Layers
Chapter Eighteen
By: Brenli and Jael
"What is your idea of a perfect world…?"
Azrael slowly pried open his tired, drooping eyes. "Hmm?"
"A perfect world. What do you think that means?"
Blinking away his blurry sight, Azrael sighed and held Celestiel just a little bit tighter. He rested his mouth against the crown of her head and inhaled the sweet scent of her black hair. "Why do you ask?"
"I'm just curious. Isn't this what lovers are supposed to do…? Pillow talk?"
Lovers… Is that what she was calling them, now? He tried to swallow back his bitterness. This wasn't her fault. The indent from his wedding ring was still present on his hand, and a photo of his recently dead wife and son rested on the bedside table beside them. He never had the heart to turn it around, even as their smiling, frozen faces watched as he had brutal, punishing sex with the woman who had been his friend for longer than he had known his wife.
Celestiel had only meant to comfort him. And comfort him, she did. They both knew he was picturing Anna when he took Celestiel into his bed, when he closed his eyes and pressed himself inside of her. Celestiel was such a giving, kind woman… she always had been. Selfless to a fault…
"Azrael?"
"A perfect world…" Azrael let the foreign concept roll around in his mouth before he dared utter it aloud. "That's a silly thing to think about."
"Maybe. But it's an interesting concept, isn't it? A perfect world without suffering…"
"If that kind of world exists… it's not a world we belong in, Celestiel."
He felt her shrink against his bare chest, and his hands rubbed the naked flesh of her back.
"I know," she said. "A perfect world is a world that doesn't exist…"
xXxXxXx
We can do it, Azrael had said. We can make this world perfect.
Serissa's tears had dried against her cheeks, leaving her skin feeling sticky. The blood on her hands was drying and flaking away. She rubbed her forehead and ignored the dark brown flakes dusting her eyelashes.
To make this world perfect, we'll erase it.
Nathan's lifeless eyes were still staring at her, accusing her… Making her realize that all her foolish dreams of a perfect life were just that… foolish.
One person is only happy when they stand on the misery of another. We'll break the cycle.
For one brief, shining period of time, Serissa believed that Azrael was wrong. That she could find happiness. Happiness in raising a trio of children that weren't hers. Happiness in the arms of an Angel who may have really, truly loved her.
She screamed and cried and beat her own temples with bloodied fists, begging herself to wake up. Until her head was pounding and the tears dried on her cheeks. But the nightmare she found herself in wasn't fading away…
Nema and Nathan were dead. Dead. And it was her fault. She had killed them. And when that realization finally, truly seeped in, she sank to the floor and stared at their faces with a blank misery painted on her face. She only broke her catatonia long enough to place a single, short phone call.
Her phone sat next to her, blood caked on the glossy screen. She heard him hurrying down the stairs to her secret room before he ever burst through the doorway.
"Celestiel, what happened?"
Azrael was the last person she wanted to see. The last person she wanted to share her newest mistake with, and yet he was the only one who…
Serissa watched Azrael crouch down over Nathan and press fingers against his neck, feeling for a pulse she knew wasn't there. A pulse she had stolen. "I didn't mean to…" She barely recognized her own shaking, feeble voice. "They found this place. Nema, she… she connected the dots."
"We always knew that would eventually happen, Celestiel." Azrael's deadpan, paternal voice made Serissa want to scream.
"Don't look at me like that." She said in response to his hard, accusing stare. "Was it so wrong to want to finish this without hurting anybody?"
"Wrong? Of course not. Pretty foolish, though, if you ask me."
Serissa felt new tears sting her eyes, and she pulled her knees closer to her chest in a useless attempt to comfort herself. "It's done, then. I… I've killed an innocent mother and child."
"You did what you had to do." Azrael said, his tone clipped and impatient.
"Did I?"
The silence that followed was agonizing. She knew Azrael well enough to know that her simple comment had stunned him into silence, and that accusatory look on his face intensified. "What's happened to you? The Celestiel I used to know would have never been torn up about this. She would have done what was necessary to finish what we started."
"Maybe that was my problem." Serissa muttered savagely, pushing her bloodied fingers through her hair. "Maybe that's always been my problem…!"
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that maybe… maybe this is a bad idea. The Hydra… maybe we should pull the plug."
"Pull the plug." Azrael let the words roll slowly out of his mouth, and his nose wrinkled. The taste of the words themselves were as bitter as the idea. "You can't be serious."
Serissa hoped that her silence would be all the answer he was looking for. Yes. She was serious. She was more than serious… She wanted to believe that the events the two of them had put in motion could easily be stopped. That the train to the end of the world as they knew it could be easier to derail than it was to build.
If she hadn't felt so lost, she could have stopped him from grabbing her arm. Serissa hissed in pain when Azrael yanked her to her feet. A fresh pair of tears squeezed out of her dried up eyes when his fist broke through the drywall, inches from her face. She sobbed with broken misery, knowing that she wished he had the guts to hit her. A hard punch to the face was much less than what she deserved.
"Do it…!" Serissa cried, digging her fingers into the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer. "Hurt me. I know I deserve it!"
Azrael took her skull between his hands, his nails scraping against her scalp. "I should. I should bash your head in… Knock some sense into you!"
