Blake. Yep. Time to start dealing with matters I really cared about. Unfortunately, Rhamiel was on the verge on becoming one of those things- I had a weak heart for sob stories, I'll confess.

He didn't seem to care that I stood up and walked off. I glanced back as I settled down across from Pepper, at her table a few rows back, and he was back to gazing out the window. Probably working up some more killer prose.

What a dumb kid. I kept his ring, and if he noticed I hadn't returned it, he had yet to notice.

Pepper had acquired a plate of chips and a selection of sauces, and I stuffed my face. It'd been too long since I had last eaten, and Pepper looked a bit indigent as I said, "Hey. Let's get going."

As the sky began to darken, people began to gather in the club. They were the rich sort of folks, high-contrast suits and well fitted dresses. It wasn't the sort of environment I wanted to hang around in. We left The Blues and The Banes, and Pepper led me down another winding path through the city blocks.

"What's Blake been up to then?" I asked.

"Oh, you're going to want to ask him yourself."

"I know that, but he's not here right now and you are fully capable of telling me."

"You should work on your patience," giggled Pepper, "Anyway, he's been talking about you a ton! I can't wait to see the look on his face when he sees you."

When I failed to respond, she tried again. "Aren't you excited? I think I'm more excited than you are, and it's your reunion."

"You seem like you're always excited with everything."

"Pretty much."

"Doesn't that like, make everything you're excited about sort of meaningless?"

"That's an awful way to think of things. Like, imagine that you have a bunch of houses or whatever and you upgrade them until they're all the same size. They're all equal size-wise, but inside they are very different and they're all bigger than everyone else's houses, so who cares?"

"Not a good metaphor."

"I think you're just jealous that you're so sad all the time. Or whatever."

"I'm not sad."

"You're not the one looking at your face right now."

The sun was setting fast, at a pace appropriate for an October night. The stars here were preprogrammed so shift like the sky above- except, instead of the proper constellations, all of them were visible in the dome of the sky.

They shined as bright as they would from a secluded hill, a circle of the zodiac. Ophiuchus, the thirteenth sign that Alexander Scott used, lay in the center of the sky.

With nightfall, the streets lit up. Two glowing paths showed the edges of the street, another carefully planned feature of the city. The foot traffic didn't slow either, many people still heading to and from work and a large majority slinking off to the bars.

"Blake's in the hospital," explained Pepper, "Not like, literally in the hospital. Just visiting. We're going to meet him down in the back."

"That's never a good place to meet someone."

She laughed a particularly stilted laugh, "You'll see."

The hospital looked like nearly all other hospitals, very large, nearly square, and with a slight curve on one side. We waited in the darkness of a nearby alley, illuminated only by the unnatural lights from above.

Alarms began to ring out, and a figure scampered out of back door near the top floor, carefully jumping down onto the fire escape and running until he could leap onto the ground in a cloud of dust.

Blake looked up, grinning, and then full-out laughing all open mouthed and toothy. "Mannie!" He said, running over. "Thought you'd have moved on by now."

"Me too. Or, uh, died."

"Yeah, that was always an option."

Something was wrong with him, and it took me far too long to figure out what- Most of his right arm was missing, cut at the elbow.

Staring at him and his wide smile, I didn't know where to start. So I stuck to the present. "What the hell happened to your arm?"

"Don't you mean, what the hell happened to me?"

The alarms picked up again, shriller this time.

"Yeah, and what the fuck that alarm is about."

He laughed and we ran.

Their hideout was exactly what I had expected it to be. Dark, moldy, boarded up- the quintessential place for dirty rebels to sleep on damp rotting floors.

The upstairs had been mostly blocked off by debris, and the one accessible room was closed off for the leader's use. The downstairs had two rooms, one mostly dirt with an amalgamated meeting table in the center and a camping light in the middle, while the other seemed to be a mostly intact kitchen. The fridge was full of food, and sleeping bags took up all the floor space.

"I actually really like how scattered it is in here," Blake said, "Gives it more of a.. rag-tag feeling."

There were several other people in the base when we arrived, and Blake gave me their introductions very quickly. Two of them had legitimate jobs down in lower Hell, a secretary and a salesman. Two were prostitutes, which was still a respectable job, just not one I could relate to. Another was good at computers I guess. Blake was talking very quickly.

