●●●
Death sat there, staring at the empty space where Life had stood before, trying not to cry to let his emotions show. Only moments before had she been the one crying in his arms, but it was because of his own stupidity that she had stormed off. The wind, which had begun to pick up right after Life left, was strong now, and was causing his clothes to whip at his skin, a makeshift punishment for his selfishness, or so he imagined. He stood up and teleported back home when he realized Life wasn't coming back, and probably never would ever again.
As soon as he set foot on the ground, Truth sprung from nowhere and sang, "How did the date go? Will we have to make wedding plans? Perhaps some doves, maybe even a flower wreath?"
Death shook his head and walked towards his room. Truth, stubborn as she was, followed him.
"Death, what happened? Things were going so great with you and Life, but you don't look too happy. Did you say something stupid?" she said, and Death picked up his pace.
"If you're so curious, why don't you figure out yourself?" Death spat.
Truth rolled her eyes. "Because it would be an invasion of privacy? Obviously," she said, not much different from a teenager.
"Fine," Death said, whirling around to look at her in the face. "She was sad, so I was comforting her, but I said something wrong and drove her away. Happy?" he snapped, and hurt flashed across Truth's eyes, hear head dipping in silent apology and submission.
"Sorry," Death whispered shamefully. "I was upset, but I shouldn't have taken it out on you."
Truth shook her head. "I understand. Maybe I should've been less pushy."
The two stood in an awkward silence for a while, but Truth cleared her throat. "Maybe you should go check on her and apologize for what you said."
"I can't," Death said. "I've just picked up the deaths of a bunch of humans - I should go reap them. We'll talk afterwards." He teleported away to Life's kingdom to reap fallen souls he had sensed.
He found himself in the middle of an eerily quiet town - even the air seemed to stand still. A shiver ran down his spine, but Death shook it off and began to look for the fallen souls. Suddenly, Death sensed much more dead, more souls pulling at him from all directions. Death grit his teeth. Something strange was going on, but he ignored it and carried on. He had a job to do.
The nearest fallen soul was in a house next to him, and when he walked in, he saw a mother and father sobbing at the dead child in their arms, unaware of Death's presence - Life's gift at work. Death walked over to the baby to extract the soul when the mother and father collapsed. He didn't need to check for their pulse to know they were already dead, feeling the newly fallen souls join the many tugging at him. Now he knew for sure that things were off, and after he extracted the family of souls, he went to investigate.
He teleported to the next town over to see if the same thing was going on, and sure enough, it was. People were lying dead in the middle of the street, seemingly asleep. No blood, he thought to himself. Just the most gruesome mass murder seen ever, no evidence to be seen anywhere.
Death extracted the soul of the nearest human, but before letting it go, he asked it some questions. "Hey, mind if I ask you a question?"
That was one. Goodbye.
"Might I kindly remind you that I am the one who decides whether or not you get to live in hell for the rest of eternity," Death said, and the soul seemed to bristle.
Fine. Ask me what you want.
"Do you remember how you died?"
What do you take me for? An idiot? I died less than two minutes ago - of course I remember!
"Just answer the question," Death growled, annoyed by the soul's sheer sass.
Okay, okay. I was just walking along, minding my own business, when I felt something within me snap, like the sound of an animal's neck breaking. Next thing I knew, I was dead, trapped in my body.
"No," Death whispered as his eyes went wide. He quickly summoned a few of his Reapers, and ordered them to sweep the area and extract all souls. After giving them their orders, Death watched them leave before teleporting to the source of the deaths, fearing for the worst.
He'd been there so many times, he could make his way around with his eyes closed. His footsteps echoed across the halls, and it wasn't long until he found himself in front of Life's chamber door. His knock reverberated through the hallway, but there was no response from the other side of the door. Despite there being no answer, he knew Life was in her room - he could sense her aura, emotions he couldn't quite place rolling off of it in waves.
"Life?" he called through the door. "I'm coming in." He opened the door and saw Life on her balcony, curled up into a ball. As soon as he stepped in the room, she began screaming, and a burst of dark energy pulsed from her, nothing like the light and happiness of the magic he'd seen her use before. Death swore under his breath as he felt the death of dozens more, children and adults alike.
"Life? Life, get a hold of yourself!" he yelled over her screaming, but she didn't seem to hear. In fact, the closer Death got to her, the louder she screamed. Dark energy was flowing freely from her now, and Death knew he had to stop her before she killed every mortal being on the planet.
The closer he got, the harder it was to take the next step towards her, and Death found himself driving all of his energy into his steps, his own dark energy swirling around hers, but his magic was calm and soothing, like the black of a cool night, with stars and love intertwined to settle her raging magic of nightmares and death. He was only about a meter away, and Life's screams felt like they were ripping into his ears. Knowing that this couldn't go on any longer, Death leapt towards Life and flung his arms around her. The dark energy almost flung him off the edge of the balcony, but Death kept his grip on Life strong, closing his eyes and burying his face into her silken hair.
"Life, calm down. I'm here now," he yelled above the screaming, and her screaming lessened, pausing at his voice.
"Life, look. It's me, Death. You remember me, right?" he said, forcing her to look at him, and her screaming dropped another notch.
He continued to mutter comforting nothings to her until her screaming had halted, and the dark energy had stopped pouring out. He retracted his own magic inside of himself, looking down at Life. She blinked a few times and yelped when she saw Death. "Death? What are you doing here?" she asked, and Death cringed. She doesn't remember anything from her massacre. Should I tell her?
However, before Death could answer, she gasped and whispered, "Why are there so many dead? I can feel it - there's an emptiness that wasn't there before. Like before, there were blooming and thriving flowers in a field, and then they were wiped out, with only a few wilted ones left. What happened?" She narrowed her eyes. "Did you have to do something with it?"
