#reapcy

They never found Jack’s body, but he got a gravestone.

They found Gabriel’s, though. Half alive, barely breathing, broken beyond belief.

She found Gabriel’s. She was looking for it. For him. She could barely remember screaming for him. She knew she has been but the sound of destruction and possible death was deafening.

She tried to fix him. She tried.

She knew what sort of chemicals had enhanced him. Kept him from aging as fast, sped up the healing process in his body, enhanced his strength. She knew him. Intimately.

How else does a woman know her husband, after all?

Fear and anxiety, rage, pain, andrenaline all rushed through her as she altered the biological and chemical makeup the serum that had created him—enhanced it—and pumped it straight into his body, hoping to enhance his healing functions.

She’ll never forget his screams as his body morphed and changed, his skin grew pale, dead looking, and then, as if in her worst nightmare, he seemed to just...evaporate in a cloud of black smoke. Gone. Dead.

Jack had a tombstone. She’d had to fight to get Gabriel one.

And now, the anniversary of his death—of her biggest personal and professional mistake—was upon her.

She hated remembering. She hated that, no matter where she was in the world, she visited that gravestone every year.

And every year: “I’m so sorry.” As she laid flowers on his grave. Her wedding ring hung around her neck now, tucked away.

This year was no different. She entered the graveyard, a small one, very remote, in the Los Angeles foothills. No one but she and a few others knew where she had put the empty grave. She carried white roses, and her ring was dangling in the open tonight as she fixed her scarf and knelt in front of the stone.

Tears filled her eyes as she touched the name on the writing. A moment of weakness few else ever saw anymore, if at all. “I’m so sorry. I never meant this for you.”

It was silent for a moment, and then she felt the air grow colder and she looked up. Familiar dark smoke appeared in front of her and then a creature in black with an ominous skull mask stood behind the grave, a large shotgun pointed at her where she knelt.

She didn’t know how, but she could tell how focused the monster was on her, and her eyes widened. This was him; the Reaper who had been hunting them down.

“So, you’ve come for me, then...” This was the first time she’d ever seen him. She had half a mind to reach for her pistol, tucked away in a holster under her coat. But then she looked at Gabriel’s name again and bowed her head. “Go on, then.”

“Just now. What did you say to him?”

When she lifted her head again, his masked face was in her bubble, and she jerked away a little, brows furrowing. “I...I said I never meant this for him.”

There was a dark, growling chuckle, and he lifted the ring around her neck with the end of his gun, examining it. He chuckled again and stood, his voice dropping low and menacing. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

Her head whipped up again to look at him, and she noticed the gleam of something falling out from beneath his robes, hanging around his neck. Her eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Gabriel?”

She jumped up, lunged to touch him, catch him, even remove the mask, but like before, like the worst day of her life, and in a poor of black smoke, he was gone.

“So, you’re not going to kill me then?!” She cried up to the emptiness. “I deserve it! What have I done to you?! Gabriel...Reaper...whoever you are! What have I...”

She looked down at the gravestone. “What have I done?” She touched the writing and began to cry, softly. “I’m so sorry...”

After a moment, she felt arms around her from behind, and the strange sensation of lips on her cheek, the skin rough, scarred, thin like decay, but so familiar. Then, it was gone. And Angela Ziegler stood, looking up at the sky again, eyes still wet but her face firm and full of strength. “I love you. And if it takes the rest of my life, I’ll fix this.” And with that, she placed the roses down and left, to return to her work, to her missions and with a new sense of strength and purpose.