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Catarina Oakley, for some time now, had a voice in her head.
It was… kind of masculine? In that sort of gender-neutral way. Slightly deep, but not enough to make you think "Yeah, that's a guy."
She would learn later that, though the voice did belong to a guy, they didn't mind being referred to as 'they' either.
Regardless, since she was a teen, she's had a voice in her head.
It was like living with a narrator, except both were aware that one was a narrator and the other was practically the main character, bantering with one another in that long-time-friend way.
When alone, when Catarina was befriended by Gary, when lost in a sea of people, that voice was always there. Even when she fell victim to the other voices - the more malicious and magic-fueled ones - they still remained and trusted her. Believed in her. Even when no one else did. Even when everyone else was dead.
She shouldn't have taken such companionship for granted.
It was on a train ride to some town Catarina had never heard of when the Narrator spoke. The Narrator stopped, well, Narrating some time after the Plot ended, but they still remained in her head to talk.
𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐰𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞, 𝐎𝐚𝐤𝐥𝐞𝐲?
Don't be so formal, man. How long have we known each other? 3 years? 5? Also, what's with the question?
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫, 𝐂𝐚𝐭. 𝐌𝐲 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬.
Probably. I dunno. Why do you ask? We'll always be together. Just Catarina and her witty Narrator, hand in proverbial hand.
…𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭?
I mean, I don't see how you could, like, die anyways. And I can't die. Not by conventional means, anyway.
𝐈 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭, 𝐎𝐚𝐤𝐥𝐞𝐲.
What did I say about formalities?
…Narrator?
N?
The next time Catarina heard a voice quite like her Narrator's was in the snow, begging for help. She found herself responding mentally, only instead of that recognizable snark, she just heard more pleads.
The prince she found in a pool of his own blood called himself El.
Not the right letter, but he certainly filled that loneliness she'd been feeling ever since that fateful train ride. El wasn't exactly like the Narrator - the guy never could, considering that he didn't actually narrate anything - but he did remind her of them. Same snarky attitude she couldn't help but reciprocate, same dumbass habit of repeating the obvious.
He grew on her. Like her old friend, once upon a time ago.
Something that Catarina would soon regret.
“Cat?” El asked on one moonlight night.
Catarina didn't look up from the campfire, cooking the two of them dinner. “Yeah?”
“You think that if you never found me, we'd still be friends?”
“Huh?” She looked up, confused behind her mask. He was one of the few people she'd let her emotions show around in a while, since Frisco. “Maybe? I dunno. Why do you ask?”
“I don't know. Just thinking about the universe. So vast, and we're just a… small speck. And maybe there's others. Where you never found me lying in a pool of my own blood. Maybe we would meet each other earlier. You know?” El turned to face Catarina, a smile on his face.
“...yeah.” Catarina finally said, feeling a sense of deja vu fall over her.
The next day, El is dying in her arms, a band of thieves having come to raid their camp. He didn't need to take the hit, didn’t need to give his life for her immortal one, she could live from poison, so why did he put himself in the way?
She buried him later in the snow. He would've been buried there some years earlier were it not for Catarina's assistance. Once again, a companion lost.
Catarina didn't hear that voice again until much later. The world had changed, her friends and family either six feet underground or up in the heavens. Whichever one existed.
She never would use her abilities on them, regardless of her desperation for someone she could talk to. She could never do such a thing to them, to bring them back from the dead. Catarina may not know what it feels like, but she doesn't want to find out by subjecting it to Cats, or Al, or Sil, or Gary, or El, or hell Rufus -
Regardless, the future had finally caught up with Catarina. Or maybe she finally made it to the present. Either way, her presence caught the gaze of the government, the real one this time. Or, well, it was her lack of legal presence that caught their eye, and apparently, Catarina couldn't return to her days wandering the world.
The world was too close together, too… modernized to accommodate for the habits for one anachronism lost in a new age of war and technology.
While one side of the US government paid attention to the Cold War that was brewing, the other easily cornered Catarina (or maybe she let them find her) and put her under government surveillance.
AKA, a government agent under some sort of jurisdiction of supernatural activity.
Their voice was so similar to El's, to N's . It's as if the universe wanted her to suffer.
Maybe it did.
Unlike the first two iterations of Catarina’s emotional tormenter, this Agent rarely spoke. When they did, it was always with barely-restrained remorse and disgust, and Catarina was more than happy to reciprocate with contempt.
Better to hate them instead of like, so that once they finally vanish like all the others, she won’t feel that same grief once more.
