In the 21st century, the shinigami king looks at the monster he has become, and his claws twitch, as if to curl around a gardening tool that isn't there.

The premise: Shinigami are as eternal as death itself – they live outside of the human world, and yet reflect it. Their world, their organization, their very appearances are based on Earth… at least, what Earth will become. Specifically, Earth as it is a hundred years from the "present" timeline. In just less than a century, years of war (possibly stemming from all those dropped Death Notes…) will turn the planet into an apocalyptic wasteland, and the remnants of humanity will become in appearance something like the shinigami of Death Note. But a hundred years ago… a hundred years ago, things were very different. And the king is one of the only ones who remember that.

The justification: I don't even know. This just kind of happened. I own neither Death Note nor Kuroshitsuji. Also, this was written at one in the morning, so please forgive any spelling/grammatical errors. I'll check it over when I can actually think properly again. By the way, the title's from Henry VI.

A Crown Called Content

There were few shinigami who remembered the old ways, because there was no such things as "old" to beings that lived outside of time. There were few who remembered when their wasteland home gleamed white with steel and glass, concrete and plastic. The days when enormous crags were chrome-plated staircases, when dirt and mud were pristine tile floors. There were few who remembered, and fewer still who wanted to remember, because there was no point in living in the past.

They already lived in the future, after all. It was something that the eldest and most powerful of the shinigami, the king, tried to forget almost every waking moment. No, the shinigami king held no true love for humanity, or for Earth. It wasn't his concern what humans did to themselves or to each other. Except, of course, when they did something so drastic, so utterly horrendous or idiotic or illogical, that it managed to carry over to his realm. His people.

Shinigami have always reflected humans. But death, as is only natural, comes after life, and so they reflect not the present but the future. And what a future it was. The king supposed that eventually the people of Earth would just blow themselves up. Or create some infectious disease that spread. Or die out from global warming. But some semblance of them would remain, something with a soul, and as long as there were souls on Earth then he really couldn't complain.

Still.

Most of the younger shinigami, the ones who had been born (so to speak) into this world of darkness and bleak monstrosity, didn't yet understand that their fate was that of the humans below them, and most never made the two logical connections that were to come of this: First, that humans were doomed – one way or another – to mutate into the frankly hideous creatures that the gods of death now resembled. Second, that at some point, those very same gods of death had once been far more human.

Now, as I said, the king wasn't particularly fond of humans. If anything, he might say if asked that he cared about them only so far as to take pride in his job. But then, he didn't have a job anymore. There was no such thing. There was only death, and greed, and souls…

The demons had disappeared decades ago. The older, wiser shinigami believed that they had all become one and the same. After all, they ate souls now. They stole the lives they took for their own use. They took life. There was no ritual to it, no finesse, no clean-cut rules and regulations to follow. There was no hierarchy, no teachers, no students, no promotions and salaries and endless hours of overtime clocked in. It was all gone.

Theoretically, shinigami could live forever. In reality, they were lucky if they managed a full century before going mad. Death was death, after all, disturbing by its very nature, and they were all too human. At least that's how it used to be – now, when there was no obligation to reap the souls of humans, no quotas to fill, no stress, nothing but sheer boredom… now, when all remnants of humanity had been leeched from them… well. They could steal life. They were as eternal as it got.

Sometimes, the king would put on a three-piece suit, forcing it over his globe-like body. The fabric would stretch obscenely, and the tie would hang limply on the ground like a dead animal dangling from a predator's mouth.

Sometimes, his four tentacle-like arms would twitch, and the claws that were once pale, slender hands would curl as if to grasp a garden tool that wasno longer there.

It was wrong. It was all wrong. Never had the shinigami been affected by change, never had they been left in the past, because it wasn't in their nature. But this was different, and he was different. He remembered humanity – he remembered what it was to walk among them, to interact… and more than that, he remembered what it felt like to have a purpose.

The king knew what life was like when it had meaning. He remembered getting out of bed and facing the day eagerly, knowing he had a job to do and a reason…

Well. There were no reasons anymore. There were no rules, except the ones he made, and the ones in the Death Notes. Those pitiful notebooks – a recent change, only in the last decade or so. It was probably significant in some way. Perhaps ten years after whatever would turn the humans into monsters, they would finally regain literacy. Perhaps. There was no use speculating. Too much had changed. There had never been so much change. When fire had been discovered, they were already eating cooked food. When the wheel had been invented, they were already pushing wheelbarrows. But there had always been some link, something to tie them to the people whose lives they so carelessly took. But now… now there was nothing. Now too much had changed. Once, they could even have saved human lives, if they'd had a good reason to.

No, it hadn't always been so careless.

So pointless.

The king watched as the shinigami named Ryuk tried to slip a second Death Note past him. He sighed and let him have his fun. A hundred years ago, he would have chastised the youngling, would have scolded him and threatened demotion and maybe even cut his salary.

Ryuk earned nothing. Ryuk had nothing. Ryuk had no purpose, and so the king could not begrudge him one.

The youngling left, a smirk hidden on his face. It was times like this that the king felt so bare. So naked. So lost. Was this what his people were reduced to? Was this all there was? Cruelty and greed. They were no better than demons.

Shortly after Ryuk's little episode, there was a problem with another of the younger shinigami. Gelus. The king could not help but pity the poor thing… and in a way, he felt a small part of himself die with him. This was a shinigami who still knew humanity, and even if he was too young to remember the days when they looked like them, he at least felt some connection to them. The king respected that. Few were as old as he was, and nearly every person he'd once called his coworker had long since moved on to the nothingness. With this youngling's death, he was alone. And if he'd had eyes instead of these vacant sockets, he'd perhaps have even cried.

