Dohniel was- well, I was trying not to reflect on him too much as he half carried me in whichever direction I pointed. But he was trying his best. My desperation had led to me attempting to drink an angel's blood, but it hadn't seemed to work- while I was certainly alive still, I was not feeling any better.
Dohn was coping with this fact. I couldn't really think of an explanation, but he seemed to take it as a goal to walk me through the woods. I had managed to explain, hoarsely, that I needed to find the funeral bottles I knew Michael kept in his room. And despite his Grace, Dohn seemed ready to assist.
The fighting, still happening but being pushed slowly through Heaven's gate, was mostly localized. A couple stragglers had found time for short firefights in the nearby forest, but those conflicts had often ended quickly. We were safe our entire journey over.
I could not climb the wall, or ready even grip it's edge, and it fell to Dohn to about throw me over, tossing me halfway so my stomach rested on the top, then again lowering me down once he climbed up.
Dizzy from the movement, I paused to throw up more diluted blood once I was back on the ground.
"You should be seeking Raphael instead of more blood. Though it's true you've lost a lot of blood, I'm not sure drinking it is the proper way to replenish it into your veins."
"We're close. Once I have Grace, I will be entirely better."
A couple angels were patrolling the wall, of course, and one leapt down to inspect us. Dohn was recognized fine, and I leaned my face against his chest and acted unconscious. Which wasn't exactly a hard task to do at this point.
"Haos. He is injured." Dohn said.
"Dohniel. He would be better off sacrificing himself. Throw him on a bomb. Our Healer, Raphael, is not to be found. He is dying anyways."
"It's a minor injury."
I imagined a pause where Haos examined the trail of blood I had been leaving. "You can be tenacious of your friends, Dohniel, but it will do little to fend off demons."
I heard him leave though, and Dohn kept walking forward for a while to imitate taking me to a safe house. Then he turned around and walked into the Church Tower building.
"Lveniev was a guard here." I said rather pointlessly. But, well, the man's blood was in my stomach. It felt right to at least pay him some tribute.
The building seemed to be abandoned, which I suppose played to the one noble truth of Heaven: our superiors still fought the same war we did.
Dohn seemed slow to climb the steps up to the Arch-angel's floor, perhaps fearing their eventual retribution when they psychically found out later. Or maybe it was just the knowledge of the law, so wired into his mind, that was weighing him down.
We came to the Brother's living room, and Dohn was not shocked at what he saw there. Or at least, he was not visibly disturbed by the Earth trash and domestic normalcy the Brothers enjoyed.
He simply took me to Michael's ever messy and ever knowable room and helped me sit on the bed. I fell against his shoulder pathetically, and he lay me down gently while he retrieved a funeral bottle off the bookshelf.
"Lakoi. Quite recent." He carried the bottle over. It really was more of an urn, I suppose, though built for liquid instead of ash. But it was still carrying sacred remains, and it still was something not meant to be touched.
It wasn't the same, I recognized, as the clay cups Cassiel and Victory used in funerals- in fact, as I turned the glass in my hands, I was starting to think it was just a washed out jelly jar. With blood in it.
I took a sip and gagged immediately. Somehow it was worse to try and drink blood civilly. Sucking it out of a bullet wound was weird, but drinking blood was weird in general. They went hand in hand.
My hand was starting to shake enough that Dohn noticed and held it for me. With his other hand, he helped tip the glass into my mouth. The blood was warm from sunlight and thick, having settled over the months since its collection.
About a fourth of the way I started hacking the blood right up again- I couldn't help it. When I tried to swallow, my mouth burned and my throat seemed to close up. I pressed my lips together tightly as I tried to force myself to swallow. Dohn even joined in my attempted, clamping a hand over my mouth. But a trickle forced its way past my lips, dribbling down my chin in a watery and pale stream.
I managed. But there was still a lot of blood left, and I still wasn't feeling any better. Half way through my glass I had to stop to puke on the floor.
"Do you have to redrink that?" Dohn asked.
I waved his question off with the clear nonvocal reply of 'If I do, I sure am not going to' and took another sip. My head was empty and light, filled only with thoughts of metal and how nice it'd be to pass out right now.
"Do you feel your Grace coming back yet?"
I was taking slower and slower sips, my stomach feeling restless and very full, and Dohn was beginning to glance over at me at more and more frequent intervals.
"It can't." I said lazily, spitting blood a bit as I did so. "I'm like a pot with a lid. Just hope some fall through the cracks and lasts me a little while longer."
"You're talking more."
But I was slurring throughout. Probably not a sign of any real progress.
I finished the glass at last, but surely three-fourths of the contents ended up on the floor moments after swallowing. I fell back on the bed, dizzy headed.
"Are you going to sleep? Is that a good idea?" Dohn asked.
I gritted my teeth, a habit I had never had practiced before and only tried because I recalled it being something people did when stressed.
"I'm still not dead. I should just keep moving on."
"Where to?"
I sat up. "I dunno. It's not like I can count on what little Grace I've absorbed to keep me alive for very long. So maybe I'll live on for a couple more hours. Dunno what I'll do though."
"What was the point of all this then? Breaking into this room and drinking all this blood if you have nothing to do with it's granted power?"
"Guess I have unfinished business to attend to in Hell still." I sighed. "Sorry. It's just, fight or flight. And I keep choosing fight."
"Because you lost your wings?"
"That was a terrible, terrible attempt at humor. I'm far funnier than you."
"I don't think I've ever heard you crack a joke."
"I've been doing it a lot lately. You should have seen me last time I was in Hell. Lots of jokes. And I swear I had a sense of humor back in Heaven too."
"Once you lose your name, you also lose your history. Nothing counts anymore!" It was a surreal subject for the two of us to be laughing about, but I was exhausted and Dohn was just that kind of guy.
