When Raziel slipped into Velvet's hospital room through the window, he was greeted with the sight of three people sitting around her. One young woman whose clothes were probably more expensive than anything he had ever seen, a man who was taller than him by at least a foot and could probably squish him to not-death, and a redheaded guy whose complexion was darker than his own by quite a bit.
"Do we know if Beacon has any insurance to help with this? Some specialists or something? Anything?"
The fashionista seemed to be in charge, lips set in a thin line as she gripped the arms of her seat tightly. Of the three, she was the one closest to any semblance of level headedness, as the redhead paced around the room nervously running a finger over a book as the big guy seemed to be getting angry with someone over the phone.
"I get that you're busy right now, but we really need to talk to Ms. Goodwitch right now, okay? So, if you could just- no, no. I'm sorry, this is a stressful time for us all. Can you just… can you just call me back when she's available?"
Hanging up the phone, the big man turned to the fashionista and shook his head. "Can't get to Goodwitch. She's probably busy helping with the damages. Fox, you got anything in there?"
The redhead, Fox, shook his head, lowering the book enough for Raziel to see the braille on the page. "Afraid not. Vel wasn't technically on a mission for Beacon, so their insurance won't cover it automatically. We can get a plea in, but that would take time and…"
Leaning forward in her chair, the woman of the group pinched the bridge of her nose. "And all the bullheads are currently busy getting people in and out of hospitals because the roads are too damaged. Damn it, we need Goodwitch to pull through. Beacon has neurosurgeons, right?"
Staring down at the bandaged and bruised Velvet on the bed, the taller man pursed his lips. "They may know some, but I don't think they have a fully staffed hospital on site. How long did the doctor say she had?"
Fox scowled and leaned against the wall. "He said a couple weeks of her being comatose if we're lucky. Something about a severe CSF leak and meningitis."
"Gods damn it."
The three settled into a mournful silence, and Raziel finally felt comfortable intruding a bit more to see her condition himself. He leaned in close to her face, holding his breath as he shoved his head into her and tried to look around. Unfortunately, he had no idea what he was looking for and quickly pulled out.
Crossing his arms, he bit the inside of his cheek as his mind raced with any idea as to how he could help. Opening up the Book of the Dead, he sighed and waved away the frost that came from his breath as he saw the second "V" to her name begin to-
Wait, frost?
Letting out another breath, he watched as the frost began to lead out towards the door before dissipating. Moving closer to where it had been, he exhaled again. The frost once more began to lead towards the door, stopping once it hit and dissipating once more.
Well, it was the closest thing he had to a lead so far.
Choosing to whistle instead of constantly exhaling ('cause that would be annoying), Raziel followed his breath through the hallways and down the stairs. Nurses and other staff were rushing back and forth throughout the building, wheeling patients who would stare at him and begin to go into shock. He winced, not intending to make anyone's life worse, and quickly made his way towards the bottom floor of the hospital.
The frost began to lead him to some sort of storage closet, which he phased through without trouble. It was there that his breath stopped, seemingly content to stay where it was. He didn't quite get why though; he couldn't see anyone else in-
"HYAA!"
A boot slammed into the side of his face, sending him into the wall with a groan.
"SQUARE UP, CUNT! IF DEATH WANTS TO TAKE ME, TH-THEN I AIN'T GOING DOWN WITHOUT A FIGHT!"
He held his jaw, giving it a slight rub as he glanced up to see a terrified looking Velvet trying to intimidate him with her raised fists. It probably would have worked if she didn't look scared out of her mind, hands shaking and eyes wide as she stared at him.
"If I wanted to take you, I would have just let you be."
Getting up from the ground, he raised both his hands up in a placating manner in hopes of pacifying the bunny girl. "I just want to-"
A fist collided with his face, hitting the bridge of his nose before he could finish talking. He stepped back, holding his nose as he swore at Velvet. "What the fuck man, I'm just trying to help!"
"That's exactly what Death would say!"
"How would you even know!?"
She didn't answer him, instead throwing another fist which he actually dodged this time. It was then that he remembered what his powers were, and simply stood as she threw another punch which went through him.
"Wah!"
Velvet hit the wall behind him, face slamming against the stone. Holding her nose, she turned around to glare at him, but ended up just sort of standing inside of him instead.
