Rising Above

“Lily,” Gabriel began calmly, recapturing her chin with his fingers and making her look at him again. This torment could all be ended for both of them if she’d only look deep into his eyes and see what was there. So much could be fixed if she would only lock gazes with him. There was no other way he could convince her; there was so much truth to be read in the eyes of any angel, a truth so powerful that God had seen it fit to have their eyes dissolve upon their death so that no one may steal it from their sightless stare. “One morning, in Rome, 1921, I woke up alone. Why?”

“You always ask why I left.” She heaved, again breaking their stare. “It was just time, Gabriel.”

This time, Gabriel didn’t try to make eye contact with her; she was still obviously not ready for any amount of truth, not about him and not about herself either. “And you always tell me that, and it’s a lie.”

“How do you know?” She asked, her provocation showing.

“Because I know, accept that.” His voice was level, but not harsh. So very many times she’d come so close to trusting him, he knew that part of her wanted to, but her fear was still stronger.

Lilith’s eyes narrowed again and she grimaced. “You’re not that type of angel, either, Seraph!”

Gabriel ignored the comment. “Have you ever asked yourself, Lily, what my motivation for staying here, surrounded by all the monkeys, for over two centuries, was?”

“The same as your motivation for anything is, Gabe; killing and sex.” She answered simply. “You may be holy, but you are not that complicated! Those two hundred and seventeen years encompassed an American and a French revolution, followed by the War of 1812, then the Mexican War, the American Civil War, the Spanish American War, and the coup de gras, the First World War! Don’t’ pretend your time spent here with me was anything other than a fact finding study of how to wage an effective war, so you could finally win yours!”

Gabriel pressed his hands together, gently tapping them to his lips, downplaying his exasperation. “Oh Lily…you’re not getting it, Lily. In fact, you’re really blowing it, Lily!” He may have wanted nothing more than for her to look into his eyes and understand what he was saying, let him fix the damage done to her and see that he never meant to hurt her, but that didn’t mean he would let her batter him and his heart around like he was some lovesick monkey.

In short, he was losing his patience with her, again. It happened all the time, yet he would not tell her anything outright that she did not feel the need to first look for in his eyes.

“There isn’t anything to be gotten, Gabriel!” Lilith spat, more than agitated at what she began to sense from him, but it wasn’t the first time she’d sensed it. She looked back at him, for he was staring down at the table and not waiting to capture her stare with his again. How dare he? So what if he was an Archangel, of death, retaliation, annunciation, and whatever the hell else he’d been set upon to perform. Look at him, sitting there now like she wasn’t even beside him, locked up with his thoughts, not one of the shining black hairs on his head out of place, sweet soft lips pursed and the power in his being not a bit shaken.

Instead, there he was, as radiant and glorious, as he’d always been to her, his compelling eyes, so full of ingenuous powers, half hooded by his darkened lids and dark lashes. He looked almost asleep, and Gabriel had always looked incredibly angelic when he slept, beautiful, placid, sanctified, precious, so full of grace. Lilith would have believed a creature like that, would have trusted a creature like that, enough to let him offer up the truth to her, the way no one else ever had, but then, wasn’t that what he was doing now anyway? All he wanted was her trust, and really, that was all Lilith had left to give him.

Gabriel was not completely without grace; she knew that, even if no one else did, including him. He’d always been so good to her, the incident of her eyes, teeth and soul excluded, and part of her actually believed he was sorry for what had happened to them all, no matter how much she’d fought it over the years. What was the point in not recognizing how sorry he was when she already knew it anyway? Wouldn’t it be easier to accept his apology, and live in trust with him than to live fighting with him?

He was so beautiful, so seductive, so powerful, and though it petrified her to think it, the only being she could ever trust, and she had to trust someone. The temptation crept up her spine with tingling steps, each more urgent than the last, she found her hand reaching out for his shoulder, her lips parting to form words of apology, her heart pounded, she was so afraid—

No! She couldn’t do it! She couldn’t let herself trust him! To trust him, or anyone else, was to lose everything, again. She’d opened her soul to Gabriel once, believing him when he’d told her how horrible he’d felt about what Adam had inflicted upon her, and telling her he knew how she could avenge herself; and for that, she’d lost her soul.

