(I die a little each time I contemplate the fact that... I do not own Billy and Mandy. If anything, they own me. Have a nice read.)

Mandy felt herself shivering, even under her pink comforter and 3 extra blankets. Her stomach twisted and ached. Although there was no mirror nearby, she knew she had dark circles under her eyes, extra-pale skin, and two flushed red areas on her greyish cheeks.

She was ill.

She swallowed this information rather bitterly. She was sick, and so, for the time being, at a physical disadvantage to most other people. At a mental disadvantage, too, if her fever progressed. And if she didn't live through this... Her scowl deepened. Hatred was as good a cure as anything- and loathing, she knew, would have her back on her feet in hours. If laughter was the best cure, and laughter was stupid and pointless, imagine what fury did- good, strong fury.

Mandy turned her head, and a clump of her hair pulled suddenly. She winced. Bedhead. She'd add that to her list of physical ailments. What she needed was some sort of slave- some sort of female slave- that could tend to her when she couldn't do it herself. Not like Billy, who knew nothing about girls, or Grim, who pretended to know a lot but most likely didn't.

"Hey-a Mandy!"

Mandy jumped a bit, but her scowl was back in no time, and deeper at that. "Billy," she snapped, "how many times do I have to tell you to. Stay. Out. Of my room?!" The force of the shout sent Billy rolling into the wall behind him. However, his habitual smile was back even faster than Mandy's habitual scowl was, and he sprang back to her side cheerfully.

"Hey-a Mandy," he repeated, as though nothing had happened. "Whatcha doin' in bed on your birthday?"

Mandy almost jumped again, but caught herself, turning her glare on Billy. Billy grinned back curiously. He was the only one who didn't seem to mind her angry, cold stare at all: through anger and danger, through punches and impatience, Billy had always trailed behind her dutifully, often comically, and she'd let him. Only for some sort of human company. Not that I need company, of course, she thought quickly, turning her face away.

"Hey-a M-"

"I'm sick! I'm sick, okay?"

"S-I-K, sick. But it's your birthday!" Billy placed his hands on the edge of her mattress and began to jiggle it violently. Mandy slapped him upside the head. Billy stopped moving the mattress.

"Billy-" Mandy began. She stopped, coughed, and pinched the area between her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. "Okay. We've been through this. For once, you're right: it is my birthday."

"YOUR SUH-WEET SIXTEEN!" Billy shouted.

"Uh, yeah," Mandy replied, eyeing him. "But at the same time, I am sick." Almost as if to reinforce this statement, a cold chill shot through her body, and she shivered violently. "S-s-so," she began again, teeth chittering, "I'm going to spend my birthday morning in bed, perhaps." Billy's jaw dropped. Mandy was finally satisfied- that meant at least part of what she;d said had gotten through to him... unusual.

"I may even spend all afternoon here." Billy's jaw dropped down further. He was looking at Mandy with what was probably the most horrified, forlorn expression he'd ever worn. Mandy looked at him and hesitated. Here she was, drawing out the agony as she always, always had, but now, for the first time, there was something else running through her mind: reluctance. Why was she doing this? Mandy looked away so that their eyes no longer met. Curse him and his little puppy dog face, she thought, he's trying to get what he wants- again. She steeled herself, wondering what was wrong with her- was she losing her touch? Did she have some sort of soft spot, heaven forbid? No, she decided; she couldn't just lose her touch.

Mandy hardened her heart and plowed onwards. "But most likely, I'll be in bed all day."

Billy's jaw dropped all the way to the floor. "But-"

"Yes," Mandy said flatly. She turned her back to him, expecting him to leave, and tried to get comfortable in her bed. With a fever, it was easier said than done. She would feel dreadfully cold, and curl into a little ball to try to preserve heat- then, she'd be too hot, and break into a sticky, slimy sweat, which took its time evaporating- it was evaporating still when another cold flash would come, making her even colder as the sweat dried. She did not remember sleeping, but was suddenly aware of feeling dazed, with all of her blankets twisted around her like a cocoon. She tossed and turned in this way for what felt like hours.

