OUT OF EDEN

By MargaritaDaemonelix

A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.

- John Milton, Paradise Lost

I. Whoops

"I'm ready to go when you are," Add says, rolling up the sleeves of his purple dress shirt. Ara ironed it out this morning, like the dutiful human girlfriend she's supposed to be masquerading. "There's a bit of traffic, so we might want to get going."

She laughs and wraps her arms around his back, watching as he squirms to face her and put his hands on her hips. "Your reservation is for six o'clock, right? We still have time to play."

The demon inside her, the demon that she actually is, growls in lust, but she pushes its needs aside. Four years of awkward dating have led to this moment, and for once, there's a source of love in her life that she really does love back.

For a moment, she entertains the idea of staying with him for this entire lifetime, feeding off his affection as she scours the ground world for her targets. Just being with him gives her energy, after all. His love is strong enough to satiate her appetite.

Then again, when he's well into his later years, will he be able to give her the love, the attention she needs to survive? Her mixed succubus form has its demands, after all, and if she's going to commit, she needs to be able to feed. Maybe once he stops indulging her, she'll move on, take another lover in another, more youthful form. Maybe she'll fake her death and move on to someone else.

Right now, though, she's still a young woman in a big city. She finally has a boyfriend who she genuinely loves more than anyone else in this horrific human world, and when she's not with him, she's pleading to her superiors, hoping that she might be able to stay with him a little longer.

She kisses the beautiful human boy once more, savouring the taste of his sweet, burning lips.

Wait.

Burning?

Ara wets her lips with the tip of her tongue as she pulls away from him, hoping that nothing's wrong, she's just paranoid, but as she draws a knuckle across her lips, she finds not her typical red lipstick but blood and ashes.

"Ara..."

She looks up, horrified, as Add swipes a finger across his own lips and physically puts out the dancing flames. "Oh goodness," she whispers. "I.. I can explain."

Add backs away. "No, it's my fault," he mutters, shrugging off his white blazer. "I'm sorry, Ara, I should have told you this a long time ago."

There's a sound of something rustling under fabric, and then two blindingly white wings protrude from his back.

Her jaw falls. "Oh." The pain in her lips fades to a throbbing beating, even though she knows blood is continuing to drip out. "You're an actual angel."

"Yeah. I'm sorry, I should have told you earlier," Add says, folding his wings back in. "God, I'm bad at this human romance thing."

"Then so am I," Ara mutters, backing over to the window. "I'm so, so sorry."

The pieces seem to take a moment for Add to connect, and by the time he reacts, Ara has already forced the window open. "Wait, Ara-"

She whirls around, eyes bloody red like their primal state. "Don't." She tries her best to not cry, swallows down tears and bile. "We aren't supposed to do this."

Add screams her name behind her, but she doesn't heed him, and jumps off the fire escape, letting her black wings catch her in the wind.

II. Mistakes were made

"I fucked up," Ara mumbles into her pillow. "I fell in love with an angel. An actual fucking angel. I'm going to die of holy water poisoning."

Lu laughs out loud. "You're not going to die of holy water poisoning," she chuckles, patting Ara's back soothingly. "The angels are not our enemies, as much as it may seem like they are. We work alongside them to bring the dead to their rightful homes."

"Have you ever done something like this?" Ara asks. "I mean, you're several thousand years old. Did you ever go off frolicking with humans, only to realize they were angels in disguise?"

Lu thinks for a moment. "Not before my coronation as Steel Queen," she confirms. "But then again, I don't have the needs of a succubus." She grins. "Ciel was an accident that I stumbled upon. His "human" girlfriend was an angel who killed him by accident. I patched him up and brought him here."

Ara turns over to face the thousand-year-old demon queen, who has the face and behaviours of a ten-year old human girl. "Let me put it this way," Lu says, blinking at her innocently with her bright blue eyes. "The only reason that the whole shebang is "forbidden" is because we've been locked in darkness for so long that their light burns us. Demons and angels, we're kept apart to prevent us from hurting each other by accident."

"Yeah, but that's not where the pain is," Ara whines. "And my lips still hurt. It took an hour to staunch the bleeding.

"If it's any help, your not-so-human boy is probably going through the same," Lu offers not-so-helpfully. "Demonic burns last just as long as angelic burns."

Ara just groans again and buries her face back into her pillow.

III. Why are all my friends suddenly angels

"So now I don't know what to do, Rena," Ara sighs, sprawled over the counter of the small cafe. "Add and I nearly set each other on fire, I ran for the hills, and he's probably run all the way back to... wherever angels come from."

