Chapter 7: The Low

I knew we had reached a new low, when I found you at night, sitting on the floor, leaned to one of the book cases. The bottle in your hand was almost finished and I found a broken glass not far from you, in a puddle of the same liquid. You looked at me, your gaze clouded, your eyes dreary. Not a single muscle seemed to move in your face, your body paralyzed by all the alcohol in your blood. I wanted to ask you what you're doing, but I already knew the answer. You were grieving. Your friend. The world around you that had shown you its nasty face once again. I reached out my hand to you to help you up, but in a flood of a sudden rising feeling you slapped it away. I nodded hardly noticeable, looked to the ground and left the room. I knew your look didn't follow me, instead you cursed yourself for being so foolish to scare off the only person, who offered you their help.

But I wasn't actually gone. A little later I came back with another bottle in my hand and with a cautious distance to you sat down next to you onto the cold, glossy wooden floor, which mirrored so much more than our mere presence. I put down the bottle between us and didn't say a word. It didn't seem you were up for talking. You didn't need a conversational partner, you needed someone, who just and simply was with you and who saw you and your feelings with you. You needed someone, who just suffered with you, so you wouldn't have to do it alone.

I'd rather have you cheerful and happy and in peace, I admit that, but even the raw, brutal reality of pain seemed to have a beauty to it that had always amazed me. I remembered what one of my brothers has once said to me. He's asked me if I know why angels are meant to stay away from the humans. He's said that it's not, because we are a danger to them. But because they are a danger to us. Back then I haven't fully understood what he's meant by that. By now I knew. Humans show us what it means to feel, what it really means to be human. Feelings, Emotions. Dangerous temptations.

Back then I was a soldier. A warrior of the Lord. A part of a big picture that stood above humanity and wasn't meant to have their own life. And then you came into my non-life and all of a sudden all that seemed so pointless to me. Humans, who love each other, are loyal, hate each other, shout at each other and hurt and even kill. Driven and dulled by sheer violence and longing and lust and heart. Without reason, you might say, but with more reason than every single angel I've ever known. And I saw it, the beauty in it and why one would want that.

I have changed. I'm not a soldier anymore and I don't belong to heaven anymore. I am a single, living, solitarily deciding individual with a free will, and no matter how often I've been told that I've become weak, that I've developed a weakness for humanity, yes, a weakness for you even, I am not. I'm not weak. I know that, because you told me so. They were right with how far I've fallen. No wings. No home. But I had you. And you had me. You'd rather have me, cursed or not. Your words.

And no matter how much of an angel I was, who was no angel, to my surprise there were still brothers and sisters, who wanted to follow me. Not in my footsteps, but at least my orders. They gave me their trust. But in the end it always had the same outcome. They realized that I didn't belong to them, not to heaven, not god, not to earth, or any greater good. They begged me not to lose myself over one man. They called you a filthy ape and said you were always talking me down and humiliating and mocking me. But you weren't and you didn't. You were family. And I had to choose. Them or you. And I chose you. Every time.

"You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person and why."

(John Green, "Turtles All the Way Down")

I looked at you and found the mere realization that once again you were hating your life. It was one of those moments, where you couldn't wrap your head around the facts of being alive, where nothing makes sense and everything seems simply and alone horrible. Where you regretted it all and wanted nothing anymore, but to blame yourself, because inside the little, confused, self-desperate mind of yours, which I had learned to love, it was the easiest thing you could still do. You didn't know who to hate for it, the world itself, which wasn't to blame for it, the universe, which seemed so far away, even when surrounding you, that it could hardly be a part of it, or god perhaps, about whom you knew that he simply didn't care. So you blamed the only one you didn't have to explain, why it's his fault: you.

I opened the full bottle and held it towards you with the bottom side. You understood and slightly hit it with your bottle. Here's to that we share our sorrow, that our hearts understand each other forever and that our eyes see the same awful world. You emptied the rest of the content with one sip and seemed pleased with the soft intoxication of the bitter alcohol. I did so as well, even when my bottle was still completely filled. But I'm still an angel, even when not one as originally planned by god, not even that amount of alcohol had a definite effect on me. Yet, I had to burp, after I had demolished the last sip, and perhaps wishful thinking was misleading me, but I thought to see the implication of a smile in your face. And suddenly I understood why the angels cursed and hunted us. They envied us. Because we had something they would never have.

And you would be okay. You would forget your grief and the anger on life and remember who you are. Dean Winchester. Always fighting and never lost. Strong and much stronger than everyone else. And with my help you would someday not think back and find it all unfair and pointless, but only that you once had a friend called Rick and now not anymore. He shall rest in peace.

"You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened."

(John Green, "An Abundance of Katherines")