Layers
Chapter Fifteen
By: Brenli and Jael
Lilith absolutely hadn't been expecting him to show up the following morning, bright and early, 0500... Wouldn't he be tired from... well...? But still he strode into the yard, early morning light playing off of his fiery red hair, like it may as well have been burning. The frustration etched into his brow only helped the image... as though whatever thoughts plaguing him must have lit his mind aflame.
Michael seemed every bit as surprised as she had been. "The Hell are you doing up?" He'd asked, grogginess slurring every word around the edges.
"I could ask the same." She hadn't been able to keep the bite out of her voice, and she wasn't sure that it mattered. It had been months since she had ever... snapped at him, quite like this. Somewhere along the line her hisses had turned into oddly flirtatious whines about not wanting a break, about not wanting to end their training. It had taken her all this time to realize that her clumsy attempts at flirting weren't registering with him... and not because of any lack of perception. He simply had nothing to return.
The jagged reply to his question set him off in a way she hadn't seen since their earliest days of training. Green-eyed, scowling, an unhappy rumble to his voice when he told her to get ready. That unhappiness enraged her, and she took it out on him now, with every strike and blow and parry and wave of fire that he pointlessly dodged. Why the Hell was he unhappy? Because he'd gotten up early, after a night full of sex with his crazy wife? Well, Lilith hadn't asked him to get up! If she'd had her way, she wouldn't have gotten up, either. But the night had dragged on and on, pillow placed firmly over her head, worried that she might hear more accursed cries and moans, though there didn't seem to be any, for the remainder of that night. The Evil had given up when the crack between her curtains had lightened from a blackened blue to an almost stormy gray-blue, the kind of blue that preceded the rise of the sun. She hadn't expected him to show. Maybe... she didn't want him to show! Maybe she wanted to keep striking at him until she'd pressed him back toward the house. Maybe she wanted the yard to herself, maybe she wanted to be alone! That ache, that painful realization that she didn't want to be near the War Angel for the first time in months, pushed a battle cry from her mouth. The wide blade of her scimitar caught against his Fire Sword and, against the usual odds, forced it aside, her other hand washing a great plume of fire down the middle of his chest.
Such an action meant nothing against Michael, but to any other the blow would have been anguishing and fatal, and they both knew it. Suddenly the Fire Sword stabbed deep into the dirt, and biker-gloved hands cut through the air in an aggressive refusal. "Enough!" He stomped his way over to the table littered with weapons and water bottles, grabbing a bottle and peeling off his already-sweaty shirt, throwing it onto the ground with anger.
… But why the fuck was he angry? Any other day he would have laughed and given her the same gleeful, 'Good! … Again!' that she weighed all her happiness against. The light of the newly-risen sun played off the muscles of his back, off the soft glistening of sweat... off of dozens of angry red scratches, criss-crossing on his skin.
The angry red scratches gave Lilith an angry red face. "We just started!"
"So what? I said enough!" Michael dropped against the wall of Serissa's mansion, sitting on the ground beside the door to the parlor. As he took a drink, she spotted even more scratches upon his chest, though only a few, cutting vertically against his flesh.
She was surprised that she didn't feel the urge to cry. Perhaps all the tears shed last night had helped her to run empty, Jinho's cravat soaking up the worst of them... but the anger remained, a clumsy moodiness that felt misplaced. "So you're done, already? What the fuck are you doing?"
"I don't know what the fuck I'm doing!" He snapped back at her. "You can keep training or grab a drink or whatever the fuck you want. But I said enough and I mean it!"
Green eyes burned against the cat-eyed pupils in her garnet ones, and Lilith spun around and strode over to the table. Her scimitar clanked against the wood and shook the other weapons as she grabbed a water bottle of her own. She wasn't thirsty. She needed the distraction as she stomped back over and sat beside him.
It wasn't until she had settled beside him that she realized she didn't feel right, so near him. She didn't feel unwelcome... she didn't feel much of anything from the Fire Angel, who seemed about as preoccupied with his drink as she was. But she didn't feel right, herself. Like sitting beside him crossed some line that she hadn't cared about, before. She watched him stare off into the morning air as he lifted the clear plastic to his lips and caught the light just barely managing to play off of... scars. Two of them, one traveling along the length of the inside of his forearm and another cutting perpendicular, a couple inches below the wrist.
A cross of scar tissue, and for all the time Lilith had spent staring at him before, she had never noticed these scars. To be fair, the marred flesh was nearly invisible, barely raised and only, perhaps, half of a shade lighter than his skin... an old scar, then, easily several years old-
"What the Hell are you staring at?"
She jumped, and her eyes settled on his chest, bearing much-newer wounds, making her snap back, "What do you think I'm staring at?"
"They're scratches; scratches happen!"
"I'm not talking about your stupid sex wounds!" Lilith hissed, "I'm talking about your arm!"
