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Heaven was empty.
Heaven had its ranks of angels, and of course it had the souls of everything that lived and then died in a state of grace. That number was not small, but when counted against the near infinite size of the city in sliver... Heaven was empty.
The empty places in Heaven were locked up tight. The keys were given over to the custodians who went around every century or two to the various departments to ensure that there was no corrosion setting in, no corruption. The machines that set the Earth in motion were kept in excellent repair, not because there was an expectation that they would be needed again, but because it was Heaven. There could be no corruption in Heaven.
The angels who remained in Heaven knew that lesson rather well.
Gabriel had no key to the room in question, but it wasn't as if they needed one. They set their hand over the scar where the nameplate had been burned away, remembering how many times they had stood in that very spot, and how they could no longer remember what came after. Then they shoved, the door crumpled, and they walked inside.
Their own quarters were sprawling, opening out over the tallest spires of the city in silver. The main chamber was empty except for the wardrobe full of tailored clothes brought back from Earth and mysteriously, an enormous pile of pillows, cushions, fabric and rugs thrown to the center of the floor. They wore the clothes, but the pile of soft things were a bit of a puzzle. Gabriel never slept or even spent that much time in their rooms. The cushions and blankets were simply a part of their private space, obviously selected with care in shades of deep blue, emerald green and subtle violet. They were attractive enough, they supposed, and so they had never gotten rid of them. They'd always been there, as far as Gabriel knew.
This room, on the other hand, was small and round with possibly just enough clearance to let Gabriel stretch their wings out fully if they opened them. It was tremendously tall, however, and above their head, far above, they could see a pale blue oval of sky.
Somewhere deep in their mind, under layers of rationalizations, excuses, justifications and outright lies, Gabriel was angry. They should have remembered this. They should have known that the walls in this room were colored a chalky pale blue, and that painted here and there in the crevices were nesting birds, their eyes closed, their feathers puffed out in sleep. Gabriel touched them, and then craned their neck back to look up. There were compartments carved into the walls, inviolable unless one flew, and Gabriel opened their wings.
They were proud of their wings. They were large and broad, gray like a storm and strong beyond measure. Their wings allowed them to hang in the air for hours, to fly farther than most in Heaven or Hell could dream. They were not, however, wings designed for close maneuvers or any kind of agility. During the war, that would have been fatal if Gabriel couldn't simply kill anything that got within range of their spear, their lightning or their hands.
To rise in this strange room, Gabriel had to spread their wings out, the tips brushing opposite walls, and then they had to push away from the floor with no aid at all. It was a laborious ascent, one powered by muscle alone, and in the back of Gabriel's mind, there was... not a laugh, but a ghost of a laugh, a shape where something should be but wasn't any longer.
Stop, stop, I'll come down.
They hadn't understood what those words meant before this.
They winced when they listed too far to one side and scraped a few feathers off along the wall. They corrected for it, realized it was not the first time they had learned to do so, and put the thought out of their mind until they came to the first chamber cut into the wall.
It was empty except for some old schematics, stamped with the the designation for Stage V design. Stage V was animals, Gabriel remembered. That had been a good time. There was a party afterward, and a cake shaped like a manatee. Cake wasn't out of alpha yet, so it wasn't exactly edible, but it had been a generally positive experience.
Gabriel picked one of the schematics up curiously and found the first round of plans for peregrine falcons, the narrow wings and bullet-like body unmistakable. There were excited notes scrawled around the edges, changes that would go into effect for the next round. They're going to be so fast, Gabriel read. Nothing will see them coming!
The next schematic detailed the flight of the ruby-throated hummingbird, questioning the energy needs and finally concluding that the original design, a twelve-pound hummingbird, was simply not feasible. Scrap it, just scrap it, said the tired note, and Gabriel could almost feel the frustration coming off the faint script.
The last schematic had almost no notes at all. It was the final design for an albatross's wing, the feathers stretched out and soft pencil marks delineating where the powerful muscles attached. There were numbers listed for how long an albatross could stay aloft and how far it could travel from shore. The notes tucked in the corner were unrelated to the design at all.
Look familiar?
Brat!!!
The first line was written in the same neat script that had been so scornful about the hummingbird, so pleased about the peregrine.
The second line was written in a sloppier hand, sloped to the left, the letters large and blocky.
Gabriel's handwriting.
Suddenly Gabriel became very aware of the risk they were taking. Everything up until now, well, it could have been excused. It was curiosity. It was casual interest, exploration, perhaps a morbid fascination. This, on the other hand, was remembering, and when it came to the fallen, there was only one guideline for remembering: don't.
Gabriel's hands shook, and they dropped the schematic as if burned, lurching out of the compartment and free-falling for a few dozen feet before they spread their wings. This allowed them to grab the air a little better, but it was still a struggle to ascend. They lost another handful of feathers along the way, and for all their trouble, the next compartment was empty, as was the one after that. Most angels didn't have much in the way of possessions. It was seen as odd at best, suspect at worst.
