decrolachia | Meeting Again

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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