A/N: This is a two-parter; I'll have the second part uploaded soon. This was largely inspired by unicornesque's Season Unending; ThinksInWords was awesome and beta'd it for me. If you check it out on tumblr (my url is wittygirls), you can see the amazing graphic that joly-poly over there made for me!
Enjoy!
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of a heaven"
― John Milton, Paradise Lost
They are the Grigori—the Watchers, men call them. They do on earth what the Creator cannot, whether it is settling small disputes or interpreting prophetic dreams. There are two hundred of them, each one gifted in his own way. Many teach signs; signs of the clouds, the sun, the moon, the earth. Others teach more useful skills, such as the creation of weaponry and writing with ink and paper. There is one who teaches the children of men the bitter and sweet secrets of wisdom.
Enjolras has a quick and judicious eye, and this is the gift he passes onto Man.
"Look here," he says to the quarreling farmers, and their wives and children gather 'round. "There is no dispute so great it will follow you into the life after life. Is this cow really worth so much to you? Then slaughter it and share it, and remember that you are neighbors."
Other men and their families soon call upon him to settle their disputes. Enjolras determines what is fair and what is just, and teaches men to do the same.
"You must do what is best for all of Man," he says time and time again.
It heartens him when they walk away as friends, their lesson learned and their hearts unhardened.
But as the years pass and more men come to him with every problem imaginable, he feels less and less reassured.
"There is so much wickedness in men," he laments to the others in his order. "I know they are capable of goodness, but I see less and less of it every day."
There are many who tell him to keep the faith, he is doing their Father's work. But one of his brothers, Grantaire, an angel who too often partakes in the earthly pleasures of men, laughs at him. "And who do you think first brought wickedness to men?" he challenges with a wine-stained smirk. "And who is it, do you think, who brings wickedness to them still?"
"Your mind is addled with the vine, Grantaire," Combeferre tells him, his sharp eyes looking to the skies.
In a shadow-filled corner, the angel's laugh becomes a murmur. "He condemned us as soon as He created us."
A hundred years pass, and with them pass the goodness of men. Enjolras sees neighbors steal from one another, even murder one another. He sees tribes go to war with one another for land and for glory and for other gods. The Grigori, restless on earth, begin to share their forbidden knowledge with men; heavenly secrets soon become market gossip.
"I do not see the harm in it," Samyaza insists—he shares many secrets with the human wife he has taken.
"You may not now, but remember that there was one before you who shared secrets with men," Combeferre warns.
They all know who he's talking about. Lucifer, the beloved brother, who fell because of the things he whispered in the first woman's ear.
How little things change, Enjolras reflects.
Samyaza is not the only angel to take a wife; many of them do. The daughters of men are beautiful and different from anything in Heaven. The children of these unions are curious to behold; the daughters are pale, lovely creatures, and the sons are giants. Nephilim, they are called.
"This is wrong," Combeferre mutters when Baraquel announces the birth of another son.
"To love is wrong?" Joly, who shares a woman with Bossuet, challenges. "Have we not been taught that to love is to understand Our Father?"
Enjolras opens his mouth to answer, but Grantaire beats him to it. "We will never understand Him; that is why it is wrong to love."
She comes to him in the early dawn of her womanhood. She is tall and gangly for her age and her limbs stick out at awkward angles, but her dark hair hangs down to her waist and her round face holds the promise of beauty. Her father and another man are quarreling, and she has been summoned to fetch him. He follows her, for no matter how weary he is with men and their quarrels, he is even more invigorated by ending them. He almost doesn't pay attention to the shadow of a girl beside him—men are either very eager to thrust their daughters at the Grigori or very keen to keep them away from them, and Enjolras has found that it's simply easier to avoid unmarried girls altogether—when she turns to him and asks without preamble, "Is it true what they say? That the life after this never ends?"
"It is true," he says, a little startled. It was probably a secret once, long ago, but there are few things the Grigori can keep secret from men these days.
