Not the last chapter yet, but I hope you enjoy that all the same. And I have a favor to ask. Having Mandy admit feelings, especially love, is a bit OOC as it is, but I tried very hard to make sure that she stayed as IC as I could manage. So if you do take a moment to review--which I always appreciate--could you take a moment more and be brutally honest about the scene. Were they terribly out of character? Was it alright? Did you even notice?
It is fine if you don't but I just thought, as though you all haven't done enough for me, that maybe I could ask at least one more thing of you.
And if you have not heard, I am sorry to inform you that yes, the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy has, in fact, been cancelled. In a press release Maxwell said that there was hope, they'd been cancelled before only to be revived, but it remains true for now.
There was a time when Mandy would have railed against the help, tried to give the power back and proclaimed loudly to whomever would or wouldn't listen that she needed no help and would not accept this unneeded help.
She could do it very well on her own thank you very much.
But Dione had proved herself a friend, and one of the few people Mandy respected. Few, Mandy could count them all on two fingers. Mrs. Doolan was the only other one. Doolan had taught Mandy that it didn't matter if people thought she couldn't do something because she was a girl—or a mortal—she might as well just do it anyway and let the person be damned if they couldn't see past her differences. She had taught Mandy that with determination and a thick skin, deviousness helped, you could accomplish most anything. Even besting death. (1)
Dione had taught Mandy so many contrasting lessons, but she was certain that what she was going to bring away was that there was no weakness in accepting friends and peers, they were—in their own way—a strength and it would be foolish to push them away.
Furthermore her love for Grim—ah! how strange to think that without any shred of self-loathing—was just like that, a strength rather than a weakness. But she had learned, grown, and changed. And now her dreams were there, just to the side, and something more than she'd dreamed was in her hand. And Nyx who had torn everything to shreds in the first place was cowering on the loamy soil before her, shaking, pale and pink, suddenly mortal and with her new status as Goddess there were a thousand things Mandy could see beyond that.
She could feel Nyx aging, like mortals tended to do, and it was strange. She'd never felt someone aging, never felt herself aging, but she knew the sensation the moment it was brought to her attention. She banished the creatures of the darkness and stood over Nyx, Dione at her side.
It did not take brilliance for Mandy to know that Dione was judging her, there was a test here: would Mandy make it as a God, or not? Mandy didn't know what would happen if she passed, but she knew that Failure was not an option. It was never an option.
Mandy stood for a long moment, feeling the slow-as-molasses Time moving past her. The feeling of Time passing by her without affecting her in the slightest. It reminded her of Ghost Rain. One of her professors had talked about that, oh so long ago when Grim was a static thing on the edge of her life that she could love as much as any man but could no more have than she could have the moon.
In the desert rain was rare. Sometimes even if the rain fell the ground was too hot, the day was too hot and the tiny, fledgling drops would evaporate before ever hitting the ground. A rain that isn't rain. A mortal that is a God.
Mandy turned her back on Nyx, something she would never have been stupid enough—courageous enough—to do in the past. She would have considered it foolish, impossible to display your weakness to your enemy like that. But all that mattered in this moment was Grim. He had given himself to her, told her he loved her and that his heart belonged to no one but her.
The cold fear in her heart came from one fact. That had been when she was mortal, that had been when he thought she would live maybe seventy years and no more. Had his feelings changed now that they were forever? That was what mattered, because she could not accept this power if she would have to face Grim still when a time came that he no longer wanted her with him.
She had to know.
She took a step toward him, moving slow. She was not going to show fear, she was not going to show weakness. She lifted her him and practiced her singular ability to look down on him even though he was a good foot taller than she. Eyes bored into empty eye sockets and her face and everything about her spoke of pride. Not that I care but...
"I believe I won you." She told him, her voice hard as a knife and twice as sharp. As one the crowd drew in a deep breath. Grim shook his head slowly, his hood pulled low on his forehead, his face still visable.
"You won the throne beside me, you won the power that comes with the title Queen." It was unspoken but everyone heard the addition there...she won the power that comes with the title of Queen and more. "I am merely tied up with that. You will marry me, but it was for the throne...the competition." He clarified, though she would never have admitted a moment of pause. She would have figured that out eventually.
Everyone shifted in different levels of discomfort, painfully aware of the fact that they were intruding on a terribly private moment between lovers. None of them looked away, their morbid curiosity making them brave in the face of Mandy's wrath.
They could all tell that there was more than just words between the two would-be rulers, but they couldn't decipher the code behind the words, they could only watch, and wait.
"When I said that I loved you, I meant it. I love you. I have for a very long time, and I will continue to love you, now and forever." Once she struggled through the initial admission, the rest flowed easier. "I will abdicate my newly won throne, for I will not have you because you have to marry me. I will have you only if you want me. But do not make your choice lightly, because I speak in terms of eternity." Mandy settled well into the role of Goddess and putting true meaning into words like eternal, forever and always came easily to her.
