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WHO: [Bad username or site: beforemetoday title= @ livejournal.com] and [Bad username or site: afeatherpillow title= @ livejournal.com].
WHERE: Katurian's bedroom.
WHEN: A day after Katurian messes up the universe.
WARNINGS: n/a
SUMMARY: Katurian's messing with the universe, and Death isn't too pleased about it.
FORMAT: Paragraph

*

Death's always served the universe as much as it serves her, and when something changes, when a single thread is snagged out of the fabric of space and time, she knows. Being in this universe, there are always plenty of bumps in the road; it's a nexus for far too many worlds, and everything around her is constantly pushing and pulling, trying to compensate for people coming and going, for reality doing what it must to uproot fiction. Still, it barely amounts to anything at all. It's like an itch that lingers in the roof of her mouth, persistent but tolerable.

But this—this is something else entirely. This is the universe rearranging itself to accommodate her, though she's bid it to do no such thing. There's an awareness in the back of her mind that wasn't there yesterday, and the knowledge that she claimed a happy little girl decades and decades ago is as real as anything else she's ever experienced, but she doesn't recall the act itself.

She knows who's responsible, of course. There's no way that she couldn't. It's like fingerprints have been left in the air, and whenever a clock ticks, its hands only ever seem to point towards one person. One of hers. More so than the rest, even.

Death, while not wishing to be merciful, allows him time. She knows how mortals can be; he probably needs an opportunity to let the magnitude of it all sink in. And so Death waits patiently, until an entire day passes, and she knows that he's sleeping. With that, she's stood in his room, barely distinguishable in the dark.

Had she been there under any other circumstances, she'd look around, to really get a feel for the room surrounding her. As things are, though, she simply stands over him, arms folded, and watches as he sleeps. Her gaze does little to wake him, and after some minutes, she finds that the patience she once possessed quickly wears thin, in his presence.

Reaching down, Death takes hold of Katurian's shoulder, and pulls him from her brother's realm.

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Katurian doesn't let himself sleep the first night - doesn't trust himself dealing with a likely concussion, doesn't think he can - but the second night, this night, he sleeps. He dreams about Cameron. He dreams about Desire. He dreams about his house in his old world, about the swing on the front porch, about his mother, father, brother, about ghosts and skeletons and men with bleeding stumps for arms, about THUMP THUMP YELL THUMP and freezing darkness. The dreams are mostly feelings and words, void of any narrative, and he hates it, but dreams anyway because there's nothing else.

He's learned to sleep deeply for reasons he doesn't like to think about but can never help, and so when the hand touches his shoulder, he doesn't jolt awake. He eases into consciousness, a sluggish, building understanding of the world around him. The only person that wakes him up is Mich-- but no, that makes no sense. Is he in public? Who would...?

When the world comes into focus and he sees who it is, he yelps, and then he whimpers, and then he feels his headache come whirling back in one great wave of pain and tinnitus. He buries his head in his hands.

Death releases her hold on his shoulder quickly enough. She watches as he stirs, knowing that it's only a matter of time before he realises who's towering over him; it may well be that his mind knows it already, but his body is still caught up in a surrender to sleep. For a moment, she doesn't move. For a moment, she's impossibly still, but then he's covering his face with his hands, and that's no good at all.

Reaching out, she places her hands against the backs of Katurian's, and eases them away, firm, but not forceful. It's not that she needs to see him; he needs to be able to see her, to understand that she isn't playing a game with him.

“Look at me, Katurian,” she says, voice oddly loud in the dark.

It's difficult, genuinely difficult, for him to look her in the eye, even as she pulls his hands away from his face and gives him no other choice. This close out of sleep, in the dark, dark blackness of his bedroom, it should feel like a dream, but the overwhelming reality of the situation swallows him like a cold bath. He has upset Death. He's afraid, afraid because Desire's threat still looms in his mind, but he's mostly ashamed, because he likes her, he wants her to like him, and what kind of man angers death itself? What is he?

It's only with the verbal command that he's able to pull his gaze up from blankets. Words don't come.

He trembles.

Death measures her actions out, doesn't move until she's certain of what needs to be done. She places a finger under his chin, tilting his head up a little more, and then frowns at him. For a moment, that's all she does. The expression that spreads across her face is more disappointed than angry, and once she withdraws her hand, she crosses her arms back across her chest, immediately beginning to pace around the room.

“That was a really shitty thing to do, Katurian,” Death says, teeth grit, “First I have to deal with the porter, then I have to deal with news of Dream, and now this? What were you thinking?”

