Cassiel had made the mistake of showing Cam where the grave was. The grave of their older brother, Zadkiel. Only, Camiel told Uriel the location one day, twisting her fingers as she spoke his name. Cassiel was trying to work through the Taboos God placed on the younger angel, and she’d made plenty of progress in the past few months.
Uriel listened. He promised her that he wouldn’t go there — why would he visit the grave of the monster that tried to kill him and did kill the only person who actually liked spending time around him? But that was his twin.
The Flaming Light of God and the Archangel of Mercy. They were supposed to be two halves of a whole, according to Remiel. Except Uriel was kept away from his other half, and he couldn’t remember the last time Zadkiel even looked his way with anything other than rage in his eyes… he lasted two weeks before finally visiting his twin’s grave.
Sitting in the darkness, he let himself cry — out of anger, out of grief, out of jealousy that Zadkiel was put out of his misery and left him to suffer… and out of love. He hadn’t allowed himself to grieve his twin, because he’d barely known the draconian angel. But he should have. He should have known him better than anyone.
At one point, Uriel thinks he sees Zadkiel, crouched down in front of him, looking so alike to himself that it was almost a fucked-up reflection. Uriel’s hair was lighter, mostly grey, his eyes were darker, his halo was constricting (always constricting), and his wings had feathers. He didn’t allow himself to look at Zadkiel directly, but he didn’t need to. The dark hair of Zadkiel was reflected in Raguel’s humanoid form, the light eyes were the same as Camiel’s, and the wings were… they were what Satan’s were first based off of. Zadkiel tells him to sleep, tells him that he’s forgiven, tells him that his wings should never have been clipped.
Uriel doesn’t remember the last time he flew, or the first time, but he lets himself be lulled to sleep by the words of his twin, curled on the dirt of his grave.
He stays that way for hours before he wakes to someone ripping at his arms. Uriel doesn’t try to escape, or fight back, and they shout words that hurt his head, and he closes his eyes, remembering lightning and the aching cold.
Vince didn’t find him. Elizabeth did, and as Vince shouted at her to stop, to not get hurt because he was calling Xipe, she clawed at the sleeping archangel, ripping his face and arms. He just seemed to lay there. Breathing through the pain like it was second nature.