His eyes narrowed and his head shook, seeming confused until he looked down at himself. As the former Dragonmaster realized that another cross of scar tissue had been etched into his other forearm, she heard him utter a suddenly quiet, flat, "Oh."
… And he said nothing else, just continued drinking from his water bottle, though he seemed oddly sobered by her observation. Which sobered her, too, made her directionless anger cool into a little lump of discontent, settling in her stomach. Everything about his reaction made the implication painfully clear... yet she couldn't for the life of her imagine him doing such a thing to himself. "... You don't seem like... you know."
He scoffed. "Nobody ever seems like 'you know!'" But he knew that wasn't entirely true. He thought of when his wife, who wasn't anywhere near to being his wife at the time, had shown him hers, and he hadn't been all that surprised. Quelled, yes. But not surprised.
"At least... they seem... old." She wasn't sure saying that much was meant to comfort him, or herself.
"They are old. They are years old." But now he couldn't stop staring at them. He supposed they were hard to see, but when he thought of them they stood out like cross-shaped beacons in his damn arms. He thought of her scars more than he thought of his own, to be completely honest. "Hers are older." He said thoughtlessly, with a shrug. "You can hardly even see hers, anymore. You can feel them, though." He twisted and untwisted the plastic bottle cap. "When you hold on to her arms. You can feel them." Suddenly Michael mentally shook himself. More like mentally punched himself in the face, because her wounds weren't his to discuss, and he knew that. But sometimes her wounds felt like his own...
Lilith could read every little bit of guilt on the Angel's face, in the way he kept twisting and untwisting the bottle cap. "... Nema, too?"
"Yeah." Plastic crunched just the slightest bit, under his fingers.
Champagne blonde brows knit together. "Why?"
"None of your fucking business." His voice went from quiet to rough and warning in seconds, quick like the fire that rolled in the current of his blood.
Lilith didn't need any more signs that the topic was not up for discussion. She'd barely touched upon it, and already his breath had quickened, his jaw had tensed, his eyes had blinked with some suspicious rapidness, like he needed to hold something within him. But it was for Nema's scars, and not his own... She had been ready to concede that silence was best, that neither of them were in the right frame of mind to speak, when he surprised her with words that were rough around the edges, but soft in the middle. Heartfelt but firm at the same time.
"You shouldn't need an explanation anyway; why does any fucking person do it? We do it when things don't make sense." He took a sip of water, stared at the inside of one forearm. "I don't know. Sometimes I hate these fucking scars."
"Why don't you just get Raphael to remove them…?" She weakly gestured to the very faint, cross-shaped scars, pointing with her chin.
He didn't reply right away, staring at the scars… looking conflicted, at best. But he finally allowed himself to speak, his voice a rare quietness. "… They're a reminder."
She couldn't be sure if his demeanor was something to be wary of… but she swallowed the lump in her throat and pressed on, as he took a healthy swig from his bottle of water. "Of what?"
He answered with a sigh, staring up at the sky. "That I'm not as strong as I think I am."
Lilith expected him to admit to laziness... but not weakness, never that. Michael only ever came off strong, even when something or someone rattled his cage...
"Believe me, sometimes a bastard like me needs the fucking reminder. I don't like it, but it's true. Maybe it's penance. I have no fucking idea. It is what it is and I live with it."
"Penance." She repeated hollowly, "For what?"
His first instinct was to glare at her, one part livid and one part tired... but somehow, he settled for laughter. Moody laughter. "Fuck, you have no idea..." Most people he interacted with did, to some level. They understood how he felt about the weight of the past... Well, it was the past, but it still felt like it may as well have been yesterday, compared to the eons he had lived. And maybe that explained everything... "How much do you know about the Revolution?"
Lilith blinked and found herself helplessly shrugging. "Not much. Gehenna stays pretty... to itself, so. At least we try to. We haven't exactly had much luck when we get involved with... the other worlds. I just remember that there was this weird influx of I-Children that flowed into our land talking about the Rabbit Hunting going nuts. Then the Revolution happened and some went back home. Some stayed..."
"Jesus, that's some kind of canned fucking version if I ever heard of it." His hand slipped through his fiery hair. "I don't know where to start... Tell me you know that Nema was the leader of the Revolution. Please tell me you know that much or I fucking swear..."
"Yes, I know that much!" The Evil's golden cheeks puffed out in annoyance, and she took a moody sip from her water bottle.
But her reply made him laugh... though only briefly. "... I was... on the opposing side... for a while."
"... You mean the Rabbit Hunting side?"
Michael nodded, setting down the water bottle to lean forward and rest his elbows on the knees of his criss-crossed legs, to drop his chin into the palms of his hands and just... be miserable. He wasn't sure that it would ever be easy to admit such a thing.
She tried to wrap her mind around that idea. A Rabbit Hunter, married to a Rabbit, bringing two more into the world. "That doesn't make any sense..."
