#hwfu

Right, then. If they’re going to escape, leave New Nazareth, and get far, far, away from here, then they need all of them. Him and Lockwood had been wrestling with the idea of it, tried it, but they always had something missing. Only now, half-splattered with gore and blood in his mouth, does George realize that Lucas is the missing piece. He puts it to the puzzling question of their escape, and it finally clicks into place.

Their Brothers and Sisters standby, jaws open, some with their fingers pressed to their mouth in prayer. George knows how this must look, what this is, he and Lucas standing in a sea of blood and guts and a Grace dripping remains, ripped white robes turned crimson in carnage. Someone must’ve alerted an Angel, and already George can hear gunshots in the distance.

Lucas is crouched down beside one of the bodies, or what remains of it, staring into the red smudge it is now on holy concrete.

“Lucas!” George calls it once, twice. He doesn’t budge, as if in a trance, until George rushes over and shoves his side. Instantly he recoils, scratching his arms to tend to the bugs that awaken under his skin.

They’re both trembling, he notices.

Lucas gasps. Recoils at the contact. Blinks, then he looks around. “Oh, oh God, oh fuck. We— oh… we’re fucked. We need to go.“

George winces at that—God’s name taken in vain, then the vulgar language after. Braces for the slap at the back of his head that doesn’t come. He grabs Lucas—It worsens the crawling feeling, but it doesn’t matter because there is only seconds until they’re turned into another strung-up corpse turned inside out on a cross—and hauls him up, the other boy stumbling to his feet before steadying, and lets go. “Yes, we do! I’m so glad you noticed our predicament as well!”

Lucas tries desperately to wipe the blood off his face as they run, but it smears, red and sticky, like the robes sticking to their skin. “Don’t give me that. Where’s Lockwood?”

Lockwood—he’d told George to run, clutched his knife and held off the Angel in the Church.

“The Church,” George recalls. They turn a sharp corner. Another round of gunshots fire in the distance behind them, and they break into a sprint. “He’s probably okay. Hopefully.”

-

Lockwood lies slumped against the dais, breathing raggedly through his mouth while he cradles a wound at his stomach. Seraph had only begun to take care of it—molted flesh shedding off where they can see it while new, like vines bulging, stitches over—but both Lucas and he know from experience that it doesn’t take from the pain; It still burns.

The rush of footsteps has Lockwood stiffening and scrambling for the gun he’s wrestled from the Angel’s hand. He hisses at how the wound throbs, burning like hellfire, then drags his arm up to point the barrel, because fuck. They’re still getting out of here. They’re still going to escape, and he will die trying to stop the Angels from getting their hands on the monsters they made from the three of them and the children before—

“Lockwood!” Lucas calls, coming in from the end of the hall with George at his tail, heads swivelling left and right. “It’s Lucas and George! Where are you?!”

Lockwood falters. Not angels. No more. He exhales slowly, then lowers the gun as he musters up the energy to raise his voice. “Over here!”

Finally, they lay eyes on him and waste no time running over.

“Carefully now,” he says. “The floor is…slippery.”

The marble floors of the church are painted in their own red, with chinks taken off where bullets bounced off. Casings are scattered all over the floor. Lucas and George come closer, and there the body of the Angel lie collapsed on the pews, its face caved in towards the middle where a bullet wound makes a blackhole of its head. Pink brain splatter stretches over more of the seats and out to the wall behind, dripping down in clumps while a puddle of blood grows around the Angel’s head on polished wood—the only kind of halo befitting for a thing like them. Their gun, missing from their hand, is in Lockwood’s. He flicks the safety back on and shoves it into his waistband.

They try to step quickly, and carefully, towards him. George almost slips, but Lucas grabs him by the shirt and steadies him.

Lockwood smiles, a laugh bubbling up, but then his stomach lurches. He turns his head and he retches, spitting the brown-black matter of his own putrefying insides out onto the dais.

“Oh…gross,” Lucas says, he and George reaching down to help Lockwood to his feet. They put him in between them, arms hooked around them both.

Lockwood flinches as pain throbs at his abdomen, shooting up his spine. He groans, and mouth fills up with saliva again. It comes out, splattering the toes of their shoes. “Sorry,” he says, panting. He smacks his lips, running his tongue over his teeth and swallowing like it would erase the taste of rot. “I tried to keep it down but it was fighting me.”

“‘S fine,” George responds, adjusting for a better hold on Lockwood. “You saw me keel over before too. The Flood does that.”

“Doesn’t make it less abhorrent,” Lockwood says, smiling to ameliorate the situation, but his stomach still churns—or what’s left of it in the empty void his insides must be now. “Urgh…”