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napkingGray had woken up in the wee hours and, bored to tears, decided to go for a longer flight than the confines of the island while no one else was awake to see him. After a while, he'd landed on a stretch of abandoned beach in case Sloth decided he needed a nap before starting back, but nope, it was a 'sleep shall not find you' kind of night, apparently, so he was just perched on a log watching the waves roll in when he heard a thump behind him.
The flail Gray gave when he turned around and saw who had just landed behind him, the typical heaviness of Lazarus's landing covering the second one, was worthy of a red panda. He fell right off his log, and the archangel that could, judging by all the scarring, only be Michael gave him a concerned look. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah!" Gray said as he popped to his feet, torn between snapping to attention and brushing the sand off his pants to make himself more presentable and managing mostly to sort of flail again. "I'm fine!" His voice broke and 'fine' came out on a squeak that had Lazarus looking concerned. He hadn't known Lazarus knew how to make his face look like that.
"Michael," Lazarus said after a moment of silence that stretched too long and got awkward, "I don't believe you've met Sloth before."
"Gray," Michael said. "Yes?"
"Gray," Lazarus agreed after an odd little hesitation. Well, not that odd. He almost never used their names if he could help it. If Gray had thought that would change because they were in cahoots or whatever, he didn't know why he'd ever thought that. To Gray, without using either form of address, he said, "This is Michael."
"Uh-huh," Gray agreed, because that sure was Michael, military leader of the host. It was fine. This was fine. Lazarus had said he was going to ask Michael for help, the small part of his brain that was still rational kept trying to remind the rest of it.
"Pleased to finally make your acquaintance," Michael said, and held out his hand. Gray stared at it, on the verge of shaking with fear like a chihuahua, and eventually Michael cleared his throat and withdrew the hand, looking between Lazarus and Gray in confusion.
"Gray," Lazarus said, "Tell Michael about the sword." It took Gray a moment to get his brain and mouth to connect, because what he wanted to blurt out was, 'Am I in trouble?' and that would not be helpful. It took long enough that Lazarus seemed to think he needed an explanation. "He knows more about swords than I. We thought he might recognize something that passed me by." That tracked. Lazarus's primary weapon was, of course,the stuff of Gray's nightmares the whip.
"And I have unfettered access to the vaults," Michael added, "so I can search and see if it's some forgotten object there."
That also tracked, so Gray carefully described everything he could remember about the sword--its appearance, how it had worked. Michael listened with an intensity of focus that made Gray want to go hide in a hole somewhere, and also to do whatever Michael told him to do next. When he was done, Michael said with a frown, "It doesn't sound familiar, but it does sound like a spiritual weapon. None of you have one, do you?" he asked Gray, who shook his head. "That's odd, now that I think about it." Michael gestured to Gray and told Lazarus, "He's more powerful, easily, than some of the angels who do, and certainly than the dragons I've known who had them--and he's not the most powerful of the Nephilim."
"No," Gray agreed quietly. "That's Alastair." It was his birthright as their firstborn, as Lucifer had once been the angels' firstborn. It was why he was Pride, first and foremost of sins...and not even Daman could envy him it.
"And even he doesn't have one," Michael mused. "Could the sword be yours? All seven of you?"
"Eight," Gray corrected, because he was going to keep hammering that point until someone brought Kallias back from the dead already, and, "No. That's...that feels wrong. But...maybe it is...somebody's?" He tried to pick at that, but it led nowhere. If the sword belonged to someone, he hadn't spared them a thought that weekend.
"Eight?" Michael echoed.
"S--Gray has been insistent that in the future he glimpsed, Kallias--Melancholy--was once more among their number."
"But that's impossible. He's long dead."
Gray couldn't resist pushing. "There has to be some way to fish him out of Elysium, right?"
Michael stared at him, wordless, his expression unreadable, for a long moment, and then he turned to look at Lazarus. After a few more seconds Lazarus said, "I see no reason to bring the matter before the council just yet. If Gray proves correct, when Lucifer escapes his cage it will change the calculus considerably. Uriel may yet bend to necessity, when he will bend to nothing else."
