Jun 17
Cleaned up these Maury doodles for art fight because they were getting to me
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Cleaned up these Maury doodles for art fight because they were getting to me
Felt unsatisfied with my last cover spoof, so here's my girl again
A quick Batgirl as the subject for digital coloring practice
Post canon Billiewena :)
OH billiewena, one of my favorite pairings!!!! Not gonna lie, keeping this one short was a challenge because post canon billiewena makes me want to write a whole fix it fic BUT I hope I did them justice in this short fic.
Billie and Rowena share a moment together at the end of the world. Read on AO3 or under the cut.
The reshaping of a universe without Chuck would take time, is taking time, did take time and also took no time at all. Time had to be reinvented during the reshaping of the cosmos and it took centuries and it took milliseconds and it is still taking place and has been taking place since before Chuck came into existence.
Billie, as a being of the cosmos, can feel all the other cosmic beings reworking their way through the strings of creation and she can also feel one cosmic being who is uncharacteristically still among the frantic busyness of a universe being remade.
Rowena, ruler of Hell, is sitting along the coastline of St. Ninian’s Isle, sipping a carefully brewed cup of tea. She’s in a rocking chair on a porch looking out towards the coastline off in the distance. (The entire residence will be undone in the remaking of the new world; in fact, it has already been undone.) It’s overcast but not currently raining, with enough of a chill in the air that a human might be bothered by it.
“You’re having a cup of tea at the end of the world?” Billie asks her, appearing by her side.
“There’s nothing a nice wee cup of tea can’t fix,” the queen of hell responds, calmly taking a sip. “It’s Scottish blend, the finest. Do you think it will taste different after all of this is done?”
“To us, yes,” Billie replies. “To the humans, probably not.”
Rowena sighs, “Another lovely thing lost to the passage of time.”
“More like the restructuring of time,” Billie says.
“Would you care to stay and watch for a while?” Rowena asks her.
Billie moves to stand beside Rowena in her rocking chair, looking off into the distance in the same direction Rowena does.
“I don’t suppose you’d care for some?” Rowena asks, indicating the mug in her hands.
“Human creature comforts aren’t really…my thing,” Billie says, raising an eyebrow.
“They used to be my thing,” Rowena sighs. “All I ever wanted was…”
“To be unkillable and to have every comfort in the world,” Billie finishes for her.
“That’s not too much to ask, is it?” Rowena asks primly, taking another sip of tea.
“What’s troubling you, Rowena?” Billie asks. She can feel Rowena’s energy, so still among a universe of movement. The only stagnant area in the whole of existence right now is this quiet moment Rowena has manufactured.
“Every particle in the universe is changing and most people won’t even notice the difference,” Rowena says softly.
“You’ve seen a lot—for a human,” Billie says.
“I’m not a human any longer,” Rowena sighs.
“Do you wish you still were?” Billie’s never been human but she knows how sentimental they can be, she can feel all living things deeply through their connection to death. “You’re more powerful now than you ever were before.”
“No amount of power can make you happy. I learned that over the years,” Rowena says. “And my son…he sacrificed himself rather than stay in the role I currently have.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question,” Billie says.
“No one can stay a human forever,” Rowena replies, eyes distant as she looks towards the coastline. “Not even in this new, hopefully better world. I suppose my post human life is better than others.”
Billie refrains from pointing out that that answer is still a non-answer and instead she says, “This is different to the creation of the world and yet—still so similar.”
“You’ve seen a lot—for a reaper,” Rowena says.
“I’m not a reaper anymore,” Billie says.
“Do you wish you still were?” Rowena asks, taking another sip of her tea.
“Being Death is…different,” Billie shrugs. “Sometimes there’s no better or worse. Things just are the way they are.”
“Like my becoming queen of hell,” Rowena says, the tea cup in her right hand gently clinking as it hits the saucer in her left hand. “Though I suppose the transition was easier for you.”
“Perhaps not,” Billie says.
“It wasn’t easier for you?” Rowena asks. “Aren’t reapers and Death made of the same…stuff? You feel similar to your reapers.”
