Title: Console This Heart
Disclaimer: Hex and all characters are the property of Shine Group and Sky One.
Character Focus: Cassie Hughes, Cassie/Azazeal
Summary: It's a gothic little fairy tale, and she should have grown out of believing in those by now.
Context: Set during episode two of season two.
The church was as dark and forbidding as a tomb. Outside its walls it was afternoon, but inside them as grey as the dead of night, the flickering of candle flame poor substitute for a sun frustrated by leaded slits of windows. Even in the brightest part, the ornately tiled chancel that had once housed the altar and was now a bedroom, the beams of light stabbing through the gloom were obscured by dust, shifting like storm clouds in the air. The sound of Azazeal's steady breathing echoed around the vast space, the way hymns might have done when the church had been a house of God, and not the earthly abode of his most tenacious opponent.
Cassie's breath was emerging in ragged bursts, her heart hammering so loudly inside her she imagined it audible on the outside too. She was so conscious of every thought they seemed tattooed across her face. Yet Azazeal, who claimed he could see into her very soul, had read none of them.
She'd known exactly what she was doing when she came here. This time it was a plan, and not a possession, that had led her to it. "Get the child," Ella had said. How, she hadn't said, and hadn't had to.
Cassie had worked that one out all by herself.
She sat on the edge of the bed, shivering from the adrenaline coursing through her and the chill of the stone floor, creeping up through thin red carpet and into her toes. Her hands trembled as she rolled up her tights, awaiting the dark shape looming behind her. The hot breath, burning at her neck. The soft voice, edged with menace, telling her he knew what she was doing, and it wasn't going to work.
Because surely he knew what she'd come for. He knew she'd befriended Ella – not that it was really a friendship, more a macabre kind of business partnership – and he knew what Ella was doing at Medenham. He had to know. That it was all a ruse, that Cassie was here for Malachi, and not for him...
Wasn't she?
She stood up to slide her skirt over her hips and turned to regard him. He hadn't moved. He was still resting beneath wine-dark sheets, back propped up by black pillows with crosses slashed in scarlet into them. His face was deep in sleep, moonlight pale against the darkness of the bed and the golden walls that gleamed around it.
One of his hands was slung contentedly over his bare chest, the other stretched across the empty space next to him. When they'd been lying there together, afterwards, it had been stretched across her. Cassie could still feel the warmth where he'd stroked her tousled hair; still see the way his eyes had softened, steel to velvet, when they'd met hers.
There had been no cigarette and comfortable silence, allowing her to brace herself for what would come next. There had been words, because with Azazeal there always were. He liked the sound of his own voice as much as she did. But she couldn't remember anything he'd said to her while they'd been lying there, tangled and breathless, shadows dancing around them. She'd tuned it out, concentrated on flattening the thrill it gave her to feel his fingers wandering over her, as if he was playing his favourite melody on a familiar piano. She'd let the words wash over her, slapped down every wayward shiver of delight, and reminded herself it didn't matter what he said, or how her heart sang when he said it.
Azazeal liked to talk, but it had always been a particular type of talk. Sweet nothings and softly whispered pleasantries were not what the two of them were about. It was about heat, and hatred. It was about him, telling her what she was going to do, and her, trying her damnedest not to do it.
He knew what was coming, he'd said. He was waiting for everyone else to catch up, he'd claimed, every word oozing the blasé brand of arrogance that made Cassie want to scream.
So maybe it was that arrogance that had led him to kiss her, and lead her to his bed. Maybe good sex – great sex – was so hard to come by he'd chosen to overlook the part where she upped and left with his son afterwards, just to get it. Maybe he didn't care that she was going to steal back her baby, being cocksure enough to believe he could stop what Ella had planned, before it was too late. Or maybe, just maybe...
Maybe he loved her.
Maybe he wanted to believe she loved him back.
He knew about Ella, but he hadn't been at all suspicious of her motives for coming back to him. He didn't need her for anything anymore, now he had his son. But still he'd asked her to stay. The future he'd painted was glittering temptingly before her, so close Cassie could almost reach out and touch it. Her, him, Malachi. Together. A family, the kind she'd never had. And she could have it: she could undress right now, and get back into bed with him, and never again doubt it was where she belonged.
Her fingers hovered over the zip of her skirt, until a grunt from Azazeal abruptly broke the spell.
She yanked her hand away, furious with herself for getting carried away, allowing a stupid romantic fantasy to put doubts in her head about the thing she'd come here to do. Because fantasy was all it was, in every sense of the word. Witch and fallen angel and their beautiful blond baby, living happily ever after in an abandoned church... It was nothing but a gothic little fairy tale, and she should have grown out of believing in those by now.
She plucked her top from the floor and slid it on, doggedly rebuilding the resolve that seemed to have been stripped from her at the same time as her clothes.
None of the things that made her want to stay were real. Azazeal might have looked like a man – he even fell asleep after sex, the way men supposedly tended to do – but that didn't mean he was one. He might have cared about her – admired her refusal to bow to the "inevitable", or the insanity that went with it – but it didn't change the fact that he had conquests, not relationships. He might have had actual, genuine feelings for her – even if everything he'd done, no interest in what she was feeling, did make her doubt it – but it hadn't stopped him from using her to get his own way.
