greeks in the age of rome
original (it would really be pushing it to call this biblical.) gabriel/lucifer. michael/azrael. cameal/lilith. possibly others eventually.
notes: a while ago I had this horrible idea to write (what is essentially a soap opera) about angels. then I had the even worse idea to mention this to janie who then proceeded to remind me of it a lot. so here we are months later. this thing is horribly horribly horribly self-indulgent. horribly. and large portions of it need to be re-written. but I did promise I would try so here is an introduction to all the characters.
I am going to go sleep now.
Also, yes I cast Melanie in a male role. Deal with it.
They say that a river of tears still runs though the Fields of Absalom, where Lucifer fought his last battle and was cast from heaven by his Lord.
The Seraphim whisper, when they think no one can hear them, that when the Morning Star was defeated it was not the Lord who struck the final blow. They say that He laid down His weapon and it fell to one of the Seven to rid Heaven of the usurper.
Speculation has long run rampant about the identity of this Archangel but the Powers aren’t telling and no one dare ask the Guardians.
It is telling of the Seraphim that although talk of this has not run dry in the billion years elapsed, not a single seraph has ever bothered to wonder why the Lord did not end the war Himself.
It is not their duty to wonder. The Seraphim were created to praise, to speak, not to know.
Heaven
God
George Clooney
He looks out over creation. Stars lazily burning above the blue-green gem He endeavors to love best.
‘Why?” Gabriel asks, silent as a shadow. The answer all humans crave, the question not a single angel will ask, except for Gabriel. Middle-child syndrome humans would call it.
Sweet Gabriel, too often over-looked for the triumphs and catastrophes his siblings could produce, nevertheless he silently and steadily unraveled.
It’s a shame that it had to come to this.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
The Archangels
Gabriel {The Messenger}
Ben Whishaw
The snap of the match is louder than Lucifer’s footsteps across the corrugated steel, he lights the cigarette and his hands aren’t quite steady but no one is going to comment.
“Why do we always meet on rooftops?”
“I like it here. I like to see the stars.”
The wind blows from the east, pushes clouds away and brings new ones to replace them. Fingers tap along metal, a steady pattern. Two pairs of legs swing across the edge, back and forth and back.
“You could stop it. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“Gabriel-“
“No. Don’t. Forget I said anything.”
He stands up, straightens the collar of his shirt. The sun rises petulantly, an angry child being woken.
“It’s up to you, Gabriel. You have to make the choice.”
One of them sighs. It could be either, for all the differences they used to be impossible to tell apart.
“The last person to say that to me was Michael.”
“You shouldn’t have said that. It was cruel.”
“Yes. Well, you probably deserved it.”
He walks away, long measured strides, and doesn’t look back. Lucifer’s still sitting at the edge of the world, low light catching on his hair.
Once, a very long time ago, the world made sense.
Michael {The Warrior}
Daniel Craig
“I’m not your enemy.”
He’s had this conversation too often of late and it always ends the same way. Gabriel tucks his hands deep into his pockets and walks away, back straight but head leaning forward.
Somewhere out there the Heavenly Host are polishing their armor. Azrael leans against the mirror, hair falling across her face, obscuring her eyes.
“You’re rather bad at patience.”
“What do you want, Azrael?”
He undoes his cuffs, pours a drink, then another when she takes the first from his hand.
“Relax. It’s coming. Can’t you taste it? A storm approaches, you just have to give him some time.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“That’s what you always say.”
Raphael {The Healer}
David Tennant
“You know, I did the whole raising the dead thing way before Christ made it cool.”
‘That wasn’t clever the first hundred times you said it either.”
“Stop being such a killjoy, Barachiel.”
Cassiel {The Watcher}
Uma Thurman
She stokes the flames with a sword she’s never used. It shines red in the light anyway, turns her tears into drops of blood against the white of her face.
“I can’t tell you, Gabriel.”
“But you do know.”
“I know what might happen, what could happen, but nothing for certain.”
“I didn’t think you lied.”
