Written by MariahJean7

Being bombarded with questions from a celestial asshole was not what he had imagined waking up to, but he had to admit, it was definitely preferred over what he /had/ expected. So however repetitive the questions seemed, why not humor the being for a moment? It's not like he had many other options. Or anything better to do, for that matter. All he really had to do was buy time. Right, time. Not like he was dead and had an eternity to answer to pointless accusations or anything. Come on, what gave you that impression? He sighed, that murderous glint reappearing in his eyes.
"Why-" the demon began only to be cut off by his own uncontrollable coughing. The spawn's throat burned, feeling more and more raw with each sharp inhalation. His body shook painfully with each gasp for air - and fuck if there were ever a worse time to revert back to the threatening-ness of a wet sponge.
He clasped a hand over his mouth in a vain attempt to smother the hacking, and after coughing a few more times, then the seizing gasps came to a reluctant end. Slowly, the hell spawn lowered his hand, gazing down at the palm. The appendage was painted with a fresh coating of reddish liquid, which was already in the process of drying. Ah, yes; blood. The crest of the victim.
With that, the murderous aura disappeared from the room, only to be replaced with something more morose.
More crestfallen.
"Why do /you/ fucking care?" the demon muttered coldly, his lack of eye contact seeming to become more menacing than meek.
The angel seemed a bit taken aback by his comment, judging by the way his jaw dropped slightly and he failed to retort numerous times. Nothing he was about to say must have seemed clever enough to leave his mind, as he never seemed to be able to get any words out.
"That's what I thought," the demon stated, tilting his head back somewhat smugly, "Now are you done interrogating me? Or do you get off on this somehow, you sick, twisted bastard?"
Once again the angel was left speechless and the demon couldn't help but allow a faint smirk to grace his lips in victory.
Fucking angels and their fucking questioning.
It was an endless cycle of flat out bullshit, and he just happened to be granted an eternity to endure it.
How wonderful.
"I- I don't-" the angel paused in his speech, heaving a sigh of exasperation, "I'm going to run you a bath," he stated plainly, beginning to walk away, "I am assuming that your wounds have closed up enough that you won't bleed out in the water, so I need you to rinse off the dried blood before I can re-stitch anything - seeing as I am sure as Hell not hand washing you."
A repulsed expression flashed across the angel's face as he disappeared into another room.
'Oh, so /I'm/ the disgusting one now?' the demon thought, crossing his arms over his chest indignantly. Yeah, right. If /he/ were disgusting, then they were putrid and horrifying.
The sound of running water dragged him from his small identity crisis.

/It was a telltale sound that would have been comforting - and possibly even somewhat relieving - had the circumstances been different. Had he been alive he may have even made the stretch that it was as close to heaven as he would ever get. But at the moment it was anything but. He knew better than to cling onto false hope.
This was war.
/There was no "hope."/
Hope itself was just a fairytale. Something made up to keep soldiers fighting way back when. It was fictional nonsense. Child's play. And he had no time for that. Sure, he did have eternity, but war does not last forever, regardless of one's lifetime - and he already had one to learn this. Mortal though it was.
The jingling of keys and clanging of metal forced him back into reality. Right, he didn't have time to be contemplating the universe's greatest and most complex falsehoods.
/This was war./
There was no time for such petty things.
/There was no /hope./
Hands on his shoulders roughly yanked him up from his place on the floor. They took the demon's arm and contorted it in the most unnatural way possible behind his back, harshly forcing him forwards.
A faint grimace forced its way onto his face.
"Well aren't you pleasant," the Hell spawn hissed, tugging slightly in an attempt to free his restricted appendage.
"Shut up," the angel replied, his voice cold and unforgiving and his grip around the demon's wrist doing anything but loosening.
Perhaps the angels forgot that they, too, were human at one point or another. Just because they were lucky enough to join the "ninefold celestial hierarchy," or whatever they wanted to call it, and he had the misfortune of damnation, it didn't give them the right to look down on him as if he were some sort of repugnant scum. But that was the one human aspect that must have stuck with them, even after death.
Not compassion. Not sympathy. Not kindness. Not graciousness. Not empathy.
Not any of those.
No; it was pride.
/It just had to be pride./
The most disgustingly human aspect to have ever existed.
All they had to do was cling onto one little factor that made them even the least bit more powerful than another, and all of a sudden they were considering themselves a big deal and getting up on their high horses. Be it the most recent piece of technology or some new clothes, humans always found a reason to claim they were better than one another. Even if - above all else - they were only human. And angels just happened to inherit that trait.
He found it sick.
Sick and twisted and above all, /fucking annoying./
They were no better than he was, the sadistic bastards. They were simply graced with different - /better/ - circumstances. And in his opinion, that was total garbage and he was bullshitted out of a perfectly good afterlife.
The things he did were things he /had to do./
I.E.- No choice.
None at all.
The demon stumbled over his own feet as the angel shoved him through a door, squinting as blinding white light enveloped him. The sound was close, he noticed, but he was too stunned to realize how god forsakenly close it actually was. They grabbed each of his arms, holding them awkwardly behind him, and forced his head downwards by the hair.
In that moment he could have sworn his face was on fire. The way his flesh was blistering - it was practically the same as Hell. And he should know. And on top of everything, he could neither see nor breathe. Well, he couldn't see mostly because he had squeezed his eyes shut as not to have them boiled out of his skull. And breathing probably wasn't the best decision, seeing as whatever he had been dunked it was slowly eating away at him from the outside in.
If he could just breathe, he thought, this would be so much more survivable. But /they/ weren't going to make things even the least bit easy. They were going to make him suffer. And perhaps this was some crazy repentance for sins he had long since forgotten - but he didn't believe that. Not at all.
He felt the hand that was holding his head under tighten it's grip. It yanked upwards. After he breached the surface, he could have sworn - if only for a moment - that he smelled cooking meat. Perhaps it was a result of the starvation, or perhaps he was just deluded, but he had most certainly just mistaken the scent of his own burning flesh for at least 10 different foodstuffs at once.
The pain was unbearable, the flesh from his head down practically sizzling and steaming as an after-effect of what could only be holy water.
Right. Holy water.
He couldn't believe he hadn't thought of that one sooner.
A voice originating from only a few feet away crashed his train of thought.
"We /will/ make you talk."/

