The room was dark. He was asleep. Sleep watched him curiously. He had been there for hours. He looked over to his brother, who had come and gone the last hours but had asked him to stay behind. To watch. To warn when the mortal woke. Sleep did not hold him in his power. His brother disappeared, a flurry of dark feathers, a dance of darkness. He was gone. And then he was there again, standing sullen in the corner. He was hiding in the shadows. Sleep opened his mouth to say something, but closed it, as he had for the last few hours. There was nothing to say.

“How much longer?” His brother asked.

Sleep shook his head, shrugged. This was a deep sleep. A sleep he wasn’t even sure could be broken. He could wake him, though, if his brother needed it done. He said as much but his brother shook his head, sighing.

“Let him have his sleep.”

Death disappeared again, to run another of his errands. To return another soul to the end. Sleep wondered, briefly, why. There was no specific category, just a question of why. Why? And then Death reappeared as he had done for hours, watching the sleeping form with care. He had been gone longer than expected. Sleep glanced towards him, head cocked a bit to the side.

“Bus crash…” Death said, “Could have used you.”

“Was told to stay here. To watch.” Sleep replied.

Death did not complain. It was a simple statement. Sleep took the pain away from many of those he believed needed it, and Death reaped them towards the afterlife. They were not twins, Death had his own twin and Sleep had his as well. Yet Death worked with Sleep as well as Life worked with Hope- inseparable. There was silence. They were akin to silence, enjoyed its company. Sleep opened his mouth to ask a question- one that had plagued him for hours now. At first, he thought it was a mere kindness. Death did not want to wake a victim. Then the hours passed, and he wondered if it was more than just a kindness.

The sleeping corpse shot upwards, sitting upright. It let out a shout of alarm, rushing from the bed out to the hall. Sleep watched him run, watched him enter the bathroom at the end of the hall, door flung opened and left open. He listened to the stream as it hit the back of the toilet, fell into the water.

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“He’s getting away.” Sleep said.

“No,” Death sighed, “This is a game. His favorite game. Every reincarnation, every death- he always plays this game…”

Sleep stared at his brother, moved beside Death and whispered in his ear,

“Do you love him, brother?”

Death chuckled idly to himself.

“He wishes to play a game of tag, Sleep. I want to give him his last game.”

Death patted his brother on the head and disappeared in a vortex of fabric. The mortal ran down the street, laughing, dodging the obstacles of an over boisterous city. Death followed silently. They moved without trouble, an endless game played millennia over and over. Death had never lost. Sleep followed his brother, forced to run, to pound after them step by step. The mortal took a sharp right, into traffic, leaping over a small angry man driving an even smaller car and into an alleyway across the street. Death followed as he does, through the cars, not minding them running through him like mist on a foggy day. He was careful not to touch them. Even the little angry man he maneuvered around- his time had not come. At least, not yet. Sleep waited for the crosswalk to become accessible, anxiously waiting for the striding green man to appear. He decided better of it, and leapt into the rode, ignoring the horns of oncoming traffic as cars screeched and stopped before hitting him. It wouldn’t have mattered. They could not kill him. Sleep entered the alleyway and found Death kneeling over the mortal’s body. He was pale, fingers stretched out as if he were trying to grab something.

“It seems I always catch them when they least expect it,” Death said to no one.

It was not meant to be heard, but it was listened to anyways. Sleep watched his brother close the mortal’s eyes, and then watched his brother reap the mortal’s soul. Death turned, looking at his brother. His pale face contorted into a chagrined frown.

“There is work to be done.” Death said.

Sleep said nothing, but simply left the alleyway. And Death, as it always does, trailed behind him.