The house was ruined.

Rosiel sighed as she stood in the middle of all the disorder, hands on her hips, her stance roaring anger and pain, made more evident by the livid tears coursing down her blood-splattered cheeks. She had been proud of her home—it was a house of two stories, with four bedrooms; the walls were crème colored with golden trim, and the furnishings were of the most elegant vintage Italian design that she had been able to get her greedy little hands on.

More importantly, it was her hometheir home, a place that she had built with the help of her brother and Other-Half, a place where she found bliss. It was her own little piece of Heaven where nothing could touch them.

It was all a mess now; all her hard work and effort into making a home, a safe haven… ruined.

Gilded mirrors were shattered, tables were overturned, and chairs (which had previously been used as hasty weapons) now laid broken on the ground in pieces. The stuffing had been ripped out of plush sofas, and now it all lay scattered across the floor like snow, dotted with red—the blood of those foolish to invade the Messinger's house.

Blood splattered nearly every surface, the thick, nearly black crimson substance (some of which had begun to pool on the wooden flooring as it oozed down from elevated surfaces) coagulating with the nighttime breeze that came in through various broken windows. The smell that radiated off it was simply fetid, resembling rotten flesh—like death, more or less

The walls all had claw marks, which made some of the wallpaper begin to peel in ribbons, and the wall that divided the kitchen with the dining room was broken completely, a rather large dog-shaped hole in the center of it.

The lustrous wooden floor, which was kept in tiptop shape, was now opaque and showed signs of a violent scuffle.

Twenty-two years of living a normal life, of living with a sense of peace, all gone down the drain, just like that—all over in a single moment.

Where had they gone wrong?

"Well, I suppose we couldn't keep living this charade for long," muttered Rosiel as she bent down to retrieve her angel sword from the corpse of a hellhound.

Three of those brutish animals (not including the five dead demons in the basement) had stormed through the house; all the size of your large average dog, with black matted fur and glowing red eyes, invisible to everyone except for the ones it was sent to retrieve; the ones that it was meant to take down to Hell.

Rosiel had killed two, while the remaining one (injured in the shoulder by her angel sword) scampered away; leaving a bloody trail behind it that disappeared into the woods surrounding the property. She would deal with that one later. There were more pressing matters to attend to now.

It seemed that the Morning Star had found Deborah once more, and since this attack hadn't been the quietest of ones, it was only a matter of time before Heaven became aware of their location—they would have to burn the house down and erase anything that could be traced back to them.

There was no other option. They couldn't hide in plain sight anymore. It had been foolish to think that they could in the first place, anyways.

Damn, thought Rosiel ruefully, looking around her destroyed home, I really loved this house… at least the cars weren't destroyed. I'm gonna have to rent out a garage to keep those—

Suddenly—almost unbelievably—the cell phone in the back pocket of Rosiel's shorts began to buzz with an incoming call, interrupting her train of thoughts. Rosiel hesitated, mulling it over, (who could be calling her in such a time?) before muttering "fuck it" and reaching into her back pocket, retrieving the phone and not even sparing the display screen a second glance as she pressed the phone against her ear. What more could happen after tonight, right?

She was wrong, of course.

Later, Rosiel would come to regret not checking who the incoming call was from, and at the same time she would thank her lucky stars that she hadn't checked it, because then she might not have answered if she'd known who exactly was calling her.

A very familiar, unwelcomed voice spoke through the line the moment Rosiel accepted the call, accented with a slight Indian accent, asking, "Rosiel?"

Rosiel's eyes narrowed, her hackles rising defensively as she said, "What do you want, Kali?"

The aforementioned Kali sighed, saying quietly, "I was told to call you—"

"By whom, if I may be so bold as to ask, your majesty," replied Rosiel mockingly, eyes narrowed as she cautiously made her way out of the living room.

"Gabriel."

Alarms began going off in Rosiel's head, so much, so that she nearly dropped her angel sword in surprise, and all but froze completely on the spot.