They did all look rag-tag though. Rag-tag revolutionaries, absolutely. Hell had a habit of generating those.

Blake hadn't settled down since we arrived. If anything, he seemed more energetic. Sometimes he'd just look over at me and smile and I ended up finding myself doing the same thing an awful lot as well. I couldn't help feel pretty content, despite everything else that was happening. I mean, Blake was here now. Alive. Missing a hand, yeah, but that didn't exactly change who he was.

I hadn't been like this with him before, had I? Something about him felt warranting of being missed.

"We need to talk," I said.

"Obviously. Here, I'll show you my favorite place in this building."

Upstairs, Blake navigated through the debris, at one point apologizing to me as he squeezed through a narrow gap in the rubble. Past the collapsed wall it was a lot easier to walk, though creaky. Blake kept to the left wall and darted through the first door, and climbed through the window there.

Out the window was the fire escape and on the top of the fire escape was the roof. "I like to come up here and just watch sometimes. It's kind of nostalgic actually."

A rusty pool chair had been placed near the edge, but neither of us chose to sit there. Instead we both sat right on the edge and let our feet hang over the street below.

"You used to live in the city then?"

"Think so. Somewhere to the west, maybe."

"I... know where your file is. Sydney left it with Kell."

"Do you think it's a good idea to take a look?"

"I can't imagine it being a bad one," I said, "Sorry. Not about that, just- sorry, you know? I want to practice my sincerity."

"When have you lied?" Anything he said seemed to polite, like an astute observation free from opinion. Like he wasn't going to judge me.

"Constantly. I don't know. I must have at some point." I fidgeted. "What happened to your arm."

"Cut it off," Blake said, laughing a little, but looking seriously uncomfortable, "Pepper did it."

"Ah, yeah, her. Why exactly did she do that?"

"The tracker, remember? I couldn't get it off, and I started getting super anxious about being carted off to die, and I thought... well. Better an arm than death, right?"

"Does she even know how to properly do that?"

"No. It was supposed to be cut right at above the bracelet, but she messed up, and- It had to go, right? This or death." He had his arm covered by his shirt sleeve, but I'd guess the cut was more around the elbow. "My pain tolerance is a lot higher than it used to be. It's okay, now- hurts, but less."

"What were you doing at the hospital?"

"Um, just sort of... like any good rebellious group, we've been doing some unsightly work as well. I don't like to get caught up in it, I swear. But it happens. It was this old man, Philip. He was dying, and I had to knock a few cables loose, that's all. Probably it was a humane way to go. Hopefully painless."

"I heard he was dead."

"Someone attacked him in the street, left him critically injured. I guess he was on his way out anyways, but the others here wanted it to be absolute. I think they might have been testing me."

"That was murder," I said, looking him in the eye. Blake didn't seem the type to kill, but it hardly changed my opinion of him. Everyone down here had dirty hands.

"I know, it's ghastly, but in a way we're just trading one or two lives for hundreds. That's how Pepper explained it at least. I'm not nearly as charismatic... as her."

"Do you have a thing for her?"

"You don't like to comment on things, do you? Just listening and absorbing like a machine."

"I'll comment that I'm not too fond of the comparison."

"Sorry. Pepper's nice. I don't know if I'm in any state to go around having crushes, but sure? She's cute. I like happy people," Blake said, "Why do you care?"

"Let's get that file so you can leave this place," I said, not willing to explain Pepper probably was playing with his feelings on purpose.

"Ooo, avoiding the subject, huh? You got a crush of your own?" He jabbed me with his elbow. "Please don't. I would have literally no way to react to that."

"No. God no."

"And now I'm sort of offended." He smiled. "I've come to like this city. You sort of abandoned me, so that was a damper to my spirit, but you came back. So now all I feel is pleased. I never went through a rebellious phase in my teens, and I guess this is me compensating for it. I know it's all trivial and pointless, but it's really good to just scream 'Fuck the system!' once in a while, you know?"

"All revolutions fail."

"Aw, boo. You ever been to Earth, Mannie? Revolutions are the people's favorite game. Everyone loves an underdog." Blake looked off at the city below, spiraling barely, a mess of light and darkness. Down the road, the bass drummed from a loud bar, and a high pitched shout echoed from the east. "We might not achieve anything, but it's fun. And I like having fun."

