[C][M] The Pursuit Begins

The day was mild, the limbo between warm and cold, far from a picturesque day to languish in the sun, but tame enough to go outside to cool down. A gray overcast hung in the sky though there was no threat of rain, everything just seemed to have the air of neutrality. A steady breeze sweeps along the landscape, making the tops of trees shiver and flicker their green leaves.

But in contrast to this calmness, a space in the center of the clouds begins to stir, churning and folding as if threatening to explode over the earth. The clouds then pull apart from the sky, revealing a brilliantly blue light from the heavens, cutting through the gray of the earth to land on the roof of the Coven. A barreling ball of cloud shoots down from this light and hits the roof of the mansion, scattering roof tiles, making the whole building shudder on its foundation.

A thick fog of white cloud mists off the figure, crouched down against the roof, his sandal-clad feet burrowed into the room, his right hand leaving scalding indents on it. His amethyst eyes flicker open and his straightens his tone body proudly. He towers over this puny mortal earth, he could destroy it in a day if he were bored, but his Father would not be pleased. He has come here for another reason however, and that is to find the one he has lost.

Achinoam.

Overcast days were the days that Achinoam most adored. Especially days like this when the clouds were set in a swirling mass.

She could fly without people noticing if she was careful enough on these day. She could stretch her wings; it was something she hadn't been doing very often while she had been down on Earth.

Her hair whipped out around her as four large snowy white wings beat against the breeze.

Silver brows drew together in confusion as her golden eyes caught the swirling clouds above the Coven. That didn't bode well.

Summoning her sword, she pushed herself forwards, determined to get rid of the threat before it did anything to upset anyone in the Coven. She bet it was a Nephilim. They were constantly coming down to Earth and causing trouble.

Her feet touched the ground and she stood tall, shoulders pushing back in the typical gait of a warrior.

When the figure stood, her sword clattered to the ground before fading into nothingness. "Jegudiel," she muttered softly, golden eyes staring at the tall figure in absolute shock.

Why was he here? She had barely been gone for a few months; he couldn't be here for her...could he? Months were like hours to people as old as the two of them. A year could go by like a day for them.

Nonetheless, it was good to see the other Angel. She had missed the company of other Angels, though she wouldn't let Belial know that. He would either feel insulted or do something to try and sway her to stop her from missing other Angels. She didn't want either to happen.

The woman launched herself at the male Angel, her wings fading out of existence as her arms wrapped around his neck. She knew he'd rather push her away than hug her back but it didn't matter. She had missed him in the short amount of time they had been separated so, even at the risk of being pushed away, she'd give him the hug she wanted.

It brought a sickeningly satisfied smile to the lips of the massive angel man that Achi would be the first to find him. She was a magnet to him and he knew it, relished in it. It made him feel empowered, and yet, with her embrace he felt almost as if she were diminishing this power. He would never admit it, but her touch almost made him feel weak within the depths of his heart.

Almost.

Jeg's firm body tenses under her touch and he shrugs her off of him stiffly, a scowl on his face and in his eyes.

"Don't do that here," he scoffs, his broad wings shivering behind his back once freed from her embrace. His head twitches upward slightly to flick a lock of his long, glistening hair from out of his eyes.

"I'm here to reassure myself you aren't polluting your soul around the influence of that fallen heathen."

His teeth are bared when he even thinks of his rival.

A little smile curled her lips when he shrugged her off.

She could always trust Jegudiel to act so rough. If he started acting kind she would be scared for his mental health.

"I will do what I wish to do," she replied, planting her hands on her bare hips. "It is not your place here to tell me what I am to do." If they were in the Heavens that'd be a totally different story. Back home Jegudiel was in a higher position. he could tell her what to do and she would have to do it. Earth was neutral ground. She didn't have to take Jeg's orders here.

Her eyes flickered down when the other Angel growled. Of course. Of course Jegudiel knew where she had gone - who she had gone to find. He knew her better than anyone bar Gabriel.

And, of course, he wasn't pleased with her choice to search out Belial. Jeg always got annoyed (more so than usual) when he even got the inclination that she was thinking of the Fallen.

Achi's golden eyes turned back up to Jeg. "My soul is safe from any form of pollution." She knew that was a lie. Belial had already gotten her to do things that no Angel would have ever thought of doing without someone sinful coaxing them into it. She didn't consider what Belial was doing as polluting her. No, she much rather thought of it as him showing her another way of life.

Jeg felt a large discomfort grow in the pit of his stomach from twisting presence of a lack of familiarity. She was allowed to be smart with him in this place, this savage little ball of dirt and muddy water crawling with underdeveloped low lives. He scoffs at her meager attempt at boldness,

"Be careful what you choose to speak Achinoam. I am still in favor with the Father seeing as though I don't run around with pesky little traitors." His tone is condescending, almost rude, but he keeps an air to himself that makes him appear more authoritative than a complete bully.