"I still don't have the first clue how--" Michael cut himself off, and when he glanced over at Gray again he looked--guilty. Gray did his best to look like he had no clue there was a problem besides Kallias being dead in the first place. "Well. It's past time for a proper inventory of the vaults; perhaps we'll be able to turn up this sword. I doubt it, honestly. We didn't confiscate many spiritual weapons during the war. Lightbringer, of course, but for the most part anyone we were able to take a spiritual weapon off of ended up dead." At which point, of course, their weapon would cease to exist.
"It has to be someone close to the situation," Lazarus observed. "Even taking into account that we are dealing with prophecy, I don't see some random person being born with the blade to defeat Lucifer in their soul."
"Which is why it would make the most sense if it was Alastair's, or some sort of...group effort." Michael pondered the situation for a moment, then moved on to the next most likely group of candidates. "Your fated mates. Tell me about them."
"Uh," Gray said, and tried not to look over at Lazarus and failed.
"Lazarus can be ruled out. We already know what his weapon is."
"Right." Lazarus had said the archangels had made him seal the bond. Michael was one of those. So he'd been part of that whole...thing. Of course. "Uh. Mine is human, so I guess he's out. And Kal's is Elasus, of course. We already knew that."
"We absolutely did not know that," Lazarus ground out through his teeth, and Gray winced, remembering how furious he had been at the time, how he had thought their binding youthful foolishness, rash and dangerous. Well. He hadn't been wrong, had he? "The others?"
Gray ran through what he remembered of his brothers' mates, although it wasn't that much. He didn't remember anything about Galen's except for his name, Simon. He very deliberately left one brother out, but of course they noticed, and Lazarus asked, "What of Lust?"
He had kind of hoped to keep Bellamy's fated mate under wraps until the deal was done, which was, he imagined, the only way Phoenix had gotten to live in that future he remembered, the one that had seen him swiping to show Arden a picture of the demon with Gray's brother sitting next to him and a toddler in his lap, but that wasn't really an option once he'd been asked directly.
"Uh," he said, fighting not to fidget. "He's a...uh...he's a demon."
Lazarus wordlessly turned around and walked away up the beach. Gray was too busy trying to make himself smaller under Michael's gaze to worry about what that meant, but Michael just rubbed at the bridge of his nose.
"A demon's unlikely to have a spiritual weapon, but I suppose it can't be ruled out," he said, half in the direction Lazarus had gone.
"This is a disaster!" Lazarus called back.
"Obviously. Uriel will be intolerable, so we should avoid that for as long as possible. But presumably the demon defects, which could be very useful."
"I really think he must have," Gray agreed, because, well. Otherwise they would have had to kill Phoenix to cut Bellamy free of the bond, the way Gray had seriously considered killing Lazarus. He leaned past Michael to tell Lazarus, who was pacing with his hands in his hair, "Look, I know who it is. If I have to, I can kill him. But in the future I saw, they were together, and they were happy, and the only way that makes sense is if he defected. So we've got to give him the chance to do it."
Lazarus stopped pacing and turned to ask him, "How bad can it be? You say that you need your mates at the end, but there's no mention of such in the prophecy. How bad could it possibly be without Bellamy's?"
Gray forgot to be afraid for a moment, forgot everything but his temper, because, "I'm letting you live! Think about it!" Lazarus looked almost like he'd hit him, and Gray snapped, "That's worse! You get how that's worse, right?"
"Yes, Gray," Lazarus shouted back, "I understand that it is worse! But we are stuck in this situation and Bellamy isn't yet!"
"I'm not doing it! I'm not risking my brother before I even give the stupid demon a chance!" Lazarus snarled, and Gray flinched. He couldn't help it. It was bone-deep instinct, even though even Castor at his shittiest had never managed to get quite that sound out of Lazarus before.
