Chapter 12: The Watcher and Temporary Mercy

Alix spoke without turning; she'd felt the presence of something old and familiar when it had appeared at the edge of the woods behind her, but it didn't scare her. Truth be told, nothing scared her anymore, not after living for as long as she had.

And she knew this particular Watcher.

"'His'?" The Watcher spoke as though he wasn't sure what she meant, but she knew better than to believe him. She turned to face him then, her liquid mercury eyes taking in his appearance in a matter of seconds as she threw the stolen knife at his throat. He caught the blade, of course, only to find she had pulled her flintlock and now held it in a steady hand level with his head; she'd recognized him when he first appeared on the sense of his soul alone, but now she knew for sure. He hadn't changed much, he was still handsome in a sort of unearthly way though his blue-green pupil-less eyes were cold and hard with grey and vaguely threatening now beneath white-silver hair combed neatly down and to one side. He was trying to blend in appearance wise so she assumed he was masking his true appearance with a veil, but the fact he didn't falter with a flintlock aimed at his head would've given him away in a heartbeat even if she couldn't see the divine fire that made up his soul.

"Don't play the fool," she cocked her head to one side, "You're a Watcher, you should be able to recognize when someone has been touched by the Caretaker just as well as I can. They had a sort of…" she paused searching for the right words to describe it, "divine spark in their souls."

"Why do you aim that weapon at me even knowing what I am?" Alix's eyes were as cold as his voice when he broke his silence again as it became clear he didn't recognize her.

"Because I don't know who you are or why you're here," she lied, pulling the hammer back as if for emphasis as ancient ink-black Lurakil runes wrote themselves around its barrel and her arm up beneath the sleeve of her blouse. "If this doesn't concern you, you must not know who I am, either," a brief pause to let that sink in, "and with the way His children usually treat me, you can't blame me if I prefer to err on the side of caution." The Watcher moved faster than Alix had expected, taking advantage of her moment of hesitation to close the distance between them and catch her by the throat with one hand while his other caught hold of her wrist and sent the shot wide into the trees.

"You are filth," he spat the words, "tempting and tainting His creation simply because your master says to." His voice, though still eerily soothing, contained an icy venom, and briefly, Alix thought about pointing out that this world did not belong to the Caretaker and she hadn't followed Lucifer since shortly after the fall of man. Instead, despite his disgust and the iron grip on her throat, Alix only smiled sadly. She could have burned him, hurt him in some way—maybe even killed him, but she didn't fight, because he was more than just familiar to her, the last remnant from her time in Egypt—

a time she'd washed away in her own mercury and liquid hellfire blood after burying a son she hadn't asked for but had grown to love dearly all the same.

"Isn't that interesting," she spoke breathlessly, but unafraid, "what did they do to you, little Watcher?" she smiled wider as Keep and her other Hellhounds returned, but with a silent gesture she held them at bay, "To make you forget so much?" The Watcher's gaze narrowed, the colors in his eyes shifting like a storm at sea.

"Why would I recognize such an insignificant—" Alix moved, cutting him off with a blow that dislocated his elbow and then flipping him into the dirt with deadly grace.

"Even if you didn't remember me before, you will know me now." She leaned over him with a smile that didn't match the threat in her eyes, "I am not some simple demon, I am Azrael," her smile vanished and her expression sent a chill down his spine—made it clear that she was Death incarnate, "and I have not followed Lucifer since man fell from Eden." Much to the Watcher's surprise, she offered him a hand to pull him back to his feet before turning her back on him and starting inside again. "Oh," she paused in the doorway, looking up at him for a moment, "he's here in the area if you're interested," and with those words, she vanished into the house. He stared after her for a moment before glancing into the forest where her earlier shot had struck a tree; frost now spread across the leaf mold where the tree had stood only a second before, now burned away completely.

Despite the fact Alix had locked the door behind her, she found herself toe to toe with the Watcher again as soon as she turned around.

"Sakes alive," she took a large step back, bumping into the door as the exclamation fell from her lips at his sudden reappearance, "What do you think you're doing?" He gave her a blank look as she pressed closer to the door as if willing herself to melt into it.

"What are you going to do?" She blinked in surprise, hesitating as though she were waiting for something to start making sense again.

"What?"

"About Lucifer being here in the area." Alix stared at the Watcher, her sleepless mind racing to piece the latest events together; mostly she was still struggling to wrap her mind around the fact this particular Watcher seemed to have a habit of showing up in her times of dire need.

But never when she called…

Alix shook the thought away.

"I don't know," she spoke quietly, her mask of confidence slipping.

"You don't know." he repeated the words, weighing them carefully, "You're not running or you'd be long gone by now." She studied him as he spoke, suddenly curious as to how long he'd been tracking her to know her patterns that well. "If you are truly Azrael as you say, then you have the power to rival his own and yet you always choose not to fight to the point we wonder if it is true. Why?" Alix was silent a moment longer, her gaze appraising.