"Of course it doesn't." He grumbled. "And there's no point in trying to make sense of it. I sure fucking tried at the time. Doing all this shit I wasn't proud of. Killing people who didn't deserve it. That fucking piece of shit Cheriour liked to tell me it was like waging war on infidels. I honestly believe that asshole had no fucking idea what he was actually saying, half the time, because that shit I did, that wasn't war. I know what war is. It's not that!"
Lilith listened to him fume and hiss about a man whose name she only remembered vaguely, in conversation with some I-Children servants. "Then why did you do it, if that's how you felt?"
He laughed. It was by no means a happy one. "Blackmail? Bribery?" It made his arms itch to revisit this kind of train of thought. It was the same train of thought that had led him to... "It doesn't matter why. Cheriour was a fucking psychopath who caught me... confessing that I loved Nema." He had paused, omitting a detail that may not have been small, but he hated admitting that some twisted man had actually watched him sleep with Nema. "And I could spend fucking hours talking about this stupid shit. That there was this whole stupid mess where he fucking arrested me, and then Nema, she..." His throat ran dry, remembering a crushed, bleeding, weak human form on the dented roof of a car, "It was a mess and that's all I want to say about it. She was supposed to take refuge in Hades, but I guess I should have known better. I guess we all should've known. She fucking ran off like the reckless bitch she is and Cheriour twisted it all around and had me believe she'd been killed off, and offered me a chance to clear my name, as if I needed to have my fucking name cleared, but I took the offer and that's just one of the many things I've gotten wrong."
She watched him as he leaned back against the wall of the mansion again, eyes gazing off into the sky, shaking his head, looking like he was using every last bit of energy to contain himself. She couldn't tell if he was going to scream or... or cry. Or both. Suddenly the scars didn't seem so out of place, after all.
"I don't know... it was such a fucked up time. I can't even believe it... A fucking Rabbit Hunter...!" He hissed the title out loud. If he could, he would have set those words on fire. "I didn't know what the fuck I was doing, anymore. None of it made sense. I'd spend my days cutting down Rabbits like they were fucking trees. Sometimes they would remind me of Nema but I'd cut them down anyway. I'd come back to the base and people would admire my work, because I guess it was work, and I wanted to cut them down like I'd only just begun my slaughter. And I should have! But I didn't!" His breath came out in a quiver between frowning lips, "And then I would have dreams of her. All the time. Sometimes they were horrible and I deserved it. Sometimes they were nice, and that would make me feel like shit when I woke up, and I deserved that, too.I'd wake up every night and ask myself why I was doing anything. Why the fuck was I even still alive?"
Lilith thought she could see him shaking with... something. But she hadn't thought he was keeping this locked up inside of him. All anyone ever seemed to focus on was him and his snowy-pale wife as this ironclad duo that she could never understand. Even when Jinho had tried with that pile of pictures, she couldn't understand... Maybe now, she could. Maybe. Though from where she sat, right next to him, it looked like a knife lodged in his chest.
"Nothing made sense, back then. And my arms? I guess that was... me punishing myself and comforting myself, at the same time. I don't like admitting it. But it is what it fucking is." Tired eyes looked at crosses made of scar tissue, and Michael slowly exhaled. "… I hope I'm never that fucked up and lost again. Shit's been hard lately..."
"... Yeah. Yeah, it has been." She felt the conversation shift so fast it gave her whiplash, her mind fighting to keep up. Somehow she knew that however true that might have been for the both of them, he meant it in a way that she simply could not relate to. This was more than the Prophecy. More than the Uprising... more than a wide-scale picture, and something she was not a part of.
"But... I don't know. I see these almost-invisible crosses on my fucking arms... and I know that I can't do that shit to myself. I can't let this get to me. Azrael, the Uprising, your Prophecy, Celestiel... I have too many people who need me. Nema, the kids... I'm not gonna fuck it up for them..."
And of course... that's how it had always been. For a while she had thought that it might have been more, or that she could make it more... but even this. Even the relentless hours of sparring and laughing with her... that had been for Nema. Not Lilith. "And that's... that's why we're here, right?" She thought that she would have begun to cry all over again, but her eyes remained dry. She felt empty and numb, and nothing else.
"Yeah, that's why we're here." He ran a tired hand down his face. "... Fuck, why did I tell you all of that?"
Lilith wished she knew. She couldn't decide if she hated him for telling her all of that, or if she was... strangely thankful. Thankful in a hollow way... "Because you're on the verge of a fucking meltdown?" The Evil opted for bitter teasing. She'd had one. Nema seemed to be living in an ongoing one, if Lilith had any say in the matter. Why not him, as well?
"Fuck you, too." He grumbled at her, standing. "Come on. I need a good fight, now."
If only a good fight would've been enough for her... But she stood, anyway, indulging him. "Ready when you are..."
xXxXxXx
"You've been very cryptic this morning." Jinho said to Uriel, tapping his cane on the edge of the sidewalk. "Though I'm beginning to understand what's going on."
