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A breath touches Michael’s ear, the ghost of a bridge that once united twin brothers. It must be a lapse of judgment, brief wistfulness, that bids Michael to listen.
In the early days of the war, Gabriel hailed Michael often. He plead for understanding, even joked about Michael’s affection for creatures he once massacred by droves. Since, Gabriel’s attempts have grown fewer and angrier. He screams for the sake of screaming, desperate to rouse Michael's temper. Michael has learned not to listen.
But tonight, Gabriel’s call is strangely subdued. There is mourning in his song, unmistakable pain. Michael remembers Gabriel’s voice crying from the darkness of nothing to existence. Beyond their twin sisters, who can know another as deeply as Michael knows Gabriel? Even the Morningstar was born alone.
Michael extracts himself from a tangle of human limbs. Not a single one stirs as Michael slides his balcony door open.
From the Stratosphere’s highest floor, Michael sees the border wall of Vega and the desert beyond, like a sea of shadow. If Gabriel and his armies advance, Michael will have full warning from here.
Outside in the chill of night, Michael hones on his brother’s voice. Gabriel sounds weakened, hurt somehow. Michael’s thoughts turn to uprising, a mutiny of Gabriel’s most trusted higher angels. But the tenor of Gabriel's voice eases Michae's concern. Quiet as he sounds, his call persists.
The pierce of Empyrean steel would stitch their severed lines in an instant. Michael has left just enough of their bond to ensure this reaction. Were Gabriel’s breath to fail, Michael would gasp with him. Were he to bleed, Michael would grasp at phantom wounds. Gabriel does not call to Michael because he is injured. Why then?
From Michael’s back, an expanse of black wings unfurl. Michael will regret answering this call, but regret seems a constant theme where his brother is concerned.
Wind whips across Michael’s face as he dives from the Stratosphere’s peak. Vega's lights glitter beneath him like a field of jewels. Michael's figure is familiar to the corpsmen on the border wall, and he crosses without incident. One day, will they fire upon him in error, or not in error? An orchestrated attempt on Michael's life by the ones Michael has sworn to protect?
This is Gabriel’s poisonous way of thinking, but tensions among the humans are high. Michael cannot blame them for their fear, but he will protect them as long as he is able. Even from themselves.
Michael knows where he will find Gabriel, and he knows where he will not.
His brother's throne stands in the mountains, a shrine to a self-proclaimed king. Michael does not understand the source of this vanity. Gabriel misses Father so much that he has made himself a god? It makes little sense.
Much as Gabriel enjoys his self-made kingdom, he never wants Michael to join him in the mountains. Maybe he does not want to risk Michael's mockery of his design. Or does he fear a sway of his court of angels to Michael’s side?
Gabriel's preference is by the ocean a few miles north of Helena. Rapids. Rocks. Blue water and bluer skies. But tonight, Gabriel calls from a quieter location. There are no cries of gulls or crashes of mounting tide. Michael recognizes the dance of branches in the forests bordering New Delphi.
In a clearing, Gabriel waits with downcast eyes. Gabriel has foregone his recent preference for body-encasing clothing. His black tunic is simple, trademark leather straps absent from his neck. Gabriel’s hair is loose too, not slicked back in his usual fashion. Pieces of it cling to skin still wet from a recent wash.
Michael’s boots set in the grass, and his wings sift like gentle breezes. In recent meetings, this has been Gabriel’s cue to draw his sword. Gabriel likes his bluster, and he pursues Michael with every shred of vanity in his heart. Tonight, Gabriel does not even raise his head.
Gabriel’s silence disquiets Michael. Perhaps something is truly wrong. Or - dare Michael hope - has news come of Father? Surely Michael would feel the swell of infinite existence in his own chest. Father’s absence is a gaping chasm in the fabric of life itself. Michael bears this devastation as best he can. But Gabriel, poor Gabriel, the loss of Father ruins him.
“Brother, what news?” Michael asks.
Gabriel does not look at him, but his smile turns sharp. “Oh,” he says, “are you speaking to me now?”
Michael deflates. "So this is more of the same. From the tenor of your call, I thought different.”
“So you do hear me.” Gabriel’s eyes are broken glass, but Michael reads a hesitance in him. “Do you only acknowledge your kin when you believe life and death to be in the balance?”
“That won’t work, Gabriel.” Michael feels tired. “Do you have anything else to say?” A laugh chokes from Gabriel. It sounds painful, wrong.
Michael leans against the base of a nearby tree. How young this planet is, how much room left to grow. If only Gabriel and his flock do not lay waste to it.
“Weren't you leaving?” Gabriel spits. “You must have more important business to attend to with those parasites you nurture. The rodents you hold in higher esteem than your own family-”
“They are Father’s most beloved creation!” Michael knows not to let Gabriel bait him, but he cannot help himself. “You used to know that better than anyone, Gabriel. Have you forgotten?”
Gabriel’s next laugh is quieter, raw as a fresh wound. “I learned long ago of the cruelty of man. Have you forgotten that, brother mine?”
Michael closes his eyes. Once, the thought of Gabriel turning a violent hand against humanity was unthinkable. Gabriel was the one who soothed Michael’s lust for blood and fought him back from the brink of madness. It remains Michael’s greatest failure that he has not saved Gabriel from the same fate.
“Will you be silent?” Gabriel’s smile grows spikes. “Will you forever be silent?”
