Fic: No Wealth and No Ruin [The Social Network/Dead Like Me][8/8]

[antistar_e]

☠.

Tuesday the fifteenth of April is the one-year anniversary of Mark's death. They put a blurb up on the Facebook sign-in page, the content of which is a humorous, sprawling dedication that has Dustin and Eduardo written all over it, and that's nice, but who actually uses the sign-in page anymore?

Torn between laughing at the dedication's bald honesty about his Harvard years and that squirming, humiliated feeling he gets whenever pictures of him show up online without his say-so, he tugs his sneakers on over his heels, slings his backpack over one shoulder, and heads out to fight commuter traffic, same as he does every morning.

His whole team is waiting for him when he walks into the library, and upon catching sight of him, they throw their arms up in a cheer that would probably be vocal if silence in the library wasn't hard-wired into them all by this point.

Jess pushes herself out of her seat, coming over to give him a big bear hug and to loop a couple festive strings of Mardi Gras beads around his neck. For the first time in the whole year he's known her, Tilly breaks library rules and presents him with a tin of brownies, which includes a coupon to one of Kawali's frozen yogurt shops, one that's within easy walking distance of Mark's work.

"Do we do death-day celebrations now?" he goes, completely caught off-guard by all the attention. It's different, somehow, than the surprise birthday parties people tried to throw him when he was alive.

He really dreaded those.

"Only for the first couple of years, in the name of helping you acclimate to your situation in undeath," replies Pierre. Him sitting there in Mark's usual seat, lanky legs thrown out every which way, could mean anything; today could be a high-volume day for death and he's here to help out, or it could just be Pierre coming to fuck with them for shits and giggles, just to get out of the hospital for a little bit. "After the fifth anniversary, we do it in increasing multiples: ten, twenty-five, fifty, so on and so forth."

"How macabre --" Mark starts, but Jessica suddenly steps away, holding him at arm's length, her blue eyes sharp and shrewd as they rake him head-to-toe.

"Hang on," she says, slowly. "Are these yesterday's clothes?"

"Oho!" lows Pierre in delight, putting his fist to his mouth, his eyes twinkling. "Walk of shame!"

Jessica all but snatches her hands away from him, like an eleven-year-old boy scared of cooties. "Again?" she protests, shooting Mark a betrayed look, her nose scrunched up.

Pierre gives his head a slow shake, feigning disappointment. "Man," he says, not quite suppressing his mirth. "We gotta stop seeing you like this, it's getting old."

Mark rolls his eyes. It's not like he doesn't need to go home after this and change for work, anyway. Loftily, because Kawali is drumming his fingers on the tabletop in an unimpressed kind of way, he says, "I don't know what you're talking about, you guys. Fraternization with the living is highly discouraged."

"Mmhmmm," Jessica drags out, lifting her eyebrows. "I would believe you, except the bruises on your knees have already gone green."

Mark opens his mouth to make some smart retort about her just seeing green in envy, before he remembers Kawali's suspicion that her boyfriend might have been the one who lit her on fire, and swallows the words so awkwardly his throat makes a gulping noise like a fish stuck in mud.

"Are you guys done?" Kawali wants to know. "Take the little man out for drinks later or something, because right now, I got people that need to die."

They gather around his computer console as he writes out their reaps on the back of a library flyer about pre-registration for the summer reading club. "Double-reaps today for the ladies," he goes, peeling off strips of paper for both Jess and Tilly. "And congratulations, Pierre, your smart mouth has earned you this one. Bring a poncho, it's going to be bloody. And Mark, here," he rips off another coil of paper, holding it up for Mark to take.

He holds it taut between his fingers, glancing first at the ETD: 3:42 PM, excellent, his shift at Pizza My Heart ends at three and 3:42 falls nice in the middle of the afternoon, so traffic won't be too horrible, except around the area schools. He can work around that, no problem, he helped create an app for that.

He looks next at the address: 551 Middlefield Rd, Palo Alto.

An in-home death, then, which could mean anything: a sleeping-pill suicide, a construction accident, domestic murder. Mark had one guy once who accidentally sliced his own head open with an egg-beater.

There's something familiar about it, though, something that pings in the back of his head. Where does he know that address from? Middlefield Rd is one of the busiest streets in Palo Alto, so it could be any number of businesses -- unlikely, though, it's the wrong number block for that, and a business name is usually included if it happens at one -- or has he had a reap at this house before? He feels like he remembers a reaper writing the address down for him ...

Wait.

Mark's heart stops. It can't ...

No. It can't be.

He moves his thumb to read the name.

E. Saverin
3:42 PM
551 Middlefield Rd
Palo Alto

He flings the strip of paper away from him so fast his wrist pops. "No," he goes, too loud, all but tripping over the wooden chairs in his haste to put distance between himself and that paper, that E. Saverin written so innocuously in Kawali's handwriting, first initial and last name because it helps create distance, we can't afford to empathize with our reaps, little man.

