with you. So, why hasn't my first method worked when it worked for so many others? Why was my file not ended in that first manner? This extends to regular deaths. Have you ever noticed some peculiarities that jump to mind? Maybe it can help me form a pattern for us to research!"

He could at least shoo him off. But no. Othello was being effectively ignored by the coworker. Othello's lips formed a bit of a pout, he wasn't going to deny it.

"Dear me..." he sighed, perhaps not the most polite of gestures but a quite genuine reaction. His coworker might be pleasing to the eye and look wise, but he also looked like a brick of ice had hit his face twice that much. "You should easen up more. There's so much one can learn now! I'm positively happy with my life now! How can you not find it fascinating that we have continued living and transcended to this status? All the possibilities we are offered! Death would be utterly boring option over our continuation. Our investigations at the forensics department may look ludicrous and geeky to most of you soul collectors, but it's very interesting."

"A continuation, huh?"

Othello's ears perked up like a cat.

"One worth having, right?" he promptly agreed, picking on the coworker's reply and holding on to it; he was making progress! His monologue was almost a dialogue now. "Right? I was so boring before, so uninterested and frustrated with everything. Look at me now! That's a subject I wouldn't mind discussing with you either if you want to!"

"Most lists don't change."

"Excuse me?"

The coworker was readjusting the tableware on the plate, not looking at him. "The cause of death is mostly unmutable. A person who survived "drowning" doesn't have that cause crossed and replaced with "multiple organ failure blood loss". It's irrelevant why one method is deadly to some, and others manage to survive it only to later perish of some other means, which in turn is unsuccessful to another. Eventually, one cause will still end them."

"Oh, but it's still worth researching. And it is possible that some files have changes in them, isn't it? Some factors can-"

"They still die."

"Death is inevitable. The means to it, however-"

"Why?"

Othello blinked, confused. This had moved into an actual dialogue too fast for him to apparently process it correctly.

"No matter how much you research and evolve, search for all variables in the causes of death, your findings are still halted by the same constant."

"Well, equations need constants," Othello reminded him.

"Death is meant to be final. To end, to stop learning and evolving. Research and progress serve little purpose when you have such an imposing and old-fashioned rule."

"Old fashioned rule? That's a funny way to describe death."

"Why doesn't it evolve and allow change? Why is it inevitable, if we are here?"

"It's like I said. We got a continuation."

"What if we gave others a continuation too? Don't they deserve to have a happy continuation, like you say you have now?"

"That's not my area, but I do know that's forbidden. If the human is meant to die at that moment, then they die. Otherwise, it would be tampering with human lives."

He shrugged softly. "But ours were tampered with, were they not?"

Othello wavered however slightly. "Oh. That is a nice question."

"It is, isn't it." The coworker started to stand up, picking his tray with him. He had barely touched his food, if at all.

The fellow Grim Reaper left Othello alone at the end of the table. His gaze travelled from the black robes to the empty space left at the table, eyes unfocused on it but focused on the words.

"Hm. Interesting."

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to be continued

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Author's Notes: This is such a simple idea that I doubt it'll turn out good. I think this will have 2 chapters? 3 tops. I guess I started playing into this small little headcanon a bit too much - but this will be quite short! And the character tag is not just clickbait - this story takes place in 1839. Claudia is 9 and will appear.

Thanks for reading, comments and corrections of grammar/typos are appreciated.