AN: Jeez. My first ever trozo written from an angelic point of view. Which I'm never doing again. HARD!!!!!
Raphael existed in no time and everytime. He walked down the streets of Jerusalem and greeted the apostles. He walked through the Garden of Eden, conversed with Adan, admired Eve's garden. He inhabited Pope John Paul, invoked infallibility. He marched with Martin Luther. Both Martin Luthers. He stood over the child's cradle, listened to the young woman humming Billy Joel. He was engaged in Jerusalem oil. He flew among the stars. His Father was gone. He shook Jesus' hand. He started a fire.
"Are you certain this is the one?" His brother, Michael, standing beside him. His brother, Michael, in another time, another place. They looked at the baby together. His green eyes, so bright a color in so young a face, opening and closing. The baby screamed.
Another baby, blue-eyed this time, as babies should be, silent and curious.
"Are you certain this is the one?"
Green eyes and blue eyes, and a bloodline running so strong that Raphael could almost taste it. Touched the green-eyed one.
"I am certain," he said. Another time, another flash, and a demon walking in, comfortable and confident. Up the stairs. To the cradle.
"Do we stop him?" Raphael asked.
"No," the answer from his elder brother.
The woman, slashed through the middle, jerked to the ceiling. The babe, splattered with blood from above and Below.
"Burn it," his brother said, and disappeared. Raphael lit the ceiling, summoned the father, the green-eyed brother.
The flames licked higher, consumed the woman, mouth open in a silent scream. The boy watched the fire. It ate his own heart. Raphael grabbed a flame, a single, docile strand of fire. Inserted it into the boys heart. Let it burn.
A vampire, scenting blood.
"Do we help?"
Michael again, "no."
The soldiers had him, lashed him to a tree, paraded him through the town. Rivulets of blood ran down his side, mixed with sweat. Raphael supposed that it must burn the fragile human frame. The people parted before him, as the Sea had parted for Moses.
"He will stop this," Michael, confident and serene as always. "It is in his plan. It must be."
"You have hurt him," a new angel, young, Raphael did not know him. He was young, his wings short, white, tinged with brilliant blue electricity. He was young, staring at his charge, curled in a ball around a younger brother, crying out for their father to stop this, to save them.
"This one can not be hurt," Raphael, in response.
"This is wrong."
"This is God's will," Raphael said. God was dead.
They took his clothing from him, strapped him, wrists, ankles, throats. Drove nails through delicate hands and feet. Broke bones, forced a crown, heavy with thorns down upon his head. A wicked mockery of advent wreath. He screamed, and blood bubbled in his mouth, delicate pink frost.
"This cannot be our Father's will," Raphael. Michael, stoic, calm, confident.
"It must be. We must wait."
Older now, green eyes hooded but still hopeful. A drive in a beat-up car to a busstop. Money exchanged, a brief hug.
"Bitch."
"Jerk."
"Study hard, Sammy."
A bus, pulling away. The green eyes wet now, filled with tears.
"You have hurt him."
"It is necessary."
"Would you break him? Is this what God wants?"
God is dead.
He is upright now, but he will not die. He calls out forgiveness and absolution. There is nobody beside him. Rain falls. Angels watch.
"My God, my god, why have you forsaken me?"
The skies part. Lightning. Surely now. Surely now.
A mistake, somehow. Years of traveling, ricocheting around, fire, not enough to stamp out love. He'd escaped. Escaped father, brother, hunting, Lucifer. Raphael followed him through college, followed him into the girls' loft, into the jewelry store. Not empty enough, not this one. Blue eyes still full of hope, innocence. Spared by a brother's love. Not enough.
The car left. Raphael moved.
"She has done nothing wrong." A weak protest, but Michael is there.
"No."
Another fire. Raphael waits for the boy to awaken, blue eyes to shine. Lets him see the burn. Takes another tendril of fire, inserts it into the boys heart. Lets it burn.
A soldier comes up, now, takes pity on the screaming man. Breaks both knees. Limbs sag. Chest collapses.
God is not coming.
"This is not right," says Raphael.
"Let us wait."
They wait three days.
Two years and things are good, set. The demon gathers them to him. A knife in the back. A buried box. A sold soul. Good.
God has still not appeared. The Son dwells below, intercepted before he returned to heaven's fold. Raphael goes down, battles past three-headed dogs, licking flames. They do not touch him. His stomach twists. It smells rotten down here, empty. In Heaven there is still the feel of the Father. On Earth there are echoes. Below, there is only emptiness.
He finds him, curled in on himself, rocking.
"He's going to die!" Blue electricity, white wings puffed up.
"That is God's will."
God is dead.
Raphael grabs him, by both hands, pulls him erect. His body is untouched. Lucifer has not tortured him. His brother beside him, wings blackened by the soot of hell, eyes glistening, ruby still. He is still beautiful, even touched by darkness.
"I would never harm my Father's Son," he says, fervently, desperately.
"Then why have you taken him?"
"I pray," Morningstar says. "Every night, every morn, every moment of every day. I pray. I beg forgiveness. Why won't he answer me?"
Raphael takes the mans hands and raises him to the surface.
Hounds, tearing flesh from bone from sinew, from blood. The twisted deal sending a pure soul, a righteous soul below.
"How is this God's will?" the wings drooping now, the electricity faded.
"Go down and save him."
"How can I? Angels may not go Below."
"Yes. They can."
Blue eyes, tinged by black. Emptying with every month. One month. Dead mother. Two months. Dead father. Three months. Dead fiancée. Four months. Dead brother. Empty hard. The flames have nothing left to burn. They die.
The Son walks the land, for forty days, and then sends himself to Heaven. Raphael and Michael watch him go.
"Where is our Father?" Michael, not so confident now, not so calm.
"I do not know."
"We must find him."
When he sees the youth again, the sapphire electricity, there is a difference. The wings, no longer white, burned black by the soot of absence, of dirt, of betrayal and guilt and emptiness.
"The righteous man rides out of Hell."
So. The Apocalypse begun.
They search for centuries, for millennium. They search for 2000 years and find nothing. Emptiness. Absence. When they return to earth, they cannot feel even the echoes of his presence. Raphael coughs in the acrid taste.
"Why has He left us?"
Michael, short. "If we cannot find Him, then we will bring Him to us."
Green eyes haunted, now. Blue eyes darkened. Hearts empty, nothing left to feed the flame. Love taken, twisted, betrayed, destroyed. Two empty husks. The fight lives on, the souls still clean. The perfect vessels.