"Have you ever been afraid?" The Watcher began to answer, but she wasn't finished, "Truly afraid, like you're going to lose everything that matters to you if you make one wrong move? And you better be damn well sure that your choice is the right one because, by the time you know for certain, you're in too deep to change it." He was quiet, an age-old pain reflected in his blue-green pupil-less eyes as his mind appeared to go elsewhere as the grey softened. Alix watched him, reading his expression before answering the question for him, "Yes… yes, you have…" Her voice was soft, gentle even, and he looked up at her again as uncertainty flickered through his gaze for a split second.

"You have people, things, maybe even places to lose," he spoke as his cold mask reset and she thought about telling him she already had lost a lot of those things to Lucifer over the centuries, "but you don't fight for them." She shook her head with a brief, wry smile.

"It's better if I lead him away from them, less likely they get caught in the middle that way." Never stopped him from destroying them just to spite me, though.

She shook the thought away.

"And yet you're not running away this time." Alix didn't have an answer for him any more than she'd had one for Adam.

"Tell me then, did you fight?" She already knew the answer, or at least she was fairly certain she did, but really she just needed to change the subject, to redirect away from the thoughts raging through her head like a storm.

"No." he finally spoke after a long silence, "She prayed to me, but He commanded me not to come," he took a deep breath, "so instead I watched her bury her son alone. There are some things we simply cannot fight." She listened, silent even though she'd known at least part of the story he told. Eventually, once she'd stopped herself when she found her fingers unconsciously rubbing the old mercury scars on her wrists, Alix found enough words to temporarily beat back the silence.

"Since you don't seem to be leaving any time soon, would you like a cup of tea?"

#

Silence settled between Alix and the Watcher as if it were a living thing that existed solely to swallow the words as they came to the pair. Alix sipped her tea, taking her time to catalog the most recent events of her day and to study the Watcher now that she had a chance. Then he set his cup down slowly, carefully, as if it held all of his thoughts and memories within.

"This speaks to your character, you know," he spoke simply, "that you'd invite someone who just recently tried to kill you into your home for tea." Alix raised an eyebrow at his comment.

"And what, pray tell, does it say about me?"

"You are not afraid of dying." She laughed at that, much to his well-hidden surprise.

"I am quite afraid of dying, as for me it is only temporary and usually quite painful." The corners of her mouth quirked up in a wry smile as he combed his fingers unconsciously through his hair, revealing some new black mixed into the white-silver, "Perhaps it's you I don't fear, little Watcher." She finished her tea and set it aside, ignoring the leaves and the message they held. "Do you have a name, little Watcher?" He seemed to hesitate for a moment, but eventually, he took a deep breath and answered the question she hadn't actually needed to ask.

"I am Zadkiel." Alix laughed; hearing him tell her again after everything that he was the Archangel of mercy, she couldn't help it.

"Made to reflect The Caretaker's mercy, no wonder you have none," her words were filled with misplaced bitterness and his gaze hardened into a scowl.

"Only for you." Alix couldn't put her finger on why, but his words hurt and she let slip a dry laugh; sometimes mercy is the end of a war—sometimes it's a painless death.

"I gave up the notion of mercy a very long time ago—the false hope granted me when I had Ishmael, that was the last straw." She watched his eyes widen at the name and a tired smile flickered across her lips, "Had you forgotten what I looked like?" Alix breathed a heavy sigh, raking long fingers through raven hair, dislodging some from her braid, "I suppose it has been a few thousand years." As she lowered her hand again, he caught a glimpse of a silvery scar ragged down the soft of her forearm like she'd been serious about the attempt and briefly he wondered what she meant when she spoke of mercy. "All that aside," she changed the subject then, "what do you plan to do now that you know Lucifer is in the area?" Zadkiel took a sip of his tea as if hiding behind it while he thought of a way to answer.

"I shall have to verify it first," Alix nodded slightly and took his hand firmly despite his surprise.

"I assume you've followed me long enough to find your way around," she spoke simply as she drew her fingers across the palm of his hand and Lucifer's current address appeared in a sharp script of inky black. A part of her she thought she'd left behind in Egypt missed the warmth when he pulled away to study it, finishing off his tea while he did so.

"Alright," he set the cup aside again as he stood, "I shall be off then." She watched him go in silence before glancing at his tea leaves and the death written there.

"Keep," her voice was clear and unaffected, but her gaze never left the leaves as Keep lifted his head from his paws, "make sure he's followed." The Hellhound stood at her words and vanished into the shadows, off to deliver her order to the rest of the pack.

#

Boredom breeds restlessness in all immortals and Alix was no different. She tired quickly of playing her piano and quicker still of pacing; painting the walls of her white room lasted only until she ran out of space and conversing with her ghosts, though useful for keeping her foreign languages in good shape, was about the same as conversing with herself. Still, there was no sign of Zadkiel's return and her boredom finally got the best of her as she pulled her coat on to step outside. Once outside, Alix let out a low whistle, calling Keep to her side before heading into town; what better way was there to kill time than to track her missing prey?