Wings and Tears: Part Eight
A week had passed and Solo sat on the couch of the sitting room, watching the television, his head resting on the shoulder of his father.
“The Leaders Conference is only a week away!” declared the anchor woman. Quatre came in a muted the television as Relena’s face appeared on the screen.
“Guys, you have a visitor,” he told the two of them. Michael appeared behind him.
“Hello Solo,” he said and Solo stood to hug the archangel, Quatre nodded and then left them alone. “How have you been, little one?”
Solo looked up at Michael, “I’ve been better.”
“Of course,” Duo stood to shake Michael’s hand. Michael looked at him for a second, while their hands were still clasped together, and then they both came together in an embrace. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine. Really I’m fine.” Duo insisted.
“Why are you here Michael? Not that I’m not glad to see you.” Solo asked, sitting back down on the couch.
“Well, really, I just wanted to see how you were doing, little one. I mean, I’ve been worried about you.”
“I…I…just wish I knew what she thought she was accomplishing!” Solo declared, his eyes looking at the ground. Duo came and sat next to him again and put his arms around him. “I really wish she could have just explained it better, and then maybe I could have talked her out of it. God, she hid it from me. I should have seen what was happening.”
“No,” Michael bent in front of him, “No! You are not blaming yourself for this Solo. Look at me.” Solo looked up at him. “This is not your fault. What your mother did is not your fault. You did everything you could.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Solo protested.
“Neither did I!” Michael shot back, both of them had tears in their eyes. “Do you blame me as well? I was there too, remember? Is it my fault too? Don’t you think I should have known that poison? I saw it when your Grandmother took it! I should have known, right? You…you didn’t even known there was such a drink that could kill us until she went missing! I knew! I should have stopped it!” By this time both of them were crying. Solo reach out and hugged Michael tightly and they cried together.
After their tears had stopped they still held each other until Michael backed up.
“I’m gonna take you out.”
“What?”
“You need a break, so does your Dad. There is a center in the city that’s holding a dance. We are going to crash it.”
“I don’t want to. Really Michael, I just want to stay here.”
Michael shook his head, “I never thought you would turn me down.”
“I’m not.”
Michael smiled weakly and sighed, “To tell the truth I wanted a break as well. The Lord came to me, Solo, after you left again. He said that your mother did something, unthinkable. He said that she somehow found a way to break Lucifer out of Hell,” he stood, the pain in his voice was so heavy they could almost taste it. He stood and went to touch the eternally blooming white rose.
Duo and Solo both looked at him shocked for a moment, “How did she do that?!” demanded Duo.
Michael shrugged sadly, “I don’t know, neither did He. That’s why we’re so scared of it. What could possibly break a Seal of God?” He turned back to them. “I’m tried. I’ve dealt with too much. It’s not easy being the leader. It’s not easy being patient. It’s not easy being good and now He wants me to find Luc and put him back it Hell? He didn’t even give me a moment to mourn my friend.” Michael eyes were distant and so sad. “He said I was the only one with the stamina to take it. He said I needed to protect His Power. Whatever she did…it had He scared out of his All-Knowing mind.” Solo stood and walked up to the archangel. His empathic abilities allowed him to feel the grief and distress of his leader.
~~
“No. I’m not going to a dance where all of the cute girls are lesbians. That’s like putting a meal in front of a staving man and telling him it’s poisoned!”
“Well gee Wufei, if I had known you were that desperate…”
“Shut-up Maxwell! I’ll just stay here and watch after Hanna.”
“That’s good. That means we won’t have to call in Lorena on her day off.” Quatre commented.
“See? Its better I stay here.”
The center
Michael had talked about was the GLC in the city, other wise known as the Gay
and
Ten minutes later they were in two different cars and on their way into the city. The center might not have been as ‘hip’ as some of the clubs as the old pilots were used to, but they didn’t have to worry about tricking people to get Solo inside. Music blared into their bodies as the entered the club.
“Michael, are you sure about this?” asked Solo, a little apprehensive.
“No, but I’m never sure of anything. Come on.” the archangel dragged Solo by the hand into the crowd of dancers. Solo really didn’t feel like dancing, but he humored Michael, as soon he found himself lost in the songs. Quatre smiled at Trowa as he was brought onto the dance floor as well. Duo glanced sidelong at Heero, who glared than sighed.
“Come on.” Heero said and together they moved into the crowd.
Solo danced and danced and danced. He didn’t take a break, just closed his eyes and moved. He didn’t care who was dancing with him, just as long as they didn’t get in the way. For the first time that week he wasn’t thinking about his mother and his body, mind, and spirit loved the freedom. Michael, however, got tired and moved to the punch bowl. Heero was standing by it. He had abandoned Duo on the floor ten minutes before and was now watching him dance with his son. Michael took some of the red liquid and turned to look at the pair as well. They were laughing.
