Radicle (Terminal trilogy #2, can stand alone)

30: Dead man walking

That would have been entirely inappropriate though, especially with her husband sitting right next to her.

I ended the story with when Raphael threw me to this Earth, and Lucky paused for a moment.

"How is he?"

"Michael?"

"Raphael."

"He's uh... fine. Haven't seen much of him. He's busy."

"That's good." She said. She paused again. "Anyway. I will take you in here then. No reason to discriminate against people commonly antagonized. But please change your name. Human or not, it's silly and will probably freak out a lot of my fallen."

"It's my name. Call me Mick if you must."

"Fine. Mick. We can say you named yourself after a microphone."

"Please don't make up a backstory for me."

"No last name though. House rules are simple. Respect everyone, be nice, listen to me, forget about Heaven."

"You own the place then?"

"You thought otherwise?"

"Why did you choose the name Lucky?"

"What, you trying to ask every question you can think of?" Her eyes seemed to have a smart gleam to them, so perhaps she was just joking. "You're asking this in the presence of a man named Luxury."

"Sorry. Just wondering."

"I know what you're wondering." She said with a dry smile. "Everyone does, the moment they see me. Even the humans sometimes get us confused. Michael is my brother, yes. Twins."

"And the other brothers too?"

"Doubtfully. But yes. And I chose Lucky because- well, it was chosen for me. I tried to get people to call me Lucy, but it never quite stuck." She laughed. "Sort of ironically, I suppose."

I felt uncomfortable among my would-be brethren, mostly because I kept thinking how all of this should have gone down. Few angels think to themselves 'eventually, I will fall', but the thought crosses our minds at least once in our service. And certainly I had it on my mind more than anyone lately.

I always thought when I came to fall- well, I didn't know about Purgatory back then. There was no way we could have known. Before I had just assumed fallen angels were stranded from each other, wandering the earth pointlessly. Once I had learned this was not the case, however, I started thinking when I fell, I would end up here quite comfortably. It was a homely sort of place.

But with the difficulties I had created my first visit, my new brothers were not ready to be warm with me. Conifer, my old friend, tried to be friendly. But I couldn't help but recall how he had cut off my wing, so it was sort of awkward.

My shoulder was starting to hurt, too, and I clutched it while listening to Conifer speak to another fallen named Interstate.

"What is an interstate anyways?" I interrupted their conversation to ask, as I hadn't really been listening in.

"I dunno." He said. "It was one of the first things I saw on a sign when I got up. Not the first, obviously, or most of us would be named pine tree." He gave a sort of glare at Conifer, who shrugged it off.

"Well, mine's still pretty unique." He said.

"We have twenty eight different Pines. They're like a plague." Interstate said.

"You've been on this Earth for a while then. Most of the signs have rusted at this point. You'd think you'd have learned what your name meant."

He shrugged. "I suppose I could guess the meaning by now. But I like the mystery. Besides, I don't leave this place very often anyways. There's no point to the humans. Nothing unique to take interest in."