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Abaddon is a demon. He measures moments in millennia, and years slip past like seconds going by in a movie. Through it all, he insists his memory is golden—that he remembers the birth of the universe, the way it tumbled into being like a stone shaken loose from a god’s shoe; how the Neanderthals rose and fell, and how humanity stole the stage.
It isn’t exactly a lie. But much of it blurs together, smeared by time into indistinct shapes. There are whole stretches where his memory goes dark—black screens where there should be pictures, events he knows occurred but cannot recall.
And still, some moments remain sharp as glass. Too sharp—they prick at his skin and peel him clean, if not to watch him bleed. He relives them again and again and again.
Abaddon is no child. He is ancient beyond measure, older than continents, old enough to have watched the universe remake itself a hundred times over. Yet even so, he finds himself wetting his clothing like a terrified child. It doesn’t happen often—only after Katherine finds him, drags him out, strips him bare, and forces him into the bathtub.
He avoids it as long as he can, sneaking down to the lake on the property to wash, hoping the water will hide his scent. Apparently, that isn’t good enough for Katherine.
When she comes for him, he fights. He scratches at her arms, kicks, twists, tries to bolt every time her grip loosens—but it only makes things worse when he tries to run. Her arm locks around his throat, tight enough to cut off air he doesn’t even need. Still he thrashes, snarls, tries to bite. The sounds that tear from his throat are half wheeze, half plea—like if he just plays the part of something fragile, she might let him go. She doesn't. Just uses her free hand to scrub him down.
His nails are filed dull now; they can’t even break her skin.
“You wretched woman!” he chokes out, words rasping between gasps. “You will not imprison Abaddon!”
He gets the message across well enough.
Katherine only mutters something sharp and furious under her breath as she reaches for the shampoo.
Abaddon seizes on that flicker of distraction, lunging forward to throw her off. He barely gets halfway out of the tub before she forces him back—down and under. Cold water crashes over his face, rushes into his lungs before he can even register there’s no air to breathe. It's not like he needs it. He struggles for it, wants it back nonetheless.
She doesn’t let him surface. He thrashes and claws, kicks hard enough to send water sloshing over the rim, but her grip only tightens. Her fingers dig into his scalp, scrubbing, pulling, punishing.
It’s bad—worse than bad—and it reminds him.
That memory is carved deep, etched into the marrow of him. The place—Hell itself—is a blur now: heat, acid, screaming. He remembers the shape of it, but not the texture. There is another Hell, though. One he recalls in perfect clarity. That room. The stone that scraped his skin raw. The sting of water that burned through his essence, his very being. The man who carved into him, claiming to serve God. He’d shoved him under the water, too.
Abaddon stops struggling. Eyes wide, teeth clenched, his body remembers before his mind can. The memory sears through him, looping again and again as if it’s happening for the first time. He hates it—hates the body for reacting, hates the weakness. He shouldn’t care. He doesn’t. But the vessel locks up anyway, convulsing in blind panic, lungs clawing for air that isn’t there.
The water burns as it fills him, but it’s nothing compared to the holy water. Nothing comes close to that pain—the raw fire of it, the hours spent vomiting it back up, shredding already-ruined vocal cords. The gut-deep ache of knowing he could never get clean, not when the only water near him hated him as much as he hated it.
Katherine’s grip loosens, and he breaks the surface with a violent gasp, though his lungs are already full. He doubles over, gagging and retching as if he could purge not only the water but the memory itself. The matriarch’s face flickers with something like guilt. Good.
He hiccups, sputtering as water spills from his mouth and nose—anything to get it out, to get himself out. He just needs to be anywhere but that room again.
He bolts from the tub, snatching his clothes in a trembling handful and hurling himself toward the nearest vent. Katherine doesn’t follow, doesn’t even move to stop him—but he scrambles faster anyway, as if she might change her mind.
Later, when the panic ebbs into a cold, sour shame, he curses himself for being so pathetic. The matriarch will think there’s something wrong with him—when it’s the vessel that’s broken. He hates it: the flesh that binds him, the nerves that twitch and tremble without his consent. It doesn’t listen. It never has.
At dawn, he washes his clothes. He’s watched Katherine enough times to know how the machines work. Anything to erase the stench of urine, to hide the evidence of a body too stupid to listen. He doesn't have better vocabulary for it.
By morning, the house feels quiet again. Katherine’s gone about her day as if nothing happened, and Abaddon pretends to do the same. He perches near the window, watching the light creep across the floorboards, waiting for the heaviness in his chest to fade. It doesn’t. Okay.
Days slip by like that: silent, deliberate, controlled. Completely in his hands. Good. He’s even begun letting Nathan follow him to the bathroom now, since the man can’t touch him. It’s preferable to the matriarch, who seems to take a particular pleasure in forcing him still. He doesn’t like it, but it’s manageable. Tolerable. As long as he stops asking about the scar adorning his chest.
Weeks pass. Abaddon keeps his distance from Katherine, and for a while it’s almost enough.
If anyone notices the stiffness in his shoulders, they do not mention it.
