Stargazing - Weeks

Michael

He barely ever watched the stars anymore.
He rather watched the Moon instead, as it changed its face, waxing and waning and waxing again, shining a different light on Heaven and Earth week by busy week...
… and he watched the Lady Moon as she remained the same, always exactly the same freezing, broken little being, no matter how many weeks, months, years, decades or even centuries passed by. Time that she would never get back. Time, without her, that Heaven would never get back.
Had anyone looked at it, they would have shuddered and turned their gaze away from the cold determination Tish was shining with that night. He had allowed this to go on far longer than he should have. And so he made sure a whole legion of angels was standing ready to stop and hinder Vega, should he decide to leave the solitude of his palace that night. (And what solitude it was! Just him and the reports, and a wide empty circle devoid of clouds, breeze or life around the whole crystalline building...)
He had also flown out to Albireo – its shepherd, while not locked up, couldn't leave his beloved superior's palace. Or rather he wouldn't – because he had discovered how badly worried it made her every time he did, and so he rather consigned himself to being a willing prisoner of her palace. Over the years, unfortunately, he had lost the influence he used to have on her initially... he couldn't get her out, much less to stop obsessing... yet he stayed anyway. This night, though, it was crucial that Zizuph wouldn't interfere, no matter what would happen... Michael made that very clear in the instructions he whispered to the star this devoted little angel shepherded.
Maybe he had spent too much time listening to humans' beliefs, because he chose the night of the half moon -rumoured to be a time of change – to act. He crept into the still strangely dark palace – not that there was any real need for caution, the only one who could have noticed him was Zizuph, and that little angel had his instructions...
Piles of discarded books littered the floor, their concentration growing as he neared the small private garden in the base of the modified bastion. In fact, they covered nearly the entire hall leading up to those parts, there being only one narrow pathway between them, which meandered hesitantly towards the library...
He went to stand in the outer half of the olive grove in the garden, and waited. It wouldn't be much longer... He knew from his conversation with Albireo that the rarely seen Lady of the Moon (and guardian of the sickly Sadr) had kept to the words of every instruction Algenib had given her over the years. She sat up straight while reading – but she did nothing else. She had to let her wings show sometimes – so she never bothered to fold them back again, and never cared for their state either. She had been told not to live in the library -so she wandered around the palace, always with a book in her hands, never even looking up to see where she was going or where she would drop the finished volume. Every night, when the Moon reached its zenith, the (undeniably half-mad) angel would wander into her private garden, and stay there (reading, of course) until dawn. Consequently, these visits varied in length, and tonight, it wouldn't last long... but a few minutes were really all Michael needed.
When she arrived, he gave his little sister some seven seconds to discover she was not alone, and recognise her visitor... before he set everything – the books, the walls, the plants, and even himself – on fire. He was burning bright, solemn and unstoppable, with all the force of the Sun in the palace of the Moon, careful to keep only one thing untouched by the flames: the terrified, frozen Lady of the Moon.
Though he endured the pain in quiet, he wished Gabriel wouldn't. Such silence was so completely unbefitting of her...
She didn't make a sound as she tried to fight back, to save everything that had been set aflame. Though it had become her obsession to try to find something in her innumerable books that would tell her why that horrible day had to come to pass, what she had done wrong, when she had begun to misunderstand or worse, misinterpret the Will... Though she probably knew the pages of those endless books better than the hearts of some siblings, she had to let go of this part of the collection.
She was much less willing to despise of the plants, which only prolonged their suffering. Namely, they could be restored, while they were more or less whole and on fire... but once they turned to ashes, it would be upsetting the balance of life and death to bring them back – and she knew that very well. To act against that unwritten but well-known law for selfish reasons: it was unthinkable for her, even now.
However, the worst part only came when she did let go of everything else, and she could turn her full attention to her brother... who was still just standing there, arms half-raised, wings fully spread and smouldering, blazing, burning...
Even through the hot, swirling air, Michael could see his sister's eyes turn empty, and then ruled by the dark spot Raphael had told him about...
He turned up the heat (still careful not to let one single flame reach Gabriel).
Slowly but surely he could feel his sister slip away, her restraining hold on the fire all around fade... and the first feathers crumble into dust...
He didn't blame her. He wouldn't, not even if this desperate experiment ended up in a painful failure. He knew she wasn't seeing the present, not really: the past had too strong a grip on her mind, heart and soul, Vega had managed to strike too deep, to make her question everything, and leave her defenceless against the crushing waves and vertexes of time.
But some part of her had to have remained tethered to the present. Her sight could not be fully clouded over, nor driven irrevocably wild – he believed that with all his heart, and he was willing to risk his life on it.
He didn't wince, didn't scream, didn't curse (although he could have, he had learned a lot from his younger siblings)... he just stood there, engulfed in flames, and watched... and waited, patiently...
He hadn't even noticed that moonlight had first faded, and then gone out entirely; not until it exploded back into the garden, eclipsing all the fire of the Sun with a softly caressing, pleasantly cool sort of light. But the radiance didn't come from the ever-changing face of a tiny satellite; it was all Gabriel.
