[RPF]: Just Don't Mention the "D" Word. Part Four
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After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
~ J.K. Rowling
It’s a little lonely, being by himself. He doesn’t have Jensen anymore to talk to- alright, annoy- but his shifts aren’t exactly long. They are fuller than before though, and Jared still can only teleport short distances, much like the other reapers who aren’t Jensen, so his days are spent rushing from one location to another and hoping he doesn’t miss the bus.
Which has happened, is insanely annoying and requires Jared to blink-hop his way across the city, hoping he doesn’t get a headache in the process.
Today, he’s out in the park, sitting on a bench, lightly running his hand up and down the wood of his scythe and watching the runners go by. He knows what Jensen means about feeling which scythe is yours- every time he touches his own it sends a happy thrum through him, like the scythe is pleased to see him.
Once, he picked up Jensen’s, just to see what it felt like. Wrong, like a piece of a puzzle not fitting properly, even though the shape matches the space you have. Wrong, and a little bit dark, not at all like the light he feels with his own.
‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Genevieve says, and sits down next to him.
‘What are you doing here?’ Jared asks, a little warily. Genevieve hasn’t exactly made any advances towards him recently, but then, he has been avoiding her.
‘Picking up a soul at 3,’ she says. ‘Well, 3.06, but it’s close enough.’
‘I’m 3.07,’ Jared says.
‘Get out, gotta be a joint thing, right? I mean, could be a coincidence, but they’re rather close together to be purely accidental. What do you reckon it is?’
‘I did think it was gonna be one of the runners, but now I’m not so sure.’
‘Well, it’s 3.03 now, I guess we’ll find out soon enough.’
It’s odd. He’s never seen Genevieve so laid back, so… unlike Genevieve. It’s a little disconcerting, but he has the feeling that this is what she’s like beneath that sex obsessed personality she portrays.
‘So, I’m not going to apologize,’ she says into the silence, ‘because you can’t fault me for trying. But I see how you look at Jensen, and I see how Jensen looks back, and I want you to know that you can stop running away from me. I’m not going to try anything. At least, not unless it ends between you and Jensen, but I’ll totally wait an appropriate time before hitting on you again.’
Jared laughs. Genevieve smirks at him.
‘Hi, I’m Genevieve,’ she says.
‘Hey, I’m Jared.’
Their re-introductions are cut short by a scream across the park. The guy who runs the hot dog stand has his arms up, but the guy holding the gun has it trained on a woman, a runner who must have stopped for food.
Jared and Genevieve take off across the park, and when they get there, Jared reaps the woman while Genevieve takes the hot dog guy. He keeps refusing to hand over money to the guy wielding the gun, claiming all he’s got is twenty in change. Gun-wielder aims the gun at hot-dog, and there’s more shouting.
The gun goes off and hot-dog drops. The runner screams again, and gun-wielder’s eyes go wide and he looks disbelieving at the gun, like he didn’t expect it to fire. He turns to the woman, tells her to shut up, waves the gun around a little more and it goes off again. The woman’s screams cut off.
Clearly, Jared thinks, someone doesn’t learn from past mistakes.
The gun-wielder stands just a moment, sirens filtering in, getting closer. Like a signal to run, the guy does just that, taking off across the park. Jared doesn’t spare him another thought, just leans down to collect the soul properly.
‘You got anymore to do?’ Genevieve asks, when both souls are safely tucked away in the scythes.
‘No, that’s me done for the day. You?’
‘Done also. Walk with me back to HQ? We can resume getting to know one another again.’
‘Sure,’ Jared says, setting off across the grass. Genevieve falls into step next to him.
‘I gotta ask, is there any kind of chance, if you weren’t with Jensen of course, that you would go for me? Or are you a man-only kind of guy?’
Jared smiles. ‘There just might be. To be honest, you came on too strong, and it threw me off wanting you.’
They pass the would-be-robber-but-instead-turned-killer at the edge of the park, getting bent over the hood of a police car and cuffed. Another officer stands to the side, reading out the guy’s rights.
‘But the female thing-’
‘Doesn’t bother me,’ Jared says with a laugh.
‘I knew it. And I guess I can be a little sorry for how I went about things, but mostly sorry that it didn’t work. You can never tell, you know? When I was alive it worked all the time, guys loved it when I threw myself at them. Not so much now that I’ve flat lined.’
