I was emptied of impurities. Well, anything that could be pushed from my pores or orifices. Despite living my life between comfort and agony, the muted discomfort of the process felt… cleansing in a way. As if I had been scrubbed clean inside and out. My soul may wear the dirty marks of the life I’d lived, but the rest of me was spotless. If only I could say that convincingly.

Wight dropped the possession, and I collapsed to the bathroom floor, my body convulsing with pain and shivering from the cold.

[I was able to remove the taint of the pills, Eric.]

“T-thank y-ou,” I coughed from a throat sore and tender. My fingertips burned, and it felt like my digestive organs had been soaked in acid. “Vi-vision went-t-t weird.”

[I didn’t want you to react to seeing your own blood.]

Why I had bled during the process was probably not a question that I wanted answered. I felt starved and nauseous, and my eyes were sore. I could see now why possession was dangerous - this was a polite medical procedure done with care and good intent. If Wight wanted to go rogue, he probably could have liquidated my insides or done any number of things to make it worse.

I shuddered as I watched him coalesce into his bird form. He stood to my side as the sound of footsteps came up the stairs. Pearl. She rushed over to me and immediately grabbed a towel to throw over my naked body.

“Wight, he is freezing - you can’t just… did it go okay?”

I couldn’t see her face, but she sounded concerned. My prior transgressions seemingly water under the bridge. It wasn’t really me, after all, was it?

[I have done what I can. I’m sorry for his predicament.]

“W-wight still needs t-to work on his bed-d side mann-ner.” The words stumbled from my mouth, but I managed to smile up at my patron. Warmth was beginning to return to my tensing body.

Pearl sighed and sat beside me; almost by reflex, her fingers began to soothe the side of my head. “You are a fragile little lamb, Eric.”

[Yet too stubborn to fade from existence.]

I closed my eyes, not really wanting to speak more, until my throat stopped feeling so swollen and raw. If there was a good reason why I was so resistant to death, I hoped it would start giving me some pleasantry on the side to make the struggle worth it. Well, I had a beautiful demon nursing me and a weird demon-bird friend. Rodney was a good kid too, and thankfully hadn’t come up to see me in such a state of disrepair.

“Go get dressed; I imagine you are quite hungry. I’ll go cook.” Pearl leaned down and kissed the side of my head before her warmth was removed, and she stood for the door. “Oh, Wight, I am holding you personally accountable for his well-being now.”

[Understood, the Pearl.]

Despite my face still being foot-level on the floor, I could physically feel her glare at Wight. He was already my protector in a way, but now she was giving him the stark reminder that he needed to do better. Being cared for was certainly a warm feeling, eagerly grasped for in my current weakened state.

We both waited in silence as her footsteps went downstairs, and there was the low murmur of the demon speaking with Rodney.

[The Pearl certainly cares for you, Eric.]

“Uh-huh.” I groaned as I pushed my body up from the floor and righted myself into a sitting position with a big sigh. “She’s pretty amazing, I guess.”

[You guess?]

“It’s…” I frowned at the bird person looking down his beak impassively at me. “It’s early days; she’s everything I could ask for if I’m honest. But…”

[The whole being a demon thing?]

“No. Not really. I barely register it most of the time - but we’ve only been… it’s been a wild two weeks, and I am hesitant to pin my hopes and futures on such a slim slice of reality.” I grimaced. An odd time and position to be having a heart-to-heart.

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[I understand. Perhaps soon you will be strong enough to tell her how you feel.]

Wight shrugged - a terribly strange motion for him - and walked past me into the bedroom.

I wasn’t quite sure how much I should be relying on my patron for advice on my love life. Not that I was placing any doubts on what he said or what manner of experience he might hold within that feathered head - but I was neither emotionally nor physically in the right place to have my heart jostled about.

Not getting any younger, I lifted myself from the floor. Intrusive thoughts told me to feign an injury so that Pearl would be mad at him for leaving me alone briefly. I allowed myself a smile over the thought but retained enough of my faculties to know that would only backfire, and I’d end up with Wight breathing down my neck more than he already did.

