you say [rookie] like it's a [bad] thing - Remiel and Gabriel
Human blood was red, he knows that, had seen too much of it spilled over the centuries, had grieved over it, finding it difficult to trust that such sacrifices were worth it, an oddity in a legacy of a jealous and a powerful God who accepted in payment fire and blood. Angels are light made flesh, and yet he was so much less than light, the growing understanding tainting him, that he had hated to punish the wicked through force, to harm through justice, had found no pleasure in it upon order. He was the voice of the Almighty, the intercessor, swift and fleeting and approachable with bright eyes and clever, human-tuned words, that aped as one of them, loving the harp, the horn, but never the sword. Pretty, empathetic Gabriel, who had closed his eyes when the aristocrats tumbled and the beasts ran wild in the streets, for if the injustice came with sweet smelling skin and soft words, then the only justice could be savagery.Â
Splintered wants. Words are wind. They never listened.
Human blood is red, but why did his look black in the moonlight? Shining like oil beneath the fizzing crackle of neon, absurd flamingo pink, it blends in deep eddies, a poisonous ink jet in the drifting, murky depths, thick enough to write his name in. Not that he would, he had no need for names down here, no one had any use for names down here. Even upon Earth there had been places like down here, where children play in drifting refuse and summer beneath fire hydrants and fathers rise screaming like leviathans from the deep. Pretty girls flutter temptingly, ephemeral for such concrete joys, their flimsy clothing light as termite wings beneath the unforgiving cast of the street lights. There is no name for such a place, not truly, although cities mold and shape their own. It is simply down here, and names are a detriment rather than an aid. Without a name, you could be anyone.
But would that be so bad? He hates this bloody city, hates to watch the heel of the rich grind slowly away at the faces of the poor, hates that broken-back equality that capitalism promises, only to perpetuate the eventual lie. A creature of light and air, freer even than many of his kin, his wings were clipped and his being funneled into a decaying organism that threatened to cave in all around him, each cell forcibly held in stasis, his Grace beating wildly through the paper-thin facade like the wings of a caged bird. He had worn the veneer, the disguise, but even so, ironically, it had been behavior not entity that had condemned him, and he takes his punishment with the good-humored ease of a rattlesnake roused.Â
Who knew that a human’s face had so many planes?Â
Words leave his mouth among the snaps and the impacts, mocking, laughing words, and at a pause, he chuckles at them through the blood at his teeth, spitting casually to the side and wiping the rainwater from his eyes. His cards scatter, wet and curled in the rain which shines in his close-cut hair like diamonds, gleaming over his warm skin. He is bare bone, atom-bombed, his every triumph a tragedy, slick as a seal, his coat hanging loosely over his shoulders, the tattered leather cushioning some of the blows. Terrifying and triumphant even as he is losing, consumed by his own tremendous force of personality, his lip curling in amused scorn, shaking his head, words sharp and fierce and yet strangely laconic, the only other sounds beside speech his labored breathing. There is no sense of pleading with him, nothing but the aw-shucks mentality of a man who knows his gauntlet is run and the absolute bloody-mindedness of one who refuses to fall in for the count.Â
Every time they strike him, he falls back down, and every time he rises again. He is divine and he is starlight, and he is torn flesh, muddied under flickering street lamps, decayed matter and broken bones. His laughter is bright, startling, in the darkness, pure defiance, swallowed by the blast radius of his own destruction but not destroyed, transfigured, brought into himself in one sudden, incandescent moment. He cannot feel the blows, they are distant and dim, and they form an almost soothing rhythm on his abused frame. His eyes gleam with stifled fire and he snarls, and he smiles.
Is that all you’ve got?
 Machismo, bravado, and as he grows numb, the sound of the rain drowns out their curses, and he shakes his head to think of the fact that these men, these incensed masses, who were so angry at being cheated, felt no twinge of guilt when they stole from those far less deserving. He had seen the humble gratitude in the eyes of old men, young men, gaunt women, their fragile smiles. He fought for them, Robin Hood upon a razor’s edge. He is speaking, but his words are fractured, praying in the hope of some other to defend him, with no experience to serve otherwise, his Grace swelled like some quivering inferno, held up by strings and spit and flesh. Brother, safety, warmth, care, and he means one in that cracked, broken, shaking voice that is equally joyous as afraid. Afraid, distantly, quietly afraid, a fear that wells like black water, rising like the tide.
He is dizzy. He is drifting, his beauty crackling and utterly, completely defiant as he finds his feet again. As he wavers, they circle him, a pack of wolves waiting for his feet to give, to tear at his unprotected belly, to wet their muzzles to the eyes in the result of all his failures, but he does not fall, not yet. He seems to hover upon falling, like some tremulous star, newborn, ready to take flight into the darkness, new and unencumbered. Blinking past the cold sting of the rain, he looks up into the sky.