"Hey," the sound was loud and clear through all the haze, "Snap out of it."
He could tell where he was. He could make out everything around him. The bed. The nightstand. The walls; decorated with various photographs and paintings of what he assumed to be the ocean. All of it. But he couldn't seem to /comprehend/ any of it.
"Hey," the voice spoke again, louder and more stern this time.
The demon looked up, making eye contact with the green-eyed guardian, but he didn't know how or what to respond.
The voice picked up again, "Hey!-"
"Shut up," the Hellspawn suddenly blurted, the fog in his mind vanishing as he pushed himself to the edge of the bed, "I heard you the first time."
The demon reached out, snagging the towel from the angel's hands as he forced himself to stand.
"Right..." the angel mumbled from beside him.
Truth be told, the demon hadn't actually heard what the celestial other had said. Though, he could hear that the water was no longer running in the other room, and judging by the towel he was now holding, an assumption could be made that the bath was ready. It was relatively easy to deduce that much. Not to mention that the angel hadn't objected as the demon began hobbling towards what he believed to be the bathroom.

-x-

The room was laid out much like that of an inn. There was a bed up against the wall towards the back that had a relatively tiny dresser beside it, as well as a kitchenette; both off to the right. Off to the left there was a small table, two chairs parallel to it, and in the very back two doors. The door to the right was for the bathroom, the one opposite of it was most likely a closet of some sort. All of the walls were painted white, containing various silver accents.
The demon sighed, lost in his thoughts and calculations about the place. He wasn't sure how long he'd been like this, but evidently it was long enough that the angel felt it necessary to come banging on the door numerous times. Each time he would say something along the lines of "Hurry up if you want anything to heal right. I still need to fix the stitches on your wounds," and each time the demon would shoo the guardian with one of the many snide remarks catalogued in his mind.
Though, truth be told, he hadn't even gone near the water.
The Hellspawn wasn't an idiot. He knew that the angel could have performed any number of blessings in the time it took to fill the tub to the brim, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to take a risk by touching it. The feeling of flesh boiling off bone was not a pleasant one, and the demon knew this all too well. Then again, he wasn't entirely enjoying the feeling of dried blood caked onto his skin and clothing to much, either. That was unpleasant in and of itself.
He inhaled a deep breath, grasping the edge of the sink, forcing himself into a standing position. He supposed he had to at least try it. And if not now, when? Most things were better sooner than later - in his experience, anyway. The demon wobbled over to the bath, crouching beside it. This was it. If he were going to risk his perfectly good skin again, he'd best do it now. Well, it wasn't exactly perfect. Mostly scarred and bloody, but that wasn't the point.
'Now or never,' the spawn thought, ' Now or never...'
His hand hovered over the glossy surface of the water for a moment, tension hanging in the air like the echo of distant thunder. But he did have to get this over with. So, mentally making a vow to kill the angel if the water burned him in any way, shape, or form, the demon dunked his hand in.
He gawked at the water, flipping his hand over and gazing at his palm. Sure, the water was a bit warm, granted that all bath water was supposed to be warm. But it didn't burn.
/It didn't burn./
Just to be certain that he wasn't in shock, the demon cupped his free hand, scooping up some water and pouring it down his arm. Still nothing.
He was baffled. Completely and utterly baffled.
A sudden rush of adrenaline shot through his body, causing the spawn to jolt onto his feet. He stumbled back over towards the door, yanking a set of towels off the rack and plopping them on the edge of the sink counter. Next, he peeled off his clothes, examining the articles for a moment. Every last piece had managed to retain a reddish tinge, despite being black. But the smell - the smell was the worst part. They /reeked./ Death, decay, rot; you name it, he smelled it, still lingering on his clothing. It was repulsive.
The demon tossed them to the side, making the decision to save them for later. Hastily, he unwound the bandages still draped around him, desperately yearning to wash the filth from himself. Most, if not all of the wounds, were still raw and oozing blood, he discovered, and they'd almost completely soaked through the gauze, leaving a sticky residue.
'It'll wash off,' he thought, running his fingers through his hair and cautiously sliding into the water.
Immediately the liquid gained a reddish tinge. Be it from the still bleeding wounds or the old blood dissolving off his skin, the demon had no idea. Nor did he care. In fact, the water felt so nice, he hadn't even noticed that the angel had been banging on the door and yelling for almost a solid 2 and a half minutes. He ignored the sound. All he wanted in that moment was to be left alone. That's all he'd wanted for a while now. To be a-
/Bang!/
The hell spawn quickly turned his head in the direction of the noise, causing the water to splash and ripple around him. The door was standing wide open, and right there, with a flustered/embarrassed expression plastered on his face, was the angel.
"I don't- I didn't- I-"
The demon slowly tilted his head up, countering the guardian's stare with an abruptly menacing one of his own. He snickered slightly.
"...Pervert."