Death and the Maiden

Of everyone in Heaven and Hell, she was the one I needed more than anything.

And I'd betrayed her.

I bit down the sob.

That night. That night she'd been with me.

I'd nearly said the word. Oh, I'd thrown it out before, as a joke, or as a simple affectionate little saying when we were together.

But that night I'd very nearly let slip that I loved her.

The word that would tie me to her and her to me even if she never said it back to me.

I sometimes almost thought I saw something in her eyes when she watched me.

And she'd... said that other word to me.

Mine.

In that warm, possessive, but above-all cherishing way.

How had we gone from that to... all this?

Easy.

My stupidity.

My selfishness.

My desire to be special, to have something special.

Had this all been a reaction to her words to me? Was I afraid of being... wanted? Needed?

Was this simple self-destruction?

Jezebel....

Was I... important to her?

Did she... think of me that way? The way I thought of her?

I slumped down further.

Oh fuck me, what a horrid mess I'd made of it all.

And now... now I'd ensnared Caitlyn into my mess as well.

Slept with her, been with her in that supremely unfair way, taking from her what could have been a shining memory and making it something... cheap and tacky and, above all, sordid.

I'd taken an innocent and wrecked her.

They'd send me back to Limbo. They'd never trust me with any responsibility ever again.

Might as well shuffle over that last, long leap into the beyond...

"Gwenhwyfar?"

I jumped, sniffed, scrubbed furiously at my eyes.

"Hi," I announced, unable to keep the emotion out of my voice, too befouled to dare utter her name.

"Where are you?"

"I'm... here," I whispered.

"Can I join you?"

Fatalism took me.

"Yes," I answered, as hope deserted me.

A tang of brimstone on the air, swiftly swept away.

And there she stood, tall and exotic and beautiful in her painted-on red top and skin-tight black leggings and calf-high boots, staring down at me, concern furrowing her brow.

"Oh, Feathers," she said, dropping to her knees in front of me. "Oh no. What is it? Tell me, honey..."

And the warmth and affection in her voice shattered me.

I fell forward as if I'd been kicked in the gut, and curled up, sobbing.

She got her arms under me; I clung to her.

"Jenny, Jenny, my darling, speak to me, come on," she whispered. "What is it?"

I had no choice but to confess my sins.

I struggled to breathe.

"Jen," she whispered. She leaned forward, as if to kiss me; I had to stop that... I didn't deserve...

"I... I... I slept with her..." I gasped.

She froze, and my heart died inside me.

"With... who."

Her words were slow, soft and emotionless, as if reading from a script.

"Her. Her. The girl. That girl..."

I felt her shiver, take a breath.

"The... human girl? Jen? What the fuck?"

"I'm sorry," I wailed. "I'm sorry, I... I was weak, and I shouldn't...it... "

"You... you slept with her. Fuck... I just... fuck..."

The raw, unfiltered hurt in her voice was like a knife in my brain, twisting and turning, slicing and scrambling the few last unbroken bits of me.

She let me go and rocked back on her haunches.

I reached for her, she batted my beseeching hand away, and away again.

"Please," I sobbed.

"No," she said, ice cold, hard as flint. "No. I... I can't believe it. You wouldn't do that to me. You wouldn't dare do that to me. Is this... is this some sick joke? Some stupid fucking... test?"

I stared up at her, heartbroken.

Wrecked.

Ruined.

All in ashes now.

"No," I managed, in a tiny voice. "I did it."

She closed her eyes, seemed to stagger and shrink in on herself.

"Oh... fuck you," she whispered, at last, voice all strange with weird harmonics.

And she started to cry, and turned away from me.

"Wait!" I begged, desperate for any scrap, "Oh, please wait..."

"Not any more," she snarled through her tears. "Never any more, you... you monstrous, loathsome, untoward, monumental bitch."

She stared down at me, then clutched her arms to herself.

Heat blossomed off her, blue-white flames danced in her eyes.

"Never darken my existence again," she said, in a soft, emotionless tone made all the more awful by the twin tracks of dried, encrusted salt that meandered down her haughty cheeks.

A ripple, and she vanished.

And I fell forward into the unsympathetic mud and retched bile until there was nothing left in me.

It was Lucius who came to find me at last; it was Lucius who carried me home, and it was Lucius who held me and guarded me as I fell down into inky unthinking blackness from which I desperately wished never to wake.

"Gwen?"

His voice was gentle.

I stared out at the distant hills beyond the plain of standing stones.

