The apocalypse came and went in all its calamitous glory. Angels clashed, fighting tooth and nail. Armies met and fell like beasts. Trumpets sounded, clear in the air, as the skies rained fire and brimstone. Woeful cries made a chorus in the night as sinners fell to the deep dark abyss. Hell was unleashed, preaching chaos to the masses, but the Angels struck the earth with golden flames.
And Satan lost.
The blow was enough to kill her, but it had only wounded him. It was fitting that the blade had pierced their hearts.
You should have broken the contract. Why didn't you just break the contract?
He fell.
And she was lost to the beast within him. The anguished howl was heard across the world, but Michael did not have the heart to end it.
—
A thousand years passed in a moment - what was a thousand years to the Devil? - and Satan languished in his prison.
But it was not his freedom he lamented.
Sometimes he thought he heard her in the monster; it had almost consumed him once when he listened too closely.
Sometimes he did hear her - a giggle in the stale air, a snippet of something she'd said once, half forgotten and barely clinging to intelligibility - but it was only in his mind. Sometimes he thought this was another punishment.
Eventually, Satan became aware of the slipping- the tiny widening absence of the souls within him. Now that there were were none left to take their place, the slow withdrawal of the damned was noticeable. Obvious. Heart-stopping.
And then one day he realised what God had never told him, the truth that he somehow always knew but never dared hope for.
His Father was a merciful god.
Hell is temporary.
—
She was the last to recede, since she was the last to die. Natalie's voice had become clearer with each passing soul, but he could still only barely hear her when the last of her words resounded in his head. They sounded like gibberish.
And then Natalie was gone, and the silence almost drove him mad. The irony was palpable: after all this time fighting the beast they created, it was the lack of voices in his head that threatened to rob him of his sanity.
He'd screamed, shouted for her to come back, called her every name in the book, promised what little he had if only she would come back. Years passed, and there was no reply.
—
She appeared like a wraith in his prison, bright and clear and gold, and took his hand.
"Are you real?" The question tasted familiar on his tongue. He'd asked her before, so long ago.
Natalie grinned, nodding. She looked the same, unchanged after so long except, perhaps, for the wisdom in her eyes.
Neither was sure who had moved first, but Natalie was clutched to his chest in a moment.
"It was worth it, you know." She whispered.
"Worth what?"
"Worth Hell to spend my life with you."