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The Black Sky

Blaire Graves (HoneyLatte)

It is his job to oversee worlds.

Harry had died before his twentieth birthday in a death eater attack, and he woke up in the realm between life and death as the Master of Death. It wasn't just some fancy title from a children's fable, it was a real job. Being the Master of Death meant power beyond what he'd possessed as Harry, beyond what any witch or wizard could possess, but it came with burdens and responsibilities. Harry's job is to watch worlds as the rise and fall in an eternity that only lasts days in his point of view. It is his job to oversee and fix worlds where the wheel of death is malfunctioning. He isn't allowed to interfere or interact with the people of these worlds. He comes into these worlds on Sirius's bike and rides around as an unseen ghost looking for the keys so that he may fix the wheels. Some worlds this only takes an hour. Others take years. It is a lonely life.

World #613 is an Earth based reality in the year 2010 when it's wheel breaks. There is nothing special about it. Harry grabs his gear and jumps in the world. It isn't supposed to be any different from any other world he's fixed.

--

Despite the wheel being broken there are still people dying like normal, and Harry isn't allowed to start his search until the unusual stuff starts to happen. It's only been broken for two days. He is sitting on a highway railing in Georgia, enjoying the warm sunshine despite being dressed head to toe in black leather, waiting for something to happen. There is a copper petrichor on the air, the scent and taste of blood, and he knows something bad is going to happen. A police car drives by and Harry watches the passenger. He's just a man, tall, handsome, dark haired, and fair skinned. Just a man. Around him is a cloud of black smoke only Harry can see, an omen of death. He is the reason Harry can taste death on the air. Harry watches as they drive by.

The passenger looks at him. Not through him, at him. Harry can feel their eyes meet, as if the world is suddenly in slow motion, as if he isn't wearing a helmet that blocks their gaze from truely meeting. For a second it is as they are just standing right in front of each other and gazing into each other's eyes, his emerald meeting a sapphire like the sky after a winter storm. The car drives away, but Harry is completely sure he was seen, despite that being an impossibility.

He follows, curiosity getting the better of him.

He watches.

He watches the shoot out. He watches the man get shot. He watches the ambulance come. He follows.

--

Two weeks after Rick Grimes is shot, the dead start to walk the earth. Harry sits at his bedside until then, but he doesn't go far. Nearly three months after the start of the Apocalypse, he feels it when the man wakes. Harry knows where he's going. He knows everything about Richard Andrew Grimes now, from his birth in the back of his dad's police car, to how he'll die, impaled in a bear trap and let to bleed out for hours, in only six short months. He knows of another broken reality, one he can see where he doesn't die then, where he lives through so much horror and pain, but Death is meant to fix that reality, and he is meant to be fixing this one and not following a mortal man, no matter that he saw Harry.

He isn't supposed to get attached. He does anyways, and he follows the man, at a distance.

--

He follows him for six months, letting himself be seen or heard before a disaster or death. He hears as Rick talks of him to his group. Harbinger, he calls Harry, and a harbinger is what Harry lets himself be. He lets himself be nothing more than a warning only Rick sees.

He doesn't expect to start feeling for the man. He doesn't expect to feel the warmth of a blush on his cheeks any time the man nods his way to acknowledge he sees him, and understands pain is coming his way. Harry doesn't expect to feel his pain as he falls into the bear trap, broken and bleeding and so full of fear. He can't handle it.

Harry takes out his pocket watch and clicks the button. The world turns grayscale like an old T.V. The color seeps out of everything, and all around him becomes silent and still as if the world around him has turned to stone. He jumps down into the hole, and Rick raises his head. Blood drips from his mouth, but there is a soft expression on his face. He is no longer in pain, Harry knows, but he still winces at the sight of the man so broken and bloody. 

"You are useless." The words slip out before he can stop them, harsh but soft. They are the first words he has ever spoken to Rick and they are cruel without being cruel.

Harry removes his helmet, revealing his face to the mortal despite how he should never do something so foolish. He knows he can be scary, wild black hair to his shoulders floating around his head like a halo, picked up by a wind that doesn't exist, eyes glowing like the killing curse, long wings stretched out menacingly behind him like the wings of lucifer himself.

"Am I dead?" Rick asks. He doesn't even seem frightened, or surprised. His southern drawl is matter of fact, calm, even peaceful.

Harry shakes his head. "It's not your time yet Richard Andrew Grimes." Rick shivers when he says his full name, but it is not a shiver of fright. It's one of wanting. Peculiar. "I will turn the clock back twenty-four hours, go North instead of South and you will find the sanctuary you seek." Harry says, then he pulls out Hermione's time turner.

It isn't a real time turner, not in the traditional sense, merely a manifestation of his magic for show. He could just as easily winde his pocket watch, or snap his fingers, or simply blink or exhale and the result would be the same.

"Wait!" Rick cries, and Harry looks at him. "Why me? I don't understand. What is so special about me?"

He shrugs. Why indeed. "There isn't anything particularly special about you." he answers. "To be honest I wouldn't have looked twice your way, if it weren't for the fact that you saw me on the highway the day you got shot. I was invisible to everyone but you saw me. You always see me even when no one else can, and that is what makes you so important."

He doesn't tell the mortal that he is falling for him, that he doesn't want to watch him die, feel him die, in such a horrid way. He doesn't say that he is breaking every rule for a man who barely knows him. Instead he twists the knob once, and the world spins like a child's top and then Rick is standing uninjured in the same place he had been before they headed South.

"Thank you." he says.

Harry can not help the grin that touches his lips. "No one has ever thanked me before." he says. "I have to go now. I've tarried too long at your side. You will never see me again. Stay safe, Richard."

Rick has a sort of sad face, and Harry can not help himself. He leans forward and kisses Rick. Just a soft press of his lips to his chapped lips. He can taste the death on his skin anyways, blood on his own lips even though it is no longer there. It doesn't even last a full second. It's merely a brush of his lips against the mortals. He presses a pendant into the man's hands and he kisses him. Then he disappears, though he watches from a distance as the world fades back to color and movement. He slips the necklace into his shirt pocket and then goes to wake everyone up so they can get ready to leave.

They head north.

Harry follows.