A/N: The following story was inspired by a piece I found on deviantart called The Fallen.
"You hold the key." he says softly. "Heaven is not so far away." He is right. Heaven is not far, not when I hold the cold metal that could free me from my bonds in an instant if I wished it. It is all I have to do: just stick the slender metal instrument into the lock in order to free my wrists from the cold bracelets holding me down. I could leave this cold world behind, and I'll have him – as well as an eternal life in paradise – in its place. All I have to do is use the key.
I find myself placing it into the keyhole, thinking to do exactly as he wishes, what I myself wish. I must leave this place. This place is where men kill each other with hate and war, where greed corrupts what once were good hearts, where lust replaces love, and God is just a three-letter word that goes before "damn it". Why would I want to stay here when so little good is left? Why would any immortal want to spend eternity chained to a rock that sits upon the wild sea? This place is not what it was on the day of its creation. Sin has spilled forth like a black plague. Who would not choose Heaven over this place so close to Hell?
"Leave this place, Marianna." he tells me. "There is nothing for you here. Come with me. We can go together and never look back." I look up at him. He's so beautiful. Any mortal girl would get lost in his innocent blue eyes, barely visible under the mop of curly golden hair. He is well-muscled and strong. Such a dream. And he cares for me, this angel called Nathaniel. He's gentle and kind, the type of being you read about in a child's fairy tale. He wants to be my "knight in shining armor" and save me from this cruel, cruel place. He wants to save me: the damsel chained down by this world.
Why? Why is this wonderful person, the one who is the very symbol of light itself, trying to rescue me? Before I came to Heaven, I was never anything worth fighting for. I was just a restless girl, pissed at the world, recklessly living my life with alcohol and partying as my constant companions. My life was by no means, a fairytale. My "fairy godmother" was a foster mom who spent the majority of her time praying to God to ease my troubled soul and mending my worn clothes. My "chariot made from a pumpkin" was a beat up car that I often used for chauffeuring my friends and their boyfriends about as they hooked up in the back seat. My "prince charming" was a boyfriend caught up in heroin and vodka, and he loved nothing more than to tell me what a piece of shit I was, supposedly only with me because I was the one girl who never hassled him about getting clean.
That one moment I experienced on that fateful night in September where I saw the drunk's car careening towards me was the only moment I ever felt truly at peace. I'd never feared Death, and now that it had come I was ready to go to Purgatory, where I could work to free myself of my sins. I had been raised with Catholic beliefs, although I seldom followed them. That is what I believed. When I found myself at the Golden Gates of Heaven instead, I had never been more surprised. What had I done to deserve this? I had never been a deep sinner, but I had never been a saint, either. So why was I there?
My foster mom, Nathaniel had said when I'd met him. Her love for me had carried me there. Well, how did I repay her? I went back down to Earth, disguised as a human, to do everything that I had done before death. Life in Heaven was great, but I just didn't feel like I belonged. I couldn't stand the fact that I didn't deserve being there. I guess you could say that I was looking to be thrown out of Heaven, just asking to blacken those annoyingly pure white wings that had sprouted upon my back.
When that finally happened, I expected to be thrown to Hell, not because I wanted to go there, but because riffraff like me were supposed to go there. God had other plans.
He chained me down to the world that had scorned me my entire life. I was forced upon a rock in the middle of the ocean, where the sea was the only thing I could watch unless I chose to look up to the sky and see what I'd given up. For months I sat there, feeling sorry for myself as the cold waves washed over me. I was such an idiot. I was a girl who'd been given a chance, and I'd thrown it all away because I was too scared to let go of what I'd known my entire life.
Then Nathaniel came back down, after being away so long from not being able to look down at the girl who'd thrown away her chance.
"Look down Marianna." he had said. "For God's sake, look down."
I looked down towards my bonds, through the veil of dark, chaotic hair that hadn't been tamed even in my death. So close to my pale hand was the key.
"It's been there this entire time."
I am looking at it now, knowing that one turn to the left can free my wrist. I can leave the pain behind, after months of agony on this rocky prison. I hesitate. Nathaniel growls in frustration.
"What is wrong with you, Marianna James? After months of torturing yourself like this you still hesitate to let go? What is there to hold on to? Do you find happiness in agony?"
A small, perverse part of me does. But I do not say that to him. Instead, I offer him the bigger part of the truth: "Earth, as cruel as it can be, is all that I've ever known." I say, playing with the skirt of my tattered black dress. I feel a sob deep within me, ready to erupt out of my mouth. My corset feels like it's suffocating me as I hold it in. "I do not wish to spend all eternity in it, but I am not ready to leave."
A tear rolls down his cheek. "But why?"
"There was some happiness in this life." I reply softly. "There were times when my 'mother' would take the beer bottle out of my hand and rock me to sleep as I cried on her shoulder. There were times when my friends wanted to go to the mall with me instead of hooking up with their boyfriends. During the extremely rare times when Scott was clean and sober, he could be kind and thoughtful for once. There are times now that I sit on this rock and watch dolphins play or the waves dance around me." I pause, looking up at him.
"It is those times that make me see that there's still beauty here on Earth, that there is still a flicker of hope for mankind. How can I selfishly leave for my own chance at happiness when this world is still just barely holding out for its own? I cannot leave until that flicker becomes a strong flame."
"So this is your choice, Marianna?" he says sadly, looking down. At my nod, he flies off, shaking his head. Before he enters the sky, he looks back and calls out.
"I shall wait for the day when you're ready!" He disappears into the clouds, the ones that are so dark yet still hold the ray of light that shall remain until I can come home. I whisper to myself.
"Yes. Because one day I will be ready to let go."
A/N: I'm gonna try and give the link. Remove the spaces and replace the parenthesized words with proper symbols.
http (colon slash slash) halaquinn-arcadias (dot) deviantart (dot) com (slash) art (slash) The-Fallen-56186345