Death Speaks To Death About Death

Pair: Duo, Sandman's Death, unrequited 2+1. Slight 2+3 at the very end.

Warning: Heero is dead from the start, so obviously there's a bit of death, a cold and bitter Duo, angst, language, and the 5-stages-of-grief-ness. Lack of any real sobbing, if you catch my drift.

Note: Crossover with the Sandman comic, technical sequel to Death Takes One (although this was written first). This is part of the Sandman Crossovers series, but it's also a stand-alone.

Summary: Death pays Duo a visit shortly after Heero's sudden departure from the mortal coil, and the two have a face-off.

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Oh, sure, I know. My name is Duo, and when number one dies, number two is gonna get a little kooky. According to various statistics, my expected life-span has shortened considerably since his death, and some--not naming names--look at me and think, well, there goes that one. Hell, if they had their way, Duo Maxwell would have been dead and gone the minute I got that phone call. But that's where they get it wrong.

So Heero is dead. Big fucking deal.

It's just another day. I wake up, I wash my pain-in-the-ass hair, I grab a bite of yesterday's dinner, and I'm out on my way to work. There's about three accidents during my fifteen minute drive in the crapheap I call a car, and the only thing that really interferes with my peachy friggin' mood is the way all the traffic comes to a complete halt as people slow down and poke their heads out of their automatic windows to gawk at the wreckage of shrapnel and apparently healthy victims standing on shoulders and glaring at their cellphones, everybody looking for a dead body to scream at. The accidents aren't serious, much to the disappointment of everyone in line... I could give them a body if that's what they really want, but I'm not in the mood, and that's not my thing anymore, anyway.

Yeah. It's just another average day in the life of me, minus one Heero Yuy. People are born just long enough to die, and who am I to sob about it? I've got work to do. I've got a crew that depends on me, and a house that needs to be completely renovated by the fifth. Today is the first. I cannot afford to care.

So I arrive at the house we're working on and I park on the shoulder of the road because the driveway is full with a pickup and an old tiny Subaru, carefully not caring about anything. I jump out, swing the door shut, and whistle my way to the front porch where Larry is staring at me like I've got three heads.

He knows and I know he knows. But there's this thing called personal business, and apparently, Larry never heard of it.

"Max," he says, short for Maxwell since I never really told them my actual name. Didn't want the boys to come lookin' for me, tellin' me how much they wanna catch up on them good ol' days. Like I wanna be reminded. I came here to start a new life, to be a real friggin' American in America. Bought me a pink house in the middle of Richmond. Sometimes Grant comes down to visit me, and Robby Lee brings the beer.

Yeah, and Larry's got that eye going on, the big wet one that says, just like Hilde does it, oh, you poor, poor man. "Max, you don't have to be here today." Then he lifts that hand, the one that pats an invisible shoulder since he sure as fuck ain't gonna touch mine. "Take the day off," he says. "Take the week off. We got it from here."

No, he really doesn't, but unlike me, Larry The Boss isn't above lying.

I narrow my eyes at him, and even though Larry's a mammoth, he backs off a bit. In a jovial tune to sway the tension, I tell em, "Q-ball, right? Didn't know he had your number." The way he winces, I know it was Quatre. Quatre's the one who found me, to spill the beans about our number one. I have a feeling he's known exactly where I've been since I ever made the attempts to disappear, and he's only let me believe I've slipped from his radar because he knew well enough to give me space. Smart, my little Q-tip, but he's got balls of steel to call up my boss and sweet talk him into sweet talkin' me to take the day off.

He's gonna hear about this when I get within snapping distance of his neck.

Larry just shrugs. "Doesn't matter where I got the info." Oh, he's ballsy, I'll give him that. "What matters is that I'm giving you leave. Turn around and go home."

I shake my head at him. "Sorry, Lare. I can't do that. I get bored, I get antsy, and I get antsy, bad things happen. You wouldn't want bad things to happen, would you?"

No, his eyes tell me. He would not.

But his lips say, "Max," like he's gonna grab me and tie me to the steering wheel of my car if I don't start cooperating.

He knows who I am. He knows what I've done, and where I came from. Most everyone knows, 'cause it's kinda hard to hide the past when your face has been plastered all over the screens by OZ and their various counterparts. The others fared better, but I had the unfortunate luck to be captured by a madman in Wing Zero, and not only did he and his goons torture me, make me very mad, and through a series of unfortunate events cause Trowa to destroy my beautiful gundam, but they also took pictures. Lots of them. And they plastered them all to high heaven probably just to spite me in the process.