They keep talking, and Jared finds himself enjoying Genevieve’s company more than he ever thought he would. She’s amazingly funny, and smart, and he thinks if she had been like this when he first met her it would have been easy to fall for her.
He tells her as much.
‘Really? Drat,’ she sighs. ‘I’m a bit of an idiot when it comes to men. Thanks though, I suppose, I’ll be keeping that in mind for next time, or hell, if Jensen’s ever out of the picture.’
Jared smiles at that.
‘But somehow, I don’t see that happening any time soon,’ she says. ‘Am I right?’
Jared blushes. ‘I don’t want it to happen,’ he says. They’ve reached the storefront, and Jared can see Katie through the window, powering through order after order at a pace that can only be matched by another reaper.
‘Well that’s step number one to keeping it at least, that much I do know. Have you told him how you feel yet?’
‘No, I don’t quite know how. And it’s still new, so I don’t want to jinx it, or scare him away.’
‘Somehow, I don’t think that’ll happen,’ she says, ‘not with the way it’s so obvious that he feels the same.’ She smacks the back of her hand against his chest. ‘Tell you what- tonight, you go have wild monkey sex with that hot piece of meat and tell him how you feel, and then tomorrow, come tell me all the details. Including the romantic bits. It’ll be like my own personal Harlequin novel.’
The door, which has been continually opening and closing with customers, now stays open.
‘Are you two finished yacking?’ Katie asks, and then, ‘Oh god, you’re not harassing him, are you, Gen?’
‘I’m being cool and collected and hoping it’ll steal him away,’ Genevieve replies, winking at Jared. ‘Why, you need help in there?’ she asks Katie.
‘Yes,’ Katie says. ‘It was fine and empty, so I told Mike he could leave and go screw Tom or something. So he did, leave that is, I have no idea if he’s bedding Tom right now or not, but I can’t get hold of him and every fucking person in the city has decided they want ice-cream right at this moment.’
Genevieve looks at Jared. ‘Help us, please?’ She bats her eyelashes and drops her voice. ‘I’ll make it so worth your time.’ Then she laughs. ‘And what I mean by that is I’ll make you a peppermint chocolate milkshake. They’re the best in the city.’
‘They are,’ Katie agrees, ‘they really are, and she won’t give me the secret of how she does it either.’
‘Well, if there’s milkshakes involved, count me in,’ Jared says, and goes to process the souls before joining Katie by the ice-cream.
He’s on his way upstairs when he bumps into Eric, on his way down.
‘Jay, man,’ he says, ‘how’s the gig treating you?’
‘It’s good, I’m having fun.’
‘Good, good,’ Eric says. ‘Not missing anybody while you’re out there, all alone?’ He smirks at Jared. Jared blushes.
‘You know, when I met Jensen, officially met him,’ Eric continues, ‘it was right after the first time he turned down the offer to move on. He was so miserable, you know, and so I sent through the offer to set him to rest and all I got back was a note that said “no thanks”. I thought, what the hell? Why would anyone turn that down, most of all when they’re that sad in their job?
‘So I went over. He was still in Scotland at that time, and he took one look at me and said “is that it, you’re Death?” That’s when I knew that Jensen was something special. Looks Death- dressed as the part I might add since it was official business- in the eye and asks him if that was all to it.’
Eric shakes his head. ‘He told me he liked the job he was doing, told me he didn’t want to move on and face his family, his friends, all those who he had failed. Was adamant, no matter what I said that he wouldn’t move on.
‘Next time I asked, was right before Jeff was due to join us. Jensen again, said no. So when Jeff came around, I thought “perfect! Someone for Jensen to connect to” and he did, mostly. It got a little skewed along the way and Jeff ended up being more of a father figure for Jen, but even now, when push comes to shove all Jensen has to do is frown and Jeff turns into the naive little acolyte he once was.
‘I’ve asked only two other times, the last only days before you came into existence- and that is, days before you were conceived. Still said no. His reasons are less about his family now, more about him actually genuinely liking this job- I’m guessing you’ve seen all the tricks he can do?’
Jared nods. ‘The shadow thing is pretty awesome.’
