Work Text:
When the Aether Portal had glitched and Haley had come out instead of Fable, Rae and Ophelia had been too caught up in the chaos of the reset to look for Haley’s Daemon. It was understood that one’s Daemon disappeared when you died, and Momboo herself had seen Fynn disintegrate into dust when Sherbert’s arrow pierced through Haley’s heart.
Nobody knew what happened to the soul when a person was brought back to life. It had never been done before. Well, except for Chaos and Ezra, supposedly, but no one had spoken to the mercenary and her killdeer Daemon much between the revelation of their first death and the tragedy of their second.
Once in the relative safety of the bubble, Rae was again too frazzled to look closely enough at Haley. Between the anxiety of Ocie and Will’s absence and the stress of keeping the borrowed power stable, Rae barely had it in himself to murmur his appreciation when Ophelia tapped his shoulder to whisper that she couldn’t see Fynn in any of her usual spots.
When the bubble shattered, and Rae lost hold of his boyfriends, he was too caught up in grief to even move from his new location in the world. Ophelia also clung to him, downcast. He was so relieved when Sherbert and Skittles spawned that he barely noticed the final figure that had shown up with them. He released his brother from his embrace, took a step back, and finally, finally, took a look at Haley.
She’s very different, with a new grey shawl, white hair, and a white blindfold over her eyes. Most importantly, however, the beautiful black and white butterfly daemon she had once had is nowhere to be found. Instead, there is a sleek black raven on her shoulder, peering at him with intelligent black eyes.
“How are you doing, Haley?” Rae asks cautiously, picking up Ophelia so she can cling to his shoulder.
“Oh, I’m living,” Haley responds absentmindedly, then gestures at the raven on her shoulder. “Fynn’s doing a lot better now she exists though.”
The raven, Fynn, makes a screeching sound that Rae thinks is laughter. He and Sherbert exchange glances. Rae attempts to pull out a notebook to write down the change but is disappointed to find only a blank field notes book. He relays as much to his brother, who seems to be in a similar boat, with nothing but the eye potion they had made together.
“I have beef.” Haley inputs. She pulls a strip of what looks jerky out of her inventory and eats one half, giving the other piece to Fynn. Ophelia almost falls off Rae’s shoulder in shock and attempts to tell Haley that Daemons don’t generally eat real food, only for Fynn to throw the piece of beef in their beak over their shoulder into the water. It lands with a plop and floats to the surface.
“Do you want some?” Haley hands a strip of jerky to Rae, who takes it bewilderedly and eats it. “It’s otherworldly beef.” She adds, causing Ophelia to whip her head around alarmedly and Rae to almost choke on the food.
“I regret eating that already.” He comments, swallowing to get the taste out of his mouth.
“Nooooo.” Haley denies. “Fynn likes eating it, see?” She hands another strip of food to the raven, almost giving Rae another heart attack, but the Daemon just throws the piece over their shoulder again. It joins the first scrap in the surf.
“Where’s everyone else?” Sherbert asks, and Rae feels sick. He doesn’t know how to respond to the question, caught up as he is in his own guilt. Luckily, he doesn’t have to.
“The other people are just late. We’re on time, they're late. I bet they don’t have clocks.” The voice is Fynn’s, uncomfortably similar to how it had been before Haley’s death. Rae doesn’t remark on it, too caught up in self-blame.
“But what if they just don’t show up?” He worries. “What if people don’t just lose their memories this time? What if they die because of what I did?
“People don’t die. People live, actually.” It’s Fynn again, Haley still munching serenely on a piece of beef on the other side of the beach. The Daemon stands on the ground, trying very hard not to get sand in her feathers. Sherbert and Rae squint at them skeptically.
“Sherb!” Haley yells from where she has made her way to Skittle’s spot on a fence post. Fynn snaps around and flaps over to perch on her shoulder again. “I have a question. Is your bird always this color?”
“Excuse me?” Skittles says affrontedly. He flings his wings up in offense.
“Um…” Sherbert hurries over to placate their Daemon. “Mostly?”
“But…” Haley looks confused. “Fynn’s not that color.” Rae and Sherbert look at her, baffled.
“Haley?” Ophelia asks cautiously. “Did Fynn change because… you died and came back?”
“Of course I did, silly!” Fynn caws, letting out another screeching laugh. “What, did you think I was going to just stay a butterfly?”
Rae had never wished they had their old notes more than this moment. “But Daemons don’t just… resettle like that!” Ophelia tells Fynn, distressed. “It’s unheard of!”
“Well, you’ve heard of it now!” Haley replies brightly. “Besides, Fynn wasn’t with me when I was dead, so technically, she’s not resettled, just reformed!”
“You didn’t have Fynn with you?” Sherbert asks, sounding horrified. Rae agrees with the sentiment. Not having your Daemon, your Soul with you sounds like a nightmare.
Rae and Ophelia have more to ask– to say, but Sherbert takes one glance at the already setting sun and decides they need to get a move on if they want to get anything done in the newly reset world.
They keep an eye on Haley and Fynn for the next few weeks, watching as though Fynn may explode into dust or reform again in front of them. Nothing happens. By all descriptions, Fynn is just a normal Daemon, no more odd than Haley is.
“Chaos had supposedly died and came back as well,” Ophelia comments one night as they pour over their notes on Daemons. “Ezra never seemed out of place.”
“I guess…” Rae says, feeling lost. “It just feels like there should be more to it. Like, if that happened to us, I’d want to know why.”
Ophelia climbs up on top of Rae’s head, carefully avoiding the spot where new horns are starting to emerge. She carefully combs his hair out of his face.
“But maybe Haley doesn’t need to know why.” She theorizes. “Maybe She and Fynn have just accepted that they’ve changed, and there’s nothing more to it.”
“Death is quite a life-altering experience, I’d say.” Rae supposes. “And if there are more answers, we can cross that path when we get there.”
Neither he nor Ophelia really understood death, but Haley and Fynn did. The behavior of people’s souls wasn’t up to them. They weren’t up to anyone.