Trinity sees when it starts to slow down. From her quiet place in the trees, she watches Ayana's body start to shake and shiver, be released from its hold.
It's all very dramatic when it happens. Trinity gives it that at least; Judgment's not one of those all bark and no bite things. There's flashing lights, heavy winds, all of it. The other angels love it. They gather around to watch, sometimes. It makes them feel better, Trinity guesses, to witness this great awe-inspiring thing. It's the closest they ever get to hearing directly from God, the thing they've dedicated their lives and legacies to. It makes them feel connected.
Secretly, Trinity wonders if that's the reason for all those showy lights and winds. It's a dangerous thought to have. It's not a pep rally. These decisions are not made with anything but God's will, divine justice, and definitely not to appease the angels like some kind of dictator throwing propaganda at a restless army. Just letting that thought run through her head is sacrilegious, she knows. Thankfully, angels can't read minds.
She watches the other angels all around her start to fall away like shadows, creeping from their places in the vines, on their way back to their work. The show is over now, lights gone and air calm again, everything back to normal.
Only Trinity stays, stupidly, like she always does. Just to make sure, she tells herself. Just to be sure.
Ayana.
The voice is not solid, like a human's or even an angel's. It's deep and sweet and sad, and seems to be made up of the air. It comes from everywhere, and from inside of yourself. It always makes Trinity want to cry. Which she doesn't. Obviously.
You have been judged by the Holy Spirit, the voice says. Your life on Earth weighed by the divine powers.
Ok, Trinity thinks as she watches Ayana try to stand, blinking and shivering like she's just been woken up. So far so good. Now all that's left is the "Your soul is worthy," and it's over. Another job perfectly done--
And your soul has been found lacking.
Wait.
What?
Trinity freezes. She feels the other angels stop cold where they had been retreating.
By the most ancient and omniscient powers in the universe, you are sentenced to spend eternity in the red fires of Hell.
Still standing in the middle of the river, Ayana's face twists from something like shock into horror.
Oh no, Trinity thinks. No, no, no. This can't be happening. It never has. It doesn't make any sense.
The voice disappears, leaving everyone where they are, a young girl soaking wet and a group of slack-jawed angels scattered like the stars missing from the sky. They all stand there stupid, not knowing what to do or say.
Trinity moves first.
"Ayana!" she calls across the water. "Get out of the river! Come on, hurry up!"
She tries to keep the panic out of her voice, she really does, but this is a new situation for her, ok? Still, Ayana starts over.
When she finally stumbles out of the water, shaking violently, Trinity rushes to hold her up. Wrapping her jacket around Ayana, quietly mourning for the leather, Trinity looks around them frantically.
"It said Hell," Ayana says wildly, "Did you hear? It said to literally go to hell!"
"Yeah, I heard that part," Trinity says anxiously.
"You said I'd be fine!" Ayana says accusingly.
"Well you should've been, alright?!"
"So what now?" Ayana asks.
Trinity has no idea what happens now. She's never been around for this part. She's always disappeared as soon as her charges were okayed, let into the celestial city or whatever. There must be someone coming for Ayana, but where? Are they on their way now?
Trinity takes a deep breath and thinks. Her job is over. Protocol is, she should've left long ago. Wherever this girl goes, however she gets there, is not Trinity's responsibility. What is her responsibility is to go back to her office, replace the bucket under the drip again, finish her reports, and move on to the next case.
She looks over at Ayana's terrified face.
Trinity has never been to the land of the damned, has never felt hellfire. But she's been taught what it means since the moment she came into existence. Hell is torment, suffering, and it never ends. It's where humans go when they're cruel and evil, so hopelessly screwed up that even God loving them can't save their souls.
And she read up on this girl's life in detail. She's a sad kid whose worst crimes include breaking up with guys over text and smoking too much weed. Ayana shouldn't be going there. It's a mistake. God doesn't make mistakes, yada yada, but Trinity knows that this is one.