“I don’t.”
He doesn’t reply, slips out through the door, leaves her there to the fire and everything she sees. The night is cold against her bare skin.
Cameal {The Vengeful}
Clive Owen
He rained ash on Sodom and Gomorrah as Azrael’s laughter rang in his ears and screams echoed across the land.
He drowned all of creation except for a single boat and slaughtered every first-born son in a mighty empire and cast two children from the only garden they had ever known.
But first, first he loved a woman. The woman. The human woman.
Lilith with her dark eyes and dark hair. Lilith who would not be cowed, not by Adam, not by God. Lilith, who made him stumble, made him fall.
No longer the trusted advisor, for ten thousand years he’s been little more than an errand boy with a bloody sword. For ten thousand years he has paid and repaid for his moment of doubt.
And still it is her he would have chosen.
That’s why when Lucifer declares war, sword ablaze, Cameal looks not to him but to Gabriel.
When all the others turn to fight, Cameal looks to Gabriel and knows how this will all end.
Aniel {The Joy}
Amanda Seyfried
When Michael shows up she’s in Vegas, doubling down, glass nearly empty in her hand but it’s the laughter making her glow.
His tux is finely cut and that alone tells her he didn’t choose it. On the balcony she straightens his tie as he looks out over the lights, distaste painted into every feature.
“Glorious, isn’t it? The new Gomorrah.”
He doesn’t take the bait but she has enough sass for the both of them.
“I’m going to need you to watch the girl.”
“To hell with that.”
“My point exactly.”
She rolls her eyes.
“This is serious, Aniel.”
“With you it always is.”
He gets no promise out of her either way. But then, he never did ask. He never does.
After he’s gone she goes inside, there’s a party to get back to. End of all creation be damned, something has to pass the time.
Barachiel {The Guardian}
James Franco
“Are you a virgin, Miss. DeMille?”
Her lips turn at either end, caught been a frown and smile. She pours the coffee with a particular brand of precision that he’s sure goes unappreciated by customers.
Her hair lays loose around her neck and she’s looking out the open window as much as at him.
“I can hardly see how that’s your concern. It’s a rather personal question.”
“I suppose so.”
“I mean you haven’t even given me your name.”
Her tone lacks interest and he laughs full and deep. Three people in the street stumble at the sound, her eyes don’t leave the maple tree.
It’s a pity he likes this one.
Other Angels
Metatron {The Voice}
Morgan Freeman
There’s a bar just at the edge of nowhere, neon sign flickering pink then orange outside. God likes to go there, order a scotch, sit in the corner and nurse it long into the night.
Metatron walks in on a Thursday night, takes a seat next to God and orders a double of whatever He’s having.
If someone could listen, if someone knew how to listen, the ensuing conversation would sound like this.
“Ponies?”
“Dogs tonight.”
“Dogs, right. How much did you lose?”
“A mint.”
An eyebrow is raised.
“Don’t look at me like that. You aren’t my mother.”
A beat.
“No. Just your Father.”
There isn’t a laugh. Maybe a smile caught in the corners of two mouths, but God never did laugh very well and Metatron can only stray so far.
Later they wander through the neon-coated night, step past cats and through oil-splattered puddles.
Metatron asks, “can’t you stop this?”
This time, even if someone could listen, they wouldn’t hear a damn thing.
Azrael {The Angel of Death}
Eva Green
It’s a game, you see. Everyone has their role to play and everyone must follow the rules.
Michael fights and Gabriel informs and Metatron talks. She kills. It’s no different really; they just can’t be bothered to understand that.
They all show their disapproval eventually. The lower angels clear out when she enters - the Principalities are especially intolerant of her company-the Seraphim don’t speak around her and the Cherubim stand straighter and check the exits.
(The Virtues don’t notice but if you don’t have your own gravitational field they aren’t apt to do so.)
Gabriel is the only one who has ever said it. During those horrible days in the aftermath, when his eyes had all but lost their shine, she’d taken her turn with him and he’d looked out at the battlefield, still alight with a hundred fires.
