"You left me at church," Chance said as Aria returned. 

Aria looked around. She was back in what she assumed was his room. He hadn't even looked up, how did he know she was back? 

"There was someone I had to talk to." She looked at the stuffed animals stacked neatly at the corner of the bed, the little car light plugged in by the door, and all the toys strewn about. 

"Was it your boss?" Chance asked, pushing cars around on the carpet.

"In a way, I suppose he sort of it."

"Well what did he say?"

"That I can be here as long as I teach you about what I do?"

The boy's head whipped up, his eyes bright. "I get to learn about Reapers?"

"No, you get to learn about Bridges." She wasn't going to start out the learning process with any fallacies. That would certainly not be a good way to being. 

"What do bridges have to do with being a Reaper?" Chance's nose crinkled and he crossed his arms. 

"I'm not a Reaper. I'm a Bridge. I help souls get from the physical world to their door when they can't stay in their body anymore."

"How do you do that?" 

"By touching the soul."

"So if you touch a soul then it has to leave?"

Aria sat on the ground in front of the boy. She was still amazed that she was able to have a conversation with him, that he could see her. A living, breathing person could see and talk to her. 

"If I touch a soul, then it has to leave, yes."

"Why didn't you do that to me? I remember standing there talking to you. I saw myself. Why didn't you take my soul away?"

She wasn't sure how to answer that question, especially not in a way that would be beneficial to his learning. She didn't even really know why she hadn't taken his soul to cross. She couldn't really explain it. 

The only thing she could think about was the crash she'd been to just before she'd seen him in the hospital bed. The feeling of complete uselessness to help in any way other than her designated role. 

"Ari?"

Aria focused back on Chance. "I'm not entirely sure why." It was the best she could do for now. 

"Is that what saved me?"

Saved him? She hardly saved him, she thought. She had almost ended his life right there anyway, damning his soul to do what she did. She didn't save him, just had just put a new time clock on his life. 

"In a way it did."

"So you are my guardian angel."

"I'm no angel. Angels don't even exist."

Chances little mouth dropped open, his bottom lip quivering. "But...but mommy said..."

Aria could have kicked herself. She was too used to being blunt with souls. She didn't know how to play the good guy. She shouldn't have said it anyway, because she didn't know. For all anyone knew, angels could be waiting behind those doors. 

"There aren't any here," she said, saving herself. "There aren't any angels here on the physical world."

"But there are angels?" Chance's eyes shimmered with unshed tears. 

She couldn't just lie to the boy. She just had to be nicer than she was used to. 

"I don't know. There could be, but there's a chance there aren't any as well. I have no idea what there is beyond those doors, and I never will."

"Well why not?"

Aria explained how once a soul was marked by Death and had served in any capacity that a door no longer existed for them. Death's souls were essentially the souls left to wander the physical realm because they denied to follow a Bridge and hadn't been forced into going. The door was gone, never to appear again. She told him how she wasn't sure what an end for her would look like, but she did know that there could be an end. 

"What does it feel like to be a Bridge?"

She cocked her head to the side at the question. It wasn't something she'd ever really thought about. Feel? There wasn't much she did feel. She could feel the souls when they touched her. But she couldn't feel the world around her. She felt helpless during accidents and massacres, when there were tons dead and even more injured, but she could do nothing about it. But most of all...

"It doesn't really feel like anything," she whispered. 

Chance reached out and took her hand, the warmth seeping into the cold she had never noticed before. 

Aria looked at his little hand on hers, staring at it intently. Nothing about this boy or these encounters made sense. Just how much had what she done affected him? Apparently enough that he was the only living person who could possibly interact with her in ways she never knew she was missing. 

"Your hand feels funny," Chance said. He didn't take his hand away or crinkle his nose or make any sort of move that indicated he was uncomfortable. It was just a statement of fact to him. 

Aria smiled. Maybe they would have more in common in that regard than she'd originally though. She could work with straight truth. 

*****

Well that sounds like quite a lonely existence. And she's having to learn how to actually communicate with humans...in a way that's not so in-your-face and controlling. 

I'm back from France and settled in, so we are back to the updates!

Keep crack-a-lackin!

Red Assassin