11. Eleven o Clock

One last demand. That was all that kept her in his reach. One he was forced to not delay any longer. He couldn't. If any more time passed, he'd do something that might hurt her. He'd hold on to her. He'd refuse to let go of her. And he couldn't hold on to her. He had to let her go.

He knocked on the glass window of her kitchen framing her like painting in an art gallery, and she spun in his direction. Something akin to an earthquake raked his body when she pressed a hand to the window and gave him something he had not imagined her ever giving him even in his wildest dreams—a smile so radiant she could outshine any sun.

It felt as if something was dragging barbed wire through his insides as he lifted his fingers and pressed them against the cold glass, over hers.

Her little careful smile grew as she watched their hands join, it bloomed into a grin, and for the first time in his existence, he learnt what spring felt like to humans.

Leaning closer, she closed her eyes and pressed her lips to the glass.

Tears streaked down his face as he leaned in, too, wishing he could love closely without hurting those he loved.

They stood there, both on each side of the window, their brows pressed together, gazing at one another until her lips moved to form words that sealed so many fates.

It's okay.

Was it though?

Pushing away from the window, she got up and came outside, stopping the closest she'd ever been to him and handing him the end of a ribbon, before dragging him to sit on the grass where she'd laid a blanket. "Azriel might throw a fit again if he sees you here again."

"He doesn't scare me."

"I envy you," she said, trailing the tip of her finger on the open edge of his leather jacket. "Wish I was afraid of nothing, too."

"I might have lied to you, Silene. There are things that terrify me."

"What could ever terrify a God like you, Gabriel?"

"Ask me if I have ever been in love."

Silene hesitated, staring up at him with a plea in her eyes for him to take back his words. Her voice was small as she asked, "Have you ever been in love?"

Skies overhead rumbled with thick thunder as he admitted, "I am."

It felt like every clock had stopped moving at that very second, stuck onto those two words as Silene uttered two quiet words of her own, "You are?"

"Yes," he said as the wind picked up and grew into a tempest. Even nature wanted to stop him. "There is this secret I've kept since forever, you see."

She tucked a wind billowed strand of hair behind her ear. "What secret?"

Thunder struck close by. "One night, as I was sitting and staring at the stars, watching wishes being sucked into their bright bellies, I happened to hear one. One made for me, but not to me. All of which was strange because who could ever make wishes in my stead," he said with a forlorn smile. "The wish had been for me to vanish, to disappear, to find the worst ends one could ever find, to die a death so deadly I would never wake."

A tear streaked down Silene's cheek as she stared at him aghast.

"Nothing had made me laugh harder," he admitted, staring back at the owner of that wish. "After the amusement wore off, I remember staring at the skies for a long while wondering—wondering what I had done. It nearly gnawed me alive until I stole that prayer from the stars and went to find its owner." He tilted his head towards the stormy skies warning him and threatening him to remain silent as he had remained all these years. Begging him not to tempt fates. "I still have that prayer by the way."

Trees and grass and even the foundations of the hills around them shook from the wind that swept across.

Another tear dropped down her face, and he made to reach for her, hand halting mid-way the forbidding space between them.

"I found her," he continued, tucking that desire in the place he buried every other desire of his, deep in the chambers of his heart that had grown so big to accommodate his only love—the chambers that had become a graveyard where he'd had to bury his love, too. "A few times actually. I couldn't stop watching her from afar. I kept wondering if such a lovely ghost had been left behind by my brother. I kept wondering why she was still in my lands, amongst my living. Until I saw her tears. Then there she was, my sad girl, alive and all mine yet not mine at all. I could only get so close to her. Even the earth beneath her feet hated me, the walls of her home screamed at me when I'd dare steal any glance, the forest around her home would laugh at my efforts to get her attention. Nothing impressed her. Whenever I'd send her sun, she would go out less. When I'd send her rain, she would curse at it. When I'd grow flowers under her feet, she'd stomp on them. When I'd send her friends, she'd cower in fear. Her being would fade in and out of existence. Sometimes I would not be able to find her for days, nature tricking me and disguising her home. I didn't see her for a long time after. But then she made another prayer for my ruin. I wanted to see her again, but she had to let me somehow."

"And did she?"

"She did." A bitter laughter poured out of him. "But it was only to spite me. She was already in the arms of my brother when I got there. She'd hated me so much that it had made her longing for him almost seem like love—deep, profound love. A love so strong that she'd drank poison for."

Another tear slid down Silene's cheek and Gabriel resisted every urge that commanded his holy existence to have her in his arms.

