Private Finished Don't fear the reaper

Shay didn't know the type of coffee Charlie had made for her. She liked coffee, but she was no connoisseur of the stuff. Besides, she didn't much plan on drinking anything hot. She had come there with something to say, and until she'd say it, her hands wouldn't stop fidgeting, and that scowl wouldn't leave her face.

"What the Hell was all of that yesterday?" Shay said once he'd spoken. She was, of course, referring to the conversation he, her, Gwyn, and Clement had been having at the community center. Something about protecting the dead.

Shay didn't think it would piss her off so much, all this dead stuff, but it did. There was that anger in her again. The one she'd tried pushing far away and the one that had died down during her time with Derry. But here it was again, fully inflamed. She wanted to hurt something, but that wasn't something Shay would say out loud to even her therapist.

"What? You're some protector of the dead now? And you have the gall to keep looking at me every time you wanna say some shit about Reapers like I don't know what you're on about. I didn't choose to be this way, Charlie."

None of that made sense to Shay. Regis had been the only helpful Reaper Shay knew and even he was pretty tight-lipped about what it all meant. Angelo had less a clue than Shay did and it wasn't like anyone was writing any books. But to be schooled about respecting the dead by a lich. A lich who had disrespected the spirits right in front of her, well that was a good way to have your pride scathing.

"Save the apologies," she told him, though not as harshly as she wanted to. "I don't care much for apologies, and I don't think you'd have cared if I didn't get pissed anyway."

She'd known plenty of men who were like that. Logan had been like that, but she didn't want to think about him. Years in the orphanage, abused by so-called family members, other children, and a series of bad romances was enough to have Shay hardened to all those possible false apologies and tears.

She had Derry now, and she trusted the blunt truths he'd give her. They could hurt sometimes, but less so because she knew they were real. Ironic that a self-proclaimed confidence man and liar was one of her most trustworthy relationships.

"Well, yeah, Charlie it's hard not to be offended when I'm glad bad for the dead. And a soul sucker, among other derogatories when all I did was be born. You have a lot of balls being pissed at Reapers and taking it out on me, of all people."

Shay was fuming. Standing and pacing the office. Coffee forgotten, which was about the truest sign of her anger. No coffee. No food. Just rage. Rage that brought her back to the powerlessness of before.

"What are you even sorry for? Do you know?"

"Remorse is the ability to genuinely feel sorry for the thing you've done. Guilt is what you feel when you're only sorry because it led to a negative consequence," Shay said it as though she'd heard it somewhere before. The words had a stale quality to them. A statement learned through many childhood lectures.

"And I'm not nice. Or good," she corrected a bit sharply. Everyone thought that was what she was. Why? Because she was friendly or because she helped people through their issues? Shay wasn't even sure she'd do any of those things if she didn't have a compulsion to do so.

"That's not your problem Charlie," Shay said with a bit too much confidence for it to have been a real thing. "You understand what upsets people. They tell you. But you still see it as a joke. You see everything as a joke. Is that why you became a Lich, because it was all a big joke to you?"

Shay hated being an angry crier. She pulled her shirt up over her stomach, pointing to the tattoo there, then did the same to the one on the left side of her chest and lastly, the one spanning her back. Decency be damned, though she did a decent job at not showing off anything too immodest.

"These aren't jokes! The bonfire wasn't a joke to me. My life, my problems, my fiance and this islands safety, don't joke to me." She motioned to her body, indicating the tattoos. "Those are battle scars. Lessons of death and they aren't jokes. Do you understand? If you want to treat me like an enemy fine, but I'm not going to play nice if you keep poking fun at me.

"Being a Reaper is hard enough without you walking around acting like you're some hero."

Shay got up in Charlie's face then, because this point had to be firmly put to rest. For him. For Angelo. For everyone. It was something she might not have said to the children in her life, but Charlie was a God damn adult.

"There are no heroes in this world. You are never going to wear the white armor, you hear? No matter what you do. How nice you are. It doesn't matter. You're still a Lich. You still disrespected the dead in front of me and a bunch of other people. Those things don't get forgiven just because you act vaguely nice. Or because you read to orphans."

"Yes," Shay seethed. "An experiment that cost people's lives and eternal afterlife. You don't just wake up one day and become a fuckin' Lich, Charlie."

And she rolled her eyes at the idea that Bertrand was some grand hero. "No. Bertrand is handsome and — He's no more hero than anyone else. He's not pure. He's not innocent. He's just a person. A person with some stupid halo effect. He's handsome sure, and he seems perfect, but you think a hero would walk around bragging about being a hero?

"The closest thing to a hero in this world is the bad people. Angelo is a hero, and he's taken fathers from their children. Sons from their moms. No remorse about any of that. But he's a hero to me. No one is universally a hero. Nothing works that way."

She turned her back on him like an impudent child, crossed her arms. Shay's voice was quieter now, not less angry but it was a cold anger forced with the fire of time. "I used to tell myself when I was really young that we're more than our powers. It's true, a little. But we still are what we are. I'm Shay, and I'm a Reaper. If I weren't a Reaper I couldn't have –" she cut off and looked at her stomach where her tattoo resided.

"Things wouldn't have happened. We can pretend all we want that what we are doesn't define us, but it does. I would not be this Shay if I were not a Reaper."

She listened to Charlie. Shay didn't feel pity for him, exactly. But she didn't feel pity anymore at all. She'd heard sob stories from plenty of people now. She'd heard real sadness too, and there came a certain coldness once you listened to enough of them.

Everything here felt personal. If she were a real professional, Shay would have walked away and let someone else handle it. But she wasn't. She wasn't like Angelo. In this way, she was like Klaus, and that only made her hurt worse.

"Of course it hurts!" Shay said, turning to watch him. Her voice was harsh, but her eyes were searching for the truth of those words.

"The world hurts. It's not just you. You immortals. You're all powerful, but you've got no strength to you. A social stub of the toe has you all hiding while you talk about hurting or killing people like me because... because why? I don't know. You all have your different reasons. You're so lost in your own pain you can't see other peoples."

Shay made urgent motions to the door, indicating the people beyond. Out of sight but not out of mind.

"You keep coming at Gwyn, but have you ever bothered to try to see why he might be uncomfortable? You laugh at Clement because he didn't do things like you, but have you ever stopped to see why that was? You constantly prod at Reapers for doing their jobs. Their jobs. The jobs that keep the people you want to be close to safe.

"You sit here telling me what a monster you are. Stop pitying yourself. You think you're the only one? You think I'm a good person? I would do terrible things to members of humanity. I don't hide behind any good deed."

And then Shay wondered. She had to challenge his past hatreds. She had to understand because not understanding was killing her. It was pissing her off. And now... was she even angry anymore or had instinct just taken over? Was she once again just doing her job?

"What badness could you have seen, Charlie, that made you want to kill it all. You can't empathize with people. You only feel the sympathy, but you don't know. You were in war when you were younger, right? But growing up with humanity, always watching from the outside looking in you couldn't possible have been forged the way we were."

She went and knelt in front of him, made sure he was staring into her eyes. For once, Shay didn't think they gave way to what she was thinking. Because even Shay wasn't sure what that was.

"You ever been taken into a family and wake up the first night with some guy standing over your bed? You ever been so brutalized you wondered if you even wanted to get up in the morning? Can you comprehend the nightmares? The tortures? What pains can you compare, if any?

"You treat everyone like a game to figure out. Everyone like a book to research. But we're not those things and you will never get close to anyone treating them like they are. We're not your experiments or your playthings."