There is a Truck.

That is the first aberrant part of our story; we are on a school road which - although it sees traffic, and trucks - is generally not the kind of road that you speed down; everyone knows it is a school road, which means you generally get people with cameras and notepads and just plain old fans who like seeing students with wingspurs. However, it is 4 PM, and the truck driver has some strange idea that there are no more students at this time of day.

There are no traffic lights. There is a pedestrian crossing.

There usually aren't many students at 4 PM, because they get out at 3:25; but he stayed behind to talk to his grandmother and some of his exceedingly plentiful aunties. He left them a few moments ago. Across the road is a dairy which the students often frequent; he plans to go there to get a can of soda, giving the proprietor a grin which generally lands him a free Boost bar, and eat it in the park while waiting for someone to pick him up. Today it will be his father; yesterday it was his mother. This is normal. The Boost bar is generally normal.

Running is normal, too. He wants to get across the road. He looks both ways; but his mistake, in this instance, is to look the way that the truck is not coming from. When he steps out, to look at the way the truck is, it is generally to look very close at the fender as he is suddenly spirited away like a lamb to a hawk.

For a few minutes, everything happens very quickly.

Boy, meet truck.

Truck, meet boy.

Boy meet truck meet squealing breaks and breaking metal and the hot hard gravel of the road; boy meets kinetics, boy meets force, boy meets the noise of one small body getting hit for what is maybe meant to be the last time. A sack of flesh cannot withstand chrome at this pace; he is airborne, wet, meaty, flying, streaked across the tarmac, he is very shocked, he is very damp, he is very bloodied. There's hardly time to be more than shocked; all it is is the truck, and the noise like a watermelon being dropped from a height, and the suggestion of light and noise and sudden suffering.

Maybe it's karma. His grandfather is the Lord of Pain, his other the Angel of Death; Duriel knows the pain, and Samael knows the death. This is the last pain before the last breath. (His ribs are sticking, half-pulverized, into his lungs.) The truck's stopped now; there is a long red streak of the endless voyage of eight-year-old boy carried by the collision, down the road, shockingly liquid. (His skull is underestimated by the word 'fractured'. There is blood on his brain. It seeps.) There is nothing; he is in pieces; out of his body's respect, he goes unconscious.

If you want to look at his face - which you won't - you can still see his expression.

It's a soft, hollow, empty smile.

*

the gospel according to elijah

*

It was quite usual lately in the beautiful Indian summer that London was having for the teachers to go outside with their mugs of tea; Lindy was lolled near the gate, laughing, taking a hedonistic moment away from staff meetings and cleaning up her things for marking. She didn't have to worry; Yoyo was taking the bus home, and Repha'im and Shaktiel long past schooling age. It made her feel old, really. New generations of angels poured in and out of her classes, small but steady, fascinating in a world where she'd grown up without. She stirred her tea again, and took a large gulp.

" - no, if you ask me, Sama should date Aniel, she's lovely. Though maybe a little incestuous, now that I come to think about it. Um. Not that I think it matters in this family. That's some family tree we've got here, Demi. More like a family hedgerow. A family mangrove swamp. A family thicket. I'm so glad you found some euphemistic letter to put beside my name and Raz's for Liseli, by the way, I can't think of anything but 'f' - I mean FERTILIZATION, honestly, okay, I'm sorry, that sounded dirty - "

Demeter Serraffield, one time Archangel of Yesod, Current Countess of Oxford, mother of four and grandmother of one rolled her eyes slightly, running one slim finger around the rim of her coffee mug, "Frankly if Aniel is the most incestuous of the matches he considers, I will throw him a party," she closed her eyes briefly. She had given up fighting her children on who they might involve themselves with after it had been such a miserable failure with Jibreel. Now she was content to sit back and let genetics sort out all the tangles in her family tree. She supposed they'd learn the lesson the hard way when one of their children was born all webby. If such a case never came -- which was possible due to the inherently mysterious nature of angelic heredity -- then she wished them all well, and would be ceaselessly happy, even if one of her pets decided to marry one of their blood siblings. She waved Lindy off with one hand, "Oh, don't worry about offending my delicate sensibilities. I live with Eden, you will recall."

"Well, yeah," Lindy admitted, as if that explained everything, because sadly it did. "But, I mean, it could always be worse, right? I don't think I'm ever going to get grandkids. Ever. I'm just going to sneak in and write fake things on Idrael's birth certificate, honestly, because I've given up on having a scion of the Naaktgeboren family tree who does not make me kind of, you know, well, though maybe I should hold out for when they get older, though I love them all so much - "

Elaboration on the topic would have been had, had they not been interrupted by one of the loudest and most metallic cries of agony ever heard outside the school. There was an incessant, shrilling honk of a truck; fishtailing wheels; the noise of impact, a thud. More honking. Somebody screaming. It was loud and disorienting and it gutted both of them to the core.

"Shit," the angel of chaos hissed, and had tossed her mug to the grass without thinking; she was sprinting, Gabriel was sprinting, both of them were out the school gates with wide eyes and something terrible starting to wrap around them when they saw the rather forlorn little figure lying bleeding in the gutter. It looked crumpled and thrown-away, dipped crimson, a broken parody of a person.

"Shit," said Lindy again, and this time it came out a rising wail as she saw the uniform. "Shit - shit - "

Time spaced out for Demi in slow infinite moments as her mules scuff-skidded on the pavement and the world came into deep focus in the hair's breadth of a second, the world as viewed through an underwater lens, and again, once as she had five thousand years previous she felt as if she knew part of what being Metatron meant. Then it had been the earth under her feet and the city like a great living organism that had swallowed her whole. Now it was the knowing, sure and cold in her stomach. She knew what was coming, saw it in her head before she saw it with her eyes, with the greenlines erratic like static lines scattering every which way, knew who it was and what had been done. Knew what she would find in a sodden bundle of red, steaming going cold over hair the color of white gold now albino pink from the stain.

She did not stop to think as she never stopped to think because as she had once tried to explain it, there was never enough time in the world for the stopping and the thinking. It was not so much a ladder any more as it was a turn and skip-step up, halfway to heaven in a breath. She burned clean and pure and high like a star, counting out her own threads under her breath as they unwound around her in a beautiful and marvelous whirlwind of dying. Twenty-eight seconds. Twenty-eight seconds was all she had when once she had thrown her shoulder to the world and shifted it on its axis, burning lightning and ozone and fireworks for hours in the mud along the coast of Normandy. Perhaps she was getting old. Perhaps it was times of peace and stillness that had drawn the shuttle away from her ever-knitting fingers. She did not really have time to consider it.

Her shoes were gone and she left hollows of grass and flowers and butterflies burned into life and then gutted like candles as her feet splayed against the tarmac. There was so little left, like a bag of marbles dropped from the top of a building and left to shatter and scatter where they would. She was on her knees before him, like he was the lamb on the altar, and it was as if her fingers were digging through his cooling flesh, searching for the spark of green that was left, searching for the last bit of living that was left, and there was only the tattered hem of his school coat, the zipper torn off by the force of the impact. She dug deeper, feeling flesh and intestines and broken ribs and he was a ragdoll under her fingers. Fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds was the bridge from this world to the next. She had to find the catch, the last burn. She would find it under her hands, counting out her seconds into nothings. She wondered if Duriel would forgive her for not saying goodbye. That was another second. She had fourteen.