However, Lilith knew it was already too late, for she’d actually felt the wall within her crumble, and the need to trust Gabriel heave forth. Frantic for a bad memory of him, she refilled her glass, all the way to it’s rim, watching as blood spilled over the edges, trickling down over the stem of the goblet, pooling on the table top in deep, dark shades of crimson that washed away the persuasion to just stare into his eyes and trust him, and the truth within him.

“Don’t do that!” Gabriel barked ripping the bottle out of her hand as if he knew the lonely, depressive solace she sought from the bloody deluge. “Drinking it is one thing, wallowing in it is another!”

“As if you would even know!” Lilith rumbled, regaining the angst that always kept her safely out of range of trusting anyone. She plunged her finger into the blood and then held it up to Gabriel’s face, red streaks dripping down her finger to her hand. “You did this to me! You didn’t want humans to have a soul, you still don’t, and you used me in your plot, leaving me to exist in this earthly plain forever as a blood drinker, a soulless killer of infants! Score one for the Angel of Death! You only want me to trust you again so you can take out a few more souls and serve yourself again, and take everything from me that I have left!”

She paused for a moment, taking a breath, and then, as if what she’d just finished saying had not been enough to torture him; she smiled cruelly and added, “You are a selfish, supercilious beast that can love nothing! No wonder God did not choose you to receive something as divine as a soul!”

Gabriel’s head jerked up angrily and his eyes burned red, then almost black with the torrent of fury and injury that rushed through him. She had no right to make such a determination, no right to ever say that to him, it didn’t matter what she’d been put through. Lilith was a hopeless cause, and he felt, like he so often did, that he should just forget her. There were always long arguments whenever the subject of her trusting him came up, but she’d never cut him as deeply as she had just now. He would forget her this time, he’d done everything he could, made more attempts than he could even remember at apologizing and trying to show her the love he felt for her, only to have it thrown back in his face, or been torn to tatters by her fangs and claws. Even angels had been given only so much tolerance.

He grabbed her hand, inserting her finger into his mouth and sucking the blood from it, just to annoy her, and then abruptly stood up. He didn’t need this. “Lilith, I have been telling you for centuries that there would come a day when I would no longer have patience for you and the fear you let yourself hide behind. Today is that day! I will not keep going through this with you, the same way I will not let some talking monkey take my place! Maybe the boss cursed us both, Lily, because this constant argument with you is worse than Hell, and I’ve been to Hell! Either way, it doesn’t matter, because I’m done! Goodnight, Lily, for the last time!” He pressed two fingers to his lips, kissed them, then motioned towards her with them.

“What?” Lilith’s face went white, she felt faint. She and Gabriel had this argument more times than she could even recall, but he’d never said he was done with her. He couldn’t be done with her! “No!” She wailed as he turned his back to her and began to walk away from her. She scrambled to her feet, bloody tears in her eyes. She ran, catching his arm, stopping him.

“I swear to God, Lily, you better have one hell of a one eighty planned!” Gabriel growled as he looked down at her, but part of him was glad that she’d bothered to chase after him. How could it be that he’d at first been filled with so much joy at having encountered her again, only to be walking out on her forever now? Still, it amused him that it was he who would be leaving this time if she didn’t finally overcome her fears, and not her running out on him as usual. The control had just shifted in their relationship, and it was about time, too.

“Gabriel, don’t leave, not forever!” Lilith pleaded, standing in front of him now, her hands on his chest as she tried to push him back towards the booth. “Please! I need you, don’t leave me!”

“You need me?” Gabriel repeated, but he didn’t give in. Saying she ‘needed’ him was the closest she’d ever gotten to saying anything that truly meant anything. He knew she needed him, but he wanted her to know and admit why she needed him. “You need me for what?”

