Author's Note: Well, here we are…the last chapter. Honestly, when I started this fic last year as a one-shot I never thought it would become a multi-chapter story. And I have you to thank, yes, you, my awesome readers and reviewers. Thank you so much for giving me the inspiration and creativity I needed to see this story through to the end. I am grateful for each and every one of you. It's been a great ride and I hope you enjoyed it. So, without further ado…the epilogue.

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Legion.

Epilogue Dido and Aeneas

When I am laid, am laid in Earth, may my wrongs create

No trouble, no trouble in thy breast

Remember me, remember me, but ah! Forget my fate.

-Dido's Lament by Henry Purcell

Michael's head hit the diner floor. His world was eclipsed by encroaching darkness, by the last pitiful throbs of his broken heart, which had been pierced through by his brother's own lance. He had a last hectic vision of Gabriel towering above him. There were tears on his cheeks and his jaw had slackened under the weight of his grief. It was unjust, Michael thought vaguely as his last breaths rang hollowly in his ribcage. His one regret, was not having failed Charlie and her baby, but having forced his brother into fratricide, a sin unworthy of an archangel's soul, but good enough for Eve's son Cain.

And then there was Heniel, of course. How could he ever forget her…

Michael's eyes were rimmed in red and a sticky sort of blackness that mimicked tar, or a soul gone to waste. A copper coating of blood lingered in his throat and on his tongue and dripped from his lips. He remembered that she had kissed him once, never freely, but with a pained resignation that was so much like a prophecy. He wondered how she could have known, from the very first, that he would not be true. And he wondered how long it had taken her to forget the exact timber of his voice, the tenor of his words, when he told all of Heaven that he had not loved her.

If indeed she had forgotten at all…

Michael blinked. He could see the bloodstains on the ceiling of the diner, Gabriel's shadow obscuring the small handprints left behind by the possessed boy. His brother was a portrait of agony, holding his shoulders straight like the good soldier he was despite his guilt.

"You wanted to live like one of them," Gabriel intoned in a voice of practiced steadiness. He paused and tried to catch his breath, biting back a rising sob. "Now…you'll die like one of them…"

Michael blinked again and this time, the diner disappeared. He was bathed in a cool, soft darkness, the shadows frayed at the edges by the promise of light. He had been caught somewhere between the grey. He existed…and he didn't. The looseness of his soul, the freedom it had suddenly been given, no longer tethered to his body or mind, would have been frightening if he could have experienced the sensation of fear. The emptiness around him was indistinguishable as Michael had become part of the unfathomable, where the only certainty rested in non-existence…and the absence of his Father.

Damnation.

But it wasn't Hell that had welcomed him. Only oblivion. Michael did not know how long he remained there in the void and he only became aware of time itself again when things began to change. He was moving away from this space, passing through to another sphere, one that enveloped him and remolded his soul.

The process reunited him with his pain and doubt, with all the cares he had been able to relinquish for one brief, mindless stretch. But his faith had found him also and he could remember the precious joy that accompanied every sorrow, the memories he could never sacrifice and the devotion to his Father, which he had missed.

Michael moved through death and back into life, into a resurrection that carried with it a promise, a covenant from his Lord like the rainbow thrown out in the sky over Noah's ark.

Michael closed his eyes in relief. I gave Him what He needed…

The air turned sweet and perfumed. A fresh breeze made his reclaimed flesh tingle with all that was sacred and sanctified. Michael opened his eyes and found himself on the threshold. He stood just beyond the boundary of Heaven, at the fabled Gates that were not really gates at all. The area was open field. A single path wound it's away into the garden, where the trees rose like gables and the most blessed of souls wandered in unending happiness, in the Paradise they had created for themselves out of their Father's love.

Michael did not expect to be greeted upon his return. And he did not expect to see her waiting for him.

Heniel's wings fluttered when she saw him. Her feathers were the color of sea-foam, bruised only by the shadow of her long, plaited hair.

