Chapter Text
Frieren opened her eyes, blinking in mild surprise.
The last thing she recalled was stepping in front of a hail of gunfire; a bright blue shield flaring into existence around her. The metal slugs were fired in such volume that even her mana had eventually been stretched to its limits. She hoped she had bought enough time for Fir to evacuate with her children. She hadn’t been able to sense them anymore which was a good sign.
She had tried to teleport away once her mana reserves had started reaching their true end but had found herself trapped; a strange device that she had never heard of disrupted her mana flow once her shield was lowered. It seemed the age of mage craft was truly coming to an end.
There was a brief burst of pain and then she had found herself here, wherever that was. She was surrounded by rolling hills of dull, grey sand and she was almost buried in one of them, though she found it fell away from her clothes and body much easier than typical sand did.
Frieren sat up, noting that she was wearing the white dress robes that had been her staple clothing for so long. That surprised her; she hadn’t seen the garments in centuries. They had been lost in the same attack that had claimed Stark’s life. The warrior had still been amazingly spry for a man of seventy but that could only count for so much against the foes they had faced that day.
It had hurt Frieren to bury him; even more so because she had to comfort Fern and their children throughout the experience.
“I must say; I am not the least bit surprised to find you lost in thought. How often did I stumble across such a scene when we traveled together, Frieren?”
That voice.
It had been almost a millennia and so it took her a second to recall why it made her heart sing.
Just a second.
Frieren looked up to see a tall figure in a white cloak standing over her; hand on a hip as he stared down at her with a soft smile. He had blue hair with strands of white streaking through it and a defined, hairless face that made him look no less manly, in her eyes.
“Himmel?” she said, in slight awe.
“In the flesh.” he said, his smile melting into a familiar, playful grin. “Or, well. I guess not flesh but whatever this is.”
He poked at his cheek and Frieren saw it waver and shift, almost like water.
“What is this place?” she asked, looking around. The sand seemed to stretch for miles in every direction; little to no other features in sight.
“This is Death, Frieren.” he said directly.
Frieren blinked, looking around once more. Then she nodded.
“That makes sense.” she said.
“That calmness; only one such as you could hear that they have died and react with a simple nod.” he said with a small laugh. He extended his hand, helping Frieren to her feet.
“It is not as if I fear it.” she said. “Everything dies, even elves.”
She looked Himmel up and down.
“You look like you did when we were married.” she said. Then she hesitated, a flicker of doubt crossing her face. It had all been an illusion wrought by Grausam; their marriage had been nothing more than fiction.
Himmel reached for Frieren’s hand, taking it in his own and squeezing it. Despite the fact that they were dead, she could still feel the warmth that she remembered from decades spent in a secluded cabin.
“You’re right; I do look as I did when we were married.” he said firmly, rejecting her doubts. “Everything in that world may have been a fabrication but our feelings were not.”
“How can you be so certain?” asked Frieren, hating the hesitance in her voice. She had never been a vulnerable person but the illusion that she had been placed in with Himmel was the one flaw in her armor; the one weakness she held close to her heart, borne from the love that she’d held for this human man that had left her life too, too soon. The passing years had only robbed those happy memories of their definition, allowing uncertainty to creep in and fester.
Himmel bent down, cupping Frieren’s face in his other hand. He brought his lips to meet hers and, just like that, all of the doubts and worries she had nurtured in the centuries since departing the illusion vanished, like so much mist before the rays of sunrise.
She leaned in, her hand coming up to rest under Himmel’s chin as all of the longing she had kept buried for so long came bursting through her chest. She felt tears start to flow from her closed eyes and she hiccupped briefly, a sob barely escaping against where her lips met Himmel’s.
He pulled back and smiled, a thumb reaching up to brush at her now wet cheeks.
“You were crying the last time I kissed you too, Frieren.” he said. “Come now, you would have the others think poorly of my kisses with that attitude.”
Frieren sobbed again but this time, she smiled, wiping at her eyes with a closed fist.
“You are as ridiculous as ever, my Hero.” she said, opening her eyes to look into Himmel’s blue ones. She had missed him; oh, how she had missed him. She had grown adept at ignoring it and living beyond her regret but there had been so many times where, alone, she had allowed herself to think of him and to feel the pain in her chest; a pain she had never experienced before in all her years of living.
She had said goodbye to a countless number of friends and comrades over the years but the pain of losing Himmel had always been different. She had not known elves could feel that kind of pain. Serie had called her strange when she had confided in her after some time. Kraft had said little with his mouth but much more with eyes that were reflections of her own when she had stumbled across him centuries after she had last seen him and shared a night by a fire.
