Coming of the Seraph
Assiah
Chapter 7
†
By ten-thirty Miharu had grown restless of sitting in bed with the window open so she could chain-smoke the rest of her pack. She tossed her phone aside, rendered boring when it stopped supplying a string of conversations. She got up to dress, slipping into something suitable for a night out in the summer. The sticky August humidity served as an indicator that typhoon season was in full bloom.
She flicked the lights on in the living area on her way out of her bedroom, nearly jumping out of her skin as swore, very loudly. Something… or someone, had been sitting on the sofa, or so she'd thought. Fear prickled through her, making small hairs on the back of her neck stand on end as she caught her breath from the gasp that had sent her heart into her throat.
Nothing there, she scolded herself. A trick of the light, the girl thought as she ordered herself to stop freaking out about everything.
Miharu crossed the room, fixing the thin straps on the deliberately over-sized black cotton top she wore. It parted gently, inconspicuously making a show of only having enough buttons to hide her chest, and even then the gentle lavender bralette underneath it wasn't exactly hidden. It did though, make light of the high-waisted jean shorts underneath it, which stayed hidden only until the shirt opened.
There was shoe box sitting on the tiny dining room table, no longer gift wrapped but there was a birthday card still sitting on top. She opened it briefly, a message of love from her mother along with an apology for not making it home. It was dated two weeks ago, the same date as her birthday.
She was all smiles as she opened her gift for the second time, carefully folding away the tissue paper so she could lift a black leather ankle boot out of the box. Its surface was a glossy and reflective contrast to the red sole on the underside.
There was no hesitation putting them of, and she walked a small circle around the living room. They were as comfortable as brand new five-inch heels could be, and there was really only one way to break in new shoes. Miharu checked her phone for the time, taking it with her as she disappeared into the bathroom.
Lucifer shut his eyes momentarily, a full week of insomnia catching up with him for nothing more than a minute or two. He rubbed at the strain in his eyes, jaw clenched tight enough to ensure he'd have a headache sooner rather than later.
There was ultimately nothing remarkable about her. She was human, even if the hum of her aura was bursting with potential. It lacked finesse, and anything remotely celestial. Even the Organic Angel had left traces of herself in each body she'd been reincarnated into; physically, emotionally, each of them had Alexiel's power in one way or another.
He pictured a hundred lifetimes later. How eventually her face, every exquisite razor-sharp line, would transcend the race and gender of her vessels. How those eyes, regardless of the color they'd adopt, would see him and only know a stranger.
But there wouldn't be a hundred lifetimes… The thought surfaced as a pitfall in his stomach. There would only be this girl, but thinking it did nothing to solidify the idea.
"Yea! I'll be right down!" Miharu said excitedly into her phone as she hurried out of the bathroom. There were dark shadows powdered around the edges of her eyes now, and lipstick just shy of maraschino. It suited her almost too well, an air of wildness that radiated something predatory. In that respect she was as close to the spirit inside of her as she could be.
It wasn't until she slid a fold of cash and a fake ID into her pocket that Lucifer connected what in retrospect where very obvious dots. A scowl cracked the boredom on his face, and it thinned into more annoyance.
She wasn't a misfit, or the kind of girl that spent her Friday nights locked in her room with a phone on social media sites. Fujiwara Miharu was in every possible way worse than that.
She was a party girl.
†
Lucifer regretted his decision to follow her into the club as soon as he'd made it. The overcrowded atmosphere and agitating volume of the fast music inside were not elements he subjected himself to often. If ever.
He wanted to see though, see Miharu and this new and much more interesting side that somehow Ezekiel had failed to capture. With a sullen expression he loomed on the upper level of the crowd, watching the girl keep time with her hips and shoulders.
The dance floor was full, bodies crushed against bodies as they moved together in a dizzying gyration. If she possessed reservations they'd fallen away on the lips of a young man with pretty western almost twenty something features. His kisses a sloppy indication that he was too drunk to be coherent. Hopefully not to drunk to buy her some drinks though.
"I need a drink!" Miharu tried to yell over the music, but the look on his handsome face said he hadn't understood. She wrapped her arms back around his neck, pulling him closer. He grinned, stinking of tequila and she avoided his mouth only to yell again into his ear.
He nodded in agreement, maybe thinking there'd be more than a hefty tab at the end of the night. Miharu winked and smiled, earning herself free drinks with just a look.
Miharu followed him to bar, telling him that another shot of Bacardi would be enough. She sent him away when she spotted Suzumi on the far end of the bar, catching her breath with a half empty bottle of water.
"Suzumi-chan?" Miharu's tone was curious, arguably concerned by the flush on her friends cheeks. But Suzumi's smile said otherwise.
"Can we go outside, Miharu-chan?" She asked, the squeak of her voice just barely cutting through the music. "Nanako won't go outside with me… And after that creep from the other night…" Miharu nodded, she needed a smoke anyway. The boy could wait, he wasn't likely to get the bartender's attention for several minutes anyway.
