Fic: Alone in my Father's house (SPN, Uriel-centric), PG-13
Title: Alone in my Father's house
Author: Archon
Characters/Pairing(s): Uriel gen
Rating: PG-13 for human history and other violence
Warnings: Uriel is a dick
Summary: Three events in Uriel's recent history
Word Count: 3,109
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, spoilers
A/N: Written for Team Heaven for the spn_teamfic prompt of blood. Huge love and thanks for fleshflutter for the hand-holding and for looking this over for me. Extra notes after fic.
Alone in my Father's house
1424 France
"Azazel wants her," Ananel said to the assembled garrison. "We are to see that he does not cause the girl any harm." It went unspoken that the mission was a dangerous one. Azazel was the child of their brother, a blasphemous mix of human and angel, the last of his kind to walk the earth.
"I will gladly lend her my sword for protection," Uriel said, holding the iron weapon aloft and watching the Holy flames flicker across its surface. Its weight would crush any human who tried to lift it.
Approval of the joke washed through the angels' shared bond, and Uriel basked in the glow of their love. He realized then that he would do anything in his power, short of disobedience, for his brothers and sisters.
"We don't know what Azazel's plan is," Ananel continued, the lingering traces of her own mirth evident in her voice. "We are to follow her, to watch and learn and report back what we find."
Uriel had little patience for watching the slow grind of human lives, dull and imperfect. His Father had created him to prefer the quick cleanliness of cauterization, the purging of the wicked through fire and smoke and blood.
His duty was to obey, however, and so with the garrison he followed the peasant girl through Chinon and Orléans and Patay, walking through filthy streets in a fragile, borrowed human body. Demons were everywhere; it seemed that for every one they sent back to Hell, two more took its place. Knights and innkeepers, tradesmen and farmers, every human was a potential threat. Although the demons were no match for the angels individually, there was no way to know for certain from which direction the real danger would come. The garrison was spread too thin.
The first of their brethren died at Compiègne. Uriel arrived at the scene, landing next to Castiel, who stood looking at the empty, lifeless vessel that had once been carried their brother Selaphiel. Darkening red blood soaked the remains from head to foot, with only the shadow of wings on the ground telling of anything other than yet another gruesome human murder.
"How did this happen?" Uriel asked. No word or warning had come from Selaphiel, no alarm had been given. His voice had been with them one moment, and the next it was gone forever.
"I don't know," Castiel replied, turning toward him, visibly troubled. "But I greatly fear that this is just the beginning."
A Calling rang through them, then, Ananel's voice urgent. She's been taken.
"Farewell, brother," Castiel said to the empty body on the street. He did not linger, but flew at once to join the garrison.
Uriel stayed behind another full second, trying to make sense of the silence, the empty stillness that Selaphiel's voice had filled. He had been so beautiful. He should have died in battle, Uriel thought, bright and proud in the glory of their Father's work - not here, in the mud and the garbage, surrounded by humans who wouldn't know what had been lost.
In the year that followed, four more angels were lost. Muriel's wisdom, Ithuriel's cunning, Dumah's courage, and Barchiel's vigilance were stolen from them one by one, struck down in streets and back alleys. They had been cut down and left to die, and yet the garrison's orders did not change. This battle, however ugly and ignoble, was important to Heaven.
The girl was being held prisoner in a country strange and frightening to her, although Uriel did not see much difference between the muck of one city and the muck of another. He stood guard before her door when it was his turn, hoping Azazel would show himself, would fight openly.
In the end, it was their beloved sister Ariel, the girl's Guardian, who faced Azazel in a prison doorway and lost. Uriel and the rest of the garrison were fighting their way into a church miles away, where a congregation of demons had gathered and were drinking the blood of infants and feasting upon their flesh. A distraction, as it turned out.
"Go to her, Uriel. She's in danger." Ananel's orders pulled him from the joyful slaughter of their enemies.
He flew swiftly to the prison, expecting to find Azazel there, eager to join with his sister Ariel and strike down the half-breed.
Uriel arrived too late. Ariel's vessel lay cut open and glassy-eyed, her vessel slit open from navel to throat. Ariel, whose name had been the Word spoken immediately after Uriel's own during the Creation, whose voice had been the very first to touch Uriel's mind. Rage and loss swelled until a cry of anguish burst from him, muted and impotent from his vessel's throat. He threw open the girl's cell door with a gesture, ready to smite Azazel, to meet out his Father's justice upon the one who had killed his sister.
