Mortals often wondered which had come first: death or time?

Death knew they asked the wrong question entirely, for why did it matter? What was time to a mortal other than the yardstick by which they measured the encroachment of their inevitable demise? Death and time had come into existence in the same moment of creation, though they would not leave this plane together: the last thing Death would reap was time.

So for an existence unmeasurable by any mortal means, Death walked in the universe alone. Stars were born and flared and died, continents churned and consumed each other, life bloomed and swam and flew—and then it began to walk on two legs—and then it began to pray.

And suddenly, Death wasn’t alone any longer.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice echoing in the shrieking wind and the echoing creak of glaciers.

The being—the woman—in front of him smiled. “Hello,” she said, and in her voice was the balm of a thousand springs. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“But who are you?” he asked, for no living thing had seen him, not in all the eons of his existence.

“I’m Hope,” she said, that coy smile still toying with her lips.

Though the wind was raging now, and snow fell down in pellets too hard to be called ‘flakes’, she didn’t shiver, nor was her smooth skin flecked with goosebumps. Her white robes looked much like his own black clothing, though her hair was long and free, and her feet were bare.

She gestured at the huddled figures in the back of the shallow cave, sitting as close to the flickering fire as they could. “They made me.”

Hope. The word echoed in Death’s mind, sounding like the creak of growing forests and the hum of entangled stars.

“The humans made you?” he asked, unsure if she was toying with him.

“They did,” she confirmed, turning back to watch the shivering group. “They tell themselves that fates can change, and situations can improve, and perhaps things will get better—despite all odds, they hope. And so now they have me.”

“They welcome me,” said Death defensively, still off-balance in the presence of this other. “In the last second, when the inevitable has become clear—then, they welcome me. I put an end to their suffering.”

“And I help them through it,” said Hope.

Death noticed that she was flickering now, translucent like the smoke trailing up from the newly extinguished fire. Her lips had gone blue, and her smile was tinged with sadness.

“They do welcome you, in the very end,” she agreed. Now her robes billowed in the wind, and her hair formed a tangled golden halo around her face. “As will I.”

Death reached for her, but Hope was gone—Hope was gone, and he had work to do.

With gentleness and respect, but no regret, Death collected the souls that no longer shivered around the cold remains of their fire. He rode with five souls to the end of all things, and there he left them—left them with Hope, for she had been reaped, too. And that… he did regret.

~*~

 

He found her again when ash rained from the sky, and the earth trembled like the wrath of non-existent gods.

“Hello,” said Hope, perched on the edge of a limestone roof. Her legs dangled freely over a fifty-foot drop, and her golden hair had been braided around her head like a crown. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“That is… foolish,” said Death, dropping to sit beside her. The brilliant blue sea churned with fleeing boats and choppy waves, but along the far horizon the water was blue and clear. “I am everywhere, in every exhale and shiver, in every turning of the earth.

“But I can’t talk to the encroachment of winter, or the gentle tunneling of worms through the soil,” said Hope, scooting ever so slightly closer to Death. She was warm—he could feel it. “I can talk to you.”

That anyone, anywhere wanted to talk with him was a novelty.

“Where do you go, when your work is done?” asked Hope as the earth shook once more, and the volcano belched clouds of fast-moving poison.

“There is a place,” said Death slowly, trying to describe a place that defied language and physics both. “A soft darkness, between the atoms of the universe. Endless and vast and warm.”

“And the souls?” Hope asked. Her smile had slipped away now, and there was a greenish hue to her features. When she reached for Death’s hand, he didn’t pull it away.

“I carry them to the door, and help them through,” he said honestly. “I can tell you no more than that.”

“I have seen the door,” said Hope gently as she flickered beside him.

“I know,” said Death, as gentle as a dropped feather, as Hope died again. He held her essence to him as he collected souls from beneath ashes and water and pain, and carried them to the place where all things ended. As he passed Hope from his hands to the door, she disappeared again.

 

~*~

 

The next time Death met Hope, he wasn’t in the world of the mortals.

“I found you,” she said, briefly pressing her cheek to his like a cat stopping itself against a friendly hand. She was so warm, so trusting and surprising, that Death caught himself embracing her right back.

