Author's note: Okay. This one is, admittedly, pretty damn heavy, almost all the way through, but it's the last major bust-up of the story. It only gets sweeter after this, promise.

Audrey awoke to a white, octagonal, marble ceiling, its beams sprawling from the centre to each of the eight pillars surrounding her. The sound of rain lulled her into a false sense of security before she recalled what had happened and sat upright with a sharp gasp upon the flat, stone altar where she lay in the middle of the gazebo. The first thing she noticed was a pair of bare feet beside hers.

Heart in her mouth, she shifted over to Lucifer's side, pulling an eyelid open with her thumb on his brow; he stirred groggily and blinked, allowing her to sink back and breathe again with her hand over her heart. As she did so, a black tunic came into view, and she followed the broad, muscular frame up to meet Gabriel's watchful, azure eyes with barefaced, unmitigated fury. He stared back, evidently nonplussed over her anger.

"How could you?" She barely managed to whisper.

"I don't understand," he replied quietly; "I thought this was what you wanted?" Audrey squinted at him, incredulous.

"You didn't even warn me," she scolded, her voice flattened under her effort to keep it even.

Lucifer's fingers touched her wrist; they were ice cold. She looked down at his pained expression and suspected he was suffering from the same throbbing headache as she.

"You didn't know?" He mumbled, his other arm coming up to shelter his malachite eyes, despite the dullness of the light coming through the open sides of the structure.

"Of course not," Audrey assured him, a little hurt. "What reason would I have to lure you into a trap? Stints of hostility aside – because I'm pretty sure that was actually nothing to do with me – you've been kind to me. You've protected me just as fiercely as your brothers; you listened when I needed somebody to talk to; that's why I asked you to meet me," she clarified, raking his white-blonde hair aside with her fingers. "I don't see the evil in you everyone talks about. I wanted to ask you why you did it – to give you the chance you never got to explain yourself, for everyone to hear."

"And that's exactly what we've done," Michael chimed in from her other side.

"No," she retorted scathingly; "What you've done is made a difficult situation worse." She turned back to Gabriel, her vehemence waning to an irritable, motherly reprimand: "The fact that you have the ability to bend others to your will does not mean you should use it at every given opportunity."

She watched the understanding bleed into his sorry, blue eyes as he regarded the passionate flux of her corona, convulsing with unmatchable radiance; he knew she was right. We didn't even try to speak to him, he realised; we just assumed he'd attack.

"I should have trusted you," he acknowledged. Turning to Lucifer, he extended his hand to help him up. "I'm sorry," he beseeched.

Lucifer sneered in disdain and began to push himself up without aid, but at Audrey's covert touch to his elbow, hidden from Gabriel's line of sight, he took his brother's hand and allowed it to pull him into a sitting position.

"Where have you brought us?" Audrey asked, changing the subject to prevent further disaster.

The answer came from behind, in the medium of a gentle, honey-smooth, male voice that she recognised at once, despite it being the first time she'd ever heard it. It was the hush of the wind and the ebbing of the tide and the calming patter of the rain beyond the marble columns of the rotunda.

"You're in the garden of Eden, child," it soothed melodically, and Audrey twisted to meet her maker.

He was every bit as holy as he'd ever been depicted, though in a strange, terrestrial way that indicated righteousness, rather than self-righteousness. He looked nothing like the old man Michelangelo painted, but in fact, approximately in his mid-thirties. His sandy hair was about the same length as Uriel's, but much thicker than the archangel's sleek locks; it was streaked only very slightly with grey at his temples, and it was well hidden because of his neutral colour. The lines at the corners of his bronze, fatherly eyes were more of character than age, and he was clean-shaven save for the light stubble around his jaw and across his upper lip.

He wore a thin, greyish-mauve kurta that came to the tops of his thighs, with leafy flourishes of silver embroidery around the open, buttoned neckline and the sleeves pushed up to reveal his forearms, which were smattered with blonde hairs like fields of bowing wheat. From what Audrey could see of his trousers beneath it, they were supple leather like those of his sons' uniforms.

There was no smile upon his young face, but the corners of his mouth had a natural upward tilt that lent a peacefulness to the still somewhat tense situation.

At first, Audrey found herself unable to meet his dark amber gaze, feeling very much like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, until she remembered exactly who was at fault, and locked her eyes defiantly on his. She was rewarded with a small smirk, as though he could see directly into her mind, and he looked pointedly down at where her fingers still rested on Lucifer's elbow. She deliberately stretched her arm out across his back in answer, staring him down. You will not intimidate me, she vowed.