She caught it at eight, in the break of his ribcage, and pulled that one feeble stream of green to herself as if she was welcoming it home. Flesh of my flesh. She had seven seconds. If her previous reweavings had been gentle affairs where she tied up herself in the weaving of the line, even when it had been Duriel when he had still been red death and soulless, then this reweaving was a maelstrom of pulling anything she could get into herself and the remaking of this little broken boy. If all her life she had only asked, only begged what there was to spare, this time she stole and man-handled and took, forcing the green out of the grass and trees and killing all the small creeping things in a four block radius as she wrenched the green into her hands and built it, cats-cradle swift into a tether that would hold the weight of his soul. She was ceaseless, tireless, ancient, and everywhere and he was breathing. She had two seconds.

She brushed the hair out of his face with a gentle hand and then rolled back into oblivion.

(Which left Lindy screaming, screaming, every wingspur quivering and her hands over her face as the world stopped to come and look. The light from Gabriel hurt your eyes; she hadn't felt it in so long; the Light, the flowers dying on the pavement, crushed underneath her feet as she ran towards them.)

Blood. Boy. Gabriel lying on the ground, all burnt out from the Ascending; between the sort of gaps in her eyes she could see the life, as Chaos, the evergreen being knitted back. Demi had done something; whether it had worked, whether it had killed the angel of life herself in the doing, whatever the fuck it was - Normandy all over again and her hands were shaking, mouth gibbering. The truck had stopped; there was a man getting out of it, a nondescript sort of man, with a kind of puzzled expression as if he was thinking what was that bump. There were people coming out of houses; there were people coming out of the corner shop across the road; her own wings broke out of her back in sympathy, fluttering uselessly, halo and bluebells. Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god -

"He ran out into the road," the truck driver was saying, to nobody in particular. "Just ran out. Didn't see him. How could I see him?"

"It was a pedestrian crossing!" She was screaming at him, hysterics, voice wobbling as she desperately frisked herself for her cellphone. A dry part of her thought that it was probably better to say nothing until the lawyers got there, but then another even dryer part said that it didn't matter because there was an Angel of Clemency who was going to wring his neck. Shit. She was going to wring his neck. "It was a school crossing with lines, you fucking bastard! Oh, God, somebody call an ambulance, I can't find my phone - "

"He's an angel, right - " Even more discomfort. There were people staring at him aghast now. " - it doesn't matter, he'll be fine, won't he? - "

"HE'S AN EIGHT YEAR OLD CHILD, YOU BIG STUPID RETARD! You just mowed down the angel of the covenant!"

"Oh, fuck, that's Gabriel's grandson," said one of the onlookers, who were all like zombie puppets staring into nothing. At least he was quicker on the uptake. "Jesus Christ - "

"Fuck Jesus! Get an ambulance!"

People had already run away, ostensibly to get one; somebody offered the quivering angel of chaos a cellphone, and she managed to give them a grateful look as she dropped to Demi's side and tucked the damn thing under her chin. 1-1-1. Heartbeat? Heartbeat? Heartbeat? Heartbeat. She didn't even want to touch Buboe; she didn't want to shift him, in case he crumbled away in her hands. Oh, god, there was the terrible whiteness of bone underneath all those wounds; he was staring sightlessly up into the sky, a marionette with all strings cut, next to the last green butterfly of the archangel of life in all her fallen glory. Heartbeat. Gabriel was alive, thank God, thank God -

"Ambulance," she shrieked to the operator, too dry, too clinical. "Police, King's Cross, outside - outside - outside the school at St. Luke's, it's - it's a boy been run over by a truck, please, and the Archangel Gabriel - Demeter, please wake up, Demi, Demi - "

That, at least, started things getting done so quickly that even though the cellphone fell from her buttered grasp as she wept, things were moving. She didn't want to crawl over to Buboe - the small thin arm sticking out at funny angles, as if he had six joints in his forearm. He looked slightly - smoother - as if the weaving of the Life had knitted him partly back together; but he was still terribly broken, terribly wet, terribly spilling out so that the gutter was running like a plague in Egypt. It took her ten tries to take his pulse properly; and by the time she found one, she could hardly look for tears. She loved Buboe; who couldn't love Buboe? She had babies. She could imagine Yoyo lying there; well, she couldn't, she could imagine Yoyo standing there with a certain look on her face and a big dent in the truck - this wasn't fair, this wasn't fair, this was insanely stupid!

The madding crowd had finally made their move; all Lindy could think was that there were other people, people who had maybe more medical knowhow than watching a couple of episodes of Chicago Hope like she had; she was lead away bawling over to the school gates again, clutching the cellphone like a pacifier, crying as though her heart would break. Three angels in one place, two taken into the ambulance on gurneys, rigged up like Christmas trees; one in the police car, just before mob mentality would have cheerfully done in the truck driver out of pure human vengeance. Britain loved its royals; Britain loved its angels.

Bang.

(Young angel mowed down in the afternoon sunshine; film at eleven.)

*

Where were you when the shots were fired that rang round the world? Jibreel Eisenreich was sitting cross-legged on the floor at Bartleby's, one finger to her lips as she contemplated the organic monstrosity in front of her. It was meant to be the ruins at Carnac, effervescent as Ozymandias, built out of banana mush and raisins. Bartleby himself was queening over it as the centerpiece in the November show, but she herself was not entirely sure it would last that long. Her sculptures, built of only the deteriorating -- representative of the constant decay around her as civilization itself was worn down into sand -- rarely lasted more than a few weeks at most without constant tending, before they were unfit and unsafe to have in hygienic dwellings. Still, this one was Bartleby's now, and he was free to do with it as he wished. There was a deep irony inherent that told her he would probably shellac it down with preservatives and possibly freeze-dry it in an attempt to make it last until mid-November for his gala. Such was humanity -- ever striving against the inevitable. She now had only to decide whether or not to put the piece on display against a sea of spoiled cream or against cliffs of stale cake.

She was still contemplating this decision when her cell phone buzzed on the floor behind her like a click beetle trying to flip itself over. Perhaps it was Azrael and he might have something worthwhile to point out concerning the thematic differences of spoiled cream and stale cake. Without checking who might be ringing her, she flipped open the phone and answered it in a distracted fashion.

"Jibreel."

"Oh, Jibs."

There was something terribly wrong with Orfiel's voice; it was slow and as stale as the cake in front of her, thick, as if it was coming from far away. It was quiet and leaden; Rosalind Naaktgeboren never sounded like that, never. "Jibs, I'm calling from the hospital."

It was a cool sweat that broke out over her body, like condensation on a glass as the words sunk in slowly, deeply, into her flesh and down her spine. The way Orfiel's voice sounded, so curious and hollow and strained metal left no hopes that this call was over a sprained ankle or a busted lip. She counted out the most well known species of rhysodidae to herself and prayed, folded hands and folded heart, that it wasn't Azrael, that something hadn't happened to Azrael -- but then why would Orfiel be calling over Azrael? At this hour Orfiel would be at school, although the children would be on their way home by now long since -- her heart stilled like it was carven, marble-stone as worn and dead as Ozymandias.

"What's happened?"

There was something that sounded like a dry sob, followed by a sniffle; Orfiel sounded like a duck in deep distress. "I - I'm sorry, they gave me some kind of happy pill to shut me up, I don't quite know what I'm saying. It's Buboe, Jibs, he got hit by a truck - I think he's in surgery now - your mum's here, too, she did the... Green thing and conked out. I'm sorry. I'm so so so so sorry."

It was something like being chloroformed, she thought distractedly, stowed away in a bottle of formaldehyde. "Where are you? Which hospital?"

"St. Sebastian's. I don't know where your Dad is. Should I get your dad? I didn't want to call the, the, the thing, before I asked you - not Eden or Sama or Zads - I think he's dying, Jibs."

"Orfiel," she said with all the grace she could manage willed into that one little drop of a word, as the girding and armor broke around her and she was half-sobbing like a little girl, "Find my father. Please. Oh, God, don't. Is my mother alive? Please, Christ. Christ. I'm coming."

