Title: Tyrant Grim
Author: Neko-chan
Fandom: Durarara!
Rating: T
Pairing: n/a, but some hints towards Shizuo/Izaya at the very end
Disclaimer: Not mine~
Summary: Every person has their own personal Boogeyman. Izaya's just happens to be Death.
Author's Note: The title comes from a quote/poem from René Francois Regnier that goes as such: Gaily I lived as ease and nature taught, / And spent my little life without a thought, / And am amazed that Death, that tyrant grim, / Should think of me, who never thought of him.

Prompt from the drrrkink meme: Izaya meets the Grim Reaper. He is shit scareless, believing Death has finally come for him.
I want to see Izaya trying to cheat death. Go on, anons. give me what you got.

Tyrant Grim

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me.
The Carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality
~ Emily Dickinson

:

It all came to him in pieces, shattered bits of reality that, brought together, formed a skewed yet somehow cohesive whole:

Screeching tires.

A flash of blue, there and gone again.

Headlights, bright and glaring, looming closer and closer.

There was the crunch of bones breaking.

Agony.

So much agony, pain that shuddered through his body, echoing back and forth until it was all that he could feel-could ever feel. Neverending. Formless because it was everywhere, and when he tried to move… he finally understood the meaning of true torture. Such agony that he was beyond tears, lost in a cocoon of consciousness where everything faded away before throbbing back into crystal-sharp clarity.

Agony.

The blue, blue sky-a wide expanse that stretched across the globe, arms reaching wide between the points of skyscrapers.

And the impassive amber gaze of Shizuo as he leaned over Izaya's broken body, unsympathetic and distant.

It was then that Izaya finally truly realized that he was going to die.

:

Mothers had always warned their children to look both ways before crossing the street.

The reemergence of awareness came slowly.

It was sight that came to Izaya first, though he at first thought that he was blind. There was darkness, ever-reaching, all-consuming. It smothered his senses, pushing down low and hard, covering his eyes until Izaya was once more reminded of why it was that he had feared the night as a child. There was a danger in the primeval soup of nothingness, a blanket void where things that go bump in the night hid from all concepts of what-can-only-be, defying logic and striking out when a person was weakest.

Izaya was afraid.

This…? This was the afterlife promised to his beloved humans?

Touch came next, the sensations slipping back into consciousness as the information broker reached up and pressed trembling fingertips against his cheek. The skin there was wet with tears, and it was taste that trickled back into existence when the tang of salt landed upon the tip of his tongue. He knew, realized with an instinct passed down through his genes over thousands of years, that he was in the Void, the nothingness where awareness stagnated and eventually faded away, the spiritual dead zone where Izaya's memory would stutter and stall, his existence blown out as thoroughly as a candle in the wind.

Hearing was the last to return.

"No!" he screamed, voice deadened and muffled in the noctivigant gloom. "No! I refuse this! I don't want to stay here! I won't stay here! I wanted Valhalla!" His voice bellow across the immeasurable distance, echoing back to him-words twisting and mutating until his words were no longer decipherable and all that remained was incomprehensible cackling. It was a sound that had Izaya shuddering in fear, the temptation to clap his hands over his ears strong-he was dead, dead and gone and this was a place worse than Hell; it was this stretch of meaninglessness that had struck such terror within Izaya when he had previously thought of death, of dying. It was his nightmare come to light, come to life, and Izaya wanted nothing more than to howl his horror to the sky-not-sky in the hopes that there would be someone there to here to reconfirm the fact that he existed.

A single flame flickered into life, far in the distance.

It wasn't very bright-low and quietly burning-but it was a single beacon in the darkness that surrounded Izaya. His claret gaze widened when he spotted it and he immediately lunged forward, stumbling over his feet in the haste to move, and then he was soon enough running towards the promise that the fire posed: he was no longer alone. He would see another human, one of the beloved humans that made Izaya's heart ache with their infinite number of flaws.

"Hey!" he cried out, eyes widening even further as he finally slowed and halted, seeing for the first time what it was that the light illuminated. There was indeed that flame, a torch held by a cowled figure that led an ox-drawn carriage. What had Izaya's heart quicken its pace, however, was the fact that the oxen were not alive: bones of animals long dead, hooked up to the carriage and drawing it into the murky shadows step by ponderous step. The informant swallowed and, in a gesture that was surprisingly antithesis to his entire personality, tentatively asked, "…where am I?"