The truth was, it was only about half an hour since she'd turned away from Billy, when Grim showed up. "NOOO!" Billy shouted when he saw Grim. He'd been standing there for the past half hour, waiting for Mandy to talk to him (it had never crossed his mind that she might be getting too near deliria to speak), and now he lept up and tried to snatch Grim's scythe away. He failed, because Grim was not even carrying his scythe. Such trivial differences made no difference to Billy. He grabbed the object Grim was carrying anyway, placed his body between it and Grim, and fairly foamed at the mouth as he said, "You can't take her! I'll never let you take her! Grim, you may be my bestest friend, but Mandy is my bestest bestest bestest friend, and you can't have her!"

Grim took a step back. He raised an eyebrow. "I came to wish her a happy birthday. So take't easy."

Billy paused to look at the object he was holding. It was a taut black string- tied to the top was a helium balloon, a black one, with a pink flower in the middle. There was a very one-sided awkward silence, during which Grim fidgeted and Billy picked his nose unconcernedly. Billy tried to tie the end of the string to one of Mandy's pink bedposts, but, lacking the skills to tie a knot, he simply let go of the balloon and let it bob to the ceiling.

"Oh, brother," Grim said under his breath. He left the room, leaving Billy and a terribly ill Mandy alone once again.

Billy watched her like he watched the television; blankly, staring, either utterly inattentive or utterly rapt, it was impossible to tell which. Unless, that is, an observer knew what to look for: the way his face lit up when she tossed towards him, the way he leaned forward slightly when she groaned in her sleep and clutched the sheets around her, the way color came to his cheeks when the sheets came off a bit and he saw how her sweat made her pink nightie cling to her.

He watched her the entire time not knowing a coherent thought.

-GABM-

Mandy blinked and sat up. Where was she? She had trouble remembering. Her head spun and she felt nauseous... rather than her own bed in her own bedroom, she was sitting somewhere... strange. She squinted at her surroundings. The ground was dry, cracked, and dusty, leading her to believe she was in some sort of desert; yet, the sky was as blank and white as a fresh sheet of paper.

She stopped squinting, but her eyes remained narrowed. She was certainly not in Endsville anymore. Whoever had moved her from her resting place would pay. Dearly. Other than the ground and the sky, there was nothing- no trees, no animals, no buildings. Even the ground, with all its cracks and crevasses, was dusty and boring.

"Hey!" she yelled suddenly. Her voice fell dead in the air. Of course it would, she realized, with nothing for the sound to vibrate off of: there were no land formations. She glared at the turf with furious, futile intensity. She couldn't even start an avalanche or anything. She supposed, because she was the only one here, that she'd finally taken everything over. But what was the use in that? There were no citizens to punish. There were no rebellions to crush.

Deep under the ground, something started to rumble. Mandy felt her eyebrows raise up; she was slightly worried about that noise. It meant- back on Earth, anyway- that there was about to be an-

"Earthquake," she spoke quietly. Her voice rang with the same muffled deadness that it had before, but now, not even Mandy took notice: the rumble had turned to a roar as the ground began to pitch and shake violently. The cracks looked much less boring when they were being tossed into the air. Mandy's stomach lurched as the ground was suddenly removed from under her feet. There was no way she could land on her feet this time. Everything had been caught off balance, everything was tossed helter-skelter into the air like some sort of lazy pizza god was tossing up the crust of the planet... Mandy cried out as a violent wave rose and smacked her right out of the air. She squeezed her eyes shut. Laying flat on her stomach, her fingers scrabbled uselessly in the dust, searching for something to cling to. The knowledge that there was nothing left a bitter taste in her mouth. At least-

Billy.

"Billy," she whispered. She could do nothing but whisper as wave after wave knocked her breath away. Where was he? Back on Earth? Was he here on this planet, maybe also experiencing what she was, but not as able to protect himself? She cursed him and worried for him. If he didn't live through this, she'd- she'd-

She started to cry. She hated herself for crying, especially for crying for him, but overpowering the hatred was the certainty that he was dead somewhere, his body broken and bloody on the ground. She knew it, somehow she knew it. The feeling was indescribable... awful. God, where was he? Where was he?

Her muscles slacked. Each quake pummeled her and made her flop around like a rag doll. She didn't notice. The violent rumbling, even, was a distant rushing in her ears. She didn't care.

The ground opened up into a wide, grinning chasm. Mandy barely noticed it through the salt water- so much salt water... the ground tossed her body around, and she guessed she was being hurt. Fine. She'd endured physical pain before, but this new feeling- it hurt worse, a lot worse, and she didn't resist as the ground pitched up and sent her into the bottomless chasm.

