She sits with her hands folded, one pressed over top of the other. From afar, it might even look as though she’s praying (it might look as though she’s holy, still held firm in the Mother's grasp). She breathes in. Slow, tentative—as though the air might carry unspoken words out and away from her. There’s a certain chilling numbness that creeps up on you when you’ve lived this way for so long; a buzzing static that burns from the base of your skull, all the way down to the backs of your knees, your calves—the place where your feet hit the ground running (always running, always dying to get out even as you lean into the punches). It’s the feeling of living in the hollowed-out limbs of a corpse, of walking around with waxen, rotting flesh and a smile that stretches slightly too far to be genuine. 

And yet, now, for once, her body is no longer whirring—no longer silently humming with agitation or the drive to propel herself forward and up, ever up. For once, she’s still, save for the thrashing in her throat. She breathes out. She rolls words around in her mouth: flashpoint, epiphany—whispers them like a prayer spoken to no one—lightning strike, catalyst. A thread pulled so taut, it cuts to marrow. Breathe in, breathe out. Keep the pace, hold the line. Adjust to the status quo. But the status quo has never looked so unappealing. Because, she realizes, if someone had asked her to paint the slope of a silver-blue throat, or the upturned palm of a scaled hand, she could do it with her eyes closed. She could do it in complete darkness, at the edge of existence. Of this she was nearly certain.

--- It had taken place in the corridors that stretch from one end of infinity to the next; a slicing wound driven between the ribs of the universe. And it had been innocuous, really—a passing glance, at first. And then an icy nod, the turn of a jaw towards the stale light. The brush of shoulders, and the ache that bloomed in her at the touch. Time wore on, kingdoms rose and fell. The sea drew towards the shore, Michael’s eyes drew towards a too-sharp mouth. In their own fragment of purgatory made heaven made something completely new, she and Dagon exchanged rasped whispers—hushed murmurings of a revolution.

The inferno in her gut grew, consumed, devoured. Years clawed past. It's important to note that angels, as imagined in most popular religious scripture, are exceptionally good at self-restraint. And for the most part, this is true. But those who wrote the holy texts never considered the canted slope of the devil’s mouth; they never imagined that the devil could be gentle, could press her palm to yours like a promise and speak new religion into being. And so, after what could have been eons or mere decades, they fell together, breath intermingling in the space that had become more sanctuary than abyss. Flashpoint, epiphany. It had been inevitable, really. Lightning strike, catalyst. They were two neutron stars collapsing in on themselves. Gravity, heat, the press of a sigh into her open mouth. The hunger that settled in the bottom of her gut. --- So when Gabriel walks into her office, head held high and grinning, Michael swallows it all down. She chokes it back, feels all the love she has for her demon lodge in her throat and stay there.