"Dahyun."

Nothing.

"Dahyun look at me."

Still, nothing.

A pause.

"Dahyunnie?"

Dahyun froze, and the voice quickly entered her bubble.

"Dahyunnie…please." 

A breath, and Dahyun relented. "What? What do you want, Nayeon?"

Stumbling forward at the invitation, Nayeon faced the stubborn wall that was Dahyun's back. Calmly, she aimed to place a hand on Dahyun's shoulder. 

But at the merest sense of contact, Dahyun flinched and shoved Nayeon's hand away, still not deigning to face the woman. "Just say what you came here to say, Nayeon. And hurry, before anyone catches us."

No reaction would have been acceptable, but despite her better judgment, Nayeon snickered. 

And to that, Dahyun whipped around in a fury of white fire. "Do you have something to say or not?"

Her anger was scorching, but Nayeon didn't feel a of the flames. "Wow, you really haven't changed at all, have you?" Nayeon wondered. "Still the same old goody-two-shoes that I've always known and loved."

Internally, Dahyun flinched, but it was masked when she moved in closer, radiating waves so wild everything around them should have been rendered to ash had they not been standing at the threshold between heaven and below. "Save it," Dahyun snapped. "Just say what you came here to say and be done with it. You shouldn't be here for too long, anyway. It's not safe for you."

A physical presence restrained Nayeon from poking the beast more, forcing her to swallow the heat of her words down and bury them in her stomach for later use. She paid special attention to the second half of Dahyun's words—the part where it sounded like she still cared—and centered herself around that instead.  

Nayeon sighed. "It's not too late, you know." She linked her fingers. "To come back."

"Come back where?" Dahyun asked, even though she knew the answer.

"Come back home." Nayeon braved a step in, now so perfectly eye-level with Dahyun that their noses nearly brushed. "Come back…to me." 

"And do what exactly?" Dahyun challenged. "You want me to come back home and do what?"

"What we always did."

"Like what? Watch over people's lives and pretend we're not wreaking havoc with every flick of our wrist? Mess with all the souls on this planet and pretend we don't enjoy every single second of it?" Dahyun grimaced. "At least this way, I can do what I want without having to pretend."

Nayeon didn't bother to hide the distaste on her face this time. "Oh will you stop with your god complex already? Just because you switched sides doesn't make you better than everyone else."

"No," Dahyun agreed. "It just makes me honest."

And to that, Nayeon laughed—a full-blown laugh as whole-hearted as it was empty. "Don't you dare act all high and mighty now, Dahyun. You were just as bad as the rest of us. The only difference was that you got caught. And the only reason we're having this conversation right now is because you were too incompetent to control your own behaviors."

Soundless beats thumped in the air, and for a moment, Dahyun's fire flickered into a simmer, dipping timid blues before they erupted into an even fiercer red. "What are you even doing here?" she hissed.

An antiparallel phenomenon, Nayeon remained stone cold. "I told you. I want you to come back. I've talked to the council, and they're willing to give you a second chance."

"The council? Seriously?" The scoff Dahyun ripped was scornfully low. "You mean the council who clipped my wings and banished me to hell in the first place? That council?"

The string wrapped around Nayeon's waist spun her 180 degrees, and the hostile piece of her temper flew away as suddenly as it left her raw. She softened, if only a bit. 

"It's not too late," Nayeon echoed. "You can still redeem yourself. You can still save yourself." She bit her lip. "We can be together again."

"Yeah? And then what?" Dahyun muttered. "What happens after that?" 

Her question was shaped like the inevitable was about to occur, but what Dahyun was truly asking was for Nayeon to recount all the happiness of their past, stories she could relive as if they would have any say in the choice she had to make.

And so Nayeon did just that. (She could always understand what Dahyun was saying, even if she didn't say anything at all.)

"Well, it'll be just like old times," Nayeon began, slowly, carefully. "Just me and you, together, with the entire world and everything in it right here, in the palm of our hands. We'll fly across the stars, swim across the oceans, rain fire upon the earth. Anything. We can do anything we want, Dahyun. Anything you dream of, we can do it. Just like before."

