“One day you'll call me Death.
For now…
Wrath will do.”
—Kerri Maniscalco
 
 
 
 
 
. . .
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thanatos watches this all unfold.
 
He was no stranger to tragedy, to calamities and things not going the way they seem like they could and should have. Even if those things always happened to other people. He was always the one at the sidelines, the one waiting at the end of the line.
 
Always, always watching. Always observing and following while those with finite lifespans tried and failed to run from him.
 
From their fate, the inevitable end.
 
Sometimes, he was considered a mercy, a rest, many times he was the tragedy. But throughout the end of time, he was unavoidable.
 
The fate of all living things.
 
(Proserpina’s head had suddenly dipped forward like a puppet whose strings were cut off, her long dark hair shrouding her face like a blackened veil… and for a split of a second, Death itself genuinely thought the goddess of shadows had started to weep.
 
But no.
 
She was laughing.
 
He smiles.)
 
The grandfather clock ticked between them, each swing of the pendulum sounding far heavier than it should as the goddess of shadows continued to laugh and laugh.
 
Meanwhile, that beloved face slowly morphed to that of confusion for a moment before it twisted into a very familiar look of pure horror, as if he just now realized what is about to happen, the sheer gravity of his mistake. And by the way he started moving back ever so slowly just about confirmed it.
 
“W-Wait. I can explain… just… let me-” the supposedly dead man was saying now, amidst the shadows’ laughter, something like panic rising in that same, maddeningly familiar voice the longer this goes on.
 
Alastor was pounding on the door by now.
 
He threw it a confused, frustrated glance.
 
Thus, as sudden as she had started laughing, Proserpina abruptly cuts herself off, never mind how the shadows coiled and writhed about around her, pulsing as though with a life of its own as darkness conquered the room, instantly covering the door.
 
The exits, the walls, the windows.
 
The knocking.
 
Until it was just them now in this world of darkness.
 
Where no one can save him from them.
 
“Look–”
 
“We are looking,” the gods assures him, and yes, yes they are. We are looking at a dead man.  A man long since dead. And we should know, for have the shadows not tried to cheat Death itself for that very same soul once upon a time…?
 
But death is a promise, not a bargain to be made.
 
The keeper of Death smiles then, slowly, almost pleasantly, at the sight of Warren Veil’s perplexed doppelganger as he stares upon her… but it's all wrong. Her smile gives nothing but the exact opposite feeling of what a smile should bring.
 
Terror. As he should be.
 
Because, right now, they are both livid.
 
“How. Dare. You…?!” 
 
And the world threatens to break apart around them.
 
In between her grief and his outrage, the demand for vengeance instantly settled to begin an unstoppable collision course as both gods lashed out with that as a warning—on that damned mockery of the dead! —shadows and blade lashing out again and again and again.
 
Black and silver rang true in the air, almost indistinguishable to the naked eye at the supernatural speed they had as they moved as one while that… that dead thing danced around each assault like a pest.
 
Proserpina snarls.
 
WHY WON’T YOU DIE?!
 
She steps back and disappears straight into to the darkness, and before the copy could even wrap his head around what just happened, a sudden, well-placed kick on his back drove him knees first on the glass covered ground.
 
He feels more than hears death itself drawing near.
 
“W-Wait! I SAID WAIT! Just… listen!” he yelps, arms hurriedly raising in an attempt to protect himself, just as he caught sight of Thanatos itself descending upon him.
 
No…!
 
No, no, no, no!
 
“Winters, PLEASE…!”
 
She stopped.
 
Wait.
 
…she stopped?
 
Slowly, not bothering to move an inch in fear of setting her off again, he timidly cracked an eye open (since when he closed them?) to find himself face to face with her.
 
For a dreadful moment, the goddess of shadows only stared down at him with wide eyes, and she was so dangerously close, her accursed blade only inches away from cutting his head clean off of his shoulder, the look on her face completely out of place.
 
She looked like she wanted to be anywhere but here right now. She looked like someone who desperately wanted to run. And it was a wish he was so achingly familiar with at the moment.
 
He swallows, “W-Winters…?”
 
It had been so long.
 
So many years since she had heard that voice in real life, calling out for her and William, that she almost didn’t realize that the words are real, his voice was real.
 
He was real…
 
…until her eyes met his own.
 
And the rage bubbled up all over again.
 
“I-I’m… I’m not your enemy, I’m–AGH!”
 
The shadows easily hauled him off of the ground, twisting and wounding around his neck as he thrashes and squirms about like a fish on a hook.
 
Red eyes.
 
She squeezes, those eyes are not sky blue…!
 
Her father’s face and body wasn’t just good enough for them, no, this leech just had to steal her father’s voice as well!
 
She knows this is a trap.
 
She knows, she knows–
 
And yet.
 
And yet…
 
She couldn’t bear to look as she chokes the life out of him.
 
Because despite the grief, the righteous rage, it hurts. If it weren’t for William and that strange dream she just had minutes ago, Proserpina was sickened to realize that she may not have even recognized Warren Veil himself anymore. For even his voice, in the waking world, was a sound she could barely recognize…
 
Once, and even that was only in a dream, Warren’s voice used to calm her once upon a time. Comfort her in a way that only he and Alastor can.
 
But she had also heard his voice in her nightmares. Far more often than she liked. His anguished screams, cutting off his desperate calls for their names. Those dying screams… a disturbing echo of her own as fire and demons alike cackled and descended upon their misery.
 
It was her last living memory of him, and it was seared so deep into the recesses of her mind. No matter how hard she had tried to forget and push away the memory, it comes back.
 
It always came crawling back.
 
Over the years, his voice had been reduced to nothing but long-suffering screams and cries of their names. Pleads for mercy. Death screams. The very idea of safety was something she could no longer associate with his voice in the living, waking world as it has haunted her ever since.
 
She missed him. She missed him so much…
 
And I despised you for it.
 
No thanks to Roman, even Warren Veil himself had become something for her to despise all because he could not protect her.
 
She could not protect him.
 
The first person whom she loved and had loved her unconditionally in return had now become something to despise because even him had become a blade to use against her. A weakness. A weakness… Hades was right. Attachments are a weakness.
 
So, let us be rid of it.
 
“P-Please,” he choked out, “Just… just… l-listen, Win…”
 
Her heart clenched at the nickname.
 
“Please,” she begs, softly, “Don’t call me that.”  
 
They just had to dig up her father’s image, and torture her with what was left of his remains. Right when he was an old, open wound forced upon her in dreams and now in waking. How dare they. How dare they? What good was it that her heart was still intact, if it was going to be bludgeoned all over again?!
 
Tears gathered in the corner of his eyes, “W-Win…”
 
His voice… it was a call, a balm, a curse, and a plea. The statement of something so enormous it can only be said in a name.
 
Desperate, he reached out a hand towards her.
 
Instinctively, despite herself, she reached back.