Eric’s eyes go wide with excitement. ‘It is, isn’t it? So damn awesome. He’s better at it than me, too, little bitch. Anyway.’ He coughs. ‘Jensen thinks he was made for this- and in some ways he was, you all are made for this job, but Jensen’s belief goes beyond anything else I’ve seen. I think part of him is still trying to atone for his life. But part of him, the part I can see deep down, was missing something, waiting for something.
‘And then, your mama and daddy went bada-bing bada-boom and you popped into my knowledge. That’s when I knew. Knew what you would become, how you were made for this business, and how you were made for Jensen.’
He leans in closer. ‘Sometimes, we find our soul mates in life. Sometimes, they’re born centuries apart. Now I don’t know if you two really are a matched pair, but something tells me the universe screwed up, and it’s what’s been keeping Jensen around. He’s been waiting for you all his afterlife, and he never even knew it.’
He straightens again, reaches up to clap a hand on Jared’s shoulder. ‘I know you won’t break his heart, but still, don’t break his heart. That kid’s the only thing that’s stayed around awhile in my existence, and I care for him.’ He looks up, presumably to where Jensen is in his apartment. He shakes his head, a fond smile tugging at his mouth, and then pats Jared.
‘And now, I’m off to the Bahamas. Work is never over, but at least I can do it on the beach with a coconut cocktail in my hand.’
And with that, he disappears, leaving Jared to run up the rest of the staircase. There’s something he has to tell Jensen.
He doesn’t get to tell Jensen right away, unfortunately. Jensen pretty much accosted him at the front door, dragging Jared inside and dropping to his knees there by the entrance. Jared had to close the door, before someone found their way up to this floor and saw them.
Jensen had whispered, ‘Missed you,’ before sucking Jared down and taking him all the way to heaven, and then Jared had to return in kind by picking Jensen up and carrying him into the bedroom.
Four hours, two showers and new bed sheets later, Jensen’s half asleep with his head on Jared’s chest.
‘I’m hungry,’ Jared says, and Jensen stifles a laugh into Jared’s skin.
‘You want french toast?’ Jensen asks, Jared’s stomach rumbling in anticipation. Jensen smacks it lightly as he gets up. ‘Don’t fall asleep while I’m gone,’ he says. ‘It’ll be totally unfair if I’m slaving away in the kitchen while you’re snoring in here.’
‘I’ll get up then,’ Jared says. ‘I can’t help being sleepy, you wear me out. That stupid body and sex drive of yours really takes it out of me.’
‘You like this body, and its sex drive,’ Jensen says.
‘I love that body and its sex drive,’ Jared replies, Jensen laughing as he leaves the bedroom. Jared goes quiet. He does, he really loves Jensen. Loves everything about him, from the way he smiles to the way he stumbles around the apartment pre-coffee, grumbling and bitching about anything that comes to his attention.
Jared gets out of bed, tying the sheet around his waist. Jensen’s humming in the kitchen, Jared can hear it over the hiss of the pan and he stops in the hallway to listen. It’s the Pink Panther theme, but slightly jazzed up, and when he looks around the wall Jensen’s bopping around and sliding across the tiles, swaying his hips to the beat.
He’s so amazingly sexy. Jared’s heart soars.
He sneaks up behind Jensen, grabbing his hips and molding himself to the shape of Jensen’s body. Jensen jumps at the first touch but then eases back into Jared’s grasp.
‘I hate you,’ Jensen says. Jared smiles into the nape of Jensen’s neck. They sway together, Jensen resuming his humming at he pokes the spatula at the pan.
‘No you don’t, you love me. You love me like I love you.’
Jensen freezes, but it’s not in fright.
‘You love me?’ he asks, turning in Jared’s grasp.
‘I do,’ Jared says, ‘I really do.’
‘You’re just saying that because we had sex and I’m making you food.’
‘No, I love you because you’re humming Pink Panther, and eyeing the coffee machine, and because you really are the most amazing person ever.’
‘Oh,’ Jensen says in a whisper. ‘That’s good. Because I love you too.’
Jared just kisses him, because there’s really nothing more to say. There is food to cook though, and then to eat, and lots of monkey sex to be had, which Jared carries out with great enthusiasm.
‘Tell me, Jarebear,’ Danneel starts, ‘am I awesome or what?’
Jared tells her, ‘You’re awesome, I admit. Are this amount of leaves necessary though?’
