ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH 1/?

Warning: This story contains potential SLASH. That is: a male/male relationship. DO NOT read if you are uncomfortable with this. I know that you probably know what you're getting into, but I don't have time to babysit people who cannot read the warnings, and I DO NOT appreciate getting flamed by those who have issues with my stories because they chose to read them.

This is also in an alternate universe, and I apologize if the characters are dreadfully OOC.

(A/N: After a stint of about two months, re-read this and realized that it needed work: so I added dialogue (which I hope you like) and deleted things, and cleared things up for later. Next chapters coming up in a couple of weeks, cuz I have finals and need to do REALLY well...)

This work is based on GO, not mine...yeah. You know the drill, don't sue me cuz I'm not making money off of it. You'll get three nickels and a spatula. And I'll throw rotten cabbages at you in the process.







~PRAELUDIUM~





The city's streets were noisy, dirty, filled with life of those who made up the masses. Here a cabbage vendor haggled over the price of his produce with a woman whose eyes had hardened over the years and who no one made a fool of. Both wearing patched clothing of dust-hues, years of grime and poverty and survival as tangible as the coarse threads of flax. Arms waving, the vendor seemed on the verge of lifting into the air while the woman, face as impassive as a stone watched. Her mouth moved slightly, a few words were spoken, a ritual was fulfilled, and the vendor relented. The faint smile that graced both well-worn faces spoke of years together, accustomed to each other, friends of much more than similar interests, but understandings.

There, a pair of young lovers roamed through the streets, the girl with her flaxen hair and dainty feet a splash of brightness in the tapestry of people. She tossed her hair, that sweetness with the sauciness that only Youth can accomplish, and laughed a tinkling laugh as lively as the dancing motes of dust. The other passer-byers smiled indulgently, as her young man followed in the path of her lively steps, his face a study of dazed worship. A plain, polished silver ring on one slim finger spoke volumes of days with no food but memories, night of no warmth but dreams.

In the corner, a drunkard slouched in the shadows, the flies buzzing, his hand still clutching the bottle that had brought him low. A cat more bones than meat sniffed at his sleeve, tattered and fouled beyond wearing. Above, in a house of doubtable repute and virtue, a woman leaned out. Hair nut-brown and unbound, she called to the passing men and adjusted her shift, much too loose at the neck. A voice ill-intended for much more than bellowing sounded behind her, and in a swirl of gaudy red cotton and white bosom and hair she disappeared.

Two men stood at a stone wall of a house, where the shade offered meager protection from the sun. Dark eyes and curly hair and stocky builds spoke of the same family, the same upbringing. Voices raised and excited, eyes sparkling, they conversed about the night before last, when they had been privileged to visit the finest opera house in the city.

Made of sleek gray stone and rose-veined marble, the building had awed them with the nobility that came from age and fine taste. Yet for all the beautiful exterior, it was within that the true treasures lay. From the very first note, the very first swirl of shining cloth, the audience had been captured like moths to a flame. The acting had been superb, the women so lovely, and the music...the music had been sublime.

"For shame, Alesso, for shame." At this both laughed, for it was a long-standing joke between the two. "You could at least have let the memory of Maribel have a decent funeral before you latched onto another."

The young man called Alesso by his cousin grinned, dropping his head in a repentant pose, locking his legs and hunching his shoulders. The overall effect, unfortunately, was rather ruined by the impudent set of his face, and the wide grin that was threatening to break out.

"I don't know what I'll do with you, cousin! Auntie Sarina made me promise, at a time when I was half-drunk that I'd look after you. Never let it be said that your most esteemed mother was not an opportunist of the highest degree…and what has this brought me?"

"A companion who will help you get entirely drunk?"

"Very amusing cousin. As I recall, you weren't the one who bought the flowers for Marcia, despite the fact that I suffer greatly from flower-fever, procured the "adorable donkey" for Fiona, (and nearly got brained in the process,) not to mention Sohi and the rope of sheets, Nicia and that horror she calls a nurse, Leone, that *demon* of hers, and my second-best tunic!"

"Give it up, Gaetano, you coward! That dog barely came up to your waist, and the truth is that you ran away in fear just because it tried to greet you!"

"Coward is it? That *dog* has teeth the size of my dagger, and it was headed straight for my codpiece! I'd like to see you with a demon that size rushing towards your family jewels, and count the seconds that you stay still!"

There was a moment of silence, in which Gaetano, taller, and at this point much ruddier in face, paused for a breath. His cousin, seizing onto the opportunity like a drowning man to a log, smiled his most winning smile and proceeded to overwhelm his kinsman with the force of his considerable charm.

