Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Only now can he truly recall being blind. The depravation, the inability to look, but the necessity to see. And see he did, see he does.

Only now can he truly recall the mind, the collective, the constant motion. Each saw the other and everyone else like ghostly silhouettes charging across a flat, dark landscape of sky, with even darker shadows meeting them in the middle.

Each heard the others and everyone else’s whispers, their presences like thoughts of their own. They felt when someone fell on a foreign sword.

There was no sound, no light, no sight. Only outlines of his and their glorious forms. Flashing, spotless silver in holy light, clashing, filthy gold.

Heaven was no place for war.

———

Only now could he remember the jump, the pull in his gut of gravity, the pesky thing. The upward-ness of it all, the odd twinge of hope, of returning to paradise, or at the very least a breath of fresh air. The perks of life on earth.

But only now could he remember how he had thought of them, so enraged that they dared not show their faces, blinded like horses, calmed and almost desensitized to the carnage they carved out of their opposition. Did they know?

He wonders if now they—or whoever might have survived—are aware.

Heaven, after all, was no place for war.

———•———

The air prickles with Ryan’s quiet panic and unease as the evening sets in and the sun is gradually obscured by the skyline and silhouetted branches. The early autumn air is crisp, but around this spot in particular it changes just so, just enough for it to be noticeable.

It’s sharp, and it makes Ryan perk up like the ears and noses of a wolf pack collectively pricked at the sound of a threat, warning bells ringing. He can’t quite pinpoint when it happened but the air from the cracked window on the passenger side stung his lungs for a moment or two, the sensation vanishing as soon as it came. If Ryan concentrates hard, he can still feel the prickling in his throat.

Just as he noticed the change, Shane had coughed slightly—an unconscious human reaction to a possibly dangerous presence—but of course he doesn’t know what it is. He’d never believe Ryan if he told him.

Shane, bless him and his overlarge head, refuses to acknowledge the supernatural, or any proof Ryan has given as little more than fantasy or an animal going batshit at o-dark-thirty. It’s part of his role as a skeptic on the show (they are actors after all) but he has made it clear that he does not believe in any of this off-set, and Ryan sometimes fears that one of these days all of that swearing and the accusations of cowardice will catch up to him.

As a human, Shane is remarkably frail. He can break bones, he can get sick. He can die in any number of horrible and gut-churning ways. Anything that escaped into the shadows those many thousands of years ago can and will feed on any unease he projects, every backwards glance.

And Ryan fears most of all that one day they’ll run into something that he can’t deal with discreetly. Something he can’t pacify, something that will rear it’s ugly head and take full advantage of Shane’s fragility. His humanity, and the fact that he is human.

And it will know that Ryan is not.

He knows well that this sudden wave of anxiety means that the reports of a demon infestation are correct, but he’s dealt with this before. He’ll be fine. They’ll be fine. Ryan realizes he’s white-knuckling the steering wheel, staring blankly out at the trees that arch over the empty, twilit road.

“Ryan?”

He looks over at Shane. Shane, who looks back at him, mild concerned creeping into his face.

“You good, buddy?”

“No dude, I’m fucking nervous,”

Ryan chuckles, shaking his head and looking back at the road as they go around a bend.

“There’s supposed to be a demon on this bridge...”

“C’mon, buck up! You’ve defeated every bridge demon we’ve faced.”

Ryan snorts derisively.

“Which is exactly one!”

“Well, I’m demon-proof and you’ve got your holy water nerf gun or whatever. We’ll be fine.”

Apparently seeing that this does little to ease Ryan’s nerves, Shane cracks a joke about Old Alton, about how for a time the wiki page for the bridge had listed them as owners. Ryan does get a kick out of that. It won’t dispel the feeling of wrongness settling in his belly, but it’s a temporary relief. Good enough, he supposes.

Shane goes back to staring out the window, and the action affords Ryan some sense of comfort, knowing that presently, Shane is mostly unconcerned. He turns his eyes back to the road.

They reach the bridge all too soon, and the sun is too low in the sky and the stars are far too bright. Any trees who’s branches are bare reach out, closing around them, clawing at their backs. To pull them away, or to push them forward?

Time stands at the transition point between twilight and nighttime, mid-step as it were. The camera crew, chatting quietly, busy themselves setting up their equipment, each clatter and scuffle magnified by anxiety. The beams of flashlights and headlamps swing across their little huddle, haphazardly darting and catching people in the eye.

Ryan flicks his on and points it at the bridge, thrown into relief only moments ago by their headlights. It’s really nothing special, a simple arch bridge made of stone and mossy spots, nature’s freckles. It is smooth and well-worn and probably very quaint and pretty during the day and not at all what you’d expect from a demon bridge.

The overpass stretches over a stream, babbling quietly out of sight of their flashlight beams. Ryan dislikes how everything beyond the drop down into the stream’s ditch except the bridge is swallowed by the fast-approaching night. It’s time to suit up, he supposes. A good distraction.

———

Camera lights are flashing, body cams are rolling, and different confirmation calls are magnified in the night, but when the final ‘action!’ is called, Shane watches Ryan shed some of his fear, some of the weight from his shoulders. He half-heartedly listens to Ryan recite the memorized blurb about the history of the so-called demon-infested land they stand on, just as nervous as ever.

Every house, every cave, every forest, every location they’ve ever toured, he’s just as jittery. It’s funny sometimes, watching him jump at something innocuous, but one day Shane worries he might just die of fright.

He can practically see the unease wafting around Ryan, pouring off of him in waves like nitrogen vapor. It looks vaguely like the heat signatures a snake perceives while cornering a mouse, only brighter somehow, more vibrant and gaseous, swirling in heavy clouds. As Ryan continues to speak, it flares occasionally, shining like Lucifer in his heyday, the Light-Bearer, the Morning Star.

So very bright...perhaps it’s just Shanes’s proximity. That unease is so strong, and though he’s unwilling to feed off of any negativity produced by anyone on the crew, especially Ryan, whatever is on this bridge—because there is most definitely something on it, Shane isn’t an idiot—does not have the same reservations.

It will not care that their party might or might not be entirely human.

It’s a stifling thing, a demon’s presence. Shane should know, he’s spent so much time among them. Hell may not be what humanity thinks it is, but the first time he surfaced was bliss. It was clean and clear and crisp. It was bright. It was paradise.

And this or any demon trip they take is a reminder of that escape, of the sentence that put him there. Shane, for the first time in his memory, has to fight a little to breathe. Fight for the essence of life in the air.

“You scared?”

Ryan’s voice shakes, cracking a bit. Shane shivers, then snorts, falling back to earth.

“Nope. Told you a hundred times, I’m demon-proof. This demon’s got nothin’ on me.”

“Not even a little? Seriously? Look at this thing!”

Ryan gestures to the bridge with his flashlight.  Of course Shane hates the damn bridge, he can see everything around it, everything it used to be. A viaduct, now practically a patch of stone compared to what it was.

And standing atop the mossy parapets, face in shadow, a demon looms. By now they should be well-acquainted with one another. But whoever it may be is in shadow, far away somehow, or employing some sort of illusion. They should have departed by now, fled long before Shane arrived. But they’re choosing to pick a fight.

He permits himself to drop the glamor on his eyes for a moment, clearing his vision for a second or two. By the look of that illusion’s construction, they might be able to stand up for themselves. They might be powerful enough that Shane can’t be discreet in banishing them for a while.

He stares full-force at whatever stands above them, and it shrinks away, properly scared. But it doesn’t leave. It coils up at the other end of the bridge, taking refuge in the trees near the road on the other side. Blinking the glamor back on again, Shane smiles.

“Not one bit.”

Lifting one foot in an entirely over-dramatic fashion, Shane steps onto the bridge, spreading his arms out for the effect.

Of course this was where they had to try it. Of course it had to be today. Whoever was keeping to the shadows tonight hadn’t pulled anything big, not yet. Shane had yelled obscenities over the rampart and down under the arch below where it was said (inaccurately) the demon hid, but still they did nothing, only creeping closer to the bridge.

Ryan had pulled out the spirit box, and Shane had grimaced his way through the painfully magnified sounds of repeated channel jumping, keeping an eye on whoever might be talking and letting a word or two slip through before clamping down on the air around them. Still, the demon did nothing. Biding its time.

It’s terribly irritating, given how long they’re out here for and increasingly worrying. Shane finds himself mentally looking over his shoulder with more frequency. He can see Ryan’s panic bubbling over as well, even though he has no idea what he’s dealing with.

