The High Blue Ceiling & The Low Dark Everywhere

Hey, did you hear about the Nightwalker? According to the grapevine, it's a pony who comes out of nowhere and talks you out of suicide! Pretty not-cool, huh? Wait what? No! I'm saying that the suicide part is not cool. The 'showing up whenever you need him' part is totally cool. Kinda like batemare, or mare-do-well if, you know, they were the suicide-prevention hotline.

The rooftop view from the Currency Exchange building always calmed him down. Ponies passing along the sidewalk, on their way to wherever they were going, ponies sitting in traffic, taking a midnight joyride or trying to get home. The doppler effect cars made when they passed by on the road below, and the ambient noise of the city at night itself never failed to, at the very least, ease the churning, burning pains in his heart.

"Hey there! This seat taken?" He looked up and to his left. Standing there was a stoutish purple mare with blue curls, wearing an officer's uniform. Levitating in her magic was a large Mcdoneighald's cup, which she noisily slurped from.

"Yeah sure, nopony else here." He stated gruffly, making a 'go ahead' gesture. She settled in beside him quickly enough, pulling her officer's cap down over her eyes so the drizzling rain didn't get in her eyes.  He never understood why ponies always shied away from the rain or complained about how it wasted a 'perfectly fine day'. Rain was rain, how else was stuff supposed to grow? Then again, there was always magic, but magic didn't always work the way it was supposed to. Take cars for example. Arcano-electric energy has come a long way from the primordial Model-Ps that used to clutter the sidewalks. That doesn't mean that they're the pinnacle of modern technology. Heck, you always hear horror stories of what could happen if you mess with the power crystals or engine, or both at the same time.

"Like the rain?" She asked, he grunted, almost forgetting about her entirely. The generator behind him hums steadily onwards. The rooftop's not big, but a fall from this size would definitely leave a corpse.

"So is that a yes or a no?" She asked again, setting the cup down and staring at him. If he wasn't where he was, about to do what he was going to do, he might've acknowledged that she was cute, and subsequently hit on her. With the situation as it was, however, all he did was grunt and get up, moving to the edge of the building and sitting down so that his back legs hung off the building itself, lazily making figure 8s.

"I dunno, more like I don't care about the rain."

"Why don't you care about the rain?"

"Because it's rain. It's a scheduled shower that the city kept pushing back because of some parade or whatever."

"Did you know that Gryphons don't like scheduled rain?"

"Yes?"

He take a sidelong look at the mare who's managed to, in the span of that strange conversation, sidle up alongside him.  "Is there a point to this?" He asks. "I kinda want to kill myself."

"Aww, but you're so cute!" She giggled, brushing aside a curtain of his solid gray mane to look him dead in the eye. Funnily enough, his eyes were also dead and flat, like his mane. He sighed and pushed her hoof away, standing up and on the lip of the rooftop where he swayed precariously near the edge.

"Stop hitting on me. I have things to do."

"Like killing yourself."

"Yes."

"Oh. Why do you want to kill yourself again? Trouble at home? Work?" She leaned back, the flirtatious note gone from her voice.

"Nah."

"Then why?" She asked again. He rolled his eyes in annoyance.

"Because I get a pay raise."

"Pardon?"

"I work at the DeathCo." She made an 'ooh'ing noise as the realization dawned on her, followed immediately by a quirk of her eyebrow as confusion set in.

"Why does that matter?" He face-hoofed and stepped away from the ledge.

"DeathCo's job is to go out and collect dead ponies, right?" He asked, she nodded, so he continued. "Now, that's all fine and dandy, collect souls, get the bodies off the street. No fuss, no mess, not too much grieving. Especially since their bodies are going towards a better cause, and quite profitable cause." He continued, sniggering at the little dig. "So, ponies get paid on how many hours they work, right?" She nodded again. "There's this loophole where you get paid an extra 10 bits an hour if you're technically dead. Warrant and all. Plus, I can work the graveyard shift." He finished, cocking his head to the side. "Literally."

"... Okay. I think I get it." She stated after some time had passed. "You want to kill yourself, because a death warrant will prove that, well, you're dead. And that'll get you a raise." She finished. He nodded, relieved. He was about to step off the lip and end it all, when she pipped up yet again. "But isn't that just a job? It's temporary, right? What if you wanted to settle down? Get married, raise a family, and see the world? Celestia's sake, this has to be the dumbest reasoning for kicking the can I've seen! And I've been working this beat for 5 years!" She threw down her cap and physically pulled him off the lip of the building. "You know what? No. I'm not allowing you to kill yourself. You just need help." She muttered, using her telekinesis to pull a bag out from behind the generator.

"You know, I've actually seen the afterlife." He continued, completely unperturbed.

"Bullshit." She countered, thought, it sounded less like a retort, and more like a muffled garbling of words, considering that she had freed a pair of foreleg cuffs from the bag.

"How's that bullshit? I deal in death lady, it was just part of my job training." He continued, she stopped wrestling with the cuffs and used her telekinesis to heft him up.

"I'm saying that's bullshit because it just.. is, alright?" She continued pulling the saddlebag back onto her back.

"How is that bullshit?" He countered, mouth quirked at the corners in faint amusement.

"Nopony's meant to see the afterlife until it's their time." She more or less grunted. "Now move, I'm going to drop you off at a hospital, and you're going to do it unless you want to spend the night in jail." She muttered, roughly pushing him towards the door.

"Who decides when it's time?" He asks, laughing as she stopped dead in her tracks. Using the opportunity, he lunged past her, and over the lip of the building. Of course she lunged, but she was neither quick enough or strong enough to pull the plummeting stallion back to her.

As the blue and red strobe lights of her fellow officers cordoned the sidewalk off, and the crowd pushed and shoved to see the body, she sat there on her perch on the Currency Exchange building, looking down at the still grey lump that had just a few moments ago, been a rather witty yet melancholic living breathing being. Yet as she sat there, her thoughts kept going back to his final words.

"Who decides when it's time?"And try as she might, she could never answer that one question.