Chapter Text
It starts with Emily showing up at Pentious’s doorway looking ready to bite someone’s head off. This is notable because Pentious has very rarely seen Emily looking ready to bite someone’s head off. Never, as a matter of fact. He actually wasn’t aware that was a way she could look, which makes it all the more alarming that she looks that way now.
Pentious has never been good with alarming. He tried once and well… Well. Maybe the way that ended is the reason he takes one look at her and squawks, “Oh dear! Has someone died?”
Emily takes a step back, holding her hands up in a display of innocence. “No, no, nothing like that!” She smooths her scowl over with an awkward smile. “Sorry to worry you, Pentious. I should have gotten my temper under control before I came over.”
Pentious lets out a chuckle that he knows better than to hope isn’t immensely awkward. “It’s fine, Miss Emily.”
If his chuckle was awkward – and it is, as surely as he is the only one in heaven with a tail and a tendency to hisssss – then it can’t compare to the silence that follows.
Emily stands there. Pentious stands there. They stare at each other, and no one says a word until she works up the nerve to ask, “So… May I come in?”
No, Pentious wants to say, no you may not. I appreciate your attempts to be my friend, but I wish to spend today alone, sulking over my friends and eggs.
Because his bravery had died with his eggbois and the only meaningful relationships he’d had in his entire existence, he says, “Of course.”
He steps aside to allow entry into the vast glossy space that heaven calls a penthouse, which he’s pretty sure is just a fancier word for apartment. It earns him a grin that implies that he’s some kind of hero for doing so, which is a flawed notion for two reasons. For one, the seraphim must have known as well as he that he wasn’t actually going to say no. Secondly, he didn’t make much of a hero when he was actively trying to be one. It seems doubtful that he’d be able to pull it off now, on total accident.
There isn’t even supposed to be a “now” for him.
Emily walks over to the couch like nothing’s wrong. Which is fair, because really, is anything wrong? Pentious is in heaven, where everything is objectively perfect, and these are merely the sulky, melodramatic whinings of someone who doesn’t know how to appreciate a good thing when he gets it. Everything is fine! So what if it doesn’t feel like it? It definitely, doubtlessly, objectively is.
Well, it is apart from whatever has Emily down. Pentious should try and do something about that, because she’s an angel and if he doesn’t–
Nothing will happen if he doesn’t, for he and Emily are friends. She’s kind and good and sweet and stunningly perfect, the way angels were always meant to be. He’s honored to be in her presence and, more importantly, touched to be her friend. And they are friends! Which is why he’s going to set his own nonsense aside and take her burden upon himself, because –
there are better people being left to rot in hell, and they would surely do so much more.
– they are friends.
Thus, Pentious only lingers in the doorway for a short while before making his way over to the pristine white couch Emily has sat down on. He offers her his most not-uncomfortable smile as he sits down next to her.
She responds by grinning ear-to-ear and grabbing his hand. That definitely isn’t uncomfortable either.
…Except for maybe, possibly, just a little bit, the way Emily’s smile looks like it’s been burnt into place by one of Cherri’s bombs.
“How are you enjoying your wings?” she asks. “I noticed you haven’t been flying much. I could give you lessons if you’d like.”
Pentious pulls his newfangled wings in closer to his back. It doesn’t make them feel any less alien, but it… hmm… well…
It accomplishes nothing. But it looks like it may have, and with a frustrated angel smiling at him with such excitement, that’s what matters.
“Perhaps later.” He gives Emily’s hand a squeeze, the sort of squeeze that says the squeezee didn’t do anything wrong, before gently, inoffensively, pulling his hand out of hers. “I would like to know if you’re okay first.”
Emily lets out a burst of shrill laughter. “Okay? Oh, of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“Miss Emily, you are a very kind person.”
“Thank you!”
“So I can’t imagine that everything could be okay if you find yourself in a situation where you need to control your temper.”
Emily’s smile falls.
Pentious’s nerves feel an awful lot like a gaggle of eggs running around his head, crying for attention. He ignores them just like he ignored the actual eggs before they got all scrambled and burnt, squeezing Emily’s hand again and continuing, “Because you are kind, and have been kind to me, I would like to know what has you feeling bad. If you are open to sharing.”
