And then- well, Michael had a thing for entrances, but even more he had a thing for showing up at wholly expected times. So he was there suddenly, on the streets of Pride with his brothers, waiting. For me? Supposedly.
"How did you know I'd be here?" I asked, going with the presumption.
"You were either going to come or go at some point today."
"Speaking of 'some point today'..." Uriel said, faking a yawn.
None of the brothers really looked happy to see me, Michael included, though it could be supposed the non-Michael siblings were honestly mad. How long had they been waiting? There was little way they couldn't have heard the battle outside when they first arrived to take the elevator down.
"Of course." Michael said, waving the conversation's subject away with his hand. Despite his typical grin, I had grown used to his facial expressions, and could tell something was wrong. "But I assure you, we need Michael C here to get anything done."
Did Michael just call me Michael? Well, yes, he obviously had- but it was such a weird thing I had to question if I had slipped into a dream.
"Why." Gabriel asked, or really, stated with a heavy sigh.
"He knows these demons. He'll keep us alive."
"He killed us last time we were here, Michael." Gabriel said again. "You're wasting time."
"Uh, well, you know-" Raphael said, glancing between his two older brothers nervously. "Five people."
"Five people." Gabriel about spat.
Michael took my hand and the group started walking, but I still had a feeling I was dreaming.
Michael than turned to his brothers and held up a hand. "Wait here." He said.
"No." Gabriel said immediately, but he stood still and the other two brothers stood behind him.
Michael led me ahead of him, holding my hand in the air like it was a waltz. When we were at the other end of the street, he leaned in close and whispered in my ear.
"My children are all dying." I looked up at his face and saw he was still smiling. "It's time I surrendered."
I felt something stir in my chest, like my heart had turned. But I shook the feeling off with practiced ease. "I have to go."
"No you don't."
"Yes, I do."
"I'll ask for you, then. Tell the demons I won't speak without you. You'll return to me eventually."
"I really need to go. Please, kill me now or else I will wait for death to seek me herself."
"I'm not going to kill you right now, and you're not going to let yourself die. Just come with me." His nails were digging into my arm.
"I don't care about anything anymore."
"Except Heaven. Except me. Because you know I wouldn't allow for anything else."
"I-I really have to go." I looked away from his gaze. "You need to give Heaven up."
"See! You still care about its fate... at least in some form." He ran a hand down my cheek, letting his fingers linger on what I was sure was my blushing face.
"You two have been having your moment for a lot longer than a moment needs to last!" Uriel called from the other side of the street.
"Yeah! Uh, I don't necessarily need to see the end result of this intimate moment. E-ever." Raphael looked back and forth between his two brothers for a sign of approval, but no one seemed particularly amused.
"You're coming with me." Michael said, and he slipped his hand into mine.
"I should go." I said, but I let him lead me forward.
I did not need to be here, and almost in connection I felt a small trickle of blood fall down my lips. Just a nosebleed, but surely meant to be a sign. Or was it an omen if it called for bad things?
Hell really needed better security. Truthfully, I had no idea if they even had security, or what good security looked like- I just felt it was very easy for us to head into The Few's main office and ride up to their meeting room. And walk in.
Glenn pointed at me. "I left you to die."
I sighed. "Not yet."
Kell and Stacy were the only other people present. Stacy seemed absorbed in his touch phone and barely looked up. Kell looked happier than the last time I had seen him, but that meant very little. And his mood immediately dropped as the Brothers and I walked into the room.
"Can we not." He said. "God. What are you doing back here again?"
"Calm down, blood dog." Michael said, gesturing for his brothers to sit but not doing so himself. "His death will come on my whim. But that's like, not right now. So relax."
"Why are we here?" Raphael asked.
"Business, of course. What else would I come visit you with?"
"More transophobic garbage?"
"You consistently forget English isn't my first language." Michael shrugged.
"Yes it is." I heard Gabriel say under his breath.
"I'm the older one here, I think I know a bit more than you." Michael said, switching to angelic to scold him.
"A year is barely anything when we've each had two hundred of them."
"Stop your bickering and return to... whatever we're here to talk about!" Raphael interrupted.
"Uh, yes." Michael straightened his posture as he spoke. "Regardless, this is a serious time, and one not meant for vaguely rude remarks."
"It wasn't a rude one. It was say, fact." Stacy was still speaking off hand though, not too invested.
"If I want to fuck on my brother for putting on a long skirt, I'm pretty certain that's something I'm allowed to do."
"You're wearing a dress though." Glenn pointed out.
"But at least I don't go around calling myself a girl because of it."
