3. Three o Clock

Gabriel rarely made himself seen. Even to the one he loved most—his brother. Ever since they'd been little and new to their existence, they'd been pitted against one another and had been raised to believe that they merely existed as something to stand against each other. Despite never falling for any of it, he'd still been wary of how he loved his brother. Gabriel was afraid—he was afraid to love his brother properly. Truth was, Gabriel was afraid to love anything at all. The only way he'd ever loved had been from afar. As they were now. A river apart and both standing on different sides. He could only love his brother like that without hurting him.

"No," Azriel curtly told him before he could even ask what he'd come there to ask. "The same answer you have gotten from me for the past five hundred years. You're not going anywhere near her. You've already tempted your luck enough by interfering with her work."

Even though his brother's defensiveness towards Silene was not unfounded, a sliver of envy slid into his belly and curled up his gut like a rattle snake full of venom.

Gabriel hated himself for the resentment he'd developed for his brother these past five hundred years. On his guiltless brother who bore none of the faults he'd attributed to him since the day he'd heard of the woman who'd prayed about his own downfall to none other than his own brother out of all.

It was the first time Silene had prayed in her life. A life Gabriel did not know had even existed amongst his realms until that prayer so long ago now—it was how he had found her, amongst the living yet not quite. And that lone prayer had been wasted on his ruination. A plea made to the stars for his damnation. The worst one they could find.

At the time he'd laughed, revelled in that prayer he'd heard by chance, full of amusement. Until he'd chased after it and found its owner. His least regretful mistake, but the one that had cost him the most.

In the end, there had been no prayer to bring him nearly close to the ruin that he was standing in so many feet under. A ruin that he'd sunk into the very moment he stayed to watch a human girl with such hate in her heart for him—a hate he'd never seen her possess for anyone else, not even those who'd hurt her. Before he'd known that the land under him had been quicksand, he'd spent days there on that pale realm, just waiting for her to finally raise her hazel eyes in his direction. Little had he known that the girl had desired the ground more than the skies, and that she would have never looked at him anyway.

"And I've done as you've asked," Gabriel said. "I've stayed away."

Azriel tilted his head, shooting his brother a look full of doubt. "Have you?"

"The best I could." From afar, it had all been from afar.

"You could hurt her, really hurt her."

Something cracked in his chest at his brother's words. "Never again."

"She is close, Gabe. So close to getting to leave here. So close to a new life."

So close to forever slipping through his fingers, burned out of her memory, burned out of his, too. Once she would fulfil her service to his brother, that's when his punishment would start.

The words burned up his throat like burning embers dragged by an iron rake as he spoke them, "You think that will keep her away from coming here again as soon as she can? She loved you once. Do you think she will not love you again?"

"Gabriel," his brother warned. "If the fates will have it so, then there is nothing you nor I can do."

"Is this payback?" Gabriel asked his brother who'd started looking at him with a scornful gaze ever since he'd forced him and his human lover apart years ago.

Azriel shook his head. "Have you always thought so little of me, brother?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

He didn't know for how much longer he could keep her bones warm before his would start to grow cold, too. How much longer could he bear to embrace the soil she'd been buried in that blighted realm he cursed every time he visited because he missed her and that was the only way he could see her. "I'm too desperate. Sleeping at her grave every night is not sufficing anymore. I might be tasting your power, brother. You might have won over me after all. Our father was right."

"Our father is a demented old God." His head lowered and he took off his glasses to rub a hand across his face. "You only have her for a few hours. The longer she stays away from Asphodel, the more danger she is in. I will intervene if you do anything that puts her in harm's way."

Gabriel nodded. He would have been satisfied even if he'd let him have her for a minute even.

The soft spring wind swept north, and he drew his eyes shut, inhaling the sweet scent of lilies carried with it. If it weren't for the noise below his feet and the sound of humanity buzzing underneath him, he would have thought he was laying on a field somewhere the sun shone hard enough to blind you, not at the edge of a building looking hundred metres below.