"How do you know that name," asked Rosiel quietly, her tone a mixture of wariness and dread.

"I figured it out," said Kali simply, her voice becoming somber, "There was once a time when he thought he could fool me into thinking he was the Trickster—that he was the lowly God Loki, but not anymore; an Archangel, Gabriel no less—who would have thought?"

How the hell did she… I don't… FUCK!

A bad feeling settled deep within Rosiel's very core—Gabriel had once made himself pass as the God of Mischief and Lies; it was a game for him, and his very own witness protection program. Taking on a new identity was how he'd been able to hide himself from Heaven's watchful eye… No one who knew him as Loki was supposed to know his identity except for the obvious select few who were in his little social circle.

Moreover, if certain people knew that an Archangel was gallivanting on earth, well… it spelled trouble. Archangels were powerful, and there were various beings that would do anything in their power to trap themselves a genuine Archangel from Heaven… how had Kali found out about Gabriel? She wasn't supposed to know!

Taking in a deep breath to quell down the rising panic in her chest, Rosiel said, "You're losing me, Kali. What the hell are you trying to say—no wait, more importantly: why the fuck would Gabriel give you my number to call? I loathe you, and you me—do you see where I'm going with this?"

"I understand," sighed Kali, "but please, you must listen to me—"

"No, I shouldn't fucking listen to you," Rosiel spat, the past flashing across her mind's eye, making her pitiable attempts at calming herself down all for nothing. "You seduced him, you fucking four-armed bitch! Because of you, our bond will never be the same again! You tainted it with your filthy, fucking—"

"Who did he bond himself to!" yelled Kali rhetorically, her voice sounding strained. "At the end of the day, whom does he always come home to? You, Rosiel, not me—you; it's you! It has always been you! What we had… it was nothing, it meant nothing to him; he was just a man enticed. In the end, it's you who has his grace in her hands, while all I have are bitter memories of a simple fling that I could never make into something more because he ALWAYS REFUSED!"

All was silent as the weight of Kali's words hung heavily in the air. In short, she had said that Rosiel had won Gabriel's affections, but it had never been a game, not to Rosiel. A game was a diversion from reality, something to entertain yourself with—the bond of angels was not a game, not something that could be tainted or trifled with, and yet it had happened…

Without their Other-Half, an angel was not whole, and right now, Rosiel felt like a part of her was missing.

"What the fuck do you want?" asked Rosiel in a rasping voice, her bottom lip beginning to quiver as all the emotions associated with Gabriel's betrayal came back to her. It had happened years ago, centuries in the past, and yet it still hurt as if it had just happened yesterday. Rosiel could feel her grace dimming just a tiny bit with the horrible memories and feelings resurfacing.

Gabriel—her Gabriel, for a lack of a better word, had cheated… he had cheated with a goddess, no less. Kali, the Hindu Goddess of Time, Change, and Destruction—hell yeah destruction, thought Rosiel bitterly, that bitch fucking destroyed what we had… it'll never be the same, not since she stepped between us.

"Gabriel is dead—"

The world suddenly stopped turning for Rosiel.

Her grace began pulsing in distress.

Her angel sword slipped from her grasp and clattered to the ground.

Her hands began to tremble, and the air left her lungs.

Those three little words had not been what Rosiel had been expecting to hear, not in a million years.

"—Elysian Fields Hotel. Muncie, Indiana—that is where you'll find him," continued Kali, her voice quiet, despondent, "or what's left of him…"

Kali hung up, and Rosiel screamed, allowing her grace to leave her vessel for just a second, but a second was all it took for the house to fill up with a blinding white light—and then it burned, being engulfed in flames.

The Messingers—effectively—were no more.


AN: I have made it obvious where we stand when it comes to the show's timeline, and I will say this now: I am totally going to put to use my creative license, so canon will be twisted to fit this story's plot.