The light, prior to being turned on, did not look broken. Now, he turns it on, expecting a reaction. The light flickers a few times, tauntingly, and distinctly sizzles out. There is no mistake about it: the light bulb is dead. Broken. He detests when things break.

He retrieves a light bulb from the bathroom, pushing a black lock of hair from his brown eyes. He proceeds to kill the switch, crawl up on the not-so-sturdy table, and balance himself.

“Damn… who put in these lights, anyway?”

With one hand, he holds the new light bulb, and with the other reaches to unscrew the older one. He has to stretch up on his tiptoes to reach the dead one, the table wobbling threateningly. Concentrating, he rids himself of the useless bulb, swaying a little. He stretches, stretches, reaching---and slips off the table, body colliding with linoleum. There is a rather unhealthy ‘whump’ that follows.

It’s not just an ‘ouch’. It’s a cataclysmic ouch.

Vega Andrews is, quite literally, dead.

And the light is still broken.

Four chairs had been sitting around the kitchen table to begin with. Now, one of them’s on the ground, toppled over along with Vega’s unmoving form. There’s no pool of blood, no dramatic twitching. This kind of death’s like that-- anticlimactic.

Someone’s sitting in one of the three remaining chairs.

With his hands clasped on the table in front of him, his posture casual/formal, he looks like he could be a lawyer-- maybe a lawyer in an informal session, informing a client of some tidbit of news. The image is incongruous with the whole “kitchen death” scene.

His outfit’s odd—he’s wearing the kind of crisp black suit that looks like it hasn’t just absorbed all the colours in the spectrum, it’s eaten them. Under that, he’s wearing a deep red-burgundy shirt and a white tie. The tie-pin is a grinning skull; details, details.

The colours of the suit contrast with his pale-paper-white skin, snowy-albino-white hair, and glimmery-huskydog-white eyes. The light from the next room, where the lightbulb isn’t broken, reflects oddly off the silver of his tie-pin and the two hoops in his left hear.

He’s watching Vega’s corpse-- or, more specifically, a point just above it—with that lawyery expression: here I am, doing a job that I will never be thanked for.

Oh, well, at least I look good doing it.

He's not too fond of lawyers. After all, they may as well bring death; they always look ready for a funeral.

He's up... figuratively speaking. His body does not rise from the floor, of course. He feels like he should have had a headache, because... damn that had been a nasty fall. But the realization isn't there yet.

The first thing he notices is the fact that the light is still broken, because it's still dark in here. And then he notices the figure. A tax collector? Fine suit, and...

"What are you doing here?" Some sort of outrage, obviously.

The pale man holds out his right hand, fingers spread as if ready to grasp. The air thickens, condensing until it is tangible, visible—in the space of a heartbeat a scythe appears like a disintegration in reverse, and he closes his long, white fingers around its handle.

Swoosh. Slice.

His expression shows his boredom with this routine as he severs the connection between Vega’s soul and his body. The scythe disappears in the downswing, as if slipping nonchalantly into another dimension. Vega is free.

Azrael smiles.

”Just my job, Mister Andrew.”

Boredom... boredom? To Vega, this is his life, and...

"Whoa, man. Seriously, you don't want to do that." He sounds anxious, like he's talking too fast, and... his hands would have been gesturing with his speech, if he had his body to use them.

And he ducks, squinting away from the slice. But it doesn't... hurt.

"Your... job?"

Oh, fuck. He doesn't dare glance down at the floor.

Azrael stands, and the chair makes that annoying scraping-back-across-linoleum sound, deep-throated and woody/rubbery. It’s almost harmonic.

And he’s tall.

”Mhmm.” His voice is full of strange tones and undertones—it sits in the air like an incongruous bit of ice in a summertime stream, stubbornly refusing the melt.

”Come on, Mister Andrews. Time to move on.” He offers the young man a hand that is only slightly more plump than a halloween-decoration skeleton’s.

