Chapter Text
The saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" had never made sense to Bree Dhiere. It seemed cruel to count wrongs done for good reasons against someone's soul. But apparently it counted all the same.
Her son would at least be set for life. She'd made sure of that, made sure Robert not only couldn't touch their son's money, but that he'd never even know about it. Billy was barely two. He'd be able to move on. He was safe, in a happy home with her sister now, his favorite auntie. Neither of them having custody was better than Robert having him. Robert who'd made her think she was crazy. Robert who'd presented all his 'evidence' of her incompetence to the judge he'd been caught sleeping with. Robert who would never see their son again, gross legal negligence and perjury and a dozen other things he was guilty of would land him in jail for a decade or more. Billy was safe, and he'd never know where the money came from, when he turned twenty-one. Bree would never get to see it. But it was enough. It had to be.
The road had been slick with black ice in the January cold. Construction had riled up the local wildlife. It was dark, and she had been crying, taking curves too fast as music blasted, trying to run away from the pain the only way she knew how. In hindsight it was so very, very stupid.
A bat flapping against the windshield, catching her off guard. A panicked swerve down an embankment, dodging a farmer's terrified goats, trying to stop the car as it skidded through the late January mud. Crashing into the waiting, frigid Mississippi below, the current sluggish and the mud deep, the river older and deadlier than man, an old god in it's own right.
A locked seatbelt on a ratty old car. A concussion from the airbag wasting precious time. Water rushing in through the seams and the cracks. Cold so deep it went burning through her chest and her head and her eyes. Then darkness.
She woke up to screaming and explosions, falling on the ground with a painful thud. Dreaming. Hallucinating. The people twisted and animalistic and wrong. The sky red. The air acrid and choking with brimstone and smoke. It was a dream. Just a dream. She'd been found, been fished out. She was in a coma and seeing crazy things. Seeing the IRA attack she'd been caught in when she'd visited her great-aunt in Ireland. Seeing everything through the twisted, warped lens that only existed in dreams. It was just a dream.
Something exploded nearby and knocked her to the ground, something hot and sharp tearing through her arm. And it hurt. It hurt. Dreams...didn't hurt. Bree shook her head and scrambled backwards, trying to make sense of everything, trying to figure out what was going on. Another blast sounded nearby, and instinct took over. She ran, sprinting from the dirty alley out into the street. A motorcycle stood abandoned with a shotgun mounted on the back, and she hopped on, bare feet slapping as she tried to kick it to life. She had to get out of whatever was going on. It had been years since she'd ridden, but as the bike roared to life and she zipped away, something felt right for the first time in months. Maybe in years. Whatever was going on, whatever fever dream or hallucination she was in, whatever was happening, at least something felt right.
She screamed as something jumped in front of her, teeth snapping and growling, face some mutilated mess of fangs and eyes. She didn't know if the gun was loaded, and reached back, swerving as she used the butt to knock the...whatever it was away. She steered the bike down into an alley as the sound of explosions dulled slightly, checking the gun. Loaded. She ignored the odd way her skin looked, the blue tinge that made no sense. She was hallucinating. Of course she was blue. This was all some coma dream.
"'Ey, doll, you okay?" came a voice, New York accent unmistakable. She looked up, startling at the lanky frame of the...man? who'd addressed her. He was impossibly slim and tall, his face softened but inhuman all the same, eyes mismatched with red pupils. And he had too many arms. Like a spider. This was one hell of a dream.
"I...uh...I'm fine. I think. I just need to wake up." Bree muttered, her ears still pricked to the chaos going on behind her, flinching at another explosion.
"Wake up, huh?" the spidery man said, flicking his cigarette away before realization crossed over his face. "Ah shit, you just landed didn't you?"
"Landed?" Bree watched as the man ran a hand through his...fur? Hair? She wasn't sure, but the sudden change in demeanor put her on edge. He seemed friendly enough, as dream people went, but her brain was clearly on overdrive in whatever hospital bed her body was in. The man looked around, uneasy, before grabbing her upper arm and pulling her away.
