Dancing On the Head of a Pin

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Thrones’ cryptic words finally made sense.

He was never supposed to return here.

And now Remy knew why they were so desperate for him to have killed Madach.

What he’d feared most had happened, not exactly in the way that he thought it might, but it had happened.

Lucifer was free.

Remy hadn’t a clue what he should be doing, and so he stood, frozen in place, watching as the Son of the Morning looked about him, like a new tenant surveying the empty space of an apartment, deciding where the furniture should go.

And then his golden-flecked eyes fell upon Remy.

Remy met that gaze without fear, remembering a time when this powerful being once stood at the right hand of God, but also recalling the rebellion that the Morningstar had perpetrated. The Seraphim nature remembered the battles and the bloodshed as well as who was ultimately responsible, and it would not wither before the angel’s commanding stare.

Sensing no imminent danger, Lucifer looked away, his awesome wings unfurling completely from his back. The dark angel leapt into the air. Hovering above the chamber, he raised his arms, fingers extended. Head tossed back in a cry of effort, the Morningstar began to exert control over his surroundings.

The ground began to tremble, a slight vibration at first, followed by tremors so great that it was difficult stay upright.

Remy felt helpless. Certainly he could have listened to the urgings of his angelic nature, flying up to confront the first of the fallen, but he knew that it would make little difference.

Lucifer was free, and Hell was his to command.

From beneath the dead, the Pitiless emerged. The weapons created from the Morningstar’s essence flew up into the air of the prison chamber to hover before their true owner. Their master.

“These have served their purpose well.” Lucifer’s voice boomed, and Remy watched as the weapons began to lose shape, becoming like smoke that swirled around the Morningstar, eventually being absorbed into his golden body, as he took back the power he had cast off so very long ago.

His already perfect form seemed to become even more immaculate, glowing like a star—a morning star—and bathing the once-icy chamber in his radiance.

The walls began to creak and groan, large portions of ancient ice sliding from the walls to shatter upon the floor.

“They sought to keep me from… this.” Lucifer’s voice carried above the rhythmic beating of his awesome wingspan.

And with those words, the Son of the Morning threw out his arms, accepting his environment. The ground writhed like ocean waves; the walls crumbled.

Remy was forced to the air, and he watched in growing horror and awe as the ceiling of the chamber fell away to reveal the tarnished sky of Hell.

Tartarus was crumbling.

Remy flew through the air, dodging huge sections of the ice prison as they came hurtling down at him.

In the icy rubble below he saw them begin to appear, fallen angels that had not been freed in the initial attack. They crawled out from beneath the remains of their prison cells, haunted faces turned toward the heavens of Hell.

Up toward their lord and master.

The light of the Morningstar bathed the Hellish landscape, and like the spread of the most virulent disease, it too began to writhe and change. The ground shook, its dry, blighted surface beginning to crack, huge, miles-long fissures zigzagging like bolts of lightning across the surface. New mountains surged up from the ground where there had been none.

Riding the powerful updrafts of air, Remy watched with a mixture of wonder and horror as the land was transformed with little regard to those below. The fallen skittered about for safety, many of them falling victim to the shifting ground and the hungry fissures that would swallow them whole.

Hell has to eat if it is to change, to grow into something else.

Remy listened to their screams, their pleas to a god that flew above them, but their cries fell upon deaf ears.

Outrage spurred him on, and before he knew what he was doing, Remy was flying toward the Morningstar; the closer he got, the greater his rage.

There had been the slightest bit of hope, a kernel of chance that the countless millennia of imprisonment had done something to change the attitude of God’s once favored, that he had learned from his monumental error in judgment.

That he was repentant.

Remy hadn’t a clue as to what he would do once he reached his opponent, weaponless except for the brute strength of his kind, but he could not stop himself now.

Here was the being responsible for the event that had changed his existence—changed the very nature of Heaven and what it meant to be a servant of God.

Lucifer’s hand wrapped around Remy’s throat in a grip of iron, stopping the Seraphim’s attack with bone-jarring ease.

That glimmer of hope, that kernel of chance was quickly dispelled as the first of the fallen looked down into his eyes. And all Remy could see reflected in that golden-flecked gaze, was a seething fury, anger barely held in check.

“I could end you with the merest flick of my wrist,” Lucifer said, his voice a soft whisper, nearly lost in the cacophonous sounds of a Hell in transition.