She choked before she could speak further. She had the words on her tongue: If you do not love me, I will rule you and you will serve me, best friends forever Grim. But they stuck in her throat and she could not utter them. She wasn't certain she meant them anymore. Weakness or no she wasn't certain she could face him if he rejected her after she had come so far. So many things she had long considered weaknesses were truly strengths that she wasn't certain it was worth keeping him.
She had kept Grim as a servant because she lacked the power of the Underworld, but now, even if she lost her newly found heart, now she had the power of the Night. She didn't need him anymore and she did not need to face him and feel the pain of rejection if he wouldn't have her.
Grim walked towards her with slow and measured steps until he was close enough to reach out and touch her. Once there he nearly fell upon her, gathering her into his arms as though she weighed absolutely nothing at all and clutching her against his ribcage. "Do you feel that?" He asked before she could shout at him. She was confused, not that she would ever admit it, and looked up at him.
He collected one of her hands in one of his bony ones.
"Do you feel a heartbeat? Blood pulsing through my veins? Warm skin to touch? Arms to hold you?" He asked. "I haven't any of those." He pressed his face to her forehead, his teeth cold and hard against her skin. "I haven't lips to kiss you. I can't even feel you. I can feel your power, both old and new, but I can't feel your skin, or your hair. I can't breath in the scent of you, and this is as close as we two can be, this is the exchange." He whispered. "Power over Death but I cannot make Life, or be a part of it."
He let her go and stumbled back as though he'd been struck, though Mandy was too startled by his action to have moved, and she swayed on her feet a moment before she could even find her balance.
"So the real question becomes, Mandy, do you know what you are saying, promising?" He asked. And everyone waited, and watched.
"You dare to question me Bone-bag?" The hated name was no longer an insult, now he could hear it, that soft and breathless undercurrent to the words that made it more of a confession of her feelings. Mandy was not the type to proclaim her love every day, nor was she the type to use ridiculous pet names, but here in this word? Here was her love.
"I chose you. I do not say things I do not mean. None of that means anything to me. I did not say that I loved the way you held me, the way you kissed me. I am not some heroine in a Harlequin novel you dope. I said that I loved you, how many times must I say that before it gets through your thick skull?" She had an image of the time she had convinced him to play tennis—the French way—only this time she proclaimed her love before each swing, and asked him if he understood yet afterwards. (2)
At the vicious little twist of her lips Grim was fairly certain that she had thought of some horrid way to get the information through his thick skull.
"And I am the Grim Reaper." He said, his Scythe leaping into his hand from nothing more than a flicker of flames. "In all the realms of all the worlds the only constant among them all is Death. What begins must end and I am there in that moment. Speaking in terms of eternity and forever." He dared to scoff. "I am Eternity, I am Forever, and I speak and mean nothing less."
"Then I suppose I'm going to be Queen of the Underworld?" She asked, but she knew the answer. This moment was special, different, and they might not be so frank about their emotions ever again. She would not mind, but she wanted to hear it. She wanted to hear those words she had never dared to hope for.
And later, if anyone brought it up, she could always have them killed.
Grim smiled, slow and lazy and he knew. He knew what she wanted to hear and he knew why she wanted to hear them and he would do anything for her. He would pull the moon down from the sky, he would lend her his femur to fetch the remote and he would spend all day baking cookies so she could get a person scout badge.
He took a small, shuffling step, just enough to bring him back within touching distance, and with his Scythe in one hand he took one of her hands with the other. He couldn't feel the pulse beneath her flesh, but he could feel the pulse of her now eternal life. He could feel the soft touch of her flesh, but he could feel the soft touch of her power, soft and mysterious and just barely and undercurrent of danger. He could not provid the normal physical loves that even Goddesses sometimes craved, but they had something completely different and no less special between them.
Anything he lacked, they had something the rest of the worlds lacked.
"Mandy, would you deign rule beside me, as my Queen?" He asked. And she smirked at him.
"I hope you know I won't stand one step behind you and play the quiet and doting wife." She warned him. He was the only one she would ever warn, she warned Billy but that was different, you had to warn him or he might forget he was supposed to feel pain when you hurt him.
"I wouldn't have it any other way." He told her, and he meant it.
"Good." She nodded, and then she pulled her hand away from him, throwing a quick "I expect a ring and I do not like diamonds." Over her shoulder as she turned to face Dione, half of the Gods in the Parthenon and Orpheus and Eurydice. She was not some princess in a tower waiting to be rescued and her quest was certainly not over until she said it was.
1 -- In "Who Killed Who" (Yes that's the title of the episode, I actually know this one) Mrs. Doolan is this lovely old Lady that Mandy meets. This is one of the greatest episodes and I highly recommend it, if you've a way to find the episodes on line or the scripts or whatever, all you need to know about her for the story I have included here so no worries on that matter.
2 -- There is one episode, I'm sure one of you will know the title, where Mandy and Grim play Tennis "The french way" which involves shoving two tennis balls in Grim's eyesockets and then slamming the back of his skull with a racket, shooting out the tennis balls to hit a tower of the cans they come in, I thought I would take a moment to explain this scene in case some of you have had the misfortune of not seeing that one.