PLEASE NOTE: I have posted THREE chapters today, this is the third. Please read 'Another Rush of Wings' and 'I Am the Greatest Angel' BEFORE this one ;)
I'm six chapters ahead and they're all rather long and in need of a wee bit of editing, so I won't be posting them all tonight. I am tired and need to sleep.
But I thought it would be good to leave you with a little light. ;)
We join here with Samael. I hope you enjoy this. Let me know, if you can, what you think of this and the other chapters in a comment or review. They brighten my day so much. I dedicate this chapter to my mum, Carmel, who I lost in 2008. She was an RN and a hospice nurse who brightened the lives and last moments of many.
Happy Mother's Day, mum.
Samael opened his eyes slowly.
And found himself standing amidst the crystalline grasses, flower and trees of the meadow of his birth.
Breathing in deeply, he closed his eyes again as the shimmering music of the meadow and the chorus of the Host swelled around him.
He smiled.
It was good to be back.
The pain was gone, severed as he was from the body that had suffered those horrible wounds.
It had been momentarily confusing, though, seeing Azrael rebuffed by a human.
But, clearly, his sister had returned to claim him, and now...
Samael frowned.
...now everything would come to an end.
For he had failed to stop the Third and his father no longer knew who He was.
With a heavy heart, Samael stared down at his hands.
Whole again.
And oddly solid.
Strange.
He was wearing his robes, as well. Had they not been completely burned away?
Why was he solid, wearing clothes that no longer existed?
Curious, he flexed his wings, and felt them brush the air at his back. They folded about him protectively, and he touched their crests in wonder.
Wings did not belong on the back of a dead angel.
Something rushed past him.
A shadow, fast.
Running?
The song of the Host came to an abrupt end.
Every blade of crystalline grass, every flower, and leaf on every tree, stilled.
Samael felt something. A presence at his back.
Hearing only the sound of his breathing, and the unwavering beat of his heart, he turned.
Nothing moved. No breeze stirred the space.
At the edge of the meadow, where his gaze had been tugged so many times before, was a figure.
Frozen, as everything else was.
Caught in the long stride of a desperate sprint.
Samael's heart began to hammer.
The hair and build were his own.
Running
Frowning, he walked slowly towards the figure, dressed in oddly human clothes, and as he neared, the profile was revealed.
His own.
Samael straightened, his eyes growing bright with golden fire.
Lucifer.
Samael snapped his wings out wide. Flames engulfed him.
Fallen one! he bellowed, closing white-knuckled fists. You do not BELONG here!
The figure did nothing.
A phantom?
Samael torched it, devouring the figure with the fire of his being.
The flames receded, the land was unmarked. The figure, gone.
A breeze drifted through the space, sending everything about him singing again, melding and weaving with the renewed chorus of the Host.
It was, as always, beautiful. But... why had it stopped in the first place? Why had the phantom appeared?
The stone dias in the center of the meadow drew his gaze, and he stepped towards it, shaking his head.
It did not matter what it had been. It was gone. That was all-
A shadow passed him.
Running
Everything froze once more.
Blazing again, Samael turned towards the edge of the meadow, where the figure stood again.
NO!
Caught in the same pose - a desperate run.
With a growl, Samael gestured, and the figure disappeared in a tower of white-hot flame.
When it subsided, nothing remained.
The world restarted again.
The Host's voices filled the space as the land spoke in crystalline tones.
Samael looked about himself in alarm.
Why is this happ-
The blur of a running form passed him yet again.
STOP THIS! Samael roared, engulfing the figure in mid-flight.
It did nothing. The figure ran through his fires, froze at the edge of the meadow, and the world froze with it.
STOP THIS NOW!
Samael rushed the figure, his fist raised to strike.
His punch passed through air reanimated by a soft breeze, as Lucifer disappeared.
The land was filled with song once more.
"Stop this..." he whispered, his eyes fixed before him, knowing and dreading what was about to be again.
And come it did - the racing shadow, and as it neared, the remnants of thoughts that he now knew were never his own.
I love you, Chloe! Chloe Jane Decker, I lo-
Time stopped. The figure stood before him, frozen mid-stride.
And finally, Samael truly saw the expression on Lucifer's face.
Eyes rimmed white. Mouth spread open, tugged back in fear.
Such terror and despair.
It suddenly made sense.
"You were unmade at this moment," Samael whispered. "And you knew it was coming."
The figure dissipated.
The world moved again.
Samael remained where he was, waiting for Lucifer to return.
And the horror and sadness filled him as he stared into the face of the fallen angel.
"Why are you haunting this space?" he asked, with no expectation of a reply.
He looked about himself as the figure vanished and time moved forward again.
"Is this space real? Am I truly in Heaven?"
Chloe Jane Decker, I lo-
Samael turned to the frozen figment of Lucifer.
"Or are you haunting me? My mind perhaps? Perhaps I still live?"
He knew the answer immediately.
Yes
"Still lying in a pool, then. Damaged beyond repair. But for some reason, locked in my mind, playing you over and over."
He glowered at the figure, as it appeared, vanished, and came again.
Over and over.
"Why then, am I here, reviewing the end of a corruption? A fault? A mistake? What purpose does this serve?"
Lucifer appeared once more, and Samael felt his old rage surface again.
He leaned in close to the phantom, locking eyes with his predecessor, and spoke with a burning gaze. "You were wrong to rebel. You set yourself against God. Sin exists on this world because of you."
He tilted his head back imperiously. "You deserved this fate."
