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It had rained exactly once, and only because Azazel had asked for it, tentatively, the way you ask for something when you're not sure you're allowed to want things yet. The rain had come down soft and gray over the eastern edge of the Garden, and by the time it stopped, there was a demon standing very still on top of the wall, looking east, wondering if that had been a nice thing to do or a weak one.
He still hadn't worked out the difference.
Raphael found him there at dusk. He'd known where to look; he always seemed to know where to look, though he told himself that was just a talent, the same way some angels were good with stars and some were good with fire. He was good at finding the thing he'd lost.
"You're new," Raphael said, which was a lie, or at least an incomplete truth, and he said it anyway because the alternative was saying nothing at all, and he'd never once in his existence managed that.
The demon on the wall turned. He had soft eyes for something that was supposed to be evil, and an expression that suggested he was still deciding what to do with his face. "Word gets around fast," he said. "Down There, I mean. Didn't realize we had — visitors."
"We don't. I'm not visiting. I'm stationed here." Raphael came to lean against the wall a few feet off, close enough to talk, far enough to pretend it was casual. Up close, the demon smelled like rain and something warmer underneath it, like a hearth that hadn't been lit yet. Raphael's hands wanted to do something they had no business doing, so he crossed his arms instead. "Guarding the east gate. Someone has to, now that the two of them are out wandering around down there discovering shame and pointy sticks."
"Ah. Flaming sword and everything?"
"Left it with the humans, actually."
The demon's eyebrows went up — delighted, unmistakably delighted, and trying very hard not to show it. "You gave it away?"
"They looked cold." Raphael shrugged, like it hadn't cost him anything, like the sword hadn't been the first outright no he'd said to a direct order and hadn't felt, in the moment, exactly like falling. "It's not as if Head Office does inventory."
"That's either very kind or very stupid."
"Little of both, probably. Story of my life." Raphael said it lightly. It was not light. He was looking at a face he had catalogued a thousand different ways before the world had even properly started spinning — laughing, furious, soft with sleep in the hour before Creation when nobody needed sleep but they'd tried it anyway just to see — and none of those expressions were on it now, because none of those memories belonged to the person wearing the face anymore.
He'd known, in the abstract, that this would be hard. He hadn't known it would be this particular kind of hard, standing three feet from someone who used to fall asleep with his head on Raphael's shoulder and ask him questions about the shape of the universe, watching that someone look at him with polite, professional wariness, like Raphael was simply a stranger who happened to be handsome and inconveniently kind.
"You've got a name?" Raphael asked, because he needed to hear it. Needed to know what they were calling him now, what he'd have to learn to answer to when he wasn't calling him something else in his own head, quietly, where no one could hear.
"Azazel." A beat. "Suits the job description, or so I'm told."
"Raphael."
"An angel with an actual name. Bit unusual, isn't it? Most of you just go by rank."
"I like to think I'm memorable." He wasn't going to say: you gave me that name. He wasn't going to say: you used to call me Rafi when it was just the two of us, and no one else was allowed to. He stayed silent instead, silence of grief with nowhere to go, so it went into his chest and sat there like a stone he'd decided to carry on purpose.
Azazel was watching him with the particular squint of someone doing sums that weren't adding up. "You're staring."
"I'm cataloguing," Raphael said. "Occupational habit. Angels catalogue things. It's meant to be humbling, appreciating the vastness of Creation, et cetera."
"And what's the verdict? On the demon."
"Undetermined. Come back in a few thousand years."
That got a laugh out of him — surprised, a little rusty, like he hadn't expected to be funny and enjoyed finding out he was. It was such a small, ordinary sound and it nearly took Raphael's knees out from under him. He thought: there you are. He thought: I did this to you. He thought both of those things in the same half a second and let neither of them reach his face.
"So," Azazel said, recovering himself, straightening his shoulders like he was remembering the assignment. "Suppose I ought to do something demonic. Set a bad example. Corrupt somebody's innocence, or whatever it is we're meant to be filling in quarterly reports about."
"Any ideas?"
"I gave them an apple."
Raphael waited. "That's it?"
"Well — I gave it to her nicely. Told her it was the tree of knowledge, told her what it did, gave her every chance to say no. Seemed only fair. She should get to choose. Free will and all that; I understand that's meant to be the whole point of the operation." Azazel frowned at the horizon, faintly troubled by his own conduct. "I don't imagine that's very sinister."
"No," Raphael agreed. "It really isn't."
"It's meant to be a temptation, not a — a transaction. I keep doing this. I had a whole plan and then I got there and thought, well, it seems rude not to explain the stakes properly." He said this like a confession, like Raphael was about to report him. "I'm not sure I'm cut out for it."
You never were cut out for cruelty, Raphael didn't say. You asked too many questions in the wrong direction and they threw you out for it and it was my fault, every second of it was my fault, and I would let it happen again if it meant you existed at all, even like this, even not knowing me.
What he said instead was: "For what it's worth — I think you're doing fine."
Azazel looked at him sideways, surprised again, in that same rusty way. "That's an odd thing for an angel to say to a demon."
"Heaven's not as tidy as they'd like you to think." Raphael pushed off the wall before he could do something unwise, like reach for him, like say a name that hadn't been used in this world yet and never would be if Raphael had any say in it. "I should get back to guarding a gate with a sword I don't have. Try not to redeem anyone else by accident, Azazel. Head Office will get suspicious."
"Wouldn't dream of it." A pause. "I'll see you around, then? Guarding your empty gate?"
"You know where to find me," Raphael said, and something about the phrase came out heavier than he meant it to, an old joke wearing a new face, a promise he'd made once before to someone who couldn't remember taking it.
Azazel didn't notice. Of course he didn't notice. That was rather the point.
Raphael walked back to his post and did not look back, and did not let himself think, not yet, about how many thousand years of see you around were still ahead of them, or how he was going to survive loving the same soul twice while only one of them knew there'd ever been a first time.
Behind him, on the wall, Azazel watched the two humans disappear over a low green hill, and felt, for reasons he couldn't name, unaccountably lonely — as if he'd misplaced something important a very long time ago, and had only just now, in this exact moment, noticed it was gone.
He put it down to the weather, and went to see about some snakes.