It’s Danneel’s turn to host a party, and she’s decided that in honor of the approaching autumn, she’s holding an autumn equinox party. It’s neither on nor near the equinox, but that doesn’t matter to Danneel, who says her equinox party will be much better than whatever Tom’s planning for next month.
Jared’s inclined to agree, although he honestly doesn’t know how awesome Tom’s parties may be. He thinks if Mike manages to convince him to theme it superhero like he’s been trying for the past few months, it may be even greater than Christmas last year was. He’s already got his batman costume ready and waiting, and he’s hoping he can get Jensen to wear something skintight.
Jensen’s turn is the month after- October, which means Halloween, and Jared can’t wait to see how he handles it. Apparently Jensen’s been very clever at getting out of hosting, but he can no longer avoid it, since he now has more than one friend who’ll gang up on him.
‘Of course it’s necessary,’ Danneel says. ‘It’s autumn. What kind of autumn would it be without fallen leaves?’
Katie walks in then, dropping her clipboard onto the kitchen counter.
‘A very shit autumn,’ she says in greeting, and Danneel smiles.
‘See? A very shit autumn indeed.’ She gives Katie a kiss, which doesn’t end for several minutes. Jared waits patiently, rolling eyes when they draw back for breath only to dive right back in again.
‘Like what you see?’ Katie purrs at him. Jared smirks.
‘Baby, I’m jealous. When are you gonna leave her for me, huh?’
Danneel laughs. ‘Alright, enough, I can’t stand the thought of penis near my girlfriend. Jare, when you see him, could you please remind Misha he is not, under any circumstances, allowed to dress up as a sex-ritual sacrifice? I figure if we can get everybody ordering him not to then he may just not do it.’
Jared nods. ‘I’m still allowed to come as a tree, right?’
‘Your costume is such a cop-out,’ Katie whines, tapping her nails on the counter. ‘Trees are all year round, and just because your tall, doesn’t mean you can get away with it.’
‘I could come as a totem pole,’ Jared muses. ‘I don’t know how autumn-y or pagan-y a totem pole actually is, but is that more appropriate for the idea of equinox and rituals? Although, you’d have Jensen climbing me all night if I came as a totem pole.’
‘You’d probably come anyway, with Jensen climbing all over you,’ Katie says, laughing.
‘If you really want, you can come as a tree,’ Danneel says. ‘At least that way, when Jensen does jump you, we can pass it off as enthusiasm for childhood activities rather than kinky pagan sex.’
‘Although, Jensen’s totally allowed to come as a sex ritual sacrifice,’ says Katie. ‘Bring your own oil though, ours smells like frangipanis.’
‘And that’s my cue to leave,’ Jared says, ‘because I really don’t want to hear the plotting on how you’re going to hand-assault my boyfriend. Danni, you still want me to pick up the stones?’
‘Yes please, and I asked them to include a set of candles too, so grab those while you’re at it. Thanks, Jared.’
He waves as he goes, but shuts the door quickly when he hears Katie mention throwing Danneel down on the couch and fulfilling a sex ritual of their own before the party starts.
He catches Chris on his way out, and manages to get him to come along to pick up Danneel’s stones. Chris looks somber, hands in his pockets as they walk.
‘You okay, man?’ Jared asks, and Chris shrugs.
‘I don’t know.’ He’s silent. Jared doesn’t intend to push it. Chris is worse than Jensen with the sharing and caring. ‘I’ve been offered to move on,’ he finally says.
‘Oh,’ Jared says, ‘that’s not a good thing for you?’
‘I’m honestly not sure. I’ve been in this a while, you know, since 1744, but I don’t know that I can leave right now. I know Jensen has you, and you’ve been amazing for him, but he’s still my best friend. I can’t just leave him. And I know me and Sandy have our problems, and it’s been getting worse lately, but I love her, Jared, and I really don’t want to let her go.’
‘Maybe you should talk this over with her, see what she has to say.’
‘Yeah, maybe, but I don’t want her to think I’m leaving because of her or something she did, or worse, for her to tell me to go because she doesn’t want me to stay, doesn’t want to fight for me.’
Jared doubts that’d happen. Chris and Sandy may not have the smoothest relationship- it seems like every third weekend Sandy’s on his threshold crying and saying she and Chris are over- but Jared knows that she loves Chris, otherwise she wouldn’t be so upset at every fight they have.