Shane knows he can feel something, the lack of life in the air. He doesn’t like the fact that they’re clearing out the cameras, that he fucking agreed to stand on this bridge in the dark with Ryan Bergara and a demon for five whole minutes. That little shit was waiting for a chance and they’ve practically gift-wrapped one.

———

Shane gives a thumbs-up the the crew, and inwardly Ryan wonders how he’s not terrified. He’s a chill guy, he’s always been, especially in haunted locations. The only thing he had to fear was the dark and something scuttling along the skirting board or around his ankles in an empty house.

But as the crew’s car backs away down the road and is swallowed by the trees, Ryan swears he can see Shane shiver. The car lights in the distance shut off and Ryan can just catch sight of Shane in the dim, diffused light of the moon. Almost instantly the air shifts, the atmosphere around them compressing.

Something creeps closer, moving under cover of inky darkness, the train of nightfall’s ball gown. Something disguises it’s footsteps as the splashing and ebb and flow of the stream below them, in their quiet breathing. Ryan can look scared, but he can’t panic, he can’t he can’t raise any suspicion—

“Ryan?”

He can hear the concern in Shane’s voice, the fear masked by mild laughter. For him or for Ryan?

“Oooooooh fuck.”

He has to play this off like he’s just unnerved by the darkness and it’s not like there’s a very literally godforsaken demon in their midst. A patch of dark leaps across the stream below them, circling around Shane’s back and into Ryan’s field of vision.

It would look no different than the night to Shane’s eyes but Ryan can see the darker nature of the shadow, the blackest of black, the total absence of light. Flat, empty reality, a cut-out in the form of a misshapen angel. He can feel Shane watching him, the concern, the growing fear at his lack of response.

———

Shane is afraid. Shane is, for the first time on one of these little investigations, very afraid.

Most of the locations they’ve toured have indeed been haunted, mainly by wayward souls lost in their journey to wherever souls go. Shane never stuck around long enough to know. But they were relatively harmless, easy to keep in line, and even the most abrasive of these souls Shane could easily deal with.

The worst of them were nothing more than a meal, but then again, he did make his intentions known to everything on site whenever they arrived, so if they crossed a line they knew the consequences.

A handful of demon locations had been risky bets—Annabelle had been a particularly gutsy customer—but nothing that Shane couldn’t handle discreetly since shit hit the fan all those many years ago. But whoever this is poses a threat.

A starved threat, a hungry one. Desperate.

One who, like Shane, has played a very long game indeed after shit hit the fan, one who’s accumulated power over a long, long time. He can see the thing leap from the cover of shadow and brush, watch it spread great wings and fly—wings. Oh, you are a daring one. Daring or stupid? That doesn’t make it any better, but Shane now has a basic idea of who it could be. He has so little time until—

“Did you fucking hear that?”

Ryan sounds petrified, he is, his fear is shining like a beacon and it’s damn near bright enough to light up the night sky. It will call to whoever is out here and they do not have time for that, Shane does not have time for that.

Sounds of nails scratching ground magnified by an echo and quickly hushed come from all around them and Ryan is spinning in circles, camera long forgotten. Shane has to keep his cool. He  has too .

“I-It’s probably just some animal Ryan, chill.”

He can hear his voice crack and clears his throat, dropping the glamor around his eyes again and doing and casual 360 turn as if to gesture that they’re safe.

It’s blocking their way out, standing right on the  path leading up to the bridge. Wings, he was right. Silhouetted in dull, dim white amongst the trees is some parody of a bird, tall and feathery black as the void of the firmament above them and so, so very large. Tall for any demon, ten, eleven feet or so?

And here’s the thing with size. You can have your movie monsters, god-crushers, creatures of godzillian scale, but the larger they are the less frightening. You can loose their trail so easily, and if you don’t you’re nothing but collateral damage. It’s not personal. Every ounce of intelligence is drained from behind their eyes.

But there is a sweet spot, somewhere between human and monster where they are just large enough to be a threat, just small enough to pick something out of a crowd. Just small enough to hunt. And trust God to turn It’s disowned children into the epitome of fear.

For a second Shane sees it, a bird of gargantuan stature, bent double with empty, beady eyes fixed on him. Thrush’s feathers, dull and dark and darker still than vanta-black, they dwarf the night around them in color, disorganized and sickly.

The wings look broken somehow. They’re missing portions of feathers and underneath is a thin, leathery skin like that of dragon’s wings. It’s legs are easily the height of a car, grimy and almost scaly in appearance, and if they were cleaned and cared for they might have been beautiful if not for their malformed features. Bones broken and healed incorrectly.

A chipped beak, filthy as the legs is only feet from the ground and a pair of soulless, terrible eyes stand out from a mass of feathers.

All in an instant.

And Shane recognizes him, and the growing knot in his stomach tightens just a smidge more. Caimo, Great President of Hell, giver of an ear that may understand nature’s many voices to anyone daring enough to summon him, giver of future truths.

And he was far below Shane’s rank (even though that fact was obsolete) but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a massive, vaguely bird-shaped problem. He had clearly clawed his way up the power scale one nothing was being regulated anymore, as had Shane, but even so...he lets the glamour fall back into place and looks at Ryan .

“See? Nothing. Just darkness. You can talk to em’, or do you want me to poke at the ghoulies a bit-“

He hears the hiss from the darkness, the intake of breath and the rattle, ragged pronunciation of his true name and Shane will not stand for this. He forces Caimo to shut up with a casual bit of occult magic to bind his beak shut, but Shane can feel the emptying sensation coil around his solar plexus, the sign of an oncoming transformation.

He has his front turned towards Ryan and a good thing to, he swears the a feather or two must have poked through the nape of his neck. He can’t afford to drop his glamour, not now that Ryan is really, truly scared, not now that he can feel the divine winds change and that the swirling vapor cloud of fear is drifting past him towards the rival demon on this bridge. He has to think.

Shane can hear the scratching of clawed feet on dirt.

———

Ryan needs to think. He needs to. He needs to buy time because he can see the demon, the unholy cloud of malice at the very end of the bridge, he can see it and he knows it will be coming for Shane. Shane, all giddy and energized from a night of antagonizing something he didn’t believe for a second was there, Shane, in the most danger he’s ever been in over the course of his entire life, and he doesn’t even know.

Ryan keeps up the act of wild fear that is becoming progressively less of an act because the air around him is being sapped away. He feels it’s terrible, ragged breaths like something is attempting to inhale more than the air. It sucks up everything around it, into itself, forever hungry, forever bitter.

It rakes at his angelic ears, clawing at them, the long, rattling breath. Why can’t five minutes move any faster, come on. Shane is now glancing at the road back to civilization, nervousness creeping into his face.

“Ryan?”

His voice is quizzical with something dark buried beneath it. He looks concerned, more concerned than he should and Ryan knows their time should be up. He feels the illusion set in, the isolation magic, as though a glass dome has been set on top of them, a way to keep both of them in for just long enough.

A shield.

A trap.

He can see it, the dull shine, the sheen of a demon’s magic, a filthy terrarium ceiling stretching over the expanse of the sky and he can see the moon and the stars darken and some of them blink out of sight. They’re trapped, Ryan can feel it, how the air turns foul in a way only he can smell. He can’t make a move, he can’t. But he has to.

“ Ryan. ”

And this time there is something more in Shane’s voice, more panic, more fear, and still something nags at him.

“ RYAN— “

And the malformed, cursed bird, the horrid outcast, the beast, launches itself into the light.

Shane vanishes.

A spark leaps.

It has been so very long since last Ryan could properly see.

His skin hurts, his bones hurt. They stretch and bend and break open, mending around this old form. How long has it been? How long since a light like this touched the world? Surely centuries at the very least. How long since he’d abandoned the ranks?

His eyes push back against his skull and Ryan considers shedding his skin and bones and body in its entirety, but that seems like a tad much for today. He can’t deal with that hassle, not after whatever the fallout of this will look like.

He doesn’t want to think about it.

The world is dark and star-spattered and suddenly shapes don’t make much sense anymore, they don’t exist on the plane Ryan can see. They glow ever so faintly at the edges, the stones of the bridge, the water beneath, the trees surrounding them. The world is now made of open sky.

Reality buzzes. Warped pinpricks of light skitter across the edges of his vision, they pulse and shiver, they breathe. Each and every light a living thing. They make the stars look dim and faint.

