He comes to slowly, senses dragging themselves back to work one by one. There's a familiar ceiling stretching above him, right down to the spiderweb in the corner, a little round window letting in the pale glow of the moon.
It's quiet, strangely so, as he struggles to get his limbs to cooperate and finds the reason he doesn't have full use of his legs is because the Singularity has slumped over them, face slack with something closer to unconsciousness than sleep.
Another glance lets a bundle on the floor take shape in the gloom, locks of blue and soft snores giving some indication of its occupants, and the scene loses some of its dreamlike atmosphere when his sarcasm module grinds back to life.
Idiots, reckless, foolish, loyal idiots, to not at least retire to their own beds, to remain so oblivious as to stay in the room with a dangerously unstable primal—
But then…
Cautiously, ever so cautiously, he commands his senses to turn inward, listening, searching — and rearing back at the impossibility of what he finds, that utterly cohesive, grooveless surface.
"Awake at last, o Supreme Handful?"
With a slight rustle, Michael unfolds herself from the chair that he failed to notice, movements stiffer and voice rougher than he remembers. For a moment, she looks smaller, too, almost shrunken, before he realizes that is because she isn't wearing her armor.
"I… I'm…"
His own voice is barely distinguishable from a breath, less out of conscious respect for the trio of exhausted sky dwellers sleeping at his feet and more because there is hardly any of it left. The embarrassment at her seeing him in this state is a fleeting thing because she rises to make her way over, and she's always been just a little intimidating, armor or no.
She perches on the edge of the bed with the ease of someone who has been doing so for hours, if not days, and there's no hesitation in the hand that comes to rest against his brow. First cool, then a quick, sharp heat as her power flashes through him – it burns, his tired nerves rejecting the idea of bearing yet more magic, and Michael's mouth twists remorsefully at his wince.
"Your recklessness seems to know no bounds. You truly outdid yourself this time."
She withdraws her hand and nods as if satisfied by what she's found, though the concern in her eyes doesn't seem to lessen. It's still strange to think that she would worry for him like this.
"What— what happened…?" he rasps, unsure of what to focus on between this foreign show of care and the undeserved loyalty of the sky dweller children, the fact that his room is quiet and the skies feel calm, darkened with the cycle of day-to-night instead of the howling armies of hell. And above all, the fact that he is here to take it all in, trembling and weak but whole, mended, as if primal cores could be fixed by something as trivial as a healing spell.
To his surprise, Michael sighs out something close to a laugh. "You saved His skies." She pauses, and amends, "Your skies. Can't you tell?"
"I'm not sure I know… what's real at this moment."
"Ah. Well, I do happen to know a sky dweller remedy for this," she says, and he only has a split-second to register that something is off about her tone before she flicks him squarely in the forehead.
The unexpectedness of it jars loose a flood of relief so forceful he nearly sinks back against the pillow, that this is it, this is real, the sting of her fingers the proof that he hasn't failed, hasn't disappointed, at last has managed to save someone—
Many someones.
Possibly all the someones.
Perhaps he shouldn't feel so accomplished at the thought, not when Lucifer undoubtedly did the same thing a hundred, a thousand times over, and without almost losing control of himself, too.
"Is that what you think? That you simply 'lost control'?" Michael asks, a frown rapidly turning her face into a familiar mask of severity.
"I…" He presses his lips together, trying to leash his thoughts before any more can leap unbidden on his tongue.
"You… of course, of course you would." She sighs, heavily, as if her lungs could expel more than air. "We didn't see, but… Lyria told us. You had twelve wings, Sandalphon."
A desert wind sweeps through him, scattering whatever thoughts he's managed to pull together and leaving him gutted in its wake.
"That's not possible," his mouth says, even as something stirs in the back of his mind, a memory of being overcome, enveloped, cradled by the most beautiful color in all the skies–
"That wasn't— that can't be— how would she even have seen—"
"That, I do not know, but it doesn't matter. You being with us now is proof enough."
"No. No, that was you, you saved—"
"We didn't, Sandalphon," she says softly. "We couldn't have. You were beyond any power."
Another memory, a fragment of dream, of rushing through a sun-filled, idyllic little house with the panic of an abandoned child, searching, calling desperately—
"No." His voice is a high, shivering whisper.
"We were trying to protect these children, when… well. It just stopped."
"No…"
"As far as I can tell, your core is whole. You may be the only one of us who can ascertain what truly happened, but I think…"
"Don't say it," he manages, words having to claw past the vise tightening around his throat, and distantly aware of how his body has started trying to tremble apart at the seams. "Don't."
"I'm… truly sorry," she murmurs, a hand haltingly coming to rest against his back, and this is how the mortal children find him when they wake, shaking in Michael's arms with the hoarse, ugly sobs of that final, unholy loss.
I think… whatever power of His was left in you… must have wanted to save you somehow.
*.*.*.*.*
Life goes on, because that's what life does.