The Angel's arms, thick with muscle cross over his broad, bare chest condescendingly as he listens to her speak, looking at her as if she's a child who has decided to run away. Of course he didn't believe her as long as she was around that impure creature from hell.

"Tell me, what have you been doing roaming around in this barbaric wasteland hm? Stirring up trouble for our kind?" His voice is eccentric and haughty, pronouncing words precisely so they had a natural sharpness to them.

"Father's favour means little on Earth and if you were to bring what I say back to Father when they posed no threat to our home it would be rather pitiful of you." It would be pitiful if Jeg took this chance - the one chance she was able to finally find her friend in millennia - to get her in trouble and laden her with another punishment. She was finally free to do what she wished.

Earth truly was neutral ground for Angels. They could do anything with so little consequence. She wouldn't be in Father's good graces for being with Belial again after his Fall but anything she did with Belial here would be completely overlooked.

This was a conversation they had had often back home. Belial came up in frequent conversation.

Achinoam loved the Fallen, Jegudiel not so much. They argued long and hard over the Fallen and Achi's feelings for him.

As unpleasant as arguing with the man was, she loved the familiarity of it. She had been missing home a lot and this was a little piece of home that had come to her.

"I needed a break from home. I couldn't stand looking at Father's garden for another moment." That was very truthful. She'd been condemned to guarding the Garden for thousands upon thousands of years. Just the thought of the garden at the moment was enough to make her cringe.

"I decided to search out Belial if he was here on Earth. He was." Is. She had found him out and now she was spending as much time as she could with him.

The tall, chiseled angel man scoffs, a low, bold noise deep from within his broad chest. She was picking at his brain as she had before in heaven, allowing the jousting of words to continue. Jeg disdained the fallen to say the least; he found the blackened creature a pure waste of air and didn't understand why the father hadn't disposed of him the way he should have a long time ago.

"Don't forget who created Earth Achinoam," he snaps out quickly at her, "Don't forget who created you. Humans sin and defy all they please on this pathetic ball of mud and pay the price for it. Do you truly believe you were made at the same level as those filthy primates?" He lets out a deep, sarcastic laugh from his stomach and shakes his head.

Achi is acting like a child! Stubborn and afflicted by the influence of the fallen. Deep within his heart, buried beneath a solid coating of resentment, a warmer, worried part of him throbs against the passion she speaks with when discussing the fallen angel. It is a swirling mass of jealousy and fear, fear that Achi will end up in a situation she won't be able to get herself out of... He would be devastated if she became a fallen as well.

She gave the Angel an insulted glare and huff.

"I will never be as low as mortals." Like any and all Angels, she had a disdain for the mortal creatures. They were a waste of space - sinning with everything they did and still gaining more affection from Father than his own Angel's did.

The mere suggestion of her being at the same level as them was a true insult.

"I am here to enjoy my time away from duties. If you only wish to insult me then return home to Father."

That stung her. She didn't want him to leave. She loved him. Truly she did. She didn't want to send him home. She wanted to show him all the beauty of Earth that the mortals hadn't destroyed.

But she stayed firm, glaring up at the man as she waited for him to make his choice. Stop insulting her so much and stay or continue the way he was going and go back home.

An amused grin stretches upon his flawless lips as he takes in her glare, soaks it up really, relishing in the passion he induces in her. The angel man extends his long, muscular arm and brushes his fingers against the woman's jawline, feeling skin he hasn't touched in what's felt like centuries.

"Don't try and order me around Achinoam. I will act as I please and stay as long as I like. This world is neutral ground you say? Does that make you its ruler hm?" his tone is snide and condescending, but his caress his gentle, expressing the emotions he is not able to show within words.

Jeg steps away from the woman and starts walking toward the door that leads to the interior of the coven, practically inviting himself into this abode without even giving Achi enough time to respond to his question face to face.

"Show me what's so 'spectacular' about this place Achinoam. I'm just dying to know."

The woman's eyes slid shut when Jeg let his fingers brush over her skin.

This was so tender. For so long after meeting him the first time she hadn't believed that he could be gentle like this. She adored it and it happened so rarely that she needed to pause and savour the moment, even if the two of them were in the middle of (yet another) fight.

Her eyes flickered open when his hand slipped from her face, watching as he made his way across the roof.

"This world has a natural beauty about it."

She followed after him with a soft sigh, bending to pick up a shirt she had discarded by the door when she had come out here a few hours earlier. She pulled it over her head and smoothed it over her flat stomach.

"It's flaws make it beautiful."

"It's flaws make it pathetic you mean," he sneers out waltzing into the coven, "It is full of nothing but destruction and death. Traitors, thieves, and rapists all contained on a worthless ball of mud." His words are meant to sting, maybe even more than that. He wants her to feel as low as he had when she ran off to seek the embrace of the fallen creature. He wants her to know she hurt him and his faith in her, his faith in this world.

