Her features were obscured by the abject absence of light. A tiny sliver of a moon feebly illuminated her features, but he was certain that for the first time he saw Iris with an expression of genuine concern. The mask she wore had slipped.

Not sure if he should be flattered or humiliated, he instead asked, "What are you doing here?"

She scanned the area where they stood.

"Where ishere?"

"Death Valley," he sighed. "It's in the Mojave–"

"Oh, I know where Death Valley is. I paid attention in Geography class. It's an easy place to remember because it has a sick name–maybe not as memorable as Djibouti though…", she nervously laughed. "I don't know, Erik…what am I doing here?"

It finally occurred to him the reality of their circumstance. Iris was here with him in the middle of nowhere, far from any other souls.

"This is unusual," he dully remarked.

"This has never happened before," she agreed. "I was called here, but not to escort anyone's soul. I just felt like you needed me. Do you?...Need me, I mean."

"I don't know what I need," he muttered to the ground.

Iris came to his side and sat upon the neatly folded her black denim clad legs under her and slouched forward casually.

"Is this about that girl?"

"No," he instantly responded. "Yes–a bit–I don't know. I just feel…"

"Heartbroken?" she supplied.

"Like the punchline of some universally accepted joke written by the gods."

In the gloom of the desert night, he saw a flash of her teeth as she grinned.

"That's a little emo, but who doesn't feel that way sometimes?"

Still dejected he threw himself back upon the compact, rocky earth and gazed up to the burning stars above–dizzyingly brilliant here with no human light to squander their beauty. The sight made him despair that much more potently. Everything in this damned world was too pretty–the stars, the seas, that boy's pure love, Christine…He shut his eyes from the pain and willed himself to crumble into the soil, just as he should have rightfully done in his coffin a century ago.

Time marched in place for a long spell, going everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He lay on the ground in a sad little heap, reminiscing on all his mistakes and flaws. It must have been an hour before his existential death was interrupted.

"I wanted the pain to stop. I didn't know what else to do," she quietly said.

Confused, he opened his eyes and propped his skeleton frame up on one elbow to look at her. She was fiddling with a stick, swooping and scratching into the dirt. She looked up at him with a broken expression.

"You once asked me why I did it, why I jumped off that building," she explained.

"That was cruel of me to have said. I was speaking from—"

"Stop," she sighed. "I need to say this. I've been thinking alot about it since you asked. I know that I act like what I did doesn't bother me, but it eats me up every moment. I think about that woman. I think about that kid. I think about my family and the life that I could have had if I just asked for help. You don't really ever think that it could be you. I mean, I always thought it was crazy when people took their own lives. And then it was me doing it."

He sat in respectful silence, sensing there was more to come.

"My parents loved me," she continued. "But they never really knew me. And maybe part of that was because there were parts of myself that I had kept willfully hidden away from them. I know I don't seem like it, but I wasn't born here. We moved from Taiwan when I was three so that I could have more than what they had. They worked their asses off to build a really good life for me, and they still did it even when they eventually grew to hate each other. But they wanted me to do really great things with my life and I tried to live up to their expectations. I did the damn thing. I was Valedictorian of my high school and class president and all that stupid shit that doesn't even really matter in the grand scheme of things. Then I got accepted into a crazy great university to do pre-med and that's when the cracks started to form. I didn't want to be a doctor, I wanted to be a writer–or at the very least, I wanted to live life a little bit before jumping into a career that I knew was bound to make me exhausted and miserable. So, I started to slip. I went to parties, I drank too much and tried all the drugs. I missed lectures and assignments. My grades suffered, until they were so beyond fucked that I was going to go into academic suspension and I still didn't stop. I was lying to my parents the whole time. They thought their daughter was living up to all of their carefully crafted dreams. And then I got dropped from school. My counselor wrote me a very kind email about how sometimes the pressures of ivy league can be too much. And then I knew that I was going to have to break the news to my parents who had no idea I was struggling. They had put a ton of their life savings into my tuition and I had squandered some of it because I had waited too long to fess up."

She took a moment to gather her thoughts, tossing rock out into the darkness in the wake of her agitation.

