Chapter Text
Jonny d’Ville gets stabbed in the chest in a bar fight, and he’s not surprised to feel nothing.
His legs give out underneath him, but he keeps his composure as always. He’ll be right back up in a few minutes anyways. While he’s on the floor, he takes the time to appreciate how the lights in the ceiling cast a golden glow over the carnage. One of them glares into the corner of his eyes, scattering colors like a lens flare on a camera.
The noise of the fight around him dulls, and the sharp sound of footsteps cuts clearly through it. Like someone walking across the stage in a theater while it rains outside. A figure stands over him. They wear a long, dark trench coat, and the lights above frame their head like a halo so Jonny can’t make out their features. If he believed in such things, he might’ve thought that he was looking at the spirit of death itself.
“Oh. It’s you.” They sound disappointed.
Jonny squints to try and see their face. “Yes, it’s me. Who are you?”
“I’m insulted, Jonny. And here I thought that after making a whole album stealing my voice you’d remember me.”
The prismatic flare clears as they kneel down beside him, and Jonny sees the features of someone who has spent too many late nights studying files and braids from New Midgard.
“Lyfrassir?” Jonny croaks.
“Sort of.” The former inspector cracks their neck to the side, rolls back their shoulders. He can see a deep and intense hatred in their eyes, hidden just beneath a veneer of calm detachment.
“How are you here?”
“To sound like your own archivist, there was only a 0.0002% chance I escaped Yggdrasil without taking a piece of the Bifrost with me. I’m sure there’s a universe out there where it happened, but it’s not this one. Or maybe it is, and I’m just dropping in from mine. It’s very difficult to tell these things nowadays.”
“Are you just going to keep talking at me until I regenerate?”
Lyfrassir looks almost sympathetic. “Oh, Jonny. You won't regenerate, you’re dead.”
That’s the moment that he realizes his heart isn’t ticking in order to stop at Lyfrassir’s words. “What?”
“This is your fading conscience. I’m the only one here who can see you.”
Jonny looks around. He’d assumed that everyone had just ignored him because they were caught up in the fight. Maybe they were, maybe Lyfrassir was lying to him.
“No,” Jonny asserts. “I’m not dead. I know what death is like, and this isn’t it.”
Lyfrassir scoffs. “You don’t know the first thing about it.”
“I am far more intimate with death than anyone in this room,” He snarls. “No one else here has seen the things I’ve seen.”
“Death comes for everyone, Jonny, but you’ve deluded yourself into thinking you’re exempt from that. You never understood it. How could you, when you never really experienced it in its full capacity? You claim that you fooled everyone, but the only one you fooled is yourself.”
There is a long and pregnant pause. “I think you know why I’m the one that’s here,” Lyfrassir says softly.
Jonny swallows. “You represent everyone in the Yggdrasil system.”
“Right on the money. Maybe you should be the detective.” Lyfrassir looks sadder now. “Eighty eight billion people. Do you know how unfathomable that is? Eighty eight billion lives cut too short.”
“So, what, we inadvertently turned you into a grim reaper and you’re here to lord it over me?”
“You misunderstand the nature of what I am. But that’s okay. It'll end soon anyways.”
Jonny looks back at the lights. They seem dimmer now. “I had more stories to tell.”
“Maybe so. The problem is that death doesn’t really care about that. That’s the trick, though, you can’t let yourself get lost in the prospect of your own demise. You know it’s going to happen, so the only thing you can do is love life. It’s a balancing act.”
“But-”
“Did you see the beauty that life has? Did you take off your makeup? Did you stop living for tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you? You had so many chances to make a change, and now you have to look back and regret you didn’t take them.”
“I thought I had more time,” Jonny says.
“So you didn’t listen to the one you know as Nemo. You waited for the undefinable ‘better’ day to do the things you wanted.”
“I thought that I was alone.”
“Arthur’s words meant nothing to you? You couldn’t take it upon yourself to show yourself to another or see something new in them?”
“I thought that it was all pointless.”
Lyfrassir smiles softly, without malice. “If you had just stopped viewing yourself as the end goal, it might’ve had one.”
Something hurts where Jonny’s heart used to be. “Why are you telling me this now?” He whispers. “When I’m already about to die.”
Lyfrassir shrugs. “I thought you deserved to know.”
“That’s it, then? You give me this as if it won’t leave my last moments in torture.”
“It’s about to become important. It’ll help you make a decision.”
“Oh yea? And what decision is that.”
Lyfrassir studies his face, glances at something across the room, then exhales. “I’m here to do one thing for you.”
“Why?”
“You may have let Yggdrasil die, but you didn’t let it go unknown. I hate you for using me, but if that’s what allows people to know we existed then I owe you one favor.”
Jonny thinks. What was he going to ask of the eldritch personification of death and extinction? Did they have the power to save him? Maybe that was their angle. To hold Jonny in front of all the ways he’d approached life wrong like the Ghost of the Future in that stupid story so that he could recognize it and approach life with a new vigor.
He meets Lyfrassir’s eyes. No. That wasn’t right. Jonny had to accept this, that he would die, and now was that time.
“If I'll die, that means the others will too, right?” He asks. Lyfrassir nods. “How?”
“I can’t give you details other than that you all die alone.”
Jonny closes his eyes. “Can you be with them when they die, then? So they at least have that comfort?”
The sound of the fight has completely died away now. Jonny fears that if he opens his eyes, he’ll see nothing.
“That was the right decision.”
A knot releases in Jonny’s chest. He thinks it might’ve been the last thing keeping him alive, but without the tightness, he feels free to laugh. Laugh because a million years ago he never would have been able to imagine himself using a boon given by a demigod to give someone solace. That Jonny might’ve considered him stupid for it.
He imagines that Tim will be angry about it. To have whatever battle he’s in interrupted by a stranger, because Jonny can’t conceive of Tim dying anywhere except fighting something. He hopes Lyfrassir annoys the hell out of Marius. Payback for New Midgard.
Maybe they’ll see something new Raphaella’s side. Brian will probably appreciate it the most, he always hated being lonely. Ivy will more than likely spend her last moments archiving a statement from them. Jonny knows Ashes will put on a show. They were always flashy. The Toy Soldier, as always, will be happy to just be included. Maybe, whenever she is, Lyfrassir will even find Nastya.
Jonny laughs until he cries. It’s out of relief, really. Maybe he really did learn something. He’ll never really get to know though, because a few moments later, he can no longer even hear his laughter. The last thing he feels is a hand on his shoulder.