"Could you move please? I'm not a first date kinda guy. Well, actually I am but don't tell anyone that, I don't wanna look like a slut."
She jumped out of him quickly after that, face red as she seemed to debate between hitting him and yelling at him.
So, she chose both.
"OW!"
"ASSHOLE!"
Holding the side of his face, he decided that he needed practice turning on his intangibility so quickly. "Am I really the asshole here? All you've done is abuse me since I came here, and frankly I just don't see this relationship lasting if that's going to be your attitude."
Velvet squinted at him, fear completely gone as her more rational thoughts began to settle in. "Wait a minute, those eyes. I remember something like that. Green… green something."
Clapping his hands together, Raziel stepped away from her before she could have anymore funny ideas and quickly began to relay the exposition she needed. "Great, awesome. Right, so I'm the guy who pulled you out of that mall, you're welcome by the way, and am currently trying to make sure you don't die from those wounds. Again, you're welcome."
Her brow furrowed as she slowly relaxed her stance. "Wait, so I'm not dead?"
That… would take a bit to answer. "Kinda? Your relationship status with life is complicated right now, but you're definitely not dead yet!"
"Yet?"
Ah shit, him and his big mouth. He really wished there was a handbook for this sort of thing. "You're comatose right now, lying down in a hospital bed a few floors up. But it could be worse, you could be in the Spectral Realm."
He could see the question in her expression before she asked it, and quickly explained it the best he could. "Oh, right, that. Yeah, there's no heaven and no hell, it's just all one big blob of disappointment where souls roam forever and mutate into abominations."
Shrugging his shoulders in an "whatcha gonna do" manner, Raziel quickly realized his error as her body lost all strength and she fell back against the wall. "There's… what?"
"You aren't religious, are you?"
She didn't answer him, instead too busy staring off into nothing as she had an existential crisis. Unsure of how to comfort someone who just had their entire worldview shattered, he just went with whatever sounded right and hoped that it worked. "Yeah, the management isn't great but I'm really trying to change that and maybe one day there could be a heaven? I mean, I don't really know but anything's possible, right?"
Letting out a sigh, Velvet pulled herself out of whatever mental crisis she was having and seemed to steel her resolve. "I can worry about that later. What do I need to do to not die, Mr…?"
There was a moment of awkward silence as he paused to think about what name to give. Calling himself Death would be confusing, considering Lady Death also referred to herself as such. Lord Death would give the wrong idea towards his relationship with Lady Death. Indeed, there really was only one option to go with here.
"You can consider me to be… Peaceful Death. Though that's a bit of a mouthful, so you could just call me Raziel."
He allowed his human form to take hold, giving a wave as Velvet in turn gave him a wide-eye stare. "Wait, the guy from the library? You're Death!?"
Shrugging his shoulders, Raziel returned to his "work" attire. "An aspect of it, sure. Though there is another."
"You mean that… that monster that had towered over the city?"
He grimaced, remembering the chaos that had been inflicted onto the city. "Yeah. She is a Cold Death. If you ever see her, pretend you don't and run."
Velvet rubbed the sides of her forehead with her eyes held shut, doing her best to process everything he was just about dumping at her feet. "Okay, okay. Just, what do I need to do?"
That… was a good question. Pulling out his Book of the Dead, he skimmed over the powers he could see in hopes of figuring out a plan. Nothing stood out, and in spite of his hopes of being able to buy a solution from the so-called "Waifu Catalog", he was blocked from accessing anything not a part of his "build". Whatever the reason may be, his past-self had decided to make this as challenging as possible for him. For now, he was just going to have to take things one step at a time.
"Not sure, but we should probably start by getting you back to your body."
Gesturing for her to follow, Raziel led her out of the storage closet and into the hallway. He glanced in both directions, trying to remember which way he had come from. The closet couldn't have been too far from the stairs, so maybe it was to the left? But what if the closet was actually on the opposite side of the hall and it was right instead?
He really should have paid attention to where he was going.
"Where is everyone?"
Velvet's voice brought him out of his direction confusion, alerting to the oddly empty nature of the hallway. It should have been more than busy, considering how much of a tizzy everyone had been in before. And now that he thought about it, there should have been more noise than the eerie silence that persisted.