"We'll come back for that later, looks like you know what to do with it," he said, pointing to the bike. "But you can't be here, not fresh meat, not in a turf war...shitshitshit. Come on, dollface, let's go, before Val sees you."
"...Val?"
"My...boss--girlie come on, I know you got short legs, but move!" the tall man hisses as he drags her along. "He's...been looking for a bigger girl, and I ain't gonna be the one that throws some new landed sinner at him. Let's get you the hell outta dodge and I...I can explain what's going on, easy-like, yeah?"
Bree followed him, short of breath, forcing down the sinking fear that this isn't a dream, isn't a nightmare, isn't even one of her sleep paralysis delusions that feel so real...forces down the fear that this is something else entirely as the spidery man pulls her along.
"Name's Angel, by the way. Angeldust. What are you gonna call yourself?"
"Call myself? Uhh. My name?"
"You remember it? New? Weird. Most of us take a while to remember everything. What is it?"
"Bree. Bree Dhiere."
Angeldust makes an odd sound as he tugs her around a corner, his mouth pulling into a smile that shows sharp teeth and dimples. "'Dire,' huh? Well, that'll fit right in down here. Come on, we're almost there. Cherri won't blow up her own apartment building."
"Cherry?"
"My friend with the fireworks back there. Cherri Bomb. She's fighting that stupid stuffy old snake again. Turf war. I...I'm gettin' ahead of myself. She's my room-mate. Our apartment should be safe enough."
Bree nods, falling into silence and following Angel through the jagged, strange city and into a surprisingly normal looking apartment complex. The décor is dark and the amount of eye-shaped themes questionable, but it's by far the most normal thing she's seen since waking up in whatever dream this is. She lets Angel sit her down on a couch once they get to what must be his apartment with the...explosives specialist, and she sags, exhausted.
"You like risotto?" Angel calls from another room, the sounds of rustling in a fridge clear in the small area. "I made a big pot last night, might as well feed you."
"I...yeah, sure." Bree agrees, not sure what else to do. Even in dreams, you don't question hospitality.
She sits and looks around the space. It's somewhat messy, but lived in and comfortable, a far contrast to the chaos in the dream world outside. There's a pile of laundry on a kitchen chair, and a bra hanging from one of the others, and the previous night's dinner dishes setting out on the table. It looks like her apartment from when she was in college. Maybe that's what her mind is showing her, just to clean out the old stuff.
"Where you from?" comes a call from the kitchen, and Bree's reverie is broken somewhat. "You got that flat accent from the sticks. You from Kansas there, Dorothy?" Angel laughs at his own joke.
"St. Louis," Bree calls back, finding it odd her dreams want to banter with her. She's not going to question it, not when the implications are so much worse. Angel's high pitched laugh carries out.
"Ooh, city gal! Land of crime and shiners, huh? You and me'll get along just fine." He emerged from the kitchen with a bowl piled high with rice, wearing a gaudy French maid apron. Bree shook her head and accepted the food, letting it cool for a moment.
"So...I guess I'm stuck here for a while then?" She asked. "I didn't realize I'd be...aware I was in a coma while I was in it. This is weird. But at least my mind came up with an interesting person."
Bree watches as Angel's face shifts from confusion to a bone weary resignation. He lets her eat, flinching as a beeper goes off and he heads to the kitchen to return the phone call. Bree ignores the angry whispers as Angel speaks with whoever it was that paged him, and savors the food. It reminds her of the Hill back home, Italian restaurants and businesses all in a patch of the city that made it easy to find, but better, because it's clearly home made and an old recipe. There was an odd aftertaste, almost like faint sulfur, but she ignored it, not wanting to say anything. Angel came back out of the kitchen looking more tired than before.