He finds it easy to be around Esther; she seems just as keen as he is on avoiding her mother. She flits from room to room, dragging him in her wake like a reluctant shadow. He doesn’t always understand why she insists on his company—half the time she’s talking to herself, the other half asking him questions he doesn’t know how to answer or simply won't—but it’s better than silence.
She calls him a professor sometimes—he doesn't know what that is—usually when she wants something. “Come on, teach me something actually dangerous this time,” she says one afternoon, dragging a chair over so she can sit directly in his line of sight.
He frowns. “Magic is not—” he gestures vaguely, “—something you pick up over the table with idle chatter.”
“Then let's do it anyway.”
She grins, and he hates that he feels the faintest tug of amusement in his chest. He tries to look unimpressed, but it’s difficult when she’s leaning over the table, brow furrowed, lips pursed as she draws sigils onto napkins. Half of them are wrong, the lines crooked and incomplete, but she’s determined. He can respect that.
He's not a scholar of any kind; magic is not his specialty—he only knows the basics, and even then, his vessel lacks the finesse for it. The only reason he can use any at all is because he is a demon, and he can pull the essence from the air itself. Esther, though—she’s good. Naturally so. Her energy bends toward the current, finds its rhythm without instruction. It impresses even him, though he’d rather go through the beginning of time again than admit it aloud.
He figures she must come from a line of witches. It's not as uncommon as humans make it out to be, his kind has walked the Earth for many years and made many-a-friend. He doesn’t mention it to her, only hints at grimoires hidden in the library—ancient things with spines like snakeskin and pages that seem to speak when you touch them. She hasn’t found them yet, but he has hope for her.
Sometimes, Nathan joins them. He’ll linger at the doorway with his mug, watching with a half-smile as Esther badgers Abaddon into showing her more. He teases them both, lightening the air in ways Abaddon can’t.
Even Katherine softens in small, unexpected ways. She still hovers, pretending to clean things over and over as if he cannot be trusted, but it's less now. She passes by him in the hall with a curt nod instead of a reprimand. She leaves tea on the counter near his preferred vent without saying a word about it. He pretends to drink it, but really he's pouring it out—he’s hopeful that the woman hasn't put anything in the drinks, but he cannot be too sure.
The house feels lighter these days. The tension has loosened, replaced by the quiet murmur of routine—Esther’s laughter from the other room, Nathan’s music crackling faintly from the radio, the occasional sound of wind through the windows.
Abaddon still startles at loud noises, still tenses when footsteps approach from behind, but the edges of his fear have dulled to something he can almost live with. He begins to fill the gaps of the day with small things: teaching Esther, rearranging books, standing at windows just to feel the sunlight touch his face.
It’s a cool summer morning. The dew in the air feels nice when it lands on his skin through the open window. Abaddon finds himself relaxing despite himself, watching the sunrise bleed slowly over the horizon. He has lived through many of them—empires rising and burning away, worlds dying in their cradles—and yet still finds peace in this: the hush of dawn, the trembling shimmer of light on wet grass, the soft sound of Esther humming somewhere down the hall.
Footsteps getting louder, closer.
Then Esther grabs his wrist. Her fingers are warm, too tight, and she’s saying something—words he can’t quite catch, probably explaining why she needs him to come outside. Her voice hums somewhere behind his temples, distant and meaningless.
And then, before he can stop it, his mind supplies a different scene: another voice, another hand, another pull—down a narrow stairway, into the dark of a room he wishes he could forget.
Like that, just like that, any ounce of progress he has made seems to regress to the back of his mind. His vessel is suddenly nauseous, worse than when he downs lighter fluid and worse than when he stares at holy imagery.
He knows, realistically, Esther would never do that to him—couldn’t. She’s just a child by comparison, her frame barely taller than his vessel’s. She doesn’t tower over him. She doesn’t scream scripture just to hear him choke on the blood that bubbles up his throat. She doesn’t yank him by the hair, drag him across stone, hurt him simply because she can. She can't. He won't let her.
Still, his body doesn’t know the difference. His muscles lock, his feet drag against the floor in a weak, useless protest. The vessel never knows when to listen to him.
Esther stops anyway, turning to glance at him. “Woah, dude, you look like you saw a ghost.” She actually looks around, checking the corners as if one might be there. Even if there were, it wouldn’t explain the way his skin’s gone pale—or paler—the way his spine’s gone rigid. It’s the first time she’s ever seen him with proper posture.
“Uh-” He curses his vessel, the way it can't seem to form words as he's willing it. He doesn't understand how humans could live like this, with their bodies controlling them more than they control it. He hates his skin, he hates the loss of control, and most of all— he hates those who made it so his flesh may betray him.
“Yes,” he manages, though doesn't even remember if he was even asked a question. “What do you need me for?” Anything to steer away from the nausea crawling up his throat.
Esther hesitates. “Abby—”
“Not my name,” Abaddon cuts in, voice flat and deadpan. His eyes narrow. She doesn’t understand why he despises the nickname, and he won’t tell her—won’t tell anyone. There’s no reason to. It doesn’t wound him. It shouldn't. It can't. It can't. It can't. It can't. He suddenly wants to pull at his hair, it's too itchy and it's sitting against his neck in the wrong way.
She sighs. “I want to explore that cave we found on the property, but there might be something alive in there. And since you can’t die—perfect distraction material. You in?”
