outside_omens | (no subject)

Entry tags:

mictain,
war

(no subject)

Date: February 20, 2000 - later
Setting: St. James' Park
Status: Mictain, War
Summary: War comes to get Mictain to the Manor.

Mictain couldn't tell how long it had been since the angels had left by the time he was finally able to stop shaking. He had ages ago closed out the pain, but he still felt rather weak and disoriented, still not used to his new form of existence.

Nobody saw him, of course, but no human had tried to approach the clearing even once. The aura he was giving off drove them away, and that was all well and fine with him. He didn't want anybody near at the moment.

He felt empty. He'd been torn away from the only constant thing in his existence, and it hurt on a level even he couldn't ignore. However, he just clenched his eyes shut and endured it, silently vowing revenge for Uriel and everybody else who was somehow involved in his Fall.

...Well, except for Raphael. But only because the healer was far too much fun to lust after to even think about spoiling his beauty. And that was all there was to it. Period.

Just as he had struggled himself into a standing position at last, stretching his now midnight black wings as wide as he could to check if they were alright, he felt the presence of another immortal. Not turning around, he summoned his sword to hand. It felt cool under his skin -- still dangerous, yes, but not holy. It was his sword first and foremost, not an angel's. Only now, secure with his weapon although he hardly had the strength left to actually use it, did he turn around to see who was approaching.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She wasn't an idiot, and only an idiot would have gone to retrieve a volatile demon unarmed, but she hadn't brought a sword either. Both War's hands were in her oversized pockets, her right clutched around a throwing knife just in case she needed a distraction. Her face, however, was blank. "Hey," she said, dully. "Like the hair."

Mictain saw the person approaching him and sneered. "Like the hair?" he echoed disbelievingly. "That's all you have to say?" Placing the tip of the sword on the ground and leaning against its hilt, he eyed the personification warily. He wasn't an idiot either, and he thus knew that at least one of her currently hidden hands was holding a weapon.

He spread his wings even wider for a moment as if to show them off before drawing them behind his back, out of her reach. One could never be too careful in a situation like this. "Did Adam send you?" he asked. "Or did you come to mock my misery?" One blond eyebrow was raised in challenge.

"Why wouldn't I?" War shrugged. "It's nice. Always liked red, but you knew that. Wrong conversational icebreaker, okay." She brushed some of her own hair out of her face with her left hand. "Yeah, Adam talked to me, but that's not why I came."

Mictain saw her brushing hair from her face and relaxed a bit. There didn't seem to be anything in her now empty pocket -- only one weapon, then. Of course, given what she was that didn't make her any less dangerous, but it was a good sign anyway.

"Then why did you come here?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. Although still wary, he was now more curious. "To exchange hairstyle tips?"

War fingered the knife thoughtfully, tapping her forefinger against the blade. It didn't look as if she was going to need it, but while Michael may not have been inclined to stab erratically, Mictain might be. Besides, if nothing else, the feeling of cold steel under her fingers was reassuring, like a security blanket. "Actually, I came to say your friends are complete fuckwads," she said blunty. "But we can talk hair if you want."

Mictain laughed bitterly at that. "What friends?" he asked. "Gabriel saw it more important to fly away than to check whether I was still even alive, Uriel, whom I thought of as my best friend, Felled me, and Raphael, the one I Fell for -- literally --, at first manipulated me and then fled when everything went awry. They are all just miserable little fuckers, on that I agree with you, but I wouldn't call them my friends."

So it might have been a mistake to send the knife flying across the clearing to embed itself in the bark of a tree, but War did it nonetheless. "That," she growled. "All that, stupid. Miserable. It's not my place to pass judgment on you celestial types, but if I did, there'd be a couple of archangels with missing limbs. I don't care what color your fucking wings are, that was low."

Mictain blinked as she threw the knife but chose not to comment. Well, now whe was most probably unarmed. A good thing, that. He had absolutely no strength left to fight -- it took about all he had to stay upright.

"That's the way it's always been," he said with a bitter tone. "Angels and demons don't mix -- I should know it if anyone; after all, I was always the one most eager to slay any demon crossing my way. The stories of the few exceptions to that rule rarely end well. However," he then said, "not getting along at the first place and completely abandoning are two quite different things."

She shook her head wildly. "'s what I meant. You don't leave someone behind like that! I don't care if you Fell or whatever it is you did to Fall. They could've--" War glared, growled again. "They could've at least made sure you weren't completely broken, or anything. It's not like you don't need consideration, now. Assholes."