Serissa only laughed. "What's stopping you? I'm broken, anyway. You won't be hurting anything."
Azrael's breath felt warm on her lips, and he rested his forehead against hers, still gripping her hair so hard, her skin tingled with the need to push him away. "Why are you doing this? Why now?" He murmured acidly.
"I don't know."
"Don't lie to me…! You know exactly why. It's those fucking children of yours. It's this double life you're living!"
"Don't bring them into this." Her hands pushed against his chest, eager to shove him away as he dared to tread on a subject that was always forbidden for them.
"I will because I know I'm right." Azrael pressed his weight into her, pinning her smaller, shaking body against the wall. "You have this ridiculous idea in your head that if you could just be Serissa, then everything you really are will just fade away. But you know you can't use Serissa as your mask forever."
"Shut up!"
"No!" Azrael's voice cracked with rage and pain. "If they really knew who you are, your children, your precious Earth Angel? They would reject you. They would curse you and hate you!"
"Shut up!" Serissa felt all of her anger, pain, fear and misery explode out of her with two words. Her palms struck Azrael's chest hard, and the stunned man flew backwards with the force of her hit.
Azrael crashed into Serissa's computer, breaking the thing into pieces. Sparks flew and water from its internal coolant system sprayed. Azrael coughed and clutched his chest. Imprints of Serissa's hands were burned into the gray fabric of his shirt, and Serissa stared at her own hands with an open horror on her face.
A dark purple smoke was rising out of her hands, and her skin tingled with the electric surges discharging after her blow. She hadn't seen that part of herself in many years, since the Spear had first bestowed such devastating powers on her when it chose her.
"I'm… I'm so sorry!" Serissa stepped towards Azrael's feet and collapsed to her knees. "Forgive me, I didn't…!"
"I'm fine." Azrael croaked, clutching his heart.
"No… No, you're not." Serissa's mouth quivered and her shoulders slumped. "You're right about me. You're always right… I've always wanted to think that I could have started over as Serissa. Put my past as Celestiel behind me and start fresh." She rested her hands in her lap, and clenched her fingers tight as the smoke finally vanished. "... But I can't. I know I can't. Forgive me."
Azrael jumped when Serissa's hands gently closed around his ankles and her head bowed in shame.
"You're my best friend. I turned my back on you and I'm sorry. Tell me what I have to do to make amends."
"You know exactly what you have to do." Azrael plucked the little golden thumb drive out of the wreckage of Serissa's computer. The thumb drive that held the copy of the Hydra virus she had worked so hard on for so many years. "Let the Hydra do its job and we won't have to worry about making amends, anymore. We won't have to worry about a damn thing." He crouched down and forced the drive into Serissa's palm. "Let's make our perfect world."
Her fist closed around the gold plated thumb drive, and she nodded once, feeling her throat dry and the pit of her stomach drop with dread.
"Good. Now… what should we do with Nema and Nathan?"
Serissa hated to be reminded of her pair of victims in the corner. "I… I don't know. We can't let Michael have the bodies. Raphael could resurrect them."
"And that could spoil everything. The Hydra is ready, so all we need to do is get you a straight shot to Raziel's God computer, right?"
"... Right." Serissa muttered miserably.
"Then let me worry about the others… I can let Michael know that Nema and Nathan are dead."
"He'll come after you."
"That's the point, isn't it? Misdirection is what we've been doing best." Azrael gave her a strangely steady smile. "Michael will come for me and the others will follow, giving you time to get to the computer."
"But Azrael, he'll kill you."
That simple thought made the smile on Azrael's face fade slightly. "Does it really matter, in the end?"
Serissa felt her insides crumble when she thought of Michael killing Azrael… in spite of everything. "I can't let you do that."
"You don't have a choice, do you?" Azrael reached out his gentle fingers to close Nathan's wide, lifeless eyes. "After Michael is informed of their deaths, I'll burn their bodies."
"Why?"
"Just in case something goes wrong. If the bodies are burned, Raphael can't resurrect them."
Even though Serissa knew that was the best thing to do, the idea of destroying Nema and Nathan forever, along with the hope of ever bringing them back, made her already broken heart fracture just a little bit more. "... Whatever you think is best."
xXxXxXx
These fevers felt like they would be the end of her.
The former Dragonmaster threw all of her blankets off her body and pressed her palm to her sweaty forehead. Maybe this was the price to pay for all those youth potions she'd taken, over the years... Puberty fevers were never pleasant, from what she'd been told, but she had bypassed them with those little blue vials. Lilith would have taken one just to put a stop to this sickness, if only she could have found the missing potions. True, her body was fully-grown, now, all womanly curves, but that didn't seem to stop the fevers from coming. Maybe she should have expected it. Maybe it was even worse for the simple fact that she'd kept it at bay for so long... Lesson learned, she supposed. She had been enduring these fevers off and on for a little over a week.
Sitting up, Lilith's hand brushed down one thigh, and she winced when her nail accidentally caught on a scab forming over one of the bite marks.
If it wasn't for all the bite marks on her – the new curtains and the plate of sweets, too, but mostly the bite marks – she would have written off that night as some sort of shameless dream, or a deranged sign that the puberty fevers would be upon her, soon. The fevers began three days afterward, so...