Remy felt the grip on his throat grow tighter, the pressure inside his skull so great that he wondered if the top of his head might explode.

“But something prevents me.” Lucifer drew him closer, studying Remy’s straining features.

“You meant something to the being I was,” the Morningstar stated. It was as if a door inside his mind had been suddenly opened, revealing the secret contents held inside, the experiences of a fallen called Madach.

“You believed in my repentance.”

The fingers around Remy’s throat opened, releasing him, and he swam backward through the air, away from his foe.

“For that belief you shall live,” Lucifer said, looking down at the morphing landscape of Hell. The cries of the fallen as they fought to survive drifted in the air like a perverted birdsong.

“And with this gift, I give you purpose.”

Lucifer extended a muscular arm, his long, delicate fingers splayed.

Remy felt the air around him immediately charged. He tried to escape by dropping down to the chaotic terrain that twisted and changed below, but he was held fast by the Morningstar’s will.

“You will be my messenger,” Lucifer said. “You will tell them of my return, that their best-laid plans were for naught, and that they will pay for their transgressions against me.”

The air around him began to crackle, the fabric of Hell’s reality beginning to tear.

Lucifer was opening a passage.

But to where?

“As to when, that will be for me to decide.”

The portal opened with a terrible sucking sound, and Remy found himself pulled into the blistering cold of its infinite darkness. He tried to stop himself, to hold on to the sides of the puncture made in the sky above Hell, but the pull was too great, and he slipped into the void, the final, chilling words of Lucifer Morningstar sending him on his way.

“For I have a kingdom to build.”

Remy was deposited before the Gates, the stink of Hell radiating from his angelic form.

He fell to his knees as the wound in time and space healed behind him. Eager to breathe in anything other than shadow, he gasped, taking in hungry lungfuls of the suddenly hospitable environment.

He felt the soft earth beneath his knees, the golden-colored grass that tickled the palms of his hands, the fragrant, nearly intoxicating smell of the air; it had been a very long time since he’d been to this place.

But it was impossible to forget.

A fine haze covered the golden plains of grass, but then a gentle breeze stirred, moving aside the curtain of mist to reveal the Gates. Two enormous posts that looked to be fashioned of finely polished bone, or as said some who’d managed to catch a glimpse of the magnificent sight, and remained alive to speak of it, pearl.

Remy rose to his feet upon wobbling legs, lurching forward, drawn toward the magnificent sight.

Toward the only thing that separated him from the kingdom of Heaven.

He could see it there in the distance, through the intricate metalwork that hung between the awesome posts.

Flashes of memory were stirred, and he recalled when last he’d passed through this gateway. It had been at the close of the war, and he thought it would be the last time.

He had abandoned Heaven, or more accurately, Heaven had abandoned him.

Remy stood before the shuttered gates, a glimpse of Heaven partially obscured by the blowing mist beyond them, and knew a serenity that he’d not felt in a very long time.

His Seraphim nature was calmed by the return, sedated by the sight of the golden kingdom beyond the entrance. And deep inside, a little bit more of the humanity that he’d worked so hard to create died.

He reached out, prepared to push the Gates open and stride toward the vast city of light, to deliver the message given to him by its most fallen son.

His hands had barely touched the warm metal when there was a brilliant flash and he was repelled. He lay on the ground stunned, his entire body numbed as if by a million volts of electricity. Gradually, feeling returned, and he cautiously climbed to his feet.

Have I been barred from Heaven? His thoughts raced as he again readied to approach the gateway. Is this some sort of punishment for my leaving after the war?

Off in the distance, above the spires of the Heavenly kingdom, Remy saw that it had grown dark, as if storm clouds now hung over the city and were spreading across the skies of Heaven.

But soon he realized that it was not clouds at all.

A great army flew through the sky toward him.

An army of angels.

Heaven’s air was filled with the sound of pounding wings as they approached—swarming across the sky, descending on the other side of the Gate that separated them.

“Hail, Remiel,” an angel at the head of the flock cried, the first to touch down.

He was adorned from head to toe in intricate armor of gold, as if the rays of the sun had been used to create the ornate adornment for him, and for all the angelic soldiers that landed behind him.

As the leader strode closer to the Gate, he removed his helmet, and a sick feeling writhed in the pit of Remy’s belly as he recognized this angel.

“Greetings, Michael,” Remy said, bowing his head slightly in respect for the leader of the mighty Archangels.