"I'll find Duriel." The voice was far-away again; high and reedy. It was clear that the angel of chaos wasn't functioning on all cylinders. "I'll wake up your mum. She's all hollow out. I'm sorry, Jibs, I'm sorry forever. We just heard this big crash and then your mum ran out and we were knee-deep in blood and roses - I'll find Duriel. Come 'round the back, Jibs, there's... Reporters already. Bastards. I'll find your frog."

She didn't have the presence of mind to tell Orfiel goodbye and it was only the automatic disconnection of the wireless when she snapped her phone shut like a mousetrap that would have even given the Angel of Chaos an idea she was no longer on the line. For one slow second, she looked down at the smooth, cool tile of the gallery. It was green. Ave Maria. She left without her shoes. It was only in the cab that she realized she didn't have them, gravel-dirt-grime ground into her toes and she didn't feel it, like she was cresting high on a numbing wave of system shock. She could hear herself speaking to the cab driver, hear it whistling around her ears as if it were another person talking, and my how collected they were being. She'd left without her purse or wallet, but he didn't even remember his fare, his eyes fastened on the snow-white spurs behind her ears. She was smoking white-hot in the back seat of that cab, burning holes in the cushions, and she'd never climbed ascension's ladder herself, never once, but she had to force it out of herself before she blew the windows out of the cab with too many wings and too much holy. She caught herself at Elohim and forced herself down into herself, into Jibreel. She tried to think of bark beetles but could only think of coal mine canaries.

The cabbie left her in the alley behind St. Sebastian's because she had the presence of mind to ask him to. She could not think, and he himself got out of the front seat to help her onto her feet. He took off his hat to her and looked like he might fall to his knees there in the stone and gravel of the lot, so she kissed him on the forehead. He would later tell his wife that he had given a free fare to the Madonna. She would believe him because she had seen it on television.

She let herself in the staff entrance with a duplicate of a key card that her mother still kept in her wallet, tracking in grime and pebbles and leaving high arched footprints from the the clean room to the ER staff room. There were two tired looking gentlemen there having coffee. She knew one of them had been at her christening.

"Trauma," she stuttered, feeling like she was five years old again and it was the first time she had ever come into these halls and it all came out in one bruised question, "Critical trauma. My son's been hit by a truck have you seen my father?"

There are some things no man can say no to; a holy-glowing, wild-eyed seraphim who is pushing the border at Elohim and shifting down to move into Arelim, the Throne, is one of them. Jibreel glowed; she half-hurt to look at, like a shifting statue, practically coming off sparks. There was a slight bedraggled trail of what might have been white rose petals; they put down their coffee and stood to attention as if their bodies had rehearsed for it. It was the reason why some people petitioned against the angels, still. The fear. The mortal meets the immortal; the human quails before the halo.

"This way, Ms. Eisenreich," the first one said, as kindly as possible, moving to take her arm and then thinking better of it as she paced up the corridor like a dream. "Dr. Eisenreich isn't on duty right now, but we've put him on call - "

Corridor. Corridor. Corridor. Door. Door. Door. Faces turned to look at her with something more fearful than reverence; it was worship, it was pity. News moved quickly in St. Sebastian's. So did fear.

Besides, she wasn't the only angel in the area outside intensive care. Here there was more than one aide in the trauma corridor. One who was looking at the end of her tether, one trying to contain him; he who had already moved up to Malakim, drawing all the shadows in the room to himself in an unceasing streak of blackness, dripping drab leather and chrome under the hot glare of the electric lights. He was horror-eyed, mouth a slash, making the aide look as if she wanted a Valium and then to hide under the bed; his sable wings were quivering, fully out, brushing the hard plastic. It was unfair. When he moved, the two humans cringed to see him.

"Dr. Hawkesby, please - "

"I'm a doctor! Let me in there!"

"He's already being operated on, Doctor - "

"Let me in there! That's my son!"

"Please, we'll have to restrain you - "

It was like her brain was made of Viennese lace and she couldn't put the situation together for herself. All she saw was him and all she thought was canary silk, "Azrael," she half-sobbed, "Azrael, Azrael. You need to come down. You're going to hurt someone -- "

He'd already lifted one of the plastic chairs, wrenched it without an effort from its welding to the others; he was holding it over his head as if it was the holy sword of vengeance, and at her voice, it dropped. It clattered down to the linoleum, making the aides jump; she could see him melt, struggle, Malakim down to Elohim, Elohim down to burning Arelim, dropping away from him like a chrysalis to leave a man who had just taken off his lab coat to put on a leather jacket to pick up his son from school. The leather was in tatters now, just like her coat, split from the force and fury of their wings in their howling grief. Buboe had come before Azrael; he'd been too late to even leave, a heartbeat's tarrying cleaning up the bones, a few moments too long in the morgue of St. Sebastian's.

She could see his eyes struggle to focus on her; when they finally did, when he was finally Back, he crumbled like the house built upon the sand. "Jibreel," he said, and it was pure pain, impotent lion's howl. "They won't let me in, I saw his goddamn charts, and I'm not letting that fucking boy scout touch him - I'm not - I'm not - "

"Please," she begged, moving to hang off his arm like a Christmas ornament that has been stepped on, wings at all angles as she tried to shake the hurt out of her head, "Tell me what's happened? Tell me what's happened," the sob was rising again in her voice because she was lost and could not find her way back to the path, "My baby. My little baby. Where's my father?"

He had to hold on to her for a few moments, like a buoy, so hard that his fingers bruised her shoulders. He was shaking, all over, breathing hard and bare-stripped. "Internal bleeding," he said, after a few moments, failing miserably to hide the catch in his voice. "Everywhere. He's got a - he's got a fluid leak, a penetrating brain injury. Pressure building, blood on the brain. Fractures everywhere - they should have been breaks, but Aunt Gabriel did, did something. His lungs were all in pieces but she was there. He got pulverized. Oh, God, if your mother hadn't been there - Gabriel - "

If she felt his fingers on her shoulders she gave no sign, only staggered a little against him, "She climbed," she said without thinking, screwing her eyes shut, falling back on the knowing of her mother than went deeper than her bones and back five thousand years, "She climbed. She climbed, she climbed, she climbed. Did she, did she -- " she choked herself even, "Oh God Azrael if she's dead someone's going to have to go and restrain my father -- and my baby, my baby, Azrael, what do you mean penetrating brain injury? What does that -- " and she knew her taxonomy, but she was always among the beetles pinned to boards, "Oh no, oh God no --"

For long moments he just held her, arms wrapped around her shoulders as if she was going to fly apart. The aides crept off and left them; he buried his face in the soft birdsweet smell of her hair, faintly dusty. She was always so thin and light in his arms. Jibreel could smell his sweat; he was afraid, Azrael was afraid, Azrael was never afraid.

"Your mother's all right." His voice was almost dead again, brittle, dry. "They hooked her up to an IV, she's just exhausted and in shock. He - he's - "

Azrael's weeping was a sudden, bursting storm, noisy, heartbroken, his shoulders shaking as he buried his heart in her and sealed it away for ever. "He's got a twenty-eighty percent chance, twenty percent of living through the operation. A truck. A fucking truck. It hit him so fucking hard that they had to give him a tracheotomy, his collarbone went through his fucking throat." Gabriel had saved him on that one, too. "Oh, God, it's his b-birthday in a month."

With him suddenly all around her like a cocoon and crying into her hair, she was shocked silent, shocked still, shocked very deathly still. Now there was a number. She had a number. She clipped it neatly as if she were scrapbooking and sealed it away inside a tiny box in herself. Twenty-eight was better than a quarter. One in four that her son might live. One in four, like drawing blindly from a deck of cards.

