disclaimer: entirely applicable. the little snatches of verse between segments are a few of Lemony Snicket's dedications to Beatrice Baudelaire he wrote in the dedications of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which i use because they are charming and macabre and i love them.

inspiration: i hate myself and i was listening to Davey Jones's music box on a loop and thinking of Raffryn and well it was never going to go anywhere wholesome and also did i mention Raffryn.

so. lets take a moment here to talk about Angelfall. or, to get to specifics, that sucker punch to the throat Ee calls an ending.

because, like. what.

subsequently this does carry my monologue merrily onward to the slight issue of there being a singularly sad lack of wishful damage control in the form of fanfic so far. i looked, kids. i did.

(quick slip in, i've never written first person PoV before, but i really loved Penryn's voice and i shall therefore quash my narratorly insecurities and – i hate myself – i shall wing it. oh yes.)

thus.


when we met my life began
soon afterward, yours ended.

(–Penryn wh–)

It's dead, outside. I can tell you that without looking.

Night had fallen after some interval, something like a burial cloth over a misdiagnosed coma patient making its way to the morgue. The earthy sleeper, it turns out, wasn't in actuality one to tax itself with bangs nor whimpers about the confusion. The constant static buzz of the down pour makes its own kind of silence, and the little cottage smells like drowning dust and rotting trees.

Penryn has been dead for a while, I can tell you.

I can also tell you that her legs are bruised up and that exactly twelve cuts are visible through her wear-ripped jeans; I can tell you that the milky grey light melts to silver at the fringes of her silhouette, cut as it is into the little rustic doorway; I can't tell you her expression because her hood is up, but I can assure you that she would not be looking at me; I can't tell you how she's still standing because I can tell you there's a sick slick red red grin cut into her neck, but I can tell you that blood still looks unmistakably crimson in the dark, and also that it is welling from the wounds of this girl, of Penryn, as if through broken pipe-veins and I can tell you her hoodie used to be blue and she used to smile with her mouth.

I can tell you that she is precisely nine feet and six inches away from me.

I can continue to tell myself that she is entirely dead.

"Hi," she says.

Of course it's Penryn.

I don't move. It's a question whether I'm breathing.

(-do you remember who isn't Penryn isn't Penryn isn't breathing isn't anymore-)

"Raffe." She's whispering as if she's checking to see if I'm asleep and I'm swallowing spiders, and I don't move.

A floorboard creaks under a dusty buckled bloody boot. I can tell you this because I'm sitting at the opposite wall of this tiny lonely useless human shack at two in the morning while a dead girl calmly walks toward me like it's (-still-) the most natural thing in the world and I can't raise my eyes above her feet.

These feet stop fifteen centimetres from my crossed and bloodless legs. The shoes are too big for the feet. This was done on purpose. I can tell you because I was there when she packed extra socks into the extra room and then sulked over the clunkiness when she had to use her innovative padding as gloves instead.

The heels click now. Gunshot.

Rock from tip-toe to heel. Tip-toe to heel. Tip-toe to-

"Raffe, are you mad at me?"

Oh.

God.

She kneels. (-she's so cold it's like leaning into a meatlockerohgod oh-) She does a peculiar and achingly Penryn-like thing where she splays her elbows awkwardly to the sides and ducks down, twists up her neck so she can see my face and I can't look at her. Her lips are downturned.

(-there was no blood on her the first time either-) There is no blood on her now.

She touches my jaw and I want to scream. The gentle insistence of her hand lifts the head I don't remember bowing until I have to meet her eyes. Big, dark Penryn-eyes with the little corner tilts that made her look always teasing, always curious and ever such a deep shade that I never could name the actual colour but always felt the want of getting closer (-closercloserclose-) to try.

I'm swallowing my lungs.

She frowns that little V into her forehead. Her hand slips quietly up into my hair and I can actually feel myself go insane.

"Raffe." That voice is in my bones. "Raffe," she says, so, so soft, "do you love me?"

And she smells like the ocean and warm leather and Penryn and I am a loathsome weak and selfish ruined bastard and I breathe, I say, I gasp "Yes." (-and I think I am so sorry-)

She rests her free hand under the dip of my collarbone. She smiles and my heart tries to beat its way through the cage of my ribs to meet her personally.

