accidental video -> text; sunday morning

[expunger]

[The video clicks on softly, with little static or feedback normally associated with angels. It's broadcasting from a rooftop, pointing off-kilter slightly to take in the panorama of Adstringéndum's horizon in the early light of dawn. The sky is striped and bright, the sun only just peeking over the distant horizon to paint the city and Wastes with

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Offline;

[painhumbles]

[Yep. Here's Gabriel. Having watched that entire PCD display and now genuinely curious.]

You left your phone on.

[But not enough to not be a brat about her quiet log time.]

Offline;

[expunger]

I am aware.

[Without looking at him. The sunrise is genuinely beautiful; how has she gone so many thousands of years without noticing it? Surely she does not need to be young to appreciate the beauty of Creation.

Even if this sunrise is not at home, and this sun not created by their Father is dawning light over an alien world. Raphael will take it anyway, since she won't see His Creation again.]

Offline;

[checkoutpandora]

[Gabriel watches it for himself, allowing himself just a second of quiet contemplation, of actually appreciation of the sunrise. In a world as broken as theirs, you don't really pay attention to the sunrises- you're too busy counting the number of sunsets.] You also seem to have TB of the Grace, but that's neither here or there, huh?

[expunger]

No. [Her reply comes softly. She still won't look at him.]

Tuberculosis can be cured.

[checkoutpandora]

Okay, so you're hemorrhaging Grace like a trauma victim- no sense in getting fatalistic about it. [Except... Well, yeah.] So I guess Tommy's little spell did a lot more than fake-kill you, huh?

[expunger]

Much more.

[Fatalistic. Entirely the wrong and right word to use, since her fate is absolutely sealed by now, but with the infuriating and daunting possibility of return. Raphael looks at him slowly, then really looks at him for the first time in a long time. Noticing his vessel's very oversized clothing, how frenetic and snappy his gesticulating gets when he's under stress or profoundly unhappy. His wings, smaller than hers but still enormous, hollowed and thin from long separation from home but still shining brighter than her own anymore.

Four beautiful faces burning just behind the casing of flesh and bone. Each face and part of him is flawless: a perfect work of God burning magnificent and vast, coloring far outside the lines of his human shape. How he carries himself so tall in that diminutive vessel, as if to make every person who looks at him see what the angels see. She sees it all.

She doesn't want to forget. ]

[painhumbles]

How? [He's unaware, as he always is. He thinks he knows everything when, truly, he knows nothing.]

[expunger]

You- [A pained pause when she realizes he honestly doesn't know. That he hasn't figured it out from her condition, and she'll have to tell him.]

I am dying, Gabriel.

[painhumbles]

[He did sort of know that, but he wasn't letting himself believe it. The part he really wanted to know was how some pissant man-witch managed a spell that could kill an archangel. He fixes her with a pained "duh" look and elaborates for her.] How did he pull it off?

[expunger]

It was a simple enough curse. Apparently this one is universally lethal.