Page 6 of Good Intentions

I didn’t need to eat. I didn’t need to drink. I was sustained by the above. So I inevitably ate a few mouthfuls and fed the rest to the patients who could eat, and spooned the broth into the mouths of those who couldn’t.

Bray sat back, smiling to himself. “I think this is the best one I’ve made yet.” There were no variables. It would be the exact same, but still, Nora smiled, walking over to kiss his face.

“It smells amazing.” Her voice was raised, and despite his hearing loss, I may have repaired him a little more than would be considered appropriate. He didn’t deserve to lose two valuable senses. Over the last few days, I repaired a little more every night while everyone slept until they were chalking it up to natural healing. It was fortunate that we had no good imagining equipment, because they would have seen it was all but decimated when they first arrived.

Bray tilted his face to hers, like he was a flower and she was the sun. And I felt…envy. The emotion felt heavy in my chest, taking up space beside the never ending guilt. What would it be like to be so casually loved?

As if he could read my thoughts, he turned his bandaged eyes in my direction. “Come, Ruhan, I’ve made you a bowl too. You know, I was going to be a chef if I didn’t become a surgeon.” His tone was light, but I could hear the loss in his words. They pulled at my chest, and after holding him the other night, I found myself unable to resist the physical contact. I sat beside him, and he nudged me with his arm as I pushed peace toward him. I eased his loss, though I meant what I’d said; he’d have to feel it to recover from it.

He handed me the bowl of lentils and rice, and waited. I lifted a spoonful to my lips and ate it quietly. “Delicious,” I murmured and he laughed.

“Liar.”

Nora grabbed her bowl and sat on the other side of me. Pressed between their warmth as we ate, I felt alive. Not existing, but actually living. It was shocking and addictive and I wasn’t sure I could ever return to my lonely existence once they left.

But I must. I’d had companions before, and though I felt their loss when they eventually moved on, I had endured.

I would endure their loss too.

“Will you return to your homes once this is over?”

Bray froze, and I knew I’d asked the wrong question. “Normally, we would head to the next place. Somewhere with war or famine or in desperate need of doctors. But now, I would be a liability. So I guess I will have to return to England.” Loss. Such profound loss.

I pressed a hand to the back of his head, easing his pain, and he rested it heavily in my palm. He took the comfort I gave him so easily.

Nora watched us both, and she reached across my body to twine her fingers in Bray’s. “I’m done too. After–” she broke off. “I’m done. I’ll go where Bray goes.” Her eyes met mine, her arm brushing my chest felt like it was made of fire. “And you, Ruhan?”

I wanted her to know my real name. I’d had thousands of names, but I wanted to hear her say my name with that soft inflection.

“I’ll continue. Easing suffering is my purpose,” I told them softly.

Bray rested his head on my shoulder. “And who eases your suffering?” he asked gently, and I froze.

Why did they undo me?

I quickly rested my cheek on his soft, blond head, before straightening. A temptation I’d been unable to resist, but could deny myself eventually. “My role is to endure. To ease and to endure.” Stroking my hand through his hair once more, I got to my feet. I avoided the too-knowing eyes of Nora. “I shall check on the patients.”

I ran away from the things they made me feel, the questions that they raised so innocently. My wings were hidden from them, and for the first time, I was glad that I couldn’t see them. Glad they were hidden from my sight also, because I feared what I would see when they emerged again.

I was doubting, and it tormented me. It tormented me in the same way that the soft scent of Nora’s skin and Bray’s soft words tormented me. I needed to leave them before I gave into the temptation that plagued me. I wanted them. I wanted to touch them, taste them. I wanted to soak in their humanity until it set me free.

Instead, I checked the patients and chased away their pain. I fell back into my purpose before Michael discovered that I lusted after a Daughter of Man. And a Son of Man, which was perhaps worse.

He would run me through, because another Archangel could not fall, not if we wanted the Legions of Heaven to survive.

Another week passed. Somewhere in there I was retrieved by Azriel, the fallen Angel of Death. We’d returned to Serendipity and I had woken her from her endless coma. I didn’t look too hard at his sunset shaded wings that had been white for so many millennia. I didn’t look too hard at my desire to return back to this purgatory of death as quickly as possible either.

The conflict seemed to have passed through. There were no armies fighting in the streets, they'd moved forward to a new front line, but it left behind something worse. Silence. As if no one remained anymore. But we worked side by side recovering those we could, healing them if we could, Nora, Bray and I.

Today, we were raiding the remains of the hospital. We needed more medicine, and Nora had a rough idea of how to get to the locked pharmacy even through the collapsed building. When we made it, my feet pulled up short. This was no accident. No miscalculation. This was a razed building. I saw the half buried ambulance, and my eyes caught on the heaving shoulders of Nora. Her eyes were locked on the ambulance too, and I knew she was relieving the moment. The terror she must have felt.

I stepped forward and placed my hand on her spine. “Come. It is best we don’t linger out here longer than necessary.”

She swallowed hard and we climbed over the large chunks of concrete. We did not see the bodies still there. A flash of fabric under ruins. A stench that lingered in a way that was indescribable. She led me over the boulders, surefooted as a mountain goat. Their building had come down, but she was sure that the pharmacy would still stand. It was locked down better than a bunker.

She pointed downward. “In there.”

I looked at her, and there was knowledge in her eyes that she didn’t voice. Bray had been correct. She did suspect I was an actual angel. “Stay here,” I ordered her softly, but there was steel in my tone. It would be dangerous for a mortal beneath the ruins. One wrong move could bring it down.