Angel Tears

[jackofallgeeks]

Nicholas Emerson trudged up the muddly hillside, his footing uneasy on the rain-slick grass and mudflows, holding his thin jacket tight with one and, the other hand stuffed deep into his pocket, idly fingering a single quarter. The rain fell like shards of glass, and the wind whipped around him threatening to knock him back down to his car, parked on a pathway that wound around the hill at about it's midpoint. Nicholas trudged up the hill, but he wasn't himself; he hadn't been himself for quite sometime. His speech and mannerisms were the same, his memories were as clear as ever, but the one who rode behind his eyes was Tariel, an ancient creature cast into Hell by God Himself at the dawn of time. Nicholas had been at his weekest when Tariel, free of an ever-weakening prison, found him. He still had a purplish scar around his neck where he'd hung himself. Nicholas and Tariel crested the top of the hill, the sky a low cieling of roiling black clouds. He wiped sopping bangs out of his face as he staggered the last couple steps to fall on his knees by the single gnarled oak that crowned this high hill, overlooking the small township below. Tariel had been driven by hate and torment when he found Nicholas, but something inside him struck Tariel like a physical blow. Even hanging by his neck in the depths of despair, Nicholas had something to live for: Olivia. Nicholas had loved her; he had hung himself feeling she could never love him in return, but he had loved her. And Tariel had latched onto the love, had managed to climb out of his own pit. Nicholas had given him a reason to live, and he did. Together, the worked to fufil both their dreams. Now, there was no torment. Nor were there dreams, or hope, or even love. Kneeling in the mud next to the smooth black headstone, there was only a deep, aching emptiness. Running dirty fingers over the stone slab, letter etched into it's marbled surface. Olivia Anne Emerson, 1973 - 2014. Nicholas, Tariel, wept, warm tears mixing with frigid rain on the man's face. He was soaked now, not even bothering to hold his jacket closed. "I am twice damned." Tariel croaked out through a sore throat, his voice hardly audible over the wind. "I was once and Angel; I saw the creation of the world itself. I saw the first sunrise. I was once a beast, unable to see beyond his own pain, locked in a dark, silent prison for a crime I no longer even remember. I was once a desperate man, a man who felt he had no options left. And then we were happy; then, we had you. You saw in us what neither of us could see in ourselves. You would have us be together always." Tariel slammed his fist into the hard stone with a cracking sound, though whether of bone or stone he neither knew nor cared; his hand was already numb from the wind and rain. "He cast me into the pit, and now he's taken you from me!" Tariel felt his rage rising, felt the old bitter hatred again... And he pushed it back down, straining with the effort. He slumped against the stone, exhausted. "I am proud of what we were. I don't want to become that beast again, that desperate man, not when I've come so far. But I'm done. There is nothing left, no pain, no feeling." He lay there against the stone for a very long time.