"No!" he says again; it's a primal noise, torn unbidden from his throat. "No, no, no."

He looks at the reapers, all of them staring at him, startled and stunned by the outburst, but nothing registers beyond the oval-shaped blurs of their faces. "I'm not doing this. I'm not. I can't. Not this one. Not --"

Pierre leans down, snatching the strip of paper up off the carpet and scanning it. "Who's E. Saverin?" he asks at large.

Recognition kindles in the others' expressions, a dawning horror he's both gratified and sickened to see. This can't be real. One year after his own murder ... this can't. Could there be another E. Saverin at 551 Middlefield Rd today? Mark thinks Eduardo would have said something if one of his family was coming up for a visit. Do any of them have the first initial E? Any of them besides Eduardo?

Eduardo.

"Mark's lover, I think," Tilly says, quiet, at the same time Jessica whispers, "doesn't he partially own Mark's company?"

Mark doubles over like he's been hit in the gut. He presses the heels of his hands to his head and begs, "Someone else do it, I can't."

And then there's that thought, and it's even more horrible; the idea of someone else seeing Eduardo minutes before he dies, someone else touching him, someone else leading his soul into the light. Mark's reaction is vehement, instantaneous; he lurches forward, snatching the paper back from Pierre so violently he leaves long scratches on his wrists.

Pierre, for once, is shocked into speechlessness. There's pity making the corners of his mouth turn down, something Mark's never seen on him before.

Tilly's still holding her brownie tin and Jessica looks stricken, face ghost-white, like she wants to take back every untoward crack she made about the state of Mark's knees.

Mark turns on his heel and breaks for the door.

Kawali heads him off at the circulation desk, snatching up by the elbow and all but dragging him outside.

The sun has fully risen by now, momentarily blinding him, and he lets Kawali lead him to the statue; the piecemeal woman made of flat sheets of metal, her abstract features turned towards the sky. Some smartass has tucked a rose into her crotch. Mark stares at that bright splash of pink, until Kawali squeezes his elbow and makes him look up.

"You have to do it," he says, inexorable, a softer version of his and what part of this makes you think you have a choice? voice.

"No." Mark holds up his palms in a clear show of rejection, like denial is going to change anything. "No, I can't. I haven't failed a single reap since I started, but you cannot ask this of me. You can't."

"You have to," Kawali insists.

"I'm not killing him!" Mark screams, wrenching his hands up into fists like ... like what, like he's going to punch him? The last time Mark's ever hit anyone was in the fourth grade, and a girl, at that, and she'd looked more startled than hurt by it. Mark can be cruel, but he's never been violent.

Kawali seizes him by the biceps, grip so tight it almost lifts Mark onto his tiptoes, and he shakes him. He's huge, muscular, and as he's so fond of reminding him, Mark's just a little man. The force of it makes his head snap back onto his neck, brains rattling. Black spots dance in front of his eyes.

"Don't you see?" Kawali hisses out through clenched teeth. "When are you going to learn, Mark, it's the exact opposite! You're not killing him, you're saving him."

"How --" Mark chokes.

"Do you want him to die painfully?" His voice is fierce, tight, and Mark buries his face in his palms so he doesn't have to look him in the eye. "Do you want him to feel every second of it? Mark, that is why we are here. This is what grim reapers are made for. He's going to die, you can't stop it, but you can make sure he doesn't feel pain. He doesn't have to die alone."

"We all die alone!" Mark retorts, vicious and wounded, knuckles going white with strain, because he remembers the quiet, the six in the morning hush of being on his hands and knees fumbling for his phone charger and nobody had told him they loved him just in case Peter Thiel's right-hand man came up behind him with a baseball bat.

Nobody.

"No," and Kawali grabs his wrists, wrenching his hands away from his face, the way you do to small children when you need them to listen. "No. Mark Zuckerberg, if you have a shred of human decency in you, you will not leave him to suffer. Do not make him die alone."

Mark makes a noise. "I don't want him to die at all."

Kawali softens, releasing him slowly. His fingerprints make red marks rise on Mark's skin, but he heals fast and they fade as he watches, swaying on the spot. He doesn't try to bolt again, and the paper with the time of Eduardo's death is still in his hand.

Finally, Kawali says, "You love him," and, apparently without realizing it, he touches the pads of his fingers to the pocket of his Aloha shirt, where he keeps the sketch of his wife. "It's the best thing you can do for him, don't you think, is to save his soul?"

"I don't have a choice," says Mark, flat, expressionless.

"No," says Kawali with so much sympathy it hurts.

☠.

He cannot concentrate.

He cannot think.

He cannot --

He can't do anything.

He is a useless, twitchy mess, with his brain going one way and his body going another. His fingers jitter loose on his time-in card, his feet walk him into walls. There is nothing inside his head but a mess of screaming, chaotic and over-loud, like tea kettles or dial-up or the long, continuous wailing horn of the car that struck and killed Keisha Morgan.

