Of everyone in Heaven and Hell, she was the one I needed more than anything.
And I’d betrayed her.
I bit down the sob.
That night. That night she’d been with me.
I’d nearly said the word. Oh, I’d thrown it out before, as a joke, or as a simple affectionate little saying when we were together.
But that night I’d very nearly let slip that I loved her.
The word that would tie me to her and her to me even if she never said it back to me.
I sometimes almost thought I saw something in her eyes when she watched me.
And she’d… said that other word to me.
Mine.
In that warm, possessive, but above-all cherishing way.
How had we gone from that to… all this?
Easy.
My stupidity.
My selfishness.
My desire to be special, to have something special.
Had this all been a reaction to her words to me? Was I afraid of being… wanted? Needed?
Was this simple self-destruction?
Jezebel….
Was I… important to her?
Did she… think of me that way? The way I thought of her?
I slumped down further.
Oh fuck me, what a horrid mess I’d made of it all.
And now… now I’d ensnared Caitlyn into my mess as well.
Slept with her, been with her in that supremely unfair way, taking from her what could have been a shining memory and making it something… cheap and tacky and, above all, sordid.
I’d taken an innocent and wrecked her.
They’d send me back to Limbo. They’d never trust me with any responsibility ever again.
Might as well shuffle over that last, long leap into the beyond…
“Gwenhwyfar?”
I jumped, sniffed, scrubbed furiously at my eyes.
“Hi,” I announced, unable to keep the emotion out of my voice, too befouled to dare utter her name.
“Where are you?”
“I’m… here,” I whispered.
“Can I join you?”
Fatalism took me.
“Yes,” I answered, as hope deserted me.
A tang of brimstone on the air, swiftly swept away.
And there she stood, tall and exotic and beautiful in her painted-on red top and skin-tight black leggings and calf-high boots, staring down at me, concern furrowing her brow.
“Oh, Feathers,” she said, dropping to her knees in front of me. “Oh no. What is it? Tell me, honey…”
And the warmth and affection in her voice shattered me.
I fell forward as if I’d been kicked in the gut, and curled up, sobbing.
She got her arms under me; I clung to her.
“Jenny, Jenny, my darling, speak to me, come on,” she whispered. “What is it?”
I had no choice but to confess my sins.
I struggled to breathe.
“Jen,” she whispered. She leaned forward, as if to kiss me; I had to stop that… I didn’t deserve…
“I… I… I slept with her…” I gasped.
She froze, and my heart died inside me.
“With… who.”
Her words were slow, soft and emotionless, as if reading from a script.
“Her. Her. The girl. That girl…”
I felt her shiver, take a breath.
“The… human girl? Jen? What the fuck?”
“I’m sorry,” I wailed. “I’m sorry, I… I was weak, and I shouldn’t… it… ”
“You… you slept with her. Fuck… I just… fuck…”
The raw, unfiltered hurt in her voice was like a knife in my brain, twisting and turning, slicing and scrambling the few last unbroken bits of me.
She let me go and rocked back on her haunches.
I reached for her, she batted my beseeching hand away, and away again.
“Please,” I sobbed.
“No,” she said, ice cold, hard as flint. “No. I… I can’t believe it. You wouldn’t do that to me. You wouldn’t dare do that to me. Is this… is this some sick joke? Some stupid fucking… test?”
I stared up at her, heartbroken.
Wrecked.
Ruined.
All in ashes now.
“No,” I managed, in a tiny voice. “I did it.”
She closed her eyes, seemed to stagger and shrink in on herself.
“Oh… fuck you,” she whispered, at last, voice all strange with weird harmonics.
And she started to cry, and turned away from me.
“Wait!” I begged, desperate for any scrap, “Oh, please wait…”
“Not any more,” she snarled through her tears. “Never any more, you… you monstrous, loathsome, untoward, monumental bitch.”
She stared down at me, then clutched her arms to herself.
Heat blossomed off her, blue-white flames danced in her eyes.
“Never darken my existence again,” she said, in a soft, emotionless tone made all the more awful by the twin tracks of dried, encrusted salt that meandered down her haughty cheeks.
A ripple, and she vanished.
And I fell forward into the unsympathetic mud and retched bile until there was nothing left in me.