Shuffling slowly into the bedroom, I was moderately surprised to see clothes laid out for me. It hadn’t sounded like Pearl had enough time to do the deed in a normal fashion as she passed through. Perhaps some foul domestic magic. I dressed myself in the traditional dark dress shirt and slacks as Wight sat back at the desk to work on his drawing.

“Is there something in particular you are trying to draw? Or is it just… feelings?” I wasn’t much of an artist myself, so my knowledge of the process was limited at most.

[I do not know. There is just something I feel needed putting to paper.]

With a stretch of weary muscles, I stood behind him again to see if it had begun to take any shape that I recognized. Again, black intersecting lines at seemingly random lengths and angles. “Hmm. Do you need other colors, perhaps?”

[That would be nice, Eric.]

Another thing for the shopping list… although I didn’t feel much like stepping into the real world today. I would do enough of that tomorrow at the funeral. As my demonic regeneration slowly repaired my insides, I felt like I could still wrangle that trip to Hell - after eating food and convincing Pearl, no doubt.

That just left the question of the Organization. I believe we all felt that they had tried to coerce me into sorting the demon-lover issue out. Either by Wight and I causing terrible damage to the neighborhood in an attempt to vaporize her or falling to her sword and retrieving their prized demon back to their pact vessel. Part of me wondered if Wight would hold a grudge against them if that had been the outcome.

Maybe they hoped we would meet up in the Hells and cause trouble there - as far as I knew, they weren’t aware of the current domestic situation. Certainly, human-demon relationships were probably not this cordial and grounded usually. Neither a patron nor Hunter that emotionally close. Nor a Hunter and their Blank such good friends. The Org liked to keep all the pieces separate, and I was beginning to think they were scared of what the whole could accomplish.

Surely, even though I was not the most experienced or high-level Hunter, the things Wight and I had accomplished - and the things I had survived thanks to Pearl… the Org didn’t know how lucky they had it. Now that they had tried to take that away…

Slowly, we went down the stairs. My muscles were pretty much fine, but I felt a little lightheaded. Wight said something about it being because I was emptied of most unnecessary liquids, and my body needed the energy.

“Eric? You look like you just shat your soul out.” Rodney grimaced in greeting as I walked through the dining room door.

My recliner hadn’t been upstairs and now wasn’t by the window. Although perplexed by both its current whereabouts and how it managed to travel about, my brain had neither the energy nor the capacity to enquire further.

“My what?” I grinned, but something about his sentence didn't settle between my ears. "I think I lost a few good organs there."

[You did not, you would be dead if I actioned that.]

I turned my head to raise an eyebrow at my patron, unsurprised to find that his impassive face was hard to read if that statement was sarcasm. I wouldn’t put it past him to accidentally pop my heart from my mortal shell. Probably in a more painful and visceral way than with a ‘pop,’ too.

“Pearl said you were a dumbass and told me to tell you that.” The Blank wrinkled up his face. “Given that she is currently cooking us up some food, I don’t think she is angry. But she just really wanted to call you a dumbass.”

“I am a dumbass.” I sighed as I sunk into one of the dining chairs opposite him, thankful that the regeneration had softened any soreness that lingered in the… more sensitive parts of my system. “And I did try to shoot her.” My eyes looked down at the morose-looking revolver on the floor.

“Pearl would have survived it, though, right?” He peered at the kitchen door that was pushed to but not closed. “She is powerful?”

I nodded. The whole situation would have been even more amusing if I hadn’t had my own demonic power. Eric the Dumbass would have just stood there clicking through an empty cylinder as Wight and the rest looked on in bemusement. “Way more powerful than Wight and I. Even going full out…”

[It would have been like the Jailer fight if we were to have a chance of winning.]

That only went our way because of the stakes involved and the gap in expectation of the large demon. I doubted I had the energy or willpower in me to use that kind of skill again, not against Pearl, especially.

“I’d rather not go through that again.” It had destroyed Wight and broken me. I did get a kiss out of the event, though, so silver linings and all that.

I circled my finger on the table where Pearl had scuffed the varnish previously. There was still the question of what she had been doing the last day - returning in her leather armor wasn’t the best sign. Other than being worried and annoyed at me, she had seemed in reasonable spirits, though.

That would have to wait for now, as all I could think about was the food I had started to smell.

And killing Seth’a.