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I - The baby.
Names are generally uninteresting to Rio. She welcomes so many people, it simply isn’t worth the effort to remember every single one of their names. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t remember the person. She remembers every single thread she has ever cut, it’s just that their names are most often the most inconsequential thing about them.
There are exceptions of course. She tends to remember the names of people that she finds interesting, those that have a habit of escaping her clutches, or that freely gift her many lives. The name of who she loves. Those names, they usually stick.
She may also remember the name of people whose path she crosses without cutting it, if the circumstances are interesting enough.
This is how she meets the baby, cradled in the arms of the last man she's here to collect. The baby is drenched in his blood, pouring from a gunshot wound to the neck, but she is otherwise untouched by the massacre that surrounds her. How peculiar.
She crouches down, and the baby follows her with attentive eyes. That too is peculiar. Not many people can see her before their time. She smiles at her, caressing her bloody cheek with a single finger before booping her on the nose.
The baby smiles back and her eyes are so bright they remind her of another child, centuries before, who was not afraid of Death and always smiled at her as she used to sit in the corner, collecting her dues, hidden from his mother’s eyes.
She could take the little thing with her right now. No one would blame her. The baby is alone, and the cold night is creeping closer and closer. Babies are fragile things after all.
She knows the name of the little one’s mother. Jiaying. Oh, how she loathes the woman. She is not having a good time right now, but she will survive, as always.
She could take the baby as payback for Jiaying’s continued defiance. Admittedly, it would not be the first time, although the latest daughter was not her plan. But. The baby keeps looking at her and she doesn’t share Jiaying’s power. It would be petty.
Rio gets up, ushering her new guest to his next destination, as a group of people approaches the scene. She leaves behind the baby, in the company of a single flower.
A daisy.
II - The protectors, the culprits…
Little Daisy's father is relentless. He follows those that took his daughter like a bloodhound, and he gets four out of the five. Always a step behind though. He doesn’t stop.
She isn't happy with him, considering how many people he unduly gave Jiaying to ensure her survival, but she can appreciate a man dedicated to a purpose. Especially when his path of vengeance ends up paying so many tithes to her.
His relentlessness moves her to check in on the little girl every once in a while. A visit from her doesn’t always end in death. Sometimes, she hangs around people, even long before collecting them. In all her eternity, it helps her with finding beauty in the worlds she cares for, shining away the dullness of her endless charge.
Usually, her lingering inspires a sense of foreboding in those present. Little Daisy doesn’t seem bothered by it. She doesn’t notice her, per se, doesn’t look straight at her knowingly, like she did when she was a baby drenched in blood, but she is the calmest in the room, and her eyes search the corners for someone that they can’t see.
She can’t help herself. Those that are not repulsed by her presence always warm her heart a little bit.
And if she leaves a hint here and there with her father when a man that should be taking care of little Daisy becomes more and more prone to violence, or when a deadbeat couple starts withholding her food for any insignificant transgression, well she might as well use his drive for something good. And in her black heart, Rio is a sucker for family reunions.
III - … and others along the way.
Just because she took a vested interest once or twice in some lives, it doesn’t mean that she often actively meddles in them. There is still a balance in the world at large, and sometimes Death just happens. Whether she happens near someone in particular more than others, it is truly happenstance, but humans do love to see patterns everywhere.
Although her presence is unintentional, Rio sees no reason not to keep an eye on young Daisy if she happens nearby. She refuses though to remember any hideous name like Mary Sue Poots. But Skye fits well enough.
IV - Skye.
She stares, unmoving, still-as-death as the blood starts pooling under Skye. She wants to rage and end and take those that hurt her, but she can't, and isn't that ironic. She can't even relish in the knowledge that when his time comes, it will be an outpouring of suffering, because the blood is expanding, and Skye is losing color.
Skye’s eyes are drooping, and in their almost unseeing she knows that they are starting to See her.
She takes a step back, retreating in the shadowed corner, willing herself to be invisible and failing because Death can't hide from the dead.
Just as Skye’s eyes find her again, the room resonates with the thundering steps rushing down the stairs. Skye’s Coulson appears in the doorway and Rio sighs in relief, suddenly unchained from the scene, and blinks away in the same breath.
V - Skye, eighteen times.
She is dragged back to Skye again. And again. And again. And again another fifteen times.
Humans are resilient creatures, their hearts can stop and be restarted and they can come back from so many grievous injuries with a bit of luck, care, and strength of spirit. So what if she slips Skye a few more seconds each time her heart stops? It would be rude to make all these doctors’ efforts be for nothing.
She leaves when they inject Skye with Kree blood. That is something for the future.
One repeating image hangs in the back of Rio's mind in the moments after. Each time Skye coded, her eyes were closed. They always looked straight at her.
VI - The partner.
