video; BACKDATED to Wednesday

[expunger]

[Raphael, this time, looks less like the bleeding pile of shit she did last time and more like a meditative businesswoman with dry skin who hasn't slept in a while. She is seated Indian-style on the floor of what is obviously a run-down house; her normal illusions of nice drawing rooms and furnished libraries are gone. Forgotten, even. There's a

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[Offline] Log format because I do what I want. 8|

[swordoffate]

Michael has been having a bad week. Actually, longer than that; he's been having a bad while, ever since the disastrous break down of his family's careful alliances and truces that had kept them all at peace. He'd had to break up altercations and had missed even more of them, and despite what his siblings apparently thought, he was not an endless source of patience that existed to keep them from their immature squabbling and lead them all around by the hand

it's your hot body you do what you want.

[expunger]

Raphael continued spinning the sword in midair, not bothering to look up to greet him. The wound was a little bigger now, and the bright glow coming from within fascinated her. It was a bright, strident pain to cut through the constant burn that even now ate away at her being and strained her insides. Anything different was welcome.

There was no greeting, friendliness, or familiarity from her. If anything, Michael's arrival made her frown, shoulders shifting with displeasure at the too-bright presence now pressing at the walls around her. His presence was like a low-grade migraine to her. In fact, from her stalking this week of the other so-called angels in the city, they all were- except one. But he was the one that she knew she had to have caution around. The untrustworthy one, the bastard she distinctly remembered plunging his hand into her Grace and trying to rip it out, leaving behind this horrible, constant screaming agony inside her.

She had nothing to say to any of her alleged brothers.

I run with twelve gangs and we only commit hate crimes

[swordoffate]

Michael was not impressed, and he didn't know what she was doing with the sword; the Raphael he knew would not be treating a dangerous weapon so callously. The sight of the grace bleed, as small as it was, bothered him and he didn't even have to move to mentally reach out and pluck the sword from her telekinetic grasp, it flying to his hand for him to catch it easily.

"It isn't a toy, Raphael." He said, voice tight; he wasn't snapping or losing his cool, but he wanted to to the point where it was creeping into his tone.

I ran for Congress and won

[expunger]

She was on her feet at that, instantly annoyed. Only now did Raphael see fit to look at him, feeling with a disturbed pang the metaphysical hurt of being near him and his kind.

"Give me my sword." Pause. "It is mine." That was doubt, but she wouldn't admit it.

SHUT UP BITCH~

[swordoffate]

Michael tossed the weapon back at her when she demanded it back, acquiescing because his point had been made already. "Then don't misuse it." He warned, striding casually further into the room. The ridiculously barren room, which he didn't bother to restore to it's usual decorations just yet.

I'M SO BAD I DIGITALLY PUT JABBA BACK IN THE ORIGINAL STAR WARS MOVIE

[expunger]

Raphael caught it easily and sheathed it again in nothingness, watching curiously as it slid seemingly into her sleeve and out of sight. Then she turned to him again, ignoring the burst of cutting pain from her hand. On top of the agony of Hellfire, nothing else seemed to matter.

"I'll do whatever I want." That felt right on a level she couldn't quantify, so she pressed on in the direction that made sense. "You are in no position to tell me otherwise."

I'M SO BAD I DON'T REMEMBER ANY MORE LINES

[swordoffate]

A flash of irritation passed through Michael, but he continued his lazy walk into the room. He couldn't even blame the outright defiance on the event, considering she'd done it before, but he tried not to let it get to him as he responded. "As far as you know." He commented lightly, in the airy tone of someone who clearly didn't care what another thought of them, because they were wrong and it didn't matter if they knew it.

I'M SO BAD I LOOKED THEM UP YOU LAZY SLUT

[expunger]

Raphael appeared right in front of him, wings folding closed.

"No, you are right. There are many things I do not know." Her gaze was very deliberately unwavering.

I'M SO BAD I WAS ACTUALLY DOING THEM WITHOUT CHEATING 8| /ALL ENTENDRES INTENDED

[swordoffate]

He tracked her motion easily enough that he wasn't surprised by the sudden flight, staring back at her evenly. "That's the event's doing, as you know. If you have a question, ask it."

I'M SO BAD THAT FUCK YOUR MOTHER.

[expunger]

"I have one, but you could answer it."

She backed off a step, eyes narrowed but thoughtful. "I fail to see why I try to be around you at all."

I'M SO BAD THAT YOUR FACE

[swordoffate]

Ouch. That hurt worse than Michael was willing to show, so he didn't, face as neutral and calm as ever. "What do you find so dislikeable about me?" He turned the question around, both because he wanted to know the answer and because it let him control the conversation.

[expunger]

It was a fair question, she supposed, given that this person barely identifiable as her same species was her brother. So Raphael answered it, barely keeping a lid on herself through the sting of presence before her that she couldn't even identify as holy.

"Being around you is physically painful. I cannot begin to imagine why I inflict it on myself."

[swordoffate]

Oh, that. Michael nodded, looking a little more somber. "It's unfortunate, and recent. We're still working on a way to fix it."

[expunger]

"I know." She remembers that much. "Our brother inserted his hand inside me and lit my being on fire. Looking at you and being in a room with you is singularly unpleasant, and I have yet to acclimate to it."

Raphael never told him that before. The angel never once gave any indication that being around Michael was anything but normal or, indeed, a little comforting.

[swordoffate]

She'd never said it, but Michael had begun to guess. He knew his grace had been painful to her when he'd attempted healing, so it wasn't really a stretch, though hearing it was unpleasant.

He wondered if it might be best if he avoided her for the event, so as not to put more stress on her, but considering her behavior on the video feed while he wasn't around? No. He wasn't so sure he wanted to leave her alone.

"And the damage you were doing to yourself with the sword was better?"

[expunger]

Raphael didn't have to look down to know that her finger was still injured, brilliant light pouring from the cut. No matter.

"Yes. It provides a distraction from the persistent pain of Hellfire." Depressingly, Raphael never would have been this honest if she had her memories and with them, her hang ups. She never would have told him the truth if she knew her brother. "You sneer because you do not know."

With that, she stepped forward and pressed her uninjured hand to his head, pushing into his mind the pain, the feel of Hellfire that Raphael was even in that very moment enduring: a constant, white-hot burn that never abated and was never any less intense than the first moment it seared her, for months on end without the slightest flicker of abatement. Her skin on fire, her being twisted, the lurching metaphysical nausea of being around him or Gabriel. Raphael let him see in a way that she knew another angel (if he could even said to be like her anymore- she couldn't really count herself as his kind or his species, regardless of