"I climbed up an icy mountain once", she said with perfect composure despite the changing winds, "And there I met a man, my angel of death. He'll come to claim my soul when the world goes wrong and my time is up."

I stood with a distorted look in my eyes. Exactly as I remembered it. She was once again lying half buried in rubble, and the impression of a seemingly century-long struggle on her face.

"What triggered it, Lady?", I asked, trying to ignore her current predicament.

"The red sky. He must have been looking for me for a long time since then. I didn't think he'll find me this soon. It should have been harder."

He was the one that delivered the blank note.

"Why are you dying, Lady?", I asked, incapable of comprehending why she had given up.

"I promised", her answer was too honest, yet I couldn't wrap my head around it.

I suppose she had more than one priorities in her life. I never really knew.

"Is he the one you hated?"

"Not him. He's the one I loved."

"You? You loved?"

"I'm lying. I don't think I ever really did love him. Even though he saved my life. Even though...I wish he never saved my life."

She lay sprawled under an endless sky. The darkness was blanketing the day and I knew she wouldn't see the moon tonight.

"This is my world...", she only managed to whisper.

As if she'd seen right through me, as if I amounted to nothing, as if she defied my absoluteness...her glare was piercing.

And I realized finally why she didn't go well with God...any god.

The air wasn't stirring for me or her, but the world around us was certainly in a hurricane.

She said something, or tried to. But it didn't carry.

I sat down beside her just like that day. I though it was like I'd travelled back in time. I could just redo it, I thought. It wouldn't be the same but it would still be there.

"Do I still possess the power to rewrite everything? To deny existence?", the monster reared its head.

The fear of having lost my touch lingered right in front of my eyes. Who could promise that I wouldn't mess up again? And what if I changed things to something even worse? What could be worse though?

No. I was thinking about the wrong things.

I returned back to the now and absorbed what was before me.

I took Lady's hand in mine, just like last time. It really wasn't anything different. I wondered if I was just delaying the inevitable.

"I'll still do it", I said aloud.

She stared at me emptily, her breathing was slowing done.

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"You could have defeated him easily, couldn't you?", I asked.

She said nothing.

"Do you think its over if you just let yourself be the victim? I'll redo it all. You won't die here, Lady", even as I said it, the idea of going to another world where Lady wouldn't be the same Lady I knew, made me want to throw up.

Its not that I didn't really know that the original was already gone. I just held on to a false reality. Lady was wrong. I was the real deviant among us all. And I was going to do the defying again.

I had returned from Montreuil when I walked straight into the aftermath of a battle. Lady sent us all away so she could confront the attacker herself. Valhalla was all but gone. Lady was lying in a ditch, topped with rubble, and garnished in a pool of her blood.

The hardest part wasn't turning things around. It wasn't writing a new reality. It wasn't dealing with the fact that I was the only original one in that world. The hardest part was listening to Lady's breath as it got weaker and weaker until I couldn't hear it anymore.

That was my cue to do my thing. But I absolutely couldn't deal with every single second that passed as she wheezed her final breaths, going cold all the while. Her body fought against its death and I could just tell how much of a struggle it was for her to die. All the while I sat beside her listening to the end of it. It was horrible business.

I just need to go back before I got that letter. I won't deliver it to Lady. I was planning everything I'd do right. It had begun. The slow, excruciating wait before she was silent. I just had to sit there, calculating the minutes before I could do it. I was still capable of doing it, I decided to myself. I just had to sit there for now. For now.

"What the hell, Lady? What're you crying for?", I asked, noticing streaks of silent tears going down the side of her face.

She looked at me, and gave, what would be her last chuckle in this world. I was one to talk. Unlike last time, I was in tears. I was breaking down, waterworks and all.

She couldn't feel her hands anymore so I was free to squeeze it as tightly as I wanted. And so I did, like I was holding onto my own life.

In the end, it's a brief moment. And in that brief moment, everything exists. Everything that is real, at least. And when that moment is over, it seems too distant to reach.

And so it happened with Lady. She was out cold, her face was perfectly blank. Her eyes, perfectly empty. This time she hadn't fought a void but I could tell the void still existed somewhere inside her.

I was tired, sleepy, tear-stained, terribly hungry, and would have died for a drop of water. I laid down on my side, right next to Lady, turned towards her. She was so tiny, I thought.

And then, failing to continue on with any thoughts, I didn't realize when, but I fell asleep.

**************************

"This is a bit much, Sight. I didn't expect that", Deli leaned over the bench where Sight was sitting and apparently examining something.

"You look like a girl, Lubbock", I heard Grim in another corner, who was poking at Lubbock with his shoe.

Lubbock was clearly too annoyed but he'd changed his seat for the hundredth time. Grim had been annoying him all morning. That was rare.

June was wiping her table clean, her typewriter was gone.

"Focus, Seraph", the voice came from somewhere really close.

I turned my head to find Lady sitting beside me. I had a chair placed next to hers at the table. She was reading a map to me. It was something important, I'm sure.

When I'd realized it wasn't a dream, I quickly began counting heads.

"Enough! You're no doctor, Sight", Chopper's voice rose from where Sight and Deli were.

Apparently, he was the object of their examination. Chopper's face was mostly covered in fresh scars. I figured he must have had a pretty bad accident. I couldn't help but stare.

"What're you gawking at, kid? Want another go? I won't be so complacent this time", Chopper noticed my stare.

Naturally, I had no clue at the time what he was talking about. I later learned that I had been the one to deliver those scars on him. The day he was about to storm out of Valhalla, I had seized him at the gate and pummeled him with every bit of strength in me. I had caught him off guard, so that he didn't even get a chance to resist. He was left immobile and ended up not leaving.

Apparently, contrary to what I had decided, I delivered the letter to Lady.

"He should be coming around any minute", Chopper stood up and declared, fixing his attire.

"Better be on our toes, then", Deli followed his lead.

They were all going to stay and fight. If Lady wasn't going to kill this man from the snowy mountains, then they would. I felt light-headed, detached. I felt like I couldn't really reach out to anyone. Especially Lady, she felt like she wasn't even real. I could barely bring myself to look at her.

Before we could move out though, the door opened.