Post by Thanatos on Apr 2, 2014 20:16:50 GMT -5
"I feel like we're in the midst of a funeral march." Thanatos turned his head just slightly to look down at the woman at his side. It was rare to see her so somber, even in the midst of a reaping. He wondered if it had anything to do with the victim's age. She was almost always snippy with him for a few days following the passing of a child.
"The boy isn't dead yet," he tried to comfort but he knew it sounded harsh and unpromising on his tongue.
"You remember what happened the last time someone 'wasn't dead yet' in this wretched land," she whispered and she reached forward, her hand hovering just over the pirate's back, fingers almost grazing the angel's arc of his shoulder blade. Even if she made contact, he wouldn't feel her. Thanatos watched her hand drop back to her side. How gravely loss can change them, he ruminated, quieted momentarily by the dichotomy of the human race: how resilient and yet how fragile they all were. He might not have recognized the Captain the first time they had seen him so transformed, nor the Queen after he'd thieved away her lover to the Underworld. Whatever the admirable state of their roots, these creatures now grew crooked and unnatural. Like watching trees try to sprout healthfully when there was some heavy, foreign object in the way of their journey, maybe one that blocked the sunlight.
Thanatos did not remember the scene of every soul that he reaped. But he did remember a great many of them, much to his chagrin.
When they reached the ship, they hung back a moment, allowing the procession to gain some distance as they climbed aboard and laid the boy down on the deck. Helena stared long and hard at the wilting paint on the side of the vessel. "The 'Jolly' Roger," she quipped, shaking her head. "That sort of irony is really just cruel. This makes three, if the boy dies tonight. Maybe someone broke a mirror aboard it. ...Well, more like a few dozen mirrors, if I'm doing the math right. Let's see. Three centuries divided by seven years bad luck..."
"Didn't take you as one to put much stalk in superstition."
She stopped. The thin thread of humor petered out of her tone. "I'm not. Faith and luck and destiny and all that--just things we tell ourselves to ease the edges of the world before we go to sleep."
They stalled another few seconds. He shifted his weight and sighed; there was no getting around Fate, ruthless whore that she was.
By the time they had rallied enough to step onto the damp wood of the deck, Henry Mills was lying on his back up by the wheel, a few grown bodies crowded around him. Thanatos could have named them all, each one, but he didn't because getting attached or feeling sorry for them never made it any easier to do. He knelt beside the child. For all of his steely determination and insistence that rules were rules, his eyes were softer than usual and he was not smiling. He hated when it happened to them so young. He found himself thinking sometimes, at night, about all of the hundreds of thousands of things that they would never get to do, of all of the tiny and grandiose ways in which they might have altered the world. He imagined, most every time, that it would have been for the better. It was hard to see the dark potential of a grown man or woman in the unknowing smile of a child. Stay like this, he would have liked to tell them. Don't grow up--that's how you grow mean.
But he had seen what happened when such a wish came true: The Boy That Never Grew Up. Peter Pan. He was no kinder than plenty of the crude adults Thanatos had reaped. So maybe it wasn't age. Maybe they all just had an expiration date on them. Maybe they could only be soft and sweet for a certain amount of time and then they grew out of it, shedding it like a second skin.
Helena's hand brushed his cheek. He almost turned and buried his head in her soft belly. I'm sorry, he wanted to say to her, and to the rest of them, the ones standing around the boy and looking down on him in fear. I'm so sorry.
"Did you want to come along?" he inquired, unconsciously leaning a little into her palm.
She must have read the exhaustion in the gruff state of his voice because she usually wouldn't watch, not when they were so short on years of life. But this time she conceded, "Alright, then."
He deliberated another moment, glancing behind them, hoping that someone might come sprinting out of the darkness with some solution and then he would open his little book of names and Henry Mills would have disappeared for a while, at least until he was old and gray and ready to go. Some deaths were set in stone. Some were not. That was how some came under the misguided impression that they had 'cheated' him, escaped the Reaper, the Grim. No one escaped him, just delayed him a while. "I have to," he grated.
Helena nodded. "I know." He longed for the usual warmth in her voice but she had put the distance between them for a reason and he knew there was no crossing it until this was done and she had settled down, reminding herself that he never did it by choice.
He rested his palm on the boy's forehead, his hand calloused and weathered. Gradually, the world around the three of them dimmed just a hair, time slowing as he dragged the boy's consciousness into The Void, that little sliver of space between life and death, the place he took them all to acclimate them, explain to them what had happened and answer the questions that he could. "Henry," he called quietly, as if they were old friends, and waited for the boy to sit up and see them.