Something was wrong.
Taking a quick detour into a nearby room, he leaned in close to a window and felt a sudden rise of worry take hold of his chest.
The world outside was slightly tilted, not enough to be a massive problem but definitely noticeable. The straight lines of the buildings were just a bit too crooked to make sense, especially for someone so used to the sight. It didn't help that there was a blue fog all along the ground, giving the empty city outside a deathly gleam.
An answer formed in his head, and he hoped that he was wrong.
Focusing on the feeling of transitioning to the Material Realm, Raziel walked back into the hallway and frowned as he saw doctors and nurses scrambling to get from room to room. People screamed and cried from the reception area a few halls down, and corpses were being wheeled out to make room for new patients. But none of those things are what caught his attention. It was Velvet, standing in the center of his gaze, which stole his focus.
She was no longer as solid as she had been when he had first seen her, instead now a partially see-through figure. Fuck.
Opening his book back up, he turned the page to her name and pursed his lips once he saw that Velvet's entire first name was already written and that the first letter of her last name was nearly done. Closing the book, he focused on her and felt himself shift to whatever limbo she was in.
"Bad news. Something is going on with your condition, and it's making the whole 'you dying' thing worse."
A bit of fear set in once again, pupils dilating as she heard the news. The last thing he wanted was her to be afraid, and he quickly thought of anything he could say to alleviate that. "Turns out you were right about that head trauma thing. Nasty stuff."
Fear quickly turned to anger as she scowled at him. "Is now really the time for jokes, mate?"
"Only one way to find out right?"
Glancing down to the left side of the hallway, Raziel once again remembered that he was thinking about this the wrong way. He could walk through walls, disappear, and fly. What was the point in finding stairs? "Don't freak out, but we're about to disobey physics."
"What does that-"
He cut Velvet off, sweeping her off her feet and holding her bridal style as he then flew up into the ceiling. She clutched at his shoulders, shutting her eyes as she prepared to bonk right off of it. He took a bit of pleasure at seeing her open her eyes in a confused manner as they simply phased through the ceiling instead.
"How?"
Tilting his head, he gave her a look as they flew up to the fifth floor where her room was located. "Is now really the time to be questioning things? Also, do you do squats often because I swear it's like I'm holding a soft rock right now."
The idea of asking if she was single came to mind, but the glare she leveled him with was enough to put that on ice. "Shutting up now."
"You do that."
As he flew around the floor, Raziel kept an eye on his reserves of energy. In spite of him flying and using his intangibility, the drain from it was much less than usual. A quarter at the very least. Velvet being closer to death must mean that her limbo was closer to the Spectral Realm. Neat for him.
"Are you sure this is the right floor?"
He furrowed his brow. "Of course I am. I may not know how to get there, but I do know where I'm going. The only way I'd be wrong is if the hospital had been… twisted. Shit."
Raziel stopped where he was, giving a look around the hallway and realizing that the walls were beginning to tilt the wrong way. Deciding to experiment a bit, he moved a floor up and frowned even further as it was even more deformed than the fifth.
"By chance, what floor do you remember being on?"
There was a massive part of him that hoped that he was wrong, but as she scratched the side of her head, he realized that he wasn't nearly that lucky. "The top one, right? I don't know, I wasn't really looking at where I was going. I was just… trying to escape."
Right, right. He couldn't blame her for that. But it did mean that this limbo of hers was based on her perception, which was gonna be a pain in the ass. "Then to the top we go."
And up they went, passing by each floor like a sort of reverse rabbit hole. Hospital halls slowly morphed into dimly lit corridors of unnatural geometry as they got closer to the top. The blue fog from outside began to seep into the upper levels of the absurdly tall hospital. The walls grew more cracked, the air becoming stale with the scent of antiseptic and blood, and all throughout it the sounds of whispers and moans were becoming more and more prevalent.
What were the odds of souls being dragged into her limbo? Considering his luck so far, probably 100%.
Stopping on the next floor, he set Velvet down and began to pace back and forth. Whatever was happening now, it wasn't working. They needed a new plan. But what?
"Raziel, what's that?"