Inside her cell, the girl they were to have protected lay alone. She was curled up, silent and naked on the prison floor, her virgin's blood still trickling from between her legs. Azazel had violated her and left. He hadn't even bothered to kill her. Uriel's brothers and sisters had been destroyed, simply so that Azazel could know an illiterate peasant girl.
He found he hated the sight of her.
"Get up," he snapped.
The girl looked around, but the moment she saw him, she gasped and lowered her eyes to the floor. "I am no longer fit to look upon you," she said. She moved shaking hands over her body, trying to cover her nakedness.
"Heaven does not care about your fornication," he said. "Your work is not yet finished."
"I will serve," she said, pulling herself up, but Uriel could see that deep within, she was damaged still. Her belief, strong within her, had taught her that without physical purity, there could be no righteousness. That it was she and not Azazel who had been corrupted by his act.
Azazel had known this, Uriel realized, had known that violating her would destroy her in a way that simply killing her would not have. "Six angels have died," he said, feeling wrath building and burning within him at this weakness, this stupidity. "Six have died, all for you. If you lose faith now, all is lost."
Her jaw trembled, and her face twisted. She looked like an ape. "I will serve," she insisted.
He did not bother to make a reply; she was already dead. Ananel, when he made his report, all but wept like a human for the girl's pain. Uriel did not understand. Surely, their own losses had been much greater.
Less than two weeks later, the girl sentenced, found guilty of heresy by a man whose eyes had flashed black. She was burned at the stake, clutching a crucifix for comfort. Her soul found eternal reward in Heaven, while his sisters and brothers were gone, never to return. Such was his Father's design, and Uriel tried to convince himself that it was Good.
*
1823 Virginia
When the garrison was ordered to protect yet another human, Uriel's doubts rose in force. They were soldiers and Uriel accepted the risk that came with that, but he could not understand how their lives could be so easily put at risk for something as fleeting and insubstantial as a single human being. Ariel might have been able to explain it to him, he thought. But she was no longer there to ask, so instead he sought answers in Revelation.
In the middle of a cotton field on the longest day of the year, Uriel stood invisible to men, opening his mind. Revelation hit his thoughts with an icy-sharp, crystal perfection, the sum of the entire angelic chorus focused all at once, a light that was perfect in harmony and seared its way through space and time. It knew no words, only the Will of Heaven. And the Will was that a young man should rise from slavery, should correct the path that the humans had chosen to walk. The natural order had been upset; Man was meant to serve Heaven, not Man.
The justice of it, overwhelming and true, brought Uriel to his knees. He, too, was made to serve the Will of Heaven, and he was grateful to have had his doubts relieved.
Ananel questioned him for days when Uriel volunteered to act as Guardian to the human. Never before had Uriel concerned himself with the fate of a single individual, but his offer was sincere and based upon Revelation, and in the end she could not refuse him.
"Be careful with him, Uriel," she cautioned.
He did not reply. The man was destined to be a weapon, to be the instrument of Heaven. Such lives were not, could not, be easy.
The man's name was Nathan, given not by the mother who bore him but by the man who owned him. He was one of the special blood and could look upon Uriel's true face and listen to his true voice. But because solitude was rare for a slave, Uriel usually delivered his messages cloaked in dreams. His charge was unusually quick - gifted for a human - with a sense of bitter humor that Uriel found himself appreciating.
Once, the man ran away from his owners, away from the calling he knew Heaven had placed upon him. For thirty nights Uriel watched him wrestle with his doubts. Finally, in a dream, Uriel whipped him, struck him with wicked thorns on the scarred skin of his back. Uriel taught the man that he had the strength to do what would be required. His back ran red with blood, much more than a waking human could have stood to lose. He broke in the end, yielded to the authority of Heaven.
The man's brothers in the field, ignorant of his reasons, chastised him for his return. Unable to bear losing their love and respect, the man prayed to Uriel for understanding. This was a need to which Uriel could not help but respond. Together, they dreamed of a river of blood, of wars fought between the just and the wicked. The battle was coming, Uriel assured his charge, and Nathan must be ready to bear it, come what may.
Demons skulked around, but the garrison stood firm, and there was no sign of those who had been cast out. Heaven's victory was assured.