"Cousin, yes, I apologize for my impudent remarks, and proclaim you the bravest of men. I am unworthy of having one such as you as kinsman of blood and spirit, yet cannot help throwing myself at your feet to reques--"

"Alesso, buttering me up will result in nothing but a sharp crack on the head. No more serenades, no more boats, no more balcony rescues, no more PETS. I refuse, cousin, and that's the end."

"But Gaetano…now that I've seen the error of my ways, you'll take pity on your poor, love-struck youngest cousin, right? Please, for the sake of my mother…please for the sake of my ancestors who are also your ancestors but which really doesn't matter…I beg of yooooo..."

"Alesso, two things spring to mind. One, you are not my youngest cousin due to the fact that you have four younger siblings, yet to be honest, your behavior denies that fact. Two, should you continue that rather irritating noise, I am not responsible for upending you into the river. I hear it is quite wet these days...and that look will get you nothing but a glare from me, no matter how effective it is with my mother."

"Cousin, just one favor. So tiny compared with your pure heart and enormous soul and vast resources and great intelligence...I swear on my mother's grave..."

"You swore on that with Marcia."

"...on my father's grave?"

"Fiona."

"...on MY grave..."

"No need, that was for the donkey."

"...on the graves of the children I'll beget with that lovely little morsel of an opera singer..."

"You swore on that with Nicia, and I have yet to collect."

"...COUSIN! I swear on my collection of weapons that I will never, ever, in the name of God, his son and the Holy Ghost, Mary, Virgin Mother, all Twelve of the Apostles, all Ten of the Commandments, ask your benevolent being for another favor. But my heart YEARNS for that lovely girl…I speak the truth cousin, that I shall perish if I do not marry that maiden."

There was another pause as Gaetano stared down into his cousin's face. For all their bantering and threats, he really was very fond of his younger cousin, never having a brother himself. For all his gesturing and mock anger, he did not mind overmuch the feats he performed in the multiple names of his cousin's loves. He sighed, grinning as the large brown eyes (downfall of many a maiden and many a pastry baked by various matrons of the town) filled with hope.

"Fine."

And to make his ignoble defeat more seemly.

"But your silver-plated dagger is mine."

The street rang out with warm, young male laughter, as Gaetano took to his heels, grinning like a madman, while Alesso, hand over his heirloom dagger dashed after him. The dust roiled and curled like the fine tendrils of dark hair that Alesso dreamed of, ephemeral, silky smooth, and in the end, just a collapse of a dream.

Deluded darling, how he longed for creamy ivory skin, slender limbs and a rainfall of hair like sun on oak. They pictured that body in its sheath of dark blue, ribbons fluttering in the moving air. In the end, false, so false.

Young Alesso thought he knew about sweet tinkling laughter, the tilt of a sweetly curling head and delicate pose of a flower in flight. He thought he knew the way she talked, in lovely soft syllables and pauses, how she paused in the light, a marble statue, how she danced.* Yet the greatest knowledge of this lovely, lovely creature was a lie, the secrets of the stage, of the singers, of the opera were uncovered, hidden by faint candlelight and draping sapphire silk.

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There had always been castrati, those beautiful, un-earthly men with the voices of what some rumored to rival those of the angels, achieved by the sacrifice of what made them men. Slender, taller and weaker than ordinary men, their bones were soft, flexible with the lack of the messages in their blood that would have told them to stop growing. They were always reaching towards the sky in a futile attempt to follow the bright notes of their music, the lines of neck and shoulder proud as a stag's.

Whether they stood or sat or were simply there, they shone with what some called isolation, some called loneliness, and what they called with dry eyes and tight faces, choice. For all the adoration the opera and the listeners showered upon them, there was mockery and disgust to balance the fawning masses. Half-men, freaks, lower than filth from the gutters, they called them, and much, much worse.

Perhaps it was jealousy, lashing out at, as mules turn upon a unicorn, resentment and anger at the gifts they carried in grace, in fame, and the mystery called song. Perhaps it was fear of the unknown. But that lack of true human contact burned and they shied away from the outside world, becoming in essence what opera was: a tale told in music, its figures aloof, bright as the stars with their power to dazzle, yet the brightness they carried came at the price of companionship.

There were little boys, large eyes lacking the realization of what had been done to them. Little peasant boys, or children of the night-lit streets, taken or bought from a life of poverty and whoredom. A sacrifice was made, sharp steel catching the light, for comfort, for money, for music. Little boys did not care yet about their blood, their bones, the mystery of woman and true man. A slice of warm bread, a soft bed to a rat-gnawed crust, a cold, cold step...they knew the beauty of simplicity. Little boys lay content.

There were the young adolescents, gradually seeing the comparisons and parallels of their life and that of "true" men who could give life to the soil of woman, who could carry on the name of their families, who saw /them/ as a blight, a necessary evil. The drink of their lives was very bitter, the drops sour and dry as dust swept off stage. Youth was born to pride, manhood a citadel of glory, of honor...and they wept at their chains as outside, in the sun-lit streets, young boys blushed at the cracking in their voices, stroked the down on their upper lips in imitations of their fathers.