Mark isn't used to a brain that cannot think, cannot form lines, black and white and A and B and what is this, what is this, what is he going to do?

Before he left the library, he gave Jessica back the Mardi Gras beads, pooling them into her palm because the thought of celebration makes his stomach curdle. Jess had looked down at them and then flung her arms around his neck, fierce and tight. She murmured, "we'll come to your apartment later, all right? You don't have to go through this by yourself," she told him, like Eduardo was already dead.

There are days when you want someone to notice that the world has twisted in every wrong direction, and days that you want no one to notice at all, and for Mark, today's one of those latter days, which means that Sancha corners him by the ovens as soon as he gets into work and peers owlishly into his eyes, her mouth twisted into a frown.

"Whatever you're on," she goes severely. "Don't let it impair you when you're out on delivery, okay?"

Mark wants to laugh at her for the assumption, and then he wants to say something nasty and cruel about her hair or her boyfriend or her stupid Afro-Peruvian heritage, and then he wants to turn his back on her and never have to think about her again, because it's simply too much effort to think about her, to care that she even exists, not with everything howling exhaustively inside of him.

He goes through the day like that, angry and hurting and on the verge of shaking apart, and time's going too fast, too fast, ten to noon to two, and he can't do anything to stop it.

This must be what the dilution felt like, he thinks, that fucking dilution that he became so infamous for. It's some kind of fucking cosmic payback. Mark thought he had a 30% share of Eduardo's life, a solid slice of time to do all the things he wanted to do, and now it's hit him in the face, smack in the print on this innocuous strip of paper with name, place, and ETD -- all he has left of Eduardo's life is a fucking .03%.

At three, he hangs his apron on the hook and punches out, robotic and cold with dread. Forty-two minutes left.

Forty-one.

He swings on Sancha. "You should let your boyfriend propose to you," he goes, flat as a slap to the face.

She blinks at him, startled into saying, "um, okay," reactionary, before it occurs to her what he said.

Mark spins around and leaves, stepping out into the blindingly-bright California sun; the world burns away to white for a second and he squints through it. There are people shapes moving on the sidewalk, in the courtyard, going in and out of shops across the street and someone's laughing, her head tilted back and her teeth visibly bright, and Mark feels a flare of anger roll through his stomach, because Eduardo Saverin is supposed to die today and doesn't that deserve the world to stop? It doesn't matter if nobody knows who he is; he is so devastatingly important to Mark and the world needs to stop for a moment and that woman should not be laughing.

It's quiet inside the Facebook building on the corner of University and High, and just as Mark punches the button for the elevator, the doors pop open and Eduardo comes out, all suit and hair and eyebrows and briefcase and no no no no, he can't do this.

His face splits into a smile at the sight of Mark, their coming-and-going momentum catching them up into a half-hug.

"Hi!" he goes brightly, steering them around. "I forgot to tell you earlier. Today's a half-day for everybody because of the date -- and I got caught up in a bunch of meetings, so I'm not really getting out as early as I want, sorry about that," he goes with a long-suffering huff. "We're thinking of moving, did I mention that to you before?"

"You or Facebook?" Mark goes blankly.

"Facebook. After what happened to Mark and then losing Keisha ..." he shrugs, a minute twitch of his shoulders. "It feels too much like bad luck for our employees to stay here. And -- well, it's small as far as offices go, and we're only the biggest thing to happen to the Internet since Google." He cuts a glance to Mark at that, looking for a reaction.

With none forthcoming, a frown creases between his eyebrows.

"Christopher," he goes. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Mark goes without thinking, because that absolute howling nothingness is back, threatening to engulf him. If Eduardo is gone and Facebook follows, what will Mark have left?

Eduardo steps into his space, like he's going to go in for a hug, but Mark twitches away. He doesn't want to touch Eduardo, doesn't dare, because who knows what the touch of a reaper will do to the doomed? Mark doesn't want to take his soul, even accidentally; he wants nothing more than to grab Eduardo and forcibly drag them back to this morning, Eduardo spread out with a pillow under his head and his laptop balanced on his belly, laughingly searching through eBay and wanting to know if Mark was sure he didn't want a quilt with Tigger and Piglett and Winnie the Pooh on it. Just for laughs.

No, he thinks, desperate. No.

We all have someone we love to the point of ruin; Kawali could not stop death for Lehua and Tilly could not stop death for her children, death stole Jessica from her Sam and death stole Keisha from Kevin, and Mark will not let that happen to him.

He will not, he will not.

He is Mark Zuckerberg and he is Christopher Robin and for Eduardo, he will stop Death itself.

He has to.

