Chapter Text
1.
« Were you ever going to tell me ? »
Rem eyed Jealous warrily. He was here again, crouching in front of the Eye, peaking at the human world like its sight only would bring him back to life.
Jealous did not answer immediately, carrefully looking down the hole with a tremor in his sigh.
« I tried to move on, but nobody is her. » he replied, voice pained.
Rem got closer and peered at the Eye that was opening on the human world. The young woman was there, her freshly bleached hair tied in pigtails. Her clothes were nicely picked and her lifespan was down to one day.
« So it's today. » Rem tried again to start the conversation, but Jealous was engrossed with the Eye.
« It can't be... » he whispered. « Look at her... she's fine. »
She indeed looked fine, and it angered Rem all the most. She couldn't understand Jealous and his infatuation. Had she understood sooner, maybe she could have taken his attention away from the girl. But she'd been slow, too slow, to accept that her friend had taken his liking upon a human, and so here they were.
She'd watched with Jealous the countdown begin a little less than a year ago, when they'd realized that she would die sooner than her time. It had been a tragedy and Jealous had disappeared for days after that. He was the laughinstock of the shinigami realm, but nothing had stopped him from coming back and taking a sit in front of an Eye to peer at the other world.
Love really was for mortals and fools.
*
Jealous was not watching the girl, which bugged Rem quite a bit. He'd been looking at her for years, and the day of her passing, he was engrossed in a low life's whereabouts. She put her large hand on his small shoulder and they switched the image to the girl's.
The night came on the human world and the young woman exited her workplace. Rem was diligently watching, like a human would a movie, and sat down in front of the Eye to follow the course of the events.
« How is it going to go ? » she wondered out loud, to push Jealous to talk.
She too had grown accustomed to the girl's life and was ashamed to admit that this night was making her poor dead heart ram in her ribcage.
The other shinigami seemed rather calm. He was sitting as usual, a pen twirling in his tiny doll hand, and his eyes were shining fiercely.
« Jealous. » Rem called because she felt ominously in danger all of a sudden.
Or more, she felt him in danger.
« Jealous, give me your notebook. »
Jealous detached his eyes from the shining hair of the human girl and looked at his feet. He sighed heavily, deflating like a balloon, and after a short hesitation, handed his death note to Rem. She enraptured the book with her big hand and kept it against her heart as she crouched back next to him. Love was for mortals and fools, but maybe Jealous was a shinigami after all. He wouldn't die for her.
They watched in silence as the girl walked home in the dark. A shadow followed her and cornered her. Rem open her only eye as big as she could, unable to comprehend what was going on :
« He's not going to- »
To kill her ? No way.
The man in the human world was wailing words of despair, waving a knife in front of him. Rem threw a glance at Jealous, still sitting next to her, and there was now in his eyes a longing she'd never seen before. Like he was watching his precious human for the last time. There was a tiny smile on his face when he closed his eyes and the colors on his skin started to fade away.
« Jealous ? » Rem asked, but the poor Shinigami was slowly turning to dust.
She opened the notebook in a hurry, looking for the last name written. She now understood why he'd been spying on the man before she arrived. He'd previously written his name and the cause of his death to be midnight, of a heart attack, without hurting anyone.
« How did you... »
« I guessed it would be him... » Jealous panted as he was falling apart. « he was more and more... threatening... with the passing time... »
If Rem had had feelings, she would have felt sad. But she didn't.
« I also guessed... you would take my death note... »
So she just asked :
« Why ? »
« I love her. » and the wind scattered his ashes on the ground.
Rem stood dumbfounded, holding Jealous' notebook and slowly rising to peak at the Eye. The girl was running to her house and locked the door behind her. The man made a couple of steps in the opposite direction before collapsing, leaving the world unharmed, but for Jealou's dead body.
The female shinigami turned back. Love truly was for mortals and fools, and she would never understand.
*
Rem wished the girl a thousand nightmares for taking her friend away. She looked at her for the months that followed, and when the words of Ryuk having disappeared in the human world spread, she threw Jealous' notebook on the girl's path. She picked it up.