He nods and lets her lead him forward. He doesn't grab at his hair like he wants to. He focuses on the way her hand is small and soft around his wrist—nothing like the rough one that once dragged him, nails biting into his skin. It’s different. The warmth remains the same, though.
They walk into the forest, Abaddon concentrating on not vomiting, no matter how much the body demanded it.
Esther is careful not to grab him so hard after that, and it makes him furious that she thinks he’s fragile. He has lost limbs, rested in fireplaces because he enjoyed the burn, wedged himself into crevices that crushed his ribs and kept going simply because he could. What a disgusting mockery—to think he could be broken by something as simple as fingers on his skin.
He decides to tell her as much, a deep frown on his face as she just gives him a look he cannot decipher and doesn't will himself to understand. She looked— sad, but not. Like the sadness was for him and not herself.
He couldn't comprehend the thought of it.
The days after blur together, quieter than they should be. Esther doesn’t bring any of it up again, and Abaddon is happy to forget. She still gives him that cautious look sometimes—as though one wrong word might make him break apart—and it stirs something bitter, biting in his chest.
It's another few weeks before it happens again, the heat of Summer has kicked into full gear and the Freeling offspring have “break” from school.
The days crawl. The air in the house grows heavy, clinging to the walls like damp fabric. Abaddon starts spending more time inside, drawn to the dim corners where he can smell mold growing. He watches the dust drift through the stillness, fascinated by how easily it moves in the light. Sometimes, he just stares at the patterns in them, completely engrossed with how the air moves.
Esther keeps herself busy. He hears her humming in the kitchen, or dragging furniture across the floor with a muttered curse. She speaks less to him, and when she does, it’s with that careful lilt—like she’s testing the ground for cracks before stepping forward. He hates it, but it's manageable in small pieces.
She doesn't really ask him to teach her anymore, and he thinks it has something to do with the grimoire she found. Ah.
At night, he can’t sleep. He doesn't sleep. He won't. The cicadas outside scream until the small hours, and when the noise finally dies, the silence feels worse. He paces the hall sometimes, bare-footed, tracing the pattern of the wallpaper with his fingers. Once, he stops by the children’s rooms, listening to the soft rhythm of their breathing. It makes him feel something ugly, something so Abaddon that he turns away before he can name it.
The house is still by mid-afternoon, sunlight dusting the parlor in gold. Abaddon kneels by the fireplace, coaxing the coals back to life. He likes this task—the simplicity of it. No words, no expectations. Just motion and purpose. The heat licks against his skin, not close enough to Hell for his liking. Esther left hours ago, complaining he was making the room too hot. Sure.
He feeds the fire with careful precision, arranging the wood as if the pattern matters. Sparks jump and move towards the demon like they recognize him. For a moment, the rhythm almost feels meditative.
He doesn’t notice Katherine until her shadow stretches across the wall beside him.
“Abaddon,” she says quietly.
He stiffens, glancing back. “What.”
Her voice is soft—measured in that way she uses when she’s trying not to provoke him. “I’d like to talk.” It sounds the same as when she wants to talk to Esther and Ben about their father, like he’s fragile. He frowns deeply.
He doesn’t look up. “About what.”
“The bath,” she says.
That word is enough to sour the air. He can feel it, like something sticky on his skin, the same way syrup was when they had pancakes. Still, he doesn’t look at her—only watches the flame devour another sliver of wood.
“I’m not angry,” she adds, taking a step into the room. “I just want to understand why it frightens you so much.”
Frightens. The word makes him want to laugh. He opens his mouth in rebuttal—then the door clicks shut behind her, despite the heat of the room. She thinks that their conversation deserves privacy, to an extent.
That’s all it takes. it's almost as his body doesn't believe he deserves to get better, it's as if the soul trapped in him can only regress.
He’s still forming sentences, he thinks, but he barely understands the words now, eyes flicking between the woman across from him and the door. Did she mean to entrap him? Was this her plan all along?
It’s happening again.
It’s going to happen again.
His body tenses before he can stop it, a shudder crawling up his arms. He can see the other door now.. heavy, wooden, closing him in. The same oak wood. The same glistening finish. He's being cornered.
She must notice the look on his face, because she’s looking at him like he’s told her the hotel burned with everyone inside. It's the same as him; he’s burning and- and it hurts. He can’t breathe. He doesn’t need to, but he wants to. His lungs, frail, beg for it like he did when he was forced down and—and-
Katherine steps closer, meaning well, her tone still calm, still soft. “Abaddon, I’m not here to hurt you. Look at me, please.” It's motherly, but her actions feel anything but.
He takes a step back. Then another.
Her expression falters. There's exasperation in it now, confusion. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
His throat burns, but his voice comes out steady enough. “Do not shut the door.” It burns, he's burning, but it's okay because it's not like the holy water.
She blinks. “What?”
“Do not,” he repeats, the syllables rasping like something dragged over stone, like he was. “Shut. The door.” His voice cracks, and it’s the crack that scares him most. Because he hears someone else in it—the boy he devoured, begging through his own teeth.
The silence that follows is sharp and brittle.