He looked towards where Velvet was pointing and groaned at what he saw. It was a mutated soul, though a very different one than those he was used to. It was instead a sickly and emaciated looking thing in a hospital gown, its overly long limbs covered in bandages while it leaned on a sharp looking IV drip with rust decorating the metal.
Stepping between it and Velvet, he flexed his hand while giving a brief explanation. "A mutated soul. That's just about what happens to those who stay in the Spectral Realm too long."
"Th-That could happen to me?"
There was no reason to say anything, not when the answer was so obvious. Instead, he lunged forward with his claws and slashed at the soul. It growled, blocking with the IV drip before using the heavy bottom of it to slam him into the wall. He grunted, spiked wheel pressing into his chest as the soul pushed more against him.
Grabbing the drip with both hands, Raziel pushed back against the soul and wrenched the weapon from its hands. Kicking it into the wall on the other side of the hallway, he took the sharp end of the drip and stabbed it into the soul's chest before pulling back his lower mask and devouring it.
"That should take care of-"
Whatever he was saying was interrupted as another hospital soul flew by him, having been kicked aside by Velvet. The young woman was currently dealing with three of them at once, and was currently reminding him of the skill gap between his bare-knuckle street brawling and a huntress-in-training.
Two of them attempted to get her at the same time, one aiming for her head while the other swung at her midsection. She ducked low, sweeping her legs to knock the two of them while also dodging out of the way as the third attempted to strike down at her. Grabbing the rusted metal of the third's IV drip, she yanked it back to bring the soul closer and punched it right in the face, sending it to the ground.
Clearly, she was a much better fighter than he was. However, she lacked the means to actually keep those souls down.
Souls couldn't die, even to each other. They could fight, and often did. They could tear each other apart until only wisps remain, and even attempt to eat each other. But no matter what happened, they would always reform. Whether that be in someone else's stomach, or where the remains of their wisps were. Only he and Lady Death could actually put them down for good, as far as he was aware.
And so, the three Velvet had put down were already getting right back up. And to make things worse, reinforcements were beginning to arrive on either side of the hallway. Even if they worked together, there were only so many souls he could devour at once. It would be too easy to be overwhelmed.
So, it was time for a new plan.
Shoving his claws into the three who had jumped Velvet and devouring them, he pointed to the incoming horde and gave her an apologetic look. "We don't have the time to deal with them, so please don't yell at me for what I'm about to do."
Her eyes widened and she began to protest, but before she could get anything out, he had already tackled her through the wall of the hallway and tossed them both outside the hospital.
"RAZIEL YOU CUUUUUUUUUUNT!"
They tumbled through the air for a few seconds, as it took Raziel a moment to get a hold of his energy and allow himself to stop falling. Once he was floating properly, he winced as she began punching his back. "I did say not to yell."
"I was not ready for that, you bloody drongo!"
"Is anyone ever?"
Flying up the side of the building, he narrowed his eyes at the sheer height of it. Unlike the hospital in the Material Realm, this one was so tall that he couldn't even see the end of it, only a forever expanse of whitewashed stone bricks. With how long it looked, it might honestly be faster to simply enhance his speed with ectoplasm than to waste the energy flying.
Turning his head to explain his thoughts to Velvet, he then realized that he was still holding her over his shoulder. Though he was never one to be disappointed at seeing a nice ass, it wasn't exactly what he had in mind, so he instead got close to the side of the hospital and reoriented himself. Feet now pressed against the bricks, he hoisted Velvet off of him and tried to set her down.
That did not work.
"Are you crazy!"
She almost immediately began to fall, and it was only thanks to her grabbing at his arm that she didn't plummet all the way down. She hung off of his arm, dangling while he stood on the wall of the hospital. In hindsight, he probably should have expected this. Having these powers were really screwing with his sense of what was normal.
"Just imagine that you can stand on the wall, and you'll be fine!"
"If I weren't dangling right now, I would deck you!"
Well, fair enough. Pulling her in close to him, he grabbed onto her waist and kept her level as she pressed her feet against the wall and her arms around his neck. She looked deathly afraid of falling, something he could understand considering the ground below had long since been obscured by the blue fog. Still, he needed her to be focused. "Velvet, Velvet, look at me, alright? Just look at me."
