Author's Note: this is a re-telling of a tale I've already told. This version will be more in-depth and more complete than the previous draft. Short chapters, an inconsistent setting. I hope you enjoy this journey, even if we've already taken a similar path.

Reaper Rewritten: 31/12

I. Barcelona, Park Güell, Present Day

"We aren't heroes, Henry," she says, her breath lightning against his cheek. She crackles, rips his sky in two, and disappears, leaving him chasing storms along the horizon again.

But now, in this one moment, she's standing on a mosaic wall overlooking Barcelona, arms outstretched, teetering and silent. He ought to reach for her. Ought to tangle his fingers in her own and pull her from the ledge before she slides off and pools red against the rocks below.

He remains still, his hands clenching at his sides.

The sun catches the fire in her raven curls as it dips below the mountain behind them. She twists to face the city and the sea. Her hands settle at the slope of her hips, balanced.

He leans into the wall beside her before resting his chin on his knuckles. "Do heroes stand on walls, Lotte?" He glances up at her. "Or do they stand on the ground?"

She's lost in the view, in how the last moments of sunlight lick the sea beyond the buildings.

"Last time we stood here, it was just a mountain, wasn't it," she says.

She's not asking—she's remembering. Or, trying to. He clenches his teeth.

She reaches for him. He takes her hand, but instead of helping her to the ground once more, he allows her to pull him up onto the wall alongside her. The feeling of her fingers entwined with his distracts him. He misses the shadow of a smile tugging at her eyelashes.

"It doesn't matter what a hero stands on," she says, "if they have nothing to stand for."

She's indulging him, her fingers too loose between his, and he's sure this moment is somewhere quite near the close of it all. He's chased her across time-faded borders, expecting to find her hiding in the yellow edges of an antiquated map. But the sun burns lower behind them and night breathes a modern beat into those far-off waves as they tumble ashore. She's always strayed away from neon cities, from black lights and music built with turntable buttons, preferring instead the pastel shadows of impressionism and classical strings.

"Heroes don't run," she says. "Heroes have something to fight for—something to save. We have nothing to save."

Her fingers slip from his and for an instant—just an instant—he fears she's going to jump, to leave him stranded atop that mosaic wall alone. He seizes her wrist and their eyes lock.

"Henry," she breathes, her lips barely parting. She's looking up at him through the "Don't."

"You don't have to run," he says. He's already laced his fingers between hers again when he lifts her hand to his mouth. "You don't have to hide." He kisses each of her knuckles. "Can't you see, Charlotte? The world has forgotten us."

A smile cracks across her face. "The world is forgetting us, Henry. The world is always just forgetting us—there are people who still can remember." She pulls her hand from his lips. "I'm not going to jump. You don't have to hold me here." She tears her gaze from his to stare out at the coastline. "Until they forget, until they have forgotten, until they have forgotten even the potential to remember what it is they have forgotten, jumping won't solve anything."

He wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her close. She rests her head on his shoulder, though her gaze remains fixed on the city before them.

"We could both jump," he says.

"We could," she whispers.

"But nothing would happen."

She rolls her head deeper into the crook of his neck and when she speaks, he feels her lips parting against his skin. "No, nothing."

He tightens his arms around her and twists to kiss her head. "I'll never forget you, Lotte."

"Then I'll never be able to die, and nor will you."

"Maybe I don't want to die."

She slips from his grasp by taking a step forward, a step off the ledge. But she doesn't fall—she floats.

"You've remembered your magic," he says, resisting the smile tugging at his lips. He extends his hand to her.

She doesn't take it. Instead, the wind coils around her, tossing her hair over her shoulders toward the sea. "Dying is part of living. You cannot be alive if you cannot die, Henry."

He clenches his jaw. "Charlotte, don't."

"I have to," she says as she turns away.

He stops her, his hand clinging to her wrist. She doesn't turn back to him. Instead, the wind she's floating on threatens to pull him from the ledge and drop him to break against the rocks below.

"I've waited almost a hundred years to hold you again," he says. She's slipping away, her body fading, translucent and hidden within the wind. "Don't leave me without so much as a kiss, Lotte."

Only the echo of her voice touches his lips as she flickers into nothing but air. "It's time you stop chasing me."

"Never," he says, hoping that somewhere, she can still hear him—hoping that wherever she is, she still wants to listen.