Micky excused himself from my presence once we came down off the roof, left saying there was 'something he had to attend to'. I thought we had reached an understanding, but he seemed flustered.

After taking a moment to call Ria and confirm she knew what had happened to me and that she and Adeline were safe, I went back down to the room Christina was sitting outside of.

"How are you?" I asked, sitting down next to her.

"Oh. You know."

"Okay, so that wasn't a good question." I said. "How is he?"

"In a coma. Well, he's awake now, so I guess it isn't much of a coma."

"He is?" I stood up and peered through the window into the room. Kell was in bed, sitting upright with one arm hanging off the side of the bed. It was weird seeing him like this, hair messy, dressed in only a hospital gown. I couldn't see his face too well from this distance, and somehow the juxtaposition of everything made me doubt it was even him.

Next to him, a chair was pulled up. Kelsey was reading a book.

"He's not fully awake. Sometimes he moves around, or even talks, but he hasn't been retaining any new memories. He passes in and out of consciousness slowly and without warning. Sometimes his eyes are still open."

"I'm really sorry."

"Don't fucking apologize." She grimaced at me, taking in my bandages. "You made it out alive. That's always a good thing."

"Why are you sitting out here?"

"I'm half curious to wonder what you've assumed."

"I don't know."

"Kell been remembering us... vaguely." Christina said slowly. "And only half the time does he remember us at all. I've been here for days, and only twice has he gotten my name right. Sometimes he remembers some tiny detail about me- that my hair used to be red, or that we're married."

"That's really bad. Jesus. Must be awful for you to go through."

"It's bad." Christina said softly. "And he always remembers Kelsey. I can't change that they've known each other for half a century. So he always gets his name right. He prefers to sit with him. You saw that right?"

I nodded.

"They just sit together. He doesn't like it much when I hang around. Thinks it's a bit odd when I hold his hand, even if he can't do much to stop me." She was on the brink of tears, and she tilted her head upwards to prevent them from flowing. "I can tell he likes it when Kelsey's there. He can't carry a conversation, but sometimes he tries to when Kelsey's around."

"They used to be in a relationship, right?"

"For years. And they were good friends before and after it." Christina shook her head. "I've always felt like the bad guy. The wrong choice. The one he's supposed to overcome. But I still love him."

"You guys are married, though. And he told me shortly before... this happened that he wouldn't marry someone he didn't love."

"I know he loved me. But I still feel like I made an awful decision in wanting to love him. That I should have just changed my mind and dated Michael or something. Because he and Kelsey, they're just... silent together."

"You did what you wanted to do. Nothing wrong with that. Probably... followed your heart or whatever."

"Think of it like this," Christina sniffed, "I could conceivably be happy with so many people. I love easily. Michael is a little messed up, but I like him a lot- we could easily have fallen in love. His brother, Gabriel? We've gotten along wonderfully in the past. Maybe that'd have worked out. God, I don't like him in the slightest, but even your weird friend Micky has some lovable traits. I'm an agreeable person. I don't leave things until it's too late."

Christina was quiet for a bit, trying still not to cry.

"I could be so happy with thousands of people I've never met before. And then he could be happy with Kelsey. God, they have such a past together, and such a dramatic story- and then I'm just here. Just some secretary."

"But you're not. And you shouldn't feel like you have to be." I said. "You shouldn't feel so bad about this."

"Sometimes I think that there must be a branch of some sort. That there has to be an ultimate, a way to progress from one relationship to another, leaving one person behind for someone who lacks one of their flaws. Sometimes I think there has to be an endgame to this all."

"What are you trying to say?"

"I'm happy with Kell. I love him. I think it's as weird as everyone else tells me it is." Christina wiped one of her eyes, smearing mascara across her face. "But these last few days have me wondering when I'm going to start using past tense."

"Is his condition that bad?"

"We don't know." Christina frowned. "We'll see."

"I'm really sorry for this to have happened. I didn't know Kell very well, but I always got the impression he was a good man."

"Don't you have something else to do? Something that doesn't involve listening to people blather excessively?"

"...Not really, no."

"Then you should start looking."

I didn't know what to make of Christina's advice. I only knew that it was time I took a look outside of the hospital.

The streets aren't quite empty, but the few people that traversed them kept their heads low. There was a cold energy in the air. A restless vibe.

No one in this city knew what they were doing. What they wanted. Me included.

Out of curiosity, I headed down to the new border. I didn't get too close, just close enough that I could see the single man standing in the middle of the road. The rebels' numbers couldn't have been over a couple hundred, but he stood still, unchallenged.

I turned onto the nearest horizontal street. Every street had just a single guard on it. On the central vertical, the one that led straight into the center, a small crowd obstructed my view. As I moved closer, someone grabbed my shoulder.

"Blake?" A man asked.

"Please?" I said in response. I wriggled out of his grasp and moved to the front of the crowd.

There were four people standing in a line, two of them holding guns. One of them was slightly in front, speaking rapidly in angelic. He had his black wings showing.

