Chapter Text
It’s nice to think that some things are universal. Meeting estranged family is always a little awkward, even when your mom is the moon.
At the shuddering heights of Tartarus, Thanatos gives Nyx a wan smile.
“Hello, mother,” he says dutifully. “You look well.”
The moon glares down at him, one enormous pea-green eye. Even without what might be called a face, she still manages to convey a faint air of surprise. It figures. Kids never turn out how you expect.
“It's the scarf, isn’t it,” he says, looking down at it. “You think it makes me look frivolous.”
Nyx gives up on understanding. She does not know the steps to this dance. Sorry I’m late, traffic was hell. You wouldn’t believe the congestion in the mesosphere. You look wonderful, you’ve grown so much, but you’re too skinny! A growing boy needs to eat! Words that mean nothing and words that mean everything. Muscle memories and rituals and expectations to subvert. Chaos into order, dust into meat. Comedy. Drama. Heartache and heartbreak and limited-time-only seasonal crepes. The whole bloody theater of life. It isn’t for her.
(It wasn’t supposed to be for Thanatos, either. It’s just that he got to borrow a little, for a while.)
Thanatos watches himself disappear.
It doesn’t hurt. Dying never does. People just get the wrong idea because they’ve got so used to living, which hurts immensely.
The last indignity is this: no matter how much you didn't want to, if you live long enough, eventually, you will have to see yourself become your mother.
###
Ryoji dreams.
Which is weird because, as a rule, the dead generally don’t. Death isn’t a long sleep. It’s just what happens when everything else stops. No more sleep. No more dreams. No more anything, ever. Pretty much by definition. But that doesn’t read as well on the bereavement card.
Nevertheless, Ryoji dreams. Maybe it’s another of his little perks. More special treatment to reward him for being a monster who shattered into twelve nightmares and a leech.
(It couldn’t be mercy. Nyx doesn’t know the meaning of the word.)
Ryoji dreams of a sky stained red and a sea painted black. Asphalt studded with steel coffins, hiding meat that’s only just begun to bloat. Ribbons of yellow and green pulse from the moon. Putrescent, like a wound.
One car remains on the crumbling bridge, crunched and upended but intact. Something inside it calls to him.
Death draws near.
There are four bodies in the car. Three of them are empty, but there is light still stirring in the fourth. She wriggles against the belt that binds her to her seat, one tiny hand clutching at the hand of something dead. Its hand looks just like hers. A perfect mirror.
Thanatos cannot understand. What is it that makes life so alluring? Why do the living cling so hard to something they were never going to keep?
It matters little. The girl is an opportunity. A shelter from which to gather strength. Hiding inside her will be easy. Death dwells in everything that breathes.
The girl hardens as she ages, like a scab. Scar tissue seals over her wounds. Slowly she learns how to pretend. How to hold out her hands and put on a smile.
She chases sensation. Blood on her knuckles, ash in her mouth. The sting of the safety pin through the lobe of her ear, her yelp muffled by fabric clenched between her teeth. Grit and gravel ground into her knees. Warm palms clenched tight against hers. She feels something, for a moment, and then nothing. None of it is anything. No feeling ever lasts.
She goes to sleep in the dark, alone. But she isn’t alone.
(She’s never alone.)
The girl transfers schools, again. She’s made too many enemies, and still more false friends. She has donned a thousand masks. She knows, now, how to pretend.
Soon it will be over. The watcher takes comfort in that. Perhaps the girl would, too, if only he could tell her.
All at once, he finds that he can. Not only can—he must. There’s a contract that she must sign. An agreement that every living thing has already made; that they’ll make again and again and again. Someday, the pain will end. Memento Mori: Remember You Will Die.
And when she opens the dormitory door, for the first time, she can see him.
The camera tilts. The witnessed, bearing witness. The watcher, suddenly seen.
“Hello,” Pharos tells her, and smiles. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
The End
It's the end of the world.
Trees shudder and creak. Leaves pucker and drop. Steam curls off the surface of a sea already beginning to boil. And at the top of a very tall tower, nine specks of dust prepare for their final fight.
(There will be no more fighting, after this. There will be no ‘after.’ Only peace.)
Nyx will not mourn this world. Death is not the cost of life—it is its maker. Not an end, but an absence. What is light without shadow? What is shadow without something to cast it? Death bounds life and life breeds death. Death defines life defines death, defines life, and around and around they go. Ring around the ro~sie, a pocket full of po~sies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. Such a merry game! Such a merry chase! And then we all fall down.