He exhales when she releases his chin, but the breath stays out, and within a few seconds, he has to remind himself to breathe again. While she paces, he sits up entirely, clutching the blanket to his chest with white-knuckled hands. It's just something to hold. He wishes it made him feel better.

"I wanted it to be fair," he says, before his thoughts are fully formed, before his words are fully formed. They slur, and he takes another gulp of air. "I know that you're there, and I respect that you're there, but she didn't deserve to die alone and miserable like that, it wasn't how it needed to happen, it just wasn't, and I'm sure you'll say that's how it needed to happen, but I have to--"

He drops his eyes. He remembers the unfinished basement floor. Colorful, happy magnets. The look on her face when he told her what was in store. His voice, trembling, grows softer.

"I have to disagree."

“Most people don't deserve the deaths they're given, Katurian,” Death says, the heel of her palm rested against her forehead, “But that's what they get. Everyone gets a lifetime, and if you change the rules for one person, you have to change them for everyone. What's your plan? Are you going to do this for everyone who's ever been miserable? Everyone you feel sorry for? Because I'll tell you something, Katurian. It's not a particularly pleasant feeling, when the universe rearranges itself to accommodate you, even when you are a concept.”

Katurian imagines doing this for every person who has ever been miserable, imagines thousands and millions of dying yells and stiff bodies in his arms, and he shudders visibly, tightening his grip on the blanket. He already feels fundamentally broken with the blood of four (five? six?) people on his hands, and how can he handle any more? But that's what he set out to do. That's what he set out to do.

"Not everyone," he says, almost pleading. "Special cases. I can feel the patterns in everyone's lives, like if someone has experiences worth keeping past his or her childhood, and most people do. I wouldn't do it to them." It. Even he winces at the cruelty of omission, the self-censoring. "I didn't know I would hurt you. I'm sorry."

Death doesn't reply, and instead opts to simply linger on what to do. It wouldn't be difficult to wrap things up neatly there and then, and send Katurian back to where he ought to be, but she likes him. In spite of everything, her feelings towards him haven't changed. She wonders, briefly, if she's overreacting; after all, it's said that death makes no deals, and yet she creates immortals on a whim, and allows ghosts to roam free in attics they've become endeared to. Death, unlike her siblings, follows no rules, and is not bound quite as intrinsically as the others are to their duty.

With a great sigh, she sits herself upon the edge of his bed.

“Why didn't you tell me you were going to do it?” she asks, voice barely any softer at all, “I thought we were friends, Katurian.”

"I'm sorry," he says again, quieter. He remembers apologizing to the detectives who were interrogating him, as though it were second only to breathing. He apologized because he hoped they would let him off lighter, that they would maybe spare him. This is different. He doesn't care if she ruins him like Desire promised to ruin him. He cares about her. Death. The answer and the end. He remembers picturing Death talking to him beforehand (he did wonder if he should tell her) and his whole will breaking, of sinking into inactivity, of living a second life that amounted to nothing all over again. He would have taken the out. Now there's no turning back, and he wonders which is better.

He runs a hand through his hair, along the back of his head. He's certain there are more words, but they hang in the back of his throat, rough and scratchy, weak with exhaustion and the tears that aren't coming. What he does manage is incomplete. Unsaid.

"I took so long convincing myself."

Death clasps her hands together, and rests her chin atop her entwined fingers. She wonders, had he told her before what he planned to do, whether she'd attempt to stop him or not. The Endless, theoretically, don't interfere with the workings of mortals. Still, being in this City has forced them all to change, and the same rules don't apply to this universe as they do to all the rest. She weighs the possibilities in her mind, and comes to a simple conclusion: she wouldn't have done a thing.

Death listens, and Death asks questions in the hope that people will voice answers that they never even realised they had, but she doesn't forcefully attempt to change their minds.

“I would've been here for you, Katurian. You should know that by now. I would've listened. Would've supported you, even,” she says quietly, and then pauses. “Did you really think that I wouldn't find out?”

Although he hears her words, it takes him another few moments to register their significance beyond the consonants and vowels. She would have been there for him. With Nigel missing, he assumed that he would only have enemies, people who would see him as a murderer, a monster. Every explanation, every justification would be pushed aside for the larger (or smaller) picture, that Katurian K. Katurian has helped - no, has made - a child kill herself.

His head is heavy. Before he realizes it, he buries his face again, and the incredible weight of all his thoughts spider into his fingertips where skin touches skin. They crawl down his neck and back, and fill his entire body with the doubt, the fear, the self-pity and the self-loathing. Takaya was right - he is misery. At least right now.

