The tooth, the knife, goes away in the sand. God does not track its arc with his eyes; he doesn't need to; he feels it there where it falls, still buzzing with violence. In its absence, his chest weaves together whole again. His shirt hangs in tatters, but it only shows the warm expanse of his skin. He doesn't pay it any mind.

Paul clutches at him with his hand ruined and slippery, cut tendons pressed bare against his shoulder. God frees one hand to take Paul's, so gently, and correct the damage with the burning press of his fingers. He doesn't have the patience to leave a scar, to make a lesson of it. There's no need.

"It's alright," he soothes, and it's so easy. That unholy radiance winks out like night falling, and John rubs some mindless clumsy rhythm across Paul's shoulders. No one ever held him like this in the wake of what he became. Not except one person, and she couldn't have known how. "It's alright."

John can't fix him; John can't save him; but John knows him, and that's something. They're two of a kind.