Katherine hesitates, glancing between him and the latch. She reaches for it slowly, deliberately and opens the door again. The faintest draft stirs the air, and only then can Abaddon breathe.
They stare at each other for a long, uneasy moment. Then he bolts, no warning, no words, straight for the nearest vent.
This time, she really does try to stop him. Her hand snags his ankle just as he’s almost gone. Panic flares white-hot; he gasps like he’s been burned, and maybe he has, because it hurts all the same, and lashes out, kicking hard enough to bruise.
She lets go.
He doesn’t come out for over a week. The vents stay silent, the food Esther leaves untouched. Katherine scolds her for it, it’s not as if he needs food anyway, but Esther sits outside the vents and asks him to teach her more about magic.
He wonders if she lost the grimoire already.
She goes ignored for another week.
When he finally reappears, it’s to the sound of a sermon drifting through the hotel; Esther’s idea, meant to coax him out.
He tries to ignore it. Covers his ears. Clenches his teeth. He looks like a child hearing something he cannot bear. He doesn’t know how long he pushes through, how long he writhes, curls in on himself, hides his face in his chest.
The sermon gets louder.
That’s it. He leaves the vents, just as he’s been baited to, and stalks toward the noise. He smashes the radio the moment he sees it—boot slamming down again and again until the wood caves and the metal screams.
“Why would you put that on the song box?” he snarls, breath shaking.
It’s too late when he realizes he’s stepped into a devil's trap.
Oh.
Oh.
His expression crumples instantly.
The air goes still. The only sound is the faint crackle of air that barely drags out of Abaddon's lungs. It hurts to breathe. He can't breathe.
He takes a half-step back, eyes darting to the circle around him. His throat tightens. It hurts to breathe. “Esther,” he says, voice low, too quiet to be mistaken for anger. “What is this?” It feels like betrayal. He vows to hide the other grimoires.
She doesn’t answer. Not right away. Then, softly—“She asked me to keep you still.”
His pulse spikes. He tests the edge of the circle with his boot; the pain hits like a whipcrack, unseen but real, flaring across his legs. He flinches hard, breath stuttering. He can’t cross it. The pain will spread, dip into his vessel like poison. It’s real pain—awful, and not in the way Hell was awful. Nowhere close to home.
“Esther, leave us for now, okay?” comes the matriarch’s voice. Calm. Too calm.
Esther hesitates, glancing at him, guilt flickering, but obeys. The door shuts behind her, slow and final. Abaddon thinks she is a sheep following the orders of her Shepard. It reminds him of someone he once new. Of the skin he wears.
Still, this is worse than the door closing with Katherine. Worse, because he knows what comes next. It always did.
He swallows, a strange sound that borders on laughter leaving him. “A private conversation, then,” he mutters. He wonders if he should get to his knees already, they’re shaking anyway. Words of penance play at the tip of his tongue, apologies sour in his gut and die in his throat before they are born. He knows the verses he should be made to say, but they claw at his throat and sink into his skin before they ever make it out.
The matriarch steps closer, and the light shifts against the salt, following her outline. He stares at her shadow, not her face. He wonders, distantly, if he will be made to kneel again. If she will hold him down and tear into him until he’s clean. She never thinks he is clean. He is not clean.
He wonders if Esther thinks he deserves it.
But nothing happens.
No pain. No voice raised, no hands forcing him down. Only the soft drag of the matriarch’s sigh as she kneels just outside the circle. “Abaddon,” Katherine says—her tone stripped of authority now, smaller. “I’m not angry. I just… want to understand.” She sits in front of him.
He doesn’t look at her. Doesn’t breathe, either. Can't. Can't breathe, he can't breathe.
“Why don’t you like baths?” she asks finally.
He stares at the floorboards. His fingers press against his ears until they ache. The question isn’t cruel by nature—he knows that. Yet it digs into the recesses of his mind, sends his vessel locking up. He squeezes his eyes shut, palms over his ears, mimicking the tantrum of an upset child. He hates it, he hates this, but the vessel is bigger than him, now, and he can only do what it asks of him.
Katherine hesitates. Tries again, quieter this time. “You’ll feel better if you tell me.” Her hand reaches out, heavy as it lands on his shoulder.
He swallows hard, shaking his head violently—a whimpered no slipping past his lips. He doesn’t want to. He won’t. He won’t.
Minutes drag. She coaxes, pleads, even tries to bribe him, but he isn’t listening. Not really. The words are just noise, blending with the sound of his own pulse.
Eventually, Katherine’s patience thins—not angry, just helpless. She glances toward the hall. “Nathan?”
A moment later, footsteps.
Nathan leans into the doorway, phasing through just slightly, assessing the scene. “What happened?”
Katherine sighs, brushing a hand through her hair. “He won’t talk. Won’t even look at me. I just wanted to ask-” She cuts herself off, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter. He’s terrified.” He'd taken to laying on the floor, crumpled into a ball.
His vessel is pathetic, but he is too. Everything he is has bled into it, and the vessel, wretched thing, has bled back. It wraps its fragile, human hands around his throat and chokes him with the knowledge that he is not himself nor the vessel.
He is no demon, no human, definitely not an angel anymore. He finds he just is; pathetic, too human for something so not.
