Chapter Text
Butcher.
Stay with me. Where you belong.
We can be one, like the roots of a tree.
Blood, red and viscous and hot, filled Simon. It filled his mouth, his nose, his eyes and ears and lungs and stomach. It choked him and coagulated in his veins and held him still so he could not thrash or fight. It forced every other fluid out of him and replaced every drop, ruptured every cell in his body until he was one with it. Until he could not tell where he ended and the blood began.
Simon.
Simon. This ends with you. It was always meant to.
You are the end.
He was suspended in scarlet nothingness. A nothing so deep and eternal and big that it swallowed universes whole and didn't even bother to spit out the bones. An overwhelming bigness that broke him body, mind, and soul into a million pieces with its sheer enormity and remade him into something new and terrifying.
He was everything and nothing and nowhere and everywhere all at once. There was no single consciousness that could sanely hold all that there was. He did. Whether he wanted to or not.
He couldn't cry. Couldn't scream. Couldn't find enough humanity in himself to even try.
There is nothing left, Butcher. Just you and I. As it should be.
This had to be Hell. Time did not exist. Space did not exist.
Simon did not exist.
You cannot escape. You don't deserve it.
—
Until suddenly, he did. Until suddenly, there was a somethingness that drowned out the vast nothing and destroyed what the blood built.
Agony.
The radiating burst of suffering and pain was deep and all-encompassing; it became an anchor. Simon clung to it the way he clung to the black box, to the seedling of the Last Tree, to the faded and dull memory of his mother.
With the pain came other sensations. A cold breeze passing over him. The smell of salt and iron and something foreign. The weight of a body laying limp and lifeless on its stomach. The sound of water crashing against itself rhythmically.
There was light. Simon could sense it beyond the eyelids that he should not have possessed. The pain was still constant and overbearing and totalitarian. It threatened to bury him, suffocate him, bring him to the edge over and over before pulling back for a moment.
It was still better than the blood.
Simon drifted in and out of consciousness for a while. He couldn't tell how long he had been laying there. When he was out, it was blessedly silent. When he wasn't, the pain paralyzed him and devoured his other senses until he had no choice but to slip back into that peaceful void. He didn't have the strength to do anything but lay there in agony.
Eventually, there was the sound of footsteps approaching, crunching and sliding around erratically as if walking on broken glass. He couldn't tell how many there were, especially as they drew closer and faster, heavier. There was a sound like the trill of long-gone instruments, shrill and beautiful all the same. A frantic voice reached his ears, but he couldn't focus on the words being said, couldn't commit any of them to memory.
Hands grabbed Simon and pulled at him. Fresh pain blossomed from the touch, white-hot and overwhelming to break his stupor. He tried to squirm away from the source of the pressure. At some point he was turned over to lay on his back, and a burning sensation spread across his skin as the uneven ground dug into his flesh.
Simon tried to speak, to yell or scream or beg at whoever it was to get away from him and stop touching him and tormenting him, but his jaw refused to unclench itself. He could feel his bones creak under his own strength. Somehow a deep, rattling groan ripped itself from his chest in reply to the barrage of new and unpleasant sensations.
“He's alive!”
At last, there were words that Simon could finally, finally understand. It was enough to get him to pry his eyes open, just a bit. Just to get his bearings.
The light was too bright. It blinded him instantly, and if his head wasn't already throbbing, pain would have stabbed him right through the temple. White and pale, washing away the horrid red stains of his sins, washing away the endless blood. A holiness that Simon didn't believe he deserved.
A silhouette crossed in front of Simon's face, blocking that great holy light and for a moment he mourned it. Then in that shadowy figure a face came into focus. The brightest, bluest eyes Simon had ever seen bored into him, brow pinched in concern. Golden windswept hair crowned his head and softly glowed in the light.
An angel. Surely, an angel come to banish Simon back to Hell where he belonged, where he couldn't taint this Heaven that he'd mistakenly found himself in.
He tried to lift his arm to reach, to grab, to beg the angel to spare him just a little longer. His limbs felt impossibly heavy, and his head swam as the angel spoke, though he still couldn't hold onto any of the words. In Eden, the Father said that the angels spoke with voices like a thousand horns, that one could feel their words in one's heart first and mind second. This angel didn't sound like that. He was equal parts loud and soothing, commanding and gentle, frightened and caring.
There was something that Simon vaguely registered as an apology, which confused him because why would a divine being apologize to a lowly creature like him? Then there was another new pain, so sharp and so intense that there was no source he could follow it to. It blocked out everything else for an eternity, leaving Simon with nothing but the knowledge that the angel had done his job and sent him back to his infinite suffering.
He expected to be back in the blood, to be ripped apart and shattered into an uncountable number of pieces, to lose himself again and again for eternity.