“Sometimes you’re such a bitch, Azrael.”
She’d laughed and the flames had danced a little higher, a little brighter, eager to please.
“I know.”
That’s what it comes down to. They think she’s a bitch because she takes and takes and takes. They don’t understand about the hunger, about the constant need, about the balance.
Only Michael has ever understood. Michael who she always follows, half a step behind, watching, taking as his armies destroy all enemies.
She stands, half a step behind him, and sometimes at the height of the battle, as more and more are killed, he turns to look at her when she is at her most glorious, at her most beautiful, fire burning in his eyes.
The battle rages and he raises his sword, destroys without mercy or hesitation and she laughs, and it is glorious.
It is all game, you see, this existence. Everyone has a part to play and she plays hers loyally.
No one ever said it couldn’t be fun.
Yofiel {The Muse}
Rosamund Pike
Michael only ever comes to visit when he needs something. It isn’t a pretty truth but she makes up for it with her smile.
“He’ll make the choice eventually, you know. Pushing him won’t help anything.”
She leans back into the chair, crosses her legs at the ankles. This time it’s not inspiration he wants, it’s direction and that’s something she can’t give.
“He’s wasting time. We need to be prepared.”
“You made him choose last time, look how that turned out.”
“He made his own-“
“No he didn’t. He did what was expected of him, that’s all.”
“And what’s that suppose to mean?”
“Just that not everyone has your highly developed sense of loyalty.”
“He isn’t human, Yofiel.”
“No. But don’t you ever think he might as well be?”
Hell
Lucifer {The Morning Star}
Melanie Laurent
He doesn’t mind humanity particularly, even finds them naively charming at times. But God created them, God loves them and that’s enough of a reason for destruction.
That’s the perfect reason for destruction.
(God also created Gabriel whispers a part of his mind that he doesn’t listen to anymore, but that’s not up for discussion.)
The Demons
Abaddon {The Destroyer}
Zoe Saldana
She’s followed Lucifer since the very first moment and it’s not about betrayal or revenge or loyalty. It’s about nature, hers to be precise.
Chaos is the drug, the addiction, the blood that pours through her veins and Lucifer was never stingy about providing it.
There will be death and disaster and panic and she will watch over it all, glorious in ways most can’t imagine.
And sure, this game may mean the end of everything, but she was always a live in the moment kind of girl.
Moloch {The Impure}
Paul Bettany
Back in the day he was a fringe entity, a nightmare thing created to roam the desert and keep the Israelites in line.
Back then the proper angels didn’t give him the time of day and he kept to the shadows because there was nowhere else to go. Then Luci sauntered into his part of the desert, eyes coated with bad intentions and worse lies. He followed without a second thought and fell in line, a step behind the Fallen. Always a step behind the Fallen.
He has no delusions. All he is in this game is another pawn, is just a stepping-stone toward the ultimate goal. It doesn’t matter.
He still keeps to the shadow but now it’s because he likes what they do for his cheekbones.
Leviathan {The Gatekeeper}
Jeremy Irons
Like all the others he is created to serve. A Cherub of the highest order, a guardian that was only out-ranked by Barachiel himself. The greatest of all the protectors, this is his past.
Then of course Lucifer has his bright idea and all of Heaven is pushed into tumult and a war, the war is fought and won (by some definition of the term) and he is still there, still great and powerful and loyal. Above all else loyal.
Lucifer is cast out. The usurper is duly punished, shut behind gates of celestial bronze, but every gate must have a lock. So there Leviathan sits, for a thousand-thousand-thousand years.
Leviathan sits, with the dull murmur of Heavenly work occasionally flitting through the cold hot quietness of Hell seeping from the gate, and he protects. He keeps the door closed right up until Lucifer bends down and whispers in his ear “this isn’t working out too well for me. How about you?”
That’s the moment it stops being about loyalty.