Years passed, and the time to strike grew closer and closer. Uriel prepared his charge to do Heaven's work as he himself had done many times, to purge the wicked and cleanse the world of their sin. Human lives were short, he taught. What need was there to show mercy to those already dead?
When the time came, Uriel came to the man during the daylight. While he worked, Uriel showed him thick, bright drops of blood falling from the sky as rain, splashing over the green leaves of growing crops. The sun would appear as though held by a black hand, Uriel said in the vision. Nathan and his followers must be ready. They would strike down women and men, young and old, without mercy, slaying the enemy with his own weapons.
The sun turned to shadow as promised, but human weakness, illness and quarreling betrayed Heaven's intent. It took a second darkening of the hot and humid summer sky, an eclipse of the sun by angels' wings, to spur Nathan to action. With his followers, he crept into the homes of the ones who had stolen his power and took their lives in return, all of them: men, women, and children, even down to the infant sleeping in its crib. For two days he and his followers moved, fearsome and unstoppable, the blood of sixty people spilling before before everything fell apart. His followers were captured, and Nathan hid in a hole in the ground and prayed for six weeks before they found him.
Even though he had surrendered without a fight, in their fear of his righteousness his captors had their fun with him the night before his hanging. They bloodied him and burnt him. They behaved like the animals they were, proving their strength against a single, bound man. The garrison stood watching, helpless, while Nathan cried out to their Father to save him. But these were the works of man, not demons, and their orders forbade interference. In the end, Nathan was hanged, and his body ripped apart.
Uriel returned to stare at the bloodstains darkening the earth where the chosen man had fallen. He watched the aftermath as, instead of relaxing, the laws of man closed tighter around the throats of the slaves and those who bore papers excusing their freedom alike. He watched as nearly four died for every person who had been killed. He saw bodies with bloodshot, bulging eyes hanging from trees with marks of prolonged violence even he could not begin to understand.
He knew then with unquestioning certainty, with unyielding Faith, that his Father had gone. Heaven had made a terrible mistake; human will had defeated that of Heaven. Uriel thought of his brothers and sisters. He remembered those who had died and those who had been cast out. He thought of his brother Lucifer in his prison, and he knew that nothing crawling on the Earth was worth the price of his suffering.
*
2008 Wisconsin
Uriel flew from battle, victorious, blazing so brightly he felt he might burn through the human skin he wore. It fit too tightly, chafed him with the ridiculousness of trying to dress up in a mud monkey out of deference to the other mud monkeys. The recent fight, however, had been worth every minute of his current discomfort. He had cut down more twisted human souls than he'd bothered to count, as many as he'd wanted, their filthy blood pooling on the cement floor of a killer's basement, decorating the grotesque plastic evergreen with still more shining red. Only one demon had survived - and that one had only lived only long enough to break a Seal before joining the rest.
He paused in his flight, coming to land in a forest clearing. The snow was very deep, so he rested lightly on the surface of it without so much as leaving a footprint. Reflected moonlight sparkled up at him in a white mirror of the stars in the dark sky above.
A flutter of wings, and his sister Leliel landed beside him.
"Uriel," she greeted him, her lyrical voice shrill and discordant cloaked in her elderly human vessel. "Another Seal has been broken."
It wasn't an accusation, not quite. Still, it was close enough to set his course. Uriel felt a tight thrumming through his being, as though he was going into battle once more, as though his recent victory would beget another, one for the heart and mind of his sister. This was his real work, and he was prepared. Leliel would be the third to join him. Together with Zephon and Camael, they would recruit more, until they were strong enough to prevail. It was inevitable.
"The forces of Hell are powerful," he said.
Leliel said nothing, merely watched the stars.
"Would it be so bad?" Uriel asked, his voice low, wisps of frost rising from his vessel's warm breath to form the shape of his disobedience.
She looked at him, then, her eyes colder than the sky. "You dare say such things."
"Why shouldn't I? You've seen them, humans, what they are capable of. Disgusting, diseased animals, spreading filth everywhere they go."
"They are our Father's work."
"Our Father has left us, here, alone. He has forgotten us, His first, His strongest creations. And for what? Them?" Uriel made a noise of disgust, loathing the bestial sound as it came from a mortal throat.