Lilith couldn’t lose him! She looked up at his eyes, trying to force herself to match his stare, but again becoming too afraid. “Just don’t go!”

Gabriel held her face in both his hands, steadying her gaze, looking down at her intently. “Come on, Lily, do it,” he whispered, for he didn’t want to forget about her, he’d loved her for too long, but he couldn’t keep subjecting himself to her game either. “Trust me or lose me.”

Lilith tried so hard not to close her eyes, for she couldn’t move away from him. But she was so afraid of what she’d see in his eyes and what it would mean for her, and she was still very sure she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She’d lived her entire snake-eyed, blood drinking existence with Gabriel to blame for it, but what if it wasn’t his fault after all? What if she’d just been the victim of a creator who did not fully understand his creation? Gabriel was himself, why not her? Maybe her whole cursed existence was due to her own arrogance; which would not allow her to lie beneath Adam? For Gabriel was an arrogant creature as well, and look what it had done to him. What was she to do if her entire damnation was her own fault? Blame herself? Admit that she was weak? Take responsibility for her choice to go along with Gabriel’s plan about the apple that had gotten her into so much trouble? For the first time in her life, would she have to stop being the victim and grow up? Maybe even share part of herself with someone else? What? She could allow herself to find happiness?

Lilith felt like a wave had just crashed over her, drenching he with a new reality she’d never considered. She could be happy, and it was only herself that had ever kept her from being so. This battle with Gabriel had never truly been about him or what she’d always blamed on him, it was about what Lilith could not and did not want to accept about herself. Those thoughts had not come to her since that auspicious night in Rome, 1921, when she’d come so close to accepting the truth from Gabriel’s eyes, letting herself trust him and the feelings he had for her, the truth and the love that had terrified her for centuries, and she’d panicked, ripping into him with her teeth and claws until he fell to the floor and didn’t move, couldn’t move.

She trembled beneath the Seraph’s gaze now, never wanting to relive that horrible night or that dread, but knowing she must in order to keep him in her life. This epiphany was too much to digest on the spot; the sudden onset of such consciousness and clarity alone shook her to her core. She closed her eyes. “I can’t.” She cried, more bloody tears streaming down over her temples towards her ears as Gabriel tipped her face upwards. She knew what she said had been the wrong answer, and she must find some way of keeping him from making good on his pledge to leave unless she gave in. “Not here.” She was barely able to speak, but knew Gabriel had heard her, for he was still there.

“Then where?” He asked, looking around the room and understanding why she may have wanted a more private setting for this, that was, if she wasn’t just trying some pathetic ploy to slow his departure. He hoped that she meant to finally end this struggle, for he did not want to lose her. He released the hold he had on her and wiped her bloody tears away with his finger. “And stop that, you know I hate it!”

Lilith collected herself again, not knowing what she would do next to keep him here, to keep him in her life, or how she would say it. Gabriel handed her a handkerchief from his black coat and she wiped away the rest of her tears, still shuddering a little, but able to at least think of her next immediate move. “I have an apartment downstairs, come on.” She took his hand and he let her lead him through a door and then into and elevator, away from the crowd upstairs.

Gabriel was given the ability to smell emotions, love, happiness, fear, anger and he smelled despair all over Lilith. The brief ride in the elevator was silent; she didn’t even look at him, just stood visibly trembling. He wanted to comfort her, put his arms around her, but he didn’t dare. She had to fix this by herself, and if she didn’t, he was gone, no matter how much it would hurt either of them. Besides, if he won his latest war in Heaven, what time would he have to even think of her? Just because he’d always wanted her didn’t mean he needed her. But, he’d never seen her like this before though, a bundle of raw and ragged emotions, barely contained by flesh and bone.

Thank you for continuing to read! How's it going so far? If you like it, please let me know! I'm working on a sequel, so tell me what you think! It's the only way you get more to read!:-)