They cross the street to the parking garage, and never before has Mark appreciated just how many ways a human being can die. People are so fucking invincible, managing to go about their business and avoid death every single day. He's never experienced this kind of absolute, crippling terror before; the fear of cracks in the sidewalk or banana peels, of sudden solar flares or every bicyclist that goes by, because time is ticking down and any one of these things could be what takes Eduardo from him.

They get into Eduardo's car, Mark flinching full-body at everything he does, like when he turns the ignition key, remembering vividly the little red car exploding on the on-ramp to the 101. He doesn't dare blink, scanning everything in his peripheral for signs of a graveling -- anything that might tip him off as to what's coming for them.

Eduardo keeps shooting him little worried looks when he thinks Mark isn't watching, but he doesn't ask again.

Drumming the flats of his hands on the steering wheel, he goes, "What would you say if I was thinking about getting a dog?" He's cheerful, face turned up to the sun, the way people are when they've gotten off work early. "I like living things, I have a backyard that's going unused, and it'd be nice to have one compassionate being around the house," he looks pointedly at Mark. "And on the occasions I do have to fly somewhere like the lonely-hearts businessman I am, I can get you to house-sit.

"And yes," he adds quickly. "Before you get all clever on me, that was a thinly-veiled attempt to share my home with you."

Mark frowns. "The dog is a ..."

"Socially acceptable excuse to give you a key, yes. Which is why I'm warning you now."

Mark knows how Eduardo is going to die. He is going to die because Mark is going to kill him. Mark is going to wring his stupidly long, gorgeous neck and that will be that. You can't just say things like that and expect to survive, it's not physically possible.

"I love you," he blurts out, just because he should know. It's the only defense Mark has.

Eduardo flashes him a full-toothed grin. "I know," he goes cheekily. "I love me too sometimes. You have to admit my ideas are kind of brilliant."

He's pulling into his driveway at 551 Middlefield Rd before Mark realizes this is the last place he wants Eduardo to be right now. He freezes and opens his mouth to suggest that they go anywhere else, anywhere, but Eduardo's already out of the car and he can't do that, he can't do that, because Mark hasn't figured out what will kill him yet.

Puzzled, Eduardo drums his knuckles against Mark's window, gesturing for him to come on, before he heads off down the driveway to check the mailbox.

There are too many cars winking by on Middlefield; Mark can see their reflections flickering in the windows of the house, and he yanks the car door open, because anything could happen to Eduardo at the end of the driveway. A hit-and-run, a drive-by shooting, a defragmenting bit of the space station could plummet to earth and crush him --

And then Eduardo's back, empty-handed. "Nothing, not even junk mail! How sad. I still get Quilter's Monthly sometimes, you know, addressed to the lady who owned the house before me."

He smiles with just one side of his mouth, like it's trying to pull the other side up with it but he's waiting for Mark to give him one in return, and there are five minutes left to go before 3:42pm and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if Mark can stop his death. What matters is that Mark and Mark alone can stop it from hurting.

This one time, Mark can be the one that stops Eduardo's pain.

It will be the most important thing he's ever done.

He grabs fistfuls of Eduardo's clothes and half-hauls him in, half-hauls himself up. It sends them bumping up against the side of the car, but then Mark's got his mouth on Eduardo's and it doesn't matter where their bodies are in space, so long as they're still attached to each other.

It's the longest, most intense kiss he's ever given, and judging by the way Eduardo's hands hover over his waist like they've forgotten what they're doing, the way he leans into it, searching, that he's never been kissed like this before. And that's fitting, because who is ever going to kiss him like this; this is a reaper's kiss, a good-bye, a promise, a you are going to die and these are my hands, they will hold your soul and I will guard it and protect it, and I love you, and I'll take it all away.

And with that thought, he lifts his fingers and touches them to Eduardo's temple, and slowly, so slowly, as slowly as he can get away with, drags his bare fingertips down every familiar line of his face. Underneath his skin, Eduardo's soul shimmers and stretches, yawning and awakened and summoned to Mark's touch.

With one long pull of his mouth against Mark's, Eduardo leans back and looks at him.

Just a look.

And then he kisses him on the mouth one last time and backs away, heading towards the side door into the kitchen. He walks backwards, doing some little shimmy that's probably supposed to be seductive, but he's grinning too hard to pull it off and Mark's smiling back and he's helpless, he's helpless, and nobody ever told him just how little choice you have about love.

A noise, and Mark looks up.

There's a graveling crouched on the roof of the car.

Their eyes crack together; he's never looked directly at an agent of fate because you're not supposed to, and the graveling's eyes are hollow and black and lit in the center like Mordor, like hellfire, like cat's eye stones. It bears its teeth at him slowly, smugly, because it's too late to stop it -- Mark has already reaped Eduardo's soul.

From the very first time he saw his mother's reaction to the toads Mark squashed in kindergarten, he has never wanted to physically harm another living thing -- not his sisters, not his girlfriends, not the press, not even Eduardo or the Winklevoss twins. But there's nothing but white rage in his mind when he lunges forward to snap that graveling's miserable little neck.