"It's all right," she whispered softly, because it was, it would be all right eventually, one way or another. Her feathers slowly melted off of her, the strain of holding ascension had burned a hole into her head, "It's all right, now," she murmured softly against him, "It's all right."

"It's not." He was totally ragged, husky, tear stained. "He's dying in there. He's dying. Jibreel, I love him more than - more than I love the world, I don't know how I made him. He's better than me. I never tell him I love him enough. I'm a bad father."

"Azrael," she said his name like it was the beginning of some sort of mantra, "He's not going to die. He won't die. He can't. He won't -- "

"I'm going to kill that truck driver." It was quietly sane, dry, factual. "I'm going to shove metal through his head. I'm going to break his brain just like he broke my little boy."

At that she took both of his wrists into her pale, clammy hands and squeezed them as hard as she could, her ascension flaring to Arelim with fire dancing around her, and then streaking gone, leaving her colorless, boneless, mirthless, "You can't do that. It's not right. It was an accident. Accident. Do you think my baby would want that?"

He burst into tears again at that, like a tired child. Obviously, that had been his last line of defense, his last attack, his last shield against the encroaching dark; the angel of the apocalypse crumpled against her, too much of him, six feet of heavy Azrael who obviously no longer wished to be on the planet. All he could hiss was, "He's mine too."

She staggered again under his sudden weight and somehow managed the half step backward it took to guide them both down into the only slightly destroyed row of hard plastic chairs. He was almost in her lap, weight bearing her down into the plastic as he sobbed against her, raw and hurt in so many places he was unable even to lick his wounds. She let her hand go up to his hair to softly stroke it, and felt as distant as a star, cold fusion, "Of course he is," she said quietly, "Of course he is. I'm sorry -- "

It was all he could do to weep, broken. She had never seen him like this. He simply gave himself to her, naked, openly bleeding, breaking down like old machinery as she watched. He looked much younger than - well - five thousand. There was a dreadful bustling; some kind of changing of the guard, two doors opening down off a corridor they weren't allowed to enter -- bloodied scrubs and grim eyes. Nobody likes working on a child.

"You know how careful he is," the man in her lap suddenly burst out again, hanging by a needle and a thread, even his outbursts all grey and pathetic and soft. "You know."

"I know," she answered, half sing-song, stroking his head as if he were a little dog about to be put down, "He always is -- "

What she was about to state candidly about her little boy was cut off by the silent appearance of another formidable lab coat in her periphery. She looked up so quickly that one of her braids swung over her shoulder and struck Azrael on the back. He did nothing but quiver against her, and she smoothed his back soothingly where her hair had struck like a lash. Her father stood before them, hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his coat, unreadable as Sanskrit is to a blind Russian.

"Do you know?" she asked, feather soft and chill as sleet, one hand still running idle circles on Azrael's back.

He inclined his head slightly, his voice old and rusted like iron, as level a gravestone, "I am aware," he said.

The seraphim of apocalypse raised his head to look at the ex-Lord Of Pain, shoes to head. They'd looked at each other a fair bit over the course of their respective careers; quite a bit of it had been in disdain, disrespect or general distaste. Now Azrael was just empty, slightly pleading: it was Duriel who had the floor, the man who'd fathered his grandson as supplicant. "They won't let me in," he said, broken, half-plea. I cannot get out, I cannot get out, I cannot get out.

Duriel seemed to consider Azrael for a moment before speaking, "That is the correct course of action. The law states that no doctor may preside at an operation on his own kin," his eyes shifted from the angel of the apocalypse to his daughter who sat, empty husk and it seemed as if he might have had some further commentary concerning such laws, but if he did, he kept it to himself. "I have checked the roster. The best neurosurgeon in the city is in there. If you went in there in your current state you would do nothing but jeopardize the child's chances for survival."

Azrael deflated like a balloon. You could almost hear the soft skeeee. "Have you seen his charts?"

"I have seen them."

"Then you know, Duriel. You know if they don't take care with the leak, it'll all go to hell. That's my son in there. It's my son's brain. You saw the yaw on that one piece of debris. They fuck up on that, it won't matter if he lives through the operation - Duriel." It was pure begging. In all his life, Azrael had never begged; and now he was down on one metaphorical knee in front of a man he had hated desperately. "Please."

"Azrael," he said, in a tone of voice that Jibreel immediately identified as starting one of his I-will-say-this-one-time-and-one-time-only statements, her eyes widened and she willed him to be gentle -- at least gentler than he usually was with the angel of apocalypse, "I am well aware of whose son that is in there on the table. If I allow you into that room and the child dies because of your interference, there will not be forgiveness in the world enough for either of us."

Azrael put his head into his hands. Game, set, match. Duriel 1, Azrael 0.

"Duriel."

It was Orfiel's voice; she was padding down the corridor, pupils so dilated she could have given birth with them. Her braids were coming loose, and somehow or another she'd lost her shoes. She was obviously so drugged that her stomach probably needed a pump. "There you are. T-minus thirteen hours until Gabriel wakes up, it hit her pretty bad, but I had this little peek at her lifeline to see when she was going to be all wakey-wakey and it said that long. I can do that because I am Me. Fuck Harmony with her orderly shit. Chaos owns you. I called the house and told Sama about the frog, and that truck driver is in protective custody, I think he understands. It's all roses. I've been trying to do it with bluebells for the last half hour but I can only go up to Ofanim, and I blew up my window - "

Duriel looked at her levelly for a moment before he spoke, "Thank you for your concern." Then he took her by the arm, which was a blessing because Jibreel was not sure that Orfiel would have known to follow him any other way, "If you'll come with me -- " he began shortly and she nodded, a flurry of hair and half-pinned braids. He nodded again at his daughter, "You must excuse me while I attend to Orfiel. As soon as I have word of anything, you will know."

"Are you manhandling me? I almost married your wife like nine times way back when. Also I think we kind of did it back in Japan, that was way hot."

His great-nephew stood, totally ignoring poor babbling Lindy; his eyes were dark and agonized on his uncle's face, intent, quiet. His words tumbled out over each other. "Duriel, do you see the candleflame?"

Jibreel watched her father's eyes shift, gunmetal sharp, from Azrael, who stood as a dying man stands, holding in his insides with splayed fingers, to her where she sat, half crushed against mauve plastic. He turned away from both of them and motioned Orfiel to follow him. He left them both agonized and silent, and it was only at the terminus of the corridor that he paused, almost as if it were against his will, and spoke.

"If I saw anything, I would not be here speaking." The implication was then, that he would be elsewhere, with other responsibilities. The slumping of Azrael's shoulders as he left with the small angel of chaos was less of a graveyard movement; it was more pure relief, sagging, some small rekindling of some small hope.

"No candleflame," he muttered to himself. "No candleflame."

With her father gone and Azrael away from her, the corridor was again curiously empty and she shivered, trembling inside the tatters of her coat and shirt that now left her barely decent for the niceties of society, too much milkflesh showing. She pulled her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, balling herself into the tiniest bundle she could manage, a little pill bug in blueberry black, "I'm so afraid," she said quietly, almost to herself.

He didn't want to say: I am too. He didn't want to say: I'm so afraid I want to die. Azrael turned to look at her as if for the first time; the chill in the air-conditioned corridor, the grime on her feet, the blue-whites of her hands.

"I have some extra clothes in my office," he said quietly. "You need to take a shower, Jibreel, this close to the theater." His hand was at her hair, slipping down and tilting up her chin; there was a horrible gaping maw in his eyes, but he was - with difficulty - pulling himself back out of it. Or at least pretending to. "You'll catch cold. It'll only be my button-up shirts, but..."

