On the 50th anniversary of the Seraphic Invasion, three separate manuscripts came onto my desk. They had all come from writers of the post-Invasion generation and all attempted to tell a simple history of those fateful months in which the angels had waged war on humanity.

While I was gratified to have my status as the premier historian of the Seraphic Invasion validated, I was even more excited to hear the interpretation of an entire new generation on the event that defined the millennium. Indeed, this was the event that started the third era of humanity, going from BC to AD to PI-Post-Invasion. The opportunity to hear from a point-of-view of young people removed from the immediate aftermath, but still very much entrenched in its legacy, was tantalizing.

I read every page of every single manuscript. And then exercised what I consider to be magnificent restraint by not chucking every scrap of paper from those drafts off a cliff.

All three of the manuscripts chose to focus on the story of Penryn Young and the archangel Raphael and how their romance saved humanity. It is a tempting and attractive tale-an apocalyptic, glorified Romeo & Juliet love story that has been told and retold at least a thousand times in this century alone. No doubt it'll be retold time and time again long after my old bones are gone. More importantly, it'll be told long after Raphael has stopped finding amusement in every butchered retelling, much to the exasperation and (barely) contained fury of Penryn.

The first manuscript told the story of how Raffe fell instantly in love with a moony-eyed waif, a character whose only connection to the actual Penryn Young was their common name. With barely a footnote dedicated to Penryn's mother and beloved sister, the book wove a nauseating tale about how Penryn's shining purity and innocence convinced Raphael to save all of humanity in order to win the heart of his beloved.

Another informed me that Penryn and Paige had been trained by their mother for years before the Invasion to become the Killer of Angels and Locust Queen. It tol the tale of how Penryn singlehandedly stormed the aerie, freed Alcatraz, and won the Battle of Half Moon Bay. Going off solely this manuscript, an unschooled observer would have thought she single-handedly brought entire angelic legions to knee with a rusty sword and a sassy attitude.

The last, and most ridiculous, document depicted Penryn as Cleopatra incarnate. In shockingly lewd and obscenely wrong detail, it made Penryn Young out to be some sort of seductress who clutched the hearts of Obadiah West and archangel Raphael. Apparently, she used her sexual wiles to maneuver the course of the war to win victory for the humans and more importantly, place herself in position of power after the war.

[It should be noted upon reading this last manuscript, Raphael burst out laughing and was unable to reply to my much warranted indignation on Penryn's behalf without going into another bout of snickering.

When he could finally string together a coherent sentence, he insisted on keeping the manuscript for his private entertainment.]

After that completely useless and undignified episode, it became clear to me that historical accuracy of the most important event in the millennium was about to beaten out by fanciful embellishments and insipid, cliched storytelling. Something needed to be done and clearly I was the only one who would set the record straight.

All those manuscripts were wrong. Penryn Young was no wilting flower, no warrior queen, no Machiavellian seductress. Neither was Raphael a knight-in-shining-armor or hapless victim of his own passions. Their affair will go down as one of the greatest in history, but it cannot be allowed to be buried under its own weight.

The Daughter of Man and the Wrath of God were real people. They were Penryn and Raffe. And as anyone who had spent more than two minutes in their company, one thing was obvious.

Quite simply, they were two idiots stupid in love with one another.

-Russell "Rusty" Snow, in the prologue of his twenty-third book on the Seraphic Invasion: The White Thread: Penryn and Raphael's Story

Penryn fidgeted as she sat perched on the picnic table. She had Pooky Bear for company, absentmindedly stroking the blade for a dash of courage. It was a habit she had developed after almost a year of shared company.

Not that Pooky Bear was being much help at the moment-if swords could roll their eyes, Pooky would definitely be doing so right now. At this point, it simply bore the antics of its co-bearer with exasperation. Penryn considered it a step up from its initial patronizing attitude-Pooky considered it to be a tactical surrender.

Not that Pooky necessarily wrong in this case. This probably was a stupid idea. It was almost definitely a stupid idea. But she had lugged over a bag of food and a picnic blanket (okay, it was raggedly old quilt, but at least it was clean) all the way to this little patch of wood in the park. Not to mention all the hassle before the lugging-maneuvering her packed schedule for days in advance so she could have this one afternoon free. The apocalypse was over, but it was a still a long, rocky path back to fully-functioning civilization. And some unfathomable, the people of the former Resistance and the souls that had flocked to San Francisco afterwards insisted she should lead them back that road.

Yeah, let the girl who had been staring down a failing grade in Econ/Gov in high school before the apocalypse broke loose be in charge of the effort of rebuilding civil society from the ground up that. It's not like that's a disaster waiting to happen.

