End and Outcome

“What the HELL is this?!?”

He knew she was there, he had known she was coming the moment she stepped foot in Boomtown. Her life force had always been strong, yet he wondered why on earth she was seeking him out. Lazily he reached up and with the tip of his talon he raised the bandages from his eyes and peeked at the silhouette of a girl standing in the middle of the doorway with both fists on her hips, feet askew with the backdrop of a blaring sun behind her. “We’re not in hell.”

“This is a… a… a…. CHURCH!” She screamed out loudly flailing her arms about. “It’s completely blasphemous!”

He decided to lower the blindfold back and close his eyes lying on a pallet of broken pews with a wing covering his form. “It was an abandoned church and I remind you I used to be a member of the Magdeline order, whatever lifetime that entails. Talk to the Diocese if you don’t believe me.”

“I did. Apparently I am branded just like you. A nun ‘in whatever lifetime that entails.’” She raised two fingers on either hand to quote what he just said. “I tried to talk to the Doctor about what that meant and why that meant and…”

“Let me guess…” Chronos could only smile, what a man to run off when things got complicated. “I do love guessing.” He sat up stretching out his wings behind him before standing up feeling woozy in the process using a piece of broken off altar to steady himself, “You’re up earlier than noon… you’re here speaking to me more than likely against what you think is your better judgement, and you’re upset.” He finally reached up raising the bandana off his eyes over his forehead looking down at the flustered youth. “The Doctor is gone.”

She glared at him.

He actually liked playing this game of making her mad. He always did as she was the funniest person in the universe when she was upset. Windows would break, the nun would swear up a storm and people would run for cover. Though times changed, he was no longer in need of stealing her soul to survive as he had his horns back, and therefore he was in his fullest demonic form rather than that of the equivalent of an eight year old child. Perhaps it was the detachment of his youth like form that made him want to egg her more, she wasn’t busy hitting him over the head, or pulling his ears, or yelling at him… did he actually miss her abuse. Seriously he should find a bottle and go crawl under a rock or something for a few millennia.

“Hey!” She snapped her fingers in front of his face.

Chronos reared his head back at the intrusion to his personal space, “What is it you want nun?”

“Answer my questions… demon!”

Chronos sighed heavily before sitting on the altar and folding his legs motioning her to pull up a pew and listen. She did so most grudgingly dropping herself down on that bench stirring the dust around to glow visibly in the colored trails of light shining through the broken stained glass. “Welcome to my home, and please before you get hysterical it was abandoned and reclaimed by Lunar, he gave it to me. I am assuming he told you where to find me.”

She looked around the tiny broken church with critical eyes noting the rusted crosses and broken pews and a rather large pallet of wood with a simple drape of cloth that he had been lying on when she came in. “Yea he told me you’d be in the last place I would expect… hey why are there cows outside?”

“Because I don’t want them inside?” He shrugged when she just stared at him. “A demon has to eat you know, I can’t live just off of fear.”

“Oh please!” She glared then after a few moments she cocked her head to the side and stared at him with a thoughtful expression.

“Rosette.” Chronos whispered after he saw her staring at him like that, “He told you, didn’t he?”

“He said some things.”

“And do you believe him?”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

Chronos nodded his head, folding his arms looking outside of the closet window to the outside air. “I am Chronos, born son of Pandemonium, the fallen angel of heaven.”

She gulped loudly knowing exactly who Pandemonium was. “What does ‘born son’ mean?”

“My brothers and sisters are grown, not born like me.”

“So you’re telling me you’re a demon prince of hell?”

“That is exactly what I am telling you.”

“Ah” She muttered rolling her eyes.

“But I carry the brand… sinner, once hornless.”

“YOU!” She stood up and pointed at him, “You’re a sinner of hell?”

“What do you know about the sinners Rosette?”

She sat down and fidgeted a bit, “Well, I was busy throwing spitwads at my friends in that class. But you overturned hell, killed Pandemonium, created chaos and were cast out of hell to terra bringing the other sinners with you? But I was told they were all hunted down and killed?”

“I killed the other sinners, and my brother Aion who sought to take over this plane as well.”

“Oh.” She whispered.

“Your part in all this, you were my contract, the person whose soul I lived off of to remain alive.”

“You thieving bastard!” She yelled at him.

“You freely offered yourself I could not refuse you and believe me I tried. But you are more stubborn than I am persuasive. I died with you, but my brother willed me back to life returning my horns to me, the doctor found you running away from the nunnery.”

“After my brother died I was taken in by the nuns from the orphanage, I didn’t fit in, I got the switch every day and I hated all of it.”

“Without changing the past they changed its outcome. I am alive and you are alive, that is all that matters. Live your life far away from me.” He stood up and pointed at the door, “You should leave.”

She sighed heavily pulling the habit off her head exposing unruly blonde hair, “I’m still a nun, as much as I hated living at the covenant I took oaths to the order. I can’t leave the order they’re all over the place. They’ve promoted me, to a ranger, so I can go where I want and take down demons wherever I want I only have to check in every now and then.” She seemed truly happy for her promotion.

“Smart decision on their part, otherwise you’d be running for the hills.” Chronos looked to the broken door, “Still, you should go, be a ranger elsewhere not here.”

“I can’t.”

He turned and stared at her and said with an undignified, “Huh?”

She held out a scroll of paper to the demon, “You’ve been reinstated.”

He looked at the scroll with a seething hatred in his eyes, damn them. He took the scroll and read it, sure enough he himself took oaths though different for obvious reasons. “But I died!”

“Tough shit demon. Its either this or you get sealed up like the rest of them.”

He didn’t want to be sealed in another tomb, he had already spent fifty years sealed in a tomb with rotting corpses, before that he spent another ten years sealed away by some rogue priest before he was able to find a way to unseal himself. No he didn’t like the idea but if it kept the nuns from coming after him then so be it. “Fine, but I don’t want to work with you.”

“Tough shit again.”

“What?!?”

“Let’s make this absolutely clear demon I don’t have to like you…” She narrowed her eyes at the demon, “… but I do have to work with you.”