Chapter Text
Brook was the typical Grim Reaper everyone thought about when they imagined what Death might look like. He had his cloak and scythe so that everyone he reaped knew that image was correct. He was also entirely made of bones which he knew a lot debated on, because some thought he was simple a moving shadow in a cloak. Brook understood that his image was only as bones to show that no one was immune to Death, since all people were the same on the inside. It was a wonder that he hadn't been made as a human but without skin. Brook took it as a blessing because then he had no reason to make his skull and bone jokes his brothers hated so much. The cloak would have covered everything even if he was that, so it wouldn't have been too bad. Brook was just Death, a floating skeleton that wore a cloak and cut out people's souls with his scythe.
Brook floated around a hospital in Auckland, New Zealand and searched for someone close to death. Can always find someone in a hospital, Brook thought as he made his way up a floor to the more intensive care patients.
He looked through their charts and noted to himself which ones he took at that moment and which ones he had to go back for another day.
To Death this was routine. Stop at a hospital and look through the patient's. Stop at an old age home and look at the elders there. Stop at a mental hospital and look at which ones were ready to kill themselves. All routine and boring. Sometimes Brook really hated being Death.
He couldn't partake in some of the things his brothers could. Famine had found out that they could eat human food while incorporeal, but as Death and being made of only bones he had no stomach for the food to go. Skull joke, Brook thought as he noted another patient on his the list of ones taken, that one had stage four liver cancer.
Two rooms down from the man with cancer, Brook came across a five month old little boy. Odd, Brook wondered before he reached for the boys records to see why he was there. Heart murmur, Brook read, a ventricular septal defect, or V.S.D., that seems to have grown since diagnosed. If there was one thing Brook never liked about his job it was taking children. He saw that the boy was scheduled for surgery the next day, but Brook decided he was going to go ahead and take the boy. A hole in the heart was never a good thing. The boys little body was too blue and he was too thin to make it much longer on his own anyway.
Brook swung of his scythe and cut the little baby's soul from his body. He watched as the boy began to fade from the world. Before his last heart beat finished Brook heard the door to the room open and, who he assumed were, the boys parents and doctor walked in.
Sad they have to see him go, Brook thought as he saw the mothers ice blue eyes swell with tears. The father sat himself on the floor off to the side and cried his eyes out while he begged the doctor to save his son.
It took the doctor awhile, but he ended up getting a heart beat out of the boy again. It was the mother, Robin as the father called her, who ended up tying the boy's soul back to himself. She stood there beside him with her hand placed on his head and talked to him.
Brook heard the doctor and the father talk for a short while before the doctor left. He watched as the father sat on the other side of his son and took his very small hand in his. Then they both talked. They talked about nothing and everything. From what some of their friends were up to, “Those will be your aunts and uncles,” the father said. To what they had planned for their son's life, “I hope you will learn as many languages as you want, Tom,” Robin whispered in his ear.
Brook watched as the boy's soul not only reattached itself to his body, but as it made the connection stronger.
This boy, Brook thought as the father eventually fell asleep in his chair with his head near his son and the mother continued to whisper to him, has a very strong connection to himself.
The child’s, Tom’s, eyes opened and looked to his mother as she continued to whisper to him before he turned his eyes to Brook. He sees me, Brook wondered, even though I’m just bones. A laugh broke out of his empty chest as he said, “Skull joke,” to the room.
There was a comprehension in Tom’s eyes when Brook looked back to him. Like to boy could hear him as well. That can't be, Brook thought as he moved around and watched Tom’s eyes follow him. “How can you hear me?” Tom couldn't do much or even really fully understood what Brook said, but he had to have heard him because he twitched at Brook’s words.
Brook knew that sometimes those he took could see him for a short while while they were dying. It meant that if they were brought back they remembered. But Brook had never had anyone see him like that after they were fully healthy again. Being able to perceive him had something to do with the scythe. That since the scythe was a part of Brook and he used it to sever the people from themselves they then gained the ability to look at him for a short while. Supposedly Pestilence’s bow did something similar when the arrow reached the person, but Death had never had that confirmed by his brother. Though if Brook remembered correctly Pestilence didn't use the bow anymore.
Brook looked at the parents, the father that slept with his head near his son and the mother that still lightly talked to him. He felt bad about what he did, but knew he was going to do it again. With scythe in hand Brook slashed it at Tom again. That time there was more resistance when the scythe cut through, but it made severed the soul as it was supposed to. Brook watched again as Tom slowly faded away.