The One where Vi gets some answers
There were a million thoughts swirling in Vi’s mind, none of which were very coherent, most of which consisting of “what the absolute fuck”.
“Wu..ck?” is what comes out of her mouth instead.
“Eloquent as always, I see,” Jayce replies. Vi narrows her eyes.
“Help me with Cait,” she says, her tone coming out harsher than she intended. She could have picked her up all on her own, but something inside her was still too afraid to touch her, as if Caitlyn would vanish through her fingers if she wasn’t careful enough. She hoists Caitlyn’s limp body up by her armpits while Jayce grabs her legs. Gingerly, the two of them lifted her into the living room, lowering her gently onto the couch. Vi removed a thin shawl from the back of a chair and draped it over Caitlyn, slowly settling down to sit next to her on the floor.
Jayce is still gawking at her like she’s some sort of weird animal at the zoo. Vi scowls back at him. “What are you doing here?” she asks.
“What are you doing here?” he asks in response. He gestures to Caitlyn lying on the sofa with a shit-eating grin. “Making…amends, perhaps?”
“That was the intention,” Vi snaps, “but as you can see, it hasn’t been going very well. First I try to approach her at her place of work, but all I get is this cryptic message asking me to stalk her after work and to not be obvious about it, then I spend an hour wandering around London, following blinking street lamps until I finally get here, where I find out she’s drunk and she passes out on me. And you’re here, apparently! So it’s been fucking great, as you can tell, and I’m really running out of patience here, so why don’t you just tell me what the hell you’re doing here, pretty boy?”
Jayce blinks owlishly. “Right. You see, I’m not supposed to tell you. How do I know if you can be trusted?”
Vi very nearly punches him. “Fine. Be that way,” she says after exercising an exorbitant amount of self control, “I can wait until she wakes up. I’m sure she’ll be more willing to explain our current situation.”
“Maybe she will, maybe she won’t,” Jayce shrugs. “You two do have a difficult history.”
“Keep talking and we will,” Vi snarls. Jayce shuts up, sensing the venom in her voice. “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be alive, for—“ she stops herself.
“You only say that every time you see me, Vi. Every few hundred years, I somehow run into you. If I didn’t know you were a raging lesbian, I’d say that you might be a little interested in me.”
Vi glares at him. “Do you have any idea what danger you’re putting Caitlyn in by directly associating with her? Look, I’ve tried very hard over the last several thousand years to keep the two of you separate. You’re the man that escaped Death, and that’s only because she let you evade her.”
“Hey now,” Jayce raised a lecturing finger, “I didn’t escape death. I will have you know that I’ve died many, many times before. Caitlyn and I are old, old friends. I just don’t stay dead for very long.”
“I’m sure Caitlyn had her reasons for keeping you alive,” Vi snaps. Jayce had always been a constant enigma, a topic she tried hard not to breach with Caitlyn. Since 1941, it had annoyed her to no end that Caitlyn had been willing to bend the rules of life and death for Jayce, but not for her. She buries her head into the armrest of the sofa to reset her thoughts, because that was another matter entirely and she wasn’t going to have another crisis about it right now, and then straightens back up, glaring fiercely at Jayce. “Why now, Jayce? Why are you making contact with her now? And why is she hiding you willingly?” If Caitlyn and Jayce met in the human world when he was alive, she would have known better than to approach him, which meant that all this was Jayce’s doing. Jayce had reached out to Caitlyn for God knows what and he really could not have chosen a more terrible time. With the end of the world fast approaching, Vi knew that both Heaven and Hell, after leaving the blue planet mostly alone for at least a millennium, would be fixated on Earth, meaning they couldn’t get away with doing anything strange without them noticing.
Jayce huffs. “I just told you—I can’t say. It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he says quickly, raising his hands in surrender, “but she might not.”
Not anymore. The unspoken words hang like icicles from the ceiling, stabbing into Vi’s skin.
Next to her, Caitlyn lets out a small, whiny noise. They both turn to stare at her, but then she scrunches her nose and pulls the shawl tighter around her, rolling round to face the inside of the couch so her face was obscured. Vi sighs.
“Let her rest,” she says. “I’ll sleep on the floor tonight. We can figure this shit out in the morning.”
“No, no,” Jayce objects quickly. “Cait would kill me if I let you sleep on the floor. It’s January, Vi, and these tiles will freeze your balls off through the carpet. Why don’t you take Cait’s bedroom? I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”
“Absolutely not,” Vi answers. Too quickly, perhaps. “We should move Caitlyn off the couch and into her bed. I can take the couch.”
Jayce gestured to the navy-haired woman, who had already entangled her long limbs around the covers and the cushions. “She looks pretty cosy to me.”