She sighed and reached over to grab at the little bottle of ibuprofen pills on her bedside table and swallow one whole, though she couldn't be sure how much good human medicine would do for her Evil body. Their exact effectiveness was the last thing on her mind... Her night with Jinho had been real.
Shinryu help her. Lilith had no idea where to begin sorting out her feelings about that. Why had it even happened? Sure, before then she'd felt herself slowly changing, as though the tears she'd wept into his cravat contained little pieces of her hate, but she hadn't really thought of... No, that was a lie. An almost-lie. She found he was handsome when she actually, truly looked at him, but that wasn't the same as lusty fantasies.
Oh, but that didn't change how she'd looked at him that night. Lilith had been dizzy on venom, but she still remembered how she wanted him in traditional Gehenna finery... or else nothing.
And she still remembered how utterly divine he looked in nothing.
This would have been so much easier if only he was here with her! They needed to talk, and she needed hit him hard for leaving her alone the following morning. Really? Jinho the self-professed gentleman, taking her virginity and then disappearing? Did he treat his six wives this way?
In the past, it had been easy to assume such horrible things about the man, but now that question burned through her body, through her brain, making her woozy. She pressed her hand to her sweating forehead and frowned. She didn't... want to think such things of him. Lilith found herself attempting to give him the benefit of the doubt, for the first time ever. He must have been called away for work, for some errand or task Lord Lucifer needed him for.
Did his errands take up to a week to complete? She had no idea, but he'd been absent ever since that night. The morning after – well, more accurately the afternoon after – she'd stirred and felt light-headed and pissed off and... hurt. She attempted to cover all her bites with a pair of capris that hugged her thighs too tightly and a high-necked blouse, and unceremoniously punched Jinho's door. She screamed for him to get his lecherous ass out in the hall.
He never appeared, never slipped through the door or opened it or even so much as spoke through it... and Lilith almost cried. At the time, she'd tried to drown out the rush of pain by heading out into the backyard, finding Michael there and snapping about how late she was. No sooner than she'd closed the distance between them, his entire demeanor had changed. He asked her what was wrong with her two times, and sent her away after he grumbled that she looked pale and sickly.
It wasn't until she'd returned to her room that she realized Jinho had left her that plate of little cakes and that glass of orange juice, and she ate and drank and cried. Because she was touched. Because she was hurt. Because she was angry. Because of all those things and more... Lilith couldn't sort out her fucking feelings.
A week had gone by, and she still couldn't sort out her fucking feelings... and now she had much-belated, long-suppressed puberty fevers, on top of it.
"Lilith...!"
The former Dragonmaster's head felt like it might split open with all her shock. What the... What was that? No sooner than she shook her head to clear it, she heard it again.
"... shopping for fitting clothes?"
"She never shops."
"Agate?" Was the fever effectively breaking down her mind? But she remembered that young voice so well... She never thought the day would come where she would be so glad to hear Agate's child-like voice, so relieved...!
"Lil..."
Amber's voice, now, but it was faded, muffled, like hearing someone speak while underwater. Instinct made her reach up and touch one of her earrings. Was this really happening...? Why would this be happening? If anything it should have been that much more impossible to reach out to the Shinryu, or for them to reach out to her, thanks to the fevers... Maybe this was getting to be too much for her body to bear on its own. Maybe she needed to see Raphael, though she wasn't sure what he could do for her. The puberty fevers weren't an ailment so much as a normal transition, for an Evil.
She heard one more voice, so soft it was barely a whisper, carried off in the air, through purple satin curtains. "Dear girl..."
"Jade...!" Lilith thought she would weep. She missed Jade, she needed Jade so badly, ever since her potions had been lost! She stood much too fast, her legs wobbling slightly as she made her way to the window, straining to listen. "Jade, I hope I'm not losing my mind, here."
Laughter. Amber and Agate's laughter, though thoroughly muted and easily lost in the air. Lilith could already imagine Agate holding her long, wide sleeve over her mouth.
"Guys, I... I don't know if this is just my fever or not. If not, how... how are you doing this? I can barely hear you..."
No response. None, not even the tiniest whisper.
Maybe her fever really was making her hear things... Lilith sighed and tried not to cry as she pulled aside the heavy satin and looked down into the yard, saw the fiery crown of Michael's head as he stomped angrily toward the mansion. If her fever was getting this bad... and if Raphael couldn't do anything for her... She would have no choice. She would be forced to contact the Council, back home.
"You're all right..."
She let the satin curtain drop. "Jade?" The words had come from further away, from the opposite direction, like she murmured to her from the other side of her door. The Princess followed the words as they were repeated, even more quietly than before, with no clue if the words really couldbe followed...
Lilith slipped into the hallway, and they were there. All three of them, though they had their backs turned toward her, and seemed about to leave. Her legs wobbled again, and she grabbed onto her doorknob for support.
Jade, though her blind eyes were delicately wrapped in soft, silver-blue silk, turned her head toward her and smiled. "How you've grown." Her voice was finally clear.
One blink, and the Shinryu disappeared, leaving Lilith to reach out toward nothing. "Wait...!" A useless plea. She shrank back against the door, holding a hand to her forehead yet again. Maybe a cold bath would help her...
