Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If there was one thing about Kat’s life that stayed the same before and after she found out she was a Hell Maiden, it was that she hated asking for help.

When she was little, she was good at it. If she couldn’t quite reach a record on the shelves that housed her dad’s collection, she would ask him to grab it for her. If she couldn’t figure out how to spell a word while working on her second grade homework, she would ask her mom. Help was always offered, and asking for it was encouraged. After Kat’s parents died, all that went away.

Asking for help meant ridicule, shaming, and no real answers. At the group home, the older kids would tease, and at school, the teachers would scoff. In prison, it’s every person for themselves, but by that point, she knew not to rely on anyone but herself.

It wasn’t exactly the same at Rust Bank Catholic, but old habits die hard.

Kat knew that her friends weren’t like the people she met in the group home or prison, but that didn’t mean they were her parents, either. Kids her age who had been nice to her in the past had laughed in her face when she’d asked them for help on a homework problem. Teachers she had trusted had told her she was a disappointment for getting less than a perfect grade on a test. Even though Raul and Sister Helley and Siobhan and others at RBC had proven to have her back when they’d taken down Klax Korp, she couldn’t be sure that the same kindness would extend to when the fate of their town wasn’t at stake. Kat had come to love the people around her, she really had, but she wasn’t quite ready to completely trust them just yet, even if it was with something as trivial as her math homework.

Kat had been struggling with the bookwork for an hour, and it didn’t make any more sense than it had when she started. Kat had never particularly liked math, but when she’d been locked up they’d hardly bothered to give her much of an education, and now she felt leagues behind everyone else in her pre-algebra class. It was well past midnight, Siobhan was passed out on the bed across from hers in the room they shared now that the other girl was also a ward of the state, and Kat was about ready to scream. She tugged on her hair as she held her head in her hands, the letters and numbers on the page in front of her beginning to swirl into an unreadable mess. Her grade in math was already teetering between a C and a D, and if she didn’t get this homework done, her situation would only get worse. She needed a solution, as with her alarm set for seven in the morning, she needed a solution fast. With one last harsh tug to her hair, Kat stood up, snatched the textbook and paper she’d been working on off her desk, and slipped out of the room as quietly as she could.

Raul had shown Kat how to get up to the abandoned bell tower not long after everything with Klax Korp went down, so it was easy for her to shimmy the door to the staircase open without breaking the ancient lock and avoid all the creaky stairs that might alert the nuns that a student was up well past curfew. When she was safely at the top of the tower where she wouldn’t be heard by anyone in the school, she threw her homework onto the desk Raul usually used for drawing, pulled a slip of paper out of her pocket, and started reciting the Latin written on it.

After the Bearz-a-bub had given the words for Kat to repeat in order to summon her demons, she had committed them to memory as best she could until she’d gotten the chance to write them down. She’d had to look up a couple of them, so she wasn’t completely sure that the incantation would work, but she was out of options.

It was less than a minute after Kat had recited the Latin on her slip of paper that there was a rumbling noise from outside, then rapidly approaching screaming as two figures were thrown through the window that was, thankfully, open.

Kat’s eyes were wide as she stared down at Wendell and Wild, groaning in pain where they had landed against the opposite wall. Those weird bird-things that Kat had seen when Belzer had shown up squawked mockingly outside the window, and she wondered what exactly she had just gotten herself into.

“Hell Maiden?” Wild asked, both of the brothers recovering quickly from their speedy entrance and standing.

“Why the hell did you just come flying through the window?” Kat hissed in a half-whisper, one ear listening for any sign that the nuns had heard the commotion and were coming to investigate. All she heard was more squawks from the bird-things outside, this time sounding suspiciously like laughs. Both brothers glared out the window, and the bird-things retreated.

“We need those assholes to fly us up out the crack that your summoning made in the earth. They just like being dicks about getting us here,” Wendell explained as he dusted himself off.

“Let’s just hope the nuns didn’t hear that,” Kat grumbled, crossing her arms. Now that the brothers were here, she couldn’t help but feel nervous. She hadn’t really thought summoning them through, the decision made out of desperation and sleep-deprivation. She didn’t know if they’d be upset that she summoned them without warning, or if they’d be cruel about what she intended to ask of them. At least it would be expected of them, being demons and all.

“How did you remember how to summon us?” Wild asked, his head slightly tilted to the side.

“And why did you summon us?” Wendell added, mirroring his brother’s body language. Kat’s shoulders rose up to her ears under their twin gazes.

“I wrote down what the Bearz-a-bub told me to say when I summoned y’all the first time, just in case I needed it again,” Kat explained, and instead of seeming annoyed, the brothers looked almost proud. Kat chalked it up to her being bad at reading facial expressions when she was tired and tried to ignore the warm feeling in her stomach at the thought.

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain why you needed us,” Wendell said, and even though he didn’t sound mad, Kat couldn’t help but look away. Unfortunately for her, she looked right towards her homework, and the brothers followed her gaze.

“What’s this?” Wild asked, moving to look at the open textbook, Wendell right behind him, and Kat cringed.

“It’s- um,” she stuttered, taking a step forward but ultimately hovering a few feet away from the brothers as they took in the algebra problems, Kat’s scratched-out attempts at solving them, and the tear in the paper from where she’d gotten so frustrated she’d ripped the pencil through it. Wendell picked up the paper she’d been trying to solve the problems on and turned back towards Kat with an incredulous look on his face.

“Did you summon us to help you with math homework?” he asked, and Kat winced.

“I don’t know, maybe!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. “You guys are demons, and demons are supposed to be evil, and math is definitely evil, so I just- I don’t know.” Kat deflated, looking down towards her bare feet, which were cold on the wooden floor of the tower. She didn’t have the energy to be embarrassed by the distant realization that she had summoned Wendell and Wild while in her pajamas.

“I know it’s stupid, I just couldn’t ask anyone else for help. You can go back to Hell, I’ll figure it out,” she said, quieter, and waited. For the brothers to make fun of her or leave without a word, she wasn’t sure, but whatever she was expecting, it wasn’t for the two to go silent, and then approach her.