"That wasn't the worst part of it all. I thought I had fallen in love with this guy. I knew from the start he was bad news–he had more red flags than a matador. But I felt–i don't know–SEEN–for the first time, really. It seemed like he got me, which was something I never felt before. I had never been in love before. And then I found out that the intimacy we shared was all bullshit when I found out he was fucking married. He wasn't even the age he told me, he was like ten years older than he said he was. This all happened at the same time. I got that email from my counselor and then found out the dude I was in love with was an asshole. Betrayal and failure. I had one shitty day and it boiled over. It was impulsive and stupid, but jumping just felt like the best choice at the time. I didn't want to live another second feeling those things."

She tossed another rock into the darkness.

"I knew the second I jumped that it was a mistake. Everything in my life crystalized for a moment and I realized that it could all be fixed. But gravity was already in motion. It's all pretty fucking lame when I think back on it." She glanced over at him with half-shed tears in her eyes. "I kind of just trauma dumped on you. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk."

"What is a Ted Talk?"

"Erik, my friend," she teasingly reproached. "You really do need to get out more."

"I am out," he looked about himself.

"Oh my god," she groaned. "Was that supposed to be a joke? That was worse than a dad joke."

In the distance, something yelled into the night in a haunting cadence, followed by another eerie call.

"What the fuck was that?"

"Coyotes," he replied. "But don't worry. I don't think you're their preferred cuisine."

"These jokes are not landing, Erik," she rolled her eyes. "So,tell me about your girl. What is it about this one that's got the mysterious Mr. Erik so smitten?"

"I don't believe it can be summed up with something as crude and cumbersome as language," he mused. "She has a gentle sensitivity about her, and a deep sadness that I ache to touch. I feel as though,if I can somehow hold that part of her and repair it, that it will somehow mend my own broken pieces."

"I'm not sure if 'let's be sad together' is the sort of love you want, Erik."

"People can be happily sad together," he dumbly argued.

"No, Erik," she countered with quiet compassion. "I think that's just called codependency."

He groaned and threw himself back upon the Earth. The blanket of stars hovered like a swirl of illuminated dust in the sky.

"It doesn't matter," he said to the sky. "She's gone now–just as Nadir is gone."

"Who's Nadir?"

"A man from another life," he said in a paper-thin voice. "The one person who ever truly loved me–even when I was thoroughly unworthy of such love. He's been dead for so long, but sometimes I feel as if it were just yesterday I left him standing on that rocky beach. How was I to know love when it looked me right in the face? How was I to recognize it? It seemed as though it were a mirage and I, foolish as I was, was terrified to approach it and find that it was nothing more than a trick of the heat. He spent years trying to find me after we last said goodbye–It was not to be. I couldn't face something as clean as his love with a soul as spoiled as mine had become. I was death, and he was life…it was as simple as that."

"Does this have something to do with your 'Angel of Death' gig?"

He let out an embarrassed chuckle.

"I forgot that I told you about that," he murmured with chagrin.

"It's a hard detail to forget. I'm sorry–but I've gotta ask…did you enjoy it?"

"No. Yet, I wanted to," he confessed with reluctant honesty. "I supposed if I could find myself with the ability to revel in death, it would truly make me inhuman and separate from all those who had hurt me. My machinations were moot. It only further sunk me into a living hell of my own making. I felt more human than ever after each life, and still, I continued to try…I wanted to be above pain. Not this incomplete mockery of a man."

Iris inched towards him and clasped his hand within her own. It was a strange, comfortable bit of connection that both unnerved and touched him.

"I'm sorry," she softly said, giving his cold hand a strong squeeze of support. "I'm sorry that you had to live the life that you 're a weird dude, but I want you to know that I consider you my friend. I mean, I've never told anyone what brought me to make the decision that I did so that must count for something, right?"

He truly looked at her now. She was so young. He thought of all that she had told him and something welled up in him. It was so brilliant and sharp that he thought he may cry from the agony of it.

"I am honored," he truthfully replied. "You are a good and honest person, Iris. I hope you can see that and forgive yourself."

"Maybe, you're right." she tenderly said, "But maybe it's time that webothforgive ourselves."

Nothing more was said. Together they sat, hand in awful-ugly-hand, until Iris was called away to tend to a soul and Erik was left watching the sun rise upon the barren landscape.

After hours of contemplation, he resigned to return, collect his things, and leave Christine's life forever.