Bring Back What Once Was Mine
He was blonde, then, with pale blue eyes and a youthful expression to his borrowed face. The body of the farmer he'd taken was long and lanky, but starved, and he had not gained any weight since his taking of the body two years before.
He knew, because he had been in the village when men and women gathered to speak of the young farmer who had gone off one night in the woods and had never returned. He knew because he had gone into the woods, himself, and he had seen him becoming accustomed to his new flesh and body, staring at his fingers as if not quite sure what to do with them.
As if he had forgotten what the reflection of his heavenly body looked and felt like. It had, after all, been millennia since the archdaemons had fallen and lost their heavenly forms, becoming twisted, corrupted reflections of themselves. Grotesque and warped like old wood left out in the rain for too long; peeling and damaged.
Kristoff remembered the bloody war, hiding in the dark behind his wings and trembling limbs, staring at the corruption of the beautiful angels with fascination and fear. He remembered and he thought of it and he never allowed himself to forget, even when he lost so much that he forced himself to forget everything else.
Yet he left the strange creature alone for two years, following after him in silence, watching him. Watching how he grew, and changed; how he killed knights and then lords and dressed in their clothes, disguising himself in silks and buttons until no one could remember the farmer from the marsh country.
He'd been a French farmer, he remembered. A simple man mourning the loss of his wife, and cursing God's name when he could. No wonder the archdaemon chose him as his earthly vessel.
He approached him in 1368 because that was the year the archdaemon who called himself Mikhail suffered his first loss, in the form of a woman who was murdered because the villagers believed her to be a whore and the devil's bride. Mikhail's hands shook, and he stared at the corpse, and Kristoff wondered at the reaction, Wondered how such a twisted creature could still mourn over the loss of a woman he barely seemed to have cared about.
He wondered, and as he wondered his curiousity grew, and so he revealed himself to Mikhail and told him he could help. And with Kristoff's help, Mikhail killed those who had killed his first beloved, and Kristoff wrapped him in his wings and allowed him the moment of weakness to mourn.
And he knew, in that moment of holding the archdaemon's head to his heart, that he had something precious and powerful, beautiful and hideous.
He had Mikhail in his grasp.
What they had, Kristoff would not call romantic. He would call it carnal, and Mikhail only ever turned to Kristoff when he was feeling vicious and wrathful and spiteful. And they'd tear at one another, their clothes and their hair and skin, teeth biting into flesh, and Kristoff reveled in it. He hid Mikhail in his wings and he owned him, and for a time he thought they were happy. They would always be this way, he thought.
Kristoff and his archdaemon.
Yet it was not to be, and Mikhail left him in the middle of the night. He changed his name, going by Christoff as if to spite him, and his face was no longer the softened youth it had once been. Kristoff had watched as it sharpened, shaping as if being pushed and formed by powerful hands inside his skin; pulling in the skin and changing his appearance the longer the archdaemon resided within the peasant's body.
Kristoff lost his Mikhail, and he disappeared into Italy and became Angelo.
And in 1721, his Mikhail returned to him.
He called himself Theodore, and he had changed drastically since Angelo had last seen his archdaemon. Sharper and more defined; cool and distant in expression, with only the faintest curiousity in darkening eyes. He retained his blonde hair but it was curled, now, and darkening to a less fair shade. He dressed richly, importantly, and carried himself with the air of a lord or a duke. He also watched the shadows with sharp eyes, as if waiting for someone to slide out of them and drag him away.
Angelo watched him from a distance, but kept close. He watched him fall into bed with a fae woman, and hissed between his teeth; hating her but knowing better than to do anything against the queen of the birds.
When Theodore left, Angelo followed him, and he watched him woo women and men. At times, Theodore left behind with his women his prodigy; babes born with his blood and his taint. Babes who took bits of his archdaemon and gave them to women undeserving of his power. Undeserving of owning any of him.
And so Angelo found the babes Theodore left behind, and he slaughtered them. And as Theodore heard of the deaths of his children, he grew more dismayed, and Angelo reveled.
After so much time, he still had power over his precious archdaemon.
When Theodore became Ronaldo and romanced a Bulgarian gypsy woman, Angelo had half the mind to kill her himself, but he stayed away; watching as she was drained by a vampire fledgling and buried by his sire, left to be found by his archdaemon and a redheaded witch.
They raised a ghoul, who was foul of mouth and physically strong, eating the flesh of his archdaemon's victims. And Angelo decided that she could stay, for she kept his archdaemon safe from those who could wish him harm outside of Angelo himself.
After all, Angelo was allowed to hurt him. He was his archdaemon.
He could do with him as he wished. He was the only one who could do with him as he wished.
In 1881, they meet again. His archdaemon was now Dante, and his hair was dark and cut close to his head, with a trimmed beard. He dressed as a lord, still, and his ghoul dressed as a lady, though when she spoke, she spoke as a sailor or a sailor's whore.
When seeing him, Dante tried to force him back, telling him to stay away. That he knew he had been following him for centuries, and that he wished to be left alone. That their affair was dead to him, and that Angelo should let dead things rest. Dante had grown tired of Angelo's possessive nature; had grown weary of his way of claiming the archdaemon as his own. Had grown spiteful at the way Angelo killed his offspring.
Yet Angelo told him he would never escape his hold. That Dante was his.
That Dante would always be his.
And Dante swore to him - swore, violently and forcefully, that should Angelo ever reveal himself to the archdaemon again, he would rip the wings off of Angelo's back. He would make him suffer, and bleed, and he would watch him die with pleasure.
And Angelo grinned, and told him he looked forward to the day he could manage to make himself do that, and he left him. But he was never far. And he continued to kill Dante's children until Dante killed them himself.
Waited for the day his archdaemon would need him again, and he could reclaim what was rightfully his.
For Angelo knew that that day would one day come.
He just needed to be patient.
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