It fades to smoke and his hands pass right through it, slamming down hard on the roof of the car. Its snickers linger in the air even after it's gone.

"Hey, Christopher!" Eduardo calls over his shoulder, standing at the door. "What are you doing?"

Heart pounding, Mark turns around, his eyes finding Eduardo first and then flitting up, squinting briefly against the flickering of the windows.

3:41.

And Mark realizes the windows aren't reflecting the traffic flashing by on the street. It's coming from inside.

Eduardo's house is on fire.

Eduardo's house is on fire and it's locked up, sealed tight, because Eduardo always loved playing with the climate control and was very adamant about everything being insulated from the outside. The windows are glowing because the inside is burning.

Fire.

Fire inside and Eduardo's at the door, fitting his key into the lock, his head turned in Mark's direction.

"Well, aren't you coming?" he goes, laughing.

He looks happy.

He looks loved.

Backdraft, he hears his littlest sister's voice in his head; she'd helped him and the other girls study for the SATs in high school, the big vocabulary book propped open awkwardly on her lap, sneakers swinging above the carpet and shoelaces dangling. I like this one! It's a noun.

Just read it to me already, R--

Fine! Geez. 'Backdraft. A phenomenon in which a fire that has consumed all available oxygen suddenly explodes when more oxygen is made available, typically because a door or window has been opened.' Doesn't that sound cool!

Backdraft.

"No, War--!" Mark starts, stepping forward.

The door opens and all there is the hollow and the dark, the pinprick of light like the graveling's eyes, a beat of the absolute silence.

3:42.

A rush, a roar.

He sees, for one incredible, ethereal moment, Eduardo lit up and wreathed in fire --

-- and then he burns away, engulfed, gone, and the fire descends on Mark, hungry and cavernous and all-consuming.

All the world is fire and

his flesh peels away and

everything vanishes away white.

☠.

At first, there is only sound.

The world, when it burns, is very loud; a jumble, a cacophony Mark cannot distinguish anything from. It thunders in his ears. The whole universe, just filled up with noise.

His sense of smell is next to return, sudden and sharp enough to make him choke. Burning flesh is not something you forget the smell of, not after you've smelled it once, and taste comes right on its heels, pasted along Mark's tongue, cloying, disgusting, ashy.

Mark wakes up just as his lungs shudder back into working, sucking down air in a thick gasp, lying flat on his back on the gritty driveway pavement. Sitting upright with difficulty, he blinks, trying to get rid of the weird sensation as his eyelids finish repairing themselves, skin thickening across his eyeballs and the lashes popping in, one-by-one. When he looks down at himself, he immediately wishes he hadn't; his skin is trying to grow back as fast as it can, covering up his ribs as they snap back into place, caging in the new, raw patches on his lungs and heart; the charred, burned bits slough off in reels like a sunburn. He even catches a brief glimpse of his stomach lining.

"Oh, that's gross," he mutters, fighting down the urge to throw up, between the sight and the smell and the heat.

And then there are hands on him, and someone's saying his name.

"Mark. Mark, come on, you gotta get up."

He blinks some more -- anything that's not directly in front of his face blurs pathetically, great big blotches of color circling around him like vultures.

"Come on, Mark, we gotta go. There are going to be people here any moment -- pedestrians and cops and EMTs and they're going to find you sitting here photosynthesizing or whatever you're doing, so we better move."

It sounds sensible, so he nods, wobbly, and lets the hands pull him to his feet. It's halting progress, as fingers and palms gingerly search for somewhere to touch him that isn't over his rapidly-repairing sternum. They get him upright, and it turns out there's arms attached to those hands and a torso to them, which he discovers when he staggers sideways into them, and they steady him. "That's it," murmurs the voice, right in his ear. Mark feebly tries to pick bits of blackened bone and barbecued flesh off of himself, brushing them to the pavement.

"Sorry," he mumbles. "It's a mess. I don't usually get that close. Can we add getting blown up to the list of things I'd rather not do again?"

There's a slightly hysterical giggle that follows that, and Mark's not too sure if it's coming from him or the voice next to him.

They move forward, up the curb and onto the sidewalk with careful steps. The smudges of color are solidifying into shapes; he can see the house now, a blazing, towering inferno of flame and bright light, the whole thing completely devoured from the inside. Black smoke pours up into the sky, billowing in clouds, and like fog, like firework smog, Mark knows he'll be seeing the smokescreen from it hovering over the bay for days.

The lawn is littered with scattered debris, bright little baubles of color amidst the grass; bits of the car, he presumes, and the door, and --

And there's a watch lying on the sidewalk. Mark stares at it until they go past and leave it behind them, craning his neck until he can't see it anymore, tossed across the cement; the thick silver band and the blackened face, turned up to the sky. It's a familiar watch; he remembers a twenty-first birthday party somewhere, somewhen, and Chris at his elbow, jeering as Eduardo pulled off the wrapping paper. It's a fancy-ass businessman's watch.