Having random folks in every passing glance know that you're one of five of the most ex-dangerous-men-in-the-world, as well as responsible for killing several thousand people during the war, is a very frustrating thing do deal with, but it has its perks. I'm also one of the guys who's saved the world twice, and no one ever tries to fuck with me, bigger, badder, meaner, superior or not. It's pretty sweet, actually.

But Larry isn't afraid of me. He's just smart. And I like Larry, so I say, somewhat soothingly, "Don't worry about it, pal. M'fine, perfectly fine. You need the work done, I'm here to do it."

Of course he's gonna cave, he does need the work, and we do have a deadline, death or not. If I'm gonna be stupid and ignore his generosity, fine. That's my problem. That's what I love about Larry.

So without a word, he opens the door and waves a hand inside. I grin at him, and he shakes his head at me. He's pushin' fifty and he's a diabetic, he's life-tired, he's got three kids in college, and he deserves to be home with his wife and rest in peace. He shouldn't have to deal with crazy number two every day of the damn week, no matter how much work I might get done per man.

I saunter up wooden stairs, grabbing a huge old log splitter dressed with rust and red paint chips, and pass two bedrooms on the way to a small, ugly bathroom. The wallpaper had been taken down the day before amid much bitching by yours truly, and various colors of mold, yellowed tile cement, dried glue and the remnants of god-only-knows-what dresses the walls, giving the little room a wonderfully smelly soup of sweat, glue, chemicals, asbestos and piss. The toilet is also gone, hauled into the master bedroom across the hall, and the cheap-ass vinyl floor's already ripped out, leaving rotted subfloor behind. My target today is an ugly wall-to-wall cast iron tub, which already has a blue tarp draped over it so that when I smash it, the enamel doesn't fly into my face and cut me up. So nice of Larry, to prepare me for a job even though he was all set on turning me away.

Right.

I've got to smash the tub up because they're gonna replace it with a modern surround. Cast iron's are ages old, anyway--I can't remember the last time I'd seen a cast iron tub, save maybe Europe, where there's all kinds of weird shit. Of course, I grew up as a colony brat, and everything's always the cheapest grade on a colony. It's expensive enough to ship it from Earth, don't need to lose your other leg buyin' it too.

Cast irons are heavy mothers. Praise the ox-men who dragged this thing up a sixteen-step winding staircase through the tightest corner to hit Bacon Ave and into this tiny little bathroom that barely supports the four bedrooms upstairs it was meant to serve. Of course, they probably used pullies, but that's still one heavy mother lover. Good thing I get to take it down in pieces. Smashing things up is my joy in life.

I fist the log splitter good, and bring it up for a swing, trying to think about something that's made me really, really angry the last week or so. It isn't too hard, I just picture Heero's face. The splitter goes down with a WHAM. I wind up, WHAM again, and again and again and again.

I stop after a sixth WHAM and peak under the tarp for my progress. Got a good chunk of the main wall out. Great. Once I get the wall, the tub's support weakens severely, and I can work on smashing it in half.

WHAM. WHAM. WHAM-WHAM-WHAM.

"Yo! Max!" Gary, Larry's brother. A smart ass, but the best electrician in the city. "You smashin' the whole house up or what?"

Before I can think of a come-back, I can hear Larry smacking him up upside the head. "Max is having his therapy time. Leave him alone."

I roll my eyes, and scream back, "What therapy!?"

"Anger management! Get smashin', kid!"

"This coming from the man who wanted to send me home!"

"Lost your chance! Smash away!"

Aye-aye, Cap'n.

I smash. I smash that tub so much I just wish it was Heero's dead body. That perfectly mortal fucker, who does he think he is, to go dying on me? Like any other joe off the street, just WHAM and he's gone. Get a call from Quatre that goes like: Oh fuck... I'm so sorry, Duo--Sorry for what?--Duo... Heero is dead.

WHAM bam, thank you man.

I knew when Quatre started swearing that something was wrong. You get a call and the first thing you hear is Q-ball's voice in the edge of hysteria, whispering, Oh fuck, and you start worrying. It's not just because it's Quatre and our sweet psychotic little Quatre doesn't swear in public or over phone calls that could potentially be tapped by wrinkly old women of the Etiquette Patrol, but because it was the kind of Oh fuck that a man utters when he just suddenly out of the blue remembers that his best friend died a day ago, and he never called his other best friend who did not die to tell him about it. Like, Oh fuck, Duo, don't you have any psychic abilities? If I were you, I would've known the micro-second that clot hit his brain. Actually, I did. Isn't that shibby?

Yeah, really friggin' shibby.

WHAM!

Fuck you, Heero. Who in the hell ever give you the right to die first?

He always was number one. And I'm just number two.

Give me a month, give me a year. I'll prove it.