Ryan’s skin burns. He can feel each rattling breath through every extremity, feel his blood and his pulse so suddenly and everywhere, all at once because he hasn’t fit so well in his skin in centuries. For a moment he’s stretched a mite too thin, and his heartbeat shakes the ground he stands on. He should cover his eyes. Shane might not survive his aura if he looks at Ryan too long, let alone his face.

Shane.

He needs to find Shane. The moment passes and when Ryan lets out a sigh, one that rings through space like wind chimes and church bells, and the awareness returns.

The pain and the presence, a magnified version of the unease you feel when unseen eyes peek out from unknown places. Awareness without realization. But there are no eyes, no unknowns here.

Ryan sees.

The darkest of the dark eclipses a large portion of this sky-plane they exist on now and Shane—

Shane is no where to be found. No.

Oh no.

And very suddenly, Ryan is thousands upon thousands of years back, the weight of a longsword in hand and the coolness of the strongest and holiest armor on his back. The freedom to fly, to beat the air with well-trained wings, to sing praises and luck to his fellows, leading the angels under his command into battle. The soothing cold of the armored circlet locked into place over his eyes, the muting of senses and the relief of sheer clarity. Of seeing without sight those around him. Of moving as one.

But now there is no one and Shane has vanished and Ryan has all the time in the world to beat the hell out of this demon, they have all the time they need in this little bubble of the world thanks to demon magic but Shane—Shane has barely minuets before he will be lost if he’s lucky. If he’s not, lost in seconds, dead and worse, soulless. A shell.

He had better hold on. For his own sake. For Ryan’s. He can’t live with that guilt.

See, humans are really very frail. The direct stare of an unglamored angel of any kind—no disguises, no shield from their holy light—would do nothing short of breaking their minds. The trade-offs of divinity.

And demons do the same thing, except their light is far from holy, their gaze far from patronizing and majestic. It petrifies, it corrupts and preserves. Humans stand no chance. Shane stands no chance.

The weight of armor, of the blinding headpiece making the world go dark so he can focus—it urges his feet forward, forces the ground to fall away from them.

Ryan recalls with fleeting joy his takeoff stance—much like how runners stand in preparation for a sprint, the unfurling of great wings and the wind resistance around them as they beat the air, once, twice, and he is rushing forward and up and away.

The chilly weight of the longsword in his hand is his only comfort. Through the panic and worry, Ryan wonders if he looks as Joan of Arc might, the Holy Maid leading her French soldiers into battle with her head held high. Far up in the air, he dives like a falling star towards his target, knowing his aim is true.

Everything in a mater of seconds.

Ryan drives his sword into the dark, and he cannot help but see the wartime of before, the carnage and the blood, and the dawning knowledge of why he was never supposed to see.

He does not look when the darkness is blown away, blown back in an explosion, splattering across the bridge. Something huge flies upwards and out into the night. Ryan is flung back by the force of it, skidding backwards and tearing up pieces of stone in an effort to slow himself down. He’s not done with it yet, not by a long shot, but Shane—

Shane isn’t there.

No. Impossible.

He had to be, Ryan watched him get dragged back into the dark, away from Ryan’s protection and his light. Perhaps the worst has come—but the evil, vile thing, is materializing again, this foul thing that has taken Shane from him and oh, Ryan has never felt so strongly the urge to kill.

For the lives and the sake of his friends just a few hundred feet away down that dark, winding road, but most importantly for daring to take a human life, daring to try to kill.

An eye for an eye was alway the policy of the Powers, always to keep Hell in check. His sword raises itself in Ryan’s hand, and perhaps he should open his eyes, perhaps he should look, really, truly look at this horror before it dies not by blade, but by the light and then—

Something swoops out of the dark before Ryan can look at it and do away with it. Shadows beating back shadows?

————

Even when he had the power to, when he hadn’t yet abandoned the “natural order of things” (and that was more of a vague truce than anything) Shane Madej detested most other demons.

The highest ranks were power-hungry, ranting and raging and slaughtering their way to victory, the lowest and least powerful were leeches of the worst kind, whining and crying and sucking up to anyone that might tolerate them and stabbing them in the back once they were offered a better deal, only to spin a sob story of torture once their traitorousness came back to slit their throat.

The only hellish entities he could find it in himself to tolerate where those lucky, lucky few whom he’d struck bargains with, those who held up their end of the deal out fear of what he might do if they didn’t or out of respect that he’d trust them with whatever he was offering up. That he’d go to them, that what with all the chaos in Hell, all the corruption, that he’d put the fragments of trust he still had in them.

Honesty and trust are held in high regard in Hell because of the bargaining system, and yet it is so rare to see those cast out into it abide by them. Not like Heaven could say the same. They deserved the downfall they got.

That was the way of things. And Shane has not had to deal with those insufferable, sniveling traitors (at least in their full capacity) for so, so many years—one of the perks of life on Earth—and now, now that Caimo, that cruel, scheming, thieving bastard had decided it was advisable to pick fights with Shane of all people was a step over the line.

Not only that, but he had made a bid after Ryan Steven Bergara, like that was ever going to happen. Not on Shane’s watch. If it meant Ryan had the answer to his lifelong burning question about the supernatural, then so be it, but he would live the life he was given to the fullest if Shane had anything to say.

He allows himself to be swallowed by the suffocating, all-encompassing black mass, watching with burgeoning regret as Ryan’s face vanishes. It’s a simply proximity snare and a cloaking charm rolled into one.

Not even an Angel would be able to clearly see them, with the added bonus that it yanks its victim inwards. It is also barely a hindrance to Shane’s power. If this is how the game is played, so be it. I’m going to shove the game board up your ass.

Bones crunch and crack, and skin contorts and twists and reshapes itself, and Shane is clay in his own hands. He feels as though he’s undoing the bindings around his lungs, that finally they’re able to fully expand, that his ribs can open around them.

That empty pull in his gut is back, like he’s being sucked down some deep, endless hole from the inside, and it is so much stronger. It spirals out of control. Shane has to reign it in, he has to, but it has been so, so long since he’s stretched, why not indulge?

He goes faster than he should, and it hurts, it hurts so bad, but if he doesn’t do anything, Ryan—

Fuck, Shane can’t think about that. It won’t come to that. He won’t let it come to that.

Ryan. Ryan who’d always poked fun about his height, was not wrong. Of course, he didn’t know it, did he? He supposes it’s one of the reasons he chose this particular body—being tall is so much fun, so useful to scare away anything that might think of crawling out of the shadows.

It was so nice to be tall and yet also fit human scale, but Shane has never really appreciated how much he towers. Truly dwarfs everything around him.

The stretch in his limbs is painful at first and it’s all he can do to stay calm, but it’s almost like his joints are pulling apart. Just as quickly the feeling subsides and Shane is hit with the sheer power the comes with height all at once, of long, longer wiry legs like a stork, ribbed bird’s legs with claw feet, feet large enough, strong enough to carry something off into the dark.

To scratch and maul and to render prey unrecognizable. Arms long enough to be wings, fingers and hands hidden by feathers, and Shane can’t help but relish the comfort of feathers layering across his arms, of the power of flight. How he’s wrapped up in the skin of a bird and a human.

Shane breathes for the first time in so very long, sees clearly. But he can’t waste time enjoying this, he can’t risk that. Now to deal with that snare spell.

Carefully, Shane hooks his fingers into the binding of the magic, so familiar the song and pattern, the humming of the stitching. With surprisingly little effort, Shane rips it apart and jumps into the sky, the sound of magic tearing ripping through the air.

There’s a bright flash below him, something electric around him, but Shane can’t be bothered just yet. Ryan is still down there. Ryan, face to face with what he’s wanted to see since they began.

In danger.

Shane can see the trap around them as he flies as high as he’s able to go, feel spell crackle when he touches it, and he could very well rip a hole in it for escape, but he has time for that later. He dives, feet first, wings spread out far enough to blot out the sky, and aims for the dark figure of a giant thrush. His aim is true.

———

Ryan tucks his wings inward, effectively cocooning himself in feathers like some gargantuan shield. He tucks them over his eyes. With weapon raised, he revolves on the spot, a glimmering beacon in the all-encompassing dark. He can only operate on flashes of basic, disjointed logic.

The demon was here. Was here. Past-tense.

The demon is now gone. Shane is gone.

The demon took Shane. But where is Shane?