"Paint this when we're done." I told him.
"What do you mean by 'this'? This room? This battle? You?"
"I'm not the painter here. I lack the imagination."
"And humor, don't forget about that. You're dead in Michael's memory, but not mine. And I know who you are to well to believe such petty lies as 'you having a sense of humor'."
"Just paint some pretty pictures. I don't know what's coming next, but I know you're going to be around to paint the trees that will be there."
"Is this some kind of roundabout way of asking me to stay safe?"
"It's a roundabout order, Dohniel, from your superior ambassador. Paint me some goddamn forests."
"I don't take orders from the fallen." He stuck out his chest and fixed his posture. "But perhaps a shaky alliance can be maintained, for my goals are the same as yours."
"Very well, sir." I said, taking on the same mock higher dialect as he was. Then I dropped into a more serious tone. "Just don't die if Michael asks you to."
"I never would have." He said. "Even if he asked me yesterday."
"This place smells like salt and puke." I said, breaking out of the seriousness again due sheerly to my still weak mind.
"Really? I'm mostly honing in on the metal. Smells like Toja's workshop. Or the infirmary, I guess, but that's a bit too obvious of a comparison."
He helped me stand up again, but I was slowly starting to feel a bit better. But only barely. My estimate of a few hours was looking to be a good one. Half way through our slow journey to the couch I was able to walk on my own, and it was only with a bit of trouble that I resisted the urge to fall asleep as I sunk onto the couch.
"You could bring some blood with you. It's not like we're trying to hide that we were here or anything. So you might as well take some with you." Dohn said, and I sighed.
"I only want to die when my life isn't at risk. In a few hours, I'll be inclined to agree with you. But right now, it's best I just leave the blood behind and let myself decay."
Dohn was looking at me- well, a lot, since we were having a conversation. But his stare was mostly that of concern, mixed with a definite fear. He didn't know what was happening with me, but felt obliged to play along out of sheer loyalty alone. Or friendship, really, since loyalty is often just a posh way of saying that.
"Can you not die?" He asked, strained.
"Uh, it's for the best. You'll learn the details of it one day, I'm sure, and then you might be inclined to agree. But that will be in the future, from someone who isn't me, and you will be alive to hear it." I stressed the last aspect like I was trying to return to joking around, but I was too distracted to make it sound like anything but a harsh command.
"If I run onto the inhabited Earth, I'll be fine." Dohn was saying, but I was too busy thinking about something that I already knew.
"Michael keeps a lot of angel's blood in his bedroom." I said.
So he did. I knew that a long time ago. And then before that as well. He kept a lot of blood. He used a lot of blood. He needed a lot of blood.
As any formerly Graceful being would.
I did not tell Dohn, as truthfully it was the sort of secret I myself was less happy to learn about, and I was not fond of sharing my misery with others. Besides, it wasn't even useful- it was just a fact.
Tegan had once told me a blue whale had a nine foot long penis. This had been a fact, but one that managed to be utterly useless to me in a number of ways: at the time, I hadn't even been aware of what a blue whale was.
Anyways, this secret was a blue whale penis, and I was its unhappy bearer.
"So he does." Dohn said. He was quiet for a while then, and I thought perhaps he had realized the implication as well- but he said nothing, perhaps recognizing it as worthless to share.
"I'd like take you somewhere on the inhabited earth. Somewhere you'll be safe."
"You don't have to worry about me, Castell. I have my Grace and I have my blade. I'll make it on my own."
It hadn't been long ago that I had lived for the same two facts, and I grew more certain about my choice. "No. I don't enjoy to try and lord you around here, but I'm taking you somewhere safe. That way, when I die, I will not enter the afterlife with worries of you still haunting my soul."
If I had a soul anymore, of course. Technically angels recognized the afterlife as a deep sleep where Michael kept us safe until the day we would all get reborn. I was vaguely aware humans had a whole bunch of afterlives to choose from, and I had yet to make my choice, so I supposed it was going to be random.
Or nothingness, I guess, but if after death came nothingness then at least I knew my future was not to be wrought with worry for the living.
"Are we leaving now then?" Dohn stood up fast, but then leaned down to help me stand.
"To Purgatory, yes."
"What is that?" He had to help me down the stairs, but only barely. The blood seemed to have contained a little Grace after all.
"A refuge. You won't fit in too well, but you'll be safe."
"For someone with a few hours left to live, you are taking a very long detour."
"I only need to check one thing in Hell. And it should be very fast."
"What is it?" I didn't really mind that Dohn refused to let an obviously sore subject rest. He was the only man I was close to who did this, questioning past my obvious comfort level, and I was grateful for it.
Well, if someone who wasn't my friend kept pushing me, I'd get annoyed. But Dohn was Dohn, and he had never liked the idea of the slow reveal.
"My lov- uh... former sexual acquaintance might be dead."
"Oh. Sweet. Male or female?"
"Female."
"Cool. What is sexual intercourse like?"
"Very warm. You'll- you'll see for yourself if you ever try it."
"I aim to!" He said with a smile, like he was making a particularly heartfelt promise.
Slipping away from the fighting still wasn't very hard, but as a downside I didn't have a chance to check in on what was currently happening. I could still hear the guns crack and various grunts and screams, but as we walked further away in the direction of the neighboring town, a cold wind picked up and drained everything around it. The gunshots became bristles, and the screams became- well, they still sounded like screams. But the screams of ghosts, perhaps. Crying into the wind, hopelessly praying their suffering would not fall on deaf ears.
But the world was empty beyond the gates of Heaven and Hell. And Dohn and I slipped out of it in complete silence- besides the occasional, stuttering and vastly inappropriate, laugh.