Vega inches away from the unattractive noise, finding himself to still be squinting. He' so... white. It's almost hard to look at.

The voice sets him on edge, and he can't seem to believe the words the accompany it. He does not, therefore, accept the hand, and manages to stay a comfortable distance apart from the god.

"No. Nononono. I need a fucking cig."

The god shrugs, an expansive shoulders-up, arms-out gesture. He steps over Vega’s body, following the soul’s retreat.

”Cigarettes are corporeal. You are not, so you might have a problem with that.”

He’s withdrawn his outreached hand and pocketed the both of them, a man (God) with time to kill. It’s not as if freaking out is an unusual reaction.

He cocks his head to the side, apparently waiting for Vega to run through the Five Stages of Discovering You’re Dead (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and moving the hell on).

We're at, what-- one? Maybe two.

"A problem? I'll tell you what I have a problem with..."

He pauses, and catches a glimpse of his corpse, lying plainly on the linoleum. It isn't a gruesome sight at all, yet... he's beyond disgusted.

"This is a mistake." Flimsy argument, but he doesn't know what else he can say.

And he moves away, determined to keep distance between them.

Azrael doesn’t follow this time—he doesn’t play games. (He doesn’t play games that he isn’t in charge of, at least.) He slides himself into a sitting position on top of the table, which doesn’t even wobble under his nonweight. Hands gripping the edge, legs swinging just slightly, he follows Vega with his eyes.

”’This is a mistake’,” he mimics, and gives the soul a withering expression.

”You don’t think I’ve heard that one before? Hundreds of times in every language, Mister Andrews. Try again.”

Vega backs himself into a rather messy corner, looking rather undignified. He offers a rather sour expression in return, his childlike nature surfacing.

"Try again...? This isn't some sort of game show." He pauses again, and looks to the broken light.

"You can't tell me I'm dead." 'That was too stupid a way to die', his tone implies.

Azrael's expression cools a few degrees at the mention of 'can't'. White eyebrows lowered and thick, dark eyelashes at halfmast, he asks,

"Can't I?"

Vega's dead-- that means he's in Azrael's domain. He's one of Azrael's people. It really isn't his place to be telling the god what he can or can't do.

He slides off the table and stands, and the room seems to shrink around him. Tall. Taller than usual.

"You're dead, Vega Andrews-- and it's time to leave."

He replies, "no" just like a petulant child. He sounds terribly indignant.

Then, the room starts to shrink. He doesn't want to shrink with it, or shrink in it, for that matter. He looks more than a tad frantic, and sputters out, "wait."

Wait what? Terribly cliché. He doesn't want to move on.

Azrael spreads his arms wide in annoyance, like he's questioning Vega's actions; like his' paused in mid-flight. If there's a suggestion of wings in the air, we'll forgive him his theatrics-- death hasn't been a mundane and scientific experience for very long, and still isn't in much of the world.

"I don't play chess," he says, just to clarify.

"Neither do I," he would've gritted his teeth if he could've. He understands the reference, but he's... exasperated? Afraid? Panicked? Pick one.

He tries to collect himself, and... rather fails miserably.

"Can't you reverse this?"

Desperate, isn't he.

"Uh huh," Azrael confirms, not shifting positions.

"But I don't take Visa."

He couldn't just go around reversing everyone's death, now could he? In fact, it's obvious he doesn't, because people do die-- don't they?

"Don't joke with me!" Desperation. He barks this out, seething. He's cycling back and forth through emotions rather peculiarly.

He doesn't want to accept death, or Death, if you will.

"What do you want?"

He knows people die. He doesn't want to have to be one of them.

"Entertainment."

He drops his arms and lifts an eyebrow.

"Respect."

He plucks a pack of cigarettes, completely brandless, out of thin air and shakes out two.

"Mom's apple pie. Why? What do you have?"

One of the cigarettes is offered to Vega; the other, he sticks in the corner of his mouth. It lights on its own.