The opening of the gates, the occasional nudge he gives Lucifer toward the Garden and the tree, everything he does until the whole damn Heavenly Host descends and locks him beneath a rock (where he gets to listen to humanity, of all things, wither away the time) has nothing to do with loyalty, with betrayal. With avenging oneself against the Lord who cast you aside for a new and better creation.
All of it is about boredom. Millennia upon millennia of boredom.
It’s too bad Michael was always the sort of pain in the ass who couldn’t understand that.
Earth
Lilith {The Temptress}
Indira Varma
She’s like to say it started because she wasn’t good (obedient) enough. She’d like to claim responsibility.
It really started because of Lucifer, which means it really started because of Gabriel, and that’s just funny enough that she doesn’t mind sitting on the sidelines this time. Well, mostly on the sidelines.
She leans back and watches disaster unfold. Cameal sees the glint in her eyes (the one that got the two of them, if no one else, here in the first place) and takes her hand, restrains her.
“Don’t push your luck, sweetheart.”
“But it’s what I’m best at.”
He laughs. Of course he laughs.
Caroline DeMille {The Savior}
Rose Bryne
She was never anything particularly special or clever. She’s just a little orphan girl with a strange brother and a lot of time on her hands.
She walks a lot during the day and sometimes at night even though she shouldn’t, the city passes her by the same way time does, maybe if she watched where she was going it wouldn’t.
Life is all making coffee and washing tables and having just enough money to eat and sleeping and breathing. Mostly life is just breathing.
Then a boy with dark eyes walks into the café one day says “you have to come with me” and whole world goes to hell.
Jonathan DeMille {The Prophet}
August Diehl
When they were young he told Caroline that she was never going to die. They’d fought (they always fought). Voices rising sharply in the night, Aunt gone so the house was empty, all the better for their screams to echo in.
That is when it all had changed; that’s when she’d stopped believing in him, stopped letting him tell her about the dreams.
Years later and it’s all over, her face lined with weariness that didn’t exist weeks ago and he can’t really look at her.
“You were right.” There’s a laugh caught in her throat, sharp and deadly and it hurts to listen.
He looks out over the city; it’s raining, endlessly raining.
He says, “I’m sorry.”
notes: a while ago I had this horrible idea to write (what is essentially a soap opera) about angels. then I had the even worse idea to mention this to janie who then proceeded to remind me of it a lot. so here we are months later. this thing is horribly horribly horribly self-indulgent. horribly. and large portions of it need to be re-written. but I did promise I would try so here is an introduction to all the characters.
I am going to go sleep now.
Also, yes I cast Melanie in a male role. Deal with it.
They say that a river of tears still runs though the Fields of Absalom, where Lucifer fought his last battle and was cast from heaven by his Lord.
The Seraphim whisper, when they think no one can hear them, that when the Morning Star was defeated it was not the Lord who struck the final blow. They say that He laid down His weapon and it fell to one of the Seven to rid Heaven of the usurper.
Speculation has long run rampant about the identity of this Archangel but the Powers aren’t telling and no one dare ask the Guardians.
It is telling of the Seraphim that although talk of this has not run dry in the billion years elapsed, not a single seraph has ever bothered to wonder why the Lord did not end the war Himself.
It is not their duty to wonder. The Seraphim were created to praise, to speak, not to know.
Heaven
God
George Clooney
He looks out over creation. Stars lazily burning above the blue-green gem He endeavors to love best.
‘Why?” Gabriel asks, silent as a shadow. The answer all humans crave, the question not a single angel will ask, except for Gabriel. Middle-child syndrome humans would call it.
Sweet Gabriel, too often over-looked for the triumphs and catastrophes his siblings could produce, nevertheless he silently and steadily unraveled.
It’s a shame that it had to come to this.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
The Archangels
Gabriel {The Messenger}
Ben Whishaw
The snap of the match is louder than Lucifer’s footsteps across the corrugated steel, he lights the cigarette and his hands aren’t quite steady but no one is going to comment.
“Why do we always meet on rooftops?”
“I like it here. I like to see the stars.”