Judas' mansion loomed before them, and Jinho cast a glance at Uriel. The Angel of Earth seemed troubled, his dark brows furrowed together as he stared at the structure in front of them. Uriel providing limited information wasn't the only thing that put him on edge. The Angel didn't quite seem like himself, at all. The scruffy, haphazardously thrown together man he had come to grudgingly accept was nowhere to be seen. In his place, stood an Angel who seemed more like his old self. His mahogany hair was neatly combed, pulled back into a low ponytail, the soft strands spilling over one shoulder of a high collared, pressed jacket. Gone were the threadbare blue jeans he spent his days in, in their place a pair of crisp black pants over polished black shoes. Seeing Uriel's hair tied back made the weight of his own hair all the more apparent, as he'd left it loose and falling around his shoulders from beneath his top hat.
"I need you to get me inside." Uriel said, adjusting his collar and nodding his head towards Judas' ominously dark mansion.
"May I ask why?" Jinho murmured softly, despite already knowing the answer.
"I need to have a little chat with Judas."
"This is about Serissa." He supposed he could have been more gentle about spelling out the truth, but somehow, he couldn't find the drive to do so. Something about the two of them made Jinho's patience wear so thin… There were too many things kept under wraps, these days. Unnecessary wraps, if anyone were to ask him.
The Angel of Earth was silent for a painfully long moment. "Yes. I know that… you know about us."
"I was made aware last night, yes. Although why you both insist on keeping your affair a secret is beyond me. If anything, I'm glad for the change she has inspired in you." The corner of Jinho's mouth curled into a charming smirk, grown half-hearted with his impatience. Oh, what happened to his patience?
"It's just better that way."
That corner of his mouth dropped back down, and the words were out before Jinho could stop them. "You're not ashamed, are you?"
"Heavens, no!" Uriel countered quickly, his eyes finally turning to give Jinho a hard, fleeting look. "It's just… nobody's business."
"Fair enough." When he replied, it was with subdued quietness under the remnants of that stone-hard glare. Jinho knew he deserved that, knew he needed to relearn tact before the strange lack of it ended up ruining him. "So you are here to tell Judas to relieve Serissa's workload."
"You're perceptive, as always, Jinho."
"It's nice to know I haven't completely lost my touch…" Very, very nice to know. He was getting to the point where he no longer felt like himself... "Come. I'll get you inside."
xXxXxXx
A short while later, Jinho relaxed in an armchair in one of Judas' many parlors. He brushed his thumb over the head of his cane, his dark eyes tracking Uriel as he paced across a red silk rug. Uriel studied every little trinket and bauble that furnished the room, the gold candelabras, the dark wood furniture, the golden infant Angel statues on the mantle. However, Jinho knew that his companion was anything but interested in the luxurious and expensive things the Revenant King surrounded himself with. "You should sit. This is doing nothing for your nerves, Uriel."
"I can't help it." Uriel muttered moodily. "Why is he keeping us waiting, like this?"
"Judas is a busy man. We're lucky he agreed to see us at all, considering what happened the last time you two met." The Gehenna Vampire was sure Uriel didn't need the reminder, but even so…
Uriel planted his hands on the mantle and stared into the empty, lifeless fireplace. His shoulders were rigid, tension clearly driving the man insane. So Jinho frowned and thought of ways to distract him.
"I'm told that you've been researching Celestiel. Have you found anything?"
"Nothing of importance." Uriel said quietly. "Truth is, I'm not even sure I'm researching the right person."
"What do you mean?"
Finally, Uriel's shoulders slumped and he crossed the room, to place himself in a couch directly opposite Jinho. "I found an Angel in the registry by the name of 'Celestiel'. But I can't be sure it's the same Celestiel as the one who fights alongside the Uprising."
Ink-black eyes narrowed the slightest bit. "Go on."
"This Angel I found... she's old. Her age is comparable to the Elementals. I found copies of her old Academy transcripts and military records. She was one of very few females to volunteer to fight in the war against Lucifer. Things I find are scattered and vague, but everything I have found has lead me to believe that Celestiel was a good, honest woman. A woman of honor and integrity. Hell, I found records that she requested to be demoted from Powers to the regular Angel class, to be part of the Guardian division. The request was denied; I have no idea why. But... it just doesn't add up. I'm working on a lead, but I have to wait for one of Raphael's nurses to follow up with me. "
"What for...?"
"According to military records, Celestiel suffered a severe injury during the war with Lucifer. But I haven't seen the medical records, yet."
By now his dark brows had begun gently furrowing together. "What does an injury have to do with anything?"
"It could be nothing, it could be everything. I won't know until I see the records myself."
"... This may seem like a strange question, but I'm afraid I just have to ask. Why is researching Celestiel so important to you?" Such thorough digging for a single person…! True that Celestiel had proven herself to be a dangerous enigma with a single appearance, true that looking into her background was needed, but Jinho had no idea Uriel managed to pull this much information out of Heaven's records. If the things Lord Lucifer had ever said while reminiscing meant anything, the Angels were obsessive about keeping files and notes and reports. This task must have taken countless days, weeks, months to do…!
