A/n: I got this idea after reading a book that I had picked up from the local metaphysical shop. I will tell you this, straight out: the ritual depicted in the following story is real. I summarize the steps necessary for the beginnings of a ritual, without changing anything because I feel that there is the need for at least that much realism when it comes to a subject like this. However, I must also tell you that, unless you have studied and trained, you should not attempt any kind of magickal working. I, myself, have encountered one too many things that I would rather have not had to face because of my own carelessness and naietivity. Not everything out there is good, no matter what Silver Ravenwolf or whatever Wiccan author will have you believe. As tried and corny as this warning always sounds, I have to say it: Kids, do not try this at home. While I have not performed this ritual myself (though I plan to when the time of year is right) that doesn't mean that it doesn't work, so please, just, be smart about that kind of stuff, alright?

And, without further preaching, I'll let you all get onto the story.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own IZ. Sorry.

Le Danse Macabre

When you're a kid, the one thing that you want, more than anything else in the world, is your freedom. To be alone. To do whatever you want. The reason that you want this so badly is because it is something that you feel you will never truly have. You will never be alone in the world--you will never have no one to turn to; nowhere to go. Always and forever, there will be someone at your side or behind you, keeping an ever watching eye out, making sure that you follow the right path. We want freedom so badly that we can taste it only because it is something that we will never truly grasp, and for that, we are secretly grateful. For being alone is a frightening thing indeed. There are strange, horrifying things in the darkness where such freedom lies—horrifying things that, as children, we may wish to glimpse, but never touch. No, we must never touch them, for if we can touch them, there is a very good chance that they can touch us as well.

However, once freedom is thrust at you, once you find yourself alone in the dark, with the monsters breaking down the closet doors, you no longer care if they touch you, if they reach out with hands that are cold and wet, if their death stink invades your pores and nostrils, because you are no longer afraid. Once you set your mind on getting back that light, that safe feeling that you lost, or that was taken from you; once you set your mind on getting that back, fear is irrelevant. Because you know that the only way to get what you want is to make the first move—the only way to get back what you've lost is to step into the darkness and touch first.

If you had told me a year ago that I would one day be willing to not only cross an ocean, but a dimensional plane as well to get him back, I would have told you that you were crazy. And coming from me, that would be a strange comment, indeed. However, while I was at first purposefully stoic and indifferent to the news of his death when I finally go the letter—the envelope was almost covered with stamps and notes from various post offices from around the world by the time I received it. Guess I should have provided an up to date forwarding address. At any rate, even though I, at first, showed no outward reaction to the news of his death (and why should I have cared, anyhow? It was just one less thing for me to worry about. I didn't care about him. He was nothing but a nuisance, a plague upon my existence. What did I care?), after not too long I started to have doubts about whether or not I cared as little as I would like to think. With him gone, I had absolutely no one. I was completely alone. I think that is what caused me to start on my path towards the darkness more than anything else—that looming knowledge that I was alone. That I would never again hear his voice or see another letter written in his spidery handwriting—letters that I never read with any real interest to start with, but more out of basic curiosity. Or boredom. Whichever.

The idea came to be in a dream, actually. In my dream I was standing with my mother at a grave. I thought that it was hers, at first—the gods know that I've dreamed of her death many times since it occurred when I was a five—but this time it wasn't. The grave was etched with only three letters; her name carried five. Rain poured from the sky and plastered my hair to my cheeks and my mother whispered to me two simple words; two words that I would obsess over for the next three months until the time of year and phase of the moon were correct for what I had planned. Two words that would change the entire course of my life:

Find Him.

The ritual was simple at best. I had long ago given myself over to the well worn, but less traveled path of witchcraft and paganism, and had spent a good portion of my twenty-first year reading as much as I could on the Dark Arts. Things like curses and demonic creatures had always fascinated me, but to tell the truth, my reasoning for learning such a craft was not so much to know how to use it, but rather to Protect myself from it. While most information you find nowadays will focus on the Good and Holy path—white magic, healing, perhaps a love spell or two, even though that branches more on the Gray than the White—there are people and forces out there who care little about making an herb garden grow a rich crop, or bringing about good luck in a new marriage. No, there are energies out there who want nothing more than to see you fail. Believe me. I know, firsthand.

I began gathering supplies early. I dug out my old books, checked the farmer's almanac for the proper time in the month, and booked my plane ticket back to the city I once called "home". That was where he was buried. He never did leave that tired old town, even when his empire collapsed around him, more because of a silly scandal than an actual mistake. The flight was set for October. Halloween would fall on a Dark Moon that year. The night the veil between this would and the next would be the thinnest would be the darkest night of the month. I couldn't have planned it better, myself.