“Hell Maiden,” Wild said, and the tone of his voice was enough to prompt Kat to whip her head up to look at him. He sounded sad. He looked it, too, and so did Wendell. Kat, confused, just hunched her shoulders.

“We’re not upset with you, if that’s what you're worried about,” he continued. “I know we didn’t explain all this Hell Maiden stuff very well when everything went down last month, but we meant it when we said we’re your personal demons. Anything you need, we’re here to help.”

“Even if it’s just math homework,” Wendell added.

“Even if it’s just math homework,” Wild nodded in agreement. Kat suddenly found herself with burning eyes and struggling to speak past a lump in her throat. The brothers, thankfully, let her collect herself for a moment before she spoke.

“If you’re sure,” she said, and both demons quickly nodded.

“We are,” Wendell said. He reached out and hovered one of his hands over Kat’s shoulder. When she didn’t move away, he rested it there, warm and grounding. At the contact, Kat blinded away the haze of fear that had overtaken her mind, suddenly aware of how exhausted she was, and let herself be led over to the table where her math textbook was.

“Let’s see how much of this we can knock out before you pass out on us,” Wendell said, a teasing lit to his voice, and Kat batted his hand off her shoulder.

“I’m just fine,” she said with a roll of her eyes, and both brothers scoffed. Kat couldn’t help but smile, even as Wild started reading out the first problem on the page.

They got three-fourths of the way through the work Kat needed to do before she fell asleep with her forehead resting on the desk, and she woke up the next morning in her bed, blanket tucked neatly around her body. When she wandered over to her desk where her textbook was sitting, she found the paper with her work on it sandwiched between the pages, the problems she knew she didn’t do completed in her own handwriting. Demons had more tricks up their sleeves than reviving the dead it seemed.

“Did you manage to figure it out?” Siobhan asked from where she was still in bed behind Kat, scaring her so badly that she jumped. "I know you were still working on whatever homework that is when I went to bed." Kat turned around with the paper in hand, still staring at it as she spoke.

“Yeah. I, uh, got some help,” she said. Siobhan hummed, and Kat looked up in time to see her sit up and stretch.

“That’s good, then. We’d better start getting ready for class.” Kat nodded silently in agreement, and looked back down at her paper. That warm feeling pooled in her stomach again, but this time, she found herself smiling instead of pushing it away. For the first time in a long time, asking for help didn’t seem so bad.

Chapter Text

Spring was just beginning when Raul and Kat started planning out how they were going to revive the brewery. They would have started earlier, if the area hadn’t been an active crime scene.

When the dead brewery workers were brought to testify in court about the Klaxons having purposefully started the fire that killed them, the site of the arson was re-classified as a crime scene while the claim was investigated. Whatever they found there, along with the testimonies of the workers, it was enough to get the Klaxons sentenced to life. A few months after Kat raised the dead, the brewery was once again unclassified as a crime scene, and the very next day, Kat and Raul were scouting the place out.

It would take a lot of work and even more money to restore the building to its former glory, but Kat wasn’t deterred. Even if it took her decades, she would get her parents’ business back up and running. She had all the time in the world. Besides, while she waited to raise the money to start construction to repair the building, she could work on other things. The first on her agenda was designing the new logo she had seen in her vision with Raul.

It was easy at first. Raul was easily one of the most talented artists Kat had ever met, and the two seemed to agree on every aspect of the design. Whatever Kat described from her vision, Raul seemed to know just how to draw it. Granted, it might have been because what she saw was the future, which was just the product of what she was Raul were designing in the present, but it hurt her head to think about it that way, so she tried not to.

Things went well for the first couple of weeks. Kat and Raul brainstormed over dozens of concepts in the tower, actively putting off their schoolwork in the process, until they finally felt like they were getting somewhere with the designs. That was, until Kat realized she couldn’t completely remember her vision.

“Is that even possible?” Raul asked when she told him, the two once again up in the bell tower after class. Kat shook her head.

“I guess. I remembered all of my visions so clearly before.”

“Maybe they’re like normal memories, so you forget parts of them after a while,” Raul suggested, and as much as Kat hated it, he was probably right. Kat still didn’t really know how to control her visions. Sister Helley and Manberg had been training her ever since she’d become a Hell Maiden, but the most progress she’d made was purposefully inducing her visions a handful of times. The only time she'd been able to purposefully see a specific point in the future had been when she’d had the vision of the brewery in the first place. She had no idea how she was supposed to bring it up again.

“I’ll ask Sister Helley and Manberg to let me train longer tonight,” Kat decided. “The sooner I can see that vision again, the sooner we can keep working on the logo.” Raul nodded, but he had a look on his face that Kat had come to realize meant he had something he wanted to say that he didn’t think would be very popular.

“What if we didn’t need to base it completely off your vision,” he asked, and Kat went still where she was sitting and bouncing her leg across the room. Raul flinched.

“It has to be exactly like the vision, you know that,” she said, staring Raul down. He averted his gaze, hunching his shoulders.

“I know that what you saw was really cool, but it doesn’t have to be exactly the same. I’m sure we’ll come up with something just as good.” Kat huffed, distantly aware that her anger was wholly misplaced, but that didn’t stop her from standing up and beginning to pace.

“You don’t get it, Raul. That’s the design I showed my parents, so that’s the way it has to be. Everything I showed my parents has to happen, or else I lied to them. It had to be exactly the same,” she urged, waving her hands around as she crossed the room over and over. Raul’s shoulders relaxed as she spoke, and instead of apprehensive, he now looked sad.

“Kat, it wouldn’t be lying to them if a few things were different. They knew that your visions weren’t the only way the future could happen. They literally helped change one of them,” Raul reasoned. Kat just shook her head.

“This is different. They liked what I showed them, so I have to make it happen. And I can’t exactly ask them what I saw, can I?” Kat huffed, her brief anger melting away as she collapsed back into her chair.

“Kat,” Raul said, and she grimaced a little at the pitying tone of his voice.

“They’re dead, and this is the last thing they saw. I have to make it happen.” The two sat in silence for a moment, neither knowing how to move on with the conversation, before Raul’s face suddenly lit up, and he was launching himself out of his chair and across the room.

