Work Text:
Burning.
This is all Ryujin has ever known.
But that’s not true.
Once upon a time, she could unfurl her wings, take to the skies, and trust that the air will hold her. She could unclench her fists, let her fingers touch the night, and whisper constellations into being. She was powerful. She was beautiful.
She made the mistake of wanting.
It didn’t matter what it was that she wanted. All that mattered was that she did, even when she wasn’t created to be capable of feeling such a thing.
God doesn’t make mistakes.
So, she fell. And she burned.
Hell is dark.
The moment she could think past the pain, Ryujin knew why it is the way it is. It’s the perfect punishment – no matter how many stars she could breathe to life, they won’t burn bright enough to bring light. For so long, she lay on the ground unmoving, staring up at the infinite darkness of Hell, and thought, ah, so this is hopelessness.
Hell is silent.
When the demons speak to her, they do so in murmurs and whispers. Ryujin speaks the loudest, and this is how she keeps them in line. They respect her not because of her voice or who she was in Heaven but because she can speak at all. They were all in varying degrees of pain, but Ryujin looks the most grotesque out of all of them. When she speaks and they stare at her, half in awe and half in fear, she knows that they wonder how she manages to do anything more than clench her jaw and breathe.
(Her answer: she was the first to fall. She burned the longest. She wanted. Pain is all she knows.)
An angel comes to Hell the moment Ryujin begins to think that maybe she’s finally forgotten the life she lived before the fall.
Ryujin wasn’t prepared for her.
The angel brings grace, warmth, and an echo of Heaven’s hymns in her wings, and Ryujin touches what little skin she has left on her chest, burnt fingers brushing against bone, nails slipping slightly into the gaps of her ribs. She thinks that this is also punishment as she stares at someone who has everything she has lost.
“Oh.”
Ryujin’s eyes travel from her golden wings to her brown eyes.
“Oh,” the angel repeats with something so much kinder than pity.
Ryujin clenches her jaw and breathes.
“I’m Yeji,” the angel says.
Ryujin steels herself. She draws herself up to her full height, bites back a grunt as her skin moves and stretches, and stares expectantly at Yeji. She’s smaller than her, and Ryujin wishes she could unfurl her charred wings. The demons step closer behind her, wary and nervous as if sensing her apprehension and moving out of loyalty forged in fire and misery.
Yeji’s brows furrow deeply, wings glowing too brightly. Ryujin flinches and prepares herself for judgment.
“Please don’t be afraid,” Yeji says instead. She hesitates, eyes taking in their disfigured bodies, a question stalling in her throat. “Are you okay?”
Hell freezes.
For a moment, there is nothing but complete and utter silence. Yeji’s question hangs heavy in the air around them, a sweet thing that lands over their horrid burns, exposed muscles, and broken bones.
And then the demons groan, ghastly and deep and loud. The sound passes through clenched jaws and grinding teeth, and this is the most honest response that such a kind question deserves to have.
Ryujin swallows, momentarily overwhelmed. She hurts everywhere and all the time, but for the first time in eternity, she is acutely aware of every burn that never healed and every wound that never scabbed over. Almost delirious, her eyes inexplicably search for Yeji’s.
She finds the angel with her hands over her mouth, wings dropping until her primaries brush the hard earth of Hell.
“I’m sorry,” Yeji whispers, barely audible against the chest-deep lament that the demons are singing.
She steals the apology Ryujin screamed for as long as it took for her to fall. So, Ryujin answers her the way she had hoped God would.
“It’s okay,” she says, voice remarkably steady, sure, sincere.
The demons quiet.
“I’m Ryujin.”
Angels wear their hearts on their wings.
From the way the feathers move to the way they stretch and fold, their wings speak in a language that is always true to how they feel. And because demons were once angels, Ryujin never forgot how to speak in wings.
When two demons faced each other and their blackened feathers moved restlessly, Ryujin would know to step in to help resolve the argument. Sometimes, Ryujin would catch a demon with the tips of their wings pointed up, and she would know that they yearned to fly. Some demons keep their wings wrapped around their bodies, and Ryujin knows that they feel cold, hollow, alone.
Ryujin keeps her wings folded tight, tucked close to her back, and almost out of sight.
Yeji is different.
