Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She was the first thing her eyes fell upon. Lovelier than the shining dawn - very wind made flesh - Uriel had decided the other would be hers before Father even finishes uttering the words of their joining.

The Youngest opens then eyes of frozen starlight, lilting voice weaving the first of songs in Greeting, and she was not disappointed.

For a long time afterwards, they shared everything, much like the older boys - twins also. Huddling together beneath the willow tree, they would exchange promises and whispered secrets. They would be the first of all things feminine, but it was for her sister only that she would weave wreaths of flowers. She is not obsessive, she tells herself - merely fascinated - as she braids blossoms with care into locks of inky twilight.

Her chest feels tight - an uncomfortable, ugly feeling when Raphaela graces the smiling Morningstar with a crown of hawthorne flowers. So she ignores the adoration in that gaze until a day comes that she could no longer truly deny it.

Sometimes, she wonders why Father had made them so differently. Michael and Gabriel were the yin to the other's yang. But she is not light, just as Raphaela was no more darkness and they belonged not to each other solely.

The twins brushes past her in the Garden laughingly and she - she realizes she is alone and empty.

But their Oldest brother, bright as he is, would not be the one to hold Raphaela through the throes of nightmares. And for a time, Uriel told herself that was enough.

She asks each time though her sister would unfailingly refuse to speak.

"It is only a dream," she is reassured. "It's fine, really, Auri."

But Raphaela sounded more like she desperately wanted to convince herself, and so, Uriel learns to stop asking.

Wherever her sister went, magic and beauty followed.

She watches as Raphaela throws her arms back to the sky and sings. The Eldest drifts closer, equally enchanted, and she knows he draws power too from that song - together the First and the Youngest, their energy, entwining, graces the garden with warmth and life and when the two finishes the Garden is no longer quite so empty.

She sits, brooding, choosing to ignore the creatures and critters that now wandered their home with insolence until Raphaela brings over a single, squealing egg.

It cracks open to free an ugly, bald little thing.

"He's not much right now, but soon he will have wings as strong as ours." Gushes her sister, breathless.

Uriel doesn't quite have the heart to say she really doubts that.

But days later she watches, astounded, as the turtledove soars through the garden on wings of snow and speckled ash.

"What are you doing."

It wasn't a question really, and the boys pulling hastily back from each other had the decency to look ashamed.

Or at least Michael did.

"Shouldn't you be shadowing Raphael?" Grouched Gabriel.

Her lips curve into a bitter, sardonic smile.

"She's occupied."

She turns to leave, acerbic words left to simmer in the air, sparing not a thought for the twins' exchanged look of worry.

Uriel wanders the Garden.

Sure enough, she finds Raphaela, sleeping soundly against the Eldest's shoulder.

Yet irritated as she was, she still lingers long enough to draw her mantle about the Youngest.

Father gifts them with more brothers and sisters. Too many, that before long their faces become blurs even though Father engraves into their hearts each and every single name.

A kingdom rises, mighty and unparalleled.

She could only think how fitting it was that Raphaela no longer dances barefoot among mud and broken stones.

Some of the Powers, this new class of beings, catch her eye. Like that fledgling in Raphaela's choir who also had hair the color of twilight.

But Noma would never be akin to the one they call now Princess of Atzulith.

Father summons them to the Throne room - all Five - and introduces the Grigori.

She watches as silent tears fill her sister's shining eyes.

And she understands even less when they fall. Wasn't it an honor, as Father had said?

Not because these Watchers as spirits only were closer to Father.

For with no body, there was no curse to want.

She holds Raphaela anyways, who sobs when Father does not change His mind.

Lucifer did love Raphaela.

Uriel could see that, or she would've never permitted it otherwise.

But he does not love her enough to stay.

She is unmoving stone as Father Gifts them all with blades. Michael and Gabriel are silent too, for once, as Father proclaims punishment.

"My Morningstar has disrespected my Will."

Father leaves them to their thoughts then, and without the light of His grace, the room quickly becomes more than cold.

Her sister is distressed.

"Give me your blade," so she says. "The Healer of Heaven has no use for swords."

They win, of course.

But they might as well have lost.

"Is that the meaning of meetings?" Her sister murmurs.

She leans in and captures those petal-soft lips. Their kiss is without passion, cold and fleeting.

"Yes," she smiles. "So that we may properly part."

She leaves then with a whisper of wings and midnight feathers.

