James froze for a second, looked down at the wood at his feet, then looked up at Maahes. Maahes wanted to stay close to him. He supposed that was normal. He'd almost forgotten: though he knew several of the people they were with, Maahes probably didn't - and Maahes probably knew him the best out of them all. "I was just... going to build a fire pit, since the sun is lowering in the sky, and it will get dark soon," he said. "If you want to help me do that, I suppose you could."
Rose was tired. Tired of constantly fighting, tired of life, tired of being branded. Her and Aquarius worked in silence. She took a deep breath.
"Thanks for everything you've done. I...I'm not normally this...weak." She turned a little red. She hated admitting that the brand got to her. That it had burned more than her skin. It had scarred her heart as well. She'd learned to put on a front, but when that burn had shot up her arm, she knew they were very, very [i]angry.[i] What made her upset, was the fact that she had no idea why, and that they were able to control it, even in this realm, or world. Normally, she was tougher than this.
"Those moments when your in so deep, it feels easier to just swim down"
"I'm erasing myself from the narrative. Let future historians wonder how Eliza reacted when you broke her heart
So Zephyrus had the trappings of something that could technically be called civilisation, yet was unacquainted with matches. Well. I supposed we couldn't all be so advanced.
"Sticks that are smaller than the palm of your hand, with one end covered in a chemical solution, including phosphorus, that catches alight when struck against a surface that can provide suitable friction. They are typically packaged in a box that includes sandpaper, for that reason.
How's that?"
Bad souls have born better sons, better souls born worse ones -St Vincent
Aquarius looked over at Rose and gave her a small, hesitant smile. "Weakness is okay," he quietly said. "It's not healthy to be strong all the time. Sometimes you have to let other people be there for you. It doesn't...It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you."
He glanced over at his brother, who was now off in a conversation with Boris.
"I'm not strong," he admitted. He looked back over at Rose. "I actually think I'm really weak...but I don't mind it too much, because I have Zephyrus and Liz there for me whenever I'm afraid or hurt."
He hesitated.
"So...uh...don't be scared of being weak, because I'll make sure you don't feel afraid or hurt while we're here," he hurriedly added on, ducking his head back down to focus on their job instead of on whatever her reaction would be.
xXx
"That's a better explanation than any of the chosen ever gave," Zephyrus replied. He absentmindedly tried to rub away the face paint again - and inevitably failed to remove it. He lowered his hand back down to his side and eyed the group. Who was the most likely to have something that could light a fire-
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Edward pull out something from his pocket. There wasn't anything to suggest that it would help them, but the silver glinting in the sunset made him pause. Edward was in the middle of chatting with Schadel and Griffith (who he suspected was Grim, the skeleton Aquarius and their older brother had met in that weird mansion), and had a small cylinder in his hand.
His eyes lit up when he saw a flame burst to life at the tip of the silver box.
"I think we found our fire," he said, pointing at Edward.
xXx
Edward casually lit his cigarette, looking the Grim Reaper over as he did so. He should have been skeptical of what he was claiming, but the angel before him didn't seem like the type to lie - he seemed to be telling the truth. And, even if his honesty was under fire, there was nothing to say that an actual Grim Reaper didn't exist somewhere in the world. His time as a ghost and with Schadel had shown him just how strange the world really was.
"You said that Dean's soul looked like mine," the Grim Reaper said. Edward put his cigarette between his lips and tried to imagine what the Grim Reaper really looked liked. It was harder than expected; he could only see him as the human-ish angel before him.
"It does," Schadel confirmed.
"But that can't be right," he protested. "I'm-I'm the only me."
"We thought there was only the regular kind of grim reaper," Edward pointing out, slipping his lighter back into his pocket. Thank God that hadn't been lost in the mysterious teleportation and transformation.
The Grim Reaper shook his head. "He doesn't act right." When Schadel and Edward both gave him confused looks, he quickly elaborated. "People are scared when they see a giant skeleton, or when they think Death is coming. And I could never risk going anywhere near a hunter, even if I somehow disguised myself as a human - it would be too risky."
"Dean doesn't act like that," Schadel realized.
A nod. "He's too confident."
"Yeah," Edward agreed with a nod of his own. "And you don't give me the warm fuzzy feeling in my soul."
Grim and Schadel stared.
"The...warm fuzzy feeling?" his best friend slowly repeated.
Edward frowned. Neither of them felt it? How could they not? It was impossible now to be strangely drawn to Dean; the moment he had emerged from the woods, the feeling had settled in his chest. Even though Dean had gone into the hunter building quite some time ago, it still was there - just slightly weaker than before.
"You know," he said. They still stared at him - apparently, they didn't. "It's impossible to ignore him. Each time I look at him, the warm fuzzy feeling in my chest gets stronger...It's hard to describe. You...You really don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"
Schadel and the Grim Reaper glanced each other, and then nodded.
Building a fire pit really wasn't that big of a deal. It wasn't even complicated, but clearly, his friends wanted to be involved.
He carried the stack of wood to the center of their 'campsite.'
"Any help makes it go faster, so I don't mind," he said simply, looking down at the forest floor. "Really, all we need to do is dig a pit and clear the ground around it of anything that could catch fire, so we keep it contained."
"I could help dig the pit," Maahes volunteered. He leaned down and was about to do so, but suddenly realized he didn't have anything that could really do that - he couldn't access his magic, and his shoes were just a pair of sandals. He hesitated, looking between Damascus and James, and then said, "Actually, I'll, uh, just move the things away that could catch fire."
xXx
Aquarius gave her another warm smile. "I'm sure we will."
xXx
Schadel thought long and hard on what Edward said. There was only one thing that she could think of, but she would have thought he would have been able to figure that out - or had it really been that long since the last time it had happened?
