Original -- The City Adel; "Caretaker" Title: Caretaker Author/Artist:ivoryandhorn Fandom: original -- the City Adel Pairing/Characters: Jozas, Ivahn, & Annetta Rating: PG-13 Warnings: someone has died just before this piece begins Prompt Answered:Jozas and Ivahn: the memory cannot keep me warm / but it never leaves me cold Author's Notes: Loose interpretation of theme, ahahahayeah. Ahem. This one needs a little background. In the interests of clarity I'll just outright say that in this continuity, Ivahn and his family are vampires. I don't normally play around with Ivahn's family, and haven't touched Jozas for a long time, so it was kind of neat to touch on both of those things with this.
“Wake up,” Jozas heard him say as he arrived. “Please, please…oh god, Annetta, please…wake up.”
Jozas watched for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. Finally he cleared his throat loudly. The man’s face snapped up to his, wary.
“I’m here for her,” Jozas declared. “Her uh, soul, that is.”
“But she’s so young,” he said brokenly, still clinging to the body. The girl’s chest was stained by a red bloom, obscene against the pale blue of her blouse.
Fuck. Jozas hated it when they talked back. “I’m sorry,” he said. People died every day; this girl wasn’t any more or less significant than any of the other souls he collected each day. “There’s…” he watched the man swallow. “You can’t…?”
“No,” Jozas said. “No deals, no exceptions. That’s not how death works. Especially for your kind.”
He saw the man flinched and cursed himself; wooden stake through the heart of course he should’ve known. Grandfather would’ve known exactly the right thing to say.
“Sorry,” he repeated lamely. For what, he didn’t know exactly.
“It’s okay,” the man whispered, letting the body go. Jozas watched as he carefully laid out the girl’s corpse, smoothed the clothes down her body, though he flinched when his hands accidentally brushed the stake. He laid her arms over her body, crossed at the wrists.
“I think they normally go across the chest,” Jozas said awkwardly.
“I know,” the man said in a small voice, “but there’s not really…I mean…” And Jozas hated himself again because way to go, screwed it up twice in one collection.
Jozas cleared his throat as the man gently closed the eyes. “Do you have anything else you want to say before…”
“Will she…” the man looked up at him for the first time, and Jozas looked back for a long moment. “…I mean, we’re not really religious but is she going to…”
Jozas reached for the book hanging from the chains on his belt. “She’s not going to hell, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said, flipping through it for the entry marked Chandlerson, Annetta. “She was young, that makes her pretty blameless…never touched live blood, that counts in her favor…” He stared down at the page for a moment when he finally found her name. After a long moment he snapped it shut. “She’ll be okay.” Feeling he had to make up for what he’d seen next to her name, he added “I’ll make sure of it,” on an impulse.
The man smiled just a little, very weakly, and then it faded back into his face and he looked down at his sister’s corpse, smoothing he hair from her forehead. “I…I guess…” He took a deep breath. “Okay, I…I guess you…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Have a job to do.”
Jozas nodded and hefted his scythe. Delicately, he slit her throat. Something like a wispy copy of the girl drifted out after the blade, though her chest did not have a piece of wood rammed through her torso, which was definitely a plus. With her face no longer unnaturally still and pale, she looked…different. Jozas would even go so far as to say pretty, now that her features were fully animated. It wasn’t necrophilia if he wasn’t planning to screw her, after all.
“Ivahn?” she called as she drifted up to Jozas’ side. “Ivahn, why’re you cry…who’re you?” Jozas regarded her coolly. “Guess,” he said. He switched the hand holding his scythe.
“You’re…” she goggled. “You’re Death?”
“How many people do you know voluntarily walk around in a great big black cloak and carry a fucking scythe?” He sighed at her taken aback look and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. You have to go now, Annetta.”
She looked back at the man and then back at Jozas. “So what’s going to happen to me?” Jozas thought of the entry in his book, with UNDET tersely written in the AFTLIF column. Somehow he sensed saying “I have no fucking clue” would not exactly be the most reassuring thing to say. “That’s what I’m going to find out,” he said. He held out a gloved hand. “Ready?”
He followed her gaze back to the man who, by the looks of things, had dissolved completely into sobs. Jozas turned away. Human emotion made him uncomfortable, especially when it was so…blatant. Annetta watched him calm and curious. At least she wasn’t screaming for a lawyer or doctor or whatever. “Alright,” she said at last, with one more backward glance. Her hand fit snugly in his.
“Boyfriend?” he asked as they shifted between worlds. “He looks a little old for you, to be honest.”
“Brother,” she replied. “He's...always looking out for me. Though I guess that’s kind of your job, now. I heard your promise,” she added sweetly.
“Fuck,” Jozas groaned, just as they arrived at the manor.