She ducked her head, "I'm sorry. I didn't think. I didn't think about anything when I came. I just did. I wouldn't want to -- " she stopped and swallowed down what she might have said about contamination and infection, "Please, is there a place I could wash? Oh, I know there is, it's a hospital, I'm being so stupid and I can't think. Thank you, thank you for letting me borrow something," she looked down at her feet as if noticing them for the first time, the end-tuck to her curled little ball. "I forgot my shoes," she said dumbly.

"I'll take you to the showers." He was gentle now. "I'll get you shoes, Jibreel. " It was amusing, nigh on hilarious, that this was the closest they'd probably been since - for ever. He'd missed that. He was wild, running, gone half mad, but he would be strong for her. "I... Just..."

She slowly came uncurled, feet touching the floor again as she stood, bare feet on the tile, and then took his arm because she couldn't think of what else to do. Despite everything, despite eight years of everything and the nights alone and shallow and empty -- except for her little boy -- and all of this at her own perverse choice, despite herself, despite her head, despite anything her brain had figured up as good sense, she wanted to be near him with the kind of needy urgency that four thousand plaques of pinned beetles could do nothing to force under. "I... know..." she answered haltingly, afraid of saying too much and giving too much of it away, right there, right then. She was so weak.

They left it at that. He took her hand, and he lead her away, like he was her husband and she was his wife; he carried her with spit and lemon juice, he carried her with nothing, he was going mad.

(The giant mechanical spider of the medical industry operates on Buboe's brain. There is no sound.)

*

Azrael's office was small, tidy and mismatched; he had put Jibreel on the sofa, wet from hot water and hospital soap and the Herbal Essences shampoo he kept in the secret drawer on his desk, and her sitting there in an oversized button-up shirt and a pair of his too-large jeans with the ankles rolled up brought such an ache to him that he felt wretchedly guilty. His head was a whirl; half tempest, half white noise, he couldn't think straight. He couldn't exist straight.

He took one of the cushions and - very wearily - set it down next to his desk, sitting, leaning against it. Both of them seemed burned-out now, like used-up Roman candles; their eyes held the same deadness, any life in them the sort of fever-heat of a disease. He'd called Acheliah; she was sick with mono, he'd begged her not to come to the hospital until she acquiesced. He didn't think he could have looked at her; not her face, not her eyes. He would have fallen apart, on her, on any excuse to break into a thousand tiny pieces in her harbour. The only one he could bear was Jibs.

"Your calendar is out of date," she observed absently, one slender finger peeking out of the cuff of the button-down shirt, "That isn't even this year, Azrael."

"Huh?" He seemed genuinely surprised. "Really? I never noticed."

She smiled weakly and it was a familiar smile and at the same time one she hadn't brought out in ages. It was a wistful smile, soft around the edges, a smile that had she seen it in the mirror she would have cursed herself and sworn not to go out without veil and hood ever again. It was a smile that said too much of what she felt about him in its gentleness, in its privateness. It was a smile she had once given him as she lay still as a small and mysterious puzzlebox in his arms, telling him what she thought about decay and the detritus of civilization, what she thought about the nature of apocalypse, wondered aloud what he thought about the nature of mercy.

It trembled around the corners of her mouth, not so much from nervosia, because she was deadly calm, but more ticced muscles, strained to breaking, pulled like taffy. She almost said it right there, peaceful, companionable, as if two floors above them a neurosurgeon was not sorting out the pieces of her son's brainflesh, that it might not turn him cold and stiff and stale as cake, spoiled as milk, as if she had not left him eight years ago, left him without words because she'd never had the proper words in her to explain.

You need someone to look after you.

She needed someone to look after her, bundled up in clothes that were far to big for her, in clothes that felt of him. She felt safe, exhausted from her ascension burn, and wanted to sink back forever, free-falling, never-touching bottom. Instead she said, "It's still a nice calendar. I like canyons." Her calendar was Arthropods of the World. October was the giant isopod.

"I'm not exactly the best interior decorator." The most treasured piece of art he had at home - among all the remnants of exquisite antique furniture, the Picasso scribble that Picasso himself had given to him once when he was drunk ("Look, it's a bird") - was a drawing his son had made when he was approximately four, of a large purple blob surrounded by other multi-coloured blobs and a flock of V's that apparently represented Peter. My family. "I picked out the curtains." (They were a horrible shade of teal.)

He flopped - gracelessly, for him; as if she was the entirety of his concept of privacy. He propped up the cushion behind his head and flipped his mass of dark hair out the way, white forelock a blaze against the chintzy faded print of cats. He really did have no decorating sense. "You know, I had a boyfriend for three years in the eighties, and I still have no taste in anything."

Why was he talking about this? It was as if - his mouth had to keep moving - because his eyes were somewhere else, he was in the back of the surgery as the doctors inserted the shunt. Michael The Hairdresser was a century away; eternity; he couldn't even remember his last name. It felt like he'd come out of a long dream; out of being - insane - the downfall that had started quietly and inexorably the first time he had taken Jibreel to bed, crossed the line of mentor and student, cousin-to-cousin, angel-to-angel. She had been small and thin and perfect, unutterably composed, and he realized that she was older than he was. (For Azrael, being the Highlander, it brought his entire worldview crashing down.)

"You know," she said seriously, leaning over so that her chin was propped on the arm of the couch and she was draped over it like one of the folk art cats of the washed out print, the too-large shirt spread around her like the flesh flaps of a flying squirrel, "I don't think sexual preference has anything to do with taste. I think, Bartleby would show a spoiled jar of mayonnaise if I gave it to him. Especially if I called it something like 'Crucifixion.'"

Her bones had lost all their marrow, as it had been before when she'd been in this hospital. Seven floors up. Children's cancer ward. Three floors up, OB/GYN. Her baby.

"If it helps, you're my favourite modern artist," he said mildly. "I even liked 'Apassionata' - you know, the one you did with lychees."

His eyes burnt a hole up through the ceiling. His hands moved up; they measured the sky, they measured the sun, they drew back and conducted the silent chorus of blood and grief and a minor. His long fingers traced the air; his thumbs felt down, scaling, sliding, pressing the grazed lids down over Buboe's apple-red eyes.

"They've shaved his head," Azrael said. "They've fixed him in the head pin device, and they've had to clamp it down because his head isn't so big around. They've drilled the burr holes in - I never took neurosurgery in this century - left side down; they've cut the bone flap, they're looking at the ruptured vessels. Jibreel, I studied dead bodies all my life, why didn't I study live ones?"

"You can't know everything there is to know, no matter how long you live, Azrael. There will always be things that you don't know and times that you wished you knew them. I wish I knew something, anything. I can only think of dissecting birds in life science. I only know beetles. Only beetles and not little boys. I'm less than useless. At least you," she stopped and then closed her eyes so tightly it felt that she might fuse the skin lids together, "You know what's happening to him. You understand. I feel so very stupid. Maybe I should have been a surgeon. It's all my mother ever wanted, I think."

"No," he said. "All your mother ever wanted was for you to be happy."

It took only a few words. Always just a handful. She was bare and broken and sobbing, hands over her face as she bent up, crumpled like paper, "I'm so sorry Azrael. This is all my fault. I'm so sorry. I should have been there. I should have been there to get him. I never should have done any of this. I never should have done anything. I'm so so sorry."

It was the blind leading the blind, the father leading the mother in the wake of the dead child, the stupefied leading the shocked; all he could do was move to hold her, both of them rocking in their grasp as if that would change anything. He pressed her hot little face to his chest; he closed his eyes and willed the night to come. The stars have all gone out. "It was my turn to get him, Jibreel, I was running late. I stayed behind - to clean up the lab - I should have been there. I swore to protect him when he was born. I swore to stand there if the Creeping Dark came back, I swore to stand there if Duriel Fell, I swore to stand there against anything and I wasn't there when he ran into a truck. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry. Five thousand years and I never did anything right."