If he'd had eyes. Of course, he could still see. Things had changed. The old rules didn't apply anymore. He could see.

But if he'd had eyes…

The king raised one long, limp arm to the skull that served as his face, reaching a claw towards the empty hole that marked a former nose – the fragment of a long-forgotten gesture. A useless gesture. Purposeless. Like everything else.

He sighed.

A shadow fell across the ground. Another shinigami, probably here to say they've lost their Death Note. It seemed to be happening quite often, a running theme. The king vaguely wondered what havoc it was causing in the human world.

"Oh," he thought, "perhaps that's what causes the apparent apocalypse."

There was the sound of approaching footsteps, and a figure entered the filthy cave that he called his office, though everyone else insisted on "throne room." The footsteps stopped, and the king looked up with empty eyes.

The being that stood in front of him was a shinigami like any other, with dark purplish-crimson skin. It was, like most, somewhere between male and female, though it appeared to sway towards the latter. The creature (chances were low that it was old enough to have ever been anything more than a monster) had a rather voluptuous upper body, and a waist so thin as to be pinched in the middle – giving the impression of an enormous, feminine insect. It had no hair to speak of, though its face was rounded and soft, with thick red lips and long, spidery eyelashes. The only clothing it wore was a tattered red wrap of fabric around its lower half.

The creature bowed its head and opened its mouth to speak, revealing inch-long serrated teeth.

"My king," it crooned in a voice surprisingly low in timbre. "I have yearned for years now to come and see you for myself, and it seems that you are indeed as great as they say."

The tone was reverent, subservient. Annoying. This was another overly-loyal subject, here for praise or the like – even when as subjects they hardly did anything. The king undulated his enormous mass of a body in irritation. "Yes, yes," he snapped. "What do you want?"

"W-what do I want?" the creature looked up, acid-green eyes searching the king's skull, perhaps for some sort of emotional cues. It would find none. "Well…" it trailed off, as if unwilling to continue.

"Speak," the king demanded flatly. Best to get this over with.

"Right. Well," the shinigami began, "I have heard a lot about you – I mean, who hasn't – you're our king – and I thought that maybe – just maybe – I could come and see what the… what the big deal was – please forgive me for being so blunt – but now that I'm here, I see you're really quite handsome, and I just wanted to say…" it trailed off again, biting its lower lip with those absurdly pointed teeth.

The king took a minute to process this, and when he did, he could only manage a strangled "…handsome?…"

The creature nodded hesitantly, looking extremely nervous and irritatingly meek. "I– also… well, you see… I…"

"Get on with it."

With a squeak, the shinigami rapidly continued: "Its just that– that no one would tell me your name, and I didn't really know w–what was going on, because I've been on the other side of the w–world for a while because I thought m–maybe it was less boring there but then I heard there was a new k–king after the old one stepped down and I thought maybe it… maybe…" There was a strange flicker over the creature's face, as the terrified expression was replaced for a split second by something that most certainly wasn't terror – thought the king had no idea what it was. "W–well I asked around and I found out your name and now I'm here."

His name? This shinigami… knew… but… "Why? Why does it matter?" the king asked, genuinely curious if rather bemused. "You are my subject. You should address me as 'your highness,' or the like."

The creature looked up and tilted its head. There was a pause.

"Everything's different," it said finally, and the king would have blinked in confusion - if he'd had eyes. The creature's voice had entirely lost the subservient tone, hiking up an octave. Its face had relaxed, no longer screwed up into some combination of respect and fear. "I can't tell what's what anymore. Everything's changed too fast and I couldn't tell what was happening and I got lost, alright? So don't blame me." It danced between the words as it spoke, lilting, flamboyant. No. This was wrong.

"Explain." This was very, very wrong.

That voice continued. That damned wrong voice. "Well~…" The creature was speaking in tildes. It wasn't possible. If there were gods of things other than death, they had to be laughing at the king right now. That damned impossible voice. "I left thinking maybe it wouldn't be so dreary out there, you know? Everyone left, half of them died. Quite inconsiderate of them, really." It just winked at him. This monster just winked at him. That damned familiar voice. "And then everything started to fall apart. So I stayed away. And the last king was just a brute – not nearly as good-looking, might– I– add–" It drew an inch closer with each of its last words. The monster was flirting with him. That damned perfect voice. "But when I heard about you, I thought 'Big and stoic and a partykiller, that sounds like someone I know,' and then I thought…"

The thing reached behind itself, into a pocket sewn into the wrap around its waist (the remains of a red jacket, the king realized suddenly), and pulled out…

A pair of glasses.

They were old, and had been broken several times, and the nose was held together by tape, and one of the lenses was cracked… but…

The king was silent.

"I thought these might belong to you, Will?" asked Grell Sutcliff.

Some things would never change, and for that, the king would keep living.

AN: Oh, great. I actually teared up while writing this. But on another note… how the hell did this happen? I was trying to write an introspective piece about how the shinigami of Kuroshitsuji might change and leave the humans behind, becoming the creatures we know from Death Note, with an added level of horror from the implication that the world they live in now is a reflection of the human world from a century in the future. I did not intend this reunion. I didn't even know who the other shinigami was until I got to the "tattered red wrap of fabric," and then I sat back and went "Ohhhhh…"

Seriously. What. The. Heck. Why did Grell have William's glasses? Is this implied Grelliam? Are Ronald and the others dead? What exactly happened to the demons? I dunno. I really dunno.

Ah, well.