Chapter Text
Their Time
Close
The air whipped past his head, but he was too tired to be afraid of the conclusion. He had been falling for ages. He could not see the bottom despite this. He had admitted the truth. He just couldn't take living as Sunny anymore. Just one look on his friends' horrified faces cemented that fact.
He shed his burden but now the burden was put on them. Kel’s bright grin was stuck on a face with horrified eyes. Tears welled at the corner of his eyes as they begged for him to be lying, for this to be some cruel twist of his addled mind. He reached out to Sunny, his hand grasping for his as if to smother this feeling out the room, to gain comfort. Sunny had no such comfort to give.
Aubrey was bright red, starting from her cheeks and spreading across her entire face as. She had given him her number and, she had wished him happiness and peace. She would have never wished all this to a murderer. She shook with barely contained rage. She wanted him dead on the spot, she wanted to take back every kind word ever given to him. Sunny wished that he could grant that request.
Hero was the worst. The silence that followed his confession was deafening. But the sobs that came out of him twisted a knife in Sunny’s gut. This pillar of his life, his older brother collapsed on the floor. He just held his face and wept, wailing in grief. Sunny could do nothing but watch.
He couldn't handle it, he had to run from the room. He only heard his heartbeat as his vision swam, barely making out the exit sign directing his path. He only meant to escape, to run away from this nightmare. Of course, they didn’t forgive them. How could they forgive a monster like him? That was how he found himself on the hospital roof. This was not the exit he was looking for, but that loose railing gave a much better one. Sunny would never hurt anybody ever again.
How long had he been falling? He looked at his reflection in the passing windows as he continued to plummet. His white dressing gown flapping in the harsh breeze. At some point he had lost his slippers, he flexed his foot oddly, and up they went, swept away by this endless fall. The bag under his eye only grew larger, sleep was impossible with the howl of the wind in his ears. His brain must have been torturing him before his demise. It could have been moments, it could have been days, time seemed too slow.
“Maybe this was a bad idea…” He mused.
This situation felt like a sick joke. He was forced to fall endlessly from the roof. He was never given the release that he craved. An unamused snort caught his attention.
“I’ve been waiting 36 hours for you to say that Sunny Suzuki.” The being behind him was sitting at a table as they met his eyes in the reflection. There was cold blue fire where his eyes should be. They looked more alive than the dull brown eyes which drilled through the reflection A black cloak obscured most of its body, a bony hand rapping its fingertips on the table. Their head was a mix of a goat and human skull, longhorns exposed as the hood was swept back. “Let's get this over with.”
With a snap, Sunny found himself sitting across from this grim figure. He didn't sit so much as gently rest upon the wooden seat; it was falling just a mite slower than him. “You can call my title, Death. Normally, I would take such delight in scraping you off the pavement. But unfortunately, I can't do that today.”
“... I jumped.” Death just glared at him, even in his suicidal state he shrunk. It bore into his very core and made Sunny feel like his blood would freeze. “Yes, and normally, I would let murderers and cowards just die and move on, but you are a…” The cloaked figure began rapping their fingers again, “special case.”
With a flash of blue, the table was piled up with letters. Some were lost from the pile as they fell, but they burned away to nothing and rejoined the pile. “Somehow, your goody two shoes of a sister somehow found out about the life extension.” Death plucked one that flew through the air. “Every one hundred years, at my own discretion, I can return someone to life when it was cut short. Turn back the clock.”
Sunny opened his mouth but was met with a glare that enforced silence. “YOU will not speak unless spoken to. Do you understand welp?” A hasty nod was given as Death’s hackles lowered a bit, tearing the letter open. “Your sister found out about it, and somehow convinced enough people that she showed your life to start a letter-writing campaign!” The letter was caught alight as the skeleton’s hand burned. “So now I have fancy pants upstairs telling me how to do my job for the first time since creation!”
“And don't get me started on you, you miserable worm. First, you kill and fake hang your sister, damaging everyone around you beyond repair. Then you run away to your house and refuse to leave for 4 years. You spit in the face of my wife by refusing to live life. But then oh! You're improving.” Death just continues to grow in volume, flames licking at their robe as they grow larger.
“You leave the house, and you meet up with your friends. You try to make some amends. You are one of the few people to beat their personal demons! You were so close to really working through this! To redemption! But at the last possible moment, you fling yourself off the roof like a LEMMING. You splatter yourself on the pavement like the worthless sack of meat you are, a sack of meat, and hurt your friends even more. You are less then nothing, and it would be my pleasure to drag you down to whatever waits for beings like you!” Death screamed.
