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

[thelightbringer]

Good. It deserves your wrath.

[Rare as it is to get Raphael angry. He takes a breath to say more, but doesn't. Confiding anything in anyone has the same appeal as chugging curdled milk.]

[expunger]

I am surprised you haven't destroyed the city already.

[thelightbringer]

You have such narrow expectations, brother.

[expunger]

He was one of the few threads tying you to stability.

[thelightbringer]

[And how he wants to tear her wings right off for bringing this up. But he just moves away from her, to inspect the carcass.]

Yes. He was.

[He keeps his voice as level as he can, never betraying the panic he's felt ever since Michael simply disappeared.]

[expunger]

You will have to live with no shadow of Michael in your life or at its edges.

[And Lucifer has never done that before. Even for Raphael, at first, it was hard.]

[thelightbringer]

[He wants to snap that he's done that, in the Cage. He was entirely isolated there. But he'd had the promise of seeing Michael if he could survive long enough, if he could keep himself together and escape.

If he escapes this he has the Apocalypse and abandonment.]

Well, so do you.

[expunger]

I have already accepted that I will never see him again.

[The corpse begins to burn.]

Have you?

[thelightbringer]

[He doesn't move a muscle, but the corpse abruptly explodes into frozen-but-smoldering pieces.]

Of course you would just give up on him.