That snare spell was laced with occult magic, and it was not an insubstantial one by any means. Ryan was unable to see through it. Shane, a human of all things, would have no way of knowing what he’d gotten into or how to get out of it but the demon—the thing that flew upwards. But then what was the second shadow and where was it?

The creek below still babbles, the sound magnified one hundredfold in the quiet. Trees rustle in the wind and the crackling air. Everything is loud, so very, very loud in Ryan’s ears and he can’t hear where his quarry might have gone—

A monstrous silhouette shoots upwards from under the bridge and shatters the silence, shaking the very air around it and Ryan is only half-seconds behind. He can feel Shane, Shane in all his fiery glory, Shane, somehow, even with all the odds against him, even with such an infinitely slim chance, still here.

The demon is fast, so fast that the blotted-out space in the sky would barely be noticeable if it were not for the rush of wind and the spot blacker than the night rocketing through the air. The demon is fast, but Ryan is faster.

He’s gaining ground, and it feels so much slower when you’re the one in pursuit, but he estimates it must have been only two, three seconds at most before the hulking shadow, now eclipsing his vision almost entirely banks sharply to the left, dropping with dizzying speed. Ryan catches a split-second glimpse of the demon snare, the filthy, contaminated magic that made up the structure before diving headfirst towards his quarry.

It wobbles in the air for a moment or two and then the mass of dark feathers splits.

———

Shane has had just about enough for one night. Stars break out across his vision as he hits the bridge, surely shattering some of the stones. Never mind the bridge. Caimo is of higher concern. Barely remaining airborne, he flaps above Shane, a giant thrush blocking out the moon and stars. Shane is on his feet in seconds, seconds enough for Caimo to make a dive at him.

A desperation move. Shane can’t help but grin. Weak. And stupid. It’s mean, but it’s not wrong. It had been so easy to tear apart the snare he’d been trapped in, so easy to pull Caimo into the sky, to scare him into a trap. Into thinking he might win.

In the few seconds Shane has, he opens his wings to the sky, turning his palms upwards. The snare is like a string trick, practiced and perfected and so much stronger than Shane’s adversary could ever hope to conjure. Caimo is lazy. He is drunk on his own grandeur and power. He is afraid. The strands of magic tie themselves into knots, weaving in and out and Shane watches with sick glee the way the thrush changes.

As though lifting a mask, Caimo transforms mid-dive. He is only a man with wings now, broken, mutilated wings, beaten legs and claws, halfway between bird and man.

Every demon has something akin to this form. A truly terrifying animal skin they wear to frighten and command, a human skin they might earn or steal, and this. This halfway point between. A form which Shane prefers, a form in which he can clearly see Caimo and he can see Shane, and Shane can sit back and relish the look of dawning realization, the crumpling of defeat.

Without Caimo actually touching him, Shane feels him hit the spell as the world around them goes dark, and he opens the metaphorical valve. See, there are four steps in the process of killing and eating a demon. First, subdue, which Shane already has covered.

Second, siphon. He has to remove any magical means of escape from the equation. Siphoning power from any entity, occult or divine or even mortal is painful and quite literally draining for the subject, as is to be expected, but as Shane tugs on the line he has between him and his target, the rush of accumulated power that winds around him doubles in intensity.

It has been so long since he’s done this, if now only for revenge. This power rush is like a live wire. It sparks and seethes, and it’s something like the burn of whisky and something so unbearably sweet but not sugary.

Shane can’t care about the warped screeches barely escaping from that tangled mass of feathers above him. He relegated Caimo to a human form, watching him shrink and writhe in pain suddenly he’s nothing but a fragile human body with large, dark, petrified eyes. Shane can find no humanity in himself, even after all these years.

Caimo falls at his feet, barely a groan escaping his lips, and for the first time in a long, long time, Shane feels powerful. Properly powerful, like hungry-vengeful-god kind of powerful, like he’s just swallowed a hurricane and he can spit out storms for days.

It’s better than getting high or drunk or anything of this mortal world, and maybe Shane might just break under the strain, but he’ll hold it together. He’s got things to do.

The next step in properly killing a demon is to destroy their body, which, in human form, is easy. Human bodies are frail and Shane is so, so tall and he considers tearing Caimo’s human body apart with his bare hands, but that seems to good for an egotistical cheat. He rests a clawed foot on Caimo’s skull and marvels at how he could pick him up by his head if he pleased.

Instead, he crushes it, claws digging harshly into flesh, feeling bone splinter. Now, demons don’t bleed like humans do. They don’t have blood. They can feign a pulse or a paper cut, but Caimo is drained of all his magic, he has nothing left but a volatile spirit-body, powerless and meager.

So instead of blood and brain matter and bone seeping from his skull, remnants of the organ cradled in the cracked mass, something dark and oily creeps from underneath Shane’s foot. It’s not quite a gas, not quite a liquid, but it swirls and undulates in a fearful, agitated way. The walls of the snare shake.

Shane needs to find Ryan. He needs to kill this thing.

That’s the last step, actually. Dispose for the spirit-body once you’ve stripped a demon of everything else. There’s no coming back from that. And so Shane reaches out and collects this gaseous liquid in his hands, and does not stop to ponder the feeble, pleading magic beneath his fingers.

You crossed a line, buddy. You can speak, you can scream and cackle, you can throw me out the window if you please. Shit, tug on the Ry-guy’s shirt for all I care. Scare him. But don’t you ever, EVER think of hurting him or any other mortal here. They are fragile. They don’t stand a chance. Pick on someone who can actually fight if you think you’re such hot stuff.

Eating a demon on their last legs is about the only thing anyone likes about that kind of scenario. It’s a grueling process, those fights, but the power trip of eating a soul is something unparalleled.

The spirit-body of a dying being is large, and in it’s last moments as Shane tries to condense it, it gets even larger. It shines so brightly, black rimmed with white and he can feel the thrum of the death of a star in his hands. He pushes inwards. The bubble pops.

The explosion can only be likened to a supernova. The thing collapses and expands rapidly, the snare he conjured is collapsing around him, sending him flying back into the forest on the other side of the ruined bridge. But Shane hangs onto the last bit of demon essence and swallows it in one go.

That’s an explosion all on it’s own. He feels electric. Giddy. Fidgety and dominant. The potency of this energy is insane. He’s sure he might explode for a second or two, wobbling on his legs and barely standing anyways. But the feeling passes, and he’s left in a powerful afterglow.

He feels more so, and strongly, maybe denser physically. Shane breathes a long sigh. He opens his eyes, only to close them rapidly again.

Light. Bright, pure light.

Between rapidly blinking lids, Shane can make out a human shape in amongst the brightness.

Metal shines.

Feathers. Not feathers, wings.

———

Ryan, stained in demonic spirit-matter and fresh from battle, lifts his sword in the direction of the feathery shadow, now thrown into harsh relief in his light.

Shane?

———

Shane can’t quite see him, but he’s there, his friend is there.

Ryan?

All either of them can do is whisper the other’s name out of shock. All they can do is ask.

———

Ryan looks at something not Shane, something  set darkly against a forest backdrop standing in the rubble, something lanky and impossibly tall that bears the face of his friend.

The legs are long and scarred, bird’s legs, stork’s legs, with rough, battle-worn, curled claws. Feathers collect in patches on his torso and fill out down his legs, growing in short little patches across his shoulders and collarbone like they’re trying to take hold of his body.

His arms are no longer arms, but wings. Great, feathery things, black at the tips turning to a filthy off-white. Peeking through the mass of feathers somewhere near where Ryan suspects the bones of his extended arms must end, hands poke out of the feathers. Long, clawed fingers fidget. Hands built to tear and scratch.

Shane’s mop of wavy hair has vanished, replaced with a crown of feathers growing from his scalp. They’re disorderly, matted in places, sticking up in others. Ryan can only described two clumps of feathers that have gone black and hard as congealed, stiffening into something resembling horns that keep close to Shane’s skull, curling over the top of his head and bending up.

More small knobs, darkened and jagged, push through his scalp around his forehead. New feathers trail down Shane’s face, short feathered patches spreading across his cheekbones and cheeks lead Ryan to deep-set, round eyes that hollow out the rest of his face.

They remind Ryan of an owl or an eagle: they have depth. Ryan is looking into a pupil and an iris, not just a shiny, black spot set into the face. Still, they are hollow. They track and stick with their target like an owl would, but it is less like looking at an intelligent being and more like staring into the maw of a too-dark cave or over a cliff.