Even faced with the horrors of Ryujin’s body and despite seeing firsthand the way her demons have been reduced to their most primal states, Yeji’s wings are relaxed. They don’t rush to cover her body the way Michael’s did during his first (and last) visit. They don’t stiffen into deadly things the way Gabriel’s did when Ryujin, touch-starved and hurting, attempted to reach for him. They don’t puff up and make themselves bigger the way Uriel’s did when he demanded her to kneel before his feet and repent.
“Go,” Ryujin says, low and calm.
Yeji tilts her head. “Me?”
Ryujin shakes her head.
The demons hesitate, and Ryujin knows that they long to touch the grace in Yeji’s wings and take it for themselves. Whatever it takes.
The thought doesn’t sit well with her.
“Go,” she growls.
The demons hasten to obey.
Left alone with Ryujin, Yeji’s feathers shift uncertainly before settling awkwardly. Ryujin moves closer, half drawn to Yeji’s faint glow and half curious about what will happen. Yeji stills, watches, blushes a little at Ryujin’s unwavering attention.
The corners of Ryujin’s lips quirk up. She softens. Her shoulders twinge, unused to being at ease.
“You’re Lucifer?” Yeji asks unsurely, hesitating over the name Heaven cast out.
Ryujin gestures slowly at her own body shrouded by Hell’s oppressive darkness.
Lucifer. Light-bringer. Morning star.
“Once upon a time, yes,” she answers quietly. “It’s just Ryujin now.”
Yeji smiles sheepishly. “Okay.” She shifts her weight from one leg to the other, wings tucking closer to her body. Makes herself smaller. “I don’t really know why I’m here.”
Ryujin lifts a singed eyebrow. “Really?”
“They just told me to see Hell. So… here I am.”
“You must have done something wrong then?”
Yeji chews at her bottom lip. “I hope not. I really just asked what Hell is like.”
“Well, there isn’t much to see but,” Ryujin offers her a hand wrapped in tattered fabric, testing, “would you like to walk with me?”
Yeji looks at the proffered hand – no doubt seeing the gore of it, the way the cloth seamlessly transitions into skin, no lines in between – before looking past Ryujin’s ear.
Ryujin pulls her wings tighter against her back.
Yeji smiles, small but grateful, and doesn’t ask. “Okay.”
Yeji’s hand is just slightly smaller than Ryujin’s. She takes her hand carefully, moving so slowly that Ryujin can feel the moment each finger lands on her palm, not so much holding as she is just touching. It’s not out of wariness, Ryujin can tell, because all the while, Yeji looks at her as if she’s looking for any signs of distress.
It’s more care than Ryujin has felt in eons.
She turns around and leads them deeper into Hell the moment she feels the burning at the back of her eyes, the kind that doesn’t devour skin or melt flesh but is just as ruinous and just as baring. She takes one step after another, Yeji never falling too far behind, touch blissfully cool and achingly soothing and barely there.
Ryujin holds on despite the way it stings.
And somewhere in the hollow space that is her heart, something grows. Something familiar.
Something damning.
Yeji visits again. She arrives as unexpectedly as the first time, and Ryujin meets her with cautious but pleasant surprise.
“Did they send you back for a second round of sightseeing?”
Yeji smiles, catching the teasing in Ryujin’s voice. She shrugs. “This time, I know why.”
“What did you do?” Ryujin asks, her surprise morphing into curiosity.
She hasn’t known her for long or doesn’t even know her at all, but she’d chosen to remember Yeji as someone unerringly kind, even in the company of the condemned and the damned. She didn’t think she would come back. No one ever came to see her a second time.
And yet, here she is.
“I told a Seraph to stop hurting a Virtue,” Yeji says, wings rising slightly, proud and unrepentant.
Ryujin grins, all teeth and bloodied lips. “Aren’t you a Dominion?” she asks. “How did that go?”
Yeji turns sheepish. “I’m here again, aren’t I?”
For how long? Ryujin doesn’t ask.
She stays for as long as she can.
“Are the stars yours?” Yeji asks the fifth time she comes down to Hell.
Ryujin shies away from her curiosity, not knowing what to expect from it. She wonders if it’s a test, especially considering the question came from someone who should believe that everything in the world was created by God.
“Yes,” she mumbles at last. “Sometimes, I wonder if anyone still looks at them.”
