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"A woman."
"A woman?" Newt stared. "I don't get it. I don't get any of it."
"I fell in love with a mortal woman. I had sex with her. I had a child with her."
Newt blinked.
"Not a single part of what I did is allowed, and so I was cast out. The woman lives, unknowingly, in an eternal cycle, always within my reach, but unattainable. And the child..." Hermann looked both angry and stricken as he averted his eyes, stared at the blackboard still covered with his numbers. "My son was murdered in front of me, and his body burned to ash."
For a moment that stretched out much longer than was comfortable, Newt stared silently. "Bullshit." He laughed suddenly, slapping his knee. "Good one! You got me, Herms! You really got me! I actually kind of believed you."
But Hermann remained serious, face dour and distinctly unhappy even though they'd just saved the world together.
And what Newt had seen in the drift. But that… that couldn't be true at all. It was just some kind of… dream or hallucination of Hermann's. "Prove it to me," Newt said finally, needing to disbelieve it, needing it to not be true, because he didn't think his mind could actually handle the idea, the truth that Hermann was an angel. A fallen angel.
"They left these things as a reminder of what I'd been, what I'd done and lost for it," Hermann answered quietly, taking several steps back to put a respectable amount of space between them. "I don't know what will happen once you see this."
Newt was about to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean when there was something like a flash of light, but it was also dark, just his vision going out for an instant, like a blink he wasn't even aware of overtaking not just his sight but his entire scope of reality. When he blinked the world back into existence, his legs went wobbly and he sank to the floor, staring up at Hermann. This was not a joke.
Hermann stood there, still in his ridiculous parka and jacket and sweater and shirt and trousers and shoes, just like it was expected of Hermann Gottlieb.
Newt laughed, a strangled and not entirely sane noise.
Wings. Tattered looking things made of silvery energy that shone with unearthly light. Wings. Not a feather in sight, just pure energy that Newt could feel in his bones, a strange, itchy sensation that wasn't exactly comfortable. The very average cane that was always within Hermann's grasp was now a seven foot tall weapon. "Is that a spear?"
"You'd probably terrestrially call it a guisarme."
New stifled another laugh, staring at the shining polearm. Guisarme was only something he'd heard in role-playing games. The next words slipped out because it felt that if he didn't speak, he would just continue to laugh: "Looks like you could kill someone with that."
It's a silver blur, a pinwheel that ruffled his hair with its speed until it came to a stop with the blade at his throat. Newt didn't even dare swallow.
Hermann pressed hard into Newt's flesh, but the edge never broke the skin, never exerted more pressure than the touch of a doctor performing an examination. "I couldn't, even if I wished to. It has no effect on mortals." He withdrew it to lean on it once more.
"Hermann, is that a halo?" Newt asked, his entire body trembling as he stared up. Whether he was truly processing each bit of information, he could only evaluate later, because questions, so many questions, just one after another. He had to ask because he didn't know much about angels, even less about fallen angels, and even less than that about actual angels, and that didn't really look like any halo he'd ever seen in pictures.
Unlike the silver of the wings and the spear (guisarme, Mr. Fancypants angel), the halo looked more like a large ring of deeply tarnished brass, just hovering over Hermann's head, following his every movement precisely. No glow, no shine, just a very ordinary looking thing. "Of a sort. A remnant of it."
"Jesus Christ. Oh, should I not…?"
"Have I ever stopped you before?"
True, Hermann had never seemed to care no matter how blue Newt's language had gotten (and as a German-born-and-raised American, that was very blue). "Well. Why don't you just… repent or confess or whatever? Just like the churches are always saying to do."
"I refuse to apologize for something good. She was--is beautiful and kind. How can it be a crime to love? And then when you see your child slaughtered in front of you… I deserved to be cast out. I was weak. I still am. When they killed him, said there could be no more nephilim to torment mankind, and I watched my brothers be cast into darkness, that was when I swore vengeance." Hermann reached up and touched the halo, making it spark red where his fingers came into contact. "I don't care any longer about forgiveness or penance."
Newt's brain helpfully supplied all the information he'd gleaned from his formative college years. "Evil giants."
Again, Hermann's face darkened with fury, like a storm over the ocean rather than the very mortal anger Newt was used to seeing. "He was not an evil giant! He was a helpless child, ripped from his mother's arms. I'll never forget…"
The memories in the drift made a little more sense, the one with the woman crying and Hermann shouting, and a baby… "Your father, Lars Gottlieb." Newt frowned suddenly. Gottlieb. It was some kind of joke.
"Not my father. He's not Lucifer or Satan or whatever you want to call it either. He's another, like me. We were working together before San Francisco." Hermann snorted in vague amusement. "To bring about the corruption of mankind. It seems so petty now. I suppose it always felt petty, but a fallen angel still receives orders from Father."
With legs that felt like lead, and arms that had no strength, Father echoing in his head like the worst reverb ever experienced, Newt crawled to the nearest chair and dragged himself up into it. He was still shaking, still felt removed from reality. "Fallen angels helping to save the planet."
"What use are all the realms if there are no souls? It would be like building a giant LEGO city and then allowing your dog to use it as a toilet."
The laugh felt better, more natural. "You said you didn't know what would happen once I saw…" Newt waved his hand at Hermann, either unable or unwilling to put it into words. "This. You have to kill me now or something?"
"I've found most mortals go insane, but things are different here."
"I'll say." Newt felt mostly sane, just an odd touch of gibbering, but that happened sometimes even when not faced with an angel.
