The office was warm and welcoming, the walls coloured like sunset and the desk was not too broad, not too deep, giving enough personal space between the two sat at opposite sides of it without creating a distance far enough to be intimidating or isolating. There were two bookshelves, one crammed with textbooks and the other with comics, trashy romances, murder mysteries, biographies and practically every genre of book one could give name to. The chairs were comfortable, too. Death had to admit that as far as the offices for the universe’s last therapist went, it did an excellent job of radiating a sense of both competence on behalf of its owner and disarming charm.

The woman who sat across from him on the desk was not very old, not as one might expect for the Last Woman. She was perhaps in her late fifties or early sixties by appearance. Of course in this late year that could mean she was aeons old, but Death had certain advantages in these sorts of things, and he knew she was barely a century in age. An odd affectation for one so young to allow their age to advance so far… but given she was the Last, perhaps she saw no particular point in it any more.

“You know,” she said, “you do not look anything like what I imagined.”

Death smiled, an old and tired smile for a youthful face of dark skin and blue eyes and a tussle of brown hair, “Would you rather I look different?” he asked, leaning back. Jeans and blue shirt became robes dark as the void outside and his flesh withered into bleached bone and those blue eyes shone in the sockets with a light utterly unlike the lost, dead stars. He leaned forward again, steepling talons, the robes fading to white and more like those of a Buddhist monk than the cowled Reaper, a long curving beak clacking with laughter, and long graceful feathers of a white so bright it burned glimmered upon his frame. Pale flames of green-yellow flickered within his eyes, “Take your pick. I’ve worn many faces over the years.”

If the display affected the woman, she didn’t show it. Instead, she simply shook her head, “No, I was just surprised. Please, take any form that you feel comfortable in. This is a safe place.”

The tall, gaunt bird-creature leaned back in his seat and regarded her with slowly-flickering flame, “I was affecting a shape for your comfort, Doctor, not mine. But as you wish. I shall remain as I am presently, then. It is as good a form as any.”

She pursed her lips at that, and this time she leaned forward, fingers steepling, “Is it? Do you have a name, or do I simply call you Death this entire time?”

The avian figure clacked his beak in laughter, “Well that is one of my truer names, if not the Truth of me. But in this body… in this body, I am called Ayam the Pale. It will suffice.”

She nodded, “Ayam, then. Alright, so Ayam why are we here today?” she asked, her voice gentle, displaying a quiet sort of curiosity.

“Is it not obvious, Doctor? You are the last human living. The last mind living, in fact. I just took the last of the Archai in their blackhole computational matrices, and the last of an unnamed species of mollusc-esque creatures that clustered around the volcanic vents of the last even remotely habitable planet in the universe a few trillion trillion lightyears away. I am impressed, really, that you have held out alone here for a whole year. The last living thing in Refuge. The last sanctuary of organic life in all Existence, outlasting even the stars. It was a truly commendable effort.”

His voice was kind, and there was even admiration in it, but something in it made Doctor Iqra Schroeder frown, “You left me until last? God-computers, alien animals, philosophers and mystiques and scientists from a hundred million human clades alone never mind the uncounted number of xeno-sophonts out there… and you pick me to go last?”

Ayam shook his head, “I do not choose, Doctor. That is not my place. I am Death. I do not kill,” he paused, hesitated, and then amended, “Unless I am asked to hurry things along, but I have not done that in a very long time. No, I come to you because it is time. I have put it off for a year and a day, but I can forestall my duty no longer.”

She tilted her head, “Forestall?” She asked, eyes searching his alien face. He’d chosen that form for a reason; there was something in it he took comfort from, but it also made it harder to read him. Perhaps his hesitance was subconscious, and this was another part of it. He wanted her help, and would not admit it to himself, and so made it harder on himself to get it. He would not be the first patient to exhibit such avoidance behaviour, “And why are you stalling, Ayam?”

He hesitated, looked away, “A poor choice of phrase. I wanted to give you time to come to terms with it. That is all.”

She shook her head, “I don’t think that’s true. You left a therapist as the last living thing. You avoided coming here for a year after the last other souls passed on. When you said that you had ‘just’ taken the molluscs and the Archai… that was a year ago too, wasn’t it? When the others here took their lives because of their…” she hesitated, a pain flickering across her face, “Religious beliefs.”

Ayam sighed heavily, and forced himself to look back at her, “I can see that I cannot lie to you. Yes. I left you alone this whole time. I could have come to you then, and given you my offer then, and… put things to rest. But I did not. It was… cruel of me, to prolong this. I am sorry, Doctor.”

She gave him a long, steady look, “If you think you were being cruel leaving me here like this… then why did you do it?”