The Accident

It had been two whole days since Logan last saw the young man who claimed to be Death incarnate. Each time his shift ended and he was safely in his own apartment, in bed, he breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't that he didn't believe the eerily calm lad but he couldn't accept that Remy was anyone but a young Cajun who narrowly escaped death and now -somehow- felt responsible for the fragile lives of other people. With a heavy sigh and a shake of his head, he rolled onto his left side and stared at the red numbers on the clock and prayed for his exhaustion to kick in so he could wake up and see Corey staring back at him from his hospital bed.

His dreams came at strange intervals. It was hard for Logan to distinguish what was fact from what he saw in his mind's eye:

Remy.

Grass.

Gray sky.

Red.

Wetness.

Remy.

Grass field.

Stonehenge?

Druids.

Fire.

Remy.

Stone house.

Kiss?

Smile.

Shun.

Scream.

The sound of the alarm clock was enough to break the speeding cycle of Logan's perplexing dreams. Slapping the button to silence the news show, Logan sat up and rubbed at his eyes before opening them to his bedroom. It was still dark but he knew it was morning by the way his head still felt the heaviness of sleep. A ragged breath and a glance around the room for anything out of place, just to maintain his position in sanity, had him thinking about what his mind was trying to tell him about Remy.

Logan slipped out of bed and shuffled his way to the kitchen to turn the coffeepot on. He yawned and focused on the glass decanter that was quickly filling with the black liquid as his brain showed him the tall, cold, stone figure of Stonehenge once again. Logan had never been to England yet he could see the large stones, caked in red, on a cloudy gray backdrop morning. He could feel the grass beneath his bare feet, eventhough he stood on white tile in his kitchen.

His cell phone rang from his bedside table. Logan hurried back into his bedroom to catch the call before the other person hung up. "Hello?" Zeke told Logan about the short staff and Logan had agreed to help, as soon as he had some coffee and a shower. "Give me about 45, still have to wake up." As he hung up, the coffee was done and he had to hurry to drink a cup before heading into the shower.

The shower only lasted half of his normal time yet he spent the full time thinking about what his dream meant and why Remy was in it. Logan stood there and stared at himself in the mirror, the towel around his waist and his hair a mess from the towel dry. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face before blinking and reaching for his toothbrush. Brushing his teeth, combing his hair and hurrying to pull his uniform from the dryer, Logan shook his white shirt since he wasn't the type to own an iron. As he rinsed his mouth out, he slipped his pants on and buttoned his shirt before grabbing his socks and shoes and rushing out the door to meet Zeke in the lobby.

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"Dammit!" Logan shouted out of frustration. The CPR exercises hadn't worked to revive the blonde teenaged woman who had crossed a busy street while being burnt out on meth. "Get the paddles! Cam, standby with the blankets, she's gonna be in shock when she wakes up." His mind was racing in several different directions and he was only hoping that he was making sense in his judgements.

When he looked up and expected to see Cam and the paddles, he was thrown off-balance by the young man in black who stood there so calmly. "What do you want? As if I really need to ask."

Remy knelt down and calmly glanced down at the beaten and battered girl. He sighed and blinked as he refocused on the EMT. "It's time to let her go, Logan. There is nothing you can do for her now." His vision steadied on the gruff tech who didn't bother to make eye contact.

Logan only growled, "get the fuck outta my way. You can't have her yet, you fucking ambulance chaser! Cam!" The wind blew a light breeze that hadn't helped much in cooling the tech who hadn't bothered taking off his jacket when he first arrived on scene. He had noticed that the breeze had slowed as it blew across his face yet he hadn't taken the time to figure out why. The sounds of the vehicles whirring by had also come to a slower pace. Everything around him had slowed almost to a hault but Logan, and now the tall figure across from him, had continued their normal speed.

Eventhough it was a visible slap in the face, Remy stood his ground and asked again, "Logan there is nothing your medicine can do for her now. Your job is to save the lives of those you can. My job is to coury those you can't. Please let her go."

A snarl should have told Remy to back up but the message was lost in translation. "You stay the fuck away from her! If I can't stop your sick fuckin' hobby, maybe I can slow you down." He started the CPR compressions again. Yelling for either tech to help him wasn't doing anything. In fact, when he did look up, he noticed that everyone seemed to be in slow gear.

"The only thing you are trying to postpone is her journey to the next level. Logan, I will not ask you again. Let me do my job." The next moment was not something he had expected. It had never happened before so his expression of complete and utter shock was sincere enough to seep into Logan's feral thoughts as their eyes met. Remy knew humans had evolved into desperate, uncontrollable monsters but he had never thought the EMT would leap over the patient, knock Remy back onto the pavement and bury three very sharp claws into his chest. Regaining composure as his eyes forced their calmness into Logan's, Remy only breathed and stared up at the man as he lay on the side of the road.

The claws removed themselves from Remy's chest and Logan sat back to gather his thoughts on what he had done. "Stay away from me and my job."

Remy sat up and brushed the dust off of his suit jacket before standing up to finish the rest of the suit. When he was finished, he straightened himself and looked very calmly at the tech who went back to the girl. "Very well. I will be back when you can accept that your simple threats cannot stop my job."

When Logan turned back around from having his back to Remy, he found that he was alone and back into real time. The girl was being treated by Zeke but nothing had worked. Logan felt like he was in a daze instead of fighting with Death over one misguided soul that he knew would never make it back to life.