"Even to the end of days?" she presses, brown eyes boring into his blue ones.
He looks away as another loosely-guarded secret falls from his lips. "There is only an earthly end to days; in Heaven, there is no end."
She considers. "And what happens, in this life without end?"
He walks a little ahead of her. "That is a question I cannot answer, daughter."
She runs to catch up with him. "Cannot, or will not?"
"Éponine," he warns.
She ducks her head and mumbles an apology, and that is the end of the matter.
Their paths do not cross again for a few more years. He sees her now and again in the market, running errands for her father or tending to her flock of younger siblings, but they never exchange more than passing nods. He catches glimpses of her here and there, and piece by piece, he sees her becoming a woman.
It is the woman Éponine who buries her two youngest brothers when they catch fever. Her mother and father pay for the embalming and beat their breasts and tear their clothes as is expected, but it is Éponine who selects which toys of theirs follow them into the tomb. It is Éponine who leaves a candle inside the dark cave because the little boys were always afraid of the dark. While the Grigori sing their melodious songs of mourning, Éponine holds her only living brother left close and whispers the lullabies she sang at his cradle—though whether she sings for him or for the boys in the tomb, no one knows. Her sister, almost a woman herself, takes the boy away when the other mourners leave, but Éponine stays by the tomb.
Enjolras does not want to leave her alone, not when there is that dead and empty look in her eyes, and that is how he finds himself at her side for the second time.
"They are with Our Father now," he murmurs, which is the only consolation he knows to give.
"Yes." She is quiet for a moment. "Do you remember when I came for you all those years ago, Grigori? I asked you about the life after life."
"I remember."
"You wouldn't tell me what happened."
"It is not for the living—"
"I want to know," her voice cracks, "what's happening to my brothers."
He is quiet for a long moment. "I have never died," he finally says, slowly. "But…I am told that there is no pain. Only light. The body is made new and whole; all wounds healed, all blemishes removed. And you are taken across a silver lake by a boat. A heavenly host welcomes you, and you are reunited with loved ones. At least, that is what I have been told. Your brothers are at peace, daughter, as should you be."
She makes a small tuh! noise and mutters, "Be at peace." Then, louder, she asks, "But what do you do there, in the garden of the Lord? It goes without end, you said before. What do we do in these infinite days?"
"You welcome the newcomers and sing the praises of the Lord," he recites as he has been taught.
Her brow furrows. "Forever?"
"Well, yes." He sees her hesitance and hurries, "It seems very long and perhaps very dull now, but it will not when you are there. Every hour is more wonderful than the last."
Her next question surprises him. "Is anyone unhappy in Heaven? Is there any discontent?"
"No, of course not." But something in the back of his mind whispers, Yes. There were many who were discontent. One third of the angels fell with Lucifer.
"And is everyone so happy because Heaven is really so wonderful, or is it because they have no choice?" She turns flashing eyes on him, and he finds that for once, he does not know the answer.
He knows what he should answer, of course…but he also knows that he is not supposed to lie.
He bows his head.
"It's strange. The Lord created us to serve him in this life, and we're told we're rewarded for this service in the next life, but our reward is more servitude."
"Love of your creator is not servitude," he says, sharper than he intends to.
"I did not ask to be created, and I did not ask to spend eternity being reminded of it." Her breath hitches and the fire in her eyes smolders into ashes. "Forgive me," she murmurs, dropping her head. "I'm very tired. All of this…" She struggles for words for another moment before giving up and running away.
Six more months pass before they speak again. By now, the number of Grigori married to the daughters of men outnumber those who remain pure; add this to the number of Nephilim and daughters of angels who marry the sons and daughters of men, and there are few men left without heavenly blood coursing through their veins.
They are celebrating the union of Marius, one of his order, and Cosette, the daughter of an angel and a daughter of men, when Enjolras sees Grantaire and Éponine sitting in a corner. They are laughing over their cups of wine, which is all very well—until he sees Grantaire rest a hand on her leg.