“I suppose it's true we were made from the same cosmic powers,” Billie says. “We are connected but we are not…one. And being Death it’s…the grand scheme of things is clearer. I’m no longer a reaper working as a single cog in the mechanism of fate. Now I’m…”
“The engineer sent to fix the mechanism of fate?” Rowena suggests.
“Hm, I suppose that’s an apt enough metaphor,” Billie says.
“And that’s hard for you? Hard enough that you think this change was easier for me?”
“Human beings…they’re in a constant state of flux,” Billie muses. "For a human to become something that is no longer human is just another change for you in your ever changing lives.”
“You thought you’d be a reaper forever,” Rowena says sympathetically.
“I’ve been a reaper since before this world was born, I always thought I’d be a reaper when it ended,” Billie says quietly.
Rowena sets her teacup down and stands up. Moving close to her, she gently places her hand on Billie’s face, her thumb stroking Billie’s cheekbone. Billie can feel her energy reaching out and Billie sighs a bit and allows Rowena in. Rowena had been one of the most powerful humans Billie had ever met but she had still been human. Now, as ruler of hell, she’s made of something more celestial. Rowena’s energy washes over her. Her steadfast resolve is something that Billie has always admired. Rowena has been knocked down many times and she has never failed to get back up again. It’s so very human of her and something that comforts Billie in this moment, when everything around her is changing. Rowena’s energy flows through her, an energy that knows how to meet adversity and bend but not break. Billie remembers when she comforted Rowena with words when she was a witch. Words were the only thing her human brain would have understood. Now Rowena is able to soothe her with a cosmic exchange of energies a human would never understand.
They stand there together while the reshaping of the world goes on around them, for a single moment and for many moments and for every moment that ever existed and ever will exist. They stand there while time stretches on and wraps around them and skips ahead and reverses and repeats, swirling frantically around this one moment held still by Rowena’s powers.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it,” Rowena gives Billie a sly smile. “And how are we feeling?”
“I feel fine,” Billie’s mouth twitches but she doesn’t allow herself to smile at Rowena’s joke.
“Will we still have that song in this brand new world order?” Rowena asks.
“In some iteration or another,” Billie says.
“I suppose I’ve been idle long enough,” Rowena sighs, letting her hand fall and stepping away. “Time to dive back into the chaos, then?"
“Well, it wouldn't be much of a universe without either of us," Billie says.
Rowena gives her a small, satisfied smile.
Billie dematerializes first, her consciousness moving away from the frozen moment she shared with Rowena and out towards the magnificent chaos of a whole universe being reorientated. Rowena soon follows, chasing after her into a swirling mass of primordial atoms that were to become and have become and are the brand new universe.
oooh I would love to read your spin on JoCassie! so if you wanna write a drabble abou them, that would be so amazing <3
JOCASSIE!!! Okay, I wasn't sure exactly where to go with this prompt at first until I realized what Jo and Cassie would both care about so deeply: work and love. So this is a small moment between Jo and Cassie, many many years in the future, after they've made a life together built around their shared passion.
Read on AO3 or under the cut.
"Cassie, you almost done?" Jo pokes her head into Cassie's office.
"Yeah, almost, almost," Cassie says. She's sitting at her desk, crouching over several stacks of paper with hundreds of streams of numbers across them. "Five more minutes."
"Your five minutes will turn into an hour," Jo laughs.
"Fine," Cassie sighs and pushes the piles away from her. Her back pops as she straightens up. "Oof, I'm getting too old for this."
"Pouring through some scumbag politician's financial records is a young man's game," Jo smiles at her and moves to rub Cassie's back. Cassie groans and leans into it, her shoulders relaxing as Jo's strong hands quickly work some of the tension out of her back.
"We need to hit the farmers market quick, I need to leave for Tupelo by 3."
"Tupelo, what's in Tupelo?"
"A rugaru," Jo says.
"A rugaru in tupelo?"
"No, but that would be really funny, wouldn't it?"