“No she doesn’t!” Vi hisses.
“Take the damn bed,” Caitlyn says suddenly, her voice low and raspy. Vi very nearly jumps out of her own skin. “I’ll see you in the morning. Jayce, show our guest to their room.”
As the both of them continued staring down at her unmoving form on the couch, Caitlyn accentuated her previous statement with a chilling, commanding tone. “Now.” Jayce winced and led Vi out of the living room, bearing a remarkable resemblance to a puppy that had been told off by their owner.
Stepping into Caitlyn’s room, Vi can’t shake the feeling that the bed looks out of place. Every other inch looks fairly lived in–a messy stack of bills stabbed through a long silver needle on the desk, a coat sleeve sticking out of the wardrobe. Vi takes a seat on the bed gingerly as the covers crease underneath her, feeling mildly guilty for fucking up the neatly pressed sheets. It doesn’t look like it’s been slept in in weeks.
“For what it’s worth,” Jayce says suddenly, leaning against the doorframe, “I’m glad you came back.”
“Even if it’s just to give you bad news?” Vi mutters under her breath. Jayce hears her, from how the corners of his lips quirk up.
He knows, she thinks to herself.
With a final wave, Jayce turns and closes the door on his way out, footsteps fading and then disappearing when the door to the guest bedroom closes with a click.
Vi looks around the room, attempting to refamiliarise herself with this new Caitlyn, to get a glimpse into her life without her. She doesn’t know what she’s expecting. A dart board with her face on it? Unaddressed letters to her shoved haphazardly into a drawer? Vi stares at the ceiling, thinking about her tiny apartment above The Last Drop. She wonders if Caitlyn will ever see it, and if she’ll be looking for any tiny trace of herself and if she’ll be disappointed by the lack thereof, or if she’ll see through the carefully maintained facade of “moving on”.
It was so easy to remove someone from your life. Sentimentally, however, that never worked.
They had been trekking aimlessly in the desert for 2 weeks, no end in sight. Vi and Powder stayed at least 20 metres ahead of the other two Horsemen when they walked, minimising conversation as much as possible. Despite walking side by side, Powder had barely said 5 words to her. When the glare off the sands became too much, Vi would look up and steal glances at her sister. Sometimes she would be staring resolutely at her sandals, determinedly not meeting her gaze. Once Vi caught her with tears in her eyes, face twisted in rage. When Powder caught her staring, she wiped the tears off angrily and marched ahead.
When night fell, Powder would head off and salvage whatever vegetation she could find, and Vi would light a fire when she got back. She no longer had to strike stone against stone to get sparks flying. After the Tower had fallen, Vi had learned to summon fire at will, as if the newfound power coursing through her veins could be drawn out through her fingertips, burning and writhing in wispy flames. She was feeding off the carnage and destruction, as Mel had told her so when she pulled her upright from the rubble. Powder had never looked at her the same again. As she watched Powder disappear into the horizon, she feared that she would never come back.
Tonight Powder returned empty handed, more sullen than usual.
“Couldn’t find anything,” she said, shrugging.
Vi just nodded. “Early night, then?” Powder shrugged again and stalked into their tent without a word.
She sat outside the tent and stared blankly into the distance. A few weeks ago, she would have been able to see the Tower, a giant shadow in the mist, but now all that was left was nothing. Vi blinked, and then felt the red seep into her vision. The rusty taste of blood was prominent on her tongue, screams and harsh voices overlapping in her ears. Heart racing, Vi felt herself burn.
It was her fault. She’d been skeptical of Jayce, of the power of humanity, and then she’d watched it all burn. Her distrust, her doubt, her disbelief had lit the pyre, and like a vulture, she was feasting off the ruins. Could she really blame Powder if she did want to leave her? Vi wanted to leave herself, too, if there was a way to separate her soul from this power-hungry body.
Approaching footsteps pulled her out of her thoughts, and she looked up to see Death, holding a gnarled, dried branch alight with cold blue flames.
“Mel caught a mouse a while ago. If you’re hungry, you can–”
“--You know I’m not hungry,” Vi muttered. Death fell silent.
“Just because we don’t have to eat doesn’t mean we shouldn’t,” Death said.
“Why? Will it make me feel more human?” Vi shot back.
Behind her, the sound of a ripping tent gashed through the dark. Powder emerged, her body hanging half out of the slashed tent, bits of the cloth still caught in her fingernails like pale tendrils.
“Get the fuck away,” Powder snarled. Vi looked at her, stunned. With the lower half of her face painted in ghostly blue light from the flames, she looked almost feral, and her eyes were glowing fully pink.