"This is even worse than I expected," Michael said, and Lazarus--laughed. That was another sound Gray had never heard out of him before, even in this completely humorless, hollowed out way. Gray was torn between astonishment and the complex mix of fear and embarrassment that came with realizing that not only had he been fighting with Lazarus, he'd been doing so right in front of an archangel. His finest hour, this was not.
"You're definitely not wrong. A demon..."
"That...never mind. We'll talk about it later." Michael cut a look toward Gray--Not in front of the Nephilim--but it was funny. He looked almost sad. "I believe I need to put up some barriers in your mind?"
"Stuff gets through," Gray muttered. "Whether we want it to or not. And they can't know. Not yet. Not with--" His eyes darted to Lazarus.
"Of course," Michael agreed, and reached out to touch Gray's temple. Gray did his best to hold very, very still.
It didn't hurt. He didn't know why he'd expected it to. When Michael was done, he removed his hand and said, "That should hold. Take care."
"Tell no one about Lust's mate," Lazarus instructed him.
Gray rolled his eyes, even though he knew he shouldn't. "I wasn't planning on it. I wasn't even planning on telling you."
"We should get back," Michael said abruptly, even as Lazarus opened his mouth to say something else. "Before we're marked as gone." He asked Gray, "Do you really remember nothing else about this Simon?"
Gray thought about it, and had to shake his head. "I think I mentioned they still lived in Echo Bay? But that doesn't tell us anything."
"No...but still, Two days, eight futures to try to divine out...it's a miracle you remember as much as you do. Well done."
"Uh," Gray said, not sure what to do with praise from an archangel. "Thanks?" It got him another of those very odd looks from Michael. But, "Look, if I do remember something, or something else happens...I can't go through Al to get in touch with you. He's distracted. He's not stupid."
"He is in fact the farthest thing possible from stupid," Lazarus said, and Gray had to nod in agreement, because: that. "I will endeavor to check in with you more regularly." And then Michael and Lazarus were taking off, kicking up sand everywhere and leaving Gray to make his way back to the island.
At least now he could safely hang around Raiden without having to make sure he didn't think about certain things (like Lazarus possibly having sex with their brother, ew, ew) the whole time, he guessed.
(NFB/NFI due to distance!)
The flail Gray gave when he turned around and saw who had just landed behind him, the typical heaviness of Lazarus's landing covering the second one, was worthy of a red panda. He fell right off his log, and the archangel that could, judging by all the scarring, only be Michael gave him a concerned look. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah!" Gray said as he popped to his feet, torn between snapping to attention and brushing the sand off his pants to make himself more presentable and managing mostly to sort of flail again. "I'm fine!" His voice broke and 'fine' came out on a squeak that had Lazarus looking concerned. He hadn't known Lazarus knew how to make his face look like that.
"Michael," Lazarus said after a moment of silence that stretched too long and got awkward, "I don't believe you've met Sloth before."
"Gray," Michael said. "Yes?"
"Gray," Lazarus agreed after an odd little hesitation. Well, not that odd. He almost never used their names if he could help it. If Gray had thought that would change because they were in cahoots or whatever, he didn't know why he'd ever thought that. To Gray, without using either form of address, he said, "This is Michael."
"Uh-huh," Gray agreed, because that sure was Michael, military leader of the host. It was fine. This was fine. Lazarus had said he was going to ask Michael for help, the small part of his brain that was still rational kept trying to remind the rest of it.
"Pleased to finally make your acquaintance," Michael said, and held out his hand. Gray stared at it, on the verge of shaking with fear like a chihuahua, and eventually Michael cleared his throat and withdrew the hand, looking between Lazarus and Gray in confusion.
"Gray," Lazarus said, "Tell Michael about the sword." It took Gray a moment to get his brain and mouth to connect, because what he wanted to blurt out was, 'Am I in trouble?' and that would not be helpful. It took long enough that Lazarus seemed to think he needed an explanation. "He knows more about swords than I. We thought he might recognize something that passed me by." That tracked. Lazarus's primary weapon was, of course,
"And I have unfettered access to the vaults," Michael added, "so I can search and see if it's some forgotten object there."