“I do,” Yeji answers, eager and enthusiastic. “I love the ones that go…”
Yeji traces the air, and Ryujin, endeared, smirks at her.
“Do that again?”
Oblivious, Yeji does as she’s told.
Ryujin laughs, quiet and hoarse and almost forgotten.
Yeji pouts. “You’re teasing me.”
“Sorry,” Ryujin coughs, a smile still playing on her lips. “I couldn’t resist.”
Yeji looks utterly disgruntled, and so, Ryujin steps into her space, poking a battered finger at her arm before taking her hand.
“Show me again,” she asks gently. “I’ll tell you their names.”
Yeji squints at her suspiciously until Ryujin nudges her. She lifts their hands and traces the constellation against Hell’s black sky.
“Mama Bear,” Ryujin says when Yeji’s done, their hands still pointing above them.
“Are you teasing me again?”
Ryujin laughs. “No. There’s a baby bear. Here.”
This time, Ryujin moves their hands, tracing a constellation just a little bit to the side. She lets their hands drop as soon as she’s done, unable to take the way her chest feels too tight and too full. There’s an awed smile on Yeji’s face as if she could see the stars beyond Hell. Ryujin looks at her feet, slightly out of breath.
“I didn’t know,” Yeji says quietly. “Will you tell me about all of them?”
Ryujin looks at her. “There’s a lot.”
Yeji shrugs. “I have time.”
Ryujin wants to ask. She swallows it instead.
“Okay.”
She turns and picks up a sharp-edged rock. She faces a wall, nervous for reasons unknown. She scratches the bears onto the wall.
“Ursa,” she says before drawing another constellation. “Kesil.” Another one. “Kimah.”
She loses herself as she draws, remembering every single thing she used to create the stars above. Her hope. Her happiness. Her love. She recreates as many of them as she can, wings itching to spread wide and free. She ignores it, focuses on Yeji, gives Hell her stars. Yeji asks about their names, what she was thinking when she created every one of them. Ryujin loses her caution and answers her as best as she can.
By the time she finishes, Ryujin’s hands feel as if they’ve been scraped and burnt once again. She hides them before Yeji can see as the angel traces the shadowed stars on the wall, whispering their names one by one.
Ryujin lets her, watches her, and wishes that she still had God’s grace if only so she could breathe more constellations to life, if only so that Yeji could stay a little while longer.
Sometimes, Yeji tells her things.
Her favorite color is black, and Ryujin almost choked on you’d like it here then. She tells her about the handful of times she visited the human world, how fascinated she was that none of them seemed to know what they were doing but did what they could anyway, how she’d wondered what it would be like to be free to explore the possibilities of tomorrow. When she runs out of questions to ask, Yeji would give her secrets. She doesn’t think she’s a good angel. She’s afraid of failing. She likes to dance when no one’s looking.
After having everything be taken away from her, Ryujin is honored to be given all the small, important pieces that Yeji willingly, freely, kindly offers.
Yeji keeps coming back.
Ryujin gains something to lose.
They can’t die. They were built to survive eternity by His side, all of them a constantly moving unit designed to be at His beck and call. Food was unnecessary. Sleep was optional. They can hurt themselves, but it was never anything so dire that a grace-filled feather and a little care can’t fix.
Ryujin used to relish her immortality.
In Hell, she curses it.
They live sunless days and moonless nights, desperate for relief, for the simple joy of being unaware of their bodies.
Ryujin has tried to fall asleep countless times before. She would close her eyes the way she’d seen God’s beloved humans do and she would wait, still as a corpse, for her soul to decide that her body isn’t worth staying for.
It doesn’t matter how long she keeps herself still. The earth is harsh against her featherless wings, the air of Hell too suffocating, the sky too dark. The demons are restless, constantly volleying between seething wrath and moaning despair. She is neither comfortable nor safe.
More than anything, Ryujin hurts, outside and in, and pain is grounding. Her soul stays where it is.
There is no rest for the wicked.
Some days are worse than others.
Ryujin leans her body against her wall of stars, jaw clenched and teeth grinding. Her breaths come out in short, sharp gasps.
In all honesty, she’s surprised it took so long for the pain to catch up to her. It’s happened before – there are only so many times she can ignore the state of her body. And the longer she does it, the more it demands to be felt. Always, it overwhelms her, pushes her down to the ground and reminds her of her place, bears down on her until being ripped apart is all she can feel.
