Chapter Text
If your love were taken from me
Every light that's bright would soon go dim
It would be as dark as the world before Columbus
Down the waterfall and I'd swim over the brim
Those men who lust for land
And for riches strange and new
Who love those trinkets of desire
Oh they will never have you
And they'll never know the gold
Or the copper in your hair
How could they weigh the worth
Of youSo
Rare-Suzanne Vega
I’ve always found it curious that paintings of Hell, since time immemorial, depict it as a fiery pit. Humans are rarely lacking in imagination, but if I never see another horned goat-man wreathed in orange and red standing in what looks like a coal mine, I’ll be dad-damned grateful. What their obsession with goat legs is, I’ll never know. That’s one for Dr. Linda – not that I’ll see her anytime soon. I won’t see any of them.
The thought brings with it a rush of pain that presses down on my chest and dulls the constant moans of the damned. For all that I’m surrounded by endless rooms populated by every miscreant in history deemed deserving of punishment, I’m alone. Worse yet, I’ve had just enough therapy to recognize that I’m also lonely, deprived of my friends, my brother…her. I can’t bear to think of her by name, and I won’t say it aloud here, blessing this foul place with the closest thing to a prayer I know. I glance at my blood-red pocket square, the same one I wore when she almost took a bullet for me, and think of the cut on my hand the day she told me she was terrified. The splash of color is vivid in the otherwise bleak landscape, symbols of my vulnerability, of our history, of the things and emotions that tie us together. Hell isn’t red. Hell is cold, and black and blue as a bruise that never heals. The last ridiculously oversize shirt I saw her in was black, with tiny white stars on it. I wanted to fall into her like a black hole, like my own universe, like the new reality I gifted Mum. Instead, I watch ash fall gently as Chinese water torture on my shoulders, disappearing before it accumulates and then falling again, recycling itself like the elements of a star.
Eternity yawns like the hungry mouth of some great beast, and I drink in my memories of her like an unending tumbler of the finest scotch.
The way her skin glowed golden in my dress shirt, tousled as a bride in my bed.
That minuscule tug of her hair on my beard when I hold her, and she finally pulls away.
The beauty mark under her right eye, punctuating cheekbones that arch in the exact same angle as her brows.
You would think that, after weeks that seemed like months, I would have forgotten the way her hair looked all piled up on her birthday, the beach-glass clarity of her irises or the way neither of us breathed during the infinitesimal progress of her parted mouth towards mine that first time on the beach. If anything, my memory has become more acute, the moments playing and replaying on a loop like the dramatic crescendo of a rock opera. The Alanis-like irony of it all is that I can’t imagine heaven being much better than my version of hell. I want to never think of her again. I want to see her roll her eyes at me. I want to trace my initial on the bow of her lips with my fingers, my tongue.
This brings me to another point: the realm of the damned is a helluva (pun intended) place to practice abstinence. The detective is a smart, capable, loving woman. She’s also a grade-A fox with a mouth like a grenade. Inevitably, thoughts of my hot tub hottie turn into daydreams that would put Pornhub to shame. It doesn’t help to know that my Father basically genetically engineered my soulmate, so our physical compatibility is, in short, divine. For all that I resent the hell out of his interference, I’m a little miffed I never gave her the best night of her life. The knowledge that my first bout of lovemaking would have undoubtedly outdone the sum of over a millennia’s worth of sexual escapades was positively haunting me. Just another reason to resent the old man.
If you’ve ever wondered if jerking the old gherkin in hell provides any relief, let me enlighten you. It does not.
Still, the bulk of my pain is centered a bit further up my body. The charcoal shadows remind me of her eyes, the stone edifices of the planes of her face. This was my home before Los Angeles existed, and yet it is alien to me. There is no kindness here, no good, except for the parts of her that I carry with me. No life except for what I remember of our shared time. The land of the unforgiven stretches as far as my eye can see, punishing in its desolation.
In theory, I suppose, Dad won.
I am where He wanted me to be, but only in body. He can’t take my ultimate victory. It lives beyond his power. The barren cliffs are hard as guilt, unyielding as eternal punishment, and none of them seem as real as the moment when she said she loved me. The moment when she begged me not to leave her.
I never did, Chloe, I tell the part of her soul that is mine. I can’t.