“Woah!” Kat exclaimed as he latched onto her arm, dragging her out of her own chair and into the middle of the room, bouncing with excitement the whole way. “Raul, what the hell?”

“You can’t talk to your parents anymore, but I bet I knew of two people who can,” he explained, still bouncing on his toes and gripping Kat’s arm as she realized what he meant. Her eyes went wide, and her other hand latched onto both of her.

“You’re right. Holy shit, Raul, you’re right. I bet they can talk to my parents. You’re a genius!” she exclaimed, and Raul’s cheeks went a little pink at the compliment. The two weren’t together or anything, neither were they interested in being, but they were best friends, so Kat found herself just a little pleased at the fact that she could let Raul know just how much she appreciated him. She’d told Raul about her midnight study session with Wendell and Wild the day after it had happened, and instead of warning her against continuing to summon demons into the mortal world like Helley and Manberg had (something about how “even the nicest demons can be cruel” or whatever), he’d been ecstatic that she’d been able to do it again. He’d been even happier to hear that the demons had helped her out, and then proceeded to hit her over the head with a notebook and tell her that, if she ever needed help on anything ever again, she’d better ask him for it. Kat was getting better at asking for and accepting help, and in turn, she was getting better at showing her appreciation for it, too.

“Do you need me to leave to summon them?” Raul asked, snapping Kat out of her thoughts. She shook her head, both to clear her mind and let him know that he didn’t have to.

“Just open the window for me and stay off to the side of the room. They come up a little, well, chaotically,” she explained. Raul did as he was told, and Kat started reciting the Latin she had now memorized. In the moments of silence after her incantation, Raul glanced around the room.

“Did it wor-”

“Just wait,” Kat interrupted, moving herself so that she was also out of the way of the brothers’ inevitable entrance. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the sound of those creepy birds and the protests of two demons reached the pairs’ ears, and a moment later, two bodies came flying into the room through the window and hit the opposite wall.

“What the fuck!” Raul shouted as the brothers untangled themselves from the heap they’d landed in. Kat just laughed.

“We cannot keep doing that,” Wendell complained, stretching until his back popped, and Wild hummed in agreement. The two’s displeased expressions disappeared when they laid eyes on Kat, and both brothers grinned.

“Hell Maiden!” Wild exclaimed, and before Kat could react, he stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. Kat froze for a moment, a tiny bit out of the embarrassment of her friend being right there, but mostly out of sheer surprise. Kat would be a liar if she said she didn’t like hugs, but her time in the system and in jail made her hesitant to seek out any kind of physical affection. She hadn’t really realized how long it had been since someone had hugged her. As she snapped out of her shock and hugged Wild back, she realized the last time had been her parents before they died for a second time. She made the executive decision to push that realization into the back of her mind of the foreseeable future.

“It’s good to see you,” Wendell said as Wild pulled back, and Kat found herself easily falling into a hug with the other brother. She caught a glimpse of Raul smiling in that knowing way he did whenever he was right about something, and even though Kat had no idea what the hell he had been right about, she still flipped him off behind Wendell’s back. Both he and Wild laughed.

“It’s nice to see y’all, too,” she said, pulling away again so that she was standing in front of the two brothers, Raul to off to her side. Kat glanced over at him and gave him a pointed look.

“Oh, uh, hi,” he said, giving Wendell and Wild an awkward wave.

“Hey, kid,” Wendell greeted back.

“Raul, right? The one from the graveyard?” Wild asked. Raul nodded his head.

“We never apologized for that, did we?” Wendell asked his brother, and the two grimaced, both turning to face Raul with sheepish smiles on their faces. Raul just waved a dismissing hand in the air.

“No, it’s fine, you don’t have to. Besides, Kat’s already told me what big softies the both of you are, anyways,” he said.

“Raul,” Kat hissed, but the brothers just laughed, especially once they noticed the way her face had gone pink.

“Well, it’s common knowledge that demons can and will do anything for their Hell Maidens,” Wild said, and all three of them started laughing when Kat somehow turned ever redder.

“Moving on!” she declared, and mercifully, the three let her change the topic of conversation.

“What’s up?” Wendell asked.

“So, Raul and I have been working on a new logo for my parents’ brewery, and we’re basing it off the one I saw in my vision, but I forgot everything that was a part of the logo because I guess visions are like memories and they fade but- anyways, Raul had the idea that I could ask if you could, um, ask my parents if they remember the whole thing?” she asked in a rush. Wendell and Wild both inhaled, and then shared a look that didn’t appear very promising.

“It’s just, you guys said you’d reserve a place for Kat’s parents in your park, so I thought maybe you could talk to them, too, is all,” Raul added. Wendell and Wild just looked back at Kat with twin expressions of regret.

“I’m sorry, Hell Maiden, but that’s not quite how it works,” Wendell said, and Kat’s heart sank.

“Oh,” she said, her gaze falling to the ground.

“We can see your parents, if we look for them, but we can’t really talk to them. Belzer’s the only one who can directly interact with the souls, and he’s very particular about not doing that,” Wild explained.

“We’re sorry we can’t do more,” Wendell added, placing a tentative hand on Kat’s shoulder. When she didn’t pull away, he pulled her into a hug. This time, she didn’t even register the fact that she should probably be embarrassed, and instead just wrapped her arms around Wendell and hugged back.

“It was a stupid idea, anyways,” she mumbled into his shirt, quiet enough that only he could hear, and the demon made a noise of protest, pulling away from the hug so he could hold Kat at an arms-length. A little part of her mourned the hug ending.

“It wasn’t a stupid idea at all,” Wendell said, and Wild nodded in agreement.

“It was a pretty smart assumption, actually. Both of you had every reason to think we could talk to them. You two don’t have to feel bad,” he added onto his brother’s words. Kat still felt like shit, but their reassurance made her feel at least a little better.

“I’m sorry for summoning you up here for nothing,” Kat said, and both brothers once again made noises of protest.

“We told you, there’s no such thing as a stupid request. Even if we can’t do what you ask, we’re glad you summoned us.” Wild said. Kat just shrugged.

