Chapter Ten

Death had spent eons studying his inability to touch others. There had been a period of a few centuries where did nothing but experiment with it, repeatedly removing and replacing the souls of various creatures in an attempt to discover any variations. He'd learned the exact amount of contact needed to take the soul of an adult human versus that of a small bird. He'd learned how to make the return of a soul drive a man mad, and how to make it simply agonizing beyond what the mortal mind can conceive. 

He had discovered that the removal of a soul was actually painless—souls were meant to move on eventually, and speeding it up did not cause any sort of undue pain. Returning a soul to its body, however, was entirely unnatural and was the only thing he'd found in all his many millennia of existence that was capable of actually causing pain to a soul.

Death had learned the hard way that so much as accidentally brushing against someone as he walked by was enough to leech the soul from a mortal if he made skin-on-skin contact with them. He had to be much more purposeful to do so through clothing; an accidental brush against someone's arm through a sleeve would only jerk on the person's soul (the equivalent of having someone wrap a chain around one's sternum and pull on it, hard), but he could press his palm flat against a person's chest through a robe and get the same results if he concentrated. Touching a mortal's skin was nonnegotiable—there simply was no way to prevent his Touch from working.

This was the one aspect of his existence that he had never learned to accept. The immortality had stopped bothering him after the first few thousand years, and the unlimited power wasn't something he could complain about. But he missed the casual touches, the comfort of a person's hand on his shoulder, the reassurance of a motherly hug. He could hardly even remember what it felt like to be touched. Touching a mortal and removing their soul was not the same as touching a human and feeling skin beneath his fingertips. His hands were slick with his magic, his power, and even when removing a soul he was unable to feel the skin beneath his fingers.

So it was with a sort of numb surprise that Death stared at where his hand was wrapped around that of his mortal shell, and he felt skin. It was unlike anything he could ever remember feeling. Clammy and rough and calloused and trembling and the most wonderful thing he'd ever felt in the entirety of his being. Death's eyes flicked to his mortal shell's face, noting how he had his eyes clamped shut and how he was biting his lip, before returning his gaze to the hand he was holding.

Death exhaled, long and slow and shuddering, and tightened his grip on the limb he was grasping. Death felt as if the world was simultaneously pressing down on him and removed from his shoulders, all at once. There was a pressure behind his eyes he did not recognize, a burning in his throat, a constriction in his chest where his heart used to be. He wondered if he were the one having his soul removed, for surely this was the only explanation for why his entire being suddenly ached.

The fingers he was staring at moved then, wrapping around his hand and wrist instead of just lying there shaking. The ache in his chest suddenly increased exponentially, and Death sucked in a sharp breath in response. He had no idea what was happening, why he felt like this. It had been so very long since he'd felt anything, and not merely with his hands.

His shell was not trembling anymore. Death could feel the eyes on him, saw the other hand come to rest atop of his own shaking hand, could hear the way his mortal shell's panicked breathing was calming back down even as his own became ragged and uneven. Had they traded roles? Had he not merely taken his shell's soul, but replaced it with his own in turn? Death did not—could not—understand.

"Hey," his shell whispered, leaning closer, and Death found himself frozen, utterly incapable of movement. "Are you all right?"

Death breathed. His shell had risked his soul in an effort to aid him in some way, and he was worried about Death? He wondered if this was what it was like to go into shock. He wondered if perhaps his age had finally caught up to him and he'd lost what little sanity he had left. He wondered, he wondered, he wondered… but he did not understand.

"Whoa, don't be upset!" his shell was saying a bit frantically, obviously in response to some sort of expression he was unaware he was making. His shell patted his hand, lifting his own to grip firmly on his shoulder. "It's ok. Just take a deep breath. Calm down." His shell's face twisted into a rueful smile. "Somehow I had imagine these roles being reversed."

Death could feel that hand on his shoulder as if his entire world had narrowed to the foreign pressure of a hand on his shoulder. Comforting him.

Death reached up with his free hand and hesitated, unsure if he was willing to press his luck and terrified—him, terrified!—that if he touched his shell again he would remove his soul. He was not sure he could stand it if this turned out to be a unique occurrence. He was sure he would break, then, utterly and wholly, and the world would crack beneath the weight of his grief.

"It's ok," his shell repeated, smiling reassuringly as he removed the hand from his shoulder and grasped the one hovering in the air between them. Death felt lightheaded. He hadn't even known he was capable of feeling lightheaded. His shell shifted closer until he was sitting beside him on the mattress, still holding both of his hands. The boy released his hand and leaned against his side, wrapping one arm around his waist and pulling him into an awkward hug.

Death felt his entire world shift on its axis. Slowly, carefully, Death wrapped his own arm around his mortal shell and returned the one-armed embrace, scarcely believing this was real, that this was actually happening.

Death stared across the room through unseeing eyes, his mind having completely given up trying to make sense of this development. His mortal shell shook him slightly in concern, peering up at him.

"…how do you feel?"

Death blinked, and the world began turning again. A slow, lopsided grin tugged at his mouth as he tightened both his arm around his mortal shell and the hand still being held between them.

"Alive," Death decided. "I feel alive."