The Gates of Dusk arched behind me.

"What is it."

The words were hard to form. It had been a while since I'd spoken. How long, I wasn't sure. Centuries, maybe. Centuries of unbroken, black, self-hatred.

"It's been a week, my friend."

Only a week?

Impossible.

"You cannot wallow like this. The dead need you. We need you."

Nobody needed me.

"Gwenhwyfar."

His hands were warm and firm on my shoulders.

I moved my jaw, but no sound came out.

"She will come back," he said, softly. "She's... tempestuous. Her anger blazes, then flickers out."

"Not... this time," I managed, voice creaking from misuse. "She will never be back. It's over. I've wrecked it. Wrecked everything. I'm done. Done, Lucius. I want..."

"What do you want, my dear friend?"

His voice was calm, but I could hear the fear he strove so hard to hide.

I somehow managed to turn to face him.

"I want you to go to Azrael for me. I want... I want an end. Omega. Ask him. Please."

"No," he whispered, appalled. "That cannot possibly be your choice after all this, after all you've survived. No. I cannot."

"I can't go back, and I can't stay. What else is there."

"Why can't you go back?"

"To what?" I demanded bitterly. "Another life of pain, another cycle, another at most eighty years of loss and hurt and... and likely, violent death? Would you have me raped again, Lucius? Would you have me bleed my life's blood out into the clay as more clay is heaped upon me, blocking my mouth, stifling me, muffling my screams for mercy? Would you ask that of me?"

"The world has changed, Gwenhwyfar."

His voice was rough. I'd never told him all the details, and I guess he'd never looked on the little index card of the great Reliquary that recorded my sad, little life.

Lucius was honourable. And utterly wasted on me.

"Not that much," I whispered in answer. "I proved that."

"You made a mistake, Gwenhwy..."

"I ruined three lives!" I screamed, grappling at him. "What more do you need to understand that I am not worth your love! I'm not your daughter! She's dead! And so am I! So let me go!"

He opened his mouth to answer, but seemed unable to find words.

I stared at him, horrified at myself... and somehow, somehow I was crying again.

"I'm sorry, oh, oh, I'm so sorry," I sobbed. "I didn't... I didn't mean to... to hurt you too..."

"You are not Adelia. I loved her with all my heart, but you are dear to me too," he said, voice thick. "Please, Jenny. I have walked beside you for more than a century and a half. You are my family. Please! There is still something to be salvaged out of this..."

A strange, heavy solitude settled on me; I felt a great beyondness looming at my fingertips.

"No," I said, softly. "No, I'm... finished with this. I can't any more."

He closed his eyes, found some reservoir of inner strength.

"You will need to tell Azrael yourself," he said. "I will not carry this message to him. I refuse."

"Then I will do it myself," I answered, no less softly.

We stared out at the stones.

The gnawing teeth of Creation, came the sudden bitter thought. Chewing us up until there's nothing left...

"Jenny?"

"Yes," I answered, some time later.

"Will you promise me something?"

"My promises are worth nothing."

"Not to me. I know you will keep a promise you make to me."

I couldn't meet his gaze. His trust was entirely misplaced in me.

Gwenhwyfar Carew. Archangel of Cock-ups, that was me. Fuck-up extraordinaire. Artiste of Catastrophe. Seducer. Oath-breaker.

Queen of Lies...

"I should have been a fiend," I whispered.

"No. You are just who you were meant to be."

I bit back the tears; I wasn't going to cry any more.

Soon I'd be done with this poisonous afterlife. Soon I would be gone.

"What is the promise you want from me," I breathed, at last.

"Do nothing for now. Wait one day. After all, what is one more day to us?"

"Pain," I whispered.

"Then I ask you to please, please, give me one day of pain," he said. He lifted my chin, stared down at me. "Do noting final. I beg you. Wait for me before you decide on this path."

I blinked, swallowed

"I'll wait," I whispered at last. "One day. I can do one day. I will take one more day of pain, because I love you. One day, Lucius. Then Gwenhwyfar is done."

He brushed his lips to my forehead and shifted; dust and pebbles danced in his wake.

And I sat there in the dust and waited as the sun swung down and the moon crossed the sky and the pink of new dawn tinged the horizon.

The stones were raking the sky when I slowly rose to my feet once more.

I'd kept my word.

I'd waited.

But he had not returned.

So I flew slowly home, and alighted on my balcony. I watered my lavender, and wrote my letter to him.