Death seemed taken aback, the first emotion Vi had seen cross her otherwise blank face. “Powder,” she said.
“I said, get the fuck away,” Powder spat. “Which part of that do you not understand?” She clambered out of the tent, nails digging into Vi’s arms like talons as she thrust her behind herself. A dagger glimmered coldly in her fist.
“Get back!” Vi seized the hand wielding the dagger, forcing Powder to lower it as she dragged her backwards. “Are you fucking insane?!” she shouted, fear seeping into her voice. This was Death they were talking about, the force that just took and took without hesitation. If Vi felt this powerful from one single event of chaos, she couldn’t imagine how much power Death held, and she had no desire of seeing it in action.
Powder wrestled against her hold, the dagger in her fist flashing silver as she brandished it up and down. Twisting around to look at her, Vi could see the venom in her eyes. “Don’t you dare hold me back,” she hissed, shaking violently in Vi’s grip. “They’re the reason for all our fucking problems, Violet. Don’t you see? ” She turned to the dark haired woman, still motionless in front of them, pink eyes flashing with vengeance. “They’ve come here and ruined everything. They’ve ruined Jayce’s Tower, they’ve divided everyone and killed the rest, and now they’re following us like everything’s okay and we’re just supposed to accept them? Just because we’re the Four Horsemen and whatever the fuck that means? She’s fucking Death, Vi! She’s the one that takes away everything we love and care about! She’s the reason why we’re always alone! And back there, at the Tower, she nearly took you too–”
Vi’s heart broke. Powder didn’t blame her for what happened at the Tower. Instead, she was burdened with the fear of losing her as well. She had never thought about how terrifying it was for Powder to see her that way, too busy losing the pieces of her mind in red sand.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” VI whispered, and Powder swivelled around to look at her, tears swimming in her eyes. “She can’t take me from you. No one can.”
Powder’s bottom lip trembled. Death was still standing there, eyes cold and unmoving, as if she was a statue. “Is this amusing for you?” Powder shouted. “Watching us struggle this way? Do you even feel anything, you sick monster? When you take…” she stopped and flung Vi off her, falling to her knees in the sand, “when you take them away, does it even matter to you?”
Death studied her sister’s bowed form, eyes downcast.
“Of course it does,” she said finally. “I am Death, so I know how much life matters.”
Powder just scoffed, fists clenched at her sides, her face contorted in a mask of pain and fury. “Yeah, right.”
“You act as if I chose this path,” Death said softly, her gaze falling on Vi’s face, as if she could see through her soul, into the grief and agony and guilt that twisted her mind, and Vi knew that this time she was speaking to her. “I am no different from you, created for a purpose that God is too proud and too good to perform Themselves.” When Powder didn’t answer, she simply sighed, a faint sadness in her eyes that passed as soon as it came.
“I do sincerely apologise for ruining your evening,” she said, bowing stiffly. “Do take the fire anyway. Desert nights are always cold.” With a sweep of her billowing dark robe, she disappeared into the darkness. The flaming branch fell to the ground, as if she had never been there.
Vi took Powder into her arms and let her cry to her heart’s content, trying hard not to think about what Death had said.
Vi was startled out of her sleep by the very loud noise of a dumbbell falling on the floor, or perhaps on a foot, judging from the anguished howl that followed. Vi huffed and turned over, burying her face in the pillows, trying to tune him out. Jayce was evidently more of a maniac that she’d initially thought. Who woke up that early to work out unless they were trying to get over someone?
The unmistakable noise of heavy metal music seeps through the pillow and into her ears. Groaning, Vi throws the pillow across the room, where it fell to the floor after hitting the wall with a soft thunk. Throwing on a jacket over her sleeveless undershirt, Vi resigns herself to an early morning.
She follows the faint, warm light of the living room, trudging through the dark corridor while stretching out her arms, hearing her joints pop. Right in the middle of a very large, probably unattractive yawn, she catches Caitlyn’s eye across the room.
Caitlyn is sitting in an armchair next to the faux fireplace embedded in the wall, an antique lamp glowing and hovering beside her in the air. Swathed in a dark blue robe of velvet sheen, her outline blurred gold by the light of the lamp, she looked like a queen lounging comfortably on her throne. Vi makes a weak attempt to redeem her dignity by slapping a hand over her wide yawn.
“You’re up,” Vi says casually.
Lips pursed, Caitlyn sets down her book, crossing the room to the kitchenette. Vi doesn’t miss the faint uncertain wobble in her steps. “Coffee?” she asks.
