Taboo

There is a darkness inside of him that has blossomed from centuries of jealousy and isolation, the lust and hatred of his own flesh and blood. He wants her and he wants her dead, and when he's feeling particularly detached from the heavens he considers necrophilia. He covets his own glistening hair, his own creamy skin, the pale lips that he paints in lavender. She is his mirror image and the most beautiful thing tangible to him. The purity he wrapped around him like a cloak vanished millennia ago, the moment he learned of the hatred she harbored for him, the twin she should have loved but didn't. He doesn't know if he's capable of love anymore. He's reminded of the fact so often by Katan.

The cherub enters the room and pretends that the Inorganic Angel draped lifelessly over a glass chair is still the luminous prodigy that risked his rank in heaven to give a name to a child who had no face. He chooses to ignore the fact that there is blood dripping from Rosiel's lavender nails and the glass legs of his chair, and that the carpet beneath is soaking up every drop of crimson like a parched field thirsty for water. So many mortals have died at his hands, but Katan opts to see otherwise, sees only the beautiful angel that gave him corporeal form and a heart that beats only for the ruler of ancient Atziluth.

"Katan...."

Blindly he comes to the voice that echoes through the room like the vibrating of crystal, so reminiscent of heaven but tainted of hell. Katan can sympathize. He bends low in front of the chair where Rosiel sits – motionless still – shrouded in sheer white taffeta that doesn't match his temperament. His wings lie limply on the floor, occasionally giving a shudder, sending white feathers into the air. It smells of perfume or incense, Katan can't tell, but he knows it must be Rosiel. He reaches out to grab a pale hand and kisses it, tasting copper. "Lord Rosiel."

He stirs only to withdraw his hand from his subordinate's grasp and cup his cheek with it, and to brush a bare leg against Katan's side, which makes him visibly shudder. Rosiel smiles, lavender lips parted over gleaming teeth that might as well be fangs for the viciousness in the expression. "So beautiful," he purrs as he lifts up Katan's face so their eyes meet; Katan immediately looks away. "She's close, can't you feel her presence?" Alexiel... of course... he is talking about Alexiel. "Setsuna Mudo... how long before you surrender your will to hers?" How often does he do this, stare into Katan's face with the eyes of a lover, and speak to him only of his twin sister's beauty? He knows it hurts, and that's why he does it.

"Rosiel... sir... it's the girl, Sara Mudo...."

"I know," Rosiel replies in that beautiful voice of his, but the tone is neither reprimanding nor sharp. Only in the centuries long ago when the Inorganic Angel truly cared for the young cherub could he make the mistake of such ignorance without punishment. Rosiel's violent nature so often leaves Katan bleeding. But clearly he's been softened by the thought of his sister, and his thirst for blood appeased only hours ago. Katan can still taste it on his lips. His master's brilliant yellow eyes are gleaming with lust, and the hand on Katan's cheek tightens its grip. He leans down and pulls the cherub up simultaneously, meeting his eager mouth and murmuring "Alexiel" into lips that do not belong to her. Katan wonders selfishly if things might be different had Rosiel given him a woman's body.

It is a mere matter of seconds before Rosiel has slipped off the ornate glass chair and joined Katan on the ground, his wings convulsing with forbidden pleasure. The sensation of taffeta against Katan's skin is overwhelming, and he clutches desperately to the gauzy fabric, knowing full well that it is not he whom Rosiel is fantasizing of. The thin fingers raking at his back do not belong to his lover, but to his Lord, to whom he is nothing but a servant, a tool to satisfy carnal lusts prohibited by their race. The trembling cherub wonders if Rosiel saved him from his fate as a grigor simply so that he might serve him in ways a non-corporeal angel couldn't.

"Beautiful," Rosiel breathes into Katan's open mouth, and he imagines that he is speaking to him, breaking the highest taboo of heaven. The creator and the disciple, merging together as a sole entity, burying oneself within the flesh of one's own creation. They lie together beneath layers of crumpled taffeta, and Katan cannot imagine a more exquisite taste than that of this fallen angel, the salt of sweat and the metallic quality of blood. He's covered in it. But Katan condones the sin for the memory of the sacrifices he himself made to resurrect the moaning angel. The friction between them is enough to stop his heart.

You are one of the very few pure angels... pure and gentle, you know no hatred or jealousy....

But he was wrong. Katan hates her more than he can stand, more than his body can take. A siren, a succubus, a whore... she had his love, his beauty, his allegiance, and she wasn't satisfied. Narcissism was his only flaw, and even so, his compassion, his grace, his ability to grant miracles... his virtues overrode his vanity. Jealousy floods Katan's veins until tears pour down his face, and Rosiel smiles because he assumes he's crying for another reason entirely. "Does it hurt, Alexiel?" The tears fall faster, but Rosiel catches them on his tongue and makes a soft noise of ecstasy. He loves the pain of his sister, this sinful sister who betrayed him. The taste of her suffering is such a decadent pleasure.

Rosiel comes abruptly at the thought of his naked and vulnerable sister writhing in agony, and Katan is quick to follow, warmth spilling onto his abdomen. The lunacy, the demonic pleasure in the Inorganic Angel's eyes is so pronounced; Katan closes his own to shield himself from the sight, to imagine instead that the man above him is looking down at him with the adoration he hasn't shown the cherub in eons. He opens his eyes only when Rosiel pulls out of him and sits up, wings trembling with satisfaction. He can feel their vibration through the taffeta that is tangled around his body.

When the devoted servant follows suit and proceeds to ask him if he requires anything else, Rosiel presses a finger against his swollen lips in a successful attempt to hush him. Then his thumb slides over his flushed cheek, still wet. "You are so beautiful, Katan." And he wonders with a desperate amount of hope if maybe he means it, if maybe he'd made love to him and not Alexiel, but then Rosiel stands up, the last sheets of white cloth falling from his pale but perfect body, and whispers, "She's so very close now."

He turns, dreamlike, away, and strides out of the nearly empty room, leaving Katan speechless on the floor, a glass chair and a heap of stained taffeta that he's still clutching between his fingers the only remnants of the angel he has admired and loved for an eternity.

Sometimes... I wanted so much to taint you.

But the sobbing cherub has been broken for centuries.