Title: Wake Up
I wrote this over my stay in California, and it went from a few lines in my head to something frikkin long.
It's Chrno Crusade, about Satella after she wakes up in the nineties... Some of the details are off, because it had been so long since I last read it, though I reread it today and yesterday.
When Satella woke, her eyes smarting against a burst of light and the stream of salty seawater, her feet stumbling over hot sand that drew rapidly away from under her feet with a receding wave, she was greeted by a young, cheerful face over a navy suit, trimmed in white and gold and a rosary. The sunny expression, the fringe of blonde hair shocked Satella for a moment, reminded her of something unfinished.
"What-" she croaked, shaking hair out of her face and wiping sea water out of her mouth.
Behind the girl was an older man in a similar suit talking urgently into what was, as Satella would soon discover, a cell phone.
"We'll answer all your questions," the girl said brightly. "We've been waiting for you for seventy years."
--- ---
"I saw you looking at my uniform," Sarah, the girl, chattered. The girl was nervous, Satella realized hazily as the dark car moved sleekly through unfamiliar traffic, and she couldn't be more than fifteen. "The Order isn't really official anymore. After the Incident of 1924, our influence has declined because of the lack of verified demon sightings. All of the Apostles lost their powers, too."
Satella nodded absently, staring at the city outside.
"We're still here, though, and we've been watching for you. It's been my duty for a year or so, patrolling the shores-Father Michael is my back-up in case your reappearance attracts any form of astral interference."
"Where are we going?" Satella interrupted.
She looked surprised. "To see Azmaria's last words."
--- ---
Satella drifted in and out of jobs, without real need. Despite Steiner's death long ago, the Magdalan Order had managed her finances. Despite inflation, she had plenty of money.
This time she didn't bother to look for her sister. She didn't think she could stand the disappointment twice. The scars across her lower ribs still ached in the wet.
She still looked, though, at dark, short hair-once she spun, causing an irritated eddy in the current of people, to stare at a slight, short-haired woman in a white coat and black skirt disappear into a crowd crossing the street. Another time a waitress with a young face and layered grey hair under a huge, bulky knit cap smiled at her and disappeared into the kitchen before Satella had time to even think of recognizing her.
She wondered if she was immortal, when she showed few signs of aging, or if she would die despite the interference of power in her life, like Joshua and Azmaria.
She drifted through lovers, too, and they found her beautiful, full of life, and frustratingly distracted. One told her she was lost in a past she wouldn't tell him, and she smiled at him and told him he was right.
--- ---
"You're so frustrating," sighed Sarah. The Order frequently sent her to check that Satella was alive and not consorting with demons. Satella, who heard as much from others, did not expect it from this girl-woman. She said as much.
"Find some way to spend your time that doesn't end up with you getting too caught up in your thoughts."
Satella smiled absently at a boy with shaggy dark hair that reminded her of a memory. Sarah put down her mug with a clink and rolled her eyes. "You've adapted," she said, sounding tired, "to this time. What was the point of coming back to life if you're going to live so halfheartedly?"
"I didn't have much choice in the matter," Satella marked wryly.
Sarah regarded her darkly. "I have to go file my report for the Order." As she left the café, her voice came winding back: "Find a hobby. Breed dogs or something. God knows you have the money."
"Dog breeding is for old people in retirement," Satella called to her.
"You are old!"
"Sarah's a Jewish name, and you're a Christian nun!" Satella grinned and downed her coffee. She glanced at the boy again and put it out of her mind.
--- ---
She got herself a job in precious gems three years after coming back, and managed to devote some attention to it. After six months she decided it took too much energy and quit. Plus, she didn't like the way her boss looked at her.
"Are you kidding me?" said Sarah when Satella mentioned it. "I thought that at least would keep you entertained."
"Why? You don't know my past."
"I know you dealt in gems. But no. To read the info on any of the major players in the Incident of 1924 you have to be very high-ranked in the order. To even read about Storm or Feather is heavy stuff, much less you. Or especially Rosette Christopher. I know at least that they called you the Jewel Witch."
"She looked a bit like you, but she was louder and more cheerful, I think, and she had more of a reason for melancholy than you, but she never was," Satella said thoughtfully.
"What?"
"She was never melancholy, and you are."
"No, who?"
"Rosette."
"You knew her?"
"Yeah," Satella said, barely paying attention, "and Azmaria was a china doll, with that hair. Chrno was… Oh God, the picture, where did I put the damn thing? I wish Steiner was here, he'd know where. He always kept track of these things for me."
"Satella, don't-"
Satella rummaged through drawers, rifled through her purse, increasingly panicked. "Where is that damn thing?" she cried, finally, sitting down amid a flurry of tossed papers. "The Order gave me a stupid copy. Now what do I have from them? The tape of Azmaria was confiscated by the Order, her grandson isn't allowed to talk to me because they're afraid I'll somehow awaken an Apostle's powers in him. Damn it!"
She looked up to see Sarah staring at her.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I shouldn't have brought it up."
Satella sighed, shook her head restlessly. "Just… just go for right now. File your report."
Sarah didn't move. "What are you going to do?"
She blinked a few times, rubbed her forehead, forgot the question. Then she looked up, twirling a strand of hair in her fingers. "I…" She met Sarah's troubled eyes with a bemused expression. "I think I'm going to cut my hair."
--- ---
For eight more years she did it all again. With her hair so much shorter, Satella would've liked to say that she looked like Florette, but that would have been a lie. Fiore used to look like Satella did now.
Sarah's life interested with hers at rapidly increasing intervals. One day she breezed into Satella's current apartment and said, "I can't believe you."
Satella, lighting a cigarette, said, "What?" and instead of putting it in her mouth, looked at it. "I'm thinking of taking up smoking."
Sarah threw up her hands and turned away with a noise of disgust.
"You told me to take up a hobby, what, three years ago?"
"You don't do anything. Why do you even bother?"
"Aha, that's where you're wrong. That is where the cigarette comes in; something to do."
"Not what I was talking about."
"Didn't you ask me that around the same time you told me to take up a hobby?" Satella asked reasonably, stubbing out the unused cigarette on the floor.
"That was eight years ago," Sarah said, frustrated. "Look at you. You don't even look older, you haven't changed at all."
"Aha!" Satella said again, tracing a pattern on the floor with the cigarette. "Proof that living halfheartedly is beneficial." She glanced up at Sarah. "You don't remind me of Rosette anymore."
"She was fifteen! I am twenty-seven," she said, with exaggerated patience.
"No."
"Three years after you arrived, they took me off your case. They figured if anything was going to happen, it would have. It's been years since that. I couldn't imagine what would happen to you without someone regular in your life."
"You were fifteen when I came back."
"Sixteen."
"That's not the point," Satella said, reclaiming her line of thought. "You don't smile anymore. You're so frustrated with life."
"Is there really so much significance in becoming cynical?"
"The kind of cynicism you have," Satella said gently, not looking at her, "is the kind I had when I was nineteen and thought I had nothing left. Have you lost something? You're seven years past being eighteen."
"Eight."
"Does it matter?"
"You're still nineteen. Have you looked in a mirror? Have you looked at yourself?"
