Gilbert is sitting in his usual booth on a Friday night. It's six in the evening and therefore far too crowded for Antonio to stop cooking long enough to spare time for more than a quick hello, but Gilbert doesn't mind. Lovino had taken his order and darted off to the kitchen to put it in. He has about seven or eight tables, by Gilbert's count, which is, apparently, a lot. The restaurant isn't that large, and he counted only twenty tables total, so he supposes that is nearly half the restaurant.

Shaking his head (which has felt so much lighter, likely due to the absence of a halo, which he'd lost on a crosswalk two towns over after what was, apparently, four drinks too many), he sips his plastic cup full of ice water and prods at the lemon with his straw.

He had hoped to stay and chat with his friend, but Antonio's business has to come first, no matter how awesome he agrees Gilbert is. Resolving to come back later, he stops the other server on his way out (a Belgian girl named Emma with whom he'd shared a few friendly chats but whom he'd never been able to get to know all that well). "Hey, tell Antonio I said hi, I'll be back tomorrow at three," he says, and she gives him a smile and a nod before darting off to refill someone's drink.

Once outside, Gilbert takes a deep breath of the cool night air, feels his human-lungs inflate and his human-tongue tastes exhaust from the cars on the road. He knows, or supposes, he has to stop thinking of his parts as human-parts, considering his very last feather fell off days and days ago and he was able to sell it for enough money to keep himself human-alive for ages, but still.

It's hard to forget divinity. Or something. He doesn't really like to think that way.

The sky is quiet, and he stares for a moment at the sunset, until he feels something like humming at the back of his skull. He watches a woman and man walk hand-in-hand down the street and thinks, for one maybe-crazy moment: This is how you find something to replace God.

.

(One of the few conversations he had with Emma, she tried to ask Gilbert about his family. Gilbert had thought about his closest little brother and shook his head. I lost them, he'd said.

Emma had shaken her head and smiled gently. It's okay, she told him. You can find a new family. It'll be in the last place you think to look, sure, but I'm sure you can find it.)

.

Gilbert watches the two walk down the street and says nothing, at first. He doesn't know how to act, instincts screaming leave and approach in equal parts. He's always been impulsive, even when he was in Heaven, but now he has human adrenaline replacing... replacing... whatever angels have.

He doesn't think it's a fair trade, but he doesn't know who he'd take it up with.

Regardless, his conflicting instincts leave him frozen in place. Just before the couple turns the corner of the street, just before they leave his sight, the man turns back to look at him, violet eyes meeting sanguine, and Gilbert takes off at a sprint, mind all but screaming go go go. It isn't until his lungs are burning that he stops. Flight instincts are something, he thinks. Run-run-run. Not nearly as fun as the fight-or- part of the adrenaline rush.

.

Food is the best part about the world, probably. Gilbert eats french fries on the roof of the empty building he's sleeping in. He's not the only squatter, but people keep too themselves. He doesn't know how he'd go about finding a real house with a real bed given that he doesn't even have a real name, so this will do. Beats Heaven any day. Apart from the pang in his chest when he thinks about his little bro, Gilbert doesn't miss Heaven at all.

.

Three days after Gilbert ran-ran-ran like the Hounds of Hell were on his tail (are there hounds down there? he wonders; he'd never considered it, really), he sees the violet-eyed man in a bar. The woman is there, draped over some tall fellow in a suit like she's his brand new scarf, and the man just watches out of the corner of his eye. Watches like he isn't watching.

Gilbert's seen this kind of thing before (during the first week after he Fell, a woman had draped over him in much the same way, kissed him after four drinks and said he looked like an old boyfriend, old-soul-and-impulse, she'd said, like fire, she'd said, and the woman had smiled like it was a sin and Gilbert kissed her, because... you never know, it might just be).

He can taste curiosity like a sugar cube between his teeth. Gilbert likes sugar cubes. They're his favorite. Like meat and beer and gym memberships and the way you can fold a shirt just right if you want to and German pop music from the 1990s.

But: curiosity. Of all the people here, in this bar, he finds he can't look away from the man in violet for long. Something calls to him.

Bars are crowded. When he first Fell, Gilbert didn't much like crowds—they'd walk through the spaces where his wings would-be-could-be-should-be and he'd shudder. Now he likes it, likes being swept along, usually likes watching the whole crowd, humanity doing what humanity does best. But he can't focus on anyone but the couple, even as the woman seems to instigate a bar fight with just a word, throwing punches with the best of them as the man joins a few others in stepping back, a cocktail held delicately in one hand.

Gilbert steps away, too. He doesn't shy from a fight, but that only really applies to ones that involve him. He doesn't involve himself in anything for no good reason. He's far too awesome to throw punches for strangers.

And anyway, the bartender quickly breaks up the fight, the bouncer escorts everyone involved out, threats about police are made. The man in violet sets down his glass and follows the fuming customers out the door, presumably to rejoin his lady.