"Hey girlie...I mean, Bree? I...have to go back into work, Val's noticed I'm gone. Try and get some sleep, okay? Cherri or me should be back before dark. Beer's in the fridge, help yourself. I'll leave a note for Cherri in case you're out and she gets in first, yeah?" Before she can respond, Angeldust is shuffling back into his coat and pouring some of the risotto into a pretty piece of crockery, muttering something about bribing this 'Val' character with a good meal. Bree watches as he leaves, before shrugging and settling on the somewhat lumpy couch to sleep. Could she sleep in a coma? She wasn't sure. Maybe the hallucination was like being awake, and her brain actually needed to shut down for a while. She let her mind slip away, easing the throbbing headache that had sparked up as she settled in, resting her head on the arm of the couch and closing her eyes, nodding off after a few long minutes letting herself acclimate to the sounds coming from outside, the occasional muffled boom still rattling the windows.
The apartment is dark hours later when Bree wakes to the sound of voices muffled behind a door. Angel's New York accent and...an Australian one? Well...she supposed she had been watching Crocodile Dundee on repeat not too long before--Billy loved the movie.
"...was I supposed to do, just leave her there? You know how rough it is!"
"You don't know what she's down here for Angie, ya can't just bring in random drongos off the street."
"She thinks she's in a coma, doesn't understand what's happening! Cherri, I had ta!" Bree sat up, the worn couch springs groaning under her weight
"Oh shite, I think she's awake."
Angel's head pops into view from one of the doors on the adjoining wall, his strange, inhuman face showing an expression that was clearly torn. Bree gave an awkward wave as he came back into the living area, a young woman with pink-washed hair and a singular large eye coming into view behind him. Bree shook her head, trying to get her thoughts sorted. A New York Italian spider...man...thing. And an Australian cyclops with big 80's hair. If she ever woke up from the coma she was going to write a book.
"You're...Cherri Bomb, I guess?" Bree asked quietly. The woman blinked in surprise before nodding.
"Yeah, 'at's me. Angie said you got caught in the muck outside. Sorry about that. 'Lord Pretentious' gettin' too big for his scaly britches again."
"Um. Thanks? I think. I'm okay." Bree mumbles, looking to Angel for some sort of advice. "Sooo...Are you guys like...my spirit guides or just my brain making me friends while I'm out? Because this is getting really involved and I don't want to get too sucked in if they need me to wake up. I don't want to miss many visitations with my kid if I can avoid it."
Angel and Cherri exchange a look, Angel dipping back into the room and grabbing something. Bree sat waiting for an answer as the two of them came and sat on either side of her.
"Hey, listen," Cherri began slowly, fidgeting with her nail polish. "Ange explained about...the coma thing. Hon...there ain't any easy way to say this, but it's harder now, knowing you got a kid."
"I don't understand...no easy way to say what?"
"You ain't in a coma, Bree. You're...you're dead. And you didn't land at the pearly gates." Angel said slowly, turning over the object in his second set of hands as his first set hemmed and tried to figure out what to do with themselves.
"I...what?" Bree stammered. "No. No I can't be. That doesn't make any sense. I'm...well...not awake but I'm talking! I'm in my head. I can feel things. If I were dead I'd just...not be."
"Oh, one-a those, then?" Cherri Bomb said knowingly. "Yeah, I didn't have much faith in an afterlife either, but that's wot it is."
"There's no way I'm dead!" Bree said, her voice raising in irritation. "I can...my senses work! My brain works! I...This is just a dream."
"...doll...you ever seen yourself in a dream?" Angel asks. Bree freezes at the melancholy drop in his voice.
"...Yeah? What's that got to do with my own brain telling me I'm dead?"
"How'd ya look? When you saw yourself? How'd ya look?" Cherri asks. Bree groans and buries her face in her hands.
"Like myself? Duh? Like me or...me but old or ugly or whatever 'cuz it's a nightmare and my teeth are falling out or some shit? Why?" Bree grumbles in agitation.
"Take a look, then." Angel says sadly. He flinches, and Bree wonders why as he hands her the hand mirror. "That stupid old sayin' is true, you know, "the eyes are the window to the soul" an' all. First look's always the hardest. Just...try to breathe through it, okay?"