That also tracked, so Gray carefully described everything he could remember about the sword--its appearance, how it had worked. Michael listened with an intensity of focus that made Gray want to go hide in a hole somewhere, and also to do whatever Michael told him to do next. When he was done, Michael said with a frown, "It doesn't sound familiar, but it does sound like a spiritual weapon. None of you have one, do you?" he asked Gray, who shook his head. "That's odd, now that I think about it." Michael gestured to Gray and told Lazarus, "He's more powerful, easily, than some of the angels who do, and certainly than the dragons I've known who had them--and he's not the most powerful of the Nephilim."
"No," Gray agreed quietly. "That's Alastair." It was his birthright as their firstborn, as Lucifer had once been the angels' firstborn. It was why he was Pride, first and foremost of sins...and not even Daman could envy him it.
"And even he doesn't have one," Michael mused. "Could the sword be yours? All seven of you?"
"Eight," Gray corrected, because he was going to keep hammering that point until someone brought Kallias back from the dead already, and, "No. That's...that feels wrong. But...maybe it is...somebody's?" He tried to pick at that, but it led nowhere. If the sword belonged to someone, he hadn't spared them a thought that weekend.
"Eight?" Michael echoed.
"S--Gray has been insistent that in the future he glimpsed, Kallias--Melancholy--was once more among their number."
"But that's impossible. He's long dead."
Gray couldn't resist pushing. "There has to be some way to fish him out of Elysium, right?"
Michael stared at him, wordless, his expression unreadable, for a long moment, and then he turned to look at Lazarus. After a few more seconds Lazarus said, "I see no reason to bring the matter before the council just yet. If Gray proves correct, when Lucifer escapes his cage it will change the calculus considerably. Uriel may yet bend to necessity, when he will bend to nothing else."
"I still don't have the first clue how--" Michael cut himself off, and when he glanced over at Gray again he looked--guilty. Gray did his best to look like he had no clue there was a problem besides Kallias being dead in the first place. "Well. It's past time for a proper inventory of the vaults; perhaps we'll be able to turn up this sword. I doubt it, honestly. We didn't confiscate many spiritual weapons during the war. Lightbringer, of course, but for the most part anyone we were able to take a spiritual weapon off of ended up dead." At which point, of course, their weapon would cease to exist.
"It has to be someone close to the situation," Lazarus observed. "Even taking into account that we are dealing with prophecy, I don't see some random person being born with the blade to defeat Lucifer in their soul."
"Which is why it would make the most sense if it was Alastair's, or some sort of...group effort." Michael pondered the situation for a moment, then moved on to the next most likely group of candidates. "Your fated mates. Tell me about them."
"Uh," Gray said, and tried not to look over at Lazarus and failed.
"Lazarus can be ruled out. We already know what his weapon is."
"Right." Lazarus had said the archangels had made him seal the bond. Michael was one of those. So he'd been part of that whole...thing. Of course. "Uh. Mine is human, so I guess he's out. And Kal's is Elasus, of course. We already knew that."
"We absolutely did not know that," Lazarus ground out through his teeth, and Gray winced, remembering how furious he had been at the time, how he had thought their binding youthful foolishness, rash and dangerous. Well. He hadn't been wrong, had he? "The others?"
Gray ran through what he remembered of his brothers' mates, although it wasn't that much. He didn't remember anything about Galen's except for his name, Simon. He very deliberately left one brother out, but of course they noticed, and Lazarus asked, "What of Lust?"
He had kind of hoped to keep Bellamy's fated mate under wraps until the deal was done, which was, he imagined, the only way Phoenix had gotten to live in that future he remembered, the one that had seen him swiping to show Arden a picture of the demon with Gray's brother sitting next to him and a toddler in his lap, but that wasn't really an option once he'd been asked directly.
"Uh," he said, fighting not to fidget. "He's a...uh...he's a demon."
