“Aye, as certainly as a fish is wet,” Malthael replied, echoing a phrase Lyndon oft said. “Still, violence begets violence. Though I am inclined to agree with you in theory, practice has shown me Magtherius’ decision is...nuanced.”
Light knew, he had tried to brusquely intervene and had subsequently reaped the consequences. Whatever darkness brewed in his counterpart (and he firmly believed it was a different shadow than the one that haunted him), it did not respond positively to force. It met aggression with equal fervor, regardless of the damage it did to everything else.
What Magtherius seemed to be doing was teaching his charge control, and patience: tempering instincts to counter the raw frustration that bubbled within the reaper. When Malthael imagined the fledgling applying those behaviours, he pictured a being closely resembling the immortal he had been, once.
Perfectly in charge. Cunning. Even more dangerous than the half-feral creature Tyranius made him out to be.
He wondered if history was doomed to repeat itself for that reason. If he was meant to suffer the same pitfalls in every incarnation. Or, if Magtherius’ efforts would be enough to alter the flow of fate.
Only time would tell.
“So where do you live anyways and how about did you come from there to here?”
He did not like Tyranius’ suspicious tone much, nor the way she was eyeing up his gear. Truthfully, he was surprised the others had not yet commented on his physical similarity to the reaper. Granted, the fledglings did not seem to be very observant, and he had not encountered any adult angels until this point. Auriel had nearly made the connection, until she had overlooked the obvious in favour of assessing his character.
But, as Lyndon also said -- if it looked like a duck, and it quacked like a duck...
Tyranius was no idiot. If she hadn’t figured things out already, she would. Soon.
“Elsewhere,” he replied, his tone calmly evasive. “And against my better judgement.”
“We can work with that,” Malthael began to reply, before noticing something terrible occurring. He quickly pointed a finger at the quilt, which had begun to smoke from its proximity to Imperius’ wings.
Much too late.
The blanket caught flame. Malthael’s stomach flopped as he watched his counterpart toss the quilt to the ground and stomp vigorously on it to extinguish the fire.
“By the archfiend’s tits! Bloody, damnable - Imperius!”
“Oh….sorry….”
This was not good. Malthael remembered very clearly the fit the angel had thrown in the library when he had been younger. Though age seemed to have tempered those instincts somewhat, they were obviously building in him again at the thought of failing at his quest.
He glanced around, hoping to see Magtherius manifest at a convenient moment. The angel did not.
“Sorry? That’s all you have to say?”
“…I didn’t even notice you were behind-”
The scream that came from the angel almost curdled Malthael’s blood. Feral, uncontrolled.
Reaper.
It was everything he had feared when he first saw the darkness simmering in the younger angel. In this realm, at least, the shadows that had haunted him unto his death were embedded in the angel from the very beginning. Magtherius had taken some steps to teach his counterpart self-control, but the angel was still young.
And very, very angry.
Malthael knew well the sort of stupidity he was capable of when he was enraged.
“You are a little ball of destruction! Everything you touch seems to go up in smoke! I didn’t want to go this far, but now we are in desperate straits to get this done!”
And, there it was. The beginning of the idiocy.
Do something, Malthael commanded himself, as the angel stalked to the cleaning supplies and begin sifting through them, before eventually holding up a corked bottle. He is a child. Treat him as a child. What would you do with an irate child?
Take it to their parents, obviously.
Non-viable option. Next. He doubted he could talk the angel down. Distract him, perhaps? Find Magtherius? No, he had no idea where the Archangel was, and it would take too long.
“…what is even in that bottle you made me sneak from the elders here?”
“This is going to show me all the answers I need, that’s what. The distilled vapors of the fruit of the tree of Eden.”
Tree of Eden? Malthael’s gaze was tugged to the bottle, within which simmered an unidentifiable golden material. He had no idea what a Tree of Eden was, but knowing it was from the elders meant it was potentially dangerous, and clearly not meant to be handled by a fledgling.
--notafledglingjustanidiotlikeyou--
He hissed. Not the time. He could hardly spare the brain capacity for self-doubt.
“…we aren’t suppose to use that! The instructors said-”
“They don’t take risks to get what they want. But I do.” The angel popped the cork and began to inhale from it, while Imperius stammered nearby.
Oh, no. No. No. No. Thatwasnothappening.
Malthael lunged, one hand catching the bottle, his other arm wrapping about the angel’s trunk and slamming him into the dock. He was lighter than he looked, but tall and lanky enough Malthael became tangled in the angel’s cloak and wings. The wispy tendrils rasped loudly against each other, stinging him wherever they brushed.
“Enough,” he bellowed into the fog, ignoring the sharp bites of the wingtips into his arms and exposed skin. “Terrible. Idea. Did you even think?”
--didyoueventhinkwhenyoulungedhim--
No, because strategy was a luxury employed by individuals with time. He had no time. The angel did and had obviously squandered it.
“Damnable fool,” he scowled, managing to wrangle the bottle onto the dock so he could clumsily slide it Imperius’ direction and out of reach of the struggling Reaper. “Actions have consequences. You are not immune, and not every plan comes to fruition. You will fail, you will learn to deal with that failure, and life will continue on in some form or another regardless!”
--andhowareyouenjoyingyourfailurerightnow?--
--byscreamingtowardsit?--
Impshit. He wasn’t--
He was.
It didn’t matter if the angel looked like a mature angel. He wasn’t.
He was shouting at a child, who had done something potentially dangerous, but who was still a child nonetheless. It was neither befitting the instructive role he had tried to assume in his mortal life or of the leadership he had offered when he had been an Archangel.
His shoulders slumped, though he remained in place, holding his counterpart against the ground.
It was too easy to see the angel as his mirror, and to treat him as he would treat himself -- with all the same derision and perfectionism that so often caused him anxiety.