He is scared and surprised when she comes to greet him. She is gentle with him and he goes without a fight. She lets him linger a few seconds, lets him watch so that the last thing he sees is Skye breaking free of her shell, a magnificent force of nature. He is proud and so is Rio.
VII - Jiaying.
Rio has been waiting for her for a long long time. The cracking of Jiaying’s spine is music to her ears and she will relish it for eras to come.
VIII - The boy with lightning in his hands.
She watches the boy, emaciated and weakened, walking the fine line that marks her domain. It will be an almost thing, but she knows he'll make it. She can see the years before him, through the unseeing eyes of the patients he won't be able to save. She also sees the white hair and the lines that stretch with his smile as his second granddaughter opens her eyes for the first time, bellowing out her first lively cry.
She sees an entire life, full of joys and sorrows and growths and stops and straights and twists. A life that anyone should be content with living. A life that she cuts short in his moment of greatest weakness as she shows him what will happen to Daisy if he doesn't take her place. He doesn’t hesitate.
She tells herself that it's not against the rules. The boy for Daisy, a life for a life, there is still a balance and from the knot of their intertwined threads, only one will come out as it was always meant to.
“Thank you,” Rio still whispers to the boy as she leads him away from the particles that were his body.
IX - The twice-lived traitor.
She could remember this man's name. This man alive in two places at the same time. This man who betrayed Daisy.
The building collapses and Rio chooses not to.
X - Philip J. Coulson.
When she had taken Jiaying, it had been so much easier than it had been hard. Daisy had been wishing for her mother's love, sure, but Jiaying had been escaping her clutches for millennia, leaving a trail of broken lives behind herself, and she had been trying to cut Daisy's life short when she had finally managed to encase her last breath in her trophy room. It had felt right.
This should feel right too.
Philip J. Coulson has been dead once before and she does not take kindly to those who leave her realm without permission. And yet, this feels different. As if this time he should have gotten more time, even though he's already stolen five years more than allotted. One less than she has ever allotted someone else.
He greets her with serenity, just as the boy had.
He apologizes for his delay, but - he throws a glance at the picture on his bedside table, of his team in a lush green meadow, where he and Daisy are standing side by side next to the newly married couple - he says that he thinks he made the most of the time he took. He glances at the woman sleeping next to his body. Maybe he could have done more, he amends, but he can't regret what he had. He hopes they don't either.
She smiles at him, as she opens the door for him. Her gaze lingers on Daisy's picture though.
She thinks he understands as he goes to cross the threshold. He smiles wryly, “Wherever she goes…”
“It has been an interesting few years.”
“I wish they had been boring. She would have been happier, I think.”
She can't object to that.
As he steps over the threshold and she closes the door behind them, she understands why it feels so much harder than with Jiaying.
Philip J. Coulson stole five years from her, but Rio is taking something far more precious from Daisy. And it hurts just like it did three centuries ago.
XI - The sister and the good man.
She doesn't look as Jiaying’s older daughter puts down the gun this time.
She doesn't look as the kind, honorable man boards the Zephyr.
If Rio doesn't look, she doesn't have to act.
XII - Daisy.
“We have met before.”
Daisy’s body is being dragged into the Zephyr, but she is already standing next to her.
“In passing.” Daisy looks calm, as she has always been whenever she was close by. “You have never feared me. It’s quite rare.”
“Hard to fear something you’ve known your whole life.”
Her body is laid gently on the floor. It’s pale and warmth is leaching out by the second.
“You never stuck around.”
“Your life has always been quite eventful. I didn’t want my entertainment to end.”
“So this is it? I always expected it to hurt more.”
“Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it’s painless. I don’t often get a say in it. I just collect.”
Some of her team are crouching around her body. The copy of Philip J. Coulson is the most distraught.
“I think I’m fine with it. ”
The words don’t hurt her, but they do disturb her. She has been following Daisy’s life since she was a baby, getting more invested than she had since– Since.
As much as she'd love to welcome Daisy into her home, it feels unkind. Untimely.
Daisy's lack of fighting spirit, the easy acceptance, makes her feel uneasy.
“Did you accomplish all you wanted?” This question, she knows, is unkind as well.
Daisy recoils a little, glancing at the people that surround her body. It's not as many people as she wished to be with her. She lingers on her sister.
“I don't think that's possible. There is always a new purpose. But I did my best, I think.”
Purpose. Creatures throughout the universes spend most of their lives thinking they have to find a purpose, a justification for being alive. As if life itself and its cycle weren't already the purpose.
“Mortals have the most peculiar ideas.” Some things will forever be inscrutable to her.
She turns to Daisy, and Daisy doesn't turn away from her touch as she raises a hand to caress her cheek, as she had done when they first met. Behind her, Daisy's sister puts her hands on her still, cold chest and Rio releases the invisible hold she has on her.
Her lips turn up in a chagrined smile.
“I can only give time. Make the most of it.”