In the midst of turning to hide in the darkness of her room, she saw Michael stomping his way up the stairs, pausing at the top to glower at her. She'd known that he was obsessive about training her, sparring endlessly with her... Hadn't she pushed for just that, for so long? But did her absence really warrant the glare he gave her...? "I know..." She sighed.
"Do you?"
Lilith frowned and tried to read him, hoped that he would read the obvious anguish on her face. He looked like he hadn't slept... at all. Enraged green eyes were red-rimmed, and that only made those emerald irises seem all the brighter. "I'm sorry... I've had a fever."
"I don't give a fuck about your fever!" He had a way of looming at her, even though he was shorter, as he began striding toward her.
She heard the slight tink of metal, and realized that he wore a ball chain around his neck, tucked into his dark tank top. His dog tags, most likely, though she'd never seen him wear them, before. She almost figured he must have been too powerful, too notorious a soldier to even need them...
Michael came so close to her, she teetered back against the door she still hung onto by its knob. "You better fucking tell me what you said to my wife."
Dizziness clashed with confusion, and that only made Lilith's head pound more. "What...? Michael, I don't-"
"Yes, you do!" He bellowed. "You know exactly what you said to her! And I swear to God, Lilith, you should fucking thank Nema that she took her sweet fucking time telling me anything, because if she'd told me right off the bat, you might not be here to have your fucking fever!"
But the last time she'd had any real conversation with Nema, they... The realization hit her, not like cold water, but like fire laying siege to her brain. Nema had told him about that day... But oh, so much had happened between then and now! "Michael..." She held out a hand to try and stop him, to make him pause, but in her dizziness she touched the dark fabric covering his chest.
He grabbed her hand so fast, pulling it away by her wrist, his grip nearly crushing, and he spoke over the bewildered, ill gasp that left her. "Don't. Touch. Me. Understood?"
What else could she do under the heat of the Fire Angel's rage, but nod and fight to keep her head clear?
He released her as though her arm disgusted him, and perhaps it truly did. "What the fuck did you say to her?"
Horrible things. Cruel things. Things specifically meant to hurt her, though they were based on nothing... Things about his body temperature, and how much she had enjoyed it, at the time...
"Talk!"
Lilith fought the urge to cry again. Why was she so weepy, lately? "Michael, I'm sorry-"
"It's a little late for 'sorry'!"
"Let me speak to her..." Lilith was certain that would be akin to a death sentence, but if the way her body felt meant anything, she might be close to death, anyway.
Ire radiated off of Michael in huge waves, even as he paused, even as his breath momentarily shuddered. "You're welcome to try, if you have any fucking clue where she ran off to."
The weight of the realization, the gravity of the consequences, pulled so hard on her knees that she felt herself sinking to the floor. She gripped hard onto the doorknob, and hoped that would be enough to keep her upright.
"Let me be fucking clear, Lilith – you can never replace my wife! No one can! You can wish all you want to and you can tell Nema whatever the fuck you want to, but you aren't anywhere near to her, not in my fucking book!"
"I know..." Lilith whimpered, but for the first time, it had nothing to do with his rejection of her.
Yet Michael kept on shouting, unleashing all the pain he'd allowed to build inside himself for a week. "If you are lucky, one day you'll be half what Nema is! But at the rate you've gone, after whatever shit you've said to her, I'd say those chances are pretty fucking slim!"
"I know." Her knees tapped the ground. "I'm sorry..."
"Stand the fuck up, Lilith."
"Michael..." She shook her head, and her vision swam for it. "Please..."
"You've got some fucking nerve saying 'please' to me!"
"Raphael..." Lilith didn't have the energy to say anything more than that before the fever took her over, weakening her hold on her door and sending her to the floor in an ailing heap.
xXxXxXx
Uriel felt like he had worn tracks in the carpet after all of his angry, frustrated pacing. How could she just leave like that? After everything. Three times, he had reached for his doorknob, to chase after her. Whether or not it was to yell at her… or beg for forgiveness, he didn't really know.
He wanted to tell her that he loved her. He had come so close, and stopped only because she had interrupted him. Like she knew what he was about to say, and didn't want to hear it…
Frustration and despair made him rake his fingers through disheveled hair. All those unanswered questions were furiously chasing themselves in his head, and the sinking feeling that he was somehow running out of time only made it so much worse. He threw open his door and stepped into the hall before he even realized what he was doing. The moment he did, he was grateful that he had chosen that moment to act.
He knew her so well, not even seeing her from behind prevented him from recognizing her.
"Serissa?"
Something was wrong, and he knew that instantly. Her hair was wet, and seemed far too dark. The acrid smell of hair dye filled the hallway and burned his nose. He remembered that once Serissa had told him that her natural hair color was black… had she colored it back?
"Serissa, look at me."
When she turned to look at him over her shoulder, her face wasn't like the face he had so lovingly committed to memory. Her cheeks seemed sunken, her skin waxy. Eyes of an unfamiliar glacial blue pierced right through him.
"Your contacts…"
"I don't need them, anymore."
Uriel felt a frightened breath leave him in a shaking rush. "What's going on?" He hurried up to her and grasped her shoulders in his hands. She flinched, shrugging one shoulder away from his touch, her face twisting in pain. "What happened to your arm?"
