decrolachia | Meeting Again

The boy had succeeded. The Littles had been purified, and though that could not erase Angelicus's sin, it was a step toward atonement. It was a burden lifted from her shoulders, which had grown such a broad framework to support that metaphorical weight that she felt somehow dangerously ungrounded without it.

There was a sense of relief in knowing the creatures no longer existed, no longer suffered. But it could not fix the problems that had resulted from their creation. It could not reverse the events that had led to the Blaze. Purifying the Littles could not douse the sky or untwist the twisted. Things could not be restored to the way they had been before the Blaze. Nothing was so simple.

But this one thing, however small in the greater context of the world, had shown her something very important: even if the clock could not be turned back, they could still make steps toward patching up what had been broken. The world did not have to stagnate as it had become. Her life did not have to stagnate. She was alive and she could act. She could make things better or make them worse. She could improve her own situation, and then she could worry about the rest of the world.

The first thing to do with this new revelation was obvious. She was going to find the man who had started it all.

She did not know where the Archangel resided. She had not seen him since the Blaze, had heard from others that he was seen only in projections through consciousness orbs, but she could surmise where he would be hidden. It made sense to her that he would reside near the God that had so long been the focus of his obsession.

She could navigate the Neuro Tower with ease. She had no footfalls and could move in perfect silence, could navigate the darkened corridors where grotesques did not venture. She could travel without attracting unwanted attention. And so it was a simple enough matter to make the journey down, down, ever downward, in search of a memory she held fondly and a fearsome man who may or may not be that same memory.

Angelicus had always been among the sharpest in the Order - it was part of why the Archangel had taken her under his wing, so to speak. Her deductions that he would be towards the deepest levels of the tower were perfectly correct.

The state she would find him in, however, may lie beyond deduction. Archangel was hardly the only one left fused to a consciousness orb after the Blaze, but he was perhaps among the most dramatic in manner.

Angelicus's stealth served her well, and he did not even sense her until she entered his floor. His eyes flew open, body tensing. He'd know her baroque anywhere - but why had she come here?

He... had not wanted her to see him like this.

The Archangel tilted his head to look at her from his pathetic state as she entered the room, trying hard to hide the pain in his sky-red eyes.

"Angelicus." He'd hoped to speak sternly, tensely, but the confusion and surprise leaked through in his tone. "Why have you come?"

It was certainly not what she'd expected to see. She froze in the doorway, hovering, as always, several inches above the floor. Her face was an impassive mask, but the birds perched on the framework at her shoulders expressed what her smooth porcelain skin did not. The white bird, to her left, turned its head away and raised up a wing in front of its eyes, in sympathetic anguish at the sight before it. The black bird fluttered abruptly, as though making to take flight, and shifted nervously on its perch, shocked and horrified.

"Archangel," she whispered, her voice conveying much more subtly everything her birds were showing. When she spoke it seemed to sound like a poor quality recording or a static-filled radio transmission, as though she were not speaking directly but relaying her words through a device that separated them from herself.

She stayed there in the open doorway, silent for a very long moment as the words attempting to form vanished before she could grasp them.

Finally, she answered the only thing she possibly could. "To see you."

He only huffed, looking away once more. He didn't want to see her reaction, or her baroque flinch in horror.

"You have already abandoned me - our mission - long ago. If you will not help create our new world, then there is no point in us meeting like this."

First her, the person whose support had brought them so far, and now the difficulty he was having persuading 12 to do as he needed... salvation was so close, but would this world never see it? The Archangel drew in a deep breath, feeling the frustration and pain of betrayal begin to rise up in his chest once more.

Her eyes lowered. Her resolve, newborn and fragile, faltered. Perhaps she should not have come after all. There was no longer any place for her in the Archangel's heart except as an accomplice, it seemed. She could not be that for him. Never again.

She drifted back, retreating partly into the deep shadows beyond the doorway, unreached by the orb's light. Her arms wrapped themselves around her body, long spidery limbs that reached to the floor, that could fold around her like a shield or a coffin, much more securely than the arms she'd wrapped around herself before the Blaze.

"The Koriel boy has purified the Littles," she informed him. She lifted her head, just enough to watch his reaction, hoping--but knowing it was in vain--that it might convince him to stop his crusade.

That wasn't entirely true - the Archangel still remembered her as the only person not to balk at the sight of his eyes. Stubborn as he is, however... right then, it only made the fact that she left cut deeper.

Her news, however... he snapped back to meet her gaze again, body once more tense. Even those wings stiffened, their tips quivering.

"He what!? But... he shouldn't even know of the Littles...!" Eyes narrowed, reading Angelicus carefully. "You... you told him?"

She did not lift her head, but her eyes, still impassive, stared back at him from beneath the shadows of her towering hat. The white bird edged closer along its perch to her shoulder, tense and nervously shifting its wings. The black bird straightened its back and mirrored Angelicus's timid stare with one that confidently bored into Archangel's red eyes.

"I could not bear the burden of such a heavy sin forever, Archangel."

He raised a hand - shakily; he had not had much opportunity to move since the Blaze - to rub at the bridge of his nose.

"You truly have left me. Do you not care for the world, Angelicus? Do you not want to see one free from this twisting, from so much corruption? These methods are necessary; it is the only way..."

"The only way..." she echoed, like a fading radio transmission. She straightened, unfolding her arms from around herself, and looked at him head-on. Both her birds now did the same. Determination and certainty showed in every aspect of her being.

She had not come to her decision lightly.

"I cannot care for a world which would require such cruelty to exist."

"Exactly."

His words were hissed now, hands gripping at his face as he tried to wrest his expression into something he could bear to show her.

"This world is cruel, broken, twisted. Ruled by a god that was corrupted long before I intervened. If I succeed, I will make a new world, one without such things - if the steps I must take to get there are cruel, so be it. Soon that cruelty will never exist again... can't you see this!?"

"It is your world that requires such a thing, Archangel." Her tone was hard, cold, and her posture the same. Despite that, she felt sorrow for him, seeing how he struggled with himself. She had hurt him greatly, she knew, both by leaving and now with this, but this was one thing she would not compromise on.

"How can you guarantee that a world which must be born from cruelty will be free of it?"

"Because I will not let it!"

How many times in all the years she'd known him had the Archangel actually raised his voice? He seemed to realize it the instant it snapped out of his mouth, and his legs jerked as if to try and curl up. Gravity and his position prevented that, however, and so for a long moment he was simply quiet. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse, as if that one burst had ruined it.

"I can't... let anything like that happen again. But if you speak the truth, Angelicus... it already no longer matters. Without both the boy and the ampules, we cannot purify the Absolute God..."

He heaved a deep breath, finally dropping his hands, though his head turned away to stare into the blackness behind him.

"This world will continue to twist, perhaps until it is even more utterly unrecognizable than it is now. Can't you call that a fate equally cruel?"

She was taken aback by the sudden force of his response, floating backwards in a flinch, both her birds fluttering in surprise. It was quick, a brief interruption of her calm before she settled back into it.

She folded her hands in front of her shins, looking across at him with a slight tilt to her head. Despite the blankness of her face, she seemed somehow incredibly sad. What she felt for him now was pity, more than anything. That he had driven himself to such lengths, that he had ended up like this, that even now he denied everything was his own fault and sought to claim he could fix it all if only his original plan could succeed.

She could not convince him that he was wrong. He was distorted too far by his own baroques, though he could not see it, did not realize it.

And yet, she would still try. She couldn't stand to see him like this. It hurt her too deeply to walk away again.

"I believe there must be another way. That boy - he will find it."

Meeting Again

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