Cassie sighs, pretending to be too tired to laugh at Jo's silly joke.
"Just a newbie hunter out there," Jo continues, bringing her elbow up to put more pressure on the center of Cassie's back. "Garth wanted me to check in with them. It should be an easy salt and burn but he says it's taking them a bit too long to figure out what's keeping the spirit here."
"Do you think he'll ever retire and get his nose out of everybody else's business?" Cassie says, unable to keep the fondness out of her voice.
"Garth? Never," Jo says. "You know he's probably saying the same thing about us."
"Hey, I'm a reporter," Cassie says. "All self respecting reporters work until they drop dead at their desks."
"Yeah, and all hunters drink themselves to death by 40 but I don't drink so I guess I need a new plan," Jo says.
"But that plan won't be retirement."
"Absolutely not."
Cassie sighs again and rolls her shoulders.
"You're going to have to promise me you won't get so wrapped up in your work while I'm gone that you let all the produce we're about to buy go bad in the fridge," Jo says as she moves her fingers to deftly work the tight points in Cassie's neck.
"Oh so you can abandon all the food here while you go running of on a hunt but if I forget it then I'm the irresponsible one?"
"Yup," Jo says happily.
"Why don't we just skip the farmers market this week?"
"Because if we buy the food, you have to make the food," Jo says, a smile in her voice. "If we don't buy the food then you'll just order takeout the whole time and I'll come home to a wife who won't let either of us sleep because of her terrible indigestion."
"I won't get—" Cassie starts to say but she cuts herself off. Jo knows her too well.
Eventually, Jo's hands drop from her neck, giving her one final comforting squeeze before falling away. Cassie stands up and turns to look at the other woman. She stares at Jo, her partner of two and a half decades now, her sight tracing the laugh lines around Jo's eyes and the shining locks of gray hair framing face.
"Ready to get to work?" Jo asks her.
"Always," Cassie says.
sooo i'm not sure who first posted about claire x patience but honestly it's been rattling around in my mind ever since so a lil drabble about them would be amazing!! <3
YESSSSS Claire x Patience, let's do it!
This is a liiiiiiitle bit longer than a lil drabble because apparently I have no self control when it comes to rarepairs but please enjoy established relationship Claire/Patience on a hunt (also Missouri is alive and well).
Read on AO3 or under the cut.
“You ready for this?” Claire asks.
Claire’s hand grips Patience’s hand tightly as Patience nods resolutely. Claire’s other hand carries a duffle bag full of supplies.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Claire leads her in through the backdoor of the house, which had clearly been broken into before. Patience raises an eyebrow.
“What? It’s an abandoned, haunted house,” Claire shrugs. “Who's gonna care if I break a few locks?”
The air inside the house is noticeably chillier than outside but, other than that, it seems like any other building that’s fallen into disuse. Dust covering the surfaces, a bit of a stuffy smell, nothing that overtly indicates a haunting. And yet, as soon as Patience steps inside, she can sense the spirit’s presence. It’s nothing she can feel, hear, smell, taste or touch. It’s simply sure knowledge that invades her brain, sending shivers down her spine for no good reason.
Claire must notice the change in her demeanor because she asks, “Your extra senses already picking something up?”
“Yeah, you’re right, there’s definitely a ghost in here,” Patience says.
“You ready to get to work?”
Patience nods. Claire gives a final squeeze to her hand before letting go so she can get to work setting up a salt circle around Patience.
“Most ghosts don’t tend to be active during the day but just in case,” she says as she dumps salt around her.
“What do you want me to look for, specifically?” Patience asks.
“Anything you can pick up on that might help me see what’s keeping the ghost here.”
“You already torched the remains?”
“Cremated,” Claire grunts as she heaves the last of the salt onto the floor.
“All set?” Patience asks.
Claire pulls two iron crow bars from her bag and hands one to Patience, “As set as we can be.”
Patience takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. She grips the crow bar more as a grounding technique than with any real intention of actually using it. She knew some basic self defense even before taking up the life of a hunter and she’s been taking more in depth hand-to-hand combat lessons with Jody but a deep psychic reading will require all of her focus.