‘I don’t even know if I can turn it down, you know? Nobody’s ever turned it down before. Besides, where’s the new reaper gonna stay?’
‘There’s plenty of space in the building, Chris, especially since Tom’s finally now in with Mike. Even Jen and I have been talking about living together permanently. But… you know you can turn it down, yeah? You don’t have to move on? You can choose to stay.’
‘Really?’ Chris asks.
‘What, Jensen didn’t tell you?’ Chris frowns. ‘Huh, well- yeah, it’s not a requirement of you, just an offer. Saying no is the reason why Jen’s been around for so long.’
‘That little bastard. He told me he’d never been offered.’
Jared tries not to laugh too hard.
‘Talk it over with Sandy,’ he says and Chris looks at him. ‘How she looks at you? It’s how I look at Jen. I think you’ll find that she doesn’t want you to go. Have you told her how you feel?’
‘Never felt like it was the right time. I probably should, huh?’
‘Yeah,’ Jared says. ‘And you know it’ll probably help things run easier for you two if you do tell her. Chicks love romance, and Sandy deserves to know. Besides, you deserve to have her.’
‘That was mushy, man.’
‘I know. Funny what love does to your masculinity.’
‘Real men love!’ Chris grunts, thumping his chest, and they both break out into laughter.
They walk in comfortable silence until they get to the address Danneel had written down. It’s a warehouse, so they walk round to the loading dock, as per Danneel’s instructions (printed neatly under the address and underlined three times). Then they stop. And stare. And stare a little more at what they’re faced with, which happen to be “the stones” Danneel had asked for. Some are five feet tall, others are eight, stretching up past Jared to the point where he doesn’t know if they’ll even fit in the apartment.
‘Jesus,’ Chris mutters, and Jared has to agree. He goes up to one, touches it, expects cold rock but instead gets warm wood and what feels like paper.
‘It’s fake,’ Jared says, relieved, knocking on it. It makes a hollow sounding thunk thunk.
‘Really?’ Chris says. ‘Thank you universe! At least they’ll be easier to get back to base.’
He spoke too soon, because that’s when the twelve boxes of candles appear.
‘There’s forty candles to a box,’ the heavy set man with Danneel’s order says.
Jared asks if they can borrow a truck.
Though Danneel’s party, when it happens? Is so worth the effort when Jensen teleports them behind a row of stones, drops to his knees and blows him in the candlelight.
So this is Jared’s life now. Or, well, afterlife. He wakes up, usually in Jensen’s bed, but occasionally in his own with Jensen wrapped around him (either way they’re both in a bed together each morning), and puts on the coffee before he leaves for a morning exercise run (unless he’s been on a night run for souls, in which case, he sleeps half the day away). He gets downstairs, says a quick good morning to Jeff, puts on the coffee in the downstairs kitchen, and heads out.
He intersperses his run with blinking, teleporting across the city, then across the country, and sometimes across the ocean, just to run in new territories. When he gets back he takes a shower, with Jensen if he’s awake, and it usually turns into shower sex of some kind. Jared can’t help it, Jensen’s beautiful with the water connecting his freckles and sticking to his eyelashes, and if Jensen’s muttering is to be believed, Jared’s just as pretty in the shower, too. He (or they, depending on the shower) then hops back into bed for morning cuddling before it’s time to go out reaping. His and Jensen’s schedules have steadily synced up, courtesy of Death, Jared thinks, until they now both have days off together, and their shifts match to start and finish within the same hours so that whenever they’re not running around the city, they’re together.
Jared collects his first child just before Christmas comes around, from leukemia, and Jensen sits with him that night, drinking eggnog straight from the bottle until they pass out.
Jensen still writes two thousand pages for his daily reports, but at least Jared managed to get it down from his previous ten thousand or so. He achieved (and is still achieving) it by distracting Jensen at every opportunity, including one memorable day when Jensen was so stubborn that Jared came downstairs dressed only in his boxer briefs, and Katie had cackled while Misha filmed the whole thing to send to Vicki. Jensen had immediately dropped the pen and ushered Jared into the elevator, and Mike spent the next two days in a mood because he missed the whole thing.
