Angels and Devils
when angels speak of love
The devil perches on his seat, balanced quite precariously, but he doesn't rightly care. Up up up and up there are two angels. The murk and the dirt that is the earth and its inhabitants fog up the image of the two slightly, but Kakashi is determined to watch them.
Their whispering words travel down and finally reach the devil's ears. He can't catch everything, but he can make out the general idea of it all.
Love.
He can't tell whether they're happy, or aggravated, or perhaps tired. Tired of love, happily in love, aggravated with love, it's all love.
So the devil curls its tail around itself, and began the long climb up the stairway to heaven. In the beginning, the stones are chipped and scorched, but earthy, from years of misuse and lack of repair, but as his hooves step higher and higher, the smell he would only occasionally catch a whiff off gets worse and worse.
Kakashi quickly rushes past the human world. It's always given him a splitting headache.
Then, as he rises to heaven, the steps turn white, like pearls or diamonds. God is very elaborate, Kakashi thinks to himself. He wouldn't put it past Him to make His part of the stairway of diamonds.
Then he gets shoved into by something large and feathery, which he takes to be a wing. The angels.
"You? We haven't had one of your kind up here in ages! How is it down there in eternal Hell?" Kakashi coughs nervously, and feels a little guilty to have been watching these two without them having known.
Well, it's good to know they won't flay him alive for daring to invade their 'wondrous' Heaven. "Bah, it's never-changing. That's the eternal bitch of it all, you know? Not the fact that it's hot as the fuckin' dickens, or that you're stuck with a bunch of people that are in Hell for a reason, but its monotony. Goddam, how irritating." The two angels give him a moment to shake his head before laughing outright.
"Oh, don't I wish we had the same complaint!" The female angel says in a voice that really isn't that fitting of an angel. Sure, it's soft, and feminine, but her tone is proof that she has quite an attitude behind the gentle femininity. On her cheeks are twin purple rectangles, which look oddly well placed on her roundish face. "God is so very fickle. His idea of who belongs in heaven is always changing. Did you know that at one point we had communists up here?"
The male angel grunts. "Look, I'll say it once, and I'll no doubt say it again. The theory of communism is a very sound idea, just like democracy and shit. The problem is, none of them ever really work out." Now his voice is definitely not one of an angel. It's rough and angry, passionate and deep. It's too very manly to be an angel's tone.
"Should you really be cursing?" Kakashi asks tentatively, glancing around as if a lightning bolt will come out of nowhere and hit the male angel.
The angels exchange glances and laugh. "Oh, God hasn't paid attention to us in millennia. And we're damn thankful of it! That's mostly the reason we fought with Lucifer. It wasn't out of loyalty or want of peace. It was so God could go back to his toys and leave us the hell alone."
Rin nods fervently. "Lucifer just wanted to be God's pet forever. I swear, it feels like I'm in a human high school sometimes. There's always those people who want the teacher to like them."
Kakashi is appropriately confused. So this is . . . the renowned Heaven? Why do these angels sound so oddly cynical about it?
"Well, if it's so very stuffy up here, what do you two say to a short visit downstairs?" He raises his thin, silver eyebrows suggestively, hoping they'll accept. He can show them a few good things about Hell . . .
"You mean go to Earth?" the two angels exclaim distastefully, as if the mere suggestion of it is enough to make them sick.
Kakashi looks offended that they'd think he'd say something like that. He's not aruffian. "Of course not! I meant Hell." He snorts. "Earth. Whatta joke."
Now that the misunderstanding has been cleared up, the two angels seem to really be contemplating the idea. "What do you think, Obito?" Rin asks thoughtfully, knowing full well he's probably rather willing to jump right in, head first.
"Why not?" he answers with a sly grin. His mind is running on the same train of thought as Kakashi's.
So the devil and the two angels descend downwards, sparking conversation to cover nervousness and disgust as they pass Earth.
"So, what were you two doing so close to the Gate?" Kakashi asks curiously.
Obito and Rin exchange glances. "Well, we were talking about love. It's almost a taboo topic in Heaven, you know."
"Love?" Kakashi asks incredulously, unsure he's heard right.
"Yes. You see, God created us without much love, unlike those humans. Because of this, I suppose a lot of us seem to lack it, this sentiment that comes to humans so easily," Rin explains easily.
Kakashi lets out a grunt to show he's understood, but without really understanding the idea behind it. Not having love? Kakashi can't imagine it. He loves plenty of things. He loves cold, he loves food, he loves pleasure, he loves legs, he loves necks. "So you don't love?"
Obito coughs nervously. "That's the problem. Rin and I do. That's why we were talking about it away from the others. They'd think badly of us if they knew. We'd be like . . . heretics, or something."
Kakashi laughs then, finding the whole subject kind of amusing. Wasn't Heaven supposed to be loving and caring and overwhelmingly white? The white part seemed to be the only part he'd gotten right.
"Don't worry then. Hell's like love's garden. You reap what it sows, or something stupid like that." Then the fires are lapping at their toes, and the angels finch back in surprise. Fire's a new concept to them. They're used to sterile, cold, white, not this passionate, fiery red, always moving, always hungry.
The angels find themselves enjoying their stay of Hell, once they get used to it. They eat at the best restaurants (all the good chefs went to Hell) and were free to love the food. They danced to the best music (all the greatest musicians went to Hell, too) and were free to love the music and the dance. Then they would return to Kakashi's abode and found themselves loving the touches and intimacies and even him, a devil, but a sure as Hell lovely one.
Needless to say, they walked up those pearly white stairs with a little more weight than they'd had walking down (they lost most of it during their dances and the sex, though), and a song stuck in their heads.
When the other angels asked Obito and Rin where they'd been off to, the two of them exchanged secret loving grins and answered: "In heaven."