Malachi. Who might have looked like a beautiful blonde baby, all rosy cheeks and innocent eyes, but was really not a baby at all.
Cassie groped about for her cardigan and shrugged it on over her top. As she turned to reach for her boots its button clanged against the metal bed frame, cutting shrilly into the silence of the church. She hissed in a breath and held it as the seconds ticked by, everything suspended except the drum beat thud of her heart, but Azazeal didn't stir. Looking down at him, she realised that though she'd woken up before to find him there, watching while she slept, she'd never until now seen him sleeping. He looked peaceful. Vulnerable. Almost like the angel he'd been, once upon a time too distant to number in years.
One of his eyelids twitched as she watched, making her wonder if he was dreaming. If he even did dream. And if he did, what it was about.
Maybe it was blood and brimstone, the thought of unleashing hell on unsuspecting earth.
Maybe it was her.
She perched gingerly on the edge of the bed, wincing as the springs creaked beneath her, and slipped on her boots, an eye on Azazeal the whole time. He shifted in his sleep, making the hand on his chest drop to his waist and the sheets ripple in dark waves towards her. And then, as if reacting to her gaze, his lips slowly began to curve; and he smiled. She sprang up in panic, heart in her mouth, a flimsy excuse flying to her lips. But still his eyes remained firmly closed.
Standing there, studying him, Cassie realised it wasn't his usual, knowing kind of smirk of a smile. It was the real thing. It lit up his face, normally as stern as if it was carved from the same ancient stone as the church; warmed with happiness and not smug satisfaction a mouth that could be so cold, and so cruel. Because being with her made him happy: she hoped it did, believed it did, knew it did.
But she didn't know if it was for the right reasons.
Azazeal was charming, and convincing. But he was also a murdering, manipulative bastard. He was so blinded by his arrogance it hadn't occurred to him she might have been trying to trick him. He would never have imagined she'd set out to seduce him, the way he'd never bothered to with her, preferring the quick-fix of an enchanted pendant to make her drop her defences and dance to his tune. He'd taken her to bed and swallowed everything she'd said to him in the heat of the moment, because he thought she was too weak to resist him.
She wasn't.
She could have pretended. She could have stayed, been his lover, been a mother to Malachi: tried to mould him in her image, instead of his father's. But Ella had shot down the idea the second she'd dared suggest it. It wasn't an option, she'd said. If Azazeal discovered the deception he'd kill her, she'd claimed, every word so rigidly unrelenting it made Cassie wonder if the reason she'd been alive so long was really that she was some kind of robot.
There was no maybe about it, according to Ella. No chance Malachi would grow up to be anything but what he'd been born to be, however much Cassie wanted to let herself love him, however hard she hoped that love might be enough to save him.
What Ella hadn't said, but Cassie assumed she believed, was that spending too much time around Azazeal might sway her to his side. Even Thelma, who knew her better than anyone, seemed worried about that. And Cassie could hardly blame her for it. Sometimes it did seem that she was incapable of making her own choices, or of sticking to them. Sometimes it seemed they weren't her choices at all, and that the only options open to her were the ones Azazeal and Ella were presenting her with.
She'd discovered she had powers, but somewhere along the twisted path that had led her from there to here, it had begun to feel as if she had very little power at all.
There were just so many things she didn't know. So many things she was suddenly unable to decide, a dizzying whirl of nagging doubts and unanswered questions, tearing through her conscience and tugging hard on her heartstrings. Did Azazeal love her, as everything he said and did seemed to prove? Or was it just an act, one he'd had centuries to practise, and generations of her ancestors to practise with? Should she have tried that bit harder to return Thelma's feelings – Thelma, the one person she was certain did love her – instead of always fighting against them? Could she really hand her child over to Ella...and allow her to kill him?
She stared up at the stained glass above her, searching for answers she was never going to get, from a God who had never cared enough to provide them.
If only she didn't feel so conflicted: torn between the warring voices in her head that belonged to Azazeal, and to Ella, and as faint as a fading heartbeat, to her. If only she wasn't so unsure: so plagued by uncertainty it brought her to the point of paralysis. If only she could think more clearly: the way she never could when Azazeal was around her, apparently even when he was unconscious.
Cassie had long since given up on wishing things were different. But it didn't stop her remembering what it was like when they had been. At least before Azazeal there had been some clarity, even if it was just the knowledge that it was her and Thelma against the world. She hated what she'd become since he'd invaded her life and made it all about him; put his needs and desires ahead of hers; taken her over, head and heart. She hated it. Hated him...
But she loved him.
And she so desperately wanted to believe he loved her back.
Cassie watched over Azazeal a while longer as he slept on, oblivious. Then she combed her fingers through her hair, wrapped her coat and scarf back around her, and tiptoed away to fetch Malachi. It was getting late, and Ella would be waiting.
The light was dying as she ran from the church into the crowded streets outside, Malachi clasped tightly in her arms. And although she never once considered turning back; somehow it felt like a little part of her was too.
END