"You... do always use feminine case when talking to yourself in angelic though. And call yourself a mother like all the time." I said.
"Yeah, but only to prove that anyone can do it. I'm not a girl. Neither is he. You can't just change those things."
"Were you honestly talking about Lucky again?" Gabriel sighed. "Michael, when will you let it rest?"
"When it dies."
"It can't die anymore than we can." Raphael said quietly. "You should leave Lucy alone."
Michael was angry. Fully angry. Worse than I'd ever seen him before. He was an emotive man usually, but it was always positive- grinning and laughing and smiling instead of letting his eyes lose their sparkle and letting a room sit quiet. But now he was hunched over protectively, mouth slightly open, staring with dead eyes at the table.
He could have looked repentive if you didn't know him. Stunned by the others' words. Ready to try life over again.
But I knew he was raging, even if I had yet to grasp why.
"I'm too young for this." He said flatly. "Nichael! Come." Then with flourish he grabbed my shoulder so tight I fell almost to the floor. He forced me out of the room and into the hallway. But there he fell to the floor, inches from the door, and motioned for me to sit with him.
I waited a few seconds, considering if I really should. But then I got down and sat a few inches next to him. He immediately scouched over, weaseling his way closer to me until his limbs were more or less entwined with mine in a quite unromantic fashion.
He fell against my shoulder and I didn't know what to do.
"Even you're not happy to see me."
"I don't have to grasp everything to gleam you're at a fault."
"Look, lucky Luke-y always got everything he wanted. So he wanted to be a girl now? In a family of boys, my parents loved the idea of a little girl to dote on. It'd be cute! It'd be daring! And most of all, it was a problem with an easy answer- unlike the case of the twin, the burden of the family, who was always embarrassing his parent's dinner guests with his tales of monsters and voices lurking in the hall."
"Don't-"
"So I killed them and burned the house I had long been trapped in and I learned to keep quiet and found my own good spin. Sometimes it's easier to forge a new identity than face who you've become."
"Stop talking." I said, taking notice of my the speed I was breathing at. "You didn't have parents."
"You're right. I didn't. Anyways, out on the streets Luke didn't do much else but gather attention like his orphan's plight was any worse than ours, like having doctors talk about you with other doctors somehow made you-"
"You didn't have doctors on the streets. You couldn't have been an orphan if you never were born to begin with."
"You're right. That's true. Luke is always stealing my children though, letting them believe his lies and letting them think I am the evil one simply because I came before him. He thinks he's born different, he thinks he's a girl in his mind. And I think I could wear a dress too, and wear makeup and talk about boys and use female pronouns and still be a boy. "
"Do... you want to be a girl then?"
He was not done. "No, I'm a boy. Like he is. Why is it that I am different from him? Why does he believe he is different from me? We are twins. In a family of brothers."
"Michael. Do you want me to call you a girl? If you're worried, I mean, your brothers will be fine with it and angelic myth already basically regards you as genderless-"
"I am not a girl." He said with great sorrow. "And neither is he."
"But do you want to be?"
He was quiet. "Luke is not a girl."
"Michael. This conversation is very irrelevant to have dragged me out of the room for it."
"My brothers don't understand. When I was little, my mother and father thought they understood Luke and gave him everything he ever wanted. So I burned the house down."
"Michael."
"They said I was good with music and good with art. But I never got to be a girl like he did. My parents didn't get to be called 'open-minded' and 'kind-hearted' for raising me. I was his twin. Identical. But every time I kill him and send him back to his proper nineteen year old state, he immediately seeks to damage himself farther from my image."
"Michael."
"I was a lost cause the moment I stopped doing what they asked. But at least I had a title."
"Mich-"
"Oh, shut up!" Michael snapped at me, really snapped. Angry. And allowing it. "Stop trying to quiet me. Who exactly have you been hoping I was? Who do you want me to become? I'm immortal, Nichael. I can't change."
"You're calling me Nichael again."
"Because right now, you are my angel." He fell back to his calm haze, lightly smiling while his sunned fingers traced my face. And that was when I realized two things:
Michael was sick.
And Heaven couldn't end like this.
I untangled myself from Michael, and got ready to stand. "Do you like Lucky?" I asked him.
"I love him. He's my brother, after all. My perfect twin."
"Come on then." I helped pick him up to his feet, and as I got ready to enter the conference room again, I saw Michael trace a finger on the well below his left eye. Had he been crying?
"I just wish he wouldn't fall for his own lies."
"We're going to go in and talk to The Few now. Your brothers too."
"His games aren't fun anymore."
"Michael. Come on."
I had to hold his hand to help him walk in.