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Entry tags:
accidental video -> text; sunday morning
[The video clicks on softly, with little static or feedback normally associated with angels. It's broadcasting from a rooftop, pointing off-kilter slightly to take in the panorama of Adstringéndum's horizon in the early light of dawn. The sky is striped and bright, the sun only just peeking over the distant horizon to paint the city and Wastes with vivid pinks and oranges that chase away the dusty blues of night. In this beauty sits Raphael, turned so far from the PCD that only a sliver of her face is visible over her shoulder.
Raphael is, rarely, sitting on an actual chair, leaning heavily on one elbow braced against her knee, the picture of peace. Not that she's usually a party animal, but there's something different about her, something more poised than arrogant, for once. There hasn't been room for arrogance these past several days; for the first time in her life she has absolutely nothing to be confident in, no future or present certainty to inflate her pride.
The result is a look that's almost a little deflated, if a person knows her very well. Most don't. She prefers it that way. It will be easier.
There's a kind of easy insecurity and nervous assurance in knowing that she's going to die. The curse now eating away at her for six days has only worsened, her dread simply crystallized when Severus Snape told her what that curse does and what it's doing to her. Everything else has fallen away: old grudges, past motivations, future plans are all meaningless with this encroachment of her apparent mortality. Raphael has died once before, in her home world, but there she had less than a minute to realize she was well and truly done for. She has been alone with her thoughts for over three days. Raphael also knows how impermanent death can be in this place, but she has seen people die here and never return. She has no home or life to go to; once Tom Riddle's curse takes the last of her life, she will be utterly gone unless the Animus see fit to restore her.
She hasn't even told anybody. If you asked her, Raphael could not tell you why.
The angel sits there, skin lit up in pinks and white shirt soaked in vivid orange, and watches the sunrise for a long time. At one point she breaks the silence with something that literally nobody has ever seen the archangel do- she coughs slightly. Only someone paying very close attention would notice the tiniest, briefest glow of dim white light on her hand as she coughed on it. That unnoticeable blink of light is Grace, bleeding out in a slow trickle since the week's start, foreshadowing the inevitable supernova that will announce her end. After at least five minutes, she turns her head very slightly (not enough to see her face properly- good, because it's pale, wan, eaten around the edges by parasitic rot with dark circles under her eyes) and seems to notice the camera. With a snap of her fingers the video shuts off. Then she decides to post something purposeful; her mind is roiling and lost, too many unfamiliar and intimidating thoughts filling that vast consciousness.]
[Filtered from Tom Riddle and Morgana]
What would you think of the chance live forever?
There are those who would seize such an opportunity.
There are those who would refuse. Why? [She hesitates in typing the next part, reluctant to let slip any notion of uncertainty, but her need for answers compels her. For once, archangels are not the wise ones here. These ridiculous, limited, idiotic humans earned their mortality and their Knowledge of good and evil, she may as well hear what it has to say.] How many years of life is enough?
Raphael is, rarely, sitting on an actual chair, leaning heavily on one elbow braced against her knee, the picture of peace. Not that she's usually a party animal, but there's something different about her, something more poised than arrogant, for once. There hasn't been room for arrogance these past several days; for the first time in her life she has absolutely nothing to be confident in, no future or present certainty to inflate her pride.
The result is a look that's almost a little deflated, if a person knows her very well. Most don't. She prefers it that way. It will be easier.
There's a kind of easy insecurity and nervous assurance in knowing that she's going to die. The curse now eating away at her for six days has only worsened, her dread simply crystallized when Severus Snape told her what that curse does and what it's doing to her. Everything else has fallen away: old grudges, past motivations, future plans are all meaningless with this encroachment of her apparent mortality. Raphael has died once before, in her home world, but there she had less than a minute to realize she was well and truly done for. She has been alone with her thoughts for over three days. Raphael also knows how impermanent death can be in this place, but she has seen people die here and never return. She has no home or life to go to; once Tom Riddle's curse takes the last of her life, she will be utterly gone unless the Animus see fit to restore her.
She hasn't even told anybody. If you asked her, Raphael could not tell you why.
The angel sits there, skin lit up in pinks and white shirt soaked in vivid orange, and watches the sunrise for a long time. At one point she breaks the silence with something that literally nobody has ever seen the archangel do- she coughs slightly. Only someone paying very close attention would notice the tiniest, briefest glow of dim white light on her hand as she coughed on it. That unnoticeable blink of light is Grace, bleeding out in a slow trickle since the week's start, foreshadowing the inevitable supernova that will announce her end. After at least five minutes, she turns her head very slightly (not enough to see her face properly- good, because it's pale, wan, eaten around the edges by parasitic rot with dark circles under her eyes) and seems to notice the camera. With a snap of her fingers the video shuts off. Then she decides to post something purposeful; her mind is roiling and lost, too many unfamiliar and intimidating thoughts filling that vast consciousness.]