He blinks away from the memory, glancing down at the hand splayed across his chest, the same gleaming, expensive watch perched upon its wrist.

He reaches up, curling his fingers around the fleshy part of Eduardo's hand. He gives it a squeeze, and doesn't let go as they make their way away from his burning house. Mark had been standing so much further away from the door when the backdraft happened, and had still been injured so bad he blacked out, which is saying something, for one of the undead. He could look for the remains, but he doesn't try too hard. Don't let him die alone, he thinks, and leans his weight up against Eduardo.

Anyone looking at the scene right now, out of their home windows or car windows or coming out to stand at the curb and gawk at the destruction, any one of those people is only going to see one person limping down the street.

☠.

Mark opens his eyes again.

He knows, in the way people do when they've spent a long time living in one place, exactly where he is: in the park by the nursing home where they watched the fireworks on 4th of July, an easy midway point between 551 Middlefield Rd and the Facebook offices. He can hear the swings on the playground creaking and parents calling to their children to be careful and the drone of the bees among the flowers. He can see the sky and the garden in his peripheral, well-maintained riots of star jasmine and bougainvillea, and the hummingbirds flitting back and forth among them.

Eduardo is beside him in the grass, watching him.

"Mark," he says.

"Wardo," Mark answers, relieved to be able to say it, like it's been trapped under his tongue all this time. When you're undead, the only ones who can see your face for what it truly is are the others like you, and the dead.

He stretches out his hands to either side of him, fingers digging into fistfuls of grass. He drags air into his lungs, and it smells the way green things do, like earth and plants. Eduardo's hand is close to his own, as if maybe their fingers had been touching before Mark woke up, and his eyes track the movements of Eduardo's hand as he makes a sweep through the grass, passing right through it like mist and leaving the blades barely rustling in his wake.

Mark lifts his eyes to meet his gaze, and Eduardo blurts out, "I'm sorry."

"For?" he goes blankly.

"For Facebook -- I ... this is going to be news, any moment, and Dustin and Sean ... I mean, I trust them, but I don't know if Facebook is going to survive so many blows, all at once, not with you dead, and the fiasco with Maurice, and Thiel in jail awaiting trail, and now me --" he makes a broad gesture at himself, all, hi, I'm Casper the friendly ghost.

Mark just blinks at him. He isn't worried. Facebook survived him, and it survived Dustin and Eduardo and Sean and Thiel, and it will survive whatever comes next, even if it's Hewlett-Packard Patrick or the US government.

(Okay, well, maybe not them. Anyone but them.)

Eduardo moves restlessly. "Shit, though, do you think it was murder? Someone picking off Facbook founders, one-by-one?" He gives his head a quick shake, like this is too ridiculous to contemplate. "No, Maurice and Thiel are behind bars. Maybe I just left the stove on."

"Do you really think it's a coincidence that you died on the one-year anniversary of my death?" Mark interrupts, his voice calm from experience with the frantic and the newly-deceased. Funny, how hanging around dead people day after day has actually improved Mark's social skills.

Eduardo flinches. "Well ..."

"You're Facebook's most public face at the moment -- after me and Thiel, obviously, and I'm already dead and Thiel is behind guard in a California petitionary somewhere. So even if someone wanted to go after him, they'd have a hard time of it. You're the next big target."

"That's just it, though," Eduardo goes quickly, in a voice that approaches desperate from a couple different angles. "Why would someone want to kill me? If anyone, I would have thought I'd hear about an attempt on Thiel; someone looking for revenge for killing you and the woman --"

"Pomona, her name's Pomona. I would kill Thiel for Pomona's sake, if I could," Mark says darkly. "She never did anything to deserve what happened to her."

"Neither did you," Eduardo grits out, hard and through clenched teeth.

Mark tilts his head back into the grass, smiling up at him. "That actually means a lot, coming from you."

He thinks that might have been the wrong thing to say, judging by the way Eduardo's expression blanks out with something like hurt, so he reaches out to tap his fingers solidly against the back of Eduardo's hand, glad for a moment that the undead can touch the dead.

"Listen," he says. "If you were murdered, Kawali will find out who did it. He's got a thing for solving murders -- he's the one who found out who murdered me. He's kind of my boss, Kawali is," he goes in reply to Eduardo's questioning look. "Or, well, he looks out for us and makes sure we do the shit we're actually supposed to do."

Eduardo's eyebrows shoot up. "You, taking orders from somebody?" he goes, the joking in his voice only a little shaky. "This I gotta see."

Mark chuckles in acknowledgement, like he's supposed to, and goes to retract his hand when Eduardo's shoots out, catching his wrist and holding it. His thumb pushes into the soft spot between the bone, hard enough to make Mark squirm a little with discomfort.