“You should come spar with me sometime, I’ll show you how to actually use that thing,” Claire teases her lightly, indicating the completely unthreatening grip Patience has on the crow bar.
“Quiet,” Patience hushes her but it does give her some encouragement to realize she knew exactly how Claire was gesturing without even opening her eyes. She’s really starting to get good at projecting her consciousness outward.
Or perhaps she’s just gotten too familiar with Claire’s body language.
Patience shakes the very distracting thought of Claire’s body out of her head and tries to center herself again.
“It could be useful, you know, practicing some fighting techniques,” Claire continues.
“You really want me to come beat you again?”
“That wasn’t a fair fight! You cheated,” Claire huffs.
“Anticipating your movements and reacting to them is just what fighting is,” Patiences says calmly, her eyes still closed and breathing even. “That’s not cheating.”
“It is when you’re psychic,” Claire rolls her eyes.
“Do you want me to focus or not? Reading the energy in this room is taking longer than it usually does.”
“Maybe you just have to have some patience,” Claire smirks.
Patience groans, “Your dad jokes are getting worse than Dean’s.”
She says it mostly to shut Claire up and it works because Claire stands there with her mouth gaping open, clearly taken aback.
“You love my dad jokes,” Claire eventually mutters, her arms crossed and an offended look marring her face.
Patience tries to clear her mind again. She’s been honing her gift through lessons with her grandmother, Missouri, who assures her she’s been getting better but focusing her powers still takes her a tremendous amount of energy and concentration. She wishes all visions could come to her as easily as the unprompted ones do. She frequently wonders if she’ll ever be able to access her powers with complete ease, the way her grandma seems to do. Her grandmother tells her (without her ever saying her fears out loud) that it will come with time and practice. Until then, she guesses she just has to struggle through.
With another deep inhale and a slow exhale, she sends her consciousness outward, into the house. Tapping into the house’s strange energy, she follows along in her mind to every corner and cranny, searching out to see if any object in the house has sentimental meaning attached. Sentimental objects always have a different aura.
She startles a little as she bumps up against a strange energy she’s not familiar with. It’s something dark and dangerous. This must be the ghost. It’s strange, to try to connect with the energies of a house and suddenly be connected to a sentient spirit but she supposes it must work differently with dead people. When she connects with the energy of a space, she is feeling out the memories of all that has happened there. What is a ghost but a memory that can speak for itself?
She tries to unobtrusively follow the spirit’s energy, searching for its source in the house. Her consciousness moves through room after room, trying to feel out where this specific energy is strongest.
She’s feeling out a long forgotten upstairs bedroom when suddenly she’s hit with a powerful wave of desperation. Being in this room is torture, being in this room is suffocating her, being in this room is killing her. She tries to quickly retract herself from the room but she can’t, she’s stuck there and she’s being filled with feelings of despair and grief and pain that don’t belong to her.
In the room where her body stands, the atmosphere is changing. The temperature is dropping and a strange wind that seems to come from nowhere is picking up.
“Patience?” Claire asks, lifting up her crowbar so it's ready to swing.
Patience can’t answer. Her voice has been stolen from her. She can’t even nod to let Claire know she’s alright. She can see her own body in the salt circle that Claire had made for her, but everything she is is trapped in the upstairs bedroom.
A shaky apparition appears and Claire swings through it, banishing it but only for a moment before it rematerializes on the other side of the circle. Claire lunges for it, swinging, and banishes it again only for it to appear on the other side of the room.
The room downstairs becomes more and more hostile as Patience tries to escape the bedroom and bring herself back to her own body. Small debris starts circling in the wind as Claire works to keep banishing the apparition every time it appears.
“Patience! Are you alright?”
If Patience had the ability to speak, she’d only scream.
Claire is desperately fending off every attack with her crowbar as the wind picks up, howling louder and louder. Patience knows that Claire is in trouble, she’s a fighter but even she can’t fight off something undead forever. She can hear Claire struggling, fighting as hard as she can to keep up with something that doesn’t even have a living body to tire out. Logically, she knows she needs to move, to help but she’s so outside of her own body, she feels only distantly aware of the danger they both face at this moment.
