Summary: Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and decide which of those two categories your family falls into.

Notes: All characters are property of Twig and the Academy Universe.

--King Henry V, Act IV, Scene III

***

(719)

Ariel was the first to find him.

It was coming dusk and everything was shades of grey and green for as far as Uriel could see. The only break was the palest smear on the horizon, something that only angel eyes probably could have registered at that distance. When he stood and watched the small white shape winging rapidly through the sky, the thought that it might be a bird or stray piece of cloth blown by the winds never crossed his mind. After watching fixedly for a moment, he went into the hut. By the time Ariel landed cautiously, arms spread for balance on the broken shale surface, Uriel had emptied the basket he normally used to carry firewood in, brought it outside, and turned it upside down for a second seat.

Ariel walked up, all the grace of flight transformed into short nervous gestures now, hands stroking down windblown hair and the shiver of wing-pinions smoothing into a tight furl. He looked no different than the last time Uriel had seen him—a little flushed in the face from the burn of the wind, perhaps.

"Are you sure that’s sturdy enough?" Ariel asked with a cautious smile.

"I hope so," Uriel replied. "I don’t have anything else. It’s good to see you, Ari."

Something bright and brittle crumpled in Ariel’s face and Uriel thought for an instant that their first meeting in nearly five hundred years would be less words than silence, less joy than pain. He braced himself and wasn’t even sure for what, but Ariel gave him a smile that was like sunlight off broken glass and it had been long enough so that even that made his legs stand and his arms open, and it was not, not like coming home but good enough.

"It’s good to see you too, Yuri." Ariel’s voice was muffled against his shoulder, and then he stepped out of the circle of Uriel’s arms and prodded the basket with one foot. "So."

"There’s a yak," Uriel offered. "Somewhere." He gestured vaguely to where he’d last seen the animal, grazing on what grew out of the thin stony soil. He thought that he should maybe get around to naming it, although he wasn’t sure it would actually come if he called.

"It’s all right. I’d rather have something immobile." Ariel sat down gingerly. The basket sagged, the wicker sides rustled alarmingly but everything held. "So. Why do you have a yak?"

"It found me." Uriel stopped and smiled as he ducked back into the hut. "That seems to happen."

There was only rice and greens for dinner but Ariel said he didn’t mind, that he liked it. After the basket had sagged far enough for Ariel’s wing tips to brush the ground, he had said that maybe Uriel should put the firewood back in the basket and just let him sit on a rock. Uriel had agreed about the firewood but ended up dragging his cot outside so that they could both sit.

Uriel threw another stick on the fire. It was spring and some of the wood was still green. The smoke made them both cough a little but it neither moved away. Uriel leaned back on his elbows and picked out constellations; Ariel named whichever one was pointed out and then found one for Uriel to identify.

"I tried to get Cassiel out but it wasn’t even the right place," Ariel said. He was facing away from Uriel, chin resting on one palm and watching the flames leap. "Gemini. What about that one?"

It was warm for a fire but Uriel usually kept one to mark his dwelling. The local people had dark ancient eyes and skin the color of parchment. They moved silently through the bramble patches and rocky outcroppings and most importantly, they marked his fire and left him alone. The wood was something strange and grey, and it made the oily smoke smell like pepper and cloves.

"Columba," Uriel replied. His throat stung from the smoke. "Ariel."

"It wasn’t even the right place," Ariel repeated and the tears in his eyes weren’t from the smoke anymore. The sparks from the fire leaped and swirled in, the tears from his youngest brother dripped and swirled in a bouquet under his chin, just as bright in the reflected firelight.

Wordlessly, Uriel moved to sit beside Ariel and extend one arm, wordlessly Ariel leaned into him. It seemed almost too familiar, the posture and he could very well have traveled back the hundreds of years to another fireplace and all of his brothers close around him and quiet for once with their own thoughts. They sat in silence for a few moments and then Ariel spoke again.

"He shouldn’t be alone in the dark, Yuri." Ariel’s voice was helpless with raw unhappiness. "No one should. It’s not right."

