Everything .Kuro.

One more soul was all he needed, and Alan would be saved.

Eric adjusted the blade slung over one shoulder. Behind the streaming lenses of his glasses, muddy shapes moved, nameless, numberless, nothingness. Women in sepia and taupe dresses, and men in colours of night, funerals, doves – everyone so ordered and alike, moving as part of a whole. The cogs of Victorian London, fresh out from the opera.

"You misheard, you know."

Eric started, the blade swinging off his shoulder as he turned – his position on the sloped roof of twelve, Amber Street, should have been near unreachable to anything that was mortal, but that was a mortal voice. The Undertaker sat on a chimney pot, legs crossed.

"How di-"

"One thousand souls doesn't cure the Thorns of Death."

The Undertaker bent his head to inspect his long nails, his laughter like the pattering raindrops.

Eric closed his eyes, and bit back anger, despair. No, he was strong, he would do this. "How many? Ten thousand? A million?"

"You'd have to borrow my dear's chainsaw to kill a million – yours is too guttural and singular," the Undertaker chirped brightly. He held out his hands, long nails invisible in the darkness. "But. There is no amount of souls you can kill. One thousand is correct – what is wrong is the concept that the Thorns can be removed. They cannot. They can be transferred, but not removed."

So there was hope, then, there was an inkling of hope. There was a chance. Then, the words sunk in, made sense – the initial flash of euphoria faded. ".... One thousand souls will give it to me," he said, calmly. "I'll get it, but Alan will be free of it?"

"Correct!" Beaming, the Undertaker hopped off his chimney and moved along the beam, his arms outstretched like wings, catching the rain, hugging the fog. "One thousand souls will move the Thorns to your own body. It won't get rid of them. Once the thorns are in your veins..."

Something skittered over his wrists, and Eric slammed it down against his thigh, stared at the spider that lay crushed there.

"... and in your bone, in your flesh, then they're there to stay. Only one thousand souls will shift them, and then just to your body, or to whomever else pays the price. But."

Eric took half a step back as the Undertaker moved even closer, and stopped in front of him. His nose could almost touch the other Reaper's. He could see the mist the rain made over his hair, and how it seemed to slide off him, not wetting him, not even touching him. Power radiated warmly.

"How much are you willing to sacrifice, Mister Slingby, to save the one you love?"

"Everything."

That was all there was to it.

"Everything," Eric repeated, and turned to look at the road, and the milling opera-enthusiasts. "I'll sacrifice everything to save him. Everything."

The Undertaker laughed, even more brightly, and then he turned and slipped out of sight. Whatever the joke was, he didn't share it, and Eric didn't ask. He slid down the roof instead, dropped down lightly in an alleyway, waited, like a common predator. And when the woman passed in front of the opening, he reached out and drew her in, shushed her frightened squeals.

They always knew, somehow, that it was the end. Some of them fought it. Some of them accepted it.

She collapsed in his arms and wept, and wept, and wept.

It would have been nice if he'd felt something for her – but he didn't.

She was the final one.

"Hush, there, there," he said tonelessly, and lifted the heavy blade. "There, there. Don't cry." As if it made a difference. They all stopped crying when he placed the point to their chest, when he gave it one short, sharp, hard push and sliced through bone-muscle-heart-skin. Her fingers grasped at his scythe, sliced open by the blade; her delicate heart pulsed and pulsed around the metalwork, but to nothing. It faded.

And there was pain, a horrible pain, the pain of death – the pain of feeling death twice, three, four times over. His entire body was alight. It burrowed into his skin like maggots, nested in his eyes, in his stomach, spilt hot bile and fetid viruses into him. And then, it was gone.

There was nothing  but another corpse, another Cinematic Record.

Eric pushed his hair out of his wet face, and stepped away. He lifted the blade and, as he did, his sleeve rode up and showed a thin black line, snaking across his skin like an external vein.

The sacrifice had called for everything – and he had given it everything.

. . .

And, really, everything wasn't so big.

It was worth it, to wake up in the morning to Alan's calm, soft breathing; to slip his buttons open and see his skin there, with the faint white scars of a plague sufferer, but no more pain. He could touch him again – could stroke his fingertips over one, and make him laugh.

Sleepily, Alan's lips curved, and he lifted his hips up lazily, sighed, "Eric..."

Everything was doable.

"I love you," Eric sighed, and let his head rest against Alan's chest.

Alan laughed, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, digging his fingers deep into his hair. "I love you too, E-... they're gone!"

His squeal of surprise hurt Eric's head, faintly, and the line on his wrist ached – Alan rolled him off himself and shot over to the mirror, pulled his clothes off to check. "Look, Eric, they're gone! I... I feel amazing. Oh."

The sunlight drifted through the window and lit him up from behind. His smile was just so bright and happy and goofy...

It was definitely worth sacrificing 'everything'.