Sunny could feel the heat now, the table on the Reaper’s was being consumed. The letter’s burning and fluttering down from above, cycling as they both fell and fell. “You want to know what the very worst part is? Do you Mr. Suzuki? Every single one of your friends saw you doing this: Kel, Basil, Aubrey, and oh, of course, you hurt Hero the worst. It seems to be a habit of yours hmm?”
“N-no. They don't care about me. T-their fine!” Sunny could barely warble out the words, the gorge rising in his throat as tears pricked at his eyes. They didn't care, they didn't see, the thoughts cycling as Death just chuckled darkly.
“Oh, no child. They do care about you so immensely despite you not being worth it. That's going to be what makes this even worse for them.” Death reached out, grabbing the malnourished boy by the collar. “Let me show you the consequences of your last mistake.”
Sunny was on the corner of the roof watching himself. He didn't remember gazing down for so long. He only remembered how he got up here. He was alone, just like he wanted. Death was lying to make him second guess. That was until he heard the commotion coming up the stairwell. “Oh no... No please no”
He tried to close his eyes but couldn't, he tried to cover them, but they were not there anymore. He couldn't see himself, and he couldn't look away from his own figure, toes dangling off the edge. He couldn't move his head.
The door slammed open, dull metal echoing as Aubrey and a nurse panted. “Sunny?” Her face was painted with confusion as he watched himself look back to her.
Sunny just watched in horror as he just let himself fall, Aubrey struggling against the nurse violently. “SUNNY! NO! YOU BASTARD!” Tears welled up in her eyes, her body shaking as she collapsed to her knees “Y-you fucking coward…” She pounded her fist into the gravel. Over and over as she let out an incoherent wail.
Sunny tried to move, to comfort her. He was stuck in place. Until he wasn't.
_______
Now he was in Basil's room. Kel was doing his best to console the sobbing blond but was clearly out of his element. “Shhhh it's okay. When they get Sunny, we’ll talk about this more okay.”
His smile was like one of those cheap Halloween masks. Plastic and barely held on by failing elastic. Basil just sobbed in relief, he was grinning, but it was a weak wobbly thing.
He wasn’t mad at Sunny. He looked relieved if anything, his Something, the halo of black ink, nowhere to be found. The pit in Sunny only grew, Aubrey had made him feel like the ground would swallow him up.
Kel looked out the window. “Sunny isn't going to leave us, He's too strong.”
As if by some twist of some sick bout of infernal providence, Sunny watched himself plummet past Basil’s window. Kel just froze, his hands rubbing the blond's back going still, His smile growing wider and wider as tears poured down his face.
“Everything is going to be okay Basil.”
And again, he was moved. The smell of flowers hung in the chilly night air. Hero sat, outside some makeshift garden outside the hospital. He was pacing back and forth, threatening to put a groove into the brick below.
“He was a child, only a child. He’s still a child” he muttered to himself. Sunny had no idea how long he had been here, but he had never seen Hero like this, let alone talk to himself.
“If only it had been h- NO. No that's so wrong, if Mari heard you saying that…” Hero paced faster, familiarly wringing his hands. An anxiety attack was incoming, but Hero was too strong to fall for something like that. Right?
“I can’t lose him too. Man up Hero! Put your problems aside. What could happen if I leave them all alone again?” With that, he stopped. “Maybe it won't be fake this time. Sunny’s heart sank. He prayed that Hero wasn't going to see this.
“You never failed Mari. It was... an accident” he laughed, almost in relief. “You never failed. But Sunny ran out. I didn’t fail Mari, and I'm not going to fail him.”
With renewed vigor, Hero collected himself. He had the chance to make up for four neglectful years, all out of misplaced guilt. He didn’t forgive either of them, not yet. But soon he could, he could feel it.
Sunny’s prayers were ignored. Hero looked up, Eyes rapidly following the object plummeting to the ground above him. He yelped and jumped out of the way.
Time was frozen in its place. A cruel frame of his actions. Just an inch from impact. Hero’s jumping form frozen in mid realization. Sunny looked almost peaceful, it was almost unfair how he wasn’t allowed to die with willful ignorance. He was shown that he had hurt every one of the people he tried to save.
He felt himself return to some state of permanence as he fell to his knees and sobbed. Bitter tears poured out of him. All he wanted was peace, he couldn't take any more of this. And yet he was shown how he failed yet again. He didn’t even notice Death loom over him, having gotten up from the bench that Hero was pacing in front of.