She did as he asked, looking into his eyes as she struggled not to hyperventilate. He squeezed his hands on her waist, reaffirming that his grip on her was solid and that she wasn't going to fall. "You will not fall. I will not let you. You just need to believe that you can do this, okay? This is your limbo. You are its master, no one else. Okay?"
Whether or not it worked that way, he had no idea. But he preferred to portray a semblance of confidence than to allow his wishy washiness to lead her spiraling downwards instead. Even so, her face was still pale and hands still clammy around him. A sensation he shouldn't be able to feel through his clothing but wasn't about to question.
"B-But what if I do fall? I don't know if I have my Aura here, and it's such a long way down, and what if I die?"
The desire to grab her shoulders and shake her silly was strong, but doing so would mean letting go of her. So, he restrained himself and settled for words instead. "It's a bit late for that. I'm going to let go of you in three seconds and turn intangible, so you better get ready."
Her arms tightened around him as she began to protest. "Wait don't-"
"Three!"
"Just wait a sec-"
"Two!"
"I'm not read-"
"ONE!"
He let go of her waist, watching as she screamed and shoved her face into his chest, but didn't fall. Indeed, it was only her hair which moved. Instead of being dragged to the ground below it, instead fell down to her lower back as if gravity had flipped 90 degrees.
It took a moment for her to realize she hadn't fallen to her doom, pulling away from him as she felt her feet standing on the wall like a floor. Slowly and with much hesitation, she unwrapped her arms from around his shoulders and took a few experimental steps. Looking up at him with an indiscernible expression, she let out a breath and questioned him slightly. "You never turned intangible."
"And you never fell."
Velvet blinked as she mulled it over, before a small and honest smile broke out on her face. "Yeah… I didn't fall, did I? To the top floor then?"
"Let's."
The two began to sprint up the side of the building, a newfound confidence surging within them as they made their way up. Unlike the seemingly endless ascent that had plagued them earlier, the end of the hospital seemed much closer than his initial look had indicated. If anything, it seemed to almost shrink somehow. Fancy that.
Getting to the end of the building, they leapt over the edge and fell on the roof with a slight stumble on his end. Brushing himself off, Raziel hummed as he saw what lay before them at the very top. "You know, this feels vaguely fairytale-like. Finding a princess at the top of a tower."
"I'm not a princess, mate."
True, but that didn't make his observation any less true. Rather than a typical roof, the top of the hospital was now the beginning of some sort of shrine where the physical body of Velvet lay dormant in a hospital bed a dozen steps up. There was probably a metaphor in there somewhere, but that was above his expertise.
Ascending the stairs together, Raziel kept silent as they drew nearer to her body. Despite all the trouble it took to get here, there was still the issue of what to do now. He was too in over his head, and the idea of failing Velvet now was starting to eat away at him. What if he couldn't actually save her? What if he had just given her all this hope only to fail at the last moment? He had no idea what he was doing, he was just sort of following his gut. He was just some guy really. Not even an average one, if he were being honest. He was a street rat, just barely a legal adult.
What if he wasn't enough to do this? To do any of what he had claimed?
They stopped by her bedside, the weight in his stomach growing tenfold as Velvet looked at him expectantly. "What now?"
He gulped, pulling out his Book of the Dead and flipping through the pages as he began to search for an answer. "That is a good question. Let me just uh, figure that out real quick. It'll be in here, it'll be in here."
Word after word, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, page after page. He worked his way through the book with a nervous fervor as he searched for an answer to his plight. The abilities listed within that he could see held nothing regarding bringing her back, and anything else in there wasn't even legible to him.
"There is a way to do it, right?"
The look in her eyes was crushing, the dwindling measure of hope which he had worked so hard to preserve. "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there is. There has to be."
Maybe it wasn't directly in the book. Maybe he had to just sort of come up with a way to do it himself? He knew how to devour souls, so maybe it was the opposite of that? Maybe he could just sort of try and push her into the body or maybe-
"SHE'S FLATLINING!"
His head shot up and turned to the voice, his heart dropped as he recognized the fashionista who had said it. He felt a deep numbness as he stood in the hospital room, book still in hand as Velvet's friends began to rush around her body. He stared, disbelieving, as he looked around the room to see where Velvet herself was.
But she wasn't there. She was gone. He had failed her.
"No. No, no, no."
