Work Text:
If.
If this 4 ft. 5 apartment crasher truly was Death.
Then they were scr*d.
Tana’s eyes grew wide.
“Oh s*…Gabbie?”
“Yeah?”
“…How much trouble are we in right now?”
“Let’s…play it by ear, and then panic later”.
“You sure we’re gonna have a later?”
“Maybe Death’ll be reasonable”.
“Death is never reasonable”.
“We make them think they need us, then”.
“And then what?”
“…I am literally making this up as I go”.
*
This is bad-
This is very bad-
Apparently they’d taken too long to move in the desired direction-
So now Mx. Goth Kid was tugging at their sleeves.
Like a f*ing child-
When that didn’t work, they grasped their hands with cold, clammy fingers.
Pulling…
“Okay, okay we’re coming!”
She thought she saw a half-smile beneath that low hood of theirs.
You-
Are not allowed to act cute.
Heading toward the door, she heard Tana give a little squeak of shock.
Which matched her mental state.
The swirling band of white flames was nothing compared to what they saw within:
Mortimer.
Stoned.
One arm outstretched as if to warn a b* off, forever and ever.
*
They hopped through that portal in no time!
Death was impressed.
They could have just left him to be petrified…
Following calmly after them, the immortal being watched as Gabbie called out ‘hello?’ after ‘hello! Mortimer, wake up-!!’.
As Tana frantically felt for any cracks or nicks in the stone-any possible fissures to carve the lost man out.
“How did this happen!?”
“What, did Medusa come crawling out of the marble work or something?”
“-Hey! Can you hear me!?”
“I don’t think that’s gonna do it-“
“Then what will?”
Both of them looked expectantly.
“Can you not break this guy out on your own?”
“…”
“Look, I’m no good at guessing games, okay?”
The blonde’s hands swirled in the air, agitated.
“Just say the word, and we’ll do what we have to in order to save him!”
“-And then we can talk about this whole ‘running away from Hell’ thing, alright?”
They had worry shimmering in their eyes.
Death smiled.
Held out a hook.
“What?”
“What is that for!?”
“Is that supposed to help us free Mortimer?”
Minutes passed.
“Right, enough of this!”
Tana snatched it out of their hand, and drove the steel-tipped edge into the statue’s chest.
With a crunch.
“Girl! You better hope you didn’t just kill him worse”.
“There’s only one way to find out, Gabbie”.
She yanked it loose.
Crumbles of stone, and hairline fractures spilling out into spiderwebbed patterns all over…
A pulsating black hole leaked dark mist.
Could that be-
It was.
Mortimer’s soul.
*
Nothingness.
Silence.
Suffocation.
For a limitless stretch of time, that was what he had experienced.
Breath-destroying fear locked up inside of his lungs.
He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t scream out into the abyss for help!
Was this his own special torture for having betrayed them all a night prior?
Forced to be trapped like this forever…
‘Mom…’
But there was no way that she could be here.
Because she’d been killed-
Trying to move, he'd found that his limbs wouldn’t listen.
His arm permanently stuck pointing into the distance.
His feet stuck an inch apart from each other for eternity.
His eyes open since the mark of the hour, now stinging madly-
Then-a crack of light.
Exploding in on itself until there was no place left for the shadows keeping him prisoner to hide…
He found himself floating in the air only inches from the astonished (Gabbie) and overjoyed (Tana) faces of two of his friends.
‘Wh-what the-!?”
Looking(!) from one side to the other, Mortimer saw that they were alone.
‘What happened-to me…?’
“Someone turned you to stone”, the Hollywood Starlet replied.
‘-Yeah.
I remember now!’
Those cold eyes staring into his, willing his body to stone-
‘It was a gorgon-
She came in and was going to threaten the others’.
He shook his head, the memories all coming back to him at once.
‘The Sorceress and I tried to stop her, but-‘
His smoky hands tread will-o-wisps in the air as he told the story.
‘You can probably guess how well that turned out’.
“Not great”, Gabbie deadpanned.
“Why does he look like a ghost?” Tana asked.
The cloaked kid kept quiet.
“Tana…”
“What? I just want to know-
If this is supposed to happen!”
“-I would say so”.
“Thank you!”
“Tana, that wasn’t him!”
…
“What!?”
Mortimer had seen the door creak open.
Softly.
And now, framed in the threshold.
Was a ruffled and wet looking Duchess.
Carrying a tiny, white-haired child.
Excalibur sheathed inside her belt.