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The Erlking stands vigil at the end of his time, where the last of his life lies in a coffin that is to be eternally sealed.

The storms- he no longer hears them in his ears, a constant deafening roar that used to beat down harshly on his eardrums. No, they have finally passed, and he is left with the sound of silence, a peaceful state of existence for the last pieces of himself, but one he dreads with every fiber of his being. 

He dies with regret, a bitter taste in his mouth that has dried up all of its hateful vengeance for this world. He, too, has seen that visage in his mind’s eye- amidst all the chaos of his last battles as the Erlking, he sees a perfect world where he and the memories of all Catherines across mirror worlds, laid to rest in the calm drizzle of the hill of Wuthering Heights, and two people standing over the two tombstones- a Heathcliff who has seen all the world’s perils (his whole world was Catherine), and a Catherine who smiles with the infinite possibilities of pain and illness. That would be all to it, if not for the purest joy and love on their faces, signifying the possibility that in the infinite possibilities of the mirror worlds, there was at least one in which he and Catherine might have been happy. 

He had fallen to his knees then, tears falling down his dirtied cheeks as he kneels before the Heathcliff that has gained victory over him, the Heathcliff who suffered all the same but took on all of that pain to make it his own. 

The Heathcliff who will experience the worst pain out of all Heathcliffs; more than he, the Erlking, ever will. The pain of Catherine never having existed in the first place.

His existence has been made obsolete by this resentful, brave Heathcliff. There is nothing to do but to await his end, knelt over his coffin clattered to the ground in front of him, the one who sleeps within heading towards her eternal rest herself. Perhaps, in carrying his coffin, he has been trapping his love for all eternity, forcefully dragging her along on his eternal hunt, never letting her truly rest. Once again, his selfishness and cowardice gives way, and he sobs at the idea of trapping his love, forcing her to watch his perpetual punishment he’d set for himself. But now, he has been beaten, and he may finally let Dullahan wander greener pastures, and release an eternity’s worth of Hindleys, Lintons, Josephines, and Heathcliffs he’d kept chained to the realm of his personal mortal punishment. 

He may finally hoist his only possession, his coffin bearing Cather̶̡̭͈̅̿̈́̓̉͐̍̌ḯ̶̢͉̥̼̫͖̤̆̀͒̇͂ͅn̴̨̤͙̗̬͓̐ͅe̴̡̥͆’s corpse… what…?

The coffin is empty. The familiar still figure of Cather̶̡̭͈̅̿̈́̓̉͐̍̌ḯ̶̢͉̥̼̫͖̤̆̀͒̇͂ͅn̴̨̤͙̗̬͓̐ͅe̴̡̥͆ is nowhere to be seen, has she already been corroded away by whatever had been done by that Clock? That Clockhead seems to stare directly at his collapsed, defeated form, eyelessly and senselessly, but he can hear the constant tick-tock that comes from the relentlessness of time they represent, a calling for the beyond that he is destined to. 

They tell him all he needs to know. That this was of Cather̶̡̭͈̅̿̈́̓̉͐̍̌ḯ̶̢͉̥̼̫͖̤̆̀͒̇͂ͅn̴̨̤͙̗̬͓̐ͅe̴̡̥͆’s doing.

There is no time to ask why, or how. His form is dissipating, painlessly and just like grains of sand in the vast desert of existence. His tears drip down to the floor, the only thing that remains, along with his distant words that takes every ounce of courage in his body to admit.

“They were…” He utters, bittersweet, the image of a happy Heathcliff and Cather̶̡̭͈̅̿̈́̓̉͐̍̌ḯ̶̢͉̥̼̫͖̤̆̀͒̇͂ͅn̴̨̤͙̗̬͓̐ͅe̴̡̥͆ freshly painted on the melting lobes of his brain. 

He does not finish that sentence. He cannot bear to. And so he can only continue.

“I see… I let my conviction…

blind myself to the other possibilities…”

And he was no more. 