It was Lucius who came to find me at last; it was Lucius who carried me home, and it was Lucius who held me and guarded me as I fell down into inky unthinking blackness from which I desperately wished never to wake.
“Gwen?”
His voice was gentle.
I stared out at the distant hills beyond the plain of standing stones.
The Gates of Dusk arched behind me.
“What is it.”
The words were hard to form. It had been a while since I’d spoken. How long, I wasn’t sure. Centuries, maybe. Centuries of unbroken, black, self-hatred.
“It’s been a week, my friend.”
Only a week?
Impossible.
“You cannot wallow like this. The dead need you. We need you.”
Nobody needed me.
“Gwenhwyfar.”
His hands were warm and firm on my shoulders.
I moved my jaw, but no sound came out.
“She will come back,” he said, softly. “She’s… tempestuous. Her anger blazes, then flickers out.”
“Not… this time,” I managed, voice creaking from misuse. “She will never be back. It’s over. I’ve wrecked it. Wrecked everything. I’m done. Done, Lucius. I want…”
“What do you want, my dear friend?”
His voice was calm, but I could hear the fear he strove so hard to hide.
I somehow managed to turn to face him.
“I want you to go to Azrael for me. I want… I want an end. Omega. Ask him. Please.”
“No,” he whispered, appalled. “That cannot possibly be your choice after all this, after all you’ve survived. No. I cannot.”
“I can’t go back, and I can’t stay. What else is there.”
“Why can’t you go back?”
“To what?” I demanded bitterly. “Another life of pain, another cycle, another at most eighty years of loss and hurt and… and likely, violent death? Would you have me raped again, Lucius? Would you have me bleed my life’s blood out into the clay as more clay is heaped upon me, blocking my mouth, stifling me, muffling my screams for mercy? Would you ask that of me?”
“The world has changed, Gwenhwyfar.”
His voice was rough. I’d never told him all the details, and I guess he’d never looked on the little index card of the great Reliquary that recorded my sad, little life.
Lucius was honourable. And utterly wasted on me.
“Not that much,” I whispered in answer. “I proved that.”
“You made a mistake, Gwenhwy…”
“I ruined three lives!” I screamed, grappling at him. “What more do you need to understand that I am not worth your love! I’m not your daughter! She’s dead! And so am I! So let me go!”
He opened his mouth to answer, but seemed unable to find words.
I stared at him, horrified at myself… and somehow, somehow I was crying again.
“I’m sorry, oh, oh, I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to… to hurt you too…”
“You are not Adelia. I loved her with all my heart, but you are dear to me too,” he said, voice thick. “Please, Jenny. I have walked beside you for more than a century and a half. You are my family. Please! There is still something to be salvaged out of this…”
A strange, heavy solitude settled on me; I felt a great beyondness looming at my fingertips.
“No,” I said, softly. “No, I’m… finished with this. I can’t any more.”
He closed his eyes, found some reservoir of inner strength.
“You will need to tell Azrael yourself,” he said. “I will not carry this message to him. I refuse.”
“Then I will do it myself,” I answered, no less softly.
We stared out at the stones.
The gnawing teeth of Creation, came the sudden bitter thought. Chewing us up until there’s nothing left…
“Jenny?”
“Yes,” I answered, some time later.
“Will you promise me something?”
“My promises are worth nothing.”
“Not to me. I know you will keep a promise you make to me.”
I couldn’t meet his gaze. His trust was entirely misplaced in me.
Gwenhwyfar Carew. Archangel of Cock-ups, that was me. Fuck-up extraordinaire. Artiste of Catastrophe. Seducer. Oath-breaker.
Queen of Lies…
“I should have been a fiend,” I whispered.
“No. You are just who you were meant to be.”
I bit back the tears; I wasn’t going to cry any more.
Soon I’d be done with this poisonous afterlife. Soon I would be gone.
“What is the promise you want from me,” I breathed, at last.
“Do nothing for now. Wait one day. After all, what is one more day to us?”
“Pain,” I whispered.
“Then I ask you to please, please, give me one day of pain,” he said. He lifted my chin, stared down at me. “Do noting final. I beg you. Wait for me before you decide on this path.”
I blinked, swallowed