"No. It’s not."

He thought of past years, thought of the last time they were all together and something beat inside, like a sudden throb from a bruise that hadn’t healed yet. It hurt more than a little to realize how long it had been.

"We’re not meant to be like this. We’re not meant to be apart." Ariel’s wings were tensing, Uriel could feel the tremble in the muscle of his shoulders. Before he could even begin to say something, Ariel shook his head. "I don’t mean like this," he said sweeping one arm over the surroundings and the hut. "We’re not supposed to be apart. Yuri, can’t you feel him missing?"

Of course he could. Bone-deep, twisted into every fiber of muscle and sinew, running along his spine and nestled between his shoulder-blades, hidden by wings—every part of him knew something was wrong, felt it as surely as missing a hand or foot. Balance was off.

Stories could be true. Everything Uriel had told his brothers about their beginnings was true, or as true a story that old could be. The sword that created them had cut them out of one whole and with one of the pieces lost, nothing was right.

"I feel it," Uriel replied. Gemini. The Twins. More stories. One twin died and the other followed him down to the underworld, the deepest darkest place possible just so they wouldn’t be separated, just so neither of them had to be alone. They lived without light for half their days just to be with each other.

Quicker than thought, Ariel stood, wings snapping out to their full span. "Then why?" he said in a strangled whisper that was more like a scream. "Why leave him there? He’s our brother, Yuri. You can’t stop loving him, I know you can’t."

Love is knowing how to hurt someone, Azrael said to him once. Love is when you know them so well that you know exactly how to hurt them, but you don’t do it because you know.

Raphael had listened and shook his head. Love is knowing when to hurt a person, Raphael had replied. Love is hurting a person because you know why you have to.

Had it really been coming from that long ago? Had it?

"I never stopped loving Cassiel," he told Ariel’s back. His younger brother was wrapped in his own wings again, head bowed and hair hanging in his face.

"No," Ariel said, and his voice was more hurt than ever before, shaking all over with fine cracks. "No, you didn’t stop. None of us did. That’s why it’s all wrong." He took a deep breath. "I’m going to get him out, Yuri. I thought you should know."

"Yes." The fire was dying. "Yes. I see."

"Goodbye, Yuri."

"Goodbye, Ari."

Ariel ran, almost stumbling down the mountainside, stray pieces of rock clattering his wake as though clawing through the air. Just when Uriel thought that surely he would trip, Ariel leaped into the air and spiraled upwards, pale against the dark night sky, reaching for the stars. He watched until his brother was a dot on the horizon and then gone.

Somewhere in the darkness, the yak was lowing. Uriel kicked dirt on the fire to smother the coals, and dragged his bed inside. When he lay down on his stomach, his cheek pressed against the mattress stuffed with grass, he could still see the constellations behind his eyes. He mapped them until sleep came.

***

(1099)

The Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem and Michael arrived with them. The recent flood of pale-skinned, light-haired men striding tall around the city and sacking any particular building that caught their eyes had inured Uriel enough to not look twice at sunlight shining off blond hair outside his window.

"Yuri?" and then, "Yuri!" was his only warning, and Michael came barreling through the door, covered with dust and dried blood and carrying a suckling pig under his left arm. He gave Uriel an enthusiastic one-armed hug that left brown smears of dust all down the front of his clean clothes, sneezed, and dropped the piglet.

The piglet promptly shook itself and took off into the next room. There was a loud clatter of things falling and the pig squealing. Michael ran after the pig and there was another crash and then an ominous silence and heavy breathing.

"Hello, Michael," Uriel said amiably to the empty room, and then followed, waiting for the next loud noise and evidence of disaster.

Michael stayed for supper instead of returning to camp. Uriel didn’t bother to ask which side he was on and doubted Michael would be able to tell him anyway. He sent Michael for water at the well and started to clean the fish he had bought at the market that morning. After waiting an hour for water that didn’t materialize, he went to the well, took Michael firmly by the elbow and marched him away from the small but growing cluster of dark-haired, dark-eyed girls who had come to draw the evening water.

