accidental video;

[expunger]

[Gray. The opening shot is all dim gray and dusky, a boring shot of a concrete wall stained with black ash, before too-bright blue-white light knifes through the picture again, causing horrible screaming static for a brief moment. Everything whirls before the PCD lands, now pointed up at a derelict ceiling. From far off, noise can be heard: footsteps, crackling electricity, a low electric tinny and hard breathing. After a long minute the picture shakes again, lifting and turning around to show Raphael's face.

She looks, for lack of a better word, like shit. For an angel she looks exhausted, with faint circles under her eyes. Her skin has a papery quality that is strongly evocative of Lucifer. Face rot dots her hairline and a small spot on one side of her jaw, again very like what Lucifer suffers from. Despite coming out of a terrible event (for which she was a complete hermit, speaking to and seeing no one), there's obviously something else on her mind.]

The Archangel Michael is gone. You would do well to never speak his name again where we can hear it.

[ooc note: anyone going to find her will find her in the Wastes. Yes, even if they poof to her side immediately, angels. She can hustle.]

Comments

offline and i think they sell that at Home Depot

[expunger]

Only when forced.

[Lightly, like there's nothing more interesting here than the weather. She isn't too close to him, only a few feet, but it could become arm's reach with only a few short steps.]

Do you utterly lack self-preservation?

[emptynight]

Only as much as you lack the concept of personal space, Buttercup.

[expunger]

[That comment blows past her, for all the care she gives it; personal space is less than worthless to her. What interests her is him, the glint of human sympathy beneath the monster, his suicidally stupid lack of concern for who he antagonizes. Even more that she can hear his blood pumping just beneath the skin, surging through arteries and easily-slit veins. She tilts her head slightly, eyes trained on him.]

Was your expression of sympathy sincere?

[emptynight]

[Some people who'd known Thomas would say that the suicidal lack of concern over who he antagonized was a trait Thomas had always possessed. But those who'd known him better, known him as well as he ever let anyone know him, would have known better, would have seen the desperate edge of self-destruction hidden deep beneath the sarcasm and the feigned stupidity.

But then, the only two people who would have known that were Harry and Justine. Harry was dead and Justine was as good as gone.

Which meant the self-destructive baiting of an angel who he knew could rip off his head with a single thought went unnoticed, even by Thomas himself.

Well, he'd always been good at denial.

He raises an eyebrow at Raphael, the gesture so fluid and practiced it practically broadcast itself as a feign, as a means to enrage.]

It doesn't matter what I say, does it? You're not exactly inclined to believe me.

[expunger]

Let me decide what I will or won't believe.

[Somehow, even in expressing some kernel of potential to believe him, she manages to sound incredibly arrogant. Raphael just rolls her shoulders slightly, like a lion shifting position just to better stare you down. It doesn't look like it, but it's a gesture meant to distract: to distract herself from thinking too hard, to fill a few seconds of silence with something other than his blood pumping loudly.]

[emptynight]

[He stands still, the predatory Hunger refusing to show weakness in the face of a threat, and meets her eye. He tilts his head, watching her in that moment of silence, almost as if daring her to see what was or wasn't there. Or maybe just to tell the difference]

Then decide, Buttercup.

[expunger]

[Their eyes meet for a long, long minute of absolute silence. The look in his eyes was different when giving that condolence, different enough to be noteworthy. She would be foolish to disregard it. Raphael speaks quietly, without drawing breath.]

You meant it.

[It takes a long time for her vast, lightning-quick mind to even approach the idea that he actually meant it, though. A lesser being having sympathy for an angel? Even here, after all the kindnesses and sympathies others have shown her, she never quite believes or trusts it.

And yet.]

[emptynight]

[He nods once, the motion fluid. His expression doesn't change, still carelessly confident, his voice holding that edge of mockery despite the truth. It was how he lived, after all. On the edge of truth and lies, playing both until they were impossible to untangle.]

Are you surprised monsters have feelings too?