-.-. .- - .... -.-- --..-- / -. --- -.-.--

Nothing/Everything/All/Gone

Grains/Time/Lost/Yearn

Closed/Procession/Flowers/Purple

Sweet/White/Hum/Thought

Here/Cease/Possible/Not

Inside/?/How/Me

Open/No/Disappear/Only

Guard/Live/Must/I

-.-. .- - .... -.--

There is a man, who has finally set his sword down on a field of purple and grey.

A storm rages around him. Relentless and cruel. Its cold, bitter winds whip him, leaving marks on his skin. He is not even granted the privilege of colour, the marks a dark grey upon his slightly lighter grey skin. 

His scarf flutters like a black flag in the wind, leaving trails of black flames to escape into the distance. 

He stands vigil over a dark coffin, sealed tightly by his own hands, his eyes forever fixed upon the outer black shell of the final resting place of the one he truly loved, unshifting and unblinking. You won’t know his thoughts, his feelings, his emotions; only his one true motivation stands strong, projected in his unmoving stance, a being grey like a statue, adorned with the black of his past.

There is nothing to say, and no one to say anything to. This is how he will be, forever, the keeper of an extraordinary memory, extraordinary to him in life, sacred to him in death. The weight of his final resting duty weighs down heavier than a million suns, but his pride would not let him buckle under its pressure- this is all he has left to do, all that his existence’s meaning has left. There is nothing more to do, than to…

“What left must you do?” A voice that does not belong here, reaches his weary ears.

For the first time in eternity, he looks up, eyes sweeping across the planes of purple and grey. The storm seems to calm for a moment, its heavy rain easing up to a light drizzle and its winds calming down to a light breeze. In this plane of existence, there has never been respite from his duty, and so who is the being who has come to give him a little reprieve? 

His eyes land on a figure, familiar as his own, eyes as purple as the flowers surrounding them. At once, he knows that his defeater has come to seek his audience- him, a lonely nonexistent soul who protects the concept of love and perfection from ceasing to exist.

“I… am the last one. I must stand watch, in this raging storm of my life and non-life, to ensure she never fades away.”

“You… You’re the damn reason why I’ve not forgotten?”

“And that Clock,” He feels compelled to say, almost as if an unseen force pulled those words out of his mouth. No matter. He understands what he is saying anyway. “Time, whether past, non-past, present, non-present, or the future, will always endure.”

The sinner takes a step towards him, bumping his foot on something hard. It’s his greatsword, the one that had caused him so much trouble back when he had still been on a quest for retribution against the one person who deserved hell unleashed upon him- himself. 

However, it seems that it has now been retired forevermore, as it lays among the grass of grey and flowers of purple, the water that pools around the blade resembling the tears that the Erlking has never been able to cry, save for the first time, where he’d watched her casket lower inch-by-inch into the ground. 

The pain of smashing his head into a tree, although a distant memory, a mere ache compared to the deep wounds left on his soul, is still one he remembers to this day.

“Oi- stop, Erlking, focus!” A voice snaps, and he jolts back to reality, or whatever reality this plane of existence seems to be. The sinner, his victor, is now in front of him- or rather, he is in front of the closed coffin, his hand on the hard surface of Cather̶̡̭͈̅̿̈́̓̉͐̍̌ḯ̶̢͉̥̼̫͖̤̆̀͒̇͂ͅn̴̨̤͙̗̬͓̐ͅe̴̡̥͆’s final resting place, tracing shapeless designs on the blackness of its wood. 

His eyes search the sinner’s face. The irritation is fading off his features, a face he’s seen over and over again in each mirror world he’d visited to claim his retribution from every Heathcliff. His eyes reek of sorrow, of deep, deep pain, and he’s almost happy that this victorious version of Heathcliff will forever live with the pain of her nonexistence, a pain far greater than he himself has ever carried. 

“Will you stop doing that?!” The sinner sounds close to losing his temper, seemingly able to hear his thoughts.