Back on the deck of the ill-named Jolly Roger, Henry lay still though, and his pulse slowed a few beats while he danced closer to the man called Death.
Henry Mills
"The boy isn't dead yet," he tried to comfort but he knew it sounded harsh and unpromising on his tongue.
"You remember what happened the last time someone 'wasn't dead yet' in this wretched land," she whispered and she reached forward, her hand hovering just over the pirate's back, fingers almost grazing the angel's arc of his shoulder blade. Even if she made contact, he wouldn't feel her. Thanatos watched her hand drop back to her side. How gravely loss can change them, he ruminated, quieted momentarily by the dichotomy of the human race: how resilient and yet how fragile they all were. He might not have recognized the Captain the first time they had seen him so transformed, nor the Queen after he'd thieved away her lover to the Underworld. Whatever the admirable state of their roots, these creatures now grew crooked and unnatural. Like watching trees try to sprout healthfully when there was some heavy, foreign object in the way of their journey, maybe one that blocked the sunlight.
Thanatos did not remember the scene of every soul that he reaped. But he did remember a great many of them, much to his chagrin.
When they reached the ship, they hung back a moment, allowing the procession to gain some distance as they climbed aboard and laid the boy down on the deck. Helena stared long and hard at the wilting paint on the side of the vessel. "The 'Jolly' Roger," she quipped, shaking her head. "That sort of irony is really just cruel. This makes three, if the boy dies tonight. Maybe someone broke a mirror aboard it. ...Well, more like a few dozen mirrors, if I'm doing the math right. Let's see. Three centuries divided by seven years bad luck..."
"Didn't take you as one to put much stalk in superstition."
She stopped. The thin thread of humor petered out of her tone. "I'm not. Faith and luck and destiny and all that--just things we tell ourselves to ease the edges of the world before we go to sleep."
They stalled another few seconds. He shifted his weight and sighed; there was no getting around Fate, ruthless whore that she was.
By the time they had rallied enough to step onto the damp wood of the deck, Henry Mills was lying on his back up by the wheel, a few grown bodies crowded around him. Thanatos could have named them all, each one, but he didn't because getting attached or feeling sorry for them never made it any easier to do. He knelt beside the child. For all of his steely determination and insistence that rules were rules, his eyes were softer than usual and he was not smiling. He hated when it happened to them so young. He found himself thinking sometimes, at night, about all of the hundreds of thousands of things that they would never get to do, of all of the tiny and grandiose ways in which they might have altered the world. He imagined, most every time, that it would have been for the better. It was hard to see the dark potential of a grown man or woman in the unknowing smile of a child. Stay like this, he would have liked to tell them. Don't grow up--that's how you grow mean.
But he had seen what happened when such a wish came true: The Boy That Never Grew Up. Peter Pan. He was no kinder than plenty of the crude adults Thanatos had reaped. So maybe it wasn't age. Maybe they all just had an expiration date on them. Maybe they could only be soft and sweet for a certain amount of time and then they grew out of it, shedding it like a second skin.
Helena's hand brushed his cheek. He almost turned and buried his head in her soft belly. I'm sorry, he wanted to say to her, and to the rest of them, the ones standing around the boy and looking down on him in fear. I'm so sorry.
"Did you want to come along?" he inquired, unconsciously leaning a little into her palm.
She must have read the exhaustion in the gruff state of his voice because she usually wouldn't watch, not when they were so short on years of life. But this time she conceded, "Alright, then."
He deliberated another moment, glancing behind them, hoping that someone might come sprinting out of the darkness with some solution and then he would open his little book of names and Henry Mills would have disappeared for a while, at least until he was old and gray and ready to go. Some deaths were set in stone. Some were not. That was how some came under the misguided impression that they had 'cheated' him, escaped the Reaper, the Grim. No one escaped him, just delayed him a while. "I have to," he grated.
Helena nodded. "I know." He longed for the usual warmth in her voice but she had put the distance between them for a reason and he knew there was no crossing it until this was done and she had settled down, reminding herself that he never did it by choice.
He rested his palm on the boy's forehead, his hand calloused and weathered. Gradually, the world around the three of them dimmed just a hair, time slowing as he dragged the boy's consciousness into The Void, that little sliver of space between life and death, the place he took them all to acclimate them, explain to them what had happened and answer the questions that he could. "Henry," he called quietly, as if they were old friends, and waited for the boy to sit up and see them.
Back on the deck of the ill-named Jolly Roger, Henry lay still though, and his pulse slowed a few beats while he danced closer to the man called Death.
Henry Mills