“You’re brighter,” he said, his voice creaking like rusty hinges, rough and low with disuse.

“Yes,” said Hope, settling in beside him. “There are more humans now, and they encourage each other. In encouraging each other, they strengthen me.”

“I have always been as I am,” said Death, making room for Hope beside him. The universe was ever-expanding: there could be plenty of room for Hope. “I don’t change.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Hope, scooting around so that her face was cradled on his shoulder and her fingers could trace patterns and spells over his chest. “But I like you the way you are.”

“You do?” asked Death, catching her hand in his before her wandering fingers stole his wits the same way humans had snatched fire from Fate.

“You’re… a kind Death, I think,” said Hope. “You come when the pain is too much, and you never blame or judge.”

“All will meet me,” said Death, baffled. “Why would I judge how that happens? Why would I judge the flowers that bloom to die, or the mountains that are worn down to sand?”

“Like I said,” said Hope, tilting her face to look up at him with summer-perfect eyes. “A kindly Death.”

Death didn’t need to sleep, but he rested against Hope in the soft place just beyond where starlight could reach. He was feeling something new, something he couldn’t quite give voice to yet: a sort of diffused, happy warmth. Something that needed no action or cultivation to maintain, and inspired no sense of urgency within him. Joy, but without the burning brightness of its temporary nature.

With Hope in his arms, Death was content.

 

~*~

 

Death reaped Hope over and over and over—from rooms filled with mourners and bloodletters, from workhouses, from lowly mud huts and walled castles alike. He reaped her over and over, and yet every time Hope seemed happy to see him.

Deep within Death’s still breast, something warm started to grow.

 

~*~

 

Eventually, Death started to look for Hope in the warm dark nothingness. He was no longer content to wait for his visits the way earthly farmers waited for rain. And because he was Death, and not a thing alive could hide from him, he found her. She was basking on a smooth, sun-warmed rock that stretched endlessly on in the void beyond comprehension, and Death shucked his robes and joined her on it.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, though there was no petulance in her voice.

“I’m sorry,” said Death, enjoying her soft weight when she shifted to sprawl on top of him.

Death was a creature outside of time, so he would have been hard-pressed to know how long she lay atop him, her elfin face tilted down seriously towards his. He couldn’t have measured it in seconds or minutes (not by mortal gauge) but he could count time in the number of Hope’s heartbeats and the soft, warm exhalations of her breath against his chest.

Two thousand, four hundred and three heartbeats after Hope had curled atop him, she did something Death would never forget. She bent her head to his and kissed him; kissed like it was all she’d wanted to do for the whole of her short existence- and Death found that it was all he wanted, too. After an eon of sameness, Death wanted. Death wanted her.

His hand clenched in the soft curls at the nape of her neck and he kissed her the way he’d seen mortal lovers do, with warm lips and a soft, open mouth and a flirting tongue. Hope wriggled, sighing summer breezes into his mouth, and Death discovered that other parts of him wanted as well.

 

~*~

 

Police lights whirred into the night, casting sickly, pulsing shadows over the road. Hope had arrived before him (but then, she always did). Her hair was loosely braided down her back, and beneath the soft glow of her sun-tinged skin her face was pale.

“Tell me there are more of us,” she asked, turning into Death’s arms as soon as she saw him. “If the humans made me—surely, surely we aren’t alone. Couldn’t there be someone else? Justice? Freedom?”

Death pressed his cheek to the top of Hope’s head. Their conversation was invisible to the young reporter standing only a few feet away, frantically typing notes into her phone: lone gunman—deacon of his church—manifesto found on laptop—revenge on the women who—

“Justice and freedom are only ideas, my love.”

Hope shifted closer to him. “So am I.”

“No,” said Death, watching as cloth-draped bodies were wheeled out of the clinic. “You’re a feeling. Something that doesn’t need words to exist. Justice and freedom can mean anything, and so they mean nothing.”

“I wish—” said Hope, even as she began to fade in Death’s arms.

“I know,” he said softly, not willing to let her go any more quickly than he had to.

Sirens blared and cameras rolled and political lines were drawn. Hope faded, and Death reaped.

