Chapter Text
He is in an endless nightmare. It has long ceased to simply seem to him, he has been convinced of it for sure. He did not know why he deserved it, and he never received an answer. And it is unlikely that he ever will.
Humans had always seemed interesting creatures to him. Animals with such a complex body structure and, especially, a brain, that it seemed to harm them more often than help. A four-chambered heart, a spine with curves special for straight walking, reduced body hair and, of course, 85 billion neurons. Not that many, if you think about it, differences from the rest of the planet's fauna, especially for a species that arrogantly calls itself the pinnacle of evolution. The angel did not quite understand what all these complications were for, but these were His own beloved children, and who was he then to judge? Humans have several times more taste buds than most animals. Why? An animal needs them to determine whether food is edible and fresh. For a human, among other things, so as not to die of hunger. This is where the great strength and great weakness of this species lies - mental problems. Representatives of the human species are so overloaded in the world they have created for themselves that, against the background of not only physical ailments, but also psychological and mental ones, they can forget about food, and even consciously reject it, succumbing to a multitude of reasons that were, mainly, in their heads. And if the refusal to eat was perhaps one of the most striking consequences, there were a great many other ailments, varying in their effects and horrors. Angel was not the know-it-all that everyone thought him to be, but he had heard of some of these ailments.
Derealization, for example. A terrible disturbance of perception in which the world around him is perceived as unreal or distant, deprived of its colors. The angel rarely thought about what it could mean. Had he ever felt this way before? He hardly ever could. He was an ephemeral substance, incapable of suffering or delusions of the mind. He understood what it meant only when he descended to Earth and acquired physical form. Then, when the deafening hum of the machine changed tone and it forced him to abruptly open his eyelids, only to find that he could not see anything. He lost his eyes again. He tore them out, unable to bear it, unable to see. And it did not help - because he still had other senses, but they seemed so distant that they seemed only like a dream. Suffocating. Heavy. Smelling of sulfur and coal and fuel. Unreal, but so painful that it seemed to be the only thing he represented now. Concentrated suffering. Endless pain, and only somewhere on the tips of his fingers - the heat of steam, the clicking of gears frozen in the thick air, and endless dreams and memories that sometimes helped him not to go crazy, sometimes did the opposite.
Or depersonalization, when people suffered from a recurring feeling of "being outside their body and losing their "I"." Previously, this affliction caused Angel only a condescending smile, as something unattainable for himself, because in order to feel how far you are from your personality, you need to have one. An unaffordable luxury for creatures like him. So he thought until he found himself here. Locked in his own personal Limbo, unable to move more than half a meter, feeling the crushing weight of several hundred tons of a scientific complex and the desert above his head. Involuntarily, he began to forget himself, trying to survive the horrors of which he became a hostage against his will. One day, he fell silent when he realized that no one would simply listen to his pleas and endless questions. Along with this "one day", he discovered something in himself that, as he had long thought, was available only to people. Self-pity. Its first seed, when he began to ask himself: "What did I do to deserve this?" And then it began to develop like a snowball that covered him completely, not giving him the opportunity to breathe.
Such questions, as we know, lead to others. "Who am I, what have I done, that this should be what I deserve?" The angel thought about himself. He pieced together his essence, everything he knew about himself, everything he had done, from the broken glass. He reconstructed himself piece by piece, only to finally have the puzzle picture and smash it with his own hands when he came to the final conclusion: he in the past was not the same creature as he was now. Everything he knew about himself simply shattered into the picture of reality - once an ethereal creature and a faithful messenger of Heaven, now he was someone locked in an earthly, physical shell, faulty externally and internally, piece by piece replaced with wires and scrap metal, reassembled so many times that he no longer remembered whether anything remained of the “former” him. Every time his physical shell miraculously attempted to restore itself, people saw it as a new opportunity to destroy him again.
He knew he was rotten to the core when one day a thought entered his head that made him attempt to tear apart what was left of him with his own hands: the thought that if his miracles were finally exhausted, it would give him the deliverance he had longed for. It made him want to curse himself, if only he could. Only people, the most pitiful and fallen to the very bottom of their lives, in despair sought peace in a final, deceptive release that would send their soul to the fiery hell itself. The very thought of it was so saturated with sin that the Angel desperately wanted purification, he tried to fold his hands in a prayer gesture, but a pair of irons wrapped in wires - all that was left of his hands by this point after another torture - slammed against each other with a grinding sound. His lips trembled, without uttering a word. He could not make a sound with what was left of his throat.
He was here and not here at the same time. Locked in, with no way to return to Heaven even in his thoughts and short dreams. Sometimes, in the short periods of time when he switched off, it seemed to him that he saw himself from the outside - miserable, tangled in chains and wires, barely breathing and sometimes shuddering from the electric shocks that passed through his body. Then he would wake up again, confused, and either saw nothing in front of him at all - when again there was nothing - or saw endless networks of wires and somewhere there, in the distance, a heavy iron door and a small “window” - thick glass, in which, most often, people in white coats scurried back and forth, sometimes looking at him, but more often going about their business, while Engie himself lost himself in pain.