“What are you doing, Michael?” asked Heero.
“What do you mean?” Michael asked taken a little aback.
“You do know that Solo likes you a lot, right?” Heero asked, his eyebrow raised.
Michael paused a second, “It doesn’t take a genius to see that.”
“So then why are you leading him on?” Heero asked immediately and turned to face the archangel, his face very set.
“What makes you think I’m doing that?” Michael asked, defensive.
“You invited him here, you’ve been dancing with him.”
“In case you haven’t noticed Solo really hasn’t been paying attention to who he is dancing with, and I brought him here because he really needed a break from morning. Angels aren’t like humans, Heero, we can’t spend weeks at a time thinking about the misery in out hearts, it cripples us. He needed a break.”
“And so…how do you feel about Solo?”
“I helped raise him.”
“Are you saying I can’t care about him because I didn’t.”
Michael just looked at him for a moment, and he looked right back, “Is that what this is about?”
“This is about you hurting a kid who is already in pain.”
“Look at him? Does it look like I’m hurting him?” Solo, in fact, looked like he was having the time of his life. “Heero, I’m not here to hurt him. I’m not here to ‘lead him on’. I’m not here to take away his love for you and Duo.” Heero looked back at the angel.
“He doesn’t love me.”
“Are you so sure?” Michael turned back to Heero. White and blue lights replaced the raging rainbow ones and a soft melody played. For a while they glared at each other.
“What do you mean?” Heero asked.
“He may be
Duo’s son, but your Duo’s husband and because of that Solo looks up to you.
Solo has been searching for the reason Duo left Lorelei. And now with her death
it hurts even more that Duo is no longer angelic. He’s human. He’ll die as
well.” Michael paused and Heero looked back at father and son. “You’re the
reason he left. He might say it was this or that, but it doesn’t take a
half-witted angel to see that you’re
the reason. Solo found that out the first time he saw Duo, and so he’s been
studying you, and his father’s emotions towards you. That’s why he is so
baffled by your relationship.”
“Wait a
minute, are you saying that while he has been here Solo has been conducting a
type of investigation into me?” asked Heero.
“Yes. And
do you know what he found?”
Heero looked back at Michael and for a second they were silent, “What?” he finally asked.
“Quatre described it best, you are to Heart of Space. God crafted and chose you to lead the Gundams into war. You are the Prefect Soldier, perfect as only God’s hands could have made you. The lyrics to the old song says it all, ‘God must have spent a little more time on you.’ Duo saw that in you, and that’s enough to allure any angel away, especially since you returned the feeling. You knew there was something different about Duo, didn’t you?” Michael turned now to look at Heero. Heero looked to the ground and thought. Had he known that Duo was an angel? What had made him attracted to Duo? He hadn’t felt those types of feeling for anyone else, he had no reason too, they interfered with his missions. He literally ignored or beat them out of himself, but he had never been able to stop the attraction he had towards Duo, the magnetism between them. Had it been because he ‘felt’ Duo’s angelic origin? Suddenly he found himself nodding. Michael smiled, “Not even Quatre guessed at that, not even Duo guessed it, only you. You just didn’t know it at the time. But anyway, back to my point, you’re fascinating to us, every once and a while a human like you comes around and it blows us away. Duo loves you because of it and so does Solo, just in very different ways.”
“Lorelei didn’t love me?”
“No, but she did hate you in only a way an angel could hate you. We are rarely indifferent towards humans like you.” He turned back to the crowd.
“What about you?” Heero asked. Michael looked at him again and smiled. He was about to say something when his smiled failed. He looked back at Solo to find that Solo had stopped dancing and was looking at him.
“What?” asked Heero. Michael started to walk towards Solo and Solo walked towards Michael.
“Do you feel that?” Michael asked Solo. Solo nodded.
“Feel what?” Duo asked, he had followed Solo.
“Where is he?” Solo asked.
“I don’t know.” Michael and Solo both began looking around.
“Where’s who?” Duo asked, and looked at Heero, who had followed Michael.
“There!” Solo said and pointed at a figure by the exit. Michael looked where he was pointing and the figure quickly ducked into the darkness outside. Michael and Solo ran to follow him. Michael took the lead and swung open the door. The person they were chasing was running through the empty side of the parking lot, running at a speed only possible of an angel. Michael and Solo sped up as well. Soon they caught up with him and Michael quickly tackled him. They both grunted as they hit the ground. Solo stopped running and quickly caught his breath.
“Get off!” yelled the person Michael had tackled.
“And let you get away?”
“Ok, fine. I really don’t mind this position you know.” Michael quickly got off of him.
“What are you doing here?” Michael asked angrily. “You don’t want to go back to Hell do you?!”