She thinks of all the charges she's had, all the time spent memorizing files and doing perfect reports and being polite to her bosses and making sure she did everything right.
She's done everything right.
All the stress, all the effort, for what? Hundreds of years of perfect work just to throw it away for some random case that should be none of her concern?
She sighs deeply, hating herself even as the words come out of her mouth.
"Now," she tells Ayana with more confidence than she feels, "you come with me."
--
The boss's office is slightly bigger than the ones the guides get, yet somehow even more depressing, because this is the next step, where your ambition and blood and sweat and tears take you. Crammed between the break room and the janitor's closet, in a tiny lopsided space that looks like it's holding its breath. It could be seen as bare bones and minimalist, maybe, but it mostly just reads as sad. The only real upside is that, unlike Trinity's current workspace, it has actual walls. You know, dream big and all that.
Ayana stands next to her, looking soggy and downtrodden.
Looking over her shoulder the whole time, half expecting a team of security guards with pitchforks or something to stop them, Trinity had rushed them both out of the shadowy leafiness of the Garden, up the seemingly never ending stairs, and back through Reception. She'd then marched them through the halls, ignoring the stares from her coworkers as if returning from the Hall of Judgment with a catatonic human trailing in her wake was an everyday thing.
Now, standing in front of her manager's office, Trinity reviews the events leading up to her making what may be the biggest mistake of her life.
She took a human through the process, the human was judged unworthy of salvation, which is highly unusual, and was sentenced to Hell, which is unheard of for a soul delivered by an angel. Trinity then took the human back up the way they came, something that has never been done before, because she believed the omniscient and all powerful Lord they all serve had screwed up.
Well. There's really no good way to explain that without sounding like an insubordinate maniac, so she might as well just get this over with.
She knocks politely.
"Yes?" a muffled voice calls out.
"It's Trinity."
"You may enter."
She opens the door delicately (like everything in this place, it's old and precarious, and one time Darius had walked in so zealously the door had fallen off its hinges.) Inside sits a bored, irritable woman whose face is in a constant state of discomfort.
"Hello, ma'am."
"What do you need?" Gina says without looking up, sounding annoyed.
"Well, I just got finished with this case, I mean, I would have been finished with it, but something really strange happened, and I wasn't sure what to do since nothing like this has ever happened before, so I thought if I came to you--"
Maybe, Trinity thinks desperately, if she rambles long enough and dumbly enough then Gina won't notice the girl behind her, currently shifting her weight loudly and dripping water onto the linoleum.
"Trinity. What is that?" Gina interrupts disapprovingly, staring over her shoulder.
There goes that plan.
"--They sentenced her to Hell." Trinity says dejectedly.
Gina's face does something complicated, going from uncomprehending to shocked to controlled.
"Well," Gina decides on, "If that's the Lord's decision then that's the Lord's decision, and there's nothing else to say about it. I don't see why you would take this girl back up here."
"I know, but doesn't it just seem-- really strange?" Trinity asks, cringing as she speaks.
"That is not your call to make. You know that. This girl needs to be taken back right away, before the order of things is upset any further."
"Humans picked up by us never go to Hell. Ever. Anything that she did to deserve that would have been in her file," Trinity says in a rush, knowing she's digging herself in deeper with every word.
"Are you telling me that? Did I miss the day you got a promotion and now have things to explain to me?" Gina asks angrily. Trinity has a feeling it's a rhetorical question.
"No, ma'am, I didn't mean it like that. I'm really sorry."
"I never would've expected this from you, Trinity. You've always done your work so well," Gina says, but she looks appeased. "Now take this girl where she belongs right this second, and we'll talk about the consequences of your actions when you get back."
This is her out, Trinity thinks, she could just leave it at this. Take Ayana back, get some dirty looks and extra paperwork for a while but in general, stay on the nice, steady path she's carved out for herself. She doesn't have to throw everything away. She can stay safe, comfortable. Treated like a child, sure, but on her way to something better. It would make perfect sense. It would be so easy.