The wind blows from the east, pushes clouds away and brings new ones to replace them. Fingers tap along metal, a steady pattern. Two pairs of legs swing across the edge, back and forth and back.
“You could stop it. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“Gabriel-“
“No. Don’t. Forget I said anything.”
He stands up, straightens the collar of his shirt. The sun rises petulantly, an angry child being woken.
“It’s up to you, Gabriel. You have to make the choice.”
One of them sighs. It could be either, for all the differences they used to be impossible to tell apart.
“The last person to say that to me was Michael.”
“You shouldn’t have said that. It was cruel.”
“Yes. Well, you probably deserved it.”
He walks away, long measured strides, and doesn’t look back. Lucifer’s still sitting at the edge of the world, low light catching on his hair.
Once, a very long time ago, the world made sense.
Michael {The Warrior}
Daniel Craig
“I’m not your enemy.”
He’s had this conversation too often of late and it always ends the same way. Gabriel tucks his hands deep into his pockets and walks away, back straight but head leaning forward.
Somewhere out there the Heavenly Host are polishing their armor. Azrael leans against the mirror, hair falling across her face, obscuring her eyes.
“You’re rather bad at patience.”
“What do you want, Azrael?”
He undoes his cuffs, pours a drink, then another when she takes the first from his hand.
“Relax. It’s coming. Can’t you taste it? A storm approaches, you just have to give him some time.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“That’s what you always say.”
Raphael {The Healer}
David Tennant
“You know, I did the whole raising the dead thing way before Christ made it cool.”
‘That wasn’t clever the first hundred times you said it either.”
“Stop being such a killjoy, Barachiel.”
Cassiel {The Watcher}
Uma Thurman
She stokes the flames with a sword she’s never used. It shines red in the light anyway, turns her tears into drops of blood against the white of her face.
“I can’t tell you, Gabriel.”
“But you do know.”
“I know what might happen, what could happen, but nothing for certain.”
“I didn’t think you lied.”
“I don’t.”
He doesn’t reply, slips out through the door, leaves her there to the fire and everything she sees. The night is cold against her bare skin.
Cameal {The Vengeful}
Clive Owen
He rained ash on Sodom and Gomorrah as Azrael’s laughter rang in his ears and screams echoed across the land.
He drowned all of creation except for a single boat and slaughtered every first-born son in a mighty empire and cast two children from the only garden they had ever known.
But first, first he loved a woman. The woman. The human woman.
Lilith with her dark eyes and dark hair. Lilith who would not be cowed, not by Adam, not by God. Lilith, who made him stumble, made him fall.
No longer the trusted advisor, for ten thousand years he’s been little more than an errand boy with a bloody sword. For ten thousand years he has paid and repaid for his moment of doubt.
And still it is her he would have chosen.
That’s why when Lucifer declares war, sword ablaze, Cameal looks not to him but to Gabriel.
When all the others turn to fight, Cameal looks to Gabriel and knows how this will all end.
Aniel {The Joy}
Amanda Seyfried
When Michael shows up she’s in Vegas, doubling down, glass nearly empty in her hand but it’s the laughter making her glow.
His tux is finely cut and that alone tells her he didn’t choose it. On the balcony she straightens his tie as he looks out over the lights, distaste painted into every feature.
“Glorious, isn’t it? The new Gomorrah.”
He doesn’t take the bait but she has enough sass for the both of them.
“I’m going to need you to watch the girl.”
“To hell with that.”
“My point exactly.”
She rolls her eyes.
“This is serious, Aniel.”
“With you it always is.”
He gets no promise out of her either way. But then, he never did ask. He never does.
After he’s gone she goes inside, there’s a party to get back to. End of all creation be damned, something has to pass the time.
Barachiel {The Guardian}
James Franco
“Are you a virgin, Miss. DeMille?”
Her lips turn at either end, caught been a frown and smile. She pours the coffee with a particular brand of precision that he’s sure goes unappreciated by customers.
Her hair lays loose around her neck and she’s looking out the open window as much as at him.
