Chapter Text
In hindsight, Charles knew this would happen eventually.
He’s the brawn, yes, but Edwin’s always been the faster runner. 70 years of being relentlessly chased by a baby-doll spider demon will do that to a ghost. So when Death had shown up after their latest case -- in the middle of the street in the middle of the night and far, far closer to him and Edwin and Crystal than they had ever expected her to be, with them all directly in her line of sight -- he had looked Edwin straight in his fearful eyes, and whispered, “ Run.”
“Not without you,” Edwin had responded plainly. So infuriatingly stubborn, even when his literal existence was on the line.
“We don’t have time, Edwin. You need to get out of here. You need to get Crystal out of here,” Charles had said. “I’ll be fine, yeah? She’s not taking me without a fight.”
“ Charles -”
“Go. Please .”
Edwin had opened his mouth to respond, but had said nothing. He’d given Charles one last painful look and sprinted, Crystal in tow. She’d been too paralyzed with fear, it seemed, to protest Edwin taking her hand.
And now he stands face-to-face with Death herself, bathed in the streetlights she’d turned blue. The being he’d spent 35 years running from.
He almost breaks out into a sprint, on instinct.
“Hello, Charles,” she says. Kindly. Far kinder than he had expected her to sound, although after seeing her take a soul or two from their office, perhaps he should have expected it.
“Yeah, right, listen,” Charles says, before she can get another word in, “here’s how this is gonna go. You’re not taking us.” He wonders for a moment if hitting her with his cricket bat will be effective. He immediately decides against it.
But Death just smiles at him. It’s still so fucking soft, and understanding, and forget the cricket bat - Charles just wants to punch her. “We didn’t go with you then, and we’re not going with you now. So just move on, yeah?”
“Charles Rowland, you’ve been running a long time. But no one is coming to hurt you anymore.”
He thinks of running down the hallways of his parents’ house, his father on his heels. Across the green, the stones the other boys threw whizzing past him. He thinks of Hell’s endless corridors and Edwin’s scared voice. The endless times they’ve run away, together, whenever Death was near.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Death continues. “I’m just here to talk.”
“Talk?”
She nods. “Charles, many of the souls I come to collect have faced unjust deaths, and I can’t do anything about it. But yours…yours set off our sensors.”
Charles stares at her. “Sensors — what do you mean, sensors?”
Death’s face turns…almost sad, at that. “You died at the wrong time, Charles. Your death was originally marked for —”
“Stop. I — I don’t want to know. I shouldn’t know that stuff. It’s bad luck, innit?”
Death smiles again. “That's very wise.”
“Why does it matter when I was supposed to die, anyway?” Charles asks. “I didn’t die then, did I? I died when I did and I hate it, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Charles,” Death says again, “that’s why I’m here.”
Her smile falls. “Your death was unjust and unplanned. I can reverse it. Make it so you pass on when you are meant to.”
She holds her hand out to Charles. “I can send you back. You can pick up right where you left off. Like it never happened.”
Charles stares at her, eyes wide. Death keeps her arm outstretched, hand open.
“You can live again.”