When Harry woke up, Loona's warmth was gone from under him, and he had been drooling heavily on the couch. He stood up, groggy and not really fully conscious of his surroundings. His throat was dry and itchy, his eyes heavy-lidded, and he was parched. All his muscles ached, strained and tense as though he'd run the world's longest and most arduous marathon. He didn't even remember everything that had happened that day, from his showdown with the Angels to his own Angel convulsing and frying his own brain.
He swam in that blissful state of ignorance known only when one is still half-asleep, cracking his knuckles and stretching out his stiff, painful body inch by inch. He opened the fridge, and as he downed a carton of what was clearly expired milk, everything came back to him.
Surprisingly, what his mind lingered on was the gentle kiss Loona had planted on his forehead just that evening, and he blushed hard when he remembered it. He shut his eyes and tried to replicate it in his head with as much exactness as he was capable of, and if he properly cleared his mind, he could almost feel her, smell her close to him again.
He wanted to chastise himself for focusing on something like that when there were clearly more serious matters at hand, but he hopped about the house lightly, his thoughts on Loona and Loona only. What would he say to her when he saw her next? He would've liked to greet her with a kiss or tell her something meaningful, something that would make her understand the bliss she carried around with her in a cloud.
Could he maybe write her a letter? He knew that he could never draw or paint her in a way that he felt was representative of his affection, but would words be any better? Anyway, wouldn't something like that is a little over the top?
He wouldn't even know what to write - he even got lost when trying to say the simplest things to her just because she was here. He probably wouldn't be able to get past the first line.
Thinking about this, his mind was completely occupied, but then a grunt came from Angel's room, and his wispy, creative and loving mood came crashing down and broke, cutting him everywhere. He rushed over, angry at himself for being so distracted, feeling terrible for forgetting Angel.
How could he forget him after what had happened? But Harry didn't want to answer that question because he knew that it was all too likely that he had wanted to forget. He slammed the door open, and inside, he saw Angel.
He was fluttering about the bed, clearly unsteady on his feet, clutching his head on one set of his hands. He was clearly about to collapse, but he was still near the bed. Still, he could fall on the wall and do even more damage to his already burned-out head.
Harry hastened to his side and clutched Angel's wavering figure. Angel looked up at him, and the look on his face pained Harry more than he would've thought possible because, for a moment, Angel did not recognize him.
Just a moment after, recognition set into his features - it was clear he was also hypersensitive to the light and that both his mind and his vision were blurred and reeling. Still, Harry knew he had seen him and that though he loved him, his image had gone unrecognized at first.
Harry choked back a sob as he lowered Angel back onto the bed. "Easy there," he muttered, but he soon resolved not to say anything because his voice was cracking, and even the sound of his pain was enough to inflict even more of it. "Am I dead?" Angel asked, slurring his words painfully.
He didn't even sound like himself. He sounded like something that was half-there, half-not. "Well, sort of," Harry replied with a tight smile. "You didn't double-die if that's what you're asking," he said, removing his hand temporarily from Angel's armpit to discreetly wipe off the pained tears that had begun to flow unwanted from his face. Angel suddenly looked him dead in the eye with a focus completely contrary to the wavering mess he had been a second previous. "And you're here? Harry? Harry?" He touched his face, and Harry put his hand to where Angel clutched him. "Yes, I'm here." "But you died, Har," Angel's lowered lip quivered.
Harry had never seen him go through such vulnerable expressions, with such dire and extreme emotions that even manifested themselves in this manner. But, then again, Cherri had made sure he never saw Angel overdose, and it wasn't a feat that had occurred that often, anyway.
If it had, there would've been no Angel to love, to speak to, to live with. There would've been no Angel. "No, I didn't. See?" He said, pressing his hand, " I'm here. With you." Angel shook his head in disbelief, his tears coming out black from the makeup he still had on his lashes. They matted his pale fur, still humid from the bath Cherri Bomb had given him.
He looked awful like he had been hit by a train and left dumb and unable to move his limbs. "No, no, no!" Angel put his hands to his ears, but he was still so out of it that he collapsed sideways and stumbled off the bed. Harry was about to pick him up when Angel started to convulse again. "Shit," Harry uttered desperately. He flipped Angel to his side and had to wait him out until he was done. He watched the whites roll up to be the only visible part of his eyes, and he watched the yellow-ish, toxic foam that bubbled from his open lips. He looked dead, and he looked like he was dying.
