"Exclusion Criteria"

by Acey

Notes/Warnings: Preseries with mild canon liberties, spoilers probably up until volume 15, extreme cruelty, mentions of rape and sex. Raphael/Jibril.

summer-

In the back of his mind was the memory of rows of incubators, of standing beside his nurse and watching the infants doze. He couldn't guess his age then, it was some time before he even had a gender, and he wondered if part of the memory itself was half-inflicted on him by his nurse, proud of her star charge.

(you were so intent, studying them, and every time one of the newborn's eyes opened you would smile)

(and we knew for a surety then that the name God had given you was right and perfect, raphael, meaning God-please-heal)

But part of it he knew was real by virtue of repetition. The days came when a blue-haired angel around Raphael's size would toddle there and lean over the incubator nearest the floor, chubby fingers smearing the glass. Raphael grasped that hand.

"Don't do that. Don't touch it."

"Why?"

"The nurses'll get mad. I tried it before."

They were nowhere in sight. The other angel pointed that out with a frown, trying to tug a hand out of Raphael's grip, but Raphael persisted.

"It doesn't matter. Don't touch it. They're—they're asleep," Raphael decided. As if to spite the claim, one of the infants turned its head, staring at both of them. "You'll bother them."

"I will not. See? That one likes me."

The gray eyes of the infant suddenly focused themselves on Raphael, and only Raphael. It bothered Raphael enough to step back. The other angel giggled.

"He likes you too."

"It's not a he yet. Don't be stupid."

"I think it's a he." Pouting now, the angel sat down in front of the incubator. After a nervous glance around the area, Raphael followed suit. "Who're you?"

"Raphael. Who're you?"

"Jibril."

(meaning strength-of-God)

Raphael mentally repeated the word. Jibril, Jibril. It was a peaceful, pleasing sound. Soft, not like Raphael's own name, with its jarring, harsh syllables that even the nurse shortened to Raph, when no one was around to correct her.

"Who's your nurse?" Everyone had one.

"Ambriel."

"Mine's Cassiel. The one with the moles on her face."

xxx

From then on they played together, when the nurses were out of sight. Jibril coaxed Raphael into pressing palms against the incubators, smearing handprints on the glass. Raphael went further, talking Jibril, eventually, into sneaking outside and trying to fly with wings too bulky for a child to handle, astral powers too underdeveloped to be of much use. Jibril flew a few feet before crashing into a hedge, a small clump of down floating toward the ground in the wake of the mishap.

Raphael laughed, or started to, before lugging Jibril out of the hedge and discovering Jibril's pretty, delicate face was streaked with tears.

"It didn't hurt that much, did it? Baby."

Jibril lunged at Raphael, whose wings were still out, fluttering subconsciously. Jibril's fingers grabbed for Raphael's shirt, first, then found the wings, suddenly tearing out handfuls of feathers. Pain shot through Raphael's body like a hundred needles stabbing at once, collapsing to the ground, screaming

(stop it)

(jibril)

crying for Cassiel. Her arms were around Raphael in what felt like seconds. Ambriel was behind her. No, she was grabbing Jibril now, pulling Jibril away. Raphael's eyes closed.

xxx

"You hurt me first," Jibril insisted, still sobbing a little, nothing like the strangled cries Raphael was still choking back five minutes after the nurses had separated them. There were scratches on Jibril's face from the briars, Raphael realized, blood already dried.

"You hurt me fir—"

Raphael couldn't take any satisfaction in the crack of a slap, Ambriel's hand connecting with Jibril's cheek, twice. Fresh tears trailed down Jibril's face as Ambriel picked the child up and out of the hospital room. Cassiel cast an apologetic look in Raphael's direction before following the others. Raphael could hear her excuses on Jibril's behalf from outside the door, punctuated by the staccato of her heels against the tile floor. Could hear Jibril, still wailing, and Ambriel ignoring all of Cassiel's remarks, insisting—

"The child is old enough to know better. Jibril delighted in revenge." Even with the door closed, Raphael could tell that Ambriel practically spat out the words, like a curse.

"Jibril had no idea of the consequences."

"Which is why I brought the child here. To see. To make restitution. Apologize for hurting Raphael so badly."

"Raphael will heal soon."

"It's the principle, Cassiel. It's cruelty. I won't stand for it in any charge of mine, especially not one destined—"

"Hush."

"I'll bring Jibril back tomorrow," Ambriel snapped.

xxx

Jibril came alone the next day. Raphael was half-certain Ambriel was in the hallway, waiting but not entering.