“Tea, thanks.” Vi replies firmly, not missing the glare Caitlyn shoots her way. Even before humans discovered the effects of caffeine, Caitlyn had been chasing its highs, so she had taken to coffee splendidly ever since it became a beverage. When they were…together, Vi had acted as a harsh moderator, stating Caitlyn could only have coffee if she was having one, and there was no way she was going to let her have coffee while still being hungover. But they weren’t together anymore, so why did she expect Caitlyn to care? Why did Vi care? Vi mentally slaps herself.
It’s just old habits, she convinces herself. Old habits die hard.
Caitlyn turns to her with a put-off expression on her face, but she’s holding two cups of steaming tea. Vi takes her mug and tries not to think too much about what it means.
She takes a seat across Caitlyn at the raised marble countertop in the kitchen, the pair of them stewing in silence like tea leaves in boiled water. Vi ransacks her mind for anything to say.
That was a lie. She had a lot she wanted to say to Caitlyn. She wanted to say that she was sorry, but she wanted her to be sorry too. She wanted to ask about the book in the photo. She wanted to know if Caitlyn had moved on, if she was seeing someone else. None of those seemed very appropriate to voice out loud, however, so she remained silent.
It’s Caitlyn who eventually makes the first venture. “How have you been?” she inquires politely.
Vi shrugs. “I’ve been alright. I own this bar in downtown Manhattan now, so not so different from you. Busy, most of the time. I don’t get a lot of time to myself, but that’s okay. The people I work with are pretty cool.” It’s also better because I don’t have a lot of time to think about you.
“I imagine there are still some differences between owning a cafe and a bar,” Caitlyn says. “And I’m not talking about the beverages they serve.”
“Yeah, I guess. Oh, before I forget. That cake you recommended yesterday–it was one of the best I’ve ever tasted.”
Caitlyn smiles modestly. “I’ll give your compliments to the chef. They’re great.”
“We have a pretty awesome cook too at my place. He’s called Jericho. Makes the best burger and fries you’ve ever had in your life.”
“That’s nice.”
“You should come by sometime,” Vi blurts, not exactly sure why. Caitlyn looks at her, her face mirroring similar surprise.
“I would love to, Vi. Although I don’t suppose we have a lot of time left,” Caitlyn says finally, and Vi feels the temperature in the room drop.
She picks up the teaspoon, crushing a dark leaf crumb under the flat side. “You know.”
“Why else would you be here?” Caitlyn says matter-of-factly.
“I can’t come by just because I wanted to see you?”
“I distinctly remember you saying that you never wanted to see me again, so no, Vi, that isn’t a possibility I would entertain.”
Vi feels her throat run dry despite the hot tea moistening it just a sip ago.
She sighs, setting down her spoon. “You know I didn’t mean it.”
“Did you not mean it in hindsight, or did you not mean it when you said it?” Caitlyn says, blue eyes piercing.
Vi winces, dropping her gaze to study the tea leaves coagulating at the bottom of her mug. She’d learned how to read them for fun, centuries ago, but she’d forgotten everything now. She wishes she could still scrutinise them and divinate the perfect answer to Caitlyn’s question, if there even is one.
“You said a lot of shit too,” is what she says instead. A defensive act. A craven act.
It’s Caitlyn’s turn to fall silent. “I suppose I did,” Caitlyn says softly.
“Can I ask you a question?” Vi asks.
She nods, albeit a little warily.
She doesn’t say do you think we can have another shot at being us, before it all ends? She doesn’t ask if we weren’t who we are, would we have lasted for as long as we’d hoped?
Instead she asks: “What are you planning with Jayce?”
Caitlyn studies her carefully, as if searching for something in her face. When she found it, or found nothing, perhaps, she brought her cup to her lips and replaced it delicately down in the saucer.
“Before I tell you,” she says, her words haltingly slow, “you should know that once I have, you’re going to be forced into something bigger than anything you’ve ever been through. And you’re not going to like it. There’s no retreating into the background this time.”
Vi leans back in her chair. She thinks of all the wars and chaos that had been brought about by her, all the times she felt like nothing but a vessel of ill omens and monstrous tendencies that brought down entire civilisations, all the times she had to sit and watch it all collapse around her, being unable to do anything to stop it.
“Being actively involved for once doesn’t sound that bad.”
They continued their unending trek through the desert. Vi kept a few paces behind Powder, feigning exhaustion. As she kept her eyes on the horizon, Powder’s silhouette cast a tiny shadow on the endless plain of sand.
In all honesty, Vi wasn’t exhausted. The dull thrill of power still thrummed through her veins, though it felt significantly less pronounced than before. Still, the lack of aching strains in her muscles unnerved her, making her feel more like a machine than a human.