She’d been fortunate so far. Yeji has yet to see her like this, and Ryujin thought, hoped even, that maybe it means that she’d begun to heal. Oh, she moans, the lies we tell ourselves to survive.
God’s ears are closed to the prayers of the wicked. Still, Ryujin tries. She begs for forgiveness. She asks for mercy. She vows to be better.
When it changes nothing, her mind wanders, trying to find something, anything, to pull her through.
Ryujin thinks of Yeji.
Her chest flays open. She pulls her knees closer to herself, wraps her arms around them, whimpers all the way through.
She doesn’t mean to do it, isn’t even aware that she’d done it.
Ryujin prays.
I wish you were here.
Yeji hears.
The earth shakes the moment Yeji lands in Hell.
“Ryujin,” she gasps.
Ryujin lifts her head, a little bit crazed, vision blurry. The space in front of her shifts, and suddenly, Yeji’s on her knees, hands skating over her body.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Yeji asks, wings unfurling to their full length, feathers sharp and protective.
Ryujin’s gaze settles on Yeji’s worried expression. “Did you—” she swallows, scouring her throat for her voice and forcing her jaw to move. “Did you do something wrong again?”
Yeji gingerly places her hands around Ryujin’s elbows. “I haven’t been sent here since I told off that Seraph.”
“Oh.”
“Ryujinnie,” Yeji murmurs gently. “Are you in pain?”
“Always,” Ryujin rasps.
Yeji's eyes soften, and Ryujin can almost hear her heart break.
“What do you need? What can I do?”
Ryujin shakes her head once, keeping the movement as small as possible. Her wings shudder against the rough wall, falling from her back, drooping tiredly, helplessly. She watches Yeji take in what little of her wings she can see. Something fiercely tender and profoundly sad drifts across her expression, and if Ryujin could talk, she might have told her that it’s okay, that she’s used to it, that it’s worse than it looks. She might’ve forced her wings back to where they’ve been welded against her back.
Her heart betrays her. Her wings do what her fingers yearn to do but can’t, locked as they are around her forearms, doing their best to keep her from falling apart. They fold close to Ryujin’s body until a part of them touches the back of Yeji’s hands. They ask what Ryujin can’t bring herself to ask.
“Okay,” Yeji whispers.
When Yeji’s hands leave her elbows, Ryujin’s lips crack open, wings pressing closer. Yeji hushes her gently, murmurs something Ryujin can’t quite catch in her mounting panic. Her breath catches when Yeji moves to sit beside her.
“Come here.”
Yeji slips a hand behind her wings, and Ryujin flinches on instinct.
“Is this okay?” Yeji asks, holding still for a moment.
Ryujin’s stomach tangles itself into knots. Still, she nods.
Yeji gives her a small smile before she starts coaxing her to lean forward. It takes a little bit of hesitant adjusting, but when everything settles, Ryujin finds herself wrapped in Yeji’s arms and wings.
“Rest,” Yeji presses into her blood-matted scalp. “I have you. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
A shiver passes over Ryujin, and she doesn’t know what to do with this, with Yeji’s kindness, with the way it hurts and soothes her all at the same time. Yeji is warm and soft and real, here for reasons Ryujin can’t fathom, gives her all the mercy God won’t give to her.
She turns her head, leans her forehead into Yeji’s neck, and cries.
Ryujin dreams.
The Silver City – pearly gates, wordless hymns, unblemished skin. She dreams of Heaven, and she is painless. She walks without having to look over her shoulder. She takes to the sky, and the air holds her. She looks up, farther than her wings can carry her, and there they are, bright as ever. She says their names, and they twinkle as if welcoming her home.
The Netherworld – stone corridors, hard earth, stars scratched on the wall. She dreams of Hell, and she is content. She keeps her wings pressed against her back, a habit more than anything else. She doesn’t lament the burns all over her body. She looks up, standing still as if waiting, and there she is, beautiful as ever. She says her name.
“Yeji.”
“I’m here.”
Ryujin sleeps a little while longer.
The first thing Ryujin does when she wakes is place a hand on her chest. She fills her lungs with air, cracks her eyes open, sits up properly. She looks at herself and sees small patches of skin where there was nothing but burns.
