It’s 3pm on a rainy Wednesday, and Hob is sleepily grading student papers, when Death of the Endless appears in his flat, lies quietly down on the couch, and rests her head in his lap.
Hob stares down at her for a long moment, hands aloft in indecision, because this is not... something they do. By now he can say he calls Death a friend, and they get drinks together sometimes and chat, but this...
“Everything alright, love?” he asks, finally resting a hand on her shoulder.
“I don’t mean to disturb your peace,” Death says quietly. The TV Hob’s left on as background noise—some silly cooking show—nearly drowns out her voice entirely.
“Nothing peaceful about trying to find nice ways to tell my students they can’t write for shit,” Hob says, pushing his papers away. He can’t see Death’s face well like this, but he doesn’t like the uneven sound of her voice, not when she’s usually so level. “Disturb away.”
After a long moment in which they both just listen to the TV program host blather on about crumpets, Death says, “I am not affected by deaths.”
“…Alright,” Hob says, though he’s not convinced.
“I am…” Death continues, but trails off on a breath like a whistle of cold wind. “May I... stay here awhile?”
“‘Course.” Hob carefully pets at her head, strokes her hair. Worry is building, but he doesn’t think Death needs him to pull her words out of her the way he sometimes has to with Dream. She will speak when she’s ready. “Do you want to hear some truly fascinating attempts at historical analysis? Or is peace and quiet what you’re looking for?”
“You can speak if you wish,” Death says, still in that quiet tone.
So Hob tells her about some of his students, the ones who truly seem to have some promise in the field, and the others who he’s pretty sure are just mangling their papers together from sentences out of one of those AI things, if the originality is anything to go by. It’s disappointing but does make for humorous reading. Though really, Hob’s not sure whether to laugh or despair when he has to read lines like War has negative effects on people in an actual university academic paper. Wow, you don’t say.
He does manage to get a few chuckles out of his friend, but none with her usual humor and enthusiasm, and eventually he trails off, and they listen quietly to the background noise of the TV.
“Is there anything I can do?” Hob asks quietly.
“Can you control the future, Hob?” Death asks, a rhetorical question without any of her usual lightheartedness.
“Can’t even control the present,” Hob says. He just keeps his hands on her, one on her shoulder, one on the top of her head. Grounding, he hopes. And he thinks on what she’d said.
Hob knows that Destiny is the only Endless that operates in the future, but he has wondered, now that he understands them a bit better, if Death may not have a foot in that direction as well. She must know, some way, how to be where she must when she must.
Death has never seemed overly burdened by the past, even though history is a tower of bones a hundred miles high. Hob had asked, once — do all those terrible things ever bother you? you were there for them all —and all she had said was, “It has already happened,” with neither pleasure nor pain, just acceptance.
The future is another matter entirely.
“Is something going to happen?” he asks.
“I will not burden you with knowledge that is not yours to carry,” Death says.
So, that’s a yes.
“Maybe I could do something about it,” Hob suggests, though he suspects where that query will lead.
“You could not.”
“What about you, then?”
“That is not my place,” she says, though she sounds less certain about it than she usually is when discussing her function.
“You sure?” Hob asks.
“Were I to change fates for some, what excuse would I have for not doing so for all? Unfair things happen hourly, and always will. If I upend the balance, there is no telling how things would tip out of control down the road.”
It must be hard, Hob thinks, to be so powerful and yet so powerless.
“You did spare me,” he points out.
Death huffs, almost a laugh. “In truth, I shouldn’t have done that. Although I suspect Destiny had it written in his book for other purposes entirely.”
Huh. Well, that’s probably something Hob shouldn’t think on too hard for the sake of his own sanity.
“Well, I’m certainly not complaining about it,” Hob says, and Death chuckles.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asks, when they’ve been sitting for another few minutes in silence.
“I… do not have many friends,” Death says. Common family trait, then, Hob thinks. Not that it’s really so surprising. Death is very personable, but most of her interactions with people are, well… fleeting. And it can’t be easy to make normal friends, when you’re as expansive a being as one of the Endless.
“Stay for a while then,” Hob says. He pulls a blanket over her and tucks it around her shoulders. “Until you have to go.”
“Thank you, Hob,” says Death, still sounding incredibly weighed down by her function, but given a slight reprieve, perhaps.
Hob rubs her shoulder and thinks about these endless creatures he’s chosen to love. Do they have anyone else to worry about them? He doesn’t think so. It’s just Hob, and he doesn’t think that’s anywhere close to enough, but he’ll just have to do his best.
“Any time, love,” he tells her, and means it.
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