"I b-brought you something."

Jibril looked sorrier than Raphael had ever seen anyone look, gnawing on one chubby finger, holding out a package in the other hand. An offering.

Raphael shifted in bed, fumbled with the flimsy red wrapping paper, the white ribbon. It was a dolphin made of glass, tinted blue. The exact same shade as Jibril's hair.

"Hold it from the bottom."

"Does it do anything?"

"You'll see, okay?" Jibril was staring at the IV instead of Raphael's face. "Touch it right on the fins."

Raphael did. The dolphin felt warm, suddenly, warm enough to almost drop it in surprise—but then a dozen tiny orange fish flew up inside it, all at once, rippling the blue, only to disappear a second later. Raphael stared, fascinated.

"You see? It's magic. Ambriel helped me. You touch the fins and the fish swim up to the top."

"It's okay now, right? You're not mad at me?" Frowning in worried concentration, Jibril leaned in for the first time since coming into Raphael's room, scrutinizing Raphael's expression. Raphael was too busy turning the figure over to notice, trying to find where the fish had gone.

"Uh-uh. They don't hurt anymore."

xxx

Children became students. Friendship became courtesy. An angel's life was supposed to be sanitized, disinfected after the first few monthly rounds of pills, and the school barracks were separated by sex as soon as the medications took hold. After the age of ten they rarely saw each other, were counseled against it. It was wholly improper. Raphael accepted that, because he knew it to be true, knew the sickly-sweet feeling he'd begun to get the few times he did see her was ungodly. It had come with the hormone pills, like everything else. Like getting used to pronouns there hadn't been a need for, and having a growth spurt drastic enough to be unnerving. Getting used to pants, of all things, instead of the shapeless robes.

Knowing that it was only chance that had made him male in the first place, just as it was with her.

One thing he could take a cold comfort in—he wasn't the only one stealing longing looks at the girls as they passed, wanting suddenly

(to tug at ribbons, press his mouth against hers, touch those tiny curves)

to commit a sin against God. Some were looking at each other instead—

(his roommate pressed against the wall of their dormitory, another boy's lips on his neck, and raphael stood and watched until they saw him)

(begged him not to tell and he hadn't, he hadn't)

and he'd been told his whole life that was just as abominable.

Raphael swallowed up his own feelings best he could, by prayers, by concentrating on his studies. All around him were students doing the same, and excelling at it. In fact, a few seemed utterly untouched by the onset of lust. That Raphael wasn't among them, he decided, was his own failing. He would strive to do better. He would avoid the sight of women—not just Jibril, all women—as best he could, until the day came that he could look at them and be clean.

It got easier. It got better.

Raphael paced through the same hallway of incubators with that old sense of wonder still intact. He received a congratulatory letter from Jibril on his high marks and upcoming graduation. He returned the favor not long after, with a note asking for a visit.

xxx

Womanhood suited Jibril. Raphael almost envied it, the ease in which she'd seemed to accept the role, the stateliness, the grace that made it hard for him to believe that this was his old secret playmate, as grown as she was.

"Remember this?" He dug in his briefcase until he found it, wrapped carefully in tissue. He peeled the layers away, revealing the blue dolphin. "It's usually on my desk as a paperweight, but..."

"You kept it."

"It reminded me of you."

"You shouldn't have kept it all these years. It's—" Jibril searched for the word, only for a moment, her lips pursed, "childish, Raphael."

"You're blushing," Raphael said offhand. He toyed with the figure, brushing his finger against the fins. The fish inside swum up, as always. "I thought it was just a toy until I got to school, with a little astral power trapped inside, but I saw your old nurse awhile ago. She told me it was connected to you."

"Yes. It works as long as I'm alive."

"That's what she told me. If there really is a war," and Raphael laughed, or tried to, "I'll bring it with me on the battlefield, and I'll know how you're doing before anyone else does."

"If there's a war I won't be on the battlefield. You know that."

"Oh, but you ought to. You'll always have my confidence." He leaned back in his chair. "Congratulations on your promotion."

"I may say the same for you soon."

"It's just talk, Jibril," but his face broke into a tiny smile that Jibril didn't return.

"Why do you want to be Chief of the Virtues?"

Raphael blinked.

"Well, why did you want to be Chief of the Cherubim? Ambition. Reassurance. Things… politics always change. A position like that offers some stability."

"That's a very selfish reason."