Shane’s eyes, like such frightening vistas nature may present us with, trigger something like the call of the void. A reckless beckoning.

This is Shane, this looks like Shane.

This can’t be Shane.

Ryan’s voice is magnified to a booming command in the sudden silence, in the wake of settled dust. It is the first time he’s spoken like this in…how long? His voice is suddenly so, so large.

“Leave him, leave this body. Now.”

Ryan points his sword at Shane’s chest. Shane, a puppet and plaything for a demon against his will. Shane, helpless to stop it. The voice that answers him is a gravely whisper.

“Ryan…I can’t—please, put down the sword. Ryan. Please.”

“ Let him go.”

“Ryan, it’s Shane, it’s me!”

By now this gravely voice is raised in agitation and anger, and Shane’s new wings have spread outwards as a some kind of defensive reflex. Curled out and around to obscure his body. He bends his knees in a stance that has him prepped to take off should he need to.

“Ryan—“

Ryan knows he shouldn’t have fallen for it.

“When were you gonna mention you were an Angel?”

Ryan can’t bring himself to move.

“Ryan. Put. Down. The. Sword.”

Shane’s voice rises in a growl of a crescendo, something akin to the THX sound, and he seems to loom taller than ever. The darkness behind him seems to swallow him more and more as the seconds pass. Ryan stares him down.

“ Ryan.”

The air begins to fizzle and spark, and Ryan can feel hellish magic creep across his skin like a chilling breeze, like a bugs and spiders crawling on him. It pulls at him and something else, something that makes his stomach drop.

For a second, fatigue washes over him, and as the wave recedes it tries to drag something with it. Ryan can feel some kind of holiness leave him.

“ RYAN. ”

Ryan looks Shane up and down, looks through him. Looks into the concave crevices carved into those shadowy spaces, those bright hunter-eyes, wide and enraged and afraid.

Afraid, and something more. Betrayal. A silent plea of why? Of my hands are raised in protest and submission and I will fight you to get away with my life if I have to but I will never forgive myself if I do. If I hurt you. Because I can. Please, end this, end this now, I’ll tell you everything, please—

At some point Ryan might have switched onto Shane’s personal mental frequency. He doesn’t know if he’s reading his face or if he’s reading his mind. If it’s the latter, he can’t help but come to the conclusion that it is in fact Shane standing in front of him, looming, towering, projecting his thoughts as he would to a potential mortal target. Projecting an offer of peace. An exchange.

Ryan lowers his sword.

———

Shane feels the spiraling, dropping sensation reverse upwards, plucking him and pulling him down in a most literal sense. He no longer looms on long stork legs, instead confined to the proportions of a human body, if voluntarily.

His clothes return in a swirl as though they are pulled down a drain while everything is being sucked up and away into nothing. The heady rush of power from having just fed isn’t entirely gone, but muted.

Suddenly, Shane is human.

Shane is Shane, not some name to be found in an old grimoire. He’s stuffed back into a skin that Ryan would poke fun of for being so tall, and it is his, it is him, but never has he felt so inhuman.

Shane hangs on to the snare around the bridge area, keeping his fingers laced through the stitching of the magic, keeping it stable. They’re essentially in their own pocket of paused time, and they have to stay here just a little longer. He eyes Ryan warily, watching as he folds his wings around him, only to fold them into his back and stow them away for now.

They stand, unscathed and untouched in the wreckage of the bridge. They stand in the clothes of only minutes before, in the bodies of a time of innocence and ignorance. It’s not destroyed, but it will need fixing.

———

Ryan reaches out towards the smashed bits of stone in front of him, then to the fallen pieces around him and in the stream below. He pushes a miracle out through his chest like medication through an IV, into his arms, his hands, his fingers and out into the stones and pebbles. He intertwines his fingers with the matter of the stones, pulling at them, at the atoms, at the energy within them, all of it, pulling it towards him.

They gather together, the atoms stitching together the seams of broken things, the stones of the bridge fixing themselves, putting themselves back into place. They are an extension of Ryan for the few moments he has a hold on them, on the matter that makes them up. They are him.  But the feeling dissipates as fast as it comes.

Ryan then reaches out to feel for the plastic and metal and fragile glass of the cameras, flashlights, and microphones, but finds them whole. He looks quickly at Shane across the repaired bridge.

In his hands he holds a tripod with camera attached, glowing faintly as though it had been placed over a flame. Shane’s hands glow as though they are lit from behind with a flashlight, the same color as the tripod legs—a bright, rosy orange-red. Veins are scattered across his hands, glowing bloody and red. Human.

The body cams and microphones, already repaired, float around Shane’s head as he sets the tripod up again, tapping buttons and placing a hand over the camera lens for a moment. He looks at Ryan, sending a microphone and body cam his way before strapping on his own gear and flicking on his flashlight.

“I uh, I cleared the film.”

Shane offers it up as some kind of apology, looking away at the moon. Ryan nods in quiet, awkward thanks, suiting up in the pressing silence.

Chapter Text

As predicted, their next days in the office are tense to say the least. The crew seem to be oddly distant and shaken up. Shane has only ever seen them this way a handful of times, after one of the demon locations and a few particularly creepy ghost infestations who’s occupants weren’t immediately cowed by Shane’s presence.

But these next days are fraught. The crew, though not initially worried when finding them after their allotted five minutes has passed (at least in real time outside of Shane and Ryan’s bubble) had grown increasingly uneasy as the shoot drew to a close.

Shane could only do so much to keep anxiety from taking hold of him when they went on patrol through the forest nearby. Ryan said little while they walked, content with watching the swinging of his flashlight beam as it panned from one side of the path to the other, keeping a watchful eye.

His face had remained blank for the rest of the shoot and through the drive back to their hotel. Little was said in the hotel room. Shane did not sleep well.

The crew began to loosen up on the flight home, but the atmosphere of the night before, even though they didn’t know half of what went down, seemed to stick to everyone and keep them watching their backs. The mood persists into the following days.

Shane knows he and Ryan will need to address the events of the shoot. It’s not every day you’re outed as a demon, nor your best friend an angel. It’s not every day you each threaten the other’s life.

Shane takes notice of the unspoken pact to avoid one another that he and Ryan have forged. There’s lots to do after just getting back from filming an episode. They have to look through footage with the editing team, there’s narration work in the studio, they have to look at an array of prospective haunted locations to research and film at next, so they already have a lot of their collective plate.

But they can only get away with this for so long.

It’s only been a day since they got back and their work week is almost over, so the weekend will be open for a conversation. Shane opens his calendar and checks the next few days: the weekend is clear. All he needs to do is message Ryan. Hell, maybe talk to him, ask him if he’s free.

Shane looks up across their office space and sees Ryan chatting with one of the video editors before straightening up and maneuvering back to his desk. They make eye contact across the room. Ryan looks petrified for a moment, a look that quickly devolves into embarrassment and anxiety.

Shane looks back at his phone, sighing. Questions upon questions, queries and concerns and wild thoughts run rampant in his head. It feels as though the seams in the bone of his skull are straining to hold the in the pressure.

Being demonic—or simply non-human—means that Shane doesn’t get migraines or even headaches, but he supposes this is what is must feel like. At this point, it doesn’t matter when or where he and Ryan meet, they need to talk.

Shane barely catches Ryan as he’s leaving the office building, stopping him just outside the door. He made the critical error of deliberating on how exactly to approach him, and by the time he’d decided, Ryan was already leaving.

Shane also makes the mistake of tapping him suddenly on the shoulder, because the reaction Ryan gives him prompts Shane to back down quickly; Ryan looks like he might just drop his disguise out of fright.

“Hey.”

“Hi, Shane.”

Ryan avoids his face, surprise replaced with apprehension.

“Hey. Uh, so, you free on Saturday? I think—maybe we can—We should talk.”

The instant the words leave Shane’s mouth he wants to kick himself for how weirdly professional it sounds, but Ryan seems to take the hint. He remembers what they are. Shane sees a flicker of it when Ryan looks at him directly. He sighs, pulling out his phone and checking his calendar.

“I can do the afternoon…but it‘ll be a bit late.”

“Oh, that’s fine.”

“Um. Ok, how’s 5:00 at mine?”

“Good.”

They stand face-to-face for a moment, silence and tension bayoneting a conversation already at death’s door. Shane can tell Ryan wants to leave.

“Well. Bye.”

Ryan offers up a half-hearted smile and turns quickly on his heel, barely letting Shane get in a goodbye.