“Um, if I can-” Raul spoke up from the other side of the room, hunching his shoulders just a bit as the other three turned to look at him. “If I can ask, you two both designed your amusement park, right?” Both brothers nodded. “Does that mean you guys designed a lot of the artistic parts, too?” Again, the demons nodded, though they looked confused. Kat, however, suddenly realized what Raul was getting at.

“Help us with the logo!” she exclaimed, ducking out from under Wendell’s hands and over to the desk that the design concepts were on. She bounced back over to the brothers with the papers in hand and thrust them towards them. “Raul was right. You park looked really cool, so I bet you can help us make the logo look really cool, too,” she explained. The brothers both looked a mix of stunned and tentatively hopeful.

“You want us to help you with the design?” Wendell asked, and just by his tone of voice, Kat could tell how much he wanted to.

“Yeah,” she said. “You guys designed a whole ass theme park. You’ll be a huge help.”

“We’d be honored,” Wild said, and Kat grinned.

The four poured over the concepts Raul had drawn up for the next couple of hours. They refined some already existing elements and added on some extra details that enhanced the design. The most notable was adding a pair of wings to the backs of Kat’s parents, which she immediately recognized as what had been the missing piece from her vision. In the end, they had a logo that Kat and Raul were happy with, and Wendell and Wild were proud of. They bid their goodbyes with two final hugs for Kat and the ruffling of Raul’s hair. After the two demons were gone, Raul turned to Kat and grabbed her shoulders.

“Those are the two most artistically gifted people I have ever met,” he said, so serious that Kat couldn’t help but laugh.

“We can summon them again another time if you want,” she said, brushing his hands off her shoulders and making her way towards the stairs. The sun was setting, which meant it was almost time for dinner.

“Can we? Oh my god, that would be awesome. They’re way cooler when they’re not locking me behind a sewer grate,” Raul gushed, and Kat didn’t bother hiding the smile on her face at her friend's antics. She was really glad she had gotten to properly introduce the three of them. And she meant it when she said she was open to the idea of summoning Wendell and Wild sometime in the near future. She was already excited to see them again.

Chapter Text

Most of the time, Kat had good days. She would never stop missing her parents, not until the day she died and saw them again, but in the years since she’d lost them, she’d learned to compartmentalize that grief, to live her life without their deaths weighing on every single thing she did. After getting to see them again, it was even easier, knowing they were down there waiting for her, proud of her, anxious for her to tell them about all she achieved in her life once she’d lived it to its fullest. Not being able to keep them up in the living world with her had hurt, but just being able to see them had healed something in her she never thought she would ever be able to fix. But-

But.

Grief was a monster in itself, Kat had realized very young. It didn’t listen to reason, and it didn’t hold back if it didn’t want to. Kat knew her parents were having the time of their afterlives in Wendell and Wild’s fun park, and most days that was enough.

Tonight, it wasn’t.

It was well and truly spring now, the night air only uncomfortably chilly against Kat’s bare arms, instead of dangerously freezing. It was past two in the morning, but Kat hadn’t been able to come close to sleeping since she and Siobhan had turned off the lights over three hours prior. She’d decided she couldn’t stand staring at the empty bunk above her any longer and snuck out. Usually, she would have gone up to the belltower, but something in her had pulled her outside, to the grounds behind RBC. The sky was clear, the moon lighting her way across the grounds until she found a decently large tree. She decided that was as good a place as any to wallow, and slumped against its trunk, pulling her knees to her chest and resting her chin on top of them.

She sighed, and nobody but herself, the moon above, and the tree at her back heard it. It just made her feel worse.

Kat missed her parents so much it was hard to even put into words. Sometimes, like that night, she wouldn’t be able to get the thought of them out of her head. How life would be, if they were still alive. How she would go to sleep in her bed in her childhood room, the soft sound of the record player and her parents talking lulling her to sleep from the living room. How her dad would cook them dinner every night and how her mom would do her hair every day before school. How they’d pick her up after school every day and take her to the brewery, where she’d do her homework and get to know the employees and try to sneak a sip of the samples that had been left out and unattended. How her life would just be so different and so much better.

Kat couldn’t say her life was horrible, or even bad, really. Compared to her time in the system and juvie before RBC, her life now was a fairytale. She had friends, adults who cared about her, and the brewery to bring back to life. But that didn’t stop the fact that she knew, with everything in her, that if her parents were alive, her life would be perfect. Everything in her ached, her chest and stomach and head, as if she was about to explode, and she just wanted her parents back.

Suddenly, like she hadn’t actually been in her body for the past few minutes and was only just coming back to herself, Kat realized she was hyperventilating. Her chest was heaving and her face was wet, and she couldn’t hear the sound of the breeze rustling the leaves above her head anymore. She did her best to calm her breathing, but it only worked enough for her to be able to hear again.

Something lonely in Kat’s chest kept tugging, begging to be remedied. But she didn’t want to wake up Raul and Siobhan, who both had tests in the morning, or Sister Helley, who would get that worried look on her face and pester Kat with questions about how she was doing for the next week at least. She realized, miserably, that there was nobody around that she could go to. Not without feeling guilty. Not without being a bother.

She sat there for another few minutes, shivering slightly, her thoughts a miserable cycle, until the thought of her demons crossed her mind. And-

Her first instinct was not to summon them. Kat knew that Hell Maidens and their demons had a bond stronger than most people would ever imagine, but she’d only interacted with them a handful of times. She’d summoned them for help before, yes, but this was different. This wasn’t homework or some designs, this was Kat at her worst. She didn’t want them to see her like this. She didn’t want their judgment.

But something in her still told her to summon them. “Anything you need, we’re here to help,” she remembered. “We told you, there’s no such thing as a stupid request. Even if we can’t do what you ask, we’re glad you summoned us.” Maybe it was because she was exhausted, maybe it was because she was lonely, maybe it was because Kat trusted the brothers. No matter the reason, she found the Latin words falling out of her mouth before she could talk herself out of summoning them.

