The Better Half
"All the hardest, coldest people you meet were once as soft as water, and that's the tragedy of life." - Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
You're created together, whether by mistake or choice, neither of you seek to speculate. You're formed of starlight and darkness, iron-edged feathers and steel-tipped bones, curled together in the quiet in the moments before you're both thrust into the light.
Michael is smaller from the beginning, weaker it seems, and although it's never truly spoken or assigned, you feel an overwhelming feeling of protection as you straighten the bulky wings which seem three sizes too big for the frail body.
The other angels give up on teaching him to fly. He's too fragile, too small to control his wings, and he'd shatter into a thousand pieces when he fell. But Michael is determined, making up for what he lacks in body with his spirit, and you feel an intense rush of pride every time he crashes down and struggles back up before striking the ground, with a flap of flailing wings and spread arms, balancing himself on the tips of his toes before launching off again.
He grows quickly, shifting, morphing until he's as tall as the others, as strong as the rest, a warrior in every way, training and learning.
Time is meaningless in Heaven, a vast eternity that stretches to depths even the angels can't comprehend, but you only know that they measure it in events, fragmented moments of significance.
There's the day when you're all still so young, when your Father creates something new, something He calls His child, as He called your brothers and sisters and you when you were formed, and you stare down at the garden and the naked, wingless creature, searching for beauty, for logic in the strange form, watching wordlessly as their Father creates another and places it beside the first. You don't see the beauty, only the helplessness, the frailty, and something reminds you of Michael, as he was at the beginning.
You go down, too often, it seems, out of sight, watching, listening, even laughing with delight as the creatures marvel over the animals and plants of the learn and study, grow, and you're proud, intensely proud of Father's work, intrigued by the differences, the frailty of body and the strength of the heart in the beings of the earth.
The Fall is the second event you remember, and you shouldn't have been surprised, not when you saw the curiosity in their eyes from the start, the longing for knowledge and thirst for wisdom that hung ripe and tantalizingly close to their fingertips. They sinned, and it's right that they're punished, but you weep as Father slaughters an animal and clothes them in it's still bloody skin, and your heart aches as they're driven out and sent to wander, the wind blowing away their footprints in the sand.
You follow them for a while, long enough to ensure they seek shelter, linger as they start a new life, a different, harsher one. The man - Adam, Father called him - learns to work the land and harvest it's bounty, but Eve is the one you marvel out, watching as life takes root and grows inside her, as one child and then another comes to walk the earth, small mirrors of their parents in every way.
Cain is strong, proud, and handsome, a warrior to be in awe of, and some of the higher angels regard him with envy, even now. But it's Abel who you watch over, who you delight in. Different, with a heart so good it makes you want to weep. Abel is exquisite, the intricate craftsmanship of the Father, as if the poison of the fruit of the tree somehow escaped his veins and left him pure. Tiny hands reach for the beauty of nature from the day he learns to crawl, and nature reaches back, as if sensing the goodness within. Animals come to him with trust, even the wild and strange things of the sky and ground, and the ground yields bounty for him. You are fascinated, drawn like the warmth of the sun to the earth.
Abel is generous and faithful, offering only the best to Father, and you feel a swell of pride when you watch his gifts, tempered only by the wave of disgust at the selfishness of his brother.
You try to get Michael to see what you do, but he only looks at them and then away. You can feel yourself drifting away from Michael, like the yin and yang you always were, each of you balanced on the side of a scale, light and dark, never tipping too far one way without one of you shifting to balance the other.
Death is next event you remember, and this is how you measure it: in staring eyes and twisted hands, crimson and gaping wound, bits of shattered rock and skull, and horrible, deafening silence. Abel, still and broken, as the earth screams from every drop of his blood, and you curl into yourself and scream with it until the others force you to stop. The humans have never seen death either, and you watch, fists clenched, as they shake the body, as they plead and cry, as they understand, slowly, surely. They learn what death is: the absence of breath and pulse, the lack of life, the loss of a child. Mortality was a word, not understood, like light to a person without eyes. Now it is silence and blood and pain twisted and coiled inside them. This is also murder, a new word, horrible and metallic on the tongue, and you watch Michael burn it into Cain's forehead in runes and twisted letters, and you do not flinch, do not weep.
Another child follows, pity from Father, and they call him Seth, clear and strong, and handsome. But the light that was in Abel does not appear in him, and his goodness, however well intentioned, is not pure. Generations pass, and you take little notice. You have other tasks, other thoughts, and you see less and less of Michael as Father sends him down more, and he returns reeking of blood and sweat and suffering not his own.
This is how the Flood begins, as cruelty spawns wickedness, as wickedness gives birth to rage, rage to madness, and madness to depravity. The humans are vast, as numerous as the angels, violent and evil in every way, and yet something in you still sees hope, some glimmer of Father's design or flicker of Abel's light. You find yourself, alongside Uriel, in a wasteland of sand and desert, your face splattered with Michael's blood, your hands soaked in it. He's close to death when you stop, and you leave him there, and you think you should feel something, anything, but perhaps you've forgotten how to feel at all.
Michael lives, you learn, as the orphaned child of one of his victims patiently dribbles water past swollen lips parched by the sun, and bandages the wounds to staunch the blood. He heals slowly, almost mortally so, and there are no more orders from Father, no more crimson waters of the Flood, only a strange and distant peace.
It's then, perhaps, that the scales begin to tip, like a trickle of water poured drop by drop from one side to the next, forming a new balance. The child has been dead centuries now, an old man with many children when he reached his final day, and Michael has not forgotten, while you have changed, hardened it seems. You see little beauty in the weak life that crawls across the earth, nothing of value or worth, only a vast darkness as they fight and kill, argue over Father's name and followers, as Heaven itself threatens to be consumed by the ocean of blood they spill in it's name.
That is when Father disappears, like wind snuffing out a candle, leaving them lost and alone. There are no explanations, no meaning, no signs. Heaven and earth shift, and the angels and mortals alike struggle to understand, even as you think you understand, as it finally makes sense, that the creation has somehow stolen away the Creator.
It does not surprise you - why should it after all this time? - that Michael doesn't agree. He stands silent, watching you in that familiar way, as the snakes watch the humans before they strike, as you gather your swords. There is something in his eyes you can't read sorrow, grief? and his hand reaches to stop you before falling back at his side. But he asks, quietly, and only once, why, and you can't answer him, not in words, not in all the languages of mortals and angels. You can't explain the weariness within you, the light you carried that shifted to Michael that day in the desert as his darkness flowed into you. Or perhaps it started before, with Abel, with the screams and the horror. You say nothing.
You are not surprised when he goes to the humans, when he gathers as many of them as he can to protect them, when he stands against you and the others who side with you. Nor are you surprised when angel blood begins to stain his blades as human blood spills across yours.
And when you see him cry, you understand what you should have long ago. You were the only angels created together, and perhaps it was a mistake after all, two of you filling a void only one was supposed to occupy, possessing only enough of everything for one, like conjoined twins with a single heart between two chests.
Michael has all the tears. And you are hollow.