A Poorly Done Job [Grim Reaper!Tsukishima]
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Tsukishima Kei always does his job.
In the very beginning, if you could possibly create a timeline in the loneliness of his existence alongside the living, he felt what he had learned humans call resentment.
Every life he took, he felt what could only be described as guilt running through his empty vessel, coating every part of his existence. Every panicked pair of eyes he spotted, every tear shed by the friends and family, they all added to the immense culpability on his shoulders.
It left an interesting question, one that he had been able to wonder about at the time - was it truly his fault? After all, it’s not as if he chose who died and who lived, he simply moved mechanically through the world as the clocks above everyone’s heads ran out. He didn’t just wander around and glance at someone and suddenly decided their time had ran out, that would go against how meticulous he had grown to be.
The more time passed, and the mores lives he claimed, the more insensitive he grew. At least, that’s what he’d like to believe, and it’s what everyone who hears about him believes as well.
The merciless Grim Reaper, who wanders the Earth in search for victims, taking their souls and claiming them as his own. The cruel Grim Reaper, who breaks apart families and friends, who separates lovers for his own sick pleasure. The lonely Grim Reaper, who cannot stand to see happiness that he cannot achieve by himself, instead taking it from others so that they too will experience his anguish. The aggressive Grim Reaper that was rumoured to smile wider every time his victims yelled and begged for more time.
The sad Grim Reaper.
The last one wasn’t seen to the public, of course, neither would he expect it to be. People would only see him as cruel for the rest of his life, and it was better for him to grow into that character than continue to try and justify himself. Only the dead can hear him, and the dead have no time for forgiveness as they deal with their own grief. The dead have no time for forgiveness as he takes them to the other world. The dead have no time for forgiveness as they go to Heaven to meet up with their past or go to Hell to face the consequences of it. The dead have no time for the sad, lonely Grim Reaper.
Kei has no time for pity, either, or he won’t last in his job. For the personification of death, he’s awfully afraid of it. His wandering started the moment he tried to distance himself from the panicked pleas for mercy, finding that the only way to block them out was to completely ignore them and move almost robotically, swinging his scythe in a harvesting movement and just walking alongside them to guide them somewhere else.
As he does this, in order to block out the guilt and pain he feels, his mind wanders. He thinks about who put him there, who decided death should have a conscience, and if there are more of him out there. If a person dies every second, it’s only natural he cannot attend to all of them. He’s not limited to any country or area, so he wonders how it works. Most of all, he fears. If he does his job properly, he gets to continue ‘living’, if you could call it that, but what would happen if he were to misbehave?
He has considered the possibility many times, but he has never been careless enough to actually follow through with it. Or, in reality, he has never been brave enough. As much as that would pain him to admit.
The merciless Grim Reaper has no room for failure, no room for pity, no room for solidarity. The cruel monster has no chance to reconsider a decision, to go against the clock above everyone’s heads, no way to restart the ticking. The bloodthirsty creature takes pleasure from it, after all.
The sad, lonely Grim Reaper has no chance to keep anyone to himself.
Tsukishima Kei always does his job.
But much like the stories about him are a lie, much like the allegations of his overwhelming pleasure when taking someone’s life are in reality guilt and suffering, that statement, too, is a lie.
There was one time when Tsukishima Kei did not do his job.
The aggressive killer had found himself in a small village, not really too sure how he had gotten there in the first place. This happened often, in the middle of his aimless walks around the cemeteries in the company of the few lost souls who didn’t want to move to the other world and had actually forgiven him. He would be pulled by an invisible force so he could follow the sound of a broken clock, where he would always find his next victim and accompany them.
That’s when he saw them for the first time.
After emotionlessly following after the sound of the broken clock, he had found the first person to give him something different after an eternity of regret and nausea. Amidst his lonesome nights spent crying and the panic once he finally got rid of a particularly distraught soul, he found what he had heard been describe as ‘joy’.
He couldn’t explain it, not only because it was a feeling he had never experienced in his life before, but also because it came from nowhere. All they had done was smile.
And suddenly, his arms failed to obey them. Suddenly, the ruthless monster felt himself trapped in someone else’s grasp, as if they were about to swing a scythe of their own and finally take him out of his misery. In his eyes, this human with a loud broken clock sound was a Divine Being who was finally ready to set him free after years, decades, centuries and possibly millenniums of suffering.
He waited, and waited. He follow after them all day, losing himself in the way they acted, the way they spoke and the way they smiled. A few minutes turned into hours, and hours turned into days. Tsukishima Kei, who had not been pulled away from his trance, had not been called to do any sort of reaping since he had first laid eyes on this...
Human.
The more time he spends with them, and the more intense the broken clock sounds, the more aware of that fact he becomes. They’re not a divine entity of any sort, they’re just a human whose time had run out.
A kind, caring human, with the most beautiful smile that he has ever seen. A human whose time ended far too soon, and who has managed to make the remorseless monster question his entire existence simply from the way they sweetly spoke to a child or unhesitatingly helped an elder in need.
So, for the first time, after a week of following after them, he decides to think for himself. He decides he won’t kill this person, and instead will let them live a long life.
He lives in constant fear again, but now for different reasons.
Perhaps the Heavens had granted him the benefit to have someone like Y/N by his side, though they couldn’t physically see each other, but they had not forced him to kill them. He had continued with his work, but whenever he was done he no longer spent time around the cemetery. He came to visit.
He fears the day Y/N finds someone to love, is scared to watch them grow old. Most of all, he’s terrified to be the one who has to take their life when he deems they’ve lived enough for humans not to be suspicious, and that that will result in him being hated by the only person that truly brings him joy.
But until then, Kei sits by their side every night, taking in every tear and every smile like he had never before, and vouches to make memories for the time he no longer has them. Until then, he’ll continue to cherish the kind gift from the Gods, and make sure nothing gets in between him and his one true happiness.
He’ll accept continuing to be the bloodthirsty demon for as long as he lives, so long as he’s allowed to keep this one mistake in his curriculum.
The one time Tsukishima Kei didn’t do his job.
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