[Filtered from Tom Riddle and Morgana]
What would you think of the chance live forever?
There are those who would seize such an opportunity.
There are those who would refuse. Why? [She hesitates in typing the next part, reluctant to let slip any notion of uncertainty, but her need for answers compels her. For once, archangels are not the wise ones here. These ridiculous, limited, idiotic humans earned their mortality and their Knowledge of good and evil, she may as well hear what it has to say.] How many years of life is enough?
[Offline]
[He steps forward and sits next to her. Lucifer doesn't sit very often.]
Which, by the way, is a headscratcher. Since when do you ask them how much life is enough? They can't even respect the lives of goldfish.
[Offline]
We are unchanging by nature while they were made to adapt, small and petty though they generally are. By God's design they have knowledge denied to us.
[She is lost and needs a source of guidance, but knows her brothers can give her nothing. They know as much as she does about the realities of accepting mortality.]
[Offline]
And how can you sit here and think we're unchanging? It takes us longer because our lives are longer. Mice grow faster than humans, but that doesn't make them superior.
[Offline]
[Sentience. Maturity. The ability to think for themselves and distinguish consequences, to weigh options and discerningly pick the better. All of Heaven is still looking for it's daddy. She says nothing to his second point; it's still thorny in her mind.]
[Offline]
[Despite his time in the Pit he is more familiar with human suffering than his siblings are. They didn't get their hands dirty; Lucifer has. He's made it his business to know what makes humans tick.]
And that's not even the point. We can change, Raphael.
[he gives her a small, worried smile. He'd meant it to be reassuring but he knows it's not, so he throws in a very light joke.] Even me.
[Offline]
[Offline]
He hesitates a second, then leans his weight to the right--his shoulder rests lightly against hers.]
[Offline]
Now it reminds her of just how much things do change. She knows she has to tell him. It's not as if he won't find out.]
[Offline]
The little contact is familiar to him, too, of course. The fact that he can sit like this with her again has his vessel's throat feeling oddly strangled. He feels her vessel tense a little, but he realizes it's not to get away from him, for once. It's the pause before a confession; he knows it well.
But then she says nothing, and he looks at her slowly.]
[Offline]
It takes a second for her to recover, to stop leaning her forehead against her hand and sit up a little unsteadily. She doesn't look at Lucifer. Somehow, she wishes she wouldn't have to.]
[Offline]
[His immediate thought is that Snape has betrayed them. It's followed by panic. He can't heal that. He can't heal her, or any angel, at all.
He has seen a lot of injuries. Most angels never die so slowly they cough out their own Grace.]
What did he do?
[Offline]
[She gives him a Look; the "calm down" is unspoken.]
He was able to tell me something I did not know.
[Offline]
[Glancing to be sure those wings are in fact healed.]
[Offline]
[Nothing for it but to dive right in. They're all going to find out soon enough.]
It was temporarily behaving like the Colt.
[Offline]
[He looks at the hand she had coughed into.]
[Offline]
[Very determinedly looking Over There. Staring intently at the rising sun as if the metaphor could lead her somewhere good and far from this worthless world.]
[Offline]
[There is always something to be done. Always.]
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[He turns to argue with her, but seeing how bad she looks, how sickly her Grace is....
All he can manage is a soft protest:]
But you were healing.
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[Head bowed, utterly resigned.]
My Grace had not yet begun to suffer damage.
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[It's true, but such a paltry phrase. It's not at all what he means.
Lucifer licks his lips and gathers his thoughts.]
I wish I had been there to stop him before he could have hurt you.
[Still not what he means exactly.]
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I should have remembered myself before pursuing him alone.
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[And so are apologies, so he swallows the one that has been sitting on the back of his tongue.]
We can't change what happened. If the Animus send you back, they'll take a price. It might be a memory if it's not a power. Keep a record of what you don't want to forget.
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Yes. I will.
[She holds a hand out and calls upon the ruined books of the city, the demolished library, the upturned filing cabinets in rubble piles that were once offices and back rooms of store, the personal offices in the many houses and every piece of paper in the city. Paper and books come from everywhere and nowhere, swirling like dead leaves on a whirlwind and coming together in a single book growing larger and larger- a hundred pages, a thousand, ten, then compressing impossibly into one reasonably-sized tome lying on the concrete of the roof.
Raphael bends down and scoops it up. It looks old, a little beaten, as befitting the scavenged materials from whence it came. She traces the cover with a finger, sketching out a sigil that inks in slowly following where she traces.]
Everything will be set down.