The final compartment, however, wasn't empty. Instead, it was piled high with blankets and cushions that looked terribly familiar, chosen with care in shades of deep blue, emerald green and subtle violet. Gabriel's heart beat faster, and they approached the nest, as they now knew it was, with caution approaching fear.
It's too big for one person, they found themselves thinking, and all unlooked for came the reply:
Well... I wasn't planning on sleeping alone.
Remembering the fallen was forbidden. Pain, however... pain was just fine.
It felt as if something had reached into their chest and carved out a great handful of flesh and bone and muscle. Gabriel staggered on their feet, wings spreading for balance and crashing into the walls of the compartment. There was the smash of delicate bones against stone, a shower of feathers striped in half or torn out altogether when they raked against the walls. They were too large for the space, too large by far, and they struck their wings against the walls twice more before they finally drew them close.
There was no room for them, not here, not in all of empty Heaven, and Heaven, they suddenly realized, was only empty because half the angels were gone. Heaven was empty, Gabriel was empty, and the only thing that they were allowed to fill it with was this ache.
Gabriel wasn't sure when their legs gave out, but they pitched face first into the pile of pillows, suddenly rolling in velvet, cotton, and linen. It felt good, as good as their own clothes did, and their wings drew up and in, covering them as they curled in a nest they had once shared with...
They had read the name. It had been written in the heart of the moon, overlooked when the censors came through to blur out the names of the fallen. It was reading. It was fine. It wasn't remembering.
Gabriel said it in their mind, and then when it wasn't enough, they whispered it over and over like a seraph chanting the hundred secret names of God.
With every repetition, they waited for the wrath that must surely come, that would throw them from the heights of creation down to the depths below. They waited in dread, they waited in hope, and then throat dry and entire being aching with loss, they realized that they were waiting for an answer that was not going to come.
Slowly,Gabriel straightened up. The compartment was a mess, cushions scattered and broken feathers everywhere. It didn't matter. No one lived here anymore. They wouldn't come back.
At the mouth of the compartment, Gabriel looked down at the floor far below them. If they stepped out into the space without opening their wings, it would hurt when they hit the floor. They would be broken, bloodied, possibly more so than a quick miracle could fix. Falling was not knowing.
Almost carelessly, Gabriel stepped out of the compartment, feeling their own weight for the first time they could remember. The wind whistled past their ears, tore at their clothes, deafened them, cleansed them.
At the last moment, however, Gabriel's wings came out, and then they were soaring up and out of that place, out into a sky that suddenly seemed to echo with its own hollowness.
I can't, they thought in shock, but of course that was ridiculous. They were an archangel. There should have been nothing that they could not do.
Hell, on the other hand, was more or less the perfect size.
Beelzebub knew that ze wasn't the only one who had suspicions when they woke up and discovered the grimy tiled tunnels, the arid meeting halls and the ugly little sitting rooms, all terrible, all waiting for them. In the first few hundred years, it was a matter of some debate over why there was a Hell before there were demons to live in it, what part of the Ineffable Plan it might have served or whether it served at all.
So ze had their suspicions, and ze also knew that those suspicions meant less than nothing. The fallen remembered, and they had had six thousand years to figure out that the past held nothing for them.
Instead, they looked to the future.
Befitting zir rank, Beelzebub's chambers were large, though of course they were prone to the same leaks and creeping sense of misery that infested all of their underworld. Throughout the years, ze had turned it into something halfway between a trophy room and junk shop. The walls were mounted with the heads of those who had tried their hands against zir and the shelves were crowded with prizes of war and mementos of sin and salvation denied. All very right and proper.
The only thing that would have raised an eyebrow (unwise- raising an eyebrow around Beelzebub was a good way to lose it) was the chamber off to one side of the rest. It was broad and sprawling, tall enough that the ceiling was shadowy when one stood on the ground. In one corner was am antique wardrobe, and close to it was a pile of luxurious stolen pillows, all made by hand and sore losses to the ones who had sewn them.
Sometimes, when the high council meetings would not stop, and when the incessant buzz in zir head seemed just a little too loud, Beelzebub came into this room to comfort zirself. Ze opened the wardrobe and pressed zir face into the expertly tailored clothing inside. Ze curled up in the nest that was far too big for one person.
Ze stroked the black chains that ran to the floor, forged from hellfire and designed not only to bind divine strength but also to burn it. The chains were struck to the root of Hell, and Beelzebub zirself couldn't pull them free. The manacles were sized for wrists far larger than zirs, and sometimes Beelzebub slid zir hands through them to rattle them like bracelets, solemnly playful in a way that Gabriel would have remembered, if only they tried.
Try, ze thought, stretched on the silk pillows. Try just a little. I am waiting for you, fairest, when you are fallen.