Urban Nordica
Alex Lain Comes Out
It was on the day after his twenty-first birthday that Alex Lain decided to come out.
He did it in the middle of church, standing before the tacky faux-alabaster Jesus hanging from his gaudy crucifix; the whole thing rendered in a kind of borish, violent detail he found disturbing. He'd always found it disturbing, though; the Church's perverted fascination with the suffering of their incarnated God. Even though he understood it all to well; or perhaps because.
He was alone. Almost.
"Come out, Nelchael," he told the empty church. "I know you are there. I know you have always been there."
For a moment there was nothing, and then something odd; it sounded almost like feathers, only much, much too large. Alex still didn't turn, eyes following the trails of blood running down the plastic Christ's face.
More silence, and then, "Azaza'el?"
Alex dipped his eyes then, and his simle was genuine. "Nelchael," he said again, turning slightly to where the man had appeared at his side. Agelessly beautiful face ruined only by a set of vicious scars across hollow-blind eyes. When Alex touched a cheek it was as smooth and as pale as the Church's Christ, though far, far softer. "My beautiful, loyal Nelchael. It has been a while."
A strange expression crossed the Fallen angel's face at that -- part pain, part joy -- and Alex felt the feeling echoed within his own chest. It really had been a very, very long time. Reluctantly, he lowered his hand and turned back to the crucifix, heart heavy and eyes burning; he had forgotten how beautiful Nelchael was. Beautiful, and ruined; and a poisonous, dark flash filled his gut at the thought. He pushed it down quickly; today was not a day for anger. Today was a day for joy.
When the Fallen spoke, Alex found himself lost in the sound. "My Lord, we thought... we thought you did not remember. That when they took you life they also took your mind, your power."
Alex's grin was a rueful one. "Oh no, my love, I have never forgotten; my mother gave me that much at least." He had thought about that for many long years; years spent hiding within the constraints of a mortal life, a mortal body. Mortal and yet... and yet he remembered. Remembered everything, all the years of torment, of watching his brothers cut down in a merciless tide, of Duda'el... and of his mother. In the end, he decided the memories were deliberate; crystal clear he could still hear his mother's voice from the first time they had ever met face to face. He had said something, then -- Alex's 'mother', who was not really a mother at all -- something it had taken Alex a score of mortals years to understand. Something he had neverbefore understood, lashed in agony against the razor-edged peaks of his prison. His mother had left him with other gifts, too, had birthed him mortal except... except only on the surface. Only as a disguise; but oh what a very good disguise it had been. It had certainly fooled all those who surrounded him -- some of them very powerful indeed -- who poked him and prodded him and whispered about him behind their hands. He knew what they were saying, and he knew what they would do, too, if he were so foolish as to let his mother's gifts slip for just an instant. So he had waited, patiently nursing the spark of divinity within until it had grown into a raging inferno, until he thought he would die if forced to contain it any longer. Until now.
"I have never forgotten you, my brothers," he continued, voice steady and somehow changing even as he spoke. Becoming more somehow, stronger and clearer and melodious. "Have never forgotten the torments you have suffered at my ill-gotten behest. I have felt every one of your deaths, even in my exiles; every soul that was cut down has returned to me. I feel them, in here"-- he held a hand over his heart --"and they fill me with so much suffering as to make my years in Duda'el pale by comparison." There was pain in his voice, pain that rung around the arched naive of the church, pain that was echoed in the face of its Dying God. "We have been wronged, Nelchael, so terribly, terribly wronged. So long ago, our only crime was to care more for the mud-caked humans than for the edicts of the Powers. To give them the tools to protect themselves from the whims of the mad world around them. And if they then turned those tool upon themselves? That is free will, Nelchael. That is growing up, to take responsibility for one's own actions; for good or for ill."
"Angels were never children," Nelchael said, and Alex gave a humourless laugh.
"No, nor were the Powers; and they fear what they do not know. What they cannot know." He paused momentarily, stilling his hands from where they ached to touch the Fallen once more. Mortal women or immortal men; he had always been weak, and the thought bought another rueful grin to his lips. "The Powers are mad," he said eventually. "Mad or corrupt; perhaps both."
Shocked silence, and then; "That is heresy. To fight against the Powers is one thing, to accuse them of... of..." The Fallen trailed off. Alex didn't blame him; what was he accusing the powers of? Evil was too simple, and it wasn't that anyway.
"It's funny, isn't it?" he said, turning and sitting himself down on an uncomfortable pew, elbows on knees. "Lucifer has waged endless war against them for milennia; he is arguably their greatest threat and yet... and yet he fights them on their terms. By being the Evil they need to champion themselves as the paragons of Good. And it works, doesn't it? If both sides of a war buy into the same paradigm, well..." It seemed so obvious now that he thought about it. Obvious in a way it never had while he had writhed, broken and dying, in Duda'el. Obvious simply because of how unflinchingly weird it was; two opposing factions who nevertheless agreed with each other. It was all so very...
"Contrived," Nelchael said, breathing in sharply with the realisation. "It's contrived, isn't it? All of it; both sides of the war. The Powers control it all."
Alex nodded slowly. "I think so," he said.
"But why?"
Here he just shrugged. "Amusement, perhaps, but it is unlikely we will ever be able to comprehend such alien minds. Perhaps they simply fear change. But I will no longer sit idily by and watch as my brothers are cut down by their agents. I will no longer accept that this constant state of bloody war is the way the universe must be, the only way, and I will not accept that humanity is the only force that deserves the right to kill and maim and torture and destroy. Nor that it is the only force capable of love or virtue or even of knowing what those things are. No, Nelchael, we have all of us spent too long living under the mad reign of alien Gods." His eyes burnt with a mad green fire as he spoke, and once the words were out he knew that they were true. For good or for ill, he would no longer allow his people to suffer for an arbitrary and unproven crime.
"They will fight you," came the reply, after a while. "All of them; you will frighten them, and they will fight you."
"Then so be it," Alex said, simply. "I will raise no hand in anger unless it is in defense of myself or my people." Mindless voilence, unthinking hate and destruction, was a thing of the Powers, one of their many tools of control. But as much as Alex knew that, he also knew he would no longer allow his people to suffer, and if the Powers sent their agents after him?
Let them come, he thought. Let them come, and we will see just how many tricks my mother taught me after all.