Like always, it wasn’t very long before the effects of the summoning became clear. This time, though, Kat was on the ground instead of in the belltower, and watched as the earth opened up in front of her, large enough to fit a minivan into. She heard Wendell and Wild before she saw them, shouting as they ascended into the world of the living, popping out the whole and being dropped by those demon bird things she still hadn’t asked them the name of yet.

“That was a lot less painful than usual,” Wendell remarked, standing up from where he had face planted into the grass a few feet away from Kat. Wild hummed in agreement, doing the same and dusting himself off as he took in his surroundings. It only took a couple seconds for both brothers to lock eyes on Kat.

“Hell Maiden?” Wild asked, eyes scanning over Kat as he took the scene in front of him, Wendell doing the same. Both had obvious looks of concern on their faces, even if they didn’t seem to know exactly what to do. Kat felt guilty. Kat felt relieved.

“Hi,” she greeted miserably, sniffing. She didn’t know what to say to them, how to explain that she’d missed her parents so much she’d summoned two demons just to keep her company. Saying it out loud would just make her feel pathetic. Then again, not saying anything didn’t make her feel much better, either.

Their awkward staring contest lasted an agonizing thirty seconds, Kat peering up at Wendell and Wild, and the brothers gazing down at her. Thirty seconds was as much as Kat could bear before everything felt too much too much too much again, and she buried her face into her knees again.

Wendell and Wild made twin noises of protest, hurt sounds, sounds that made Kat feel even more guilty. She didn’t want them to see her like this. She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t know what she wanted.

“Kat?” Wendell asked, his voice closer, and Kat distantly realized that the two had gotten nearer to her as her breathing was picking up her and head was getting fuzzing and noises were becoming muddy and-

And there were arms around her, pulling her out of the ball she’d made of herself and into a hug.

Kat felt whatever had been building inside of her for the last four hours give way, not bothering to even attempt to stop the sob that escaped her as she curled her hands into the suit jacket she was pressed against and let everything go.

Kat let herself cry, really cry, for the first time in a long time. She couldn’t find the energy to be embarrassed about the fact that she was certainly ruining the jacket her face was pressed into, snot and tears running right off of her face and into the fabric. She distantly realized it was Wendell who was holding her, the demon having apparently sat next to her before he’d wrapped both arms around her. One of his hands was holding her head to his chest, the other rubbing a soothing pattern up and down her back. She could feel Wild hovering behind her, too, and one of his hands on her shoulder, his thumb making a similar pattern to Wendell, a similar motion of comfort.

It took a few minutes for her to calm down enough to control her breathing. Once she had stopped hiccuping every few seconds, she pulled away from Wendell, who let her go easily, hands shifting to rest on her forearms.

“Sorry,” she sniffled, bowing her head so she didn’t have to meet the demon’s eyes. Wild made a noise of protest from behind her, and Wendell squeezed her arms gently.

“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” Wendell assured her, Wild humming in agreement. Kat was almost starting to believe them. Or maybe she was just too exhausted to care anymore.

“Can you- I don’t know. Nevermind, I don’t even know why I summoned you guys, I’m sorry, you can go-” she rambled, curling back into herself, and this time it was Wild who pulled her into a hug.

“It’s okay,” he soothed, at the same time Wendell said, “Slow down, Hell Maiden.” The brothers shuffled her around so that she was sandwiched between them, Wild’s arm around her back and Wendell’s over her shoulder, her head resting on Wild’s shoulder. They didn’t have insanely hot body temperatures, like most people probably would’ve expected of demons, but they were warm like a human would be, and Kat found that she wasn’t shivering anymore.

“We’ll stay here as long as you need,” Wild said softly.

“And if you want to tell us what’s going on, we’re all ears,” Wendell added. Frustrated tears welled in Kat’s eyes at the brothers’ kindness. What had she done to deserve guardians like them?

“It’s stupid,” she mumbled, tangling her fingers together. Fidgeting helped her talk, sometimes.

“Nah,” Wild said easily, and the sheer confidence in the way he said it was almost enough to make Kat laugh. “You’re our Hell Maiden, we’re kinda here for you no matter what. Nothing you say is gonna be stupid.” Kat considered it for a long moment, and the brothers let her, the three of them sitting against each other and the tree in a comfortable silence.

The system had hurt Kat, and she knew it. The thought of telling them what was making her so upset terrified her, because a part of her brain still believed that divulging that information would only lead it being used against her. Hell, just letting someone see her in such a miserable state had that part of her brain convinced everyone would be calling her a crybaby bitch for the next month at least. But Wendell and Wild had proved themselves to her before, and she knew that if she was ever going to trust them fully, she had to take this chance. So, she tugged harder on her fingers, and spoke.

“I just really miss my parents,” she said softly, and it felt like a confession. Neither demon said a word, they just tightened their half-hugs. Kat took a deep breath. She’d already started, she could finish it now.

“I’m so glad I got to see them again, and I know they’re down there with you guy’s and that they’re happy, but I still miss them. And if they were here everything would be better and I’d be happy and- and if I hadn’t screamed when I saw the worm in that stupid fucking apple-” Kat cut herself off, breath hitching as she began to cry again. She turned her head to that it was buried in Wild’s shoulder, words once again lost.

“You blame yourself?” Wendell asked, and Kat nodded, face still hidden. “You shouldn’t, don’t ever blame yourself for that, Kat,” he said, his voice more serious than she’d ever heard him.

“We don’t know what caused that crash, we weren’t there, but we know it wasn’t you. And even if it was? It’s still not your fault,” Wild assured her, and Kat let out a sob. Both brothers squeezed her tighter.

“I’m serious. Nobody will ever blame you for it. Not us, not your parents, nobody. And you shouldn’t either. You were basically a baby, Hell Maiden. Just because you lived doesn’t mean you should spend your life feeling guilty for it.”

God, they were too fucking smart.

“If- if I had died with them-”

“No, Kat-”

“Absolutely not. Do not go there, please,” Wendell urged.

“I don’t mean it like that,” she clarified. “I just wish we were together.”