"Did you think maybe I would come back and spread magic in the world? I've had my share of fairy tales. They hurt."
Sarah stood and stared at her.
"You don't want to come back, Sarah. You don't have to. I'll have lost dearer friends than you."
Sarha turned, hesitated, and left.
"Bye," Satella called after her. "God," she said, and flopped backwards onto the floor.
--- ---
In the memory of friends lost, she went to visit the graves again. She stood there for a couple minutes, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot like a tethered bird, then sat down in the grass in front of the tombstone, tossing the flowers all around her.
"I don't really know how to act anymore," she told Azmaria solemnly. "I suppose anyone eighty, ninety years old in a nineteen-year-old's body would go a bit crazy. She turned towards Rosette. "I don't think I'm really crazy, though, for all I'm talking to hunks of stone." She smiled and stroked a headstone. "Very pretty stones, I'm sure."
She stood up, not bothering to brush grass off her clothes. "I don't think there's anyone like any of us left anymore. I think I'm a relic, not even a hundred years later." She turned, called idly over her shoulder, "I love you. Tell everyone."
She turned back briefly, at the gate, to look again. A slight figure stood by the grave, black skirt belling out even in the slight breeze.
"Fiore?"
The figure, back turned to her, raised a hand briefly, in acknowledgement or denial, but did not otherwise move.
Satella grinned, and turned away. "See if I ever visit again," she said.
There was no response that Satella knew. But Shader, waiting in the trees, was smiling.
Satella made her way through a few more years. When she was consistently asked for an ID to get a drink, she stopped in a drugstore to buy a mirror. She paid the clerk, and stepped outside to look at herself, which she had not done since before Christmas day in 1924.
"Geez," she said softly. She tossed the mirror into an alleyway and kept on walking.
"See somethin' you didn't like, lady?" a hobo called raucously.
"No. Did you?"
"Damn sure I didn't. Wha's wrong, fixin' yer makeup?"
"Just proving someone right."
Later that day at her current waitress-ing job a regular customer asked her out.
"Oh, sweetheart," she said kindly, "I'm far too old for you."
"Oh? You look around nineteen, twenty to me."
"I've been nineteen for a very long time," she said, and began gathering up dishes. She smiled at him and headed for the kitchen.
"Is that what you say to every guy who asks you out? Will you, or will you not?"
She stopped and turned. "Oh," she said sympathetically, "I've spent far too much time chasing after men and then being nasty to them. You wouldn't enjoy it."
--- ---
You come here to look for guys or something?" asked the teenager behind the desk in the museum's gift shop the third time Satella showed up that week.
"This topic is getting old," Satella remarked, then said, "No, I actually like museums. I enjoy art. I used to have quite the collection until a friend of mine started breaking vases." She took a pamphlet and smiled. "Finding guys is not something I object to."
She wandered through the halls a while, examining paintings and statues and closely reading captions, until warm arms draped over her shoulders and someone said, "Little sister!"
Satella turned around to a familiar face that she didn't know. "You-"
"My name is Shader," the demon said. "Let's get coffee."
--- ---
We watch over you, sometimes-she didn't want me to talk to you, but your sister is very stubborn. She's going to stay away from you. I hope you understand." Shader adjusted her hat. It was the kind Satella associated with nerdy adolescents, one with cat ears and giant slanted eyes. A tuft of fur escaped a fabric ear; Shader tucked it back in.
"She's not my sister," really, anymore," Satella said, stirring her coffee.
"No, but there isn't any other way to express it, is there? Especially now." Satella licked a dot of whipped cream off her straw and smiled contentedly.
"Now?"
"What do you think happened in those seventy years you were dead? Not dead, really, not any way to really say it. You recognize my face, don't you? We've never met. I bet you could recognize every one of the Sinners. Fiore ahs that much from you, too. "
"Memories?"
"You weren't bound together long or tightly enough for that. Just basic sensory memories." Shader's feline smile turned dangerous suddenly, like a panther cleaning its claws. "If you two spent more time together, it might not end well for either of you."
Satella was silent, her stillness a question.
"You're not quite human anymore," Fiore said, no longer dangerous but still not safe. She laughed. "Though I don't know if Aion would believe that."
Satella began to feel mired in one-worded confusion. "What?"
"Aion didn't think much of humans. Well, no," she sighed, "that's not right. Think about it this way: have you ever had a pet?"
"No."
"Really? Shame. Anyway, most demons-who aren't legion, the ones who are upper-class, say, Aion, would view a human as you would a dog."
"Or a cat?"
"Meh! You can care about a pet, enjoy its company, think it's rather smart, cry when it dies, but you wouldn't love it. It's not on your level. And why shouldn't demons feel this way? We are stronger, smarter, more powerful, our bodies more efficient."
"You don't think that way," Satella said with certainty.
I have learned that humans are very complex creatures, interesting to watch, and fun to play with," Fiore said quite seriously. "You'll learn this too." She got up, gathering her bag an finishing her drink.
"Am I going to live forever?" Satella asked suddenly, rushed.
"Who knows? I don't know if I'll live forever. I don't know if anyone lives forever. We just all have to wait for forever to pass by. How can you ever know something like that?" Shader stood and looked her over, straight-faced. "Get around the city a bit more. You'll be surprised at what you see."
--- ---
For the next few weeks Satella wandered everywhere through the city, taking every alleyway she could find and getting thoroughly lost. Even in the worst neighborhoods, she was left unmolested. Once a man attacked her, though, just off a busy street. He asked breathlessly for her money. Empty-handed, she said as much and he angrily stabbed a knife into her shoulder. Satella cried out against the pain, but when he pulled the little knife out she was still as it healed over.
"Oh," she said, as the man fled, "that's new." She looked around, for any witnesses, and her eyes caught at a man in a fire escape, face lined with bitterness and work. When her eyes met his, he turned and she saw the line of filed-down horns underneath his hair.
"Oh," she said again, but much more quietly, and left.
She was shocked as she realized, wandering the streets. The Order is stupid, she thought, with sudden contempt, if they don't see this. There were demons on every street, and they all recognized Satella. Whenever one passed, she received the slightest nod or something similar, as one inhuman to another.
Shader hadn't given her any contact information, but she found Satella again about three weeks after the museum, knocking on Satella's door early in the morning with a box of warm pastries and balancing Starbucks cups.
Bleary-eyed and blinking, Satella let her in.
"You wanted to talk to me, I'm thinking," Shader said cheerfully, depositing her precious cargo on the floor. "Don't you have any furniture?"
"No. No point. I don't know how long I'll be in this place and I hate having to move stuff," Satella said, downing half her coffee and rubbing her eyes. "And yes, I did want to talk to you."
"Get all the way inside and close the door first, you don't want men to see you in that little ensemble, did you? It would burst their poor hearts." Satella pulled at a large t-shirt and shorts and snorted. "You never know who's watching."
"A few weeks ago I might have ignored that," Satella said.
"Oh, they're not all watching you," Shader said. "You're not that important. If they see you, yes, they'll watch, but they won't go out of their way."
"Why are they all here?"
"This city is special," Shader said, the eyes over her relentless smile shadowing. "A lot of things have happened here. For example, Pandaemonium destroyed it. There's nowhere else a demon would go. The astral line is very strong here, too."