Just before he reaches the door, he turns to look Gilbert in the eye once more.

"Coming?" he asks, and Gilbert freezes like a cornered mouse.

There's a pause, before the man shakes his head. "Never mind."

.

When he returns home ("home" still being an abandoned building and a sleeping bag), Gilbert dreams. A dreamscape that stubbornly refuses to align itself to the neat lines of Heaven or the crooked ones of Earth, a dreamscape made up of visions of a countryside he's never seen and old, old knights (Teutons) fighting holy wars making up the background.

"Gilbert," says a voice behind him, as he contemplates holy war.

"Ludwig," he says.

Bruder, he says. What are you doing here, I:

fell

Fell

died

was exiled

evicted Heavenly things from my head when I was kicked out

missed you

am dreaming

, he says.

"Yes," Ludwig says, which doesn't explain very much at all. He's taller than Gilbert remembers him being. Or maybe Gilbert is shorter.

He feels his pulse hammering away like something that wants to escape, like a prey animal.

"Are you okay?" Ludwig asks. "Down here?"

Yes, Gilbert says, or maybe: "Yeah, I guess."

Ludwig doesn't answer for a moment.

"Why are you here?" he asks at last. "Are you supposed to tell me something? Is that the point of this?"

"Why does there have to be a point?" Ludwig asks.

Gilbert opens his mouth to retort but his brother is already saying, "No. There is a point. I came here to tell you a secret. There's a prophet on Earth."

"... So?" Gilbert manages.

"The Question, Bruder," Ludwig says, and Gilbert frowns. "The one God gave us, the one he put in our very bones. Rediscover holiness and you might be able to come home."

"How? How does knowing about a prophet help me 'rediscover holiness?'" Gilbert demands.

Ludwig seems to start a reply to him, but a loud crash sends Gilbert careening back into the waking world. Just outside, he hears cursing, car alarms going off.

"No, no, no!" he cries, jumping out of his sleeping back so he could kick at the nearest wall. "Fuck, Ludwig, please! Don't leave just like that! Ludwig, please! Bruder!"

.

He doesn't see the couple again for another three days.

.

When he does, he's sitting at a different bar, and they drift in the door one at a time, as if pretending not to know one another. The woman sits in at a table in the back and the man sits next to him on a bar stool.

"Hey," Gilbert says, not looking up from the beer he'd been sipping at for the better part of an hour.

"Hello," replies the man, and then adds, "Roderich."

Gilbert guesses that must be his name. People down here sure do love those what's your name? what's your name? what's your name?

"Gilbert," he says in response.

"You are an angel?" Roderich asks, which is a good enough reason to pause and frown, as good a reason as Gilbert's had in his month-and-a-half of human-living.

"Yeah," he says at last, because it's better than explaining a topple out of Heaven to some human. By now, the woman has joined them.

"This is my wife, Elizaveta," he goes on, gesturing to her. The woman—Elizaveta—smiles.

"Pleased to meet you... Gilbert, was it? Sorry, I was listening from over there," she said, gesturing.

"Yeah, I kinda saw you," the albino says, rolling red eyes.

"We're good people," Roderich begins, with the kind of voice that sounds almost like a sales pitch.

"I don't need good souls," Gilbert says over the top of his mug of beer. "An accomplice was closer to what I was hoping for, if some human was going to come up and tell me he knows what I am."

"You sure this guy's really an angel?" Elizaveta asks, something in her tone more than a touch skeptical.

Roderich shrugs. "I can only repeat what I've heard."

Gilbert grins. "Nobody as awesome as I am could have been made on earth."

There's a flash of pain on Roderich's face, as if from a headache, but it's gone in a split second. Gilbert still doesn't know all the faces humans make, but pain is fairly unmistakable. People have given him that look before, usually after he proves his awesomeness, but occasionally after hitting someone in the face.

"The dust is settling," Roderich says, without preamble, as if his words are supposed to be obvious, "new ash from a new fire. Elizaveta and I are just trying to keep afloat in the world. But we're not perfect. Flaws. Faults. Weaknesses. The word in the Greek could be asthenia; it could again be hamartia."

Gilbert blinks. "What do you want from me?" he asks, frowning.

"Nothing," Elizaveta cuts in. "We just wanted to meet you. Roderich says you're an angel."

"I am," Gilbert says, his voice more like a whisper than anything. It does not occur to him to lie to them. That is not very human of him but then... he is not wholly human, yet. Maybe he never will be.

"Roderich sees God's words in music," she explains.

"A prophet?" he asks, but he knows the answer already. This guy's a prophet. This is better than God, better than holiness, this is something both divine-touched and flawed. Humanity that can replace Godliness. Imperfection wrapped up in a purple package. He grins. "And so you want the awesome me to help you with the visions or something?"

"No," Roderich says, shaking his head. "I want you to let me help you."

It's not often someone can leave Gilbert speechless. It occurs to him to be angry about it afterwards.