Shadows fell over them, and all three of them looked up sharply to see not one archangel, but two, hovering over them like watchful gargoyles. There was Michael, as expected, but there was also a woman, with features as fine and pretty as Siobhan could imagine. Her four wings were pale—white, but with just enough of a tint to them that they were very nearly blue—her skin was like porcelain, and her eyes glowed like fire opals. Her hair was a deep red, contrasting almost startlingly with her skin and wings, and it fell down to her waist in a pin straight sheet.
For a long moment where it seemed like no one even dared to breathe, Michael and the woman simply hovered in the air, their heads bowed together as they spoke. Siobhan couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but if the new angel decided to help Michael out, then it meant that she, Jack, and Gabriel were dead.
And then…she vanished. The newcomer offered Michael an almost terrifyingly and yet also near comically dissatisfied look, spread her wings, and was gone. For a moment, Michael gaped at where she had hovered, looking palpably offended, before he shook his head minutely and turned his attention to the sand below.
For a moment, he eyed them thoughtfully before his shoulders rose and fell in a shrug, and he too vanished.
“…Looking for a more agreeable ally?” Jack suggested after a moment, staring skyward in bewilderment. All that greeted him was the moon and the stars.
“Fun,” Siobhan deadpanned unenthusiastically. “We’re already in a sand trap. Can that please just be as annoying as anything is going to get today? Maybe he decided he doesn’t want to deal with the sand.”
“Understandable,” Gabriel groused, giving his wings a small shake. Sand rained down quietly behind him.
“This is a No Whining Zone,” Siobhan informed him primly, folding her arms over her chest and side-eying him.
He held his hands up in a parody of surrender, just as Jack loudly complained, “God, this sand is awful,” in a melodramatic, high-pitched whining tone.
“I will throw sand at you,” Siobhan threatened.
“I don’t think it would make much of a difference,” Jack pointed out, spreading his arms out to his sides to gesture around them at the fact that there really was nothing but sand in every direction.
There was no time to debate the effectiveness of her threat, though, as a familiar four-winged silhouette reappeared above them. Michael was alone that time, looking discontented with something. His lack of assistance, Siobhan supposed.
When he landed, sand was launched in every direction, as if a grenade had gone off. Squealing, Siobhan ducked her head to hide her eyes in the crook of one arm, and when she dared look up again, she saw Jack peering cautious from behind his own arm and Gabriel carefully looking over the edge of one of his wings.
Cautiously, they all straightened up. “Trying to drag others into this, as well?” Gabriel wondered blandly, his wings spreading behind him, ready to move at a moment’s notice.
“Spare me,” Michael spat, his wings snapping out behind him before flaring out to his sides. “You abandoned us; you don’t get to disapprove of us simultaneously.”
“I’m fairly sure I can disapprove of you as much as I please,” Gabriel returned earnestly, feigning a pleasant tone. “You could never pull rank on me before. Do you expect it to actually work now?”
With a disgusted noise, Michael lunged forward, only to stumble as Gabriel launched into the air just enough to flip over and land behind Michael’s back. Jack and Siobhan surged forward, body-slamming Michael into the sand.
The three of them scuffled for a moment, Jack and Siobhan heaving their weight down against Michael until his aggressively thrashing wings were fully submerged in the sand, crushing in on the feathers from all directions. Had he been an ordinary human, possibly even a vampire, he would have been trapped.
He was nothing like an ordinary human, though.
Gabriel grabbed Siobhan’s shoulder and Jack’s elbow, yanking both of them away as, with a mighty heave, Michael ripped himself free of the sand, the displacement causing the ground beneath them all to sink. For a moment, everyone wound up on their knees or on all fours as they tried and failed to keep their balance.
Nothing about any of it was particularly graceful that night. The sand dragged at their legs and shifted under feet, trying to drag them under or simply make it so they had no ground left to stand on at all. It made the entire ordeal feel more like a comedy production than an actual fight, honestly. Gabriel, wisely, chose to take to the air.
Jack swept Michael’s legs out from under him, though it was largely just to get his attention so he wouldn’t notice Gabriel bearing down on him. There was an outraged shout and some graceless flailing as Gabriel landed on Michael’s shoulders, wings flapping both to keep his own balance and to disorient Michael.
Michael staggered backward until the sand caught at his legs, and then he simply tumbled backward at the knees. Gabriel launched himself away, landing and falling into a small tumble before picking himself back up and once again landing on Michael, as if his brother was some sort of springboard or a landing pad.
(Occasionally, Siobhan was glad that she’d had relatively little sibling rivalry, if this was what it looked like.)
Gabriel backed off as Siobhan threw herself into the fray, hooking an arm around Michael’s neck to drag him off balance. If they could just keep him stumbling, then fighting back was easier.
He shrugged her off and started to toss her aside, though the effort was stymied when she caught a handful of feathers and dragged herself back toward him.