"I begged him," he confessed, finally free of the truth he knew would make her hate him even more. "I begged him to leave her. I asked him for a favour. But there isn't much he could take from me. So I gave him the only thing I could give him—the thing I would come to desire most. And he left her. The debt for her life paid in exchange for what I'd come to desire most." He ran a hand over his eyes, feeling a painful sting burn across them. "I'd made a mistake in my calculations. I'd underestimated just how much she hated me and loved him." A choked laughter sputtered out of him. "The moment we'd left and she'd woken—she'd woken desperate for her one true love and had bled out in the bed I'd left her alive in exchange for the last thing anyone could take from me. Then I saw her walk through the gates to my brother, right back in his arms. She'd taken something from him. Twice. He was not gentle to her. For she then had to serve him for five hundred years and bring him one hundred thousand lives."

The sob that drew out of her shook his entire being. Unable to see her crumble right there, so close to him, unable to hold her, he forced his eyes closed and put his hands over his ears. He couldn't see or hear her—he could not. He'd hold her, and she'd vanish in his hands like mist along with any memory he had of hers. He couldn't—he couldn't live without a fragment of her memory.

Her tears spilled—they'd spilled worse than any blood in any battle Gabriel had ever witnessed. Then rain fell down on them with the fury of a thousand storms, bleeding into the land just like her cries.

And again, all he could do was watch.

Her cries had eventually stopped, but her tears had not. And their silence was most unbearable. Her tears had endlessly poured as he'd helped her dry off and change. They'd not stopped as he'd tried to gently brush her hair, and then help her get into her bed.

Laying on her side, facing away from him, she hid them, too. He'd laid beside her with her tucked to his chest as close as he could get, yet somehow it was the furthest he'd ever been to her.

His fingers tangled on the ends of her hair, playing with the strands and marvelling at the softness, remembering how her touch felt the same, so silky and gentle.

"Tonight," she whispered, her voice hoarse and defeated. "Azriel has asked me to collect my last death. What will happen after…with you…and me?"

"You will be reborn."

"And you?"

"I will get to watch you live."

"Will I see you?"

"No, my ruin, to your luck you won't. But I will be there. In the sun, the flame of a candle, city lights and every single moon beam. I will always be with you."

"What if you can't find me again?"

"I'm never losing you again, Silene. I will rake through every world I know to find you. You will not see me, you will not remember me, but I will be there, you have my word. Will you stop sulking and let me look at you now?" Pushing himself to his elbow, he carefully reached with the back of his finger to push the white strands of hair back from her eyes. "Don't cry, my ruin, my beautiful damnation, or I might not let you go."

"Then don't."

"You deserve better than my wretched heart that can't even love you properly, closely. You deserve someone who can hold you."

She turned and pressed her face to her pillow, her shoulders shaking from the loud sobs.

"Please," he begged, not even able to touch her, to comfort her in his embrace because his words no longer seemed to. "Please, Silene. Please, my ruin."

But she only cried harder.

He did not know how he'd dragged her out of her room, or even out of her home at all and into a very tiny fishing boat in the middle of a lake, holding a fishing rod with both hands and standing stiffly on her seat out of fear they'd top over in the water.

This had been her last demand.

She wanted to go fishing, but apparently, she had no clue what fishing entailed at all.

"They were smiling with all their teeth and gums in that human magazine," she grumpily muttered, tightening her hold on the fishing rod until her knuckles turned white. "And it stinks in here." She nudged the bait box with the tip of her heeled boots. "Throw that over."

Gabriel shook from laughter, and she squealed when the boat rocked, "Stop laughing, I hate swimming."

He leaned to fold back the brim of the huge fishing hat she'd insisted on wearing and was covering more than half her face. "This is ridiculous."

"I wanted the full experience."

"Did you now?"

After giving him one long look, she sighed and looked away, her shoulder slouching.

"What was all that for?" he asked.

"I want to sit in your lap and kiss you."

He grinned at her. "I want that, too."

"Give me a bargain then, just like you've given the others."

"Silene—"

"Take anything you want, anything at all, just make it so I can have you at least in one lifetime. Any lifetime. Hundreds and thousands of years from now, or at the end of all times, just once, even if it is just for a day. Make it possible. You can do that."

"I can't, Silene."

Her mouth quivered as she looked away at the distance surely to hide her welling eyes while she muttered, "Useless God."

It should have hurt him, but her words only made his heart well. "You can be cruel to me, my ruin. I do not mind."

"You had no business bringing me back then. Wasting a bargain on such a useless thing."

"I was going to give you everything. When you'd wake, I was going to lay the heads of those who hurt you like cobble stone for you to walk on, with their blood I would have painted a bright red path for you to follow towards a new life, a better one."

Still looking at the distance of the glittering, sun kissed lake, she muttered, "Something would have been missing."

"What is that?"

Gabriel's heart sank below the very water they stood upon when she turned to look at him. No words were spoken, yet all of them at once. "Perhaps…it happened so—"

"Do not say it."

Silene looked away again, refusing to show him her face as she whispered, "Stupid, silly God."

His smile only seemed to set her off more because she hurled all sorts of insults at him. All which only made him smile harder.