Sitting in his car, Shane massages his temples, an old habit he’s filed away just like all of those other basic, automatic behaviors. Sniffing, drumming his fingers, fidgeting, hell, eating and sleeping: all behaviors he’s learned.

And even though eating and sleeping do provide him energy—though it’s no where near what negativity or the occasional (even non-human) soul gives him—the lack of necessity reminds him at the worst of times that he is eternal.

Shane has made plenty friends in the past, loved plenty of times over, and every time he worries about the loss of the mortals he attaches to. They’re fragile, some are even beautiful, and Shane counts his lucky stars that he’s met some quality people.

But stars die.  Shane’s made peace with that.

He went through the same process when he met Ryan. Ryan, so curious and fiery when the mood struck him, so fun, so funny. A fantastic human. Ryan, a scaredy-cat, but so brave to be putting himself out there.

And Shane, though he would inevitably part with Ryan, maybe even age himself as Ryan would naturally to stay with him for a little longer, made peace with their eventual parting. He knew he would be heartbroken to leave him. But the heartbreak is nothing new.

Ryan wouldn’t be just another death, but Shane would know to think of him as the best of the times they shared. Somehow, the discovery of the fact that Ryan would endure with Shane for as long as the universe existed shakes Shane more than the possibility of his demise.

———

Ryan’s thoughts are moving faster than he can finish thinking them as he collapses on his bed. There is so, so much to think about.

If Shane is a demon, then who is he? Definitely one of note, but that doesn’t quite narrow it down. How had he kept his head down for so long? What did he feed on? How the hell had Ryan not noticed him? 

So Ryan does what he always does before a demonic shoot. He pulls out his books.

It’s a coping mechanism. On normal shoots he’ll reach out for the presence of ghosts, lending a silent hand by unbinding them from their deathly prison if they reach back with desperation and fear. It’s the least he can do.

Some are content and well-mannered, best left alone. It’s easy enough.

But demons hurt people, and Ryan will not stand for the suffering of his camera crew and his co-host. It was his job to deal with demons and keep the cosmos in order before everything fell apart, so he’s fit for the job of hemming in a demon for the night of their shoot and keeping it quiet if it’s not immediately on the defensive.

He does this with every hellish entity he comes across, and they in turn avoid him if both have their wits about them. But it’s best to be informed, so Ryan read up.

He keeps his book collection in opaque plastic boxes beneath his bed so that they rarely see the sunlight. Grimoires, summoning guides, texts on demonology, even a loose copy of Paradise Lost: some are hundreds of years old, (first editions he prides himself on keeping in such good condition, but miracle magic does help) others are modern and written by studied authors.

‘Shane Madej’ won’t be listed as a page header, but looking at entities that take a large bird-form will narrow down his options. Ryan cracks open and leaves it floating in mid air as he unloads pages of notes and other books.

He closes the curtains and locks his door. There’s so, so much work to do.

———

The sun is already setting when Shane knocks in Ryan’s door, his stomach churning. He feels as though he’s sealed some terrifying pact when he knocks on the door, the sound a promise to go through with what they agreed to do. Shane hears footsteps from the other side of the door.

“Hey, Shane.”

“Hi.”

Ryan greets him with a set face, nervousness leaving him rough around the edges. He looks haggard. Still, Ryan steps aside and gestures for Shane to cross the threshold of his house.

Immediately, warning bells begin to go off in Shane’s head. He feels something mildly threatening here, not so much that it would endanger his life and safety, but enough for it to inspire curiosity and mild concern. His instincts tell him to survey the area for some trace of angelic magic, a trap or snare, but he trusts Ryan enough not to try something like that. He wouldn’t.

He wouldn’t.

The journey between Ryan’s front door and his living room is short, only spanning a hallway and somewhere under ten seconds, seconds that feel much longer when Shane is probing for more possible threats. Sigils, salt circles, a triangle trap, anything. But there is no chalk or salt or paint in sight, although Shane finds himself doubting that Ryan would use something as mediocre as that.

His assumptions are confirmed when he sees the organized mess of Ryan’s combined living room and kitchen. Books and notes and pages and pages of old, old drawings and even older languages are stacked neatly throughout the room on just about every surface. Some of the ink has faded from the pages, yellowed and ragged around the edges, the sharp corners of fresh paper softened by time.

Shane spots a few books that look due for a replacement of their bindings. Others look rather new: large books with intricate printed cover art with cover corners worn away by excessive use despite how young they are.

A handful of books, both old and new, are still floating listlessly in the air, open to a random page. And that threatening aura is all over here, and it is so pungent that Shane begins to have second thoughts.

He needs to look, really look. For only a second or two, Shane peels back the glamour around his eyes to survey the room.

He isn’t met with the icy, stomach-churning rush of fear he anticipated, a fear Shane can only now feel in the presence of Ryan’s power. Instead, what he feels is more of a chilly trickle of disappointment and confusion, something that makes Shane want to turn tail and leave, not with fear at his back but a feeling of betrayal.

It only takes a second or two for Shane to spot the blue-white glowing ghost of a sigil encased within a triangle on the floor. His sigil.

It makes Shane feel nauseous.

Ryan has clearly just wiped the spell and the invisibility charm from its place on the floor judging by bright but fading afterglow it casts, and he was clearly confident enough when he made the decision not to include a protective circle.

It makes Shane wonders if Ryan would have kept him there to interrogate him, trapped him there, a sword to his throat. That was his job after all.

Regardless of where or what you were in Hell, you knew of the Powers. One of the many angelic ranks, it was there job to take care of anyone causing a ruckus on earth, making a demon’s job potentially life-threatening.

Shane has seen the end of a handful of demons in his time, all close calls on his part, and it seems far worse than anything he could do to a fellow demon. Shane allows himself to entertain the idea that this might be the end of a very, very long line. He dismisses it. Ryan wouldn’t.

Come to think of it, that can’t be Ryan’s name. Shane isn’t Shane’s true name. He looks again at the sigil on the floor. Another thing to ask about Ryan: his name, and supposedly how he found Shane’s. Ryan is staring at him. Shane realizes he’s been staring at him without a glamour.

“Sorry, I—Just a bit nervous.”

Ryan seems to put two and two together, resulting in a moment of embarrassed epiphany. He turns away, gesturing with both hands to the piles of books and pages and making them rise into the air. With a move along gesture, Ryan sends them soaring into neat and balanced piles in the corner of the room.

“There’s not much I can say to make that better, is there?”

Shane gives a non-committal shrug, avoiding Ryan’s eyes.

“ . . . I didn’t go through with it.”

Shane sighs, waving away Ryan’s excuse and asking with a jerk of his head if he can sit. He settles on the couch, back to the window. Ryan sits at the short end of the table on a smaller couch. The quiet becomes oppressive as already-slow conversation grinds to a halt. Shane, already bursting at the seams with questions, can’t take it.

“So. Should we . . . set down rules?

Shane realizes how odd it sounds the instant the words leave his mouth. This conversation is going to be fairly structured and the questions have already been asked, but the stakes are so high it seems it is only right to promise honesty to each other. Ryan seems to be thinking along the same lines.

“No lies. No omission.”

Ryan looks Shane in the eye.

“Agreed?”

Shane breathes a long, heavy sigh.

“Agreed.”

Silence falls again.

“So . . . “

Shane draws out the word.

“Should I go first?”

Ryan snorts quietly, a strained grin on his face.

“Sure. Shoot your shot.”

“ . . . How did you learn my name?”

———

Ryan freezes. Of course. Of course it had to be that. Of course it had to be a reminder of the fact that he’d entertained and nearly gone through with the idea of trapping his best friend in a demon snare. Shane is a demon, but Shane is Shane.

Ryan can’t bring himself to call him by his real name. That’s not Shane.

He gestures wordlessly to the books. A particularly old tome rises out of the stacks, flipping open to a well-worn page.

“You’re listed in the Ars Goetia.”

Ryan looks away as Shane examines the page with a mix of mild interest and apprehension. He touches the worn, soft pages lightly—almost with reverence—tracing over fading ink with careful fingers until he finds his name. One of them, whichever he’s chosen to adopt. Ryan can’t help but ask.

“Which…Which one did you go by?”

Ryan sees Shane’s expression twitch at the present-tense irregular verb, as though he’s bothered by the insinuation that the still treats it as a name, bothered by the implications of the title and the duties it would bind him to. After a beat or two of silence, Shane speaks, the sigh in his voice evidence of how difficult this conversation was likely to be. He sounds exhausted.