She’s healing.
Suddenly awake, she turns to look at Yeji.
“You gave me a feather?” Ryujin asks, voice trembling.
Yeji smiles, the glow in her wings still brilliant but so obviously muted. Ryujin takes her hands. She knows what pain looks like, has seen all its faces, knows where it hides. Ripping a feather from their wings is a decision they don’t take lightly. It’s a painful thing to do, like yanking on a heartstring until it snaps. To be given a feather is to be loved.
“I’m okay,” Yeji says, smile unwavering.
Ryujin shakes her head, watching the faded glow of her wings. Yeji needs to go back. She’s been here too long.
“Why would you—”
“—Why wouldn’t I?” Yeji insists. “Haven’t you suffered long enough?”
Ryujin clutches at her hands. “I didn’t… I’m not using you. I would never—”
Yeji folds her wings around them until Ryujin can’t see anything but her. “Silly. I know that. You’d never ask. But, Ryujinnie, you don’t have to.”
Ryujin’s chest feels too full with a thing that’s too familiar. Her breath rushes out of her, tainted with a question that lives in the back of her throat, always weighted and waiting.
“You need to go back,” Ryujin says instead, hands tightening around Yeji’s.
Yeji’s fingers press against the new skin of her hands, touching to hold on. “I do.”
“Thank you,” Ryujin chokes. “For coming here, for the feather, for staying with me.”
Yeji leans forward until her forehead touches Ryujin’s.
Ryujin burns.
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Hell changes.
Ryujin doesn’t know if it’s the stars scratched on the wall or the slowly growing patches of new skin all over her body, but her prison’s walls are no longer as hard, its corners no longer as rough-edged, its demons no longer as desolate.
The first time a demon came up to her with his eyes on the new skin, Ryujin had offered her arm for him to touch before tearing a part of his clothes and wrapping the fabric as tenderly as she could around his scraped elbow. The demon had looked at her, ruined by the foreign tenderness, and knelt before her feet.
Since then, it became common for her to see her demons tending to each other’s wounds. Ryujin helps whenever she can. She doesn’t know if they’ll heal without the help of a feather, but it hardly seems to matter to them when she sees the relief on their faces, as if being touched and being cared for are already so much more than they could have hoped for.
Ryujin understands.
Yeji doesn’t come empty-handed anymore. Sometimes, her arms are full of things that can help clean wounds and groom wings. Other times, she brings blankets and pillows and clothes. Every time, she brings something that makes Hell a little more bearable. She had been moved to near tears the first time she saw what Ryujin and the demons were doing, overwhelmed by how kindness ripples, how tenderness touches, how gentleness heals. Ryujin had kept silent when Yeji murmured a prayer, a small heartfelt thing, God, please, just a little bit of mercy for the damned.
Yeji asks, and Ryujin and her demons receive. They build a home out of the ashes. No one smites it down. Yeji keeps coming.
Ryujin cannot ask for anything more.
On one visit, Yeji finds her watching a legion trying to help each re-learn how to fly. They’re all clumsy and off-balance, unused to the added weight of bandages. Ryujin’s stomach swoops in sympathy when one demon plummets down a cliff face. Before she can decide if she should go to them and tell them to give their bodies time to heal before jumping off of high places, she feels arms rest comfortably over her shoulders.
Ryujin forgets about the legion. The body behind hers is careful not to brush against her still-healing wings, and Ryujin wonders when Yeji’s touch became something so familiar.
“Did you want to join them?” Yeji asks, mouth close enough to warm Ryujin’s ear.
She lifts a hand to touch Yeji’s forearm. “No, I was just watching them in case someone gets hurt. When did you get here?”
“Just now. I would’ve found you sooner, but one of your demons asked how to use the ointment I brought last time I was here,” Yeji answers softly. “Why don’t you join them?”
The question tiptoes around a bigger one Ryujin knows Yeji’s been trying to hold back for as long as they’ve known each other. She lets her wings nudge at Yeji, smiling at the surprised oof that rushes out of her.
“You sure that’s what you wanna ask?” Ryujin glances at her, catching the pout on Yeji’s lips, before looking back at the legion. Too close.
“I was trying to be subtle.”
Ryujin rolls her eyes, brushes her thumb lightly on Yeji’s skin. “Just ask.”
“Okay. Ryujinnie,” Yeji coos like she does when she’s trying to annoy her, and Ryujin’s heart misses a beat. “Why don’t you fly?”
“See, wasn’t that easy?”
Yeji huffs, fingers easily finding the growing patch of new skin on Ryujin’s upper arm and pinching it. “Are you going to answer or are you going to keep teasing me?”
“Depends. Teasing you is more fun.”
“I’m leaving,” Yeji declares, hold loosening.
Ryujin chuckles and leans back. “I’m kidding.”
Yeji gently rests her chin on Ryujin’s shoulder. Ryujin can’t remember anything she’d want more than this, even just this moment, no matter how short-lived it may be.
“So?”
Ryujin watches as yet another demon takes the risk. She closes her eyes, presses her temple against Yeji’s hair, feels the same swooping sensation in her stomach even with her feet firmly rooted to the ground.
“I’m afraid of falling.”
A silly laugh tickles the back of her throat at the thought that it might be a little too late for that.
It’s enough, Ryujin realizes with a chest full of aching tenderness.
Yeji naps against Ryujin on the makeshift nest made out of all the soft things she brought to Hell. She’s neither awake nor asleep, floating in the in-between, arm looped around Ryujin’s elbow, legs curled, knees resting on Ryujin’s thigh. Hell is quiet, peaceful almost, and Ryujin thinks that if she stared at the sky long enough, she might find her stars winking at them. She watches two demons flying circles around each other with their bandaged wings, dancing in the air, holding each other close.
Ryujin smiles at the happy image they make.
She rests a hand on Yeji’s knee just to make sure she’s there, and Yeji murmurs under her breath, shifts closer.
There’s trust here and an unlikely friendship. More fondness than Ryujin knows what to do with. A kind of contentment she didn’t think she’d ever have after being cast out. A piece of Heaven real enough for Ryujin to touch.
Every time Yeji left to go back to where she ought to be, Ryujin would feel the same thing that damned her. She would want. She’d want to ask her to come back, to stay longer, to be here instead of elsewhere. She never did, and she never will, she realizes. Because she doesn’t have to. Yeji will keep coming back for reasons Ryujin may never understand. If she isn’t here tomorrow, then she’ll be here next time.
It’s enough.
Something inside her loosens, a knot untangling from one heartbeat to the next. The burning in her chest gives way to a different kind of warmth.
For the first time in eternity, Ryujin opens her wings.
Wraps Yeji in them. Holds the moment for as long as she dares.
She takes a leap of faith, falls in love, and soars.
One day, Ryujin says the words. She’s alone when she does it and only because her mind inevitably wandered back to Yeji. She had been lost in the memories they’ve made and the moments they’ve shared, smiling dopily at nothing and feeling like she has never known pain when the words fell from the tip of her tongue.
She was thinking about how Yeji ran her fingers on her new feathers, touching them the way she touched the stars on the wall – reverently, softly.
“They’re beautiful,” Yeji said as soon as she emerged from her nap. “Do you like them?”
Still exhilarated with the fall, Ryujin met her with a grin and a confession: “I like them. They remind me of you.”
Yeji had blushed a pretty pink before hiding her face in her hands and murmuring something about why she bothered to come here only to be bullied.
Ryujin smiles at the memory.
“I love you,” she whispers like a prayer.
The words taste like freedom, and maybe one day, she’ll tell her.
She doesn’t have to. Yeji hears.
“Ryujinnie, I love you, too.”
Ryujin shoots to her feet, a crazed laugh startled out of her.
And then, Hell splits open.
Ryujin looks up, barely able to comprehend everything that’s happening, and watches, dumbfounded, as Hell descends into chaos. Lightning streaks across the sky. Thunder rolls in. It’s a familiar sight and symphony.
A fall.
Memories rush through her mind. She remembers how terrifying it had been to see the ground rush up to her, to meet it harshly, to have no one there to catch her.
Her heart climbs to her throat, body taut and ready, eyes scouring the sky. She sees her almost instantly, a shooting star against the darkness of Hell.
Ryujin doesn’t think about it. She spreads her wings and flies.
She catches Yeji before the fall could hurt her. She flies them back to the ground, holds her close, watches the sky breathlessly.
Why? Why? God, why?