[expunger]

[She should be. The world is black and white, she knows this. Angels are marble statues, creatures of diamond and ice frozen in eternal guardianship, defrosting only to be perfect soldiers. Demons lie, monsters devour, and only humans are afforded the basest and highest complexities of spiritual life. Raphael's normal coldness edged now with a strange sharp softness, something curious and almost young in their ancient depths. Looking into Thomas' eyes, she understands that it should be surprising according to everything she "knows."]

No.

[Something subtle changes in her eyes; that glimpse of something turning to a glittering, dangerous sharpness that most people would run from.]

You are neither vampire nor demon.

[emptynight]

[The Hunger is too much a predator to ignore the threat, and Thomas' eyes gleam bright silver as the demon rises closer to the surface. It can taste it, that desire it'd felt from her before. Twist, bend, break, feed. Insolent doe. Freak of nature that fancies itself high. Desire twists it like it twists all kine, and they are ours.]

Then pray tell what am I, Buttercup?

[expunger]

[A question she can't answer, but the reality tastes closer to "demon" than anything. Cambion, incubus. It beats loudly in her ears and pulses just beneath paper-thin skin, gleaming in silver eyes.]

I do not know. [She almost doesn't care. Whatever he is bleeds just as easily. His arteries are in the same places as a human's, throat just as vulnerable-] I cannot tell without knowing more of your properties.

[emptynight]

[Her answer makes him smile, showing perfect white teeth, and there's something of a challenge in it.]

Maybe if you buy me dinner first.

[expunger]

Perhaps. [The usually controlled angel says it distantly, not realizing or acknowledging the idiom's meaning, as her eyes linger on him. Every part of her is literally burning, darkness and putrid fire lap at the edges of every cell in her vessel's body, corroding her from the inside and straining her against her vessel's tiny confines so painfully she might burst. Her condition yearns for succor, for some relief that she can sense just beneath his skin.

Demon blood. It would be so easy.

She takes a long step closer, expression dark.]

How many murders have you committed?

[emptynight]

[The question makes him hesitate despite the mask of careless nonchalance. The kill that had woken the demon, that first glorious feeding that had left him with the eternal Hunger, the women the Skinwalker had fed him. The Stygians. Those he'd killed protecting his little brother. The ghouls. Those of the Red Court the night he'd followed Harry into Hell itself to rescue Harry's daughter. All of them dead. All of them necessary.

And a part of him had enjoyed every one of them.

And that was not even counting Harry's death. That one laid on Thomas' conscience, sending his little brother to the boat where he'd been shot.]

More than most, but you knew that.

[expunger]

[Another step closer, too close. He'll have to back away if he wants enough room to breathe.]

How many?

[Something to talk about. Something to seize on that isn't- that is philosophical, rather than physical.]

[emptynight]

Six hundred fifty seven.

[Maybe he's really that stupid. Or just that self-destructive. Either way, Thomas does not move as Raphael closes into his personal space. He rattles off the number flippantly. Counting the Red Court vampires that died at his hand that night at Chichen Itza, it was probably closer to the truth than not. And yet a complete and utter fabrication.]

[expunger]

[That's when Raphael grabs him by the throat and lifts him easily off the ground with one hand.]

Do not lie to me.

[emptynight]

[Silver flashes again in his eyes as she grabs him by the throat and hauls him off his feet, but any anger Thomas would have displayed is mitigated by the skin to skin contact, and the demon's silken whisper against his thoughts of desire. Hunger, denial, need for the unthinkable, survival, the cessation of pain, for just a moment.

A slow, knowing smile spreads over Thomas' face as he peers down at Raphael. The demon's touch skitters along her skin, calling to that desire that it can feel. It's familiar enough to call to it, for the demon to whisper to give in.]

I don't keep count.

[Not any more, at least.]

[expunger]

[Raphael's arm is shaking slightly. That never, ever happens where people can see- certainly not Thomas. Her grip tightens on his throat like a vise, like maybe if she can squeeze the life out of him this incessant hunger will stop. Logically she knows he's now affecting her on purpose, but it doesn't change the fact that she can imagine it, imagine cutting him open and can practically taste relief. Anything, even the most disgusting action, is better than corroding her vessel from the inside. Her black eyes look right into his silver ones, too intense and scarcely seeing.]