"I am casting away all that makes me Serissa."
"What?" Uriel took her uninjured arm and pulled her closer again. Serissa stared blankly at his chest when he pulled aside the lapel of her jacket, exposing her shoulder. Once, her shoulder was the top of a beautiful Shiva tattoo, a tattoo that Uriel knew very well. All that was there beneath the fabric of her black jacket was wrinkled pink flesh…
Newly generated skin. Uriel had seen it before.
"Serissa, what have you done?" Uriel groaned, trying to imagine the pain of cutting skin off, just to let it regrow.
"Don't worry about me."
"I will worry about you!" Uriel snapped, cupping her face in his hands just to force her to finally look at him. The blank, dead look on her face made him feel uneasy. He didn't even recognize the woman in his arms, anymore. "I care about you…"
"You're so naive, Uriel." She said slowly, clearly struggling to swallow back emotions. "Soon, you will wonder if it's possible to hate me more."
"What?"
"Take this." She slipped a disc between them, shining inside a plastic case. "Gather the others and watch it together. You all need to see it."
Uriel took the disc with shaking fingers. "Come with me… we'll all watch it together."
"I don't need to see it. Because I already know how this story is going to end."
Baffled, Uriel stood still and bewildered as he watched Serissa turn and leave him there in the hallway, clutching a little disc in his hands, wondering if the sinking feeling of dread he had would ever go away.
xXxXxXx
"Is she going to be all right?"
"I have no idea. I need to get in touch with someone from Gehenna. Or anyone who knows anything about the Evils..."
"Jinho?"
"He doesn't seem to be here. None of my calls have gone through, either..."
The murmurs came through like the murky, underwater voices the Shinryu had, and when Lilith opened her eyes, the light spilling in from her open door blinded her. A frustrated, sickly hiss left her mouth, and she pressed a hand to her forehead, only to find that a neatly folded washcloth had been laid across it. She hadn't even realized she fainted. One moment she was on the floor, the next in bed...
Wearing a robe. With her hair only partly-dry.
"Lilith?" Raphael saw her flinch, and immediately attempted to comfort her. "You're okay. I'm taking care of you." He took the washcloth from her forehead and briefly laid his hand over it, giving a quiet sigh of annoyance... and then relief washed over her, like cool water.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me just yet." He frowned, his golden brows furrowed together as he soaked the washcloth in a bowl of iced water. "The only thing I seem to be doing is temporarily treating symptoms."
Lilith nonetheless relished the time spent without fever. "Did you...?"
"Put you in an ice bath? Yes." He gently rung out the cloth and folded it again, whispering as he placed it over her forehead once more, "And I took care of those bites, too."
Heat returned to the Princess' face, though this time it was the heat of embarrassment, not illness.
The Wind Angel read right through it. "What you do is your business." His voice raised as he leaned away from her. "But if I were you, I would get in contact with somebody back home. I'm able to relieve the fever, but it seems to keep coming back."
"... I can't."
Raphael's ice-blue eyes widened just slightly. "Lilith, I'm doing what I can, but without knowing more about the Evils, I can't do much more than this. This isn't some virus or disease..."
"It's puberty fevers. All I can do is wait them out."
The room grew silent, and Lilith watched as Barbiel, who he'd been murmuring to earlier, shut the door and crossed over to her bed, sitting at the foot of it. "The Evils fall ill, when they go through puberty?" She asked.
"Yes." Lilith said with a nod, though their faces remained skeptical. "I know I'm... an adult. I think this has something to do with the youth potions I was taking."
The Wind Angel and his Nurse shared an unreadable glance, and Barbiel asked her another question. "Are there any other instances... where an Evil might fall ill like this?"
She felt a little lump of confused worry in her gut, but forced herself to ask back, "... Why?"
Both Angels briefly shut their eyes, and Raphael broke the news out slowly, quietly, carefully. "You... You are pregnant."
Suddenly Lilith's mouth was a tense line. "... Pregnant. You're sure."
"When Michael called me over, I realized it the moment I picked you up off the floor. I laid my hand on your stomach to see if it was something abdominal... You're eleven days in. Maybe twelve... if your gestation period is anything like an Angel's."
She stared without seeing, her breathing growing shallow and swift. Her fevers had come off and on for a little over a week. She'd slept with Jinho three days before they started...
"Lilith...?" The Holy Healer's hands gently rested on her cheeks, feeling for her temperature. It had suddenly flared.
"These aren't puberty fevers." Lilith's garnet eyes were wide and suddenly scared. "They're pregnancy fevers..." She should have known. Shinryu help her, she should have known as soon as she'd heard their voices, as soon as she saw them in the hall. They were able to reach out, however vaguely, not because of her… but because of the new little Dragonmaster, growing within her...
"Are they normal for an Evil, then?" Raphael asked, not releasing her face until her temperature went back down. Still her breathing was stressed. "It seems so soon for a woman to fall ill due to pregnancy. But if this is normal for your kind, then I need to know."
"And you should contact that Council of yours. Those Elders in Gehenna." Barbiel added.
"No." Her answer was sharp and strained.