"Because of all that?"
"Yup. Come on, eat something. They're delicious…"
Satella accepted a Danish and chewed on it thoughtfully. "How does the Magdalan Order not know?"
"They have a very limited capacity in these modern days, and those who know don't care. And we haven't been causing trouble.
"None at all?"
"Not the kind that would attract the Magdalan Order."
Satella considered briefly a blonde head of hair and the accompanying frustrated frown and hummed. "What about Pandaemonium?"
"What about her?"
"I don't know. I was gone before it all ended."
"I'll tell you someday," Shader said. "Right now, it's too early." She curled up in a patch of sunlight with her pastry and coffee. "Go back to sleep."
Satella shrugged and found herself another patch of sun. When she woke up, Shader had gone.
--- ---
"I'm back," Shader sang at Satella's latest job, another waitress-ing job. "Bring me ale, wench!"
"I'd be happy to," Satella said, fingering her notepad, "if I didn't think you couldn't hold it."
"Nonsense! People of my ilk are very resistant to alcohol."
"Coffee?"
"Yes, please."
Satella's manager stopped her as she came into the kitchen.
"Do you know her?"
"Yes," Satella said, amiably, "she's friends with my sister."
"Why isn't your sister here, then?"
"We don't really talk. Why?"
The woman looked at her thoughtfully, a tray balanced in one hand, the other smoothing out a wrinkle in her apron. "You've worked here a month, and never talked about your personal life."
"Oh, I don't have much of a life at all," Satella said pleasantly, as she stuck a note with the other orders. "I just sit around at home when I'm not working."
"I doubt that."
"Nonsense!" Satella glanced back into the seating area-Shader was examining a pepper grinder. Satella saw all kinds of bad possibilities there, and turned to her manager. "Can I take my break now? Just about ten minutes or so."
"Go ahead."
Satella slipped off her apron and slid into a seat across from Shader, who straightened up from her hunch over the table. "My coffee?"
"Someone else is getting it. Why are you here?"
"Boredom," said Shader innocently, "that's all."
"I doubt it. Answer my question," Satella said, "then, the one that you so conveniently left before answering."
"Which one?" said Shader, putting down the grinder and picking up the ketchup. She opened it and squinted down the opening.
"Why are the demons here, and not at Pandaemonium?"
"Oh," said Shader dismally, "that one."
Satella smiled, rested her chin on her hand, and waited.
Shader's eyes went dark, secretive. "Pandaemonium is not… accessible," she said reluctantly. "I do not know how to explain it to you. Pandaemonium is not precisely destroyed… Just not… accessible. That is the only way to say it that I know. Pandaemonium destroyed this city, once. Now we are here."
"How did Aion survive without his horns?"
"Contractors," Shader said, surprised, "I would've thought you'd have figured it out. Multiple contractors, sealed in the jewels."
"Can the demons here survive without Pandaemonium? They still have their horns, and I cannot imagine them being able to find contractors."
"They don't know how to form contracts," Shader said, accepting her coffee from a waitress and not paying any attention to her. "Mary Magdalene was the one to create practice; Chrno survived after her death using the clock device that I built, which Rosette than used to contain her own soul. Without Pandaemonium, the demons are all dying slowly. This world is forgetting its magic."
"What about you?" Satella watched the demon prissily sip coffee, then stir in a sugar packet.
"What about me?"
"You are very well aware, what about you," Satella said, reproachfully, "go on and answer."
"I have a different source of life energy," Shader said diffidently.
"A contract," Satella said immediately. "My sister." She leaned forward abruptly. "But my sister's life-span-"
"You and your sister are no longer human, as you well know," Shader said calmly, smiling again, "and I think, with my calculations, there will be no issue. We don't know how long you two will live anyway."
"Satella!" called her manager, suddenly, "time's up, and you've stretched it. I'm sorry, ma'am; we really do need to get to work. It's almost time for the evening rush."
"Bye, Shader." Satella rose, pushed the chair in. On impulse, she reached out and tweaked an ear, under a hat. "Just making sure it was really there."
"Meh!" said Shader. "Bye, little sister. I'll give your regards to your sister."
"Don't bother."
Later, her manager turned to her suddenly and asked, "What's Pandaemonium?"
Caught up in her thoughts, Satella said absently, "Where demons live."
"What?"
"Oh," said Satella suddenly, surprised. "Ooops."
"What are you talking about?" her manager asked suspiciously.
Satella blinked, trying to gather her thoughts. "In, um, the bible. The home of demons is Pandaemonium. My friend there is a scholar, a bit-I assume that's where you got it, when you delivered her coffee?-and she's writing a story. She was telling me about it."
"Strange."
--- ---
That wasn't the last time she received a visitor at her job. A few days later, a man in a navy suit with white and gold trimmings showed up and asked for Satella Harvenheit. Her manager stared at him in astonishment, then wearily went into the kitchen to talk to Satella.
"There's a man out there asking for you. Should I get rid of him, or is he okay?"
Satella peaked out the door and closed it, fast.
"Get rid of him?"
"No," said Satella, a bit dazed, "that's a priest. My priest, actually. I haven't seen him in years. I suppose I should talk to him."
"He doesn't look like a priest."
"No, that's the point," Satella said, and went to go talk to him.
He turned as she approached, and nodded his head at her. "Miss Harvenheit," he said politely.
"Father Michael," she said, smiling with a mixture of bemusement and politeness, "it's good to see you. I haven't seen you since…" and she became aware of her manager's listening presence, "the last church retreat came back from the beach."
He smiled briefly, at that.
"Is something wrong?" she asked. "Anything wrong with Sarah, or-"
"Sarah has been transferred out of the city," he said mildly. "She… no longer wished to work in the Order."
Satella could, for all intents and purposes, sense the sudden increase in curiosity and interest form her manager. "Excuse me," she said politely, "please come and sit down over here," and led him to a table in the corner.
"That's not what I came to say, though," he said. "She's been gone for a number of years. We actually do still have a novice member patrolling the shores, in case your sister shows up there, though; nothing like Sarah. Not as idealistic, not as easily discouraged from a job like we have in the Order. Not expecting a fairy tale to come true whenever anything happens. That's a bit of why she left, you know. I could tell she wouldn't last. She thought when you arrived that maybe some of the excitement of living in a world with demons and jewel witches would come back. She was very disappointed in you."
"She would have been very disappointed in life in the twenties," Satella said amiably. "It was not good. She wouldn't have lasted then, either."
He grunted agreement at that, and rubbed his beard, appearing to remember his train of thoughts. "I came here to tell you that the amounts of astral interference the Order has been picking up have been increasing in the past two weeks."
"How do you know?" said Satella, straight-faced.
He sighed and looked at her. "To be frank, Miss Harvenheit, I am aware of the large number of demons in this city. You knew of Father Gilliam, I presume? I am related to him. I know about the demons. I know that we have been overlooking them for years. However, we do have instruments to inform us of astral levels. This information is classified… I do not think we should keep anything from you, who played such a key role in the Incident of 1924. However, I cannot explain to you how the instruments work because I do not know."
"Be satisfied in knowing that we do know."
"And why do I need to know?"