No, she lagged behind Powder because lately her thoughts had been wandering back to Death. She refused to let her sister know that the exchange that night had rattled her more than she’d ever let on. Powder was crumbling, she knew, and Vi was having a hard enough time trying to piece her back together. If Vi started falling apart too, there would be no one to put them back together again.
Vi had hated Death. She was responsible, she had told herself in the beginning. She appeared the night before everything went wrong. She knew it was coming and she did nothing to stop it. It was easier to pin the blame on someone else, feel the weight of her own burden shared by another unwilling participant. But still the voice of reason in her mind nagged, and Vi hated it. She hated that a tiny bit of herself acknowledged how Death and herself could really be two sides of the same coin, how they could be equally responsible and irresponsible. It was much easier to hate someone as an aloof, isolated entity, but that night Death had shown her that she wasn’t.
Death was as far from human as someone could get, but she could be more human than Vi had ever imagined. The realization shook her to her very core, and now Vi couldn’t antagonise her again the same way Powder did.
She wanted to speak to her. To make sense of the turmoil inside her. To know that someone else understood. Every time she thought of speaking to the woman, however, the image of Powder, tears streaking wildly down her cheeks as she fell apart in her arms, came to her and Vi was drowned in guilt. How could she be thinking about this when her sister was still suffering so much? If anything, her associating with Death would only serve to destroy the remains of Powder’s fragile mentality.
She wondered if Death had a name. She had not given it, and Vi had not asked, eager to cling onto a single villainised impression. When someone had another name to know them by, there were different aspects to associate them with.
Lagging behind her sister, Vi was farther from Powder but closer to the remaining two Horsemen, who had kept a respectable distance since the day they began to move through the desert. Occasionally, she threw her head back, casually glancing over at the pair of them. They looked quite striking as they moved in stride, white and black robes billowing. Even under the heavy veils to keep the sand out of her face, Vi could feel that piercing blue gaze on her.
The opportunity came when Mel and Powder set off in search of water. Powder didn’t seem too happy about the company, but Mel was adamant about it, stating that it would be likely for sandstorms to rage at this time of year. It took some convincing, but in the end Powder begrudgingly muttered that Mel was more tolerable than “the other one” , as she had affectionately dubbed. Vi waved them off, forcing a wide smile on her face, hoping it would ease Powder’s worries about leaving her alone with the 4th Horseman.
The pair of them set up the tents and sat in front of them. Death kept igniting and quenching a blue wisp of flame on her fingertip, as if she was snapping her fingers. Vi watched in silence, wondering if she felt the heat. People had always said that blue flames burned the hottest.
“Yours aren’t blue, are they?” the dark haired woman asked suddenly.
Vi shook her head. “No. You should have seen them before, when I lit the campfires.” Her flames were a vivid red, a few shades lighter than the colour of fresh blood, burning slightly orange in the centre. “They’re red.”
“It suits you,” Death replied simply.
Vi raised an eyebrow. “Your hair, I mean. It’s red too,” Death explained.
“So do your flames,” Vi said before she could stop herself. “They match your eyes.”
A small smile played across Death’s pale lips. As she looked at Vi, it struck her that she was really very beautiful when she smiled. She quickly dropped her gaze, studying the frayed ends of her laced sandals.
“Where does it come from?” Vi asked. “This…power.”
“I don’t know exactly,” Death said, “but I view them as rewards. Rewards from God for doing our work, I suppose.”
“Rewards?” Vi almost spat out the word, her body physically recoiling in disgust. The blood, the smoke, the broken hopes, Powder’s fearful eyes–rewards?
“I’m already putting it lightly,” Death said monotonously. “You feel it too, don’t you? It’s like feeding off misery. Ripping something away that wasn’t ours to take.”
Vi swallowed, the anger within her surfacing as sudden warm tears in her eyes. She brushed them away angrily and hoped the other woman didn’t notice. “How do you live with it?” she asked eventually.
Death curled her toes in the sand, lines of careful pondering. “You don’t,” she said simply. “It’s not your doing. It is Their will. We are merely vessels at Their disposal. Don’t give yourself too much credit, Violet.” It’s the first time she’s said her name.
“I don’t–I don’t want to justify this feeling with excuses.”
Death fixed her with bright blue eyes, made even paler by the flickering flame in her right palm. “Will it make you feel better if you don’t?”
She sighed and put her head in her hands. “No,” she admitted begrudgingly.
“The act of shouldering responsibility and to believe that you’re constantly in control of the situation is very human of you.”
Vi looked back up at her, not understanding.