He saunters inside the coven, looking around with an analytical look on his face, taking in the decor and atmosphere, judging it. He wonders why in god's name she would want to reside in this place when she could have all of the heavens at her fingertips. It makes no sense to him.

"Show me around this... Below passable dwelling you call your home," he hisses out, not looking back to question her. His long, gallant wings are pressed to his back so they won't knock into Achi nor the interior of the house. It is mostly so that he won't scuff up his perfectly pearl colored feathers of his wings.

"The flaws of the humans do not define the beauty of the planet," she replied lightly.

She couldn't disagree with Jeg on that matter. Humans were pathetic. There was so much...idiocy between them. She couldn't understand them. She just... couldn't. The people on Earth were so pathetic. She couldn't defend them at all.

"This ball of mud is far less than useless." It had a charm about it.

"Earth is flawed, Jegudiel. We have to take that in mind when viewing it." They had to take its flaws as they were. "They're not like us."

She followed after him, rolling her eyes a little. "It would be easier if you removed your wings, Jeg."

The Angel bounced forwards to walk next to Jeg, turning a smile upwards. "This could never be my home." She reached out to take his hand. "My home is with the rest of you. Back with Father."

The tall angel pulls his hand away from her's, keeping his narrowed eyes forward in a harsh manner as he walks.

"Then why would you prefer to be on this flawed planet with these unworthy primates?" he questions bitterly. He had has this questioning weighing heavily on his heart ever since she had left. Part of him knew it was because of the fallen, but another part didn't want to come to terms with this. Jegudiel wanted so hard to believe he was Achinoam's favored companion, but she ran away with the other, more impure creature.

His wings tighten harder against his back, he is set on keep his wings exposed to combat her command,

"It's better these vile creatures know their place in the presence of a holy. Otherwise they will think they can act as they please around me." He tilts his head to crack his neck and his eyes narrow even more.

Achi sighed softly when he tore his hand away from hers.

She tried not to make comparisons between Jegudiel and Belial but in times like these it was so difficult. She loved Jegudiel but she loved Belial even more. Comparing the two was cruel to Jeg.

Now was one of those times when she couldn't help but to compare the two. Whereas Jeg didn't much like showing signs of affection, Belial was all for it. He loved showing affection.

She preferred Belial's love of showing affection.

"I have told you this, Jeg. I couldn't stand the sight of Father's garden any more. I needed some time away."

She sighed again when his wings didn't dissipate. He was so stubborn.

"I cannot show you much if you insist on keeping your wings on show."

A strong breath exits his nose in distaste and his teeth grit together. If they were on the territory of the father such disrespect would not be tolerated.

"It doesn't matter if you had gotten tired. Up there, with him and the rest of us, that is where you belong not among these filthy creatures," his tone is almost a jeer as he speaks, "They're tainting you Achinoam, tainting you with their demonic beliefs and disgusting treatment of this world."

His wings tense once again behind his back, refusing to be hidden,

"Then I'll just show myself around. These creatures need to know their place among the righteous."

"When one is tired, one rests, Brother. That is exactly what I am doing now."

Her lips curled upwards into a soft smile, even after his poisonous words. She knew him so well.

"You never understood that concept, did you, Jegudiel? Resting when things got difficult. You always shouldered all the weariness you felt and carried on."

She admired that but she still felt worried for him. When would his burdens become too much for his strong shoulders to bear?

"Many do not believe, Jeg. We're a fictitious creature to them. They could attempt to hurt you if they see you like this." She didn't want that. "I do not want you to kill anyone."

"Our kind doesn't rest," he says flatly, looking back at her from over his broad shoulder, "What we do is endless for the father. To 'rest' is to poison what we were made for and fall to the same level as these creatures called humans. Rest is for the weak, but you can still get away from it."

What a foolish thing for her to say, that these creatures would hurt him! He was a God among them, his power bountiful and strong. Not only that, but he had the power of good on his side and that has never failed him.

The large angel laughs haughtily at her comment and turns to look into her eyes, nearly backing her against the wall. His broad arm comes up to rest against the wall near near face. For less than a moment he loses his godly complex and seems to soften in her presence. How much he's missed that soft angelic face, something in his heart tightens with pain.

But his resentment returns to his eyes and face.

"Their pathetic little lives are disposable if they think for one second they can harm me," he hisses into her ear, his bared teeth dangerously close to her lower lip.

He lingers a moment before he turns to keep walking down the hallway, a powerful disposition to his stride.

"Then I openly admit to being weak."

She needed rest. She needed to get away for a few decades to rest. Even she needed that. She was the strongest Angel back home. She had beaten Michael. She had beaten the Angel closest to God in a fight and yet she needed rest.

Achi tilted her head to the side a little when he turned around.