She'd always smelled something like summer to him, but when she'd near him, winter would come as shivers spread down the length of his spine like the cold lick of brisk wind.

He smiled up at the darkening skies, feeling her gloomy presence stare onto his back, possibly contemplating every possible way to his incessant end. "Are you going to stand there all night?" he asked, already drunk in her presence.

Her footsteps were light as she approached him to the ledge of the building where he'd sat. "I was hoping you'd jump and somehow die."

His smile grew into a grin. "You might get your wish."

"To my very unfortunate luck you can't die," she blankly said, taking a seat just a couple feet from him and pulling the black, delicate flower embroidered hood down with an elegance he'd only ever seen her possess. Her fingers had been made only to hold gently, so thin and fragile. He could only begin to imagine how soft the deaths she gave were, how lucky the souls she had touched must have been to be held by those tender fingers.

"Maybe not in the human ways you're thinking of. But one can die many other deaths without one"s life being taken." As he had often died when he'd seen those tender hands stained with blood while she's held onto life as she'd been beaten and bruised just before his eyes when all he could do was watch.

Gabriel had died his first death then. As he'd stood feet away from her house while she'd knelt down in front of the well, washing that blood off easily as if she'd done it a thousand times. The second death he'd died, his corpse had been buried in her eyes. Eyes that had shone so brightly despite the pain in her body and the open wounds still weeping red while she'd bid her younger brother goodbye with a huge smile as he'd gone to work—a smile that had faded with each step he'd taken away from her. He could recall almost every single one of his deaths. Every single one held her as its gravestone.

She turned to stare at him for a long while, hazel eyes bore into his as if slowly unlocking every single one of his thoughts, peeling back every layer of the secrets he had only ever shared with the wind and his brother, the only ones that had witnessed his breakdown at her feet. "I really hope you've died them all. Every possible death one can die without one's life being taken."

He chuckled despite feeling a sharp spear of ice going straight through his chest. "The stars might hear." Gabriel was not one to seek pity, not hers out of all, he simply did not deserve it, nor would he ever be able to, but he had the unbearable urge to ask that she pities him, that she handles his deaths with those same tender hands. So selfishly, he wanted his corpse to be beheld by that soft touch despite his many crimes.

"I'm hoping they might have already heard me long ago."

As he remained there, unable to look away from her and grappled with fear that he might soon die again, he found himself asking, "Were you afraid of dying?"

But Gabriel knew the truth. He'd watched her long enough to know that she had not been afraid. He'd seen her run in his brother's arms, happy tears clinging to her eyes. But Gabriel had been born with a penchant for pain—he wanted to ache only so he didn't feel like matter, like something only capable of floating. Worst thing was…Gabriel had gotten a taste of it only some time ago, grown fond of the draining, bitter taste of pain, and he'd become addicted, too.

"No," she quietly said, turning to look at the darkening skies that were missing the usual stars unlike other realms. "I was more afraid of living. It is such a burden we are given. Life is such a burden." She sighed as if the weight of a thousand worlds was resting against her chest. "To keep living is a burden when you find no meaning in it, to keep watching years go by as you rot away body and soul with the only thing that could hurt you intact all the way through. If I'd lost my mind, it might have been easier. It would have been a kindness, you know, for you to have granted me that at least."

"You know I can't interfere with human lives, Silene. Many rules forbid me to. As they forbid my brother."

Resting her chin on her shoulder, she looked at him. "I wouldn't have wasted prayers on an arrogant God like you anyway."

"Tell me then, Silene, who did you pray to?"

"No one," she lied to him.

Gabriel's hands curled into fists, forcing himself not to reach for her when her long hair flew up in the air as the wind picked up and tunnelled into a vortex between them. He wanted to comb his fingers through the silky strands for he had such a weakness for her strange hair—white at the front, like the moon, and black at the back like skies of the darkest night. "I will choose to believe that. Only because you lie so prettily."