The crowd around me seemed passively interested, certainly listening. A few angels were trying to talk over the fallen one.

The man who had grabbed my shoulder earlier had followed me to the front of the crowd, and he again grabbed me. I forced his hand away from me, and he grabbed me again.

"The fuck. Stop that." I said.

He stared deeply into my eyes for a moment, enough that I probably would've been severely frightened if I wasn't in a public place. Then he yelled something in angelic, something weird like 'Eho!' really loudly. My heart started to race as the crowd quieted down and began to look at me.

He repeated himself a few times, then shoved me forward. He shouted 'eho' again. Took a step beside me, still clutching my shoulder with his sharp nails, and started chattering in angelic to the rebels in front of us.

"Blake." One of them said to me. I think she looked vaguely familiar- one of the leaders I had seen with the leader Bouquet.

"Not now."

"You have connections on the inside." The angel who had grabbed me said. "You are able clear things up."

"I'd... really rather not..." I examined the ground, practicing my breathing.

"Where is Michael?" The angel asked me desperately.

"What difference does it make?" The rebel responded.

"Good point." I said weakly. "What exactly are your goals again?"

"This revolution has nothing to do with religion. Michael does not matter."

Another rebel joined in. "Whether or not Michael lives, he has lied to us all. He always has."

"Er, what exactly are you trying to achieve as a group though?" I asked.

"Revolution. Upheaval. Change."

"To what?"

"Something else. It's been long enough."

"Do you have plans for a government after the revolution? Do you have reliable leaders in place?"

"We're not goddamn idiots, Blake. Out purpose is to change things, not to revamp them. To knock things off their kilter, and then restore them. Hell's doing a few things right. We're seeking to change the ones we find iffy."

The other rebel nodded furiously. "And to try the war criminals of the state for their crimes!"

"...And for that too. We're a bit of a fusion group. Two parties. Both wanting change. One a little thirstier for justice than the other."

"We're only slightly better than what Hell has now. But we're representing angels better than they are. We're vouching for dues to be paid. And we're something different."

"Thanks. Right." I said. "Uh." I looked back at the crowd behind me. "So Michael's actually alive-" I didn't get to finish the last syllable, drowned out by a weird sort of whoop from someone in the crowd. It was a mix between a whistle and a scream, and I took it to mean someone was pretty excited.

The man who refused to let go of my shoulder gave me the widest grin I think I've seen on a face. He started yelling a couple of loud things in angelic.

"Don't forget he is a liar, then. A coward like Alexander, hiding from war. Never dying, never aging, never stopping." The rebel woman said.

"He's alive, and he's sorry." I said. "I don't want to deal with this, so I'm thinking I'm going to leave. But you guys shouldn't worry so much about Michael. He's... he's just a kid."

I shook the grinning man's hand off me again and quickly started to walk away while the gathered crowd fell into whispering. Once or twice someone tried to stop me, and I'd sidestep past them. A couple people took my photograph, and I could only imagine how I looked, still ill and nearly dead.

There was a shout behind me, then a scream. I looked back- someone had evidently been stabbed. Seriously? Angels were all idiots, I swear. Stabbing people because their cult leader turned out to legitimately be immortal.

A gunshot rang out. I didn't want to get involved in this. I kept going.

I needed a fucking hobby.

When I was a kid, I collected coins. It was the most innocuous hobby I can think of. Not even really a hobby. Just a gathering of themed items. At some point I put my binder away and forgot about it, and that was it.

I'm not even sure what a hobby is- most of them are skills, like painting or music. Things you have to work at. Things I wasn't dedicated enough to bother with.

I couldn't even dedicate myself to video games. Beat maybe three of them in my entire life.

I sold my soul to make things different, to go somewhere else. A woman came up to me and started chatting me up outside a library once, and I was too polite to leave during her spiel about a new beginning. I was recently twenty-two, more than a year into caring for Ria and Adeline, and though I had no one to admit it too, I was dead tired. Child-rearing only seems fun. It mostly saps your strength.

The lady was likely a cult recruiter, I thought, or some new age yoga instructor. Still, she gave me her personal phone number, and was cute. I called her a few days later and vented. The next day, we had a date.

It wasn't a normal progression of a relationship, and all the while I was steadily convinced she was just trying to get me to join a cult. Still, she listened to me and nodded often.

It was after our dinner date that she showed me her horns, which sounds a lot like a euphemism but was not. And though I felt guilty, a new beginning sounded a lot like a good idea to me.

She asked what I wished for, and I couldn't think of anything. I actually asked for my coin collection back.

Then I said 'scratch that', and changed my wish to nothing. And asked I be collected asap. When she explained the minimal contract was supposed to be a year, I changed my wish to 'I want to go to Hell.'

She had made it sound like such a nice place, after all.

Or at least, a new one.

If I had another soul to sell, if I could sell it again from Hell, I'd ask for the exact same blank slate. Another soft reset.

And maybe this time it'd actually work.