Nathan studies him for a long moment. The demon’s knees are drawn close, hands clamped over his ears, shoulders trembling in small, stubborn spasms. He’s trying to breathe through them, but the air catches every time.
Nathan crouches near the edge of the circle, careful not to disturb Abaddon further. “Hey,” he says softly. “You’re safe, all right? No one’s going to make you do anything.”
His voice sounds too gentle. Abaddon hates it, and some stupid human part of his vessel wants to be punished for acting like this. Maybe it could be beaten out of him, maybe if that priest had tried harder, he would've hit something that reflects the boy instead of him.
Abaddon doesn’t move. His eyes flicker between them, between the chalk and the door, calculating. He wants to leave. Tears well in his eyes, and he wipes them away with angry haste. Stupid vessel. Weak. He’d kill that child in his mind’s space for daring to cry through him. And still, his hands won’t stop shaking. Stop it. Stop it.
Nathan looks up at Katherine. “He’s not going to talk like this.”
“I just want to understand—”
“And you will,” Nathan interrupts, steady as ever. “But not like this. He’ll tell us when he’s ready. You’ve got to give him room to breathe first.”
Katherine’s jaw tightens, frustration warring with guilt. “Nathan—”
“Trust me,” he says. “Let him out.” His hand reaches toward her shoulder, mimicking comfort he couldn’t give—warmth he didn’t have. His fingers pass through her skin.
For a moment, she looks ready to refuse. Then her shoulders sag. She brushes a thumb across her brow and crouches, sweeping a break through the chalk in one slow motion. She doesn’t look at the demon.
Abaddon doesn’t move at first. He just stares at the gap, suspicious, like it might be another trick. Humanity is known for its curiosity—it will be their downfall and his, too.
“Go on,” Nathan murmurs. “You’re free.” His voice is soft, the way one might coax a feral animal from a trap.
Only then does Abaddon rise—stiff, deliberate—and step out. He doesn’t waste time; he bolts from the room faster than Katherine can change her mind. He makes a silent vow to stay away from that woman for as long as he can help it. An eternity, if it really came down to it.
The air in the room stays heavy long after he’s gone. Katherine exhales shakily, rubbing her palms against her knees as if she can wipe away the unease clinging to her skin. Nathan straightens slowly, watching the doorway where Abaddon disappeared.
“You should’ve seen his eyes,” Katherine mutters. “Like he thought I’d drag him back.”
Nathan doesn’t answer. He just watched her as she gathered soap, a sponge, and began cleaning the floor of the sigil. The sound of it being scraped is the only noise between them. When he finally speaks, it’s half to himself.
“Fear doesn’t leave easy. Especially for Abaddon.”
Katherine hesitates, then nods. “No. It doesn’t.”
“He’s never had to be scared before Earth, you know? It's new for him, and we can only be there for him when he wants to talk about it.” Nathan sits next to her.
“Yeah..”
Outside, the floorboards creak. A door clicks shut somewhere down the hall.
The house settles back into routine. Days blur, soft and uneventful. Abaddon keeps to the corners—by vents, by doors, anywhere with an exit.
He and Esther haven’t spoken much these past few weeks, but the silence isn’t hostile anymore. They’re finding their rhythm again.
Abaddon still keeps the other grimoires in the vents. He can't be too sure anymore.
He still shadows Nathan like a tether. His savior, his buffer. Katherine keeps her distance, and he makes sure it stays that way. It’s better for everyone. It still upsets him that he cannot cling to Nathan like he wants to, he has no physical body, but he'd have to deal with that by himself.
Still, he learns to move quieter. It’s not fear—he tells himself that, anyway—but caution. The creak of a floorboard still makes his vessel feel wrong. He hates that. So he memorizes which planks complain, which doors stick, which hinges squeal in protest. The hotel becomes a map in his head, full of paths and exits. That's all it is, in his mind; exits upon exits.
Sometimes Nathan catches him tracing the walls with his fingertips, counting how long it takes to get to the next door. Nathan never asks. Abaddon appreciates that.
He doesn’t sleep much. He says he doesn’t need to, which is mostly true, but sometimes Nathan finds him sitting in the hallway at three a.m., staring at nothing with a blanket half-draped over his shoulders. The hotel is warm at night, and he piles them onto himself anyway—never warm enough. It’s not like hell. They talk about nothing—the weather, the leaking faucet, the strange cat that keeps showing up at the back door.
Nathan says that black cats are bad luck. Abaddon sets food out, because he's bad luck too.
Once she finds out, Esther joins them and brings a deck of cards. Abaddon doesn’t understand the game, but he appreciates the intricate designs of each card. When he finally wins a hand, he smiles—brags that it is because no one could win against a demon (Esther doesn't mention that she'd won every round up til then).
Nathan calls it “making progress.” Katherine calls it “surface-level compliance.” Esther calls it “kind of sweet, actually.”
Abaddon doesn’t call it anything. He just tries not to ruin it.
The cat visits often now. He calls it Ælfwynn, but Esther has taken to calling her Winnie. He supposes that's okay, too.
He brushes his fingers through her black fur—he can tell she's covered in dirt and other filth. A life of living in the forest. He feels a sort of guilt, because his hands sully her further, for he is dirty too. Worse than her.