“You could decide not to fight,” Michael reasoned, trying a new tactic for the moment. It was actually a bit startling; Siobhan wasn’t used to him saying much of anything if we wasn’t berating Gabriel. He was cut off with a grunt as Siobhan punched him in the gut. He dodged her next strike, and the one after that only glanced off the edge of his ribs.
“So could you,” Siobhan snapped, jerking back out of range to get a breath. “You aren’t getting anything out of this.”
“Someone must make my brother pay for disobeying,” he pointed out. “Why not me?”
Siobhan made an inarticulate noise of disgust and leapt forward. Her next punch was sloppy, only glancing off of his shoulder, and she was slow in retracting her fist.
His hand closed around Siobhan’s forearm and he yanked her close, turning her and folding her arm over her back. She reached back, scrabbling at his fingers with her free hand, but his grip was like a steel vise, and he hardly even needed to concentrate to maintain it, instead turning to deflect Jack’s next series of rapid strikes.
He kept his hold on Siobhan, her arm bent behind her at such an angle that it felt as if her elbow was going to pop right out of place. Gabriel slammed one elbow into the back of Michael’s neck, and while it did make him stumble, his hold on Siobhan only tightened. His wings snapped out behind him, quick and harsh, and Gabriel landed on his back in the sand as two of them hit him in the chest and the stomach. He grunted as Michael’s foot landed on the center of his chest.
Jack still didn’t back off, even if he didn’t accomplish much by punching Michael in the chest, other than distracting him. But Gabriel reached up, both hands closing around the wrist of Michael’s unoccupied arm. Which meant he had rather limited options if he wanted to get Jack out of his face. So maybe just distracting him was good enough.
On the plus side, Michael released his hold on Siobhan. On the downside, he instead curled his fingers tight around Jack’s throat, growling in a low voice, “I’ve met very few creatures as bothersome as you lot have proven to be.”
With one sharp, heaving motion, Michael tossed Jack aside, not even bothering with the typical attempt at flying into the stratosphere with him. Perhaps he had gotten tired of that plan never working.
Jack landed on his back, and when Michael didn’t immediately try to grab him again, he scrambled back up to his feet, watching instead as Michael backed away a few paces.
<
br /> Michael launched himself into the air, spiraling higher and dropping sand as he went, until finally he disappeared. Once again, leaving as Regina’s return from whatever world the trials took place in approached, before he could find himself on the wrong end of her wrath.
“He’s very persistent,” Siobhan observed after a moment, staring into the sky and waiting to see if he would make a reappearance.
“Michael has always been hardheaded,” Gabriel sighed as he got back to his feet, and he gave his wings a flap. Not that it did much good; the three of them were all well and truly coated in grit.
“You don’t say,” Siobhan snorted.
“Now that all that’s over with, I’ve got a question. Who was that earlier?” Jack asked, gesturing broadly at the sky. He didn’t actually specify, but given the lack of options, it was rather readily apparent that he was referring to the mysterious female archangel.
Gabriel sighed and gave his wings a shake, though just at a glance, it was evident he hadn’t gotten anywhere near all of the sand out of them. Siobhan knew how that felt. She scratched a hand through her hair and felt grains shift beneath her nails.
“Our sister Anael,” he answered, his voice low.
“She didn’t seem to be getting along with him,” Jack observed, his head bowed low as he brushed sand from his hair with one hand. “Thoughts?”
Gabriel shrugged, and there was something incredibly human about the gesture. “She was always the most level-headed of us,” he hazarded. “That may have something to do with it. Besides, she doesn’t like to get her hands dirty if she doesn’t have to, and she’s never been particularly fond of waste.”
“Maybe other angels will decide to lend us a hand,” Siobhan sighed wistfully. “And then all the fighting can take place in the air. And not involve me.”
“Or me,” Jack chimed in.
“I’m feeling very singled out right now,” Gabriel deadpanned in return.
Siobhan brought a hand to her chest and carefully arranged her expression into something earnest. She rubbed her thumb and middle finger together on her other hand, as if to play a very sad song on a microscopically small violin. She bowed her head morosely toward her chest as she did.
Gabriel pelted sand at her with his foot in retaliation, and she was already wondering just how long it was going to take until the pockets of her pants were free of sand.
*
Just as Regina suspected, there was no sand when the light took her. There wasn’t much of anything at first, though she could clearly feel the ground beneath her shoes, even if she couldn’t see it.
With each step she took, though, everything became clearer and clearer. It started with sound, making it apparent that she wasn’t simply walking across the ground, but through water, splashing quietly with each step as it rose around her ankles. Soon enough, she could see the crystal clear water around her feet, still and tranquil save for her own footsteps. It stretched on in every direction, uninterrupted. There weren’t any rocks, unless the flat bedrock beneath the water counted.