Raphael sighed. "If you insist, I can keep watch over you. But I'm not going to be as reliable as I ought to be. I've never dealt with an Evil's pregnancy, before. I have no idea what to expect..."
"It would be better for you, if you told them." Barbiel rested her hand on Lilith's ankle, causing the Princess to jump.
"If I tell them, they'll... They'll force me to...!" Strange, how the woman's gentle rubbing of her ankle soothed her, though it didn't take away the weight of the situation, settling – perhaps appropriately – low in her belly. "They'll force me to marry..."
"Jinho." Barbiel finished for her, gently motioning for Lilith to breathe slowly, deeply, and watching the Evil attempt to obey her. "Then you don't want him to know, either...?"
"Is he here?" Lilith's voice suddenly rang shrill, and the desire to weep overcame her when both Angels shook their heads.
"We've been trying to reach him, in case he might have been able to help me." Raphael said quietly. "No word, yet, but we'll keep trying... if you want that."
Shock and fear and disappointment and a strange kind of loneliness made her ache. "He should know..." Each syllable had quaked in her mouth, and then the tears finally spilled over. At least all the weepy feelings over the past week made some sense, now...
"We'll give you some time alone..." Raphael stood, frowning softly. "I've left my number on your table. Barbiel's, too. Call either of us, if you need anything, okay?"
Of course, he didn't exactly expect the Princess of Evils to respond, tears drowning out whatever she might have had to say. What else could he do but give her a soft, sympathetic frown before leaving the room...? No sooner than he'd shut the door, he was quietly sighing to his wife. "She needs to have someone from Gehenna tend to her..."
"I know," Barbiel agreed, "But if they're dangling this marriage over her head... no wonder she doesn't want to contact them."
He tore a frustrated hand through his golden hair. "Then we better find Jinho, and soon... I don't care whether she's an Evil, an Angel, human... Getting fevers so high she faints and needs an ice bath isn't good for the child. For either of them."
She nodded, reaching out to embrace him with a sigh.
"Raphael?"
The Wind Angel had no sooner rested his chin on the crown of Barbiel's head when Uriel interrupted them.
"What is it?" The concern etched all over Uriel's troubled face immediately set Raphael on edge.
"Nothing, I hope. But I need everybody to gather in the den."
"Why?"
"Just do it." Uriel said shortly, angrily. A heartbeat later, he paused, sighed and added, "Please."
xXxXxXx
Uriel's hands were shaking when he powered up the DVD player. He was sure somebody was missing, but he couldn't wait another minute.
"Uriel, what is going on?"
He didn't even recognize the voice who asked the simple question, but it did seem familiar. He knew it was just one of the many people living in the mansion, sitting in various places around the den.
Raphael thought to ask yet again, but the Earth Angel seemed so distracted and anxious, he thought the man would have made the ground split if provoked too much. He tapped a quick text message to his wife, 'Is she coming down?'
'On our way. Needs to take it slow. She's upset.'
Of course the former Dragonmaster was upset; he couldn't blame her for that. But she wasn't the only one, clearly. Uriel was weighed down, and his fiery-haired friend brought in a whole other strange wave of high-strung worry, as he sat in a chair across from him. Isobelle mumbled and gripped onto her father's wrist as he hurried tapped away at his phone with one hand. The other curled tight around his dog tags, and while Michael wasn't exactly a still man by any means, his nervousness as palpable. It showed in the way he pulled and played with those tags, the metal making uncomfortable noises as they clacked against the ball chain. Raphael thought to move over to him, to ask what had him on edge… but when Jibril stepped forward to take her granddaughter into her arms, she whispered in Michael's ear. His reaction was immediate and damn near caustic, his shoulders tensing, his eyes green and wide, something spitting out of his mouth in an indiscernible, but heated, whisper. Their eyes met, and for a flash of a moment, Michael looked vulnerable… and then he was back to sending out messages with his phone, fingers frantically tapping.
He shared a shrug with Jibril, as she stepped back to sit beside Setsuna. These were unhappy times; that's all they knew, but every head in the room turned to Uriel when he spoke again.
"Serissa gave me this, and insisted we all watch it together." Uriel's trembling fingers slipped the disc into the DVD tray and pushed it back into the player. "She was acting… odd. Something's wrong."
People were murmuring, perhaps asking him more questions, but Uriel wasn't listening anymore. He stood up, stepped away from the TV, and started the disc with the plastic remote clenched tightly in his hand.
The large plasma screen TV flickered, and when the video started, Michael was the first one to let out an angry, loud hiss.
Azrael was recording himself in a mirror, a camcorder in one hand, held just below his chin. "Hello, everyone. Comfortable? I hope so." Azrael shrugged and turned the camcorder, shakily capturing a door, the ceiling, before the angle settled back to a direct view of his pale, tired-looking face. "Even if you aren't comfortable, don't worry. I'm going to make this brief. I just thought you all should be the first ones to bear witness to my victory."
"What the fuck is he talking about?" Michael snapped, hating the image of that man's face looming on a gigantic television screen.
"Like I said, I'll be brief." Azrael lowered the camera again, and the images on the screen were distorted, jumbled, punctuated by the sound of tapping footsteps. He was moving down a hallway of some kind. A dimly lit, dingy hallway. And when the camera stopped moving, when it finally settled on something and the autofocus brought it into a view, a collective gasp of horror tore through the den.
