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Death has never misplaced a soul. It is true that she is very busy; on average, about 100 or so people die every minute worldwide, so she will never be out of work and she absolutely does not get a day off. But, contrary to popular opinion, the population has never ballooned beyond her scope of ability. After all, she is an Endless; her capabilities defy the known laws of space and time as they are known by less powerful beings. Beyond that, if she or her siblings ever had any trouble keeping up, one – or doubtless, several of them – would have already wiped out whatever percentage of the population they felt necessary to get things back in working order. A few of her siblings certainly play enough games with humans as it is, and very few of them have levels of empathy for humanity that approach non-psychotic levels.
It helps, however, for she and her siblings to let the trans-dimensional beings working for them to think that they need help keeping up with the world population. For one, the trick of being an all-knowing, all-powerful supernatural being is to not let anyone know you’re an all-knowing, all-powerful supernatural being; surprisingly less gets done when it is assumed an Endless can just pop in and either solve or create all one’s problems. Secondly, letting those who work for the Endless think they are integral to the continued working of the machinery of the universe gives each trans-dimensional being a feeling of value and purpose. And, in her case, it also allows Death to focus on only reaping souls who are ready to move on immediately after death and subtly manufacturing scenarios that will allow those who are stuck to finally move on.
A soul with unfinished business could still move on to the afterlife, but in Death’s experience, it is cruel to force them; the spirits wander through their afterlife, too preoccupied by their business still tethering them to the mortal plane to truly be anywhere. So instead, Death conveniently lets some souls slip through her fingers. She lets them think they’ve outsmarted her or outrun her when they’re not ready. When they are ready, she comes back; when those ghosts cause mayhem in their time on the mortal plane, she allows her functionaries to apprehend them. After all, as has already been mentioned, she is very busy. And today, she’s going to Hell to play matchmaker.
Death likes to avoid Hell whenever she can, for two reasons: first, her sibling Lucifer doesn’t know about the backdoor she’s found into Hell and would decidedly not appreciate her coming in to pluck souls they have already claimed. The second, and more tedious, reason is that Hell is just plain uncomfortable: it’s always too hot, or too cold, or filled with bees, or containing some eldritch horror. Today, it’s a demon who has shaped itself into a giant spider made out of baby doll heads. The spider is chasing a terrified British teenaged boy through a playhouse of its own making. Death watches from afar for a bit. She pities the poor boy; he had been forcibly sacrificed to a demon by classmates, but if he hadn’t, he would have ended up in Hell anyway, because of the somewhat arbitrary rules for going to Hell.
A soul ends up in Hell for one of a few reasons. The most well-known one is simply that the person deserves it for whatever wicked thing they did on Earth; the most common reason, however, is simply because a person believes they deserved to be here, whether they were decent people or not. This teenaged boy – Edwin is his name – already suspects he belongs here because of an unchangeable sexuality he has not even yet fully admitted to himself and a bigoted culture who taught him that that part of him is wrong. The demon who dragged him to Hell, though, had apologized for doing so and assured him his damnation was due to a technicality. Between that and the fact that the boy had died chaste allows him to tenaciously cling to the belief that he does not deserve the punishment currently being inflicted upon him.
Death watches Edwin turn a corner and flee the baby-doll-headed-spider in mortal terror and her heart aches for him. Not for the first time, Death wishes she could just spirit this boy out of Hell and into the mortal realm, but her better sense holds her back, as always. It goes against the plan. Instead, once Edwin is out of sight, she finally emerges from the shadows and allows the demon to see her calming blue aura light. Correction – the blue light is calming to humans; it sets demons’ nerves on edge like discordant symbols clashing arrhythmically in the middle of a catchy tune. Death does not mind this effect she has in the slightest. She blocks the demon’s path from the boy, who by now has a very decent head start.
“I need to speak to the demon under this…” she pauses and sweeps her hand over the spider, “…costume.”
The spider trembles but remains resolutely spider-like. For a moment, she wonders if she is going to have to intensify her light until the demon shrieks to get it to comply, but then the mass of doll parts clatter to the floor and a short, pale grey humanoid creature with a bald head full of horns and a scowling expression stands in the middle of the mess.
“What do you want?” the demon bites out. “You’re interrupting my hunt.”
Death gives him her best compassionate smile. It almost always reassures humans. The demon, however, shrinks back and his scowl turns into an outright snarl.
“I’m actually afraid I’m going to have to interrupt your hunt. Permanently.”
The demon howls in outrage. “This is ludicrous! I traded him fair and square! Gave up a couple of animal torturers for him. One of them liked to skin squirrels while they were still alive.”
Death’s expression does not waver. “That’s a bad deal. This boy is innocent.”
For the first time since their conversation began, the demon grins. His eyes are bright and wickedly malevolent. “That’s what makes it so much fun.”
A disgusting sentiment, but not an unexpected one. For a moment, Death ignores the demon and instead reaches out telepathically to find Edwin. He has made a wrong turn and gotten to Avarice. That level’s tar pits will not be kind to his bare feet.
“I’m sorry, I cannot let you go after him.”
The demon narrows his eyes. “What right do you have here in Lucifer Morningstar’s realm?”
Death cocks her head at the odd question. “There is no existence without me. I define it. Even yours.”
She is too kind to threaten and, moreover, doesn’t need to. Even if ripping apart this poor boy repeatedly is the most fun game this demon had ever known, he knows better than to resist her. Edwin is slowly making his way to the door she has set up for him, which will take him to the place he died 73 years prior. The same place where, in the most tragic and beautiful sense of irony, he will meet his soulmate: a boy of the same age who is currently bleeding to death while his jeering friends carry his shivering body to a half-frozen lake.
Over the next three decades, Death sees the two boys she set up together often. They never think she sees them. It’s odd to her that, for how remarkably intelligent the boy she saved from Hell is, he has never figured out that just running from the building where she has appeared does not stop her from sensing his presence. She supposes in a way it’s endearing, like playing hide-and-seek with a small child who just puts a lampshade on their head and believes they’ve suddenly become well-hidden. She is also pleased to see that the boy’s soulmate – Charles is his name – keeps him happy, and vice versa. They were both so lonely in life.
Whenever the boys think they have come too close to being found and reaped, they hold hands or hug each other. Their relationship is deeply intimate, but from what she has learned from eons of watching human behavior, not romantic. It’s not surprising; Edwin was deeply buried in denial about his sexuality when she found him, and Charles has his own traumas to work through regarding intimate relationships. But Death is also satisfied with how well they are following their planned trajectory to the afterlife. She doesn’t intervene; the hard work is theirs to do. She has no doubt that one day they will come to fully understand everything that they are to one another and then, when they are finally ready, move on to their shared afterlife. After all, they have forever to figure it out.