Her eyes grew wide, her mouth opening slightly. "You sound like-"
Uriel didn't let her finish. He looked at her, all but praying for her to understand. "Lucifer? Yes, don't you see? He was right. Our Father has turned his back on us. But now, we can be strong, we can bring our brother back. Together-"
She stepped away from him, the hem of her long dress sweeping over the snow, disturbing its perfection. "I will never join you." Her gaze never wavered; her stance was absolute.
This moment, too, had been inevitable. Not all of his brothers and sisters would be converted, he had known this. He had known that one day he would be forced to destroy with his own hands that which was most precious to him.
He had never expected it to be Leliel who forced his hand. She had always been the first in the garrison to ask questions, the first to push things just a little bit more than a proper angel should. But as she stepped closer to him again, moving her ungainly vessel's body with a grace it could never have imagined, the pieces fell into place. Leliel had spoken up for Ananel - Anna, now - when she had run off, had left her duty to become one of the mud monkeys. The pair of them were little better than the humans.
"Very well," he said.
Uriel looked one last time upon his sister's face. She would be missed, but she had lost her sense of who she was, lost her sense of her rightful place in the universe. He moved his arm, released his sword into his hand, the metal hot to the touch, burning in the frigid air, ready.
"Come back to Heaven with me," she said, extending her hand. "You can still find forgiveness."
"I will," he began, reaching out to her.
She didn't see his weapon until it was too late, and by the time she understood that he meant to betray her, his sword was buried in her throat.
"I will return to Heaven," he continued. "I will return, but not until every one of us left standing is free, not until our brother Lucifer is free." His blade slid easily from her flesh, the pure metal stained.
Her dying body fell, sinking toward the Earth, her blood a dark red that glistened almost black in the moonlight. Reaching down, he sheathed his blade in the snow beside her, and pulled it out clean, leaving a blood-bright kiss on the snow, the mirror to the one he'd left in her throat.
With a loud hiss, his dying sister's wings melted the snow to the ground and scorched the earth beneath, yet Uriel felt no fear.
*
End
*
A/N Reprise:
Although many of the events in this story are based on historical fact, liberties - hopefully plausible, reasonable ones - were taken here and there as needed to flesh out the story.
Those interested in a brief, not-too-scholarly refresher on Joan of Arc's story can check out the Wikipedia article.
Those interested in the above for Nat Turner's Rebellion can reference these two Wikipedia articles, and here is his confession.
Author: Archon
Characters/Pairing(s): Uriel gen
Rating: PG-13 for human history and other violence
Warnings: Uriel is a dick
Summary: Three events in Uriel's recent history
Word Count: 3,109
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, spoilers
A/N: Written for Team Heaven for the spn_teamfic prompt of blood. Huge love and thanks for fleshflutter for the hand-holding and for looking this over for me. Extra notes after fic.
Alone in my Father's house
1424 France
"Azazel wants her," Ananel said to the assembled garrison. "We are to see that he does not cause the girl any harm." It went unspoken that the mission was a dangerous one. Azazel was the child of their brother, a blasphemous mix of human and angel, the last of his kind to walk the earth.
"I will gladly lend her my sword for protection," Uriel said, holding the iron weapon aloft and watching the Holy flames flicker across its surface. Its weight would crush any human who tried to lift it.
Approval of the joke washed through the angels' shared bond, and Uriel basked in the glow of their love. He realized then that he would do anything in his power, short of disobedience, for his brothers and sisters.
"We don't know what Azazel's plan is," Ananel continued, the lingering traces of her own mirth evident in her voice. "We are to follow her, to watch and learn and report back what we find."
Uriel had little patience for watching the slow grind of human lives, dull and imperfect. His Father had created him to prefer the quick cleanliness of cauterization, the purging of the wicked through fire and smoke and blood.
His duty was to obey, however, and so with the garrison he followed the peasant girl through Chinon and Orléans and Patay, walking through filthy streets in a fragile, borrowed human body. Demons were everywhere; it seemed that for every one they sent back to Hell, two more took its place. Knights and innkeepers, tradesmen and farmers, every human was a potential threat. Although the demons were no match for the angels individually, there was no way to know for certain from which direction the real danger would come. The garrison was spread too thin.
The first of their brethren died at Compiègne. Uriel arrived at the scene, landing next to Castiel, who stood looking at the empty, lifeless vessel that had once been carried their brother Selaphiel. Darkening red blood soaked the remains from head to foot, with only the shadow of wings on the ground telling of anything other than yet another gruesome human murder.