Sandalphon reminds himself of that every morning, and, when it fails to carry him through the day, as often as necessary, sometimes every other hour, to keep himself from simply stopping in his tracks and never moving again.
There are things to do, and a pleasant numbness to throwing himself into them without giving himself time to think – there are linens to wash, and wounded to care for, and hard-to-reach parts of the ship to fix.
If it helps him avoid the worried gazes of the Singularity and Lyria, the lizard's nervous hovering, or the former Primarchs, who have started taking turns checking up on the ship and its inhabitants, then so much the better.
Sandalphon knows they'd try to help if he let them, just as he knows — and they know too — that there is nothing they could say, no way they could understand the enormity of his loss. It's so much worse than the first time, or even the second, when he was left with kernels of hope to clutch like precious baubles, dreams that offered glimpses of absolution before allowing him to suffer in penance, a drive, a mission, an oath to do everything to bring Him back.
And even when he couldn't, even when the realization of that vow turned out to be beyond his power, he was still given a chance to do the right thing…
And you thought that the right thing would be to reject the heaven He was offering you so unconditionally, because you still couldn't let go of the fantasy of becoming deserving of it. Deserving of /Him/.
It's enough to make him smile, the sheer, hopeless arrogance of the sentiment, the naivety of that new wish – that if he couldn't restore Lucifer, allow him to experience for himself the skies that he'd spent millennia protecting, then Sandalphon – stupid, prideful, blindly optimistic Sandalphon – might be able to venture out, and return with something of worth, carrying a treasure trove of experiences.
Memories of hundreds of tiny novelties, of learning to draw shapes in the swirls of coffee foam, of getting dragged around shopping for pointless knickknacks, of sea-salt on his lips and sand between his toes, of having to deposit a particularly persistent cat off his lap and getting a right clawing in response, of diving into the warm southern winds and letting them carry him for miles and miles, lazily, just because…
Of thoughts, both idle and serious, to show that no matter where he was and what he did, it was always, always with one goal in mind–
To bring back a soil untainted by the sins of the past, upon which we can sow our own memories, and watch them grow.
He has a brief, crippling moment of panic when the sky dwellers declare the ship fixed, and clean, and all the wounded have been discharged from the infirmary, because the idea of having to start picking up his own pieces is just too much to bear.
How can he, when the misshapen thing he was gluing back together will no longer serve its purpose, when he won't ever have to worry again about any feeble attempts to make it beautiful, to make it worthy–
It's a relief to learn he'll be returning to active duty instead, to be allowed to lose himself in battle once more by tearing through the leftover pockets of Otherworld taint.
"We need you, you hear me, Sandalphon?" the Singularity says sternly as they gird their swords and armor for the fights ahead. "We need you."
"I hear you," he says, though it comes out much softer than it once would have, devoid of posturing. It does warm something in him to know she cares, even though he'll now never get to share the experience of being hounded by this tiny skyfarer woman to be more sociable, to take better care of himself, to please stop making certain companions think he's going to turn them into lizard barbecue—
He slams the door on the ruins of his heart, and tilts his chin skyward in a show of confidence she only half buys but smiles at all the same.
"I hear you."
*.*.*.*.*
It happens so terribly fast.
One minute, they're holding the creatures at bay, and the next, the small village vanguard that insisted on helping the trained skyfarers fight has been overcome, leaving a flock of screeching harpies free to rush for the very spot where Lyria is trying to help the townsfolk evacuate.
He knows the Singularity will have words for him later, will see it as a sign of wasteful foolishness instead of the calculated risk it is—
There's no guarantee, no way he'll be able to shield this waifish little girl with just his sword, and truly, what is this life even for anymore when he can't use it with abandon?
Teleporting is as easy as breathing, scattering and reforming right behind Lyria, her surprised gasp swallowed by the embrace of his wings. With them in place, no harm will come to her, and he'll be able to pull himself together again later, as he always does, and the Singularity can take care of the rest —
He expects the pain, expects the claws stabbing into his flesh, but what he doesn't expect is for them to be stabbing from the inside out, or the sweet warmth that comes bubbling up in their wake – surging, cresting, washing over him with a force that shouldn't be this reassuring, this soothing—
Fingers sliding along his back gently, ever so gently, brushing over his hair and past his cheeks in a way that's enough to make him reach out, to catch them before they can leave—
"Sandalphon, you're—!"
Almost unwillingly, he opens his eyes (when did he close them?) to meet the boundless shock in Lyria's stare, gazing up at him, behind him—
There are no claws, he realizes belatedly.
There are no fingers.
There are only wings, an embrace of pure white pinions stilling time and thought with its soft fluttering caress — and a feeling, vast and nameless and wholly not his, as they slowly pull back—
~Here — you — always~
—to once again, impossibly, flood the world with light.
*.*.*.*.*
TBC
Author's Notes: I love Michael. She's so criminally underused, and I love the uneasy budding mentor relationship she has with Sandalphon, so yeah, you bet I gave her a part.