The robed being paused in its trudging pace, hood turning slowly to look at the human that had made its way to this particular, hidden realm. And though Izaya looked, there were no features to be made out: just empty darkness, a gaping entry into the Void that surrounded Izaya, and the informant shivered in reaction. The creature spoke then in a voice that rumbled through the informant's bones, and Izaya shrieked at the sudden pain and clapped his hands over his ears to try to stifle the soul-deep speech, Go.The creature gestures with one completely covered arm towards the door to the carriage, just a thin wooden screen covering its entrance and separating it out from the shadows that lingered everywhere.

Tentatively, when it looked as if the creature wouldn't speak any more, Izaya cautiously lifted one hand and then the other from his ears, eyes squinting suspiciously at the other-making sure that it would not talk again, would not again speak in that language that vibrated through his body and brought back memories of the agony that he had felt when-

But… no.

Izaya didn't want to think about it.

Instead, the jacket-clad man stepped-one, two, three-over towards the opening to the ox carriage, chirping out his best greeting in the hopes of impressing in case there was anyone within the twilight cavern of the vehicle, but then he stopped-abruptly and with a quiet yelp of surprise when he saw just who was occupying the carriage. "Y-You!"

A man who Izaya would have once upon a time ago called Heiwajima Shizuo comfortably sprawled at the back of the oxen-pulled cart, reclining easily amongst scattered pillows. He was dressed in a simple white yukata with an overrobe settled over his shoulders, the blue and white of the covering accentuating the blue of the blonde man's gaze. He watched the shocked brunette with an impassive gaze that mirrored, exactly the expression that Shizuo had worn as Izaya had been dying on a street in Ikebukuro. He brought his long kiseru to his mouth, lips parting just enough for the other man to take a deep breath from the tobacco settled at the pipe's end, and smoke slowly curled out of his mouth to wreathe his head in a silver-tinted halo.

"Enjoying your time in Nihil?" the blonde murmured and any justification that Izaya tried to make to himself that this was not the Shizu-chan ground to a halt at the cadence within the other's voice, the words that were layered into the ones spoken aloud but never actually said, knowing full well that Izaya would hear, anyway: This is the Hell that you've earned, flea.

Izaya grit his teeth. "…who are you? You're obviously not Shizu-chan." Or at least not the one that I knew.

The other man smiled at that, bright and challengingly and so Shizuo, and once more breathed deep from his pipe, smoke trickling out yet again-and it was then that the smoke's scent finally drifted over to Izaya on cloying tendrils, and the informant started because he recognized the scent, had smelled it on Shizuo's clothes each time the debt collector had managed to get too close during one of their many chases through the roads of 'Bukuro.

"Mmm," he hummed in answer, opting for a noncommittal reply as he settled further back into the shadows until all Izaya could truly see of him-clearly, that is-was that pair of shockingly blue eyes. "I am. And I'm not. Never really wanted to admit it until now, flea, but you were right all those years when you called me inhuman. I'm not a monster, though-except, maybe, your own personal one." The words were enough to turn the smile into a wicked grin, and Izaya narrowed his eyes dangerously, in warning at the other.

"Then what the hell are you, Shizu-chan? Some type of protozoan lifeform that managed to ape the human form?" The broker knew that he was groping at both insults and derision, and there was very real fear for the other that Izaya had never really felt when alive. This… this was out of his control and, what was worse, Izaya couldn't predict what the other would do now-didn't even know what he was. And for someone who relied so thoroughly on his network of spies, of information, of technology, the lack of knowledge was more than a little unnerving.

"Ne, Izaya-kun," the man with Shizuo's face began, eyes glinting in amusement at Izaya's not very well hidden discomfort. "When you were still alive, you ended up using Celty for a lot of your errands. Tell me, do you remember what a Dullahan actually is-their purpose in life, their reason for existing?"

Izaya knew, but instinct drove him to remain silent.