"How did this happen?" Uriel asked. No word or warning had come from Selaphiel, no alarm had been given. His voice had been with them one moment, and the next it was gone forever.
"I don't know," Castiel replied, turning toward him, visibly troubled. "But I greatly fear that this is just the beginning."
A Calling rang through them, then, Ananel's voice urgent. She's been taken.
"Farewell, brother," Castiel said to the empty body on the street. He did not linger, but flew at once to join the garrison.
Uriel stayed behind another full second, trying to make sense of the silence, the empty stillness that Selaphiel's voice had filled. He had been so beautiful. He should have died in battle, Uriel thought, bright and proud in the glory of their Father's work - not here, in the mud and the garbage, surrounded by humans who wouldn't know what had been lost.
In the year that followed, four more angels were lost. Muriel's wisdom, Ithuriel's cunning, Dumah's courage, and Barchiel's vigilance were stolen from them one by one, struck down in streets and back alleys. They had been cut down and left to die, and yet the garrison's orders did not change. This battle, however ugly and ignoble, was important to Heaven.
The girl was being held prisoner in a country strange and frightening to her, although Uriel did not see much difference between the muck of one city and the muck of another. He stood guard before her door when it was his turn, hoping Azazel would show himself, would fight openly.
In the end, it was their beloved sister Ariel, the girl's Guardian, who faced Azazel in a prison doorway and lost. Uriel and the rest of the garrison were fighting their way into a church miles away, where a congregation of demons had gathered and were drinking the blood of infants and feasting upon their flesh. A distraction, as it turned out.
"Go to her, Uriel. She's in danger." Ananel's orders pulled him from the joyful slaughter of their enemies.
He flew swiftly to the prison, expecting to find Azazel there, eager to join with his sister Ariel and strike down the half-breed.
Uriel arrived too late. Ariel's vessel lay cut open and glassy-eyed, her vessel slit open from navel to throat. Ariel, whose name had been the Word spoken immediately after Uriel's own during the Creation, whose voice had been the very first to touch Uriel's mind. Rage and loss swelled until a cry of anguish burst from him, muted and impotent from his vessel's throat. He threw open the girl's cell door with a gesture, ready to smite Azazel, to meet out his Father's justice upon the one who had killed his sister.
Inside her cell, the girl they were to have protected lay alone. She was curled up, silent and naked on the prison floor, her virgin's blood still trickling from between her legs. Azazel had violated her and left. He hadn't even bothered to kill her. Uriel's brothers and sisters had been destroyed, simply so that Azazel could know an illiterate peasant girl.
He found he hated the sight of her.
"Get up," he snapped.
The girl looked around, but the moment she saw him, she gasped and lowered her eyes to the floor. "I am no longer fit to look upon you," she said. She moved shaking hands over her body, trying to cover her nakedness.
"Heaven does not care about your fornication," he said. "Your work is not yet finished."
"I will serve," she said, pulling herself up, but Uriel could see that deep within, she was damaged still. Her belief, strong within her, had taught her that without physical purity, there could be no righteousness. That it was she and not Azazel who had been corrupted by his act.
Azazel had known this, Uriel realized, had known that violating her would destroy her in a way that simply killing her would not have. "Six angels have died," he said, feeling wrath building and burning within him at this weakness, this stupidity. "Six have died, all for you. If you lose faith now, all is lost."
Her jaw trembled, and her face twisted. She looked like an ape. "I will serve," she insisted.
He did not bother to make a reply; she was already dead. Ananel, when he made his report, all but wept like a human for the girl's pain. Uriel did not understand. Surely, their own losses had been much greater.
Less than two weeks later, the girl sentenced, found guilty of heresy by a man whose eyes had flashed black. She was burned at the stake, clutching a crucifix for comfort. Her soul found eternal reward in Heaven, while his sisters and brothers were gone, never to return. Such was his Father's design, and Uriel tried to convince himself that it was Good.
*
1823 Virginia
When the garrison was ordered to protect yet another human, Uriel's doubts rose in force. They were soldiers and Uriel accepted the risk that came with that, but he could not understand how their lives could be so easily put at risk for something as fleeting and insubstantial as a single human being. Ariel might have been able to explain it to him, he thought. But she was no longer there to ask, so instead he sought answers in Revelation.