Harry held him. He wanted to believe he was insensible to this, that he knew how Angel was and what he suffered through, and that since he was a child, he had always understood deep down that his father was not alright. That was what he wanted to believe, but the empty well of despair within him disagreed. One could never get used to torture so acute, so penetrating to the heart. It severed all your nerves and dampened your brain, and overheated your whole body, so you were simultaneously petrified and overworked.
Whenever Angel burned a piece of himself away, Harry was burned, too. He understood that there was no way to get accustomed to such pain, that the only relief was that you already knew it was coming. So the shock wore off, and you convinced yourself you didn't feel it anymore, when in reality you experience every sensation just as vividly, just with the knowledge that it will pass, and that you have already lived through it once, even if it was barely surviving. The seizure passed, and Harry set Angel back down on his bed, completely unconscious and with a body so limp and fragile that it seemed like a child's corpse. He dragged a chair from the kitchen and got his paper and pencil, and he began drawing
0=0=0=0=0=0=0=0=00=0=0=0=0=0
Cherri Bomb found Harry completely passed out in front of Angel's bed, Angel himself asleep as well, but with an uncomfortable look on his face. The kid's clothes were still stiff and crusty with blood - he'd probably have to throw it all out.
Blood was hard to wash off, Cherri knew, and Hell didn't have proper stain removers anywhere. On his lap were stubs of old pencils and long, new ones, together with some scattered papers. Harry didn't use an eraser. She picked up the drawing that sat on the snoring kid's lap and observed it.
It was simply a black ball. But it looked like more than that: it had shape but seemed shapeless, it was violent, but it seemed deeply sad at the same time. She was deeply unsettled by the meaning behind that simple mess of black pencil.
Looking at him drooling all over himself, it was hard to believe that that numb-nuts had made it. She set it back down on him, careful not to wake him, and perched herself by the edge of Angel's bed. Angel stirred and opened his eyes. He took a few seconds to realize he was awake, to remember his existence and acclimatize.
Finally, he looked at Cherri. "Harry?" He croaked, his blood-shot eyes slit like a spider's. Cherri nodded to the sleeping figure of the kid, and just as she did, a deep snore erupted from his chest, as if confirming the fact that he was alive, regardless of what his bloody clothes made it look like. "How?" He let out, looking pleadingly at her.
She wiped some of the smeared grey streaks from under his eyes. "I don't know, Ange. But he's here," Angel nodded at her words, and a moment later, allowed his eyes to close once more. Cherri left out the window a few minutes later, not wanting to disturb the sleeping family.
=0=0=0=0=0=0=0=0=0=0
The following day, Harry and Cherri babied Angel the whole morning. They fed him water through a straw and spoon-fed him soup made out of vegetable just-past-expiration-date. Cherri had helped Harry strip off his stiff clothes with a knife, and he had finally taken a shower.
She had kept her questions to herself, noticing the pensive, over-preoccupied look that flooded Harry's expression at all times of the day. However, she still craved to know what had happened with him and Loona during the extermination.
She had never seen someone survive it like that - Hell, she had never seen anyone survive it, not in those conditions. If you survived, it was because you were nowhere near it. Period. Was there any other way? She couldn't fathom it - but they were special kids. Maybe they'd found a way to save themselves. It was an odd thought, but she thought he might tell her eventually, and if he didn't, then Angel would spill his guts once Harry told him, so she didn't really need to dwell on it. In the afternoon, after rejecting Angel's mumbling plea for a 'healing bottle of beer' and making him some tea instead, Loona suddenly burst into the apartment.
No one had expected her, and though Harry was still pleased by her presence, he was equally as perplexed, especially as he was struck by the urgent look in her eyes. The moment he saw her, he remembered everything he had thought about: writing her a letter, drawing something special, finding the perfect words, but the only thing that came out was: "Hey, what are you-" "Just- I- where is your TV remote?" Loona began, stumbling over her words, flipping over cushions and searching for the remote. Cherri and Harry watched her, confused.
She found it under the couch and immediately flipped to the news channel when the static was steady. Katie Killjoy's soothing yet horrid voice boomed through the small apartment. "- sources that have asked to be anonymous (we will reveal their names shortly) have confirmed that there has been a survivor of an Angel attack after yesterday's extermination.
