Psychopomp (short story)
Psychopomp was a standalone fanfiction short story by Aristide Twain. It was an unofficial crossover between Jenny Everywhere and Neil Gaiman's Endless from The Sandman and related media.
Contents
Plot
Jenny Everywhere shifts at random and finds herself in a very old universe where everything that could happen already had, leaving nothing interesting left. But when even Destiny is gone there is still one power left to remember him: Death. Drawn to the only living creature in the universe, Death appears and talks with Jenny. In time, they agree to go see what might be happening in other universes…
Jenny Everywhere
- This story features an unspecified Jenny. She has good control of her shifting but sometimes let herself shift at random, letting “the winds of infinity” take her where they would. She notes that this version of her is native to a universe that “isn't even part of the same multiversal cluster” as Death's universe.
- Death previously met the version of Jenny native to her own universe. She apparently did not look identical to the story's main Jenny, but did use the “Jenny Everywhere” name.
- Jenny instinctively summons a bubble of air around herself upon shifting into an airless void.
- She reflects on how she is technically immortal because, however many million versions of her die, there are still an infinity of Jennies left alive, with more being born at every moment — all of whom retain the memories of any Jenny who dies, though they don't necessarily choose to call on these memories.
Jenny Nowhere
- Jenny is familiar with versions of Jenny Nowhere who have bleached-white skin and wear black clothing. She is also called “the Nemesis”, and Jenny muses that “the relationship between her and the Nemesis [is] complex to say the last; sometimes they [are] related, sometimes they [aren't], sometimes Nowhere [is] much closer to home still”.
Death
- Death's embodiments, in Jenny's experience, to be “cold, inhuman, imperious — everything she wasn't”, as well as being sore losers about how Jenny “keeps beating them at chess”.
- However, the story focuses on Death of the Endless. One of the Endless, she appears as “a girl with a shock of black hair”, whose skin is “a pure marble white”. She wears “striking make-up”, a black sleeveless T-shirt and matching jeans. Jenny deems her far more likable than Deaths usually are, and eventually helps her become a shifter.
Worldbuilding
- The Endless numbered seven: three sisters (including Death), three brothers (including Destiny) and one sibling who was either “neither” or “simultaneously” male or female. Destiny was the eldest, and the last to die.
Universes
- This story takes place in Death's native universe at a point when it is “dead”, nothing but an expanse of timeless, empty darkness. Jenny describes it as having been “a vibrant universe once, full of heroes and villains and living suns… Magic, gods and witches, angels and demons, and things stranger still. A world of adventure”. The suggestion is that this is the DC Comics or Vertigo universe, or a close analogue thereof.
Continuity
- Jenny is familiar with Jenny Nowheres who wear black and have bone-white skin. This is reminiscent of Nowhere as depicted by King Francis Petty, for instance in COMIC: That Feeling When Your Antagonist Is Gay For You.
- Jenny notes that Nowhere is sometimes “much closer” to her than just being her sister, referencing PROSE: Parallax's depiction of the original Jenny Nowhere as being a “fallen” version of Jenny Everywhere herself.
- This story inspired Scott Sanford to create PROSE: Pratfall, depicting Jenny's meeting with another popular 20th century British writer's version of Death.
- These characters would be seen again in PROSE: Storm's End.
Behind the scenes
Background
Aristide Twain noted in the Author's Notes that the story was inspired by Scott Sanford's suggestion in PROSE: Second Date of a crossover between Jenny Everywhere's mythos and Neil Gaiman's Sandman by virtue of giving Morpheus himself a cameo at the Restaurant. This made Death the second Endless to appear in a Jenny Everywhere story.
The story picks up on the oft-stated, but never-shown fact in The Sandman series that Death was slated to be the very last living thing in the universe, outliving Destiny himself, and to somehow “leave” it after she was finished with her duties therein.
Read online
The story is available for free archiveofourown