It was so stupid. He was reading the paper in his office, and he had a clot. It hit his brain. He had a massive stroke, and was dead before anyone found him. I don't know why he had a clot, it's a perfectly human flaw, one of the many in a man's body. But I've seen Heero fall from a thirteen-story building and get up and walk away. I've seen him reset his own leg from that fall--hell, if you really wanna get going, I've shot him twice dead on before he'd stay the fuck down, and I only need one shot to make most ordinary mortal men stay down and die. I've seen him do a lot of impossible things in a lot of impossible situations, ladies and gentlemen, even rise from the dead once or twice. And it is not fuckin' fair--not fair at all--to let him die for real by a stupid fucking clot. I mean, what the hell? God has a sick sense of humor.

So I keep on WHAMin', and eventually, the tub is shattered into halves, then thirds, and then smaller pieces just to get the wind off my rage. By the time I stop, I'm dropping the log splitter and collapsing against the wall, sweating like a dog and wheezing like one dying on a tarmac in mid-July of heat exhaustion. There's something wet in my eye, and I put it off as sweat because I couldn't handle it if it were anything else. I wipe at my brow, glaring at the ripped tarp and the shattered bits of what once was a whole tub underneath it. The studs of the wall behind the tub are rotted, looks like they're gonna have to be replaced. There was a nasty leak in here for about three days while the previous owner of the house was too stupid to find the shut-off valve and call a plumber. All the subfloor needs to be replaced too, the walls ripped out and redone. There's about two weeks worth of work left in this bathroom alone, and we have four days to finish the whole house. Isn't that wonderful? Not gonna happen, especially if you get the inspectors involved, but never put off Larry for not trying. It isn't our fault this house has everything wrong with it and the yard too. Our investor is a pain in the ass and doesn't know a wrench from a pair of plumber's pliers, but he's valuable, so we humor the man with the money, even if it means killing ourselves in the process.

Of course, I can't much blame him for not knowing his ass from shit anyway, because when I started, I didn't know anything either. There's a big difference, knowing how to fight a war, and knowing how to rebuild houses. Houses are much harder to deal with. Good thing I'm so patient, right?

I yank up the biggest of my pile of cast iron shrapnel and carry it to the stairs, down, and out. I toss it into the driveway, to be thrown in Larry's pickup and hauled to the dump later in the week. We're probably gonna get reported, throwing all our shit in the front yard, but fuck if I care. The investor shoulda called a dumpster for us, and he never did. He'll suffer the consequences.

Just as I'm back up the stairs to grab another piece, there's a woman I've never seen before leaning against the doorless-doorway to the bathroom. She's very pale and very gothic, dressed in a sleeveless black top, black jeans and black boots--something obviously grown out of my, shall we say, younger days?

I already hate her. Her lips are stained with black lipstick, the corner of her left eye twirled with a black pencil to make a curl, and there's a large silver ankh around her neck, probably just to stereotype herself. Her left hand (nails painted shiny black, of course) is leaning on the jam of the doorway, her right on a perfectly curved hip where a flash of the whitest skin is just exposed under her skimpy black spaghetti top. There is absolutely no color to her entire appearance. If she didn't look like she'd just come out of a typical nightclub, I would've thought she was Amish. Or an Amish vampire, maybe.

She's frowning. Her iris-less eyes, like black pools to the world of beyond, are caught between thoughtful, and the anger those thoughts inspire.

When I open my mouth, I mean to ask her who she is and what the hell she's doing in this house, but the words die in my throat, because of course I know who she is. I was the God of Death, once. How could I not?

Death. Yeah.

I'm half insane with grief, anyway, can't you tell? I just know these things.

She shakes her head, sighs heavily, and drums her fingers against her hip. That glare never wavers, but I refuse to be intimidated. "You've got a lot of nerve," she says to me.

I'm understandably annoyed. "What, me? You're the one in my way, lady."

She just narrows that glare, amplifying it times ten.

Youch.

And I hear a shout downstairs, a snap of electricity. The lights flicker, and I can smell flesh convulsing and burning. A moment later, Larry screams his brother's name.

I jerk, wanting to go downstairs to check on them, and torn to stay right here and figure out just what the hell this woman wants from me.

Did Gary just--

Her brow twitches, lips curling into a slight smirk. Yes, it says.

So much for being the best electrician in the city.

"I just stopped by to pick up Gary, but while I'm here... honestly, who do you think you are? You don't know the first thing about Death."

I know who she is. I know it like I know how to breathe.

"You took him away," I tell her, quietly hating in the same way she's quietly knowing. She took him away, and he let her do it. I hate them both.

She's not surprised that I know her, which surprises me because she implied that I didn't know at all. She's the essence of cool. "Of course I did," she says, buffing her solid black nails against her shirt. "That's what I do."

