Work Text:
“‘Gone?’ What do you mean, ‘gone?’ I’m a shinigami, Liz, I would know if she died, what happened to her?”
“That’s all we know. Cece and I called her phone ‘til ours both ran out of charge, Raora looked for her, we even asked Advent for help finding her, and… there was nothing to find.”
The call had come far too early in the morning for Calli, who’d been working on lyrics and mixes with her team the entire day before. She’d planned to make some time for Gigi that afternoon, maybe some coffee at a cute little cat cafe she’d had her eye on, but her schedule had been too tight to make it work and she promised - like she always promised - that they’d get a chance later in the week. That devilishly bright ball of sunlight called Gigi had forgiven her before she apologized, of course, without a hint of feeling betrayed or bitter at having lost to The Music once again. And now she was Gone. Just like that.
Well, obviously not “just like that”, because no one just stopped existing without Death-sensei’s awareness. While the rest of Cover scrambled to organize itself, Calli went to the Underworld via the Employee Only door and found her master in their office. “Yo, sensei, I’ve got a Missing Person’s report for ya.”
“Let ‘er rip, Mori-mo.”
“Gigi Murin.” She let the name speak for itself. Her boss didn’t visibly react. “I know you would’ve asked me to take care of her. Got any idea what happened there?”
The empty void under Death-sensei’s hood stared back. “She was due soon.”
“...What?”
“No fault of her own. An unavoidable accident. Wrong place, wrong time.” Their bones clicked in the silence between them; a skeletal hand set a piece of parchment on the desk. “It should have happened already, in fact.”
No, no, Gigi couldn’t be a Death-Dodger. Calli’d hunted a few down during her apprenticeship - a lich, a mad scientist, a Certain Orange Bird (as a prank from one of the senior reapers) - but hunting down a friend to drag, kicking and screaming, to the afterlife they deserved? She’d do it, but-
“However, the Warden intervened.”
She couldn’t have heard that correctly. “What?”
“The Warden of Time intervened.” Death-sensei sighed, the least and most human sound their apprentice had ever heard them make. “She was removed from the timeline seconds before her death would have occurred.”
“But we all remember she existed still-”
“Not retroactively, Mori-mo. Just from that point onward.”
Calli’s scythe appeared in her hand. “I need to talk to the Warden.”
“I knew you would.” Death-sensei placed another object on their desk: a wispy hourglass spun out of bluish-silver metal. “She did, too.”
“Good. Makes things easier for both of us… I won’t do anything rash, sensei.”
They nodded. “I know.”
She grabbed the hourglass and crushed it in her hand; instantaneously, she arrived in… not the Warden’s residence, but a certain Keeper’s.
A Forest.
-----
Kronii sighed as she heard the sound of inevitable footsteps crunching leaf litter beneath them. Fauna’s forest, once perpetually in springtime, had shifted into some muddled twilight season, somehow autumn and summer and winter all at once. Maybe that was her fault; maybe if she hadn’t been such an emotional wreck for the past few Changes, it might have stayed green forever, but a wreck she’d been, and it’d brought her and the passing of Time back there on multiple occasions.
Of course, for the first of those Changes, Fauna had been there. Sana’s departure for the Wider Universe, and Amelia’s disappearance into anonymity, had been tough, but Kronii had endured. Then, the Keeper had retreated back to The Source, humanity’s actions reaching a critical point that demanded full time management. Of course, since it was humanity’s fault, Mumei was soon called back to help deal with the fallout of both the problems and the attempted solutions… and almost in the same breath, Gura, last living relic of one of the oldest of Mumei’s wards, had disappeared beneath the waves, never to be seen again. Kronii hadn’t asked Calli what happened to her. She wished, sometimes, that she had, but she knew she didn’t want to know.
Because, unlike everyone else around her, Kronii was painfully aware that all of these things had been destined to occur from the beginning. Not in a conscious sense, but the chronic buzzing of chronology in the back of her mind manifested in prophetic dreams and dreadful nightmares, in slurred warnings and garbled threats. She’d tried to tell Sora about A-Chan’s decision ahead of time, but every time the words almost strung themselves together, they fell apart in her mouth. The Warden Preserved; she could not Interfere.
That rather unfortunate choice of wording from The Source regarding her mission had given her the freedom she needed to create the coming moment.
She counted the femtoseconds between Calli’s footsteps, the milliseconds between breaths, the days between their first meeting and this dread encounter. How cruel Fate could be, how palpable dread Certainty was, how hard it was to let go… Too hard, even. Gigi Murin was the last straw. Kronii would not, could not let her go and remain sane. Her end would be the Warden’s, simultaneous to the Planck instant, and she knew all too well how close the gremlin had come to demise that day.
Kronii also knew that it was unavoidable. And so, she waited for the reaper to arrive.
