I’ve held many-a crying child in my years, mostly my own after meals. Vel’s grip was tight as I lowered him and a very distracted Blackie to the ground. My little ones loved my wing tent maneuver and it never failed to calm them.

          He leaned back in wonder at the little lights, which were outside my wings rather than inside for a certain drifty demon. We sat basically at the hips with Vel across from us with our knees faintly overlapping.

          “…are you really going to consider me family?” His voice was calm, showing no excitement or worry. All I could see in his eyes, was a tired young heart. It seemed I was right.

          “We have no families of our own anymore. It seemed like a good time to start again.” I patted his knee that was closest to me and glanced at my old new partner.

          “Blackie, why do I feel like your glowing eyes has nothing to do with the warm, touching moment we’re having as a family?”

          After his eyes locked on me and he mentioned a health exam, I could feel my heart start racing. If it wasn’t for the child, I would have fled on the spot. Flashes of years past raged as he roughed he around without actually touching me much besides my head and arm. I had the oddest feeling of being treating like a dog in need of a checkup.

          I raised my eyebrow in hopes of getting him to treat me less like a dog ready to bite, but instead he rolled his eyes and gestured the child closer to witness this poor old woman’s helplessness.

           “I don’t like listening to hearts since that puts my head where they can bite it.”

          Oh sure, like I’d bite someone who hasn’t had a bath in a week. I wanted to protest my innocence when he actually reached in and grabbed my upper jaw and braced it open. My back teeth weren’t sharp like the front, but it still couldn’t have been comfortable. Thankfully, it did seem like he’d managed to wash his hands somehow as they didn’t taste of dirt or wood like I’d expect.

          Running water, that was going to be my next project.

          Perhaps I had grown too comfortable around him. Perhaps I had begun to see him as merely a person. I had forgotten, or it had drifted from a place where it should have stayed to remind me.

          Babaris is a demon, always and forever, a demon. This realization was forced to my attention when he smiled.

          It was terrible, like when I “accidently” shattered the very nice  mirror my mother-in-law insisted was traditional in every good angelic home. A hammer flew from my hand and it shattered into hundreds of cracked webs before it fell completely to the floor with only a few bits and pieces jammed into the frame. Only here, thank the ever-loving Lord Above, his skin did not completely fall off.

          Blood ran down in little rivers as a grin forced its way across like miners with pickaxes through a mountain to his ears. Crinkles around his nose and eyes that would have been adorable were it not for the buckets of blood that arose. What I was amazed by was the fact that none of it got into his eyes.

        “Is she sick?”

        Sick? How could I be sick?

        “…exposed to blood for an extended period of time.”

         That was not my fault. Finally, after more mumbling, he let go of my jaw. I spat it out the moment he let go.

         “I’ll have you know there were extenuating circumstances! Many of them! I love baths! That decade was hell!”

         “Decade? Did you got stuck in hell?” He wrapped up his hand with a bandage he pulled out from his clothes. Lacie picked a good set that fit him well.

          “Yes!” I bit back tears, “My troop left me behind!”

          “Did you run off ahead without them?”

          “That’s not the point. They never came to look for me. In the end, I had to hide for a decade before I made it out, jumping from one piles of corpses to the next in an area where I could barely see.” It was quiet traumatizing.

          “Outer ring?” Babaris rolled his eyes as Vel handed him some disinfecting cream that they had made earlier for his cracked face. “Why didn’t you just fight your way out?”

          “…it was a stealth mission.”

          “You turned it into a game didn’t you.” He got this knowing and slightly patronizing look in his eye as if he hadn’t just jammed his hand down my throat.

          “…for the record I won. No one knew I was ever there.”

          “Was this about a century ago?”

          “…perhaps?”

          “We got a lot of reports about a suspicious individual that was repeatedly spotted, we called it the ghost incident.” Smirking, he worsened the cracks.

          “…I didn’t get caught.”

          “You got detected.”

          “Excuse me,” Vel interrupted, “but what are the side effects of the illness? And isn’t a century a bit long to have an illness go untreated?”

          “For a human, or even a younger angel, yes. But she’s old and tough so it hasn’t made much headway. It’ll be a while before she’s better. I’ve only got so much blood.”

          “Could I help?”     

          “No, human blood won’t work. You recover too slow too. All she deals with is a lack of energy and motivate-tion….” He trailed off, though now that he mentioned it…I have been feeling tired and sluggish these past few decades…

          He turned to look at me for a moment, unprecedently serious.

          “…on second thought maybe we should leave it…”