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The prayers woke him from a calm and dreamless sleep.
No matter what name he was called by, he always knew when it was a plea for his assistance. It was innate.
Today, or perhaps this century, he was asked for as a figure that the mortals deemed Saint Wayne. Not completely accurate, but not the worst he’d heard. He was not a saint, not that particular sort of holy, but it at least didn’t name him as another. For one unfortunate period during the years that mortals called the 18th century, he’d been called ‘Thanatos’. It had been deeply uncomfortable for both of them.
As his vision began to brighten and function as it was properly meant to, he turned his gaze down to the pleas. They seemed to be reaching up from a dark, smog filled city. An unexpected place for such a thing to come from - these ‘modern’ cities were odd, and often distant from the holy.
The reason for the unusual pleas soon became apparent. If he’d had a heart, it certainly would have sunk.
Phoibos, lashing out, as if a wounded animal. His ruined wing was in tatters at his side, dirtied and more scar than flesh or feather. The deep gashes in his face remained mostly unhealed, unable to do so without His proper approval.
Saint Wayne - as was apparently his name now - descended in a whirlwind of light and holy energy. It might have been a bit unnecessary, but it couldn’t hurt.
“Be not afraid,” he announced, even as the gathered mortals screeched like peculiar birds. Phoibos snarled, baring those teeth sharpened by centuries of the violence needed to survive on Earth. “Your prayers are being answered, faithful ones.”
“OH MY GOD-”
There’s two of them, oh god!”
“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the-”
“Be not afraid,” he tried to reiterate. As the mortals panicked, scrambling to get away from him, Phoibos jerked back into action.
He slammed through a pair of armed mortals, tossing them haphazardly. Saint Wayne only just managed to ensure they were cradled by holy power. In return, he left himself open to the attack thrown at him. Phoibos would always turn his focus toward him, no matter the company.
It hit like a meteor. Saint Wayne locked an arm into his as they crashed back into the already crumbling buildings around them. More screams echoed around them as Phoibos made a raw, feral noise. He didn’t need to be stopped immediately, just held onto until the mortals could flee the scene.
Saint Wayne wrapped his wings around Phoibos, completely solid against the fallen’s attempts to spread his own and break the cocoon of feathers their tussle was now contained to. Savage claws scrambled for his body, each scratch of them burning like hellfire. It didn’t deter him. Never once had it.
Many mortals, at least those who still held faith, assumed beings like him to be “angels”. Entities of pure good, of kindness, healing, and light. That was simply false.
The wounds healed in the time it took to take a breath. Even the bite to the shoulder, the claws burying into the abdomen. It hurt, of course. But no soldier had ever been called to take on an opponent they could not match.
Saint Wayne grabbed Phoibos’ hair with his free hand, yanking him into a position of submission. He was a protector; a guardian of good. A knight. Phoibos had never been one of those, and now he was weakened from centuries of neglect and struggle for survival down on earth. It may have made him more vicious, but the fighting of an animal was no match for a holy warrior.
The position that Saint Wayne managed to pull them into was uncomfortable, but ultimately practical. Phoibos’ back was locked to his chest, his broken wing pressing into his middle. One arm wrapped around his neck, the other around his good wing and its aligned arm. For all his thrashing, Phoibos couldn’t properly escape.
It was always a struggle to get him to calm. Saint Wayne always went through with it. Phoibos was damaged, not ruined, surely.
Remaining in that lock of bodies, Saint Wayne took off, straight into the sky, and then past it. They didn’t quite reach the above, but they came close before he let go of Phoibos and let them both fall.
There was a moment of panic. Phoibos’ almost mortal form reacted before his mind had a chance to, good wing flaring out and attempting to slow the plummet back toward the earth. It didn’t work, of course. If it had, none of this would have been happening at all.
Once his mind caught up, the panic turned to anger. It always did. Every time, it twisted something in Saint Wayne’s chest into a writhing pit.
“You. Always you,” Phoibos snarled. The wind in their ears and the impossible height would have made it impossible for mortals to breathe, much less speak. As they were, it was barely a minor annoyance.
Saint Wayne kept his own wings open. It almost looked like a true fall, a dishonored removal from the above. He couldn’t shake the part of him that called that he deserved one. “In what world would it not be?” He responded, gaze locked on that tormented expression and those fierce teeth.