"Azmaria's grandson, suggested we tell you. It would be more relevant to you, who interacted with demons regularly, than to us if we cannot find the roots behind it. I'd ask you to find it for us."
"Really?"
"I am not on orders from Magdala. They would not approve. I simply request that you… in some way decrease the levels of astral interference. I believe you can better than we."
"I'll do what I can," Satella said, after a moment.
"Thank you." As he stood up and shrugged on his long coat, he looked at Satella with an expression she could not decipher. Then, after a moment of what looked like struggling with himself, he said, "Azmaria's grandson noted that you have not visited the graves in some time. It might be nice to do so."
She smiled bleakly. "I have my own reasons for not visiting. Mostly pique."
He did not respond, but turned away towards the door. As he left, she heard him say quietly, "Azmaria's boy often has very perceptive hunches. I would not be surprised if the last Hendrick inherited some of it."
Satella watched him go thoughtfully, then went into the kitchen. The restaurant hadn't actually opened yet.
"What was all that about?" her manager asked excitedly. "You looked pretty serious, talking."
"He was inquiring as to the state of my immortal soul," Satella replied, with some irony the woman did not catch; if she had, she wouldn’t have understood. "I am afraid he was disappointed."
"What do you believe in, anyway?"
"A lot of things."
--- ---
It took her a few days to steel herself enough to face the graves again. If Fiore was there, she swore to herself, she would leave immediately and never come back. She doubted the woman-doll would be there, though; she had certainly avoided Satella for long enough to support that theory.
There was nothing unusual about the graves, when she arrived. She sat down in front of it like last time, without the preceding awkwardness. She smiled; Rosette was not lacking for flowers.
"What they do in graveyards," Satella wondered out loud, arranging the flowers with the ones she had brought to her own satisfaction, "when flowers left on graves die? It must be sad, to see them. I never have."
"Oi!"
Satella turned, abruptly, to see Shader. "I'm back yet again," said Shader, "and I'm surprised to see you here."
"Is my sister here?"
"Nope, I'm just following you."
Satella leaned back until she was lying down. "Then why are you surprised to see me?"
"I'm surprised you came. I didn't think you wanted to."
"I don't want to. I don't want to be here. A Magdalan priest suggested it."
"Meh!" said Shader scornfully, "you followed what a Magdalan priest told you to do?"
"Apparently he's related to someone from the Incident of 1924… Father Gilliam?"
Shader cocked her head to one side. "That's what Magdala calls it… we call it Pandaemonium's Death. Not completely accurate, of course. I remember Gilliam. He fought with Genai. Genai was winning, too, until Gilliam put up a barrier around him."
"Which one was Genai?"
"Remember," said Shader mysteriously, obviously knowing it and enjoying it. "You know his face from Fiore. Think of it."
"Oh," said Satella, "that's new. A cowboy hat?"
"Yes. Don't laugh. We all liked to play cowboys and Indians back then. The Indian was Chrno."
"I see."
Shader turned her head from one side to another for a few minutes, looking at Satella, who stared back, an eyebrow lifted.
"Stay here," the demon said suddenly, half-smiling. "Maybe you'll be surprised."
"How long?"
"Until someone comes."
"Shader," Satella said with some exasperation, "I'm not going to just sit here forever."
"Fine then. Just visit very frequently. But you might never know, then."
"Know what?"
"I don't know. But I have a hunch. Sometimes you just have to see."
--- ---
Satella visited for a couple of days after that, hoping more than she wanted to for something to happen. Another bouquet appeared a few days later, and something snapped.
Whoever you are, you're an idiot. You're involved. Come and talk to me, she wrote on a note, and left it on the gravestone, please. If not, I'll wait for you and I'll call out the whole Magdalan Order to wait with me.
--- ---
She was in the museum, again, looking at a new exhibit.
"Satella-"
She whirled around. If it had been Shader, she would have been greeted with a hug.
She looked up into a familiar face that she did know.
"You-" She felt the world falling out from underneath her, then abruptly realigning itself behind her swinging fist. "You bastard!"
It landed with a satisfying noise. The speaker staggered back, clutching his face. "What the hell! I came to you, finally, and you're hitting me," Chrno said reproachfully.
She stared at him. "I'm-" she said, automatically, then narrowed her eyes and finished, "not sorry. Not at all."
"I'm not surprised," he muttered, and made her laugh. He looked up at her. "I didn't want to come."
"I don't blame you." She looked at him silently for a few minutes until he looked uncomfortable.
"What?"
"Your hair is shorter," she said with childish disappointment. "It's shorter than I remember."
"It happens. Come on," he said, "let's go."
"That's all?" She said, suddenly irritated. "You've been gone for more than eighty years… more than ten of which I have been awake and alive and you wouldn't come and see me. Did you think I would hate it if someone that I once knew could speak to me?"
"You didn't want to go to the graves. You put it off for years."
"Fiore was there. I didn't want to see her again."
"I didn't want to see you. You were there, and you weren't. I don't want to talk about what happened. You would've asked. Are you going to?"
She looked at him, and said sadly, "Oh, sweetheart, no. I don't want to know."
"Then let's go," he said, and turned.
"Just tell me… did Aion die?"
He looked at her, and said nothing.
"I'll take that," she said.
--- ---
He was sitting on the floor in her apartment, eating a donut like a ten-year old boy, with a mild expression on his face.
"What are you going to do now?"
He looked at her, mouth full, so surprised that his face was a picture.
"Good," she said, before he could say anything, "you haven't lost that. I thought you might. I'm glad you didn't."
"Lost what?"
"Silliness. You need it. I would feel strange if you came back and weren't silly."
"I am not silly," he said, dignified, swallowing his bite of donut.
"I doubt it. What are you going to do now? Just breeze in and out?"
"I don't want to leave you alone for the rest of your life, however long you live," he said. "I won't stay with you the entire time. But I'll come back, when I leave. I'll stay with you in that sense, until I die." He looked at her, and she sat down next to him. His hand reached for her shoulder, gripped it tightly.
"Your horns-"
"Not enough energy from Pandaemonium."
"A contract-"
He stood up suddenly. "No."
"Chrno-"
"Not again, please, Satella. Not again," and he turned towards the door.
When he opened it, she said, "You promised to come back." He glanced back as he opened the door. "Talk to Shader," she said.
--- ---
He came back late at night, knocking at her door. She opened it, blinking.
"Do all demons choose erratic hours to knock on people's doors, or is it just when I'm sleeping?" she asked.
"Is it worth it, for you?"
"No, opening doors at night is not worth it. Yes, I know what you mean," she said when he opened his mouth. "I don't particularly care. Do you want to die?"
He came in and sat on the floor. "No," he said quietly, "I don't want to die."
"Is that a bad thing?"
"She didn't want to die. She wasn't afraid, though. I am afraid to die." He looked at her. "When a demon dies, does he go to the same place as a human?"
"How would I know?" she said bluntly. "Chrno, she had someone with her. If you would rather die than form a contract, stay with me and I'll be here with you until you die. But sweetheart, I don't love you, I don't. Not like that. You must know that. Will it be enough, for you?"
"Yes," and he turned and cried into her arms.
When he was done, she said, "What do you want to do, then?"
"I don't know."
