"So what the hell's a' matter with him?" Red chewed on the stubby end of a cigar and sat his oversized bulk on the closed lid of the commode.
"I don't know, Red," said Liz in tired sarcasm. "Maybe he just recently watched someone he felt something for die."
Red (aka Hellboy) muttered unintelligibly and chewed on in frustration. For the last two days, he'd watched his friend sink into a state of dejection that finally left Abe in a self-induced comatose state in the old porcelain bath.
Liz dipped her hand in the water to brush along the slick scales of Abe's face. She inflamed herself at the lowest level and warmed the water, not knowing whether it helped him or not. She was at least able to comfort herself with the effort.
They'd been camped out in the deserted house on the Irish coast for a few weeks now. It was pretty much a shack; a remnant of one of the bureau's previous cases left empty because of the latent hauntings. Red had already somehow collected five cats, Liz was growing rounder with child, and Abe had kept his grief to himself until it subdued him completely. To Red, it looked like his thalassic friend, arms crossed and lanky figure filling up the space, lay in a water-logged coffin. Bubbles of respiration were Abe's only telltale signs of life.
"Ah, crap." Red's usual intonation was laced with worry for his friend as well as concern for Liz, who was showing the lines of tension throughout her body. The quitting of the bureau had been a dramatic step, but they'd all been prepared for it. What they really hadn't considered (like any normal person) was how well cared for they'd all actually been. Pampered even. Red missed the large meals, snacks, brunches, all the food that he'd enjoyed. Liz didn't have the insulated room, so a lot of bedding got scorched when she had bad dreams (Red made a point to have her sleep practically on top of him so she wouldn't burn the house down, not that he minded or anything). Worst of all, Abe was denied his huge tank. Though the ocean was practically at their door, Abe avoided open water on principle. He'd suffered in silence on this point as well and Red blamed himself and finally realized how selfish he'd actually been about his own comforts - a point Liz had emphatically made a few months earlier to his chagrin.
Thinking of Liz, he suddenly realized how much time she'd spent attending to Abe in the last couple days trying to pry him out of his grief, then watching over him lest he decide to do something morbid like leave them completely. Red noticed for the first time the dark circles under Liz's eyes, the languid way she circled her fingers in the water without even being conscious of the motion. He spit out the butt of the cigar (the last one he'd surely see in a while) and stooped to pick Liz up. "Time for bed, babe."
"Don't call me babe," she muttered into his neck, rubbing her face against the smooth leather of his skin.
"Uhh...Abe," he said teasingly, "I said 'get out of bed Abe'."
"Mmmm," she muttered indistinctly as he tucked her into the somewhat sooty smelling bed.
Red rested by her side for a moment, cradling her swelling abdomen. "Don't get all hot and bothered without me," he said, somewhat jokingly. He knew that at times she could spontaneously combust for no reason at all - one of the side effects of pregnancy. Forget morning sickness, Liz put the tendencies of a "delicate situation" to shame.
Twilight dipped heavy over the ocean like a lid on a pan of soup. Red stood at the sea's edged muttering what sounded like half-forgotten incantations, but it could have been swearing and oaths rumbling in that deep voice. With a resigned sigh, he took a few things from his belt and faced the darkening waves.
"Scaley had better buy me a good box of cigars for this."
He crushed a whitish stone in the leaden grasp of his rock-like fist, the bulky fingers rubbing together with the sound of a drawbridge closing. He added the powder to a vial which contained a tooth from St. Mary, Star of the sea. A drop of seawater and the vial began to glow neon phosphorus. Red capped it and whirled it by a bit of cording come from Ahab's own be-damned ship. When he let go, the vial sailed out over the waves leaving a jet-plume of firefly light in its wake. The waters bloomed where it struck the ocean, the waves strobing colors like lightening in that opposite sky.
Red sat down to wait, wishing for the soothing nicotine of a good smoke.
She walked from the waves just as the over-large moon lifted its face above the horizon. All sealskin and sea dark hair, she'd been many times mistaken for the sirens that haunted the Irish coast.
"Sareana!" Red said jovially, the only word he got out before he was half-turned by a smart slap across the face. It was like being smacked with a wet towel soaked in brine.
"Ow," he muttered somewhat belatedly with dry indignation.
"You thought you could just leave me there in the Triangle and I'd disappear like one of those daft sailors?" she asked fiercely, propping webbed hands on her sleek hips, the long fins draping her sides ridging in anger like a kaleidoscopic cloak.
"It wasn't like that, Sare," Red said helplessly, groping for one of his clever excuses. "Bermuda was about to become the next Atlantis. I couldn't let that slimy netherworld guy swallow it like a late-night snack!"
"Oh, and after you got done saving mankind, you couldn't see coming back and facing me like a man. Just a "Dear John" note in the sand and you were gone!" She turned her back on him now, watching the waves roll in, her fins dimming with dejection.
"We were no good for each other, Sare," Red tried desperately, putting all the meaning he could muster into his voice. "I always sank like a stone with this thing," he did a little wave with his rock hand, "and you'd get me all fired up and the corral would boil into pulp. The entire lagoon became a nice fish soup during our last fight!"
"You never understood me," she said sadly.
"Sareana, I didn't ask you here to open old wounds," he said, serious now and thinking of Abe. "I've got a favor to ask, and whether you agree or not, you can leave here and never have to see me again."
"What do you want now? Poseidon's trident? Ahab's ivory leg? As I recall, there were a few pirate treasures missing when you skipped out!" She tried to say it with the bite of anger, but already she was softening at the sincerity in his voice.
"I ain't come to take anything from you, babe." he said, almost biting his tongue the moment he said the word, then rushing on in headlong desperation before she could fling a new net of anger over him. "I need you to help someone." And when you see him, he thought to himself, you'll forget anything we ever had together.
Hellboy knew how alone in the world Sareana was.
He watched until the tide pulled them out in its licking wake - two dark forms sinking beneath the waves as the first light of dawn turned the water from inky black to mournful grey. Red then crawled into bed with Liz, his wet skin hissing slightly as it quenched the flame licking lightly down her torso.