"You’re no fun," Michael complained as Uriel sat him at the table and set him to kneading the bread dough.

"So you’ve said before," Uriel replied wryly. It wasn’t the first time he had been grateful for the fact that all of his brothers were incapable of offspring. The fact that Michael’s conquests were more than willing and that he would leave them trinkets worth more money than they would see in a year made no difference. There would probably be enough bastard children with light eyes and hair running through the streets a year from now anyway.

Michael kneaded furiously as if to work his frustration out. Oil spat and crackled, the smell of cooking fish filled the air. He took the dough away from Michael and found it had been kneaded about three times as much as it had to be, shrugged, and lay it to bake on the hearth anyway. After the piglet showed pronounced interest in the bread, he made Michael tether it to the door-post outside.

They ate mostly in silence, sitting near the open doorway and watching the sun go down. Children with dirty faces ran by, a woman drew water from the well and gave them a slow, unreadable look before walking away with the pot balanced on her head. Uriel watched the sway of her hips and the line of her back and thought of a similar woman from Rome, whose name he couldn’t remember.

"Ari got Cassiel out," Michael announced. "But he wasn’t all right. Raphael came to see him but we wouldn’t let him in." He licked fish grease off his fingers and flicked a bone over the threshold. The piglet nosed hopefully around the doorway for scraps and one of the street children wandered over to pat it.

Uriel stood up and stretched his legs. "Wash yourself, Michael. I can smell you from here."

Michael sang lewd marching songs in a loud off-key voice and got water everywhere in the back room while Uriel tried to restore the dusty tunic to its original color. Once washed, it proved more dust than cloth and he could put his fist through most of the holes. Shaking his head, he found a needle and thread and tried to patch up the worst of them.

Outside, a light summer rain shower was starting to fall, making sweet cool pattering sounds in the dust. The piglet went indoors as far as the leash would let it and left muddy tracks on the floor, which Uriel wiped up.

"Out," he told the pig sternly. The piglet shuffled a few steps back, lay down again, and closed its eyes. He supposed that was good enough.

Michael finally emerged and lay on the floor as well, chin propped in hands and dripped water from his hair all over the floor again. He described the ship he had sailed on and the girls he had met and his exact physical symptoms from the day he drank bad water and ate too many oranges. He didn’t mention Cassiel again.

Uriel sat back, closed his eyes, and let the words wash around him in a comforting incomprehensible wave. It was good to be uncomplicated sometimes, good to be surrounded by ordinary things. The smell of rain was better than that of fish. The rain sent people hurrying into homes and under awnings, soldiers crowding into taverns for mugs of wine and ale. No one refused them entry no matter where they went.

Children in the streets, children yet to come. Bloody handprints on doorways and homes going up in flames and the sky and setting sun as beautiful on those days as any day. Life was essentially cruel, he thought, subjecting people to any fate with no warning or reason. Despite beauty or war or anything, life was cruel and it was simply a fact, neither negative nor positive.

"…and so they finally banded together and asked us to leave, although they were pretty much scared out of their minds and there really wasn’t much left to leave by then. It was all Gabriel’s fault, anyway."

"Yes?" he said, a part of his attention having never gone away from the story. "And then?"

"Oh, then I went down to the docks because I was still looking for something to do and found the captain. Yuri?" Michael looked up at him. His hair was still slightly damp and the humidity outside gave it a slight wave.

"Yes?"

"I missed you. I wish you hadn’t gone away."

He closed his eyes again. "I missed you too, Michael."

Afterwards, Uriel gave Michael two of the blankets from his bed and left him rolled up in a cocoon of wool and feathers in front of the dying embers of the fire. The piglet jerked in its sleep but didn’t wake up as he stepped around the two to lie down on his own bed.

In the morning, Michael ate all but four of an entire bowl of figs, volunteered to draw the water, and finally departed in his newly mended tunic. The piglet tagged along trustingly at his heels after Michael fed it one of the figs. Life was cruel but it all depended on perspective, Uriel thought with some amusement.