For three months, every night I dreamed of my mother and that stone. That stone that wasn't hers, but another's. Another whom I had tried to ignore and forget, but all the same, one to whom I had to relay one final message. Someone that I needed to speak with one last time to tell him the words that I couldn't allow past my lips while I was young and he was alive. Every night I would cry at the grave in my dream, my mother's ever watching eyes on my face and ever forgiving hands on my shoulders as she whispered in my ear, "Find Him. Tell Him. Find Him."

Finally, the day arrived. I had arrived in town the day before, but had spent the time mediating on what Halloween night would show me. The morning of the thirty-first, I awoke early, and spent the day getting into the right mindset. I had a date with death that night, after all, I needed to be in the proper form. I wandered the city, aimlessly, allowing my feet to follow paths from my childhood, following steps that my brain barely remembered, but my body would know, forever. Past the Skool where I had taunted him with something childlike that was somehow short of innocence; past that looming house, the security system long disabled and silent, and all the time I could only chuckle with wonderment about what amazing adventures we all had. If that is what Life held for him, I could only imagine what he was finding in death. If nothing else, you could never accuse him of not appreciating life to its fullest, whether he consciously realized it or not.

Night fell, and as the darkness fell and the moon rose, invisible over the horizon, I stood from where I had been crouched for the better part of an hour—at his feet, staring at his name etched into the stone that was so like the one I saw in my dream—and began the ritual, moving through the practiced motions and speaking the memorized words in such a way that it was not even part of a conscious thought.

I had fasted throughout the day, making sure that my body was a pure as my intentions and my mind, and had bathed and dressed before making my way to the graveyard a little before sunset. I could faintly smell the Myrrh and cypress oils that I had diffused into my bath water and anointed my wrists and forehead with as I moved clockwise in circle surrounding the grave, my black cloak rustling as I walked, infusing the space in turn with the power of each of the Four Elements to cleanse the space. Then, with my dagger pointed downward, I envisioned a glowing line moving from its tip into the ground as I slowly moved around the circle three more times, murmuring the words that I had memorized so long ago that it felt like another lifetime. For all I knew, it could have been. Laying my hand on the ground, I stated that the circle was sealed above as below and could almost feel the energy I was raising crackling around me as a translucent bubble. If possible, the night seemed darker as I moved around the circle one last time, stopping at each directional corner to call each of the Elements, asking them to watch over and protect me and my intentions throughout the ritual. Moving to the center, just above his grave, where I had set up my small alter, and requested one last time for the God and Goddess to watch over me as I conducted my ritual. As I tried to communicate with Death, and perhaps, even, with Him.

Sitting before my alter I struck a match and lit the candles—black, of course, and focused my mind and will upon the card that lay in the middle of the cloth I had laid out. The card pictured a woman seemingly made of stone, her arms crossed over her chest, her head bowed in mourning. Below her was the faint image of a skull, the card itself bordered by dying leaves. The Death card from my Tarot deck. I took one last deep breath and focused my thoughts and will into the card as I stuck another match and lit the last candle on the alter. A small, black votive with I had engraved earlier with the rune Eihwaz. The remover of obstacles. The one that would grant me access to the spirit world. As I sat there, my mind focused on my intent, taking in both the card and the light from the small candle at once, the rune seemed to glow with a silver light as I felt myself sinking, flowing, falling into the card before me. The cemetery where I sat began to fade away and I found myself standing in a meadow surrounded by a wood, brown leaves crinkling as they swirled passed my ankles, dancing with the wind.

In the middle of the meadow was a bonfire, and in front of the fire stood the figure of a woman, her features bathed in shadow. I moved towards her, cautiously, pulling my cloak unconsciously tighter around me. A few feet from her I stopped, and waited, not knowing whether I should speak or kneel or wait for her to acknowledge my presence. I could sense that she knew why I was there, but still, when one is faced with Death, it may be prudent to wait to be spoken to.

As close as I was, I was finally able to make out her details. Her skin was unnaturally pale—almost gray, as if she were carved from the marble of a headstone. Her hair was pale as well, the fire light reflecting off of it unnaturally. She wore nothing but a thin linen shift, seemingly unaware of the chilling wind that was cutting through the enclosure, and I could make out the faint outline of her breasts through the cloth. In all, she looked like one of the carvings of angels or weeping women that you sometimes see watching over the graves in older cemeteries. Somewhere in the back of my mind I made a note that the old tale of the skeletal Grim Reaper, with his cloak and scythe was as far off as one could get. Or perhaps Death was only appearing to me in this form because that was the way She was depicted on the card I had used to call Her.