Then both her hands are around my neck and crushing.

And I, still, have the courtesy to not move.

Penryn presses her face so close in that I can feel her lips moving against my ear when she hisses, "You're a fucking liar."

Don't, don't don't move-

"You killed me. I am dead because of you, this is your fault." She's crying and shuddering and I think that's it, that's all, there is nothing else, I think: Now I'm dead, too. "You killed me, you just killed me why would you do that what did I do, Raffe, Raffe-?"

All her fingers are digging into my throat like the thing they want most in this world is to tear through skin and cartilage and gouge out the breath clogging my windpipe and I will not, will never, never move from exactly where I am.

Her hand punches through my chest and warm blood hits my face in a sticky, burning flare. It takes me a moment to realise that I felt no pain.

The blood is everywhere but the only horror is that it. Is not. Mine.

I snap open my eyes (-when did I why did I close my eyes-) and Penryn blinks her own big dark quizzical beautiful Penryn-gaze at me over the top of the screaming red cavity that was once her chest. The earth is vacuumed up inside the stillness of her heart and someone somewhere is screaming and someone else is pitching forwards and taking a chasm with them and who is that screaming–

And I'm awake so fast I leave my breath behind.

And I'm alone.

(-and I am alone I'm alone? Penryn wh–)

when we were together i felt breathless.
now you are.

So, sometimes I wonder about Obi.

I mean, I don't wonder about Obi like some of the other women – and a fair few guys, because this is the apocalypse and a dreamboat is a dreamboat – tend to Wonder About Obi. I don't wonder, for example, if he's a boxers or briefs kinda man or how a background of military command would factor into the bedroom. ("Thorough, yet firm," Dum-Dee always insisted with a solemn fluttering of lashes. "Like, super firm.")

I just wonder about how much effort he put into keeping me so far in both the figurative and literal dark.

Not that I have anything solid, really. But being ordered solo into no-man's land on recon for some vague maybe-angel-shaped-speck-in-the-general-direction-of-thataway for the fourth time in a month is enough to make a person a little suspicious.

In fairness, so is being in possession of what no one wants to call but clearly is an angel's sword. And so is having your paralysed body quietly handed over by a mysterious being now fondly referred to, in the way that a locally escaped serial killer would no doubt be fondly referred to, as Evil Incarnate. My mother has lately come to the conclusion that I signed a contract with The Thing That Tells to get Paige back, and hasn't exactly been quiet about her theories at base. And bearing in mind the fact that this time last year no one believed in bloodthirsty hosts of heaven whose only joy seemed to come from annihilating national landmarks… things were a little tense.

Ho hum.

If I told them I wasn't kinda wishing for a surprise landing from aforementioned beastie, I'd be a liar. Of the pants-aflame variety.

My musings break suddenly when one of my boots catches on a the peevish rise of a tree root, and I have to bite back a curse when it makes my over-compensating left go skidding outwards and my arms pin-wheel awkwardly to avoid landing on my ass in the sludge. With my muddy fate narrowly avoided for the moment, I look down at my graceless almost-splits and snort to myself. I look like an over-enthusiastic eight-year-old in the middle of a harsh lesson on the strategising of musical statues.

Raffe would have laughed.

Just as suddenly, I don't so much feel like smiling.

Dammit. The cold twist in my gut is pressed down to my stupid feet to be walked over as I right myself. I spare a moment to smudge out the obvious gouges left by my boots before moving forward and determinedly not thinking about Raffe.

And especially not about the open, completely groundless, utterly unforeseeable and equally unmistakable loss that had weighed down his face the last time I'd seen it. And then I definitely wouldn't think about how much I needed to talk to him – at this fuckery of a world's earliest convenience – because my alleged death had apparently caused that expression and knowing this made me feel sick and I would very much like to straighten stuff out, thank you. Then again, alls that really needed to happen was a chance encounter on the street and/or any makeshift battlefield, where I could maybe just wave a little and set things straight while happily avoiding any awkward conversations about these supposed feeling-type-things that, apparently, were under his angelic capability.

Yup. Waving would be perfect.

Maybe I'd even toss him a saucy little click-and-point, depending on my mood.

Of course, I'm sure you understand that this is my life on show here. I'm super sure you, unlike myself, will have already guessed that I would obviously not be looking to find him when I do.