From the way Dahyun's eyes had fluttered shut as she drank in all the possibilities, the exhaustion painted on her face temporarily washing away, Nayeon dared to feel the smallest tinge of hope. Maybe Dahyun would say yes.

But maybe she wouldn't. Maybe Dahyun was simply basking in the nostalgia of it all one last time, for old time's sake. "As long as we don't get caught," she murmured. 

A gust of wind swept past their bodies. 

"You forgot to add that." Dahyun opened her eyes, and like a spark of lightning, she didn't look at peace anymore. "We can do anything we want, as long as we don't get caught." Her sigh dripped with tired sarcasm. "I hate to break it to you, but we've tried this before. Tried, and failed." She scrunched her nose. "Well, for me, at least. I still don't know how you managed to escape, but I guess that's not my business anymore."

Neither of them spoke after that. The silence ate them up like dried specks of dust, bringing with it even more oxygen to fuel Dahyun's fire.

Nayeon gulped, afraid to continue on a pointedly stale note, but she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she didn't keep trying. "I made a deal," she whispered.

Dahyun blinked. "You what?"

"My escape, if you can even call it one. That day, the day you were caught. I made a deal."

That was it. That was all it took, and Dahyun started to feel it, the tips of her own flames beginning to singe her exposed skin. She had to pinch herself to keep from interrupting.

Without the sign to stop, Nayeon kept going. "And before you say it, no. It wasn't a deal to save myself. The complete opposite, actually. I think catching one traitor was satisfying enough for them," she explained. "They never even suspected me."

"So I was your scapegoat," Dahyun sneered. "Wonderful."

"Would you just let me finish?" Nayeon snapped.

Dahyun sneered again but otherwise stayed quiet. 

"Like I was saying," Nayeon continued, "I made a deal. For you." She paused for a moment, as if waiting to see the impact of her revelation—but Dahyun only blinked. 

Nayeon shook her head and recollected herself. "Everyone talked about it, you know? The angel gone rogue!" She flashed fireworks with her fingers for dramatic effect, but the faux-excitement was very short-lived. "Though, to be fair, they were more relieved than angry."

"Why am I not surprised?" Dahyun deadpanned.

Nayeon rolled her eyes. "Anyway, back to the deal. Before your trial, I heard the council talking. As their first offender in over a million years, they figured that they should make an example of you. A menacing threat, if you will." When Dahyun didn't react, Nayeon cleared . "They were planning to kill you, Dahyun."

Again, Dahyun's face was blank. "Oh," was all she said. Her flames were really kicking up, but she wasn't focusing on them anymore.

Nayeon ignored them as well. "The moment I heard them say that, I went straight to the judge and begged for your mercy. It wasn't my best moment, I'll admit that, but something about the sight of a young angel on her knees sobbing her guts out was probably more than he could handle." She shrugged nonchalantly, as if the scene she just described wasn't the most humiliating act a divine being could ever willingly put themselves through. "So, we made a deal. In exchange for saving your life, I promised him mine."

It took a minute for Dahyun to fully absorb the information. More wind divided their bodies. "Are you telling me that the cost of saving my life was…to sell your soul?" When Nayeon nodded weakly, she huffed in disbelief. "And to think that they have the audacity to say they're so much better than the devils."  

Nayeon's mouth twitched. "Is that really your takeaway from that?"

"No."

"Then what is? I hope you don't mind my assumption, but you don't exactly sound the most grateful right now."

Dahyun didn't reply.

So Nayeon replied for her. "You can't be serious. What? No 'thank you for saving my life Nayeon'? No nothing? After all I've done for you, you'd think the least I deserve is a simple thank you, don't you think?"

"No," Dahyun shook her head. "You don't deserve jack ."

Nayeon visibly stuttered, obviously jarred. 

The lines on Dahyun's forehead ever so slightly creased. "Do you want to know my real takeaway from that?"

Stunned, Nayeon could only nod.

Dahyun bit her lip. "My takeaway was the fact that instead of giving me death, which I most definitely deserved, you literally gave me hell, which I most definitely did not deserve. Do you have any idea what I've been through down there? Do you have any idea how much pain I've been through just to get by?"

