consumed by either fire or fire

[tryingitall]

Who: Balthazar, everyone and anyone! (Balthazar's vessel may also make appearances!)
Where: Memories, mindscapes, and dreams.
When: Days 83-88
What: An orgy, the Titanic, Heavenly angst, and Art. The city is also an option, I just didn't write a blurb for it.
Warnings: Sex, angst, potential violence, possible deaths depending on scenario.


The room is a mess. Blankets and cushions are strewn about the floor, a lamp has been knocked over, and someone has spilled liquor across of the piled clothing in the corner. The scent is overwhelming in the humid heat: sex, incense, sweat, alcohol.
It’s hard to tell how many bodies are entwined together here. A dozen? More? There are four on the bed, one person clinging so hard to the headboard that it creaks with every movement. Three more are clustered around a chair, the occupant’s whines and moans muffled by the close press of nude bodies. In a corner, a young woman is giggling as another girl licks drops of wine out of her cleavage.
Somewhere amidst the knots of slick bodies, there is an angel. He may be hard to track at first, but his voice winds its way through the gathering, burning through the noises of panting and the smack of skin against skin, a litany of soft endearments and reverent curses. There, good, yes, don’t stop, don’t stop…



The sky is black overhead, dotted with frosty stars, and the water rolling beneath the hull of the ship is the color of gray pearls. Titanic is far from shore, and her passengers are cheerfully oblivious to the danger drawing near. Balthazar rode this ship once before, as a faux-first-mate. This time, he’s a stowaway, a dark figure leaning against the railing near the bow. Only an observer to a history irrevocably written down.
“Pretty night,” a man pauses to greet him, on a stroll around the deck. “Cold as hell, but pretty.”
“It is, isn’t it?” The angel agrees, looking up at the sky. “I daresay it’ll get colder before the morning comes, though. We’ll see if you still think it’s pretty then, shall we?”
The stranger laughs. “Or I could just go inside.”
“No. Enjoy the beauty while it lasts.” Balthazar gives a small, deadened smile. There’s ice close ahead. The tragedy will begin and end in only a few short hours.



Balthazar’s not sure why his mind works so selectively. He can remember vivid flashes from his first days in existence. Comets sailing past the earth, the bubble of the primordial sea, and laughter, from an archangel, that seemed too big and bright for the skies that echoed its refrain.
After Lucifer’s Fall, the memories get dim and tangled. Heaven went darker, quieter, but how quickly did it happen? How soon after the clash did Gabriel go, too? He can’t be sure, and it’s unsettling for a being that isn’t supposed to suffer from age.
Still, the young angel has his own recollection of the moments after Gabriel was gone, when it felt like Heaven itself had a gaping wound.
He’s in a garden drenched with dew, like a morning in late spring. There are no flowers, only bare lily stamens left after petals fall away. It’s quiet, and gray, and Balthazar can feel his Grace aching, trembling on the edge of collapse. Can’t you bring him back, Father? Can’t you bring them both back?
There’s no answer, but he’s not sure he expected one. God doesn’t talk to the youngest angels. Perhaps they’re too frail to hear the Divine Voice directly. Thy will be done, he adds as an afterthought, but he doesn’t mean it, and he knows it.
Still, if God isn’t hearing his prayer anyway, there’s no harm in lying. A thousand angelic eyes blink rapidly, as if to clear themselves of tears they weren’t even designed to shed.



Dead. Castiel: dead. Uriel: dead, along with the siblings he murdered. Anna: locked away, untouchable, maybe soon to die, too.
Cas. Dead.
The walls of the Heavenly armory are thick, and Balthazar is the only one inside it now. The snap and ripple of energy from a thousand enchanted weapons dances over the walls, casting shadows of his own wings that seem to shiver in constant motion. His Grace is clenched into a dense, dark knot in the center of his being, a core of emotion drawing tighter, tighter, until everything outside it feels numb. Floating.
One by one, he closes all of his eyes, and time twists away from him. He’s not sure how long he blacks out, but when he’s sensible again, the wards are smashed, the weapons strewn all over, and both vessel and trueform ache, blue with bruises.
Balthazar looks blankly at the mess for a long moment, then moves to pick things up, piece by piece. It’s not until his arms are full that he realizes he has no intention of putting them back in their proper places.



Everything is light and fire and eyes. The human within the angel feels the pressure of power and age, burned to cinders and crushed into diamonds by the being within him (or is he within the angel now?). He’s died a hundred thousand rapturous deaths, cried in pain until his voice is transmuted into something ethereal and sharp as an ofan’s wing. But he’s still there, here, everywhere the angel is, and he remembers, and dreams.
Ink slices across a page. A fine gray haze of graphite dust hangs in the air. Paint drips and rolls down the shaft of a brush, stains his hands and sleeves, rich and sensual. If he could erase his mistakes and paint himself over, he would use shades of blue and gold; he would rip himself off the canvas and re-stretch to his limits and beyond.
He curls and uncurls his fingers, and suddenly his hands are wings, fine-boned and light, brittle and soft at the edges and heavy all the way down his arms.
“I promise, you’ll have Heaven,” the angel told him. “Someday.”
“Fuck it,” he answered. “I don’t need Heaven.”
Levi has what he needs: a half-wild brainfever, an infinite blend of Paradise and Perdition where the Muse is the only God that matters. Being a vessel hasn’t taken that away. Nothing ever will.

