#don copal

(Manny had been at the DoD longer than Domino. Longer than Don. Longer than a lot of them. They should have realized that keeping him there would have been an obvious mark that something was wrong.)

But it wasn’t Don’s fault.

He couldn’t have predicted that Manuel would do something like that. His stealing a client from Domino hadn’t been predicted.

It couldn’t have been expected!

(Maybe he should have expected it. Manny was always too sharp, too skilled for his own good. He always had been. Don had needed to do a lot of cheating to get ahead of him in this job. Because Manny had always been that good.)

Hector had wanted to get rid of the problem. Of someone who’d robbed him of another ticket. Of getting more power.

Don knew it. Domino knew it. They all knew it.

The problem had been who would take the brunt of it.

Domino openly blamed Manny for sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, saying he’d caused more trouble than he was worth.

(Like Don, he hadn't wanted to be in Hector's sights. He didn’t want to be the one taking the fall.)

Don knew it wasn’t his fault, what had happened that day, and said as much.

Manny had never done that before, none of them could have considered it. He was the issue, not any of them.

(It wasn’t his fault. It was never his fault.)

He’d realized they’d made a mistake the moment the flowers had appeared, that they weren't right. They weren't normal, even for sproutella. Even for the (so very few) flowers that could be found in the land of the dead.

And then the chill of something familiar-but-not washing over them all before the flowers, and Manuel’s remains, blew away in a gust of unnatural wind. Scattering like dust before them, leaving nothing behind.

It had felt like a sign of some kind.

He didn’t have the poetic skills to say what that sign was.

Maybe it was a sign of their foolishness. Maybe it was for their arrogance. Maybe it meant that things were going to change, whether they liked it or not. Maybe it was some combination of all three.

But it wasn’t his fault.

None of them could have known what would happen. Manny had never said or done anything that could have told them that he was any different from the rest of them. Not even a hint of something being weirder than anyone would have thought about a guy who’d just… Been another reaper. As far as any of them had known, he was just another schmuck who had a debt to pay off to the powers that be. Just like the rest of them.

How could they know something they were never told?

(They couldn’t have. That was true, it couldn’t have been his fault. It couldn’t have.)

But he knew Hector wouldn’t let it lie. He wouldn’t let Manny’s last act against him go unchallenged, no matter who or what else might also have been entangled in it. It was bad for his business.

And his business was more important than anything else. (Not even another soul.)

So Don had shut his mouth and let Hector do as he pleased.

Let him take over the work for a short time. Let Domino rise above him and go about unhindered and take over completely.

He bowed his head, kept silent, and forced himself to keep working, no matter how angry he felt about it.

(It wasn’t his fault. If he said it enough times, he would finally convince the voice in his head that it was true.)

When he’d laid eyes on that living soul wandering in the city, trying so hard to not be noticed, so hard to not be seen, he knew.

He knew.

He knew exactly who that soul was, no matter how insane it seemed. Souls weren’t supposed to have that fast of a turnover, but he knew.

That was HIM. He was back. (No matter how crazy it sounded.)

It was a young face, much younger than he’d ever know him. (But older than he would have thought.) But he still recognized it. Even with the layers of skin and life on top of the skull he knew was there.

Don was absolutely sure that that was Calavera, ducking into the shadow of an alley and trying to survey the street without anyone taking notice of him.

He could have said something. He could have pretended to help him, get himself back into Hector’s good books by delivering the teen to him. Win back the boss’s good favor by handing the man what he was after.

(But that would have meant meeting Manny again, whomever he was now. Of seeing someone he’d once offered as his scapegoat to escape Hector’s fury. Of knowing he was leading him to his death again. That he would be killing someone he knew again. Because he’d known Manny. He hadn’t been a stranger that he only knew on a screen.)

Instead, he ignored him.

Don ignored the still-living boy creeping through the streets and side allies and continued with his day. Dutifully pretending that he’d seen nothing and knew nothing. That he was blissfully unaware of any plan Hector was enacting to undo whatever Manny had done in his second death to defy him. About whatever Manny had done to protect the saints in those hair-thin seconds between when he’d seen Hector and when his bones had been pumped with sproutella.

Or whatever vengeance the Boss was trying to unleash on the teenager because of it.

It had nothing to do with him.

(He’d always been like this. Always running from his choices. Always hiding from his actions. Always ready to lay the blame on someone else for his mistakes. He’d never been able to face the consequences of his decisions.)

(And his conscience would always remind him of that, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it or how far he tried to run from it. For as loud and angry as he pretended to be, he was a coward.)

(He had always been a coward.)

AN: Okay, and that's a wrap on this ficlet! This AU doesn't have a proper name, but I think folks can gather up some of the basic details from this story just based on what's in it.

Long story short, the idea was that Manny got sprouted at the start for interfering with Hector's business, but there were some unexpected consequences to that. Namely that Manny wasn't the 100% human soul everyone thought he was, and when he was sprouted, something kicked in to stop/permanently mess with the people who did it. And Hector, in a mix of spite and determination, decided to hunt down Manny's reincarnation to FIX that problem. (As second deaths result in the souls being sent back to the 7th/Living World.)