Instead he came to consciousness once again.
The first thing Simon was aware of was how heavy his body felt, the weight of it holding him down more effectively than any restraint could hope to. Every twitch of his muscles took herculean effort. The pain lingered but it was no longer all consuming, now only a thrumming pulse in his veins and muscles that beat in tandem with his heart.
He could no longer smell the blood or the salt, instead there was an unfamiliar but comforting scent mixed with an underlying sharpness of antiseptic that wafted about. Whatever uneven jagged surface he had laid on was now soft and warm. The sound of water was still there, but distant and muffled.
It was peaceful. A quiet moment preserved in divinity. It was far more than Simon deserved.
To his left there was a soft noise, like clothes rustling. Someone sniffed wetly. That beautiful and lightly discordant music floated by again, something that wasn't quite a song.
“Yeah buddy. Watched him all night.”
There it was. The angel's voice, soft and ragged but still perfect in its holiness. Simon briefly thanked the Great Tree that he could understand his words now. He tried to open his eyes to see that face again, but his body seemed to be disconnected from his mind. His eyes remained shut without so much as a flutter, his voice trapped in his throat.
The angel sighed deeply, wearily. He sounded exhausted. Could angels feel exhaustion? “No changes,” he said with a twinge of disappointment. There was a light metallic clicking, almost akin to a pen tapping a surface, and then a creak like a rusty chair protesting a shift in weight.
More music, this time insistent and demanding. The more Simon heard, the less convinced he was that it was music. It almost sounded like words.
“Oh no, I couldn't ask that of them, not with them being so busy,” the angel said, as if in reply to the music.
So it was words. A language. Something Simon didn't understand but of course a holy being would. Perhaps it was a different kind of angel, one that was more like the angels of scripture. A being that didn't speak with words but feelings and music.
What did Simon possibly do to deserve not one but two angels to watch over his wretched broken body?
The notes were much more aggressive now, almost angry, and there was a thumping noise to punctuate it. The first angel huffed out a placating “Alright, alright! If they're okay with it. Only if they're okay with it.” The music trilled, triumphant.
There was a scampering noise, and then a gentle creaking. “You're gonna pull out of this,” the angel said quietly, like a secret. “You're gonna be okay. I promise. You-” He cut himself off, voice cracking.
Oh Great Tree, he was crying. His angel was actually crying for him.
Simon wanted so badly to reach for the angel, to reassure him that he was conscious and grateful for all that had been done for him. He cursed his body for how utterly unresponsive it was, and himself for not finding the strength to so much as make a noise. His heart weighed a little heavier as he was forced to listen to choked weeping.
The angel sniffled and took a deep shuddering breath. “I couldn't save the others, but I'll do everything I can to save you. I swear.” There was a feather-light touch on Simon's forehead that trailed to his ear. It reminded him of how his mother would tuck his hair back.
What did he mean, he couldn't save the others? Had Simon failed? Had it been too late, and the black box had been lost to the blood too? Did the eel win? Had the angels saved him because he was the only one left?
Simon barely had time to mull over these thoughts or the heaviness in his chest. His ears picked up a new sound, a steady heavy thudding that approached almost cautiously. The scampering noise returned as well, much more energetic and almost childlike.
A new musical voice announced its presence. It was deeper than the first, and more elegant in how the notes weaved into each other. Smooth and soothing. There was another metallic tapping that was barely able to be heard and a sweeping sound of someone rubbing their skin. “Yeah, I'm okay,” Simon's angel said unconvincingly. “Thanks for taking over, Adrian. Let me know if there's any change? Even if he doesn't wake up, just… you know.”
There was a short note of confirmation, and the first musical voice chimed in. It sounded urgent with a twinge of anxiety. Simon's angel chuckled, even though there was no humor to it.
“Yeah bud, I'm going, I'm going. You don't have to lay on my chest this time, okay? You're heavier than you think.”
The responding melody almost sounded like laughter. A flurry of footsteps traveled away from Simon, as did the angel's voice still talking to his heavenly companion quietly, far enough to hear his voice but not his words.
And then he was left in the dark and silence, alone.
Well, that wasn't entirely true. Whoever this Adrian was, they seemed to have stayed nearby, and even if he couldn't understand them their presence was mildly comforting.
Simon heard a scraping noise, felt a heavy thunk briefly shake whatever surface he was laying on. Then there was humming. It was gentle and low and soothing, like a wordless lullaby. It was meant to soothe him, maybe encourage him to rest and heal.
Perhaps it was the song, or how much effort it took for him to remain conscious, but Simon felt sleep pull on his mind. It beckoned to him, and he was powerless to fight it.
Slowly, but more quickly than he would have liked, Simon slipped back into unconsciousness.