She is a maiden and he is an angel and you are only protecting her is what he tells himself as he approaches in a flurry of white robes and feathered wings. "Brother, you look as if you have indulged in too much of the vine; perhaps it would serve you well to take a walk in the night air."
Grantaire opens his mouth to argue, but then a look of realization crosses his face. He smirks as he rises to his feet. "Yes, perhaps a walk would serve me well." He winks and disappears.
"I hope he was not bothering you," Enjolras says sincerely.
Éponine raises an eyebrow, swirling a finger around the rim of her cup. "No, I enjoyed his company."
He feels foolish. "You should be more careful around angels, especially those known to partake in earthly pleasures." He turns to go to save himself further embarrassment.
"Why?" she throws at him before he can escape. "I thought it was your duty to guide and protect us. Why should I be more careful around those sent to care for me?"
"Why do you always ask such infernal questions?!" he exclaims, turning around.
She pauses for a moment before smiling. "You have all the answers."
He absolutely cannot argue with this logic, and his frustration makes her laugh. "Come dance with me, son of Heaven."
He shakes his head. "I cannot."
She stands on her toes and rests her fingers against his cheek. "You may be a son of Heaven, but your home is here. Enjoy it."
He hesitates for another moment, and it is all the encouragement she needs to pull him out to the circle of dancers. The wedding party is full of angels and their children, more graceful than any child of earth, but he cannot take his eyes off this daughter of men as she twists and turns and bends. She smiles at him over her shoulder, and this son of Heaven is lost.
This is how an angel falls.
He finds himself at her side more often than not, though who seeks who out is never certain. She always asks questions and he always tells her he can't answer them, but she ends up finding out what she wants to know anyway.
"And Yahweh forgives all sins?" she demands, plucking up a wildflower and twirling it between her fingers.
"Yes," he says suspiciously, because this is far less complicated than the questions she usually asks.
"All of them? There is not one He will not forgive?" she challenges.
He feels a shadow of something creeping into his heart. The reminder of brothers once loved and gone now.
"You're quiet."
He doesn't look at her. "There is one sin."
She looks at him expectantly.
"To take one's own life is the only unforgivable sin."
She considers this. "I wonder why."
He glances at her. "What?"
"I wonder why," she repeats. "A man can be forgiven for killing another man, but not for killing himself."
It occurs to him that it is strange, and yet again, he does not have the answer. This has been happening more and more often lately, and it's starting to leave him with a frustrated feeling. He is a servant of the Great I Am, the Lord and Creator, and yet he knows so little.
"You ask too many questions," he says, which is what he always says when he doesn't know how to answer her.
She smiles at him impishly. "I ask what everyone wonders but is too afraid to voice. All men are curious."
"Really."
"Yes." She lies back on the grass. "Why else do you think Eve ate the forbidden fruit?"
"Eve ate the forbidden fruit because Lucifer told her to." Eat, daughter, and be free.
"And it gave her and all of mankind free will, didn't it?" The sun reveals itself from the clouds it was hiding behind and Éponine closes her eyes. "He was doing a kindness, real—"
"You should not speak that way of him." Enjolras says it quietly but firmly, keeping his eyes focused on the trees ahead of him.
She is quiet for a long moment. "Did you know him?" she finally asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Yes." He pauses. "The angels are like brothers, and he was the most beautiful, most beloved of us all. No one loved Adam and Eve more than he, save Our Father."
She rolls onto her side and props herself up with one elbow. "Then why are we taught to revile him?"
He sighs. "He disobeyed Our Father. He spoke often of freeing them. He said it was cruel to create them only to blind them. One day he appeared to them as a serpent and convinced them to eat the forbidden fruit. Our Father was furious…the fight went on for days. Lucifer demanded that angels be treated as gods, and when he was denied, he led a rebellion of angels against Our Father's forces. Our Father finally cast them out and sentenced them to Tartarus."