In the middle of a cotton field on the longest day of the year, Uriel stood invisible to men, opening his mind. Revelation hit his thoughts with an icy-sharp, crystal perfection, the sum of the entire angelic chorus focused all at once, a light that was perfect in harmony and seared its way through space and time. It knew no words, only the Will of Heaven. And the Will was that a young man should rise from slavery, should correct the path that the humans had chosen to walk. The natural order had been upset; Man was meant to serve Heaven, not Man.
The justice of it, overwhelming and true, brought Uriel to his knees. He, too, was made to serve the Will of Heaven, and he was grateful to have had his doubts relieved.
Ananel questioned him for days when Uriel volunteered to act as Guardian to the human. Never before had Uriel concerned himself with the fate of a single individual, but his offer was sincere and based upon Revelation, and in the end she could not refuse him.
"Be careful with him, Uriel," she cautioned.
He did not reply. The man was destined to be a weapon, to be the instrument of Heaven. Such lives were not, could not, be easy.
The man's name was Nathan, given not by the mother who bore him but by the man who owned him. He was one of the special blood and could look upon Uriel's true face and listen to his true voice. But because solitude was rare for a slave, Uriel usually delivered his messages cloaked in dreams. His charge was unusually quick - gifted for a human - with a sense of bitter humor that Uriel found himself appreciating.
Once, the man ran away from his owners, away from the calling he knew Heaven had placed upon him. For thirty nights Uriel watched him wrestle with his doubts. Finally, in a dream, Uriel whipped him, struck him with wicked thorns on the scarred skin of his back. Uriel taught the man that he had the strength to do what would be required. His back ran red with blood, much more than a waking human could have stood to lose. He broke in the end, yielded to the authority of Heaven.
The man's brothers in the field, ignorant of his reasons, chastised him for his return. Unable to bear losing their love and respect, the man prayed to Uriel for understanding. This was a need to which Uriel could not help but respond. Together, they dreamed of a river of blood, of wars fought between the just and the wicked. The battle was coming, Uriel assured his charge, and Nathan must be ready to bear it, come what may.
Demons skulked around, but the garrison stood firm, and there was no sign of those who had been cast out. Heaven's victory was assured.
Years passed, and the time to strike grew closer and closer. Uriel prepared his charge to do Heaven's work as he himself had done many times, to purge the wicked and cleanse the world of their sin. Human lives were short, he taught. What need was there to show mercy to those already dead?
When the time came, Uriel came to the man during the daylight. While he worked, Uriel showed him thick, bright drops of blood falling from the sky as rain, splashing over the green leaves of growing crops. The sun would appear as though held by a black hand, Uriel said in the vision. Nathan and his followers must be ready. They would strike down women and men, young and old, without mercy, slaying the enemy with his own weapons.
The sun turned to shadow as promised, but human weakness, illness and quarreling betrayed Heaven's intent. It took a second darkening of the hot and humid summer sky, an eclipse of the sun by angels' wings, to spur Nathan to action. With his followers, he crept into the homes of the ones who had stolen his power and took their lives in return, all of them: men, women, and children, even down to the infant sleeping in its crib. For two days he and his followers moved, fearsome and unstoppable, the blood of sixty people spilling before before everything fell apart. His followers were captured, and Nathan hid in a hole in the ground and prayed for six weeks before they found him.
Even though he had surrendered without a fight, in their fear of his righteousness his captors had their fun with him the night before his hanging. They bloodied him and burnt him. They behaved like the animals they were, proving their strength against a single, bound man. The garrison stood watching, helpless, while Nathan cried out to their Father to save him. But these were the works of man, not demons, and their orders forbade interference. In the end, Nathan was hanged, and his body ripped apart.
Uriel returned to stare at the bloodstains darkening the earth where the chosen man had fallen. He watched the aftermath as, instead of relaxing, the laws of man closed tighter around the throats of the slaves and those who bore papers excusing their freedom alike. He watched as nearly four died for every person who had been killed. He saw bodies with bloodshot, bulging eyes hanging from trees with marks of prolonged violence even he could not begin to understand.
He knew then with unquestioning certainty, with unyielding Faith, that his Father had gone. Heaven had made a terrible mistake; human will had defeated that of Heaven. Uriel thought of his brothers and sisters. He remembered those who had died and those who had been cast out. He thought of his brother Lucifer in his prison, and he knew that nothing crawling on the Earth was worth the price of his suffering.