Emily deflates with a sigh, folding a set of wings over her midsection and wrapping her arms around them to boot. “You’re the kind one, Pentious.” She purses her lips in an admirable effort to keep her scowl from returning. He knows it to be an effort because of how abysmally it fails. Which, it may have been rather nice to know that she can abysmally fail at something were it not for her asking, “You know how you asked if anyone died?”
Pentious’s eyes go wide. “Has there been an accident?”
Not in heaven, surely, but what of hell? Emily is perhaps the only angel liable to care about a disaster down there. The number of hellish denizens who she knows and cares for is limited, but they do exist.
And each of them is Pentious’s friend.
“A divine accident,” Emily grumbles.
“Sorry?” Pentious chokes out.
A divine accident? What could that mean? An exorcist gone rogue? An archangel lost control? Perhaps heaven is falling because a sinner has set foot in the skies above and soon all of hell will be obliterated because Pentious forgot that he was never really a Sir, let alone a hero, and now–
“Nothing, it’s just…” Emily’s giggle sounds like it comes through gritted teeth. Pentious is too caught up in visions of destruction to blink. “It turns out you weren’t the only one to come back.”
Pentious blinks. The burning streets of hell are gone, leaving him back in heaven, in his pristinely perfect penthouse. He stares at the angel beside him, trying to decipher the meaning of her words.
She stares at the wall, looking rather…
Constipated?
Surely that can’t be right. Not for this?
“Another sinner appeared in heaven? As an angel?” Pentious tentatively inquires. “Please forgive my impudence, Miss Emily, but wouldn’t that be a good thing?”
Emily shuffles in blatant discomfort. “It’s more like the, um, opposite. An angel appeared in hell. As a sinner.” She looks down at her lap. “Adam.”
Oh.
Oh.
“Oh,” Pentious says rather embarrassingly loudly. He closes his jaw with a snap, sucks in a breath, and forces a smile. “Well, that isn’t too bad, is it? Charlie always believed in second chances for everyone. Especially when it’s… roughly what they deserve. Why shouldn’t that include my murderer?” He nods sharply. “I wish Adam a happy second life in hell.”
Which is forever, according to some sources.
Emily sucks in a breath through her teeth. “That’s the thing. Adam… isn’t in hell.”
Pentious tenses. “What?”
“He came to the embassy and asked Sera to let him back into heaven as soon as he reconstituted. And she kinda… did.”
From there, Emily assures Pentious that Adam isn’t his problem and he’ll never, ever have to see him. Then she starts talking about something else that he can’t hear beyond the ringing in his ears. Finally, she convinces him to go flying with her, because what else is he going to do? Say no to someone who’s been nothing but kind to him?
He doesn’t feel any which way about any of it. Everything is perfect, which means that everything is fine. And that’s all that matters.
*
Once, Pentious lived in a hotel that was messy and chaotic and full of noise. Now, he lives in a penthouse that’s spick and span and nothing but peaceful.
It’s the emptiest place he’s ever been.
*
In theory, no one except for the seraphim know where Pentious lives. He isn’t under house arrest, as Emily has repeatedly assured him. The seraphim merely thought that it would be for the best that heaven get used to his presence on hell’s streets during the day, accompanied by Emily, before people start visiting him in private. Not that he would be put in danger by opening himself to strangers! No one is ever in danger in heaven, under any circumstances, ever. It’s just a matter of keeping everyone comfortable.
In theory, which he’s fairly certain that Emily thinks is practice.
In actual practice, he’s pretty sure that it was only a matter of time until an enraged angel kicked down his door and pinned him to the wall. Such is the sort of inevitability that he has no choice but to roll over and let happen. He merely wishes that the angel in question wasn’t quite as ferocious as the striking woman with a golden arm and a scowl fit for a predator.
Okay, it would also be nice if she wouldn’t kill him. He will admit that his continued survival would be ideal.
“What have you done to Adam, you fiend?” the angel in question snarls.
…Okay. He’d also prefer if he didn’t have to think about the man who murdered him the first time as he stares down the barrel of his second death.
Was he this calm when the head exorcist cut him down?
If Pentious had gotten the chance to speak to him, would his voice have been befuddlingly steady as it is when he says, “I dare say that he did more to me than I did to him.”
The angel adjusts her arm to press down on his throat rather than his clavicle. For some bizarre and – dare he say it – unwise heavenly reason, it doesn’t hurt the way it ought to.
“Save your lies,” she growled. “You defiled the First Man and made him like you.”