As if sensing the reasoning behind why no reply came to him-no matter the fact that Izaya usually enjoyed showing off his high-and-far range of information and knowledge-the blonde man laughed quietly and went on to answer his own question. "A Dullahan rides the mortal roads, announcing death, causing death in some cases, and bringing the deceased over into one of the other realms-whatever afterlife that that person deserved for the life that they lived. A Dullahan is Death's ferryman, I suppose you might even be able to say."

Feeling his way cautiously through the conversation, Izaya threw out an obvious red herring, hoping that he might be able to fish for more information-gaining some footing for himself so that he wouldn't feel so… lost. Drowning in water too deep to navigate, footing obviously lost long ago-desperate for the ground so that he could once more be stable. "Ah~ But that doesn't have anything to do with Shizu-chan, though~"

A golden eyebrow lifted, and Izaya's claret eyes turned calculating.

"Flea, stop playing dumb. There's no point in playing your games here. You have no position of power."

"And you do?" Izaya snarked back, teeth bared in a silent snarl-knowing that what he was doing was unwise but, for once, letting his temper get the better of him in a gesture that was more Shizuo than himself. But the fear still lingered, still flooded his veins with adrenaline, and this man before him knew things that Izaya himself did not, and that had never happened before. Shizuo had always been the dumb beast, no Izaya. With their positions reversed for the very first time… Izaya floundered.

A smile flashed Izaya's way, lazy and feral and dangerous. "I'm not the one who has to bargain with Death."

Izaya's breath whooshed out of him in a single gasp of air and he wheezed, holding his hand to his chest as he attempted to try to process… that. Death…? Shizu-chan was… Death? But no! That wasn't even possible! After all, the Grim Reaper was supposed to be a skeleton that held a scythe, was supposed to be dressed in tattered robes… there was an image of the Grim Reaper for a reason and all of those stereotypical clichés couldn't all be wrong! It was impossible for Death to be… to be Shizu-chan! It was impossible because Shizu-chan was just some dumb beast, created and alive for Izaya's twisted amusement-a brute that he was able to torment because he wasn't human and therefore didn't matter. Shizu-chan was there for Izaya to abuse when bored, to watch with glee as he fought and fought and fought against his protozoan fate, trying to pretend to be human when he was nothing less than trash underfoot.

As if following Izaya's thoughts-and, with dawning horror, the informant realized that that very well could be possible-Shizuo's cerulean-blue eyes gleamed out from the shadows of the carriage. "Strange, though, don't you think? That a Dullahan who had shown no real interest in the humans around her-except for the humans who sheltered her while she stayed in Japan-finally befriended a blonde debt collector who had no true connection to her. You've always claimed to like riddles, flea. What's the answer to this one?"

"A monster can't help but reach out and search for others who have a similar nature," the crimson-eyed man sneered.

There was a smile: a brief flash, there and gone again. "I suppose that I shouldn't be all that surprised, even now. You always were a fool, Orihara Izaya, never realizing and too blind to see that the weaknesses of others never compared to the one that you never could bring yourself to see: humanity's largest flaws always resided within you."

"Just shut the hell up, Shizu-chan," Izaya suddenly snarled, not wanting to hear truths long buried and long denied and long ignored brought up now, when he was feeling his most vulnerable. The informant huddled in his jacket, fingers curling into fists where Shizuo's sharp blue gaze couldn't see; when he was composed-or better at faking it-the mask that he tossed the blonde's way was all bright smiles. "Ne, it's not as if a beast like you would ever really know what you're talking about~ Your protozoan brain was never developed enough to think in terms like that! Silly Shizu-chan~"

The expression that was given to Izaya in turn was distantly amused, blunt and straight to the point in the way that had always been characteristic of the blonde "beast." "Your attempts to gain a position of power through your words are pointless; you're just wasting time now, flea. And I'm not the one whose own personal Hell happens to be the Void."

Shizuo's reminder was a sobering one, chilling and true despite the fact that Izaya couldn't explain why he believed the blonde's words. But he did, and… Izaya was afraid. The darkness that he had been immersed in, as short of a time as it was, had been the most horrifying experience that he had ever had to go through. He didn't want a repeat-not now, not ever.

"…I don't want to stay here."

