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It was a pleasant day. Not hot, not cold, but just right, the temperature was lingering on the threshold of summer, ready to tip down into more august months. In other words, it was the last day of summer, and it showed.
It was Michael's favorite day, as a rule, she didn't care much or the fluctuations of the Earth's seasons, but she did enjoy mixture of gentle warmth and cool breezes that heralded what the humans called Fall. It was considered distasteful for an angel to enjoy anything human, Gabriel's fondness for the latest men's fashions nonwithstanding, but Michael, who had long since broken many technicalities over the course of her association with two certain characters, felt free to indulge her penchants.
So at the moment, she was laying under the shade of a leafy tree, her head pillowed on Ligur's thigh, his hand carding through her loose hair. Hastur was laying a ways off on Ligur's other side, making a show of reclining naturally and failing, much to his companions' private amusement.
A slow breeze blew through the tree's branches, tampering the slightly overbearing heat. Ligur was talking in a low voice, murmuring secrets, gossip, anything notable from his side. Michael filed away the information, hardly concentrating on the words. She'd review them later, it was Ligur's voice she liked hearing most of all, deep and calm. Hastur would occasionally toss his own cent or two into the mix, but he never really said anything useful. He would talk about his latest acquisition for Hell, or how many fellow demons he had discorporated over petty trifles, but true information he never shared.
That was a...privilege? A tradition perhaps, that was restricted to Ligur and Michael, and Hastur, for all his maliciousness, remained cognizant of this.
Ligur fell silent eventually, and Michael was aware that it was her turn to share. She had started talking, listing off the facts of import that she had compiled. Overhead, the sun shifted in the sky, and light streamed down through breaks in the leaves, causing Michael to shut her eyes against the glare.
She wasn't aware of how it happened, or why it happened, perhaps it was the heat, or the soothing touch on her hair, but when her eyes closed, they remained closed for quite a while. Angels did not require sleep, and never, or rarely engaged in it. In Michael's case, she had slept only once before, during the aftermath of the first great war. Casting Satan out* had taken some effort, in both physical and emotional ways, and she had been found asleep on her feet, leaning on her sword.
It was different this time. She was not exhausted or drained, she had simply slipped into oblivion, lulled into into it by the comfort she was luxuriating in. Her companions, either shocked or awed by this unlikely happenstance, did not disturb her.
She awoke to a shriek. Hastur's shriek. There was moment of incoherence as the sound fell on her ears, then it registered, and Michael was fully awake, pushing herself up to her knees, the old soldier in her immediately alert and searching for the source of Hastur's excitement.
Because his shriek had been a shriek of fear. Ligur was crouched by her, and Michael felt his hand settle on the small of her back, a tense pressure. "Over there." he whispered in a low voice, jerking his head in a direction past them.
Michael looked, peering through the wisps of loose hair that had fallen over her face. Three. There were three figures approaching, and even from a distance, Michael could smell the taint of ozone and bitter perfume that signified what they were.
Angels.
They had been discovered.
Michael was on her feet in an instant, and so was Ligur. Hastur joined them, terror gleaming in his black eyes. "Go." Michael said sharply to them both. "Leave now." Two pairs of eyes stared at her. Ligur's, she noted, had turned a deep, defensive red.
"We aren't leaving." Ligur hissed.
Michael shook her head, bemused. "They're here for me. If you stay, you'll only..." ...You'll die.
"We ain't leavin'." Hastur echoed, reaching out towards her, his fingers just shy of closing around her wrist. Michael jerked her arm away, and stepped back.
"Go." Michael implored. The trio of angels were closing in, and if Hastur and Ligur did not go now, they were as good as...dead.
"How did they find us?" Hastur hissed, casting a still fearful, but dark look at the angels. It was a question Michael did not have time to answer.
"Michael." an angel's voice rang out, and Michael turned away to face them, her stance poised and proper, and her features expressionless, a combination which inspired intimidation. The angel halted in their tracks, lowering their eyes in a show of submissiveness to Michael's scrutiny, before remembering themselves and speaking up.
"Archangel Michael." the angel began formally, "Heaven requests your presence. Charges have been drawn up against you -" here a quick, almost ashamed look was directed at Hastur and Ligur, "-for the crime of-" Michael held up a hand, cutting off any further words.
"No need to continue. I am well aware of what the charges insinuate. I will come with you to face judgment." A look of relief briefly suffused the angel's face, and Michael allowed a thin smirk to bleed across her lips. If Michael had a mind to resist, it would take much more than the three angels that had come to subdue her. She was, after all, the Archangel Michael.
The angel backed away at Michael's smirk, gesturing the other two angels forward towards Michael, but Michael waved them away. "No need for that." Michael said derisively, "I'll come of my own free will." Michael could hear a growl break from Ligur's throat as she stepped up and was surrounded by the angels.
Go, Michael mouthed to him. Hastur was already backing away, which Michael considered to be very sensible of him. Ligur, however...
To Michael's private horror he sprang forward, taking hold of her hand and pulling her from between the two angels, who cried out in alarm. "Ligur!" Michael snapped, appalled, her flawless composure breaking for a split second. What was he doing?
"You're not going with them!" Ligur snarled, and then he was pulling her away bodily, his larger fingers crushing her smaller ones. A flare of pain lanced across the delicate bones of her hand, but Michael hardly felt it, too focused as she was on Ligur.