She couldn't wait to hit the ground. Yet, as she wished for her death, her body slowed down immensely. She began to float, back and forth, as a feather would. Her tears dripped from her face and fell before her at normal speed.

Her sobs echoed off the walls of the chasm. At any other time, she would have been relieved to hear the echoing... but really, did that matter? Did anything matter? What did matter?

She left her thoughts above her as she slowly was rocked back and forth. Down, down, until the opening of the chasm was just a tiny pinprick of light. Eventually, even that disappeared. Her heart was still broken, but the rocking and the darkness were very calming, and gradually she ceased to cry out. The silence was, if anything were a proper term at a time like this, golden. Through the awful knowledge that she'd lost- well, everything, Mandy closed her eyes and began to drift into a gloomy, heavy sleep.

She hoped there was no morning.

-GABM-

Her eyes opened. The first thing she was aware of was her face feeling oddly stiff- what- Her glare snapped into place. She knew that feeling. It meant she'd been crying. That was unacceptable.

She tried to rub her face off, to destroy any and all evidence, but instead something slapped onto her forehead. A cold, refreshing something. She lay back and sighed. Someone was sponging her forehead, and being gentle about it, at that. She still had an awful feeling at the pit of her stomach, as she often did when waking up after nightmares, but told herself over and over that nothing was wrong. It's fine, she said to herself hollowly. It's fine. It's fine.

"Yer awake!"

Suddenly, everything really was fine.

Billy whipped the cloth off of Mandy's forehead and gave her a tight, bonecrushing hug, making her ribs crackle. Over the years, he'd grown stronger, and she'd grown slightly more fragile (much as she'd have liked to deny it), a fact he often neglected to remember. Mandy had a suspicion that he'd never quite grow up.

"Gosh, for a few minutes there you weren't lookin' too good, you were kinda struggling and groaning and clinging to your sheets, and you said my name a few times, so I picked you up and rocked you for a little while, and I hope that's okay with you, but anywho, you stopped being all upset-like but were still crying all over my shirt- see? It's wet! And anyway, it made me..." He clung to himself and gave her a searching look.

Mandy knew what he meant. For once, she wasn't quite sure how to word it, either. "I know what you mean. Be quiet."

"I've never seen you cry before," Billy whispered to her, quietly.

"Billy, I'm a stoic."

Billy dropped Mandy, startling her. She hadn't even realized he'd been holding her. "Stoic!" he proclaimed idiotically. "Is that a kind of rock? We should excavate some stoic- I ate a rock once! It was sooooo crunchy that it rattled my brain when I chewed on it!"

"That's impossible, Billy, since it is a well-known fact that you don't have a brain."

"Captain Fathead has a brain!"

"Down, Billy. Try to think about this very, very carefully... Now: you are not Captain Fathead."

Billy scratched his empty head, arranging his face into his peculiar version of a thoughtful expression. A strand of drool began to drip from his mouth, and after a few minutes, he sucked it back up.

Mandy shuddered, partly from disgust and partly from another cold chill. "Never mind, imbecile. I can see that you're... you're..." She fell asleep fitfully. Billy blinked at her. He was still on her bed. A very ugly squirrel tapped at the window with a large nut, and Billy sternly told it "SHHH" which made spit flecks fly all over the room.

Seconds later: "I wanna play the sleep game!"

Billy didn't bother with the covers- they were sweaty and tangled-so he just flopped down and curled up against her. Geez, Mandy's really warm, he thought with a bit of surprise. The thought took less than a second to be wiped from his mind, but it was enough to make him sleepier.

He squinched his eyes shut and made various snoring noises. Very soon, however, his eyes smoothed out. His snores began to come easily and evenly. Next to him, his friend also slept, her nightgown wet and her hair messed up, and Billy unconsciously moved closer. His hat fell off. He began to dream of giggling dwarves. -

GABM-

Teeheehee.

Man, them dwarves sounded realistic!

Aha, ha ha, HAHAHA!

Sinister, too!

Billy's eyes snapped open. In an instant, he was sitting up and smiling idiotically. Someone was still laughing. Had the evil dwarves come with him this time?

