#nathaniel.theend

[seraphimichael]

"Die."

Apparently it was true what people said: your life really did flash before your eyes when you died. Michael had wrongfully assumed that he'd be immune by product of either his immortality or his divinity, but despite both of these truths he saw the lengthy life that the seraphim had lived stretched in front of him.

The war of The Great Old Ones, it took a thousand of Michael's kind to fell even one, creatures of indomitable power, Michael and his siblings had been created with the soul purpose of destroying them. The infantry and the front lines, it was in the years that followed when the archangel walked the realm in Adam's skin that he understood then that Michael and his siblings were never meant to survive.

In the garden of Eden Michael was never a child, but he laughed alongside his sibling and learned the truth of familial bonds. Bonds of war and heartache, buried feathers and broken promises. Lucifer was renowned for their beauty, but there was a time when he had been Michael's closest friend. Their treachery had carved a valley within the seraphim that he hadn't thought could ever be crossed or mended. Because Michael's careless father had decreed it, he'd bloodied his hands once again, this time with the ichor of his own kin. Many more years later still that Grace he ripped and returned to the aether fell to Ulthar once more, the great glutton hoarding a wealth of power above him. Performative fatherhood in its cruelest shape.

Babylon's fabled hanging gardens brought to Michael an Oracle, Damkina, she'd foretold that the archangel would be her doom but within her he found his salvation. A daughter, Omarosa, more beautiful than any other. The nephilim babe never reached her prime because there were far too many with an axe to grind, Michael and his Blessed siblings with their cacophony of enemies. He buried the demon as he'd buried his family, and for years he'd forsaken all else to do nothing but carve away at a world that felt empty and hollow. This was the blade that Ulthar had wanted, this was the sword that his father had forged.

In a cradle a newborn infant wailed as the blood of their father stained Michael's hands. Another sibling slain, another life destroyed. Nathaniel. It was true, the seraphim had made a terrible father, it was no wonder considering he'd had nothing significant to emulate. No guidance from anyone but the child that tried to awkwardly from themself again and again. The blade that he created and wove through the air, the sensitive wave the hunter's empathic abilities developed and shaped them. Michael had always been proud, but for whatever reason he'd had such a hard time saying it.

Vivianne showed him why, because children shouldn't be soldiers, they shouldn't be trained to see an enemy behind the face of everyone who called themselves a friend. Children should have been children, not sword-wielding hunters in training. Michael had taken that from Nathaniel, so when they succeeded, when they thrived and flourished, it was impossible to feel anything but regret. Pride, sure, because Nathaniel was strong enough to survive anything, but they had deserved a father and instead Michael had given them a mentor.

It was over now, Michael didn't have any time left to make amends or to make things right. He'd thought dying to save the world on Nathaniel's behalf might have been good enough, but the seraphim couldn't even do that right. In the end all Michael had managed to do was turn against his family, and cut himself from the same terrible fatherhood cloth as Ulthar.

"I love you, and I'm proud of you."

The Voice Caster's death command sunk in, and sinew broke apart as Adam's vessel burst from within as Michael's Grace suddenly imploded in on itself.

DEAD

There is no relief at seeing their father, there should be, and that is the first sign that something is terribly wrong. It's not something he taps into all that often on account of it's incredibly overwhelming, the whole empathy thing. But whatever form Assan had taken didn't feel like he normally did and while the tiefling was brutal, the way he'd popped the creatures around them like grapes.... Michael was Micheal though, the best, the biggest, the baddest, that kind of thing. But in that moment he regrets calling out to him. "I'm fine, I got startled, you should-" Nate looks around at the scene around them and it's not a lie, he'd done it without thinking too hard on it. There is this deep sinking feeling in their own gut. "You should go, I'm fine." It's so hurried and he's looking up at the seraphim, the man who'd raised him, the one who had trained him. And he knows how all of this ends, Michael had told him such months ago and it hadn't made it any easier to wrap his head around.