"Give consideration to me? Ha. They were in more hurry to leave for their own private sulking sessions." Michael smirked bitterly. Then he shuddered slightly, the effort of standing starting to get too much to his exhausted body, but his pride kept him upright, refusing to give up in front of War. Not that he'd ever given up in front of anyone, but especially not in her sight -- he had been created as a warrior and nothing else, and he'd never become anything else, either. Basically she, and what she embodied, defined the purpose of his whole existence.

"Assholes, yeah," he admitted, then added, "assuming Uriel even has one, of course. With all his no-sleep-no-drink-no-food-no-breath-no-heartbeat-no-fucking-life-or-even-bloody-vital-signs attitude I wouldn't be much surprised if he was about as far anatomically correct as your average doll under that robe of his. How do we know he's still alive, anyway? Or that he's ever been?"

It had always irritated him, even as an angel, not that he'd ever admitted it then. It was like by rejecting any human-like functions Uriel considered himself to be above such things and thus also above the other angels, who breathed, ate, slept, and everything else. He was completely without any personal goals, dreams, anything -- just a life-sized doll who did everything He wanted and little else. He may have had the Presence, but he had no life. Stupid good-for-nothing bastard.

War glared at him. "Fuck it. I know you're hurting and this whole situation's about as fucked up as it can get, but if I wanted an introduction to angel anatomy I'd've bent one over a table, okay?"

Well, even if he was going to stand there staring, that was no reason she should. She settled herself comfortably on a nearby bench, legs crossed. "Sit down, will you? Or if you won't, tell me if you want to put that sword to better use and I can whip up a riot for you."

Mictain found himself actually laughing at her words. "So sorry if my choice of topic is not to your liking," he said mockingly, smirking at her. "I've never been known for my social skills."

He then plopped down on another bench, banishing his sword. He definitely wouldn't have the strength to use it anyway, not that she needed to know that. "Has anything of interest happened at the Manor, anyway?"

She smiled sweetly, like a knife dipped in honey. "As long as you're willing to apologize.

"Not that I know of," War said. "But it's not as if there's a whole lot going on more interesting than this, is there? Lots of angels breaking, I'm sure."

Mictain smirked. "Well, it sure did seem to be fucking interesting in their opinion as they fled," he said. "I just thought that you might have heard of one breaking in particular." He didn't bother to explain his words to her, just thought back to some things Uriel had said during their conversations.

-- you would soon find yourself with one fellow archangel less --

Perhaps it is best, then, that if we do actually come that far, you shall come to check up on me afterwards, hm?

Well, he was not going to go to check on him. He was definitely not going to go anywhere near Uriel at the moment. The bastard could die for all he cared. If the idiot wanted to die anyway, who was he to deny him that joy?

She'd spent little time around Uriel since he had arrived at the manor, and most of that had been spent tossing snowballs at him. He wasn't the first archangel to come to mind. "If the healer died, I would have noticed," War said, neatly misinterpreting Mictain's meaning. She cocked her head. "You still love him?"

Mictain was taken aback by her question. In fact, he was so surprised that he actually answered truthfully. "Yes, I do," he replied. "The Fall changes what you are, not what you feel. Of course, the results of the Fall may change the feelings, but not the Falling itself." Of course, he soon regretted his words -- here he was, baring his feelings to the first being who thought to ask! -- but he couldn't very well pull his words back.

"And besides," he said then, "Raphael is not the one I was talking about."

War nodded thoughtfully, a slight smile on her face. "Maybe it's good," she said. "I mean, there's a hell of a lot of prejudice piled on top of it-- normally that's delicious, you know, causes a lot of explosive tension; my area of expertise. But you'd think angels'd be good at forgiveness, you know? So your wings changed color and you need some dental work. How're you different, really, aside from the sparkling vocabulary?"

She tilted her head. "Oh, no?"

Mictain couldn't help but laugh aloud at that. 'Some dental work,' indeed. Why, that was the only difference between him and his former angel self, yes. Funny how he hadn't noticed it before.

"How am I different? I'm on the fucking opposite side now," he replied. "Angels and demons aren't just two separate groups; they are the complete opposites of each other. An angel's powers are holy, a demon's unholy. They cancel each other. Where previously being in a church would have just strengthened me, now I wouldn't dare go inside one -- I'm not too fond of incredible pain, discorporation, and possibly permanent death."

He snorted a bit. "I'm the complete opposite of what I was before. What little remains of my former self -- what wasn't burned off as I Fell -- is twisted and broken beyond any recognition. Most of it is just, well, gone. I'm empty. I am not the former Michael with different colour of wings and fangs. Everything that Michael was has left me, was torn from me by my fucking so-called best friend, and it will not come back. I'm not him, I couldn't be him even if I tried, and I don't want to be him. I may remember what it was like to be him but I can't be him anymore -- like a man in the middle of a battle may remember peace but can't stop fighting even if he wanted to.

"No, not Raphael," he then added, "it's Uriel. He's -- from what I've managed to figure out, he's not exactly right in the head. Or more like completely nuts, absolutely crazy, fucked up beyond any measure. And he has a tendency to go for self-destructive behaviour when things aren't going his way, too. Bloody good poster angel He's picked to be His fucking favourite."

Oh, idiot.

War picked herself up and prowled over to Mictain's bench, sitting down heavily beside him. "You're not making sense," she said. "Maybe it's my neutrality talking. What exactly makes you so different? I've seen millions of people change sides, and it's never changed who they are. You're not Michael anymore, fine. But who the hell's Mictain and why's he so different? Evil? Evil's open to interpretation."

She paused, digesting what Mictain had said about Uriel. "Well," she said finally, "that's God for you."

"Well, I assume the people you've seen changing sides have usually chosen to do so," Mictain said bitterly. "However, Falling is not a choice, it's a punishment. Nobody wants to Fall. It does change you, very deeply -- the changes in your appearance are just an indication that something has changed in the inside. It's -- I don't know."

He sighed. "Look, you've been around almost as long as I have. In fact, I think you were the first of your kind to come to existence -- by the time the War begun, nobody had ever died, or fallen sick, or experienced hunger. Therefore you might be able to understand this." He turned to look at her, red eyes blazing.

"Imagine that all your existence, all those six millennia plus, there's been something -- or, rather, Somebody -- who has always been with you. No matter what you do, they're there for you. No matter where you go, what you feel, who you meet, they stay beside you. You know you can always trust them to be there, that they will never leave your side, that you can always fall back on them when everything else fails. They're around so much they become a part of you -- a big part of you. Almost more a part of you than yourself. You identify yourself in relation to them. They're basically the reason for your existence."

He drew an unnecessary breath, then continued, "Now, imagine your best friend. The one you trust most in the whole universe right after this mysterious being. Imagine them coming and tearing you away from that being, imagine that being not resisting but rather pushing you away, imagine pain and fear beyond anything you've ever felt and complete, absolute loneliness. Imagine realizing for the first time in your existence that you are all alone, that nobody will come if you need help, that you're completely on your own. You've nobody to trust, things you enjoyed before now cause you pain or simply disgust, you feel like there is no hope and never will be, ever. You've become something you hate and fear and there is no way out of it, not ever.

"And now... come and tell me all this doesn't change you one bit, that you aren't any different from before." His eyes flashed again. "It's more than that; the Fall itself does change you, the way you feel, the way you think. But even the consequences of it are enough to change you drastically. It's not just wings and fangs."

She shifted so she was looking straight at him with her orange eyes.

"I could tell you the raw details about secret agents in wars, how they'd often work for one side then have to switch all their allegiances and ties from one side - one country, one language - to another, and how it changed them, how they never felt safe or connected in a hostile world. But I'm not going to, because I think you know all that already."

She paused, and he looked at her waiting to see what she'd come up with next, trying to talk to a freshly Fallen angel.

"I do, however, object to some of the other things you just said. I've just come out here looking for you - even though Adam asked me, I still had to agree - and you think you can sit here and tell me that you're completely on your own and no one will come when you need help?"

She shook her head.

"You're not on your own, else I wouldn't be sitting right next to you. I can't make you trust me, but I - and others, back at the Manor - can look after you and help you. Hell, it's one of the reasons we're all there, when you come down to it."

She stopped, and held her hand out to him.

"Come back with me?"

Mictain laughed bitterly. "Well done," he said, "lecturing to a demon how our purpose is to look after each other. I wasn't too good at that even back when I was an angel, and now I couldn't care less." Uriel's face flashed in his mind's eye, and he smiled wryly. No, he'd never been too good at looking after others.

"I guess I will, though," he said, accepting her hand and standing up. "If not for anything else, then at least to show those idiots that the last word hasn't been said yet."

Instead of pulling a face at his words, she exulted silently. Fighting spirit: that was what she liked to see.

War steadied him on his feet, then slung his arm round her shoulders as she walked him back to her motorbike where she'd left it[1] outside the park. She dug out a spare crash helmet - she wasn't sure how much it took to discorporate a demon, but she wasn't going to take any chances - and fitted it over Mictain's head, then settled him on the seat behind her.

She looked regretfully over her shoulder as she revved the engine. She'd liked that throwing knife, it had beautiful balance... Ah well. There were more pretties in the world.

With a nod over her shoulder to the demon holding on behind her and a "Hold tight!", she gripped the handlebars and they sped back out of London, towards the Manor.

------------------

[1]Unchained - if anyone was fool enough to try to steal it.. Well. She didn't collect weaponry for nothing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only