“PATIENCE!”
Patience hears Claire’s frantic shouting over the sound of the roaring wind but she can’t respond. She can see in her mind’s eye that the wind is wearing away at the careful salt line keeping her safe but she’s too overwhelmed by misery and heartache to move.
Claire is wildly swinging her crowbar at any apparition that appears and Patience is no longer trying to hear she is overcome with the need to be heard. The feeling is strange, it’s such a powerful need that it fills her up until she might burst but it doesn’t feel like a part of her.
She thinks back to the breathing techniques her grandma taught her and tries to bring herself back to her physical body. It’s only doing this that she realizes that this urgent need she is feeling isn’t her own emotion, it’s the ghost’s emotions.
Tears are streaming down her face now as she finally has enough control over herself to quietly whisper to the howling wind, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
She projects these feelings towards the being she can sense in the house, she tries to send them all of her compassion while repeating over and over again, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
She closes her eyes tight and focuses all her empathy towards the tormented spirit. The wind starts to die down, bits and chunks of debris clattering back down to the floor. The air is less chilly now, the energy less hostile. The only sound now is Claire panting for breath, still clutching her crowbar.
“I should bring you on all the ghost hunts,” Claire says breathlessly, eyes continuing to search the room for any hidden threat.
Her eyes wide open now that she’s back in her body, tears are streaming silently down her face and she can’t bring herself to answer. Claire looks over at her in the silence.
“Hey, hey,” Claire says, walking up to her. “It’s okay, we’re both okay.”
Patience gasps in deep as if it's the first breath she’s taken since she connected with the spirit. She’s trying to remember her grandma’s rules. Ground yourself, keep yourself breathing, keep yourself calm, keep yourself aware.
Claire reaches up and gently cradles Patience’s face in her hands, “Patience, are you okay?”
Patience manages to nod this time.
“Good,” Claire says softly, wiping some of Patience’s tears away with her thumbs. “Are you coming back to me?”
Patience is still unable to answer, her own heart several armies worth of battling emotions.
Claire lets her forehead fall against Patience’s. Claire takes deep, slow, deliberate breaths, her hands still tenderly cradling Patience’s face and shuffles closer until the toes of their shoes touch. Patience closes her eyes again but this time, instead of spreading her awareness out further, she narrows it to only the points where Claire is touching her. The warm place where their foreheads rest together, Claire’s hands around her face, Claire’s work boots pressed up against her own soft sneakers.
She follows Claire’s breath, matching her own breathing with it until she feels like she’s entirely back in her own body again.
“What happened here?” Patience breathes out but then almost immediately says, “No, never mind. Don’t tell me. There’s a—”
She steps abruptly away from Claire and Claire’s hands fall down to her sides, looking almost dejected in the way they hang. Patiences looks around the room helplessly, unable to believe that when she first walked in here, it had looked so ordinary to her. Now she sees it for what it really is: a prison.
Patience takes a deep breath and then says, “There’s a loose floorboard upstairs.”
“Something hidden in there?” Claire asks, still eyeing Patience carefully but willing to take the cue that Patience just wants to keep working. “Well, let’s go check it out.”
Claire takes the duffle and easily walks upstairs and to the bedroom. Patience has a much harder time forcing her physical self to cross the threshold of the bedroom but she follows Claire anyway, knowing that there will be no relief for the spirit she felt if they don’t find a way to release it.
Claire gestures to the room and Patience points to the floorboard she knows holds secrets.
“Huh, actually get to use this thing as a crowbar,” Claire says happily, prying up the floorboard with the crowbar.
Patience drops to her knees, reaching into the hole to find that the floorboard holds dozens of letters, yellowed with age.
“What happened here?” Patience asks again.
“Are you sure you really want to know?”
Patience nods.
“Daughter of a family that lived here in the early sixties, she committed suicide.”
Patience takes this information in. It feels right but also…not.