And when I hack, stomping and cussing, through a thicket only to have the wind pull a snatch-and-grab with all the oxygen in my body, I'm sure you and the rest of the universe is having a good giggle at ol' Penryn's expense.

Raffe is ten feet away from me.

He's wearing solid, dusty army pants and solid boots and a solid enough caking of mud over his body that someone might walk right past him – he would almost blend in with the world, if not for the spined, leathery black hooks of wings at his back. And even with this helpful hint, I have to do double, triple-takes to assure myself I'm not hallucinating. When my spasmodic blinking is done with, Raffe remains resolutely solid and there. In fact, Raffe is absolutely still.

I more than most have a decent estimate of an angel's level of hearing, and am around four-hundred-and-fifty percent sure he heard me coming, but he doesn't react. I feel like some careless hand just shone a floodlight over the unassuming earth and shocked away all its breath, freezing it like a stupid rabbit about to get shot in the face.

Raffe, profile like some strange Michelangelo-modernisation with his hands braced against the rough brick of a well, looks as out of place here as a Disney villain stepping into a coffee shop to evaluate his life choices. He is also the realest thing I've seen in a long time.

(There's an unknown compartment around my centre torso carved with Raffe Was Here and I can feel it jostling against each too-quick bump of my heart until it fizzes over like a soda can, swelling through my chest and bubbling up my bottle-neck, shaking determinedly against my locks and chains like a dog that wants off the leash and into rush hour traffic.)

I take a thoughtless step forwards. Half expect him to vanish with the movement, quick as light winking through a particular prism facet.

I stop when I'm close enough to lean my hip against the old bricks beside him. After a few beats of non-movement, I do so. More time filters through and I can maybe hear the earth resume its breathing, if only to mutter a loop of anxious breezes around our little pocket of one soldier-girl, one angel with the devil's wings and one busted well. I actually clear my throat.

His mouth and eyes both tighten more firmly shut.

At least it was a reaction. "Raffe," I say, and try to squish the smile I get for having cause to do so.

Definite reaction this time, weird as it was: his hands seem to convulse on the brickwork, tendons rising up his arms like lit fuses along the harsh hiss of his breath. He sounds like he's in pain.

I frown bemusedly. I reach for his shoulder–

Raffe jerks to face me and I snatch back my hand as if a wild animal had snapped at me. His eyes are wide and blue and both very familiar and very, very not, and I belatedly realise that Raffe is indeed in some awful kind of pain. And I can't even begin to understand why. I don't have the slightest clue of what to say – not even what to ask.

I don't know how long we stand there, but I get the feeling – from his parted lips and stilted breathing and the searching bewilderment that could be the mirror of my own expression – that I'm not the only one caught here, that both of us are trapped in this stretch that I can only compare to the dragging, stomach-freezing instance of that extended instant when you lose your footing and pitch madly on a will-you-won't-you-oh-fuck precipice to avoid the impact of ground.

Raffe's the one who breaks the lock, and he does it with a tight exhale and a palm dragging down his face and a distinctly military foot-swivel. He stalks off in the opposite direction with steps that express genuine contempt for all plant life.

My feet are so ready to move off without me I have an irrepressible need to kick the hard stone of the well as punishment to them, while the rest of me stitches jittery bits and pieces back on around my edges which barely even hurts. I feel oddly numb. I feel like I have fallen through trusted surface to be submerged in ice-water.

"Hello to you too, jackass!" I throw a yell after him.

I chase after it.

And personally, I don't see a single click-and-point of any variety on the horizon.

i would much prefer it if you were alive and well.


i have no idea what i'm doing with this. i have vague masochism fuelled scenes which i keep filtering through in my head and then forgetting verbiage for because i don't write it down.

i really love reviews though – i know, it's a shocker. an writer who requires feedback to sustain life – and they remind me that this fic exists to be worked upon and that you, in turn, potentially exist somewhere far out of my window to receive any such elaborations.

so yes your words are good words and i would like them very much.

and i would just quickly like to leave you with the reminder that at this current canonical point in time Raffe is probably emotionally obliterated because not only does he currently think Penryn is dead but he also thinks she went on her merry lossless way believing he didn't care about that or her at all.

okay that's it have a nice day. (: