Chapter Text
The runner from the Front Death-k was a younger lad who'd never grown into his body, head wobbling on a skinny neck and limbs that weren't entirely under his control. His eyes were wide and troubled.
“They're saying to pull in everyone you can, Miss Lily. There's going to be a lot of people through any minute. Plane crash."
“Ah fuck.” Lily hated situations like that. Bombs. Train accidents. Genocides. Traumatic death brought out the worst in some souls, and Lily never felt good about using her usual Customer Services best (worst?) in return. Nobody deserved to die like that.
Well, almost nobody.
Hopefully most of the victims were destined for Upstairs.
…...
“Mom?”
Lily looked over to meet Sharkie's puzzled eyes. The small group standing in front of her adoptive daughter didn't seem to be loud or threatening, but there were a number of determined jaws and firmly folded arms among them. “‘Sup, Sharkie?”
“Only two of them are for us, but they want to stay together.”
Lily took a better look at the group. A conventionally good looking man in his late twenties or thirties, buzzcut and gym body. Another man of a similar age, thinner and softer with his dark hair unruly and flopping over his eyes. A redheaded woman, perhaps a little younger than the first two men, made awkward and twitchy by a war between anger and shyness. An older man, short, grey haired, with a face that had seen life in all its many facets and made peace with it. The fifth was androgynous in appearance, expression both wary and mulish. Spiky blond, to complete the quintet. All of them were somewhat similarly dressed in comfortable jeans, well broken sneakers, and matching hoodies stating…
Lily blinked and checked again…
Whip It Reel Good?
She headed from behind her desk to face the group, brushing her fingertips over her chest in the same place as the logos they sported. “What's with the-”
“That's who we are,” Gym Bod said.
“We're a cèilidh band,” added Floppy Hair.
“We're family,” Grey Hair concluded, “and family stick together.”
Lily glanced down at the wire basket on the desk in front of Sharkie. She let her fingers rest on the two files there, the contents flickering through her mind.
The first file had no surprises. Spiky Blond had struggles growing up, gender ambiguity made unbearable by unsympathetic parents. That mental pain had found unhealthy outlets. Bullying, in various forms, stemming from self disgust. Already turned around in life, after discovering a talent for music and acceptance by this found family that was determined to stay together even in death. Lily found it unsurprising that Universal Judgement felt Level One was appropriate. She mentally turned to the second file.
Murder was not what she expected to find, but there it was, right at the top of the list. Premeditated. The victim had been taken by surprise, and death had come slowly and painfully. There was no regret. No remorse.
“We know what she did,” Floppy Hair announced suddenly. “We guessed. If we'd known her then, we'd all have done the same. Any of us. And helped bury the body.”
Red Hair's mask shattered, leaving her expression raw, touched, and astonished. “You…” she shook her head as the others reached out to her, the gesture not in rejection but in disbelief.
Lily stared at them all as the silence stretched out.
“If you're just visiting, you can go almost anywhere you like,” she said eventually, still grappling with the situation.
“But Ava will be stuck on Level Three,” Gym Bod argued. “Where she goes, we all go.”
Lily's eyes flickered to the files again. Level Three was not what she would have expected for an unrepentant murderer, and Floppy Hair claimed it was something any one of them would have done. She probed more deeply, and went still.
Ava's sister, abused and driven to suicide. The perpetrator, walking free after a botched trial. Lily would have felt no remorse about extracting her own justice either. Her hand itched for a weapon. Instead she reached for her tablet, her fingers skimming over the surface as she pulled up information.
“You're expected to go to your assigned level. But there's nothing really stopping a soul from choosing a punishment level lower than the one they've been assigned to,” she remarked, sounding offhanded. “They usually don't because they'd then have to work through that level before they could get to a higher one, and who'd want to to do that if they didn't have to?” Her eyes flicked momentarily to Spiky Blond, then back to the tablet as her fingers tapped the surface. “But visitors can go almost anywhere they like. Including Level Three.”
She found what she wanted, and looked up again. One by one she met the eyes of Gym Bod, Floppy Hair and Grey Hair. “Visitors might want to take a trip down to Level Eight,” she said. Understanding replaced their puzzled looks as she added, “that's where he is. We keep spare weapons if you don't have your own.”
Sharkie added a grin full of teeth, nodding cheerfully as the band realised what Lily was telling them.
“So… you're not stopping us?” Grey Hair asked slowly. “You're… helping us?”
Lily gave a sudden laugh. “This is the Hellp Desk. Found family is something to hang on to with everything you have. Hell isn't… isn't just a place of punishment. It's a place of healing. Ava, she found her Paradise. She'll be able to visit you. And… well, the demons that work here are people too. They have a tough job. They have down time. If you were to get together for band night now and then, I bet you'd find an eager audience.”
She paused, then grinned. “Why shouldn't the devil have all the good music?”