Marie x Death if you squint. Basically Marie watching Lord Death. Not as creepy as it sounds, I swear.

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Now, Lord Death was an easy fellow to find if you knew where to look. He was almost always in the Death Room during school hours, and afterwards he could be found at his Gallows manor, either working diligently or spending his precious little time with his son.

Lord Death was also adept at hiding. He was a being forged from darkness, the living embodiment of death. He'd once told Marie that his cloak was basically a fabric spun from dread and shadows, with a mask of ivory and marble bewitched to keep the fabric in place.

Right now, he seemed to be hiding from the prying eyes of the living, which included a particular blonde.

Marie peered down a into another empty classroom, feeling a twist of guilt in her gut. A meeting for all the Death Scythe had been held, and she had said something she desperately wished she hadn't, something she knew would probably have upset the usually carefree god.

"Sometimes I wonder if he even has actual emotions! He just seems so distant from the problems of today, like he doesn't care."

Yes, she had said those cruel words, had claimed that he didn't care. She couldn't even say if she had a good excuse, besides the fact that everyone had been stressed since the Paris incident and now the Orlando shooting, and everything that had happened in between, which included Asura getting out of his imprisonment.

They still hadn't captured or killed the kishin, and it had been weighing heavily on all of their minds.

"That didn't excuse what I said though." Marie mumbled to herself, finally giving up on finding the god as she turned to walk out onto one of the school's many balconies. And, of course, it was there that she would find who she'd been looking for.

Lord Death stood, his cloak pulled off and thrown haphazardly over the old railing. The setting sun turned the Death God into a black silhouette against its flaming light, setting black hair into deep undertones of blue and red, the metal chain around his neck shining in the generous lighting. The sunlight turned his reddish gold eyes into blazing amber, beautiful against his pale skin and the dark of his eyelashes.

The blonde could only stand there, hands clasped to her chest as she watched him.

He was a god, a mighty king in this light, set ablaze by the fiery fury trapped in his eyes, yet at the same time he was mellowed out by the sadness and pain there too. There was strength in the way his shoulders were squared back, the way he held himself up straight. There was elegance in the way his hands lay on the top of the railing, long fingers curled around the black iron.

He turned to look at her, and his eyes turned from fiery, furious amber to sad gold, and then the shadows turned them into a deep red that struck fear into the woman, though she knew the god wouldn't hurt her, no matter what she said to him; Lord Death was a forgiving god, kind and polite in the way most humans would never be. The shadows had turned his pale skin into ash, and for a moment she realized how fragile this human form of death really was.

Marie could not offer him much, only her apology and useless words. She stepped close, close enough to smell leather and old books and coffee and rain, that unique blend of scents that seemed to belong to Death only. He looked down at her, those eyes - holding so much pain and sorrow and anger and hate - boring a hole into her very soul.

She slowly raised a single hand, and placed it on his shoulder, feeling the tension bleed out of him at the gesture. He didn't turn away from her. He stepped ever closer to her, and now she could smell that cloying, sickeningly sweet smell of decay and the musty fragrance of a graveyard on a stormy night.

And then he was gone, brushing past her, his cloak held tightly in his hands, those sad eyes not looking back.

She screamed her apology at him, and he turned to smile at her, and he forgive her, as he always did, and he beckoned to her.

Marie ran to catch up with Death's brisk walk, and she smiled up at him, and she saw those eyes - holding so much sadness that she wanted to sooth it all away - and she saw that there was now a warmth to them, a friendly gleam in the reddish gold depths.

She vowed to make that warmth appear in his eyes as much as she could in her short human life, even if it meant giving up her life.

Because no one deserves to hold so much sorrow and hatred and pain and anger in their heart.