Chapter Text
There is a specific- a special- kind of breaking that can only be achieved, when something that deep down you knew was never supposed to last. Was never supposed to continue existing until the bones that hold a human body upright and there and dancing have long since become nothing but ash- now breaks.
Something that still had become such a permanent all-encompassing part of your life- even while held for a mere fragment of a grander graver tale- now gone in an instant.
A breaking that kills a part of who stands in its wreckage, as the only thing left to be done is feel the dread- the dread of knowing that replacing it would never be something possible without also replacing in that action the part of yourself that knew it.
And after that.
And after that-
There is only one act that can be performed in the light of the gaze of expectations- in the gaze of a world that desires a change from you, to hold grief as a cloak- but never as a blade, an anchor. That holds only one path as right and just. And you had already made the choice to change enough to save them right? Right?
For you to walk away- and show in every step, in every glance that was prevented by the distance- that simultaneously makes the glances themselves so much more easy to direct without anyone the wiser.
For you to look at only the way cold golden faith has made its chains upon the flesh that once would have been able to fly. So cold, even while holding the colour of what you had considered precious and once had granted with a smile.
Do you know how to smile anymore God?
Or do you just have to live with the choices of the sinners, knowing that He died to save them.
You wash your mind out of the human quality to see the individual, and hold it as a blessing, grasping in your thoughts, only the quiet grief of 'why did I not ask more, why did I dread for an answer that's so much softer than this absence.'
Why did you not learn every way those lips can curl up into a smile? Why did you not bow in full and beg for a moment more, that would have been possible but not right.
Not with how it would have been burned by the weight of divinity, as the blood falls upon a God's hands that for the first time in so long do not wish to carry it. Not if it will be the burden needed for a goal to be held in reality's cruel grasp.
But you love the World, don't you God?
So let it bury your fears too- and become what is needed for the price paid to become closer to worth it than to ruin.
A cliff stands above a land that has not fallen into darkness yet.
And on its edge a being with two giant void like wings leans against its edge. Watching the endless passing of humanity. Watching the way time makes its path for those who try to deny its existence and laughing as He sees them fail the task that no one can ever manage to succeed in.
He doesn't know why He is here. Doesn't know the reason why He decided to leave at the same time as His Father, for just one passing of the sun's crimson waves.
And yet- He feels something in His feathers change.
As if a connection that He had not even noticed had existed before has now been severed without any visible reason. Without any change made by Himself.
As if a possibility has closed itself before His eyes, closing for a moment His eyes with it- one that He had not even seen within all His plans.
And for a while He leans there, His monocle shining in the rays of a new dawn- wondering and considering what can so effect Him to this degree. What can stand to effect the wings His Father made for Him like this- when He knows the attention to detail payed and the entire process of their construction to have as few exploitable flaws as is possible.
Other than those made for Him to control.
Then, just as He considers going forward with another plan, something changes once more. A rearrangement much more subtle than that of His wings but still there.
And His Father stands behind Him.
Only-
There is blood covering His Father's hands. Blood falling down His lips, as if painted against His skin so as to colour His face with its implications forever.
Never to be washed away from memory.
Blood marring the white of His robes, not in the way after a battle. Not the blood of an enemy that has fallen lightly upon His form, almost as if to accent His achievements. His victory. Because only victory can be the final result when His Father chooses to interfere.
No.
Amon knows that this is something else.
Knows it from the fact that His Father's gaze is almost empty as He looks upon the horizon. Carries nothing within it but a calmness that only the apex of the Spectator Pathway can possibly bear to manifest in such a way. And not have it ring of a lie.
A bottomless pit that doesn't even have enough light in it to shine upon despair.
And suddenly Amon fears.
Feels His intuition screaming at Him to run. To flee. To go as far away from His Father as is possible if He wants to live.
To not look back. Not look up. Scatter into as many directions as is possible by stretching Himself to the limit of what's safe to attempt in the hopes of-
surviving.
But then- it stops.
And those eyes fall upon Him and hold-
Hold something that Amon has witnessed so many times while on His Father's side, on those days where the world itself was new and interesting and curious. Where He could not quite perfectly predict every reaction and thought.
And those eyes pause at His wings.
Resting there. Becoming lighter and filled with that feeling that Amon cannot quite grasp. Becoming safer as long as they remain.
"Father?"
He brings the attention of the darkness that His Father has become upon Him. Even while calculating the likelihood of what could prevent that total darkness from returning. Theorizing on what brought it there in the first place with a quickness that is a rush, that is a sacrifice of anything else but the thoughts that are needed for survival.
"Yes, my Son?"
The blood following His Father does not leave His form and most interestingly the warmth that usually echoes His presence is now nothing but a terrifying heat. Intense in the way it carries none of the care, of that carefully calculated comfort yet presence that is usual for Him.
Easily felt on Amon's wings as His Father moves to stand behind Him.
And Amon knows. Knows it is safer to stand within it than outside it. To stand this close to an inferno that can burn anything in its path, than move to where His death will be an absolute decree made in order to bring Him closer. Knows it as well as He knows the shape of every tale He has ever listened to about the reason why His wings were even made by the hands of a being that could have created them in an instant.
He just has to keep that gaze upon Him until the heat becomes once more manageable. Until His Father remembers the limits that even Angels have.
The limits hat His son has.
And so He asks the one question He has never asked before.
"Can you tell me a tale about your wings Father?"
He is uncertain if His Father checked against the effect of His own power on Amon's wings.
A hand is placed upon one of Amon's feathers, carefully, precisely. As if steadying some parts of the blazing Sun that is Grisha's current existence by counting them as He had never done after finishing their design.
And then Amon's Father speaks- but His words echo in the River of Fate as lightly as a feather that cannot be seen and yet causes ripples nonetheless.
