07.08.02 - 1:09 p.m.

(azra'il solo #1 from links on previous post. in case mr. genius deletes it.)

11:49pm. 31st of December. The Year of our Lord, 1999.

Even now, standing at the end of a thousand years, standing at the ends of the earth of the Ocean Pacific...even now, centuries after, he still thinks of her. Maybe that is why he could not bear to be with another woman tonight, when all the world traded millennial kisses and laid blessings on the age to come. It was the eve of the New Year. It was the eve of a new millennium. A new age. A new chance. A time of change. A time to improve. A time of redemption.

Fools. There will be no changes. Not for some. Not for him. Millennium. What does it matter? It is another night that finds him alone, as every night does, whether he is accompanied by a veritable harem, or a single brief romantic (romantic? More like lust-driven...) interest, or none at all. It is always the same. It will always be the same.

Because she is gone...

Father, have you forsaken me? He could scream it to the skies--he could fling wide his arms, fling wide his gleaming black wings, he could scream until the whole world shuddered at the wrath of an angel, fallen. He could do all that and more, but he could not turn back time. And so he does nothing. And so he stands silent, black-shrouded, elegant and dark and aching, yearning, standing over the edge of the sea.

11:53pm. 31st of December. The Year of our Lord, 1999. The end of a millennium. The end of the earth.

The west wind is stiff, cold and salt-laden, and it stirs the pale perfect strands of his hair, and it stirs the pinions, the down of his wings, the wings folded about him like a cloak. The wind is good for him, so biting, so chill, that it numbs him. There were no stars tonight, no moon. There were only clouds. Soon it would rain; the skies would weep, and the sea would swallow the tears as they had swallowed his. God, how he hated the sea--how he hated its briny stink, its endless maddening rush--moving without ever going anywhere, its bulk, its size, its pitiless, blind, unfeeling presence. How he hated it--its monotonous breathing rise and fall, rise and fall, constant from the beginning to the end of time, unchanging, unforgiving, forgetting. How he hated it--and yet try as he might he could not explain away the eternal pull the ocean had for him. Time and again, he came back, to this place on the Californian coast and other places just like it. Cliff. Rocks. Ocean. He didn't know why; he simply did it, simply came and stood expressionlessly and felt his heart swell to bursting with hatred for the sea, the world, himself, until he wanted to jump, to crash and break on the rocks below, to sleep, to die, to be no more...

...only he knew he would only rise again, so cursed that heaven and hell alike rejected him.

...only he knew exactly why he came to these headlands overlooking the sea. The rocks.

Midnight. 19th of January. The Year of our Lord, 1382. The end of his world.

Afterwards, he knew he must have wept. He knew he must have screamed and raged and wept and tried, tried his best to die. Afterwards he knew what he had done. Afterwards, when it was too late, he wanted to turn back time, to take it back, to do anything, anything to bring her back.

But before...

Before, the west wind was stiff, stiff and cold and salt-laden, rain-drenched at the edge of the cliff at the edge of the sea at the edge of the known world, and it lashed against his face, his skin, and set his clothes billowing and slapping against his body like wings, like so many angry wings, restraining wings, but all the anger of the heavens, all the arms of the angels above, had not been enough to keep him from reaching out and--and--

(Oh, God, no...)

--and then somehow--somehow he found his way down; maybe he jumped; maybe he ran; maybe...somehow he was there and lifting her and she was so light, as though something was gone already, and she looked at him and she said...

...and he said...

...and she closed her eyes...

...and his world shattered...

...and...

...and eight centuries later, he can still feel her blood on his hands.

And eight centuries later, he stands alone, impassive, arrogant, indestructible even as a thunderbolt splits the sky, and all the heavens come crashing down in rain.

And eight centuries later, his heart breaks all over again.