Lazarus wordlessly turned around and walked away up the beach. Gray was too busy trying to make himself smaller under Michael's gaze to worry about what that meant, but Michael just rubbed at the bridge of his nose.
"A demon's unlikely to have a spiritual weapon, but I suppose it can't be ruled out," he said, half in the direction Lazarus had gone.
"This is a disaster!" Lazarus called back.
"Obviously. Uriel will be intolerable, so we should avoid that for as long as possible. But presumably the demon defects, which could be very useful."
"I really think he must have," Gray agreed, because, well. Otherwise they would have had to kill Phoenix to cut Bellamy free of the bond, the way Gray had seriously considered killing Lazarus. He leaned past Michael to tell Lazarus, who was pacing with his hands in his hair, "Look, I know who it is. If I have to, I can kill him. But in the future I saw, they were together, and they were happy, and the only way that makes sense is if he defected. So we've got to give him the chance to do it."
Lazarus stopped pacing and turned to ask him, "How bad can it be? You say that you need your mates at the end, but there's no mention of such in the prophecy. How bad could it possibly be without Bellamy's?"
Gray forgot to be afraid for a moment, forgot everything but his temper, because, "I'm letting you live! Think about it!" Lazarus looked almost like he'd hit him, and Gray snapped, "That's worse! You get how that's worse, right?"
"Yes, Gray," Lazarus shouted back, "I understand that it is worse! But we are stuck in this situation and Bellamy isn't yet!"
"I'm not doing it! I'm not risking my brother before I even give the stupid demon a chance!" Lazarus snarled, and Gray flinched. He couldn't help it. It was bone-deep instinct, even though even Castor at his shittiest had never managed to get quite that sound out of Lazarus before.
"This is even worse than I expected," Michael said, and Lazarus--laughed. That was another sound Gray had never heard out of him before, even in this completely humorless, hollowed out way. Gray was torn between astonishment and the complex mix of fear and embarrassment that came with realizing that not only had he been fighting with Lazarus, he'd been doing so right in front of an archangel. His finest hour, this was not.
"You're definitely not wrong. A demon..."
"That...never mind. We'll talk about it later." Michael cut a look toward Gray--Not in front of the Nephilim--but it was funny. He looked almost sad. "I believe I need to put up some barriers in your mind?"
"Stuff gets through," Gray muttered. "Whether we want it to or not. And they can't know. Not yet. Not with--" His eyes darted to Lazarus.
"Of course," Michael agreed, and reached out to touch Gray's temple. Gray did his best to hold very, very still.
It didn't hurt. He didn't know why he'd expected it to. When Michael was done, he removed his hand and said, "That should hold. Take care."
"Tell no one about Lust's mate," Lazarus instructed him.
Gray rolled his eyes, even though he knew he shouldn't. "I wasn't planning on it. I wasn't even planning on telling you."
"We should get back," Michael said abruptly, even as Lazarus opened his mouth to say something else. "Before we're marked as gone." He asked Gray, "Do you really remember nothing else about this Simon?"
Gray thought about it, and had to shake his head. "I think I mentioned they still lived in Echo Bay? But that doesn't tell us anything."
"No...but still, Two days, eight futures to try to divine out...it's a miracle you remember as much as you do. Well done."
"Uh," Gray said, not sure what to do with praise from an archangel. "Thanks?" It got him another of those very odd looks from Michael. But, "Look, if I do remember something, or something else happens...I can't go through Al to get in touch with you. He's distracted. He's not stupid."
"He is in fact the farthest thing possible from stupid," Lazarus said, and Gray had to nod in agreement, because: that. "I will endeavor to check in with you more regularly." And then Michael and Lazarus were taking off, kicking up sand everywhere and leaving Gray to make his way back to the island.
At least now he could safely hang around Raiden without having to make sure he didn't think about certain things (like Lazarus possibly having sex with their brother, ew, ew) the whole time, he guessed.
(NFB/NFI due to distance!)
