#'i pondered on this' means i lay face down in the garden until inspiration struck

[catsafarithewriter]

Are you still taking asks, if so Protective Baron

A/N: Here's a secret: I'm always up for taking asks ;) I pondered on this, and wasn't sure if you were thinking more self-sacrificing protective or angry protective, so I guess it'll be a surprise ;) enjoy!

x

"I know I have said this many times over the years, old friend," Toto says softly, "but this is the most reckless thing you've ever done."

The Bureau is quiet – too quiet – and so there's no way for Baron to miss Toto's gentle warning. Even the mantelpiece clock is silent, its second hand frozen a moment before the hour.

Baron tears his gaze away from Haru's still form, lifeless, but not dead – not yet, not if he has anything to say about it – laid across the sofa. He listens out for a breath that never comes. "Can you blame me?" he asks.

"It's not a matter of blame," the old crow Creation replies. "It's a matter of what else you're going to lose in the attempt."

"I'm not going to lose her," Baron snaps.

Toto and Muta exchange glances, and the unspoken agreement between them unnerves Baron more than any raised voice.

"Baron," Muta offers, uncharacteristically softly – like a mourner at a funeral, Baron thinks, and then discards the thought angrily, "this is kinda out of our hands. Death came for her – literally, with the bones and the scythe and the hourglass..."

"We've faced bad odds before."

"Not these kinds of odds," Toto says.

"We have time–"

"Time is very much the one thing we do not have." Muta gestures across to the desk. "Look at her hourglass, Baron! The only reason the last grain of sand hasn't already fallen is because you've pulled some fancy-schmancy time-freezing trick with the Sanctuary, but that ain't a solution!"

"It'll break the Sanctuary," Toto warns. "You can't put that kind of strain on this place for long."

"Then I'll save her before it gets to that point!" Baron retorts. He paces the Bureau, trying to look anywhere but that fateful hourglass.

It's an insultingly simple affair, too simple for the value it holds, and only contains a single speck of sand – suspended moments from falling. The handful of sand it had first arrived with, before Baron had been driven to such physics-breaking extremes, had each vanished as they fell through the upper glass. It sits atop his desk, still and quiet and ominous.

"It's not your fault," Toto says in the awful, unnatural silence. "What's happened to her... you had no way of knowing."

"Yeah, how could you have known being so close to a Creation world and its magic would be toxic to a human?" Muta adds. "It's not like either of you ever got a manual on this stuff. And Haru – she never let it slip to any of us."

To stay with him, Baron thinks. Because she would have known that he would have barred the Sanctuary doors from her if he'd had any inkling of the damage it was doing. Because in her heart-first recklessness, she would rather have risked it than walk away from the Bureau.

From him.

"She's not going to die," he says, and there is steel in his voice. "I won't let her."

"With all due respect," Toto says carefully, "I don't think Death is asking your permission."

"Then I'll just have to make sure he listens." He gathers up his top hat and his cane, throwing a sorry smile to his friends. "She's not dying," he promises. "Not today." And he steps out into the Sanctuary courtyard.

Out here, time resumes its steady march, the air alive in a way it had been lacking in the Bureau. He approaches a cloaked figure, their face veiled in shadows which give the impression of a skull. In one bony hand, a scythe rests.

"Have you come to your senses?" Death asks. "Will you relinquish the mortal?"

Baron stares up to the hood, to the empty abyss where eye sockets lie hollow in place of irises and pupils. "You're not having her."

A rumble rolls through Death. "Her time has run out, Creation. At best, you have bought yourself a goodbye, but mark my words, it is a goodbye."

"There must be a way. There always is."

"I am the one constant," Death replies. "Once the sands of her hourglass have run their course, they cannot be renewed nor returned." The hood inclines in a way which could almost be an apology. "Her time is up, Creation."

Baron's heart beats an unfamiliar staccato; a heady mixture of grief and love runs riot in his veins.

"Can they be traded?"

He feels Death's eyeless sight turn on him. "What?"

"The sand," Baron says. "You said it could not renewed or returned – but can it be given from another hourglass?"

"Gifted," Death amends. "It must be willingly given from one's own hourglass, but you, Creation, cannot."

"I must have an hourglass. Every living thing has an hourglass, you told us, and I live."

"Indeed," Death concedes, "but yours," and he sweeps an hourglass out from the recesses of his cloak, "is a Creation's."

The hourglass before Baron has a wooden frame, carved with intricate leaves, and the glass possesses an almost iridescent sheen – like his own stone-cut eyes. But it is the contents which is the strangest of it all.

There is sand within, but it is frozen in place, the grain fused together in an almost glassy fashion.

"You are an immortal," Death says. "You can no more portion out a fraction of your lifespan, than you can halve eternity. It's all," Death intones, "or nothing."

"Then take my all."

The bony hand tightens around the strange hourglass. "You understand what that will mean for you."

"I understand enough," Baron says, and he does. He understands that Haru will live. That's all he has to understand. "Give her my time. All of it."

Death looks to him with something that might be pity. The skeletal fingers dig into the glass. Cracks spiral out.

"Then so be it."

The hourglass shatters.

And in the Bureau, Haru wakes.