The gaze of horror, unchanged by his words, vanished.
And came again.
With an irritated sound, Samael walked away, stepping into the forest of shimmering trees.
And immediately found himself back at the stone dais.
He turned, and there at the edge of a frozen meadow, was Lucifer.
Scowling, he spread his wings and flew up, high enough above the meadow to see the Silver City.
Entranced by the view and smiling softly, he flew to it.
And found himself standing again before the stone platform.
No!
He spun in place, flew off in a different directions, multiple times, and was returned, time and time again.
To the meadow.
With a roar of rage, Samael set the entire meadow aflame, pushing beyond simple fire to the molten matter at the heart of a young star. Waves of destructive radiation pulsed from his being, sliding swiftly along the spectrum from yellows, to whites, to brilliant blues.
Then he drew everything back again.
Because nothing had been affected by his rage, at all.
The shadow ran past him once more.
"What is the point of this?" he whispered, spent.
Lucifer ran to the end of the meadow, moments before his unmaking.
Chloe Jane Decker, I lo-
Samael's brow soared, as he finally grasped something that felt important.
"Your last thoughts were not for yourself."
Slowly, he walked the path of the figure, towards the edge of the meadow, as Lucifer disappeared again.
"For one so selfish, that is... unexpected."
The shadow slipped through him on its way to the unmaking, and in that moment, Samael felt the flicker of an emotion that did not belong to him.
Fear.
Lucifer's fear?
Raw and despairing, it slipped swiftly through him again with the figure's next passage.
Then again.
There was... more here, layered with the fear. Perhaps if he prolonged the contact?
He attempted to match the phantom Lucifer's motions with his own, clumsily at first and with increasing distress, as Lucifer's terror grew deeply tangible.
Overwhelmingly so.
At one point he fell out of the stream of Lucifer's last moments, his heart hammering in his chest, his breaths desperate and heaving.
It was too much. Lucifer's destruction felt like his own.
Too much.
But... there was something else there... little moments and flashes of a time with the woman, Chloe. There was something important in those moments, that he had not expected at all.
A genuine, selfless love from Lucifer, that had no place in a being so corrupt.
In one so wrong.
That love was reflected by the woman, and it was... intoxicating.
Samael's breaths calmed. He stood and watched Lucifer run again.
And he remembered the kiss he had shared with Chloe, before he had been hurt so terribly. If he was brave enough to return to Lucifer's stream, he could share in that again. Feel that simple human love again.
Smiling softly, he moved into the path of the one he hated once more.
He accepted Lucifer's terror, understood it, and delved deeper.
He tasted Chloe's lips again, felt the landscape of her skin underneath his hands. He felt their incredibly pure love, and he basked in that willingly, and then... he delved deeper.
And he found a current of yearning that surpassed the moments that Lucifer and Chloe had shared.
He found the heart of a being that had sought for love on Earth because he felt severed from every celestial source that had once nurtured who he had been. The Lightbringer he had been created to be. He found the heart of a being that had spent millennia drawing desires from a simple race and striving to bring what they wished, for their love. He found a being lost, seeking endless physical trysts, craving for more so desperately, and spiraling into a joyous and self-destructive hate of the ones who had pulled their love so far away. He found a being who had given so much and found so little, who had resigned himself to an eternity of smaller human pleasures, and the faint echo of celestial love gained from them - still so much better than the flat despair of Hell, still so much better than the disgust and disdain of Heaven.
He found a being who had simply asked 'why not?' and had suffered for the asking. Who had perhaps jumped too quickly into a fight, but could not pull back when his challenge was met.
A being of pride and terrible loneliness, who had finally, at the very end of his days, found a bright promise of the love he craved, and the very beginnings of a reconciliation.
But who had lost it once more.
With a sound of immeasurable pain, as Lucifer faded from around his form, Samael collapsed to his knees.
The sound continued, as he stared at the shimmering grasses, unseeing.
He had been so wrong.
He had been so terribly wrong.
Lucifer did not deserve his hate.
No...
Lucifer deserved his compassion.
His forgiveness.
The being he had so despised... deserved his love.
The sound stopped. The shimmering music of the meadow rose with the soaring melody of the Host.
Samael sank back against his legs, staring at nothing at first.
Then he raised his hands, turning them slowly.
These had been Lucifer's hands.
Samael marveled at them, as something inside his heart began to sing.
Standing slowly, he looked over himself as if seeing himself for the first time - the outline of his form through his robe, his feet upon the crystalline ground, his grand wings arching overhead.
A soft smile spread on his face.
How he had hated this form. How he had felt cursed.
No longer.
When Lucifer's phantom came again, Samael gazed into those eyes so lost, despairing, so full of fear.
And tears welled in his own eyes as his skin began to glow.
The anger was gone.
"I had thought you a corruption, Lucifer. A terrible mistake. I was wrong. I am... honored... to be what you once were." Shining with the light from a young sun's heart, he reached towards the figure. "I share with you now, with this last moment of you, all the love of my being. The love of a celestial to replace... what you... had... lost..."
Samael's brilliant eyes widened.
"More... there is more..."
The light from his being doubled, filling the meadow in which he stood.
He could feel the connection again. His father's creative force weaving through his being again, as it had when he had been made!
"I have reclaimed it... I..."
With a soft sound, his entire body tensing, Samael spread his wings wide. His outline began to blur as light pulsed from him in every wavelength, through every spectrum.
For the connection was not simply to his father.
There is more... All of them. Every soul... I am... I am all...
The world of his mind was obliterated in light.