Chapter Text
Raphael was born into light.
There was something before that, of course, but it didn’t very much matter what, and anyway, light in those days was different than it is now. It wasn’t the paltry bouncing of waves and particles off of envelopes and air conditioners and such and onto corneas; it was something much greater, more all-encompassing, more all-forgiving. You can still see echoes of it sometimes, in the face of a parent seeing their child for the first time or the way a harmony might crescendo to a perfect chord. At any rate, Raphael did not know anything other than the light, and had no reason to look outside of it.
Her presence was softer in those first, early days. She taught Uriel the art of language, She laughed when Michael and Gabriel invented the practical joke. When She instructed Raphael on healing and he perfected it, he felt adoration so overwhelming it filled him both inside and out.
They fell naturally into an order. Raphael, the youngest, was the healer, of course, but only because he was at heart a tinkerer. She had, he suspected, only given him the gift of healing because he was relentless in figuring out how things worked and She surmised (to mixed results, as it turned out) that this would best keep him out of trouble. Lucifer was the shining star, the obvious leader, the most beautiful, the most good. Gabriel was the general, steadfast, clear-eyed. He saw good, and, once it was invented, evil, and harbored few doubts about where things landed between the two. He fell into an easy partnership with Michael, the judge, meting out punishment and reward, guided by Her hand. Uriel was the artist. She painted canvasses across galaxies, sculptures of stars and planets that left Raphael breathless. Sandalphon, Raphael’s favorite (though he would never admit it to the others), took the longest to find her role, but finally she claimed her place as the rabbi, the teacher, the custodian of knowledge.
Raphael learned how to heal the angels, and then he learned how to heal all the beasts that would and would not be created. When he mastered that, She put him to work constructing the universe, assembling planets and star systems and pluons and muons. He hadn’t created it but he built it, as no one else could, and he loved it as his own, this strange, adopted child.
Which is why a simple conversation on an unremarkable day shattered him.
It was unremarkable in comparison to the days that would come after, but to be fair, in comparison to the days that had come before, it was pretty notable. He hung the last asteroid, fiddled with a few quarks, opened his arms and his beautiful pure white wings and--
“Let there be light.”
It wasn’t light like She had created, but oh it was beautiful, a fierce rippling of awakening across millions and billions of years of space. In all honesty, Raphael was showing off a bit - he hadn’t expected an audience, but so long as he had one, in this principality with the bright eyes and easy smile, he would take full advantage.
“Oh that is…that is extraordinary ,” the principality breathed, awestruck. “Did you-- create that?”
Archangels didn’t blush, but Raphael felt the closest equivalent creeping up his cheeks. “No, no. I just stuck it all together. All the real brainpower came from Her.”
“Well it’s stunning, all the same.”
They watched the nascent universe for a time.
“Shame it’s going to be destroyed,” the principality remarked.
Raphael jolted. “What?”
The principality looked surprised. “Oh yes, didn’t you hear? Six thousand years or so and then it’s-- poof! Armageddon.”
For a moment, the universe stopped spinning, and Raphael felt himself hurtling through space instead.
“But-- why? Why create all of this just to destroy it?”
The principality remained infuriatingly unbothered, despite having just carved out the foundation of Raphael’s world and left him hanging for dear life. “Well, it’s just Her plan. I’m sure you know more than I do, being an archangel and all.”
For a moment, Raphael was reassured. She would have told him, would have explained it, shown him how this madness was simply one block in the ineffable plan.
But would She, a small, creeping voice murmured. She had been growing more and more distant the closer the universe came to completion, and Lucifer was growing bolder sowing dissent and Gabriel more rigid and--
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure you’re right. All part of the plan.”
***
When Raphael Fell, it held as much similarity to what we think of as a fall as did the light in those early days to light now. It was unrelenting, unremitting agony, his body, his mind, his soul shredded, burned, made to un-be. Everything that he was, everything that he knew, everything that he loved destroyed, turned against itself. He fell forever, and then some more, until all that was left was everything the archangel Raphael was not.
The demons found him in the pit. They didn’t recognize the archangel he was, but they set upon new flesh indiscriminately. He didn’t know how long the torture lasted, but the pain was new and different every time. He welcomed it. Every scream carried him further from what he had lost, and if he focused he could pretend that the pain was a replacement for the aching emptiness he carried inside of him where Her Grace had been.