"We can wait, to decide what to do," she said. "We have an eternity to decide."
It's Chrno Crusade, about Satella after she wakes up in the nineties... Some of the details are off, because it had been so long since I last read it, though I reread it today and yesterday.
When Satella woke, her eyes smarting against a burst of light and the stream of salty seawater, her feet stumbling over hot sand that drew rapidly away from under her feet with a receding wave, she was greeted by a young, cheerful face over a navy suit, trimmed in white and gold and a rosary. The sunny expression, the fringe of blonde hair shocked Satella for a moment, reminded her of something unfinished.
"What-" she croaked, shaking hair out of her face and wiping sea water out of her mouth.
Behind the girl was an older man in a similar suit talking urgently into what was, as Satella would soon discover, a cell phone.
"We'll answer all your questions," the girl said brightly. "We've been waiting for you for seventy years."
--- ---
"I saw you looking at my uniform," Sarah, the girl, chattered. The girl was nervous, Satella realized hazily as the dark car moved sleekly through unfamiliar traffic, and she couldn't be more than fifteen. "The Order isn't really official anymore. After the Incident of 1924, our influence has declined because of the lack of verified demon sightings. All of the Apostles lost their powers, too."
Satella nodded absently, staring at the city outside.
"We're still here, though, and we've been watching for you. It's been my duty for a year or so, patrolling the shores-Father Michael is my back-up in case your reappearance attracts any form of astral interference."
"Where are we going?" Satella interrupted.
She looked surprised. "To see Azmaria's last words."
--- ---
Satella drifted in and out of jobs, without real need. Despite Steiner's death long ago, the Magdalan Order had managed her finances. Despite inflation, she had plenty of money.
This time she didn't bother to look for her sister. She didn't think she could stand the disappointment twice. The scars across her lower ribs still ached in the wet.
She still looked, though, at dark, short hair-once she spun, causing an irritated eddy in the current of people, to stare at a slight, short-haired woman in a white coat and black skirt disappear into a crowd crossing the street. Another time a waitress with a young face and layered grey hair under a huge, bulky knit cap smiled at her and disappeared into the kitchen before Satella had time to even think of recognizing her.
She wondered if she was immortal, when she showed few signs of aging, or if she would die despite the interference of power in her life, like Joshua and Azmaria.
She drifted through lovers, too, and they found her beautiful, full of life, and frustratingly distracted. One told her she was lost in a past she wouldn't tell him, and she smiled at him and told him he was right.
--- ---
"You're so frustrating," sighed Sarah. The Order frequently sent her to check that Satella was alive and not consorting with demons. Satella, who heard as much from others, did not expect it from this girl-woman. She said as much.
"Find some way to spend your time that doesn't end up with you getting too caught up in your thoughts."
Satella smiled absently at a boy with shaggy dark hair that reminded her of a memory. Sarah put down her mug with a clink and rolled her eyes. "You've adapted," she said, sounding tired, "to this time. What was the point of coming back to life if you're going to live so halfheartedly?"
"I didn't have much choice in the matter," Satella marked wryly.
Sarah regarded her darkly. "I have to go file my report for the Order." As she left the café, her voice came winding back: "Find a hobby. Breed dogs or something. God knows you have the money."
"Dog breeding is for old people in retirement," Satella called to her.
"You are old!"
"Sarah's a Jewish name, and you're a Christian nun!" Satella grinned and downed her coffee. She glanced at the boy again and put it out of her mind.
--- ---
She got herself a job in precious gems three years after coming back, and managed to devote some attention to it. After six months she decided it took too much energy and quit. Plus, she didn't like the way her boss looked at her.
"Are you kidding me?" said Sarah when Satella mentioned it. "I thought that at least would keep you entertained."
"Why? You don't know my past."
"I know you dealt in gems. But no. To read the info on any of the major players in the Incident of 1924 you have to be very high-ranked in the order. To even read about Storm or Feather is heavy stuff, much less you. Or especially Rosette Christopher. I know at least that they called you the Jewel Witch."
"She looked a bit like you, but she was louder and more cheerful, I think, and she had more of a reason for melancholy than you, but she never was," Satella said thoughtfully.
"What?"
"She was never melancholy, and you are."
"No, who?"
"Rosette."
"You knew her?"
"Yeah," Satella said, barely paying attention, "and Azmaria was a china doll, with that hair. Chrno was… Oh God, the picture, where did I put the damn thing? I wish Steiner was here, he'd know where. He always kept track of these things for me."
"Satella, don't-"
Satella rummaged through drawers, rifled through her purse, increasingly panicked. "Where is that damn thing?" she cried, finally, sitting down amid a flurry of tossed papers. "The Order gave me a stupid copy. Now what do I have from them? The tape of Azmaria was confiscated by the Order, her grandson isn't allowed to talk to me because they're afraid I'll somehow awaken an Apostle's powers in him. Damn it!"
She looked up to see Sarah staring at her.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I shouldn't have brought it up."
Satella sighed, shook her head restlessly. "Just… just go for right now. File your report."
Sarah didn't move. "What are you going to do?"
She blinked a few times, rubbed her forehead, forgot the question. Then she looked up, twirling a strand of hair in her fingers. "I…" She met Sarah's troubled eyes with a bemused expression. "I think I'm going to cut my hair."
--- ---
For eight more years she did it all again. With her hair so much shorter, Satella would've liked to say that she looked like Florette, but that would have been a lie. Fiore used to look like Satella did now.
Sarah's life interested with hers at rapidly increasing intervals. One day she breezed into Satella's current apartment and said, "I can't believe you."
Satella, lighting a cigarette, said, "What?" and instead of putting it in her mouth, looked at it. "I'm thinking of taking up smoking."
Sarah threw up her hands and turned away with a noise of disgust.
"You told me to take up a hobby, what, three years ago?"
"You don't do anything. Why do you even bother?"
"Aha, that's where you're wrong. That is where the cigarette comes in; something to do."
"Not what I was talking about."
"Didn't you ask me that around the same time you told me to take up a hobby?" Satella asked reasonably, stubbing out the unused cigarette on the floor.
"That was eight years ago," Sarah said, frustrated. "Look at you. You don't even look older, you haven't changed at all."
"Aha!" Satella said again, tracing a pattern on the floor with the cigarette. "Proof that living halfheartedly is beneficial." She glanced up at Sarah. "You don't remind me of Rosette anymore."
"She was fifteen! I am twenty-seven," she said, with exaggerated patience.
"No."
"Three years after you arrived, they took me off your case. They figured if anything was going to happen, it would have. It's been years since that. I couldn't imagine what would happen to you without someone regular in your life."
"You were fifteen when I came back."
"Sixteen."
"That's not the point," Satella said, reclaiming her line of thought. "You don't smile anymore. You're so frustrated with life."
"Is there really so much significance in becoming cynical?"
"The kind of cynicism you have," Satella said gently, not looking at her, "is the kind I had when I was nineteen and thought I had nothing left. Have you lost something? You're seven years past being eighteen."
"Eight."
"Does it matter?"
"You're still nineteen. Have you looked in a mirror? Have you looked at yourself?"
"Did you think maybe I would come back and spread magic in the world? I've had my share of fairy tales. They hurt."