She wanted so badly to tell him then, to tell him all the things that he'd always done so right and she was always so very stupid, so very complicating, so very messy, small and lost in a hedgemaze she'd run into to hide. She'd almost forgotten why she'd run in in the first place, but now the running from him had become her life, as if there was nothing else to it but running from him, even though now she wanted to split him open and crawl into his skin, parasitic, larval, but never alone again. But she had been running for so long that she could not remember how to stop, could not fathom that he would ever want her to stop. Don't you dare take advantage of his pain.

I love you Azrael. I love you so much I could break. Don't you dare tell him that. Selfish, selfish. Only selfish. She strangled herself back under control.

"He makes me so happy, Azrael. Always so happy. He tries so hard. There's the thing you did right in five thousand years. If you want a benchmark, it's your son."

"And look where he is now." His eyes were fathomless. "If he goes, there goes the last shred of anything good, sweet, gentle I ever did. The last thing I had."

Buboe was the evidence of the only truly good, sweet and gentle thing he'd ever done, ever had, and that was her, so he was fucked. They were both screwed, both of them; there was no higher power to answer to, no goal to strive for. Nothing could fall by the wayside in the attempt to bring down the Final Dark. She was just her, and he was just him, and any mistakes they made they had to look in the face and spit on while they were still hot. He'd walked most of his life thinking himself nigh unto God, and then it turned out that he was just a very tired man who didn't know how to properly work a dishwasher and had once surreptitiously sellotaped his son's nappy on because he didn't know how to work the snaps.

"He's not going. He's not. He won't. He can't. He can't go. Azrael, Azrael I can't live without him. I won't. I can't live with only my horrible messes of rotten banana and grapefruit. I won't do it -- " she was half hysterical now, not listening to what she was saying or she'd have known to keep these thoughts to herself.

"Shhh." Rocking again, slowly, slowly. How could he comfort her? His only response was: He can't. He won't. He can't go. I can't live without him. I won't live without him. But what if he does - and that helped nobody, least of all each other. He was close to tears again, close to supernova. He just wanted his goddamn son so much. "Shhh."

Rather inauspiciously, it was at this time that the door decided to open and show perpetually nineteen Eden Ardith, even thinner than Jibs, looking as if he'd jumped out of bed and decided that punk had come back to life; but even he was somberly dressed for him, leather trousers with chains hanging out every which way and one of the ripped t-shirts shirts that advertised Rachel's old band. His hair was scraped away from his face; he didn't even wear lipstick, and the lopsided smirk on his mouth didn't reach his eyes at all. He hesitated once he saw their position, wrapped around each other like a monkey-puzzle tree, a moment so incredibly and intimately private that he felt he ought to dip his eyes in bleach. The plastic bag in his hand rustled, and it was all Azrael could do to look up. (And actually go red.)

"Welcome wagon," Samael said, almost apologetically. "We - we came quick as we could, right. Zadkiel's back home minding the fort with Liwet, Doc Doom told us we could get our arses over here. We got you, um, dinner."

At the sound of Eden's voice Jibreel jumped as if she had suddenly discovered that she and Azrael were like-poled magnets meant to repel each other forcefully. She wrenched herself away from him and sat down so hard on the arm of the sofa that she might have bruised her coccyx had the sofa been made of a meaner material. She put herself together, stacked her thousand fragments together like a cubist painting, as if she hoped to fool those who looked at her into thinking that she was weathering this strongly, her nose and ear and eye all in strange and unnatural positions that mirrored her bent-edged soul, nicked and notched in so many places from so many years of broken living. It was hard being twenty-five years old. It was much harder than being five had been, even eighteen hundred times.

Her nose twitched slightly and she strained her smile as her youngest brother came into the room with another bag, looking awkward and out of place in the sub-basement of St. Sebastian's. Upon seeing her trying to smile he flashed his own grin, quick and easy as the sun on corn. Her lip trembled.

"It's waffles," they said together, as if it had been rehearsed -- some old, half-forgotten joke -- a called line in a play, and he laughed.

"God, you two are mongoloids," their uncle said, which was pure affection. "Jibs, you move one inch an' I'll murder you, okay." He was already on Azrael's desk, taking boxes out of the bag, which smelled heavily like chinese food; his somewhat son was refixing his hair, so that he had something to do with his hands. He was quite obviously a tear stained mess; his eyes were faintly swollen, as if he had a disease, reddened and angry. Eden didn't comment on either; both Jibreel and Azrael looked as if they were plague victims, waiting for death. "My middle finger's goin' to be on Sixty Minutes tonight, what with the way I had to bloody go through those vultures with cameras out there."

Samand'riel dropped his bagged cartons on the desk and turned on his heel, nearly upsetting a bookshelf, which he shouldered back up while looking partially mortified, "He's right. I think it's going to be all over the news. Especially after Uncle Eden kicked one of them in-the-groin-no-thank-you. I really thought we were going to be arrested for a while."

The uncle in question snorted as he fished for packets of duck sauce, "Arrested by who, amazing dog-boy, the fucking paparazzi? Here is a hint: they can't do that. Christ, that's what comes for letting people with no certs like bugfuck Orfiel teach you your mamography and shit."

"Arrested by somebody," Samand'riel defended as he flopped on the cushionless side of the couch and it made a distressed whining noise.

"You never been arrested in your life. Me, I was arrested loads of times, an officer like Jeanne will go wild hot for a well-dressed hooker like me. Jibs, d'you want the prawn or the Ho Chi Minh - what the fuck is this stuff again, I forget - "

"Have you seen Duriel?" Azrael was moving, to give Jibreel room, because he felt better when he was standing up. He loomed over her, herding her back to a more comfortable position on the sofa. "Aunt Gabriel still hasn't woken up."

Jibreel took the prawn without comment, scrambling over the arm of the sofa and nearer to the arm of her brother, who obliged by roping her in with one of his lean arms and squeezing her shoulder.

"I wouldn't worry about Mam," he offered, kneading her forearm as if he might rub the lifelove back into her, "She'll be all right. Done this a thousand times. Knew it when she was born. I think she has my brains," he offered in an unhelpful and marginally cryptic way, "Besides, I asked Gazardiel to come by. She'll be all right."

"Gazzer? Great, there goes your mum."

Azrael sat down by Sama and Jibreel's feet, feeling rather young and pathetic. He took the box that Eden claimed was Tianamen Square; he ate without comment or actually tasting it, using the chopsticks, dark hair falling over his shoulders. He caught a look at the youngest Eisenreich's wrist-watch; "Eight-thirty? Already?"

"Why do you think we brought you dinner? Emphasis on the din and the er."

He's been in surgery four hours.

"I should call Bartleby. My car's still there. And my shoes. And my wallet. And my house keys. And -- " she trailed off. She did not want to say and my baby's lunch bag. He'd left it at home that morning, along with part of his Spanish homework. She hadn't had time to drive it over, but her mother had assured her that this once her grandson was allowed to turn it in a day late.

"I can do that," Azrael immediately volunteered, but looked as if he regretted it; he wanted to keep with her, hand in hers. If he went more than a metre away he was convinced that something would happen; his brain would melt down, he would start screaming, he would start screaming and he would not stop. He'd never been in the City of Dis. This was the City of Dis. "Or - Samand'riel, do you want to take my motorbike?"

"Bloody hell, who'd trust our Sama on a motorbike?" Eden sat on his erstwhile son's desk and ate something that called itself chicken. "Let me take care of the phone call stuff, Jibberee. I can yell. I think I was a telemarketer in one of my past lives, 'cos I'm evil. You just - you just sit pretty, okay?"