It was Beelzebub who rescued him. Eventually, the demons had brought her this curiosity, a fallen angel who would not break, who welcomed his torment, who was still beautiful despite the Fall. She, who was not an idiot, recognized him immediately (vaguely, he wondered who she had been before her Fall, or if perhaps she had been the caretaker of this place all along), shooed away the other demons, and brought him to the throne room, depositing him in a broken and shattered heap on the floor.
A deep, rumbling voice, like the roar of a wildfire, rang out from above. “Heal him.”
Interesting. I wonder if it’s for show-- or if they no longer can. Lucifer was not as skilled of a healer as Raphael, finding it tedious and wonky, but mending a few bones and reforming some skin had never been beyond them.
He was interrupted from his musings by a sudden coolness, wholly inappropriate to the surroundings. His muscles knit together, bones once again covered by skin, blood replaced more or less where it belonged. He would never, of course, be whole again, but Beelzebub had done a remarkably competent job of putting him back in a functional corporation.
He pulled himself up to his feet and nodded in gratitude to Beelzebub, who sniffed and turned away. He turned to Lucifer, who was lounging on the blackened and pitted throne above him. ( Have to keep that in mind, he noted. Lounging seemed more appropriate as a demon, a replacement to the ramrod-straight posture of an archangel with the Grace of the Lord shoved up his ass.)
“Shall I call you King, brother?”
Lucifer had always been the most beautiful of them all. They were the first, Her favorite, and the only one for whom the light shone from within as well as upon. Now, they were warped, terrible-- and yet, it was impossible to deny, still beautiful, in that dangerous way of an unsheathed knife or the self-righteousness of a crowd.
“You should not mock. You are bound to me.”
As if he did not know that, did not feel the oppressive yoke of his brother where once there had been nothing but Her Grace and light--
"Yes, I'm led to believe that comes with the demonic territory." He walked - sauntered, he corrected, that felt more accurate - to the side of the room for want of something to fill the silence. Stopped near a pedestal and leaned over to examine the curio it held - a head, eyes bulging and mouth strained open in a frozen scream, carved of pure onyx. "Really, brother? Hitting the beats a bit heavily, aren't you?"
"Raphael--"
"No." The name cut like a knife. A new emotion-- grief, he identified it. "Not anymore."
For a moment, Lucifer's expression was unreadable. "Very well. Brother, I would have you rule beside me. My right hand, so to speak. You would be second only to me in this kingdom."
And somehow he knew that if he accepted, that would trap him finally and forever in this prison, and he wondered if that was by design, if his brother was laying a trap open for him to climb into like a dumb lamb--
"Ehh, government never really appealed to me. All the red tape."
Lucifer's eyes grew dangerous. "For most, I would not ask."
"So it's an order, then?" He moved on from the head, bored. "You know, you've done well for yourself, brother. All of this pomp, and circumstance. Personally, I thought rebelling against heaven would mean creating something new, not just another king to kneel before, but I guess that's the privilege of being the first--"
He was flashed to the center of the room, held suspended in mid-air by his neck. Lucifer rose and slowly, deliberately, descended to him.
They were still taller, he noted vaguely, for even as he hung a few feet off the ground they looked him straight in the eye when they reached him.
"Enough."
The force holding him lifted and he landed rather inelegantly on the floor.
"Your punishment is not to die by my hand, brother, so you may as well stop trying." Lucifer crouched beside him. "As though I would ever give you up so easily."
It was a comfort, it was a threat, it was-- something else that he did not have it in him to identify at this exact moment because to pull that thread would unravel the whole thing.
He felt himself lifted to a standing position. Lucifer was back on their throne.
"It happens that there is a task I need completed. Rather lucky you dropped in, none of my subjects understand the value of a light touch."
He said nothing.
"Do this and you'll be a hero, brother," Lucifer continued, softly.
"They won't call it that."
"Only the ones who don't understand."
And this, he realized, this was the true trap, the final bar in his prison. He nodded.
"What is it?"
Lucifer leaned back, pleased. "Just head up there. Make some trouble."