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"I...." He hesitated for a moment before continuing. "We should talk about this."
“Can we not… not here,” I said, pulling away from him as the realisation of what I’d done swept over me like a wave, and the weight of my sin hit me hard. He sighed, and I could hear the pain in his voice at my rejection.
“Sure.” He got to his feet, and I heard him rustling for something in the dark. I sat up, leaning back against the rock wall, drawing my knees up to my chest. I felt small and I needed to be small right then.
Dim light filled the cave, and I blinked at the brightness of it after so many hours in the pitch dark. Alastor stood in front of me, a piece of damp cloth in his hand.
“Here. You can use this to clean yourself up.”
My face flamed red, but I took the cloth, and he turned away to give me some privacy as I quickly did as he suggested. Even he thought I was dirty. I tried to brush those thoughts away, but they were persistent. Once I was done, I handed the cloth back, avoiding his gaze.
"Food?" he asked, and I shook my head. I couldn't eat, not when my stomach felt so twisted.
After a moment of hesitation, he spoke in a low voice, "Sariel..."
I cut him off, "Don't."
"We can't ignore this forever, Sariel."
"I know," I whispered, wrapping my arms tighter around my knees.
"I don’t know what came over me," he started, his voice low and filled with regret. "I didn’t mean to… to push you into something you didn’t want."
"Alastor," I interrupted him. "It wasn't just you."
That quieted him for a moment before he spoke again. "It doesn’t make it right, if you feel this bad about what we did.”
I sighed. “It was free will. I chose to do it, and I don’t blame you for it in any way. Now, can we just forget it happened? We should be getting going.”
His silence was answer enough. I knew he must understand what I was feeling - the guilt and shame coursing through my veins. But even as I rejected him, a part of me yearned for his touch, craved the comfort he could provide. It was a jarring contrast that left me feeling even more confused. I didn’t dare look at him, and after a few moments, he got to his feet.
“I’ll wake the others,” he said quietly.
It didn’t take the others long to get going once Alastor woke them. I had been terrified that they had heard everything, that we’d woken them, but no one said a word, and soon we were setting off again, moving down the tunnel, with Alastor leading the way as usual. I hung back, letting Carlisle and Theo go next, not wanting to get into friendly conversation with anyone. Ash, who barely said a word, brought up the rear again and I wasn’t worried about personal questions from him. He barely nodded in my direction.
The walk was quiet, but the voices in my head were loud and unyielding, the thoughts like whips across my mind, echoing the punishment I could receive when Gabriel found out what had happened down here. If he found out. I could just not say anything, forget it ever happened. I could atone without even telling him. But surely omission was as bad as lying outright, wasn’t it? I didn’t know. How would I even tell him? Gabriel sent for you; you didn’t seek him out. But I was different, I had been different. He’d been my guide, my mentor. It was why my betrayal had devastated him so much. Why he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t give those angels up. I had lied to him then, telling him I’d never found them, but he’d known I was lying. I’d seen the look of hurt, of betrayal on his face before the fury. I might be his pupil, I might have been the onehe’d taken under his wing centuries ago, but my betrayal had cut all that away. Gabriel had made me what I was - a powerful host commander, respected and decorated, and now, now I was nothing.
I found myself wishing that Alastor could have seen me as I had been before. My armour, gold and white, gleaming in the sun, my angel blades, gleaming white and beautifully deadly. The thousands of angels that marched and fought at my command. No one dared disobey me. I was hard and I drove them, but I wasn’t heartless, and I had always tried to be fair. I found myself needing Alastor’s approval, I wanted his admiration, his pride. I felt like I was always falling short around him, and now… now I really had screwed things up. If I confessed to Gabriel what I had done down here, I would never regain my position. Sin scarred the souls of angels, and mine was now irrevocably damaged with the shadows of my pleasure.
I winced at the thought of the punishment that awaited me. I had told Lily that I was on probation down here on earth, which was true, but it was more like probation than I had led her to believe. Before I had been demoted and brought down to earth, I had been punished. The throne room in Heaven was now Gabriel’s domain, our Almighty Father having moved somewhere more private to allow Gabriel more freedom as to how he enacted our Father’s will. Thousands of angels fit inside the mighty Hall, and they had all been brought to witness the price of insubordination. No staggered sentencing for Gabriel, each sin, each crime held the same penance. Public humiliation and pain. Chains now hung from each pillar in the throne room. I had been stripped and forced to walk through the ranks of my warriors naked, before being strung up and flogged. Three days I had hung there, with flogging at each earth sunset and sunrise, which was witnessed by all. Gabriel had given me the honour of being the one to administer each flogging, and he had wept at mydisobedience, at what he had been forced to do to me. I couldn’t do that to him again.
Overwhelming shame swept through me like a tidal wave, and I stumbled at the intensity, nausea rising in my throat. A pair of strong hands wrapped around my upper arms, preventing me from falling and steadying me.
“You ok?” Ash’s voice was deep and low, much like Alastor’s, but smoother where Alastor’s was rough and gravelly.
“I’m fine, sorry.”
“Are you sure? You took a beating yesterday, I’m sure they’d be happy to stop if you needed a rest.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m good, really. My mind was wandering, and I wasn’t paying attention”
He nodded, and to my surprise, fell into step next to me.
“I hadn't realised you were a full angel,” he remarked as we walked. “I assumed they meant you were Fallen.”
“No, I’m not Fallen,” I said. Not yet. “What about you?” I asked, trying to take the focus off me. “Cole said you were a demon? Any particular type? Anything I should know?” I half joked, trying to lighten my own mood.
Ash didn’t smile. “No, basic demon. Rather boring really. Tend towards temptation, especially with gambling, but you don’t strike me as the poker type.”