“The story goes that she went insane so the family had to keep her locked up,” Claire continues. “They kept her locked in this room so she wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”
“No, that’s not right,” Patience says and she’s not even sure where the words come from, only that she’s sure they’re true.
“That’s what all the neighbors said,” Claire says. “But most of it was just rumors, I think.”
“She loved someone and her parents didn’t approve,” Patience says, her fingers lightly tracing the letters. “They locked her away so she couldn’t run away with him. These are the only things she had with her, to give her hope.”
A breeze stirs in the room and Claire is on high alert again, tightly gripping her crowbar but Patience doesn’t feel any threat in the spirit’s action, only affirmation.
“We don’t have to burn all of them, do we?” Patience asks.
Claire’s silence speaks volumes. Patience gathers the letter to herself, holding them close, her thumbs running gently along the worn in folds.
Holding the letters tenderly, Patience quietly says to them, “You must have loved him so much. It’s not fair that you have to stay here.”
Claire bows her head, hands clasped together in front of her so tightly that Patience can see bright red splotches contrasting with too pale points where the blood hasn’t been allowed to flow to her fingers properly.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you. It isn’t right and it isn’t fair. It’s also not right for you to be trapped here even after death, so it’s time to say goodbye now,” Patience says to the letters and the house and anyone else who may be listening.
Placing them carefully on the floor, Patience looks up to Claire expectantly. Claire reaches into the duffle bag by her feet and digs out the salt and matches.
“Do you want to…?” Claire asks, offering her the materials.
“I’ll do the salt,” Patience says. She takes it from Claire and carefully spreads grains of salt on to each letter, making sure the salt passes over all the folds and creases, before gently setting them down on the floor again.
“Ready?” Claire asks.
“Ready,” Patience says quietly.
Claire strikes a match and it sounds startlingly loud in the quiet of the room. The flame burns bright and illuminates Claire’s fair face in an almost ethereal glow as she bends down to let the fire catch on the letters.
They watch in silence as the letters are reduced to ashes.
“Come on, let's get out of here,” Claire says, offering Patience her hand. Patience grabs Claire’s hand and uses it to sling Claire’s arm around herself, nestling close to Claire and snaking her own arm around Claire’s waist. It’s a little awkward, Claire a little unbalanced because of the heavy duffle in her other hand but Patience needs the reassurance, the warm body pressed to her side as confirmation that Claire is still right here with her, very much alive and reachable.
“You’re getting really good at that stuff,” Claire says.
“Yeah,” Patience says, fiddling a little with the zipper on Claire’s jacket because it’s the only thing within her reach to fiddle with.
They walk back to the car in silence, still glued to each other. Patience dreads the moment when they’ll have to separate to get into the car, even if it will be the briefest of moments before they can touch each other again.
Claire throws the duffle in the trunk while still attached to Patience but then they walk to their separate sides of the car, Claire to the driver’s seat and Patience to the passenger’s seat. After they’re settled, Patience reaches out a hand and Claire’s is there to meet her. There’s a heaviness hanging over the car as they both sit silent and still.
“Do you regret coming out here, doing all this with us?” Claire asks her suddenly.
She says the word us but Patience hears what she’s really asking. Do you regret being with me?
“No,” Patience says firmly. “It’s hard sometimes. A lot of the time, but there’s no place I’d rather be.”
Claire smiles at her and starts the car.
“Me, either,” Claire says and she throws the car into drive and points it towards home.
billie/mary? 💀🔥
BILLIE/MARY one of my all time favorite rarepairs!!!!
I don’t even know what this is…less a ficlet and more a…fic-ish meta? Meta masquerading as fic? I don’t know. I just have A LOT of billiemary thoughts and I can’t keep them all coherent.
Read on AO3 or under the cut. (1.7K words)
Mary is outside of her body, slowly realizing that she doesn’t even have a body anymore. It has been completely obliterated. She is nothing more than a free-floating consciousness vaguely approximating what her body used to look like hanging over an ash-laden field. It’s already been one of the worst days of her life so it really shouldn’t be surprising when a powerful entity with a grudge against her family shows up.