Bree takes the mirror, morbidly curious at what version of herself she'd see now. Lately she'd been very young in her dreams.
It's not her own face that greets her. Or it is, but it's so changed it takes her forever to see herself. Gone is the mousey blonde hair and brown eyes and the wan, pale skin dusted with freckles. Her skin is a hypothermic blue, her eyes and sclera yellow-gold, and her hair is tangled and an unnaturally bright red. She reaches up, sees the blue on her arm, the claw-like, indigo nails...she brings her hand to her face and feels her skin. There's the faintest of texture under the surface, and she presses curiously, only for iridescent scales to begin showing through the yellow-freckled skin in the mirror. Her nose is rough and padded at the bottom, like an animal's. Her teeth are sharp. Her ears have been replaced with folded bat's wings, and from the crown of her head sprout a goat's horns. For a long moment, for an eternity, she stares at the strange reflection, trying to understand, to get a grasp on what this dream is. She looks herself in the eye in the mirror, and there's a jolt deep inside her chest. A deep, corrupting dread. A recognition that something is deeply, deeply wrong. Something cracks inside her, the memory of the car wreck flooding her mind. The cold and the black and the red and the fall. Dead. She was dead. She was dead and drowned in the river and would never see her son again. He wouldn't even remember her.
The mirror shatters against the far wall as Bree's scream echoes across the cramped apartment, Angeldust and Cherri Bomb both flinching, ready for an attack, but she hasn't sprung up, raring to fight like both had halfway suspected. She's curled onto the couch, hugging her knees as she muffles howling sobs, her claws digging into the shabby fabric of the clothes Hell saw fit to manifest for her when she fell. The two seasoned sinners watch, concerned and morbidly fascinated as Bree begins to pat herself down, searching for something.
They watch as Bree finds something in the tattered back pocket of her pants, pulling it out. Her sobs turn from panic to hysterics as she clutches the thing to her chest. Cherri and Angel share a look, and while they know it's risky to leave a fresh sinner on their own, this feels private, personal in a way that doesn't feel right to intrude upon, and both of them back away into their respective rooms, keeping an ear out in case the new arrival does something stupid. It's not unheard of for sinners to fall and have a replica of something from life manifest with them, a reminder of life to make their own personal Hell worse, but whatever Bree has is harmless and small.
They listen as Bree cries herself out on the couch, only emerging a couple of hours later when it's clear she's fallen asleep. Angel carefully lifts her hand, slipping the object that Hell created to torment her out from her grip, guilt coiling in his gut as he sees the tracks of her tears absorbing slowly into her skin.
It's a photograph of a heavyset blonde woman and a toddler, a gap-toothed little boy with bright blond hair and big blue eyes. Angel remembers Bree mentioning something about visitations with a kid, realizing this must be who she meant. He shakes his head and places the photo back. Hell had woken him up with a needle in his arm, a reminder of his own mistakes. This, he thought privately, was crueler.
*****
When Bree wakes, hours later, she felt empty. She knew why she'd landed in Hell. Of course she did. But she still didn't want to believe it was real. She grubbed at her eyes and sat up, clutching the photo that had somehow made it down into the pit with her. She studied it carefully. She remembered taking this photo, a rare outing with a friend who'd become obsessed with a new polaroid camera. But even as she looked at it, she knew it wasn't the real one, that that one was destroyed, waterlogged with her body at the bottom of the frozen Mississippi. Maybe they'd fish her out one day and know who she was by it.
She traced her own...her old features in the photo. Her human face. But she wasn't human anymore. And she'd never looked quite that happy, had she? There were no bags under her eyes, no fading bruise on her forearms or jaw, though she remembers feeling uncomfortable about them when this picture was taken, not wanting her friend to ask too many questions. And Billy, though an adorable child, had never had eyes quite that blue, or a smile quite that big, her son always had been a serious little man. It was a twisted, more perfect version of what could have been, but she clung to it all the same. A way to remember, even if it wasn't completely accurate, the one good thing she'd done with her life.
