Death is a black pit where nothing hurts, because nothing exists to hurt. It was no time at all, but every time I woke from it I felt like I could remember the nothingness swollen around me like a heavy blanket.

Death is like a dip, a bridge. I was on the couch and could feel my empty stomach and my loud thoughts, and the scratchy, worn fabric of the couch rub against my calves. Then death. Then Earth, and something new.

My old mind caught up to me a few seconds after my blood had begun to run again, and the old familiar patterns began to race. I'd just killed myself, for one, but in front of Christina- I guess to prove a point, to make her feel bad, but had never done anything that rash in front of her before. She must have hated me now.

And it didn't solve any of my problems, either, and I should have just left Hell forever, but then I'd be a person with no name at all, and that would be worse than anything the city could do to me.

I returned to Hell as soon as I could, and then paused in the elevator. At the end of the hall, the fake-light from the city illuminated the blue teal tiles like a lazy summer day at the bottom of a swimming pool, and the city guard watched me with apprehensions. ('Didn't see you leave', he said. He was an angel, so he would have remembered. He was an angel, so he was too polite to press, too.)

What I really should have done was go somewhere else, and I knew it. At the orphanage where I'd grown up, there was someone I once loved very much, and though she didn't care to deal with me, I knew she'd tolerate it if I sat down and cried on her doorstep. And my sister, too, at her hobbled together bar the Purgatory Café... She didn't care for me, and the fallen would mock, but if came down to it she'd probably listen. I could tell her so many things I've thought about over the years, some of them apologies, but most of them old memories.

As my mind wears thin, I worry one day I'll forget everything only I know.

Heck, it might even be happening now.

But I am no one without Hell, these days.

When I sat on the favorite meeting room table of The Few, I was feeling, at the very least, stable. They weren't technically The Few anymore, I guess, but it was an old habit, and a fun way to remind them how shitty a name that had ever been in the first place.

Then again, Hell didn't really give a shit about hiding how corrupt their government was. I'd slammed the glass door open, cracking it in the process, and jumped onto the long table. Some man was giving a talk, graphs involved. Who cared. Kell was here, and as he was the first person I'd spotted I knew, I'd gone to speak to him about the. The Situation.

"I have plenty to say to you," Kell said, his voice dripping with contempt. The man who'd been leading the meeting at least seemed alarmed, but Kell almost looked like he'd been expecting me. "Later. And you'll have to pay for that door- though I'm afraid, with the money you'll be paying to clean your apartment, you won't have enough funds."

"What're you going to do to me? I'm literally unstoppable." To a point. If he killed me, that would blow the whole 'secret immortal' thing into the mainstream eye, which we'd agreed wouldn't go over well. If he wanted to break bone, that was fair game.

"Trust me, I'm aware. Out."

"Kelly, I make the rules."

"Michael, I am physically capable of knocking you unconscious, and I wouldn't hesitate to break your legs if it came down to it. This is an important meeting," Kell said. We were having our back and forth to the stares of his lower employees, whose gazes followed us the crowd at a tennis match. "Important in that it is my job, which I do to get paid, and keep the city running. See, I have a responsibility."

"Responsibility," I repeated dryly. "How long will this take?"

"The longer you stay here, the further the end becomes." At least I could respect Kell, I guess, in his stuffed up suit and too-fancy tie. He certainly knew how to speak like every word might've been the last thing he'd say before he killed you.

I sulked off to the hall and slumped on the floor, and waited there until the clicking of shoes I couldn't afford and never would wear informed me Kell was waiting for me to stand up.

"I made things quick," he said, adjusting his tie, "Just for you."

Didn't really get what that meant. "Look, I'm sorry for what happened."

"Why are you apologizing to me?" He watched as I slowly stood up, and then followed me into the emptied meeting room. We sat opposite from each other. "Christina's the one who's traumatized, and I," Kell sighed, and that man could sigh. It sounded like the depths of his lungs were being scraped clean by his exhale. "Michael, you have a problem. I think you need a job."

"A job," I repeated, dumbstruck.

"Christina... she's deathly afraid of blood. Triggered by it, I suppose, would be the right word. She's been sick all afternoon, and still trying to convince me you didn't mean it," Kell said, huffy. "I've read the texts. I know you. I don't care if you apologize, because I wouldn't believe you if you did. What does matter to me is that you're fixed, that this attention problem and downward spiral is addressed and maintained."

"You really think a job is going to solve my- me?"

"I think you need someone to tell you, actually, no: you are awful, entitled, and too-cared for by a girl who really should spend her time fretting about better people. You are not the only mentally ill person in the world, but you might just be the most annoying." I wanted to quip something there, about how he shouldn't say that sort of thing, but you know: in the adult world, people are always saying things like that. And it was true, besides. And probably Kell had been through some shit too. "I could find you a place on the board."

Being in the same room as him made me feel both like a child and a hell of a lot older. "And what then? I don't know anything about economics, or running a government. I can barely stand reading, and am a rotten writer too. And who says I'm going to bother showing up at all?"