"How are you real?" Eduardo asks in the smallest voice, and Mark goes still. "Mark, you died. I had to hear it from your lawyers. I went to your funeral and I thought I was going to throw up every time the news came on and then my house blows up and here you are. You have a pulse," the last bit is said on the tail end of a whisper, and comes with an accompanying squeeze to Mark's wrist. "Mark, how can you have a pulse?"

"Because I'm not dead like you," he replies, keeping his voice level. "And you're not dead like me. 1% of us get to stick around after we die and become grim reapers. I was the one that took your soul before you died. It's why you didn't feel the --" he mimes an explosion with his hands.

Eduardo's fingers loosen and release him slowly. He stares.

"I think I need a moment," he says faintly.

Mark shrugs, settling back into the grass. "Take all the time you need," he answers. It's almost funny, remembering the horrible, gut-wrenching panic of earlier, aware only that Eduardo had just hours, minutes, seconds left to live: it's like it's already so far away, another chapter of his life closed, the papers signed and the dilution complete. "We're in no hurry to go anywhere."

Somewhere in the distance, there's a fire engine wailing away. It doesn't bother them.

He thinks, momentarily, of the Star of David that had been on Eduardo's fridge; the mess of glitter and construction paper that had survived Mark's sisters, and Harvard, and the first Facebook interns, and Sean's girls -- it's burned away to ash now, and the grief of that thought makes his breath catch for a moment. That small little nothing piece of home that had come this far, despite everything, is now gone.

He turns his head, seeking Eduardo's profile, turned away towards the playground, but there's only an echo of grief for him. All Eduardo lost was a body -- where he's going, he'll be without pain or worry, without the weight of people's expectations: his father's, Divya Narendra's, Mark's or even his own.

Eventually, Mark will have to return to a world without Eduardo in it, and find some way to carry on without him.

Just ... not right now.

"Dude," he goes suddenly, propping himself up on his elbows. "Oh my god. Do you know what just occurred to me? You had sex with me after I was dead," he announces, gleeful. "I am totally going to make a joke about necrophilia at your funeral. Oh, come on," he goes, when Eduardo twists to face him, gaping fishily in protest. "You got to joke about chickens at mine. I am so going to make a necrophilia reference, you just watch."

Eduardo recovers enough to tell him flatly, "You are not going to my funeral, Mark."

"Of course I am." Mark gives a twitchy shrug of his shoulders, expressionless. "I'm your boyfriend."

Somehow, that's what does it -- the light bulb goes on, finally, and Mark sees Eduardo's mind drawing the connection between Christopher Robin, who was with him when his house exploded, and Mark Zuckerberg, who is lying out with him in the grass now.

All those memories, from the very beginning, now seen for what they really were: Mark eating lunch with him every day; Mark coming to his house after the news about Thiel and Maurice hit the papers; Mark with him at the beach; Mark setting up his home office; Mark kissing him in front of the cafe and kissing him on his bedroom floor and kissing him good-bye; Mark with him for every difficult thing that went down at Facebook.

His eyes go wider, and wider, and wider, huge and enormous, and then the expression breaks.

"Who am I talking to right now?" he snaps out, his voice sharp and his mouth drawing flat in anger. "Mark? Or Christopher?"

"I've always been both. Wardo," Mark reaches out placatingly, finds Eduardo's hand and wraps their fingers together, Mark's pulse and Eduardo's not. He tugs him up so they're both sitting, knees drawn up together like children seeking reassurance in the dark. "Always. I wondered, you know, if you were going to figure me out." He grins. "Outside of, like, maybe my mother, or my sisters if they felt like it, if there was anybody who could have seen right through me, it would have been you."

Eduardo looks stricken by this, like he thinks Mark is admonishing him for not seeing the truth.

"I never --" he starts, fingers clutching convulsively. "Mark, I never. How was I supposed to -- a grim reaper? Those things don't happen in real life. I thought you were dead and dead was dead. I didn't once -- I mean, I thought you were like Mark, but I didn't ... you weren't an asshole!"

And there it is. There's the truth: as himself, with his own face, Mark never would have gotten Eduardo to trust him. He would have always been looking for the double-cross, would never have been able to hear Mark say a word without listening for the underhanded comment, would never believe him capable of human kindness. Only incognito as Christopher Robin, the pizza boy with no money in his pockets and an uncanny knowledge of Facebook's inner workings, could he get Eduardo back.

"Do you think maybe you caricatured me a little bit?" he says mildly. "You know, just because you needed to fashion yourself a devil?"

"Shut up," goes Eduardo, fierce, and he snatches Mark up into a rough hug, gripping hard at his back and burying his face against Mark's neck, desperate with it.

