Azrael felt them arriving before he saw the distortions in the air, which was something he hadn’t known he was capable of before. In the woods, he had noticed the disruption of the atmosphere that signaled their arrival, and at Vivian’s house when they had appeared out of his line of sight. This time, he felt the pulse of their presence radiating around something powerful.
He had known that he and Tobias wouldn’t have much more time to be with one another. It was what had driven him to place their fate before them and speak honestly of it. Yet, he had hoped that he would have longer than this. That last kiss between them was all they were going to be afforded. Ah, what he would have given to have that one last kiss turn into one last night, pressed against one another as they breathed in the moment.
His eyes closed against the growing pulse of power, then, hearing Tobias swear profusely under his breath, he knew that they had arrived. The pulse turned into something almost like a song, the tune of which poured into his body. It found its place deep within him, echoing around in the hollow places that the power had been drawn from originally. That empty place called to the power, and the power responded in kind. They had brought Azrael’s essence.
When his eyes opened, he was surprised to see that it was Raphael who held it so gently in his hands. The statuette seemed so small, and for a moment, Azrael could only stare at it in wonder. He hadn’t actually witnessed his essence being stripped from him, rather only felt it drawn forth before he was sent plummeting to the earth. He had glimpsed the vessel that had been its intended captor, but it had been a small cube of infinitely pure, spun glass. Its home had changed since then, and it was so strange to see the very core of what he had been for eons, shaped into such a small, intimate form.
Tobias had said nothing, and Azrael glanced around to find him transfixed by the sight of the statuette. The expression on his face was strange, yet familiar. It was the same expression that Tobias had on his face when he looked at Azrael. It was equal parts confusion and wonder, as if Tobias could not figure out where Azrael had come from or how he had come about. It had always made Azrael laugh because in those moments, Tobias was in awe of the love and warmth he was feeling once more.
Raphael had noticed the look on Tobias’s face as well, though Gabriel’s gaze was transfixed on Azrael and Azrael alone. Tobias knew what it was without being told.
“Brother.”
Gabriel’s words brought Azrael’s attention back to the present, the ache in him deepening as he realized his human lover now knew what the statue, this lost part of himself, represented. “Seems a poor choice of greeting when you aim to drag me back in chains and thrown me into The Pit, Gabriel.”
Tobias’s own rapture was broken. “Hell? They’re going to send you to Hell?”
“Where do you think the disobedient angels of the past have gone?” Azrael asked softly, wishing he had thought better before mentioning that little tidbit.
“A cage? Some other dimension? I don’t know, but Hell? For what? Because you stayed with me, because you dared to love me?”
Gabriel stood straight. “Judgement has not been passed upon you yet, brother. You are still one of us, no matter what you have done, so far. You are to stand trial before the entirety of the Host. There, you will be able to defend yourself. Without judgement, there is no punishment.”
“That’s a fancy way of saying you aren’t sending him to Hell, yet.”
“Tobias,” Azrael interrupted, “I knew the punishment for disobedience from the very beginning. If I am kept from The Pit, it will be a surprise. No angel disobeys without knowing the end results of their choices. Be still.”
“Like hell!”
Azrael hadn’t truly expected Tobias to stand idly by. For all the pain that he had felt during their unspoken goodbye before, he knew it wouldn’t deter Tobias in the slightest. He was a man who had endured so much thus far, yet always found the will to fight when necessary. Sometimes that fight was against himself, but oftentimes, it was against the world itself. Azrael's brothers, however, did not know Tobias as he did, and both looked with varied levels of surprise at the human.
“You’re telling me that just because he broke a rule, he could get chucked in Hell with the rest of the angels who broke the rules? What other rules do you have that gets someone thrown away like they’re trash? Stub your toe on a Tuesday? Off to Hell with you! Glance at a flower in the wrong way? Off to Hell with you!”
Gabriel collected himself enough to speak. “You act as if this has no precedent when, in fact, even humans are held to divine laws. If you should break them, you too would be thrown into Hell, if that were the punishment for your acts.”
“Yeah, for murder, rape, beating the living shit out of kids or old people. You know, awful things, terrible things that people do all the time and deserve to be punished for. When did love become one of the things that you get punished for?” Tobias demanded.
“Angels and humans are not the same. You may love as you choose. Just not with an angel. His body and mind may human for now, but the void within him, where a human soul would reside, is what makes him an angel. That is what makes it forbidden. That is the law. By breaking the divine law, Azrael has chosen to become a rebel. It may not be solely up to me, but in my mind, he is a rebel through and through, and should be afforded the same treatment and punishment as a rebellious angel.”
