I died today.
And now I am Rook, Malakite of War.
All that I was, everything that I knew and that I had become, is gone.
The Rook that I was . . .was beautiful. He had something of perfect purity, as brilliant a white as blinding Michael, and all the more precious because he never knew that he had it. He had faith.
There is no certain goodness in Heaven.
There is no certain rightness in Heaven.
No, there are mistakes. There are lies and there is wrong.
I lied.
I lied to her.
I made a promise to her. Perhaps I should never have made it. Perhaps it was not my place to make it in the first place. But I had made a promise to her. And today, it was I who broke it. Broke it as surely as I broke her skin and her bones. And in that breaking, in that creating of a lie, I broke that faith that I had long cherished in innocence.
And now I am Rook, Malakite of War.
My mind hurts with the vision, a vision that haunts me now more forcefully than any atrocity I have ever seen. Others created all of those horrors. This one was wrought of my own hand, and it will be mine to treasure forever, to sit over and brood and live again and again in my mind. It is my first true taste of hell . . .and my place within its workings.
We are not so far apart as I had thought.
Poor Victoria. She had a chance to redeem . . .the possibility was within her. I had hoped to nurture it, and bring it to fruition. We required information from her. I wanted to acquire that information, and bring her to God at the same time. I needed time to think. I needed her to trust me, to see the truth in the words that I did not doubt, which had been inspired by own trust. My trust was broken, and so too was hers. She will never redeem now. There will be no future for her other than hell. And it is I who has sent her there. I have consigned her to that eternal torment, and that too is a thought I can treasure forever. I sent her there with my lies, and with my misplaced faith. What an innocent I have been.
How comic Jael and Irad and the others must find me, how jocular and quaint; Rook the stalwart, Rook the pedantic, Rook the good soldier, unswerving in his service to God. In this service to Heaven, and all its misguided minions. They knew better. They knew how Heaven worked, how its servants served the words of Lie, and Wrong and Faithless better than many. Now I can be like them, bitter and haunted by the flawed purpose we pursue.
Jael. I hope she does not leave Trauma soon, or that if she does, she will be reassigned and I will never need see her. Or that I will be disbanded, 'honorably' lost in a combat against the horde, my first cousins. I have tried to mold myself to her example, blend my purposes to accommodate all my intentions, and how I have failed. She will never speak to me again once she learns of my actions, and after having given that woman my word. Still, maybe Jael's look of scorn will make no impact on me, for I am as numb and dead as anything that I have ever encountered.
I do not care about our mission.
I do not care about my comrades or myself.
I will obey, obediently and to the letter of the law, because that is what I am. Tools have no feelings. Tools are simply used. They remain tools, even if the result is failure. And if they are destroyed, they can't be haunted by their inappropriate emotions.
Michael was angry.
How could he have done that to me?
He is a Seraph, and should know my feelings for Arashiel, who is surely the greatest link to hell within our group, more so than Adrienne. And it was Arashiel who used me on Victoria. It was she who commands me, she who I must obey, who finished what Michael began. I could have killed Victoria easily. I killed myself.
Michael. You were the finest thing in all of Heaven to me. And if my promise was wrongly given, was there not some better way to rectify the wrong? All my learning, all my effort; humor, food, painting, interaction. Was that worth nothing?
Yes, it was worth nothing.
I am Rook, Malakite of War.
Malakim of War do not need to paint.
Malakim of War do not need social skills.
We kill.
And are killed in our turn, to kill again.
We have only one currency, and I excel in its trade.
Victoria. That vision, that vision. It is within me again, and I feel the need to cry. Surely this is what it must feel like, this act that I have never before experienced. My eyes ache, and my vision blurs, my chest --- I . . .oh Victoria.
Oh piteous Rook. This is your own fault. You were happy before, a perfect instrument bathed in the white wholeness of your own innocence. You were made for what you did, and there was no part of you that did not thrill to that completeness. Why did you enter those unknown waters? In walking the paths unknown to you, the haphazard and treacherous paths of others, you have unwittingly brought pain to those who trusted you. Perhaps Irad is right. Perhaps it was my own pig-headedness that brought Jael's Trauma. And Victoria's suffering, the anger of Giles and Michael. How many others has my misguided soul wronged?
Shame on you, Rook.
Shame on you.
So, I am better that he is gone. A wiser Rook takes his place. This Rook better knows his masters, better knows the 'truth' of Heaven, and better still knows his own place, his own duty.
I will not make those mistakes again. I will cherish the image of her wretched form as a reminder to warn me away from my own flawed ambitions, from my ridiculous aspirations.
I will serve.
I am Rook, Malakite of War.
I am Rook, Malakite of War . . .because there is no one else to be.