The outburst ceased – it got under control – and there she was in the middle, the dark spots still there in her eyes (in fact darker than ever), but she was seeing through them now...
In a heartbeat, he found himself swept off his feet, held in (strangely dusty) golden-white wings, and carried across Heaven sheltered from all eyes, into a sealed-off room of the ward. There, his sister began to tend to his wounds (and he had nothing but wounds at this point), while calling out for their little brother...
Raphael wasted but two seconds on surveying the state of his siblings and making his educated guesses after storming into the room. Thanks to his talent and experience, the burn marks were all gone soon, and of course, the pain was extinguished together with it. Once the elder was healed and resting, Raphael took a deep breath, and turned to their sister.
“Please, Gabriel, try to stay calm, if you can... but your eyes...”
“I know.” she interrupted, shaking her head.
“Are they disturbing your vision?”
“No.”
“Any kind of vision?”
“No. That's how I know about the spots in the first place.” she explained curtly. “But what good is my sight if, when it's truly important, I cannot interpret it and act upon it properly?”
“Gabriel...” Michael began, prompting her with a wing to sit down next to him on the bed, and pulling her close once she complied, “You're not going to lock yourself up with your books again, are you?”
“No, brother.” she promised.
“Good... thank you.” Michael sighed audibly.
“What is it?”
“It was a dangerous undertaking.” Raphael answered this time. “Trying to understand the Will... always, and fully... that's... that's...”
“... prideful and wrong.” Gabriel nodded. “But I wasn't trying to-”
“What were you doing, then?” Michael inquired. “You kept saying you had to figure out where you went wrong...”
“I know, and I wish I could... but that's not the same.”
“It isn't?”
“No, I just... I just wanted to see when and how I stopped recognising what the right thing to do was. In any given situation, it's not always the exact same as the Will-”
“Yes, I know. Father lets us diverge from the initial concept... confusingly often. But in the end, it's somehow still always His Will...”
“Yes, but there is no way to know that beforehand.” Raphael interrupted. “I'm sorry, but not even for you, Gabby.”
“Of course there isn't.” she agreed. “But there is a way to know, to feel what's right, and I've felt that, I had been feeling that all along before-...” she trailed off, flinching at the memory still, and continued more quietly. “If it led to such suffering, as it did, then it couldn't have been right, after all. This has nothing to do with Father's Will... it's just that I don't know what's right anymore, and I have to... I have to, for those that are still left, even if for Deneb, it's already too late...”
There it was: the truth, finally. This was what he had taken from her. On top of the sorrow, the grief, on top of blaming herself for the Broken One's fate... Vega had managed to take the very conviction that had allowed her love and mercy to become such overpowering forces in all the realms. And she was still far from being restored...
“Don't say such things!” Raphael hurried to say, squeezing into the little space next to the wall and completing the embrace around their sister.
“It wasn't your fault.” Michael joined in, although he was sure there would still be no quick and easy fix for this wound of the soul. Especially not in the shape of a few powerless words. After a short silence, he went on to ask, “What changed now?”
“I had to realise T wouldn't find the answer this way... and I was hurting others with what I did. Most recently, you.” Gabriel replied, her last sentence just a sheepish whisper. “If I tried to apologise, would you let me?”
“Not before you would let me say I'm sorry for burning down your garden.”
“I love you, big brother.” Gabriel said.
“I love you too, little sister.” Michael answered.
“... that's right, you two, just leave the littlest brother out of it.”  Raphael teased. He was then promptly swept up by a messy wing, and dropped in front of the elders, so that they could properly pull him into a hug (and Michael could ruffle the little rascal's hair).
“Laugh all the way you want, Gabby, but you are next.” the youngest of the three Archangels commented.
“What do you mean?”
“Have you even looked at your wings lately? Forget the bunnies, I'm expecting to find packs of dust wolves or even whole prides of dust lions in-between your feathers. That is, between those that aren't as crooked as a banana-”
“Okay, okay-”
“I think I felt something move in them-”
“Not funny, Michael!”
“Maybe it was a dust lioness after a dust zebra-”
“Why don't you take a closer look, then, baby brother?” Gabriel asked, her voice challenging – right before she shoved one of the thicker covered wings in Raphael's face, effectively sending him into a coughing fit. ...which, in the end, turned into a fit of laughter, once he could properly breathe again.
Michael watched the pair of them fondly, and waited for them to settle down. Even for the three of them, it would take a lesser eternity to clean, groom and preen all those neglected wings properly, he knew. However, he did not mind it the slightest: all the more time for the brothers to help their sister get a little more confidence back. The worst part, the brokenness, the hopeless sense of surrender were ending now. Fading to nothing, just like the waning moon. And maybe not in weeks – definitely not in weeks –, but eventually, they would let a whole new moon grow. A kind, gentle and wise, old-new moon to illuminate Heaven once more.