"I don't really know. For a while I just… did it to keep myself occupied. Distracted. But the more I learn, the more I'm starting to believe that whatever happened to Celestiel is somehow… vital."
"Why...? Azrael is the ringleader of the Uprising." Therein lay the heart of Jinho's puzzlement. She was a razor-edged question mark in the scheme of things, but she operated under Azrael's command, not independently. All that should have mattered was learning why the masked woman was involved, to begin with...
"And Celestiel his weapon, yeah, I've heard that theory. But I'm not sure I'm willing to just… accept that. I keep feeling like there's so much more to what's going on, here."
"What makes you think that?"
"The Prophecy." Uriel murmured darkly. "I feel like everyone has forgotten why we all gathered in the first place. The Shinryu created a prophecy of an Apocalypse that would wipe out the three worlds. Yet all we have concerned ourselves with is Azrael, his Uprising and petty rioting. It hardly seems to add up, does it? It's almost like…"
"Go on."
"Misdirection. Like a magic trick. Keep the audience focused on the flashy effects while the answer to the illusion is lurking in the corner of their eye."
Jinho remained silent for a long moment, considering the new angle that Uriel presented him with, and he felt himself frowning. Yes, everyone had been distracted. Nema had been thrown off her course when Celestiel stole her powers, Michael equally distracted by training Lilith, and Lilith herself…? Distracted by a forlorn romance she couldn't seem to see beyond, even now. Or perhaps, not so much, now… he couldn't be sure. He hadn't checked on her since the night she'd wept into his cravat and stolen his hair tie… The Vampire realized his thoughts were spiraling away, and mentally shook himself. It wouldn't have been off the mark to say he was horribly distracted, himself, and getting worse by the day... The entire group was left shattered and broken after the attack on Nema's neighborhood. "Do you think we're being toyed with?" Jinho asked quietly.
"I know we're being toyed with. I just don't know why. All I know is that Celestiel is somehow at the heart of all of it. I don't have proof or even a real reason to feel this way… I just do."
"You may be right, but... what do we do, then?"
"I'm hardly the one to answer that. Look at me." Uriel smiled dryly. "I'm here to tell Judas to leave Serissa be. That's not exactly a step in the right direction to derail the Apocalypse, you know?"
"Maybe not." He replied softly, the shrug of his shoulders gentle and subtle. "But I still think you're doing the right thing, here. Don't let yourself think differently."
Uriel took a deep breath and nodded, willing to accept that Jinho was right. He was doing the right thing. Serissa's problems may have been small in the shadow of a looming armageddon… but he knew he had to do this.
Jinho and Uriel both straightened in their seats when the door to the parlor opened, and a finely-dressed woman who seemed to serve as a secretary of sorts stepped through. "Judas will see you now."
xXxXxXx
Uriel forgot all about Celestiel and the Prophecy the moment he stepped into Judas' office. The second he laid eyes on the Revenant King, all he wanted to do was attack him. He wanted to strangle the life right out of the man who caused Serissa so much trouble.
But he didn't. He stood rigid in the middle of the room, watching as Jinho took a seat in front of Judas' desk. The King poured himself a glass of thick, red blood, and offered one to Jinho, who politely refused. Uriel heard them making small talk, but only registered static. He hated this man so much, he hated everything from his pressed grey suit, to the dark, perfectly trimmed goatee that surrounded his perpetual smirk.
"You've gone through enormous trouble to see me. So," Judas sat himself in his cushioned office chair and sipped his glass. "Even though you have assaulted me, I am willing to hear what you have to say."
"I'm here to talk about Serissa." Uriel replied, his tone calm, yet hinting at the ferocity he was trying so hard to keep in check.
A sour look curled Judas smirk into a tight frown. "What about her?"
"Whatever it is you have her doing at night, that keeps her awake and away from her children, I want you to stop."
Judas arched a dark brow. "Is that so?"
"Yes. She's exhausted. It's clearly too much for her, and if she can't stand up to you, then I will." The anger Uriel tried so hard to keep contained rippled through his false voice, and his fists clenched at his sides.
"Easy." Judas said, holding up a hand in surrender. "There's no need for violence." He was smirking again, and Uriel's anger intensified. "I'm at a bit of a loss, here, Uriel. Come, sit. I want to explain something to you."
Uriel didn't want to sit. Everything inside of him was screaming to just… turn and leave. He didn't want to give this evil man another second of his time, but a subtly pleading look from Jinho made him swallow his rage and sit in a chair beside him, directly opposite Judas.
Judas set aside his glass and leaned back, steepling his fingers together in front of his mouth. He was quiet for a long moment, his dark eyes turbulent. "This is an interesting development, I must say. I was unaware of the fact that Serissa was so busy she wasn't sleeping, or taking proper care of herself."
