Chapter Text
The doctor pulled the sheet up over Larry’s face.
“Time of death?”
“5:40.”
Nick held his father’s still-warm hand. Tears dripped from his eyes as he felt the fingers begin to go cold, the warmth slowly leaving Larry’s body.
He’d lived a good 93 years. Teaching a generation of students, directing a few international museums, and even remarrying at some point. That was all over now.
Nick heaved, letting Larry’s hand go.
“Nicholas?”
Ahkmenrah and the others stood before the front desk. Nick had been the guard here for upwards of 40 years. He’d visibly aged - gaining weight, growing a beard, a few scars here and there. Ahkmenrah, however, hadn’t aged at all. He was still the young adult he was when he was murdered and mummified.
“Hey, Ahk,” Nick monotoned from the guard chair.
“...I can assume from your expression that things aren’t well.”
Nick’s eyes watered again.
“Yeah.”
“Quite monosyllabic tonight,” the pharaoh sat next to the night guard. “That’s unlike you.”
Nick coughed to cover a sob.
“Dad’s dead.”
And he couldn’t hold it back any longer. His voice raised in a wail, his forehead came to rest in his hands, his throat burned with sobs.
All the rest were quiet.
“Shit…” Jedediah removed his hat, holding it over his heart. He was on Roosevelt’s right shoulder. “I… I’m sorry, Nick.”
The president removed his hat as well.
“My condolences, lad,” Teddy said, uncharacteristically quiet.
Attila couldn’t speak, with tears and sobs escaping him. He reached out for a hug from someone, anyone - Larry was who he wanted.
“We’re here for you, Nick,” Sacajawea consoled, her voice gentle as she approached the desk. “If you need to talk about it, please, tell us.”
Nick nodded, as best he could.
Octavius was the one to wordlessly leap from her left shoulder and descend down to Nick, putting his arms around the man’s forearm, giving the best hug he could at his size.
“I’m sorry,” Nick wailed, “I wanted to bring him by, but, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t bring him before he needed the life support, I, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Nick trailed off into sobbing apologies.
The pharaoh rested his arm around Nick’s shoulder, not unlike he had done to him so many years ago.
“Cry as much as is needed, Nicholas. We…” the pharaoh wiped a tear on his shoulder. “We are a family. We will get through this. Together. All of us.”
A silent, solemn nod, even from Attila.
“Don't accept that what's happening is just a case of others' suffering, or you'll find that you're joining in the turning away.”
Larry woke up to the voice of the driver singing.
He was in a cab.
“Oh, damn it, and I don’t carry any cash,” he sighed.
“Ain’t a problem, Lawrence,” the driver said as David Gilmour made his guitar sing.
Larry sighed, and flinched as they opened the partition.
“Oh, uh, I won’t, I won’t-,” he stammered. He wasn’t sure whether to swear to not tell the cops or promise to pay them back later.
A black wing extended over the seats.
“I gotta say, I am a fan of this band. A hundred years ago, I followed ‘em like the Dead,” the driver said, before puffing their cigar.
Larry felt cold inside.
“Hey, you ever follow the Dead? Oh, wait,” their wing fluttered a bit. “They broke up in ‘95, right. Right. Man, this job fucks up your calendar.”
“This job?”
The driver looked back.
Larry felt electric fear run through his nerves.
Black feathery wings.
Long, flowing hair.
A black toga.
Burning eyes.
“Oh.”
“Yep.”
Larry looked at his hands, wrinkled with nine decades of life. “I’m…”
“You’re dead. Happens to the best of us,” the driver shrugged.
“You’re Samael, right?” Larry asked, trying to remember the name of the angel of death.
“One of many names I’ve got, bub,” the driver turned back to the road. “Just sit tight, we’re almost there. And call me Sy.”
“What’s… what’s going to happen to me, Sy?”
“Well, that’s a bit prickly. Rabbis are still arguin’ about the specifics to this day,” Psychopomp explained, nonchalantly flicking ashes off their cigar. “But let’s not worry about all that. You n’ I, let’s talk. There’s somethin’ you gotta say to me, before we’re done here.”
Silence.
“C’mon, bub, I’m going as slow as I can here. I’m almost at the speed of light.”
Larry thought for a moment.
“A finite joy that outdoes heaven itself…?”
A spark.
He remembered.
“I-! I was there, at, at Arcadia!”
Psychopomp slammed the gas pedal, and reality flashed outside the windows faster than one’s mind could comprehend.
“Damn right you were!”