Calli stepped into the clearing Kronii had placed herself in with a stoic expression. This quickly collapsed into shock and some awe at Gigi’s Ward: an hourglass perched on tripod legs, slowly dropping grains of cerulean sand on a frozen, unconscious gremlin. She was beautiful in that cage, Kronii knew; it was why she’d chosen it for her.
The reaper eventually regained her composure. Causality continued its inexorable march towards casualty. “Warden.”
“Reaper.” She put on her best antagonistic mask. “Finally found us, hu-”
“Kronii, I don’t want to do this.”
The mask crumbled into sand. “Yeah. Y-yeah, I mean-”
“Then why did you do it?” Calli’s hands gripped her scythe with white knuckles. “Why won’t you let me see her off?”
“‘See her off?’” Kronii shook; her legs had long since fallen asleep from her vigil under the hourglass. “You’d take her away from me, too?”
“I didn’t take nobody from nowhere.”
“But you would have if I’d let you. Not this time, ohhhh no, not this time. She’s going to stay here, safe with me, you’ll see-”
“I’ve seen enough, I’m sad to say.” The reaper sighed. “On your feet, Warden, I don’t have all day.”
“You dare to challenge me, reaper?”
“Not a challenge, but a duty; it’s my task to reap her. Stand aside or stand your ground, you know the rules by which you’re bound. The only mystery’s how long you’ll strain your chains until you’re downed… I shouldn’t have to say that. Not to you, Kronii.”
“Then take it back, and leave us be!”
Calli took a step forward. “I can’t do that.”
“Why the fuck not, huh?! If you were gonna do it,” Kronii declared, “it should’ve been when Mumei left!”
“...What do you think I’m here to do? I came for Gigi, Kronii; I’m not here for you. With strange aeons, yes, even Death may die, but there is no end for the passing of Time. Your burden is persistence, now cease your denial… I can’t be the one to put your convictions on trial.”
“Do I get a say?” Gigi asked, brushing sand off her shoulder.
Kronii turned to tell her ‘no’ and realized what that meant. “How-”
“I heard Calli rapping and it woke me up.” The gremlin yawned like she’d uncurled from a satisfying nap. “So, I’m s’posed to die today? That sucks.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it really does.” The reaper kept walking forward.
The Warden froze her. Crudely, too; in her panic, she left one of her legs unstuck, and it withered away to nothing. “Shit, no, I didn’t-”
“Kronii, you’ve gotta let go.” Gigi’s tail touched her shoulder tenderly. “The accident wasn’t your fault… Never thought I’d say that about mine, but yeah, it’s not your fault. We’ve all gotta say goodbye, you know? Sometimes, you get to say it to someone’s face; sometimes, it’s years later, alone in your room, screaming into a pillow.”
“I’ve said enough goodbyes! I can’t do it again, Gigi, I can’t! If you go, then-”
“What about Kaela?”
Kronii froze. “Kaela?”
“And Bae? And IRyS? And Cece? And Calli?” Gigi gestured to the reaper statue. “What about Sally? Or Boros? All those people need to say goodbye to you, and you’re gonna make them do it today?”
“...I-”
“I know you won’t.” The gremlin pulled her into a hug. “I know you’re stronger than that. Seriously, have you checked your biceps out in a mirror lately? Those gains aren’t just for show, right?”
“Gigi…”
Gigi clasped her hands behind Kronii’s neck and looked her in the eye, one crying mess to another. “Come on, Kronii… I believe in you. I always have. You can do this.”
“I… I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I can’t!”
“You can!”
“I CAN’T-”
“You did.” Calli’s arms wrapped around the both of them, seamlessly joining the hug in-progress. “I’m proud of you, Kronster.”
The Warden became completely nonverbal.
Gigi nuzzled against her. “Me, too. You should wake up.”
“Uwha?”
“Yeah, wake up, Kronii.” The reaper’s fingernails pressed into her forearm. “Go on. Wake up.”
Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
-----
Brin bron, brin bron… brin bron, brin bron… ba-loop “Y’ello?”
“Hey.”
“Hey! Kinda weird hearing from ya so early.”
“Yeah, I just, uh… Got any plans today?”
“Just a stream tonight, why?”
“Do you wanna, I’unno… watch some stupid movie with me? Doesn’t matter what.”
“Ooooh, you’re asking me on a date??~~ ”
“Maybe.”
“...Nightmare again?”
“Yeah.”
“Lemme go find my coat. Be there in a minute.”
“Thanks… Would it be weird if- never mind.”
“Want me to see if Calli’s up?”
“...Please?”
“Anything for you, princess.”
“Don’t call me that…”
“Whatever you say, Kronii. See ya soon.”
“Bye…”
“...Are ya gonna end the call or-”