Her lashes fluttered fast, and she gathered her knees to her chest as if she were cold.

Gabriel shed his leather jacket, closing the distance between them to throw it over her shoulders, careful not to touch her. "I should have asked to meet inside." But he didn't think she'd want to be in a closed space with him or make her uncomfortable. Or worse—afraid.

"It's because of you, you know," she said, looking up at him with such disdain. "That I am cold. I don't get cold. I can't get cold anymore. I haven't been cold in five hundred years." A sigh escaped her as she looked away from him. "I had not realised that I'd missed it." Quickly she pressed her lips tightly shut, looking like she'd regretted the words she'd spoken.

"Would you like for me to apologise for it?"

"Do you feel sorry?"

He shrugged. "Only that I brought you up here instead of somewhere warmer."

"Why would you care?"

How could he tell her? How could he even begin to explain something so vital to him?

Looking away, he said, "I kept wondering why out of all you've never come to me once in hopes I would grant you another chance at life or a chance at seeing someone you left behind. At some point, the dead always want a bargain with me. Always in death." He chuckled a little. "They all love me more in death." All except her. Though he'd never found himself seeking to be loved, he didn't want her hate. Not hers. Gabriel had not once kneeled before anything or anyone, king nor queen, God or Goddess, but for whatever he'd done to deserve her hate, he wanted to kneel before her and beg.

"I have never needed a favour."

Another thing he knew but had not wanted to accept. The very few prayers she'd made had been for his demise. And demise had found him. Right at her feet. It had taken him one curious glance at the woman who had made him laugh with her hate, only to find himself not wanting to be hated. "Everyone needs a favour. Everyone needs a favour from me. And I am good at granting them."

"Is that what this is? You want me to ask you for a favour?"

"I just need you to ask me something. Anything. Everyone has questions for me."

"There is nothing I need to know."

"Do you hate me?" The question had slipped faster than he'd intended to ask it. He didn't mean it to seem like an accusation.

Silene's perpetual frown melted away and she turned to look at him again, with something else in her eyes, something like acquiescence, as if she had made peace with the fact that it was neither this or that. "I don't hate you, Gabriel. I just don't like you."

"Why not hate me if I have been so cruel to you?"

"I think I wasn't made capable of hate. All of it might have been easier if I had just found a way to hate. If I had clung to it, I might have found some meaning in living."

"And love? Did you not love?"

"I did. To the point of suffocation. I should have loved a little less, maybe I could have been able to hate more."

"Your death. Was it painful?"

She swallowed and his eyes dropped to her throat that was always covered by a thin scarf of sorts to hide the very scar he might as well have carved by his own hand. "People like me never die violently."

"People like you?" he asked, wanting to know more of the life he'd not been able to witness, of the life she's always pushed him away from seeing and cursed him to never see. It was like she had not wanted any witnesses to her death. Or maybe…she just had not wanted any visitors at her grave, because the woman he's seen from afar had been neither here nor there, only resembling somewhat of a lovely phantom, a mirage of pain draped in such gentle beauty. She was still as such, as the day he'd found and then lost her.

"People who have only ever known violence," she said, standing and handing him back his jacket. "I am leaving."

Looking up at her, he said, "You've given my brother your five hundred years. Before you go, give me one more day."

Silene's lips parted, and she stared at him with so much confusion for a while before asking, "Why? At the very least tell me why?"

"I'd like to know more about why you don't like me."

"Won't take me a whole other day to list them."

"I'm certain you can come up with enough to fill up a whole day."

"Such a senseless thing to do."

"Says the Reaper who knits and wears things no one can see, cooks what she cannot eat, decorates a house she invites no one into, and plants flowers no one can smell."

Her lips parted and she sat up straight. "How would you know all that?"

"I have senseless hobbies."

"Like watching me?" she asked, blinking fast, her cheeks taking the slightest rosy tint. But strangely, she did not react as surprised as he'd thought.

"That wouldn't be one of them. There is some sense to that."