There is no absolute truth, except for this: all living things are born to die. It is the ouroboros of existence. A snake can only swallow its own tail for so long before it runs out of tail.
###
The humans on the tower do not know the face of Death. They only recognize her mask, the little steward sent to trumpet her return. They call her by someone else’s name. (Humans love to name things. It helps them to construct the illusion of control. But their illusions aren’t real, and neither was the steward.)
Nyx tries to explain. The end of the world is not a tragedy, it is a mercy. Humanity wailed and pounded the ground and begged for relief. Nyx heard their prayers and answered. She is ready to make the pain stop.
Still, the humans on the roof will not hear reason. They do not understand that it’s their call she’s come to answer. Their grief, their despair. The ashes of their hope. They know their fate and they will not submit.
…It matters little. The Arcana is the means by which all is revealed. Soon, they will have their answer.
One by one, they fight.
One by one, they fall.
The Fool is battered. Bloodied. Her left arm hangs useless, forcing her to swing her naginata in clumsy, whirling arcs with her right hand alone. Nyx very nearly scowls. You can’t fight with a polearm one-handed. Didn’t you bring something else? You’re going to hurt yourself, you know?
…Strange. Such sentiments are for the living. Feeling blooms from seeds sewn of mortality, and Nyx exists beyond the cycle of life and death. She does not scowl. Even if The Fool does hurt herself, it’s not as though she’ll hurt for very long. Soon there will be no pain. Not even for ridiculous, masochistic little Fools.
“This is what they want,” Nyx reminds the Fool. Humanity is tired of suffering. They’ve tired of losing and grieving and dying. There is no mercy for the living. “Is there no pity in your heart? Do you not wish to be free?”
The Fool flashes a wild grin. Blood wells between her teeth. “Free!! Hhhha-ha-ha, I mean… sure. Sounds good on paper. But I think we’re probably not talking about the same thing.”
Nyx stares.
To her surprise, the Fool sputters a laugh. “Snrrk. Sorry, sorry. I’ll be serious. Real talk: why do you look like that?”
“...Like what.”
“Like a freaky monster version of my buddy Ryoji?”
Ah. The Harbinger. “The vessel you called by that name was ever an illusion. He was only—”
“No, yeah, I got that. I’m asking something different. Why do you look like Ryoji?”
“I—” But there is no ‘I.’ “This vessel is of little consequence.”
“So then why take form at all? Doesn’t it just give us a face to punch, sorta thing?”
“An avatar is... a useful intermediary.”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” the Fool says conspiratorially. “I think you look like Ryoji for the same reason I still want to stick around.”
“Humans live in fear of death.” But Nyx is incapable of fear.
“No, no, no. I mean… sure, that’s part of it. But people live for a million reasons. People live ‘cause the school store won’t sell yakisoba bread till Friday. Or ‘cause their favorite show just got greenlit for another season. Or just ‘cause they still have to walk their dog. You wanna know what I think?”
Nyx wants for nothing. But that also means that she doesn’t particularly not-want to hear what the Fool thinks.
“I think you look like Ryoji because Ryoji wants to live,” the Fool declares. “I think there’s stuff he wants to do, still, and he doesn’t wanna disappear until it’s done. I think living hurts, but it doesn’t only hurt. And I think that, deep down, you wanna stick around just as bad as I do.”
“Death does not want,” Nyx says coldly.
The Fool taps the side of her nose and winces at the sting. Her nose is broken in at least three places. “Aw, Ryoji-kun~! Heheh… I’m pretty sure you do.”
Tch. “You think that you have won. You are wrong. Death does not care what you want.”
“He sure seemed like he did,” the Fool snickers, and attacks.
When the Fool gathers her Universe’s strength and drives her naginata through Nyx’s exposed chest, there’s the strangest sense of… something. Something like relief. But not the relief that Nyx offers. Substance, not absence.
(The Fool hasn’t won. Not really. Death cannot die. It can only be put off for a little while longer.)
The last thing Nyx sees before she falls is a girl. Copper hair blood-drenched and rusting. Bent, but not broken.
“Oh,” Ryoji sighs, with relief, in the last of his guttering breath. “Hamuko.”
The End
“Oh,” a clear voice says, sounding taken aback. “Er. Hello. I didn’t expect to meet anyone else.”
