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She does not sleep as well as she used to, not since the battle. Some nights are peaceful. A deep, dreamless sleep that wreaths her in its cool embrace and carries her to dawn, but those are few and far between. In the months since the battle, she has spent most of her nights haunted by him.
His eyes, his laugh, his hands crushing her throat. His shadow cast on her home from high above. The flash of light that reduces her friends to ash. It is most often a distant echo, but now and then, it is as if she's been dragged back to that terrifying moment, with his hands set like steel around her throat, laughing as he kills her.
When she lay her head down tonight, she said a small prayer for peace. She did not know who to, certainly not heaven, but to anyone listening who would answer. Maybe Auntie Belphegor. She hoped so.
The last thing she registered was the smell of Vaggie's hair, and the softness of her wings pressed between them.
~
No peace. She was walking, to where she did not know, but she could only go forward. It was too steep to step back. The ground was uneven and slippery, but each time she felt she might fall, her foot found purchase at the last moment.
This was not what she had dreamt of for months. It was something different, but so far there was no sign of him, and for that alone it was better.
Something touched her! She recoiled, stumbling away, trying to squint and see what had done so. Nothing. For a moment, she thought to step closer to see, but as she did, a red glow began to burn at the corner of her eyes, dragging her attention downward. It was far, too far to see what caused it, but the shadows seemed to dance around it, to writhe and twist and squirm at its edge.
She did not want to know what it was; she did not care. She wanted to wake up, to clutch Vaggie close and try again for peace; it had been too long since she had had it.
Yet she found herself turning towards it anyway. Her steps were more hurried now, and a chill crept through her as if she were being followed, but that couldn't be. It was just a dream! Just a stupid nightmare, another curse the First Man and his cruelty had inflicted on her. Even in death, he haunted her, and she wanted nothing more than to be rid of him.
Something grabbed her arm, no, someone, she could feel their fingers! She pulled against them, turning her head toward the source. In an instant, the smothering silence was snuffed out. A hundred thousand eyes tore open from the black walls, blood red, staring into her soul, with wails of despair rising in an agonized chorus. There were hundreds upon thousands of arms and hands sprung from the walls, all reaching out to her, wringing and clawing and grasping in desperation. She screamed, but it was drowned out utterly. The hand that held her arm would not let go, squeezing so tightly that it felt like it would tear her arm from its socket. Then suddenly she was wrenched free, vaguely aware of the receding feeling of a coiled tentacle around her stomach.
‘Go, do not stop.’ A voice not her own echoed in her mind, and suddenly, before her was a clear path into the angry red glow at this hellish maze's center.
She stumbled toward it, trying to evade the frantic hands that grasped for her. Their screams sent shudders down her spine, the mixture of despair and terror and lamentation drawing a steady river of tears from her eyes, but she could not stop. She was running now, unsure where her feet would land, yet she did not dare slow to place them more surely. The glow grew brighter, the air grew hotter, the crevice grew more and more narrow. The hands grasped and clawed and snatched at her, but she could feel them. Feel their pain. They were not malevolent, they were scared, terrified. They wanted someone to hold, someone to stay.
A voice slowly rose above the rest. A shrill voice, an angry voice, a frightened voice.
“What the fuck?! What the fuck?!”
His voice.
“Get off me! Get the fuck— Let go! Let go! Help!” He shrieked.
She burst through the writhing limbs, falling hard on her chest into the red glow.
“Help me! Please! Lute! Sera, someone, please!”
She gasped, greedily filling her lungs with air from the impact of her fall. It should not hurt so much; it should not feel so real. It was only a dream! Just a nightmare!
She turned her eyes up to the source of the voice.
He was held aloft against the wall by hundreds of arms, all grasping for whatever scrap of cloth or exposed skin they could find, anything to share their misery, to keep themselves from being alone.
His own eyes were manic, utter terror written on his face as plain as her own, which she had seen in the reflection off his mask.
Then his gaze found her.
“H-Hey, hey, you! What the fuck's going on?!” His voice trembled with panic and strain as he tried to pull an arm free from the writhing mass to reach out to her.
‘He put them here,’ The voice not her own whispered. ‘They want him to stay. It is so very frightening, alone in the dark.’
She looked at the architect of her misery. This man, this angel, who'd tried to murder her and her friends for naught but the crime of trying to save lives, and realized he was sinking into the sea of limbs.
He realized, too, thrashing harder, his voice breaking.
“For fuck sake, please! Please! Don't leave me like this! K-Kill— kill me! Kill me!”
She shakily pushed herself to her feet.
‘Decide. Will you go, will you help? Decide, you don't have long.’
More hands found purchase, restraining his own, pulling them beneath the surface. He thrashed, tears streaming down his cheeks, gnashing his teeth.
“I'm sorry!” He screamed. “I'm sorry, Charlie!”
It would be so easy to let him sink. To let the ocean of blood he had spilled drown him, to swallow him up whole, as if he'd never even existed at all.
The hands clasped over his mouth, muffling his screams, which left only his eyes wide open in horror.
He deserved it. He would reap what he'd sown, knowing only suffering and horror, even if it was just a dream. She would haunt him, as he had haunted her.
But that was not what she wanted. It never was.
Rushing forward, she pried at the mass of limbs that had clasped over him. She found his cassock, balled her fist up in it as well as she could, and threw herself back.
The hands clawed at his form, desperately trying to hold him in place, but she wrenched him free, feeling herself go tumbling backwards. In the next moment, there was only darkness, and she was falling, falling fast, into the utter blackness.
‘So that is what mercy is. I will... remember this.”
She fell, and fell, and fell, until she realized she was falling no more, the cool embrace taking her into its bosom, and slipping into a dreamless rest. What she had done, what she had seen, it swam hazily in her mind, becoming one with the darkness, until it faded entirely. There would be no more nightmares...
For her.
Somewhere in Hell, a new arrival opened his eyes.