Death was already turning in search of Hope as the last of the departed souls passed through the Door. He had reaped her countless times, and would reap her over and over again, and it was starting to wear against his soul the way the tide ate at great stone cliffs—at least it would, if he thought he had a soul.

He found her in the place between worlds, and now that gentle blackness seemed cold and barren, where it had before been womb-like and warm. Hope was curled on her side, pensive and alone.

“I would change it, if I could,” said Death, curling himself around her.

“I know,” said Hope. “And yet, if given the choice, I wouldn’t want to leave them alone.”

Death pressed his face into the soft mass of Hope’s curls. “Does it hurt?” It was a question he’d wondered for eternity, and had never given voice.

Hope turned in his arms, curling so that they were face to face. “Every time,” she told him, her fine features somber. “Until the very end. But I know you’ll always be there.”

“I would take it, if I could,” said Death. I love you.

“I know,” said Hope, smiling a little. “But Death cannot die.”

“Sometimes—” He couldn’t give voice to the rest. That he wished he could put his mantle down, that he wished that he could be mortal with her, to share a fleeting lifetime if only they could be together. “I wish it wasn’t me.”

“I’m glad it’s you,” said Hope, tracing her hand slowly over his chest. “No matter what happens, I know you’ll come for me.”

It was the oddest, most twisted form of comfort that Death had ever heard. And yet, he loved her for it. “I will,” he promised, leaning in to drag his lips chastely over hers. “I’ll always come for you.”

“You’ll come for everyone,” said Hope, smiling under his mouth.

And just like that, the tone of their conversation had turned entirely.

“Are you calling me unfaithful?” Death teased, nipping at her bottom lip.

“Oh, no,” said Hope, scraping her nails down Death’s shoulder. “I would never be so blunt as all that. You’re a man of broad and varied tastes.”

He’d show her broad and varied tastes.

In the soft, cozy darkness of their nook between realities, Death loved Hope. Hope, for her part, loved him right back.

 

~*~

 

“The humans used to say that if a lion and a human could speak the same language, they still wouldn’t be able to communicate,” said Death, watching as burning meteors streaked across the sky. Meteor showers were strange affairs: they were one of the few things that were just as beautiful whether they were viewed from inside or outside of earth’s atmosphere.

“That seems silly,” said Hope. “Why couldn’t the lion and the person talk with each other?”

“Because language is just the surface problem,” said Death, watching as pieces of otherwise dull debris burned spectacularly through the atmosphere. “The philosopher argued that the real barrier would be perception: that the lion and the human would perceive their reality so differently, it wouldn’t make any difference what language they spoke.”

“That’s so—that’s just like a man,” said Hope, idly braiding long pieces of fragrant summer grass into a crown. “Some things are always the same.”

“Like what?” Death asked, laying back and watching the brilliant death of space rocks high above.

“Like love,” said Hope without missing a beat. “To be warm and fed. To feel safe. To feel the gentle ache of a job well done.”

“I don’t think lions love,” said Death, gently nudging Hope’s thigh with his shoulder.

“I don’t think we get to define what love is or is not,” said Hope. “Besides: I’d rather err on the side of loving than the alternative.”

Chastised as only a man in love could be, Death pulled Hope down to lay beside him. “I think about that lion more than I should. Would I be able to talk with the humans I reap? Or would it be like a human attempting to bond with a mayfly: fleeting and insignificant. Do mayflies understand the burning of the day?

“And then there are tortoises,” said Death, warming to his topic. “What does a day feel like to a tortoise? What does a year?”

“I don’t know,” said Hope. “But I wish we could ask them.”

“Sometimes I think that humans’ compressed lifetimes lead to their ingenuity and passion,” said Death, idly stroking his hand up and down over Hope’s back. “Would humans be so… belligerent if they lived for a thousand years? Would they still burn through the world the way those pieces of shrapnel flame through the sky?”

“I don’t know,” said Hope thoughtfully. “But I’ll tell you this: I have eternity with you, and I suspect it still won’t be enough. I’d guess that any limited amount of time feels like a cheat.”