“Is that not so?” Death asked. “Humans often tend to believe that they’re in charge of their own lives. They see Their words as guidance, and not as winds that shape their fate. Their belief and pride in their own accomplishments is why humans have a sense of self, unlike any other creature on the Earth. They thought they could rule the world and write their own fates, so They had to remind humanity of their fragility by bringing the Tower down.”
Vi curled her fingers into a tight fist, shaking. “Is that so wrong, then? Being human?”
Death shook her head. “No. It is a foolish way of thinking, but without it humans would never have learned to be brave. If it makes you feel better to believe you are closer to humans than the rest of us, then who am I to stop you?”
“I’ve spent decades thinking that I was no different from them—until the first men hunted Powder and I down for our never aging appearances. Then I’ve spent more years living amongst them, learning their ways and their stories, and just when I think that I could be one of them, I’m forced to acknowledge this…raging, raw power inside of me that sets me apart from everyone else,” Vi retorted, feeling the burning sensation resurface behind her eyelids. “I barely know anything about what it’s like to be human, and I’ve lost faith too many times now to believe that I am one. What would someone like you know about being human?”
Death raised her head, eyes piercing like flaming sapphires. “I don’t,” the woman replied slowly, showing the first instance of hesitation since she first met her, “but I speak to hundreds of souls every day. You learn a lot just from listening to them.”
“You speak to souls?” Vi asked, disbelief creeping into her voice.
“Of course,” Death replied, shrugging, as if this was a common occurrence. “I am Death. It is my job to bring souls to their resting place.”
“How many deaths are you actually there for?” Vi asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.
Death looked at her, eyebrows raised as if she was surprised by that question. “I am there for all of them. The ones that are to be remembered throughout history, and the ones that are lost in the translation of time. Eventually, everyone meets me.”
“But you’re here,” Vi gestured to the pair of them. “And people die all the time.”
“I am everywhere and nowhere,” Death answered cryptically.
Vi narrowed her eyes at their riddled answer. “Are you enjoying this?”
Death raised her hands innocently. “I don’t understand the full extent of my powers either. It’s just something I’ve grown to accept.”
“And me?” Vi asked. “Will I be there for every single fight from now on? Why did it take me so long to be able to do this? Surely humans fought even before the Tower fell.” She twirled her hand and red flames followed the motion, settling around her wrist like a glowing circlet.
“Because that was the first division of mankind,” Death explained. “Before, humans were not able to join together as a united front. There is no division without a preexisting union. With the Tower as their beacon, they were all united, so they could be divided. The first schism of many to come. The first of many to be remembered.”
She’d known in her subconscious that it would be, but her heart plummeted into her stomach all the same upon hearing Death’s confirmation.
“Why do you think They did that?” she asked quietly.
Death raised her head to the sky, as if wondering if They were there among the stars, listening to them.
“They are afraid.”
Vi scoffed. “If They’re in control of everyone all the time, why are They afraid? We’re just insignificant beings to Them, are we not?”
Death looked at her, considering. “I suppose that’s just it then. When you’re used to having control, you’ll be afraid of losing it.”
“Then what did They create humans for?” Vi flung her arms in the air in frustration. “What’s the point of making someone in Their own image if They never wanted humans to become Them?”
“It’s not for us to make assumptions about,” Death said, shrugging. “Who knows? Maybe they have a plan in place. Maybe the destruction of the Tower was just to serve some grander purpose in the future? Their actions are inexplicable, after all.”
“Does believing that make you feel better?” Vi asked scathingly.
The navy haired woman just looked at her, as if her words were water rolling off stone. “Maybe it does. Who are you to stop me?” she said simply.
“You’re just–you’re just content being a puppet then?” Vi said incredulously.
Her reaction was immediate, the fire extinguishing and the cold desert air dropping a few degrees lower. The glow of the fire was replaced by a pair of cold sapphire irises, dimly lighting the darkness. “I have more agency than you might think,” Death said, “and I am not afraid to use it.”
“Oh yeah?” Vi breathed, her words condensing into icy mists. “Kill me, then.”
“No.” The laugh that left Death’s lips was short but cold. “I can’t do that. As much as you like to think that you are human, the fact remains that you are not a mere mortal soul. I cannot take you.”
All this talk about humanity and mortality was starting to get on her nerves. “Do you have a name, Death?” she asked. “A name like Mel, or Powder, or,” she swallowed and wrapped her arms around herself, “Vi?”
Silence.
“Maybe I should give you one. A human name that other humans can understand and curse and recognize. It would give me so much pleasure, you know? Binding you to the people that you so hate to acknowledge. Plus, we’ve all got names. You’re the odd one out, you frigid bitch,” Vi blurted out all in one go.
