9. Conversation
It was a hard day's night. El made them check out literally the whole settlement, every house from attic to basement, every garage and every shed. Thank God it was a very small settlement, with only one store and gas station, a place very like Paradise Falls, and a small tourist shop at the opposite end of town, if you could call it a town when it had only one street and was really just a stretch of highway with a few houses on each side. There wasn't even a drugstore, so El told them to collect all the medicines they could find.
And they buried those three bodies, or rather Jeep did so by himself, because El said she didn't intend to waste her time on shit like that and that fire would've done just as well.
Then they selected one house as their residence. It had its own generator, so they wouldn't be reduced to using candles. When they were finally settled into the new place, the baby fed and asleep, the guns cleaned up and reloaded, and there were only a few items left to be sorted, only then did El ask Charlie to leave the baby with Jeep and bring some medical supplies to the bathroom. It was long after midnight.
"Here's the First Aid kit you were asking for," Charlie said as she entered the bathroom. Then she stopped and exclaimed, "Oh, God!"
El was standing near the mirror, and it was the sight of her bare back covered with dry blood that had horrified Charlie, blood from huge wounds torn across on her shoulder blades. El looked at Charlie's reflection in the mirror and said, "Can you sew?"
Charlie nodded.
"Well, do it then."
"We haven't found any painkillers yet," Charlie pointed out.
"I don't need them."
Charlie cleaned El's back properly, put antiseptic on the wounds and then started to suture them up. "What are these?" she asked.
"What do you think?" El replied coldly.
"That they used to be wings," Charlie said in a low, very careful voice. Then, after a couple of minutes' silence, she added, "Why didn't you come earlier?"
"I'd been walking through the desert for seven or eight hours before I found you. And there weren't any taxis free." El's voice was full of irony.
"No, I mean why didn't you come with Michael in the first place? There were some people with us when it all started, and they're all dead now. Maybe if you'd…"
"It was impossible. I was on another mission," El said sharply.
"Did you succeed in it?" Jeep' voice suddenly broke in. He turned out to be standing in the doorframe, leaning his back on its edge. "Baby's fine," he added immediately.
"No," El replied after a short pause, "I failed."
"So Michael sent some angelic loser to protect us?" Jeep smirked. "Or it's a sort of punishment, like community service?"
"Jeep!" Charlie's voice was full of reproach. She made a last stitch and cut the thread. "What's wrong with you? She saved our lives."
"And I really appreciate that," he said, without any trace of appreciation in his voice. "But Michael said that I'm your protector, Charlie, yours and the baby's, so why did he suddenly change his mind and send someone else?"
"It's not like he's never been wrong before," El replied calmly. Then she turned her back to the mirror and looked at it over her shoulder.
Charlie made a slight noise of embarrassment and Jeep choked with coughing.
"What?" Apparently for El, standing half-naked with her torso bared in front of them was a perfectly natural thing to do.
"N…nice tattoos," Jeep finally managed to say. He had tried really hard not to blush but had failed.
They were certainly worth looking at. Starting from her neck, where they looked like some sort of collar, they spread across her shoulders, arms and hands, reaching to her fingers. Her chest was covered with them as well, even her medium-sized breasts, and they had already seen that her back was tattooed as well. It looked like she was wearing a lace shirt, only she wasn't. The tattoos looked like writing in a language they couldn't recognize, in unknown schemata.
El cocked her head at Jeep and said, "Speaking of which… take off your shirt."
"Excuse me?" he replied, obviously shocked.
"Take off your shirt," she repeated, in the same emotionless tone.
"Why would I do such a thing?" There was a note of rising anger in his voice.
"Because I told you to," she replied confidently.
"Go to Hell!" he snapped.
"Oh, I feel like I'm already there," she said with a sigh. Then in one quick movement she reached for him and pinned him to the doorway with her hand on his throat. "Take. Off. Your. Fucking. Shirt. Now." There was something in her voice that frightened Jeep even more than her fingers clenched around his throat. It felt like if she squeezed them harder she could easily crush it.
"Stop it, you're hurting him!" Charlie cried.
"No, not yet, but I can do," El replied matter-of-factly. "I need to see those instructions Michael gave you." And she took her hand away.
"God, you could've just asked!" Charlie said angrily, while Jeep was taking off his shirt and swearing.
"I just did," El shrugged.
"Bitch," Jeep mumbled.
"I heard that." She said it without any annoyance, and then touched the tattoo on his hand gently. "Interesting. Now turn around." He complied, and she stared for a couple of moments at those on his back. Then she touched those, too, and said, "Very interesting. You can get dressed now."
Jeep looked at his hand and made a sound of surprise. The tattoos that had appeared while they were trying to escape from Gabriel, that Michael had said were supposed to be the instructions for what they should do next, had gone.
"What did you do?" he exclaimed.
"I've read them," El replied. "So you don't need them anymore. Besides, you couldn't have understood them anyway."
"Oh, yeah, and what if you leave?"
"No, I'm not going anywhere."
"How reassuring," he said sarcastically, and then left the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
"You don't like us much, I mean humans, do you?" Charlie asked.