"That's a lie." Uriel snarled.
"What reason do I have to lie?" Judas opened up his hands, eyes and face open with a look of strained sincerity. "Look, I'll let you in on a little secret... I have many vampires under my command. And I only have one job for Serissa. Only one, because I do not trust her with any others."
Uriel's hands gripped the arms the chair he sat in so tightly he felt the wood crack under his fingers. He grunted when Jinho roughly tapped his knee with his cane.
"That one job," Judas continued. "Is to run one of my night clubs, that doubles as a safe house. And it's a job, I am told, that she doesn't even do. She has passed the task onto one of her underlings… Reuben, I believe his name is."
Jinho reached out a hand to grab Uriel's arm, to keep the man from leaping out of his chair. "Forgive me, Judas. But that isn't what she has had us believe."
"I can't be responsible for whatever lies she has told you. But I can assure you that whatever it is that she's doing, that keeps her busy for hours on end? It's nothing for me."
"With respect, why should we believe you?" The Gehenna Vampire murmured, hoping that the moody quaking in his chest didn't put tremors in his words. But he couldn't bring himself to trust the Revenant King. He wasn't an honorable man, if anyone were to ask Jinho. Honorable men didn't throw women down onto desks, head first...
"Because I can tell you with absolute certainty that there is no other task I would give to her. Serissa is a liar and a snake. She always has been."
Jinho cast a glance at Uriel, expecting to have to restrain the Angel from leaping over the desk. He was surprised to see that Uriel still sat rigid in his chair, but his face was carefully blank, only his eyes narrowed as he studied Judas with anger in his gaze. "What do you mean?" He continued.
"There are many things that Serissa clearly hasn't told you, her humble origins being one of them." Judas smiled dryly. "And let me guess, whatever these… 'things' are that I supposedly have her doing? She never says what they are specifically, does she?"
The angry look on Uriel's face suddenly softened.
"I didn't think so."
"But why would she lie? It doesn't make any sense." Jinho tried to reason with the King. "There has to be some kind of misunderstanding here."
"Oh, I'm sure there is. But it doesn't have anything to do with me. And why would she lie...? Why does a snake stay on it's belly? It doesn't know any other way to exist. She is twisted and broken in more ways than you can imagine. I don't trust her, and neither should you."
"I don't believe you." Uriel muttered savagely.
"Believe me or not, that's your choice. But we are all guilty of hiding something, aren't we? And there are many, many layers to this story, my friend. If you want proof, ask her about her life before I took her. Ask her what she was."
"What she was?" Jinho's eyes widened in surprise. "She was human."
"Was she?" A crooked smile crossed over Judas' dark features. "Serissa is, and always will be, my greatest achievement."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Interpret as you will, but I believe it is time for you to go."
xXxXxXx
Uriel had been too quiet since they left Judas' mansion. He didn't say a single word on the journey back to Serissa's home, and Jinho felt, with each passing, silent second, his heart sinking. "You don't really believe Judas, do you?" He asked as they stepped onto Serissa's front patio. When Jinho's question only made Uriel pause, and not give an answer, Jinho frowned. "Uriel, he's obviously lying." The Earth Angel had to have known that…!
"I'm not so sure." Uriel said quietly.
"How can you say that?" Jinho said, feeling his chest tighten with dismayed sadness. "This is Serissa we're talking about." Motherly Serissa, caring to point of self-sacrifice...
"That's just it, Jinho. I've always known that she's hiding something. She has this obvious… weight on her shoulders that she refuses to talk about, refuses to share, even with me. I thought it was just my imagination, but…"
"It's probably nothing." As soon as the words were out, he wanted to laugh. One would think that with his line of work, he would believe anything but that. But here he was, and unapologetically so. Life didn't need to be endless twists and dark, questionable shadows. Life could be simple and harmless. Serissa and any supposed secrets could be simple and harmless. Somebody needed to be simple and harmless, Shinryu have mercy…!
"It's never 'nothing'. Not with me." Uriel pushed his fingers through his hair, and he sat on the steps of the patio, leaning over himself.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Good things don't happen to me, Jinho. They never have, and they never will. I should have known that what I had with Serissa was too good to be true. I should have known…!"
"Don't say that…!" Jinho cut Uriel off, desperate to stop Uriel's train of thought. Where was all this doubt coming from…? "Serissa is a good woman, we all know it! Look at everything she's done since we've been here!"
"Then what is she doing at night? If not working for Judas?"
"She is working for Judas." The exasperation dripped from every tired word, and Jinho couldn't muster up the energy to mask it. He didn't even want to...
"I can't believe that, anymore."
"Then I'll prove it. This whole idea that she's a liar is ridiculous, so I'll prove to you that she's telling the truth. I'll follow her and find out exactly what she's doing." The words were out before the Gehenna Vampire could stop himself… but then, he didn't want to refrain from making the offer. It wasn't his place, yet he didn't care. Uriel and Serissa, with all their mutual doubting, felt like the final accursed straw. They had the chance to be happy, and they kept ruining it!