As she’d hoped, it finally got a rise out of the other woman.
“I do have a human name, Violet,” she said scathingly. “It’s Caitlyn, for your information. Some humans gave it to me when I first arrived on Earth. That was also the last word they uttered before I had to take them away.”
Vi fell silent. There was an unmistakable pain behind those words.
“I’m sorry,” she said honestly. “I didn’t mean to call you a frigid bitch.”
Death shrugged, or at least Vi thought she did. It was hard to see in the dark.
Vi conjured up another batch of flames which snaked around her arm like a scarlet serpent. As the warm light permeated the darkness, she noticed how Death’s ice blue eyes melted into fresh cerulean pools.
“You can call me Caitlyn,” she offered. “Not–not the other one.”
“Alright,” Vi said. Caitlyn offered her a small smile, which she returned. It later dawned on her that that was the first genuine smile she’d cracked in weeks.
Caitlyn makes her another cup of tea, perhaps hoping that this time Vi would get the hint and say “coffee”. Vi ignores the glaringly obvious intention behind her well-meaning offer, and repeated her previous request.
“Take your feet off the lamp,” she admonished as she set down the tea in front of her. Vi rolled her eyes and lifted her feet off the bobbing light.
“So?” Vi prompted.
“Where to begin…” Caitlyn mused quietly. “Ah, yes. After the Tower of Babel fell.”
Vi nods encouragingly.
“Naturally, Jayce died there,” Caitlyn says matter-of-factly. “And so I had to take him. Now normally the instructions for where each soul is supposed to go are pretty clear. Some go to Heaven, some go to Purgatory, and others go to Hell. But there was nothing for Jayce. Think of it as a blank memo. I had no idea what to do with him.”
“Have you met any more souls like him?” Vi asks curiously.
“Very rarely,” Caitlyn says. “But it does happen.”
Vi opened her mouth to ask another question, but Caitlyn silenced her with a look.
“Anyway, I had two choices back then,” she continues. “I could either let him wander the Earth as a lost spectre, where he’d eventually fade away into God-knows-what, or I could ask him what he wanted. We didn’t really like the former option, so he offered me another.”
“Mmhm,” Vi says, placing her elbows on the countertop and leaning forward.
“Jayce said he had a mission to complete.”
“Everyone says that,” Vi scoffs. “You can’t just expect to get special treatment because of it.”
“I know,” Caitlyn replies tersely. “I wasn’t going to. But then he showed me something, and I decided to grant his request. Before you say anything dirty, it wasn’t any of his body parts.”
VI shut her mouth.
“He was blessed by an angel. And not just any angel. An angel so powerful I wouldn’t want to say his name in this vicinity. I have my theories about why Jayce was never given a clear destination for the afterlife, but it’s most likely that this angel was behind it.”
“Wow,” Vi whistles. “Well, I have a few angels in mind.”
“Make sure their names stay there, then,” Caitlyn says. Unlike The-so-very-omniscient Big Guy, angels did take a certain interest in Earth. The angels were Their messengers, after all, and whenever They were on another cosmic vacation, or whatever They were doing in Their free time, the angels were left in charge of overseeing human activity. The same applied for higher-ranking demons of Hell. When someone uttered their name, especially a Horseman, they both tended to notice. “Anyway, this angel had blessed Jayce under the condition he…carried out that mission.”
Vi raises her hand politely. Caitlyn hesitated, then allowed the question. “What is this mission?”
“Aha,” Caitlyn drops her gaze to stare at her teacup. “Well, you see…I don’t want to tell you right now. But that’s beside the point–Vi, don’t give me that look–let me finish, alright? So he pleaded with me for another chance, and since he had no place to go, I granted him another life.”
“Jayce has been alive for at least ten thousand years now,” Vi says slowly. “So this just repeats every couple of decades when you meet him again?”
Caitlyn looked uneasy. “You could say that.”
“I could?” Vi says, raising an eyebrow.
Caitlyn waves a hand in the air absentmindedly. “Well, he wasn’t always…unassigned.”
Vi let out a laugh and kicked back into her chair, crossing her arms. “Yeah, I kind of guessed since he’s hiding out here.”
“It was very recent,” Caitlyn says defensively. “Like, 2 days ago, recent.”
Vi very nearly drops the cup of tea on her lap. “Jayce died 2 days ago?”
“Yes. He’s been very careless about living since our entire arrangement.” Caitlyn shoots a glance behind her back into the corridor. “I worry about him sometimes.”
“Where was he assigned to?”
“Hell,” Caitlyn says, biting her lip. “The very darkest depths of it.” Vi sucked in a breath.
“That doesn’t seem like an assignment,” she says slowly.