He should have told her.

He shakes his head, and lifts his face just enough so that the words are audible. "In the story--" (he doesn't know if Death knows about the story, isn't sure how much it matters) "--no one ever found out. No. Would you really have--?" The words catch in his throat.

“That was a story,” Death says gently, careful of how she words herself. She makes sure not to say just a story, because she knows Katurian, and knows that they will never be just anything, to him. She pauses, here, doing her best to abruptly take on a more cheerful tone, which seems to grate against the atmosphere. “And you know what they say! The truth is always stranger than fiction. It doesn't have to be that way, here.”

Death's anger has dissolved, by this point, has been replaced by something resembling worry, rather than pity.

“But now, I expect that you've upset a lot of people. My brother-sister, especially.”

He surprises himself with a laugh at her sudden cheer, although it's weak and sad and reminds him of the pain throbbing just above his left eye. He rubs the bruise with his index finger, wincing, and raises his eyes.

"Desire promised to make my life miserable," he says. He isn't sure what to make of the worry in her voice. He wonders if she'll punish him, too. "Everyone else, I think they want to warn me, or frighten me, or something, but a lot of powerful people know. Yes. And they're very upset."

“Desire says a lot of things, Katurian, and would like to make things as unpleasant as possible for certain people. It's unfortunate that it's now preying upon you, but it isn't the end of the world,” Death explains, trying to be both optimistic and cautious in the same breath. “And as for the others, we can deal with them when we come to them.”

Edited 2010-03-16 16:23 (UTC)

He notices the 'we.'

"You'll help me?" he asks. There's a slight optimism to his voice, too - until now, he's been resigned to his own damnation, but if Death is on his side, that counts for something, doesn't it? He lowers his hands from his face, where they find a hold on blanket once more.

Death nods, turning to face him properly, legs crossed on his bed.

“I can't exactly go ahead and leave you in this state, can I?” she asks, giving him a lopsided smile.

Finally, the tears come.

He wipes them from his face with his arm, and makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sniffle. He hasn't cried since it happened, hasn't wanted to expose himself to those kinds of feelings, but now, it might be all right. It might be all right.

"I don't know how I can repay you," he says. His voice is muffled by his tears and his sleeve, but he makes sure it's heard.

She reaches out, carefully, placing her arm around his shoulders. She doesn't move herself particularly close, nor does she hold him tightly; Death simply lets him know that she's there, in the way that really matters.

“You don't have to repay me, Katurian. You just have to tell me these things in advance. That's all I'm asking.”

The idea of doing it again leaves a sickening knot in his stomach, but he promised himself he would. He nods his head, an emphatic yes, and touches the arm behind his shoulder. It takes a moment to collect his words again.

"I like that you're death." It's a funny thing to say, and maybe he's said it before. He means it with all of his heart. Now, more than ever.

Edited 2010-03-16 17:32 (UTC)

She laughs lightly at that, and the sound settles within her chest, warming her. Leaning forwards, Death pulls him close, making the embrace as unobtrusive as a hug ever can be. She ensures that it only lasts a second or two, just long enough for him to be fully aware of what's happening, and says, “I like that you like that I'm death.”

And she means it, truly. It doesn't matter how many billions and billions of humans she's loved and will love: it always touches her when somebody feels even vaguely the same way towards her. With that said, she hops back to her feet, realising that she's probably intruded enough already.

“Should I show myself out, Katurian?”

By the time she's hugged him and gotten up off the bed, he's through crying, and all that's left is a satisfying exhaustion and a hollow feeling in his bones and muscles. He nods at her question, and then he hesitates, and then he wipes his eyes and pulls the blanket closer.

"Could you stay?" He feels like a little kid again, begging his parents to stay and quell the nightmares, the ones that weren't really nightmares. Once he realized his parents' betrayal (the reason why they always said No, little Kat and left him for whirling drills, muffled screams), the tired, hopeful seeking of bedtime comfort became foreign to him. Poisonous, even. There was Michal, certainly, but Katurian was the guardian, never the one who needed help sleeping, never the one who asked for company. It surprises him, how desperate he sounds.

He swallows. "You're probably very busy, and, so, um, it isn't necessary, but I like your company, and if you could afford to stay for a little longer, just a little longer, we could maybe share stories, or, um--" He runs a hand through his hair. "--talk about whatever you'd like. I won't be sleeping now."

Edited 2010-03-18 03:29 (UTC)

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