exanimate

𝖋𝖔𝖚𝖗

"Tell me how I died."

"No."

—

"How'd I die?"

"Cas. Stop."

—

"So, Victoire-"

"Absolutely not."

—

"So. I'm dead."

"So am I."

"How'd that happen?"

"Casper."

—

"So-"

"Cas, enough!" Victoire shouts, her voice ricocheting off the walls of the dining hall. Other angels and Passed turn to face the two of them, but Victoire is oblivious. "You know full and well I can't tell you how you died!" she hisses, voice much quieter but still just as peeved.

"Why?" Casper demands, irritated. "Do you even know how you died?" he snaps, shoveling more hashbrowns into his plate. "Or are you not allowed to know that either?!"

"Victoire's jaw turns into that hard little set that happens when she's angry, and Casper knows he's hit the nail on the head. "No one is allowed to know how their own person died, Cas. I could tell how everyone died in this place - that guy?" Her voice lowers. "Ax to the head. The girl with the pink streaks? She drowned. The little kid over there? Pretty fucking tragic, he was at someone's funeral and decided to play hide-and-seek in her casket, and then stayed there as her body was burned dead and his alive - no one found him. The point is I know how everyone in this fucking place died except for myself. You can ask about anyone except your death and mine, because I can't tell you yours and I don't even know how I passed. That's the point of this place, though. If you weren't a total ass in life, you get a new, clean slate."

"So why do they give us all our memories? Give us all the longing for our old life, no idea how we died, and say 'Hey, just act like nothing happened and become a whole new person without any important memories?!'"

Victoire's silent.

Casper storms off - but he's not angry.

A tiny bud of an idea is blooming inside his brain, and he's going to nurture it into a goddamn tree and climb it out of this shithole he's been confined to.

—

"I don't even know how I passed."

"I don't even know how I passed."

"I don't even know how I passed."

There was definitely resentment in that statement, Casper mused. There was definitely room to turn that resentment into full-blown anger - he knew better than anyone how hot-headed and easily angered Victoire was.

And then, he'd say-

—

"-if you tell me how I died, I'll tell you how you died. I know how you died, remember? Grieving best friend and all that."

Victoire freezes, a deviation from the normal eyerolls and scoffs and snappish remarks. "You... I'm not dumb enough to realize that this isn't an ultimatum, Cas. I am, however, thinking about it."

"What's there to think about," Casper mutters, but of course she hears him and responds, perfectly cordial (that's what scares Casper the most).

"If I get found out," she says, swallowing and lowering her voice enough that even Casper, who's standing less than a foot away from her, can barely hear her, "I'll get kicked off the High Order of Angels."

"So... you'd only be in the regular Angel Order?"

"I- no, there's only the High Order, the Passed, or the Devil's Arrangement," Victoire says, a light little laugh bubbling out of her throat. It's vaguely sarcastic. "I'd get kicked down to Devil's Arrangement if I learned of my own death."

"So... if you figure out your own death-"

"-On purpose, if it happens by accident they'll know and just memory wipe you-"

"-then an Angel would get kicked down to the Devil's Arrangement. What happens to the Passed? There's no level below the DA, right?"

Victoire laughs, a light sound. "No, any proper horrible people during Life and those who try and manage to figure out their cause of death go down to the DA - doesn't matter if they're angel or just a regular Passed. There's nothing below that. I mean, technically there's the Void, but that's where the biggest DAs get tossed when they do something completely unacceptable - there was this one guy who managed to hone his power and kill someone who was still in the living world, and another guy who just kept chucking others into the Void so he got tossed in there himself."

Casper nods slowly, undeterred. "So. Is that a yes, or...?"

Victoire looks conflicted.

There's a full minute where she doesn't say anything, and then finally, slowly...

"Tell me."

"School shooting."

There's a sharp inhale. "Holy shit. I just got back all the memories of it. Fuck, that's why Julie died the same time as I did - she was in the same class I was in!"

Casper is painfully unsure what to say as Victoire seems to take it all in, sorting through the new painful memories with a careful precision, then seeming to pack it away in a box to look at more later.

"Kinda cute, though," she says, turning to Casper with a tiny smirk pulling at her right cheek.

All Casper can think then is what the fuck, because honestly, what the fuck. Victoire snorts at his face, and then says, "Not that someone shot me to death, jeez. I meant we both died in the same way. Your apartment got completely shot out - by one of the freako residents, actually. Die Polizei are still doing a full search of the place," she says, switching from English to German and back effortlessly. She always had a knack for languages.

Now Casper knows why his room's been flickering - it's being ransacked by people who aren't supposed to be there. He's always had a thing for privacy, so this irritates him.

And Ryder doesn't even have a place to live now - his parents lived halfway across the world.

Fuck, Casper thinks, and enough is enough.

The idea's been brewing in the back of his mind for long enough, and it's time to bring it to light.

---

YEEE THE DRAMAAAA

it's beginning 😈

dedicated to ClicheShipper

without her i literally would never have found this dying hellsite hahaha

love u guys sm

- sayu <3