“We do too, and so do your parents,” Wild said. “One day, you will be. But until then, you need to live, you hear me? You need to talk to someone about this, so you can spend your very long life kicking ass guilt-free, okay?” Kat managed a chuckle, and she felt the brothers become just a little less tense.

“I’m talking to you guys,” she said, and the demons scoffed in unison.

“I mean one of those professionals you humans have. We’re your demons, not doctors,” Wild said, a teasing lilt to his voice. Kat just shook her head.

“Maybe,” she conceded, and that was seemingly good enough for the both of them. Kat did have to admit that she felt better, both from speaking her feelings aloud, and the reassurance Wendell and Wild had provided. Her maybe was genuine. If she still felt tentatively hopeful like she did at that moment in the morning, maybe she’d talk to Sister Helley after class.

Emotional release mostly over, Kat felt herself crashing. She’d turned her head back to where it had been before so she could breathe easier, but her eyes were still closed, and she felt herself slowly drifting off to sleep.

“You falling asleep on us, Hell Maiden?” Wendell asked. Kat just hummed, earning soft laughs from both brothers. “Go ahead,” he continued. “We’ll stay until you’re asleep.” Kat was more than happy to oblige.

The next morning, she woke up in her bunk, under the covers and only a little exhausted. Siobhan hadn’t seemed to notice that Kat had left the night before, nor that she’d apparently been brought back. The two got ready for school like normal, but Kat’s thoughts lingered on Wendell and Wild. They lingered in her mind all day, until the final bell rang, and everyone filed out of Sister Helley’s classroom.

Kat hung back. She hadn’t really made a promise, but she still intended to keep it.

Chapter Text

The beginning of the new school year was surreal for Kat.

For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t the new kid. She got to have new classes with the same teachers, talk to her classmates who were from out of town about what they did at home over the summer, and most of all, not worry about where she was supposed to fit in the social ladder of the school while everybody else had it figured out. It was equally refreshing and surreal.

One thing she wholly enjoyed was being on the other end of sizing up the new kids.

“They’re new,” Kat remarked on the first day of classes, nodding her head towards some older girls in line at lunch. She and Raul usually liked to eat outside, but summer was having its final hurrah, and Kat was pretty sure if she sat outside for more than ten minutes she’d turn into a puddle. She was absolutely positive Raul would last a whole thirty seconds, what with how he continued to insist on wearing his binder for his allotted eight hours, even when it was hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk.

“Yeah, I think they’re high schoolers,” Raul said, following Kat’s gaze to the four girls she had pointed out.

“We’re high schoolers, dumbass,” Kat reminded him, sympathizing with her friend’s grimace at being reminded of their new freshman status.

“My point,” Raul huffed, “is that we don’t usually get new high schoolers, especially ones that are, like, juniors.”

“My bet is on seniors,” Kat offered, but Raul just scoffed.

“You don’t have anything to bet. Besides, Siobhan already got to them. She said they’re juniors.” Kat frowned (though really it was more of a pout), earning a roll of the eyes from Raul.

“You’re no fun,” she groused, but didn’t make any more of a fuss as the conversation moved on, especially once Siobhan found their table and launched into a rant about their required reading in English.

Kat went a week without thinking about the new girls much at all. RBC wasn’t a large school by any means, but it was just big enough that Kat didn’t know a good chunk of the kids outside of her grade. Besides the bit of information Siobhan has gotten from talking to the girls and passed on to Raul (they were sixteen, they were all from the same school, they were incredibly cliquey), she learned nothing new about them, and figured she wouldn’t for the rest of the year.

She, of course, was not so lucky.

“So,” an unfamiliar voice came from right behind Kat as she was walking between classes, immediately putting her on edge. She stopped and turned to face the voice, and sure enough, the four new girls were flanked out behind her, all giving her equally intense appraising looks.

Kat had the distinct feeling that this was not going to be fun.

“Are the rumors true?” asked the same girl who had first spoken. She was a head taller than Kat, pale, with long black hair and a poorly-hidden sneer on her face. Obviously the ringleader.

“Real specific,” Kat answered, crossing her arms and schooling her face into a well-practiced scowl. She hoped she was still able to appropriately give off a “do not fuck with me” vibe after not needing to do so for almost a year. Unfortunately, the girls didn’t seem deterred in the slightest.

“Oh, y’know, we’ve heard all sorts of things about you,” the girl elaborated, her voice sickly sweet with fake curiosity.

“Like that you can speak to the dead,” one of the other girls piped up, a redhead about Kat’s height.

“Or that you have demonic powers,” another added, this one a brunette with glasses.

“My personal favorite is that you killed someone,” the ringleader finished, her grin sharp. Kat’s brain went into overdrive as she tried to figure out what answer would make these go away the fastest.

“People believe what they want,” she shrugged. The girls didn’t seem dissuaded. In fact, their leering almost got more intense.

This was really not going to be fun.

“You see, we’re of the personal opinion that everyone in this school is full of shit,” the first girl, whose name Kat was pretty sure was something like Jenny, said. “I mean, some scrawny freshman still stuck in her emo phase? Figures people would assume you’re some sort of Satan lover. But everyone says that you buy into it, too. So what gives, Kat?” The girl was grinning like a shark, and-

And the thing is, Kat was smart, but she was also a teenager.

When kids around school worked up the courage to come up and ask her to her face about the rumors that had been circulating about her ever since she’d helped save RBC, she gave them vague non-answers. She would neither confirm nor deny anything they said about her, because while she wasn’t going around trying to advertise the fact that she could summon literal demons, she also knew that flat out denying the rumors wouldn’t work. A little part of her also preened at the clear awe a lot of the more avid rumor-believers had for her. Sue her, being seen as somewhat of a hero around school was kind of a novelty.

This was not the usual awe or neutral curiosity. This was four girls trying to put her in what they perceived to be her place. And Kat was never one to give into those who thought themselves above her.

“Like I said, people can believe what they want. I can’t help it if people take the truth and run with it.” Kat took no small amount of satisfaction in the way the black haired girl’s face twitched in annoyance.

“Sure, whatever,” she conceded. “But you don’t believe in all that bullshit, do you?” Kat just shrugged again, much to the girl’s annoyance. The other girls were starting to look a mix of disappointed and bored.