"Was yours so much more noble?" There was nothing but mild amusement in his face but his words were annoyed. He had come to congratulate her, after all.

"I worked for my position because I wanted to make things better for others."

The words seemed sanctimonious somehow, scribbled and memorized. He gave her a bland look.

"You've become a crusader since we were playmates."

"I want to do some good, Raphael. I think of the I-children, the Grigori—do you ever think about them?"

"I think of the I-children. The medical school's arguing to sterilize them." Raphael rolled his eyes. "Which I think would solve the I-children problem but increase the amount of fornica—"

"The problem isn't that they're born, it's the way we treat them!"

Heresy. Raphael could barely believe it. Offering up a wry laugh or two seemed the only way he could stomach the nonsense.

(the problem is that they're born)

(red-eyed like rabbits, wingless like humans—deformed aberrations, sins against God and all He stands for)

(and jibril knows it, she just wants to be contrary)

He didn't say anything for a moment, just shaking his head.

"You're a doctor. You— can't pretend you haven't thought— heaven's wrong, Raphael. A God that loved us would have made us into more than what we are. More than this."

"God does love us—"

"Then what did He give us? Look at yourself. Look at me." Jibril grabbed his wrist, nails pressing lightly into his skin. "I'll show you, if you won't listen."

He tried to ask how, tried to pull out of her grasp, aware far too late of what she was about to do. The grip held. A dozen images flash unbidden, unwanted in his head, every picture so frightfully clear he could almost step into it. Synchronization. Her memories, her thoughts, selected one by one for his perusal, and fired straight at his brain whether he wanted them or not.

(years of brown and yellow pills in pink blister packets)

(fright when the blood came and then the question to ambriel—if we aren't allowed to breed then why have the blood, why the semen)

(why the pills, why weren't we built to mature fully on our own)

(why mature at all, why want)

"Stop it, Jibril."

She stopped, blue eyes flashing. "You're afraid to see more, aren't you? You're afraid it'll make you question. You're playing into everyone's hands—"

"Who have you been talking to, Jibril?"

"No one." Jibril's mouth was set in a thin line. "I can tell already that you don't even want to understand."

The comment cut more than Raphael was willing to admit.

"For God's sake don't you dare say any of those things to anyone else."

fall-

Raphael went to the worshipper's hall sometimes after the congregation left, brushing his fingers against the piano and the harp, turning the pages of the hymnals. He wasn't allowed to attend the meetings anymore, but the doors weren't locked.

He played a little, sang the hymns of childhood with a new desperation, of saints and angels and God in His mercy. His voice broke after the first few measures, his nails too long for the piano keys without nicking the enamel.

No one had supported him. No one at all.

It was to be expected. No, no, it was right that they hadn't.

(because they never knew)

(because they never knew but the sin was still exposed for all the heavens to sneer at)

There had been no promotion ceremony, no celebration. They were going to revoke his title. Try him in court for the sin he'd fought against since adolescence, and bring out the only sentence worthy of a fornicator. If the war started it might be postponed.

Raphael thought of the way it had felt when Jibril had ripped his feathers. Two handfuls, that was all it had been, and it was still the most pain he had ever felt in his life. He thought of the executioners forcing his wings to unfurl

(and are they still white, raphael, are they still white)

and spreading them, clipping them to hooks. Plucking the feathers one by one, at first. The primaries. The secondaries.

(belial's legs wrapped around him, her fingers in his mouth, whispering hush, they'll hear)

(whispering don't cry, with laughter in the sound, one has shown you what you always wanted)

The wings in his mind ripped apart until there was only blood and down and remnants of bone remaining on his back.

He couldn't bear to think of the rest.

xxx

The first battle of Lucifer's rebellion began before a single person walked through the double doors of Raphael's office. She glanced at him nervously, wearing a too-tight blouse, and he shouldn't have wanted her for it.

He didn't want her for it. Insisted that feeling had died, that desire had died that night. He had put it away, cast it aside like the sin it was.

But then she smiled at him, tugged his tie. Brushed the end of it against her chin, and that one tiny gesture was more contact than he'd had in years.

"Doctor," she said, and he wrapped his arms around her, pressed his face into her neck. Remembered what Belial had done, where she'd touched him, how she'd touched him. He coaxed her, clumsily, to sit down, and she looked at him with wide blue eyes.

He promised her everything, there on that exam table, made her all the vows loneliness and bitterness could offer. Desperate for one kind word, one comforting hand running down his face. He hated her, how she accepted everything, how she let him, let him, let him—and that gleam in those eyes let him know he'd been taken even as she was lying on her back.