Comments

[servingmichael]

There's a moment. Time. Where Raphael doesn't react. For several reasons, not the least of which is wondering what in Heaven's name Balthazar is doing.

He can understand the rage, reaching out to smash and destroy. He can (almost) understand taking weapons - they are in a war. Though he doesn't envy Balthazar when Virgil gets his hands on him.

But what is he doing, here, with this boy?

He finally steps in, speaks up. "How do you plan to do that, brother?"

[tryingitall]

Balthazar feels a bit sad about burning that bridge, truth be told. He and Virgil weren't best friends, but they got along well enough. Balthazar admired him.

It took a hell of a lot to alienate him from the society of the Host.

When Raphael speaks, everything freezes except the younger angel. He looks up with an expression of mixed fear and fury. Half in and half out of the dream, he rises and flares his wings. It's a bit like an angry sparrow facing down an eagle. "Raphael. You found me quicker than I expected."

[servingmichael]

The look Raphael gives Balthazar probably could not be more condescending. His head is tilted just off center, his jaw is tensed slightly but lips pulled into a soft smirk, one eye brow quirked up.

"So I did. You didn't answer me."

[tryingitall]

Balthazar looks over his shoulder at the still, passive figure of the boy, then back at Raphael. "I'm going to give him a piece of the Staff," he says evenly. "And watch what he does from there. Unless you're here to stop me."

This is strange. This isn't how it's supposed to happen. How it happened before. Still, he presses ahead doggedly, clinging to the sketchy logic of the dream-world. "But you're not, because you didn't before. His name is Aaron, and he's just lost his big brother."

[servingmichael]

"You're just going to give it to him." It's flat. Never mind destroying the thing.

And while he felt for the boy - he knew, so well, that pain. "Many humans lose their older brothers everyday. He's not special."

[tryingitall]

"Not exactly. It's a fair trade." His eyes narrow. "You're the one who taught me how powerful human souls can be. Do you remember?"

Yet another ethical line he's stepped blithely over and left in the dust. In all fairness, he has no plan to do anything with the boy's soul except keep it. Powerful or not, it has less use to him than it would to a crossroads demon. He's grasping at straws, with some vague half-baked plan about saving it for backup. To heal himself. To heal a sibling. To make a last stand when the world falls down.

For company.

"Why does it matter if he's special? He prayed for help, and I'm the only one that answered."

[servingmichael]

He did indeed remember. It's part of why his face ticks so badly. "Does he even understand what you are taking? Or did you decide you hadn't fallen far enough?"

It's a scoff, sneered. A tone Raphael almost never uses with the youngest angels - there's no need to. "Millions, billions prey for help every day. Going to shred Heaven's arsenal to fuel their revenge? How do you chose which ones to help?" Raphael knew you couldn't. He'd tried.

[tryingitall]

"If there's further to fall, I'm game to try it," he says very softly. "What does it matter?"

Except some things do still matter to him, at least a little. Enough that he's keeping himself between the frozen human and Raphael, lest the boy be taken away. "There are worse things the weapons could be used for. Already have been, in some cases."

[servingmichael]

"You have no idea how far you have to Fall. None." It's almost growled, like a rumble of thunder, than spoken. "It matters because I haven't done what I've done to allow this." That wasn't the whole reason, or even most of it, but it was part of it.

Raphael wouldn't hurt the boy, but he might send him away if he can. "And what's to stop someone from taking it from him, and doing worse?"

[tryingitall]

"It's a losing battle, Raphael. God isn't coming back. No one cares what we do." Even as he says it, he realizes the archangel is perfectly cognizant of this reality, and trails off.

Admittedly, he hadn't considered the possibility that someone might take the weapon from the child. "I'll keep an eye on him. He's mine."

[servingmichael]

"Until Castiel was raised after Sam Winchester pulled Lucifer and Michael into the Cage, I believed God to be dead. I haven't believed he was going to return since long before Gabriel left." Not that he'd told that to Michael. "But you're wrong about no one caring what we do." He cared, if nothing else.

"And the rest of the pieces?" It's not like there is a war going on and would attract attention, right?

[tryingitall]

"Maybe you're the only one, then." It's defiant, a child thumbing his nose at authority.

To complete the picture, he adds sulkily, "I've got no plans for the rest yet."

[servingmichael]

"Of all of us who knew, Michael and Joshua were the only two who really believed it, and even Joshua admitted he was never told anything about a return. What was it Joshua said? 'He knows what the angels are doing. He knows that the Apocalypse has begun. He just doesn’t think it’s His problem.' Ask Chuck, he saw it." It's cruel, yes, but it needs to be said. God didn't care, not about any of them.

"Good, then give it back."

[tryingitall]

This is something he hasn't heard. True, Balthazar has said all along that he believes God is watching and refusing to intervene, but to hear it confirmed, by Raphael no less--

Well, that's more or less a punch to the gut. He goes very still, face almost blank as he tries to process. At last, slowly, he asks, "Is that why you're doing all this? To finish it all?"

[servingmichael]

It never stops being a punch in the gut. That, combined with Michael, had been what had finally twisted Raphael away from any remaining loyalty to God.

"It's a good part of it." Things would only continue to get worse. "Children like that boy, his brother? I said, there are millions more like him. How many more do you think there will be? How many more worse? How many before him?" Too many. Far too many in Raphael's opinion. "And us? We've spilled enough of our Grace. Michael and I just wanted peace, paradise, for all of us."

[tryingitall]

"No. You're not talking about peace, Raphael. You're talking about oblivion." Balthazar takes a step or two forward, head at a slight tilt as if he's struggling to read the archangel's face. "You're talking about the annihilation of reality as we know it. Aren't you? Because that's all that's left, if God doesn't care."

[servingmichael]

Raphael is difficult to read under the best of circumstances, and now it's harder. His eyes are a bit glassy, but mostly he just looks like he's shutting down. "That is all that's left. But there's a difference between a quick end and a slow, lingering decay. The four of us...we could have held it together perhaps. But not now. We're tired Balthazar. We did the best we could and it's not going to work. There's no reason to delay it any further." He'd told Castiel this, once. He hadn't listened. Had refused to listen. He didn't actually expect any different this time around.

[tryingitall]

He doesn't know how to react to this. In some ways, it's like looking in a mirror, the archangel's loneliness and despair almost tangible. Too familiar, and coming from Raphael of all angels--if there was anyone in Heaven Balthazar expected to be steadfast and rock-solid into eternity, it was Raphael. More so even than Michael, who's always been a cipher to him.

Part of him wants to shout out in vindication. The rest of him wants to turn and run and forget this conversation ever happened. Neither part gets its way, though.

"You should come with me. Let Cas deal with Heaven; he thinks he wants to, anyway. I'll destroy the weapons, if you want." The words seem to just spill out, and Balthazar knows he's not thinking through the implications of his suggestion. It's just a rush of kinship and compassion that's temporarily derailed the filter between his mouth and his brain.

keywords.

[servingmichael]

Raphael stops. Just stills. It's almost like seeing someone freeze framed while everything else moves around them. 'You should come with me.' It's the first time in...he doesn't know how long that anyone other than Michael had wanted Raphael at their side. Finally his head cocks to the side, much more movement than anyone normally gets out of him.

"I can't." It's not argumentative. "I can't abandon them just because others have abandoned us." He didn't mean Balthazar. He meant God, Lucifer, and Gabriel. "Running Heaven would kill Castiel. Or worse. And I can't betray Michael in that way."

;_;

[tryingitall]

The dreamscape around them is blurring and melting even as Raphael answers, the porch steps dissolving into dust, Aaron Birch a wisp of wind that floats rapidly away. Balthazar's brow creases, a glassy, bright sheen in his own eyes now.

Strangely, he can sense the lack of accusation in the archangel's voice. He can feel the futility of arguing further, too. It's been done, hasn't it? This is a memory, some construct of his mind, or Raphael's or the Cape's.

"Like I couldn't let Castiel go," he says quietly.

What else is there to say? Probably a lot, in fact, but he seems to have lost the strength to say it now.

i warned you

[servingmichael]

Raphael thinks, he's not sure yet, that he's had a similar conversation with Gabriel. Time is odd, he dislikes the dreamscape.

"None of us have ever really been good at letting go." Except God. And Metatron, he thought. "Why should that change, no matter how impossible the circumstances?"

[tryingitall]

Balthazar nods slowly, feeling like he understands Raphael for the first time. At least a little. He takes a deep breath, but can't find any words to use it on, so it simply escapes in a long, wistful sigh.

When the silence becomes awkward, he forces his lips to move once more. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't change anything."

[servingmichael]

"The question is, what does it change now?" Raphael wouldn't tamper with the past, not unless he has no other option and he'll be hesitant then too.

[tryingitall]

"I'm not sure I have an answer for that yet. I don't think I have it in me any more to be loyal to Plans or Prophecies. Just people. Just family." Shoving his hands in his pockets, he looks away. "Maybe that's not good enough in Heaven, but we're not there now."

[servingmichael]

"There are always Plans, little brother. Always, even if you don't know them." It wasn't augmentative, it simply was. Death himself had plans and designs, Castiel's radical beliefs didn't change that fundamental fact. Everyone had a plan. "And while I do applaud loyalty, it's not my approval of it matters." He was still - always would be - bitter about Michael's betrayal. If loyalty to family mattered...Michael was the most loyal.