“F–First of all–”
The grip on his neck tightens.
With his last breath of air, Pentious gasps out, “Ican’tgiveyouanswersifyouwon’tlet mespeak!”
The angel pulls back abruptly. Pentious’s tail goes limp beneath him, and although his wings flare out in an attempt to catch him, it comes a few seconds too late. He hits the ground in a graceless pile of feathers and coils, so dizzy and breathless that he barely manages to catch the angel’s smug smirk.
“So you admit that you have answers,” she says.
“I may have theories,” Pentious wheezes as he pushes himself back up. “I can’t claim to know heaven better than an exorcist, but I know the mechanisms of hell. If you wish to know how Adam came to be the way he is now, I may be able to paint a picture.”
No matter how obvious it may seem. Which is neat; Pentious has never been excited to explain something obvious before, yet he finds his stomach warming at the thought of explaining exactly why Adam is a sinner. He even finds the corner of his mouth curling up, almost as if…
No, none of that. He will provide this angel with answers out of kindness and kindness alone, even if she is sneering down at him like he’s the most disgusting thing to ever crawl out of the pits of hell.
It’s what Charlie would do.
“I don’t care how it happened, I want to know how to undo it,” the angel snaps.
This is where Pentious happens upon a conundrum, or rather, another conundrum to add to the veritable labyrinth of conundrums that has presented itself to him. Good people believe that honesty is the best policy, but he has a sneaking feeling that honesty will get him slammed against a wall again. But lying is what a sinner would do. Pentious must still be sinful somewhere in the depths of his soul, but he’s no longer a sinner. And that means…
That means that he must do what Charlie would do.
Regardless of how severely he has doubted Charlie’s wisdom from time to time.
“There is no undoing damnation,” Pentious says, his hiss perhaps a shade stronger than usual. “Adam may be able to redeem himself–” Is what Charlie will say. “–But I doubt–”
“I was a fool to let you speak,” the angel interrupts. “Tainted souls like you are incapable of anything but spouting lies.”
“And Adam is not tainted?” is not what Charlie would say. It’s not what Pentious would say if even two of his brain cells were functional.
But it leaves his mouth regardless, and by the time he realizes just how superbly he fucked up, the angel is shrieking, “Only because of you! Adam is the strongest soul I have ever met. He never lies, he never falters, and he– as long as he does it, it isn’t a fucking sin.”
There’s something about the way she says it, the sheer reverence, that pulls Pentious’s heart back to the place he can’t bear for it to be.
Pentious has long thought that he could not have a single thing in common with an exorcist angel. Even Vaggie, ex-orcist that she is, felt further away from him than anyone at the hotel, save perhaps for Alastor. Yet as he looks at the murderous psychopath staring him down, he sees in her perhaps the only thing that matters. Breathless days and sleepless nights, words he thought he’d never be able to spit out despite being engraved into his very soul.
“You’re in love with him,” he says.
“That’s none of your business,” the angel hisses.
The reverence is gone now. In its place is disgust, the same with which she looks at Pentious, along with a desperation and despair that is best saved for horror movies about valiant men turned into slathering monsters. It had been there the entire time, but now that he has caught a glimpse of something so much brighter, it becomes something else entirely, the near-vindictive warmth he’d felt earlier turning cold and hollow.
“Is that why you’ve come to me?” Pentious asks. “Because you can no longer love Adam if you find him imperfect?”
The angel’s lips part. Her eyes shine with something strong enough to make him think that there might be more to her than a bloodthirsty sadist. Something, might – the words that hang in the air, for she storms off before they can turn into anything more concrete.
Pentious doesn’t tell Emily or Sera about what happened. It was inevitable, after all.
*
In the empty quiet of his perfect apartment, Pentious has plenty of room to think.
He doesn’t think about the man who murdered him, whose condition is absolutely not his problem.
He doesn’t think about the angel who speaks in the same tones as him, whose mistakes are her own to make.
He certainly doesn’t think about the girl he spoke of the same way, who he may never see again.
Eventually, he realizes that it’s easier not to think at all.
*
Pentious isn’t supposed to leave the penthouse without Emily. Most of the time he listens.
Sometimes he ends up wondering why he isn’t still in hell.
Actually, he wonders about that almost constantly, but sometimes he performs a deceitful action that really emphasizes the point. Case in point: sneaking out unaccompanied because he feels like he’ll peel his skin off if he can’t get some fresh air in private. And considering that he hasn’t felt the urge to shed since appearing in heaven, that’s really saying something.