"Ah, young love," Rena sighs, pouring steamed milk into a large green mug. "And here I was thinking you'd be walking down the aisle soon. You've been together since, what, four years ago? That's dedication, and also an awfully long time to be concealing such a big secret."

She winks at her. "And it's an awfully long time for me to be concealing mine."

Ara blinks, and the mug, now emptied, clatters to the counter.

Where Rena was standing, there lies a single slim white feather on the ground.

IV. Twenty bucks is still twenty bucks

"Let me go, please," the spirit of the old woman screams, tugging on Ara's shoulders. "I don't want to die. I have so much left to live for. My grandchildren, I need to live for them!"

Ara looks at her phone, at the list of this woman's crimes, at the reason why her time has come. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I can't put your soul back in your body," she says soothingly, rubbing the back of the woman gently like Lu did for her. "You can't go back to life, but I'm here to guide you to the next life."

The woman looks horrified. "Am I going to Hell?" She asks, sinking to her knees. "Oh god have mercy, I-I can't, I'm so sorry..."

"Your sins are listed as indulgence and adultery," Ara reads from her phone, before shoving it back into her bag. "Ma'am, there's nothing to be afraid of. Hell isn't a flaming pit of punishment, like you might think. It is a place of healing - of learning. It's not jail, it's more like rehab."

The spirit woman only continues to sob hopelessly, screaming out the names of her first husband, her children, all her grandchildren, her deceased beloved second husband, one by one.

Ara sighs and kneels down next to her, pulling her into her embrace as the spirit woman's ethereal body shakes with her sobs. She stays that way until the wailing fades into whimpers, and the spirit woman is calm enough to let Ara guide her by the hand to the next life.

Around the corner, a figure in white stands, hidden in the shadows under the eaves of a small storefront, watching.

Then the figure spreads his white wings and flies away, ignoring the painful pounding of his heart.

V. open your door please I am actually begging you it's like 2 degrees outside and I'm in shorts and a shirt

"It's been a month, and neither of us have the guts or the maturity to actually talk to each other," Ara comments as she lands on the rooftop. "Funny how one accident tears four years into nothing."

Add is motionless, sitting still atop the pipe, but the sunset wind and light seems to blow his beautiful white feathers into flames. "We were stupid to not have said anything," she continues, folding her black bat wings behind her back. "It wasn't fair of me to run."

"Stupid is an understatement," Add laughs dryly, and only when he turns around does Ara realize that his wounds still haven't quite healed. Blood still lingers on his burnt lips, mirroring the huge clot hastily covered up with lipstick on hers. "For a century-old demon, you really pack a punch."

Ara sighs as she sits down next to him, exhaling in his familiar presence. It's still Add, just a bit more stranger, a bit more confusing. "A lot of training went into that."

They sit in silence together, watching the sun go down. "Well, I'd better get going," Add says, when the last traces of rouge dip beneath the horizon and the stars begin to come out. "Rena's gonna throw another hissyfit if I don't report in."

"Wait," Ara yelps, grabbing his sleeve. She tugs back hard, and presses her heavily coloured lips to his still bleeding ones. His blood burns, burns on her lips, but she knows the pain lies somewhere else. "I'm not going to forget you anytime soon."

His expression is cold, but his hands are not, and he clasps her gloved ones in his. "Like you said, we aren't supposed to do this," he whispers. "Let me find a way to make this happen first. Wait for me."

This time, as he tears himself away and takes to the skies, he takes a piece of Ara's heart with him.

VI. Surprise, surprise

"Your apartment is empty, and there's blood all over the floor," Elesis says accusingly. "Get your act together, girl. Where's your boy toy?"

"It's a long story." Ara sighs as Elesis hands her a bottle of water, cracking it open with the flick of her wrist. "It turns out he's an angel."

Elesis stares at her for a while. "Wait a second," she exclaims, pounding her fist on the picnic bench. For a human, she sure is loud - a flock of pigeons squawk in alarm and take flight. "Add, right? What's his actual name?"

"Um." Ara thinks for a moment, ashamed to realize that she doesn't really "officially" know her not-so-human boyfriend's birth name. "Edward."

Elesis snaps her fingers. "There's someone in Rose's cohort named Edward," she says, picking up her phone. "I'll ask her if it's the same guy."

Ara just stares at her incredulously. "Hold on a second," she says, trying to wrap her head around things. "You're a human, your best friend is a demon, and your girlfriend is an angel?"