Sarah stood and stared at her.
"You don't want to come back, Sarah. You don't have to. I'll have lost dearer friends than you."
Sarha turned, hesitated, and left.
"Bye," Satella called after her. "God," she said, and flopped backwards onto the floor.
--- ---
In the memory of friends lost, she went to visit the graves again. She stood there for a couple minutes, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot like a tethered bird, then sat down in the grass in front of the tombstone, tossing the flowers all around her.
"I don't really know how to act anymore," she told Azmaria solemnly. "I suppose anyone eighty, ninety years old in a nineteen-year-old's body would go a bit crazy. She turned towards Rosette. "I don't think I'm really crazy, though, for all I'm talking to hunks of stone." She smiled and stroked a headstone. "Very pretty stones, I'm sure."
She stood up, not bothering to brush grass off her clothes. "I don't think there's anyone like any of us left anymore. I think I'm a relic, not even a hundred years later." She turned, called idly over her shoulder, "I love you. Tell everyone."
She turned back briefly, at the gate, to look again. A slight figure stood by the grave, black skirt belling out even in the slight breeze.
"Fiore?"
The figure, back turned to her, raised a hand briefly, in acknowledgement or denial, but did not otherwise move.
Satella grinned, and turned away. "See if I ever visit again," she said.
There was no response that Satella knew. But Shader, waiting in the trees, was smiling.
Satella made her way through a few more years. When she was consistently asked for an ID to get a drink, she stopped in a drugstore to buy a mirror. She paid the clerk, and stepped outside to look at herself, which she had not done since before Christmas day in 1924.
"Geez," she said softly. She tossed the mirror into an alleyway and kept on walking.
"See somethin' you didn't like, lady?" a hobo called raucously.
"No. Did you?"
"Damn sure I didn't. Wha's wrong, fixin' yer makeup?"
"Just proving someone right."
Later that day at her current waitress-ing job a regular customer asked her out.
"Oh, sweetheart," she said kindly, "I'm far too old for you."
"Oh? You look around nineteen, twenty to me."
"I've been nineteen for a very long time," she said, and began gathering up dishes. She smiled at him and headed for the kitchen.
"Is that what you say to every guy who asks you out? Will you, or will you not?"
She stopped and turned. "Oh," she said sympathetically, "I've spent far too much time chasing after men and then being nasty to them. You wouldn't enjoy it."
--- ---
You come here to look for guys or something?" asked the teenager behind the desk in the museum's gift shop the third time Satella showed up that week.
"This topic is getting old," Satella remarked, then said, "No, I actually like museums. I enjoy art. I used to have quite the collection until a friend of mine started breaking vases." She took a pamphlet and smiled. "Finding guys is not something I object to."
She wandered through the halls a while, examining paintings and statues and closely reading captions, until warm arms draped over her shoulders and someone said, "Little sister!"
Satella turned around to a familiar face that she didn't know. "You-"
"My name is Shader," the demon said. "Let's get coffee."
--- ---
We watch over you, sometimes-she didn't want me to talk to you, but your sister is very stubborn. She's going to stay away from you. I hope you understand." Shader adjusted her hat. It was the kind Satella associated with nerdy adolescents, one with cat ears and giant slanted eyes. A tuft of fur escaped a fabric ear; Shader tucked it back in.
"She's not my sister," really, anymore," Satella said, stirring her coffee.
"No, but there isn't any other way to express it, is there? Especially now." Satella licked a dot of whipped cream off her straw and smiled contentedly.
"Now?"
"What do you think happened in those seventy years you were dead? Not dead, really, not any way to really say it. You recognize my face, don't you? We've never met. I bet you could recognize every one of the Sinners. Fiore ahs that much from you, too. "
"Memories?"
"You weren't bound together long or tightly enough for that. Just basic sensory memories." Shader's feline smile turned dangerous suddenly, like a panther cleaning its claws. "If you two spent more time together, it might not end well for either of you."
Satella was silent, her stillness a question.
"You're not quite human anymore," Fiore said, no longer dangerous but still not safe. She laughed. "Though I don't know if Aion would believe that."
Satella began to feel mired in one-worded confusion. "What?"
"Aion didn't think much of humans. Well, no," she sighed, "that's not right. Think about it this way: have you ever had a pet?"
"No."
"Really? Shame. Anyway, most demons-who aren't legion, the ones who are upper-class, say, Aion, would view a human as you would a dog."
"Or a cat?"
"Meh! You can care about a pet, enjoy its company, think it's rather smart, cry when it dies, but you wouldn't love it. It's not on your level. And why shouldn't demons feel this way? We are stronger, smarter, more powerful, our bodies more efficient."
"You don't think that way," Satella said with certainty.
I have learned that humans are very complex creatures, interesting to watch, and fun to play with," Fiore said quite seriously. "You'll learn this too." She got up, gathering her bag an finishing her drink.
"Am I going to live forever?" Satella asked suddenly, rushed.
"Who knows? I don't know if I'll live forever. I don't know if anyone lives forever. We just all have to wait for forever to pass by. How can you ever know something like that?" Shader stood and looked her over, straight-faced. "Get around the city a bit more. You'll be surprised at what you see."
--- ---
For the next few weeks Satella wandered everywhere through the city, taking every alleyway she could find and getting thoroughly lost. Even in the worst neighborhoods, she was left unmolested. Once a man attacked her, though, just off a busy street. He asked breathlessly for her money. Empty-handed, she said as much and he angrily stabbed a knife into her shoulder. Satella cried out against the pain, but when he pulled the little knife out she was still as it healed over.
"Oh," she said, as the man fled, "that's new." She looked around, for any witnesses, and her eyes caught at a man in a fire escape, face lined with bitterness and work. When her eyes met his, he turned and she saw the line of filed-down horns underneath his hair.
"Oh," she said again, but much more quietly, and left.
She was shocked as she realized, wandering the streets. The Order is stupid, she thought, with sudden contempt, if they don't see this. There were demons on every street, and they all recognized Satella. Whenever one passed, she received the slightest nod or something similar, as one inhuman to another.
Shader hadn't given her any contact information, but she found Satella again about three weeks after the museum, knocking on Satella's door early in the morning with a box of warm pastries and balancing Starbucks cups.
Bleary-eyed and blinking, Satella let her in.
"You wanted to talk to me, I'm thinking," Shader said cheerfully, depositing her precious cargo on the floor. "Don't you have any furniture?"
"No. No point. I don't know how long I'll be in this place and I hate having to move stuff," Satella said, downing half her coffee and rubbing her eyes. "And yes, I did want to talk to you."
"Get all the way inside and close the door first, you don't want men to see you in that little ensemble, did you? It would burst their poor hearts." Satella pulled at a large t-shirt and shorts and snorted. "You never know who's watching."
"A few weeks ago I might have ignored that," Satella said.
"Oh, they're not all watching you," Shader said. "You're not that important. If they see you, yes, they'll watch, but they won't go out of their way."
"Why are they all here?"
"This city is special," Shader said, the eyes over her relentless smile shadowing. "A lot of things have happened here. For example, Pandaemonium destroyed it. There's nowhere else a demon would go. The astral line is very strong here, too."
"Because of all that?"
