The Archangel
They whisper that his heart is hollow, a vessel for reason, not refuge, unyielding, when the fractured soul calls for softness. They murmur of hands too coarse, grasping where gentleness is needed— when the pieces beg to be held like breath. They do not see— his hands and the seams of his tailored suit bleed red beneath restraint. His heart, torn in tender boyhood, was never stitched whole. He was the child who learned to listen long before he dared to speak— for he had seen what his voice could cost. The price of an outburst: fresh bruises blooming on his beautiful mother, whose only crime was to have loved unconditionally. His father— the ruthless judge, wielding violence as if it were justice, when in truth, it was a coward’s verdict. He had seen it beyond the walls of home— on cracked pavement, in locker rooms thick with sweat and spite, in classrooms, behind the teacher’s back— the one meant to guard, to see, but never looking when it counted. Too soft. Too smart. Too something. And he never forgot. He fought to get to the top. Not to look down— but to reach back. Now, he is Michael— not sent to soothe, but to drive the serpent from the sanctuary. “To be just, it must be fair,” he says, the words drawn like a blade. He has seen what passes for fairness— how it failed his mother, failed the boy he used to be. And he is now the sworn watcher, ever vigilant— so that Justicia’s scale does not tip toward the serpent wearing borrowed bruises, while the garden is left to rot around the petals of the trampled. There are days when he catches his father in the mirror— the rage coiled behind his eyes, begging to be unbound. The cunning serpent slithers through the room, manipulating the soft-hearted, the sympathetic, turning justice into theater. It hisses in honeyed tones, weeping at will, masking venom with victimhood. It coils not in pain, but in performance— for it knows how to wear the wounds it never earned. And Michael, with the fire in his chest and the ghost of bruises echoing down his bloodlines, sees it for what it is. He wishes to behead it before God’s verdict. To strike first. To end it— not in justice, but in fury. But he doesn’t. He swallows the fire. Turns it into light. He is his father’s son, born of fire, forged in fury— but he is also his mother’s: stitched together with delicate grace, with love that did not yield even when the world demanded it. And that is enough to keep him in the light But the serpent is never truly slain. Like Hydra, even when one head falls, another rises in its place. The garden still bleeds. And so— his watch continues. His fight goes on.
©tinyinkblots 2025
an ode to the best ADA & a tribute to the best Barba fic writer and the literal ray of sunshine in the constant tornado that is my life.
please don't feed this to AI.