Elesis just shrugs.

VII. Maybe we're just dumb

"Yep, it's the same guy," Elesis reports, marching over while tugging Rose behind her. Now that Ara knows, it's hard to unsee the truth. Rose is always dressed in white, not unlike Add, and in the sunlight, her golden hair seems to glow with a halo.

The cherry on top is the huge pair of silvery white wings on her back, flapping indignantly as Elesis pulls her forwards. "Hullo, Ara," Rose greets, looking a little queasy. Then again, Ara doesn't exactly feel as fit as a fiddle, either. "I hate to be the harbinger of bad news, but I think things aren't going really well."

"Great to know," Ara sighs, smiling weakly. "Is he doing alright?"

"The bleeding's stopped," Rose offers. "He's mostly been just moping and locking himself in his own room. Rena's tried her best to help, but…" She shrugs. "Even her maternal nature cannot help him now."

Ara rolls her eyes, because of course. What a drama queen. "Please send him my best regards," she says. "And Rena as well."

Rose studies her curiously, a kind twinkle in her eyes. "Do you want to meet him again?" She asks. "Or rather, do you still want to be with him?"

There's a growling pit in Ara's stomach that yearns for love, his love, but the rational part of her screams louder than the growls. "I can't," she says. "He's an angel, and I'm anything but."

"Interesting," Rose says, and Elesis is tugging on her arm, reminding her that her words have too much power, "because he definitely still wants to be with you."

VIII. We're young so we're allowed to do stupid things

"I was hoping we'd be able to get married at this point of this year," Add remarks, out of the blue, and it takes Ara by surprise so much that her wings flare open and she nearly drops her phone. She's sitting on the balcony of their apartment, having spent the day scrubbing the remnants of their blood out of the nice carpet.

(Her fingers are numb from pain, but he doesn't have to know that.)

She smiles, watching as her ebony hair ripples out into the wind. "That would have been nice," she says, for a moment, just a moment, imagining spending the entirety of her long immortal demon life by the side of this angel. "I could have gotten L- Queen Luciela to officiate the wedding."

Add scoffs. "The Steel Queen, officiating our wedding." He tries to smile, Ara can feel him trying, but he gives up halfway through. "I genuinely can't imagine you in a white dress, though."

"That's okay, I can't imagine you in a black tuxedo." Ara punches his arm playfully, letting her knuckles brush past the white fabric for just a second more than she should. "Maybe we would have had a very unconventional wedding."

They laugh out loud, because what wedding of an angel and a demon could be conventional? "Well, I'm gonna have to get to work soon," Ara laughs, putting her feet between the bars of the balcony ledge and standing up. "I did all the laundry, and I got the blood stains out of the carpet."

The corners of Add's mouth twitch up. "Oh yeah, Rose told me. I'll find some time to go clean the bathroom and sweep the floor this week."

It's like nothing has changed at all. They're still constantly at work, still keeping secrets that will probably tear them apart, still trying to keep pests out of their otherwise immaculate apartment, still wondering when they'll be allowed to be together again. Still terribly in love. Still missing each other.

Ara hates it, but she loves him too much, and allows herself to fall into his kiss once more before he leaves.

She doesn't even register the pain as she looks at the new list of people on her phone.

IX. If only I could cast myself from Eden for you

"You guys probably have an easier job than we do," Ara notes as she hovers near Add. She's done for the day, but he's not, and who knows, she could learn a thing or two about her own job by watching them. "Usually, humans are very against going to Hell."

"The human vision of Heaven is really quite different from what it really is," he insists, brushing a strand of white hair out of his face. His white tablet rests in his hand, with a list of names displayed, not unlike her phone. "Originally, it was a place for the true good people - those who gave their lives to goodness, to kindness. But then war happened, and suddenly it was hard to tell who was good and who wasn't."

He sighs as he kneels down on the pavement. "So then new laws had to be made," he says, and pure white energy flows into the ground at his fingertips. "I think I was maybe two hundred when they introduced the one about cyber attacks.

"There's a place in heaven for the truly good at heart," he says, "and those are the barracks of the angels. The reward for hard work is only more hard work. Those who were good at heart but never followed those morals, well, we let them fade."

He checks the tablet again. "I was six when I became an angel," he says. "I wanted to build something that could power mankind, give them light." His gaze drops. "Father didn't like that about me. I hope he went to Hell."