A repeat performance for a repeat offender.

xxx

The war ended. Raphael suffered third-degree burns on his face during the immediate aftermath of Michael's fire. Damn fool thing to do, the healer told him, his voice going in and out like a bad radio connection as he rubbed salve across what was left of Raphael's cheekbones. Michael-sama could smell your flesh burning. Like a pig on a roast. He puked his guts out—and Raphael could picture how the healer sneered, touching his hands to the remnants of his forehead now, no pain—Raphael-sama. Can you speak?

Raphael coughed, fingering his throat with raw red hands. The skin crackled.

"Yes."

Aren't gonna be charming too many nurses into your bed with you sounding like that. Never mind looking like that. Your little lieutenant thinks it'll be another two months.

"Open up the tent."

It's open already, Raphael-sama. Or can't you see?

"I can see they've relaxed the requirements for healers since I was in school," Raphael snapped. "Open it wider."

Of course, Raphael-sama.

He heard the sound of canvas being pulled back. Concentrated the remnants of his energy on channeling the wind it brought, bringing it toward his blistered hands.

(God-please-heal)

Toward his eyes.

He saw the sunlight from the open tent first. Then he could make out bloated shadows, smeared and dripping like oil paints. The images sharpened as the minutes passed.

I'll tell you one thing, Raphael-sama, I don't think they'll be putting you on trial anytime too soon. Not after this.

"No."

Who knows, you might even be invited to a party or two. You think?

"No." Out of the corner of his eye he spotted the little lieutenant herself, Barbiel, and he tried to spare her a wink with a half-melted face while the healer prattled on. The corners of her mouth twitched up.

No, no parties. That last act on the battlefield had signed over his fate entirely, soldered his position. Settled everything more than all the years of silence, of war, all the tactics and charges and battles ever could have. He had baptized himself in that fire.

He had chosen disgrace over damnation.

Don't bother trying to heal yourself any more. Not unless you're that desperate to leave us with a good-looking corpse. Never seen Michael-sama this upset this whole damn war, not since his old nursemaid—what was her name?

"Bal."

Not since she defected. Anyway, Barbiel says we'll have to put you under soon, we might have to do some skin transplants. Hate to do something that old-fashioned but—hey, tell me one more thing before we do, Raphael-sama.

"Anything," Raphael muttered.

Was it for him or for you?

"For heaven," he lied, and he wanted to laugh. "For God and heaven, what else?"

xxx

It was centuries before he saw her again. Not Belial, who crept into his mind night after night, replaying the same tired scene. Not Barbiel, who stayed by his side perpetually, prescribed him reading glasses when she found out his eyes had never quite healed properly after the war. Slept with him on a near-weekly basis despite seeing him in the arms of other girls every day she stepped into the office. He wanted to mock her for it, wanted to wipe that calm smile off her face. But Barbiel was capable, and quiet about his indiscretions. Too capable to waste her life by his side. He would never get a better lieutenant.

It was Jibril he came to see. Jibril he wanted to see.

"There have been rumors, Jibril," and his tone was as serious as he could manage, these days. It was growing difficult to care, each century dulling his feelings more and more, like a slow-acting anesthetic. One day he was sure he'd find nothing left to fret about, and nothing left of himself to hurt. Work had become a series of bland motions and pretty words. Orgasms that were a mockery of the term. He hadn't healed a man since before the first war.

"I thought they were still all about you."

He snorted. The barb went in, slid deep through skin that hadn't smarted from attacks in years.

"You hear things when people think you're not worth their time." Raphael rolled his eyes. "Things about you. I wanted to warn you."

"What things?"

"For one, our dear prime minister wants you out of his way. You'd be surprised what passes for small talk in my hospital, one of the stakers—"

Jibril bristled, visibly.

"You slept with a staker. You slept with a girl that didn't have the mental capacity to—to—"

He'd slept with her mistress. He didn't correct her.

"She said Sevi was going to shut you down any way he could."

"I can handle myself, Raphael. Obviously, considering your appetite, you can't do the same."

"I'm not the one he's after," Raphael insisted. "There's more than that. I had a cherub in my office who told me—"

"You're worse than a swine. I never imagined I'd see the day. I never knew anyone who could degrade themselves so fully and then have the gall to laugh about it. Not in Heaven. I didn't want to believe it when I heard what you'd done. What had happened. I thought if you were innocent, you'd deny it."

