Author's note: Ermm... *stares at screen in disbelief* So, apparently you guys get two chapters today? I guess this one flooded right out because I've had it planned for a while. Heh. :)
Lucifer was ecstatic to be an archangel once more, but he still felt as though something was missing. As his fingers rose unconsciously to his throat, he realised what that something was. The Lord's knowing, amber eyes followed his son's touch, before falling upon Lucifer's tall, dark brother on his right.
A loud, metallic clunk reverberated around the silent arena as Gabriel's hefty collar unfastened at his nape and fell heavily into his hands as they came up in surprise to catch it. His face was suddenly flooded with panic as he regarded his Creator. He's going to give him mine, he worried, horrified, because I relayed what I saw before I knew all the details!
"Father, no! Please!" He begged, but was prevented from dropping to his knees by the warm, forceful hand on his arm.
"Calm yourself, Gabriel," God soothed; Michael gasped over his brother's shoulder and caught his own collar as it came free, too. "I release you both not out of dissatisfaction, but because you've made me realise that your friendship is far more valuable to me than your service. The three of you," he gestured to Lucifer as he spoke, "have my complete trust, therefore you no longer need these bindings."
Taking the collars from both his sons' hands and dissolving them into nothing between one blink and the next, he grinned delightedly at their bewildered faces.
"My Lord?" Gabriel managed, but was halted by a raised palm.
"Iehovah, if you will."
An astounded smile wound slowly up Gabriel's pillowy cheeks until it matched that of the grateful Creator, Iehovah.
"You... trust me?" Lucifer's dumbstruck whisper came, and Iehovah turned to the restored archangel, taking his face in his hands.
"Your error was human in nature, but your motives were truly angelic. I owe you a great debt for protecting the Worlds from the Antichrist; had it been anybody else, I fear it might have won."
Audrey's brain was still snagged on Iehovah's first sentence. Your error was human in nature. Fury bubbled in her chest as her heart beat faster, flushing her cheeks with anger. He let go of Lucifer and turned to face her even before she spoke a word, because the effervescent crackling that filled the air around them like a showering firework was emanating from her. The normally invisible corona surrounding her dark-honey hair pulsated with a vivacious, violent noise similar to that which the fragment of Satan had emitted.
"Mm," Iehovah hummed in acknowledgement, "I thought I still sensed some darkness here."
"Excuse me?" Audrey whispered dangerously, heedless to the frantic look upon Gabriel's face behind him.
"Though it is very faint," he added politely, "despite appearances."
She took a step towards him, barely able to breathe for the concentration it took to keep her rage in check. Iehovah recognised this and stayed still and quiet, waiting out the misguided reprimand. The return of his son had imbued him with a great deal more patience than he'd possessed of late, and he held out an arm to stop Gabriel from interrupting her when he moved forward.
"Have you ever heard of the saying, 'ignorance is bliss'?" Audrey asked rhetorically, her fingers clenching into fists as she regarded his apparent lack of concern. "It must be so easy for your angels – all of them – to have such faith in you; to follow you so blindly. Because they don't know what humans know, do they? They never ate the damn fucking fruit." Iehovah maintained his calm, and Gabriel covered his mouth in consternation over the thin ice his love was treading. "Besides Lucifer, angels know nothing of abandonment, or hopelessness. They can't understand that we keep fighting in the face of inevitability simply because there's nothing else to live for. We might have defied you, but we only hurt ourselves in doing so. The punishment of that knowledge would have been more than enough, without condemning us. Because the world I know is far more similar to Hell than it is to Heaven."
Iehovah stared at her wearily all the while, and when she finished, he let out a great sigh and stepped towards her.
"Dear child," he murmured, but she cut across him.
"DON'T PATRONIZE ME!" She roared, her voice echoing around the circular structure.
Iehovah's tuscan eyes hardened to bronze as he came to the end of his tether.
"Think, Audrey," he snapped. "Behold our wonderful little family reunion." He spun around for effect, gesturing towards the crowd of angels he called his sons. "What's the glaringly obvious missing component?"
Audrey glanced around at the assembly, perplexed. Raphael had moved round to stand behind Lucifer with Uriel; his cheek was pressed against his returned brother's shoulder in relief over his homecoming, and his fingers gripped the crook of his elbow. Uriel's hand sat atop Lucifer's other shoulder, while Michael's arms were around Gabriel's waist, continuing the restraint Iehovah had forgotten in his irritation. They supported one another in small ways that weren't always noticeable or conscious, like the Lost Boys of Neverland.
