Say Hallelujah, Say Goodnight

Chapter Two: The Middle

Salvador, Bay of All Saints (present day Brazil) | 1549

Unsurprisingly, it takes Harry a while to get used to being a demon.

Louis has only ever been an angel, so he couldn't possibly understand what it's like to be one thing, to undergo voluntary (but no less unbearable) torture and punishment in Hell for fifty years, and then to be thrown back out into humanity as an entirely new species. So he tries to help where he can, nudging his higher-ups for information on what's typical for demons — "Totally hypothetical, of course," Louis breezily reassures one of the Thrones, James, who rolls his eyes because he knows Louis too well to believe that — and helping Harry through the more unpleasant parts of demonology.

Harry adapts easily enough to most of it, though; he learns to regulate his emotions so his eyes don't flash black every time he gets a little perturbed. He gets advice from his own superior, Nick, and Nick's friends, Greg and Pixie and Aimee and Alexa. He gets used to the claws that pop when he's irritated, and the growl that rumbles in his throat unconsciously when he's jealous, and the new strength that makes it possible to toss Louis across the room when he gets a little enthusiastic.

(Louis definitely doesn't mind that particular side effect, and they can afford to repair a few holes in a few walls after a couple of memorable nights.)

It's not just the new physical attributes, either: Harry learns to read people in a way Louis can't. Angels focus on souls, the end game, the big picture. Demons, however, focus on desires.

Louis can take a look at a man's soul and see that it's dusky gold like a sunset, can know that he fears death and his wife leaving him and see the little tics and tacs of sins committed, knowing overall that this is person destined for the Light, as long as nothing approaches him to tempt him away. And then Harry can look at that same man and doesn't see the dusky gold but does see that he fears isolation, fears humiliation, and desires nothing more than to be remembered. Harry offers the human what he wants, and sometimes the man will take it. Sometimes it takes Harry changing his glamours, approaching as a beautiful woman dipped in deadly poison, or a hardened warrior promising fame and glory. Harry looks at a human and sees their limits, and it's his job to exploit them.

And that's what he has to reconcile.

He only asks once, and it's when they're sitting side-by-side on the edge of a rickety wooden bridge, sunlight dancing off the ocean in front of them, their feet brushing as the waves swirl around them. It's 1549 and the world is on the edge of change yet again, a ship carrying soldiers and Jesuit priests a speck on the horizon slowly drifting closer. It'll arrive and devastation will reign, but for right now Louis isn't worried about what will inevitably happen when the ship reaches land.

He's worried, instead, about Harry, and the quiet question muttered to Louis almost like he hopes Louis won't hear and answer: "What do you see when you look at my soul?"

Harry throws the question out like it doesn't matter to him, but there's a tremor in his voice that they both know Louis hears.

Harry doesn't know that Louis never saw his soul when he was human; he probably still think Louis knows where he was headed when (if) he died as a mortal, Above or Below, Light or Dark. It doesn't matter anymore, though, because Louis doesn't even have to blink into his Vision to feel the blackness there now, deep and seductive.

But he asked, and Louis wants to answer, to really answer, so he looks past Harry's glamours, past his Form, his true skin, his veins of fire and heat, and finds his soul.

It's black, yes. Black like sin, if sin had a color.

And that's what Harry hates, Louis knows, because black has always had a connotation with death, and despair, and disease. It's never been associated with good things, happy things.