Suzumi slid off the stool, wobbly on beer and exhaustion. Miharu steadied her as she checked her phone for the time. Two AM ticked onto the digital clock, and Miharu nodded to herself as they climbed the stairs towards the exit.
Miharu made a face of confusion as she looked up from her phone. There was an overwhelming heaviness so suddenly filling up her lungs, drowning her in slithering anxiety again. Brown eyes twitched rapidly, pulled by something familiar to where he was.
That guy, the same one from earlier. It was hard to say it wasn't, the exact same dismissive look on his face. He was already looking at her when she did the same to him, and if they'd stretched out their arms their fingers would touch.
Run.
There was that instinct again, telling her how to save herself. Up close and in the dark he was utterly terrifying, made all the more ominous by the strobe lights whipping back and forth around them. Miharu blinked away the feeling that his face was familiar, swallowing a foreign need to see if he was real.
"Hey!" She yelled, her voice didn't have to fight the thrum of the bass for him to hear her. Miharu's voice cracked, needles of fear mingling with distress. As if she might cry at a moments notice. "What are you doing here?!"
That was not the question she'd meant to ask.
'Do I know you?'
'Are you following me?'
Those were the two questions flaring up in her mind. But that one had risen up like bile, and it seemed to disarm him as much as it had her. Lucifer's brows creased, a microscopic fraction of an inch that even in the dark opened him up to her like a book.
He is following you, an alarm went off in her head, but all she could do was stare at him completely baffled.
Suzumi's hand was reaching for hers suddenly, putting a cap on the scream that had wanted out earlier and had returned with a vengeance. A tug from her friend, half a parting look of fear and panic and she was gone.
"I want to go home!" Miharu gasped as soon as the significantly cooler night air hit her. She doubled over, hands on her knees as if she expected to be sick on the sidewalk.
"What?" Suzumi stepped closer, reaching out to lay her hand on Miharu's back, her skin warm despite the frozen shiver making her muscles ache. Miharu flinched away, half spinning to face her friend for a minute. She wrapped her arms around her middle, like a child trying to protect itself before stumbling away.
"I have to go."
†
The walk home had been brisk, dotted with nervous glances behind her shoulder, and she didn't feel safe until the door was shut and bolted behind her. Miharu let out a long breath, shaking her hands in an attempt to banish the anxiousness still working through her.
It felt miserable in the dark of the apartment, and she didn't bother with the lights to navigate her way to her room. With no one to say goodnight to she noiselessly put herself to bed. Minutes flicked across the face of her clock, a weary 2:26 am.
Miharu wasn't tired, but she didn't want to be awake anymore. She'd been awake since yesterday, and that drew her eyes to the dresser. The Ambien inside of it, and how well she slept with its help coming to mind.
She shut her eyes, knowing that if she took it now it would ruin her already bad sleep schedule.
It was well past three-thirty when she finally entered a stage of deep sleep. Lucifer stepped into the moonlight, coming in strips through the blinds of the one window in her room. He watched, listening to a calm settle over her breathing.
He weighed her life against his desire for instant gratification. He wanted to think that death at his hand was a mercy compared to Azreal's brother. There would be no pain, he didn't want to see her suffer. She was, just as Kira Sakuya and Mudou Setsuna had been, victims burdened with an angel's soul when they'd already had one of their own.
Beneath the heavy shadow of her makeup he watched her eyes move rapidly. She was dreaming, and judging by the uncomfortable spasm her body made it was not a pleasant one.
He reached out a hand, one finger making contact with the apple of her cheek. He was gentle as he drew a line towards her hairline. Miharu moved her face towards the pillow, inhaling sharply without waking up.
Lucifer could wait, it wasn't as if the last seventeen years had felt like waiting. Instead they'd been a silent mourning. There had not been denial, he remembered too clearly how her head had lulled back with the weight of her hair. Lifeless silver eyes dilating, and her last sounds had been his voice; demanding that she somehow not die there.
But there had been anger. At first at their now long dead Father, as if something cruel and ineffable had long since planned to let him have the Creator's life in exchange for something he'd wanted to keep. Then at Azreal, and that love starved ghost he'd let himself be haunted by. Too gentle to be real, a kindness that at first had seemed like a blessing. She could have come with nightmares, and it was years before he realized that she had brought them with her all along. It only took days to acknowledge that her cruelties far outweighed his.
All of it was deflection from the simple fact that he'd stopped her, stayed her hand in the middle such a violent moment. What a price to pay to let the Mudou's have their happiness.
†
Like blinking. That was how fast the fuzzy blackness of sleep had crept up on her; and it was how fast she'd been deposited here.
Where here was, and much more so why here was, were questions that felt coated and secondary to a power much greater than her curiosity. She knew, simply, that she'd had this dream before; but that did nothing to give her lucidity.