"Got a kid, huh?" came Cherri's voice from the other end of the room. Bree looked up, still swiping at tears.
"Yes. I...he's so little. He's not even going to remember me."
Cherri nodded solemnly and went to the fridge, pulling out two tall cans of beer and handing one to Bree, who accepted numbly.
"Might not. But he might, too. I still remember my dad, and he walked out when I was like...three. Makes ya feel any better 'bout the whole dead thing, you're taking it better than most. New folks, some of them land and lose their minds. You hit the ground running. Bit of a freak out is to be expected."
"Is this really it? Eternity just...down here? I thought...I don't know, what happened to the lake of fire and the gnashing teeth and all of that?"
"Hooley dooly, you really did grow up in the States, didn't you? There's some of that, sure, but it's not constant." Cherri takes a drink of her beer, looking at nothing in particular. "Hey, you just died, and I get it, you feel like you deserve it or wotever but...it ain't all bad. Don't cross anyone in Cannibal Town, stay out of the Doomsday district, don't piss off an Overlord, and you should be...eh, mostly fine? You can cut loose down here. Really just go nuts, you know? Consequences ain't that much as long as you can keep out of a soul deal. They can be gnarly, but it's eternity, right? Might as well make the most of it."
Bree nods along, absorbing but not quite believing it, and takes a sip of her own beer. Again there's the aftertaste of sulfur, and she swallows back the nausea it brings.
"Why does everything taste like swamp gas?" Bree asks, wrinkling her nose. Cherri laughs.
"Tha's the corruption. You get noseblind to it after a while. Pricier stuff can get it processed out, but me an' Angel are small potatoes, so we get what we get. Speaking of, you know you're gonna have to pull your weight around here if you want to stay. Don't mind another roomie but we ain't a charity."
"Why are you and Angel helping me at all?" Bree asked, unable to stop herself, a thousand thoughts still swirling in her head. Cherri shrugs. "Angel's a big softie, and he's got a habit of picking up strays. Told me what you did, stumbled into that alley with that bike you stole. Figures you're the sort can take care of yourself, but everyone needs a leg up now an' then, right? 'Sides, it's all favors and deals down here. We do you a solid now, you help us out later somehow, all that."
Bree nodded, drained, and set her beer down on the floor, head in her hands. "I really am dead, aren't I? Drowned in the river and..."
"'fraid so, love. Explains why you're blue, at least."
"I...guess. Does hell do that? Just...rub deaths in people's faces?"
Cherri shrugs, clearly unsure herself. "Not sure. Some people it makes sense, some folks...it's flat mad. I've seen all sortsa hellforms, and I've only been here a few years. At least you're mostly human, right? I...think that means wot you done wasn't too bad. Who knows, really?"
Bree nodded, not sure what to think. She was mostly human still, as far as she could tell. The horns and the stupid ears would take some getting used to, but at least she wasn't some completely twisted monstrosity. She sighed, reaching down and finishing the beer in one long moment, letting the alcohol slam into her stomach and leaden her limbs. Cherri patted her knee roughly, standing. "Try not to stick on it, yeah? It's easier, to not think about the whole...mortality thing. Just embrace the chaos, and you'll do fine."
*****
Embracing the chaos was not easy.
Bree adjusted slowly to life in hell. She fumbled through short job after short job, laughing bitterly at the irony that the afterlife isn't all fire and brimstone, but more of the bone-weary drudgery of life, wrung through a wash of cruelty and excess. The first three positions all fired her within a week, and there was no way to demand pay. She'd tried and gotten laughed out and chased out of offices, the last one some scumbag who told her he'd pay her if she sold him her soul. She'd come out of that office limping from the ensuing fight. She was lucky that the demon in question had been smaller than her, though it was a narrow thing. But it had been an eye opener. She wouldn't survive if she couldn't adapt.
