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"There must be some way of stopping it," your angel says.
He really should know better than to give you an opening like this.
"If there was no boy…" you offer idly, "then the process would stop."
"Yes, but there is a boy," your angel protests as if bending the reality was a problem to being like him, like you.
"Well, there's a boy now," you point out. "That could change."
Your angel looks at you, at the boy you both helped to raise, and pretends not to understand.
"Something could happen to him."
A minute shake of the head, eyes avoiding yours. You almost smile. Your angel is hardly stupid, but he is just enough of a bastard to pretend to be, when it suits him. Such a liar, your hereditary enemy.
"I'm saying you could kill him."
Your angel's brow furrow, looking away, at the boy. He stills, licks his lips.
"I've never actually… killed anything," he says, eyes still on the boy he used to play with, used to tell stories to, ridiculous moralistic tales that insured the boy would never pursue a carrier in gardening.
You watch him, still as only a predator can be.
"I- I don't think I could," your angel whispers.
You lean in just a bit closer.
"Not even to save everything?" you murmur into his ear, your voice low, soothing. Gentle, just for him. "One life against the universe."
You watch him hesitate, the possibilities flashing behind his eyelids, painted there by your soft words, your sensible arguments. Six millennia you have had to know this angel, to discover every cranny and weakness and breaking point, and you are the serpent of Eden, you are temptation given form and voice and you never, ever hesitate to push just a bit more-
You watch him hesitate, watch him swallow, his throat desert-dry, his eyes stinging from the unforgiving sun-
But then the rain comes.
"Then, this Hell Hound," he stutters, still caught in the vision, still rattled, but his eyes are already turning back towards the world, towards you. "It will show up at his birthday party?"
And you allow yourself to relax, your posture slacking, your head rolling forward. You breathe deeply again.
You are the serpent of Eden and you cannot change your ways, wouldn't want to even if you could, but with your angel, with this strange, crazy creature that gave away his flaming sword, that tries so hard to be good and kind when all he has to be is obedient, that offered you shelter form the first rainstorm and from every storm since-
With your angel, you know you do not need to.