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Henley fell, and in falling knew he had failed. Mostly.
If it came down to it, he had said not an hour earlier, he would sacrifice himself to get his son’s soul coin out of hell. That was the noble thing to do. The good thing to do. It had been nice to be righteous about something for a while.
It had not felt good nor righteous to pass Gregothy’s soul coin to Ghoul. It had not felt like something a good and righteous father would do, never mind a good man. It had felt like the breaking of an illusion.
The impact was inevitable. What goes up must come down, what flies up and away from the remains of the Happy Boys must eventually join them.
Wind, or what passed for wind in hell, whistled past and the ground was right there and briefly Henley wondered if his last broken and battered soul life meant anything at all now that they were fighting hell itself and wondered too about the places in which his bones might crack upon impact, and then he didn’t wonder at all.
Later, much later, Henley’s eyes cracked open in spite of themselves. He was greeted by a room, earthy and unassuming and familiar. The third layer, his foggy brain reminded himself. Thunden’s hideout. It was morning, judging by the light streaming in through the faded curtains. He didn’t think about how alive he still appeared to be. He would just have to be fine.
An angelic glow had sequestered itself in a chair in the corner and was snoring quietly. The longer Henley stared, the more the glow began to remake itself into the shape of a winged goliath, at once familiar and strange. The way Henley felt hollow with something stronger than relief was familiar enough, however.
At once he wasn’t sure what to do. An impasse, said the part of his brain still grasping onto the dregs of the Henley from before. Shut up, said the rest of him. You don’t need fancy words to listen to reason and let the poor man sleep. Get a hold of yourself.
With a wince, a grimace and a prayer, Henley got up and cut a painstaking path to the kitchen. Once there, he found a note in familiar scrawling handwriting lying on the table.
Have ventured forth to get more milk and attend war conference with other archdevils. Will return whenever they stop arguing. Don’t wait up.
E
So there was that.
Henley gave up on breakfast. It wasn’t like he needed to eat anyway, not that any of the Happy Boys had really noticed that fact during their mad struggle through the layers. It had all happened so fast, with barely a dozen rests between them.
And it was over now, and Henley had all the time in the world to rest. It was fine, he supposed, as he lit the fire in the stove and shuffled back to the living room.
Sitting idle was something Henley didn’t excel at. For all his talk of meditation and mindfulness, actual quiet was something to be avoided or filled. The quiet now, in the room with him and the angelic being who might or might not still be his best friend, was suffocating. When there was noise, there was action, opportunities to prove himself again and again.
Lately Henley had been wondering a bit too much about who he was proving himself to. It seemed dangerous.
The angelic being who might or might nor still be his best friend stirred, and soon those luminous eyes alighted on Henley. For a moment, a beautiful shining iridescent moment, everything was fine. The hells righted on their axis, the birds sand concertos and Henley could face the silence, could face it all if he could keep those eyes on him. They were very blue. They were very bright.
Then the angelic being blinked and rubbed its eyes, and it was Gluebrick. Bloody paladins with their bloody auras. Nevertheless, Henley was relieved.
Gluebrick was smiling very wide and very soft in a way Henley wished the goliath would allow himself to more often. At a loss as to the cause of this smile, Henley opted for the easiest way out of the silence:
“Good morning, Gluebrick.”
“Mornin, Henley.” Casual and easy as every day until now. Henley did not feel casual.
“What...” There wasn’t much else to the thought really. Henley settled for that. “Yes, actually, what?”
“Oh, right!” Gluebrick started, seeming to realise that Henley had been conscious for rather few of the recent, hell-shattering events. “Well, we tried to catch you, Eric and I, only you were moving quite fast and I don’t know how gravity works in hell, but I would assume you would have been a gonner otherwise and even so you were quite close to- ”
Gluebrick paused, and Henley knew what must have happened. The smile had disappeared, so by god he will get it back. Disarm and distract.
“I know how gravity works, Gluebrick. Where’s Eric, then?” He asked instead.
The goliath paused. “I don’t know. He had a lot to say about Asmodeus before he left, though. Sounded like the other archdevils weren’t too pleased with the sod either, what with all the political words he was using, like ´alliance´. Or, um, ´mid-meeting refreshments´. Something like that.”
A short silence followed as Henley digested the utter lack of actual information.
“I can fly now,” Gluebrick added.
The wings flapped and Gluebrick was sitting next to Henley, as if to illustrate the point. He had to laugh.
“I am aware of the fact, yes.” The smile couldn’t quite find it’s way back onto his face. “You seem... fine, actually, all things considered.”