Reality came back to knock Logan off his feet and realize what he had done; he had just threatened Death, and survived. His exhale was enough to catch the attention of the driver.

"Welcome back, chief. You feeling all right?" The driver made sure he caught Logan's eye as Logan had been sitting in a daze over the girl, for about five minutes.

"Yeah. Uh, how's she doin?"

Zeke had started to put the equipment away and only shook his head as he glanced up to check Logan's state of mind. "She didn't have a chance." Pulling a white sheet over her, Zeke motioned for Logan to help him get the board into the wagon. The gravel under the flimsey wheels was the only thing to keep Logan's mind on his job. Collapsing the gurney and lifting it up into the back turned Zeke's attention away from Logan but when he had turned back, he noticed a look he had never seen on Logan; fear. "You sure you feel okay, Logan? You got that look in your eye that says we're not lookin' at the same scene."

Logan cleared his throat and shrugged off an answer as he shut the back doors and made his way around to the passengar side door. Getting in and shutting the door, he buckled up and turned to look out the window at the spot where he had spent a lifetime at. "Did uh, you see anyone out of the ordinary there, Z?" Praying the fight with the black-clothed youth was only in his head, he hadn't bothered to see the worried expression on the driver's face as the vehicle started up.

"Nope, just you, chief. That afternoon sun gettin' to ya, again?"

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The room was dark except for the bedlight behind Corey's head. Logan sat on an uncomfortable chair at the opposite side of the room, his legs had been propped up on the arm of another chair and his head rest against the wall as he dozed quietly. A nurse had draped a blanket over him and then checked Corey's unchanged vitals.

The figure at the doorway leaned against the frame with his hands in his pockets, staring casually at Logan. This time Remy hadn't been concerned with his deadline -now that it had passed- but he had been more concerned with why Logan was holding onto the frail, inconsistant, anchored form that life was. He stared at the smaller man, watching each rise and fall of Logan's barreled chest and the flutter of thin eyelids that shaded the eyes that saw a millennia before in dreams.

Remy had spent an hour standing there before Logan twitched and shifted. He had only wished that Logan would come to his senses and let go.

Logan found himself walking from the center of a quaint cobblestone and hay built village back to his small, shack-like hut at the end of the village. He stopped before the doorstep and smiled up at the young carpenter he had hired to help fix the leaking roof. His fruit sack had been filled with fruits and vegetables fresh from harvest picking and he reached in and tossed up a red apple that was greatly accepted.

The rains had stopped for the day but it had been overcast for a week with no chance of sunlight to admire the scrapping, young man in. Logan stared up at the auburn hair and brown eyes with a beautiful smile to match and felt himself grin and blush as he waved the worker down for lunch and a chat. "Come for someting to eat. I have fresh breads and fruits!"

The young man smiled even more and made his way to the sturdy makeshift ladder around the side of the hut. He noticed that the wooden shutters were closed for the middle of the day. As he continued around to the door, he took a bite of the apple he had caught and knocked on the open door. "Are your shutters stuck, sir? I can fix them for you, if you wish?" The older man had caught sight of the young carpenter in the doorway as the young man spoke.

Logan laughed and waved the boy into the one-room hut. He had already been busy placing the fruits and breads on the small table that sat in the middle of the room and was now motioning to an empty chair across from his. "Though I enjoy the light of day at a normal, the day has not been so light." A candle had been lit and placed in the middle of the table and Logan grinned at the handsome face that basked in the glow.

A moment later, the two men writhed with passion underneath the thin blanket on Logan's bed. Long, thin legs spread to let the shorter man rest between them as the two men moved together in tight, panting rhythms. Bare skin and sweat flashed their movements in the flicker of the candle. Thin fingers clawed at strong muscles in the older man's back while whispers of love and lust echoed softly in each others ears.

Lifting his head up for air, the moment of ecstasy was replaced with a howl of utter sadness and desperation. The two lovers had been separated by an angry mob that tore at Logan's tunic and pants as they bound him in chains and pushed him forward to be burned on a large pyre in the center of the village. "Thete! No! He is innocent!" Logan heard his own voice being silenced as the noises of the angry mob rose higher and higher as the flames surrounded him. "Thete!"

Logan hadn't paid any attention to the flames that licked at his ankles and sucked at the material on his body. Instead, his eyes stared only at the young man who was being bound and pulled out of the village by hooded figures. Their eyes had met and their voices called to each other yet Logan couldn't hear the young voice over his own intense, pained shrieks. He could feel the heat from the fire and smell the burnt flesh that rose into the night air.
"Thete!"

Logan sat up with a start and glanced around the room before making eye contact with the dark form standing in the doorway. His panting was taking longer to subside as he recognized the outline of the young man he had threatened that afternoon. "Isn't there an elsewhere you need to be?" His teeth ground out of frustration and an odd sense of guilt and remorse as he broke eye contact with Remy.

"If you had let me do my job, Logan, you would not have to remember what I look like."

"Get lost already."

"I cannot."

"What the Hell does that mean?"

Remy pushed himself off of the frame and placed his hands behind his back. "It means, you have caused my deadline to pass and now, I am here to ask you once more to let me do my job. Then, you can be rid of me." It hurt to say it but he found that this was not the same man he had come to love in his own lifetime.

Logan stood up and tossed the blanket onto the chair as he made his way to Corey's bedside. "Deadline, huh? You sound like a damn lawyer. Is that all life is to you? Just a cold, heartless job? What do you get outta the deal?"

"Peace."


To be continued.