"... You would do that?"
"Of course I would. Just so you can put this idea that she's a snake out of your head for good. She doesn't deserve that, and neither do you!" Jinho saw Uriel's green eyes slightly widen, and realized that he'd… snapped. Actually snapped at the man, though Uriel hardly deserved it. "... I'm sorry." He pulled the top hat off of his head as his apologized, and tried to find the words to explain himself. "Everyone is so upset and confused these days…" He was upset and confused, these days… "And here you are with Serissa, and I don't understand why the both of you can't just be ha-"
"Don't apologize." The Angel of Earth said as he stood. "Maybe… you're right? I hope that you're right." And yet the words seemed hollow and unsure.
Jinho fought back the barbs attempting to grow out of every word on his tongue. "I know that I'm right. And I'll prove it to you."
Uriel paused, but ultimately nodded at the Vampire. "Thank you, Jinho."
xXxXxXx
Jinho looked himself over in his mirror. Dark gray pants and a black, long-sleeved shirt. Nondescript. It would help him blend in with the dark...
Honestly, he felt silly. Every bit of this felt utterly unnecessary. He'd much rather put his faith in the woman who had allowed them to stay under her roof even after her home had been assaulted by the Uprising, the woman... who had been kind to him with her advice, however much he decided it would be best not to heed it. He'd much rather put his faith in her than in the man who would dare to slam that woman's head down against hard wood and have not an ounce of remorse, for it...
But the Earth Angel had been concerned near to the point of being inconsolable. So he'd do this. He would tail the woman he felt no need to tail, and tell Uriel what he already knew he would find – nothing. Jinho was resigning himself to an evening in a nightclub and nothing more.
That was what the coat was for, charcoal gray with a very subtle, barely-there leopard print. He shrugged it on and silently conceded that if there was anyone who would be able to do this flawlessly, it would be him. He pulled the ends of his hair free from the collar of his coat, fluffed it a bit, swept one hand back and across one side of his head, causing his dark waves to fall against the right side of his face. Small changes meant everything. With the right posture and enough distance put between them, enough shadows, he was sure Serissa wouldn't even recognize him. So long as she didn't see his face... Should he tap into the age manipulation, a bit? Make himself just slightly older? … No, not necessary. He wasn't going to pull out all the stops for something as silly as this.
He planted bare hands on the silver head of his cane, tapping it once against the floor as he looked himself over, and then cast it aside. So many years of carrying the cane around for stealthy protection always made him feel clumsy when he went without it, but he wouldn't need it... and he couldn't be sure if they would check for weapons, at the nightclub. He would rather not lose his cane blade on this informal mission – it wasn't even that. It was a favor for a friend and nothing more.
Jinho sighed and pulled his fingers through dark strands, further disheveling his hair. When he finished, his waves were tousled and, perhaps, nightclub-ready...? He felt unkempt. Sloppy... But at least that would work to his advantage, and he supposed that most others would have said he looked just fine. Lilith would have insisted he looked good; would have called him an idiot for disagreeing.
He cleared his throat and snapped his fingers, his favored smoky void swirling into place just behind him. As he stepped through to put himself beyond the front gate to Serissa's mansion, he further shook himself, checking his watch as he stepped into the shadowy darkness that a nearby tree offered. Jinho really couldn't afford to think of... distracting things. Not now, not while doing this silly little observation mission, and not when Serissa would be leaving the mansion at any minute. She'd said that she left for her errands at 10 at night, and he took her at her word.
But those little seconds between his waiting and her stepping past the front gate were loud with thoughts of the former Dragonmaster with tears on her face and grumbles on her lips, stealing his hair tie, calling him an idiot, but he much preferred that over being called a lecher. As Jinho began tailing the Revenant, phasing silently through trees and brush and shadows on an already dark road, he realized that the last time they had spoken to each other, she had not once called him that, or so much as mentioned his six wives. Maybe she had been too hurt to want to push him away. Maybe she was afraid to... he recalled his hand at her throat and frowned. That had been too much. In no way had Lilith deserved that, not when she didn't know the truth.
And that was his own fault. He remembered her scrawny, little girl form throwing his six wives in his face. At the time he'd been too hurt and angry to correct her; for years he insisted to everyone – his parents, Nema, the Hatter even – that telling her the reality wouldn't have amounted to anything. But maybe his father was right when he'd asked, 'Does it need to matter?' No, it didn't need to. As much as he hated to admit it, that had never been the core reason for his silence. He preferred keeping his secrets because it was so much easier...
It was easier to let the girl say hateful things than it was to revisit the six women he sorely missed...
He realized that the shadows surrounding him were thinning out, and ink-black eyes noted that they weren't heading into town... Serissa's steps were carrying her in an entirely different direction, turning her down a thinner road, leading to a nondescript little warehouse. Interesting location, but he supposed that was smart – especially as this was one of several Assiahbound Vampire dens, or something of the sort. And appearances could be deceiving; who knew what the inside of this warehouse had been converted into? Well, he supposed he would find out, soon enough.
