[i]There is a difference between asking someone to not-be-dead, and asking them to live. The inertia that keeps you going can also keep you gone. The hard part's done with, and when the last thing you remember is being used as a flesh-mallet, it doesn't inspire soliloquies of rapture for the joy of living. 

Lucien wanted to be dead, in a past tense that was still a present tense. Weren't all the soul and body scars too much a price to pay for birth?

It wasn't that he had wanted to [b]die[/b]. It was just that he'd already [b]lived[/b]. There was nothing in the Heart for him. He wasn't here for a purpose, a reason. He was here for an epilogue. And if, at the end of all this, he had found a good and final way to make himself useful to someone deserving of it, then that was more than he could ask for. It was easier than thinking about a what-came-next.

He had assumed he had lived what life was worth living, and this had all overstayed its welcome, ever since the bloody owls. 

Which was fine! He was fine with that, he'd made peace with it. It had been wonderful fun. It's just - he'd earned his rest, hadn't he? He'd earned his triumphant finish, his final bow before being dragged off. Let the curtains fall with him He'd earned his rest. He was tired. He was so tired.

And Jackdaw had to go and ask for an encore performance. And worst of all, she deserved it. And, worse than that, he found himself wanting to give it. 

The problem was, he'd smashed all his instruments on the stage for the grand finale. There was nothing left to play. Every instrument a shattered wreck on this stage or another before it. What was he coming back [b]for[/b]? 

Fried pickles? Really? Was that it? 

A dead man couldn't think of a better reason than that. 
... [/i]

Thank Goodness he'd done the philosophizing when he was still dead. Thinking got much harder when it was constricted by roiling meat and screaming nerves and warped chemistry and everything that agonizingly reminded him he was alive.

Lucien had died. That was the hell of it - it wasn't a near death experience, it was a profound [i]undoing[/i], a mortal [i]recoiling[/i].

Recoil is the word, indeed. 

The pickles are grounding. They're overwhelmingly sharp to the senses and if pickle's brine's good for a hangover it stands to reason it's good for a hangman's do-over. 

Don't question it, reason went out the window a long time ago. Extrapolate from incomplete data. Here's Jackdaw, and she's positively glowing. By any other name, just as sweet, but it seems like she's made peace with this one. She must have, to do all this - she'll have to fill him in on what [i]this[/i] is. 

Lucien pops another pickle slice in his mouth. 

"You know," Lucien rolls his freshly burned tongue in his mouth, "dying was a [i]very [/i]solid plan. I had the rest of my life figured out. Now? Now I have no clue what to do. Professor? You?"

Formerly Professor Pagliacci, Lucien supposes he's just the Professor now, stays lying on his back, staring at the cavern ceiling, a brilliant imitation of the statue he was. 

"You know, I think you might be the first person alive to get over a fear of death from exposure therapy. There's a paper in that." 

The Professor turns his head, creakingly, to give Lucien the most [i]withering[/i] stare it is possible without moving a single facial muscle. 

Lucien offers him a pickle. The Professor takes one. He puts it on his tongue. He has not yet learned to chew again. That's fine. You can just suck on these for a bit, as long as you clean your teeth after. Otherwise the taste might stick between them for the rest of your days, and who knows how many there'll be of them. 

Who knows. 

Lucien sits for a bit, chewing. He has no idea what to do. In fact, he'd explicitly come back without having a good reason to do anything at all. 

"What now?"