Chapter Text

The Nile cradles the image of the large white overhead moon in its basin - otherwise dark, save where the silver weaves lazy flowing strands through the waters. After a number of hours, her patience had been duly rewarded - Uriel had waited for the cloak of night and as Michael had once promised, here was perfect. Is perfect, rather - and will always be. The swath of heat that was the surrounding land of Egypt during the day had ensured the waters would not chill to the bone upon the first dip, unlike the oceans her other brother Gabriel so favored. Little wonder it was her favorite place still, even after nigh many a thousand years. Let her sister keep to the pools of the celestial palace - a gilded chamber was only suitable for a gilded bird - absolutely nothing compared to lazily drifting on the surface of a desert river and watching the sand dunes turn into white diamonds beneath the brush of stars.

She sighs, content a soft murmur through the otherwise silent air, simply enjoying the caress of the water against her skin and hair. Somewhere in the nearby bushels, a stray cicada sings.

The river served as a place to easily clean her wings, too. By comparison, the shallow springs of Eden were nowhere near ... as sufficient or pleasing. Then again, none of them really had any desire to visit the Garden since ... that incident. Uriel wills all thoughts of the Eldest from her mind - he was but a memory now, she has only two brothers, but it still brought an unpleasant taste to her mouth.

Raphaela used to do it - preen her wings, that is - but her sister hadn't been anywhere near her for nigh a few millenniums now. Strictly speaking, she hadn't been anywhere near her twin either without cause since that night. It was not that she was avoiding the wind's presence like an unwelcome storm. There simply was never cause to spend time together, except for when Father convened for His rare meetings - which she would then be too immersed in His assignments to spare the Princess a look in the eye. It helped also that Raphaela never called after her retreating back. Gabriel would open his big mouth, as if wanting to say something, but Michael drags the Messenger off by the trailing sleeve of his robes before he could comment.

It did irritate her that her brother did not need to form the words for her to know what he would say. And he was wrong. Uriel, Eldest daughter of God, does not pine.

Somewhere in her long train of thoughts, she had drifted close to the edge of the bank. She shifts to sit on the sandy base and with a creak of bones, releases her wings. The tips of her longest flight feathers stir the water with tiny ripples and laughingly, she kicks up a storm of falling droplets with a few heavy beats. That's right ... she was perfectly content on her own - time had washed away those feelings, that terrible longing, just as the waters of the Nile washed away the grit from her feathers. And of course with the help of quite a considerable number of lovers. It would be rather an inconvenience now to be joined at the hip to her sister as her brothers were.

Sand cracks beneath the hard heel of sandals, a hushed gasp - she turns sharply to the source. There is little light, but it mattered not to her sight. Earthbound, this may be nothing compared to vision in Father's city, but it may as well had been day before her golden eyes.

A little dark-haired girl was there, watching her with wide eyes.

Uriel stops cold. Father's decree stands - should she, then...?

The astonishment on the girl's face transforms into awe.

"Are you a goddess?" Asks the child, tilting her head delicately to one side.

She does not answer, contemplating how easy it would be to silence this girl. A single swipe of her wings and then to crush delicate bones and tear fragile tendons part by part with ruthless fingers - they would never know, perhaps even attribute the child's untimely demise to the wandering inhabitants of the Nile. But then this girl looks Uriel in the eye, still smiling, and bold as a lion - proclaims:

"You don't have to be shy, because, I am a goddess too."

The girl's name, as she unwillingly learns (she did not have an actual say in the matter, with how it was unceremoniously thrusted upon her), is Cleopatra, princess of the realm.

"Don't you have friends?" She drawls, as the child disturbs her for yet another eve.

"Goddesses don't have friends." The girl replies, calm as the water. And Uriel is left wondering, why didn't she kill this child the first night - Father would be absolutely disgusted some humans are nominating themselves in His position again. She could feel her brows slowly furrowing - really, these creatures of mud and sand, they never learn do they no matter how many times Michael is dispatched to wipe them into near oblivion? But at the least, some of them were easy on the eyes ... nothing like Father's celestial children, of course, but there was a certain charm to the rugged elements of their visages. She wets her lips, tentative and careful, startling only when the girl lays a light hand upon the shell of a long feather.

"Careful," she warns, "or goddess or not, you'll lose those fingers."

The child looks at her with dark eyes.

"Why?"

"One movement, girl. And they will be as blades."

The princess merely chose to run her fingers delicately down the length in answer. Uriel refuses to shiver.

"But they're so beautiful." Whispers the girl. "Almost like the night come to life."

"Beautiful things tend to be harmful."

"Like the desert rose?" Says the girl. "I've seen it once, preserved in resin - it was rather lovely, even with all the thorns."

"Poetic." She replies. "But hardly original, princess."

"Oh? And what under the sun is original?"