Some concerned, worrisome corner of his mind knew it was very poor and unfocused of him to keep mentally coming back to the former Dragonmaster, even when he suddenly needed to be much more careful about following Serissa. Perhaps that was the price to pay for finding this entire favor laughable. Maybe he would rather spend his evening with his thoughts about the Princess of Evils. Maybe he would rather spend his evening seeing if she might let him speak. Maybe he needed to. Maybe he was overdue for it…
Jinho phased through the outer wall of the warehouse, hiding behind a stack of wooden crates as Serissa came through the creaking side door. What was this place, anyway? It was so eerily silent. So quiet, a night club couldn't have possibly been within a mile radius. Bands of moonlight filtered through dirty and broken windows above, and he peeked out from around his wooden crates.
Serissa bent down to grab a black duffel bag hidden between a crate and the concrete wall. She shrugged out of her white jacket and unzipped the bag.
What was she doing…?
He wanted to look away to grant the woman privacy when she unzipped her clingy red dress, but he was so bewildered by the idea of her changing out of night club attire that he couldn't look away. He watched as she tugged on a pair of tight black pants, a longsleeved turtleneck, and a pair of lace up combat boots. She tossed her high heeled shoes and dress back into her bag and slid into a long black jacket.
Serissa tilted her head back and pinched a pair of contact lenses out of her eyes. Contacts…? Why would a Revenant need contact lenses? Unless they were meant to hide a natural eye color…
Hiding the bag and her old outfit in its place between the crate and the wall, she turned and headed to the far end of the warehouse.
Her boots clanked against rusty metal stairs as she climbed them, her hands sweeping her perfectly curled hair into a sloppy bun behind her head. At the top of the stairs was an old conference room of some kind, and Serissa wrenched open the rickety door and went inside.
Jinho silently climbed up the stairs behind her, crouching under the sill of one of many windows that lined the conference room. He leaned up, just enough to peek over the edge of the sill and see inside.
"You're late. Again."
The addition of a male voice violently shook the Gehenna Vampire's clouded brain, and Serissa jumped and gasped.
"Damn it, Azrael. You scared the Hell out of me!" Serissa scolded him, and Jinho watched in complete horror as the leader of the Uprising appeared beside her.
"If you were on time, for a change, you would have beaten me here."
"Sorry. But playing the role of two-faced informant isn't exactly easy."
What...? Jinho's ink-black eyes shot wide and unblinking. Informant…? Serissa was involved with the Uprising?
"And by the way... here. I saved this from the fire." Azrael tossed a black bag to Serissa. "You left it behind, last time."
Serissa stared at the bag and Jinho watched a troubled look cross over her face. "I suppose I did."
Dark brows knit together in Jinho's face as he watched Serissa pull something white from that bag. White and porcelain... and rabbit-eared... immaculate white dreadlocks spilling from the back of it.
Celestiel's mask…
No… No no no no. Jinho's fingers dug into the wood of the window's sill as he leaned forward. He stopped breathing when he saw Serissa slip the mask on over her face, the dreads falling into place over her bun and totally disguising her real hair underneath it.
Jinho felt a soft gasp tear itself out of his throat before he could think to hide it. He ducked down and pressed his back to the wall beneath the conference room window. Serissa… Celestiel… They were the same woman…?
No, that couldn't be right! His fingers dug into the turf of his dark, disheveled hair. Why would a woman aligned against them let them take up refuge in her home, let them stay even after the attack that nearly put her own children in danger? That would have implied that she had let the Uprising destroy her own home... There had to be a missing piece.
The evidence was right in front of him. All the pieces he had clicked into place and he knew, in the pit of his sinking stomach, that it made sense. Serissa was Celestiel. The terrifying woman behind the mask was the same woman who had provided them shelter. But how-
He'd heard the clatter before he saw it, a sheet of galvanized metal that he thought had been fixed tightly to the warehouse, but had only been precariously leaned against a great big hole. The terrible noise didn't stop there once his accursed shoe had tapped it free and falling, and his wide black eyes watched with sluggish horror when accursed metal rakes tumbled on top of it, metal on metal, drumming like a loud declaration of peril. If there was a missing piece, now was not the time to find it. He needed to run. Now.
But no sooner than Jinho looked up from the chaotic clanging did he find himself looking into the cold voids of the eyes of a rabbit mask. Icy blue eyes, no longer hidden behind hazel contacts, widened in surprise.
"Jinho…?" Serissa's voice floated out from behind Celestiel's face.
"You…" Jinho said, his body suddenly shaking from fear and a myriad of other emotions he couldn't quite place. "It was you all along!"
She didn't answer, but her wide-eyed gaze darted over his shoulder. Jinho felt something hard crack against the back of his skull, and his world went black.