I thanked him for his thankless kindness down the long and bitter years.

I asked him to understand, and to remember me how I had been, not how I was.

I folded the sheet of fine pink paper, scrawled a heart and kisses on the outside which were swiftly blotted with tears.

I left it in the middle of my table.

And closed my door on my home for the last time.

I made my way to the great Reliquary. I waited for Azrael to notice me. And I said the words.

He watched me as the final echoes of my request died away.

"Please," I whispered, when he said nothing and the silence had grown awful.

"You know there is no return from this," he answered, gently. "You will be unwound, and the little strands that make you you will go into other living things. You know there is no way to unpick that, right?"

"I don't want to return. I've... done enough."

"Oh, Jenny," he sighed. "You have done nothing, in the greater scheme of things."

"Your viewpoint is necessarily wider than mine," I whispered. "You see the forest. I'm the rotten tree that stifles new life."

"Little Gwenhwyfar. So certain in your shame. It's almost pride, in a way. A vanity, believing that what you have done is too terrible to forgive. Nothing is unforgivable."

I felt the shadow of his great, terrible wings spread over me.

An awful cold pierced my body and I fell to my knees.

I stared upwards at him, towering over me.

"Do you understand what oblivion is?" he said, his words coming as if from aeons away.

"Freedom," I whispered.

"No. It's undoing. Think, child, of what you'd undo. All those bright, burnished moments you've shared with me, with your friends. Even with that remarkably unfortunate human girl you were unlucky enough to cross paths with... so often," he finished, with a gentle soft irony in his tone.

"You knew."

My words were a statement of fact.

"I see the signs," he answered. "I see many things, Jenny. All this has been before. All this will be again. You are not the first of us to... dally where we shouldn't."

His wings furled, he shrank, I took a painful breath.

"Would you undo all that you are? All that you will be?"

His voice was gentle, fatherly. He reached forward to raise my chin so that I'd be forced to look at him.

"All I am is pain," I said, low and resigned. "I was born in loneliness and born again here in blood. Pain follows me. Destruction of all I love dogs my shadow. I... please. Release me. Please, Azrael. Please. Let me go."

"And what of Jezebel? Would you tear out the heart of the woman you love? Curse her to an eternity of regrets, too?"

"She... doesn't love me," I whispered. I clutched myself, unable to suppress the agony of that thought. "Maybe she did. I don't know. But... but she won't now, and she never will again."

His eyes seemed to fill the world.

Old.

Ageless.

Profoundly sad.

"Jenny. Go back below," he cajoled. "Go live again. Be part of this great work."

"No. There is nothing for me down there."

I stared up at him, and the tears fell.

"Please," I whispered. "Be merciful. Please. Let me go."

He sighed.

And shadows gathered around the edges of things.

"Gwenhwyfar Sian Carew," he whispered in words as loud as all Creation. "You will stand."

I could not disobey.

But I did look down in shock as first one, and then others of my grey feathers began to fall, the light in each winking out as it touched the black marble beneath my feet.

"Oh," I whispered.

So that was how it happened.

How quaint...

"You stand at a crossroads, Gwenhwyfar Sian Carew. Turn aside here... or walk on but a little way and you will find that ultimate end that you believe you so desperately seek. Others have stood where you stand. Most turned aside. I beg you, child. Follow their example. Do not end yourself. You still have so much to be."

I stared upwards at him.

"But... why?" I managed. "Why continue, when every step brings pain and all joy is dead? I've destroyed all that was precious to me through my own pride. I will never get it back. Why should I go on?"

"Hope, girl!" he answered. "I am Azrael. Do you think that I amongst all His creations would not know futility? And yet... we hope. We feel. We embrace one another."

He smiled a strange smile.

"And greatest and most important, we love. Love, Jenny. Love her as she loves you - with everything that you are."

A gust of wind.

A singled terrified "No!"

And someone collided with me and grappled me and knocked me to the floor, sliding over the polished stone, entangled with me until we fetched up painfully against the stairs.

Pain lanced through me; someone was slapping and punching, flailing ineffectually at me, screaming.

Jezebel, my heart whispered.

"You selfish fucking cunt", she raged at me as she fought her way free of me. She grabbed my shoulders and began to shake me like a jaguar rending its prey. "You fucking... shit-headed little... fucker! What the fuck are you thinking, you stupid thrice-damned child! Do I mean nothing to you? Is my heart worth any consideration at all, you scraggly, spiteful fucking... fuck!"

