expunger | video; BACKDATED to Wednesday

[Raphael, this time, looks less like the bleeding pile of shit she did last time and more like a meditative businesswoman with dry skin who hasn't slept in a while. She is seated Indian-style on the floor of what is obviously a run-down house; her normal illusions of nice drawing rooms and furnished libraries are gone. Forgotten, even. There's a tenseness around her eyes, a flickering darkness and she has the distinctive sallow-faced, corrosively-dry-skinned unhealthy look of Lucifer himself.]

I have heard talk and complaints about this latest event. People think they have been robbed of their identities, stripped of their selves.

[She looks vaguely disdainful at the concept, but so contemplative.]

The empty places within us call for something to fill them. Can you not wait a week? If you insist on squandering this.

[A blade emerges slowly from one sleeve until Raphael is holding a short sword in one hand. She brings it up to chest level and holds it gingerly between her two index fingers, so it rotates slowly in the air like a rotisserie.]

We do not know our own families. [One hand returns to rest on her knee, and the sword turns up until it's turn in mid-air like an impossible basketball, the sharpened point hovering centimeters over her outstretched finger.] I find it difficult to divine my motivations for my own actions.

But we have no ties that bind us from action or blinders to shield us from essential truths.

[The sword touches her finger and she looks to it slowly- curiously, like she's never seen it before. It presses down harder until drops of bright red blood well around the blade-tip. Raphael seems fascinated when her blood shimmers and tiny but dazzlingly white beams of light strobe from the small wound. Anyone looking at the sword can see creeping veins of rust spread slowly up the blade.]

In the absence of prejudice, clarity is easily grasped. The irrational contradictions we tolerate fall away.

We are not stripped. We are free.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Michael tossed the weapon back at her when she demanded it back, acquiescing because his point had been made already. "Then don't misuse it." He warned, striding casually further into the room. The ridiculously barren room, which he didn't bother to restore to it's usual decorations just yet.

Raphael caught it easily and sheathed it again in nothingness, watching curiously as it slid seemingly into her sleeve and out of sight. Then she turned to him again, ignoring the burst of cutting pain from her hand. On top of the agony of Hellfire, nothing else seemed to matter.

"I'll do whatever I want." That felt right on a level she couldn't quantify, so she pressed on in the direction that made sense. "You are in no position to tell me otherwise."

A flash of irritation passed through Michael, but he continued his lazy walk into the room. He couldn't even blame the outright defiance on the event, considering she'd done it before, but he tried not to let it get to him as he responded. "As far as you know." He commented lightly, in the airy tone of someone who clearly didn't care what another thought of them, because they were wrong and it didn't matter if they knew it.

Raphael appeared right in front of him, wings folding closed.

"No, you are right. There are many things I do not know." Her gaze was very deliberately unwavering.

He tracked her motion easily enough that he wasn't surprised by the sudden flight, staring back at her evenly. "That's the event's doing, as you know. If you have a question, ask it."

"I have one, but you could answer it."

She backed off a step, eyes narrowed but thoughtful. "I fail to see why I try to be around you at all."

Ouch. That hurt worse than Michael was willing to show, so he didn't, face as neutral and calm as ever. "What do you find so dislikeable about me?" He turned the question around, both because he wanted to know the answer and because it let him control the conversation.

It was a fair question, she supposed, given that this person barely identifiable as her same species was her brother. So Raphael answered it, barely keeping a lid on herself through the sting of presence before her that she couldn't even identify as holy.

"Being around you is physically painful. I cannot begin to imagine why I inflict it on myself."

Oh, that. Michael nodded, looking a little more somber. "It's unfortunate, and recent. We're still working on a way to fix it."

"I know." She remembers that much. "Our brother inserted his hand inside me and lit my being on fire. Looking at you and being in a room with you is singularly unpleasant, and I have yet to acclimate to it."

Raphael never told him that before. The angel never once gave any indication that being around Michael was anything but normal or, indeed, a little comforting.

She'd never said it, but Michael had begun to guess. He knew his grace had been painful to her when he'd attempted healing, so it wasn't really a stretch, though hearing it was unpleasant.

He wondered if it might be best if he avoided her for the event, so as not to put more stress on her, but considering her behavior on the video feed while he wasn't around? No. He wasn't so sure he wanted to leave her alone.

"And the damage you were doing to yourself with the sword was better?"

Raphael didn't have to look down to know that her finger was still injured, brilliant light pouring from the cut. No matter.

"Yes. It provides a distraction from the persistent pain of Hellfire." Depressingly, Raphael never would have been this honest if she had her memories and with them, her hang ups. She never would have told him the truth if she knew her brother. "You sneer because you do not know."

With that, she stepped forward and pressed her uninjured hand to his head, pushing into his mind the pain, the feel of Hellfire that Raphael was even in that very moment enduring: a constant, white-hot burn that never abated and was never any less intense than the first moment it seared her, for months on end without the slightest flicker of abatement. Her skin on fire, her being twisted, the lurching metaphysical nausea of being around him or Gabriel. Raphael let him see in a way that she knew another angel (if he could even said to be like her anymore- she couldn't really count herself as his kind or his species, regardless of family) could appreciate the time span and scope of, and stepped back. All told, she had her hand to his head for maybe two seconds, but she let him see it all.

Michael had been about to argue with her last statement, and to refute her previous one, but then she touched his forehead and suddenly all thoughts were gone, replaced by the incredible overwhelming destructive Hellfire, taking over his senses completely and drowning out everything that wasn't pain and wrongness and constant endless corruption.

When she removed her hand, he lurched forward from shock, catching himself instinctively by grabbing his sister's shoulders, eyes unfocused for a few second as he processed. She had been right; he hadn't understood. He'd tried, but he simply couldn't grasp what she was dealing with, until now.

And he didn't at all know what to do about it. Unlike his sister, he recognized the familial bond, it pained him greatly that one of his most loved siblings was suffering so much, but it wasn't as though he hadn't tried to help before. He wasn't holding back, and frustration and worry were quickly turning to anger. Not at Raphael, but at who had done this in the first place: Lucifer.

Raphael gave no outward reaction to his hands on her or weight braced against hers. She made no move to catch or support him, as she would have normally, but stood gazing into his eyes impassively. This much was what she wanted.

But time was wasting, and even now his presence pressed at her. "Then you understand why I can not stay here."

He was still reeling, but he heard her words, and he understood them. And while this was going on, while Raphael barely knew him, maybe it was best; best to spare her the pain of his presence, best for her to be away from him and the anger threatening to take over and prompt a righteous rage.

"Yes. I do."

There was no benefit of courtesy, no sentimental words, respectful ones, or even a single indication that he was anything to her but a speck on the wall. She was gone almost before the words left his lips.

video; BACKDATED to Wednesday

SHUT UP BITCH~

I'M SO BAD I DIGITALLY PUT JABBA BACK IN THE ORIGINAL STAR WARS MOVIE

I'M SO BAD I DON'T REMEMBER ANY MORE LINES

I'M SO BAD I LOOKED THEM UP YOU LAZY SLUT

I'M SO BAD I WAS ACTUALLY DOING THEM WITHOUT CHEATING 8| /ALL ENTENDRES INTENDED

I'M SO BAD THAT FUCK YOUR MOTHER.

I'M SO BAD THAT YOUR FACE

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