"Goodbye, Yuri."

"Goodbye, Michael."

When Michael reached the broken down wall that marked the boundary of Uriel’s house, he turned back and waved, a vivid splash of red-gold-blue against the smoke-blackened stones. Uriel waved back and then went inside to sweep up the last crumbling bits of dried mud and wash the blankets.

There was a single golden hair bright against the dark grey wool of one of the blankets still tossed on the floor. Uriel stretched it between his fingers to see if it would break. When it didn’t, he opened his hand and let it float out and away through the open window, carried on the breeze.

***

(1541)

He almost mistook Gabriel for another one of the statues in the chapel, so still he stood, wrapped in shadows and only the steady cadence of his breath to distinguish grey hair and rapt face from the marble figures around him. Uriel waited for the last of the men deconstructing a scaffold to leave before approaching.

Gabriel saw him coming and reached to clasp both hands around one of Uriel’s. His fingers were warm. "Yuri. I would not have expected to see you here of all places."

He tipped his head back to look at the ceiling and then to take in the images blooming out of the fresh paint that gleamed behind the altar. "Why not?"

"There are walls, a ceiling, and a number of people that exceeds what you can count on both hands," Gabriel pointed out. "You rarely come to a place that has even two of these."

Nodding in recognition of the truth and of the events over a thousand years past that Gabriel left unspoken, Uriel tried to take in the entire building. "The walls and ceiling are why I’m here, really."

"I know," Gabriel said simply.

They walked together and apart, each examining what painted scene caught their eye most favorably. Uriel walked to the altar, and looked at figures scattered with mingled expressions of fear and agony and exaltation. There was a whir of stirring air behind him, he turned to see Gabriel beating his wings slowly and ascending gradually in a smooth vertical rise. He watched his brother hover near the ceiling and look into the face of the painted God.

Tilting his head back made his neck ache. He took two not-quite steps, unfurled his own wings, and moved into the air alongside his brother. Gabriel’s hands drifted in midair and it looked almost as though he was conducting unheard music. It took Uriel a moment to realize the motions described but never actually touched the shapes of the naked men and women sprawled across the ceiling.

"One man painted all this?"

Gabriel nodded, hands pausing over Adam. "Yes. He was commissioned. He wouldn’t accept any help."

Countless tinctures of paint and worn out brushes, nearly always spent lying horizontal on a hard wooden scaffold. Occasional drops of paint in the eyes, not enough light so high up. Hours turning into days turning into months turning into years…

It was strange and almost marvelous at times to see what humans were capable of when left to their own devices. Perhaps part of it was his own stretches of isolation from civilization, the contrast of what he had left and what he would eventually discover making the encounters seem greater than they were. But one still had to give them credit. The people on the ceiling were only paint and plaster and ancient stories but one could almost expect them to break free of their frozen moments, for Adam and Eve to startle back from the serpent, for Noah’s sons to turn their faces from their father’s shame.

Gabriel was finally moving back to the ground, a descent of three lazy beats of his wings to let him touch lightly on the tile floor. Uriel took one last look at the altar fresco of the sinners reaching their arms to heaven in supplication, particularly the figure of a man with shorn blond hair. Storing the color and the shape behind his eyes, he let himself fall, catching the downdraft with one sharp beat and cutting the fall short to land softly.

Gabriel was speaking to him. "So, are the ceilings and walls," he said, amusement quirking one corner of his mouth, "worth the people?"

Uriel shrugged and spread his hands. "It is difficult to fix a value on people," he said. And Gabriel spread his own hands in return, recognizing but not acknowledging the deliberate misinterpretation.

"Magnificat anima mea Dominum… Et exultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo…"

A voice spiraled high into the air, a thin silver thread of impossibly perfect sound. Soprano, Uriel thought and the primary feathers on his wings tightened and rustled at the sheer height of the notes.

"Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suæ… ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes…"

Another voice joined in, a shade lower, gold to the silver but no less right. Contralto. And then other sopranos and tenors and every range possible blending together flawlessly like shades of color in the Magnificat on high.

He and Gabriel turned at the same time to see a cluster of wide-eyed boy-singers staring back as they sang. The choir for the mass, it must be close to being started then. They were huddled in one corner, running through their scales and hymns in preparation for the service.

Gabriel tilted his head slightly, closed his eyes, and listened. Uriel watched and wondered how the Latin tasted on their tongues, whether they knew the depth and age of what they were singing and how it would outlast their own bodies and voices for years to come.

"Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto…"

"Do you want to stay for the vespers?" he asked Gabriel.

"Sicut erat in principio… et nunc et semper…"

"Not really," Gabriel replied. "I saw what I came for."

"Et in sæcula sæculorum… Amen…"

Outside, the crowds were pressing eagerly for the entrance but drew back as Uriel and Gabriel passed through the doors. A path opened up before them, their passage was obliterated as people flowed and shifted to fill the spaces left in their wake. The elements of a typical Roman evening overlaid the air, human sweat and the promise of rain and heavy dust from the streets. Tonight however, due to the anticipation of vespers and the final unveiling of the chapel was overlaid with a hint of incense and camphor, soft golden pockets of scent that they moved in and out of without prediction.

Once out of the throng, they stopped and looked at each other, smiling a little self-consciously in shared remembrance of the chapel. "Do you have a place to sleep?" Gabriel asked.

"No. I’m just passing through," Uriel replied.

"I see." Gabriel smoothed his hair back. "I think I’ll go to Spain."

Gabriel’s hands were still warm, despite the coolness of the night. Uriel clasped both of them with both of his own hands, raised them and released. Not the touch of one finger descending from heaven and not heavenly awe on Gabriel’s face, but enough to hold as a memory of warmth and texture in his skin for however long it would be until they touched again.

"Goodbye, Yuri."

"Goodbye, Gabriel."

Gabriel walked northwest and Uriel walked to the south. Each looked back once, both times when the other’s back was turned. The reflection of fading light off each other’s hair and wings was enough reassurance. Gabriel began to sing the hymn that the choirboys had been practicing. It was a still night and Uriel listened for a long time until the melody and voice were no longer audible.

***

(1793)

It was very wet the day Raphael showed up, but the rain was not falling yet. Raphael was sitting at his kitchen table, drinking wine that was the same color as his hair, and looking pensively into the bottom of the glass.

"What year is that?" Uriel asked as he stopped to knock mud off his shoes at the door’s thresh-hold.

Raphael frowned. "Somewhere around eighty five, I think." He took a judicious sip. "In that vicinity, anyway. I poured you a glass already."

"Thank you." He sat down at the other end of the table. The curve of the wineglass in his hand was not as cool as he expected, but on a surprisingly cold day it was better to have the long, rolling streak of warmth that uncurled throughout his throat and stomach.

"Do you know," Raphael said, still staring at the bottom of his wineglass, "that what passes for the government these days has established a certain committee for a universal mobilization of men to fight for the glory of France?"

Uriel took another sip of wine. "I can’t help but wonder why this would be news to you," he said mildly, "considering that I know you’re almost certainly part of the government. In fact, I know you’ve been part of several governments. Where is this going, Raphael?"

Raphael finally looked up and smiled, laughter haunting the left corner of his mouth. "You don’t miss anything do you, Yuri? I was telling you because there’s a small envoy of men a few miles down the road, shaking in their boots because they’ve been bidden to ask the mysterious hermit who may be an angel how he feels about contributing to the nation of France with his service."

Uriel raised an eyebrow when he took in what Raphael was telling him and worked out what it meant. "Am I to be recruited, Raphael?"

The laughter that had been threatening to spill over finally did and Raphael made a credible effort not to snort his wine. "That’s the size of it. I came to give you the look-out for them."

"Is that all." He was going to have to move on sooner than he thought. He had hoped to spend the winter here.