He fell.
This thought just pierced him one day, and this pain was much worse than what he had felt all the time before. He did not just fall, he was dragged to the bottom by people, and he could not even find the strength in himself to resist. Weak and pathetic so much that he became a victim of human greed. How could he be so stupid? Careless? And if he still has not been helped, if this suffering has not been stopped, if Heaven has abandoned him... Then he is not worthy of salvation.
He will never be able to return.
For a long time now, he had felt too weak even to shed tears. He had endured being torn apart, endured being gutted, endured and waited for it all to simply end. By the time he realized that it probably would never end, he was too weak to even let out a quiet moan.
Now something had changed. Something had broken, not in his physical body, but somewhere much, much deeper. It seemed to have cracked in his chest, causing a burning and pain like a thousand needles at once, a pain that was now unbearable, and the resonance of this sound was reflected in his head, causing it to split.
He took a breath.
So sharply that it seemed to him that his lungs, filled with dusty, stale air, cracked at the seams and bled.
Before he could even come to his senses, the entire underground complex was shaken by a deafening, pain-filled scream, bouncing off every wall, reaching the surface and reaching every edge of the desert, and staying stuck in the heads of everyone who witnessed it for a long time. It didn't last long, quickly causing Angel's vocal cords to burst, filling his throat with blood that spurted out of his mouth and flowed uncontrollably down his lips, causing him to cry helplessly, silently, shaking from the agony that overwhelmed him with his whole body. Maybe people had time to come to their senses for a while after that, but they weren't given much time. On the verge of unconsciousness, Angie heard a siren wailing. Somewhere far away, but so close that at first it seemed to him that it was only his belated, long echo.
It wasn't an echo. There was someone else there. One of the last things Engie felt before passing out was an inhuman, simply extraterrestrial force that squeezed the entire research laboratory, like a child crushing a mosquito in his fist. The angel recognized this force, but he couldn't believe that he would feel it next to him ever again.
Pain. This time - not his. All his senses were dulled at least a hundred times since he came here. Nevertheless, he felt it. Human pain, multiple, other people's screams, sounding in him like one voice. His whole body shuddered, but even the pain of several hundred people that passed through him could not compare with a tenth of what people made him feel.
He vaguely remembered, as if he had blinked - and the entire laboratory had already sunk into ruins. The screams, the people, the machines fell silent. All except one - the one that held the Angel. It was damaged and barely intact, but it still hummed quietly and gradually drained his strength. His place of detention seemed to be the only place that remained almost undamaged. He did not have enough time or strength to think about how he felt about this - he lost consciousness, and did not come to his senses for a very long time, without any hope of being saved or pulled out of the ground.
He wasn't the only angel in the facility.
It was hard to believe, especially to him, but Angie wasn't the only angel that could be found in the lab. He wasn't sure how many other scientists saw him the way Angie did, though.
This one wasn't chained. He probably didn't have all that earth and metal pressing on him, or the forced body modifications, or the suffering that Angie had endured. Maybe he had something of his own, but Angie didn't know that. The winged friend looked light, even in his physical form - much more ethereal than Angie, and even as carefree as it was possible to be here.
Angie called him Peeker. The funny angel was probably one and a half times taller than Angie in his earthly form, but most often he showed up from around a corner or any other barrier that stood between him and the observer. He hid from Angie like that only at first, until he felt that he could be trusted. He hid from people constantly, from everyone at once, so that anyone except another angel could see him no more than up to his neck. Angie wasn't sure if it made any sense at all, since not everyone could see him, and those who could were accused of either weakened reason, or fatigue, or slyness. The way people flinched at the sight of Peeker, screamed and shied away, was almost funny. It would have been if Angie had had enough strength to smile or even a slight grin.
Angie didn't know why Peek wasn't still suspended next to him in the infernal machine, but he didn't dare think about it too loudly. In the end, it didn't matter if people couldn't see him, or if they couldn't imprison two angels at once, or something else - he was ready to accept it as long as Peek didn't suffer as much as he did.
He never spoke, and his appearance was intangibly silent. However, even if Peeker found Angie without eyes, without the ability to see him, the angel chained to his place always felt his appearance and presence. Because Peek smelled of freedom and surface.
He didn't smell it just with his nose, he felt it with his skin, or even what might be left of it. The light flapping of other people's wings brought fleeting relief, like an anesthetic taking effect, and Peeker always brought something with him. Something that allowed Angie to remember that there was a world outside of the wires and piles of scrap metal around. A living and breathing world, filled with something other than pain. For example, fallen flower petals. Peek never picked flowers, but he brought those that had already fallen. The leaves and petals still retained their scent, and sometimes this even briefly displaced the worries that swarmed in Angie’s head like parasitic worms. Several times Peek brought feathers from different birds.