Jared’s introduced Jensen to the wonderful world of action films, and Jensen still beats Jared at Xbox and tells him it’s character building.
At the end of the day, they either play music, Jensen occasionally playing for him because he’s ridiculously good at any instrument he picks up, or they read together, occasionally to each other, but Jared will deny that as long as he exists because there are some things an ego doesn’t recover from. Other days they chill with video games and movies. Then they have something to eat, something to drink, and head to bed, Jared spreading Jensen out on the sheets and breathing him in, whispering endearments into the still of the night.
He sometimes finds Jensen in Jeff’s office, laughing and chatting and reminiscing, and on those nights he lets them be and waits upstairs for Jensen to get back.
Every couple of weeks they get together with their friends and have dinner parties, mostly just getting drunk. They go to the monthly parties, getting dressed up and holding out as long as they can before finding a way to sneak off and get out of their clothes, and at Christmas Genevieve manages to kiss Jared under the mistletoe. It goes on longer than everybody thinks is necessary, but Jensen just shakes his head with a laugh and Jared can’t really blame Genevieve for taking the opportunity.
Eric drops by at that party, and it turns out that Jensen’s right, Death is a weepy drunk. A weepy drunk who professes his love for “all the little minions that do my bidding” and Jensen and Jeff escort him to a bedroom to sleep it off before he gives away exactly who he is.
The call came in a week before it happened. Danneel had come rushing into the library, Sophia on her heels, and they both blinked at him with excited eyes.
‘Have you heard?’ Dannel asked.
Jared had put his book down. He had been waiting for Jensen to get back, from a meeting with the head of the London division about getting support for an international reaper scavenger hunt. The one that they had a couple of months ago across the States had been a resounding success.
‘Clearly I haven’t,’ Jared had said.
‘We’re all being called out, together at the same time. Next Tuesday, something big is happening and we’re all required to be there,’ Sophia said.
‘Well, okay, not all of us,’ Danneel said. ‘But nearly all of us, and we’re not having any other reaps that day.’
Misha had come racing into the library at that time, half out of breath.
‘Did you hear?’ he asked, eyes wide.
‘Yes!’ the girls replied, and the three of them had fallen into gossip and chatter like their afterlives depended on it.
Jared had closed his eyes.
Jen, Jared thought, you there?
Then in answer, Yeah, Jare, I can hear you, what’s up?
Know anything about next Tuesday?
The big reap that’s happening? A little. I know we’re getting on a train.
How many of us are involved?
Almost all of us there in the city, Eric’s still deciding on who he thinks needs to miss out, and about half of a group from out west. I don’t know where they’re coming from though.
Will you be home soon?
Couple more hours, I promise.
I love you, Jen.
Love you too, see you soon.
Telepathy was much more awesome than Jensen had given it credit for.
The next Tuesday, they’re all gathered on the platform at the city terminal, waiting for the arrival of the country bound train.
Jared thinks they look ridiculous and is thankful no one can see them. They look like a bad flash mob, just a sea of black cloaks and sharp blades, flashing menacingly in the artificial light of the train station. Danneel winks at him before she throws her hood up over head. He doesn’t blame her, it’s cold and windy and ready to rain. The train pulls in, Jeff turning towards them, raising his voice over the squealing of the train’s brakes.
‘Alright, kiddos, listen up. Today is big, and we still don’t know quite how this is going down, but I think we all have some idea by now.’ Hooded figures all over the platform nod.
‘So, what we do is important, and it’s never been more obvious than this day. We get on this train, and we reap every soul that calls to us. We take away their pain, give them peaceful passings, and we bring their souls back to send on to their afterlife.’
‘We are death,’ Jensen mutters, and Jared thinks, yes, yes we are.
He still can’t mention the word around others, still some block that stops him from mentioning it, mainly to protect them and their feelings. But he can think it now when he couldn’t before, and say it around Jensen and Jeff, and he thinks that it makes him better at this job than the others. Because he truly understands what it means.
Jared was born so that he could die, as were all the others here with him today. It’s pointless to pretend otherwise.
They are death. He is death, and he’s never had more fun in his life.
He takes Jensen’s hand and together, they step on to the train.
‘Well well,’ Jensen says, ‘let’s get on with it.’
And they do.
Death- the last voyage, the longest, the best.
~Thomas Wolfe
{END}
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