A/N: Please take a moment to have a look at this: lunissa. deviantart. com/ gallery/ #/ d4k7sqv

Thank you.

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Chapter Seven

End

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It was over. He was through. He could not and would not bear it any further.

For a full thousand years Caphriel had fought, struggling to keep his head above the water, to keep on doing his job, to remain true to his nature. But, little by little, it had all come apart, and he with it, and where did he stand now?

He'd tried his hardest to go on loving or, at the very least, putting up with humanity for as long as he could, but now, he was hardly still capable of seeing humans as living things. They were all shadow puppets to him, these days, flitting about here and there before they melted into nothing. Caphriel couldn't care less.

He no longer travelled, either. This, too, had been a gradual process. First he'd become incapable of leaving England. Then London. Then Soho. And finally, inescapably, the bookshop. It had been five years since he'd taken up permanent residence there.

He'd venture outside only to buy some dubious, nondescript food every now and then, always at night, when he felt safest, but that was all. He hadn't even been near St James's in centuries. As for the money he paid the shopkeeper with, he made it himself. Sure, it went against the rules, but Caphriel was long past all that, now. It had never even occurred to him to simply create the food and be done with it. Perhaps it was instinctive, and those scarce trips outside were a way of preserving his disturbingly tenuous hold on reality. No point in that, really.

As for personal hygiene, well, it would have fallen by the wayside long ago, but he couldn't just let it. The bathroom was off-limits, entirely taboo, but a thought sufficed to keep clean. (Which was another break of the rules. How terrible.) It wouldn't do, after all, to go about filthy and smelling like a sewer, not around the books. What would Zirah have said, in his hurt way? He'd always taken such good care of them.

Zirah.

There was no longer a single thought in Caphriel's head that did not revolve around him, not a feeling in his heart that did not do the same.

Zirah.

When he wasn't sitting in glazed-over insensibility, Caphriel spent his time cursing and reviling himself. Why had he done it? Why could he not have shown more compassion, given more love? He did not deceive himself, even now: he knew that he would never have been able to fix Zirah, not even Christ in person could have done that, but that wasn't the point. He should have persevered anyway. He should have been an anchor for Zirah, shut his eyes to whatever he did in his dreadful innocence, should have gone on providing him with unconditional love and support, no matter that he would have been pouring it down a bottomless pit. It could have done something, could have meant something, however insignificant. A teardrop on the fire. Just a little comfort. That Zirah had deserved. But not death.

Zirah.

Always and forever the love of his life, as long as that life would endure. For six millennia, Caphriel had seen him and his suffering, ocean-deep and uncomprehending. No relief, no respite, ever, ever. Adam had been right about that, too, that fateful day in Lower Tadfield. Zirah had suffered from himself. If that thought in that place at that time had never occurred, how good he would have been then. A credit to all the Heavenly Host. It had always lain dormant behind and beneath the brokenness. Caphriel had always known this. Beautiful and shining, beyond compare. And he would have been Caphriel's angel.

Zirah.

It was with a pang of anguish that Caphriel had realised that he could no longer remember what Zirah's name had once been, in the Beginning. Caphriel had never thought of him as anything other than Zirah.

Caphriel should have listened to Adam, that day. It was true: killing Zirah had been Caphriel's right and his alone, and once it had been done, there could be no turning back. But it had changed nothing. It had not made the world a better place. The proof of this was literally everywhere, outside the bookshop. The whole world was, had never been anything other than, a hellhole. Caphriel saw that plainly, now. Zirah had hardly even put a dent in the goodness of the world. The humans had done practically all of it themselves. The truth was that Zirah had died for no reason at all.

Caphriel laughed, once.

Lying on his back, on the bed in Zirah's old bedroom, Caphriel made his final resolution. There was only one possible outcome. And it made perfect sense.

Caphriel had never been important enough for a flaming sword, or even a flaming pin, but there was no need for those fancy things. A simple kitchen knife, imbued with a little of his power, would do just as well. There was fitness in that, a kind of poetic justice. Holy water for the... for what Zirah had been, an angelic knife for the angel. There was even a touch of ritual to it. Zirah would have liked that. That was nice.

But Caphriel wouldn't go downstairs yet, no, not quite yet, just a little longer. Just a little more time to lie here and think of Zirah and torture himself. Just a little more time to feel his heart freeze over, as the last bit of will to live died out of its blood. And then he'd get up and head down to the kitchen, and, with the walking stick grasped firmly in one hand - for he refused to let go of it, even in death - he'd get it over with. It wouldn't take long, he was certain, neither the waiting, nor the deed.

Zirah...

Just a little more time.

Zirah...

Just one more fibre.

I love you.

Caphriel smiled.