The goliath’s expression morphed into one Henley assumed was worried, and he immediately regretted saying anything. The sun caught Gluebrick’s hair and it shone red in the ten-o-clock light. Gluebrick the winged, Gluebrick the untouchable, Gluebrick who had all his problems healed the moment he hit the ground. A sickness was gathering in Henley’s stomach.
“Of course I’m not fine, Henley,” Gluebrick said slowly, surprisingly, destroying all Henley’s jealousy in one fell swoop. “I mean, Ghoul’s up in Faerun without us, and that really, really isn’t fine. I miss him, okay? And I miss Eric too, even though he was here yesterday, because he’s not really Eric anymore? Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Henley added quietly in agreement. He didn’t want to think about it all, not like this, not on such a lovely day. It’d be such a waste.
But that was an excuse, a lie. So Henley sat and listened instead.
“And I met my mother, briefly, which was lovely, right? But she’s not going to stick around for forever in Hell, when she belongs in Celestia.” Gluebrick was in his own world now, staring not at Henley but past him and talking to the air.
“But there’s also a lot to be proud of, if that makes sense? I’m proud of Ghoul and proud of Eric and so proud of you and also we might have actually started some kind of revolution amongst the archdevils- ”
“We have?”
“Yep.”
“Good for us, I suppose.”
“Yep.”
Why was this awkward? Why did Henley feel like choking? Why were there no words to be found, when words were all Henley was? The silence stretched on. The birds still sang outside the window.
Almost of it’s own accord, Henley’s heart settled on the right words before his mind could keep up.
“I love you.” And as if that wasn’t mortifying enough: “Please don’t go to Celestia without me.”
Gluebrick smiled as if Henley hadn’t just thrown himself off a metaphorical cliff.
“Yeah, love you too mate. And do you seriously think that’s an option?”
Henley was falling apart at the seams. How, after all this, could Gluebrick not understand?
“No,” he said slowly, spelling it out, “I love you. How do you not get it?”
Gluebrick regarded him for a brief moment, a lifetime. “I think you’re the one who’s bein thick here, Henley. I already said, I love you too. How do you not get it?”
“I don’t, do I,” was all the answer there was to that.
And all there was to do was to finally think for a while. Face covered by hands, finally his own hands but covered in turn in tears, Henley felt himself crumbling. This was not fine. So much had changed, so much had gone so right only for it all to go wrong, and he was the one getting left behind again. For a short while he had belonged somewhere, really belonged, and now even that was gone. No purpose to this not-quite-life, this last soul-life that didn’t really mean a thing. Failure, his mind threw at him over and over.
Gluebrick, calmly sitting by, briefly put his arm around Henley and patted him. “You’ll figure it out, mate. You can do this.”
And over the cacophony of thoughts heard in another voice: his own voice, suddenly, for what felt like the first time. You have a friend who loves you. He’s a complete idiot, and hopelessly strange, but so are you. Doesn’t that just sound perfect?
At some point Henley became aware of time passing, a vague sense of second hand embarrassment and the fact that Gluebrick seemed to be pottering round the room, attempting to look busy and clean the occasional jar of herbs. The whole charade was endearing, if utterly pointless, as the only two people present were both very aware that Henley had just had a small breakdown. There was no getting away from that with household chores.
“We’re not tail buddies any more,” Henley said in lieu of anything sensible. He got up and joined Gluebrick by the window, looked out at an as yet untouched part of the third layer undergrowth.
“I could ask Thunden to polymorph me one,” the goliath answered, as if it was a genuine thing he’d do, as if it was obvious. He smiled, and it was so endearing that Henley had to stop himself from hugging him. Then, realising he probably didn’t have to do that, he simply wrapped his arms around Gluebrick.
Then Gluebrick did the unthinkable and kissed him.
The world reknit itself into a different one where this was a possibility. How had this not been a possibility before? Why did people give a damn about the real heaven or hell when this, surely, was heaven? Gluebrick was soft and overwhelming and utterly sincere and Henley was afloat in it all.
Vaguely Henley was aware of standing stock-still, unmoving, and realised that it probably wasn’t the best way to react. He tightened his arms, moved one hand up to Gluebrick’s hair (earning a happy little sigh in return) and poured all his endearment, which was actually probably love, wasn’t it, into the kiss.
They broke apart for a breath, for damage control, to check the other was still real. Gluebrick was nodding emphatically, wings fluttering haphazardly around then.
“More of that, please,” he said, and Henley couldn’t help but kiss him again through his laughter.
“I agree. For once.” Silence, no longer a thing to be feared, stretched out as they regarded one another. Gluebrick’s eyes were a luminous blue.
“Come to Celestia with me,” he asked.
“I don’t know if I can,” Henley replied.
“Well,” Gluebrick said, voice breaking just barely, “We won’t know until we try.”