Author's Note: Hello and welcome to part nine of "Hallelujah". Before we begin, I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all my brilliant readers and reviewers, Crystal-Wolf-Guardain-967, saichick, Rainyaviel, and Jenny Joker. I would also like to thank everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. Thank you so very much! Your encouragement and support means the world to me. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Legion.

Part IX The Missing Stars

Michael was patient, although he thought the virtue itself was unnecessary. It provided a mere cover for anticipation. It masked intemperance, poorly, and it drove the otherwise sane to distraction. He himself had long given up on introspection, even though he knew Heniel thought he was mad. Insanity, he was convinced, could not be found within him, only the taunt of so many unanswered questions. Thoughts that drifted anchorless through his mind. Insinuations that were more definite than they first appeared.

Michael waited, for what he wasn't certain. He began to understand time as he felt men might. He constructed days and molded moments into his life. He became aware of all that moved around him, while he remained stationary. And he became aware of her, of Heniel, who ignored him, who shut him away and left him alone to wait.

Sometimes, Michael considered going to her. He felt that he was capable of indulging in what might have been cruelty. And he knew he would be able to hurt her again, as he had on the mountaintop. He knew that he could open her blindness up to sight, take her tongue and twist it until she would say what he was too frightened to utter. But somehow, her ignorance had conquered him. She had won. He had lost.

For a while, at least. For a time. Until he saw again and finally understood why he had waited, why he had demeaned himself with patience.

The look of surrender on her face was unmistakable. The pallor of her flesh and spirit. The lingering malaise. Michael's heart broke when he gazed at her, when he found Heniel searching for him in the evening shadows of the Garden.

The night itself was a charmed thing, an unlikely fog settling over the deep valleys. Michael thought he could drown in the mist and lose himself to the low-lying clouds. The smell, the touch, the sound of the air promised something of the inevitable.

For the first time in ages, he felt his strength falter.

"Why have you come?" Michael asked, daring to offend her. She was, in a way, a fragile creature. A warrior who was flawed by her own natural weakness. The last time they had met, he had given her the name of her fear and sent her spiraling into despair, away from him and away from herself. But Michael was patient and he had waited for her to return. To him, she had returned to him.

Heniel was standing in the open night, away from the comforting darkness that came from the trees and the absent moon. She was not close to him, but close enough so that he could feel her terror. It burdened the air between them.

"I came," Heniel said, "because I am sick."

Michael accepted that. He nodded his head. "I heard that Gabriel took you with him to destroy a nephilim," he replied, unable to admit that he was jealous of his brother for claiming so much of Heniel's time.

His envy had no teeth, though, for he knew that her respect for Gabriel was blind. It was something Heniel had fashioned from her own deficiencies, a sort of wishful thinking that enabled her to believe that she could someday be like Gabriel. And although Michael was convinced that she wanted to imitate his brother, he was just as equally convinced that it was him she truly wished to be with.

Or was he misguided to even entertain the fancy? He would decide later. After he had laid his soul bare and watched it fall way. After he tried to destroy himself, but her most of all.

"Did you enjoy the duty?" he asked.

Heniel blinked, her eyes veiled, her gaze a pool of emptiness. "No," she said, "because I am sick."

"With guilt?" Michael offered. He was being too direct, he knew, but his honesty was punishment for her trepidation. He did not know why he wished to cause her pain. It was unjust. It was uncalled for. His stoicism slipped and he clenched his hands into fists, knuckles stiff and cracking.

Heniel's lips parted. The wind dragged a strand of hair over her brow. "There is a mark on my countenance," she said. "A deep scar. I think Gabriel has recognized it."

"You have lost control," Michael countered. "You are frightened of what is happening to you."

"I do not want your silent pity."

"Not silent." He was baiting her, drawing her closer. And she, he felt, wanted to be close to him. Michael wondered if he believed in fate. He wondered if this moment had been set aside for Heniel and him. He wondered if it was really his weakness that haunted them, and not hers. Perhaps she had never been weak, reason told him. Perhaps it was all a delusion.

"You deserve to be blamed for all of this," Heniel said. "And I think you did it on purpose. To disrupt. To cause chaos. I cannot forgive that."

