Michael winces at the attack, and shifts as if he means to go over and intervene. But he doesn't. He knows he can't. He'll just stand with Orpheus instead, and watch if Orpheus is going to watch. He finds the violence distasteful, but it's not quite the same viscerally for him.

"Our angels were like that," he says instead, eyes still on past-Orpheus even as he speaks to the present one. "Not like this - their nice afterlife looked nice enough. I guess superficially, it was. But they didn't understand humans. They knew they didn't, and they never just asked. Everyone there was miserable."

Such a waste of time - all that brainstorming ways to make the humans happier, when there were a bunch of humans right there to consult. That's why Michael doesn't tend to make a lot of broad rulings himself. He doesn't want to be...well, some kind of king about it, deciding for others what ought to make them happy.

"It is true that humans don't leave the afterlife. I don't...know exactly what I'd do, if someone turned up in mine like that." It's really not a question he's ever had to consider. The only time humans ever came straight from Earth to the afterlife without dying first, it was his doing. He supposes he'd mostly just be impressed, if a mortal managed it on their own somehow.

Michael considers for a moment, then shrugs. "But of course, if there's a way you can try, you've gotta try it. I got my humans' original deaths reversed on a long shot like that. You just did what you had to do."