"Do you have a crush on him?" Schadel asked.
Edward nearly spat out his cigarette, his finger being the only thing preventing it from flying out onto the forest floor. His tail swung slowly back and forth behind him now, almost as if he was contemplating what she had said. But then he shook his head, and she knew that her guess was either horribly off or entirely correct.
"No!" he protested. "I'm not in love with Dean."
"...It sounds like you are," Griffith hesitantly replied.
Edward shook his head. "It's not like that."
Schadel paused, then carefully asked, "Are you sure it doesn't feel like how you felt when you first saw Nicholas Drew...?" She felt bad about mentioning the lover he could never be with, but there wasn't really any other options. He barely talked about crushes - for all she knew, he hadn't had them in a long time.
"I'm sure of it," Edward wasted no time in saying. He placed his hand down on his heart. "Look, love is something your body feels, right? I know what love feels like. This isn't my body talking - it's my soul. It's not soulmates, or anything like that. Dean...Dean feels..."
He let out a groan.
"I can't figure out the right word," he said. "He feels...He feels like when I used to go to church every Sunday with my mom, and what it felt like when I'd pray that everything would be alright on the battlefield. I know he can't be an angel, because he seems to hate them from how he acted earlier, but he feels like he could be one."
Even though Edward was struggling to put a word to the emotion, Schadel finally understood. She didn't know what it ultimately meant, but she did know it was something important.
"He feels holy," she said.
Edward's face lit up the moment she said the word.
"Yes!" he confirmed. "Dean feels holy. I don't know how someone could feel holy, but he is."
"If he's not an angel, maybe he's a saint or something?" Schadel hesitantly asked. Obviously she knew about religion - she had to, since she dealt with the dead - but she didn't know too much about it. "You're Christian, right? That has to narrow it down-"
"God," Griffith said.
She faltered. "Yeah, this is pretty shocking-"
"No, he's God," Griffith said. "Dean's God. I'm immortal and I can't die. People believe in me. And the only person he feels holy to is a Christian - you're not Christian, are you?"
"I'm not," Schadel confirmed.
They all glanced in the direction of the hunter building.
"I'm not going to lie," Edward said, "I was expecting a beard."
Damascus casually dropped to his knees and cleared a patch of dirt. He frowned when he realized that he didn't know how to dig a pit with the resources available. After a moment of thinking privately, he shrugged and started scooping handfuls of soil with his bare hands.
As he began the slow process of digging, he reflected again on how he had been altered. Normally, he would have been able to shift into something to aid in the process, but it seemed he had been taking advantage of his abilities.
"It's strange, being human." he murmured, mostly to himself, as he succeeded only in sprinkling dirt on his khakis. "Or, rather, an angel. It's quite unsettling to only be one thing."
As he started to clear away the area around their makeshift fire, a name floated over on the wind. Maahes paused. For a moment, he was sure he had been mistaken. There was no way that he could have heard someone using one of his old aliases, and certainly not the one he used when he was thrust back into a World War II of another world.
But then he saw who was including that old name in a conversation.
Schadel had said it, but it was directed towards Edward. Maahes felt his stomach twist and churn. He had to be wrong. He just had to be. But while the horns and tail may have initially disguised the truth, he could see the similarities now - there were very few things that the Edward Smith he knew and the one here didn't share. His mind flashed back to the battlefield, and to the moment he had seen Edward's body go down. To yelling Edward's name, desperately begging for him to get back up. To struggling as the other soldiers tried to pull him away. To stupidly feeling like Edward was still there, only to brush it off when he finally came to realize that another human had died before him.
Edward had become a ghost.
Tears began to stream down his face as he stared at the man who had no reason to notice him now - and no reason to believe that he was Nicholas Drew, seeing that he couldn't change his form when he was stuck like this.
James knelt down beside Damascus and started to dig with his clawed hands. Were there any benefits to his new form, it was that having sharp fingers was actually rather useful. He was aware though, that it could result in him unitnentionally harming someone if he were to grab them too tightly.
As he scooped dirt up from the ground and piled it in a circle, he nodded at Damasucs’s comment. “I can imagine so,” he said idly, letting his glances flick up at Dami and Maahes as he worked.
That was when he caught Maahes crying. He looked around for a moment, as if to find a reason or source for his tears, but upon seeing and hearing nothing probable, he leaned forward. He wasn’t sure if Maahes wanted his tears to be acknowledged.
Damascus stopped digging as well at James' whisper, and lifted his head, studying Maahes with a concerned gaze. He didn't want to intervene unless Maahes reached out, and even then, he wasn't sure if he would be comfortable with Damascus comforting him just yet.
Nonetheless, he brushed the dirt from his hands, just in case his comfort was needed, and awaited Maahes' answer.
"I-I know him," Maahes said. He didn't clarify who - he just kept staring at the man he thought he'd never see again. It had been a little more than fifty years, but it felt like he hadn't seen Edward for an eternity. "I-I thought I would never see him again. That...that my last memory would be hi-his dead body in my arms. An-And now he's a ghost, and I'm still a-alive, but how am I supposed to let him know?"
He let out another sob.
"I don't even look like I did then!" he whispered. "He doesn't have any reason to b-believe me - this is the first time we've met since the war..."
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