[sylvanSpider]

Hell

Olivia smiled, her heart filling with warmth. She had a hard time believing that everyone in Hell truly deserved to be there, and there was the possibility that the demons there gave up the parts of them that led them to Hell to begin with. She didn't know this guy's story, but he was her ticket out of complete involuntary solitude. Did Heaven have a deaf community? That sounds amazing. Are you hearing? How do you know sign?

She was genuinely curious. She'd learned from the book they gave her that upon death, new demons are given their pique physical conditions. The deaf can hear, the blind can see. That is, unless they sacrifice that aspect of themselves. Surely, she was not the only one to give up one of her senses, surely there were others that were deaf, just like her?

Axle spun back and forth on his bar stool, thankful that such an entertaining bunch had found their way into the bar. And they were a bunch that had never met before to make the concoction all the more glorious. A slow smile crept across his face when she actually asked about something he'd dropped so nonchalantly. The girl listened. Kudos where kudos were due. “Well, for one thing. The 'trouble' you get in for killing another demon is just a large fine. They don't even deduct from your powers. Just a fine. A couple of high priced angels paid it off. Shit, I was able to pay out of pocket. And there were a few reasons, some of those you'll find arbitrary and perhaps a bit sickening, but tell me dear Inferno patron, what would you do if you saw the person most precious to you being harassed? Relentlessly? All because of the color of her skin, too. And if that harassment culminated to an attack? I killed him, and I did it slow. I've no regrets on the matter. Hopefully his soul went to create a better person.” He shook his head and looked at his chocolate milk, desperately wishing there was alcohol in it. Almost forty years later and the yearning never quite seemed to go away.

The conversation brought back some painful memories. Oh, Kady. He would have done anything for her. He would have done anything to take her place, but she was in the wrong place and even with his teleportation, he saw her too late. She'd been gotten through the heart, and he held her as she gasped her last struggling breaths. The battlefield is a terrible and wonderful place. They knew the risks when they rolled the dice, when they spun the cylinder and pulled the trigger. Kady lost and Axle won. She was gone.

And Axle remained.

Axle swallowed shaking his head. That was over twenty years ago now. The pain had mostly subsided, only coming back once in a while now. Time had mostly healed his wounds, but when he thought of her, when he remembered her face, it came crashing back in. And unlike in life, he couldn't turn to drugs to heal himself. There was no self-medication outside of the death of another.