Bibles and Bullets

The world is ending and the skin is not his vessel. Buffy/Michael. Wishlist 2011.

I'm only one season into Supernatural and it's gorgeous. Google helped me with background any obvious flaws should be attributed to lack of knowledge about the later seasons. It's a conversation between a fallen angel- the slayer and an archangel. Title is from Josh Ritter's Thin Blue Flame. Read and enjoy and please comment.

Buffy sighs and ignores the persistent itch between her shoulders as she listens to Willow and Giles hammer out details of the deal with the French coven for Slaying rights on their turf. There are a hundred other small tasks that she needs to get done among them check up on the situation in America. It's Apocalypse Season and if she didn't see the irony in having to come up with a term for multiple apocalypses before she died she certainly does now, fallen as she is.

She steps out of the meeting feeling discontented. The Slayer is coiling under her skin. She wants to hunt.

Buffy lights a cigarette and curses Spike for getting her into the habit of lighting up when she's stressed. Not that it's likely to kill her. Nothing was very likely to do that these days. Senior Slayer, the Alpha, she's untouchable these days and she can't even bring herself to regret it. Her life. She's good at this, killing.

She's been watched for the past five minutes and her fingers shift towards the pocket dimension Willow set up after the Scythe was stolen in Tokyo.

"The world is ending."

"Michael. The world is always ending." She's exasperated. "Whose skin are you wearing these days?"

"The world is ending."

"You said that already."

"The final battle and Our Father is nowhere to be found."

"God's been gone for years."

He slumps slightly the skin he's wearing taut on him. It looks natural, more normal then she's ever seen him manifest. He's figured out the little things that put humans off, shifting his weight every so often, moving instead if staying dead still.

The itch between her shoulder blades intensifies. Michael studies her, eyes the blue of the sky, blue of heaven, a dead give away to those who know what they're looking for.

"I had thought he would return." He confesses.

Buffy laughs around the cig, low and bitter. "Shall I tell you a secret? The Final Battle, if the outcome was predetermined it wouldn't need to be fought. If Heaven was guaranteed the win the battle would not be necessary. But it's not, predestined that is. Hell could win. So could Heaven. Humans figured this out long ago. Hell figured this out long ago. It's only the Angels who haven't figure it out."

"I do not understand."

"No." She said flatly. "You wouldn't."

"The world is ending."

"You're repeating yourself Michael."

"Where do you stand?"

The question throws her. Buffy has always fought for them, the Angels, Heaven, because she remembers peace.

She Fell from Grace. Do you understand?

"Bastard." It comes out a hiss.

Michael shrugs. His skin- a handsome guy, dark hair, charming smile, probably dark eyes before he burned, moves with him and Buffy studies him seeing for the first time the unease in his body.

"I would not blame you." He says eventually. If he had been human he would have been squirming under her glare. He wasn't though so he had simply discarded the human patterns he adopted, going predator still, undead still.

"Is that an apology Archangel?" Her tone is caustic.

"No. I must believe that there is a plan. That you fit within that plan."

She shrugs as though she expected nothing else. Another drag on the cig and she tilts her head back, blows smoke.

"The world is ending." She says finally.

"Yes."

"You let him fall right?"

"I do not understand."

"Lucifer Morningstar. Your Brother. You let him fall."

A pause.

"Yes."

She smiles. "Will Dean let Sam fall?"

Another pause.

"You are better informed then I thought you would be."

She shrugs the first motion she's made since exhaling. (She forgets sometimes that she needs to breathe.) "It's apocalypse season."

It is not an explanation.

"I doubt it."

"Then the world will not end."

"Are you certain of this." His intonation is flat.

"Nothing is certain anymore. But it hasn't ended the last fifty times. Why now?" She smiles careless looking like a girl of twenty for all that she's nearing thirty. Willow brought her back all wrong and she hasn't aged a day in ten years. The cigarette butt is neatly flicked to the ground.

"You never answered my question."

"He is not my vessel."

"Don't be evasive."

"The world is ending."

"So you've said."

"He is not my vessel."

Understanding flashes, illuminating her features. The world is ending and the skin is not his vessel. They are going to fight, the Devil and Michael. Avatars of the battle, brothers. Which ever falls first will lose and the outcome changes the fate of the world.

"He has his true vessel, doesn't he?"

The silence following only confirms what she already knows.

"I suppose that explains the God questions. Do you doubt Michael? I would. An absent God and the world is ending."

Silence.

"There is a plan."

"Perhaps. God is dead said Nietzsche and have any of us heard other wise?"

"He will come."

"Or he won't. This battle has been fought before. Not on such a large scale but it is fought everyday. Maybe He knows He will lose. Maybe He knows He will win. Maybe this doesn't matter at all."

"Perhaps." Said the Angel.

The Slayer sighs and leans into the wall. "Should I wish you luck?"

"No. But you could assure me of your assistance."

"Cross my heart. I have no desire to see the world end."

A beat.

"Do you truly believe He is gone?'

"Why do you ask?"

"You were human. You have the ability to question. Free will, that Our Father gave you. You would know would you not?"

"Yes. I would know."

"And?"

"Do you really wish to know?"

"Yes."

Buffy turns her face from his, eyes bleak.

"He isn't dead. I don't know anything more."

A rustle of feathers and he's gone.

"Luck." She mutters.

Hope. Buffy gave him hope because tomorrow the world ends.

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