A long endless hallway of a place she'd never been before, and it manifested with the white sterility of a hospital. Upon waking she'd taste the smell of disinfectant in the back of her throat. Like a memory… or a sensory trick her brain liked to play.
Overhead the fluorescent tubes hummed with electricity. The white noise ran a chill up her spine-
BOOM. BOOM.
A pause. Just long enough for Miharu to shriek.
BOOM. BOOM.
Like a heartbeat. Overhead the lights behind her blinked sporadically, an audible tinkle as the phosphorus lining the tubes reignited again and again until one by one they died.
BOOM. BOOM.
Buzzing silence.
BOOM. BOOM.
Darkness started in at one end of the infinitely long passage, and like a wall it closed in on her. Miharu froze, body seizing up as an old fear of the dark surfaced.
BOOM. BOOM.
Her vision spun. The dark creeping closer and closer.
BOOM. BOOM.
She remembered, how as a child it had always swallowed her up in tangible pitch. There had been hours spent in the dark unable to wake up. The fear had only gone away when the dream finally had, replaced with something all together different.
BOOM. BOOM.
Miharu heard her foot squeal against the pristine marble floor.
BOOM. BOOM.
Her body felt hollow and light, adrenaline letting her sail towards the light.
†
Lucifer watched her limbs come out of paralysis in soft jerky movements. Fingers twitching, grasping at air as she sucked in a breath through her nose.
Miharu trashed suddenly, flinging her limbs dangerously. One hand smacked the wall her bed was pushed against, sounding and looking painful but she didn't wake up. Her hand slide against the wall for a brief second, and then she slapped it twice.
She kicked suddenly and rapidly, tangling herself in a mess of soft pink sheets and blankets she'd thrown over herself when she'd gotten into bed.
She slapped the wall twice again, waiting for the next pause to close her hand into a fist. The window rattled in time with the pattern she slammed into the wall.
†
BOOM. BOOM.
The dark had caught up. It was on the peripheral of her vision, licking at her heels, making the white wall a dreadful gray.
BOOM. BOOM.
The fluorescents in front of her blinked, and Miharu felt tears stinging her eyes. She begged for anything but darkness, hearing the words without opening her mouth.
BOOM. BOOM.
The set of bulbs ahead of her started flickering, and then she was in darkness running towards the still lit stretch of hall.
BOOM. BOOM.
The light didn't wait for her, seeming to accelerate when actually it was her bones that filled with lead. Miharu fell to her knees, out of breath as she watched the lights go out one by one.
BOOM. BOOM.
She waited, catching her breath as she stared at her shaking hands. Wait, the thought caught up with her and she flung her head up at a single exposed bulb glowing faintly. The filament a hard line of light, clinging to life as it swayed at the mercy of the sound.
BOOM. BOOM.
The sound was right behind her now, clear and its origin suddenly obvious. Someone was knocking.
BOOM.
†
Her body went motionless, contorted uncomfortably with her spine at an odd angle that didn't seem possible without injury. Her hand had gone still, after finally shaking a framed picture from the wall.
She gasped for a breath, reaching upwards with one hand until her arm was extended and locked. Her fingers continued to search for something, a seemingly involuntary movement of tracing indistinct patterns.
†
Under the light there had been a door, freestanding in its frame in the dark. It didn't seem ominous at a glance, an uneven dusty sort of black color against the even darker grain of the solid wood.
Miharu's thoughts felt distant, unable to remember if she'd seen this door before. No memories surfaced, and she felt her feet move towards it. Draw. Compelled. Curious. There was no wrong word for it as she touched the door. The pads of her fingers sunk into the wood, hitting something solid a centimeter later.
She pulled her hands away, there was ash on her fingertips. Miharu stared at the door, finding that something had scorched it to ash.
Well, at least the outside of it. She ran a finger from the center of it to the knob, finding it unburnt and cold. Before she could think to hesitate she unlatched the door. A wind slipped through the crack, and it smelled like flowers and grass at the height of summer in a place she couldn't pretend to imagine.
There was only more darkness on the other side as she threw open the door, eating the light around her so that it looked even more black than anything around it.
Her hand lingered at the threshold, listening for a sound she was certain was there. Soft and weak, coming and going with no real rhythm. It occurred to her, as her ash stained fingers plunged into the darkness that it was something breathing.
A hand reached out, thin cadaverous fingers latching onto her wrist with a grip that seemed impossible. It pulled, so fast and hard that the fingers of her free hand only brushed the jamb.
†
Miharu jolted back into reality, halfway to a scream that somewhere in her esophagus turned into a sob.
She found the hazy blue light of dawn in her bedroom, and black ash on her fingertips.
Afterthoughts
Finally things are sort of trickling in for Miharu. I wanted to sort of set her up with a normal life disrupted by something unwelcome to sort of show you who she is an where she's going. She's for the most part just a girl, who was born at the wrong time with the just the right soul. What can you do?
I hope it was worth the wait and that my formatting actually stuck cause I'm not going back in after its posted unless it looks terrible~ forgive me
