Angelic Triptych: Part the First

A/N: THIS STORY IS NOT FLUFFY. NOWHERE IN ANY OF THE THREE PARTS WILL THERE BE FLUFF. XD You’re warned. I’m kind of a sadist. And I /like/ Raphael. ^^; But yeah. This will not end well. That being said, I’m kind of enamored of this plot. As the disclaimer above states, yes, this deals with religious/biblical figures. I’m very sorry if this offends, and I totally know that I’m going to hell in handbasket for what I do with the angels here. I’m only going to laugh at your flames, though. Do yourself a favor, and do something more constructive with your time if you’re so inclined.

I don’t own these characters, obviously, but this story is /mine/ and I won’t take kindly to the text or the idea being stolen. >>

Also, I have WordPerfect and it is stupid and doesn’t let me save things as .html files, so ‘/word/’ will have to serve as emphasis. XP

~*~

"Well, well. What do we have here?"

"It’s one of HIS bulldogs, it seems."

Raphael stiffened, turned around. Those voices...they were rife with...wrongness. Illness. Sticky and slimy at the same time.

"Samael. Nelchael. How...pleasant. You’re looking well." The sarcastic drawl to the angel’s voice was more than evident, for the two figures before him were...wasted. To the human eye, it was as if they had caught a particularly nasty disease, but were still fighting it. Not damned, but close enough.

The fallen angels before him had once been beautiful. He remembered them as they had been, singing the endless refrains to His glory. Samael reminded him of Lucifer himself, except that the former had the deepest black eyes Rafael had ever seen. The two angels shared long, straight blonde locks, although Samael was rather going bald in patches. Nelchael....ah...he had had the most glorious red hair, which - in Heaven - had been cut to his chin, forever boyish. It was dirty and thin now, as well as dulled to the color of dried blood. Perhaps it was blood.

Samael smirked, his voice rasping as he spoke. "Spare us the pleasantries, angel."

"Certainly." What was worse than their physical appearance was the way their angelic presence had deteriorated. The easiest way to describe the devastation was to speak in terms of their wings. Non-existent to the human eye except on the rarest of occasions, Raphael could nonetheless see them and they were...a horrible, frightening sight. The feathers had all fallen off, and the skin beneath - ravaged by time and weather - had grown hard and leathery. "Is there something I can help you with?"

Rafael had his hands tucked into the pockets of a large brown coat, protection against the cold. It was a blustery New York winter. It was almost immoral to enjoy playing a human this much. He relished the sensation, though. The wind blowing through his hair, just a little too long to be entirely decent for a man of this day and age. The bite of it, knowing he could simply miracle a scarf for himself, or an extra layer of clothing underneath the coat, and choosing not to.

And it was almost irony that they were outside St. Patrick’s, only...not quite. Since the archangel had just recently stepped out of it. It was not to be implied that he spent all his time on Earth in churches, but he quite liked them. A balm for the troubled soul. He often spent his time working in hospitals, in homeless shelters, anywhere where a good deed could be done. And to see such souls in pain...

Unexplicably, his fingers twitched now - as they often did - with the urge to help and to heal the men before him.

"So. Gentlemen." A sharp verbal prodding, and no small bit of annoyance in the fact that he had felt the urge to relieve them of their pain. Wasn’t supposed to feel like that, even if pity crept in sometimes.

Samael smirked. "Right then. Come along."

Raphael’s brows knitted. He had not expected that. "Excuse me?"

"Boss wants to see you, angel. Come on."

"The Morningstar must be weaker than I thought, if he has to send two goonies to fetch a single angel." Raphael sneered.

"It’s beneath him. Now come on, you /really/ don’t want to keep him waiting."

"I think I do, actually. What does Lucifer want with me?"

Nelchael growled. "He just wants to talk. Get /moving/."

"No."

The two Fallen grinned sickeningly, as if that’s what they had been waiting for. "No?" Samael rasped.

"No." Raphael answered resolutely.

"Wonderful." He wasn't entirely sure which one of them said it. And then they were surging forwards, towards him. They had no visible weapons on them, but then again, they hardly needed them.

The angel fought valiently on the steps of St. Patrick’s, but it was two Fallen against one angel and he hadn’t had to fight in so very, very long.

Inevitably, he went down.