"No, not really, but that doesn't matter," El replied without thinking. "I'm not here to like you, I'm here to protect your child, and that I can do without any liking."
"So why were you so hard on Jeep just now?"
"I wasn't."
"He's a good man; he loves me and the baby."
"I know. See, Charlie, to be in love with someone isn't enough to keep them safe. He's supposed to be your defender, but he's not ready. In spite of all you've been through, he's still not ready, and he should be. By denting his pride just a little, I had provoked him into becoming what he must become," El said confidently.
"So, how come angels know so much about men's psychology?" Charlie couldn't help but smile. "Are you gonna tell me that you used to deal with it up there?" She pointed at the ceiling.
"It's not about men, Charlie," El said in a strange voice, "It's about pride. So yeah, I'm familiar with this particular concept."
xxx
When he reached the Golden Gates, the only entrance to Heaven, his brother was already there waiting, looking out through the glowing archway. Though he was standing with his back to Michael, he spoke as soon as he could be heard.
"Thanks for coming so quickly. I know my request was pretty strange but I really needed to talk to you. I didn't know where else to go. " His voice was disturbed and confused, that last emotion one Michael had never expected to find in his elder brother.
"How could I not come when you asked me to? Tell me what's wrong, Lucifer, why are you so… not yourself?" Michael asked in a soft, friendly tone.
His brother turned around. Michael saw his face, and it struck him again that Lucifer apparently did not know how to say what he wanted to say. That was unprecedented and truly disturbing because his elder brother was always pretty confident in himself. So Michael just stood silently beside him and waited for him to speak.
Finally Lucifer found words again. "I know this must sound crazy, but there's something wrong with him."
"What's wrong, and with whom?" Michael was perplexed. "Do you mean Gabriel? Has Junior done something to confuse you this much? That's hard to imagine, though."
"No, of course not. Gabriel has nothing to do with it." Even a simple mention of the youngest of them brightened Lucifer's face a little, but not for long. "I'm talking about Him."
"Oh," Michael replied, even more confused. "You were right, that does sound a little bit… well, you know. Perhaps if you could just tell me what exactly…"
"Can't you see anything for yourself, Michael? You should, considering how much time you've spent lately by His side, and with them." Now he sounded really annoyed.
"By 'them', do you mean…?" Michael said, still full of incomprehension for his brother's strange behavior.
"Humans. Yeah, that's exactly what I meant."
"So, what about them?" Michael asked calmly. "I mean, sure, they're not the best of his creations, and yeah, they can be a little bit annoying, but why has that stressed you out so much? It wouldn't be the first time His experiments have made us smile, remember? And they're just so new…"
"You still don't get it, do you, Michael? He doesn't consider them one of his experiments. He doesn't even consider them just His youngest children. No, do you want to know what He told me? That they are his most beautiful and cherished creations. That He feels related to them. How could that even be possible? As you said yourself, they are far from perfection, and if He feels so close to them... it could mean only one thing: He is not perfect."
"Listen, Luc, you should be more careful what you say about such a subject." Now Michael was terrified. There was something in Lucifer's tone… emotions that he definitely wasn't supposed to feel: bitterness, anger, disappointment and jealousy. "I understand. You always were His favorite and most beloved son, and you certainly deserve it, because you're the best of our kind. But try to think of it in another way; do you remember when you were the only one, and had none of us, your brothers? Do you remember how happy you were when he allowed us to be born? Because the very first thing that I remember from the moment I started to exist was His light and your face, smiling, full of love. And I remember how happy we were when our younger brothers started to come in the world. You should know better than anyone that the youngest ones are more… well, maybe not loved, but treasured. Isn't that how you feel for Gabriel? Compared to humans, we are His elder children, so is it so surprising that He's fond of them right now? Just give it a little time, brother."
"Time for what, for Him to understand how pathetic they are and how unworthy of His love?" Lucifer said dryly. "Don't you see, Michael, they are just His new toys? Once broken, He'll throw them away, and that's exactly what He's doing to us now."
"You're wrong, brother," Michael said sorrowfully.
"I'm not!" Lucifer exclaimed. "He doesn't give a damn about us, not anymore. How else could He have said that we should serve them as we serve Him, that we should bow before them! Are you ready for that, brother?"
There were a couple of moments of deep silence, and then Michael said, "If that is His will, so be it."
"Well, I won't tolerate it. None of us deserves such a humiliation," Lucifer said coldly. "So the question is – are you with me, Michael?"
"It's not you that's speaking now, brother, it's that dented pride of yours. Don't go down this route, please; nothing good will come of it. We exist to carry out His wishes. He gave us so much. Should we defy Him over such a small requirement? All he's asking of us is to embrace his new children."
"To bow to them," the elder archangel said sarcastically.
"Yes, if that's necessary."
"Never!" His voice made Michael shiver. Never had he heard such a tone from him. It reminded him of their Father's voice, the power of it, but their Father never spoke to them in such a tone. Than Lucifer turned his back to him and said coldly, "Thank you for the conversation. That will be all for now."
Michael sighed and started to make his way back into Heaven, but then he stopped and said, "Don't go to Gabriel with this. It would upset him a lot. Don't make him choose between you and our Father. You wouldn't like the result." And then he left.