Chapter Text
My heart has grown nocturnal. The only time it wakes up is to see her soul arise over the horizons of my periphery. The moon is just big enough to see and not touch. You are in reach, almost in my grasp but not close enough to hold. You are my everlasting moonflower. Until I can have you again, I will have no choice but to admire your beauty from afar. Until that day comes, I hope nothing damages your petals, robs you of your seeds, or poisons your roots. My beautiful moonflower .
They let her keep her eyes this time. How gracious. Their kindness was almost sarcastically laughable. These are the same eyes I have grown to love, and I have seen them love me in my darkest hours. Now they will not even recognize the man in front of them. No matter how hard I beg for her eyes to trigger the memories they’ve tucked away behind baneful prison bars, they continue to look at me in confusion and bewilderment. I know because I have tried that already. I have tried to shake those memories loose, but it seems they are cemented in place.
It feels like I no longer exist to her. Every meeting is a sore reintroduction to the monster I have become to her. Unfortunately, I will continue to be that for as long as this sentence permits. I think that's what hurts the most; bless her with beautiful eyes that do not see and endless love that goes unfulfilled and I can do nothing to change either. I’m only to bear witness to lifetimes of her being so full, she is empty. This divine punishment is divinely evil.
The years go by, and I’ve learned that I’ve grown resilient to time. I do not age. My bones do not grow creaky, nor do they pop or wince in pain. My skin has not lost its luster or spirit. My smile has not fallen or faded but I have elected not to show it until she’s in my arms once again. I’ve not changed at all but still, she does not identify me.
Maybe my eyes resemble more of death, I suppose. They once were brown, the color of the healthiest earth below stunningly large trees and the lush green forest hillsides long eroded and gone. If they are blackened now, I will not be surprised. What gave them life was her. It has always been her.
Yet here we are. Again.
“How do you wish to die?” If I could die, this would be what kills me. I’ve said this phrase more times than I wish to count, especially to her. I could say nothing, though it would be a bit easier, it hurts more to see the fear enveloping her body. I could tell her the truth but even that would be too much for her right now. She’s quite literally an echo of the goddess she once was. Besides, we are here because both of us broke a vow. I will not add to this abuse if I have a choice. If I had a choice, we both would’ve died in each other's embrace long ago as it should have been.
Despite all of this, she was still breathtakingly mesmerizing. I fondly remember taking every chance I could to bask in her glow. Stealing peeks of her supple flesh as it hugged the contours of her body when she walked and danced in the most graceful of manners. I was a lust-drunken bastard of a thief who had no shame. If she ever happened to meet my glance I would simply smile knowing she felt utterly seen by me. That was enough to make her blush. Her face became ever so slightly tinted in a peachy red hue as she rushed to avert her eyes after catching me soaking her in. She was adorable.
Something’s never changed. As she sat there contemplating the answer to the question of whether or not this was all some sick joke, I found myself burglarizing again, stealing glances and studying her beauty as if time had not changed or if we are not strangers once again.
Her eyebrows knit together in the most sultry of ways though I am sure that is not her intention. Her jaw is slackened, slightly hanging ajar, as if she’s prepared to say nothing and something at the same time. I see that familiar peachy red hue surfacing again. Despite the red lighting drenching her kitchen, it was fairly easy to discern. Perhaps it was so easy to see it because I miss seeing it on her. It pours over her as if it rained trickling from the night sky. She isn’t pale in fear but I can hear her heart. She is frightened.
In the past, she was always surrounded by opulence and luxury but there was always comfort. Pearls and precious gemstones from all of the nine galaxies were a constant item in her home. The finest foods and drinks were at her disposal. There was no problem she could not handle and no issue she could not conquer. An empress in every right. Yet in all of this remained humbled and decent. She would give it all away for a poor soul who begged her enough. She has given it all away for a poor soul who has cried more times than he would like to admit.
Forgive me.
She was the warmth I craved again after being so rigid for so long. Though my plan was to get this over with and leave, I found myself sitting across from her and mildly reminiscing about what was, albeit alone, but being in her presence was more than enough. Her home described her perfectly. Comfortable. Something I would match her with knowing her prior but she deserved more. She deserves better. This was comfy but this was not her home. Her home was closer than she would ever come to realize in this lifetime.
“I-I I have a choice?” She whispers. Her voice ached. It cried the tears she would not bring herself to do at this moment. An incredulous question paired with an incredulous snicker. Her lips perked into a curious but sore smirk. Correction, she isn’t frightened any longer, she’s upset.
“Yes, you do. If you’d rather not make that choice, I understand. I will make one for you.” Despite my cold and detached delivery, I wanted nothing more than to soothe her aches and caress her pain away. I guess I’ve grown numb to this part. I’ve asked this so many times that I refuse to count anymore. I had to realize that this part was simply a protocol, procedure. If I think of it as what it truly is, it only feeds my anger. I’m already her monster; I do not need to be her boogeyman as well.
“I’m shocked I have a choice, is all. Why?”
Punishment? Retribution? Penance? How can I tell her that it was a part of our sentence when the only crime she has committed was that she loved too soon and too loudly? However, the burden of executing our infraction is one that I must carry. I must deliver her from this life and the next hereafter until we have fully reaped what we have sown.
She gets to have a choice of how to die. A mere convenience for a lifetime of unjust reconciliation for a crimeless crime, for her. I get the honor and torment of releasing her soul from her vessel. There is no death in sight for me nor an end to my existence in my foreseeable future. However, a piece of me dies with her and the life that drains out of her corpse takes a piece of mine with it.
“I thought we just… go. The grim reaper is supposed to be the silent type anyways. Why do I have a conversation? Why do I get a choice?”
“You do not get a conversation. You get a choice. To convey this choice, I must converse. That is all.” I lied. I’m sorry. I crave every time to hear her voice in every lifetime I’ve seen her. I am selfish, I know.
“Then why do I get a choice Grim Reaper? Mr, Reaper? Grim? What do I call you?” She asks so boldly but still in evident shock.
“Grim Reaper is a title and not my name. My name is not important as you will not live long enough to remember it.”
“You’re about to kill me.” She began with a whisper. I can only watch as she lets tears trickle from her eye and glint in the low hum of red light. She fidgets uncomfortably trying to physically adjust to what she can’t wrap her head around emotionally or mentally. “Everything up until this point is null and void. I have only minutes, if that, on the clock. Can I at least know your name? If everything else I’ve worked for until this point means nothing, you have to mean something.”
Please don’t cry, my everlasting moonflower. I beg of you! - I find myself screaming at her mentally. Her ache pains me more than anything.
“My name is Azrae.” I have not lied yet, it just feels like it. This is one of my names but this is not the name she knows me by. It is not the name that she has sung whenever she used to see me walking the grand corridors of our former home. That is not the name that was coated in libations when she carded her fingers through my hair. That's the only explanation as to why it lumbered me to sleep. Hearing her voice was pure inebriation and her hands were further distillation. That was not the name she moaned during the highs of her peaks or the one she screamed during the lows of her valleys. However, this name will have to do. It has to.
“Azrae. That’s a beautiful name.” She pauses for a moment, sniffles wrack her body as she tries to compose herself. The tears still fall like ruby rain upon her skin and she still adorns her blush. Now it's more tinted than before. “What does it mean?”
She pauses for a moment. Our eyes meet as if it were our first time seeing each other again. The curious glow twinkled in her eye but now it's overcast with melancholy and anguish. This is no longer something I would associate with pain but rather a somberness. I can see the firm realization soaking into her brain that this is it. I’ve seen this on her so many times and each time it stings worse than the last to even witness.
“In short, it means the seventh sea. Gatekeeper of the Seventh Heaven.”
“…Azrae…”
“Yes.”
“I can choose any way out of this life, correct?”
“As long as you do not infringe on someone’s free will or conflict with their path, You can choose however which way you want to die?”
“Ya know… I’ve been fucked by the government, fucked by capitalism, fucked by the education system, fucked by society, and all around fucked by life. So now that I’m confronted with death, rather the harbinger of it, I ask that you make love to me.’’
“You wish to die making love? To death?”