Chapter Text
Don't be afraid. Be flattered.
No!
Belinda hummed to herself as she worked, picking through the unsorted barrel of hearts. Two more clunked down from above, falling as a pair of humans died. She didn’t glance at them yet; she was still busy with the one in her hand, inspecting it.
It appeared perfectly red. One hundred percent good. She closed one eye and looked closer. Had to be sure. Couldn’t make mistakes. Humans, so complicated.
When another creature died, its heart just automatically fell into the bright light that led to the Good Place. But humans, well. The Bad Place was created just for them, because some of them grew so rotten during their lifetime they just could not be given a reward. A few of them managed to still come through pure, but it was unusual, and it was never automatic. It required the utmost care and inspection; because most human hearts came to the Death Fairies as a mix.
A mixed heart couldn’t go into the Good Place, but it certainly didn’t deserve the Bad Place. Belinda sighed as she saw it; a speck of blackness on an otherwise perfect heart. Whoever this human had been, they’d done something they’d considered Wrong or Immoral. She shrugged.
“Back to life with you, to try to sort it out again.” she said, and she tossed the heart into the Life portal, where it would go where it would go to try again.
She looked at the two new hearts that had just fallen into her sorting bin. One of them looked pure black, the other, pure red. She picked up the black one and started inspecting it. If it wasn’t pure, if there was even a speck of red, she’d always give these hearts another chance. Sometimes they came back much better! In fact she could think of a few times when a heart that had started off mostly black eventually wound up cleaning itself entirely.
But alas, not this one. It was completely blackened. Whatever it had done with its life, it considered itself utterly vile and irredeemable.
“Oh well. Very sad for you, little heart.” she said, and she tossed it towards the Bad portal.
It flew back, as if on a string, and landed again in her bin. The motion jostled the pure heart that had just landed with it, and Belinda frowned.
She picked up the heart that looked pure and eyed it. It looked absolutely perfect. Not a splotch on it anywhere. Pure and good, this heart had always been loyal to what it believed in. Never strayed, not once. She picked it up slowly, moving it towards the Good portal, and felt more resistance the further it got from her bin.
She moved it back, and picked up both hearts together. Squinting, she finally caught sight of the nearly invisible thread that connected them.
“Soul mates?” she said, surprised. “These two?”
She inspected them both again. She’d never seen anything like it.
“Marionetta, can you come here for a moment?” she called to the Death Fairy who worked near her. Marionetta flitted over, her black wings shimmering in the ethereal light.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Take a look at these two hearts for me? Tell me what you see.”
Marionetta took both into her hands and studied them.
“Hmmm. One pure evil, one pure good.”
“Yes, but now try to pull them apart.”
She did so, and felt the tug. She peered in closer and saw it.
“A soul mate thread? Between these two?”
“That’s what I said.”
“It’s so very thin.” she said. “You can hardly see it. I think one of them betrayed the other. They’re barely hanging on.”
“Well, what should we do?” Belinda asked. “Should we try to break the thread?”
Marionetta nodded.
“Let’s. We can’t very well sort them like this.”
They brought out their tools, meant only for the most complicated situations, such as this one. They tried with everything they had to break that thinnest, almost invisible thread, but it held fast.
“They just won’t separate.” Marionetta said. “We can’t sort them like this. With them bound together, we have to treat them as one heart.”
Belinda held the pure, red heart in her hand and felt pity.
“Poor thing.” she said. “I’m so sorry. It’s back to Life with you both.”
She tossed them into the Life portal and watched them go, wondering how a situation that complicated would eventually turn out. She hummed quietly as she went back to work.