“I can hardly see how that’s your concern. It’s a rather personal question.”
“I suppose so.”
“I mean you haven’t even given me your name.”
Her tone lacks interest and he laughs full and deep. Three people in the street stumble at the sound, her eyes don’t leave the maple tree.
It’s a pity he likes this one.
Other Angels
Metatron {The Voice}
Morgan Freeman
There’s a bar just at the edge of nowhere, neon sign flickering pink then orange outside. God likes to go there, order a scotch, sit in the corner and nurse it long into the night.
Metatron walks in on a Thursday night, takes a seat next to God and orders a double of whatever He’s having.
If someone could listen, if someone knew how to listen, the ensuing conversation would sound like this.
“Ponies?”
“Dogs tonight.”
“Dogs, right. How much did you lose?”
“A mint.”
An eyebrow is raised.
“Don’t look at me like that. You aren’t my mother.”
A beat.
“No. Just your Father.”
There isn’t a laugh. Maybe a smile caught in the corners of two mouths, but God never did laugh very well and Metatron can only stray so far.
Later they wander through the neon-coated night, step past cats and through oil-splattered puddles.
Metatron asks, “can’t you stop this?”
This time, even if someone could listen, they wouldn’t hear a damn thing.
Azrael {The Angel of Death}
Eva Green
It’s a game, you see. Everyone has their role to play and everyone must follow the rules.
Michael fights and Gabriel informs and Metatron talks. She kills. It’s no different really; they just can’t be bothered to understand that.
They all show their disapproval eventually. The lower angels clear out when she enters - the Principalities are especially intolerant of her company-the Seraphim don’t speak around her and the Cherubim stand straighter and check the exits.
(The Virtues don’t notice but if you don’t have your own gravitational field they aren’t apt to do so.)
Gabriel is the only one who has ever said it. During those horrible days in the aftermath, when his eyes had all but lost their shine, she’d taken her turn with him and he’d looked out at the battlefield, still alight with a hundred fires.
“Sometimes you’re such a bitch, Azrael.”
She’d laughed and the flames had danced a little higher, a little brighter, eager to please.
“I know.”
That’s what it comes down to. They think she’s a bitch because she takes and takes and takes. They don’t understand about the hunger, about the constant need, about the balance.
Only Michael has ever understood. Michael who she always follows, half a step behind, watching, taking as his armies destroy all enemies.
She stands, half a step behind him, and sometimes at the height of the battle, as more and more are killed, he turns to look at her when she is at her most glorious, at her most beautiful, fire burning in his eyes.
The battle rages and he raises his sword, destroys without mercy or hesitation and she laughs, and it is glorious.
It is all game, you see, this existence. Everyone has a part to play and she plays hers loyally.
No one ever said it couldn’t be fun.
Yofiel {The Muse}
Rosamund Pike
Michael only ever comes to visit when he needs something. It isn’t a pretty truth but she makes up for it with her smile.
“He’ll make the choice eventually, you know. Pushing him won’t help anything.”
She leans back into the chair, crosses her legs at the ankles. This time it’s not inspiration he wants, it’s direction and that’s something she can’t give.
“He’s wasting time. We need to be prepared.”
“You made him choose last time, look how that turned out.”
“He made his own-“
“No he didn’t. He did what was expected of him, that’s all.”
“And what’s that suppose to mean?”
“Just that not everyone has your highly developed sense of loyalty.”
“He isn’t human, Yofiel.”
“No. But don’t you ever think he might as well be?”
Hell
Lucifer {The Morning Star}
Melanie Laurent
He doesn’t mind humanity particularly, even finds them naively charming at times. But God created them, God loves them and that’s enough of a reason for destruction.
That’s the perfect reason for destruction.
(God also created Gabriel whispers a part of his mind that he doesn’t listen to anymore, but that’s not up for discussion.)
The Demons
Abaddon {The Destroyer}
Zoe Saldana
She’s followed Lucifer since the very first moment and it’s not about betrayal or revenge or loyalty. It’s about nature, hers to be precise.