It's an awkward tangle of arms and knees and Mark doesn't care, just wraps him up just as tight, presses them as close as possible. "I'm sorry," he goes lowly. "I'm sorry. I honestly didn't mean to trick you or lie to you, or anything. I wanted to stop you from dying. So badly. I didn't want you to die. I'm sorry you had to die."

"That's okay." Eduardo's voice is right up against his ear. "I didn't want you to die, either."

"I got bludgeoned, though," Mark murmurs. "How cool is that word?"

"Yeah, well, I got blown up. So there."

There's a pause, and then they both start giggling, a little hysterically.

We all have someone we love to the point of ruin. Mark leans into Eduardo's touch, shivering with laughter, and thinks that out of all the people he could have loved this hard, there honestly wasn't anyone better.

☠.

"Okay," goes Mark. "I want you to think of the happiest place you can imagine. A complete and total paradise."

They're standing side-by-side in the wide open park, grass and trees and rioting garden, children playing on the swings and smoke from a burning house barely visible above the treetops. Eduardo closes his eyes, swallowing; Mark watches him, eyes flicking hungrily across every familiar feature, the same way he did the very first time he found Eduardo sitting by himself in the University Cafe.

He hears Eduardo's lights arrive before he sees them; a soft rush of noise, a sound somewhere between the way the wind whistled musically over the porous rocks at Half-Moon Bay and the tinkling song of windchimes.

Here it comes, he thinks, turning to look and unable to help his thrill of curiosity at the thought of seeing someone else's paradise.

The light washes over them, pale blue as a sunrise sky, and then solidifies into --

-- into the exact mirror of where they're standing now.

"Oh, come on," Mark protests, folding his arms across his chest and staring down his reflection, which just looks back at him, flat and reptilian-looking. "The first time I'm trying to impress a friend, and you give me faulty lights. What the hell!" He looks over at Eduardo, almost accusingly. "You don't even like California!"

"Mark," Eduardo says gently. His mouth makes a fond shape. "I don't think California's the point. It might be suggesting that the happiest place I can imagine is whatever place has you in it."

"Oh holy shit," breathes Mark, staggered.

Eduardo laughs, delighted, the same way he had when he handed Mark $19,000 in a manila envelope to take them to California and watched Mark's throat bob with shock. It's the laugh of someone who's caught Mark Zuckerberg off-guard.

Still dimpled, happy, Eduardo walks towards his lights, and Mark feels a twinge of pain, because this is a forever kind of good-bye, and then Eduardo stops and looks over his shoulder curiously.

"Aren't you coming?" he goes.

Swallowing, Mark shakes his head. "It's not for me," he explains evenly, spreading his hands. "The undead can't go where you go. You go on and I stay here, that's how it works."

Eduardo frowns, and then looks pointedly at his lights, where the mirror Mark and Eduardo look back at them expectantly. "I'm pretty sure wherever that goes, you'll have a place with me," he says patiently, but Mark just keeps shaking his head, until Eduardo steps into his space and murmurs, "Mark, your current existence -- it's not some kind of purgatory. You have a choice. You aren't stuck here until you fill some grand cosmic debt, surely you know that?"

"I can't, Wardo, there are rules --" every single one of which he has broken except for this, a voice in the back of his head points out helpfully. Do not contact anyone from your old life. Do not look at the gravelings. Never be late for your appointment. Do not follow a ghost into their lights.

Mark needs to stay here, though, is the thing: for Kawali and Jessica and Tilly, for Sancha, for Dustin and Tori and Sean. Somebody needs to be Facebook's guardian angel.

"I want you to come with me, Mark," Eduardo goes, earnest, hopeful, wanting. "I don't want to go alone. I don't want to go without you, not this time." And Mark hears the far-off echo of I want, I want, I need you out here.

He closes his eyes, breathes deep, California sun warm on his eyelids and the green smell of earth in his nose and someone somewhere updating their Facebook status and most importantly of all, Eduardo beside him.

We all have someone we love to the point of ruin.

And everyone deserves a place to rest.

His eyes open again, and he looks at Eduardo.

☠.

And that's how this story begins.

Not with death. It's very rude, you know, to start a story with death. Death shouldn't be the beginning or the end of anything. Why should it be? It's not painful, not if your reaper's doing the job properly, so there's really nothing to fear from it.

(You'd be surprised, though, at how often people forget that.)

So we'll say this story begins, for us, with Mark Zuckerberg extending a hand to Eduardo Saverin, his palm turned up and his lifeline cut deep into his skin. Eduardo's fingers coil around his, familiar and tight, and everything is haloed in blue.

Yes.

Yes, I think that's a good place to start.

paradise | PEAR-a-dice |
noun

1. an ideal or idyllic state
2. any place or condition that fulfills all of one's desires and aspirations; a place of pure happiness
3. a town in N California, population 22,571

-
fin

If you live to be a hundred, I hope I live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.
Christopher Robin and the Hundred-Acre Wood

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