25.5

 

When the fear begins to subside comes the anger, rising like Vesuvian magma under the unsuspecting twin cities, melting away what’s left of the terror with righteous indignation. How dare the Creator write a role for which she did not give consent? There was no need to drag her away from her humanity into this dance between the immortals. What possible cause could they cite for the theft of her humanity when for thousands of years it was understood they despised the half-caste offspring of mortals and angels, going so far as the destroy all but a handful of people in the blanket destruction of all life on the surface. It was akin to a farmer finding a caterpillar on a lettuce and burning the whole field because of it, and them blaming the lettuce.

Not only the Creator, either, but all those angels who thought they could manipulate the world into giving up their souls, for taking them without consent; for the rape of the spirits of humanity for their own personal gain. The Fallen Ones, too, for standing by and quietly bleeding souls away from Heaven, storing them away in Hell like charging up a great battery to what? Cut a swathe through Heaven and take the places of the angels up there?

The Four were no better than the angels, well, three of them, anyway. Was she still the fourth in this scenario? The mantle had tried to claim her, took and almost destroyed Paul, then abandoned him for a Nephilim released only because her true nature had been concealed from her all of her life. How could the Four so easily accept the Nephilim as replacement for the original Famine? It was like the Beatles re-forming with some old geezer standing in as John Lennon after he’d been murdered with the attitude of Loki of the Avengers saying “Very sad… Anyway…”

And the mantle of Knowledge? What gave it the right to choose her? At least if she’d become host to the mantle of Famine she would have the satisfaction of becoming what she once was, not something new, not mentioned in the old writings. What use could she be in standing between the Four and humanity? And why had she accepted it? Was it merely Hubris? Spite because Famine had chosen the Nephilim and left her behind, coughing in the metaphorical dust of its passing?

Roisin clenches her fists. “I didn’t ask for this,” she says again, but this time the words have teeth, and she is the Jaw that Bites.

Astaroth smiles faintly. “No one ever does.”

And, finally, she feels acceptance. She is neither calm, nor at peace, but there is a quiet inevitability to the set of her expression; a ‘what the fuck’ air of ‘You gave me this, you have to deal with the consequences.’ She’s right, of course. If they thought they were getting an obedient Angel they could adapt to their will, they had another think coming. If she was Justice, she would mete it out as she decided. There were no rules to Justice but what she deemed was to right thing to do, and that morality was forged and developed upon the anvil of being human. It they were expecting Divine Justice then they could get stuffed. The only Justice they were getting was her justice, and though she was burdened – blessed? – by the mantle of Knowledge, she had seen enough injustice in the world to know what was right from what was wrong, and no matter how much they had tried to indoctrinate her as a Christian, Knowledge was more ancient than even the Creator thought it was.

The mantle has revealed her to herself, and what she sees is a woman who has been standing between worlds her entire life — long before she lost her mantle, long before she became human, long before she met Paul and Steve.

She sees the truth. She was never meant to be one thing. She was destined to become the Fifth from before the One became Four. She was always meant to become Justice.

Her shoulders square up as she raises herself to her full height and takes a deep breath.

In. Out

Then another.

In…(hold)…out…(hold)…

The grief remains. The fear remains. The anger remains. But beneath them is something ancient, something that has walked in her shoes from before the beginning of time; something that feels like the first true alignment she has ever known.

She lifts her head. Her voice is quiet, but inalienable. “…I can do this.”

Astaroth inclines his head, while behind her, Steve’s breath breaks in a sound halfway between relief and heartbreak and the Artist has stopped pretending to breathe altogether. She looks across at Paul, bent by his ordeal but not broken, and feels the mantle of Knowledge settle into her not as a burden, but as her spine.