Tobias whirled on Raphael, who looked genuinely startled to be under his attention. “You’re Raphael, right?” Raphael nodded slowly, which was enough for Tobias to continue, “That’s his soul in your hand, isn’t it?”
“His…essence,” Raphael replied, his tone making it both a correction and an affirmation.
“From what I’ve heard, that’s not a whole lot different than a soul. But you hold it. you’re actually touching it. Even from here, I can feel it. It’s like…having the Az that’s in front of me, but having that inside of me, too. I can hear it. I know what’s there. Does that feel like the soul of some terrible being that deserves to be thrown into The Pit, into a place of darkness and fire?”
Raphael’s eyes widened, darting between Tobias and Azrael in distress. For a moment, Azrael was amused at seeing the reserved angel looking rather flustered and nervous. Then, he saw the fear and doubt hidden behind those outward emotions, and surprise flooded Azrael. Raphael’s heavy silence wasn’t missed by Gabriel, who frowned heavily at him. In his refusal to speak, Raphael both refused to agree or disagree with what Tobias had said, but showed a flicker of doubt that was utterly absent in Gabriel.
“You cannot argue his case for him, mortal,” Gabriel snapped, still glaring at Raphael. “The laws are the laws, and he will be judged before the angels.”
“Fine," Tobias said, "then let me have a say! I’m just as much a part of this as he is!”
“As I have said, you are not to be held accountable for your actions. This particular law is against angels with humans, not humans with angels.”
“Then let me come to speak for him. If I’m not going to stand on trial, I can at least defend him at his.”
“Impossible! No human has stepped into Heaven. No living human, in any case. Not for millennia. No angel may bring a living human into Heaven, under any circumstances.”
Tobias crossed his arms across his chest stubbornly. “Fine, then call the big guy and tell him I want to speak with him.”
“If He wishes to speak with you, He will. You do not get to presume upon Him.”
Azrael placed a steadying hand on Tobias's shoulder. Despite the fire in his eyes, pain and helplessness lay behind the more passionate emotions. Gabriel would no more negotiate with him than he would have with the Fallen themselves. Desperation warred with Tobias’s anger, and Azrael pulled him gently away from his brothers so that he could face them himself.
Gabriel’s eyes drifted away from Tobias to rest upon Azrael. “Now, come with us, Azrael. It is over.”
Azrael straightened. “No.”
Gabriel appeared a little surprised and then annoyed. “No? What is the point of continuing to fight it? We have your essence. You can see it within Raphael’s grasp, as the mortal so gracefully pointed out. Just come with us so that we may put it back where it belongs.”
Azrael, still feeling the call of his essence with the statuette, gave a jerk of his head. “No.”
Exasperated, Gabriel threw up his hands, covering his face. There was an exhaustion in him, and Azrael felt a twinge of regret for all that he had put his brothers through. They had tried so hard to contain this disaster on their own, and now they had been forced to return home with their heads hung. They had returned to sing of their failure for all to hear. They were dealing with the apparent rebellion of one of their brothers once again, when the wounds of the last rebellion had yet to heal completely.
Gabriel sighed, letting his hands fall. “Why?”
“It matters not if you have the means to force me to return, brother. Nor if it is inevitable that I must return with you. I do not agree with this, with any of it. Months ago, I chose Tobias. I chose to be with him. I willingly gave up everything that I was to have this, even placing myself in a position to be condemned as a rebel against Heaven. Nothing from that moment has changed. If anything, my resolve has only grown.”
Tobias sighed beside him, leaning against him with a sudden grip on his wrist. “Az…”
Azrael shook his head and continued. “You can drag me back. You can force me to come with you. With what our brother holds in his hand, you have the ability to take all of my choice in the matter away. Yet, so long as I have the ability, so long as I can say ‘no,’ I will do so. I may not truly be a human, but I will retain the right to choose my own fate as one for as long as I can.”
Gabriel’s features hardened at his words. “A rebel to the very end, then?”
“If that is what you wish to call me, then so be it. I am what I am, brother, and I choose according to the dictates of my heart.”
Gabriel turned to Raphael. “Release it.”
Raphael gazed down at the crystal in his hand, hesitant in his confusion. They stared at him as he fought a war within himself, finally looking up at Azrael. Azrael could see the apology that went unspoken.
“Break it, brother,” Azrael whispered, “or Gabriel will do it for you.”
With a last look of regret, Raphael’s fingers unfolded from the statue until it plummeted to the ground. There was the sound of shattering, and Tobias’s indignant gasp beside him, then all was lost. Freed, the essence flowed back to its original home in an instant. He felt it taking root in the void within him. A cry of joy and sorrow pulled through him as he became whole once more.