She doesn’t seem to mind. She curls against him, presses her head into his palm like she can’t feel the grime that coats him. Her purr is ragged, uneven, but entirely unapologetic. He envies that—the way she can just be.
Winnie blinks up at him, slow and unconcerned. Her tail flicks once, brushing against his wrist. She stays. He doesn’t understand it. Not really. The world has always been so quick to reject him that this small defiance—this creature choosing to stay—feels like blasphemy. Her purr is kin to the words of a heretic—she is kind to him, and he is glad she has never known a holy word nor sermon.
Later, when Nathan finds him sitting on the porch steps, the cat asleep in his lap, he asks quietly, “You like her, huh?”
Abaddon doesn’t answer at first. His gaze stays on the horizon, on the thinning light that makes everything look fuzzy at the edges. Finally, he says, “She doesn’t know what I am.”
Nathan hums, thoughtful. “Maybe she doesn’t care, buddy.”
Abaddon doesn’t know what to do with that. He looks down at the cat again, at the rise and fall of her small body. He’s never been good at being clean. Not in spirit, not in flesh. The stains have always been there, and he cannot wash them from his vessel.
Still, he keeps petting the cat, for she does not care or does not feel the bad that radiates from Abaddon. She stays, warm and trusting, curled in his lap like he’s a safe place.
The next few weeks fall into a rhythm. The cat—Ælfwynn to him, Winnie to everyone else—comes and goes as she pleases. Abaddon waits for her most evenings now, a bowl of scraps tucked beside the back step. Sometimes she appears before dusk, sometimes not until the moon is high. Either way, she always comes back.
Katherine catches him once, crouched in the doorway with the cat perched on his knee. “You should keep her inside,” she suggests, voice light but firm. “She might get hurt out there.”
Abaddon doesn’t look up. “She’s fine.”
“She’s missing an eye,” Katherine points out gently.
He glances at the cat—her one golden eye gleaming, the empty socket healed into a scar. “Then she’s survived worse than this,” he says, fingers ghosting through her fur. She's still filthy, but he doesn't find it in himself to try and give her a bath. She won't like it, like he doesn't.
Katherine frowns but doesn’t argue.
He doesn’t tell her the truth: that he could keep her safe, yes, but he doesn’t want to. He wants her to choose to stay.
Because when she does, it almost feels like he’s been chosen too.
Sometimes he goes out at night, follows her through the trees, and shares a few squirrels with her. She’s gotten much bigger since he started feeding her, and he’s sure it makes hunting harder. Maybe he can’t help it—greed is a sin, after all, it’s what he’s made of—and he always gives in to her meowed demands for more.
He learns her favorite places, and finds he likes them too. His favorite is the small stream behind the briar thicket—one he can barely squeeze through without the thorns catching and tearing his clothes. Still, he keeps coming back. The water there runs clear, the air smells of moss and earth. The rocks are bathed in the Sun's light, warm to the touch in a comforting way.
Hell had nothing like it, he's sure.
He starts leaving the kitchen window cracked at night. Sometimes she slips through it before dawn, paws silent against the counter, and curls up in the chair beside him. Other nights she doesn’t come at all, and he waits anyway—he could wait a millenia for her.
He names the hours after her. Morning is when she comes around, self-assured and purring when she catches sight of him; dusk is when she vanishes into the trees, sometimes they both do, together. Everything in between feels happy, light in a way his vessel hasn't felt in a while, and he thinks for the first time that as much as he has infected her with his bad, maybe she has infected him with her good.
He doesn't ponder it for long.
He learns her moods, the way her tail twitches when she’s irritated, the louder meows she makes when she wants attention. He answers her out loud sometimes, has entire conversations with one-word responses. He doesn't concern himself when others look or overhear, it wasn't for them anyway.
He learns what she fears, too. The way her ears flatten when thunder cracks too close, or how she refuses to step on wet grass. Once, he finds her trembling under the porch during a storm, fur plastered to her sides, and without thinking he kneels in the mud to coax her out.
She hisses at first, wild and frightened, then melts against his chest the moment his hand finds her spine. He carries her inside, dripping, leaving muddy footprints through the kitchen. He's never really cared about messes, even less so now.
“I hate getting wet, too.” He murmurs, tucking her under his shirt so she'd dry off faster.
After that, she sleeps on his chest more often. It presses against his scar, but he can't really bring himself to care very much. Her purrs vibrate through his ribs. Sometimes he wonders if she can sense what he really is, and then decides she cannot.
He starts saving scraps for her: pieces of rats and squirrels, bits of chicken. He talks to her while he works, nonsense things—how the garden looks, the strange color of the morning sky, dreams he’s half-forgotten, even though they make his skin twitch for hours afterward. She never answers, but he swears she listens.
He learns quickly that she has no concept of personal boundaries. She steals from his plate when she thinks he isn’t looking—an entire strip of chicken disappearing between her teeth before he can blink. When he glares, she only blinks back, slow and unrepentant.