Oh, God. Oh, God. Eden was anxious. Eden wasn't anxious during Normandy. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood, for nothing now can come to any good.

"What was that, Gargamel?" His father was looking distinctly uncomfortable.

He'd said the last line aloud. " - Nothing. I'm staying with Jibreel."

Something was beginning to stir deeply in her intestines. There was something, there was something not right here -- outside what was rictus-mad-insane-crazy, her son stitched back together like a little rag doll. She needed to strain up on her toes, hands fisted at his collar and read his eyes. There was something stirring in him, something wrong, something terrifying. God, why were all these people here? She needed to look at him, to chase the tail of that snake into its hole. She was worried there was something worse than hysterical grief stalking the corners of his mind. She stopped caring about the fact that her Uncle and brother were in the room and laid her hand on his neck, under the base of his braid. It stilled Azrael immediately, like a tamed lion; he half-closed his eyes and let her touch him, leeching it, devouring it whole.

"Thank you, Uncle Eden. You may have to yell at Bartleby. If he asks, tell him spoiled milk."

"I'll tell him we fucked once, it shuts most people up." Oh, shit, there was something terribly wrong with them both. Eden ran one hand through the bits of caramelly hair falling in his face, eyes narrowing, brain cells whirling furiously. He needed to get Vanity Smurf out the room. "Azalea, I think Jibs needs a drink. Sama, you take him to the magical water fountain of water, okay?"

"Bu - "

"Goodalrightyessodoff."

Jibreel watched her brother hop to his feet obediently and then followed Azrael as he stood more reluctantly and looked back at her pointedly for a moment. She shook her head and curled into her pill bug shape, this time all the more sadly hilarious because of enormity of the clothes on her spare frame.

"I really would like some water."

Azrael nodded, after a moment; it was with one long, last, agonizing look that he finally managed to tear himself away, holding the door open for Sama, letting it shut behind them with a soft and vaguely hinge-worrying clang. Eden set his box of miscellany down on the desk and went to kneel beside the Jibreel-pill bug, eyeing her with a lot of candid violet force.

"Right, got those shits out the way," he announced. "Look, Jibjab, you know how many times I've done this in your life, so - "

His thin, spidery arms wrapped around her, fiercely, lips cool on her cheek as he kissed it. Eden smelled faintly like polishing liquid, and nail varnish remover, and clove cigarettes; he held her, he held her, he only let go to pillow his chin on one of his arms and put his face near hers so that he could watch her from Animal Planet close-up.

Her lip trembled alarmingly and she thought she might lose it again right there and cling to him, sobbing like a little girl. But she held it, and forced into another wobbly legged smile, "Thank you. We appreciate it."

"Is this the 'royal' we, Smurfette?" he inquired. "Shove the 'strong and brave' bullshit, duckling, I helped out with your nappy rash an' that's the kind of thing I go to a fuckin' therapist for later in my life. I'm not going to give you the 'everything is gonna be all right' crap, 'cos maybe it won't, and it doesn't matter how bloody unfair that is. I would fuckin' go top myself if I thought it would save that web-fingered grandson of mine, jus' so he can give me diabetes with his twee cuddles and smiles of infinite sweetness, but it don't work."

She shook her head, "Oh no, I meant to say 'I.' I did, didn't I? I appreciate it, Uncle Eden. I really do. It's very nice of you to talk to me like this." She was obviously not listening to the details of the conversation. With Azrael out of the room her mind had immediately drifted back to the dissection of birds.

"Lumina, listen to me, okay."

It was like her mind shut down and her body shut down and her heart stopped beating all at once, and she curled herself into the tightest little ball she had ever managed, face buried in her spindly kneecaps.

"I don't want to and you can't make me."

"That's what you think." He cocked his head to the other side, like an inquisitive bird. "Lummy died like a little lady, okay, she died with a fuckin' A plus plus plus. We had this talk already. Darlin', this is the hardest thing you're ever gonna have to live with, whether he lives or dies. Don't jump the shark. It ain't over till it's over. If you let yourself get all deathy now, you're just fucked. Your mum always used to tell me, 'Deus, you are so tiresome,' when I got all deathy on her when she was dyin', but that's 'cos your mum was kind of a nympho when her an' me were runnin' around. Don't tell anyone I ever said that. I still ain't sure your da won't kill me. Jibs, no suicide juice."

She shook through like an epileptic having a seizure, full body spasm-tremble that left her very still afterwards, as if she had died then and there and when Azrael came back he would only have to collect her corpse. After several slow heartbeats of nothing, she looked up at him, face thin and drawn, and said, "I don't want to die, Uncle Samael."

"Tough luck. You're gonna." He took her hand; he kissed the heel of it, very gently. "I'd just rather you stick 'round and give me a couple more stupid sticky grandkids until it happens, okay? I love you."

The muscles around her eyes trembled, "I think I want to hit you," she announced, but instead she uncoiled like a little snake and put both of her arms around his neck "You're my favorite Uncle ever. You should tell Raziel. I bet he'll be jealous."

He held her as tightly as he could, but since they were both so thin no real damage was done except a lot of poking with their elbows. "He won't believe me. Smug fucker. I know s'obvious but he just holds on an' on an' on, thinkin' I'm still gonna date him. You, me, we're a team. We always will be."

*

Samand'riel Eisenreich moved easily in the low lighted hallway, hands in his pockets, walking backwards so he could face his -- really, he thought the relationships were getting a little too complicated and decided to just think of the angel of apocalypse as his new brother Azzy. If only Jibs would stop being tow-headed and have some sense. He side-stepped a gurney without thought, graceful as long as he wasn't thinking about it and decided to have it out.

"Listen, Az, I don't want to upset you or anything, or worry you when I don't have to, but you should watch Jibs."

Thus said, Azrael immediately started getting both upset and worried. He looked down at Sama with an expression that managed to marry both Duriel's nonplussedness and Gabriel being frantic; there was obviously deep dread in his eyes. "... What's wrong with her, Samand'riel?"

The angel of fertility threw up both of his hands in defense and then shook his head, "Okay, this is gonna sound kinda dumb and girly, but bear with me. Okay. You're all got flowers, right? Trust me on this, you do. So you've got flowers and Jibreel is a rose and the rose isn't looking too miracle-growy at the moment. Speaking of, you aren't looking that great yourself, Mister Black Lotus, but she's my sister and I need someone to look after her when I'm not here. What I mean is that you both look like you're dying now. I don't think she ate any of her dinner."

His 'brother' looked totally stricken; he mulled over the other man's words with a certain brooding seriousness not seen in a number of years. He looked at if he wanted to say something; then he just rubbed his temples and looked like he was dying openly. "... What's my son's flower look like?"

Samand'riel scratched the back of his head as his shoulder caught the corner of the alcove that held the water fountain and he did a near one eighty, "If you mean 'what does it look like now?' then I don't have any idea, because they're not letting me up there and I shouldn't be up there. I'm 'Mary, Mary how does your garden grow,' not any kind of help with brain fixing. If you just want to know what it looks like, well, then, I can maybe tell you that."

For some reason, Azrael's mouth couldn't help but quirk up at the end; you couldn't hate Sama. You couldn't even not like Sama. It was the same quality with his own son, though with Sama you had to wait until he opened his mouth a bit and with Buboe you just had to see his face. Oh, god. He filled up one of the plastic cups, careful, watching the water. "I know what it looks like."

"Well then, we're square, aren't we?" he asked, flopped up against the wall, "By the way I had no idea you could do that. It's a nifty trick. I bet your special powers fill up the whole character sheet. I know you don't know the name for it. But maybe I can still help a little. The Hebrews didn't know what it was either. Their word for it was 'wtf?'" he cast a sidelong look at the angel of apocalypse and looked a little panicked, "Don't tell mam you heard the 'f' part from me. They spelled it 'manna.' That's the only word there's ever been for it. He's a good kid."