Usually, we don't care for such fantastic stories, but there have been so many eye-witnesses that there is no use denying it. There is an Angel-slayer in our midst," her eye twitched, "he is described as being over eight feet, white hair, giant horns, estimated to be in his thirties or late twenties, with massive, steroid abs, and reptile-looking. I mean, Tom, have you ever seen a guy like that?" "Not that I can think of, Katie, no," Tom Trench replied cheerily. "Well, I'm sure if you did, you'd ask him to fist you," she slammed her papers down. "The question is - who is this mysterious hunk of muscle? Is he a powerful demon, or did those pesky Angels release a drug-gas that made everyone absolutely fucking trip? If you have any information, call 1-800-eat-my-a-" Loona muted the TV and looked at Harry with wide, frightened eyes. "They know," she said, her voice trembling. Cherri looked back and forth between the two, clearly frightened teenagers. "What in the nine circles are you two talking about?" She demanded, placing her hands on her hips. "What did you do, Harry?" Came a trembling voice from the other side of the room.
Angel stood, leaning against his doorway, his back curved weakly. "Angel-" Harry started. "They're going to come looking for you," Angel whispered, anger and weakness making his voice quiver. Despite his decrepit appearance, Harry understood that he was harboring a lot of vexation - but that just made Harry indignant: what right did he have to judge Harry's actions? Looking at Angel's blood-shot eyes and the purple circles beneath them, he realized he was almost glad to see so much emotion from Angel because all that rushed to his mind was that expressionless, unrecognizing look from before. Angel had been hovering between being half-awake and being fully asleep these past few hours, so he was also shocked at seeing him out of bed, clearly tired but in his faculties. "I had to do it," Harry steeled himself, clenching his fists and teeth. He didn't regret the decision he had made.
It was because of it that Loona was standing before him right now, that he didn't have a hole in his chest where his heart should've been. "For what, Harry? There are so many things worse than death. Slavery is one of them, and that's what you will become when some goddamn overlord decides he needs a cool new battle weapon. And for what, Har? For your little girlfriend?" His tone had escalated far too quick, and if his words hadn't struck so close to home, Harry would've understood that it was the drugs that hadn't been properly flushed out of his system speaking, that Angel's brain hadn't fully recovered from the deep-fry it'd been put under. "Ange, I don't think you should-" Cherri started, but she was promptly interrupted by Harry. "My little girlfriend?"
Harry was fuming at that point, the veins in his forearms and neck popping out like he was about to burst. "At least my 'little girlfriend' isn't called heroine." Harry's run-in with real death had humbled him, and seeing Angel in the state that he'd been in had also made him withdraw into him. Still, he hadn't lost that defiant spark he'd been having lately, and the first word from Angel that he considered unjust just blazed that spark up into a massive flame. "She'll kill you all the same," Angel replied, not without a tinge of sadness.
Harry ran a hand through his hair and tugged. "I'd rather die protecting her than die hurting others." Angel paused at Harry's words, but Harry didn't stop because he had begun what he had wanted to say for so long a time, and now that he had popped the lid on it, he couldn't shut himself up. "Isn't that what you want? You just wanted to punish me because I left? You just wanted to fry your brain because it's the only thing you know. After all, it's the only thing you love? You aren't just killing yourself, you're killing me, you kill Cherri, but you don't care about any of that because the only thing you've ever actually loved was yourself and your fucking drugs. There's nothing else in this world you care about other than that," the anger and venom of Harry's words were drowned by his crying.
His words were cracked, broken, full of pain instead of a willingness to hurt. He looked at the three people around him after he had finished speaking. Cherri stood, looking between Harry and Angel, assimilating everything she had suddenly learned and heard, and she looked like she was in physical pain because of the situation. Loona was standing off to one side, clearly not wanting to partake in a conversation such as the one that was taking place at that moment, an argument so deeply personal and wrecking that she felt like she was interrupting just by breathing.
She was blushing deeply and looking down at the floor, her eyes skittering up and then falling back down like she had something to be embarrassed about. And then, there was Angel. If the drugs hadn't done their part to tear him apart, then Harry's words had. He had aged years in the past five seconds, and he looked as though he were ready to take excessive amounts of drugs time and time again until he really had no consciousness left until he was really gone. There were no tears in his eyes, but somehow that made it even worse.
It was like Harry had shot him. Harry could see that he wanted to say something, that there were words on the tip of his tongue, that he was pained by everything caught in his throat. But he didn't seem to be able to get it out, and he didn't seem to be capable of speech at that moment.
Looking around, Harry realized how ashamed he was of himself - of his words, of his pathetic crying, of his failing to do anything, of his getting everyone around him in trouble and possibly mortal danger. Most of all, he felt shame for what he had done to Angel, who only worried for him, who just wanted to act as a parent would.
But Harry had rejected him and done so in the cruelest way he could've, and in the worst possible moment, too, because he had never seen Angel so weak, so vulnerable. Without a word, humiliation, and agony buried like a dagger in his chest, he stormed out of the apartment.