Some things he must have found in nests, and some he picked up on the roads, judging by the lingering smell of dirt and dust. Once he even brought Angie a ladybug. The little insect was sitting quietly in his palm when Peek opened it, and Angie froze, as if enchanted.
Peek had placed the little insect on his shoulder, on what was left of it, and the soft, cool aura that the bug exuded, the smell of freshly cut grass that it carried with it, brought him such relief that it was the first time in a long time that Angie wanted to cry. And also to hug them, both - Peeker and the ladybug together.
Angie wasn't sure if Peeker had appeared before or after his imprisonment. But the second angel was probably one of the few things that kept him from going crazy. Peek had come to seem like a little brother to him. A quiet, sweet kid who liked to share cool little things he found on the street and play pranks on people. Too weak to free the older one, but enough to make him at least feel less alone. It was enough, in a way.
When the complex collapsed, Peeker was gone for a long time. Perhaps he felt bad from what he saw and heard, but deep down Engie doubted that he mourned for those whose lives were walled up here. Angie was finally convinced of this when Peek finally appeared, and through the glass Angie could watch the younger one bending over human bodies, and his constant smile on his face only grew bigger and, it seemed, more malicious. This made Angie feel a slight twinge of confusion, but the feeling quickly passed. After all, Peeker hardly sympathized with those who imprisoned his brother.
Perhaps Peeker was busy re-examining every corner of the complex. Engie was too rarely conscious to wonder where he had disappeared to. Engie didn't know where he was anymore. He couldn't even dream of Heaven anymore, but his thoughts were always carried away to somewhere where there was no pain and suffering. Each time he regained consciousness, he no longer remembered what kind of safe place it was, created exclusively in his crippled head. In fact, it hardly mattered. Whatever this place was, it would be better than reality.
Sometimes, when Angie woke up, he thought he felt someone else's presence. Somewhere up there, on the higher floors. Something alive, barely noticeable, moving among the rubble and what time had done to the remains of the people here. "Maybe a mouse," he thought before he was hanging in the wires again, like a lifeless doll.
Once, he thought the "mouse" had gotten to him. He heard a sound on the other side of the glass, like something heavy falling - maybe a rodent accidentally pushing something. The angel opened his eyelids, which were empty this time - after he had lost his temper again - but caught something like a light breeze. As if some door had been opened now, for the first time in a long time. As always, it made no sense now. Not to him. Perhaps the complex was trying to collapse underground again, finally, and was cracking at the seams. Even if so, it might be for the best - he would be buried underground anyway, but at least he wouldn't feel the torturous current still coursing through him, extracting whatever it could for the emergency generator to illuminate the rooms where it was still possible with an alarming red light that no one needed anymore.
Another time, when Angie wakes up, he sees a person. The same energy he mistook for a mouse. At first, he's not entirely sure if it was really a human, because his eyes had miraculously only just recovered, and everything was blurry, like under a huge layer of murky water. He tried to blink, and the figure began to move, moving from one terminal to another, looking for anything that was still intact, checking to see if it would work. There, in the doorway, were familiar fingers and a shock of blond hair. Peeker. He peered around the edge of the doorway, slowly, almost to his chin, and although Angie couldn't see his face, he knew what it was like. A smile, strained, but more intense than that - that's how he always reacted to strangers, as if he were trying to incinerate them with his gaze. Angie shook all over. He realized that now, as then, the younger one would not be able to protect him.
A shudder ran through his body, and for the first time in a very long time, he remembered what cold was. The man was not in a white coat, he was hardly a scientist judging by the way he was trying to make something work, but his very presence made the angel shake helplessly as soon as the memories of the suffering he had caused crept into his head. He let out a slight hum and shuddered all over, dumbfounded by the sound of his own voice. He had not heard himself for a long time. Often, his miracles did not even have time to regenerate his body enough for him to try to speak. He was so lost in thoughts in surprise that he almost didn’t notice how the sound that was firmly lodged in his head died down, and all his thoughts suddenly became empty.
The machine switched off. The magnet above his head went silent and Angie, held by almost nothing else, fell to the floor, causing the wires connected to it to stretch and burst, unable to bear the weight. He fell like a puppet, awkwardly and thumpingly, not even moving when he hit the deathly cold floor. His dirty wings spread out on the floor like two rags. The iron door opened and Angie felt with his whole being heavy steps approaching him. The angel felt the urge to shed a tear again, but could do nothing but let out a pitiful sob that burst out of him of its own accord. He closed his eyes. Closed them, and - to his happiness and great relief - fell into another unconsciousness, seeing only a red light blink in the "window" - soon the entire complex would be completely de-energized, having lost its source of energy.