Death didn’t tell Hope that one day he would live to reap time. He wouldn’t give voice to the worry that by then he would have reaped Hope, and she won’t have come back. Instead he looked down at the perfect, wonderful woman in his arms and tickled her.

She wriggled, giggling, and Death played back, growling and kissing Hope every time she tried to squirm away. They played like puppies, rolling and snapping their teeth, until Death found himself cradled between Hope’s thighs, with her flushed face smiling up at him.

“I love you,” he told her, and in that moment he was every lovestruck boy hopelessly infatuated with his girl.

“Forever and ever,” she agreed, with the light of a million already-dead stars reflected in her eyes.

 

~*~

 

All things end.

Humanity burned to their bitter end, leaving the world as furiously as they had done all that came before. 

Life lasted longer, and so did Hope. She’d grown too old to fade completely, but she was weak, unable to leave the soft nothingness of their velvety black home. Together, twined as close as two beings could be, they watched as stars burned themselves into spectacular dark voids. Gravity warped, the universe expanded and expanded yet more, past the comprehension of anything, including Death.

Bathed in the light of dying stars, Death and Hope loved each other with the desperation of the unsure. Their existence was approaching its end, and neither of them could predict when the day would come.

The universe continued to cool. Death and Hope continued to love each other.

And then (after several trillion of Hope’s heartbeats since humans had breathed their last) Death rose with the knowledge of his final task. It had come, as the little insistent tugs of all reapings did.

It was time.

(It was time.)

And still Hope slumbered beside him. She hadn’t faded away in his arms—at least, not yet.

“I have to go,” said Death, crouching beside her. Her hair was as brilliant as it had ever been, and her skin was just as fine. The only place he could see her age was in the crinkle of her eyes and the weariness of her smile.

“Is it…?”

“Yes,” said Death. “And I’d like you to come with me.”

Hope smiled widely at that, once more the mysterious girl he’d met at the end of an ice age so long ago. “As if I’d let you go without me.”

Oh, but he loved her.

Hand in hand they walked past a few dull, still-burning stars. They were alone in a preternaturally darkened sky; what little light the frozen stars made was absorbed by the grasping darkness of empty void. They walked through the trailing mists of time, the slow and cooling entropy of the universe, through the hopes and dreams of all the humans who had burned so furiously and brightly.

Together they walked, hand in hand, to the end.

“How do you reap existence?” Hope asked, looking up at him with eyes that were still so full of trust.

With the hand not holding Hope, Death opened the door. Around them, everything- matter and gravity and time and worry and love and everything wonderful and terrible- faded away.

“It’s so quiet,” said Hope, looking around.

Death began to flicker.

He looked down at his hands, and then up at Hope in shock. “But—I’m Death.”

Hope smiled at him, her love the only benediction he’d ever needed. “Apparently,” she said, holding him close. “You have hope.”

Death shook his head.

“You’re the reason I didn’t fade when humanity died. Oh, my darling. I love you so much.”

Death felt weak, but nothing hurt. The only thing that existed was Hope, and she was all he’d ever needed.

“I can’t leave you here,” he said, even as the door called to him.

“You won’t,” said Hope.”

“How do you know?” asked Death, already most of the way across the threshold.

The last thing he saw was her perfect, beloved face. “Because you always, always find me.”

And so, Death died.

 

~*~

 

There was nothing—no matter, no reality, no identity with which to think—and then there was her.

“But… we died,” said the man who had formerly been Death. “Everything ended.”

She didn’t bother with a reply. She fisted her hands in the material of his shirt, went on her toes, and kissed him. It felt like coming home, like every familiar and good and wonderful thing that he’d never allowed himself to long for. He kissed her like a man who intended to die that way (again); to suffocate from a lack of air if only it meant he could have a few more minutes wrapped up in the only person who had ever mattered.

Finally, two hundred heartbeats later, they broke apart.

“I don’t know where this is,” she said, as the distant horizon faded to blue and headed towards lavender.

“I don’t care, because I know what it is.”

“Oh you do, do you?” she said, pressing herself back against him as they watched a brilliant, burning, near-painful sunrise. “Then what is it?”

“A beginning,” he said, and bent to kiss Hope once more—always once more. “A new start. For us, and everything that comes after.”