She ignored his off-color remark. "I have a question."

He sighed, waving his hand brusquely. "Ask."

"How do you know how things smell?"

He blinked a few times as if caught off guard. Not the question he'd been anticipating. Serah smiled to herself, but concealed her satisfaction at knocking him off-kilter, not wanting him to catch sight of it.

"I remember things."

"How?"

He sighed dramatically. "Just because I’m trapped down here doesn’t mean I have no connections up there."

"But how did you know what anything smelled like to begin with?"

It took a moment for it to register with him. "Oh, because I'm an angel, right? And angels can't smell."

"Right."

"They also can't taste," he continued. "Or feel."

"I feel."

He shook his head. "You don't."

"I do," she insisted, hesitating before softly adding, "I feel when I'm with him."

He stared at her peculiarly as something sparked in his eyes, the muted red flaring like a fire doused with gasoline. The sky churned in tune with it as if something deep inside of him controlled the stratosphere. "Whatever measly little tingle Michael offers you pales in comparison to real feeling. Angels know things. We're created with sympathy. You can detect pain and hunger and desire, and you know what they mean, what they need, but you can't feel them."

"And you can?"

"Yes."

"How?"

He stepped closer, stopping when he was nearly flush against the barrier, closer than the two of them had ever been before. Had she not known better, during his hasty approach, she would’ve sworn he intended to come straight through to her side. A voice in her mind, her angelic reflex, warned her to move away from the immoral soul, but his grave expression solidified her in place as she waited for his answer.

"Not only was I forced to remember, but I was cursed with something that made it all much, much worse—empathy."

Her brow furrowed. "Wouldn't that be a blessing?"

A bitter bark of laughter ripped from his chest, the barrier between them not stopping it from striking her. "A blessing? You think it’s a blessing? I feel it all. Every ounce of feeling they have, every little sensation—I’m forced to endure it. Do you know what it's like to be so hungry, to be so fucking starving, that it feels like you're being eaten alive from the inside out? It's there constantly, but nothing I do ever satisfies the hunger, the need, the yearning.

"Do you know what it's like to be tortured, to be constantly ripped apart like someone's taking a claw hammer and bashing in your skull, but never finding the sweet relief of death? Do you know what it's like to want something so badly, to need it, to feel like you can't go on without it, only to have it dangled right in front of your face? That torture, that mental torment, is worse than any physical pain you may perceive, angel, stronger than any fucking tingle my brother may bestow upon you when you take your dress off for him."

He instantly vanished in a loud crack of thunder, so brash even the hovering reapers paused to take note. Serah just stood there, too startled to yet move, her mouth agape.

"Sat—uh, Lucifer?" she called, peering across to the vacant land. She had no idea where he’d gone, but she hoped he’d hear her whenever he was. "I may not feel all of those things—the hunger, the pain, the need—but I do feel something you don’t."

Silence reigned. She continued to stand there, watching, waiting, but nothing happened for a few minutes. Resigned, she turned to leave when the air fizzled behind her. "What?"

She turned back around to face him. "Love."

Thick arms crossed over his chest as he stared at her, not an ounce of amusement in his expression. He said not a word in response to her declaration.

"If you felt love, if you knew true love, you wouldn’t be doing all of this," she said. "The fighting is hurting the ones we’re supposed to love, the ones we’re supposed to protect. It has to stop."

"Why should I care about them?" he asked. "They don’t care about me. No one does."

"So is that why it’s happening? Vengeance? Resentment? You do it out of hate?"

"I do it because I have to."

"Why?"

He left again, this time so quietly that Serah knew he wouldn’t be coming back today.

"Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack,

All dressed in black, black, black,

With silver buttons, buttons, buttons,

All down her back, back, back!"

The two little girls chanted as they clapped their hands together, giggling when they messed up at the same time. Serah watched them quietly as they tried again, making it not much farther the second time around.

"You've got to be kidding me," Hannah said, flopping down on the swing beside her. "Now that one I know is about death. It's a riddle for a coffin."

"Or it's just another nursery rhyme."

"Another absurd one." Hannah rolled her eyes as the girls tried for the third time. "Speaking of death and absurdity—how's it going down in Hell?"

The feathers on Serah's wings ruffled. "Uh. . ."

"That bad?"

"Well, the war's still going on," she said. "He doesn't seem interested in backing down any time soon . . . or ever, really."