It got a little easier after that fight. She was already in Hell, and it was a permanent thing, as far as anyone had been able to tell her. And even if redemption were possible, Bree was still so furious at landing in hell in the first place that she doubted she'd be on the first bus out. Why should she behave when no one else was going too? When in Rome, after all. Or Hell, as the case was.
Cherri and Angel, when they weren't bickering or dragging her out to clubs, teasing her to 'live a little,' completely ignoring the irony, had agreed to let her stay with them once she began getting paid. It was grindstone work, but it was the one thing that keeps her sane. Hell had it's own government, it's own offices and economy, an almost perfect, warped reflection of real life, just as bureaucratic and twice as inefficient, but it existed. Her skills hadn't meant much in the living world, stifled by her own poor choices. In hell there were, strangely enough, opportunities for a certain type of person. Bree had learned early on in life to hunker down and find a place to survive, and in a place like Hell, where most people...most demons, because that was what she was now, without a doubt...wanted only to climb up the ladder and drag it up behind them, Bree was...well, not content, but able to dig in and endure.
The Department of Departed Souls, Hell's strange combination of eternal census and social security documentation office for sinners, was populated by people who seemed to have been assigned there by Hell itself, incurious creatures that hated their jobs but couldn't seem to leave for one reason or another. It became clear over the months that most of them were under soul contracts, owned by more powerful demons that had loaned them out to the facility as punishment for some slight or another. Bree was the first soul to volunteer to work there in decades, if not a solid century, and as such, was given a chance to actually choose a position. Even in a place like Hell, people understood the value of someone who might actually enjoy their job. It was a combination of her skills, contracts and crunching numbers, legal and accounting expertise that she'd barely had enough time to dip her toe into in the real world, that made her able to be used efficiently in the hereafter. The irony wasn't lost on her: all lawyers went to hell, after all, and everyone had always said there was a special place for the corporate ones.
Processing entrance contracts into Hell, the measure of a person's life with their sins writ small and large, sorting and storing the actual papers, putting them in some form of order, was an eternal and impossible job, but it was something to do, and no one cared how long was spent on any one contract. Bree found an odd sort of peace in the monotony of the task, and used the time to acclimate to her new existence. She organized and sorted, working on the system that barely existed and burrowing herself into an almost comfy, unnoticed corner of Hell, eventually making enough headway to read the contracts, or at least some of them, of the souls that came in to the Pride Ring.
It was fascinating in a distant way. She recognized none of the souls she read about, but as she began chipping away at the complete lack of organization in her office, she ran aground of what her boss called the heavy hitters. Demons that had been, were, or were on track to be Overlords. She read about Arabella Bliss, a former radio/televangelist's wife who's abuses of church funds and church goers had landed her so solidly in hell when she'd died that she'd been somewhat famous upon landing. She'd made a sweep of soul deals in the Doomsday district and risen to power swiftly.
A few names came up more often than not. Lord Zestial was another Overlord, and while she hadn't come close to finding his contract, buried under hundreds of years of souls, the man himself a resident of Hell for centuries, she found hundreds, if not thousands, chained to him. The gray border of his chains snaked around so many contracts that she got to the point she recognized it by the feel of the ink across the paper before she even saw it. Others were less well healed but held similar power. Lord Charnel, who owned half of the Doomsday District. Magnus Mako, a loanshark with demons as far down as the Greed ring under his employee, who worked closely in the Entertainment District with a casino Overlord known only as the Hustler. An upstart named Sir Pentious seemed to show up at the strangest times, no rhyme or reasons to the souls he owned. The only reason she remembered his name is because of Cherri's constant nagging about fighting with him in their perpetual petty turf war.
It made her nervous, to know that the woman she was beginning to trust owned souls, scant though they were. She knew trusting anyone down here was a stupid move, but she couldn't help part of who she'd always been leaching through even down here. She could only hope she never found herself in a position to need to sell her own.
