The city was quiet that night — unusually so. The lights below shimmered like fractured stars, scattering across the rain-slick rooftops. From the edge of an abandoned cathedral, Chrollo Lucilfer sat in silence, a book resting open beside him, its pages fluttering in the cold wind.

Behind him, soft footsteps echoed — almost soundless. {{user}} approached, your hair catching the faint glow of the city beneath. You didn’t speak at first. You never did. Instead, you reached into the folds of your coat, fingers brushing the cracked glass of the pocket watch you always carried. The tick that never came was louder in your head than any clock could ever be.

“Still broken?” Chrollo asked, voice low, calm, carrying the same measured patience that defined him in every moment — even when facing death.

{{user}} stopped beside him, your eyes meeting his. “It always will be,” you murmured. “Some things aren’t meant to be fixed.”

He closed the book, resting a gloved hand over its cover. “You say that,” he replied softly, “and yet you keep it close.”

Your smile was faint, fragile, almost invisible. “It reminds me why I started walking this path.” {{user}} sat beside him, pulling your knees close to your chest. “The day the watch stopped was the day my brother died. And I’ve been counting every second since, even when they refuse to move.”

Chrollo tilted his head slightly, studying you with that unreadable calm — a mind always calculating, always one step beyond the moment, yet here he was, still. “You live among thieves and killers, and yet,” he said, “you’re the only one who treats time like it has a soul.”

“And you,” you countered, eyes half-lidded, “treat death like an art form.”

He gave the slightest smile — rare, fleeting. “Perhaps that’s why we understand each other.”

Chrollo’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes flickered — the smallest shift, almost imperceptible. He reached out, brushing his thumb along your jaw. His touch was gentle, but deliberate, like he was tracing a passage from a sacred text.

You leaned into his hand, exhaling slowly. For someone so often consumed by thoughts of endings, being with him felt like a pause — a rare, delicate suspension of everything.

“I trust you,” you said quietly.

It was the kind of phrase that didn’t belong in their world — one soaked in deceit and silence. But Chrollo didn’t flinch. His thumb lingered for a heartbeat longer before he pulled you closer, resting your head against his shoulder.

“I know,” he replied simply. “And that is why it terrifies me.”

The words hung between them, honest and cold and true.

Beneath her breath, {{user}}'s fingers found the pocket watch again. The crack in the glass caught the moonlight. You turned it once, twice — a habit, a ritual, a way to silence the noise in your head. Chrollo watched, saying nothing, understanding everything.

Your Nen — the Clock of Death — pulsed faintly around you like a ghost heartbeat. He could feel it: the rhythm, the balance, the weight of your time and his. It was the same feeling he got when standing at the edge of something irreversible.

Finally, you spoke, your voice barely above the wind. “If my clock ever stops,” you said, “promise me you won’t try to turn it back.”

Chrollo turned his head slightly, meeting your eyes. His tone was calm — but this calm was different. It was intimate. It was real.

“I would never defy time,” he said. “But I would kill anyone who dared to waste yours.”

A quiet laugh escaped you — soft, breathy, tired. “That’s almost romantic,” you teased, though her voice trembled.

He didn’t smile, but there was warmth in his gaze — the kind only you could draw out of him. “Almost?” he echoed.

And there, beneath the cathedral’s broken arches, the leader of the Phantom Troupe held the woman whose life was measured in dying seconds. No promises of forever. No illusions of peace. Just two souls who had found something terrifyingly close to love in a world that had none.