The remote slipped from Uriel's hand and landed soundlessly on the plush carpet. The dull clatter came instead from Lilith stumbling in dismay, from Lilith reaching out to grab onto the doorjamb as Barbiel briefly forgot to catch her. Shock made the Angel Nurse forget herself, and all she could do was hold her hands over her mouth.
Propped against a wall sat the pale, slightly purple bodies of Nema and Nathan. Their wounds were washed clean, and the terrible gash at Nema's throat gaped dark and open as her head had been tilted to the side… her mottled cheek resting on the crown of her son's head. But their clothes still bore the stains of blood spilling down Nema's front, pouring out of Nathan's chest and serving as the only sign of what exactly had killed the boy. Pierced through his young chest…
But the worst part of all was the way they had been posed. Not left in whatever heaps they had died in, and not laid out on their backs as though ready for burial… they had been posed as though they might not have been dead, at all. Just a mother and her son sitting against a wall, leaning into each other, her cheek upon his head, eyes shut as though merely resting. If only they were simply resting...
The camera shook slightly. "Tragic, isn't it? I was hoping to send you her wedding ring, so you could have something to remember her by… but I couldn't find it. I wonder why that is?" The angle shifted back to Azrael's face again; his eyes were narrowed as they issued a direct challenge. "Come and find me… if you can." And the video instantly clicked to static, running for a bone-chilling moment before going to black.
The den became eerily silent. It was the faces that said everything. Eyes wide. Brows furrowed. Mouths either quivering or dropped open in disbelief, in dismay. Lilith gently cradled her flat belly, feeling all the upset sinking there and flaring hot in her head.
Her head turned when she heard Isobelle begin to whimper and cry, leeching off the horrid energy in the room as she sat in her grandmother's lap. The whimper set off a chain reaction...
Jibril, softly crying out an, "Oh, God...!" and bowing over the child, ice blue hair slipping over her shoulders and shielding the little girl as they began to weep together.
Setsuna, breath leaving him in a sad, soundless sob, fists clenching and unclenching before sinking low in his chair and covering his crying face with one hand.
Michael... pulling hard on his chain, though his fingers had released the dog tags… and Nema's ring along with them, the pink, heart-shaped diamond clinking cruelly against the steel. His face pinched together in despairing rage, in raging despair, a tear for each emotion leaking from each eye before he stood up with a painful, warning hiss.
But Lilith hadn't expected him to lunge at her, to attack her. No one had.
Perhaps it was just the fever springing up into her head again, but he seemed to move faster than usual, and she had duck quickly to avoid his fist, fighting the ache caused by her dizziness.
"Michael, what-!"
Someone else had made that cry for her. She was too sick and too shocked for words. Too scared for words... because he was too angry for them. The only noise coming out of him was the hissing of angry breathing. Otherwise, he was silent. His eyes said all the rest, bright green and teary with hate. The pink diamond of his late wife's wedding ring glinted threateningly at the Evil as it hung with the steel plates of his dog tags...
"Michael!" The Wind Angel had managed to recklessly work his way between them, pushing Lilith back. "Michael, what the Hell are you doing?"
The Fire Angel didn't offer an answer, only a shredded-up war cry as he tried to break through his friend and get to her, all over again.
But Raphael was persistent, yelling over him, "You need to stop!" His strong arms wrapped around the other man's torso. Large white wings sprouted from Michael's back, flapping, fighting against the man who restrained him. "Calm down before you light the house on fire!"
"Get off of me!" He snarled and struggled. "I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"
Lilith felt the firmness of the wall as she backed into it, her hands finding themselves over her stomach as she looked at the War Angel with wide, frightened garnet eyes. "... Mi-"
"Lilith, stay back." Raphael's voice was cold enough to break through her fever, and then he was back to attempting to reason with the shattered man. "Michael, this is not Lilith's fault!"
"Yes it is!" Michael roared, struggled, wings so large they sent big gusts of wind through the room with every upset sweep of them. "Everything is her fault! Everything!"
"I never wanted this!" Lilith cried out against his bellowing.
"I didn't even want to be here! I didn't want to take part in your worthless Prophecy!" Michael's voice strained and choked itself on the words. "None of this would have happened if not for you! None of it! We wouldn't have come here and she wouldn't have left me!" Some tiny patch of reason in the very back of his head noticed Lilith was crying, but it wasn't enough. It didn't match his own pain... "She wouldn't have died!"
"I'm sorry...!" The Princess sobbed, for things that were her fault and for things that weren't.
"'Sorry' doesn't undo this!" Fire suddenly flared from his balled-up fists, from along his arms, from between the soft, snow-white feathers of his broad wings, and Raphael was shoving him out of the den.
"Michael, stop! Stop!" The Wind Angel snapped, and when Michael hit him with a flaming fist that caused his skin to blister, Raphael roared from desperation and pain. His flesh healed, even as he hit Michael back and burned the thin skin stretched over his knuckles. His own wings unfurled and spread, pushing through the air, propelling the destructive Angel through the double doors and into the yard. "You're going to torch everything! Stop!"