He doesn’t plan on going far. Slither down the street here, turn the corner there, find a nice nook or cranny to curl up in and ru–
Not ruminate! Rumination will get him nowhere, so he’s definitely not going to do that. Sulking will probably summon Emily, the way it always seems to do, so he’ll probably just… curl up and not keep on not thinking about anything. Yes, he’ll do that. Brilliant plan.
Except when he finds a nice, secluded little park in which to execute his brilliant plan, he finds it already occupied by…
Himself?
No, not himself. The person curled into a tight coil of misery beneath a sprawling oak tree is a snake sinner, but he’s actually still a sinner, no wings or halo in sight. He’s big, too, with pudgy features and a cobra-like tail that looks like it could crush Pentious into a gross paste. Pentious, whose palette has become an unfortunate grey and gold, not the striking red and black of this fellow.
That’s the other thing. Striking. When the sinner lifts his head, his face contorts into such disgust that Pentious thinks he might be about to sink his fangs into his neck. He’s pretty sure that he wouldn’t do that to himself, freaky dream-hallucination-thing or not.
“The fuck are you?” the sinner spits.
Pentious’s lips curl into a tight smile, which is weird, because he doesn’t want to be smiling right now. Smiling is when things are good and happy and you like things! Well, he’s pretty sure that he knows the thing that’s happening here and he doesn’t like it. At. All.
On the bright side, Adam doesn’t look like he likes it either, so maybe they can just part ways?
Pentious tries to do just that, only to be stopped by the former angel’s shout of, “Don’t walk away when I asked you a question, you fucker!”
Then comes the sound of something big slithering after him, then the familiar flopping of cursing of a new sinner getting caught up in their own tail.
Pentious grimaces for so, so, so many reasons. Absolutely none of them justify him turning around, but that happens anyway.
Rumination. He blames the rumination swimming in the back of his mind, using up what little intelligent thought he has as he’s forced to shove it back in the big ugly Pandora’s box of his brain. That leaves him staring blankly at the big admittedly-not-ugly sinner writhing on the ground, clawing at his own tail as he tries to save himself from the very literal knot that he’s on the verge of tying himself into.
Once he’s no longer on the verge of cracking one of his vertebrae, Adam pushes himself upright, points at Pentious, and snarls, “How the hell did you get into heaven?”
Because his brain is too busy with the box to think properly, Pentious says, “I could ask you the same thing.”
Adam hisses, the deep, guttural hiss of an offended cobra. His bright orange eyes and the hood flaring out on the sides of his neck turn him into quite the image… for about four seconds. Then he cuts himself off, slapping his hands over his mouth and pulling his hood in tight.
He only lowers his hands a few inches to say, “You don’t get to judge me, you basssstard freak asssshole.” Even then, his hiss is strong enough to make his words almost unintelligible.
“I’m not judging you,” Pentious tiredly assures him. He doesn’t know when exactly he got tired, but all of a sudden he’s very, very tired. It’s weird, and weirder still that he doesn’t even feel scared when he pauses and adds, “I might be judging you a little bit for murdering me, but…”
Buuuuuut he really shouldn’t be finishing that sentence. He’s already said enough stupid things over the past few days without taunting the genocidal maniac. If there was ever someone who could figure out how to kill an angel as an unarmed sinner, it’s probably Adam. Pentious gets the impression that he’s really good at the whole killing thing.
Besides, Charlie would be disappointed if he kicked the murderer while he was down.
She must be so disappointed in him.
Pentious smiles politely. “I think I’m going to go ahead and leave you to your rumination. Have a nice night, Adam.”
Maybe Pentious’s hiss comes through a little stronger than unusual on the ‘nice’. Adam might look a little bit like he’s been slapped at the sound of it, as if he doesn’t already look weirdly pathetic for such a violent brute. But who can be blamed for that? He might not be a sinner any longer, but Pentious is still a snake. A little hissing is going to happen. He doesn’t mean anything by it, really. He isn’t going to do anything.
Even as the sound of broken cursing follows him as he heads back home.
It’s not his problem.
He’s not Charlie.
*
Pentious lives in a lovely, lonely penthouse. It’s painful in its perfection, and all he’s ever known of heaven.
He wonders how much worse it would be if he’d known something better first.