Lucifer slowly stood up, “I had to see you,” he said and then turned to look back at Michael. He ran a hand through his blond hair. Michael sighed.
“That was stupid of you.”
Lucifer took a deep breath, “Maybe. But what’s the point of being out of Hell if I can’t see you?”
Michael didn’t say anything. He clenched his fist and quickly thought about the War in Heaven. Remember how horrible he was in the War, he told himself. He deserves Hell. Solo picked up on these thoughts and the ‘memories’ that accompanied them. He looked at Michael, shocked by the revelation, then back at Lucifer.
“How did you get out?” Michael finally asked.
Duo and Heero, who had followed the two angels, finally caught up, but kept their distance. Solo looked at his father, his face still confused, and then looked back a Lucifer. Michael and Lucifer didn’t seem to notice the two humans.
“Lorelei did it.” Solo looked down at the floor and bit his lip. Lucifer said the name with reverence, “She had a human who did it…um…she called him…Wufei.”
Suddenly it made sense to Michael. “The Spirit!” The Spirit that Lorelei and Duo had created, alive but not sentient, with the power to overthrow God! Michael hadn’t known what that had really meant until now. Somehow Lorelei had used the power in that Spirit, now infused with Wufei, to break the Curse God had put on Lucifer. He remembered what she had told him, Don’t blame him Michael. I’m the one that did it. I’m the one that told him he would never have to go back. Please don’t blame him. She had been telling him to forgive his husband. Lucifer now stood, just looking at him, not even thinking about getting away, just standing there, waiting for Michael to pass his judgment. Solo still stood next to him, stunned.
“Where’s the knife?” Michael asked.
“What knife?” Luc asked him, “She only gave me this knife.” He pulled back his shirt to reveal the leather sheath and sliver blade.
“The Knife of God! The only blade that can hurt an angel! He told me it was missing. Where is it?!”
“I don’t know.” Luc said.
“Liar!” Michael accused.
“No, really, Michael, believe me.”
“How can I believe the Father of Lies?” Michael’s voice was acidic, and it hurt Luc visibly.
“Michael,” he began, but he couldn’t finish.
“The Devil doesn’t have the blade!” a human voice called. The five looked to this man, who had come up to them, undetected. He was now standing to Michael’s right, leaning on a red car. His crazed eyes glared at them. Solo had seen this human once before, at the Karaoke bar. He had been the human to place the note at his side.
Duo felt soft water droplets fall on his head from the sky. Solo looked up and some of the falling water dropped on his face. Pouring rain fell over them quickly.
“What do you want?” demanded Michael.
“Revenge.” He responded, “You all brought the death of Lorelei. You all deserve to die!”
“No Adriel!” Lucifer called, “Lorelei killed herself!” Solo looked to the ground, rain fell into his tear swelled eyes. His mother’s death was such a fresh wound in his heart.
“LIES! And from you Lucifer?! After everything she did for you! DEATH TO THE ANGELS!” he screamed wildly and pulled out the Knife of God. He remembered Lorelei’s words to him, ‘Take this, my faithful, I stole it from its pedestal in Heaven. It is the one weapon, in all the Lord’s creation, that can kill an angel.’ In fury Adriel rushed towards Michael, the black blade pointed outwards.
“No!” screamed Lucifer and swiftly placed himself in front of Michael. As the blade entered his stomach his body bent forward and his grunt of pain could be heard over the rain. Michael looked at his contorted back in stunned. Adriel let go of the blade, himself in shock. Luc’s hands moved to grasp the hilt of the weapon and he took a step backward before falling to the ground. Michael moved quickly to grab him before his body hit the black asphalt. Adriel watched this then quickly turned and ran away. He disappeared into the night and the rain. They let him go.
Michael looked down at Luc, his blue eyes were wide and panicked. He shock his head, water fell from his soaked hair and Luc blinked with pain an water fell into his eyes. He winced, clutching the knife and used to strength in his arms to pull it from his gut. His groan of pain echoed in the room. He let the blade drop to the ground beside him. Michael’s free hand moved to the wound, he tired to stop the bleeding.
Luc reached up weakly to hook his finger under the collar of Michael’s shirt. He pulled out the sliver chair that held Michael’s silver wedding band.
“I knew it,” he whispered, half smiling and half wincing. A puddle of thinned red blood formed under them. Blood flowed from under Michael’s hand. “You know…when you left. I begged for forgiveness…I…I…wanted you back in my arms…I wanted to be in your arms…and here I am.” His voice was thick with pain and sadness. Michael’s tears mixed with the rain that fell on his face. A line of blood spilled from his mouth.
“No!” Michael protested at the blood, moving his hand to whip it away, more poured from Luc’s mouth. “No!”