"Let me go, let me go, Ligur." she ordered sternly, trying to slip her hand from within his. In response, the pressure around her fingers increased, and she grabbed at his coat with her free hand, searching for purchase on the thick leather. Her nails caught in it, and she jerked Ligur back into a standstill.
"Let me go and leave."
"No, they aren't going to take you!" he persisted. Stubborn. Ligur was always so stubborn. At any other time she would have stopped to wonder why he refused to leave without her, but she already knew why, despite every testament to the contrary, and at the moment did not have time to play coy with herself.
"I will be fine." she said, willing Ligur to believe it, and to let her go. Whatever awaited her up there, whatever they meant to do, she could withstand. The loss of Ligur, which was rapidly drawing near with every moment he remained, she could not, and that was a certainty as real as the ground beneath her feet.
Being an archangel, Michael had a heady amount of influence, and Ligur's grip on her hand slackened, before he realized what she was doing. Michael had never before done that, had never used her angelic power to shift matters to her her favor, at least not with him. She could see the anger in his eyes, accented by a hint of betrayal, and she winced inwardly at her misstep.
When Ligur spoke again, the words were forced out from past a wall of tightly controlled fury. "You go up there, and you won't come back down." Was that true? Perhaps. But it would be better if Ligur had no doubts on the matter. Michael had intended to reassure him, to lie, but she was never given the chance. The angels had recovered from the shock of seeing a demon act so familiarly with an angel, and had closed ranks once more, trapping Michael and Ligur.
Ligur ripped Michael's hand off his coat and shoved her back, putting his larger frame in front of hers. Michael clenched her fist, there were minuscule bits of leather under her golden nails, a testament to just how tightly she had been grabbing Ligur's coat, a brand of her inner panic.
"Stand back." One of the angels commanded.
"Yes, stand back, you fool." Michael's thoughts echoed. It wasn't often that Ligur acted irrationally, but it appeared that this was one of those rare times. Hastur, on the other hand, had exhibited a startlingly display of rationality, and had disappeared entirely. And that did not pain Michael in slightest. Hastur would sooner drink holy water than risk his neck for her, so he had no reason to stay...no, no, that was wrong. Hastur would never leave Ligur behind, demon though he was. So where was Hastur then, if he had not left?
Overcome by the thought, Michael whipped her head around, scanning for Hastur's figure. And it was then, in that moment of inattentiveness, that the unthinkable happened.
The angels had come armed. Michael should have known that they would.
The stray droplets splattered on Michael's face, confused by them for a single moment, Michael blinked away the ones that had fallen on her eyes - and realization set in.
Holy water.
Her head snapped back around, just in time to witness Ligur melt before her very eyes, his features distorting and smoking away, and then he was no longer there, replaced by his leather coat, lying rumpled on the grass by her feet.
"No." Michael gasped.
No indeed. Michael's thoughts were a torrent of questions, blanketed in white noise. What was happening, what was happening? What had she just seen? For the Lord's sake, what had she just seen? Michael's eyes fastened on the foremost angel - the one who had dispensed the holy water, if the crystal valise in their hand was anything to go by.
They killed... They killed...
And Michael screamed. The sky above blurred to a sickly grey, and the ground trembled with uneasy vibrations, the symptoms of the Earth trying to contain the otherworldy rage being unleashed inside of it.
The angels blanched, staring around in obvious fear. Over the sound of her scream, Michael heard the the crystal flask shatter on the ground as it was dropped. Good, good, good, good. She was going to shatter them all. Shatter them as easily as the flask.
Lighting cracked across the sky in a flash of signature gold, a precursor to something more terrible. But whatever Michael had intended never came to fruition. She felt a familiar grip clamp around her arms, and a choked voice mumbled something into her ear.
Hastur.
"Don't do it, they'll kill us too." he said.
Michael tried to pull away from him, incomprehensibly angry. How dare he keep her from meting out punishment. "They'll be first." she raged, and the lighting struck the ground, too close for comfort.
Hastur dragged her back, fingers digging painfully into her arms, his grasp not slacking. "Kill those, and more will come. Lots more." He was right, but Michael did not care. Ligur was dead, dead, wasn't he angry too? Why wasn't he angry?! Michael threw an accusing glare over her shoulder at him, and met his eyes, they were blank, dull, but his mouth was set in a harsh line.
"You ain't dying too." he said. Michael's lips parted in shock, and the lighting faded in on itself. The angels took advantage of the moment and fled, ascending in frantic blaze of light.
Michael's knees buckled as the last angel took flight, and Hastur sank down with her, his arm going around her waist. Michael reached out towards the smoking coat on the grass, and above, the grey thunderclouds leached out of the sky, channeling into the form of something much smaller. Small as a tear, perhaps. They dripped down Michael's face, one, two, three, then four, five six, as her fingers closed around the coat.
She clutched the leather garment in shaking hands, and behind her Hastur tensed, a visceral reaction of horror. Despite the summer sun, Michael suddenly felt quite cold. Ligur was gone, gone because of her, for her. Would Hastur understand that? Would he even care to try?
As if in response, she felt the weight as Hastur's head dropped onto her shoulder, felt his arm tighten around her. It made nothing better, it did not help the budding, aching feel of loss in the slightest, but she knew that he did understand.
"Hastur." she murmured, as her vision blurred.
* Michael was the archangel who cast Satan from Heaven when he fell.