An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapter 1 (of 3):Â Meet-(Not-So-)Cute
Chapter Summary:Â Thanos meets Death. Death doesnât know what to think of him.
Fic Summary:Â Yes, Thanos wants to restore balance to the universe, but it didnât hurt that Death was kind of cute, too.
This is entirely the fault of @burrowingdweller fantastic Thandu fanart. For @yonduweek Day 5 - Mythology
Death does not remember Yondu Udonta.
It has been over a millennium in the past or approximately fifty years in the future since he had been mortal, since he had felt the burning ice in his veins and suffered the quick asphyxiation of exposure to the void all for the sake of one flawed, perfect boy. The flow of time hadnât been a river, but a spotlight running over the very fabric of spacetime, illuminating scenes that had already existed in every single configuration, the membrane between parallel possibilities tissue-thin yet impermeable to the beings that lived within them. When Yondu Udonta the mortal ceased to be, his tether to his native timeline had severed, and the Reaper he had became had simply come into being at an earlier instance, forced to serve his sentence in a past he did not recognize among people who were already dust by the time he drew his first breath.
Initially, he had thought it a blessing, a small kindness, to have not been forced to sever the cords of those he had felt a certain level of camaraderie in his mortal lifetime. He could serve out his sentence in purgatory before reuniting with loved ones in the hereafter (whatever that may entail).
But then he reaped his first soul.
The boy must not have been much older than Quill back when Yondu first picked him up, a child who had succumbed to a sudden illness common among younglings in this quadrant. Medicine had not yet caught up to childhood mortality rates, as evidenced by the birth and death dates inscribed in family ledgers.
Yondu had tilted his face upwards towards Fate, Provenance, whatever bureaucratic mix-up caused this mess. âFuck no,â he yelled at the sky. âI ainât doinâ no kids.â
The sky had been silent on his refusal, but the boy had not been.
He had whimpered in the way of a body used to chronic pain, but his distress grew every moment Yonduâs scythe remains idle. He curled in on himself, around his middle, his center of gravity, as his invisible cord pulls tight.
âMister⌠whatâs⌠it hurts,â he had panted, his astral skin growing pallid and weathered the longer it remained in the in-between, still connected to a mortal body that had already begun to decompose, however slightly. Yonduâs head snapped back to the ailing soul, still struggling to form words. âI want⌠Iââ
He had exhaled out of habit. âDamn it.â Damn me.
His scythe arced towards the child, and when itâs over, he had thought he could feel a sliver of his humanity fade away along with him. If he still had a stomach, he would empty it over his new robes, but he didnât. Instead, he had dry-heaved and thought of Egoâs children, the ones he didnât save.
They say you never forget your first.