Ryoji turns to find himself nose-to-nose with two yellow eyes and a familiar blue coat. It’s Hamuko’s friend, the hawk-eyed stranger they met at Paulonia Mall. Theo. They did karaoke together. Though he looks a bit different from here.
“Theo! Oh, look at you!” Ryoji leans in closer. No matter how close he looks, he can’t see even a flicker of the shadow of death. Hamuko sure has some interesting friends! “Wow! You’re… not exactly alive, are you?”
Theo looks scandalized. “Well! I certainly haven’t received any complaints!” He pulls a heavy blue book out of empty air and flips through it before darting another nervous glance at Ryoji. “Our guest already won this game, you know. We have a contract. I’m authorized to use force against any competing facilitators which might compromise that contract, so it’s too late to renege on any—“
“Oh, I see. No, it’s not like that.” Ryoji gives him a big smile. “I’m not here to make trouble! I’m just waiting for my friend.”
Theo hesitates. “It’s not very traditional…”
But Hamuko never cared about tradition, so Ryoji doesn’t either. “Do you know any card games?”
“Ah,” Theo says, brightening. “Is this— There are stories, in the sea of human consciousness, about challenging Death to a game of—“
“Aw, c’mon!” Ryoji laughs. “Don’t be like that! I’m more than just my job, you know. Anyway, death is for the living. And like I said, I’m not here on business. I just thought it might be a nice way to pass the time.”
Theo hesitates.
One more little push should do it. “Hamuko-chan always liked playing cards,” Ryoji muses. “Between you and me, she was a bit of a card shark. Totally unreadable.”
“…Well. W-Well!! I suppose a few rounds couldn’t hurt.”
The days flicker past. The light dances on the surface of the sea.
“It’s because of how it’s flowing,” Ryoji tells Theodore. “Water doesn’t really have a color. Its surface is a mirror. All you can see is what it reflects.”
“Yes.”
Ryoji snorts. “Oh, I’m sorry. Was that obvious?”
“I—” Theo hesitates. “Er. All things reflect their surroundings, don't they? Water, and mirrors, and…”
“Humans! Hah! Yeah! Do they ever!”
The End
When Hamuko’s light dies, she isn’t unfeeling. She isn’t alone. Her connections have flayed back her scars and laid her bare. She feels everything.
Hamuko is warm, her head pillowed on Aigis' lap. Ai-chan is smiling gently. Aigis was supposed to be a weapon, but Ryoji was supposed to be the End.
And here they are.
Hamuko opens her eyes.
“Oh,” she says quietly, sitting up. “...Oh.” Her gaze lands on Ryoji and Theodore, still locked in card-based combat. “Oh!! Heheh, oh, man. I always thought you guys would get along.”
“Well!” Theo huffs.
“No, you were totally right,” Ryoji cuts in. “He’s a riot. So uptight and still so curious! I just wanna show him everything that’s ever made me feel anything!”
“E-Excuse me??” Theo sputters, but Hamuko is already laughing along.
“Totally,” she snickers. “You get me.”
“I have a bit of an unfair advantage.”
There are voices rising from the stairs to the rooftop. Shouts from the lives that she’s loved. The people she fought for, and died for, just to buy them a little more time.
“...Oh,” Hamuko says softly. “Um. Is there anything I can do for them?”
“Nothing you haven’t already done,” Ryoji tells her. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I think I kinda knew.” She chews her lip, looking over her shoulder at Aigis. “But they’ll be okay?”
Ryoji shrugs. “That’s up to them. But you gave them the chance to choose.”
“...Yeah.”
“It isn’t fair!” Theodore protests, as Hamuko takes Ryoji’s hand. “You won the game! You shouldn’t just— You deserved so much more than this!!”
Hamuko takes his face in both hands and pulls him down to her level, till she can bonk her forehead against his.
“Everyone deserves better,” she tells him fondly. “…Pretty much everyone. But it’s okay. I know the score.”
Ryoji bumps his shoulder against hers, and is rewarded with another blinding smile.
“I always knew the score.” Hamuko's gaze drifts toward Aigis, toward her friends racing up the stairs. The people she loved, and always will have. “I knew what I was getting into, you know? Everything matters. And everything ends.”
“But it shouldn’t have to!!!”
“Well,” she laughs, “Well! Wouldn’t that be nice. But that isn’t the deal. It never was. No one gets to pick their ending. It was always going to end like—