She’s a thief with others, too. She ate the herbs Esther was keeping for rituals, stole the food off of Katherine's plate without so much as a look back—Abaddon found great pleasure in that heist—she even tore up a few of Ben's books. Abaddon has never been more proud of another being in his 10,000 years of living.
Sometimes she stalks him through the tall grass, crouched low and deadly serious, only to pounce on his boots with a triumphant chirp. He pretends to startle every time, and she seems endlessly proud of herself for it.
Abaddon is, too.
For a while, everything feels easy. The days fold into each other—her chirps of curiosity as he does something that catches her attention, the rustle of leaves, the warmth of sunlight on his back while she naps nearby. He starts to believe, absurdly, that this could last.
Then one morning, she doesn’t come.
At first, he doesn’t think much of it. She has her own patterns, her little adventures. She'd been having them less often more recently, but maybe she'd gone off on her own once more. Maybe she’s sleeping somewhere, or chasing something through the trees. But as the light stretches thin and the air cools, he finds himself glancing toward the window more often, listening for the pad of her paws on the counter.
Katherine keeps looking at him in a way that makes his skin crawl.
By evening, the house feels too quiet. The space beside his chair, too empty.
He tells himself she’ll come back tomorrow. She always does.
She doesn’t.
By the second day, he’s pacing. Every sound pulls his attention—the creak of the porch, a shadow moving past the window, the faint rustle of wind through the trees. None of it is her. He wants it to be her. His Ælfwynn, his Winnie.
Nathan notices first.
“She’ll turn up,” he says, voice careful, as if approaching a wounded animal. “Cats do that. They wander off for a few days, then come back when they’re hungry.”
Abaddon says nothing. He just keeps his eyes on the treeline. He appreciates the sentiment. Why not?
Esther tries next, leaning in the doorway with her arms crossed. “She’s probably fine. You spoil her, you know. Maybe she’s seeing if she can get better meals elsewhere.”
He knows she’s joking, but the words settle under his skin like splinters. Maybe she had finally found what made him so bad and realized how good she was, and how much he did not deserve good things. Had his sin finally made its way down her throat, had she tasted it on her tongue and realized how far it reached into his core?
Katherine says nothing at all. She just gives him that look again—half pity, half knowing—and goes back to her work. He almost demands to know what she thought of him, but decides against it.
By dusk, he’s done pretending. The air feels wrong, tense. He can’t stand the way the house hums with everyone else’s quiet comfort, their lack of real concern.
“I’m going out,” he mutters.
Nathan looks up from the table. “It’s getting dark. Wait until morning, yeah?”
Abaddon doesn’t answer. The door slams behind him before anyone can stop him.
Outside, the forest presses close and cold. The last of the light bleeds through the canopy as he calls her name into the wind, each syllable sounding stranger, more desperate. He pushes through the briar thicket—the same one that leads to his new favorite place—thorns catching on his coat, drawing lines of red across his hands. He doesn’t really feel it.
She’s not at the stream.
He checks by the road; nothing.
Not under the porch.
Not anywhere she should be.
When he finds her, the sun is gone—yet he is still burning. It feels as if the heart of a star has been lowered into every atom of his feeble being.
She’s curled half in the briars, fur matted, thorns pressing into her fragile neck. Her eyes are open, glassy, reflecting what little light the moon gives. For a moment, he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing. His mind rejects it—she’s only sleeping, he tells himself. Sleeping.
But she doesn’t move when he says her name. Doesn’t twitch when his hand trembles and brushes her side. No heartbeat, no warmth. Only the smell of earth and blood and something that's only just started decaying.
The fire rises before the grief does. It builds in his chest, climbs his throat, burns behind his eyes. He stumbles back, choking on air that feels too thick. His stomach twists, and he doubles over, the heat rising up, up, up, and he's retching into the grass until there’s nothing left of the star that'd taken refuge in his being.
He hates this body.
He hates its weakness, its sickness, its tremor. He hates the way it clings to the living and breaks for the dead. This vessel is soft, fragile, human. He hates, he hates—because that is what he is and cannot help but be.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, but the shaking doesn’t stop. There’s a sound coming from him—a low, whimpering noise he can’t control. It’s only after a moment that he realizes it’s her name in his voice, cracked and uneven, calling her name again and again as if the sound alone might bring her back.
When it doesn’t, he drops to his knees beside her and gathers what’s left of her into his arms. Her body is stiff, but he holds her anyway, rocking slightly, whispering nonsense into the cold air. He doesn’t know how to stop. He wants to. He wants to. He wants her.
He’s lived through the birth and death of worlds, stood in fire that devoured everything, and never once felt this small. Not even living in this body. Not even when that man had forced him onto his knees, to repent.
There are noises coming from him now—ugly, human sounds. He can’t bring himself to stop them. He wants to. There are so many things that he wants, and he is greedy, prideful, full of sin, yet he’d give it all just to have her move again.
He stays like that for a long time. Long enough for the night insects to start up, long enough for the grass to soak through his pants. Eventually the sobs fade into silence. The world doesn’t shift. Nothing changes.
He stares at her face, and something inside him cracks. There is nothing left to burn, the star has long since faded into nothing and exploded into a nova that was bleeding from his eyes, he had nothing left to bargain with. And still, he can’t accept it.