"A mother?" She suggested, her brow furrowed.
In answer, God raised both his hands to the lush shelter above and down through the hole in the centre he drew two tiny, white grains of glimmering light. They came to rest in each of his palms, before he thrust them forward, sending them flying across the gap towards her. Audrey raised her arms in alarm as a shield, taken aback, but she found they'd merely attached themselves to her own hands. Pulling them up in front of her, she gasped as two familiar figures swam before her prickling eyes.
"Mom?" She breathed, barely audible as the ghostly image of her mother smiled wistfully at her. She took her father's hand, looking up at his uninjured neck beneath the collar of his favourite spring-green shirt. "Daddy," she choked, remembering him as he'd been before the madness. He reached out to touch her face, but she felt nothing. "Why can't I feel them?" She asked, fraught with grief. "Why can't they talk?"
"Because they're dead," Iehovah replied flatly, "just as my beloved Wife." Audrey looked up at him, her amazonite eyes full of hot tears as he stepped forward with a softer expression. The specks of light in her palms shot back up through the branches as another came down to settle in his cupped hands, this one slightly bigger, and familiarly green in colour. "In the beginning, I was not alone. There was another: my counterpart, Gaia – you might know her as 'Mother Earth'. The title holds far more truth than you surely realise. I was, and am still, in love with her, body and soul."
The crease of confusion between Audrey's brows rose slightly in sympathy as she held his dejected gaze.
"What happened to her?"
"Humans happened to her," he sneered, more out of heartbreak than malice, but it made Audrey flinch to see such a thing upon his divine face all the same. "The Tree of Knowledge was planted for the purpose of developing a solution to the evil we encountered during the Creation. It was like a by-product of sentience: you make a living creature that can think for itself, and you also create all the possibilities of the decisions it could make. You give it the ability to decide to be bad. We told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree because those solutions were nowhere near ripe enough to be harvested. When they defied us, we sent them away in the hope that a taste of the evil we sought to overcome would teach them the importance of listening to instructions. Rules are set in place for reasons," he growled harshly, but he calmed with a sorrow that gouged at Audrey's heart as he gazed down slightly to his left, where she saw nothing, but it was clear that Iehovah was witnessing the same kind of apparition as she had just experienced with her parents. "If they'd just conceded to learn their lesson, we'd have accepted them back with open arms and forgiveness, but we completely underestimated their determination." He looked back at Audrey with a wry, melancholy smile and tears in his soft, amber eyes. "They endeavoured to work hard for the gift of life, but the necessity to maintain it became of too high a priority to them. They feared death, not knowing that it would just bring them back to Eden, where we could make them new bodies and shower them with our love, and it ignited conflict between them as their family grew, over livestock so that they could eat and women so that they could reproduce, and ideas and inventions that would make their lives easier. They fought one another to stay alive, and my beautiful Gaia grew sick with grief, and died. This was never the plan, sweet, fiery child, but you're stuck in a terrible, unfair world because there's nothing I can do about it. Not without her."
Audrey's throat constricted painfully. We killed her. Suddenly the weight of the angels' stares was back. She shifted nervously in the limelight.
"How come she's not mentioned in the Bible?" She asked sheepishly, and he chuckled, void of mirth.
"The Bible," Iehovah scorned. "What a pile of man-written manure. She's not in there because they forgot about her, and they forgot because she wasn't there like I was, reprimanding them around every corner."
"Can't... can't you just... make her a new body like you were going to for Adam and Eve?"
"I'm sure I don't need to explain why it takes two to tango, Audrey. We might have... achieved creation with a slightly different method, but the principle is the same."
Iehovah began to turn away, his explanation given and nothing more to say, when Audrey was struck by an epiphany. The little green soul circled her excitedly, making her dizzy but sure.
"Take mine," she bid, and Iehovah froze.
Over his shoulder, a sharp gasp and a sudden movement stole her attention; Gabriel fought against Michael's grip in protest but couldn't quite bring himself to vocalise his opposition, knowing what was at stake. His cerulean eyes worked up a storm as he silently implored her not to let him go.