The Gates parted, and the Archangel strode through them. “Heaven knows of your involvement in the most delicate and dire of matters,” the warrior angel stated, stopping before Remy. “Your arrival here before the Gates, stinking of the pit, implies that a great danger to Heaven, and all of creation, has not been averted.”

Remy studied the angel before him, and all those that had descended with him from the sky. They were clad in the armor of war, a telling sign that they were very much aware of what had transpired.

“The Thrones are no more,” Remy said, watching for some sign that this was a surprise. There was nothing; the sharp angular features of the angelic warrior remained passionless. “Destroyed by the newly awakened Lucifer Morningstar.”

A violent shudder ran through Michael’s brown-speckled wings, the only sign that he was affected by this news at all.

“I suspected no good would come from their scheme,” the angel stated, obviously referring to the Thrones’ plan to remove Lucifer from Tartarus. “They used forbidden magicks to make him forget who he was… what he was,” Michael continued with disdain. “And then they made him believe he was another… another of the lowly, absolution seekers that had sinned against the All-Father.”

The Archangel paused.

“What we feared most has occurred.” The angel turned to the army that stood beyond the Gate. “But we stand ready to deal with this impending threat.”

“So it’s war again?” Remy asked, an oppressive sense of sadness sweeping over him, replacing the euphoria of his return.

Michael turned, revealing the most disturbing of expressions. The Archangel wore a smile, and there was a glint of excitement in his piercing eyes.

“War,” he repeated as he reached down and drew the sword hanging from the scabbard at his side. “For the kingdom and the glory of Heaven.”

He raised the blade high, and all those behind him did the same.

Remy’s warrior nature was aroused by the sight before him, eager to join their number, to again wield a weapon in service to the Lord God Almighty.

But there was also a part troubled by the sight, by a nagging voice from somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind that warned the coming war would make the first pale in comparison.

“You haven’t learned a thing,” Remy said to the armored Archangel.

Michael scowled. “We’ve learned that the battle is never truly over until your enemies are utterly vanquished.”

“And the grace of mercy?” Remy asked.

“Mercy,” the Archangel scoffed. “You see now where mercy has brought us.”

And Remy saw exactly where it had brought them. There had been no healing since the conflict that altered the very nature of Heaven; in fact, he believed the wound caused by the war now festered with infection.

He hadn’t the slightest idea what could be done to cure this illness, and, to be honest, was unsure if it wasn’t already too late. Looking about, he saw what he had not noticed before, the patches of tarnish that stained the shiny surfaces of their armor, the gray haze that hung over the city in the distance like an abandoned spider’s web, a hint of something sickly sweet lingering in the breeze that could very well have been decay.

“Will you fight with us, brother?” Michael asked, holding out the blade of his sword toward Remy.

The pounding of flapping wings filled the air again, and two angels not of the warrior class flew down to land on either side of the Archangel. Each was holding a pitcher of fragrant water and watched Remy with wary eyes.

“Allow them to cleanse the stain of Hell from your person,” Michael said as the two angels slowly stepped forward. “Then you will once again be allowed to pass through the Gates of Heaven.”

Remy started to move away and the advancing angels looked nervously back to Michael.

“What is it?” the Archangel asked. “Is there something wrong?”

Remy slowly nodded. “There is,” he said. “And the sad thing is, there is nothing I can do to fix it.”

The Archangel sheathed his weapon. “You do understand that you are to be welcomed back into the fold,” he explained. “That your desertion of duty is to be overlooked as restitution for the services that you performed in the service of Heaven.”

Remy shook his head. “I don’t want to come back,” he told the warrior. “I was given a task by the Morningstar… to deliver the message that he was free, and the sad fact that the war isn’t over. I’ve done that now, and now I’m through here.”

Michael gripped the hilt of his sword tightly. “How does it feel to abandon everything that you are?” the Archangel asked, malice dripping from each and every word.

It couldn’t have hurt worse if the angel had driven his blade through Remy’s chest.

“I’ve changed,” Remy told him. “It isn’t what I am anymore.”

He couldn’t stay. The war in Heaven had nearly destroyed him once; he wasn’t about to give it the chance to do so again.

“What are you?” the Archangel Michael asked of him. “What are you if not of Heaven?”

He’d believed that it was dead—or at least close to being that way—but he had been mistaken. Remy felt his humanity, weak and buried so very deep, but still alive. It fluttered at the question, finding the strength to fight.