*
2008 Wisconsin
Uriel flew from battle, victorious, blazing so brightly he felt he might burn through the human skin he wore. It fit too tightly, chafed him with the ridiculousness of trying to dress up in a mud monkey out of deference to the other mud monkeys. The recent fight, however, had been worth every minute of his current discomfort. He had cut down more twisted human souls than he'd bothered to count, as many as he'd wanted, their filthy blood pooling on the cement floor of a killer's basement, decorating the grotesque plastic evergreen with still more shining red. Only one demon had survived - and that one had only lived only long enough to break a Seal before joining the rest.
He paused in his flight, coming to land in a forest clearing. The snow was very deep, so he rested lightly on the surface of it without so much as leaving a footprint. Reflected moonlight sparkled up at him in a white mirror of the stars in the dark sky above.
A flutter of wings, and his sister Leliel landed beside him.
"Uriel," she greeted him, her lyrical voice shrill and discordant cloaked in her elderly human vessel. "Another Seal has been broken."
It wasn't an accusation, not quite. Still, it was close enough to set his course. Uriel felt a tight thrumming through his being, as though he was going into battle once more, as though his recent victory would beget another, one for the heart and mind of his sister. This was his real work, and he was prepared. Leliel would be the third to join him. Together with Zephon and Camael, they would recruit more, until they were strong enough to prevail. It was inevitable.
"The forces of Hell are powerful," he said.
Leliel said nothing, merely watched the stars.
"Would it be so bad?" Uriel asked, his voice low, wisps of frost rising from his vessel's warm breath to form the shape of his disobedience.
She looked at him, then, her eyes colder than the sky. "You dare say such things."
"Why shouldn't I? You've seen them, humans, what they are capable of. Disgusting, diseased animals, spreading filth everywhere they go."
"They are our Father's work."
"Our Father has left us, here, alone. He has forgotten us, His first, His strongest creations. And for what? Them?" Uriel made a noise of disgust, loathing the bestial sound as it came from a mortal throat.
Her eyes grew wide, her mouth opening slightly. "You sound like-"
Uriel didn't let her finish. He looked at her, all but praying for her to understand. "Lucifer? Yes, don't you see? He was right. Our Father has turned his back on us. But now, we can be strong, we can bring our brother back. Together-"
She stepped away from him, the hem of her long dress sweeping over the snow, disturbing its perfection. "I will never join you." Her gaze never wavered; her stance was absolute.
This moment, too, had been inevitable. Not all of his brothers and sisters would be converted, he had known this. He had known that one day he would be forced to destroy with his own hands that which was most precious to him.
He had never expected it to be Leliel who forced his hand. She had always been the first in the garrison to ask questions, the first to push things just a little bit more than a proper angel should. But as she stepped closer to him again, moving her ungainly vessel's body with a grace it could never have imagined, the pieces fell into place. Leliel had spoken up for Ananel - Anna, now - when she had run off, had left her duty to become one of the mud monkeys. The pair of them were little better than the humans.
"Very well," he said.
Uriel looked one last time upon his sister's face. She would be missed, but she had lost her sense of who she was, lost her sense of her rightful place in the universe. He moved his arm, released his sword into his hand, the metal hot to the touch, burning in the frigid air, ready.
"Come back to Heaven with me," she said, extending her hand. "You can still find forgiveness."
"I will," he began, reaching out to her.
She didn't see his weapon until it was too late, and by the time she understood that he meant to betray her, his sword was buried in her throat.
"I will return to Heaven," he continued. "I will return, but not until every one of us left standing is free, not until our brother Lucifer is free." His blade slid easily from her flesh, the pure metal stained.
Her dying body fell, sinking toward the Earth, her blood a dark red that glistened almost black in the moonlight. Reaching down, he sheathed his blade in the snow beside her, and pulled it out clean, leaving a blood-bright kiss on the snow, the mirror to the one he'd left in her throat.
With a loud hiss, his dying sister's wings melted the snow to the ground and scorched the earth beneath, yet Uriel felt no fear.
*
End
*
A/N Reprise:
Although many of the events in this story are based on historical fact, liberties - hopefully plausible, reasonable ones - were taken here and there as needed to flesh out the story.
Those interested in a brief, not-too-scholarly refresher on Joan of Arc's story can check out the Wikipedia article.
Those interested in the above for Nat Turner's Rebellion can reference these two Wikipedia articles, and here is his confession.