She looks like she wants to ask more about the fallen morning star, but her little brother chooses that moment to come stumbling into the clearing. "Azelma sent me to find you, she said you've been gone all afternoon and it's time to come home…"
"She's one to complain." But Éponine rises anyway. "I want an answer for my question, Grigori," she says with a smile, and then she is gone.
He knows she was only teasing, but he ponders her question anyway, because it bothers him that anything could be unanswerable.
But this seems to be the only truly unanswerable question. Why is it a greater crime to kill oneself than to kill another? To kill another means to care nothing for that other life, to throw it away. To kill oneself at least requires emotion. It doesn't make sense.
He ponders it for three days and nights. He rewords it every way he knows how and still cannot make sense of it.
And that is how he finds himself sitting with Grantaire—for if there is anyone who will give him an answer he does not want, it is this creature.
"You still have not figured it out yet, have you?" the other Grigori snorts. "After all this time, you still believe everything you have been told is true…"
"Just tell me—"
"I am telling you!" His eyes flash. "Think, brother. When a man kills another man, the man who was killed did no wrong. He can still go to Heaven. And the man who did the killing can still beg for forgiveness. He may not be granted it, but he can still throw himself at the Lord's mercy. If a man kills himself…well, he is the killer and the killed. He cannot throw himself at anyone's mercy but his own."
A faint something begins to take shape in Enjolras's mind.
"He is at his own mercy…" he tries, grasping at straws.
"His own." Grantaire takes a swig from his wineskin. "Not the Lord's. His own."
The faint something becomes an answer.
"Do you see now, brother? It is unforgivable because it is the only way a man can free himself. Because none of them are free, on earth or in Heaven. And neither are we." He takes another swig. "Our Father was very generous, granting mortals free will, but no one talks about the part where disobeying him leads to damnation."
There is a faint humming in Enjolras's ears. It all makes sense now. Everything he has turned from is now staring him in the face and he cannot look away. He does not want to.
"Now you see." Grantaire hands him the wineskin, and for once, the blue-eyed angel accepts it. It tastes bitter and sweet on his tongue all at the same time.
"Lucifer," he sputters, handing the wineskin back.
"He figured it out long before we did."
The fallen brother rises in Enjolras's mind. He gets up, moves to leave.
"We are all condemned, Enjolras," Grantaire calls after him. "You understand that?"
He nods once, curtly. "Yes." And then he leaves to try to save one.
He finds her in the orchards long after the other women have left, plucking figs from the trees and into her basket. She smiles at him, that charming, commanding smile, but it fades when she sees his grim expression. "What…?"
"Do you want to know why ending your own life is the one unforgivable sin?" he demands of her.
"I—"
He grips her thin shoulders, causing her to drop her basket. "It is because it is the one thing you can control."
Her brown eyes stare up at him, wide with everything that one sentence tells her.
"You are born into this life, and you are told that if you serve him to the best of your ability, you are rewarded in death, but when you pass to Heaven your mind is given to Him and you lose all control of it. We have always been told Hell is a place of suffering and despair, but of course He would say that, He does not want anyone to be where He cannot control them."
She quivers in his hands. "So Hell…?"
He shakes his head. "It is just another place. I had always wondered: why would Lucifer punish those who were not with the Lord?"
"He wouldn't," she realizes. "He would be happy they were with him."
"Yes." He catches a lock of her hair between her fingers.
"And what about you?" she asks. "I can't imagine Yahweh will be very pleased you've come to this realization."
He gives her a wry smile. "I am going to be cast out of Heaven for this." He realizes now that the other Grigori have accepted this long ago, that that is why they drink wine and marry the daughters of men who bear their children. They will never be allowed back into Heaven, so they are making their homes on earth.
She takes his hand and, without taking her brown eyes off his blue ones, rests it on her breast. "Then let me be cast out with you."
He swoops down to capture her mouth and she sighs against him, pulling him down, down, down…
They fall together amidst shed clothes and scattered figs and the flutter of angel's wings.