“See? Somehow, you hurt them again, and again, and again. Four people that already had so much pain to endure. Yet they care so much about you! Even after you inflict pain after pain on them, they stick up for you! And somehow…”
Sunny sobbed, it was too much, it was all too much. “P-please, no more” He croaked. “J-just send me to Hell, reincarnate me into something that lives a pathetic life, damn me to whatever horrific afterlife awaits. I DON’T DESERVE A SECOND CHANCE!”
What he could see of Death was marred by tears, his skull betrayed no emotion. “I would, if I could, Son of Cain.” With an errant flick of a bony wrist, Sunny was flung back, he watched as the frozen scene melted away as colors blurred around him. It hurt to look, and he screwed his eye shut. Bracing for impact.
It never came. When he opened his eyes again, he was at a table. His hands clutching tight on crushed red velvet. Death sat across from him there was a small table of dark wood inlaid with gold floral patterns separated them. On the table were a steaming teapot, two bone-white china cups, and a stack of letters.
“Now listen closely, you little monster. Cause I'm only going to say this once. You are going to get a second chance. It’s out of my hands, I can’t do a thing about it.”
“Despite your actions, people in the hereafter cared enough to force my hand in centuries.” With a swipe of ivory fingers, they were spread out before him. The names each stabbed into Sunny. Mari, Kel, Basil, Hero, and even Aubrey. “Time has little meaning for me or the hereafter, whatever it is. Your friends, even after they all saw your last selfish act. AND suffered for it, vouched for you.”
Death huffed as Sunny continued to sniffle, god, this human was pathetic. “So, you are going to get your second chance. But I'm not going to make it easy on you. You will face them all down, at some point after your death, to really see what you inflicted. Do you understand? And you will not leave till I am satisfied!”
Death watched as the wretched thing across from him just cried harder, consumed by guilt and self-pity. With a bony fist slamming on the table, wreathed in flame. It demanded Sunny’s attention, shocking him out of his sobs, and the fiery glare demanded his silence. He nodded meekly, eyes still watering.
“You will be unable to leave this room unless you are facing one of them. Gia demanded at least that small comfort, but I do it only for her sake. Do you understand?”
Another nod, Death found some small pleasure in how miserable he looked. Sunny swore there was a perverse pleasure in those ember eyes. “There is no time limit, but in this context time is meaningless. I will check on you from time to time. But you have wasted enough of that as well.”
Death stood, and with a snap and a wave of musty air he was gone. Leaving Sunny alone in the room.
Waiting for a few beats, covering his face, and was about to pour out his grief when he heard a laugh. It was a cruel oozy thing, of oil sloshing in an old can. Besides the table, and the tea set, and the red walls with dark grey bars, was an elevator door. And next to it sat SOMETHING.
The SOMETHING was monstrous in its size, easily taking up half of the small room. It touched the ceiling and poured itself over a stool embedded in its frame, five eyes peering out at him. “I'm surprised you didn't piss yourself, Creator! Death was raging mad at you. I never expected you would survive without having your soul shredded! But here you stand!”
Another laugh bellowed out, it reminded Sunny of a bullfrog. Massive fat lips, teeth like broken tombstones, and many tendrils moving in its throat as it continued its mockery. “And you will be stuck here such a long time with me! I doubt you have the spine to try and rush through it.”
It readjusted, ejecting the stool violently enough that Sunny let out a yelp as it smashed against a wall. Again, it laughed, each one at his expense. “Ah but are my manners! You're meant to respect your elders. My name is Legion, and you made me.”
Sunny stared at this thing. This gluttonous-looking blob of shadow eyes and teeth. Even in his worst nightmares, even in black space nothing quite this horrific was created by his mind. Even SOMETHING paled in comparison to this thing.
“Oh creator, I am SOMETHING. Trauma-given form! Just not yours, no I'm the trauma you gave everyone else. They all saw you die! Hell, Hero saw you get turned into a greasy smear on the pavement” it laughed again “Master death thought it would be fitting to share this room till you're done” It grinned with too many teeth. Much too many.
“We can discuss later, but for now, it's my duty to send you off!” It laughed again before the soft peel of a bell, the door opening to a blinding white light. Sunny screamed as he felt it wrap a tendril around his wrist and pulled him bodily out of the chair, dragging him to the open door. “W-what’s going to happen?!” Fear was becoming all too familiar to Sunny.
“Aw relax! The first one is easy. Just meeting a friend before the end!”
With that he was flung through, everything was blinding light and a blur of color as he was flung. The doors behind him closed, but the wet laughter echoed in his ears. The room sat empty then, and quiet.