They were not the same. Holy beings were meant to serve in pairs as it was needed to serve the mortals: a warrior knight, of holy armor and more limbs and eyes than deemed appropriate, joined by a judge, of good words and an appearance similar enough to the mortals that they could pass with their wings hidden.
A pair, once broken, was never rejoined. It should always have been the failing of the knight.
“Haven’t you abandoned me enough times?” Phoibos said, voice laced with centuries worth of resentment in a body meant for eternity.
“I haven’t abandoned you once.”
The words came like second nature. With the way Phoibos’ face twisted at them, they might as well have been spoken with a forked tongue.
A laugh, bitter and rough-edged, tore into the air. “You have abandoned me everyday since you left me to those claws,” he shot back.
“I have returned to you every time it is called for,” Saint Wayne countered. “I have met you at every clash.”
“But not for me. All you do is to serve.”
In the worst way, that was true. Knights were, above all else, servants. A warrior, created as exactly that. They were supposed to be perfect, obedient, and unflinching. So why did Phoibos’ ruined face and distressed eyes keep making his body weaken to little more than mortal?
Phoibos took the moment of silence as an insult, and as confirmation. He flung out his good wing, using the little momentum offered to once again claw at Saint Wayne. The attack came directly toward his face. For a moment, he was back in that moment.
Mortals loved to gather at the feet of a judge, to feel their passing kindness and the warmth of their smiles. Saint Wayne had stood aside, giving them space to revel in the light that Phoibos had always given to him.
Beasts of hell were liars. Saint Wayne should have felt the presence of something so clearly malevolent, but it had been strong and cruel, and he had found himself distracted by the way the mortals put their delicate hands against Phoibos’ celestial skin. In instants, faster than any mortal could have perceived, the beast had shed its skin and torn through the crowd to rip its claws and teeth through that very skin and feathers.
Phoibos had screeched, and Saint Wayne had learned that tender emotion that he so often warned mortals away from: fear.
By the time Saint Wayne had slain the beast, half of Phoibos’ face and one of his wings had been left tattered. He had reached for help from the above and had received a beam of holy light, engulfing the both of them. It had only taken one. Phoibos, corrupted by that touch of hell, had been left alone. Saint Wayne had hardly had a mind to fight it.
The memory was ever clear in his mind. That, most likely, was why he always took this moment of hesitation. A moment to almost allow Phoibos to ruin him as well, just before grabbing his wrists and holding him back.
“You loyal dog,” Phoibos hissed, immediately fighting against the grip. “Don’t leave me like this again. Just kill me if you won’t take me back.”
“Neither of those things are my place,” Saint Wayne said, feeling his voice suddenly falter. “I cannot determine your place.”
“My place was to be by your side, for all of time! There is no place for an unholy judge - not on earth, not above, nor below.”
“Your- Your place-”
Saint Wayne’s grip had faltered as well as his voice. Centuries. Centuries of clashing against the one being made in union with him. A soulmate, wouldn’t mortals call it that?
Phoibos took the opportunity to grab at him again, pressing his claws into his cheeks and neck. It burned, aching in the physical, but it seemed minor in comparison to the way it left him feeling so unlike a knight.
There was nothing but pain in those once holy eyes. Nothing but pain in the shattered bond of partners. Knights were constructed to withstand every beating and agony. But, it seemed, this hadn’t been accounted for.
The claws dug deeper into his skin. It was all hellfire and open wounds. Saint Wayne knew that this couldn’t go on for centuries more. One way or another, it had to end.
Saint Wayne reached up again, but not for Phoibos’ wrists. Instead, he cupped his face. Gentleness was so foreign to a knight’s hands. Touching that half celestial, half torn skin, it came easily.
“By my side,” he echoed back quietly. Phoibos’ hands slowly loosened their grip in his skin, more out of shock than anything else.
Those pain-filled eyes softened, wide with something even older than centuries of resentment. His claws drew out of his skin and wrapped around his neck, just in time for Saint Wayne to flare his wings out and catch them mere feet from the ground.
There they remained, barely above the earth, with Saint Wayne’s hands cradling his face and Phoibos’ slipping into his hair to hold him softer.
“I will not fail you again,” he promised, that infallible loyalty to Him turning its focus. “You will never be abandoned.”
“You swear it?” Phoibos whispered, as if afraid to say it. “I will never be holy again. I will always be angry.”
Saint Wayne wrapped his wings around the both of them again, trying to keep that fear out of their one moment of something like the holy light. “I swear on all my strength,” Saint Wayne said, just to seal it with a kiss.