So of course, when she opens her mouth what comes out is, "I want to make an appeal."
Gina laughs, but it isn't a nice sound. "An appeal? An appeal to who? Are you planning on asking God to go back and look over His work for errors? A human's fate in the afterlife has not been changed since the Resurrection. And anyway, even if something like that existed, which it doesn't, you're a guide. You don't practice law. What the Hell are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking that this can't be right," Trinity just keeps talking, doesn't she? "It doesn't make any sense at all."
Gina's voice gets dangerously sharp, her eyes thin. "What doesn't make sense is you driving your career in the ground by not listening to me. I don't know what's gotten into you. Now do what I tell you, and bring. Her. Back."
Trinity takes a deep breath, runs through her options again in her head. It doesn't take very long; she doesn't actually have any.
"Okay," she says in what she hopes is an appropriately submissive mumble, "Okay."
Ayana, who's been uncharacteristically silent during this conversation, looks alarmed. Trinity cuts her off with a look.
Gina watches them go, looking mostly irritated at the interruption, but of course, there's also fear. Trinity isn't the only one who could get in trouble for this if it went too far. She's at the bottom of the food chain, dispensable, and Gina is barely higher up than Trinity. If anything goes wrong, everyone gets skittish, distances themselves as much as possible. The thought of being blamed, being punished, is petrifying. Just like Trinity was potentially ruining her career by breaking the rules, Gina is potentially ruining hers just by having something go awry like this in her department. God may be all about forgiveness, but angels aren't. It's not what they're taught.
As soon as the door shuts behind them, Ayana grabs Trinity's arm.
"You're not really gonna do what she said, are you?"
Trinity rolls her eyes. "No," she says anxiously, "We're gonna try something else."
She says it with more certainty than she really has. She doesn't exactly have a plan so much as a vague memory.
"What?" Ayana asks impatiently.
"She said appeals don't happen," Trinity says distractedly, "But they do. Or, one did. I remember, during my training, I heard something-- There was a human sent to Hell, and everybody was talking about him fighting it."
"Did it work? Did he get out?"
"I don't know. I don't remember, everything was so busy and it was just bits of a conversation between two coworkers passing through…" Trinity trails off.
That day had been busy. Every day during her first year had been busy. Newly born, ripped from her quiet, solitary place in the sky, confused and afraid, she was thrown into the chaos of the Floor without a second thought. It was a shock, and her body ached and burned in its new form, but this was her purpose, and she'd forced herself into shape quickly.
She remembers all the new voices, new faces and sounds, remembers being dragged around, wide-eyed and soaking it all in for the first days of training before finally standing on her own.
And in all of that, she remembers bits and pieces, phrases she'd clung to with no context.
Did you hear?
Yeah, it's crazy.
Someone told me she loved him, and that's why she did it.
I heard it was a filing mistake, Jesus, you're so melodramatic.
Well whoever made that mistake… God bless them, I feel bad, but they're out the door.
I mean, hey, if it really was an error, the guy can't just stay damned for no reason, right? They have to do something.
Nobody's decision is just changed. That's not a thing.
Huh, tell that to Jeremy Ovalles. He thinks it's a thing.
Humans don't know anything. They're clueless and would do anything to save their own skin.
Wouldn't we all?
An angel's memory is amazing. It has to be. All those case files Trinity had been thinking about memorizing word for word centuries ago? She still remembers them today. Humans' memories are foggy and unreliable, slipping from their minds like sand through their fingers as soon as they happen, but for angels, it's different. Trinity's people can recall past events to their mind and watch them play out like recordings in sharp detail.
But jeez, those particular days were loud and hazy. Trinity had overheard that conversation between two guides gossipping on their lunch break, as she looked wildly between her bored mentor showing her how to use the clock-in cards and a hysterical dead human child still crying for her mom.
God, her life sucks.
