Re: first class ; baths
"No." If only it could vanish, rising into the air like vapor and disappearing into nothing. Would that it were so easy. "It must be contained, kept away from the living." Death had, for as long as he could remember, tied up all loose ends. The boy was proof that there were those who slipped through the cracks but he harmed no one this way, caught in limbo. To die would be for his benefit, no one else's. "Fair is not for the likes of me," he told him, almost kindly, at least so much as Death could be. "This is my purpose. It is what I have always done, and always will. There cannot be life without death, nor death without life." Anything else, wisps of humanity and blood pumping through his veins, must only have been dreams. Waking ones, for he did not sleep, or overflow of the lives he took, perhaps. He had never known another existence.
He did not judge. If the boy wished to say goodbye, he could. If he wished to not, then he could do so, or not do so. Whether or not the girl understood or thought of him did not matter. In death, nothing mattered. It was blissful, peaceful nothing. He would not keep the boy for himself, would not deny him the release he sought.
Death would set him free.
"You have nothing to fear. I know how tired you must be, for you have suffered too long. But no more. Rest, now." When the boy offered his hand he took it in his own and pulled him close, his last embrace. Like ice creeping across a lake the cold spread, an icy burn that brought pleasant numbness in its wake. Loss of feeling, first, then a slowing of his heart, stilling of breath, until he breathed his last and his heart gave one single beat. Save for the initial sting it was very much like falling into a deep, deep slumber, from which he would not awaken. And in the waiting darkness no monsters lurked; instead, there was peace.