Overall, she wasn't entirely sure how to feel. He conveyed himself as humble and wise in his authority, like one of those really brilliant sort of teachers who wait with a patient smile while a disruptive student vents, before slamming down a detention slip in front of them. Her challenging stare didn't seem to anger him in the way it had used to do to her mother, and after measuring her up, he seemed to approve.

"I can see why Gabriel loves you so," he observed, his smirk finally stretching into a beatific smile. "You remind me of someone very dear to my heart."

A sharp gasp came from the other end of the square, stone table, where Audrey found Gabriel gazing at her as though truly seeing her for the first time. She frowned in confusion and mild irritation over the cryptic conversation once again flying high over her head. Turning back to God, she calmly but viciously lashed him with the brunt of her wrath.

"Good thing your assassins didn't succeed in my case then, huh?"

His eyes immediately dropped, unmistakably contrite, and she took no notice of Gabriel's hiss of a reproach.

"No, my son; she has every right to feel angry and hurt," he rebuffed, and when he looked back up at Audrey, his deep ochre eyes were full of tears; "but we shall discuss that matter in due course. I believe we were about to decide on a time for Lucifer's trial tomorrow." Audrey was taken aback, having expected him to put up a fight where his 'fallen' son was concerned, but he continued without missing a beat: "I think noon will do, don't you?"

Without waiting for an answer, he turned and stepped through a gap in the balustrade connecting the pillars, out into the torrential rain that thrashed the cherry and magnolia trees, sending blizzards of tiny, pink petals flurrying to the ground. As he walked away, his hair and clothes already dripping, Audrey scrambled down from the altar to run after him, her mind buzzing with far too many questions to let him escape so easily. Upon reaching the threshold of the large gazebo, however, she hit an invisible wall.

Rebounding, unhurt, she cautiously pressed her hands up against it; it was like the indiscernible bubble between the identical poles of two magnets. She focused on the dull purple figure in the distance as God disappeared across an ornate, metal bridge over a rushing river, and disappeared into the shadows of the thick, green forest beyond.

Audrey's hands unconsciously balled into fists as her head whipped round to meet Gabriel's hangdog expression.

"Humans were banished from Eden for a reason," he murmured, barely audible over the rain.

"So I'm a prisoner now?" Audrey whispered back, her fury giving way to crushing heartbreak.

"Hell is a prison," Lucifer corrected her dryly; "This is more of a waiting room. A playpen, if you will, for those of us who can't be trusted to roam freely."

"Tace!" Gabriel hissed at his brother, who quirked a brow and mock-zipped his mouth.

"It's only until morning," Michael offered placidly; "The Lord wishes to speak with the archangels, leaving nobody to accompany you."

Audrey wasn't listening, not that it would have pacified her in any way had she been able to. Her eyes searched Gabriel's face for some sign of resentment on her behalf, but all she saw was resignation in those tired, oceanic eyes.

"It's not my decision," he reasoned further.

"Then fight!" Audrey flung back at him. "Persuade him, instead of leaving me here like a criminal!" Gabriel took a breath but she gave him no room: "This is where you went wrong before," she accused; "You were too cowardly to do what's right." A thin trickle of saltwater skimmed his cashmere cheek, a little slower than those upon her own. "That's what sets Michael apart from you."

Her chest heaved with venom and pain as she watched his heart crumble before her eyes; he made to move around the table towards her, but she stepped in the opposite direction.

"You know what, don't bother," she twisted the knife one last time. "I'd rather stay here with Lucifer anyway."

She couldn't look at the poor, broken angel any longer. Fixing her tear-blinded eyes on the veil of water attacking the landscape outside, she was aware of his departure in her peripheral vision. Michael paused to regard her a moment longer, before following him out into the downpour, leaving her alone with Lucifer and the silence.

Turning her back to the altar, she sank to its base and lowered her head to her knees, letting go. A pair of large, cold hands reached under her arms and Lucifer pulled her up into his embrace, combing her silky hair with his fingers.

"That's what you get for defending the Devil," he chastised gently in her ear as she wept against his chilly, bare chest for all she was worth, "you silly, inconceivably brave little girl." She cries harder for him than she did for her parents, he noted with pity.

"I should have cut my tongue out years ago," she sobbed.

Glossary

Tace : Hold thy peace