A nervous smile made Michael's mouth tremble. There was something of misguided fury in Heniel's tone and bearing. She presented a tall, angular figure, her normally straight shoulders bowed, but her head was always held high.

She was baiting him as well. For some reason, that made him proud.

"I will never deprive you of your convictions," Michael said. He drew near to her, pressing his hand down on her forearm. It would be best, he knew, if he stopped talking around his sentiment, using only shallow words to guard what pieces of her he had kept inside himself.

Her gaze hardened with skepticism and she had the look of a lost child. "Gabriel knows. He suspects."

"What?" Michael pressed. "What does he suspect?"

He let his fingers trail down to her wrist, and then finally, her hand. The mist fell away, leaving only the silken shadows of twilight.

"I will not put a name to it," Heniel replied. Her hand tightened beneath Michael's. She was struggling with him…and with herself. "This is wrong."

"But you came and found me," he said, coaxing her with his voice, which was steady. The slight breeze had stirred something of fear within him and it fluttered about his breast, caged, trapped. For a moment, Michael was almost tempted to release it. Let it fly. Let it soar.

"I can feel your mind stalking my thoughts," Heniel said. Her eyes looked exceptionally pale in the darkness, as if her soul itself had somehow faded behind them and dropped away from the Garden with the last of the mist. "Ever since the mountaintop, ever since we fell-"

"Together," Michael added, although he knew it didn't need to be said.

Heniel shuddered, slipping her hand out from underneath his, flexing her fingers, the skin creasing over her knuckles. "I want this to be finished. I can…I can acknowledge the darkness between us and I came to you tonight because I wish it to be dispelled. We walk on the edge of things. We skirt the truth."

"The only truth that matters," Michael added. His palm felt cold without her touch. He rubbed it against his thigh. What had changed? he asked himself. Between them. Between himself and the world. Where had his faith faltered? Where had his devotion given way to this new, unworthy religion? The circle of his thoughts had long been broken, he realized and she lived in his every breath. Without meaning to, he had taken her to him, sometime during the wild rush of their fall from the mountaintop, when she reached out her hand, when he would not let go.

"You are right," Michael said. "This is my fault."

They stood in silence for a long while. The Garden concealed the fire of their shame until it was naught but cold, forgotten ash. The moon was high behind clouds of iridescent silver and rain-washed blue. Heniel raised her head and Michael was certain that she was searching for the stars, begging them to pull her away into the farthest reaches of Paradise.

The color drained from her face, from her lips. She was impermanent, no more settled than the shades around her. Michael feared that she would fly away. But if she disappeared, his prayers would no longer be tainted and the quiet ticking in the back of his heart might silence itself.

For a moment, he imagined them back on the mountaintop with the desert air pulsing around them, the sand hot and harsh, a rough caress. And if it had been Heniel, he realized, if it had been Heniel with her wings broken and falling, Michael would not have caught her. He would have let her go then, then…but could he possibly let her go now?

She was standing before him. She was lost and cold in the moonlight. And Michael knew he could end it then, end it now, give her back her life and restore his. But he didn't.

He was cruel.

Heniel understood. She raised her hand and ran her fingers over the rim of her iron collar as if to steady herself.

"The nephilim," she said, "screamed when I killed her. She looked like me…it was in the eyes. I saw myself for an instant and if you had been there, you would be frightened as well. You would be sick. I know what is coming, Michael and you are too selfish to stop it."

"You could leave now," he counseled, almost hoping that she was wiser than he thought and would heed his warning. "We could continue on this way, hiding from each other."

Heniel's smile was painful. "It would not last and if I am to have the darkness, I would rather let it surround me than live only in the shadow of it."

For an instant, the quiet ticking in the back of Michael's heart ceased. Heniel was wise, he realized. And she always had been. It was his blindness, not hers, that had led them to this place.

"Say it then," he urged. The exquisite wildness had reached him, completed his madness, left him lost, but lost in her.

Heniel still would not look him in the eyes, though. She kept her head high and searched for the missing stars. "You think," she said, "that we are in love."

Author's Note: Thanks so much for taking the time to read! If you happen to have a free moment, please leave me a review. I truly appreciate any feedback I receive for this fic.

The next chapter is currently being revised and should be posted in ten days. Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!