Nayeon faltered, caving in as the two tiny figures on her shoulders stumbled over the edge. "What?" 

"Who am I kidding?" Dahyun scoffed. "Of course you don't. And you ask for my takeaway? My takeaway was the fact that you could've saved me from an eternity of suffering by doing absolutely nothing, but no, because that's just not how you work, is it? You just have to interfere, don't you? Always make it about you. Because that's who you are, Nayeon. And look how well that turned out." 

In suspicious fascination with the dirt on the ground, Nayeon wasn't capable of maintaining eye contact for more than half a second. 

Dahyun sighed a crackling breath of air into the atmosphere around them. With fingertips so scalding they froze, she slowly lifted Nayeon's chin up from below. Her actions were gentle, but her tone was anything but. "Do you know what they do to the fallen down there, Nayeon? Look at me. Forget the humans, I mean the fallen angels. Tell me, do you know?" Dahyun squeezed her grip around Nayeon's chin, forcing her to stay put. "Come on. With how much you used to brag about knowing every little thing in this world, do you know what happened…to me?"

Tears welled in the back of Nayeon's head, but she would rather choke on them than let them pour. She did, actually, know what happened to the fallen angels in hell. They were tortured, of course, wings already clipped when they got there so they had nowhere to run. From what she read, the hellhounds had the most fun, chasing around the fallen all throughout the underworld like they were lifeless sacks of meat. And when they were tired out, the fallen were strapped and suspended over rivers of lava, forced to absorb the jumping balls of heat as one by one, the feathers of what remained of their wings were yanked off until nothing but the shells were left. All that time in there, and they were bound to build a sort of immunity towards fire. 

Nayeon cringed at the mental image. That was only the first stage of torture.

In that moment, the pain in Dahyun's eyes was more evident than ever.

Nayeon couldn't imagine what Dahyun had been through. Really, she couldn't, because the books she read only described the first century of a fallen angel's hell. Just one century.

Dahyun had been forsaken for ten.

In the back of her mind, Nayeon wondered why she never considered this when she was bent over her knees, crying before the highest judge of the heavens. What the hell was she thinking? What the hell did she do?

And as if the mental turmoil wasn't enough, Dahyun pushed forward to wrap her scarred hand around the cloth of Nayeon's collar. 

"That's right," Dahyun seethed, as if she could read the thoughts in Nayeon's brain that fired at a mile a minute, "you have no idea. And hopefully," her voice wavered, "you never will." 

Scared out of her mind, Nayeon couldn't do anything except hold her tongue. She felt the warmth of Dahyun's breath when Dahyun sighed and released her hold.

Nayeon almost went flying when Dahyun tossed her aside. Had she always been that powerful?

Pathetically, Nayeon regained her balance, the larger space between them giving her the courage to take Dahyun in fully. She looked older than she remembered, darker, chilling, burnt.

The true age of Dahyun's pain shone full force in the subtle way her eyes glimmered as they began to water. "So you still want a thank you?" Despite the tears on the verge of spilling over, Dahyun kept her gaze firm. "Well, you got it. Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, thank you Nayeon, for making sure that the rest of my immortal life was spent in a literal living hell." 

Dahyun's chest was heaving after that, her remark's physical toll slowly draining away at whatever energy she had left in her fragile blood.

Small whirlwinds of soot spiraled about their feet, lapping at their ankles and ebbing back to the void. There wasn't much else to the space; an endless sky over barren gray. The perfect middle ground of darkness and light. 

It seemed like all hope was lost. That's what Nayeon could gauge anyway, from the way Dahyun's flames weren't as strong anymore. Dahyun's entire demeanor screamed defeat.

But Nayeon couldn't let her give up yet. One more shot. She could give it one more shot—it was the least Dahyun deserved.  

Nayeon sighed. "Look, the offer still stands," she went, tentatively. "From what you just told me, I know that there's no way for me to ever take back what I did, and that there will never be enough time in eternity for me to apologize. But you still have the chance, right now, to end all of your suffering once and for all. So what are you waiting for? Let bygones be bygones, and just take the leap."

Crossing her fingers, Nayeon let herself believe the for an instant, it appeared that she had gotten through Dahyun. The steely look on Dahyun's face had melded into something more neutral and her flames had trickled into an invisible blue. 