"I was sent to meet you," she said. There was a hint of reticence in her voice, a sour note that told Michael that she wasn't pleased with the duty.

His mouth opened in barely disguised shock. There were no traces of humanity left in Heniel. She had shed her earthly skin and been restored to herself. Michael frowned, surprised at his disappointment.

"I told you to wait for me," he said. "I told you that I would come for you when I could."

"Exactly," Heniel replied. She shifted, the flaps of her leather fauld fanning out against her muscled thighs. "You always assumed that I needed a savior. And you always assumed I needed you. How does it feel to be wrong, Michael? How does it feel to be so very wrong?"

"I don't feel anything in particular."

"Exactly," Heniel repeated with a grin. "And neither do I."

It was if the lance had been thrust through his heart again. Michael put his hand to his breast, not ashamed to show his pain, the hurt that she had casually inflicted.

Heniel's smile grew. There was no apology in her gaze nor on her lips, rather a sweet, sick satisfaction that came from what she had always wanted…revenge.

"You've won," he told her plainly.

Her grin twisted and changed into a scowl. "Don't say that. Not yet-"

"I never lied to you-"

"Once."

"But not now," Michael swore. He watched the fanciful play of light on her gleaming wings and heavy armor, which she wore with the ease of a second skin. It was difficult for him to remember that sad woman he had visited a few days ago. She had had stains on her teeth and cellulite on her legs and a smoker's cough that rattled deep in her chest. It was human frailty at its best, vice married to the flesh. Michael's eyes narrowed as he took in the oddness of her Heaven-given beauty. "He brought you home," he stated in mild disbelief.

"You thought I deserved to be damned, then?" she replied. Anger infused her cheeks with a violent flush. "You thought I didn't deserve the final reward of Paradise despite my repentance. Forgiveness is not a concept that sits easily with you, is it Michael? You cannot bear to think that it wasn't me He found disappointing, but you."

Michael's tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. He hated that he had an eye for a weakness, but not for her strength. She had wisdom that exceeded is. She had a simple mind that avoided delusion and instead settled for honesty.

Heniel had never lied to herself. But Michael had.

He couldn't apologize to her, couldn't try again and again, even though he had forever, even though he would find a way to somehow make her listen.

"How?" he asked her lamely.

"Did I die?" Heniel's brows jumped up her forehead.

"Was it by accident?"

"Of course not," she replied. "Although I wasn't necessarily tired of living."

Suicide. The word was foul even in his mind.

Heniel laughed. "Wouldn't it have been even better," she said, "if I hadn't ended up here instead? You never would have seen me again, Michael. I wouldn't have let you. I didn't want to let you…" She trailed off and with a jolt of horror, he realized the heart of her sickness, the very depth of her hate for him.

Heniel had been willing to damn herself just to punish him. She had been willing to endure an eternity away from their Lord, if only so Michael would have to endure an eternity away from her.

It took him a moment to realize how sad that made him. And it took him longer to realize that he no longer had her love.

But there was hope. There always had to be hope. In his blindness, in the heat of his love that had not subsided, that had haunted him since the day she was stripped of her wings and pushed from Paradise, Michael reached out towards her.

"Heniel!" he cried.

But she turned from him. She covered her face with her hands and walked away.

The End

Author's Note: Not a happy ending, or is it? To be honest, I don't think Michael and Heniel deserve a happy ending. In case you were wondering about the epilogue title and the last line, they were both inspired by the love story of Dido and Aeneas in Virgil's The Aeneid. Dido, the Queen of Carthage, falls desperately in love with the hero Aeneas, only to have him break things off rather unceremoniously to continue on his quest. She ends up committing suicide and when the two meet in the Underworld, Dido refuses to forgive her former lover. She simply turns her back on him and walks away.

Again, thank you all so much for sticking with this story! I've had a lot of fun with it and I hope you did too. Until next time! Take care!