“I went by Shax.”

The confirmation is an odd one. It feels surreal, like Ryan’s mind is quite literally running in circles, stuck in a loop of this can’t be real, to it can, it is, to it just doesn’t seem real. But of course, it is real.

His friend has told him to his face that he is Shax, is Shan, is Scox, is the thief of senses and of the wealth of kings, is the discoverer of truths, but a liar himself. His friend is a demon, his friend has just told him, out loud and with complete clarity, his true name.

It’s a lot to digest. It just seem so casual, the amount of trust an action like that displays. Trust that Ryan won’t abuse the power of a name, of the confession he’s just borne witness to. Shane closes the book with care, minding not to damage or fold the already wrinkled and dog-eared pages.

“I actually settled on Shane because someone mispronounced Shan once. Sounded human enough.”

———

Shane leans back on the sofa with another heavy sigh. This conversation has ventured into far touchier territory far quicker than he expected. Silence falls between them again, silence that gives Shane time to organize the firestorm of unformed, voiceless questions into something resembling a line. He needs order. Hell, half of the questions he has he doesn’t even know how to turn into sentences.

The seconds tick by and the roiling chaos trapped within the bounds of Shane’s skull makes no effort to organize itself, so he starts simple, something easy to pick up off the ground.

“What about you?”

It’s a touchy subject, Shane knows, but he wants his turn. They’re in this hole so he might as well learn something while they’re down here. Ryan sighs just as heavily as Shane, and he can imagine Ryan dredging up memory after memory, sifting through and carefully constructing each sentence from whatever recollections ride the line between honest and buried. Entombed for good reason.

Shane knows the look, has spoken to a handful of others who made it out and made good time getting far, far away. He would never have dreamed that horrid mixture of regret and insecurity, confusion and fear might make it onto the face of an angel.

Angels, who were unruffled and orderly and graceful and poised, who serve their God, who follow their orders without question and without hesitation. Honed to perfection, cut and polished, and Shane can’t help but feel a little bit of envy coil in his gut at the thought that Ryan had lived in such grandeur and comfort, in blessed ignorance.

Ryan brings him out of his thoughts, staring straight ahead at the wall, fixing one of his many, many books with a blank, glazed stare.

“Rathanael. Bit of a mouthful. And a giveaway.”

Ryan barely moves his mouth when he speaks.

“Honestly, it’s kinda embarrassing. Sounds so official for an asshole who sits behind a desk and talks about old murders.”

He laughs it off, but Shane knows that response, a response he is guilty of all too often. But it’s easier, so he plays along.

“Nah, I get what you mean. You read through the Goetia’s descriptions only to realize the demon you’re looking for is just human Bigfoot.”

That earns a hearty wheeze. Shane feels the atmosphere relax just a bit as they talk, as they readjust to each other ever so slowly. It’s not like getting to know each other again, Shane thinks, more like finding out that you and a friend have a passionate and personal interest in common.

It’s a bit odd at first, knowing one another for so long, and not knowing this thing you share, but it opens the door to more shared experiences, more stories to swap, more jokes to make. Eventually, Shane finds himself feeling safe, finds himself adjusting to Ryan’s new space in his life and in his mind and his view of the world on a cliff top.

He used to sit on the metaphorical rocky outcropping overlooking the roiling ocean of time as it passed, watching the little flickers of fish and sea life go by, admiring them, treasuring the glimpses he caught. Occasionally he might spot someone in the distance along the cliff side, watching as time sped by while a select few remained still and watched it, and maybe Shane would wave, but they would vanish from sight soon enough, obscured by clouds and fog.

But Ryan, Ryan had approached him, had sat next to him on their little outcropping and Shane has a distinct feeling that they’ll enjoy watching time pass together.

They begin to talk about stupid things, about minute details and close calls, about favorite foods, and favorite mortals who’ve come and gone, the worst of the worst and the best of the best.

They talk of the raucousness of the late 1900’s, the wild times of change they witnessed, of the early decades full of war. Of watching the protests of the Civil Rights Movement, watching its ripples spread from America outward, watching the effect it had on the world. Of the horrors of war, and of one of humanity’s darkest hours.

They talk of the hight of the aristocracy, Ryan nearly choking on his own saliva while Shane regales him with a variety of times he walked in on affairs in progress. They talk of battles and royalty, of serving in courts and advising, something Shane finds Ryan made a very lucrative habit of in the heyday of ancient empires.

They talk of watching the development of humanity from afar. Watching empires be born and die, all while having prime viewing seats. They talk and talk and talk and jump around an abstract timeline of miscellaneous events. They laugh. And maybe, Shane thinks, they’ll go back to normal.

It will take a while, but eventually the knowledge of the secret best kept by each of them and now between them will find their place in their friendship. Shane has lost his appetite for difficult conversation. They can deal with it some time in their fairly nebulous shared future.

———

Ryan finds himself relaxing into their usual banter and the sun begins to slide lower in the sky. He decides the painful questions can be asked on another day, despite the itch that persists in his mind. He can ask hard questions later.

———

Shane had hoped that they might be able to dodge the subject, that it might not, like some starving, feral predator, push itself into the center of their path and make it so that they would have to go through it to get to where they wanted to go. It would have eventually, but Shane really hadn’t wanted to ruin the night.

He sits here and he remembers that he wants to keep the terribly painful questions, the uncomfortable ones, locked up for another time. Until he can’t. Until the question is accidentally implied, or it’s more like the opportunity is dropped into his lap in such a way that he can’t ignore it.

Shane can’t quite recall what they had been talking about before (“…not since Heaven,” or something like that? He still can’t recall), but the name now rings in the air between them, the only thing occupying the deathly silence that has so suddenly fallen.

Ryan is very clearly looking an inevitability directly in the face, and while he still has the time, is scraping together his pride and his resolve.  He will not flinch in the face of it.

The seconds tick by, one after anther, and Shane has never really thought about it that way. Sure, he’s experienced many lifetimes of embarrassing and awkward moments, but none quite like this. For once, he’s truly aware of the passage of time, despite the lack of a clock in the room to tick. He can count the seconds, time them down to decimal points in his mind, and Shane is sure he has never been so nervous in his life.

He has been hurtling towards this moment for only a handful of days now, but he has traveled so very, very far, fueled only by pure, unrelenting curiosity. And here, at the start of this moment so very highly anticipated, he has lost all momentum.

He has ground to a sudden standstill, unable to do anything, and for some time it seems the world has come to a stop alongside him.

Shane chokes on words he can’t quite form. Ryan is begging him with his eyes to just ask or his resolve might break. It is so, so much effort to start it up again. It would have been nice to deal with hard questions later.

“So…what happened to Heaven in the Aftermath?”

Shane rushes the words. Ryan seems to crumble just a bit, and Shane sinks back into his seat. Ryan’s face is in his hands, and he runs a hand through his hair.

He turns to face Shane with hard, haunted eyes, and sighs shakily. Not hard, brittle. Ryan looks like he knows he’s going to cry and is just waiting for tears to well and fall. He breathes deeply and fixes his eyes at a spot on the wall to his right. Shane stares at his hands. When Ryan speaks, it is quiet and halting.

“Heaven fell apart. Simple as that. Anyone still fighting on the home front probably died. I…don’t know if I feel lucky or guilty that I happened to be on Earth when it happened and not in one of the Nine Circles or any of the Heavenly Palaces. I saw bits of the destruction—all of my friends—Everyone there…Sorry.”

Ryan is crying silently, eyes foggy and red and distant in horrible, horrible remembrance. His jaw is set, so much so that it looks painful, and tears drip steadily down onto clasped hands locked tight together in his lap. But he doesn’t shake or sob or wail. It is silent and terrified, and it is so much worse.

Shane remembers.

He doesn’t recall the why or how of it all (everything is so hazy now, did they even tell him what was going on?) but he knows he had mobilized the legions under his command and was part of the cavalry charge. He recalls their screeches of rage and revenge against Heaven, against God and all of the torture they’d endured because of It.

Then only chaos and bodies falling around him and light. Holy light. Silver. Shane remembers the crisp, clear freshness of Earth’s air, of his first breath, something akin the the sharpness of mint, of how, for fleeting moments, he had wondered if it was even better in Heaven, even though he had been consigned to Hell by the occupants of that same holy sanctuary.

Unjustly.

Without trial.

Without mercy, and how was God so merciful?