To survive.

And with the realization that it still lived, he turned away from the gathering of angels, from Heaven itself.

Feeling the pull of Earth upon him.

The pull of the world that had become his home.

The journey from Heaven to Earth was a long one.

Remy lost track of time as he drifted in the void between worlds, descending from on high, moving through one plane of reality to the next.

Some of these were dreadful worlds, full of dreadful creatures that would have liked nothing more than to feed upon the flesh of the divine. And through those fearsome worlds Remy traveled, avoiding conflict when he was able, and, if he needed to, vanquishing any challenger that dared try and prevent him from reaching his destination.

The journey was long and hard, but the promise of what awaited him at the end of this long journey was enough to sustain him.

In a vast sea of black, waiting for the gentle tug of the world he so longed for, Remy floated, wrapped within his wings of golden brown.

Fragments of memory that he believed lost rose to the surface of his resting mind. He hadn’t lost them. They were still there, just buried very deep. And as he floated in the darkness of the void, continuing the long journey home, he carefully stirred them to the surface.

Reacquainting himself with his humanity.

“So it wasn’t like… a hallucination, since I’d been gut shot and all,” Steven Mulvehill said as he raised his cup of coffee to his mouth, all the while watching him.

Remy gazed out over the city of Boston from the patio of Massachusetts General Hospital, where the homicide detective was still recovering from his gunshot wound. He almost hadn’t made it.

Almost.

“Would you believe me if I told you it was?” Remy asked him.

Mulvehill barely took a sip of his drink, the intensity of his stare showing that he was seriously thinking about the question, and its answer.

“No,” he said finally. “Even though I know it doesn’t make a lick of fucking sense, I know what I saw… what I experienced.”

“I could deny it,” Remy answered. He was watching the birds fly above the city, missing the glorious feel of wind beneath his wings. “Who’s going to believe that you actually saw an angel, other than the truly devout, and some others that have a tendency to skip their meds?”

Remy tore off a piece of bagel and placed it in his mouth.

“But you’re not going to?” the detective asked. “Deny it.”

“Not to you,” he answered, chewing his breakfast. Remy picked up his napkin and wiped stray crumbs from his mouth. “Nope, I made my bed and now I have to lie in it.”

Mulvehill’s face screwed up. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean, Plato?”

Remy laughed.

“Means that I’ve got to deal with what I’ve done. I showed you what I am, and now we both have to live with it.”

“You thought I was gonna die, didn’t you?” Mulvehill asked. “You didn’t think you were gonna have to deal with this.”

Remy shrugged, having some more of his coffee.

“How many others know… you’re like that?” the detective asked.

“My wife, my dog, some business associates, but they’ve got some interesting qualities of their own,” Remy answered. He’d finished his coffee and didn’t want any more of the bagel.

“Do you want the rest of this?” he asked Mulvehill.

The detective shook his head, turning the wheelchair slightly to look out over the city. They were both quiet, wrapped up in their own thoughts.

“They say I’ll probably be going home Friday,” Mulvehill said.

“That’s good, right?” Remy asked him. “You’re ready to go home, aren’t you?”

The man nodded once, looking back to the angel sitting across from him at the patio table.

“Yeah,” he said, and paused. Remy could see him reviewing his next words carefully. “But what happens after that?”

Remy leaned back in the chair, folding his hands on his stomach. “I guess it all depends on how long it takes for you to get back on your feet. After that, you’ll go back to work… light duty at first, slowly working your way back to where you were.”

Mulvehill leaned in closer to the table so that others wouldn’t hear.

“You don’t get what I’m talking about,” he said to the angel. “Knowing what I know now… that something like you actually exists… it changes everything.”

“I guess it does,” Remy agreed. “And for that I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to be afraid.”

“I’m afraid now,” Mulvehill said, his gruffness suddenly pulled away like a curtain to reveal a man confronted with the reality of something so much bigger than himself.

“And here I was thinking I was doing you a favor. The next time you get mortally shot, remind me to look the other way.”

The detective at first appeared stunned, but as the smile began to form on the angel’s face, the two of them began to laugh.

The pull on Remy was stronger now, the current that he traveled through the void bringing him closer to his destination. He had no idea how much longer he still had on his journey, or even how long it had been thus far. All he knew was that it was a distance that must be traversed in order to return home.

Still swaddled within his wings, Remy floated through the void, the memories that continued to rise to the surface making him all the more hungry for the existence he had left behind.