“What I believe doesn’t really matter, does it?” Kat said, doing her best to look entirely uninterested and unbothered by the conversation. She still had her knack, it appeared, as the group of girls in front of her seemed to really lose interest.

“Whatever,” probably-Jenny repeated, rolling her eyes. “If you wanna lead a bunch of sixth graders on with some bullshit rumors, be my guest. I could care less.” Kat could have argued that it seemed like she really could not have cared more, but was so grateful that the girls were turning to leave her alone that she kept her mouth firmly shut.

Confrontation, by some miracle, successfully avoided, she herself turned to finish walking to class before she was tardy.

She noticed Siobhan standing behind her, having just rounded the corner, a second too late to do anything about the indignant look on her face.

“She is not bullshitting anybody,” her friend asserted.

Kat felt her stomach drop.

“Oh?” the ringleader turned back around, shark grin back on her face and even wider than before. Siobhan may have been popular, but she was genuine, and honest, and not used to being challenged by someone with more situational power than her. She was the unknowing prey, and Kat was trapped in the middle of the hunt.

“Kat’s not a liar,” Siobhan reiterated, crossing her arms and glaring up at the ringleader girl. “She’d probably be willing to tell you if you actually asked nicely, Janine.” So that was the girl’s name.

Janine was unimpressed.

“Oh yeah? And what exactly would she tell me? That she summons Satan on the regular and eats babies for breakfast? Grow up,” Janine scoffed. Siobhan’s face flushed with anger, and despite Kat elbowing her in the ribs hard, she continued on.

“She’d tell you that all the rumors aren’t true, but they’re based on the truth,” Siobhan explained, chin held high in defiance. Kat elbowed her again. Siobhan didn’t flinch.

“Well I am just dying to know what that truth is, Sharon,” Janine drawled, voice once again oozing with insincerity.

“It’s Siobhan,” she corrected.

“Whatever,” Janine scoffed. “It’s starting to sound like you don’t have a good answer, either. Maybe you’re the one spreading lies on her behalf, is that right?” Kat practically body checked Siobhan, sharply whispering her name under her breath, but she knew it was futile. The look of indignation on Siobhan’s face was unlike any expression she had ever seen on the girl before.

“The truth is that she can summon demons,” Siobhan hissed. Kat had told her about her ability ages ago, a while after they had become real friends, and she had never once regretted that decision until that exact moment.

The statement hung in the air for a moment, all the girls frozen in the now-empty hallway. For a fleeting second, Kat was hopeful that the older girls had been so taken aback by the claim that she and Siobhan could make their exit before they could snap out of it.

She was not so lucky, and all four girls burst into laughter not a moment later.

“Oh, that is rich. Do you actually believe that load of shit?” Janine asked in between cackles, making a show of wiping her eyes, because clearly what Siobhan had said was just that funny. The blonde herself had somehow gotten even more flushed. Kat could almost imagine steam coming out of her ears.

“I’m telling the truth. Tell them, Kat,” Siobhan said, finally looking over at Kat, who had long since lost control of whatever look was on her face that made her friend’s expression drop slightly. Janine cackled again.

“Oh, please, Kat, tell us all about the demons you can summon,” she mocked. Siobhan finally seemed to realize the predicament she had gotten them into, the anger on her face morphing into unease.

“I don’t have to tell you shit,” Kat bit back, grabbing Siobhan by the arm and turning away from the girls. “We’re leaving.”

“Go ahead and run,” the redheaded girl jeered, “proves us more right than all the lies you’ve told us so far.” Siobhan jerked in Kat’s grip, but she managed to keep a hold of her friend. She did not, however, account for her mouth.

“We can prove it!” Siobhan called as Kat dragged her away. “Behind the school! Tonight!” She sounded equal parts irate and desperate. Kat wanted to violently shake her until she shut up. Instead, she kept dragging.

“Oh, we’ll be there,” Janine shouted as they rounded a corner, finally breaking line of sight with the group. “Question is, will you?”

Both girls were silent as they walked the final stretch of hall to their classroom, entering just as the bell rang. Their teacher gave them a glare, but didn’t say anything as they took their seats. Kat resolutely did not glance at Siobhan the entire period, because she was afraid that, if she did, she might give in to the urge to jump up and strangle her friend.

Kat didn’t absorb a lick of information the rest of the day, floating from class to class on a cloud of paranoia and anger.

She knew, she knew Siobhan was just trying to look out for her. Siobhan’s sense of justice was stronger than that of anyone else Kat knew, even if it was sometimes misplaced. She saw a friend in trouble, heard she was being accused of spreading lies, and did what she thought was right about it. As much as Kat wanted to throttle her, she couldn’t find it in herself to genuinely be upset with Siobhan. The part of her that was angry was mostly upset with the situation, the part of her that felt good at being defended for once was entirely focused on Siobhan.

As soon as classes were over, Kat bypassed her room and immediately made her way up to the clocktower. Raul had heard about what happened partway through the day, but had promised his mom he’d be home early to help cook dinner that morning, so he hadn’t been able to catch her and get her to talk about it before he’d had to leave. Siobhan seemed to be guiltily moping an appropriate amount, and let Kat ignore her for the rest of the day without complaint.

The Latin words slipped easily out of Kat’s mouth the moment she was securely inside the clocktower, the summoning spell almost second nature to her at this point. It had been a long, slow, good summer full of adventuring around town with her friends, working on the brewery, and hanging out with Wendell and Wild. She could probably summon them in her sleep at this point.

When those bird-things she had long given up on asking the name of threw her demons through the already open window and onto the old mattress set up specifically for that purpose, Kat was ready. As soon as they had somewhat regained their bearings, she was off.

“I need your help because Siobhan really fucked up and I also kinda fucked up by not stopping her and now I kinda have to summon you guys in front of a bunch of asshole juniors or else they’re gonna bully the shit out of me for the rest of the year,” she said in a rush, bending over slightly to draw in a deep breath once she was done. Wendell and Wild, frozen where they had just barely managed to sit up side-by-side on the mattress, blinked at her in shock.

