5 — Temptation; 0723 Netherlands
With the gracious help of Mike Rice, Gloria is both dressed appropriately for an extended stay on Earth and able to see two steps in front of her. Monica, though grateful for the assistance, could have done without the excessive flirting. She forces that thought aside and sets her sights on a street cafe, the idea of teaching Gloria something useful at the forefront of her mind.
In a disappointing turn of events, the young angel is thoroughly uninterested in coffee. This, Monica cannot understand. With a quiet sigh of annoyance, she looks around for help, for a distraction from the mild frustration that being with a newborn often brought.
"Oh look, there's Andrew," Monica says as she sees him walk towards the mall across the street, among dozens of others. Gloria regarded them all curiously.
"How many does it take?" She questioned, quickly counting in her head the number of angels making their way into the building.
Andrew turns to look at them, and Monica watches him, stunned. The look on his face tells her everything she needs to know about what is going to happen, a split-second before it does.
The following few seconds are impossibly loud, a blur of chaos. Monica's cry of "No!" cannot be heard over the thundering roar of destruction, the ear-splitting crumble of metal and stone.
"The explosion must have been 2.5 tonnes, and there were two, did you notice?" Gloria says, stone-faced, rattling off facts, "separate explosions, which means there were two bombs, one timed to go off one after the other. But I don't think it was dynamite."
The older of the two is dumbfounded, struck with disbelief and grief, and gestures wildly around them.
"What are you talking about? Who cares how many bombs there were?" She cries out painfully, "look at this! Don't you feel anything?"
Gloria simply looks bewildered, clearly unable to grasp the magnitude of so much loss, so much death.
"What do you want me to feel? Am I supposed to feel what you're feeling? Is that what an angel does?"
Monica turns back to face the unbelievable devastation, hot tears spilling from her eyes.
"I don't know what an angel does anymore," she replies, shaking her head in defeated sorrow.
"Watch what you're saying, Miss Wings!" Tess scolded, but Monica continues to shake her head, backing away from the both of them, mumbling about her perpetually shattered heart and insisting that Gloria never learn to use hers.
She is broken. She can't help this new angel or the humans anymore. She doesn't know how.
She walks aimlessly in the heat of the desert. She is tired, afraid, discouraged. Getting into the car with him had been a mistake, one of several. She needs to think things over, alone.
He isn't the enemy, he'd told her. He was the alternative.
"There are options, thousands of them," he'd said, voice rich with smooth pursuassian.
He'd said he knew how much she was hurting, that she owed it to herself to find out if she could do it better than them, if she could be a better human, and a better … lover. What he'd shown her was appealing, much more than she wanted to admit, but the image of her life as a human had been objectively wrong. That mistake was his.
It is this fatal flaw in the otherwise picture-perfect spectacle that strengthens her, that pulls her away from the brink, from the temptation waiting for her just over the edge of the cliff.
It is this fatal flaw that her mind lingers on now, as she watches the tender-hearted, ever-stoic Angel of Death approach her. He might not know exactly what she'd been through, but she has a feeling, judging by the look on his face, that he'd at least been briefed on the basics.
"Do you want to talk about it?" His question is cautious, his voice is soft. She swallows hard and looks into his gentle green eyes, unsure where to start.
"I …" she begins, looking away, "almost did it, you know."
He nods in understanding, confirming her suspicion.
"But you didn't. You came back," he says in response, taking her hand in his, gently tracing the lines of her palm. She takes a steadying breath and turns back to face him.
"Yes," she says, "because he messed up."
"How?" His question is genuine, he doesn't know every detail, doesn't know exactly what she'd seen, the image of a human life, of motherhood, of love.
A small smile pulls at the corner of her mouth, but it doesn't reach her eyes. A sound between a laugh and a sob falls from her lips.
"He didn't show me with you."
She holds her breath and looks away yet again, shocked at her own frankness, at her own audacity. She hadn't planned to say it, and she isn't entirely sure that now, here of all places, is the best time to make such a brazen confession, but … if not now, when? Her held breath comes rushing out when he takes her face in his hands, when he forces her to look at him again. For what feels like the hundredth time that day, her heart lurches painfully in her chest, this time because her eyes are not the only ones filled with tears. She can count on one hand the number of times she'd seen him get emotional over the years.
"And if he had?"
She considers his question for several very long moments, considers the implications and the potential consequences of telling such a forbidden truth. She can't not say it now — to keep it bottled up and hidden would betray the most profound desire of her heart. With every bit of strength and courage she can muster, she answers him, silently praying to anyone and anything listening that this revelation would not be another entry on her very long list of mistakes.
"I wouldn't have hesitated for a single second."
xoxo, A