“Come, we have dallied in this place long enough.” said Himmel, gesturing to a door that Frieren was certain had not been there a moment earlier. It was plain and made of wood. Frieren thought it looked vaguely familiar. “The others are chomping at the bit to meet you; it’s been so long for all of us, after all.”
“Others?” asked Frieren, taking Himmel’s hand again as they began to walk towards it.
“Yes. Fern in particular has been rather impatient for the last century or so; it has been mildly disconcerting to see just how hard she’s been rooting for your death.”
“Fern would do such a thing; cursing me from beyond the grave?” asked Frieren dejectedly. It, somehow, scarily fit with the matronly, domineering woman she recalled. Himmel laughed at her sad expression.
“I wouldn’t call it cursing so much as being really eager to see you again. After all, for us, we knew where you were headed. We’ve all been watching you from up here, you know, in between our day to day lives, or afterlives rather.” he said.
They got closer and closer to the door and Frieren finally realized why it had seemed so familiar; it was an exact duplicate of the door to the cabin that she had shared with Himmel so long ago.
“There is also someone I’ve been eager to meet but I have been adamant about waiting until you arrived to wake them.”
Himmel opened the door, and Frieren saw that it led to a very familiar interior. She stepped inside, looking around at the cabin that she could distantly recall; it had been so long since she had seen it. She saw the couch where they had spent so many nights, her reading grimoires and Himmel whittling. She saw the fireplace that Himmel always kept freshly stocked with firewood, even though she knew several fire spells that would do the same job.
The dining table, the small kitchen, the mantle. She recognized it all and it filled her with a warmth that she’d all but forgotten.
“Do you like it? I did my best to reconstruct it but I always worried that I had perhaps made a few errors.” said Himmel, a bit bashfully.
“It is perfect.” said Frieren, looking up at him and smiling. “Though I don’t recall that door being in our home.”
Frieren pointed at a door that stood to the side of the door that led to their bedroom. She was relatively certain that the wall had been featureless before.
“Ah, that is a purposeful change on my part.” said Himmel. The smile he gave her made Frieren’s heart race. “Let’s go in.”
He led her to the door, opening it and gesturing for her to walk inside.
Frieren entered, looking around at the unfamiliar room. She saw a small collection of drawers, beneath a window that overlooked the forest outside their home. She recalled that the layout should not have allowed for such a window but dismissed the concern; they were dead, after all, it wasn’t as if the laws of physics likely held much sway.
At the far side of the room was a wooden box with cloth around its edge. Frieren walked over to it, wondering what exactly it was. She looked down into it and experienced something she had rarely ever felt before; complete and utter absence of thought in the face of shock.
A small form lay in the box, swaddled in white cloth. Its body was largely hidden from view but its face was the picture of peaceful sleep as it breathed, light snores barely escaping its petite nose. It had a short, fine layer of bright white hair and ears that were peaked at the ends. They were longer than a human’s but also shorter than an elf’s.
“Isn’t she beautiful?”
Frieren felt Himmel’s arms encircle her. She didn’t respond, still staring down at the small form, struggling to understand what she was looking at. Her mind felt as if it had a thousand questions but she couldn’t give voice to any of them.
“The dead do not reproduce; that is a privilege of the living. But, as I once said, I am the Hero. And as the Hero, I was indeed able to get a few concessions from those that run things here. One of those being a child that, if reality had had its way, would have vanished into so much forgotten ether.”
Himmel’s hand came to rest on Frieren’s midsection.
“And so I asked for her to exist but to remain asleep, only to be awoken by the touch of her mother. So that we may raise her together, as we should’ve been able to all those years ago.”
Frieren could see it; she could see both her and Himmel in the baby’s features. She had gotten Frieren’s round face but the lines of her chin were all Himmel’s. Frieren reached towards the baby, her hand trembling in a way that hundreds of life or death battles had never inspired.
Her hand touched the girl’s cheek and she felt something shift.
The baby yawned as she opened her eyes. They were a bright blue that Frieren recognized.
Frieren reached down to gently lift the child from her crib, long dormant instincts activating with ease as she set the baby against her chest. The child shifted, grumpily frowning as she reacted to the unfamiliar touch before settling her head against Frieren’s chest with a content sigh. She continued to stare up at Frieren who was unable to look away.
This was her daughter. She had not given birth to her, not in any conventional sense, but she could feel it in her soul. This was the child that she would’ve had with Himmel. A little girl, more beautiful than anything Frieren had seen in her almost two millennia of life.
“Thank you.” said Frieren, looking up at Himmel, her eyes full of love and light. He smiled down at her, kissing the top of her head.
They continued to look down at their daughter, content to stand in loving silence as they watched the baby coo and blink up at them.
There would be time enough for Himmel to show Frieren the rest of what Death had to offer; for now, they were content to be with one another at the beginning of the rest of their afterlives.