By extension, probably, Death thought, but out loud he said nothing.
"Did you?" she asked, her voice slightly raised, brows furrowing in question.
Death felt her rejection from earlier, how blind she was to his emotions. Anger, mixed with a bit of sorrow, began to bubble to the surface and Death found himself blurting, "No. It was you who killed them all." As soon as those words left his mouth, Death wished he could take them back in but no - the fish was already free from the net, the cat out of the bag, the bullet fired from the gun. You idiot -
"I... did what?" Life whispered, voice quavering.
When Death didn't response, Life pressed harder. "Tell me, Death. What did I do?"
"You... you killed them. They were all massacred." He refused to meet her eyes, but he knew she was crying. He could almost hear them roll down her cheeks.
"Wh - how - I," she blabbered, unable to formulate a sentence.
"I'm sorry," Death said, but when he made a move to hug her, Life pushed him away.
"No," she said. "I meant what I said earlier about being done. You're a liar, Death, and I refuse to associate myself with one."
"Life," Death began, but she shut him up with a glare.
"Get out. Leave! I don't want to hear any of it! I don't want to see you ever again!" she roared, and he left, turning his head away so that Life wouldn't be able to see how hurt he was.
Months passed, and nothing happened. People had begun to fear Life, and with every new day, there was another influx of people who sought to be free from Life's rule, jumping off cliffs or drowning, the latter more frustrating as it required Death to go to the bottoms of oceans to find the souls. Death sent all of them to hell for giving up their lives for such selfish reasons.
He hadn't seen Life since he had calmed her down, respecting her wish to be left alone. Even so, he missed having her around, and everyday without her felt like a day without food, a day without, well... Life. Life, who was the beautiful light that shone for him every day, was suddenly void and lost, and it hurt him to think of what condition she could be in right now, to think about how hurt she could be. He was growing desperate from being without her for so long, and an idea popped in his head, an idea so sinful it made him want to throw up, but he was getting desperate. Her people needed the old Life. He needed the old Life.
Death decided to follow through with his quickly thought out plan, and though a little part of him told him not to do it, he ignored the tiny inner voice. Calling one of his Jurors over to take over, he teleported to Life's castle. Instead of teleporting to the main entry hall, he teleported straight to her room. He thought of it as a little rude, but he knew extraordinary cases called for extraordinary actions.
When he appeared in her room, he found Life crouched in the middle of the room, pressing her hands to her ears, shutting her eyes tight as if hiding from a terrible beast. The sight made his blood run cold, and when he said, "Life? Are you okay?" his voice came out hollow.
Life looked at him at the sound of his voice, and she slowly shook her head. "Please, I can't live with myself. I want to forget. Make me forget everything."
Hearing those words made Death want to laugh in a sick kind of way - his thoughts instantly turning to, Well, at least she wants me to wipe her mind. In fact, it was his original plan to wipe her memory, but knowing Life had beat him to it comforted him in a strange way. It wasn't a true violation if she was asking him to erase her memories too.
Death nodded. "Of course," he said, and he walked up to her and reached out.
As he was searching through her memories, he realized that the memories of her massacre and the memories of him were too closely intertwined to erase one without erasing the other. If he decided to proceed, she would not only forget the massacre, she would forget that she ever loved him, she would forget everything they had ever been through together, every shared laugh, every picnic, every flirtatious look, their first kiss...
Something in his posture must have changed, for Life, her voice raw from crying, said hoarsely, "Please, please, let me forget. Please..." Her voice trailed off, her fists unclenching and clenching, seeming so broken - it hurt Death to see her so.
Tears welled in his eyes as he said, "I can, but you'll forget me. You'll forget us."
Life fell silent for a moment, and the only sounds were of their mingled breaths. Slowly, she reached for Death's hand and grasped it gently, her supple hands smooth and warm. "Is there any other way?" she asked, eyes shimmering with crystalline tears, gazing up at Death with eyes that reflected his broken heart.
Death shook his head. "If there was, I would know of it. I can't..." His voice broke, already knowing what she had decided to do and knowing he could do nothing to save the love of his life.
Tears began racing down her face as she laid her head on his chest. "Do it," she whispered, and Death felt his heart break, rivers of tears drawing themselves on the planes of his face.
"Life, I couldn't -" he protested, trying futilely to convince her otherwise, but Life whimpered and he stopped speaking, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out.
He gently pushed her head off his chest, the feel of her almost convincing himself to just leave her, right then and there, but he once again reached out with his hand, palm out. Before he erased her memories, he looked directly into her bluebird eyes and said, "I love you," his tears blurring the beauty in front of him into a shapeless blob.
Life, whose tears were spilling freely now, sniffled and said, "I love you, too. I'm so sorry for judging you unfairly. I wish we could've ended things differently, Death." She leaned towards him and kissed him briefly, then rested her head upon his chest once more, driving him insane. He sat there, frozen, as she kissed one tear away after the other, her lips salty with them. When she pulled away, she looked up into his eyes. "I'll miss you," she muttered. "Come find me afterwards, okay? We can start from scratch again." Reaching up, she brushed her hand on his cheek, cupping his face. " We'll start over and do it all over again, build another life without this... pain, without the mistakes that were made. We can love again."
Death gently cupped Life's cheek, the two of them just standing there, and smiled through the tears that slowly trickled down his face as he said, "See you on the other side of things."
In the next moment, her memories were gone, and with it, a part of Death's heart.
Ta-da~
A day late, but hopefully it was worth the wait! I know this is pretty long, but this is the primary memory that Death returned to Life, the memory of her massacre, and it felt wrong to cut it off. I hope I was able to pull some heartstrings with this one, because that was the overall feel I was going for. Thanks for reading and hope to see you stick around!