He bites back a bitter laugh, having expected a response similar to this one. He wants to punch Azrael. Respect? How can he possibly respect some who jokes about something so serious?

Without thinking, he takes the cigarette. He's not used to being dead; filching smokes is a habit for him. After consideration, he mumbles something about not being corporeal and watches the god's cigarette light of its own accord.

He has nothing. Doesn't seem like such a fair trade.

"You know what I have." His tone is uncertain. He's stalling.

The cigarette fidgets in between the fingers of his unsubstantial left hand.

The cigarette's incorporeal, too. It lights itself between Vega's soul-thin fingers.

"Devotion," Azrael muses. He stretches out the moment, pulling on the cigarette as though he weren't just a construction of power and colour.

"You have devotion."

He smiles at Vega, and his eyes glint.

"All right, Mister Andrews. These are my terms." The cigarette, a prop he's no longer concerned with, disappears as he begins counting his terms off on his fingers. The smoke lingers in the air.

"One," one long finger pulled down, "You pray to me every Friday night, regularly, at midnight. Light a candle, say my name, and thank me for letting you off this big damn wormhook you're on now. Don't pray, and you're right back in this situation."

He lifts his eyebrows, watching to see if Vega's taking this all in.

”Two,” a second finger, ”you’re mine. I’m giving you some extra time, here; I can call on you for a favour. You’ll owe me a big one. Three--“

”I’m taking someone else’s life in payment. Can you live with that?”

There’s a certain special emphasis on ‘live’.

Vega has the nerve to be surprised, but only for a moment, until he takes a drag of the burning cancer stick. He follows the god's every movement, studying his actions. He looks tense.

Devotion. He could be devoted if he wanted; the smile chills his soul, however. He focuses on his long fingers, mild dismay settling in his features. The word 'terms' doesn't comfort him, but he squelches any protest, listening. The cigarette burns, neglected, in his ethereal fingers.

After Azrael finishes listing the terms, Vega contemplates them. The last one sets him on edge, but he grudgingly manages a "fine," in response.

"Come here," Azrael instructs, crooking a finger.

The air thickens, as it does just before a thunderstorm. Energy's gathering.

He follows like a good, loyal puppy, paying careful attention. The cigarette has long since been forgotten.

He tilts his head, feeling somehow claustrophobic with the change in the atmosphere. He's curious... maybe a little anxious, but nowhere near as panicked. In fact, in comparison, he's cool as a cucumber.

Azrael slaps his hands together, rubs, and spreads them light a show magician. He’s grinning as he grabs soul-Vega by the soul-shoulders.

It’s like an electric storm, one hand positive and one hand negative. The room doesn’t matter (small, cold, thick), the world doesn’t matter (wan, dark, far away)—it’s Just Vega, and Azrael—

--and Vega’s body. The room blips like a bad reel of film, the dead and empty body jerking, jerking, moving, moving, and then it’s where Vega is—(soul Vega, mind Vega), and they’re one and the same (and maybe there’s something wrong with the back)

(and somewhere across town a girl named Molly is struck by a car and killed)

and Azrael grins and disappears, leaving the room suddenly empty.

The grin of a god isn't something Vega finds particularly pleasing, but he doesn't seem to have any choice in the matter. Being pulled by the shoulders adds to his claustrophobia, and the energy makes him feel numb (yet, at the same time gives him a feeling of being alive).

The jerking body (his jerking body) makes him disconcerted; he nearly has to hide his eyes, but figures at the last second it's better than being dead.

And all at once, he's alive again and gasping, fingers brushing his neck. The world returns, the god of Death isn't sitting on his table (or anywhere else in the room), and he feels sickeningly human again.

He breathes, picks himself up off the floor, and opens the fridge for a beer. He's shaking, and thinking vaguely about the person who died in place of him. He doesn't want to think about it.

As he closes the door to the fridge and opens the bottle of alcohol, he decides that fixing the light can wait.