Groaning, she laid back on the picnic table and pressed the heels of hands to her eyes. This was not time for her tenth mini-crisis of self-doubt and and anxiety.

"Come on, Young," she muttered. This was the opposite of what she wanted to be thinking about right now. "Just keep it together for a couple hours."

She heard a soft stirring in wind and the dull thud of boots hitting grass. A muffled rustling of wings being folded back.

"Am I interrupting something?"

Penryn grinned at the sky.

"You're late, Raphael."

"Sorry, I only a cryptic note left on the bed to work off of," Raffe said. He leaned against a tree directly across from her. He didn't bother to wear a shirt, as usual. "It's not like that was weird at all."

"Some people just have no appreciation for the art of surprises," Penryn said as she sat up. She rested her elbows on her knees and tucked her interlaced fingers under her chin.

"Considering most of the surprises we've experienced have involved things wanting to murder us, I've got to say I'm not a big fan of them."

"Buzzkill. Aren't warriors supposed to have a sense of adventure?"

"I tend to prefer glory and the gratitude of distressed damsels, thank you very much."

"I can't offer either of those, but I do have sandwiches and chocolate chips. Tempted?"

"Always." Raffe cocked his head. "You're wearing a dress."

"And?"

It was a simple, sleeveless thing that skimmed right below her knees. The soft, buttercup yellow hue complemented her skin and contrasted her dark hair beautifully. She had done something with her hair, leaving it in a delicate braid off to her side. Raffe was only aware of himself having moved closer to her just now, as he tugged lightly at the end of the braid while his eyes skimmed over the rest of Penryn.

She also had lipstick on, a rosy pink, and had messed around with eye make-up, making her dark eyes seem even more big and beautiful. Raffe had seen her dressed up a few time before, but that had always been a disguise, a way for her to hide behind her own allure to carry out a mission. She was still beautiful, but she looked like more of herself, more Penryn, than usual.

Humans had spent millennia writing about the grandness of love and beauty. He, as angelic being with the benefit of centuries witnessing those grand poets, could surely come up with a few worthy words.

Nope. He couldn't. He really couldn't. Not when his brain went blank just looking at her.

"It looks nice," Raffe said lamely.

Penryn bit her lip even as she smiled. "Thanks. They even go with my combat boots."

He chuckled. "Pretty and practical. That's my Daughter of Man."

"Lucky you." She looped her arms around his torso and tugged him closer. Even perched on the picnic table, she still had to tip her head up slightly to kiss him.

Kissing him wasn't the greatest idea. Actually, scratch that. It was a fantastic idea, but incredibly distracting. The next thing she knew, she was seated on Raffe's lap as he placed kisses down her jawline.

"Wait, wait, wait." She placed a hand on his chest and leaned away for a second to clear the fog from her head. "Picnic first, hickeys later."

Raffe arched an eyebrow. "Picnic? Is that why you've dragged me out here?"

"That's exactly the reason." He tugged her back close and nipped her chin. Penryn felt her mind beginning to go fuzzy again. She quickly scooted off his lap to sit back in her original position on the table, with her feet resting on the benches.

Raffe smirked as if he knew exactly what he had been doing (which, let's face it, he did), and leaned back on his hands as he sat next to her.

"And why are we on a picnic? Are you taking me out on a date?" he teased.

Penryn shrugged, fiddling the hem of her dress. The whole idea had spawned completely formed, out of the blue, when she had seen the yellow dress in an abandoned mall.

It was kind of a silly idea, and if Raffe wasn't up to it, then no big deal. They'd go home and forget it happened.

Well, she might kick his ass. Just a little bit.

She spent a few seconds trying to figure out how to explain before simply just blurting it out.

"I just wanted to do something nice. Just for the two of us. For...for you. We've both been really busy lately and you've been really supportive even though I'm constantly a step away from a nervous breakdown and I thought it'd be nice if we got away for an afternoon and did something that had nothing to do with reconstruction or angel politics. I know we live together, but I-I've missed you."

She could feel her cheeks burning. She stared at her boots. That came out more jumbled and rushed than she meant it to, but at least she didn't hold back out of fear of sounding too needy or vulnerable.

That's some progress.

Raffe studied her profile. She wasn't wrong. For these past months, he had been busy with his Watchers and dealing with the angels as they waited for Michael to lead them back home. But that had been nothing compared to Penryn's load. Between building a community among the survivors, combing out the gangs from the surrounding territory, negotiating with outside world leaders as liaison between humans and angel-kind, and making time for Paige, they've barely had a real moment alone in the a while. Most nights she would collapse on to bed face-first after a long day, groan into her pillow, and then fall into a sleep deeper than a coma.