"Actually, I was kidding. I was going to say it was big and rainbow-coloured and had glitter on it. I don't have many special powers." The only flame he was ever going to see was going to be the world's; it hadn't popped up yet. Azrael gave the teenager a lopsided smile, the biggest he could manage - not big - and sipped thoughtfully at the water before filling it up again. "I won't tell your mother anything if you don't tell her about me being all cuddly with your sister."

Sama made a 'pfft'ing sound like a little cat and shrugged his shoulders, rolling his eyes in the widest arc possible, "Like you have to be Metatron to figure that one out. I said she had my brains, but we're not that dumb. Mam? You have to know Mam. You make my sister happy? Mam gives you the life-time-achievement-award trophy. Not complicated."

"No, no, I meant - " Azrael looked quietly embarrassed. "It's not... like that, between Jibreel and I, any more. It would just make your mother think things that aren't true. It's just that she's hurting so damn much, and I'm hurting so damn much, and we only have each other at the end of things. Until... Until we know. We can act. Once we know."

"Yeah, okay, whatever. Are Mam and I the only ones in this family without Da's retarded brain goo on us?" he asked philosophically. He shook his head as if the thought distressed him, "Anyway, I'm not going to say 'don't make my sister cry or I'll punch you' because she's more than good enough at making herself cry, and besides, that's what Rachel and Zads are for. I am going to tell you one thing, though, and you had better damn well listen because I learned this the hard way. You survive. No matter what. You survive. You have other people counting on you. No matter how hard it hurts your heart. No matter how much you might feel like you want to wrench it out and grind it out under your heel, you survive. If you don't, then someone else you care about will die because of it."

The older man took another long swig of water, refilling the cup back up painstakingly, quiet. He looked at Samand'riel for a very long time, measuring it up mentally, taking it apart and putting it back together. "... I'm sorry about Jabriel."

Samand'riel rubbed the heel of his palm across the bridge of his nose and then smiled, "Isn't damn near everyone?"

"She must have been one hell of a lady." His voice was halfway a ghost now, the cup crumpling slightly in his fingers, eyes too desperate on the angel of fertility. "What if he dies? How do I stop her? How do I stop me? I don't cope well, I've never coped well in my life. All I want to do is hold her and I can't. How do you live with your baby dying like this?"

The younger man shook his head, "There isn't any kind of 'how' with living. You just do it. There en't any -- I mean, I mean, whew, Mam would have my head for that one. There aren't any kind of special tricks to it. That's where everybody gets all complicated-stuck about living. You just do it. You just do. You hold on as tight as you can to anything you can hold on to. You, her, him. It's like that. Other than that, I don't know. You don't even want to know half the mistakes I've made. Just try and live and I'll count us square. Otherwise I'm telling Zadkiel, and then he'll punch you."

Azrael looked as though he might break down again; and then he drew himself back, and very gently reached out and ruffled the hair on Samand'riel's head. "I'll... try. I want to. More than anything else I've ever wanted. And I don't want your brother to punch me, either." Last ghost of a smile. "Rachel's job."

*

There are worse things than sleeping on your office floor; like having your small son having his brain examined, a quiet shell on a surgery table, still and broken and bleeding. Azrael stole some pillows from the supply section of St. Sebastian's, and a blanket, and fussily made up a passable bed on the squashy couch for Jibreel; he bedded down very close, so that the hand that hung down from the sofa could be quietly taken in his.

They drifted in and out of sleep. If she slept. She was just quiet; all he had was her pulse, when they didn't talk, lying in the half-dark with the lights from the corridor filtering in underneath the door. He thought about her rose and his lotus; he thought about the part of Samand'riel's eyes that - that did something that mortal men shouldn't do - when he said Jabriel's name. It was past one in the morning. His son was still in surgery. The dawn seemed like it was never going to come, ever again, the night stretching on for ever; it was always night in the basements, in the morgue, but dawn came anyway.

He tried not to think about how this would be his son's last kiss goodnight, this place, if the numbers held out.

Then he thought about it more.

Jibreel laid very still on the couch, her slender fingers cradled in his palm, unwilling to be away from the touch of him, from the scent of him, trying desperately not to think of what the ramifications of this closeness might be. She held one of the pillows to her chest and tried to believe that it was her little boy, when he had been so small and starving, always nursing at hours like this one, half past forever, his duckling soft head against her breast when she had just finished her last year at school. She was not very good at making believe, but the tears she wet the pillow with were cried silently, soundlessly. She didn't want to wake him if he was sleeping.

They both tried to conceal their tears from each other so much that - with a start - Azrael realized neither was asleep; he moved, hand still in hers, to sit up against the sofa and rest his head on the very edge of Jibreel's pillow. When his other hand moved to the nape of her neck, he felt the small convulsion in her body: she was fever-hot with tears. All he could do was bury his face in her braids. Misery was becoming their shared, intimate friend; their mutual lover; she was his only bastion, his safehouse.

"Azrael," she whispered against his hair so very softly it might have been the feather's breath of a dream. What she might have said next in that moment of shared torment was cut off by a sharp two-beat rap at the door. She sat up so fast she nearly fell off the couch and on top of him, but he braced her up. That was her father, could only be her father.

The angel of apocalypse scrambled to his feet as he gently eased her back on the sofa, not even bothering with his shirt, opening the door with his stomach a vicious cocktail of eagerness and dread; light spilled into the room blindingly. Duriel's face was as-ever unsearchable, and his nephew's piteously hungry for closure as he stared at the ex-Lord of Hell. "Is he out?"

Duriel wordlessly passed him a sheaf of papers, a file-folder of hurt and anguish and shrapnelled brain, his eyes momentarily shifting to his daughter, who had pill-bugged herself up in the blanket.

"He's out of surgery," the angel of clemency confirmed, "He is alive -- " he broke off and it seemed as if he were unsure as to whether to continue or not.

Azrael had taken the papers like a child greedy for candy, flicking on the light, sitting down in his desk chair as he opened the folders. He started moving through the scans; his brow furrowed with every different scan, the intimacies of his son's brain laid out in front of him like a map. He looked like he was trying to do ten things at once; read the report, squint at the scans as if they were Magic Eye posters, absorb the information into himself and somehow come out with an equation that meant that Buboe would be up in four hours eating Cocoa Puffs and watching Pokemon: Ash's Granddaughter.

One plus one does not equal four.

"This makes no sense," he said at length, a snarl starting to creep into his voice.

Jibreel squinted in the light, still a little ball of knees and elbows and velor blanket. She crept along the sofa like an inchworm until she got to the corner nearest Azrael's desk and piled herself up there, like it might be a good place for cocoon and metamorphosis, "What do you mean, it doesn't make sense?" her voice was all trembly and unsure in her throat and all she ever knew was beetles, "He's alive. Ace of hearts. One card in a thousand, it wouldn't matter," fear again crawled into her belly, slow, like it was making a nest there, "What do you mean it doesn't make sense?"

"There's no scarring." That was Gabriel's doing. He was going to take Gabriel out to dinner and buy her flowers and a puppy and a kitten. His son was alive. His son was alive - but - the look on Jibreel's face made him want to set fire to everything. He wanted to blow things up. "There's no cranial collapse, the leak's been minimised, the damaged cells have been knitted up. All foreign matter's been taken away. They put the drain in - here - it's functioning, so's the shunt, his heart's been stabilized. His lung collapsed, but that's stable."

There was too much tremble in his voice. "So why the fuck is my son in a Glasgow scale four coma?"

*