"Shinigami," I spit. "You're supposed to be a guy."

She pockets her hand and shrugs. "They all say that."

"You took him away!"

Ah.

There it is.

The tremble in my voice.

I choke on my own rage, eyes probably watering from the steam whistling out my ears. For a moment, the only thing I can hear is Quatre, whispering, Oh fuck...

I never did ask who found the body, but I would die laughing where I stand right now if it was Relena. Can you hear it? Heeeeeeeeeroooooo!

Okay. It isn't that funny.

Death doesn't even giggle.

"You, bitch," I tell her so kindly. "You. You took him away from me."

She lifts a brow, rolls her eyes. "Honestly, Duo. You didn't make much of an effort to keep him in the first place."

"But now I'll never have him! For as long as I--" For as long as I live, I will never rest my eyes upon his fuckable body ever again. I will dream of him, for the rest of my days, and Quatre will have to break into my house/apartment/dumpster/rathole-of-the-moment to feed me burgers through a tube and light all my pretty inflammable drinks on fire so that just like Heero, I won't drink them ever again. He'll march around the place like a true Winner, and he'll be angry, and nice, and sad, and angry, Quatre does angry like no one else, so he'll be angry, and he'll tell me, Oh fuck, Duo, didn't you know? There is so much more to life.

Yeah. I wanted to be a basketball star when I was three. Then I became a gundam pilot undercover at high school, and I played streetball with Heero instead. I swear to freaking god, I won every match. Heero doesn't know what he's talking about.

"Let it go, Duo."

Didn't. He didn't know what he was talking about.

"Duo." She steps closer. Puts that black-nail-painted hand on my shoulder, and it's so cold, cold and clammy and dead like a corpse.

She doesn't have any color. I find this wrong. I find this wrong, because Death should have all the color in the world. People don't wanna die without color.

I hope to God Heero didn't die without color.

"Duo," softer. "Let it go."

And I hate. I hate because I know that Heero wouldn't have thought to ask. "You don't know what you're asking," I tell her, so quietly, vehement. "You don't know."

"Everything must pass."

Head shaking. Denial? "Not him."

"Everything, Duo." She's glaring again.

I won't give it up. That's my soul she wants, and she can't have that, because I already gave it to Satan.

"Yeah, that's right, everything. You take everything. My mother, Solo, the kids, Helen, the church, the other kids, Father, the kids--" I have to shake it again. Shake it off, like a dog does, shake, rattle and roll. "Kids. Lotsa kids. You like kids, don't you? Always young ones, mostly mine. You gonna take my children, too? Sons, daughters? Give you still-births? Hell, maybe all my future wives should just get abortions and let that be the end of it. Better yet, why should I even try to be with anyone? You follow me around, breathin' down my neck, and you take em, take em all, and they go away, and I never see them again. I-I nev-never see them again, won't ever see him again, because you took him away. Like everyone-the-fuck-else."

"I take no one 'away,'" she says, so calmly, almost bored. Like my entire tirade has already been heard from other poor buggers a million and one times over. "They die. I guide them home."

"You let him go."

"It was his time."

"He let you take him."

She shakes her head, frustrated, and stares off into space for the slightest second, as if looking at time itself, just to check and make sure that perhaps it really wasn't. "Look, I don't have all day to argue with you."

I wave a hand, surprised at how heavy it feels. Soaking the heat from my forehead, I squeeze my eyes shut to hide the fact that the caring part came out of me, unchecked. Heero's dead.

And I care.

I care a lot.

Quatre whispers, Oh fuck.

"Go to the service," Death says. "Say goodbye. When I see you again, I promise you'll feel a lot better about it."

Sure, lady.

She looks at her wrist, checking a watch that doesn't exist. "I really, really, really gotta fly."

"Then go, already."

"Hey," she says. Back to glaring. "You know this isn't over. We gotta talk about that Shinigami thing."

"Whatever."

She studies my figure standing slouched under the grief I am not supposed to be feeling.

And she smiles. The curl of her eye crinkles in a sort of amusement that I want to rip off her face and stomp on. "Okay then," she says, heading for the stairs. "As long as we've got that covered."

Yeah.

"See you next year."

Vanishes. Let's not think about that last part.

I follow her shadow down the stairs and apologize to Larry for his loss, but Larry doesn't hear a word I say, so when they take him away in the ambulance truck, I pack up my things and hitchhike to space.

I go there Heero-less, and Trowa holds me while Quatre and Wufei stare, and I cry, cry, cry all over him. Relena is catatonic. Seems I was right about that.

Oh fuck, she says. All she says, and I check the calendar just to be sure.

Yep. Just another day. 'Cept tomorrow's gonna be a new one.

--Fini