will not turn our backs on these children, these fallen...we will take them and train them, give them a purpose, but that purpose does not need a family, a mother. You are an experiment, a weapon, that is all.” He watches me as he speaks, and I want to scream as my arms are taken by forces stronger than me and I’m dragged before the beings in the seats and my mother. She reaches for me, crying, her blue eyes filled with so much pain and grief. “They do not require love or a mother, do not let them fool you, they feel nothing...just another illusion to gain sympathy. It speaks of a deal, as if we would make a deal with such an atrocity. Today I will show you how we will keep those new soldiers in line, with pain!” Some of the crowd cheers, but I don’t look away from my mother’s eyes as I feel my wings lifted up straight, and something cold pressed against the joint where it meets my back. What will they do to me? To her...
My eyes snap open, dragged from the memory at the sudden sound in the quiet. There is a fallen standing in the doorway, watching me, his eyes empty and dead. His wings are pulled in tight behind him, and he’s a sickish grey colour, his body not as strong as mine but lithe and thin. He’s taller though, he reminds me of those depictions of death in storybooks sheep love so much, even has the ugly fucking smile to cover it.
“Fallen,” he greets, his voice cool and emotionless. The fucking bastards. I never could muster that, always too much swimming around inside me. How they can serve these assholes with no emotions, I will never understand. Do they not want freedom, want to feast on their pain and blood for what they did? No, they are happy being servants.
“Brother.” I nod and he hisses.
“I am not your brother, fallen.” His voice whispers through the air. I try not to let the sting show as it sinks in, but even among my own kind I’m looked down on, disowned for the madness and emotions, for being stripped of my wings, something I had no control over. I survived but they all think I shouldn’t have, that it made me into...well, a fucking monster.
They aren’t wrong, but the part of me that’s still human aches at the thought of the people I was once family with, the children I grew up with, turning their back on me. I was never close with them, but they were all I had. They were jealous back then of what I had, but now? Now they would kill me given the order or choice. For simply surviving.
“What do you want?” I finally ask.
“To see why you are here. Is it to finally beg for forgiveness and meet death like a warrior?” he whispers, his voice filling the room with power, no doubt a gift from his angel father, the fuckers. He steps into the room then, so I sit up, my boots ringing out as they hit the floor, my hands loose at my sides, waiting. It wouldn’t be the first time they have attacked me, tried to kill me. The council calls it a test, saying if I don’t survive them, I have no worth, but if I do then I am of use.
“Or maybe to grovel at their feet, to try and become one of us? It will never happen,” he carries on, circling around the room, feathers ruffling. “You are too mad, we see it in your eyes, in your actions. You are uncontrolled, a force for sure, powerful thanks to your father, but your soul? It’s as black as your eyes, too far gone to be saved. You will never be one of us, one of those who serves, you are nothing but an experiment gone wrong, too human to be a warrior, too mad to be sane…”
“And what does that make you?” I snap, getting to my feet to face him. “You are an experiment, brother, just as human and angel as me. You forget where you come from. You think licking their boots makes you more holy? More worthy? It makes you a fool, one not strong enough to fight.”
He hisses again, his eyes bleeding into gold for a moment, another thing that makes me stand out. “We never loved, not like you. You craved the human, the