But he was already burning, on the outside and the inside. "No, just her! Just the bitch that dragged us down here in the first place!"
Despite the pain, Raphael wrapped his arms around him, held him tight and muttered harshly, "Not just her, Michael. She's pregnant. Now stop."
The plea had been a last ditch effort to calm Michael with words before having to resort to knocking him out... but the plea had worked, after the Fire Angel roared out in anguish, shoved himself away, shrank down against the tree he found at his back and just... wailed, a mourning cry that came from the center of his burning heart.
Raphael took a deep breath, the blistered flesh healing, his clothes slightly charred, but his heart breaking for his friend.
"How could I lose her, again...?" Michael's words slurred together and slipped on tears.
He knelt before him as all the blame suddenly shifted inward, and all he could think to do was give condolences. "I'm so sorry, Michael..."
"How could I let this happen; she thought I didn't love her, anymore...!" Saying it out loud seemed to make his aching throat bleed. "She died thinking that; how could I let her walk out the door...?"
The War Angel's thoughts were jagged and scattered like shrapnel after his explosion. Raphael tried to keep his own tears carefully locked away as he stared at the pink, heart-shaped diamond dangling with his dog tags, catching the light. He'd had no idea the two of them had so much as fought... did Setsuna know? Did Jibril?
"And Nathan, he was..." Michael's hands tore across his face and raked through his hair. "He was there; how could I let him see that? How could I let him leave with her?" The blue dragon upon his cheek was wet with tears as he wept to his closest friend, "The look on his face...!"
"Michael, listen to me..." Raphael's voice cracked like dry leaves in the wind, quiet and broken as he reached out and grasped his shoulder. "I promise you, if we can just get them back, I will revive them. You know I would do that for you."
The promise seemed to help, though only the smallest bit, quieting the sobs into a wounded weeping. "... But it won't fix everything." His hand closed around Nema's abandoned wedding ring.
"One thing at a time..." He said quietly, "But in her heart, she knew that you love her. And she still loved you."
A part of Michael actively rejected that comfort, railed against it, called it a lie... but another, needier, hurt part of him latched on to those words like they were the only thing that could possibly make sense, anymore. The only thing that could save him...
"Go to Isobelle, Michael. Take her to your room. Get some rest."
The name shot through the anguish and stuck in his heart, his head lifting. "Bell..." From past Raphael's shoulder, he could see her weeping, calling out for her Papa while Jibril cradled her and cried and cooed to her. While Setsuna gently held his wife and failed to keep the tears back... The death of a daughter trumping the news of that same daughter leaving Michael. Trumping everything.
"She needs her father, Michael. She needs you now more than ever before." Raphael stood with him, arms ready to catch him if he stumbled in his sadness. He wouldn't have blamed Michael, if he had. "You're all she has."
But she should have had so much more. His daughter deserved more, deserved to have her mother and her brother in her life. A strangled sob choked Michael as he strode to Jibril, reached out, brokenly told her, "I need my daughter..."
The Water Angel nodded, and couldn't find any words to give. Her grief was too deep for it... She could do no more than let Michael take his sobbing child, frowning when he held Isobelle tightly and began to apologize over and over to the poor little girl. He kissed the crown of her head again and again as he left, marching straight past the former Dragonmaster like she was invisible.
Yet perhaps she deserved that. Maybe Michael was right, in a way... The Prophecy was no farce; she needed him like she needed all the other Elementals. But if not for her, he wouldn't have fought with his wife. Nema wouldn't have left, and she'd likely be alive right now...
"Don't." Raphael laid his hand on her forehead and sent a welcome, cool wave of relief through her, then touched her stomach... checking on the child she'd only just learned about, she assumed. "Whatever you're thinking. Whatever he said... This is too complicated to pin on one person."
It was too kind, for an Angel she hadn't even given much attention to, before now. The last time she'd spoken to him, hadn't it been to grumble and doubt his fatigue when the Uprising had hit this mansion? Before then, hadn't it been to snap and demand he follow her all the way to England, near London? "Thank you..." She sounded about as broken as everyone else, and she hated it.
"I told you not to thank me just yet." The Holy Healer allowed the frustration to furrow his brows together. "Go back to your room and lay down, and we'll talk more about what to do about you, later. I'll be in to check on you..." He paused and reconsidered. "I'll send Barbiel to check on you. I'm needed elsewhere."
He didn't need to explain himself. "I understand..." Of course Raphael would make sure to be available for his friend. From what she could tell, they were almost like brothers... their sons were close friends, even...
Oh, Shinryu help them all. It wasn't bad enough that a wife and daughter, a son and brother had died? A boy had to lose a friend, too? Guilt, both deserved and undeserved, weighed heavy in Lilith's belly, and she cradled it as she slipped silently away.
xXxXxXx
A special note from Jael: I'm really sorry this chapter took so stinking long, guys. It was all my fault, really. My husband was having some health issues (no worries, he's fine now) and in the midst of all that, we found out that I'm pregnant. Yep. I'm gonna be a mom. So needless to say, I've been struggling with the inevitable issues that accompany early pregnancy. I'm doing better, and itching to finish up Layers as soon as possible. We actually only have a few chapters left! 8D