"If it was the drift, or that you've not given in to corruption, or that you're innocent. There are not enough seconds in your life to look at every man and woman I've seen beg at my feet for a second chance, for forgiveness." Hermann smiled, just a momentary lifting of the corners of his mouth. "As if I have the capacity for that now."
"So you're not going to kill me? Because honestly, I'm not cool with being killed after all the shit I went through. Though I guess if I had to go out, fallen angel would theoretically be a pretty good way. Kaiju, incidentally, has dropped from the top of my list to somewhere in the low teens." The drift, something about the drift that wasn't weird heavenly business and misery… "You're still in love with that woman?"
"For eternity. As I said, my punishment, and hers. An innocent judged for my crimes. And nobody understands why I don't simply give up my anger and beg for Father's forgiveness, return to my place… It's not even my rightful place. I prefer it here, now, where I can apply logic to the world around me instead of bowing my head and obeying nonsense rules."
The words slid over and around Newt. He could only think of one thing: "But you… want to fuck me?"
Hermann shrugged. "What more can they do to me? Sin is as arbitrary to me now as their rules are to them. And you have the same desires; I see them all. The drift only made the possibilities clear."
So many questions, and answers that just posed more questions. "OK, so straight out in the open, are you going to kill me?"
"No."
"Nice to know. What are you going to do to me?"
Another shrug.
For a fallen angel, Hermann seemed very unconcerned with things; this was not what Newt would have expected at all. In a hypothetical way, since he never considered he might encounter a fallen angel. His brain was still not ready to accept all this.
"I don't kill people, Newton. I merely lead them down the paths that send them to damnation when they do die. Or I did before. And by the way, your friend Hannibal Chau, his is a very short road."
Under his breath, Newt grumbled, "He's not my friend. Why does everyone keep thinking that? It was all strictly business."
"Was it?"
Newt got brave, out of nowhere, and pointed at Hermann. "That is not fair. I never told anyone or acted on any of those ideas. I mean, it was just a little lust."
"You do nothing in magnitudes of 'little', as I've observed for ten years." Hermann gave him that brief half-smile again. "Your excesses are very intriguing in direct counterpoint to your virtues."
With a nervous laugh, Newt looked away, eyes scanning the room absently. "I, uh, don't know how to take that. Kind of a good thing, right? Ha ha, no one ever said I had any kind of virtue before."
"Your pride and lust are like beacons, tempered with diligence and kindness and charity. How could I not love you?"
Newt blushed, definitely unable to look at Hermann now. He was unused to blatant declarations of love directed at him. "Could you really corrupt me if-if it's, like, we're… together?" He was blushing harder, feeling that heat all across his neck now too. "What if it's all in-line, just the way it's supposed to be." Looking up at Hermann, finally, finding the courage to accept a lot of scary truths all at once.
"That's not how it works, Newt. Laws won't legitimize your soul."
"Not believing in Hell won't change anything, will it?"
"You don't believe even though I'm standing right here? Newt, willful ignorance never solved anything."
"Fine. Then I don't care. In my book, this is exactly how shit is supposed to work. We get to know each other, we become friends, feelings develop, and then we act on them. That is not wrong, so…" Newt started to stand, but his legs were still in denial of what was happening and refused to support him. "Hmph. Just imagine I stood up and started to lick your tonsils. Do angels have tonsils?"
Finally, something resembling a human as Hermann shook his head and gave him a bemused smile. "Newt, I wish you would listen to what I'm saying for once. We can't. And let me be clear, my desires don't matter; it's your soul at stake. Don't make me be the one responsible for it."
"I'm not. I'm taking responsibility by finally saying I want you. I want your skinny body and your frowny face and fat brain, and I guess I want your big glowy wings and weird halo too. Free will, dude." Newt tried to present a confident smile, but it ended up being lopsided and uncertain. "That's the one thing I've got going for me, right?
But Hermann was shaking his head even as he stepped closer, within arm's reach, and then closer than that. "To your detriment. You can't want any part of this, for the sake of your immortal soul, Newt. You have no idea what damnation is, what Hell is like. Truly, I would rather walk the Earth as a servant between two opposing masters than sit comfortably in Hell."
"Herman-"
"No, Newt. There is nothing worth existing for without Earth, so to send you to Hell would be…" With a frustrated exhalation, Hermann shook his head. "You can't want me."
"I still do," Newt said quietly. "I… still feel like you're my friend even though I guess I barely know you."
The hand not holding the spear reached out and brushed over Newt's cheek. "I don't want to corrupt you. If I were to give in to my urges now… I don't want to condemn you."
Newt snorted even as he leaned into the touch. "'M not scared. Can I still call you Hermann?"
"It's probably more appropriate than ever now."
Without asking for permission, Newt turned his head and kissed the back of Hermann's knuckles. "If you don't want to answer, I get it, but what's with the math? Couldn't you just swoop down and cut the kaiju in half or something?"
"I wasn't kidding when I said numbers are as close to God as we can ever be. Sometimes when I'm alone, I write them out, hoping He'll get my message. Hoping He'll see I did nothing wrong and that it was an unjust punishment and that I'm better than the others, but then… Then I remember. I consider. My son never got the chance to write me a letter, never got to question my decisions, never was given the chance to make the wrong choice for the right reason, and I erase it all.
"If He can't see all I've done to save his precious creation so far, then what else could I possibly say to make Him care?"
Finally Newt's legs cooperate, and he stood. It all leant an extra potency to the feuds Hermann had always had with his "father". Even though Lars wasn't his father, the anger and frustration and hurt had always been very real. Without speaking, without thinking where he was supposed to put his hands, Newt hugged Hermann.
Maybe he could get some of his virtue to rub off on Hermann if he hugged him long enough.