Disclaimer: see chapter one

AN: Never again! I am never killing off this particular character again! It is just too hard, which I guess bodes well for fans of this character. Yes, I know I'm being deliberately vague, but I don't want to give the game away before the chapter starts. It's not as squeamish as the last one (I hope!) so... enjoy.

Chapter Thirteen

Stereotypes bother me. They bother me a lot.

I am not the shadowed figure tv shows portray me to be, complete with a skeletal hand and scythe. Well, sometimes I am, but that's only on Halloween and April Fool's Day, when I want to give the people that kick the bucket a bit of scare.

I am nothing to be frightened of, even though you can't see me, can't decipher my plan of attack until I initiate it.

When you look at me – and I mean really look at me, once you've overcome the initial shock of being dead – I look just like an ordinary person.

A picture tells a thousand words.

A picture will show you who I really am.

Two footprints, and four paw prints, weave their way through the sand on the Floridian beach, avoiding semi demolished sandcastles, spiky bits of shattered shell, coarse, crunchy bundles of seaweed that's washed up overnight. The sky is a mix of pinky-blue hues, interspaced with splattering of blood red.

Sunrise is usually the time for this to happen.

There is an electric current, a charge in the air that isn't usually present. The dog picks up on it instantly and barks loudly, spinning around in helicopter circles, lathering herself up into a fretful state.

Beside him, the eighty three year old man squats down by the dog, rubbing a hand over his heart, trying to ease the knot that threatened to explode from inside his chest.

"Easy, Lobo," he says, rubbing the Golden Retriever behind her ears, misreading the signs. "We'll play Fetch in a minute. I just want to paint the sunrise."

Little does he know, but he will not get that far. I watch him struggle to set up his easel on the shifting sand, squatting to even out the legs of the stand. I watch him move, joints seizing up at times, like the Tin Man after a storm, watch him struggle to do the things that give him the simplest of pleasures in life. Now that I think about it, majority of his adult life has been a struggle, thanks to me and my kind. He struggled to deal with the fallout of the three failed pregnancies his wife had suffered through. He struggled to deal with Death on a catastrophic scale, when International Rescue was just too damn late to stop me from completing my rounds. He struggled to cope when his wife died unexpectedly. He struggled when he was a pallbearer for funerals, funerals for his father, his friends, his wife and his brothers. He struggled a lot as he aged, popping various pills for a series of ailments that plagued him, anything to just keep a weakened heart from giving out completely.

It seems fitting, if slightly brutal, to watch him struggle until I can relieve him of his pain and suffering.

He can't even make it to stand up on his own two feet again. Instead, his knees give out from under him and he keels over, clutching at his heart, gasping for breath he cannot draw. He lands face first in the sand, inhaling and choking on the small particles that lodge in his throat. Lobo the dog scampers over to help her master, but she senses how close I am to the choking man and backs off.

Sighing, I kneel down beside him and gently rotate his neck, wipe the sand from around his mouth. My hands hover over his eyelids, and there is a part of him that stares up at me.

Make it stop, he begs of me. Make the pain stop. I can't take it much longer.

I nod my promise, slide my hands down over his eyelids, closing those honey-burnt eyes of his, a seal of his fate. Then I raise him up to stand next to me.

Equals now, not one trying to outrun the other.

Wait, Virgil holds up one hand, commanding me, as his oldest little brother, to stop dead in my tracks.

Old habits die hard (no, given my occupation now, that isn't meant to be a joke), and I comply.

I want to do what I came here to do. I want to paint the sunrise.

I glance down at my list. Today is a light day for Death, only about 150,000 people to collect compared to the average of 300,000. I can spare him an hour before we move on.

It doesn't take that long. Twenty minutes later, I'm staring at his last masterpiece. He's captured the sunrise, more reds than blues, more shadow than light. Lobo is in one corner, himself in the other. He's captured himself painting his painting – it's almost like Paintception.

Front and centre in his picture, there I am. There is nothing hidden about me; he paints me as he sees me, and he sees me the way he should.

I stand there, much like my picture counterpart, waiting for him to join me, so we can venture off into the unknown.