“You again,” Mary sighs.
“I could say the same to you,” Billie tilts her head. “Do you know how many times you’ve died?”
“Twice,” Mary replies.
Billie’s small smile is inscrutable, “Hardly.”
“Okay, I’ll bite, how many times have I died?” Mary asks, not wanting to know the answer but unable to stop herself from asking.
“Well, if we’re talking in the grand scheme of things,” Billie’s eyes bore into her. “All the different versions of you across all the different versions of the universe…more times than your brain could possibly comprehend. But if we’re talking about this variation of you specifically…well, let’s just say Chuck is overly fond of editing his work before he abandons a draft.”
A weary feeling fills Mary’s chest…or, the place that perhaps should have been where her chest used to be. It feels like a weight dragging her down.
“Is that why I’m so tired?” Mary asks. “I’m tired of living; I’m tired of death. It feels like there’s never any rest.”
“That’s a very interesting question,” Billie watches her closely as she says her next words. “If you die and you don’t remember it, does it still affect you? Does dragging you back from the afterlife, time after time, cause marks upon your soul that you must carry without the memory of how they got there?”
“Well…does it?”
“I could tell you but—”
“But then you’d have to kill me?” Mary interrupts.
Billie smiles then asks a question Mary could never have predicted, “Do you know why you died?”
“Which time?”
“Let’s start with the first time you remember,” Billie says.
“The first time I remember,” Mary repeats quietly.
“Yes,” Billie says.
“Not the first time. The first time I remember?”
Billie nods.
“I got slow. I got soft,” Mary says, thinking of how slowly her brain worked out what was happening that night. It had been like her mind was moving through molasses the night she died, with none of the quick thinking she’d been famous for as a hunter. The flickering light, the chill, the dark figure—all of those warnings realized too late.
“You got slow and soft,” Billie repeats thoughtfully. “And this time, the only other time you recall?”
“Jack lost control,” Mary says uncertainly, not entirely sure it makes sense even though she lived it. Something is scratching in the back of her mind, some gut feeling telling her that the last few moments of her life just felt…off. “I pushed him too far and…he lost control.”
“Did he? Is that how you read the story?”
“It’s what happened,” Mary says again though the words feel wrong.
“If you’re sure that that is really what happened here,” Billie gives her a half shrug but continues staring at Mary, as if waiting for something more from her.
“Look, I just died. Again,” Mary says sharply. “You’d better either start making sense or just take me over to the other side.”
“Hm,” Billie’s voice pitches deeper with her hum. “Technically I don’t do that anymore. That’s a reaper’s job.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Do you really think you got yourself killed, both times?” Billie asks her.
“What else could it be?”
Billie and Mary stare at each other for a long moment, Mary searching Billie’s face for any sign of hostility. Billie is clearly playing with her, maybe testing her in some way, but Mary doesn’t sense any of the animosity she witnessed last time her and her boys were confronted by Billie.
“But the lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the lord had said to Moses,” Billie recites idly. “A verse that’s plagued theologians for centuries.”
“I thought most of the bible was crap?”
Billie hums thoughtfully, “You’re not wrong. Humans have passed down the stories for so many generations…and in many cases, even the original humans didn’t perceive the events accurately.”
“So why are you quoting verses at me?”
“What do you think the point of it is?” Billie tilts her head again, examining Mary like an especially interesting bug that has crawled into her path.
“What do I think is the point of you dragging me back to Sunday school?”
“The point of the passage,” Billie raises an eyebrow at her.
“God’s a dick,” she says.
“God…” Billie muses. “He couldn’t be wrong. If he was less than omnipotent, then the story doesn’t work. So he hardened the Pharaoh's heart when it seemed he wouldn’t act out his role in the story. God cast him as the villain so the villain he had to play.”
Mary snorts, “You’re saying god made me stupid so I’d die?”