"Jezebel," I finally managed, too staggered, too disordered to say more.

"No, it's Mother Fucking Theresa, you ignorant, infantile, stupid.... Oh fuck me, I am going to... I'm going to...."

And then she dragged me up onto her lap and wrapped her arms around me, keening as she rocked us back and forth.

Her perfect Magpie wings furled around me to shield me from everything.

I reached up to trail my fingers through her wrecked and tangled tresses.

"But... you left me," I managed, strangely calm even to my own ears, convinced that this was some odd hallucination, some delusional moment of my final death.

"You... I... I was angry!" she roared, voice once again weird with the harmonics of profound rage and fear. "It's my... fucking nature, you, you... oh fuck me I can't even find the words, and now I find you here, doing this shit? Ending yourself! Fucking really? I should end you for this! Fuck!"

Her fingers clutched spasmodically at the fabric of my shirt.

She pulled back and glared down at me through her tears. White-hot rage flickered briefly in her eyes.

Then she shuddered, gulping.

"Don't you ever, and I do mean ever, try this again," she whispered. "Oh... oh fuck me, I can't... I can't believe you... I nearly lost you... "

And she began to sob - helpless, rib-cracking gasps that I slowly, in my usual blind way, came to realise were a reaction to existential dread.

Slowly the unreality faded.

Slowly I understood that she was real, and I was in her arms again, her scent and warmth surrounding me as they so often had.

As I'd never expected them to ever do again.

And that she'd feared she'd lost me.

"How did you know..." I whispered, as she regained a sliver of control.

"Lucius," she panted. "Found. Me. And I... found your... fucking note. Fuck! Fuck, I was so... terrified I'd be too... late. Fuck you, Gwen, for... for doing this to me, you... you selfish... little..."

And she pushed her face against mine and moaned wordlessly.

"Oh," I whispered.

Guilt flamed through me. I'd come so close to destroying her.

"Don't ever... do this again..." she moaned. "Promise me."

"I..."

"Promise me on your soul!" she screamed, clenching her fingers painfully into my flesh.

"... promise," I whispered.

A weight dropped away.

I curled my legs up against myself and slowly slumped in against her.

I tangled my fingers into her tresses and started to shiver as all the fears and doubt blew away like smoke.

"I love you," I breathed, unwilling to leave the words unsaid any longer, screwing my eyes tightly together as I surrendered myself to her.

"Mine," she moaned, choked-up, nodding fiercely against me, clutching me to her as fresh tears tracked down her cheeks.

"Yours," I gasped into her chest, not caring about anything else but that, even after everything, she still wanted me.

"Children," sighed Azrael, watching over us with the faintest of smiles.

He folded his wings and turned away and left us there.

Even Death has some sense of modesty, after all.

And we had things we needed to do.

The tall, curvy redhead was talking passionately. Even from the distant corner I could see the animation, the interest in her eyes. She reached out, touched Caitlyn's arm. Caitlyn laughed, smiled up at her counterpart. She was flushed. Interested. Intrigued.

Happy.

"She's pretty," Jezebel whispered.

"The redhead? Yeah, she's gorgeous, isn't she? Reminds me of you, actually..."

"No, idiot," she said, amused. "Your human."

"She's not my human."

"I can see what you saw in her."

"She was lonely, I was fucked up..."

Jezebel's fingers curled into mine. "I'm just teasing you, Feathers. But she is gorgeous. I always liked shorter girls. Makes you easier to... pick up and ravish," she said, with a throaty chuckle.

I sighed, relaxed against my lover's body as she shifted behind me, enjoying the way her arm curled over my belly.

"I'm sorry..."

"Stop," she breathed. "I've told you before. It's done. We got through it."

She planted the gentlest of kisses on my neck, I whimpered, turned to nuzzle against her for a moment.

Drawings and paintings hung interspersed on perspex walls - abstracts, landscapes, portraits of people Caitlyn had seen or met or known.

Her first exhibition at twenty five - a massive achievement for a girl of her background.

Jezebel had told me we were going.

"Closure," she'd said, when I'd asked the hesitant "Why?"

And I'd nodded, understanding the message within the message.

We moved slowly, ignored by all the gallery patrons.

"She's really good. Fantastic eye for detail and proportion." Jezebel said.

"Yeah. She is amazingly gifted."

We rounded a corner and stared up at the two works that took pride of place.

On the left canvas, Rhiannon, taking a step up into the air, hand stretching to the border of the canvas, smiling...