He rushed over to her side, dropping his book as he found a spot not taken by her friends and he stared down at her dying body. His hands hovered over her, unsure of what to do in that moment other than watch as nurses rushed into the room and began to try and move her friends from her bedside.
There was screaming and crying. Arguing and yelling. So much grief, yet it all seemed so silent in comparison to the loud droning of the monitor by her bedside. He felt… detached all of a sudden. A complete emptiness instead of sadness or despair, like he had thought he'd have felt. Was that bad? Was he a bad person for not feeling grief like they did?
Was this what it was like to lose someone you cared for?
He had only known Velvet for less than an hour total, but that time felt so… significant in his mind. He had wanted to save her. Nothing else had crossed his mind other than that desire. And really, it was probably the strongest thing he had felt for anyone. He had no family to care for or miss, no friends to rely on. It was just him and always would be, and he was fine with that. In a morbid sort of way, dying had been the best thing that ever happened to him.
But the same couldn't be said for Velvet.
Here were people grieving her, mourning the loss of someone they considered to be one of their own. He may not know what that was like, but he could imagine it was a powerful feeling. She was going to be missed dearly, cried over, and then remembered for as long as those who loved her lived. And while he had seen people die, none touched him in the way this did.
It was… unfair. When people died, it was tragic, but you could understand how it happened. Whether that's because of poor life choices by them, or by someone else who ended up crossing paths with them. It wasn't always their fault, but there was a cold logic to the order of events that one could follow. This felt different. Velvet's death wasn't because of human error or malcontent, but through the machinations of some uncaring being. A direct interference from something which shouldn't dictate life.
There was no way he could allow this to stand. It may only be one person, but so what? If he allowed Lady Death to simply do as she pleased without even the hint of resistance, what was the point in having this power in the first place? One person became ten, ten became a hundred, a hundred a thousand, and so on and so forth until all that's left is a barren rock filled with Grim and corpses.
If he couldn't save Velvet, then he couldn't save anyone.
Resolve coiled in his chest as he pressed his hand against her head, eyes hardening as he grasped whatever power he held and pulled on it with all his might. "I did not give you permission to die just yet, so wake up!"
And then, the world stopped. The doctors stopped moving, tears stopped falling, and the abhorrent droning of the heart rate monitor ceased all at once. The air was still, sound little more than a thought as he watched Velvet's eyes slowly but surely crack open.
"Ra…ziel?"
Sweat beaded down his brow as he nodded, the effort of stretching her final breath for as long as he could weighing on his shoulders heavily. He needed to be quick. "Yeah. I don't have much time, so you're just going to have to trust me."
Pulling his hand away from her forehead, he held it out to her palm up as he gave her his deal. "In exchange for whatever effort you are able to give in the pursuit of dethroning Lady Death from her position as sovereign over life and death, I shall deny the unfair end thrust upon you so that you may live out your life as intended. Do we have a deal?"
She looked at him, weak and barely hanging on, before lifting her arm with all the strength she could and shaking his hand.
"D-Deal."
Raziel could feel the last of his power give way, and his existence be thrust back into the Spectral Realm. The corrupted visage of the hospital greeted him as he stood alone in the desolate afterlife, but it did little to hamper his mood. Indeed, he stared out of the hole in the wall with a soft smile as he closed his eyes and remembered the last thing he had seen before being shot out.
It was the shocked and ecstatic faces of Velvet's loved ones as her heart began to beat once again. The crying, though this time with the relief of knowing that their loved one was still alive. The pure love that he had the privilege of bearing witness to, even if he was never intended to see it.
If that was the result of his ideal, then he would fight for it with all he could.
… … …
If you were wondering if this was a deus ex machina moment or just an asspull, no it isn't. There's a perk in the Psychopomp heritage which allows the user to make a deal with someone in their final breath, streatching that moment into forever as the user is allowed to make a deal with the soon-to-be dead. So yeah, that ending was based in fact fool.
I liked writing this chapter. And I think that's because most of the problems I've presented so far can't really be solved with violence. It helps, but that's not the end all be all. Having these problems be solved through other means feels more satisfying to me on a personal level, and is something I want to maintain as much as possible.
This has been A Decent Hoonter, and there was no way I wasn't going to name this chapter what I did.