You should.

[In a flash she brings him to his knees, coming around behind him to bend him over a bucket that wasn't there before. In an instant he's leaned over, head yanked back by the hair, throat exposed to the knife suddenly in her hand before she's slitting his throat over the bucket, holding him down so he can't escape.]

[emptynight]

[She's fast. Far faster than he had really thought possible, lulled by the obviously human feel of the body. The only thing that saves him is that he'd recently fed, that the Hunger is already close to the surface. If either of those had not happened, he'd have been dead in seconds as the hot sting of the knife at his throat.

As it was, the wound begins to knit back together as soon as the blade parts it, but not before spilling fat drops of thick, pale blood into the bucket. For once, there is genuine fear in his eyes as he struggles against Raphael's grip, and his eyes shine even paler as he draws on the demon's borrowed strength, hastening healing as best he can. Blood drips from the wound, slowing as the wound heals, but he can feel the blood loss already, the fear of actual death staring him in the face, holding him down.]

Eight that matter.

[expunger]

[So it can be hurt. Interesting. Raphael's eyes shine glitter dispassionately at the dark pink blood. Thomas' struggles barely faze her, the pallor and fear in his eyes strangely thrilling. She lets the knife clatter to the floor so she can touch the wound lightly, forcing the healing to slow in some twisted perversion of her Angel of Healing patronage. Gently, with surgical care, she puts thumb and forefinger on either side of the cut and pinches, forcing out everything she can get from the still-closing wound.

In her position, it's easy enough to murmur in his ear.]

Tell me what you think matters.

[emptynight]

[Whatever she's doing to him burns like molten steel and living fire, and the demon's strength wilts in its presence. The wound at his throat closes with agonizing slowness, the warm wet slick of blood creeping down his neck.

Thomas flinches from the breath of warm air at his ear as she murmured, and the motion shoots a spike of raw pain like liquid fire down his nerves. He manages (barely) to suppress a scream, but not the sharp inhale and its accompanying whimper of pain.

But the fact that he's not dead helps. As does dark thrill that the demon, so near the surface, can feel from her skin. Desire for something besides death, something that would soothe pain and quench the fire...

The fear doesn't exactly fade, but he makes a visible effort to force it aside, to master it, and there is little of it in his voice when he manages to speak again.]

The innocent matter. The ones that didn't wrong me or mine but died for it anyway.

[expunger]

The ones who suffered for your monstrosity.

[She yanks his head back viciously, too hard to be reasonable and enough to rip at the wound anew, just so she can look down at him harshly, face inches from his.]

You should be ripped to nothingness in the fires of Hell for your indecency.

[She lets go of his hair and seizes his wrists, yanking them behind his back and binding them together with a chain coming from nowhere, tying it to the floor behind him so he's trapped on his knees. Then she comes around him and dips a cup she suddenly has into the bucket of blood, starting to down the entire glass.]

[emptynight]

[Bile rises in Thomas' throat as he watched Raphael dip a cup into the bucket and begin to drink the thick, pale blood. The action sickens him even as the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. He might not have known why it was happening, but he knew now the object of that desire.

Which... was really nothing to go on at the moment.

He jerks on the chain pinning his wrists to the ground, wrenching his shoulders in an attempt to pull himself free. The chain rattles and he feels give in the links, not much, not enough, but something. Thomas glances at Raphael, feels his stomach rebel, and looks away again.]

Never said I was otherwise, darling.

[But he doesn't deny her claim.]

[expunger]

[If he looks back, he'll see her finishing the glass with a gasp like she's never tasted anything so perfect in her life, pressing the empty glass to her forehead and taking huge gasping breaths. Then she dips it in the bucket again and downs another glass, and if Thomas is watching he'll see her skin start to heal. The little sores and decay at her jaw, her hairline, and her cheekbone close before their eyes, her skin tone changes, the papery, unhealthy quality melting away to smooth, healthy skin. She looks more alive in a very real sense.

She feels alive. The demon blood (that she knows isn't like real demon blood, that she suspects will work differently) is filling her veins with liquid fire, the kind that soothes and fills with life. It is perfect.]