"So you don't want to leave?"

"Maybe not forever. I'm making new friends here, right? I still need to reunite with my family, reclaim whatever is left up there, but... I might come back, instead of starting over. Maybe I'll sell my soul proper to do it too."

"What would you sell your soul for?"

"At this point, I'm content, you know? Jeez, what're the limits? A billion dollars for my family?" Blake laughed. "What did you sell yours for?"

"A friend."

That was true.

"You're going to have to open up to me at some point, Mannie. If we're ever going to be friends."

"I... hope we can be." God, I was weak. I stood up. "Let's hurry up and get that file. I have some business to attend to elsewhere."

"More mysteries, huh. I'm curious as to what you were up to as well."

So I told him, which took a while: About Rhamiel, my sad quest to impress him, and the eventual bloodbath I had abandoned down below. If he wanted to be my friend, he had every right to know. Did I want to be his friend?

I wasn't in kindergarten anymore. I didn't get to sit around picking and choosing these things. Friends were people who put up with me, and so far he had, and even after describing my total willingness to abandon everyone to certain death, he had yet to run.

"Sorry," He said, when I was done.

Which was certainly nice of him.

Something felt quiet about lower Hell, but that might've just been because it was night. Though the lights down here never dimmed, most people still worked day shift, and there was an unsettled air about those still in the halls. Heading up, slowly blinking, glad to leave.

We were a minority in Greed. The office was locked, but I knew the keypad password- it was the same for every lockable door in Hell, and glaringly obvious for a place as heavily themed as this one- and we found Blake's file right there on Kell's desk.

I started feeling weird the moment we stepped into my old office and flicked the lights on. God. Quiet. Not sure how that made me feel.

These people, I knew them, and they stopped existing to me the moment I had left, my flimsy memory already working to forget everything I had gathered over the last five years. Kell would come last.

In his office, he had these cliche, thick-framed photos. I'd never taken the time to look at them before, since it was rare I'd even be in his office without him there in the first place. When we grabbed the file, I took an off moment to stare.

There were three. The first was of a woman and Kell- his first wife. He never spoke about her, but I had known he had had one. Instantly, I started to compare her to me- but wow, that was petty. She was good looking though, with a small and restrained smile. I could never really tell if I thought a girl was pretty or if I was just jealous that she looked better than me, and was obsessing over every detail. For someone who didn't consider themself a woman, this was one habit I'd yet to lose.

Kell looked happy though. Even happier in the next one, with his daughter. Didn't know he had had one. She was only around five, and Kell must have been thirty at the time- he was in his seventies now, though had come to Hell in his thirties. His physical age was thus stuck somewhere around a delicately aged fifty.

Lastly, there was a slightly more recent picture of him and Kelsey, a slightly blurry photo where both looked wasted, arms around each other, drinking in a warm looking bar.

Something about Kell being happy bothered me.

"What's up?" Blake asked. He had begun to leaf through his file, but I could tell he was still nervous about being in this office past hours, and was waiting to leave before reading.

"I feel a little ill."

Having potentially condemned Kell to a violent death was not going to make our relationship any more plausible. Not like we had much of one to begin with.

There was this bad, bad revelation I was suddenly barreling into, and something about it really did make me sick. Kell had a life. Fuck, everyone had one.

I guess I always knew I was a self centered egotistical asshole, but this was really putting things in perspective. Kell has a life, and I maybe was responsible for ending it. He had been happy at some point. He had been young.

My favorite doorman, with his dumb green horns and ill-fitting uniform, probably had a wife up in the city. Probably was proud of his job. Maybe had served his war time, and lost good friends to cruel angels.

Holy fucking shit.

I did not like this feeling.

"...Mannie?"

"I think I'm having some sort of crises. Here, one second."

"You okay?"

I was quiet for a moment, and then I took a deep breath, as quietly as I could, so Blake wouldn't know how nervous I was. Then I started thinking about something else. Something that spiraled a little bit less, something that didn't prompt me to tear up my cuticles and nip at my cheeks.

Then, after that failed, I thought about a nice garden and a friendly golden dog until my heart rate calmed.

"Yeah. Let's head back."

And then back to Wrath. At the very least, I was going to retrieve Kell's body.