Page 8 of Good Intentions

“Tell us everything,” she said softly, and hand reached out to soothe me. Hope. So I sat down and I told the Fallen angels everything.

The silence in the room afterwards was thick. My words were treasonous, a defiance of my beliefs, of the order of things. But was it worse than the things Uriel had done in the name of the Heavens?

I didn’t think so.

“He can stay here for as long as he wants,” Hope argued, and Lucifer shook his head.

“I think he needs a little space, not to be surrounded by Fallen at the moment. I don’t want to think that Michael will take it badly, but if Raphael wishes to return to Heaven’s Legions, cavorting with us degenerates isn’t going to be the way to do it.”

Mephistopheles crossed his arms over his chests. “I resent being called a degenerate.”

Gusion smirked. “Remember last night?”

Hope flushed, Mephistopheles frowned and Ace laughed loudly.

Lucifer screwed up his nose. “Please. I try not to think of it. No, fortunately I know a man who owes the Devil a favor and won’t be upset by the appearance of an archangel.” I had a suspicion I knew where they were taking me. “Just wait. We should probably lay the groundwork first. Give us five minutes then follow?”

Then they disappeared from the room.

The silence once they left was… loud. Gusion cleared his throat. “Remember, Raph, that the Father made all his creatures to evolve. Humans evolved from monkeys. Complex creatures evolved from sludge. Why would angels not also be created to evolve?”

I felt the tug of Lucifer’s call, and Gusion’s words echoed around my mind as I appeared into the home of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and once again came face to face with the beginning of my downfall. Those violet eyes still saw too much.

They looked me over, and then the big Horseman swallowed hard, his eyes snagging on the pink-tips of my wings. “He can stay. However long he needs.”

Like that, I had refuge in the home of the instruments of the Apocalypse. If this was a plan the Father had devised, he had a hell of a sense of humor.

They mainly left me alone.

I’d moped around the room they’d assigned me for a few days, but I was eventually discovered by the tiny human girl. Cara. We’d met earlier, and she’d tried to say my name, and it came out as Raffle. It had made me smile, the first mirth I’d felt… in forever. When her brother tried to correct her, I’d told them that the name was fine. Raphael was kind of hard. A lot of syllables.

Now she barged into the room where I was staying too quickly for me to hide my wings.

She looked at my wings, at my expression, and frowned. She couldn’t understand the magnitude of the color, or even what I really was, but I saw the moment she decided not to care.

“Your wings are nice. They look like Madoc’s, ‘cept his are blue.”

“Thank you,” I told her politely.

“I’m having tea. Would you like to join?” Not waiting for my answer, she grabbed my hand, pulling me from the bed and out into the hall. “It’s in the backyard,” she told me, even though I’d never agreed to tea. Still, my feet followed her of their own accord.

She led me down the stairs, past the man who was her father. “We are having a tea party,” she told him, and he stared at me wide eyed.

I shrugged. I could ponder the demise of my immortal soul later, I guess. Tea sounded good.

Except I quickly found that the tea wasn’t real as I sat on a small plastic chair that was barely holding my weight.

The cups weren’t real either. Cara lifted the teacup to her mouth, pretending to drink even though there was nothing in there. “Mmm, delicious.” She frowned. “Are you going to drink yours too?”

Blinking rapidly, I lifted the cup to my lips, before placing it back on the plastic saucer. She frowned at me again. “You have to say the ‘mmm’ noise, like it’s delicious,” she told me softly, although there was no judgement in her tone. She had such a sweet soul, I could sense it burning brightly from her chest.

I lifted the tea cup back to my mouth. “Mmm,” I said dutifully, and she smiled so brightly, I couldn’t help but smile back. She topped up my imaginary tea, and I took another fake sip. She handed me a small plastic doll with wide dark eyes that was honestly a little terrifying. Its eyelids seemed to close despite it being inanimate. I tucked it into the crook of my arm mostly so I didn’t have to look at it anymore.

Taking another fake sip, I listened to the little girl play pretend. We talked about the weather, and that she was going to the wedding of someone named Carli and she was going to be a beautiful bride except she liked a boy named Faizan who picked his nose and ate it and she thought Carli could do better. She talked about their neighbor, Susan, who didn’t like dogs or kids or people, and I nodded along solemnly. She didn’t seem to need further interaction from me other than sipping my non-existent tea occasionally and rock my inanimate child even more infrequently.

She moved on to talking about someone called Trigger, who she was going to marry when she was older, or maybe the boy in her class called Alexei, who didn’t pick his nose.

“Do you have a girlfriend, Raffle?”