Father, Uriel wants to say. But she decides not to. No one really needed Father's brand of originality - or flair for the dramatic.

"But you know..." continues the child. "...if the desert rose really wanted to be so dangerous, why are its petals then softer than silk?"

"To deceive." She says immediately. "A trap."

"Or," supplies the princess, "because it wants to be noticed and loved."

It is another lazy eve beneath a full moon when she finally gives the girl her name.

"How fitting!" Cleopatra's eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles. "Auri-"

She stiffens - the reminder, unwelcome.

"-aurem, gold like your hair and eyes!"

Cleopatra was nothing like Raphaela. The child did not have the surreal beauty or grace of her sister, but at three and ten, the girl carried herself with dignity and that terribly quick, sharp mind.

Truthfully, Uriel was not even certain at times if this wildling child was really a princess. For one in line to the throne of Egypt, the girl certainly spent much time with the common rabble. But she could sympathize, with how the people were drawn so to the little princess.

"It's not like I'm even first," explains the girl, with a shrug, when Uriel comments on it. "Father already has his perfect ladies in my sisters."

Uriel could feel the corners of her mouth twitch into a smile.

"I suppose we'll get along, then."

"What," echoes the girl in surprise, "we haven't been already?"

A night comes that Uriel permits the girl to wash her wings.

And eventually, a night comes that she permits the girl to wash her back.

But then, for what seemed like a eternity afterwards, Cleopatra stopped visiting.

It wasn't as if she was particularly interested, but she discovers the reason. A civil war - one of the older princesses had gone and declared herself Queen. Then Cleopatra... Was either exiled or worse, dead.

But it wasn't like Uriel particularly cared.

The nights in the Nile are a little lonelier.

The princess returns.

But changed.

"I couldn't come sooner." Whispers the girl, no, not anymore. On the cusp of womanhood now, even though she still carried herself with the same dignity, there is something sad and heavy in those eyes. "Father won."

She stills. Uriel had seen that look before ... long ago, in another pair of eyes.

Wordlessly, she steps closer. And gently, delicately ... draws the young woman into her arms.

"She betrayed father too-" sobs the girl, burying a dark head of curls into Uriel's chest. "-but still, she was my sister."

Uriel says nothing - claiming everything would be alright would be telling worse than a lie - and so she settles instead for rubbing gentle circles onto the girl's back.

The king is dead.

"They say that Father sold his kingdom." The young queen says, with determination burning in her eyes. "But Auri, they are wrong. He sold his kingdom to win it back."

She could not help but ask.

"And you are to win it back?"

It will be no simple feat. This so-called ally of Egypt - this Rome - was far more vast, resourced, mighty.

"There's no question, Auri, that I will."

Humans were fleeting creatures.

But they also blossom so quickly. The fearless girl she had met that eve on the river had become a wife, queen, mother, beloved leader ... living goddess to the people.

And Uriel is left to admire how dazzlingly beautiful Cleopatra had become.

"They don't matter," claims the young queen, pushing Uriel back onto the bed. "Only you."

And she believes in those words.

The queen meets him.

Cleopatra does not need to say anything for Uriel to understand.

You're in love, she wants to say, scream, when the other woman wonders why she grows so nervous around Antony. A good friend would issue the observance.

But she was not a good friend nor quite so generous.

She is not generous, but still, she leads the dying man to her.

The queen's eyes are full of unshed tears.

Uriel does not hear the gratitude and whispered apologies. And when Antony passes away in Cleopatra's arms, she makes no move to comfort the inconsolable queen.

It all ends on a full moon eve.

But they are trapped - on a ship with nowhere to go, and the light cannot reach them through the mocking small hollows of windows.

"You are really very kind." Murmurs Cleopatra.

"Then," she says to the overthrown queen as she unbinds her twin swords. "You are very cruel."

"Even so," says the other with tears in her eyes. "You are too kind ... to defy Octavius' fate for me!"

There is nothing left to say. Moving closer, she bids a pale kiss to the queen's temple. The swords fall onto the bed as lightly, she trails the kisses down, taking care to not ruin the ceremonial adornments. Octavius will capture no living goddess but he will find a beautiful corpse.

And without warning, Uriel takes and plunges an Empryean blade down.

Father's swords would not leave a scar on those not of celestial origin. Just as her queen had wished.

As the heartbeat slowly fades, she leans down, and placing her head against the lingering warmth, she closes her eyes. When she was certain there was no sound left, she whispers:

"May you find peace. And the next life be kinder."

How fitting, Uriel thinks faintly, that it is Raphaela's blade her fingers had found.