Right, yes, focus. The sinner is here, in his plane of existence, in the last place that Cather̶̡̭͈̅̿̈́̓̉͐̍̌ḯ̶̢͉̥̼̫͖̤̆̀͒̇͂ͅn̴̨̤͙̗̬͓̐ͅe̴̡̥͆ will ever exist in. Surely, whatever higher force that sent him here must have done so for a reason, yes? Is he even real, or perhaps a figment of his imagination, the imagination of a dead man who is on the verge of insanity, but cannot go insane? 

“The last place that she’ll ever exist in, huh? So I have you to thank for keeping… what, the concept of her existence safe? Is she even in there?” The sinner’s hand trails a line across the length of the coffin, and the Erlking catches an imperceptible, minute change of expression on his face, almost like he is contemplating doing something he should not be doing…

“This coffin cannot be opened,” He sighs, letting his gaze fall back onto it. “We must not open it, for she might then escape forever into the darkness of the night. Then, even I will forget she were ever here.”

The sinner bears a gaze as heavy as the Erlking’s, and it seems like he wishes to say something, but chooses not to. Instead, he lets the conversation tide over into silence, a heavy silence aching with many, many lifetimes of regret and despair, and the singular lifetime of pain, but discernment. Something that the latter wishes he had when he was still alive. 

“I am the last one,” he says, shattering through the silence with a weary conviction. “The lone one. I must atone for my final, greatest sin of all, and stand here at the edge of time to guard her eternal tomb.”

The sinner shifts. “Surely… Surely there’s a way to bring her back,” He utters, subdued, and he almost sounds as defeated as him, once upon a time, when he had been leaving his tears behind in a world that would forget him. “Surely there’s a way for you to… leave this place.”

“Even so,” he breathes out, and his fingers reach to feel the wood of the coffin beneath him, trembling. “There is no certain way. There never has been, and never will be, for all eternity, as once upon a time she made the call to wipe herself clean from the slates of all mirror worlds. To erase one’s entire existence… is truly an unimaginably terrible thing.”

He turns away, shifting his gaze onto the horizon that surrounds him in all directions, dark and thundering clouds obscuring every inch of sky that might have potentially been blue. There seems to be a light that peaks from the distant line that separates the fields and the sky, and it struggles to break through the storm, its white light filtering upwards, flickering in between the heavy blanket of grey. 

They seem to try to reach out to him, his lone figure, the last centurion watching over Pandora’s box, which housed the precious memory of a brilliant woman who was, is, and will always be everything to him. 

-.-. .- - .... -.--

Heathcliff watches the oh-so-lonely figure, clad in dark, ragged clothing, back faced to him as eternal rain fell around him, his final atonement for the biggest sin of them all: being Heathcliff. A shiver does not pass over his body, and yet he calls out to the Erlking in a question he didn’t think to ask.

“Isn’t it cold?”

The rain soaks into thin clothing and thick armour, freezing droplets of water dripping from wet locks of hair. 

“Yes, it is.” 

The faint rhythm of a clock tick-tocks in the distance, not unlike distant church bells ringing, calling for the sinner to come home, and paying its respects to a king who stands alone, atoning for all his sins, in a small and insignificant corner of time that is never due to pass away.

The Erlking turns behind to look at the sinner one last time, who is dissipating just like he once did, at the end of his worthless life.

“Live for all of us, Heathcliff.

Remember us, all who have passed before and after you.”

And he jolts awake, tears streaming down his face as familiar thunder roars in his room onboard the Mephistopheles, the Erlking’s wide and heartwrenching smile burned into the inverses of his irises.

Later, as the twelve sinners clock in for work, that same grief and sorrow lines every crevice of Heathcliff’s face, and no one dares to pry, for they all have the inkling that Heathcliff is suffering the greatest heartbreak of his life, even if they do not quite recall in full what happened at Wuthering Heights.

Their manager ticks on steadily, a constant rhythmic sound, reminding all those who have lived their dues that time is unrelenting, but forgiving for those who continue on, marching onto a distance that will eventually heal all wounds.