It was never meant to happen this way.
I never meant for it to happen.
It was never meant to happen this way.
I stood at his grave, my heart clenched full of guilt, my heart wondering if I would ever be able to forgive myself. I had dressed in a prevaricate manner as not to expose myself to the humans around me. My usual slatternly trench coat was tossed away and hidden, replaced with the synonymous black that everyone else was wearing.
Everyone that he knew was there, everyone that he had introduced me to was there, but alone I stood clandestinely hidden amongst the people and the trees, my own guilt seeking repentance from the only human that I had ever learned to love; the only human that I had ever loved that had died by my own hands.
It was as if it was some sort of perverse joke from my Father, my own Father who had forsook me when I had prayed for help, so oblivious to the way the world worked, only wanting to take all His power and use it for my own world.
I carefully lift my head and peer through a sea of blacks and grays, staring into the waxen hearts of all the souls whom had arrived at his funeral, silently punishing myself for the cause of all this.
I had traveled all across my Father's earth, through all of the centuries I had been alive, but never had my heart wrenched for a meager human like this man had. This man who I had so bigotedly dragged out from the pits of hell and in return, I myself had fallen into his iridescent green eyes, lost forever amongst a sea of human emotions.
In the beginning, there was however, no respect contained for me, what I had hoped was veneration and adoration turned out to be mistrust and falsification of my true intentions. He had once even accused me of murdering him, like those demon scum. But all it took was one look into my eyes and he knew that I meant him no harm. And then a bond was formed between us. I had once believed that we would never be separated. That one day, we would find a way to make me like him and we would grow old and die together.
I was wrong.
I remember when I first fell, for him, the heresies I had committed that had caused my brothers at home to fall into chaos and betrayal, all for this man. He had once laughed at the jargon of my tongue, telling me about all the interesting jokes that I had unintentionally said, telling me that I wasn't so much of a prick that my brothers had been. He also once told me, near his end, that my once rocky personality and awkwardness had broken away and become an urbane charisma. I remember then, questioning about his sanity, wondering to myself, 'had I really become that much of a human?'
But I had smiled, a real, human smile, thanking him, only to be returned with a punch in my arm.
I remember teaching him Enochian, the language of my people, and having to stop and point out the inscrutable strokes of his chicken scratch writing. Another thing I loved about him.
A nebulous fog had settled around my feet as I had realized that the service was over. I cloaked myself in darkness as I watch his brother, standing along before his grave marker, a cliché tableaux I'm sure he would have laughed at, maybe even digging his way out of the soft stratum of soil like he did when I had raised him from perdition. But I laugh pathetically under my breath. There was never going to be a way for him to raise again, never a chance for me to see his eyes smiling at me.
The first time he had taken me to a club and tried to get me to fornicate due to my fresh status of 'fallen', I had nearly had what a human would call a heart attack. That was the first time I had heard him laugh as he grabbed my hand and dragged me out of that wretched place of sex. It was from then on that he had me swear that if I had ever decided to give up my 'innocence', he would be the first person I had to call to tell him the news, so he could get a good laugh again. I don't think he realized that he was the one I was celibate for.
I remember when the war at home began again and I was reclaimed by the heavens as their child. I had become so caught up in the war that I had soon forgotten about my attachments to earth. When I had returned after being summoned by him, I admitted to his brother that even though he was also a dear friend, my partisanship lays with his brother. I had kept quiet about the notion that my heart was with him as well.
I remember flying in to him early in the morning, his being free form lassitude and his smell free from the bloody sent of demon entrails that he and his brother had hunted last night. I would smile at him and he would point out that my eyes would look exceptionally blue today, or that my hair was all scuffed up from the war upstairs and he would sit me down and comb it through for me.
I remember the way his hand would graze mine when his brother was stuck in the back of the car, trying to track the creature we were hunting. His thumb across my palm in slow gyrating circles, so subtly I doubted that he even noticed. But I knew, and that was all that mattered. I remember the time when I had brought the three of us back to the past and my entire body had begun to bleed, my vessel unable to attach itself to my healing abilities. He had ripped apart his shirt and plaited it around my wounds, in attempt to heal me, attempting to use spare tesserae from the ground to buy me herbs. But the apothecary had taken pity on him and healed me using human methods instead.
I remember when he had fulminated his anger into the skies, towards my father when his brother had become etiolated with illness and my powers couldn't work, because I was cut off from home. I had wrapped myself around him and kept him warm that night because he insisted using all the blankets to keep the only kin he had left warm. I do not know if it was because he had read my mind or he already knew, but he reminded me that night that I was also his family, and that the three of us would be together running around killing creatures of the dark forever.
I didn't bother reminding him that no one lived forever, not even me.
I remember when he decided to insult the King of Hell and call him what I recall as a "sinecure" bastard who controlled a ring of racketeering monkey demons that stood no chance against him. I had called him a zealot demon killing hard head after I had barely managed to subdue him with my light and flew them out to safety. I warned him never to throw a scene like that again without a permanent plan or a devil's trap. Of course, he never did listen.
I remember, I remember, I remember. That's all I can do, is remember. I would never be able to experience his warmth or his pain again. We would never be able to fight together again or mock his brother together again. He will never be able to ruffle my hair again, or ruin my coat again. Never, like the colorless paraffin from a dying fire, nonexistent and worthless. He was like a palimpsest in Death's eyes, important for one purpose and then gone the next, erased, forever.
Oh I argued and bargained with that old man, but he never budged, saying that it was all for the best, assuring me that the only place he was trapped in now was the ramifications of his own heaven, upstairs; place that I no longer had access to, because I fell, for him.
Like messages that slid out of a pneumatic mailbox or something of the sort, from the kind of movies that he liked to watch, I realized the full truth; one that I had already realized, but only sunk in again, deeper, deeper, and deeper, into the core of my being.
He is dead. My precious human, my soul dead. The one that I had given my freedom and my pride in heaven for. The one that died by my hands. Slowly, I spread out my wings, the tips grazing the wet grass below and I shed my human form, a bright light enveloping the entire plot of land. I look down from the grey skies and I see his brother looking around, for me.
But I ignore it as I shoot up into the heavens, higher than I had ever gone before, the human flesh that I had possessed now lying cold on the grass. The ice in the skies began to freeze around my wings and I turned back, falling, falling, falling.
I fell again, through the skies, through earth, and plummeting into the ground, six feet under with the body of my beloved.
I curled myself up in his empty body, my being wrapped around his no longer beating heart and I closed my eyes and waited.
I lay there waiting, until the days of the earth came to an end when I can finally perish and see him again. But for now, I lay here waiting, inside his heart. Forever, until the end of time.