Michael recognizes Gabriel’s plea and the hurt behind it. The same pain festers in Michael’s own belly. To be separated from Gabriel is not only distance from his kin. For them, twin archangels, it is a loss of self. The carving of a vital organ. A heart without its mind.
“I cannot forgive you for what you’ve done,” Michael tells him. It is true, though every word slices Michael’s tongue.
Even in the low light, Michael sees Gabriel’s flinch. “I don't need or want your forgiveness," Gabriel hisses. “I want you to-” he wavers, stoicism tumbling to despair. “I want you to stop.”
As intimately as Michael knows Gabriel, the meaning of this riddle is beyond him. “This is not my war, Gabriel," he says. "You know what you must do to end it-”
“Don't toy with me!” Unraveled as Gabriel has become, his vehemence still catches Michael by surprise. Gabriel's eyes are wet. “Speak or stay silent, but do not mock my pain!”
Have they truly been severed so long that Michael knows Gabriel so little? “I pity you, Gabriel,” Michael says, bewildered. “But I do not mock you.”
“I never hear you, or feel you, or see you. Only- only with those filthy- You taunt me. Everything I’ve done has been for you, for us! For our family, for Father!”
“You’ve gone mad, Gabriel,” Michael says quietly. He sees Gabriel’s insanity in the tear sliding down his cheek, in the tremor of his lips and the twitch of his hands. His precious brother, lost to his own hatred.
Michael has known this for years, of course. But he has not had to witness Gabriel’s broken state first hand. Even now, Michael would take this monster in his arms and soothe his pain if he could. But he cannot. They both know this.
“Then sever us and be done with it,” Gabriel snarls. “I would rather hear and see nothing. Cut me out of your life like the cancer you believe me to be.” Gabriel combs a furious hand through his hair.
Michael understands suddenly. He knows what Gabriel saw tonight. The touches he felt through the ghost of their bond. Phantom fingertips grazing. Breathed kisses between his thighs. The reverence of eager hands, the worship of polished mouths.
The bodies of higher angels are gifts from Father himself. Michael craves pleasure of the flesh as his swords once hungered for the blood of the wicked. But no number of willing human bodies can replace the joy of union with Gabriel. The completeness, the satisfaction, the height of passion and depth of feeling.
It is one thing for Gabriel to be silenced. It is another to forcibly feel every rut of passion from Michael’s bed. “I didn’t know,” Michael says.
A harsh laugh interrupts him. “You didn’t know! Are twenty-five meaningless years enough to make you forget what you are?”
“I didn’t know, Gabriel,” Michael repeats. He will not apologize for a condition born of Gabriel’s hate, but he did not mean to cause Gabriel pain. Michael grieves too - in body and mind. He misses his other half, the brother who was once the light to his darkness.
Gabriel clenches fingers in his own hair. Ruefully, Michael wonders if Gabriel would prefer them around his neck. “Assuming it was unintentional as you say," Gabriel mutters, "this will be the last I hear of you until the end.”
Michael smiles sadly. “If that is what you want.”
“Pointless.” Gabriel stalks forward, seething. “You know it’s not. You are my kin! Born of the same star, the first voice I ever heard. If only one day you could see what I see. The things you fight for will be your undoing, you must know this!”
“Gabriel, enough.” This argument has been had too many times to stomach again. Jealousy and misguided vengeance poison Gabriel’s mind. There is no reasoning with him.
Gabriel’s bluster deflates to a small, hopeless smile. “Your beloved apes have replaced me.” His fervor dissolves. Like Michael, Gabriel looks tired.
Michael shakes his head. “Your illness dethrones you, would-be God.”
Gabriel scrubs an angry hand across his face. “The brother I once knew,” he scowls, “would never accuse me of forsaking Father.”
Michael sighs. “You love too much, Gabriel. It is what I’ve cherished in you. That your own love poisons you like this… I cannot bear it. Perhaps others can. I am not strong enough.”
“The great Michael, not strong?” The taunt lacks bite. Gabriel looks sullen, gaze shifting to the forest floor. His boots crunch on a patch of fallen leaves.
“You think I don’t love you,” Michael says quietly. “That will never be true. I hate that you’ve done this, Gabriel. I hate the choice you’ve forced on me.”
Gabriel closes his eyes. “I never want to hear your voice again.” Michael knows a lie when he hears one, but the sentiment still scars. “Go back to your whores,” Gabriel mutters.
Michael eases from the tree’s base and steps into the clearing. The stars are brighter here, suns mere charms from the ground of this young world. Michael tries to hold to the joy of thousands of years before now. The pleasure he found in Gabriel’s laugh, his peace, his naked embrace.
They are archangels of God himself. Can they truly be undone by twenty-five meager years?
Michael cups a hand to Gabriel’s face. Gabriel snarls in warning, but he does not move.
“How I miss you,” Michael says. He grazes Gabriel’s cheek with a thumb. Gabriel's mouth slips open. “You won’t hear my voice again.”
Michael’s wings stretch to the heavens. He takes flight before Gabriel can respond.
As the wind whips by, Michael closes himself behind impenetrable walls. The final whispers of Gabriel’s voice fall away. He cuts Gabriel’s heartbeat from his own, and he snaps the final tie tethering their minds. Michael shivers. He is truly, utterly alone.
Michael exists in complete freedom for the first time since he came into being. Tears fall down his face and disappear into the night.
*The End*