Chaos is the drug, the addiction, the blood that pours through her veins and Lucifer was never stingy about providing it.
There will be death and disaster and panic and she will watch over it all, glorious in ways most can’t imagine.
And sure, this game may mean the end of everything, but she was always a live in the moment kind of girl.
Moloch {The Impure}
Paul Bettany
Back in the day he was a fringe entity, a nightmare thing created to roam the desert and keep the Israelites in line.
Back then the proper angels didn’t give him the time of day and he kept to the shadows because there was nowhere else to go. Then Luci sauntered into his part of the desert, eyes coated with bad intentions and worse lies. He followed without a second thought and fell in line, a step behind the Fallen. Always a step behind the Fallen.
He has no delusions. All he is in this game is another pawn, is just a stepping-stone toward the ultimate goal. It doesn’t matter.
He still keeps to the shadow but now it’s because he likes what they do for his cheekbones.
Leviathan {The Gatekeeper}
Jeremy Irons
Like all the others he is created to serve. A Cherub of the highest order, a guardian that was only out-ranked by Barachiel himself. The greatest of all the protectors, this is his past.
Then of course Lucifer has his bright idea and all of Heaven is pushed into tumult and a war, the war is fought and won (by some definition of the term) and he is still there, still great and powerful and loyal. Above all else loyal.
Lucifer is cast out. The usurper is duly punished, shut behind gates of celestial bronze, but every gate must have a lock. So there Leviathan sits, for a thousand-thousand-thousand years.
Leviathan sits, with the dull murmur of Heavenly work occasionally flitting through the cold hot quietness of Hell seeping from the gate, and he protects. He keeps the door closed right up until Lucifer bends down and whispers in his ear “this isn’t working out too well for me. How about you?”
That’s the moment it stops being about loyalty.
The opening of the gates, the occasional nudge he gives Lucifer toward the Garden and the tree, everything he does until the whole damn Heavenly Host descends and locks him beneath a rock (where he gets to listen to humanity, of all things, wither away the time) has nothing to do with loyalty, with betrayal. With avenging oneself against the Lord who cast you aside for a new and better creation.
All of it is about boredom. Millennia upon millennia of boredom.
It’s too bad Michael was always the sort of pain in the ass who couldn’t understand that.
Earth
Lilith {The Temptress}
Indira Varma
She’s like to say it started because she wasn’t good (obedient) enough. She’d like to claim responsibility.
It really started because of Lucifer, which means it really started because of Gabriel, and that’s just funny enough that she doesn’t mind sitting on the sidelines this time. Well, mostly on the sidelines.
She leans back and watches disaster unfold. Cameal sees the glint in her eyes (the one that got the two of them, if no one else, here in the first place) and takes her hand, restrains her.
“Don’t push your luck, sweetheart.”
“But it’s what I’m best at.”
He laughs. Of course he laughs.
Caroline DeMille {The Savior}
Rose Bryne
She was never anything particularly special or clever. She’s just a little orphan girl with a strange brother and a lot of time on her hands.
She walks a lot during the day and sometimes at night even though she shouldn’t, the city passes her by the same way time does, maybe if she watched where she was going it wouldn’t.
Life is all making coffee and washing tables and having just enough money to eat and sleeping and breathing. Mostly life is just breathing.
Then a boy with dark eyes walks into the café one day says “you have to come with me” and whole world goes to hell.
Jonathan DeMille {The Prophet}
August Diehl
When they were young he told Caroline that she was never going to die. They’d fought (they always fought). Voices rising sharply in the night, Aunt gone so the house was empty, all the better for their screams to echo in.
That is when it all had changed; that’s when she’d stopped believing in him, stopped letting him tell her about the dreams.
Years later and it’s all over, her face lined with weariness that didn’t exist weeks ago and he can’t really look at her.
“You were right.” There’s a laugh caught in her throat, sharp and deadly and it hurts to listen.
He looks out over the city; it’s raining, endlessly raining.
He says, “I’m sorry.”