But, like before, just as quickly as Dahyun softened, she was iron once more.

"Don't be daft, Nayeon." Her voice was unsettlingly monotone. "Stupidity never looked good on you."

With a willpower she didn't know she wielded, Nayeon ignored the entirety of Dahyun's jab in favor of one last-ditch effort.

"You have a chance, Dahyun. You're the stupid one if you decide to pass up on an opportunity like this."

"An opportunity like this?" Dahyun taunted. "Okay. In that case, let's play the hypotheticals and say I do accept. What happens then, hm? You claim we'll magically go back to our old lives, but you and I both know that that's a steaming pile of crap. After what I did, after what we did, there's no way anything about our lives will ever be even remotely the same. I might as well complete my original sentence if I ever have to go back to that hellhole." She snickered to herself at the wordplay, but sadly, the irony was lost when Nayeon inched back to their nose-brushing distance. 

"Don't say that, Dahyun. That's not funny." Nayeon swallowed. "Your life isn't a joke."

"Oh really? My life isn't a joke?"

Nayeon shook her head vigorously.

And in response, like the devil incarnate, Dahyun grinned. "That's because you're the joke, Nayeon. You may call yourself an angel, but deep down, you're just like the rest of them. You're scum."

It wasn't the most shocking matter that the craze of hell had eaten Dahyun long, long ago, but maybe it was time for it to properly engulf Nayeon as well. 

Her switch flicked down. "And you're not?" Nayeon countered.

Visibly this time, Dahyun flinched. "I never said that."

And just like that, the tables turned their worlds upside down.

"Good," Nayeon sneered. "Because I'd hate to think that you'd ever believe that you were somehow better than me—than anyone, for that matter. Because you're nothing, Dahyunnie. Nothing but a worthless fallen who was stupid enough to get caught." 

Dahyun ground her teeth, but she managed to deflect the insult with a meaningless chuckle. (It still hurt, though.) "I'll give you that one. I am worthless. But at least I have my own life down here. At least I'm not chained to the judge of some corrupt council for the rest of eternity," she looked Nayeon up and down, "unlike you."

Nayeon scoffed. Maybe Dahyun wasn't worth the shot in the end. 

"So that's it?" she asked. "That's the reason you won't come back?"

Unknowingly, Dahyun held her breath as Nayeon's eyes pierced right through her. Nayeon could always tell what she was thinking, but Dahyun had to remind herself that that was a long time ago. A millennium ago, to be exact. Nayeon couldn't read her anymore; she had changed too much since then. 

Or at least, that was what she liked to believe. 

"Yeah," Dahyun breathed. "That's my reason."

Nayeon breathed, too. "No," she stated.

"No? What do you mean 'no'?"

"No," Nayeon shook her head with newfound confidence. "That's not it. You can't fool me like that. What's the real reason?"

Dahyun bit her tongue, keeping silent. Maybe Nayeon could still see right through her after all. 

"Tell me!" Nayeon demanded. "Give me the reason, the real reason. Tell me why you won't come back."

Dahyun made a fist as she stared into Nayeon's eyes with the closest thing to desperation she'd ever felt. Every essence of her body screamed against the truth she was about to say. But, after a shaky inhale, Dahyun whispered, "I don't want to come back because you'll be there."

Now insults were nothing foreign to Nayeon; her entire childhood was riddled with them. But something about hearing those poisonous words directly from Dahyun's lips—lips she used to spend days kissing until the sun dipped past the horizon and the moon rose to replace its spot—something about hearing those poisonous words directly from Dahyun's lips made it impossible to cover the look of hurt that marred her face. And just like that, the front she'd spent half of her current eternity perfecting shattered like glass. 

Nayeon replied in a whisper that matched Dahyun's, just as shaky, just as terrified. "Did my love mean anything to you?"  

Dahyun closed her eyes, and for the first time during her infinite life in hell, she relished the burning sensation her flames inflicted as it consumed the both of them whole.

It was a well-known fact that angels couldn't lie. But luckily for Dahyun, she wasn't an angel anymore.

"No," she said. "You meant nothing to me."