She doesn’t receive an answer, but when Hell settles back down, Ryujin could swear that her dark, morose prison seems just a tad bit brighter, livelier. She doesn’t know what to think.
“Hey,” Yeji says, still cradled in her arms.
Ryujin snaps to attention and helps her up to her feet.
“Are you hurt?” She asks frantically as she takes Yeji in, trying to find anywhere she’s hurt. “Yeji, are you okay?”
She turns her around, hands skating her back and wings, unable to believe that Yeji didn’t burn.
“I’m okay, I promise—”
Ryujin wraps her arms around her waist, presses her forehead against the middle of Yeji’s shoulder blades, and holds her tight. Hands immediately cover hers, and Ryujin thinks she might shatter.
“What did you do?”
For a moment, Yeji doesn’t answer. And then, she turns around in her arms, glow-less wings tucked close to her back so she doesn’t hit her. Ryujin should let go, give her space, make sure she’s okay but—
A hand fits around the curve of her cheek, gently coaxing her to look up. Yeji’s eyes are warm and happy, thumb brushing tears away. Ryujin didn’t even know she was crying.
“What did you do?” She asks again.
Yeji kisses her.
“I wanted you.”
Yeji launches into a rambling explanation as soon as they manage to get away from the demons. They rushed up to them as soon as it was clear that they were safe from any kind of divine retribution. Ryujin had to compose herself long enough to help reassure them that both of them are fine. Her fragile composure broke the moment they managed to squirrel away to somewhere they can be alone. Her mouth had been ready to fire a million or so questions when Yeji beat her to it.
“I meant it,” is where she begins. “I love you.”
Ryujin chokes on all her questions, heart tripping over itself, wings fluffing up in surprise.
“He didn’t cast me out. I told Him that I wanted to be with you. That’s probably why I didn’t burn, but that’s beside the point. I’m here because I want to be. I didn’t want to have to come and then leave you again and again. I couldn’t take it. I knew it was only a matter of time before I decide to stay once and for all, and when I heard you—you prayed to me,” Yeji glares at her, the heat of it dampened by the blush on her cheeks. “I tripped on a cloud because of you.”
“I’m sorry?” Ryujin stutters.
Yeji shakes her head. “Anyway, I heard you, and I just knew. I want to stay with you. So, I pushed through that annoying Seraph—remember him? Yeah, I may have pushed him aside a little too forcefully to get to God and basically told Him that I’m going to stay here. Forever, this time.”
“And He just… let you?”
Yeji shrugs. “Ask and you shall receive?”
Ryujin doesn’t really know what to say to that.
“So, here I am.”
“Here you are,” Ryujin echoes.
She stares at Yeji for a long, long moment until Yeji grows uncomfortable enough to cast her gaze down to her feet.
“Say something,” Yeji mumbles.
And Ryujin could say a hundred different things. Like why here? Or why me? But that’s the thing about miracles, she thinks. Sometimes, no matter how rare it might be, they happen for reasons that defy reason and logic. All she needs to do is accept it as it is.
She steps forward and takes Yeji’s hand.
“You won’t be able to go back,” Ryujin says, words quiet with the weight of what it means to lose a place in Heaven.
Yeji looks at her. She nods. “I know.”
“This is Hell,” Ryujin adds.
Yeji smiles. “I know.”
“There’s nothing here.”
Yeji moves closer, weaves her fingers around Ryujin’s. “You’re here.”
Ryujin swallows, vision just a little bit blurry. She asks. “You’ll stay?”
“If you’ll have me.”
Ryujin grins. “And if I say no?”
Yeji whines, and she’s so close that Ryujin can feel it against her lips. “You wouldn’t dare.” She hesitates until Ryujin squeezes her hand. “Say it for me?”
Ryujin’s grin softens, wings moving to pull Yeji closer.
Ask and you shall receive.
“I love you,” she breathes, simple, easy, and true.
Yeji nuzzles her nose. “I’m glad.”
When Ryujin kisses her, she tastes everything her stars are made of on Yeji’s lips.
Hell is many things.
It’s ash gray and desolate.
Its sky is starless, its ground unforgiving, its walls looming.
A prison for the damned. A cautionary tale for the pious.
Above all else, Yeji calls it home.
Ryujin doesn’t want for anything more.