No, no. It was only Grim. He was standing next to Mandy's bed, watering from the eyes and slapping his knee, gesturing hilariously at the bed. "Hi there, Grim!" Billy said, grinning. "What's so funny?" Grim said nothing but continued to laugh. Billy, fed up with waiting for a response, began to chortle along with him.

"Grim..." Mandy said weakly. The Reaper must have woken her up with that ugly laughter, Billy thought. And he didn't like the way Mandy had said "Grim" instead of "Billy". "What's all this about? I was sleeping. Out, you."

Billy stuck his tongue out at Grim. "Say 'Billy,'" he said to Mandy.

She raised an eyebrow. "Uh... 'Billy.'" Billy was still sitting at the edge of the bed, and at the sound of his name, he grinned in delight. Grim wiped a tear away and smiled foolishly. "What's going on? What have you two morons done now?" Mandy demanded.

"Ooh-hoo, girl! Oh my- oh my-" Grim suffered through another bout of laughter. "You two were sleeping- all up against each other- with your little bodies all pressed together, just like little kitties together! Aww!"

"Grim," Mandy said. Her voice wrapped around Grim's bones and chilled them to the core. Although she delivered her words in her usual deadpan, there was something underneath, something not quite hidden from the skeleton, that burned and twisted with acidic fury. Grim stopped smiling. His tears of mirth were exchanged for a nervous sweat. Billy, seemingly oblivious to the danger, was busy making ugly faces and blowing raspberries.

"It isn't funny. It isn't cute. And if you ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever bring it up again, I will personally see to it that each and every bone in your body is ground through my grandfather's antique meat grinder. One. At. A. Time." Grim gnawed on his fingernails until he was hurting himself. Strangely enough, he didn't really notice the pain. "So don't mention it, Grim. Don't tell anyone else about it. As a matter of fact, don't even think about it. Nothing happened. You hear me? Nothing happened."

"I hear you," Grim replied faintly.

"That's what I thought. Get out of my room. Now." Grim gladly exited, leaving Billy, Mandy, and the hellish atmosphere all behind him. Billy watched him go with a satisfied, "so there" expression on his face.

Billy turned to Mandy as the door shut. "Mandy, please don't be mad at me. Grim's so mean. I just wanted to play the sleep game. You don't hate me, do you?"

"Of course I hate you, Billy," she answered. Her voice contained such comforting tones that Billy neglected to comprehend the actual words.

Instead, he wiped his brow in relief, and flopped back down next to her. "I like your nightie," he said.

She decided to let him stay, annoying or not. "When I get over this, I'm going to give you the most horrible beating of your life, Billy," she said.

Billy looked eager. They hadn't had a proper fist fight since- since, well, Mandy had gotten older; more... womanly. Billy had hit puberty first... and when Mandy had, something in him made him think that maybe she shouldn't be too roughed up anymore. He scratched his head. If she wanted to fight, it was okay, wasn't it? But he didn't want to hurt her... he looked at her, confused and trying to be sneaky about it. When he tried to mull it over, though, his thoughts all buzzed off like doomed flies, and all he knew was that he was happy about it. "Okay! How's about at my house after school tomorrow?"

"Deal," Mandy said. Her eyes narrowed. She looked sinister and threatening- just not to Billy.

"Are you gonna wear your nightie?"

Mandy was startled by the blatant desire in his tone. She covered it up with outrage, telling herself that, after all, Billy used that tone when talking about a lot of things: snow cones, videogames, and sandwiches, to name a few.

She forced herself to ignore it. "Of course not. Considering the amount of skin this shows, it would be inappropriate to wear such a garment to class, Billy. Such differences will become apparent to you when you stop being stupid. Which I doubt will ever happen."

Billy pouted and sat Indian-style across from her. "It isn't that inappropriate. My mommy and daddy fought once in bed, and they were butt-naked."

Mandy heaved a sigh. She could hardly believe he was sixteen. "Obviously you haven't paid attention in Health."

"Obviously, I have! I'll fight you over it!"

"When I feel better, Billy."

Billy folded his arms across his chest. "Fine! Have it your way! And quit rubbing your gorgeous nightie that makes you look gorgeous in my gorgeous face, okay?!" His anger fled as suddenly as it had come. Billy giggled. "BoyIcan'twaitforschool! See ya lay-tah, Mandy!" With that, he hopped off the bed and ran from the room.

Mandy watched him dash out. Then, she closed her eyes, drifting into an empty, fevered sleep.