We stared at each other for a moment that seemed all too long, Her dark eyes which contrasted too dramatically with the rest of Her boring into mine, as if searching my mind and soul or any ill will that I may mean towards Her realm, and then finally She spoke, Her voice as dry and brittle as the leaves around my ankles, but as warm and caring as a mother's.

"You are here, my child, for a reason." She stated, not meaning it as a question.

I tried to find my voice, and found I couldn't, so I only nodded.

"You are here, to relay a message: something you couldn't say to him in life, so you had to seek him out in death."

Again, it was not a question, and again, all I could do was nod.

Death chuckled, softly and shook Her head, "And what makes you think that he will listen to you, now, child? While those entering my realm bring little of their petty worldly problems with them, he has reached a point where your words no longer matter to him. You may find that he may not greet your message with open arms and a smile—more realistically, he will turn away, showing you his back as you did to him one too many times. You are willing to take this risk." Still no questions and for the third time I nodded, trying to squelch the feeling of discouragement that as rising in my chest. I had taken a fool's chance in coming here, that I knew, but the idea that he wouldn't even listen to what I had to say hadn't really crossed my mind.

After a moment, Death nodded, and Her eyes rose from mine to focus on a point somewhere behind me. I turned to see where She was looking and saw him step from the woods, the wind not touching his dark hair or coat as he moved towards me, an amused smile placed on his lips. He stopped a foot or so from me, his eyes, so much like mine, peering out at me from behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

"Gaz." He stated. Much like Death, he spoke in finality, not in questions.

"I…I came to find you, Dib." I answered, finally finding my voice, though it sounded small and lost, like a child's.

"You needn't have."

"Yes, I did."

"Why." Finally, a question, though still not posed as one, as if he knew the answer, but wanted to hear it aloud. Hear it spoken from my lips.

"I needed to tell you something. Something that I couldn't say while we were younger, while you were…something I couldn't say, then."

"But you can say, now."

"Yes." I forced myself to stay steady, to keep my eyes locked on his. I had come too far to back down, now.

"Because I'm dead."

"Yes."

"Because you're alone."

I faltered, knowing that he had made a point, his only point, but not wanting to really admit to it. I broke eye contact, finally submitting. "Yes." I whispered.

An eyebrow and the corresponding corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk and he began to turn away, shaking his head. "You haven't learned anything." He stated.

My heart sank in my chest, despair beginning to overwhelm me, but still that old fire that he always invoked in me smoldered, and I heard the words before I realized I was speaking them, "Damnit, Dib, you could at least listen to what I have to say!"

He stopped, but didn't turn, "What for."

"Because…because I came all this way…" I trailed off, watching him begin, again, to move away from me.

"Ha." He spoke as he moved, "You'll need to do better than that. This isn't about You, anymore, Gaz, it never was to begin with—"

"I know!" I shouted, trying to hear myself over the wind, and finding it easier to keep my voice steady if I spoke in louder tones, "I know that what I think or do or say doesn't matter. I know that I'm not the center of your world or anyone else's. I'm not here for that. I'm not here to ask you to forgive me!"

He stopped, again, turning his head to look over his shoulder at me. "Then why are you here."

I stood silent for a moment. Why was I here? Somewhere in my subconscious I knew, but my stubborn mind wouldn't admit or comprehend what my heart and soul longed to express. The moment passes, pregnant, but fleeting, and again he shook his head, and again, moved away, this time disappearing into the shadows of the woods. I felt my body begin to shake as the world began to fade and turn. The midnight hour had almost passed, and the veil was thickening once, again.

I turned back towards the fire and Death, my hands balled into fists at my side, tears streaming down my face. She only gave me a sad smile and shook Her head, much the way he had. That was the last thing I saw of that realm, though the image that would haunt my dreams in the nights to come was not Death's sad smile, but rather my brother's retreating form.

I opened my eyes in time to see the last glowing embers of my candles die out, their flames drowned in their own melted wax. A choked sob escaped my throat, burning it, as I allowed myself to cry out all of the pain and frustration that I felt as finally the words that I so wanted to say tumbled forth from my lips.

"I always believed you."

A/n: I always start out these one shots with something in mind that is completely different than what ends up happening. However, if you think about it, as sad and depressing as this end is, how else could it have ended? Dib has no need for his sister's acceptance, anymore, and Gaz really is too stubborn to consciously accept anything that doesn't have to do with her. While the characters may grow and evolve and they get older, their nature doesn't change and to have her speak what she wanted to so badly and have him forgive and accept her with open arms seemed like a rape of their character's essences.

At any rate, there you go. Thank you for reading, and please review and all that, it makes me smile.

j