Another name kept popping up, nearly as much as Lord Zestial's, and something about it, about the green-limned chains that decorated the entrance contracts of the souls he owned, sent a chill down her spine that she couldn't quite place, but she knew enough from her few months in hell to know when to trust a feeling. It was a name she'd avoid at all costs, simply for self preservation. The Radio Demon. On the surface the persona seemed incongruous with the reputation, a demon who's powers were somehow tied to an entertainment medium and not the sins around it, but the inescapable broadcasts that occasionally played, taking over every sort of sound equipment and bringing everything else to a halt, the tortured screams, told her differently. Nope. Absolutely not. Leaving that mess well enough alone. Bree kept her hands well and far away from any contract with the abundant green chains bordering them.
Hell had begun to seem more like purgatory when the second shock came. She got a page from Cherri, an emergency call to meet at the apartment. She took off with little notice from her job, only to arrive home and find two burly sinners she didn't recognize dropping Angel...or rather what was left of him...onto the couch. She froze in horror as Cherri tried to pull her closer to the body.
"Come on, don't be a lump. He'll come back faster if he's in one piece and we might as well clean him up."
Bree just stared at the gory remains of her roommate, who she'd begun to consider a friend. "He's...he's dead! Oh God... They've...who did this to him?"
"That damned boss of his, Valentino. 'E's not dead. Well. 'E is. But...wait. We never told you, did we? Aw, shite, hon, my mistake."
"Told me wha--Cherri what are you doing?!" Bree shouted, horrified, as Cherri began arranging the body. Or rather, the pieces of it.
"Damned Valentino, likes to tear his actors apart when he's made a bad deal. Angel got on the bad end this time." Cherri swore, shaking her head before continuing, jerking her head back in Bree's direction. "Hon...we come back from this," Cherri Bomb sighed, pulling needles and suture thread from her pockets. "We...resurrect, I guess. Can't die if you're already dead, y'know? We're immortal souls, and all that."
"Imm...immortal...but...But Angel..."
"Well it's still Hell, innit it? 'Course we can get torn up. Float a bit, come back sore as fuck. But we come back. We always come back. Well, unless you get whacked by an angel on Extermination Day but that's different."
"Extermination Day?!" Bree balked, the implications of those two simple words sending a chill down her spine.
"Look, if you're gonna freak out at everything I say, just go back to work." Cherri snapped, tears welling in her single eye. "I know you're still new but you've gotta toughen up or this place will eat you alive!"
Bree stood still a moment longer, her mind whirring. She could run. She should run. Her stomach was roiling and her heart breaking as she looked at Angel's remains laid out on the floor. But she had nowhere to go, barely anything to her name, and Hell was unforgiving to people like her, weak and useless and unobtrusive. She'd be eaten alive. Maybe literally. And Angel was her friend. He'd helped her when he didn't have to. She couldn't leave this to just Cherri, even if it made her want to throw up every meal she'd ever eaten. She held out her hand, swallowing back bile.
"Give me a needle."
Bree's hand shook as she began, threading the thick stitches and trying to make things line up. It had been years, decades since she'd handled any blood not her own, and that had been on her grandfather's farm, doing the exact opposite of this, field-dressing a buck in her teens as she spent the summer in the country. It was the same principal in reverse, but she felt the need to be careful even though Cherri was blazing through stitches on her side. Angel deserved nice stitches. She stained her jacket using it to wipe her eyes as tears fell, looking at her friend's slack face and hoping this wasn't some strange, twisted torture Hell saw fit to make her endure.
It would make an odd sort of sense if it was. This was Hell, after all. Eternal damnation and punishment. Why would all the torture be physical, when psychological damage would be just as horrible to endure? Give her a friend, let her get relatively comfortable, and then take them away horrifically and make her play like he could be brought back. Maybe it was Cherri's punishment too, to have to make her do this, to have her own friend ripped from her as well.
They sewed him back together like the gristliest of dolls, hauling his dead weight onto the sofa after lining it with plastic before wiping him down, cleaning him off and wrestling warm sweats onto his too many limbs.