Her eyes paced between his. "What sense could there even be to watching me?"

He wanted to remember her. Everything about her. He wanted everything about her engraved on his skin, for the ink to take root on his bones, for them to feed into his marrow.

Her entire life was gone somehow except the end. There wasn't a single trace of her anywhere. If not for her hate, he would have never found her, he wouldn't have borne witness of her end, of what drove her to her end.

No one could do that. No one could wish so hard to not exist that their entire existence would erase. But she did, and Gabriel was afraid she would do it again and vanish from his sight once more. Soon, she would leave his sight, and he wanted to use every clue he had to find her no matter where she would hide from him.

She threw his jacket in his lap. "Don't look at me like that."

"Why are you always so unsettled by my attention, Silene?"

"You're an unsettling creature."

He threw his head back and laughed, but that seemed to unsettle her, too, because she looked away, breathing in as if there was no air at all.

"Do I scare you?" he asked, leading her inside.

As they stepped into the lift, she said, "Only what you are."

Gabriel had been adored all of his life. Praised for just his existence alone. Made to feel above all. Finding Silene that one winter night so long ago had been the first time he'd understood his own being. Without a word, she had taught him so much about himself. For that small period of time where he'd circled her starless, moonless, sunless orbit, he'd found out the truth. Just how feeble and weak he was. How useless he'd been. For all he could do as he'd watched her hurt was to just simply do that—just watch. From afar. Hidden behind shadows of his own faults.

"Why did you bring me here, Gabriel?" she asked as the lift started going down.

His head dropped the mirror behind, and he stared at the lift's flickering light. "I didn't want to be alone tonight. Just this one night."

The way her eyes rounded full of understanding he didn"t deserve, coloured in with sadness he didn't deserve might have been his next death—such a gentle one this time. "But why me out of all?"

"Tomorrow," he started, "see me tomorrow and I will tell you."

Her long silence almost spooked him, he'd almost never felt his heart race, but it did as she thought about her answer all the way down and as they reached the river. "Does it have to be in the morning?" she asked, hopping on the boat and turning to him. "I wanted to finish planting my new flowers for whoever will stay in my home after I'm gone."

Gone. She'd be gone soon. "It doesn't have to be in the morning."

She sat down, gathering her knees to her chest and nodded at him as the boat started getting picked up by the current of the invisible river between worlds. "I will come to you since you can't come to me."

He walked along the riverbank beside her boat. "I can come to you, too, Silene."

"But you never cross the river."

He bit down his smile. "How do you know that I never cross the river?"

Looking away, she said, "You can go now."

"It's a great evening for a walk," he said, keeping the boat's pace. "How do you know I never cross the river?"

She sighed. "I have a great view from my house."

He simply raised a brow. "And do you happen to watch me often?"

"I wouldn't say often." Grabbing an oar, she started to row a little faster, making Gabriel's grin grow corner to corner.

The boat came to a stop when he put his foot on the bow and leaned in close to her. "I wonder," he said, watching her chest rise and fall faster and faster the longer he remained there so closely to her. "I wonder how long you have known that I watch you, too."

The ring of hazel thinned the longer her eyes remained on him, her pupils growing wide as if she'd been staring into the sun.

"Who told you? Az? Some busy body ghost?"

"I could fe…see you," she stuttered.

How had he missed it? "You never said hello."

"I'm not in the business of saluting stalkers."

"Only murderers and psychopaths?"

"It's my job to guide any soul, regardless. Az deals with them how he wishes to deal with them. I'm not a judge or jury."

"But they get a hello, at least. I don't."

She slowly frowned. "You sound weird."

"My pardon. I only meant to sound envious."

"Will you let go of my boat, please?"

"Sweet dreams, Silene," he whispered near her ear before he pulled back.

Her brows slowly pulled together as he let go of the boat, expression filled with doubt more than confusion. Her head craned in his direction the whole journey down the river and until she disappeared down the mist.

"Sweet dreams, my ruin," he murmured.