With each step he took forwards, she took one back until she felt the wall press against her back.

Her amber eyes flickered as they gazed over his face, trying to gauge his expression. She didn't know what he was thinking. She didn't know what she to expect.

Her eyes warmed to melted gold when his expression softened. This was the Jegudiel she loved. The one that was calm and warm and sweet.

Achi swallowed, her eyes flickering down to his mouth. She could feel his hot breath against her damp lips.

Her pink tongue traced her lower lip slowly as her eyes turned back to his. She wanted him. To kiss him again. To feel his teeth embedded in her soft lip. To sink her teeth in his lip.

She leaned forwards, eyes sliding closed as her lips parted in anticipation.

After a long moment of nothing, her eyes flickered open again and disappointment washed through her. He'd already walked away.

Jegudiel scoffs at her words, her words of being weak.

"Our kind does not rest and our kind is not weak," he sneers out, but is quick to add, "Not weak unless they allow themselves to fall like a pitiful demon." A smirk rests on his lips after he makes his snide comment, verbally bashing the creature Achi had fallen in love with without even mentioning its filthy name.

He would say anything he could to stain the fallen, to turn him into dust for how he had snatched up the one angel he had felt such passion for, and he would do it in front of her too. She deserved to feel the heartache he had when she had left him and their home for that pathetic excuse of a breathing creature.

Even now he could feel the heaviness in his chest, that pain of being left. He had seen that longing in her eyes, that way she had inched closer to him, beckoning him with those perfect, plump lips. He ached so badly to touch her so intimately like the times before she had ripped his heart out of his chest and threw it onto the cold, unforgiving ground.

It was that betrayal that made him so stubborn within this moment, he would not let that go.

"Everyone needs rest. Even me. Even you, Jeg."

Even Jeg needed rest some time. Sometime soon. He was acting... stressed. Different. It worried her.

He was usually a jerk. That was nothing new. But... this was more so than usual.

The woman followed behind him after a moment of laying against the wall. She stepped forwards quickly, her hand curling around his wrist, halting him with the immense strength that she was known for.

She wanted her Jeg back.

This one was...angry. Angrier than usual. She didn't like it.

The massive angel actually stops when he feels her grasp on his wrist, but he seems to tense up. His brow furrows above his amethyst eyes, eyes that harbor more hurt and heartbreak than he would ever like to admit.

With a sullen gaze he looks back at Achinoam, his expression seems to ask why, why she left him for that impure creature. Why had she gone away and left him with a broken heart, only mended by spite and resentment.

Jeg turns back around and pulls his wrist away from her grasp,

"Where is your lodging?"

Achi's eyes flickered down to the floor when Jeg pulled away from her.

She didn't like this.

He was acting...disgusted with her.

Her lodgings. She could sit him down and talk to him there. Find out why he kept pulling away from her. Though she had a pretty good idea of why he was doing this.

"This way."

She led him down the hallway, past Belial's room and into her own. Jeg would recognise the rune carved into Belial's door and know exactly what it was.

"Sit," she ordered, motioning to her neatly made bed as she shut the door behind them.

With heavy steps the massive angel follows the woman, eyes scanning over the halls to avert from looking over the perfection that is her person.

In doing so however, he notices the rune that marks the living space of the creature he despises. Automatically he sneers and curses under his breath, but he is able to keep himself calm enough to just walk by, a surprising feat for him, but now he knows where the tainted creature sleeps.

Jegudiel makes his way over to the bed and takes a seat, back straightened to looks powerful and dignified. His eyes scan over her room, taking in the place where she has stayed since she left their home. The thought creeps into his mind that she and the fallen had lain here on this very bed. He scowls at the though, lip arching into a sneer.

"This place is a cell compared to your true home."

"It's a pleasant cell."

She moved over to drag the desk chair over to sit in front of Jeg.

He could do nothing but tell her that this place was tainting her. He wanted her back up at home.

"You're acting differently," she accused, staring at him firmly.

"Why?"

There was no why about it. She knew why. She just wanted him to speak it. Tell her what she was thinking.

Jegudiel all but sneers at her questioning. How in heaven could she even question him after everything she has done!?

"This Earth has truly poisoned your mind Achinoam if you think what you have done shouldn't have effected me like it did," he snaps at her, his teeth all but grinding in disgust, "I am acting 'differently' because you betrayed your true family and left us all for some kind of holiday and a sick fallen lover." His voice is riddled in disgust as he says these things.

"You had everything! You had your true home, the father, and m-" he cuts himself off there, his lip twitching, he doesn't want to expose that the root of his anger comes from how she left him, "You had me."

He turns his head away so he doesn't have to look into her eyes as he hisses out,

"...You had our love and you threw it away to be with some fallen creature. You ground my heart to dust to satisfy some... Sick fetish you have." He spits out his words, still not looking into her eyes.