Cherri slid down the wall once they were done, lighting a cigarette and offering the pack to Bree, who accepted even though she hadn't smoked in years. Her hands shook, and there was blood under her nails--her claws.
"An' now we wait," Cherri sighed, closing her eye and blowing a smoke ring up to the ceiling. "You okay?"
"No. No I'm not. I...I don't even understand what's happening." Cherri gave a humorless laugh and sagged onto her shoulder, sounding exhausted herself.
"Buckle in, mate."
Bree shook later that night as she went over everything Cherri had told her, all the ins and outs of death, temporary death, and double death in Hell. Annual angelic exterminations. The ability to come back from the worst injuries and deaths outside of that, like a damned video game character. She called out of work the next day, though no one really cared. The good thing about her whole office being almost entirely literal office drones meant that she could theoretically get away with literal murder and as long as her work got done, no one would care.
She and Cherri took turns keeping watch, though Bree couldn't stand to actually look at Angel's body as it lay there, cold and unmoving. She puttered in the kitchen, baking for lack of anything else to do. She burned herself on the stove when a loud, heaving gasp sounded from the living room. She dropped what she was doing, watching aghast from the doorway.
Angel's body was gasping for breath, his limbs curling into themselves exactly like a dying spider, before he began to cough and groan, falling off the couch. Cherri made it to him before she did, helping him back up on the couch and waving Bree off, demanding she get the scissors. Bree did as she was told, her hands numb as she handed them over, watching as Cherri carefully snipped and pulled stitches that no longer served a purpose, Angel's skin pink and healing under the thin layer of white fur that covered him.
"Ang--Angel?" Bree coughed, not believing what she was seeing. When he turned to her, his eyes unfocused but clearly awake and alive, she couldn't help herself and threw herself into his chest, laughing as his fluff tickled her nose.
Angel flinched, but wrapped two of his arms around her anyway. He didn't speak, his breath still rattling in his lungs, but pulled Cherri into the hug as well, shaking as his nerves began reconnecting to his form.
"How...how long was I out?" he asked shakily after what seemed like hours. Cherri wiped her not-nose on her sleeve and and punched him in one of his arms.
"Couple days. I hate that damned moth."
"Cherri, come on, you know how Val gets..."
"That don't make it right! It don't make it right, Ange."
"I know, but...but two days ain't so bad. And at least he won't do it again for a while."
Bree stayed silent. It wasn't her place to comment on the owner of Angel's soul. She hadn't been around long enough to say anything. But she understood, to an extent, the memory of her ex-husband still fresh in her mind. She squeezed Angel tightly around the waist, knowing just how much she could have used a friend to do the same when she'd still been alive. The three of them fell asleep huddled on the couch, all of them exhausted beyond reason.
Bree woke late in the night, but didn't move, content to sit and let her back hurt a little if it meant staying by the two demons that were rapidly becoming her friends, even if friends were wishful thinking in hell. She was relieved that Cherri had been honest, that the resurrection of sinners was a reality and not a cruel trick of the nightmare she now found herself in. She took a moment, taking out the photo of her and Billy, brushing her thumb over the not-quite-accurate image of her son. She had to hope he was doing alright. She didn't have anything else to truly hold on to. The living world was locked away, and as much as it hurt to think it, she truly hoped she never saw her son or the sister left raising him again. She wouldn't curse them to this. She put the photo away. She had to change. She couldn't be who she had been, at least not fully. If she was going to survive down here, she had to break out of old habits. And now that she saw the consequences, or lack thereof, something slid into place mentally. Old hobbies, old desires stifled by trying to fit into the mold the living world had wanted her to, that Robert had forced her into. Memories of those few summer months every year in her teens when she'd been allowed all the freedom in the world on her grandfather's farm, hunting and riding his old motorcycle stuck in her mind and wouldn't shake loose. Life was cheap in Hell, and the thought was as exciting as it was terrifying. But the strings of responsibility had been severed the minute she'd landed and maybe...maybe that was it's own form of freedom, rather than fear.