Somewhere in the darkness the puppy whimpered.

Not really asleep, but in that weird resting state that he’d eventually learned to put himself in while Madeline slept, Remy rose from bed, careful not to wake his wife, and went in search of the animal.

It had been only a few days since Marlowe had come to live with them, and the young canine seemed to be adjusting quite well to his new environment.

Or at least that was what Remy believed.

He found the pup downstairs, in the corner of the shadowed living room, sitting in a patch of moonlight beneath the open window.

“What’s wrong?” Remy asked the animal, keeping his voice soft so that he did not awaken his wife.

“Miss them,” the puppy said, staring at him briefly with large, seemingly bottomless dark eyes, before he turned his snout back up to the breeze wafting in through the window.

“Who do you miss?” Remy asked him, sitting in the chair not too far from where the Labrador puppy sat. “Your pack brothers and sisters?”

“Yes.”

“As you have done, your brothers and sisters have gone to live in new places, Marlowe. With new families,” Remy started to explain. “We are your pack now.”

The dog looked at him with sad eyes, ears flat against his small, square head. “Not same. Miss them.”

Remy moved from the chair, and sat beside the animal on the floor beneath the window. “Yes, it’s sad,” he told the puppy. “But that’s the way it works. First there is the pack, and then the pack is broken up, each of you going off to find a new pack.”

Marlowe crawled up into Remy’s lap, plopping down with a heavy sigh.

“The way it works?” the Labrador pup asked.

“Afraid so,” Remy said, beginning to stroke the dog’s short, silky-soft fur.

“You leave pack?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Find new pack? Happy now… not sad?”

“No, not sad,” Remy told him, as he gently patted the young dog until he drifted off to sleep.

“Happy now.”

He was nearly there.

Remy could feel it in the sea of dark, just beyond his reach. It was the tug of the familiar, a promise of the warmth and love of companions.

They were not his kind, but still they had recognized and accepted what he was, and in turn he had made them his own.

Rousing himself from a sleeplike stasis, Remy spread his wings and listened to his senses, homing in on the place that called out to him.

The world that was his home.

They climbed the stairs to the rooftop.

Madeline carefully pushed the door at the top of the stairway open and stepped out onto what would soon become their rooftop patio.

She held his hand in hers, drawing him out onto the tar-paper surface for a view of the city beyond Beacon Hill.

“This will be fantastic,” she said, looking around at the space. A stack of empty and broken clay flowerpots sat in the corner, along with a punctured bag of potting soil. “We can put the table just about there, with the chairs around it… This is going to be great.”

She spun around and hugged him tightly.

“Are you happy?” she asked, her faced pressed to his chest.

This would be the first night in their new home on Pinckney Street. They had spent the entire day—since early that morning—painting and doing some fixing about the brownstone. The phone man had been there, as had the gas man.

Remy wrapped his arms around his wife and hugged her close.

Am I happy?

Since making this world his home, he’d slowly acclimated himself to the concept. He was a creature of Heaven; there was no time for happiness or the opposite. His existence had been to serve the Almighty.

He guessed there had been happiness in that, but now he couldn’t truly be sure. The war had taken so much from him, bleached away the colors of what had once been such a glorious rainbow.

But this world, this earth, had given him back some of the color.

In retrospect, he saw the happiness had grown. The more acclimated he became, the more human, his joy had increased.

And it had reached its zenith with the love of his wife.

“I’m happy,” he said, kissing the top of her head.

She looked up at him.

“Really? Are you really?”

He smiled at her. “What are you getting at?” he asked. “I can hear that sound in your voice. You’re fishing for something.”

She laughed as she broke away from his embrace, going to the edge of the roof. “I don’t know,” she said, leaning on the brick edging that bordered the roof space. “Sometimes I get to thinking about the reality of what you are, and where you came from.”

Remy came up from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist, and pressing against her. “I don’t understand what that has to do with…”

Madeline turned around in his grasp, gazing into his eyes.

“You’re an angel from the kingdom of Heaven,” she stressed. “Isn’t all this… with me… I don’t know… boring?”

Remy looked deep into her inquisitive stare as she waited for his answer. She would know whether or not he was lying; it was a gift that she had.

Slowly he lowered his face down toward her, his lips eventually meeting hers. They kissed softly at first, and more eagerly soon after that.

