I love your writing! Can you please do 5+1 Things-type with ineffable bureaucracy?
Thank you!! And of course I can, have some angst <3
(According to Wikipedia and also some forms of Judaism, Zadkiel is the archangel of benevolence, freedom, and mercy. Zadkiel is also said to be a he, but I’m considered to be a she and I say fuck gender so that’s not what’s happening)
*
1.
The first time she questioned, she was only moments old, bathing in the light of her holy Creator, awash with love and wonder and glory.
“Who am I?” She asked, picking herself up from the floor, her wings new and brilliant and trembling with the effort of simply being in the presence of such magnitude.
You are Zadkiel, said the one who had breathed life into her, the one who had put every golden freckle on her face, the one who had a Plan for this little angel.
“Zadkiel,” she echoes, the name clumsy on her tongue. “I am Zadkiel.”
You are the benevolent one, God continues, the merciful one, the one who harbors freedom. You are one of my Seven.
“I am Zadkiel,” the little Archangel repeats, looking up to the One Most Holy, a smile on her lips.
2.
The second time Zadkiel questions, she is hand in hand with her lover, Gabriel. They are standing on the outskirts of a crowd, in which the greatest Archangel is speaking. Lucifer was something of a prodigy here, a perfect being who held the attention of everyone around him. His tongue was silver and his reasoning sound.
At least, it was to a select few.
“One day he’s going to regret the things that he says,” Gabriel says, his gaze dark and his grip on Zadkiel’s hand tightening.
The little Archangel blinks, looking up at him in confusion. She’d always walked the line, always done things that had pushed patience or made the other angels nervous. Most said it was her connection to freedom, but Gabriel chalked it up to her ability to be difficult.
“What do you mean?” She asks, and shrinks when her lover turns a sharp glare her way.
“The things he’s saying are treason, Zadkiel.” He hisses, pulling her away from the crowd to speak with her privately. “You’d do well to disregard him, he has nothing to say that would do any of us any good.”
The little angel averts her gaze from Gabriel’s, staring at the gold cobblestone under her feet. She didn’t like being told what not to think, didn’t like having her feelings disregarded and swept aside. Gabriel was good at that, though, especially when it came to the Great Plan or anything related to it or Her.
“Alright,” she relents at last, if only to have him release his crushing grip on her hand.
He does, relief seeming to help him relax. He tilts Zadkiel’s chin up, giving her a kind smile and leaning down to kiss her. “It’s better this way.” He murmurs when he pulls away.
But Zadkiel wasn’t so sure.
3.
The third time she questioned, it was in a private nook of Heaven, in the lap of her lover.
Lucifer had been cast out of favor, banished to tar pits and fire and endless suffering. A handful of angels had come too, and Zadkiel had nearly been one of them. She had seen the disappointment in Lucifer’s eyes when she had shied away and hidden behind Gabriel, still walking her line.
After nearly driving herself mad with guilt and doubt, Zadkiel had to tell someone. And who best to tell than the one she had fallen in love with?
Gabriel listened silently as she spoke of treason and guilt and worry — so many things that angels were simply not meant to have. He let her speak until she was out of breath, out of words, and finally feeling a bit better.
“Zadkiel,” he says, slow and soft.
“You haven’t the faintest how worried I was,” the little Archangel breathes, turning to face him, a relieved smile on her face. “I thought I would burst!”
“Zadkiel,” he says again, a little louder this time.
“Maybe I was wrong, you know? About all this? Maybe I was just being silly.”
“ZADKIEL!”
The littlest Archangel falls silent, looking up at her lover. Gabriel’s face was stone, his eyes cold and hard, his mouth a thin line. Her smile fades, the relief following.
“Gabriel,” she says, her voice wavering as she realizes the gravity of what she had done. What she had said. “Gabriel, can you still love me? It was only a slip, just a lapse in judgement…”
“I do not love traitors.” Gabriel growls, and shoves her away.
4.
Her next question comes from ichor stained lips, from the depths of a place that had sounded so good when it had come from Lucifer’s stories. The air smelled of singed flesh from the wings that had been burnt black as a punishment for her crimes. Her beautiful freckles, the ones that had been painted so delicately in gold all those years ago, were now blood and diseased flesh.
There was an emptiness in her heart, if she even had one now at all. An absence. A place where once, she could feel the love and warmth around her. Now all she felt was rage, and hatred, and disgust.
They had watched her fall, with pity! Those who she had called her friends had looked away when she begged for forgiveness, when she screamed and cried and was torn from the sky. They had watched Her shatter the halo that tied her to the stars, and had done nothing about it.
Tears drip from her eyes, her breath coming in ragged gasps that sounded like something a wild beast would make, not one who had been part of the Heavenly Host. All this for a simple doubt? All this for a slip, for questions that had been asked by another?
Zadkiel looks to the heavens and screams, cursing the Creator that had created this. She screams until her voice breaks and she gasps for air, her voice as broken as the mess she had become.
“Why?” She asks, to one who was not listening. To one who would never listen again.
5.
The next time she sees a part of the heavens, she is called Beelzebub, and she is a Prince.
It takes her by surprise — all the angels were supposed to have left Eden. It was her job to clean up what was left, take what Hell needed, and leave the forsaken garden. All the angels were supposed to have been gone.
Gabriel doesn’t see her, not at first.
Do you remember me?
When he does, there is no recognition. There is no trace of the love he had once freely given, only the disgust and repulsion that she had seen the day she Fell. Gabriel looks as though he’d rather be anywhere else, looks more pretentious than she remembers, and she vows specifically to make him suffer for what he’d done to her.
+1.
Six thousand years later, after a failed end of the world, Beelzebub finds herself in bed with none other than the one she had loved so many years ago.
It had become a regular occurrence for him to be in her bed, sometime after Rome had fallen. Try as she might, her rage died quickly, and it was easier to bed him than to admit that still, in some ways, she missed him. But as the years went on, their hate-fueled fucking softened, and turned into an attachment neither of them knew they needed.
Gabriel had gone from the thorn in her side to the only one she wanted at her side. He didn’t remember her from Before, but after millenia, she didn’t really remember herself either. Just this. Just the decay and the power and the throne. Zadkiel was dead, and what remained was something better.
Her questions faded over the years, too. She no longer cared why she’d been cast here, just how she was going to get an army in gear enough to get her paperwork finished. Gabriel had proven his loyalty many, many times in hundreds of different ways, so there was no question anywhere near that.
Now she was more concerned with lazing about in bed with the Archangel, his hands on her skin, and perhaps the lazy pleasure that came with it.
“Morning,” comes Gabriel’s voice from behind her, rough with sleep and from the activities they’d indulged in the night before. His hand wraps around her slight waist, pulling Beelzebub flush against his body.
The Prince pretends to be irritated, wiggling around in a half attempt to get closer and a half pretense of annoyance. “Ugh, you’re too hot.”
“I know,” the Archangel says smugly, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck. They both knew she didn’t mind it either way.
Beelzebub rolls over, settling into his chest and looking up into those purple eyes. Gabriel gives her a lazy smile, his arm adjusting to rest on her back. The casual intimacy had been too much, once, had hurt too badly. It was a reminder of things she had once had, and until Beelzebub realized he didn’t remember, she thought he was making fun of her.
But now she knew the truth. Now she could look into his eyes, bask in his warmth, and feel safe enough to be vulnerable like this.
Now she could look into his eyes, into the I love you that always lingered, and for once since the beginning of her life, didn’t find the need to question it.