Death's Hitman

Chapter Twenty Four

"Who is she?" Hitman asked, as he sealed them into a wayfarer's hut just outside the Human Zones between there and the Barren Zones. He didn't release Hope from his thread, deciding it was safer to keep her close to him. The girl looked away from him miserably, her eyes filled with sorrow.

"She is my fault too," she said, quietly.

"Someone else you trapped here?" he asked, slightly bitterly. Her head jerked up at that and she shook her head. "Start talking,  girl."

Hope looked up at him and then began haltingly to tell a story.

"My mom was the prettiest girl in all the land. Wherever she stepped wild flowers sprung up from the earth. Her mother loved her dearly and wanted to keep her as a child forever. A child who would never fall in love and never leave her. But one day when Mom was playing in the garden the Reaper was walking the land of the living. He saw her and fell in love with this beautiful young girl who was so innocent and full of life, the opposite of him. He took to coming from Limbo every day to watch her and gradually he made his presence known to her. He would talk with her, listen to her and he made her feel like a grown up. When her mother found out though she locked the girl away and would not let him see her. She was furious that he had had the audacity to approach her daughter for all he was the Lord of Death. But Reaper would not be cowed by an angry mother; he ripped her from the cell and took her by force into his world. Mom missed her mother and grieved that she could not see her. She loved Reaper but she loved her mom too. In the end they came to an agreement that she would spend half the year with him in Limbo and half the year in the land of the living with the mother.

"Time passed and this arrangement seemed to suit them all until the mother started to ask when Mom would have children of her own. Reaper was angered when Mom asked him this question because children are not permitted into Limbo. When a child dies they are carried straight to Heaven and no child is ever born there. Mom was devastated to learn she would not be permitted to have a child and her mother encouraged her to trick Reaper into giving her one. Mom slipped something into his drink, some sort of potion her mother had given her. He drank it the night before she was due to head back to her mother and it caused his seed to take hold of her, to make her pregnant. She knew she must hide the pregnancy from him and as the six months she was with her mother passed she grew more and more anxious of returning to him, not knowing how she could hide this from him. Her mother told her to take her with her, that she would disguise herself as Mom until the baby was born.

"Their plan worked and Mom went to the Elves, who cared for her and helped her to deliver a healthy baby girl. Reaper was furious when he discovered their deception. At first he refused to see the child, leaving her with her grandmother and the Elves. He beat Mom for her part in it and cursed the child to live and die a thousand times before he would forgive her for being born. The grandmother thought to steal the child away, keep her safe in the land of the living but the bond between the mom and the child was too strong. They escaped from Reaper and they escaped from her grandmother and began to live out their purgatory together, always finding ways to make it better because they had one another.

"The grandmother would not forgive either Reaper or Mom for taking me from her and she would not forgive me for not wanting to return to her. The Lady is my grandmother, sir. And if she takes me, she will return me to the land of the living and I will be trapped there in an immortal life forever. And I do not want that... I can't go back again."

Hitman listen to all of this, his eyes wide and then he sighed.

"You've got a real fucked up family, Hope," he commented and she gave a shocked laugh and then nodded.

"Yes I have. But if she sends me back... I will be separated from everyone I love forever. When she took me she made me so sleepy because she was draining away my life here. One day I'd have faded from here completely and then I'd have woken in the Land of the Living to be her plaything for eternity. And I'd never have seen you again." This last part was whispered and he sighed, relieved to hear her say for the first time since Kane took her that she did not want to be parted from him.