"And to share the wine. It’s rather good." Raphael had always been the best of his brothers in being able to exploit the ability of looking tranquil in return to any statement.

Uriel took another sip. "It is."

"Why are you in France, Yuri?"

He considered for a moment. "I like the way the language sounds."

"Language of lovers," Raphael said, raising his eyebrows. He bit his lip and looked thoughtful. "And the profane. Everything sounds filthier in French as well, have you noticed? Michael enjoys that fact greatly."

Uriel tilted the glass back for the last sip and let Raphael offer him the bottle again. "Michael is staying with you?"

Raphael swirled his own glass, examined the sediment at the bottom of the bottle, and looked Uriel in the eye, quiet and direct. "No. He is staying with Cassiel."

Outside, the world was nothing but wind and sky. Uriel thought that he would like to go flying even under the threat of rain, even though it was cold. Thunder unrolled in a grumbling ribbon across the horizon but it was still only noise.

Once, Uriel had let himself soar directly under a snowstorm. He had turned over on his back, buoyed up by the wind and tried to stare at the snow coming down, but he kept blinking. It had been cold enough so that the snow hadn’t even melted on his wings, simply settled and eddied around him in white drifts and he stayed that way for almost a quarter of an hour, cold and quiet and safe. It had been worth his wings getting wet from the melted snow caught between the pinions when he descended.

"I imagine Cassiel is quite good at the language then. There is not too much deviation from Latin."

Raphael made no response at first but to breathe a little deeper and tilt his head to one side. "Five of us in one country. You can make a convention joke, if you want."

"Five?"

"Ariel is visiting. He will leave soon, I imagine. They’re calling this a reign of terror and he hates it." Raphael’s voice was tired and more than a little pained. "Sometimes, I wish we were other people, Yuri. Even just in simple things like Michael and Gabriel. If we could solve problems by knocking down a few walls and pull at each other’s wings, it would be so much easier."

"Rome might’ve fallen a few centuries earlier, then," he said in the closest he could come to a remark that would close the topic, and Raphael made another sharp snort. But that was unfair to keep all the words to himself, when he didn’t care and Raphael so obviously did. Uriel sifted through what could be said with whatshould be said.

"We’re who we are, Raphael," he finally said. "Change is inevitable. But we retain the part of ourselves that matters."

The words rang in the silence like glass picking up a note and Raphael looked at him again, still open, still tired, and with the look of a man with his finger resting lightly on the trigger in indecision. "I would never want to disrespect you, brother, but I would disagree. Cassiel is much changed. And…"

When nothing seemed to be forthcoming, Uriel took the glass away from Raphael’s restless fingers before he could break it. "And?"

Raphael’s hands stilled. "The wine is a good vintage, isn’t it, Yuri? It’s aged well."

"Yes." Uriel touched his own glass. "Thank you for sharing it with me, Raphael. It was very thoughtful of you."

"It’s going to rain. I don’t want to get caught in it." Raphael stood up. "Perhaps it will even snow later. Strange, so early in the season."

"It would be a surprise, wouldn’t it? Good luck, Raphael. Be sure to give my good wishes to everyone."

"Goodbye, Yuri."

"Goodbye, Raphael."

Uriel cut the last chrysanthemums of the season and stuck them in the washed-out wine bottle. He sat and stared at the splash of color against the thin shadows of the approaching evening and rested his forehead against his hands. The flowers made small suns of dark crimson and gold, the sharp bitterness of their smell all over his fingers.

He removed a red flower and a yellow flower. Uriel rubbed a thumb over their velvet softness, pushed back the circle-within-circle layers of long thin petals. War, he thought distantly, and when many footsteps shuffled outside his door and a timid knock sounded against the wood, he ignored it until it went away.

***

(1916)

Azrael found him in Peru when the Great War had been underway for two years. Uriel looked up from weeding the potato patch and Azrael was picking his way carefully through the plants to get to him.

"Have you tried crop rotation?" Azrael asked. He was holding a book under one arm and a bag in the other hand.