Some closed their eyes and threw themselves into their music, their passion, the life that they had ascended and that had no return. Sharper than silver and steel their notes soared in arpeggios and minor scales, the highest notes slashing the air. Mad, mad youth, resplendent in its fury and unrestrained passion, molded by music. They craved the light, the stage like the men in the squalid holes craved drink or poppy-dust. A drug, some called it, eyes burning with something far more frightening than fear, something to numb the pain, a desperate snatching at something barely beyond their reach--an answer, a dream, a realization.

And there were some...some whose anger and bitterness consumed them, and they threw away what had been exchanged. There were men who craved the strange, paid gold for freaks. And a power wept as music was exchanged for intrigue, drink and darkness. Darkness, dishonor and despair. Those children of the night clutched their bleeding hearts, gray from the dust and sought relief.

But those were very, very few.

For those who survived the years of youth, some reached for the moon and fell. Mediocre tutors were their station, choirboys of the cathedrals that thrilled to have such a novelty in their walls of stones, their flawed stained glass windows, their mended alter cloths and gold-plated bronze candlesticks. And they grew old and brittle, eyes already dead with the knowledge that they had leapt--and failed. Shunned by man and woman, Music had turned her back, leaving behind a sullen coal where there had been a star. And there was no choice but to take it. For all that Music is a harsh, unforgiving mistress, those that have tasted of her beauty would ere lick the dust-covered stones that have felt her footfall rather than turn their backs on a dead life.

There were those slightly better, the ones with voices that were out of the ordinary, yet lacking the passion, the fire, the rapture. Comfortable in their ignorance, they were the happiest ones. Their lives as the bought entertainer of a nobleman, sometimes something more, never lacked for money, audiences, and that little spark that called itself contentment. Music had left them gently, slipping away with a blessing and a kiss. For all that they would cry out in the middle of the night, wake with tear-soaked pillows, oblivion came with the warmth and light of the sun.

Then there were the rubies, the emeralds, the diamonds of the mass of gems. Priceless among semi-precious stones. They were the ones with voices like sunshine, moonlight, molten gold. They were the ones who could lift you to Heaven or cast you down to the burning pits of hell. They held the power to make men weep and tear their hair because of the brief, tantalizing, torturous glimpse into something that man was never supposed to see. Heaven, Paradise, Eden before the Fall. Ichor flowed in their veins, casting away base red iron; Music had touched their brows, looked into their eyes, and drawn the curtain of rationality to reveal Herself.

But all had a brilliance about them, precious and plain and painful alike. Perhaps it was the light in their eyes, removed from the dust of the outside world to a marble and candle-lit universe. Perhaps it was the light reflected off a glass wall of isolation, fingers trying in vain to reach further, reach beyond. Perhaps it was desperation. For all the beauty that they gave, that they sensed, not one of them had touched music, embraced it wholly within itself, seen what music could be, and was. Beautiful half-men they might be, but human they remained.

And then there was Assiraphio.

And he...he was all of that which was human, and so, so much more. He had the power to entrance the multitudes, to move them to madness, to love, to hatred. His voice laid open the soul and told the listener: /thou who art stained with sin, unclean, defiled; listen to me, and repent./ He had the golden voice of which writers, poets and madmen termed "the terrible, unearthly, glorious, indescribable voice of an angel."

Beautiful, yes, in eyes and hair and face and slim body of all castrati. Yet where some flitted like jeweled butterflies, smoldered like hot embers, he shone. Beauty was eclipsed, loveliness became an empty mist, and only a presence remained, warmth and light.

When men and women would praise him, calling him "Angel of the Stage," delicate lips would curve in a fond smile of irony. Assiraphio. Raphael. Seraph. Angel.

Unable to portray a fraction of the miracle that was /music/ in Heaven through this body, equipped as it was, he nevertheless strove to. And his voice was such that in any other time and place, would have enthralled kings, started wars, and toppled empires into the dust from whence they came. But that would have broken his heart. Because he was love, and he was hope and he was joy, and to become another Helen, send another thousand black ships and brave men to their doom would have broken his heart. And he hid in secrecy, in obscurity, only coming out when the need for song consumed him--

And so, he sang.





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*This is NOT our angel. Different lovely boy, will introduce later.

I wasn't too sure whether or not this version is better or not than the original. *Sigh* That's the problem with revising your own work after a stint. You come back and realize that it really has major issues, and you change it and you change it some more, and you're not sure if you did the right thing.

Tho' if you review and tell me if, and what, and who you liked, I'll try to steer the story somewhere pretty and write more...