Anyway, Trinity can't remember as well as she might be able to if she hadn't been half insane when it happened, but she knows what they were talking about. A human who'd been sent to Hell, insisting there must have been a mistake. She doesn't know if he'd been picked up by a guide or by the Fallen, she doesn't know any of the details at all, but she knows that.
Something like this has happened before. It's not completely hopeless. And they have a name. Jeremy Ovalles.
It gives her a surge of motivation, and she looks up at Ayana with a new spark of hope.
"Uh, are you okay?" Ayana asks, looking concerned, "Your face, it's kind of--"
"What?"
"You look a little--"
"What?"
"You look like you're making an expression."
"Shut up. Do you want my help or not? Come on, there's somewhere we need to go."
"Awesome," Ayana says, sounding like she means the opposite, "Hey, do you have any comfortable shoes I can borrow?" She looks down at the heels she's been carrying in her hand since the Judgment, which are impractically tall and sparkly, and now half covered in mud. "These are super hot, so I brought them back from the river, but bad for being dragged around all day."
Rolling her eyes for what must be a record amount of times in a day, Trinity changes their direction yet again to stop by her room.
---
Carrying her other jacket, a towel, a blazer she had to dig embarrassingly far into the back of her closet to find, and the one extra pair of comfortable shoes she has, Trinity steps out of her room. Ayana, who at least has stopped dripping and now only looks slightly damp and miserable, is waiting in the hallway, leaning against the wall with her arms folded over her chest and head turned up toward the ceiling like the cool angsty young adult she is.
Stunned, arms full of various garments, Trinity wonders for the sixth time today how this is her life.
"Okay," she announces with much more authority than she's ever used to announce anything before, "Here's how we're gonna do this. Dry yourself off, put these on, we'll go look for some records, and then we're going to see our old friend Darius. Remember him?"
"Yes," Ayana says slowly, as Trinity shoves the towel, blazer, and shoes in her general direction. "I do. Um, I think I meant more like sneakers though?"
"This isn't Payless," Trinity says, dropping the sturdy black boots onto the floor in front of Ayana while she puts her replacement jacket around her own shoulders, "These are what I had. Take them or go barefoot."
"Fine, jeez," Ayana mutters, towel in her hair. She starts to pull on the boots.
"Good," Trinity says, "We need you looking presentable anyway."
Ayana looks at the blazer in a way that can only be described as severely doubtful. "Is that what that's for?"
"It's professional," Trinity says defensively. It's actually hideous, pinstriped and a weird greyish brownish color and three sizes too big for either of them, but Trinity doesn't really have an expansive wardrobe at the moment, ok? It's what Trinity wore the one time she had to go to court and now she's passing it on.
"If you say so," Ayana says, still looking at the blazer like it's done something to personally offend her. She reluctantly puts it on, and shakes the towel out of her hair, dark curls falling down onto her shoulders.
"You look…" Trinity searches for the right word. "Good," she says lamely.
Ayana stares, unimpressed. "Tell me the truth."
"You look like you tried on your mom's clothes and fell into a puddle. But it's better than it was before, I swear."
"Shouldn't angels not be able to lie?" Ayana grumbles, handing her the towel.
"I'm not lying," Trinity says earnestly. She's totally lying. What was she thinking with the blazer? Oh well, too late now. "And I'm gonna need you to hand over those heels," Trinity adds.
"What?" Ayana says in surprise. "No."
"You're not using them now, are you? They're covered in mud and-- what appears to be a small beetle is crawling out of one of them. Which. Ew."
"I love these heels," Ayana says, holding them protectively.
"Look, you'll get them back," Trinity reassures her without really having any weight to put behind that promise, which apparently is her MO today.
"Fine," Ayana says, holding them out. It takes a few seconds for her to actually let them go, but Trinity wins their disturbing little tug-of-war and throws them in her room with the towel, slamming the door and shuttering as she imagines whatever creatures that have infested the shoes making a new home in her walls.
Honestly, things have really taken a sharp downturn for Trinity since this morning.
Finally ready, they walk shakily down the hallway, an angel regretting her life choices as she makes them and a human in skinny jeans and a giant ugly blazer facing eternal damnation.