His hands clasp together without thinking, the gesture alien in his own skin. His eyes shut. The motion feels wrong, foolish. Maybe Winnie has rubbed off on him too much. Maybe grief makes fools of everyone.
He begins praying, even as it singes his very core, rejecting him as much as he rejects it.
“Brothers… sisters… it is— it’s Apollyon. I realize I have not spoken, nor rejoiced in your presence for many a millennia. Still, I ask you to reach your hands and touch a simple finger upon this soul. She is good. Pure.”
Unlike him.
There is no response. He hadn’t expected one anyway.
He sits there for a long time, cradling her against his chest. The night hums around them, indifferent. He mourns in silence. He is too human, and yet not enough.
He knows the human custom, so he digs his fingers into the dirt. The soil is cold and damp, clinging beneath his nails as he pulls the ground apart so that she may rest forevermore. Each handful feels heavier than the last. He doesn’t bother to wipe his face, or the blood that’s dried on his palms.
When the hole is deep enough, he sets her down gently—like she might still wake if he isn’t careful. Like he could hurt her, because his hands are too rough and he can't control what he is and has always been. Will always be. He covers her up and stares at the patch of dirt for a while longer.
Drops fall from his face into the freshly moved soil, but he can't bring himself to wipe them away. He is pathetic.
He tells himself to stop. He orders his hands to still, his chest to quiet, his throat to stop closing.
But the vessel refuses. It grieves without his permission. Every tremor, every gasp, every tear feels stolen from him. His jaw locks, his teeth grind together, and still his body shakes. He doesn’t understand how something so small could hollow him out like this.
He presses his hand to the earth, feels the shape of her beneath it, and something inside him splits. He's wanted a lot of things in his lifetime, but he's not sure he's ever wanted something this bad. The heat that rises isn’t divine, it's not a star or hellfire—it’s human, weak, trembling. He despises it.
He wants to rip it out of himself, claw the soft, bleeding heart from his chest and bury it alongside her. This body is a cage, a mockery. It forces him to ache, to remember, to want. He wants, he wants, he wants, for he is greed and cannot help but want.
He hates it.
He hates how tightly he’s holding himself together. He hates how his breath hitches every time he looks at the dirt. He hates how the grief doesn’t fade—it festers, seeps into every inch of him like rot.
He was never meant to mourn. He was never meant to love. Not after falling. He hates many things, and he’s never realized how much hate he harbored until now—until he can’t feel any of the gentleness she once drew from him. Hate feels like betrayal, but he cannot stop. He hates the briars, he hates himself, he hates the vessel and the way it feels human things he was never supposed to. He is not human but harbors humanity like a fugitive.
And yet the vessel bleeds. Its humanity seeps through his cracks like smoke, filling his lungs until he chokes on everything he thought he’d burned out long ago—in the fires of hell that remade him.
He sits for a while longer.
It isn’t until the sun starts to rise that he leaves her grave. He’s not really aware of himself, or the world around him. He knows he should wipe his hands, his face, his shirt—but he doesn’t. The blood on him is the last piece he has of her.
It doesn't take him long to make it back.
He walks into the hotel, eyes unfocused, seeing nothing. He doesn’t get far before a hand seizes his shoulder and yanks him back.
“What did you do?” The matriarch’s voice scrapes against his ears, sharp and accusing—but he can only barely register the words. He forgives the implication.
“I need a bath.” There are still tears in his eyes. He doesn’t wipe them away.
Katherine pauses. Then she grabs his wrist—he hates it, but forgives that too. The parallels flash behind his eyes: the man dragging him, beating him, breaking him.
He can’t find it in himself to hold any contempt.
She strips him. He doesn’t struggle. It still makes him nauseous, but he can bear it. He feels like he’s underwater, though he knows he’s breathing air just fine.
The bath is warm. Katherine scrubs at his skin, but not hard enough. He wishes she would hit him—beat the humanity out of him and the vessel, so he wouldn’t have to feel this way.
He remembers, suddenly. Katherine had told him once that speaking it aloud might help.
He lets out a slow breath.
“I hate baths,” he says at last, voice low, almost thoughtful. He knows it is abrupt, he knows that humans deal in different ways, but he cannot help but be blunt for he is not human nor will be nor has been. “Because I was raped.”
The words don’t shake. They mimic confession, the sacred ritual between sinner and priest. The irony is not lost on him. But the air in the room goes still all the same. Katherine’s hand stops mid-motion.
He looks down at the water, at how it reflects the artificial light. He doesn't want to see her expression. “He said it would make me clean.” His jaw tightens. He remembers hearing the words cleanse and purify. “I am not clean. I have never been clean. And I will never be clean.”
The silence that follows feels heavier than any punishment he’s ever known.
He doesn’t cry—he thinks he should, but he’s already shown enough grief tonight. Instead, he just breathes and wonders if this is what repentance feels like: not peace, but like small pieces of himself are being torn from him little by little.
The water ripples again when Katherine finally moves.
Her arms are around him, and he finds himself in a warm embrace. She whispers things to him, tells him that no sinner deserves such punishment, that his—the priest’s—hands were not of God's will. She says sorry.
Abaddon finds himself sorry, too. He doesn't know for what.