Why Angelo is Refusing to Sleep
It's the first night after he found himself in the bar. He's upstairs, in his room, sleeping like the mortal man he wishes he still was.
He will come to regret that.
He finds himself, again, in the huge truck they moved them in. He is tied to the cross he will die on, so that he can't move. He is awake and undrugged - to give him drugs would be merciful, and the Church of Humanity knows no mercy for demons.
He feels every blow of the hammer as the nails enter his flesh at wrist and ankle, and on into the wood underneath, driving through bone on the way.
And all he can hear - all he thinks he will ever hear again, in dreams at least - is Jubilee screaming his name - and then just screaming - in rage and grief and terrible fear as they make her watch.
And no one is coming. Not Emma, not Sean, not Xavier. And he knows with absolute certainty that they are going to die here.
But the worst is yet to come. The hammer stops falling, its work done, and for one instant he knows some kind of relief - there will be pain, oh yes, pain beyond bearing, but no more jarring blows.
And then the sound of Jubilee's screams... changes. He cannot turn his head to see her, couldn't bring himself to even if he could move, but he hears every sound as they lift another cross to the next table, and drag her forward despite her best efforts to fight. And the ropes are tied, and the nails clatter, and the hammer falls again and again and again.
And she screams, and screams, and screams, and he can neither save nor protect her now.
And he wakes with a start, pale and terrified in the darkness.
And he knows that these things will be what he sees and hears every time he sleeps, if he sleeps, for a very, very long time.