"Yup. Come on, eat something. They're delicious…"
Satella accepted a Danish and chewed on it thoughtfully. "How does the Magdalan Order not know?"
"They have a very limited capacity in these modern days, and those who know don't care. And we haven't been causing trouble.
"None at all?"
"Not the kind that would attract the Magdalan Order."
Satella considered briefly a blonde head of hair and the accompanying frustrated frown and hummed. "What about Pandaemonium?"
"What about her?"
"I don't know. I was gone before it all ended."
"I'll tell you someday," Shader said. "Right now, it's too early." She curled up in a patch of sunlight with her pastry and coffee. "Go back to sleep."
Satella shrugged and found herself another patch of sun. When she woke up, Shader had gone.
--- ---
"I'm back," Shader sang at Satella's latest job, another waitress-ing job. "Bring me ale, wench!"
"I'd be happy to," Satella said, fingering her notepad, "if I didn't think you couldn't hold it."
"Nonsense! People of my ilk are very resistant to alcohol."
"Coffee?"
"Yes, please."
Satella's manager stopped her as she came into the kitchen.
"Do you know her?"
"Yes," Satella said, amiably, "she's friends with my sister."
"Why isn't your sister here, then?"
"We don't really talk. Why?"
The woman looked at her thoughtfully, a tray balanced in one hand, the other smoothing out a wrinkle in her apron. "You've worked here a month, and never talked about your personal life."
"Oh, I don't have much of a life at all," Satella said pleasantly, as she stuck a note with the other orders. "I just sit around at home when I'm not working."
"I doubt that."
"Nonsense!" Satella glanced back into the seating area-Shader was examining a pepper grinder. Satella saw all kinds of bad possibilities there, and turned to her manager. "Can I take my break now? Just about ten minutes or so."
"Go ahead."
Satella slipped off her apron and slid into a seat across from Shader, who straightened up from her hunch over the table. "My coffee?"
"Someone else is getting it. Why are you here?"
"Boredom," said Shader innocently, "that's all."
"I doubt it. Answer my question," Satella said, "then, the one that you so conveniently left before answering."
"Which one?" said Shader, putting down the grinder and picking up the ketchup. She opened it and squinted down the opening.
"Why are the demons here, and not at Pandaemonium?"
"Oh," said Shader dismally, "that one."
Satella smiled, rested her chin on her hand, and waited.
Shader's eyes went dark, secretive. "Pandaemonium is not… accessible," she said reluctantly. "I do not know how to explain it to you. Pandaemonium is not precisely destroyed… Just not… accessible. That is the only way to say it that I know. Pandaemonium destroyed this city, once. Now we are here."
"How did Aion survive without his horns?"
"Contractors," Shader said, surprised, "I would've thought you'd have figured it out. Multiple contractors, sealed in the jewels."
"Can the demons here survive without Pandaemonium? They still have their horns, and I cannot imagine them being able to find contractors."
"They don't know how to form contracts," Shader said, accepting her coffee from a waitress and not paying any attention to her. "Mary Magdalene was the one to create practice; Chrno survived after her death using the clock device that I built, which Rosette than used to contain her own soul. Without Pandaemonium, the demons are all dying slowly. This world is forgetting its magic."
"What about you?" Satella watched the demon prissily sip coffee, then stir in a sugar packet.
"What about me?"
"You are very well aware, what about you," Satella said, reproachfully, "go on and answer."
"I have a different source of life energy," Shader said diffidently.
"A contract," Satella said immediately. "My sister." She leaned forward abruptly. "But my sister's life-span-"
"You and your sister are no longer human, as you well know," Shader said calmly, smiling again, "and I think, with my calculations, there will be no issue. We don't know how long you two will live anyway."
"Satella!" called her manager, suddenly, "time's up, and you've stretched it. I'm sorry, ma'am; we really do need to get to work. It's almost time for the evening rush."
"Bye, Shader." Satella rose, pushed the chair in. On impulse, she reached out and tweaked an ear, under a hat. "Just making sure it was really there."
"Meh!" said Shader. "Bye, little sister. I'll give your regards to your sister."
"Don't bother."
Later, her manager turned to her suddenly and asked, "What's Pandaemonium?"
Caught up in her thoughts, Satella said absently, "Where demons live."
"What?"
"Oh," said Satella suddenly, surprised. "Ooops."
"What are you talking about?" her manager asked suspiciously.
Satella blinked, trying to gather her thoughts. "In, um, the bible. The home of demons is Pandaemonium. My friend there is a scholar, a bit-I assume that's where you got it, when you delivered her coffee?-and she's writing a story. She was telling me about it."
"Strange."
--- ---
That wasn't the last time she received a visitor at her job. A few days later, a man in a navy suit with white and gold trimmings showed up and asked for Satella Harvenheit. Her manager stared at him in astonishment, then wearily went into the kitchen to talk to Satella.
"There's a man out there asking for you. Should I get rid of him, or is he okay?"
Satella peaked out the door and closed it, fast.
"Get rid of him?"
"No," said Satella, a bit dazed, "that's a priest. My priest, actually. I haven't seen him in years. I suppose I should talk to him."
"He doesn't look like a priest."
"No, that's the point," Satella said, and went to go talk to him.
He turned as she approached, and nodded his head at her. "Miss Harvenheit," he said politely.
"Father Michael," she said, smiling with a mixture of bemusement and politeness, "it's good to see you. I haven't seen you since…" and she became aware of her manager's listening presence, "the last church retreat came back from the beach."
He smiled briefly, at that.
"Is something wrong?" she asked. "Anything wrong with Sarah, or-"
"Sarah has been transferred out of the city," he said mildly. "She… no longer wished to work in the Order."
Satella could, for all intents and purposes, sense the sudden increase in curiosity and interest form her manager. "Excuse me," she said politely, "please come and sit down over here," and led him to a table in the corner.
"That's not what I came to say, though," he said. "She's been gone for a number of years. We actually do still have a novice member patrolling the shores, in case your sister shows up there, though; nothing like Sarah. Not as idealistic, not as easily discouraged from a job like we have in the Order. Not expecting a fairy tale to come true whenever anything happens. That's a bit of why she left, you know. I could tell she wouldn't last. She thought when you arrived that maybe some of the excitement of living in a world with demons and jewel witches would come back. She was very disappointed in you."
"She would have been very disappointed in life in the twenties," Satella said amiably. "It was not good. She wouldn't have lasted then, either."
He grunted agreement at that, and rubbed his beard, appearing to remember his train of thoughts. "I came here to tell you that the amounts of astral interference the Order has been picking up have been increasing in the past two weeks."
"How do you know?" said Satella, straight-faced.
He sighed and looked at her. "To be frank, Miss Harvenheit, I am aware of the large number of demons in this city. You knew of Father Gilliam, I presume? I am related to him. I know about the demons. I know that we have been overlooking them for years. However, we do have instruments to inform us of astral levels. This information is classified… I do not think we should keep anything from you, who played such a key role in the Incident of 1924. However, I cannot explain to you how the instruments work because I do not know."
"Be satisfied in knowing that we do know."
"And why do I need to know?"
"Azmaria's grandson, suggested we tell you. It would be more relevant to you, who interacted with demons regularly, than to us if we cannot find the roots behind it. I'd ask you to find it for us."