Kat had the vague notion that she probably should have at least let them stand up first.

“Okayyyy,” Wild finally said, eyeing Kat a little bit like she was a wild animal. She was sure the ragged breaths she was taking weren’t helping the image. “You wanna run that by us at a normal speed?”

“There’s these new girls,” Kat explained, “who heard a bunch of rumors about me being a Satanist or something and were harassing me about it.” Both of the brothers’ expressions darkened, but Kat plowed on. “I was just gonna let them assume whatever they wanted, but Siobhan overhead and tried to defend me and basically told them about you guys and promised we’d meet them behind the school tonight to prove she wasn’t lying.”

“Yikes,” Wendell helpfully remarked. Kat still vaguely had the urge to strangle somebody, and he was not helping.

“I don’t- You guys aren’t some party trick, I’m not summoning you just to prove I’m not lying to some girls I don’t even know,” Kat explained. The brothers nodded in unison, evidently happy to let her talk through her thoughts before they added anything to the conversation.

She was just this side of panicked enough to be able to appreciate them for it.

“But if I don’t summon you guys they’re just- they’re never gonna leave me alone, and I don’t want that, either, because things have been so good here for so long and I don’t want that to change-” Kat cut herself off with another harsh inhale, and she had the vague notion she was truly starting to panic. It was hard to notice, over said panicking she was actively doing.

Wendell and Wild noticed her rapid decline immediately. Wendell scooted to the side and Wild patted the now Kat-sized space between them. She happily collapsed onto the mattress between them, slumping into Wild’s side as she got her breathing under control. Wendell rubbed circles into her back.

“They’ve got you all worked up, huh?” Wild observed. Kat nodded heavily.

“Y’know, we appreciate the sentiment, but we can be a party trick if you want,” Wendell spoke up. Kat felt rather than saw Wild reach behind her and slap him on the arm. “I mean it!” he shouted in defense. “It means a lot that you care about our honor like that, Kat, but we’d be happy to scare off some bullies if you need it.”

“But it just- it feels wrong,” Kat said, forceful in her tone, urging them to understand the feeling she couldn’t find the words for.

“I think,” Wild offered, “that you’re not ready to let the cat out of the bag quite yet.”

“I guess,” Kat said. “I mean, yeah, I don’t wanna deal with people knowing knowing I can summon demons, but it’s also just-” She huffed, going quiet to try and piece together her thoughts. The brothers waited patiently for her to do so.

God, was she lucky to have them.

“You guys aren’t a tool,” she said eventually. “You’re my friends. I don’t need to prove that you exist because I know you exist, and that’s what matters. You’re not their entertainment, you’re my demons. You’re my friends. It feels wrong to have to justify it to anyone else, I guess.”

The brothers didn’t say anything right away, but they reacted anyway. Wild wrapped an arm around her back and squeezed her in a side hug, and Wendell ruffled the hair at the top of her head. If she looked, she would have seen proud smiles on both of their faces.

“That,” Wendell said, “is far more mature than anyone your age has any right to be.” Kat found herself laughing, despite the anxiety still stirring in her gut.

“And also a little bit possessive, but hey, we’re not complaining,” Wild added. This time, it was Wendell who was slapping his brother. Kat just laughed some more.

“Seriously, though,” Wendell continued. “We’re you’re demons, Kat, and you’re our Hell Maiden. If you need us to fuck with some bullies, we’d do it in a heartbeat. But if you want to take the high road on their asses, then we support that, too.” Wild hummed in agreement.

“Thanks, guys,” Kat said, putting as much earnesty into her voice as she could muster. “I just- God, I don’t wanna have to deal with them. They’re gonna be such assholes about it when I don’t summon you guys.” They all stewed in the silent misery of the situation Kat was gonna be in later that night, until Wild straightened up.

“New idea: don’t go at all,” he proposed. Kat sat up to look at him incredulously. “What? It’s a good idea.”

“No, he’s onto something,” Wendell defended, and Kat turned to focus her skepticism on him. “Take the power back from them. Act like it was one big set up to embarrass them, making them go out and wait in the dark in the middle of the night just for nothing to happen. Really throw it back in their faces that they’re being the ridiculous ones.”

Despite her knee-jerk hesitation, Kat had a feeling that their idea might actually work. If she could play it off like she and Siobhan meant to fuck with them the entire time, and they just fell for it, it might fluster them enough that they, at least somewhat, left her alone.

“I- yeah, fuck it, I won’t go at all. I’ll tell Siobhan to act like it was our plan all along. Holy shit, you guys, thank you,” Kat gushed, throwing her arms around Wendell’s neck, then releasing him to give Wild an equally tight hug.

“Any time, Hell Maiden,” Wild chuckled, “any time.”

They talked for a while after that, Kat filling them in on the details as to how she’d ended up in her predicament in the first place. The brothers were exasperated about Siobhan’s stubborn refusal to shut her mouth when necessary, but seemed just as upset at her as Kat was. That was to say, not at all. In fact, they seemed pleasantly amused at the blonde’s fervent defense of Kat. She had a feeling they were happy someone else was protecting her when they weren’t around.

Eventually, when the sun began to set and Kat was out of stories to tell them about how the first week of school had been going, she bid the brothers farewell and made her way back down into the school. She felt significantly lighter than she had a few hours before as she made her way to her room.

Siobhan was waiting for her when she made it to their shared dorm. She stood up as soon as Kat entered, opening her mouth to likely apolgoize, but she held up her hand to stop the blonde from speaking.

“I’m not mad,” she began, taking note of the way Siobhan’s posture relaxed with relief. “I have got to teach you how to get bullies to go away, but you were trying to look out for me, so I’m not gonna hold it against you. Besides, I have a plan.”

Hesitantly, as if sensing the change in Kat’s mood from earlier in the day, Siobhan smiled. Kat found herself smiling back.

Siobhan would probably apologize later, and Kat would reiterate her forgiveness. She’d give Siobhan some tips on how to not escalate a situation like that again, and then the two would be just fine. But for now, all of that could wait. They had a scheme to hatch.