– neck,up his face and eye-patch and thinner hair, down to the place where scarred flesh becomes red metal.

This isn't your Tord.

For the first time in months, that thought wouldn't make Tom rolls his eyes and snap you're being too sentimental. Tord is Tord, and he fucked us over. There was no "real" him that cared about us deep down. Move on.

This time, you mean that your Tord – whether that's the weeb you'd known since childhood or the megalomaniac who tried wearing that weeb's skin – is not the man looking at you through the crack in your door. Because your Tord is dead.

This assertion is only bolstered by the fact that Matt is still shrieking in your ear about the horrible monster who knocked on his door, "Scared me half to death, Edd! Do you think ugly's contagious? Oh, I need to disinfect my whole apartment now." The Not Tord rolls his eyes as Matt giggles over the line. "Well, on second thought, if it was that contagious I would've gotten it from you and Tom ages ago."

You end the call.

He chuckles, even as you redouble your efforts to shut the door on his fingers. "Glad to see you're as petty as ever," he says.

A brief hum of agreement. You throw your shoulder against the door and try to pry his fingers off individually, but that doesn't work, either. "Now get out."

"Edd, please," but his voice is the same. Pleading and desperate and hoarse, but still the same. The same Tord, whispering in your ear, muttering in his sleep, laughing with you and Matt and Tom.

Betraying all of you, getting shot out of the sky.

Well, this wouldn't be the first time he's come back from the dead, now would it?

He slips his shoulder in through the door. "I just wanna talk."

You toss your weight on the door again, which only forces him back an inch, heels digging into the pavement. He seems like he's retreating for a moment, but then he shoves the door so far you hear the screws on the chain give a little, jolting you so harshly you stumble back.

The only thing keeping him out is what remains of his common courtesy, and the chain on your door.

"Oh, sorry about that," goes the voice on the other side. "Still getting used to this thing. I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"If you wanna talk to anyone," you snap, giving the door a kick. "Go talk to Tom – I'm sure he'd love to hear how your survived that."

You can't see him, but you hope that made him wince. That would, however, require he give a shit in the first place.

"You really think Tom's interested in anything I have to say?" Tord asks, like that's the dumbest thing he's ever heard.

"What makes you think I'm interested in what you have to say?" You slam your other shoulder into the door. "Get. Out."

But the hand doesn't budge; the chain is pulled taut, nervously vibrating like it's about to snap at any moment.

"Alright, I'll admit it: I'm selfish. I don't care what Tom or Matt or anyone else has to say. Not right now." His good silver eye appears in the crack in the door. "But I care about you."

"Oh really?" He's already lying; if he didn't care what Matt had to say, why bother knocking on his door, first? Unless he got the numbers mixed – and you change your mind to the option less charitable. "You expect me to believe that?"

"No, not really."

The bluntness of it makes you pause momentarily.

"But I know you," Tord continues, "and I know that you know that if you don't let me in and hear me out, you're gonna be up the rest of the month regretting it." He flashes you a knowing smile, to which you respond with a bird. The smile falls. "Come on, Edd, you heard how Matt reacted to – this." He gestures a hand up his scarred half. "And we both know Tom will flip his shit if I so much as breathe in his direction. They can wait."

"In case you haven't noticed, I can't wait for you to leave." You shove yourself off the door and stalk off into your kitchen, ignoring his questions, searching through your closet – you surely have your sword here somewhere, or at the very least your shovel. Or one of the harpoons Tom gave you after the whole debacle,'in case that creep ever comes back.'

Well, he's back.

"Edd, I'm here because you're the glue of the group, you always have been. And you're the sanest one out of all of – hey, where did you get that sword?" He asks, wholly unintimated but not unimpressed. "Looks cool."

He sounds too much like he did in middle school, back when he was obsessed with owning a katana.

You press the tip into his nose a little more, almost hard enough to draw blood, but he simply raises his gloved human hand and pulls the sword away. His grin widens, voice suddenly cheerful and teasing. "Come on, Edd! For old times' sake." Between your feet, Ringo has finally decided to sate her curiosity. She slips as much of her head as she can out the crack in the door, sniffing Tord's worn boots. "See, even Ringo misses me."

You jab the tip of the sword against his chest, just enough to rip the cloth over his heart. "Go to hell."

He grabs the blade with his metal hand, jamming the door with the steel toe of his boot. "We can't." You drop the sword ( fucking idiot ) and throw your body against the entrance again and again, ignoring the fuzzy memories churning deep in the sea of your mind, forcing him to maneuver the whole of his arm through the space, elbow digging a rut into the door frame.

On the television, Zero Mostel is singing about how there must be a moral.

You hear a familiar Norwegian curse under his breath, but the black space where his eye used to be stares. "Not alone."

You stare at him for a few long moments, studying the scars that rope the left side of his face, disappearing under the eye-patch.

"You really wanna be comparing me letting you in to Krissy being almost dragged to Hell right now?"

He looks so different, but the boy you knew is in there. In that shaky, crooked smile.

He gives a hapless shrug. "It's roughly on par with going back to actual Hell."

That is true. Hell, like love and many other things, is way better in the movies.

"No funny business?" You ask. He nods, but you suddenly shake your head. "On second thought, Cenobites are pretty shit at promises. So just don't promise anything."

"Got it, chief," he says, and you're back in the past, in him knocking on your door to go on a pizza run, or to go out and stargaze, passing the same cigar back and forth between you, you making fun of his trench coat and he your band shirts, made all the funnier when it's ones he's bought for you.

The whole ensemble now: morals tomorrow, comedy tonight!

That's life: You either roll with the joke, or die a miserable punchline.

So despite yourself, you return his smile as you reach up, and take the chain off the door.