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The thing about angels is that they never make mistakes. Angel blood is golden, and angels are holy and they’re not capable, see, of mistakes. Holiness does not slip. You cannot slip up, if you are holy – if you are holy, then you remain holy until the end of time unless—
Unless you make the worst mistake possible.
He’s been watching Simon Lewis for exactly one year.
The other thing about angels – the thing that they don’t tell you – is that angels are sinister. Vicious, heartless things. They’re not the kind of angels that mortals write about, not that kind of misplaced hope. The mortals only write about angels because to them, angels will Save, angels are hope.
They’re so stupidly wrong. Mortals always are.
Raphael’s wings are large and dark and beautiful. He imagines what they would look like, wrapped around this Simon Lewis, the Simon Lewis that he’s been watching for what feels like a millennia. Maybe it has been a millennia. Maybe Simon Lewis has been haunting him for his entire life. It doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter.
His assignments are always more interesting than this. Simon is a good person. Simon sings and goes to school and he’s loyal, oh, he’s loyal. He has a best friend, and his best friend’s family. He has a beautiful voice. He has everything.
What a shame it will be to watch him die.
Raphael does not actually want to kill him. Raphael does not actually want to kill anyone unless it’s necessary. But the good ones always bring pain to his family, the good ones are never good, and it’s always neccessary. Purity, Raphael has discovered, does not exist.
“What are you waiting for?” asks Camille, one day. She smiles, all (sharp) teeth, at Raphael. Angel teeth are always sharp, but in Camille’s smile they seem even more horrific. “Go down there and do it already.”
The trip from heaven down to earth is always difficult, and some angels don’t even survive it. But those angels are weak, weak, and didn’t deserve to go in the first place, or that’s what she tells him – still, Raphael’s concerns are logical.
“You know it’s more complicated than that.”
“What I know, Raphael,” she says, “is that you’re lazy. I really hate having to do things myself. But it’s not going to come to that, is it?” She winks at him. “Start preparing immediately. I’m tired of him. You’re always watching him. I want a useful second in command.”
Raphael sighs, nods. “Fine, I’ll go.”
In his mind he imagines—
Visiting earth, as it turns out, hurts. It feels like being ripped out of your own body. It feels like being torn from everything you know, everything inside of you – organs, bones, skin, whatever humans have – being folded out.
Raphael has to catch himself.
The body manifested for him is weak and sick. No. Wait—
The body is dead.
His body is dead, and Simon Lewis is sitting outside on a staircase. It’s dark out, so dark – the only light in this darkness comes from the streetlights. There’s almost beauty to it – darkness, and silence. Raphael has never had a chance to feel this.
This is his chance. All that you have to do to kill a mortal is scratch them, heavenly blood mixture, and Simon is all alone, he has headphones on, he wouldn’t even know. He wouldn’t even know.
Raphael has done it before. He can do this.
He’s been watching Simon Lewis for so long, though, that it hurts.
“Hello,” Raphael says, weakly, as he approaches Simon. Weak.
Simon looks up and removes his headphones. “Hey. Um. Can I – can I help you with something?”
Then Raphael makes that horrible mistake. He looks right into Simon’s eyes, a chilling kind of beauty, beautiful, and says: “I’m lost.”
Having your wings ripped right off of you, as it turns out, hurts even worse.