"Really?"
"I am not on orders from Magdala. They would not approve. I simply request that you… in some way decrease the levels of astral interference. I believe you can better than we."
"I'll do what I can," Satella said, after a moment.
"Thank you." As he stood up and shrugged on his long coat, he looked at Satella with an expression she could not decipher. Then, after a moment of what looked like struggling with himself, he said, "Azmaria's grandson noted that you have not visited the graves in some time. It might be nice to do so."
She smiled bleakly. "I have my own reasons for not visiting. Mostly pique."
He did not respond, but turned away towards the door. As he left, she heard him say quietly, "Azmaria's boy often has very perceptive hunches. I would not be surprised if the last Hendrick inherited some of it."
Satella watched him go thoughtfully, then went into the kitchen. The restaurant hadn't actually opened yet.
"What was all that about?" her manager asked excitedly. "You looked pretty serious, talking."
"He was inquiring as to the state of my immortal soul," Satella replied, with some irony the woman did not catch; if she had, she wouldn’t have understood. "I am afraid he was disappointed."
"What do you believe in, anyway?"
"A lot of things."
--- ---
It took her a few days to steel herself enough to face the graves again. If Fiore was there, she swore to herself, she would leave immediately and never come back. She doubted the woman-doll would be there, though; she had certainly avoided Satella for long enough to support that theory.
There was nothing unusual about the graves, when she arrived. She sat down in front of it like last time, without the preceding awkwardness. She smiled; Rosette was not lacking for flowers.
"What they do in graveyards," Satella wondered out loud, arranging the flowers with the ones she had brought to her own satisfaction, "when flowers left on graves die? It must be sad, to see them. I never have."
"Oi!"
Satella turned, abruptly, to see Shader. "I'm back yet again," said Shader, "and I'm surprised to see you here."
"Is my sister here?"
"Nope, I'm just following you."
Satella leaned back until she was lying down. "Then why are you surprised to see me?"
"I'm surprised you came. I didn't think you wanted to."
"I don't want to. I don't want to be here. A Magdalan priest suggested it."
"Meh!" said Shader scornfully, "you followed what a Magdalan priest told you to do?"
"Apparently he's related to someone from the Incident of 1924… Father Gilliam?"
Shader cocked her head to one side. "That's what Magdala calls it… we call it Pandaemonium's Death. Not completely accurate, of course. I remember Gilliam. He fought with Genai. Genai was winning, too, until Gilliam put up a barrier around him."
"Which one was Genai?"
"Remember," said Shader mysteriously, obviously knowing it and enjoying it. "You know his face from Fiore. Think of it."
"Oh," said Satella, "that's new. A cowboy hat?"
"Yes. Don't laugh. We all liked to play cowboys and Indians back then. The Indian was Chrno."
"I see."
Shader turned her head from one side to another for a few minutes, looking at Satella, who stared back, an eyebrow lifted.
"Stay here," the demon said suddenly, half-smiling. "Maybe you'll be surprised."
"How long?"
"Until someone comes."
"Shader," Satella said with some exasperation, "I'm not going to just sit here forever."
"Fine then. Just visit very frequently. But you might never know, then."
"Know what?"
"I don't know. But I have a hunch. Sometimes you just have to see."
--- ---
Satella visited for a couple of days after that, hoping more than she wanted to for something to happen. Another bouquet appeared a few days later, and something snapped.
Whoever you are, you're an idiot. You're involved. Come and talk to me, she wrote on a note, and left it on the gravestone, please. If not, I'll wait for you and I'll call out the whole Magdalan Order to wait with me.
--- ---
She was in the museum, again, looking at a new exhibit.
"Satella-"
She whirled around. If it had been Shader, she would have been greeted with a hug.
She looked up into a familiar face that she did know.
"You-" She felt the world falling out from underneath her, then abruptly realigning itself behind her swinging fist. "You bastard!"
It landed with a satisfying noise. The speaker staggered back, clutching his face. "What the hell! I came to you, finally, and you're hitting me," Chrno said reproachfully.
She stared at him. "I'm-" she said, automatically, then narrowed her eyes and finished, "not sorry. Not at all."
"I'm not surprised," he muttered, and made her laugh. He looked up at her. "I didn't want to come."
"I don't blame you." She looked at him silently for a few minutes until he looked uncomfortable.
"What?"
"Your hair is shorter," she said with childish disappointment. "It's shorter than I remember."
"It happens. Come on," he said, "let's go."
"That's all?" She said, suddenly irritated. "You've been gone for more than eighty years… more than ten of which I have been awake and alive and you wouldn't come and see me. Did you think I would hate it if someone that I once knew could speak to me?"
"You didn't want to go to the graves. You put it off for years."
"Fiore was there. I didn't want to see her again."
"I didn't want to see you. You were there, and you weren't. I don't want to talk about what happened. You would've asked. Are you going to?"
She looked at him, and said sadly, "Oh, sweetheart, no. I don't want to know."
"Then let's go," he said, and turned.
"Just tell me… did Aion die?"
He looked at her, and said nothing.
"I'll take that," she said.
--- ---
He was sitting on the floor in her apartment, eating a donut like a ten-year old boy, with a mild expression on his face.
"What are you going to do now?"
He looked at her, mouth full, so surprised that his face was a picture.
"Good," she said, before he could say anything, "you haven't lost that. I thought you might. I'm glad you didn't."
"Lost what?"
"Silliness. You need it. I would feel strange if you came back and weren't silly."
"I am not silly," he said, dignified, swallowing his bite of donut.
"I doubt it. What are you going to do now? Just breeze in and out?"
"I don't want to leave you alone for the rest of your life, however long you live," he said. "I won't stay with you the entire time. But I'll come back, when I leave. I'll stay with you in that sense, until I die." He looked at her, and she sat down next to him. His hand reached for her shoulder, gripped it tightly.
"Your horns-"
"Not enough energy from Pandaemonium."
"A contract-"
He stood up suddenly. "No."
"Chrno-"
"Not again, please, Satella. Not again," and he turned towards the door.
When he opened it, she said, "You promised to come back." He glanced back as he opened the door. "Talk to Shader," she said.
--- ---
He came back late at night, knocking at her door. She opened it, blinking.
"Do all demons choose erratic hours to knock on people's doors, or is it just when I'm sleeping?" she asked.
"Is it worth it, for you?"
"No, opening doors at night is not worth it. Yes, I know what you mean," she said when he opened his mouth. "I don't particularly care. Do you want to die?"
He came in and sat on the floor. "No," he said quietly, "I don't want to die."
"Is that a bad thing?"
"She didn't want to die. She wasn't afraid, though. I am afraid to die." He looked at her. "When a demon dies, does he go to the same place as a human?"
"How would I know?" she said bluntly. "Chrno, she had someone with her. If you would rather die than form a contract, stay with me and I'll be here with you until you die. But sweetheart, I don't love you, I don't. Not like that. You must know that. Will it be enough, for you?"
"Yes," and he turned and cried into her arms.
When he was done, she said, "What do you want to do, then?"
"I don't know."
"We can wait, to decide what to do," she said. "We have an eternity to decide."