“I’m saying the story went how it was supposed to go. It went the way he had written it. You were doomed to die because the narrative you were in wasn’t yours. And you’ll continue to live and die and live and die again as long as it’s a useful plot point for his magnum opus,” Billie says. “Your life…and your many deaths…threading together enough drama for his amusement.”
“What’s the point of telling me all of this? If you know I can’t do anything to change it,” Mary crosses her arms and is relieved to find it’s still a comforting gesture, even with her lack of a body.
“Well, you as a human you can’t do anything to change it.”
Mary stares at her, baffled.
“You don’t matter to the narrative when you’re dead, if you really, truly stay dead this time. The narrative doesn’t care as long as you’re gone the way you’re supposed to be,” Billie reaches out to her, brushing a stray lock of hair from her face. (Is it her face? She shouldn’t have a face anymore.) “What happens in this world, when death isn’t the end? When death is frequently a beginning?”
Mary’s mind scrambles to put together what Billie is saying, how the small puzzle pieces of cryptic suggestions fit together.
“You and I, we have been coming together and repelling apart and coming together again, whenever it is convenient for the others in the story,” Billie continues. “Why not stay with me, for good this time? No more futile life or futile deaths.”
This, she knows, is wrong. Any kind of supernatural life after death would make her a monster, something for her to hunt not to be.
“Why fight for a life that only uses you to pull someone else’s strings?” Billie asks her, her gaze so careful Mary thinks she can probably see exactly what is running through her mind.
“What are you even suggesting?” Mary finally bites out.
“You could join me,” Billie says. “We could remove you from the human realm and you could help me carry out the work of the universe—keeping balance.”
“I don’t—I don’t understand what that means,” Mary says. Everything instinct within her is screaming that making a deal with a paranormal being will always end in tragedy. It’s only the thought of the sterile, manufactured heaven that awaits her if she says no that keeps her listening.
“And you wouldn’t understand what that means, not really, not unless you agree. Human brains can’t really conceive of everything I do, the role I play in the universe,” Billie says. “But let’s just say…I have many faces, you could be one of them.”
“People die every day, why would you want me?” Mary asks.
“You represent a problem for me. It costs something of the universe, every time the natural order is disrupted. Even if Chuck thinks he’s above it, no one is above the universe,” Billie says darkly. “I need to take you out of god’s equation.”
“Why should I join you? What’s really in it for me?” Mary’s fists are clenched hard, she can’t possibly be considering this. What Billie is suggesting would take away her humanity, the one thing she thought was impossible to lose. And yet…
“It would really, really piss off Chuck,” Billie says.
“You overestimate my sense of petty vengeance if you think that’s enough to get me to agree to…whatever it is you're asking of me for eternity,” Mary says flatly.
“I think I very accurately estimate your sense of petty vengeance but that, perhaps, doesn’t matter as much as what I know you know comes next,” Billie’s eyes are a fathomless depth. “You know what the afterlife holds. Is there anything for you there?”
Mary shakes her head, her mind filled with images of her heaven while she was there—reliving the same false memories over and over again, memories of a life only forced on her by heaven’s interventions.
“You know what the living world holds. Is there anything for you there?” Billie asks her.
Mary stares off into the distance, “My boys—”
“Your boys are grown men,” Billie says. “And are you really so sure they’re better off having you in their life, when Chuck will just use you again to hurt them when he feels the story is getting a bit dull?”
“What happens if I say no?”
“I’ll have a reaper come for you and you know what happens from there. The cycle will continue until Chuck abandons this world,” Billie shrugs.
“Have we…have we had this conversation before? Have you made me this offer some other time when I died?” Mary stares straight at Billie when she asks this, watching for any sign of a reaction.
Billie doesn’t answer, only stares at her, eyes a glittering, unknowable depth.
“Come with me,” Billie says.
Mary takes a step forward. She has never known the peaceful life she’s always craved. She’s beginning to think such a thing doesn’t even exist. But maybe, just maybe, with Billie, she could finally find some contentment in the work she would do—maintaining the balance, keeping the scales of the universe even. Billie opens her arms and Mary walks willingly into Death’s warm embrace.