Life, right? Or, you know. After-life.
---
They swing by the Archives first.
Trinity heads toward the Human Records and Ayana trails after her, looking around in awe.
"It's like a warehouse," Ayana says in awe. "Like Ikea but bigger."
"Yeah, if Ikea was filled with questionably shelved records of human death and monthly wing comb expenses," Trinity mutters. It would be under J or O…
The place actually is pretty impressive. It's enormous and what some unkind people, like Trinity, would call poorly organized. But it makes her feel better being there, smelling the paper and manila folder smell. It's something about the way everything is laid out for her if she needs it. Anything she could want to know, she could find just by knowing the alphabet. The rate of global warming swallowing the Earth, the Floor's electricity bill from twenty years ago, the number of jazz musicians to die in 1984 and the exact percentage of those deaths that were due to alcoholism, you name it.
She could spend days in the aisles, going from shelf to shelf and reading for hours. It's that angel thing again. They're a bunch of know-it-alls and if they lived on Earth as humans they'd all be considered huge dorks.
Toward the end of the O section sits three full shelves of Ovalleses.
"When I was in the river," Ayana says, her voice a little strange, "I saw my life."
"Yeah?" Trinity says conversationally, sifting through folders. She goes past the Jacks and backs up when she sees the Juanas. "What'd you see?"
"I saw things I didn't remember before, that I couldn't possibly have remembered."
"Like what?"
"My baptism. My birth. That was kinda gross."
"It's not gross," Trinity says distractedly, "It's an ancient religious rite that symbolizes purification and being received into a community of God."
"I meant the birth thing," Ayana says. "Seeing myself be born was gross."
"Oh. I guess that makes more sense." There they are. A nice row of folders with Ovalles, Jeremy on the tab. "So, was it nice?"
"What?"
"Your baptism."
"I guess?" Ayana says. "My mom and my grandma were still arguing over what to name me as they walked into the church."
"Ayana's a fine name," Trinity says placatingly as she opens a folder. Nope, this guy went straight to Heaven. He was a pediatrician who did work for Doctors Without Borders. Ugh.
"It's just weird how much I know now. And I don't just know it, I remember it. It's like my head is full. Is that supposed to happen?" Ayana asks.
"Yeah, probably. Sure." Trinity discards a Jeremy who was a circus clown in Venezuela in the 1930s. Not that she has anything against circus clowns, it's just that they're all evil and definitely going to Hell without question.
Ayana squints at her suspiciously. "I'm starting to feel like you just say things in a way that sounds like they're true when really you have no idea what you're talking about."
Trinity barely glances up. "Are you just realizing that now?"
There's really only three more Jeremys, and if it's not this next one--
"Gotcha!" Trinity says triumphantly.
"Let me see." Ayana says, crowding over Trinity's shoulder.
"Jeremy Ovalles, age 47," Trinity reads out loud. "He died in 1809, in a bar fight. He had an estranged daughter and no other family, and he made a living as a knocker-upper."
Ayana looks horrified. "As a what?"
"He went around banging on people's doors to wake them up in the morning," Trinity says.
"Why would it be called something like that?"
"Like what?"
"It sounds like he knocked people up for a living!"
"He did. Alarm clocks really sucked back then."
"Never mind," Ayana sighs.
Trinity keeps reading. "He was sentenced to Hell… But this says he's still there."
"Maybe he's the wrong guy?"
"No, it has to be him. None of the others make any sense."
Ayana shrugs helpfully.
"Okay, whatever. We got what we came for, now let's just get out of here." Trinity takes the whole folder and signs it out in the front.
"I'm nothing like Jeremy anyway," Ayana says indignantly as they leave. "I'm way cooler. And I'd never be a knocker-upper."
"Yeah, ok," Trinity says. "Tell that to your outfit."
"I can't believe you just said that."
Their voices echo back through the halls as they leave the records behind on their infinite shelves.