And yet, as the days passed and Catarina received more threats from whatever agency thought could control her, she found herself unwittingly bonding with the agent. She’d even started referring to them as N in her head out of habit, since they never gave her their name or anything to refer to them as. Their days of arguing turned to days of normal conversation, the snark more casual and friendly. They even started to live with her in her government-appointed apartment, covered up with the poor excuse of needing closer surveillance.
Catarina never thought she would learn what love felt like, romantically at least. There was familial, there was friendship and companionship, but romantic? An alien experience she didn’t mind working through with them.
She never did get their name though. Something about government-mandated privacy. Hypocritical, considering all the possible government mandates they could’ve broken through “conspiring with the enemy.”
Maybe she should’ve asked.
“Oakley?”
“Yeah?"
The two sat on the couch, her arm around them. Catarina was reading a book as per usual, the casual closeness not… un welcome.
“...never mind, it's stupid.”
Catarina rolled her eyes. She’d stopped wearing her mask when around them in the privacy of their home. She’d never done that before.
“You’re the stupid one for thinking I’d think your questions are stupid,” She said in reply.
“Oh shut up!” They gently headbutted her, laughing before going quiet.
“...do,” They finally continued, “Do you think we would know each other in other realities?”
Well shit
They continued to ramble, but Catarina wasn’t listening as static filled her ears. Not again not again not again-
“Cat?”
"Of course, dumbass," She replied shortly after, pretending like she hadn't just let a familiar chill of deja vu down her spine. "Knowing you, you'd search me down in every damn timeline and universe in the world.”
“As if! I'm too good for you!” They said with a short cackle. Catarina smiled as well, all thoughts of doom escaping her mind for a brief moment.
She barely got any time in the morning before her agent was pushing her out of gunfire, shouting for her to run.
It was the first time she'd used her magic in a long while.
Catarina still remembers the familiar feeling of the necromantic magic in her blood, vibrating with a sick glee as the government agents were made to fight and dismember one another.
She can still remember the smile on their face, yelling at her to give them hell.
Why did they give themself for her, of all people?
When Catarina applied to work in SCRAP, she thought nothing of it. She knew the inner workings of the dead well enough, so why not assist in their passing? Besides, she felt like giving Death an apology for her mere existence, and this seemed like the best way to do it.
She also hoped, deep down, she would see the ghosts of her friends once more. She sincerely doubted it, they must've passed on by now, but a girl could hope.
She didn't expect to don the name Mors, to work so closely with Death in more ways than one. The people there were… strange, to put it lightly. And all Catarina felt was like a coelacanth out of water.
Magic was an oddity. Nearly like herself, but not in a way Mors recognized.
Hess… Hess unnerved Mors. Made Mors feel a cold fear she hadn't felt in decades. Only because she feared if the agent knew of her true identity, the One Who Learned would divert her rage to Mors.
The aliens of this place… while strange, weren't a surprise. There were stranger things she'd witnessed. If only the world was as kind as her.
And then there were the ghosts.
None of them were her friends. Nor her family. That damned Phantom reminded Mors too much of an old friend, though. Some of them recognized the magic that flowed in her soul, some did not. The older they were, the more likely they did.
The ghosts gave her a title too. Multiple, really, but in the same vein as most other myths. More whispered than the One Who Waits, less public and more like a rumor or boogeyman.
The Last Necromancer. The Manipulator of Souls.
Death's Final Iteration.
Strange how no one's realized what she really was, considering Mors was named Death.
Catarina never did, in the end, find a trace of N. Of El. Of them. No records held their names, their existence.
Then again, none held her existence either, in such a vast physical and digital library. Not that she looked in the latter. Computers were weird.
How much time had passed? Just a year, or centuries?
The Necromancer had long since forgotten.
They stopped using their name. Their identity. Their sense of self. Stopped wearing the mask, the coat, the things that made them what they were before.
It hurt too much to think about. Better to lose themself in the only thing that keeps them separate from their memories than wallow in their tears.
How many nights have they thought about finally ending it? The days they looked longingly at a nearby spool of rope, or the knives in a wooden block, or-
That's the coward's way out, Necromancer.
Even now, that damned demon's voice taunts and haunts their dreams and days.
They found themself residing in their old childhood home. As much as it hurt to live here… for some reason, it helped the dull ache that had spread throughout their body.
They spent their days slowly moving through their old home, a worn wooden past in a technological future. Each day they spent with a tentative slowness, savoring each memory that resurfaced with each new room and item.
The days they spent listening to their smartass brother work through science problems that they never understood.
The days they spent watching their mother cook with a skill they hadn't seen until-
Don’t remember don’t remember don’t remember her and them and-
The days they spent following their father around the farm, always assisting in chores even when he yelled at them not to in that same, exasperated tone.
