Fate watched from the shadows.

His eyes followed Heart long past where a human’s sight would stop. His gaze was as good as an eagle and his eyebrows creased with worry as he followed behind Hearts. Soft jogging pace. It was effortless to keep up with him. His breathing was even unphased by the workout. ‘I was just supposed to deal with those thugs and be on with things. How did he end up here? Babysitting.’

But he wasn’t satisfied leaving Heart here alone, his mind kept going in circles ‘Would he be alright after all?’

He felt bad; it was the middle of the night; he knew the kid had a little money on him. But he also knew he had made the kid, so frazzled he wouldn’t be going back to his workplace.

Which had been the whole reason he had been doing this whole charade all along?

To save Heart.

When he first saw the string turn, when he first saw what Mara(1) had done, he hadn’t understood why he was saving the kid. Why was he so integral to everything? When he had reviewed the life, the kid had already led; he seemed like a sensible guy, but not important enough that Mara would single him out and steal his thread from him while he was resting.

Then he had come down here to investigate, to see there was any point in saving this one life.

He watched him from too far away to be spotted. A kid too insignificant to matter, flicking his lighter to light up the darkness in his own miserable little life.

Then the faint hint of something in his sight. A redness to his vision. But it faded away before he could even grasp the feeling. Before he could sense what he was experiencing. It felt both familiar and foreign. But before he could decide what it was. The awful stench tinkled his nose and pulled his gaze away. Their shattered teeth and dead eyes wreaked of death. The black aura so strong that even though they were just regular humans. Just a bunch of mindless thugs working for their master. Chills crawled up his spine and clutched at his heart like it was trying to pull the very life away, sucking everything into their dank and surly aura. 

It was exactly what someone without a string smelled like. And there were only certain people in the world who smelled this way. Devoid of life, devoid of hope, they had lost the one thing that tethers them to life. To the world around them. They had lost their connection to love.

Or rather, they had sold it. 

Sold the thing that made them stay and see the beauty of the world. They had traded away worse than their soul. They had traded away their ability to exist. Because without a string, you were utterly alone. And loneliness is the number one precursor to death.

‘Which was exactly what Mara wanted.’

Collecting the threads like a trophy and stealing the lives to fuel himself.

Fate sneered. A disgusted and selfish god if there ever was one.

Heart has stood there flicking his lighter, grumbling over his own thoughts and worries. Oblivious to the harm gurgling towards him. 

Fate had no choice. He could only do one thing.

Because he wasn’t Mara.

Because he cared.

And so he had finished the poor things off. The poor things with their glassy, bulging, lifeless eyes. They were already gone. All he had to do was give them peace.

And then he just had to get Heart away from there. Where his scent was strong. Just in case there were more.

Heart was a good smart enough boy. When he had caught his hand, there was a moment of home, before the curiosity and confusion took over.

Luckily Heart was cautious enough to wonder where he was being taken. Though smart enough to know not to start something he knew he couldn’t win.

But he had been kinder, gentler than he had expected.

When he had been so out of sorts when the kid had clumsily screwed with his thread, messed up his strings, but the most shocking thing had come next.

Fate had just meant to get back one string that was his, and when the kid knocked over the strings, he was currently holding. He knew he should control his temper, knew that getting angry, beyond angry, was wrong. He was pissed because he had five human lives to pick up, dust off and get back to where they were supposed to be.

Worst of all, if he spent more than a few minutes with any human they needed to have their memories erased, because knowing about him was detrimental to my very existence. But then Heart, whom he had kidnapped, stopped and stayed after he had let go of his wrist. Where he had taken responsibility for his mistake and cleaned up the string simply because he saw it meant something to someone else.

It was immensely interesting to watch as the thread he shouldn’t have been able to touch cooperated, making it easier to clean up. Normally, seeing the thread alone was a feat. The strings had not only appeared to him, but had allowed him to touch them, cooperated with him, and a single string had glowed brightly for a moment when he first touched it. One of the brightest sparks he had ever seen in his entire lifetime of watching over the universe.

It flabbergasted Fate.

‘This boy was amazing!’

‘Kind... A different sort of light, in this dark world.’

‘He was pleased he had bested Mara this time…’

‘Try to steal a phenomenal light like him from the world. Not on my watch.’

‘Although, what did this mean for the future for both of them? Especially for Heart…’

He had originally gone into this annoyed and reluctant. Angry that Mara had forced him to step into the human world at all, to mettle and undo his own work that someone else had tainted.

These five lives had responded, calling out to Heart, he couldn’t see it, he couldn’t know, yet there was a thread that changed and called out to the one linked around Heart’s own ankle.

‘Things had suddenly become all too interesting.’

‘Very, very, interesting.’

He watched the kid get into a cab. A small, intrigued smile played across his face as he did so.

Heart looked back, but Fate knew he was far enough into the shadows that Heart could not see him. As Fate observed for a split second, Hearts’ leg glowed faintly in the taxi’s light. Fate could make out the five small iridescent red strings before the door closed, and the taxi pulled away.

“I wonder why it’s you of all people, Heart? Just why do you matter so much?”

“You didn’t seem like much to me at first... But there is something here.”

“Let’s find out what it is soon, Hmmm?”

Fate clicked his tongue, then turned and walked off. The alleyway and its double street lamp light flickered strongly, and then he vanished.

(1) Mara is the demonic celestial king that is associated with death, rebirth and desire. Mara is often described as the personification of the forces antagonistic to enlightenment. “Māra” comes from the Sanskrit form of the verbal root mṛ it is the verbal noun from the causative root and means ‘causing death’ or ‘killing’. So He is literally the form of temptation and death.