Death's expression might as well have been chiseled from stone, hard and assessing and waiting for some sign from Izaya that the human was actually worth something better than what he truly deserved. "Then bargain and bargain hard because this really will be your fate if you can't convince me that, somewhere deep down inside, you have a kernel of worth."

Staying here… spending the rest of eternity here with the very real chance that he'd go crazy before too long… it was a thought, a scenario that sent a frisson of fear trembling down Izaya's spine. In a gesture that left him more vulnerable than he had in years, forced into a corner with no other hidden card to play-mostly because he had been thoroughly stripped of them all-Izaya bowed his head. "I don't have anything to bargain with."

Shizuo's eyes gleamed. "Then this is the deal that you have no other choice but agree to," the blonde stated and, though Izaya's crimson eyes flared with indignation, he still remained silent-but Shizuo was right: he didn't have any other choice. It was either say 'yes' or Hell. "For every person's life you have destroyed over the years, you will make another person's life worthwhile; you will make it worth living. For each person you touch in a positive way, you'll gain another week to live. When you finally manage to break even, you will no longer be destined for this place. And when you finally manage to make a beneficial impact in enough people's lives and thus change the world by the fact that you are alive, then and only then will you be promised Valhalla."

Izaya swallowed. "And if I don't manage to break even?"

"This is where you'll end up. Do we have a bargain…?"

The informant's fingers once more curled into fists and he looked away, furious enough that his breath caught in his throat. The sheer amount of work that loomed before him… if he agreed to this bargain that wasn't a bargain at all…! He had ruined so many people's lives. Was it even possible to make it all up? "Do I even have a choice in this?"

"Yeah," Shizuo answered, making no attempt to placate the other. "You can say no and rot here forever."

That wasn't an option. Izaya closed his eyes at that, pounding his closed hands over his thighs. "Yes, damn you. Yes, we have a bargain."

The world stopped.

Izaya could feel laughter bubbling out from his lips, laughter that he knew Shizu-chan hated with a passion-laughter that usually just had the beast roaring that much louder as the informant kept just barely out of reach. He came to the intersection, caught up in the chase, and was about to dart across the street when he felt long, strong fingers catch at the hood of his jacket to pull him back.

Belatedly, Izaya saw the large truck speeding down the road, and its driver blared his horn angrily at the brunette that he had almost hit because he hadn't bothered to look to see if the way was clear. Izaya stared at the car as it drove on by, eyes wide and heart stuttering to a halt in his chest. He had almost…

Blinking, Izaya glanced over his shoulder to meet Shizuo's gaze.

They stared at each other for a long moment as Izaya attempted to get his bearings once more, but it wasn't long before the information broker was shrugging out of Shizuo's hold, dancing out of reach and shooting off one of his usual insults that typically had the blonde fuming and furious, ready to strangle Izaya once he had managed to catch up with the quick-moving parkour user. But the usual rhythm, the pattern that they always, always fell into ground in a halt, the paper-thin facade shattering into a million little pieces at one sentence that Shizuo spoke when Izaya's sneering voice finally went silent.

"Remember your bargain."

And Izaya went numb at the realization that it wasn't a dream.

Crimson met amber and Shizuo waited patiently for the shock to wear off, for the trembling of Izaya's hands to slowly still until they were as steady as they always were-quick and agile and deft, able to wield his flickblade with an expert touch. Now, however… now, it took a long, long while before Izaya's hands resembled anything like steady, breath hitching and on the verge of hyperventilating. But Shizuo waited and waited and waited and, though remaining shaky, Izaya eventually was able to look up once again to meet that inhuman (because he had always been right about that, hadn't he?) gaze.

Now or never, because it was going to be an uphill battle either way, and every journey was supposed to begin with a single step-

"…thank you, Shizu-chan. For saving me-just now, I mean. … And for the second chance."

Shizuo smiled then, bright and shining and glowing with some internal light that Izaya had never been bothered enough to take the time to see, and the informant stared with wide eyes as the distant thought, the realization as to why some people might be able to bring themselves to fall in love with Death stirred to life in the recesses of his mind, and Shizuo said, simply, "You're welcome."

It was a start.

.End.