"There really isn’t any land to rotate to," Uriel said and sat back on his heels, brushed dirt off his hands. "My main problem is the insects."

Azrael squatted down as well and fingered a lacy green leaf. "I see. No blight?"

"No, just bugs." Uriel watched Azrael clutch his book to his chest and try to switch hands with the one holding the bag, in order to see the plant closer. If he put his hand on Azrael’s chest and pushed just a little, Uriel thought he might be able to send his brother over backwards. Not that there wouldn’t be repercussions for that. "There’s a table in the house if you want to put your books down."

"A table and very little else, I’m sure," Azrael agreed. "All right."

Azrael wanted to pull up several of the plants and experiment but settled for one plant and helping Uriel clear stones out of the patch. When it was too dark to see what they were doing without the help of light, mage or natural, they went inside.

Uriel poured soup into two bowls and Azrael measured the leaves of his one allowed plant, scribbling equations and phrases of dead languages onto a torn out page of his notebook. Uriel sifted through the pebbles they had cleared from the ground, sorting two piles of quartz and granite, and Azrael spoke a few words, which culminated in a flash of greenish light, the potato plant drooping, and a strong smell of gasoline. Uriel went outside and rummaged in the woodpile for a reasonably flat board, took it inside, and drew squares on it with the charred end of a stick. Azrael managed to turn the potato plant blue.

After an hour, he took the plant, now a bilious yellow, away from Azrael and set the makeshift chessboard on the floor. Quartz played white and granite played black, and the chess pieces were decided by size. They argued over the size of pawns as compared to rooks and in the third game, Azrael tried to claim his bishop was really his queen and Uriel threw a knight at his head. Azrael responded with a handful of pawns and in the light scuffle, they lost too many pieces to continue.

The bag Azrael had been carrying was filled with newspaper clippings for the past year, and Uriel sat on the floor and traced the path of the human war. He thought it was strange how the need to record continued throughout time. Tablet to book, papyrus to paper, languages born and dying. Even when it seemed as though the end was at hand, everything was written down for generations that might not exist.

"America will enter the war soon," he said.

"Yes," Azrael replied without looking up. "It won’t be long. No one can stay neutral forever." The plant was green again.

Rows of black text on white paper. Human things. But Azrael had always loved the way information could be stored solidly in that way. Uriel stored all knowledge in his own mind, hard, inaccessible thoughts behind layers and barriers of bone and flesh and blood, opaque white, translucent red. Nothing that could be looked at, shelved, and re-opened to find exactly the same. Nothing that Azrael could pore over by candlelight and make markings in the margins of. He thought, sometimes, that Azrael would find humanity vastly improved if existing solely in the ink and paper form.

Azrael stayed for three days. Shortly before dawn on the third day, Azrael woke Uriel and asked for water and the plant he had been working on previously. After Azrael tore off some of the now noticeably bedraggled leaves and muttered over the water for a few moments, they walked out to the garden and Azrael spoke a few words as the sun rose over the mountain range. Uriel dipped his hand in the water and flicked it on the plants at his brother’s cues. As the sun rose fully and burned off the last of the mist, something pale-grey and vaporous rose over the plants as well and then dissipated.

"That should do it," Azrael said in a matter of fact tone. "It works more easily with a small, localized spot like this. And that should protect against blight as well."

"It’s really only the insects, you know." His hand was cold from the water and the early morning air. He wondered if the spell would do anything to prevent dirt from getting under his fingernails.

Azrael blinked. "The Irish said the same thing in the nineteenth century. And then look what happened. I was in London at the time, you know."

He hid his smile behind his hand, only to see that Azrael was also smiling, albeit somewhat more wryly, and making no effort to hide it. "Thank you."

"You’re welcome."

Azrael left with one of the potato plants transplanted into Uriel’s third-best pot for further study. He left the paper clippings and notebook on Uriel’s table and after walking halfway out of the room, went back and added a pen.

"Goodbye, Yuri."

"Goodbye, Azrael."