(what you'd done)

"What would you know about it, really?"

"You're despicable." Jibril stood. "I shouldn't have let you come."

"Then why did you?"

"Because part of me still wanted the Chief of the Virtues to be more than the sum of his scandals. I shouldn't have been so foolish. When I first heard what you'd done with Belial I…"

"Go on, Jibril." Raphael reached over, grabbing her wrist, meeting her gaze. She didn't move.

"I couldn't believe it. I thought there was a mistake. I learned better. You were never anything but a—"

"Shut up," Raphael finally said, nails digging into her palm. "Shut up, shut up," until it became a plea instead of a demand, not wanting to hear the words though they were the same as he'd heard since that day, reverberating in his head. Not wanting her to give them voice, because that made it final, forever. "You don't know anything. You don't know anything!"

Her eyes narrowed.

"Let go of me."

"No."

"Raphael, stop being such a child."

"You're the child." Hard enough to bruise now. Her wrist, paler than his, thin. Fragile. He could break it. Snap the bones and heal them again. "You think I wanted her. You think I lusted after Belial like an animal. But I didn't. She raped me, Jibril."

He hadn't said it out loud before. He never would again. Would never lay the word bare like the crawling, misshapen thing it was, festered and sick and tainted, proving him to be something so much more shameful than a lech and lower even than the devils beneath Assiah. There were no words in the language of angels for a man who couldn't defend his virtue against a woman. No words for what that had made him, what that had done to him.

Belial had taken his body that night and his mind every night after.

He looked Jibril in the eye and saw something smoldering. Those eyes, bluer than his, as pitiless as so many oceans, as constant. He never saw the hurt lying just beneath the surface. He dropped his grip.

"What, not a tear? You'd cry for your Grigori. It's so easy to cry for them, isn't it? You're not required to deal with them. They're born to die for us and that makes you noble, to weep for their sake. It makes you tender and gentle—doesn't it?

"But to shed a tear for one of your own—that's the difficult part. No, that's the impossible part. Because some people aren't worth your tears. Some people don't deserve your pity. Play it off any way you want, Jibril, the fact of the matter is that the sinners and the sluts don't belong in your Heaven any more than they belong in Sevortharte's."

He spat out the words, waiting on contradictions that never came. Waited for this to turn into another playmate spat, grown crueler with the passage of time, and hated her for not letting it become one.

"Maybe I wanted you. Wouldn't that be a laugh, Jibril? That's what you'd expect out of me, isn't it? Lusting after the woman God decreed to be the closest I have to a blood sister. You'd enjoy thinking I couldn't control myself. You're no different from anyone else. For all your moralizing you still only see exactly what it suits you to see."

Fingers trailed in her hair, jerking and tugging the strands, past the coy yellow ribbons. Pulling them off, crumpling them in his hand while he suddenly shoved his lips against hers.

She tasted of rain, of gardens. Beautiful things, undisturbed by God or man or angels. Sacred as a relic.

(was it the way i—)

He shuddered against her, eyes sliding shut. She didn't struggle against the kiss until his tongue darted into her mouth in one last act of cruelty. Then she bit, hard enough that Raphael was forced to draw back and see her.

Jibril's eyes were watering up. Hair disheveled, running past her waist.

(please)

(belial, please)

(don't)

"Jibril, I—"

"Get out of here, Raphael."

winter-

Cherubim came to him, called him in-between wasteful meetings and appointments and told him the news he'd already heard. They begged for his help, some of them, the women especially, glassy-eyed as they touched his arm, his shoulder, and he pulled away as though it had been a slap.

(sevotharte-sama says she's gone insane)

(she's in her garden, jibril-sama hasn't moved, no one's allowed to get near her)

(but raphael-sama, you must, you can help her)

(please, you can save her)

(even if she's dead, you can—)

"She's not dead." His hand curled over the dolphin paperweight on his desk, clenched it, and the cherub in front of him was too afraid to ask why.

It was six years before he swallowed his spite long enough to visit, in that water garden that knew no season but spring. Six years, and as a child named Sara splashed through puddles on the way to primary school, Raphael's shoes sank slightly in the damp earth surrounding her pedestal.

(you hurt me first)

Jibril was wearing ribbons and strands of pearls in her hair, stiff and stately on her throne. Raphael checked for a pulse he already knew wasn't there, fingered the thick material of her dress. That was all.

If he saw the needles in the back of her neck he never said a word.

finis