Chapter Text
Hunched shoulders were Aki’s only indication that Angel had really heard him at all.
How long do I have?
Devils… They were often such creatures of such freedom. Chaos. Destruction. Unbound by the social customs of the humans they were often surrounded by. And so easily did they show it, leveling buildings, throwing cars, wiping out humans like they were ants beneath the rubber sole of their shoes…
Yet here one sat, shoulders weighted with just the smallest bit of information about a man who hated devils to his core. What was it to them?
Did they even care? It seemed like nothing could get them to give much of a shit about anything.
He was just another human speeding toward an inevitable end, right? A few days, months, weeks… What did it even matter anymore?
At the end of the day, Aki was just another passerby with a clock above his head, ticking down the seconds until he joined everyone he’d ever grown to love and care about.
It wasn’t even like Aki liked devils.
Then why did you reach out and save me?
The Angel Devil sat with the weight of death on their shoulders, pressing them lower until they felt like all they could really do was press themselves flat to the concrete. The heaviness of lives ending…
Would it crush them into the earth? Would they just leave a smear of blood and viscera on the ground?
How could a creature with wings fight such a heaviness?
Like lead in their bones, how could they rise?
They turned to face the man who easily gave up months of his life to touch their hand. To save them.
It was easier to stay numb. To not care. To avoid the work because the work meant more and more people dying.
For what? Weapons? More things to use to fight and kill and fight and kill and watch more and more people die over and over again…
Aki’s eyes reminded them of cold steel. Unforgiving. Unrelenting. A window into nothing more than an icy-steel wall. Reflective. Giving nothing away but anger. Frustration, maybe.
The burn of the Angel Devil’s eyes were almost enough to make Aki recoil at the sight of them. Devils were all the same, weren’t they?
So why did this one not relish in the pain and the chaos…? Why wouldn’t this one rush toward fresh blood to drink and replenish. Hell, even Denji did plenty of times, bathing his body and chainsaws in as much blood as he could just to keep himself alive to fight another day.
But not this one… They almost skirted around everyone, giving so much space that the idea of reaching out to touch them… It seemed impossible. An unblemished suit, white wings… The picture of something otherworldly. Above such things.
The memory of their hand clasped tightly against his own calloused palm burned its way back into his mind.
It didn’t feel like days and weeks being stripped away like a skinned knee, layers and layers of skin unfolding and peeling away to reveal something raw beneath it.
It just… felt like a hand. Warm. Almost clammy like that of someone who was nervous.
How could a devil even be nervous anyway?
Aki shook his head with a sigh.
“Let’s go,” he spoke decisively.
There was nothing left here for either of them.
And maybe that was a comfort of its own.