A/N: This was inspired by the prompt voted on in my newsletter last month.

“Oh please Zav, for heaven’s sake, go change. You’re embarrassing yourself and me by association.” 

Zav auspiciously flapped his dark cape, letting the hood fall further over his face and obscuring it in shadow. He brandished his scythe, swinging it with the vigor of a toddler fighting an imaginary dragon with a foam weapon. Darla gave an undignified jump sideways to avoid the very real wood-and-metal tool. She tossed her hair, smoothed her pinstripe pantsuit, and glared. 

“There’s no dress code in the rulebook,” he called over his shoulder, striding away and letting her follow, “There’s nothing to stop me.” 

“You’ve never had a problem with real clothes before. Why change now?” 

It was true. Zav normally did wear human clothes and quite fashionable ones at that. Though this wasn’t his typical choice of attire, he found himself rather pleased with the result. 

“You know it’s going to scare the living daylights out of those poor souls today.” 

“Who says ‘living daylights’ anymore?” he tossed back, waving cheerfully to his coworkers also making their way down the bright marble halls. The reactions to his outfit were mixed, but he did receive a few thumbs up. 

“I do,” Darla returned primly. “You look too much like—” 

“A Grim Reaper? That’s what I am m’dear.” He pushed open the golden gates, holding them open to allow her through. She stalked past, turning around to face him.  

“‘Grim Reaper’ is a very outdated title and implies an extremely simplified view of our jobs. Honestly, it really implies that we bring death. If that doesn’t bother you it absolutely should, because we do not “bring death”. We are Soul Guides. And our intention is not to frighten the poor souls we guide into a second grave.”  

“Your intention, you mean,” he corrected, letting his naturally longer stride outpace hers until he heard her heels clicking in a speed walk that couldn’t have been comfortable in the three-inch shoes. She muttered something as she caught up with him, legs moving twice as fast but still somehow managing to look professional. Zav caught the words “bad enough,” “fiasco,” and “dimwit collector,” and charitably ignored them. 

He was used to the nickname “The Collector”. It wasn’t explicitly mean-spirited but never meant as a compliment either. So, some of his habits were unorthodox. So, most “Spirit Guides” – or whatever name they were referring to themselves this century – didn’t collect the tears of the souls they guided. But Zav did. 

Darla’s expression still reflected the disgust of spotting half a worm in her lunch apple, which hadn’t happened yet but considering her luck in getting demoted and assigned to assist him, it was probably something she was expecting. He felt a little badly for her, but not bad enough to change his chosen outfit for the day. 

“How many do I have today?” he asked, mostly to get her mind off of her bad mood. He normally just collected his assigned souls in order until he found himself at the end of the list. After which he went home to make himself a large platter of eggs and toast, or occasionally a pan of Shakshouka if he was feeling fancy (it was a dish he had taken a huge liking to after collecting a soul in northern Africa a few years before). After which, he would carefully preserve and label the vials he had collected that day and wind down with a book— unless anyone wanted to go out. 

“Six,” Darla said, flipping through the files. A light day then. It used to excite him decades ago before he realized a light day would always come to collect in the future. “Do you want to look over the files?” 

He shook his head.

 “No.” He could feel more than see her expression of disapproval, but she said nothing aloud, her heels clicking passive aggressively a few steps behind him as they walked from the Headquarters to Bibury, England.  

They were a little early, as he liked it. Keeping the souls waiting more than a few minutes was an immediate demerit, but most reapers didn’t watch the actual death. He could see the discomfort on Darla’s face as she realized that the old man puttering around the sun-spotted kitchen was very not-yet-dead. The smell of scones permeated the air as he set a carton of orange juice on the table and a woman came through the back door, a freshness to her cheeks that belied the creping skin. 

“Good thing, I was ‘bout to call you in. The scones smell ready enough.” 

“You always say that.” She rapped him with a loving knuckle against his head, “They ain’t done yet, love, give ‘em ten more minutes and you can have one, promise.” He gave a wheezy sigh of exaggerated discontent, clearly for her benefit. She shook her head with the long-suffering air of marriage with jokes as aged as a fragrant Sherry. She ambled out into the backyard, having fetched the basket that now decorated her arm. 

The next moments were inevitable. Zav had seen similar ones enough times that he stood, unmoved as the man’s face grew suddenly waxy, a hand clutching at his chest, before he fell to the floor. Within a minute his soul was blinking up at the two reapers, first confusion and then fear painting the features that were quickly melting back into a prime of youth. It was only then that Zav allowed his expression to soften, pulling the hood a little back to show his face. 

“You’ve died,” he said in Britian-accented English, using the gentle tone that several centuries of collecting souls had found most effectively comforting. His garb seemed to cripple its effectiveness a little, but he wasn’t particularly surprised. He pulled one of the six empty vials from his pocket, uncorking it and holding it gently to the man’s cheek, catching the tears that dripped into it as the man looked out toward the door, at the bent form of his wife picking strawberries in the garden. 

“Can’t I say goodbye?” he pleaded. 

“I’m sorry,” Zav said, tipping the bottle to carefully catch another tear. 

Every soul cried after death. The tears were always different but the weeping was the same. 

The next soul wept loudly as Zav delivered the news in Bejing dialect Mandarin, but the one after that sobbed in near silence, occasionally muttering a word or two in Gujarati as he looked at the overturned cart and his own body mangled beneath it. Zav caught each tear, for them and the next two as well, his back to Darla with whatever expression creased her cardboard face, focusing on nothing but the weeping souls. 