He remembers how these thoughts drove him to such rage, how now, after the slaughter, Shane might just deserve Hell. He does. The terrible voice of criticism and self-deprecation, something he seems to have picked up from humanity and can’t ditch somehow, tells him he does.

He finds himself half-inclined to believe it.

Shane realizes that he’s been staring blankly off into space, wallowing in his own trauma and past terror when Ryan is sitting here, crying quietly. Shane should be comforting him. So he reaches out awkwardly, fining he has to stretch to pat Ryan on the shoulder, and for a few moments he stays like that before making a strangely difficult move in getting up and sitting next to his—his friend.

Not an angel, not some servant of God, his friend. Ryan. Shane wraps an arm around him while his tears subside. When Ryan next speaks, his voice still shakes, but there is a conviction in it that was not there before.

“I remember very vividly—I guess I don’t know how or when, I’d never lost it before when dealing with, well, demonic interference—my headpiece was knocked off in a scuffle somewhere, lower atmosphere I think? It must have been, I could see the landscape below me. I’d just—Sorry—r-run someone through, some foot soldier who’d lost their mount. I just remember looking them in the face. There was something so terribly innocent about it, just so…afraid, i-in pain. Questioning the mercy of death. T-the glory of battle, I think. And then they were gone and falling and I—“

Ryan swallows hard, breathing slow and steady.

“I looked down to Earth, and the green had been turned to dirt and bodies. Everyone was stained with blood. And I think I realized that this wasn’t God’s divine will or conquest or righteousness or anything, it was slaughter. I think…I struggled with disillusionment.”

There is a certain energy in the room now, in the dim light of fading day and in Ryan’s sudden confessions. Something truly, utterly potent and powerful. Something to be feared. There is a buzz thrumming just under Ryan’s skin now, something not holy or human, something purely emotional. Something fizzling and bubbling that Shane can only identify as a dark drive of some kind.

There is hatred and regret in Ryan’s face, now made stony by a set jaw and eyes wide with wild fury. And something snaps in that look so suddenly, and Ryan seems to deflate, dragging himself out of the depths of his own horror.

“I…I’m sorry. I….”

Shane leaps in, trying to make up for his silence.

“No, no, take your time.”

Ryan shakes his head, smiling wryly. There’s something overwhelmingly sad in it.

“I—You don’t need to hear this. The side I fought for condemned you—I guess—I dunno, I’m practically the reason you’re…you. You’re too good to deserve it.”

Shane pauses for a moment to think on Ryan’s words.

“You’d defend me?”

Ryan looks incredulous, like Shane’s said something redundant, and in those seconds they are simply human, simply friends, and nothing more.

“Well, yeah…you’re my friend, it wouldn’t matter what you did. We’d get through it ‘cause that’s what we do.”

Silence falls between them, Shane finds himself unable to do anything but sit with it, reconciling years of agonizing hatred with whatever has just been said.

“Thanks…Thank you, Ryan.”

Shane says it, and he means it more than the words can do it justice.

———

The seconds between them shine bright with joy and trust, and Ryan can’t help but revel in it. But these are seconds and they do not last, and soon enough he can’t stop questions from clawing their way up his throat and scraping against his teeth, fighting against the pressure of his jaw to slip by to freedom.

But his selfishness—humanity, human wants and behavioral patterns—can’t compete with Shane’s fragility now, with the balance they’ve achieved. He can’t bring himself it break it. Ryan will have to wait for it to pass.

He only has to wait seconds before expectant silence swallows them whole again, before they return to the reality that they are friends and then quite a bit more. But the question, no matter how desperately Ryan now wants to ask it despite the klaxon-like voice of anxiety telling him no, seems to have lodged in his throat in it’s desperation to escape. So Ryan coughs a bit to clear it, shattering the silence.

“So, uh…what did you do?”

Shane doesn’t answer immediately, instead taking his time to think, Ryan can practically see memories flicking past his eyes as though on a projector screen, searching, scanning, picking through for an answer in amongst eons of preservation.

Ryan can tell he expects the question, but that makes it no easier to answer. He doesn’t know how long they sit there, Shane staring, glassy-eyed, into the middle distance. It makes Ryan’s gut churn when Shane speaks.

“Nothing.”

He half-heartedly throws up his hands, sinking back into the couch with a look of aloofness.

“What…?”

It’s barely a croak in response. Ryan doesn't quite know what to think, how to react. How is that possible?

God wouldn't have thrown someone from paradise without reason, it was simply not done. Ryan had seen rebellious, lost souls, even a handful of his friends stray from their path, but all knew what they had done and stood trial for their actions.

They were questioned by the holiest, the most omnipotent, those held in highest regard and trusted to carry out the deeds from the mouth of their Creator. The system was, by design, flawless. What crack in the foundation of such beautifully burnished marble had allowed Shane to slip through?

"I didn't do…anything."

Shane looks like he's searching his memories again, speaks like he's trying to find something incriminating, some little stain on his record that would explain it all away, but still he comes up with nothing.

He sounds like he's gone through these same motions so many times before, like he's searched these exact memories before hoping for some bizarre reason they might change and reveal what he seeks. He hopes to find some evidence of a transgression, however minor it may be, but comes up with none.

Shane looks at Ryan, confusion and weariness written all over his face. And then the pieces put themselves together. His voice is quiet and horse when next he speaks.

“Were you a part of Lucifer’s rebellion?”

Shane laughs, bitter and mirthless.

“Nope.”

“But how—”

Shane sighs.

“So Morningstar kicked up a fuss and rallied together any likeminded angels, right? Rebellion and defeat, blah, blah, blah, but….well, Heaven was no place for war, was it? And in the sheer panic of the situation—there were people who were screaming about how it was the end of the world, really—I guess…anyone in the wrong place just got swept under the rug.”

Ryan can’t quite speak. The terror wrought by an angel of such high standing was horrid, not counting his accomplices.

It was a sight to behold: Heaven, momentarily turned into a radiant Hell. Ryan remembers the confusion, the incoherence, the speed with which such a perfect ecosystem was reduced to ashes, but perfection is fragile by nature.

There are few things quite comparable to this masterpiece of day-lit horror, watching chaos bloom as his traitorous comrades rocketed through the heavens like something he would come to know as planes, like bombers, laying waste to what they saw as tyrannical?  Unjust?

Perhaps, seeing as Shane had slipped through the cracks, it was. How many others had been consigned to an unwarranted hell? Ryan breathes a shaky sigh.

“And afterwards…?”

“I dunno. I suppose it was kinda like locking kids in a classroom on their own. Power structures formed, and somehow I ended up in a place where I was whatever could be called ‘safe’ down there.”

Ryan can only shake his head in disbelief.

“Fuck…”

“Really.”

“…So, do you happen to know what started The End?”

Shane shakes his head, clearly eager to divert to a less personal, though no less grim topic.

“No. No, I was never really invested in the beef between Heaven and Hell. Don’t know what made ‘em so angry or why they decided to wage war on each other seeing as they’d spent so long after the rebellion ignoring each other.”

Shane studies him for a minute.

“Hoping for a different answer?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t think anyone knows why, honestly. I think—“

Shane pauses to consider his next words, the dark of the hastily falling evening casting heavier and heavier shadows across his face.

“—I think it might have been a private vendetta, y’know? Lucifer just trying to get back at God again, or maybe vice versa? I don’t think it was a…a democratic decision or whatever.”

Ryan weighs the words in his mind one at a time, carefully rolling each one in his hands like marbles, testing them.

“Isn’t that the argument against war? That the powers that be have no right to make us fight their battles and be the means to their selfish ends?”

“Yeah…”

Shane scoffs bitterly, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes and propping his thumbs under his chin, his fingertip under his nose.

“So…where do we go from here?”

Shane leans back into the couch looking at Ryan’s face, or lack thereof, seeing as he’s largely obscured by fuzzy shadows.

Regardless, he sees Ryan. He still sees Ryan.

Nothing has changed between them, he realizes. This has only added a new chapter to their friendship and their bond (and perhaps quite a large prequel), but they’re still the same people. 

“We just…keep going.”

“Keep being demon proof?”

Ryan laughs, full-throated and pure and human.

“Yeah, sure. Sure.”

And they do. They talk until the sun goes down, and a few minutes after, a few minutes too long, just as friends. As people.

And as Shane waves goodbye from the door, as he peels away into the street, he can feel the start of another moment flowing seamlessly into the end of one.