It must have taken some effort to push things around to have even have a couple hours of free time. And she was probably tired and stressed out even now, but she had taken the time to arrange all of this and look nice for the both of them.

For him.

The two of them must have risked their lives dozens of times for each other, but ordinary gestures like this still left him tongue-tied.

When she kisses his cheek as good morning, even when she needs to be running out the door.

When she refuses to take any slander about him or their relationship from any of her fellow humans, whether it's from some stooge off the street or the President.

When she just looks at him and smiles in hello, with so much love plainly written on her face.

He can't think of the words to explain how much all of that means to him and how he never imagined he would ever feel this way about anything or anyone and just how desperately, stupidly, completely, he is in love with her.

So he intertwines her fingers with his own and leans his forehead against her. They sit in the quiet in the woods and sink into each other. Just for a moment.

Raffe kisses her hand clasped in his and then leans back.

"So sandwiches, huh?"

"Yeah." Penryn digs into the bag and pulls out two. She hands one to him.

They eat in silence for few moments. It's a comfortable kind of quiet, but Raffe had a question.

"Is this how human dates go?"

Penryn scoffed. "I really wouldn't know. I've been only one date and it had been a double date with my friend Lisa. And it had end with me punching her date in the face. Not a great track record."

"So you really have been a plague upon menfolk long before the apocalypse?"

"Careful, I might break your nose, too."

"I'm shaking in my boots. What did Lisa's boy do?"

She rolled her eyes at the memory and regaled him with the details of the disastrous date. Which then led into a conservation about exactly what the hell was mini-golf and then a subsequent rant on Raffe's part about dragons.

They whiled away the afternoon like this, sitting across from each other on the picnic table and exchanging anecdotes about the World Before. For a few hours, everything faded down to just their little corner of the world as they simply basked in each other's company.

The basking didn't only include conversation. They returned back to their first conversational tangent after Penryn innocuously licked a bit of peanut butter off of Raffe's thumb.

One thing led to another and now they were sprawled out on the table, with the blanket on top of Penryn and Penryn settled on Raffe.

She still had her dress on, though now her arms had been freed from the sleeves and it was pushed back down her chest considerably. Raffe had one arm looped comfortably around her waist and the other caressing her hair, as she rested her head on his shoulder.

In his arms, glowing in the golden hour before the coming sunset, looking exquisitely dishevelled and more relaxed than she had in months, Penryn looked absolutely perfect. Beyond perfect.

Unbidden, the memories of earlier, darker times of welled up inside him. All those times when he watched her struggle to keep herself sane despite the world and her family falling apart around her, or fighting desperately for her life against impossible odds.

The memory of her body, cold and limp and lifeless, in his arms.

Maybe that's why he desperately drank in every detail now. The feel of her skin against his, her lazy sleepy smile, the way the light made her seem to glow in his arms-he knew this moment would have to come to an end. But he wanted to keep every little thing preserved in his mind to hold against all those dark moments.

Penryn reached up and brushed her thumb over his jaw.

"Why so serious?"

He drummed his fingers against her waist as he tried once more to find the words. He had always been a warrior, a soldier, and an isolated one at that. He wasn't equipped for this. Most of his initial, fumbling attempts to express his feelings came out as instructions to find some human boy that could do all the things he wanted to do for her. And since for some idiotic reason he couldn't seem to stop talking about pig farming, most of those efforts ended with Penryn looking at him like he had grown a second head.

"I..." Raffe cleared his throat. "This is something I would never have thought of. Making an effort like this, I mean. I'm glad you did, though, because...you make me happy. I didn't know I could love someone as much I love you, but I also never thought I'd ever be capable of being this happy either. So thank you, for being my something good in the dark."

Okay, it wasn't exactly Shakespeare, but it was definitely a step up from trying to marry her off to a pig farmer.

Penryn's eyes softened. She shifted to straddle his torso, cupped his face with her hands, and kissed him long and deep.

"You stayed." She intertwined their fingers and held his hand tight. "And we're here together. I'll never have the words to tell you how much that means to me."

Raffe leaned up to kiss once more, to show her that he knew exactly what she meant if she couldn't say.

They'd eventually have to return to the World After, and soon. But for now, there was no one else in the world except the Daughter of Man and her archangel.

Soooooo, this is my first fanfic, and the first thing I've written in a really, really long time. I'd really love to hear your thoughts, even if it's constructive criticism. I know this is a bit sappy (mostly because I'm a giant sap), but I hope I did right by the characters.

Also, I might do a few more one-shots of Raffyn's life after, but I'm not sure. In any case, if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading!