The trip down and up from Envy didn't actually take that long, and though TC was still half-heartedly panicking the whole time, it was fairly clear we were going to make it out of Hell with time to spare.

TC clutched her files close to her chest. She had grabbed a couple newspapers and books in addition to her favorite three files, and was struggling to hold them all while still supporting Wynona. I didn't bother offering to help.

"We should really figure something out for these kids." TC said. "You know, to care for them. Do you think your Michael knows anything about childcare? Because I fear for their lives otherwise. They need food, water, sleep, diapers, an environment that encourages learning. I don't know what else. But somehow I'm not comfortable about handing over kids this young to him. Or generally stealing kids. Still not okay with that either."

"They're mine to hand over anyway, so it doesn't matter what you think." I said.

The children had calmed down a bit, though still looked uncomfortable at being held by either of us. The infant squirmed in my arms. On suggestion from TC, we had wiped some of the caked blood off their faces and clothes, but there still was a rusty residue.

"Michael," I said, "Knows how to raise children. He raised us. He is our mother, after all, and even if you force the belief he used a bottled Grace to do it, you cannot deny that he created us."

"You never seem to bother with implications, do you? Like, following a thought and keeping it going for more than a sentence. It's remarkable." TC said, exasperated. "But about Michael. Is there any reason you refer to uh, him, as a mother figure instead of a father one?"

"Women, or at least angelic ones, are holy and pure. And Michael is holy and pure. So it is not a leap for him to be understood as a woman."

"Is he- are they?- a woman though? I mean, you say this but continue to use male pronouns."

"No, he's male. But he's also female. It is not hard to understand- after all, he ranks above the other angelic women. Naturally, this means he's ranked above the need to be one sex or the other. Michael is everything. It is a simple thing to understand."

She was quiet for a few minutes. "'Michael is everything'. Oh dear. I'm afraid we're starting to touch on something I've been meaning to talk to you about for a very long time now, and that you're going to absolutely hate me for when I'm done."

"I don't necessarily hate you." I said.

"I don't expect you to. Right now, that is. I just know that what I'm going to say is going to make you angry, and I just want to be upfront about that fact right now."

"Tell me, then."

"Let's wait until we're in the elevator. I'd hate for you to run away mid-sentence."

I decided to assume it was on purpose that TC, leading the way as always, took me down to Wrath just to use the elevator to the present Earth. I figured she just wanted the extra time to lecture me on whatever, otherwise she would have just taken the much shorter ride up from Pride.

I filled her in, briefly, on what I had been doing in the last few days- Purgatory, Marie, Michael's orders and Moll's disgusting half breeds. She didn't offer much for comments about anything.

It was only as the elevator doors in the lowest room in Hell slowly creaked shut that she seemed inspired with energy to chat. She carefully placed Wynona on the floor, and after a moments though, took off her coat for the child to sit on. Then she settled on the floor and spread her files and papers all around her like the worn metal floor was her desktop.

And then she spoke.

19.5-

"When you told me Alexander Scott, our great CEO and enigma of a leader, was actually immortal and looked like a kid, I wasn't surprised in the slightest. I already knew it.

I've told you before how, when I was a kid, my parents were collected the cycle before. But since I was already born the year the cycles always click back to, I was left still existing but very parentless. I was taken in after this. Raised by the Schulman's, my new parents, and pretty soon got to sorting files and collecting blackmail. Whatever, right?

But the trick here is that, well, I was born before the cycles started. I'm a universal constant. And I had a life before the cycles. And even though I was eight, I remember my life before hand pretty well.

It's really freaky, sometimes, to consider I've always had a life in each of the cycles. Like, I entirely existed. And there's a chance other demons out in the city knew me in one of those previous cycles, but I'd never have a way of remembering them. It kind of freaks me out. And makes me sad- I was taken in cycle nine. I had eight other lives before this, with my parents.

I'm not the first to have the landmark realization that in a world that keeps cycling itself but losing people, the world is going to be quite different each time around. Hell's long kept a squad of people who collected newspapers and videos and whatever each cycle's end to document what went where each cycle. Not much has ever been done with these files. But I've read them.

And it's through them that I discovered myself: a snippet of myself in a newspaper, written before the cycles even started.

Yes, there was a time before cycles. Think of it- there's only been nine of them. What, it's been one hundred and seventy-six years? Before the cycles, life was a different sort of pastime. And a less confusing one.

I want to just read this to you, but wow, I'm pretty nervous about it. So instead, here's this- another report by A. P. Scott. Also known as, by the way, Alexander Phineus Scott.

'I decided to sell my soul today-' That's the file, by the way, not me speaking- 'It's been long enough, and I'm still human. I was seventeen when I came to Hell. Twenty-one when I started my experiments. And now, at thirty-six, I think I'm starting to regret it.

I went in to check on my subjects for the first time in a long time. Hell's been keeping me busy enough. I don't know. I don't have an excuse. But it's the first time in a long time, and that's all that matters to me right now.

And I saw Michael there. And he looked so old and so happy to see me. He's younger than me, always has been, even if that's a pointless fact to state. But somehow he's always been meant to look much younger than me. And thirty-four does not suit him.

We've been keeping all our Grace experimentees (or is it just experiments?) in the lower levels. There's lots of room there, from construction I'd guess, and we really can fit a couple thousand down there. We have them doing some very boring work. Otherwise the people in the city might complain about all the resources I've been allocating towards them. Not like they don't complain enough already. Demons, though- what can you do?

The experiments have been moving pretty slowly. I have a couple aides who check in, of course, but otherwise we're not seeing much. Michael keeps the others together. Most of them seem to like him alright, but a good number have become quite disillusioned after fifteen years of this.

Despite Michael's insisting his following is... 'a boy's club' (those were literally his words) we've found a couple girls. He's excused one or two as being 'the girlfriend of a brother' or 'the younger sister of a girlfriend of a brother' but there's a good three others who we found disguised as boys. They claim gender shouldn't factor in following your faith. Alright. I'm just glad we now have some data on the effects of Grace on women. There's no difference in effect, by the way. That was the data we got.

So. Anyways. On the matter of selling souls, specifically mine: I was looking at Michael, and he was looking at me, and I started to feel all sappy and regretful and weak. M hasn't been around for a number of years. Real regret there. M would've punched me in the face and snapped me out of it.

I can't really explain what was going through my head. But I turned to my aide- her name was Stephanie Clearwater, a scientist and, regrettably, a succubus- and said something like:

'I wish everything was fixed. All this experimenting, all these years, reset back to the very start of it all. The core of this problem. I just want everything to be like how it used to be. Back before the experiments. And back before Michael was like this. I want time to atone. And everything to just be better. Again.'

It was really goddamn sappy. But then, in my state of terrible, I insisted Stephanie take my soul and make my wish true. And I mean, I'm not a incubus. I don't have the first clue on how souls work, or even what a soul is. I've been researching it for however many years, and I still don't know.

But I do know I was an idiot. Because there were a strange couple moments where my head went all dizzy. And next thing's next, I'm twenty-one again. The experiments have gone missing- all of them. And I've heard reports there's a great pit that's opened up on level five.'