"I'm not saying it'll be a legitimate one. It would be something light. Simple. But you'd have to come in every day, and sit in on our meetings. You'd be good as a sort of 'angelic consultant'," Kell said, "Flatly, I have no interest in helping you, no attachment. I'm a little past empathy for you at this point. But I'm willing to offer you this."

"Why?" I asked. "Christina?"

"Basic goddamn human dignity," he said. "And a heroic sense I might be able to do some good. And, yes, a kind concern for an overworked friend. I did read your texts."

"You read them, huh."

"What's your end game? What do you truly believe will happen- she'll be too traumatized and worn down to resist you? That she'll reveal she's been in love with you the entire time? Listen, Michael," Kell's voice got unexpectedly soft, genuinely concerned. Gross. "I understand more about you than you might think. I know what it's like to be aimless. And setting up structure for yourself, even a stifling, boring one, will help more than you'd expect."

"Right," I said. Didn't even have to think about it. "No."

"I'm trying to help."

"No. I don't need your help, and I don't want to do anything for you, or with you. I'm fine."

"You just killed yourself, violently, in front of your best friend. Who was covered in blood, feinted, and is now suitably traumatized. And this was after two weeks of not showering, not eating, barely moving, because you'd brutally murdered a double of yourself and left the corpse to rot in your bathroom. You've rarely been fine, Michael, but certainly not now."

"No."

"Let me do this for you," Kell said, the kindness in his voice melting back to that rigid, authoritative accent he always had about him.

"Absolutely not," I said. I should've, but I wasn't going to, and that was all I had to say about that. "Take me to the Gremon."

"The man." Kell didn't seem surprised by my switching of the subject. "Alastair Andres is his name. What are you planning to do with him?"

"Find out why he wanted to kill Doppel. Clear that stuff up." I stood up and made like I was going to leave, but paused by the door. Didn't know where I was going, and waited there until Kell tapped me on the shoulder. He was at least a foot taller than me, somewhere in the upper realms of six feet. I was only a bit taller than Christina, and the height gap between them was another reason I didn't want them as a couple. Actually: "You're so fucking tall. If you married Chrissie, you guys wouldn't be able to share a wedding photo."

"I have no interest in marrying Christina. And we already know why Alastair was looking for the doppel- and he won't be pleased to talk to you about it."

Kell started walking down the hall, to the elevator, though I was wondering if he was actually taking me to talk to the green demon or not. Yes, sure, if I got too provoked I might attack him. But I was unarmed, and feeling a lot better post-mortem.

"You know, I'd probably feel a lot better if you would clear the air about your thing with Chrissie. Don't think it should happen, but I'd like to know if it is. You know, if she's taken, or..."

Kell sighed with exasperation. "Why are you so obsessed with this? Her, I understand. Your only emotional link slash person willing to put up with you. Why do you think we are in any way romantically involved? And why are you so utterly obsessed with the notion, even when we both deny it?" He was not shy about glaring at me as we stood in the elevator, heading down. I mostly watched the wine red carpet floor.

"Sounds like you're hiding something."

"Sounds like I'm sick of you. I've tried to help. I've said my bit. And I have a meeting in ten minutes." By the time I worked up the nerve to stare at Kell back, he was looking at his nails, pulling at the cuticles. "Christina was once a direct employee of mine, and even now below me in rank. Beyond this, she is nearly a third my age."

"I know you two have slept together before," I said, which was true, and it was well timed to the ding of the doors. This was one of the lower floors I'd never been to, where a good number of employees did some kind of work, I guess. There were a lot of people about who stared as we crossed through an open-space office, heading to a small backroom.

"Vastly inappropriate," Kell said dismissively, seeming to hurry his step so the conversation would end quicker.

I don't know why I'm obsessed with them as a couple, by the way. I don't know a lot of things I ought to. I guess it's because it (Kell) is another one of those things that Chrissie likes that I will never be able to understand or partake in. Like subtitled anime, or Homestuck. Though those are mostly about me being a shit reader, and not about being capable of having a fulfilling life and a relationship that isn't ruined.

They probably weren't going to end up together, at least not happily, but already they were both so much better than me. And so Chrissie had said a thing about it, said she really really liked him, how he was a good friend. Handsome. Truth worthy. Treated her as an equal for once, not a young and silly girl. And I was sitting there, her best friend, feeling like, yeah, I didn't do any of those things.

Blah, blah. Kell opened the door, and at the desk, not even with a guard, was the green demon. Well, no, he was black and angular, and fairly average looking. His hair was shaved close to his head, there was a bandage over most of his forehead, suggesting his capture had not gone over well. And then on his check, like... well, like a block, was a green block. A tattoo of a forrest rectangle, inexplicably just plain there. He had his horns out, small little points, and I noted they had a bit of green in them. I wondered which had come first.

"Alastair. This is the man who-" Kell weirdly glanced to me, weirdly put a strange amount of emphasis on man, too, if I'm complaining. As if he doubted I was one! "The man who killed your sister."