a/n: Sorry for taking forever to post a new chapter! I have a lot on my plate, but I will do my best to post as regularly as I can.As for this chapter itself, I am complete trash for a million different reasons. I can't really say I'm sorry.
The billboards all watched over them like factory-made gods. Their surroundings could have been the hills and valleys, the over-and-underpasses of any major city if not for the eerie fog and the billboards' content. The beings who played and drank and ate and sprawled across the oversized images, selling sex, had crayola-colored skin, extraneous appendages, animal parts. Cat ears, octopus arms. Hooves at the bottom of bikini-legs.
Despite all this, something about the images' surreal perfection made Nona feel like earthly billboards always did. She found herself suddenly conscious of each human angle in her face and chipped flake of nail polish on her hands, as if she didn't measure up. And yet...
"It feels different now," she said to Michael. "Like it's actually kind of pretty here."
He looked at her through a mist the color of winter fog and headlights. The sky above him was gray, causing a slight halo effect above his blond hair. "That happens," he said, matching her stride. "Once you master this place, it mostly behaves for you."
Michael had just now achieved said mastery himself, but of course he didn't reveal this. There was something particularly humiliating about it, as if he'd gone to teach a class on something only to be stumped by a foundational question.
He outran the thought by walking a bit more quickly. His stomach felt funny and he wondered if Nona caused that like she seemed to cause nosebleeds. No, he decided, it was probably all that junk funeral food. Usually Michael made himself throw up after such unhealthy binges, but of course he couldn't do that now. So he just kept walking.
"Here," he said, coming to the spot he'd set out for. "Look." Nona stopped beside him at the edge of the hill and surveyed the underpass. It was lushly green, calling to mind the foliage of the Pacific Northwest, with winding paths through it. Dotting the area were twinkling light-up signs showcasing the illustrations and descriptions of various mythical creatures.
"It's amazing," Nona breathed. "Pegasus... Hippocampus, Centaur..." Though she was loathe to admit it, she'd been a bit of a horse girl in childhood. So her eyes drew first to the equine beasts.
Michael nodded excitedly. "Yes, and there's the Chimera, and the Manticore, and oh, the..."
"What is that one?" Nona asked, brow furrowing as she pointed to a terrifying leopard-spotted creature with seven heads. Even as an illustration, something about it made her uncomfortable and full of dread.
"That's the beast from the sea," said Michael, pleased. "He's my favorite."
Nona stood silent for a moment, listening for wind tunnels and jet planes.
"You said you were sad," she said finally, turning to Michael. "Why?"
"I don't have to tell you everything, you know," he replied, turning from the overpass and resuming his walk.
This sudden coolness wounded Nona more than she cared to admit, so she countered it with more stregnth of her own. "No," she countered, catching up to him, "and I don't have to be here. I can ascend back, which I'm going to have to do soon anyway. If I'm going to follow you, I need to be able to trust you."
Michael sighed. "When Cordelia... punished me," he still couldn't bear to say out loud what had really happened, "...she really took everyone. Okay? Everyone left who I loved, or who was on my side, or who hadn't betrayed me... all gone." There was a catch in his voice, but he swallowed it. "And so I thought, you know, at least I still have hell. At least I still have my father. But it didn't exactly... work out that way. Apparently my father is the trial by fire type. No one gets special treatment down here, not even me. It makes a person feel pretty alone, you know?"
But you're not a person, you're a monster, Nona thought.
"I'm sorry," Nona said, taking his hand. They walked the rest of the way in silence, malevolently guarded by skyscrapers and billboards.
Eventually they came upon a large, empty structure that Nona quickly recognized: an ice rink. "Here it is," Michael said. "It's what I wanted to show you."
"An ice rink?"
"Yeah. Isn't it cool?" he asked, already lacing up a pair of skates from a small row of sizes. Before she could ask any more questions he was out on the ice, beginning to loop the parameter. He wasn't bad.
Nona located her size and put skates on, too, pushing off quickly after him. "An ice rink... in hell?"
"It's not hell, it's the underworld," he said. "The places behind the doors are hell." He skated out to the center of the empty rink, then stopped himself delicately. "Anyway, watch this."
She watched. He stood, eerily beautiful beneath the urban smog, looking taller because of the ice skates. His face was a mask of chilly concentration as he lifted one hand. Nona began to feel uneasy. A foggy black shadow flashed behind him in the vague shape of demonic wings, making the rust-colored halo of light around his head perverse in its irony.
Nona waited for the sound of falling buildings, for thick dust to choke her throat.
But instead a sound system flickered on from somewhere unseen. An old rendition of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" echoed off the ice rink's open walls.
"I don't control which songs come on," Michael said, a little self-consciously, returning to loop the rink.
"You're a show-off," Nona chided, trying to control the tremor in her voice. She took a deep breath. "Where'd you learn to ice skate, anyway?" she asked. She did a small twirl and turned backward, skating that way so that Michael could face her.
"My grandma taught me, at the rink in the mall near our house," he said. "And you?"
Nona turned back around and glided ahead of him, her black dress fluttering around her thighs. "I did it competitively through middle school," she answered. "I remember at competitions, all our parents used to come and throw flowers and toys out on to the ice at the end of our routines. It was a thing."
"That's cute," Michael said. "You look like an ice skater. You have the hair."
"I knew her too, you know," Nona said abruptly.
"Knew who?"
"Your grandma. I knew all of them. I used to live in that house."
Michael's expression was unreadable. "Just tell me," Nona pressed. "I need to know... did you kill her?"
"How could you?" Michael muttered. He took off for the center of the rink.
Nona followed, stopping inches from where he stood with his arms crossed.
"How could you ask me that?" he repeated, pouting. "I thought you liked me."
"I do!" Nona blurted, retroactively realizing that it was true. "I just... I don't know... I definitely thought about killing her a few times."
To her relief, Michael joined her in laughing. For the first time she thought she saw a trace of Tate's face in his. "Yeah," he admitted. "Me too... But I didn't, to answer your question. Not directly, anyway." He didn't laugh at all at that last bit.
Nona felt herself sway on her skates, and Michael instinctively grabbed her by the forearms to steady her. Like her, he was tallish but somewhat delicately built. His wrists next to hers were just a little bit thicker due to his gender.
"I'm sorry," she muttered. "I'm gonna have to ascend soon."
Michael didn't let go of her. "What's going to happen then?" he asked. She knew exactly what he meant.
"I don't know," she admitted. She was feeling fainter by the second as the material world demanded her home.
"Then take me with you," he urged. "Please?"
"Michael, please... I can't... I can't even think right now," Nona said. It was true. The prospect of hashing out the future of her budding friendship with the antichist was impossibly overwhelming at that moment.
"Okay," he said gently. "Hey. Just one more minute, okay? Please? Here..."
When he was sure she was steady enough to stand alone, Michael again lifted a hand to the sky. His face went blank and his eyes rolled backward until a small, beautiful snow flurry surrounded them. The end effect was charming, Nona had to admit.
He broke concentration and grinned at her, flashing dimples. He then felt something wet on his upper lip and gingerly reached a hand up. Red.
"Sorry," he said, sniffing. "I just... you give me nosebleeds? I think it's something in your energy."
"Oh," she said, caught off guard. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay."
Nona placed one hand on the side of Michael's face and the other against his chest to steady herself. She thumbed the blood from his upper lip and looked barely-up into his eyes. She was about to be in what was quite possibly the biggest trouble of her life, in a lifetime that seemed to consist mainly of one instance of self-inflicted trouble after another. But she would deal with that when the time came. It couldn't hurt to use her last ounce of stregnth down here to kiss him.