Ripples that can destroy Gods if left without notice for long enough to be forgotten by all.
"Let me tell you this time," His Father's hands move to caress another feather, the heat lessening to a degree that will not burn them but not to the point where Amon can sense that the danger has passed completely. Not to the point where the hunger He felt is gone- only postponed, "the story of a God who chose to be forgotten."
Delayed by the searching of something on Amon's wings as His Father continues.
"And how his sacrifice love is the reason why the world will not yet burn."
Amon relaxes once more into His Father's hands as blood covers His wings and takes their shine away for just a moment. plunging them into total darkness-
and what His Father was searching for was luckily never found.
In a day that memory forgot- except that of a God who can never keep it faraway enough from His calculations to be reduced to something as weightless, as inconsequential as the passing of time from that moments forward. Except when counted in victories and a tally of never-ending choices made only by Himself- followed down to the instant of His every predicted possibility.
In a day that for any other being walking the earth appears to be nothing but a copy of predetermined patterns as a result of previously made choices- even as they will not witness those pathways without also being privy to much more complicated affairs than those of slow unimportant lives.
Two beings stand in a field of flowers.
One of them wears white and may perhaps in another age have been seen as a common sight with the way he is clothed in symbols of a religion long gone- but the weight of His mere presence in any place anchors Him in a different way. Anchors life within reality. Anchors hope within the minds of those who choose to follow Him. Anchors love within a hopeless never ending nightmare and makes it a blessing and a gift and a given- because that is His choice and none can take His creations away from those He has bestowed them to.
The other may have in the future been expected to be coloured in nothing but white- but this is not the time yet.
And a time such as that may never be found within the picture of a grace that wants for what currently exists to remain everlasting.
A God's regard after all is a precious thing when one has found within the passage of existence the particularly unique pleasure of calling Him a friend.
The other is a statue.
But the marble that is the base for this new form. For this continuation of a life that has now been ended by the hands of the only living being in the room- is painted in the hues of care.
Has been carefully coloured to resemble a figure that previously had resided in those fields. Painted not with the perfect skill of someone who has been taking upon Himself such an art for millenia- but with the attention of someone who had stared at every minute shift of a hand as the base- and a teacher who does have that searched for experience, even if the Angel Himself was not directly involved in the more technical parts of the process by the choice of the Creator.
Carefully carved hands of marble stretching outwards as if holding on to something that is not there. Forever frozen in a moment of giving- now with nothing to hold onto but the empty space of an absence that cuts the view like the smoke of a funeral pyre.
The only thing that is not made by that same material, by marble chosen with the same care that He had once shown to searching for the necessary foundation for a pair of wings, is that which may have drawn the eye millennia later- if this place was ever to be found.
Because- in the image of the lifelike statue currently displayed within a place more used to dancing and to quiet conversations of understanding and remembrance than to death and this new kind of grief- that can never in true close the wound of the absence of the one it depicts.
In that very image of careful choices-
Multicolored wings make themselves clear. Forever locked in a posture half in flight as had been decided by their owner's choice, even while blinded by fair, and what is fair exactly in a world you cannot stay in without damning others to suffer, agony.
And the God standing in front of the statue moves.
Without blood in His hands. Without pain in His gaze. Without the signs of a grief that now doesn't have a second voice to listen to its tune and sing it with small changes corresponding to another life lived- but still make its encore heard and known and loved.
The God moves and there is nothing to stop Him as He touches the cut wings that look pristine when placed within the confines of a picture He Himself had crafted with a wish in mind and time as His tool of choice.
And He methodically moves through feather after feather. Makes certain that they still remain without anything to hide their colour. Hands shifting evenly, as if having repeated those same motions enough times that they could have been done blindly- but their owner chooses to be the witness of every attempt.
Moves- not with the care of before but with the steadiness of a program running passed its expected course but still able to accomplish a new function set just before every piece of infrastructure needed to continue maintaining any kind of change has become nothing but dust.
The only thing remaining in His mind when looking at this scene, the fact that He is the only one that can accomplish this task. The only one who knows of this place and has the experience to not go outside of His expectations.
He accomplishes His self defined responsibility before there is a need for His absence to be noticed. Before anyone other than His Star who is now unmoving marble and equally crystallized wings at His side would have even been able to notice His absence and question it in truth.
But He does not leave then.
Does not leave when perfection has been etched, maintained- again.
Not before looking at a face that is nothing but a blank canvas, unable to be filled with all the emotions He has been witness to and in that vacancy of purpose left without eyes. Without lips. Without a smile chosen carefully from all those the God has memorized perfectly.
Rather, He moves once more to the wings. Wings that He can remove from there if He so desires. Can untie the carefully crafted strings that keep them in place. Moving gracefully, as His every action renders the Sun closer to the Earth, renders what He grasps into something holy and sacred-
The God kisses the space where a spine would have been placed underneath if there was still something resembling flesh rather than stone on the other side of those covered bones. Kisses the point where the wings would have been anchored into a body- placing Himself further inside their eternally unfurled embrace.
As if wishing that they would move around Him. Would shift under the weight of a care that is more facsimile than something a God can feel in full.
There are no tears falling from His eyes. There is no evidence of loss cradling the serenity of His present existence. There is nothing to indicate that this moment is anything but ordinary.
Except, His voice echoes and doesn't- and would never be heard in this place until all the flowers have died.
"How can one calculate grief except in its aftermath? Will They understand that a gift cannot be taken back before They are consumed by its existence?"
And the God smiles as He leaves the clearing once more.
Wings of bright yellow unmoving at His back as a million plans that none will understand in time to stop them are whispered to a pair of wings that cannot betray His words to no one but their owner.
And their owner is not here.