A few days later, he found himself sitting at the table and holding the pen. The notebook had several more blank leaves in the back. Uriel ripped one out and looked at it for a very long time before folding it in half and tucking it back into the notebook again. Somewhere unseen, some timer had started to count down, something that was outside the range of even angelic hearing but that he somehow knew all his brothers heard as well.

***

(1998)

Ariel came for him less than a week after they all sensed it.

"You are needed. Will you come?"

"Yes," he heard himself replying. It was not unlike a dream but he didn’t allow himself the luxury of pretending it could be.

There was not a long way to go, destination being in the same country. Mostly they flew, but as fields and trees turned into houses and the outspillings of city life, they went to the ground. Ariel kept a straight western course as they went, but Uriel could feel the blood-magnet pull with his eyes closed.

The last leg of the trip, Ariel brought them to a parking lot and unlocked the doors of a nondescript black car, getting rid of his wings with a quick hand gesture and spoken word. As he settled into the driver’s seat, Ariel caught Uriel looking at his shoulders. "It makes it easier to drive."

Uriel nodded and wondered absently whether Ariel had actually in his lifetime, ever taken a driver’s test and procured a license.

Ariel wore a seatbelt. Uriel let Ariel drive for a mile or so before putting on his own. They stopped in front of an office building in San Francisco, bright and graceful with metal and windows. More human accomplishments.

"The Deconstruction Green," Ariel said. "It looks just like Raphael, don’t you think?"

"It’s very tall," Uriel said politely.

They took the elevator. When they reached the floor, Uriel could hear voices quarreling, even all the way down the hall.

"Oh no," Ariel said rather ineffectually, and picked up his pace. "I knew we should have just taken the painting out before using the room."

Leaving Uriel with that cryptic comment, Ariel ran the last few steps, wings flickering back into existence and almost leaped through the door. Uriel caught a glimpse of five other people standing in the room, either bickering or watching the argument before the door swung shut again. It didn’t muffle the noise by much. Uriel walked up as well and opened the door as the voices rose to a crescendo.

He was just in time to see Gabriel turn and smash a painting over Michael’s head in silent, majestic dignity, and it did more for Uriel’s conviction that he was home than anything else probably could have.

"Michael, is it so hard for you to restrain your opinions on Gabriel’s artistic abilities for ten minutes?" Ariel said in mingled irritation and amusement. "It wasn’t that bad of a picture."

One.

"Ow. He needs to be less touchy about the fact it looks like he stuck his finger down his throat and threw up on the canvas. Did you actually use paint for that one, Gabe?" Michael was picking wood splinters out of his hair.

Two.

"You deserved that," Gabriel snapped, arms crossed over his chest. "Have you no understanding of the concept of silence? And you’re getting close to being hit by something else."

Three.

"Now I have to find something else for that wall," Raphael mused. "Azrael, do you have any suggestions?"

Four.

"I’m a scientist, not an artist," Azrael replied distantly. "Wrong forum."

Five.

"I win the bet. They started fighting before four o’ clock," a new voice said from the other side of the room. "Yuri’s here."

Six.

Cassiel looked back at him.

Cassiel looked much the same. For a moment, it really was as though time had reversed and they were all back in sync with each other, safe and beloved throughout everything, instead of just meeting to find out what to do about their balancing acts being thrown off in the most unexpected way possible. Going into battle for what was theirs.

No one spoke. Some time passed.

The thin fragile shell of memory and emotion persisted, because or in spite of all of them saying nothing. Uriel had been good at being alone but this was not unpleasant. He knew the bubble would break soon enough, but Uriel thought he would rather wait for that. He was better at waiting.

"Hello," Uriel said as the six other parts of himself came closer to draw him in and home. "Hello."

***

End Notes:

The Latin lines are taken from the Magnificat, typically sung at Vespers. They translate as:

"My soul magnifies the Lord. And my spirit rejoices in God my savior."

"For he has respected the humility of his servant: behold, therefore, from this day all generations will call me blessed."

"Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit/ as it was in the beginning and now and always/ and in the age of ages. Amen."