It washed through him, the song of Heaven beginning to echo down from somewhere far above him. His ties to the lands of the dead returned, and he could hear their cries and sobbing in the distance. The room’s edges became blurry, less defined, but his returning sight would have allowed him to see around them, if he so wished, into the realms beyond this one. Power flooded him, dispelling a weakness he hadn’t noticed in months. His essence had returned, and he was a true angel once more.
Gabriel’s noise of disgust brought him back from the forlorn acknowledgement of his returned power. His ashy wings spread out behind him, whole and solid. A glance in the nearby hotel mirror showed that the glow to his eyes had returned, glimmering gold set into his face. Yet, not all had returned as it once had been. The tattered, worn robes of gray and off-white he once bore upon his body for millennia were not there. He stood in the clothes he had worn only moments ago, though the shirt had shifted to allow for his wings. In one last, unconscious act of defiance, he had kept even that one small piece of his former humanity with him.
Tobias gaped at him, now having to stare up as Azrael stood over him, smiling sadly at his human lover. Ignoring the other two angels, Tobias reached up, gently running his fingers along the downy feathers of his wings. Ash coated them, transferring to Tobias’ exploratory touch as he felt the texture.
“Beautiful,” Tobias murmured, his eyes watering as he drew his hand back to cup Azrael’s face.
“Remember your promise,” he whispered to Tobias, hearing the dim echoes of his voice once again. He doubted that Tobias would find a way to alter any of the coming events. Yet, he knew all too well that a human could often do, with seeming ease, the very things that an angel could never do. Perhaps, there was a way for Tobias to shift events and change their future. What if he couldn’t? Well, at least Tobias would have something to channel his pain into: a fight to focus on until reality settled in and the peace of acceptance could eventually be found.
“Azrael, to me.”
The command yanked at him, the core of his being responding in an instant. It had never been used so brutally on him before, and he hated it with a flare of rage. It had never been a cause for anger before, acceptance of command had once been second nature. Now, as it pulled his feet toward Gabriel, away from Tobias, he could feel the hate burning fiercely within him.
“Oh God,” Tobias whispered. “No.”
Gabriel turned to Tobias. “May He hear your prayers and answer them with compassion, mortal.”
Even as Azrael fought, as best he could against the command, to stay with Tobias, he recoiled against the rage that billowed out from Tobias. The human seemed so small now, his power so much less now that Azrael looked on it from angelic eyes. Yet, the heat of the obvious hate he felt had more power in it than he would have thought possible. As much love as he had seen come from Tobias, equal parts of loathing exuded from every part of him now.
“And I’ll pray that he throws you in The Pit where you belong, you sanctimonious rainbow-winged prick,” Tobias spat, venom dripping from his words. “You don’t know shit about compassion, or love. And my name is Tobias. If you’re going to steal the last good thing in my life, at least call me by my name.”
Gabriel looked at Azrael. “Now, Azrael.”
The pull came even harder, and with the last efforts of his will, Azrael placed his lips on Tobias’s temple. An ugly sound was pulled from his lips as he felt his body move toward Gabriel, yanking him from the grasp that Tobias had on his wrist. Azrael’s eyes never left Tobias’s as he walked before Gabriel. There were too many emotions in his lover’s eyes for him to place a single one, let alone name it.
Gabriel reached forward, but it was Raphael who approached him first, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. Not once had Raphael looked at Gabriel, and it was Tobias he was staring at now. There was an expression of utter sorrow on Raphael’s face, and Azrael’s own heart went out to him. His brother would have felt every moment of pain and despair in this room. It would have been agonizing to know what emotions lay in Tobias’s heart as Raphael so obviously did. Azrael loved his healing brother a little more, seeing the look of regret and understanding that he passed to Tobias.
The song of Heaven grew louder, yet even over the growing tune, Azrael heard Tobias’s steady but aching, “I love you, Az.”
“And I, you,” he said.
It was all he could manage before the song grew louder still, filling his every being, as Raphael gently drew him into Heaven. It was the song he had craved from the first moment he had returned from Saul, in his attempt to regain his place within the Host. The light of its existence filled his vision before he closed his eyes. It was the very thing he had wanted from the beginning of this journey, though not in the way he would have wished—to hear the true song of Heaven once more, and to join alongside it once more.
Yet, as the sound grew louder, drawing him closer to his fate, all he focused on was the deep rumble of Tobias’ voice as he sang his bittersweet hymns.