Nemo Sine Culpa Est

Nemo sine culpa est:

Latin, meaning, no one is without fault

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

She lays in bed. Angels don't sleep, but that doesn't stop her. She sighs, and rolls onto her side. Her white hair is splayed behind her, and she flicks a strand off her neck. She looks at her lover. This is a face she has seen for many hundreds of years, a face she has touched, kissed, cleaned blood off of. She could draw this face blindfolded, the straight nose and high cheekbones, full lips normally twisted in a frown, deep green eyes always creased by worry. 

This is a face she loves, knows. This is a person she loves, knows. She stretches a hand to twirl a strand of her lovers hair in her fingers. “What's wrong, my love?” her lover asks, opening her eyes. Sophia collapses back on the bed, lets her hand rest on Ariel's neck. 

“Nothing,” she murmurs. “Go back to sleep.” she receives a groan from Ariel in response, and when she's sure she's asleep, climbs out of their shared bed. She walks through the house, silent as a whisper, nightgown swishing around her feet. 

She and Ariel built this house by hand. Ariel grew the trees for it herself, and chopped it down herself. She planted each rose bush in their garden herself, all for Sophia. They slowly built this home, bartered with other angels, and demons, and human mages for all those books, built the shelves they rested on; this was a home Sophia had infused all the love she could into. 

Her fingers brush over shelves as she walks, collecting dust on her fingertips. She walks through the front of the house, into the back room behind Ariel's desk. She opens the door quietly, and slips into the room. She looks around, at the strange gadgets hanging on the walls, robes long forgotten in piles on the floor. This is their merchandise. The cursed swords and bloodied armor and rusting jewelry. There is a difference between these items and those that decorate the halls of her home.

Those are useless, merely decorative. But these, these are worth something.

She moves to the back of the room, to the shelves covered in orbs. She picks one up, holds it in between her slender fingers. She looks at the tiny universe swirling inside of it, the pinks and yellows and reds. She sighs, and places the orb back on the shelf. She picks up a different orb, a larger one, and rolls it in between her fingers. 

This one is red and ashy, an older power. “Azazel, you fool,” she murmurs, looking at the swirls of an ashy brown within it. She sets this one back on the shelf with the others, and slips back out of the room. She doesn't return to Ariel. Not yet. She treads lightly on the badly carpeted floor, to the spare room Ash and Azazel sleep in. 

She cracks open the door, and looks at the two sleeping. Ash is curled up on one side of the bed, book clutched to his chest and blanket tangled around his legs. Azazel sleeps on the other side of the bed, blankets pulled up as far as he can get them. She looks at where Azazel's sleeping form presses into Ash's back. She closes her eyes, and taps into the power twisting in her gut. 

She can sense the same twisting in Azazel's gut, a faint thing, love for those long dead. She turns her attention to Ash, and smiles softly at the hurricane in his gut, the tendrils creeping their way up into his mouth and curling around his fingertips.

She opens her eyes, and looks at the trail of red stretching from Ash’s pinky finger, and her eyes go to where its latched onto Azazel, where the red string curls in his palm. She wrinkles her nose, and sighs. “I hate doing this,” she murmurs, as she picks up Azazel's limp hand. She plucks the string out of his palm, and ties it loosely to his finger. 

“Boys and their mutual pining,” she mutters, laughing softly. She glances down at her own hands, at the red powder glistening on her fingertips. “Please be kind to them,” she whispers, feeling a tear or two slip out of her eye. She slips out of the room, and closes the door just as quietly as she opened it. Ariel is awake when she returns to their room. 

“Are they okay?” Ariel asks, standing up. Sophia nods her head, and starts crying. Ariel says nothing as she pulls Sophia into her arms, wrapping her arms around her lover's smaller frame. 

Ariel knows this. She knows this pain, she knows the tears that come with their visitors. She knows how it hurts her to see them, to see people in love running away, to see angels sleeping in the guest room hand in hand, knowing one of them will die. Sophia always knows when one of them will die. Angels of love weren't meant to see the future, but she knows when a love is doomed. 

People came to them for many things. For power, for love, for freedom, in the end, it always boiled down to those three things. 

Ariel looks up as she leads Sophia to their bed, mouth twisted in a snarl. She sighs, and sits down on the bed. Sophia sits beside her, falling to her side, and laying her head on Ariel's thigh. “Tell me a story my love,” Sophia whispers, gripping Ariel's pajama pants. 

Ariel sighs, and closes her eyes. She tangles a hand in Sophia's white hair, and rests her hand on Sophia's shoulder. “Once upon a time, there was a god. She was a beautiful god, with the longest, shiniest, most stunning hair.” She stops for a moment to run her hand through Sophia's hair. Her hand wanders to Sophia's face, fingers brushing over her cheekbones. “She had the brightest, clearest brown eyes,” her hand drifted to Sophia's mouth, “and the prettiest, pinkest, mouth.” Ariel stopped for a moment. “She was very beautiful, but she was very lonely.” Her eyebrow quirked up. “Is this sounding familiar yet?” 

Sophia laughed through her tears. Ariel bent over her, and kissed her softly on her lips. “The moral of the story is it'll all be okay. Look at us now,” she whispers, sitting up to look around their room, at the hanging plants and dried roses, the books in piles on the ground and dresses hanging off chairs. Sophia follows her gaze, and buries her face back in Ariel's lap. 

“Life isn't going to end for them,” she says, voice muffled. Ariel sighs, and leans back on her hands. “The string wasn't tied to his finger,” Sophia continues. “I tied it but its just going to go back.” she sits up. “I don't want-” Ariel shushes her by a finger to her mouth. 

“They'll be okay,” Ariel says, bringing Sophia into a hug. Ariel stares at the ceiling as she falls back onto the bed, bringing Sophia with her. “They'll be okay,” she whispers into Sophia's hair. 

They both know she's lying. 

This is what Ariel hates. She hates what Sophia can know based off the way the string is tied. She hates what Sophia can learn when she uses that accursed power. She whispers a quick prayer to gods unhearing. She knows one would hear if he could, but he wasn't a god. He was a fake. It wasn't his place to listen to his angels prayers, so Ariel thanked whatever god was there.