The bedrock was as flat and as smooth as a well-sanded table, and Regina had no doubts that if she picked a direction and started running, she could run for an eternity without ever seeing anything save the rock and the frigid water. That would be rather counterproductive to her purposes, though, and she carried on at a walk. There was little of interest to see.
But finally, just ahead, there was a small mound of earth rising out of the water. It was small and bare, save for the grass upon it and the single tree sprouting from its center.
There were no animals, serpents or otherwise. There were no people, save for herself. She was alone.
And then the tree moved.
Its roots carefully, gracefully wove their way out of the ground, and like some sort of spider, it crawled down from its earthy mound and into the water, scuttling closer to Regina. Though it had no face, it gave off the impression that it was inspecting her closely.
Its bark was dark brown, nearing gray, and gnarled until it looked as if it might cut her if Regina simply ran her fingers along it. Its branches were bare, save for a scattering of buds that had yet to sprout, though they were growing as Regina and the tree contemplated each other.
When it spoke, it was less like it had a voice, and more as if the words it wanted were simply imprinted upon Regina’s mind.
You have come seeking what is mine.
“I have,” Regina confirmed simply. “Presumably, you’re going to try to talk me out of it, or something along those lines.” She gave the tree a rather pointed look downward, to the roots it was still balanced on. “If you don’t like what I have to say, will you strangle me?”
I will not, it answered plainly. But you will join the earth that feeds me.
Compelled by curiosity, Regina leaned around the tree, peering at the mound of earth. If she squinted just so, she could see pieces of bone peeking out of the soil. Her eyebrows rose slowly, and she mused thoughtfully, “Waste not, I suppose.”
To waste is to sin, it reasoned, and I would rather not.
“Killing me wouldn’t be a sin?” Regina challenged.
Now, that is a hazy line, it returned, its branches swaying gently. Still scuttling on its roots, it began to pace in a circle around her. Every so often, she could feel it tapping at her legs with its roots, as if it trying to gauge just how difficult it would be to turn her into fertilizer. If you are innocent—or at least benign—then it would be a sin, it carried on, placid and mellow. But if you wish to claim the Bough with ill intent, or if you would cause more harm than good? Its branches bobbed as if in a shrug. Then eliminating you would simply be…routine. It would be for the best then, for the good of the many.
“Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” Regina drawled, tone a low deadpan. “Routine murder. What a blast. But are you really qualified to talk about ‘the good of the many,’ considering what spurred my visit here?”
I have a purpose here, and I fulfill it, it reasoned, unbothered. You do not have to approve. I don’t believe your opinion was sought.
“No,” Regina acknowledged, “and I guess I can’t expect you not to be biased.”
How so? it wondered with quiet curiosity. Finally, it kept its branches and its roots to itself.
“I know what created you,” Regina pointed out, one shoulder lifting in a careless shrug. “I know their thoughts on the world. They’ve decided an entire planet is doing more harm than good. Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to know what something like mercy is.”
Its branches rustled as if from a breeze, and it seemed to be discontented for a moment. I know what mercy is, it protested. Do not underestimate me.
“I’m not,” Regina assured it, her tone dropping to something low and soothing. “Merely pointing out what seems the most logical.”
She got the impression just then that the tree rather wished it had eyes to roll, though it said no such thing and hardly moved, save for another minute rustling of its branches.
This is not what you are here to discuss, it finally decided, with a dismissive air.
Still, Regina continued to latch onto the topic. “No, but it plays into it,” she stated. “I am here to bargain for the Bough of Eden because I need it to keep people—my own and otherwise—safe, to grant to them the mercy that Heaven would deny them.”
Is a quick death not merciful? it tried in a silken tone.
“Not when there’s still a full life ahead,” she snapped, her hands on her hips. “Then it’s just murder. I’m pretty sure that’s a sin.”
The tree stilled for a moment before it began pacing in a circle around her once more. And if they deserve it? it questioned. If they really are as far gone as they have been deemed?
Regina scoffed and rolled her eyes. “By the same metric that was used to decide if someone was ‘too far gone’ as they were at the dawn of time?” she challenged. “It would be like trying to see Jupiter with a pair of binoculars. Inadequate.”
/>
You say this, but you care only for your own people, do you not? the tree accused. You are here for them, not the world as a whole.
“Does that matter?” Regina demanded. “Something doesn’t need to be your top priority for you to be kind, and I don’t wish any harm on those who aren’t vampires. I certainly don’t wish them dead.”
And if they surpass a need for you? it wondered. Then how charitable will you be?
“I’ll take a vacation,” she stated blandly, her tone a deadpan drawl.
There was a pause that felt slightly disbelieving. As simply as that? it wondered dubiously.
Regina snorted. “I didn’t actually ask to be in charge. I just agreed when it made sense for me to be. As it is, I’m not actually in charge of anyone who isn’t a vampire, I just don’t want them dead.”
So noble. Ah, sarcasm. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that she was pissing it off.
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