Caitlyn shakes her head. “No. You’re right. It’s not. It’s a threat. After several thousand years, they’ve finally caught on. I don’t know why it has to be now, but Heaven will have no mercy for what we’ve done.”
Vi sat bolt upright in her seat. “The angel–”
“--Will be punished,” Caitlyn says quietly. “So will Jayce. And so will I.”
Vi grabs Caitlyn’s hand without thinking. “You can’t–”
“--And now you know, so will you. But leave this apartment right now and pretend you never heard anything, and you will only be tried for not informing them right away when you first saw Jayce reincarnate, as will Mel and Jinx. What awaits that angel and I is much, much worse.”
She knew what Caitlyn meant. “Caitlyn, you can’t. None of this is even your fault! This is the angel and Jayce’s business!” She let go of Caitlyn’s hand and gripped her by the sides of her face, her own wild, twisted expression reflected in cool blue irises. “Caitlyn, please.”
“I’m not going to give Jayce up,” Caitlyn replies with equal ferocity.
“I would never ask you to do that,” Vi says vehemently. “I know you far too well than to ask you to give up a friend. I’m just–” she dropped her face into the crook of Caitlyn’s shoulder. “I’m just so…furious for you.”
Caitlyn’s hands linger at her sides before Vi feels her palms press tentatively against her back, grounding her.
“What’s the mission, Caitlyn?” Vi asks, her voice muffled in Caitlyn’s robe. “What’s the angel and Jayce doing that both Heaven and Hell are so terrified about?”
“If I tell you,” Caitlyn whispers, her breath warm against the shell of Vi’s ear, “I am sentencing you to the same fate I will face.”
“Cait,” Vi raises her head, hands planted firmly on Caitlyn’s shoulders. “I don’t fucking care. Let me do this with you. The world’s ending anyway.”
Caitlyn looked almost apologetic. “The coming of the apocalypse may have something to do with their finding out.”
Vi’s brain is close, oh so close, to short-circuiting. “They’re so afraid of what Jayce and the angel are trying to do that they’d wipe out the entire world just so their plan wouldn’t work?”
“That’s what we believe, yes,” Caitlyn says, a slight tremble in her voice. Vi doubted that was because of the hangover.
“You guys are making out already?” Jayce’s incredulous voice cut through the air. Caitlyn startled and moved out of arm’s reach, wrapping her robe tightly around herself.
Warm skin under her fingers replaced with cold air, Vi dropped her head in her hands, as if by compressing her skull between her palms could somehow stop the whirling pandemonium in her mind. When she looked back up again, she knew she probably looked like a madwoman, because Jayce took a few fearful steps back as she moved purposefully towards him, one foot carefully in front of the other, because if she didn’t the world would teeter on its axis and fade to black.
“Jayce,” she says finally, her voice shaking more than she’d have liked it to, “tell me what you and the angel have been planning, or I will drag you down to wherever you’re supposed to be in Hell myself.” She saw in Jayce’s eyes that he believed her.
“All right,” he said, desperately trying to regain his composure. “But if I tell you, this means that we’re a team. You, Cait, me and Viktor–”
“--That’s the bastard’s name, is it?” Vi snarls.
Jayce throws his hands up in surrender, nearly stumbling backwards. “--Easy. Please let me finish before you kill me. I need to know if you can be trusted with this information, and I need to know if you’re willing to die for our cause. Before I start telling you anything, you have to do something for me.”
“Jayce,” Caitlyn says warningly.
“Cait, please,” Jayce says placatingly, throwing her a reproachful look. Caitlyn still looked wary, but nodded her head for him to continue.
“Go with Cait to pick up Viktor. And if you get him out successfully, I will tell you everything. In fact, it’ll probably be better with Vik there. It’ll make more sense.”
Vi stills, recovering from the whiplash of the situation.
“Where is he?” she asks.
“Paris. Or at least that’s what he told me yesterday.”
“Paris?” Vi says incredulously. “Can’t he just jump on the Eurostar and meet us here?”
Jayce spread his arms placatingly. “He’s being held there before the Trial. There will probably be a battalion of angels guarding him, but between you and Cait, you might just be able to break him out. Come on. You’re literally the Horseman of War, Vi. Or Chaos, whichever you prefer.”
Vi looks at him, unimpressed. “You do realize that you’re asking us to start a war with Heaven, right?”
“Please,” Jayce says, the desperation clear on his face as he falls to his knees. “Vi, I wish I could go with you. I really, really, do. But Heaven will have my neck once they find me, and this time I’m going to stay dead and I cannot fail Viktor. Save my partner, and I promise I will tell you everything.”