The days they spent in their room, talking to the raven they kept in an iron cage.
The days they spent wondering if there was more beyond the farm that was their childhood.
What if they never left? What if they stayed, what if they inherited the farm?
Their brother would probably drag them to the city before Hell came crashing through once more. He probably wouldn’t be able to convince their parents to leave in time. Just the two O̴͈̲̘͔̓̋̐̓̓͝͝͠ǎ̶̢̨̞̮͙̗̙̱̞̟͈͐̈͌́́͛̅ͅͅk̵̟̫͚̦̦͓̰̬̤̓́̄̈́l̴̢̧̧̨̛̘̫̮̩͎͉͙̜̫̹̀͊͛̄̉̾̈́͑̀̔͘̕ę̷̨̻͚̝͖͔̭͇͙̳̱̌̃̂̿̚͝͠͠͠y̴̧̘̭̱͍̝͇̦̱̟̩̬̫͗͌̓̒ siblings
They never would meet them.
They never would see them again.
A whistle sprinted through the air. A tune they remembered all too well.
It wasn't the Necromancer’s voice. It… it was warm. Familiar.
Like the voice in their head since puberty, sarcastic yet caring as they Narrated the world.
Like the voice who accompanied them in the snow, boisterous and abundant.
Like the voice who taunted and soothed her nightmares in the same sentence, against the world's wishes.
Like the voices she held close to her heart, even as Death called to take them all away.
Like the voices she forced herself to forget in order to not succumb to her own self-Loathing.
Like-
“Oakley?”
For the first time in centuries, Catarina Oakley cried.
She cried as she turned from the shed she'd been staring at. Cried as she saw a person so familiar run to her with more tears than her. Cried as they ran into her, making them tumble into the dirt and dust. Cried and laughed at their equal euphoria.
“You bastard!” They then yell, playfully punching Catarina's side. “Do you know how long it took me to figure out where and when you were?! I had to travel through and from time to finally find your ass!”
“Time?” She asked, confused and curious. Now that she looked at them, they were… strange. Not the princely outfit, not the suit and tie, but a long dark blue leather coat almost like her own. They looked… sleek. From the future.
Still the same brown eyes. Same black, messy hair. Same face, same body, same voice .
“Oh, right.” They sat up, helping her up as well. “I, um… I'm from the future. Like, far into the future. Past… whatever's happening right now. We go to space, you know. Humans. After the Earth dies. I… never found you. In my time. The future.”
They looked down, hands clenched.
“I'm…” Catarina said, “I'm sorry. I guess? For future me? But won't this cause some sort of weird time paradox?”
They winked. “Not if I'm from a different timeline. Me coming here essentially creates a new timeline, so we're safe from weird time paradoxes.”
“Okay nerd.”
The two of them laughed, the smile on Catarina's face never fading.
“So…” they started.
Catarina hummed. “So…”
“Do you want-” “Do you-”
They stop each other, cracking a softer smile.
Catarina took the lead, standing and pulling them up as she said, “There's so many things I want to ask you. How you're here, how you remember…”
“We've got all the time in the world, Cat.”
“Oh shut up. Can I start with one question, then?”
“Shoot.”
“What… what's your name?”
“Really ?”
“Really! I never got your name! First, you were just the Narrator, but I always called you N, then El, then some government agent I was calling N in my head. So… introductions? One more time.”
“It better be the last.”
“Only if you don't die in my arms again.”
“No promises!”
Catarina's eyes narrowed.
They sighed. “Fine, fine!
“My name is Lynden. Lynden Neverfall. But you can call me El. Or N. Whatever you prefer.”
“Ironic.”
“Oh shut up! Your turn!”
“What- why do I have to introduce myself?" Catarina sputtered. "You know who I am.”
“It's for formalities, okay?”
“Fine. My name is Catarina. Catarina Oakley. Or Catarina Sneaky Danger Kil-”
“I get it, Cat.”
Catarina looked down at Lynden with a smile, softer this time. Nostalgic.
“I'm glad you're back.” She murmured, her forehead touching theirs.
“I'm glad too.” They mumbled in reply.
“Okay, now you have to explain how in Hell's name you remember me. The last times you never did.”
Lynden groaned. “Can we wait til we're inside? I'm tired! Time travel is tiring work.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Love.”
“Ew, that sounds wrong coming from you. I thought you said you're too good for pet names.”
“Well maybe I like them now.”
“Lovebird.”
“Says the one who keeps sacrificing themself for me.”
"It was only twice!"
They laughed once more as they walked towards Catarina's home, full of smiles and joy.
And the universe smiled back, Death and Time reunited permanently this time.