Ara shakes her head. "We have a bit of a policy like that, too," she says. "The ones with minor crimes, they go to rehab. Those who really just had no love for anyone else, we make sure they never forget it."

Add looks up at her, magenta eyes flickering back and forth. "And which of those two would you be?"

(Ara doesn't want to tell him that she died when she was 18, protecting her evil, evil brother from a bomb. She doesn't want to admit that her pride got the better of her, even though she knew her brother - her family - was in the wrong.)

"Well, I'm not burning in Hell," is what she manages to say. "That's a pretty good indication of what my standing is."

"I hope it is," Add says.

X. Heaven is overrated anyways

In the chambers of eternal torment, Ara searches for her brother.

She does this often, hoping to see what kind of life she might have lived had she been in the army like him. What would have happened if she'd mindlessly slaughtered like him. It's mostly to make sure he's still breathing, though, to make sure he still remembers who she is.

"Ara," he croaks, and there are more bullet holes in his back than last time. His uniform is torn to rags, and she knows that it'll replenish itself overnight as he sleeps and recovers from his wounds. "Just let them kill me already, please."

"You know I can't do that, Aren," she says, hand on her hip. "I can bring you a bit of water, but nothing more."

"It hurts," he whispers, and Ara feels her heart wrench. This is the brother she died for, reduced to a mere wisp of his former self.

"I'll ask Aisha to be a little kinder on you if I find her," she promises, tearing herself away from her wailing, tormented brother, wiping away her tears.

After a hundred years of this, he still only understands his own pain, doesn't understand that every bullet piercing him is a bullet he used to kill someone else.

"Aisha," she calls, looking for the prison warden. "Aisha?"

The trademark purple hair of the young demon girl pops up. "What's up?" She asks. "Aren's on a good behaviour track, do you want me to-"

"No," Ara says quickly. "He still doesn't understand. I need him to understand why he's here."

She looks around, beckons Aisha closer. "I need you to take me to someone. I know he's down here, for sure."

An eternity later, she's standing in front of a cell not unlike her brother's, only this one is home to a single worn-out man, face and straitjacket caked in ashes, sitting in a bed of open flame. "Well, someone's come to visit," the man jeers, as Ara opens the cell door with Aisha's master key. "What has the little demon come to tell me?"

"Asker Grenore," she says, quietly, deadly. "I am not here to forgive you of your sins."

The old man cackles, his broken voice resonating with the flickering of the flames. "I didn't think you'd have the authority to. Surprise me. What are you really here for?"

There's something carnal that erupts in Ara, but she lashes out instantaneously, raising her hand over her head before bringing it down on his face like the iron hand of the throne. "Edward deserved none of what you did to him," she says, as the old man topples into the flames and howls. "And neither did Grace."

As she turns away, she spits at his feet. "I hope you burn in Hell."

Cadenza: Death, thou shalt die

The dusk and dawn were always the most precious hours of Ara's day life, when she was masquerading as a human. The hours when midnight meets noon, when the light of day can blend with the darkness of night and create the most spectacular colours.

She'd wake up in the nether hours, shake Add's sleeping form until he woke up, and kiss him until her succubus senses were tingling all over. She'd let him open his way to her core, and she'd indulge in the few moments of sweet, sweet love before she'd have to get to her day job.

In the evening, she'd come home and be immediately showered with the same love, kisses plastered all over her skin, her hands in his. A little late, she realizes it was the only time their light and dark sides could come together. It became a cycle that she didn't want to break.

So what broke?

"You said you wanted to get married sometime this year," she mentions as she walks into their apartment, watching him sweep the floor. "Did you mean it?"

"I was going to propose to you that night at dinner," he mumbles, tossing the broom aside. "Guess it's kind of too late for that now."

"We didn't have to change anything," she amends. "We could have pretended that nothing happened." She takes a deep breath, drops her gaze to the floor. "I… I'm sorry for trying to run away. From you."

"I would have run away, too, in your position." Add opens his arms, his wings, and she falls back into his familiar embrace. "We don't have to get married this year. Maybe we can just figure out what we're going to do with our jobs first."

"Yeah, that might be an issue," she hums. "We finally managed to pay back all the loans we took out for the apartment, so we should probably stay, right?"

"Yeah." He smiles. "We'll burn the other bridges when we get there."

Ara rises up on tiptoe again and kisses him, ignoring the fact that she's not wearing any lipstick this time.

This time, the searing pain is a little bit more bearable.

A/N: wow this was abstract

~Marg