“I’m going to die.” Luc said, tasting his own blood. His vision was blurring, the rain wasn’t helping, but he struggled to keep his eyes on his husband.
“No!” Michael protested stronger, “Everything will be ok. You’ll live Luc!” He carefully pulled Luc closer to him, “Oh God.” He moaned.
Luc winced and smiled again, “No, no God,” he whispered, gagging a little on his blood. His body twitched and his eyes closed. He forced them open again. Beautiful green eyes, filled with physical and emotional pain, looked into Michael’s blue. He struggled and said, “I…I…never stopped loving you.”
Michael sobbed, “No! You can’t die like this! Not like this, Luc! I still love you too!” He was frantic, screaming through tears and rain. Luc smiled, one last time, and closed his eyes in both pain and contentment. “LUC!” Michael yelled
Both the archangel and Solo gasped and Solo had to take a step back to reorient himself. Luc’s essence had entered them both.
“NOOO!!!!!!” Michael screamed, clutching Luc’s lifeless body closer to his own. “No, no, please…Luc, please come back!” The rain pounded on the asphalt around them. Heero, Duo and Solo stood looking at Michael, stunned, none of them knew what to do. “Please go back,” Michael wined. He was rocking back and forth, holding Luc’s body so tightly that it almost seemed he thought he could force the piece of Luc’s essence back into his dead love. “Please go back,” he whispered and his rocking stopped. He readjusted his arms to warp himself around Luc’s thin and pale body. He whispered, so softly the others could barely hear him, “No, no, come back, please come back.” The rain continued to pour as Michael whispered this over and over.
Duo was chilled, his soaked hair seemed to weigh a ton, but his shocked feet refused to move back inside. Michael sobbed, his entire body shaking with his voice. Solo slowly started to walk towards him, but as he moved lightening flashed in Earth’s skies and Michael looked towards to cloudily night skies, his wet black hair stuck to his face. His eyes blinked from the water that fell into them. Then he realized that all the horrible memories of Luc, all the reason he had left his husband in Hell, were quickly fading. It wasn’t as if his husband’s death had knocked him out of his mind, it was a if those horrible things had never happened. They had never happened!
A white dove flew, somehow, though the rain. It landed and cautiously looked at Michael. Michael looked back at it, and realized what it wanted. He quickly swooped his body down to grab the black and deadly blade. “You can’t have it,” he told the bird. It tilted its head and took a step closer to Michael. “You can have it!” Michael insisted and yelled. The bird seemed to regard him for a moment before it took flight again. Michael watched its trail before his face melted back into his miserable sobbing look.
He cried again and buried his face in Luc’s soaked and lifeless chest. His body shook with agony and anger. “I’m so sorry Luc. I shouldn’t have believed it. I’m sorry.” He knew Luc wasn’t there. He knew Luc was gone forever. There wasn’t even the comforting thought he could make up his neglect in some ‘better place’. No, Luc was simply gone and Michael would never see his boyish smile again. He held the body and the blade, carefully making sure they didn’t touch, and cried.
He slowly looked at the raining sky again. “I hate you,” he called into the night and he paused to let the truth of that statement sink in, “I HATE YOU!” he screamed, his voice echoing, it seemed, of the rain drops. Then he turned again to look at Luc’s corpse. He looked at the sheath and blade that Lorelei had given Luc. The blade was the same size as the Knife of God. Carefully he removed the silver blade and replaced it with the black one. The rain had washed the blood from it, but Michael was covered in the watered-down blood of his husband. Carefully he picked up the body, it hung loosely in his arms. He turned to look at Duo, his face was as cold as the rain made Duo feel, he was angry.
“All my life I have been nothing but a tool. Is that what Lorelei tired to tell me? Is that what you and she figured out? That we are nothing but tools God used to make Heaven and Hell for humans?!” When he said ‘we’ he meant himself and Luc, his voice was angry and hateful. “Is that it, Duo?! Was there a reason for this? Is Luc’s death just one more game move!?” His voice cracked when he sad his husbands nickname.
“I-I don’t know, Michael.” Duo answered over the rain.
“That’s right you don’t. And that’s because you betrayed us, worse than my husband ever did! You became one of them!” He looked at Heero, “The filthy, fucking human beings that took our place in His heart!” He had never, ever in his life used a curse word invented by human beings and he had never, ever been this enraged. “So you know what, Duo? Fuck you!” He yelled the last part, and it made Duo jump back in surprise. “You can die with the rest of them!” He looked back at Heero, then focused on Duo, “I’ll kill you all.” Before he disappeared he turned his angry and hateful eyes on Solo and Solo remembered the dream. The dream, it had been a premonition of the death of Satan! “You have a choice to make, little one.” Michael told Solo coldly. And then he was gone.