Page 20 of At The End There Was You

“So, you agree? He is angry at us.” Her eyes widened. “He is only finishing what we started.”

“You would be an impeccable storyteller.” A pretty one at that.

“Why, you don’t think that is it? You said it yourself—”

“I was only searching for something that humankind has not used against each other in hopes to find something we can use in less than four days.”

“Something he wouldn’t expect, you mean?” she asked him, almost…retracted. “To kill him.”

He nodded and Winter’s chest and shoulders rose faster. “Why kill him? I thought we only wanted to stop what he will do, not that.”

“Death does not deserve your sympathy, Winter, nor does he need it.”

“I wouldn't speak on his behalf. Perhaps he wants my sympathies. Especially when the highest order of the most powerful people who are supposed to be loyal to him have sent someone to find out a way to get rid of him entirely. What then?”

He didn’t tell her that the high order who had sworn to him were planning things far worse for Death. He didn’t tell her that it had never been about stopping the plague, but defeating him. He didn’t tell her that they were about to use every little invention, humane or not, to end him. “Then you’re free of him.”

“No more death,” she whispered.

“Exactly.”

“And then?”

“What more could there be?”

She began breathing heavily. “Do we just live forever?”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

“I…I can’t. I mean, we simply can’t. What would be the meaning of life?”

His brows rose. “Why would that be a burden upon Death’s shoulders? Why is the meaning of life defined by him?”

“How is it not? It is in all senses. The span of it is decided by him. The reasons for living and fighting to live are defined by him. The need to live and outlive are defined by him. Life revolves around death, not the other way around.”

Azriel realised it then, what he’d missed in her evaluation on the matter. She wasn’t giving him sympathy. Not as much as she was asking of him to give her. “You don’t want that, do you?” he said instead of what he really wanted to say, You want to die. He’d met people willing and wanting to die, but not those waiting to die. Some would argue that they were all waiting for Death and they’d find him eventually. But no, Winter had taken a stool and sat on his door and was waiting. He needed to know why.

Her lips parted and a sheen glazed her eyes, but she looked away before Azriel could make sense of it, of what it meant. “Doesn’t matter what I want.”

“It does. I told you that what you want should always matter, Winter.”

“But it doesn’t, does it?” she whispered, her lips trembling. “I am not the shepherd, Azriel. He found meaning in life, he’d always known its meaning. I don’t think I ever can. But going to hell is not half as bad as remaining in this world and never being able to find that meaning no matter how desperately you seek it. To be left here with answers that you are nothing, were nothing and will be nothing for an eternity is worse than what we have to face after death.” Her chair groaned loudly as she pushed it back and stood, fleeing the table towards the far end of the library.

He would go after her, but only after she had a moment alone. Azriel knew she needed that. He’d need it himself a few times before. He took that moment to think about what she’d said, about why she felt that she was nothing, about why she felt hopeless for her future even before Death’s plague.

With a sigh, he closed his book. He already knew all he needed to know, all the ways the humankind could harm Death.

For a moment after he stood, he hesitated. What if he saw her cry? He couldn’t see her cry—not her.

“I’m alright now, you can come,” she spoke quietly, still buried beneath the darkness of the shelves.

He found her on the ground by the section with the letter ‘A’, holding a book tightly to her chest. Her cheeks were red, meaning she’d cried, and Azriel had lost the opportunity to bring her comfort.

She opened the book and turned it to show him the page. “I can’t find your name on the name registry.”

It looked like she still somehow had found comfort in him. Azriel crouched down to her, pinching a strand of red hair between his fingers. “I can find yours in about a million books. Why were you named after the coldest season?”

Her glassy tawny eyes dropped on her locks now wrapped around his finger. “I was born on the solstice. It was fitting. The midwife named me.”