Before leaving the roof to descend the stairs to their new home, where they made love on an old down comforter they’d used as a makeshift drop cloth, Remy broke their passion to answer her question.

“All this… you… this is Heaven,” he told her.

This is Heaven.

He emerged from the void into a darkness of a different kind, this one illuminated by a multitude of stars, twinkling in the galaxy like jewels strewn upon a covering of velvet.

Hanging in space, he found his bearings, moving through the vacuum, at last, toward his destination.

He had no idea how long he’d been gone, feeling the heart within his chest swelling in size as he beheld the planet he had so come to love hanging there, as if waiting for his return.

The angelic nature was displeased, attempting to exert dominance, to suppress the humanity that had emerged from hiding as he’d traveled the void toward Earth, growing in size and strength at the joy he had found in the recollections of being human.

There was nothing the angelic essence would have loved more than to withdraw completely, leaving him frail and unprotected in the killing coldness of space, eager for him to beg to be something more.

Remy held the reins firmly, controlling the troublesome aspect of his being as he entered the Earth’s atmosphere, the sudden friction of oxygen upon his flesh causing it to heat, threatening to burn. His body beginning to glow white-hot with reentry, he gritted his teeth, spreading his wings wide to help slow his descent.

The angel dropped out of the night sky unnoticed by the city below, which was as he wished it to be.

Dropping through a thick bank of clouds, Remy emerged over the city of Boston. A smile appeared on his face and his naked flesh tingled. It had been scoured a bright red as a result of his journey. It would all heal eventually, he thought, flapping his wings furiously, pushing his speed to the maximum in order to return home. He had no idea how long he’d been gone, time moving differently in travels from one realm to the next.

He just hoped it hadn’t been too long. That he hadn’t been forgotten.

Remy soared above Faneuil Hall, Government Center, and then the golden dome of the State House on his way to Beacon Hill… to Pinckney Street.

To his home.

The rooftop of his building appeared below him, and he was suddenly overtaken with a feeling of absolute exhaustion. He swooped down from the night sky, aiming for the rooftop patio below.

As his bare feet touched down upon the blacktop, he collapsed, pitching forward, the stinging warmth of his face and body now pressed to the cool tar-paper roof.

Unconsciousness threatened to take him, but he managed to fight it, not wanting to surrender to the darkness again. He’d spent far too much time in the womb of oblivion, and would prefer not to return there.

In the distance he heard a noise, growing louder, more persistent as it came closer. It was the barking of a dog—his dog—and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard a sound so beautiful.

Marlowe was saying hurry, over and over again in the rough voice that he had. And Remy couldn’t have agreed more.

Hurry.

He heard the door to the roof open, the distinct voice of his friend speaking to the insistent animal.

“If these are friggin’ pigeons again, you’re not getting your snack tonight. You think I’m joking? Try me. If you brought me all the way up here in the middle of the freakin’ night again to…”

Marlowe knew he was there, somehow sensing his arrival.

He was a good boy, a really good boy.

The barking turned higher, almost a squeal of pain, as the dog found him. Remy could feel his excited approach. The Labrador pounced and began licking his face, his head, his shoulders, repeating his name over and over again. Remy wanted to sit up, to throw his arms around the neck of his animal friend and tell him how much he was missed, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t even open his eyes.

“Jesus Christ, Remy,” he heard Mulvehill say. “I thought you were dead. When I got that phone message I didn’t know what to think… I didn’t know if you needed my help… I thought you were dead… ”

Mulvehill knelt upon the ground, and Remy’s bare skin stung as his body was gently raised, held in the arms of his friend.

Marlowe had not stopped kissing his face. It felt good, cool and sort of slimy on his tender flesh.

“Look at you,” Mulvehill said, holding his friend close. There was worry in his voice, and Remy wondered how bad he actually looked.

“You hang in there, okay?” he said. “You’re going to be fine. It’s my turn now,” Mulvehill said. “There’s no reason to be afraid… Everything is going to be all right.”

And with those words, Remy managed to crack open his eyes, staring up into the man’s worried face.

His friend was right, he thought, as he felt his eyes begin to close, eager oblivion rushing in to steal him away from this moment of happiness.

At the moment, there was no reason to be afraid; everything was going to be all right.

And as exhaustion threatened to take him, he saw his wife’s beautiful face as she again asked him the question.

Are you happy?

And he completely surrendered to the moment, taking her into his arms, the two of them drifting down, down, down into the darkness.

Yes.