The day was two-thirds through as they made their way out of headquarters after guiding the fifth soul to be taken through administration. 

One left. Zav adjusted his hood, letting it fall a little further over his face, his grip tightening on his scythe as he walked out of the golden doors toward a small town just outside of Las Vegas, USA. The sound of Darla’s heels had taken on a more exhausted clack, a wrinkle of headache between her brows, unsurprising for a reaper who had spent the last eight decades sitting in a cushioned chair behind a desk in a well-lit office. Zav couldn’t afford to slow his pace as he strode over the broken concrete toward the apartment complex. He didn’t even wrinkle his nose at the smell of weed though he could see Darla’s nose twitch. Up a rusting metal staircase to the second floor, past a few of the doors with the numbers nearly faded off and into the one marked 217. 

This time the sour stink of waste and beer made his expression twist for a moment. 

There was no dramatic scene to find here- everything that had happened had happened hours before. The details would be in the file, but it took no Sherlock Holmes for Zav to see the story painted across the apartment. 

An angry drunk— a child with too many bruises already— a blow landing heavier than intended. The man’s dulled, animalistic senses had probably screamed that calling for help was more of a risk than saving the life of his child. Now the girl lay on the floor, her heart beating softer with each struggling breath.

Perhaps he had unconsciously meant to come with a little less buffer than usual Zav thought as he stood next to Darla, waiting for the final, painful breath. That breath came twenty seconds later. It took a few more moments before she was blinking up at both of them, her features unable to grow to the prime of youth as an age she hadn’t yet reached, but the bruises and injuries melting away. 

She looked at them for a few moments before suddenly standing and running toward Zav, wispy arms wrapping around his black-clad legs before she let out a choked sound. He knelt, reaching into his pocket for the last vial and carefully uncorking it. She nuzzled against him as he caught a tear without a word. 

It was just a single tear that fell from her shining eyes, dripping to the bottom of the vial, smaller from the residue it had lost on the side of the bottle. The bottle seemed to shrink to encase it preciously. His gaze accidentally fell on Darla as he carefully replaced the cork, his sight mostly obstructed by the black hood that fell over his face, catching sight of her through the loose weave of the black linen. Her expression reminded him more of a human than it ever had before. He focused his attention back on the girl. 

He held out a hand, offering it to her, waiting for only a few seconds before he felt the tickling touch of the child’s spirit.  

Her insubstantial little fingers rested in his open palm, translucent and much smaller than they should be. He enclosed his hand around hers, casting his gaze around the room until he saw what he was looking for. A small doll, abandoned on the floor beside the girl’s body. It was no pretty girlish figure, or even a more crude little thing in a dress; rather the well-loved doll was draped in familiar black fabric, a small scythe brandished in the roughly designed hand. He picked it up, handing it to her and watching her face light up as she clutched the doll close. He pulled her away, gently turning her face to keep the body out of sight. 

It was only after they left the small room that he looked up, meeting Darla’s eyes. They were wide and a little glossy, darting from the doll and back to his hooded figure. 

“A bit macabre, don’t you think? To give a child a grim reaper doll?” he murmured, by way of conversation. Darla didn’t seem to have any words to answer as he continued, thoughtfully. “Still though, she learned to love it. More than anything else I think. I would say it might have been her one bit of comfort.” 

“Perhaps so,” Darla responded quietly after a long pause. “You may be right.” 

It was later than usual when Zav made his way through the golden doors for the final time that day, his hand feeling oddly cold after the past hours of holding the tickling warmth of the small soul that refused to let go. She’d been settled at last, willingly releasing him with a final hug to his legs only after the permits had come through, allowing her mother’s spirit to help collect her. 

He was startled to see Darla standing outside, feet bare on the ground with the heels standing primly empty a few inches away. She seemed distracted by some files but looked up as soon as he exited. 

“Oh… hi.” 

“Hello,” he returned, eyebrow twisting a little with a question. She didn’t answer it, just tidied the files in her hands and stepped carefully back into her shoes before looking up again. He sighed. “I was just going to go home and have some dinner.” 

“Ah… of course,” she responded, eyes briefly darting away and then back. Shy? Uncomfortable? Zav narrowed his eyes a little bit, noticing the uneasy shifting of weight. He gave a small mental shrug. Clearly whatever she wanted to say wasn’t something she was going to say here. 

“Do you like shakshouka?” he asked.

“Do I like what?” 

“Shakshouka.” 

“I— I’m not sure. I’ve never had it.” 

“Do you want to?” 

“Have… shakshouka?” she said slowly.

Zav nodded, flipping down his hood and relishing in the feel of the wind through his hair. 

“Sure,” she nodded, the movement slowly growing more determined. “Yes, please.” 

“As long as you don’t mind eating with the collector,” he tossed over his shoulder, turning his stride toward home. He couldn’t help the final jab but didn’t expect the shamed expression that met him. 

“Look, Zav, about your collection—” he cut her off with a wave of the hand, the tone telling him what he needed to know as she quieted, cheeks still flushing with the reminder of her earlier words. 

Something from today had changed her mind. He didn’t quite know what, but holding grudges had never been his style. 

“Would you like to see it when we get there?” 

“Really?” Her tone was careful 

“Really.” 

“I’d like that very much.”