caveofsapphires | smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

WHO: EVERYONE. All PCs thus far will be in this log, through active tagging or implication.
WHAT: THRILLS. SPILLS. Hiking trip toward the Diamond City.
WHERE: The Overworld.
WHEN: Forward-dated to May 1st (Tuesday) through May 7th (Monday).
WARNINGS: May contain violence or other mentions of physical harm. This is not summer camp.
NOTES: More information can be found on the OOC post here. Please read it!

Gathered in the morning haze, Sleepers were brought to the mouth of the Cave with plenty of supplies and equipment. Compasses that would point them toward the City. Backpacks full of clothes and food, medical kits, tents and even weapons. Stun rifles and knives — to fight off any unwanted company, they said. ("Watch out for their bite," Ryan had commented. "Those fuckers are downright feral.") The straight and narrow path would get them there in six days if they kept a good clip. They were sent off just like that. Refusals to leave were met with a wall of guard force officers blocking the entrance back into the cave city. No way to go but forward, unless someone was particularly stalwart about remaining.

From the exterminator's station near the mouth, leaving the Cave was as simple as a short hike upward into the fresh air of the Overworld. Dust and an uncomfortable sort of heat pervaded the atmosphere, light winds stirring up the sand and teasing the meager bits of vegetation that had grown. No matter what direction you looked... it was all wasteland, cracked ground and desolate emptiness. Jutting up from scarred ground were boulders and small spires made entirely of glass and patches of stone; instead of reflecting the harsh sunlight, they seemed to absorb it and only add to the muted loneliness of the atmosphere. As far as the eye could see, there was no life to be found.

With no other option, the Sleepers eventually made their way onward.

"Ineffable. Well, that's a laugh." To say that Balthazar was upset by his Father's disappearance was an understatement. They had once had a good family, the whole of Heaven, and they had all been content to serve and never ask a single question. The angels loved each other as fiercely as they had loved their Dad and even Balthazar had bern more prone to his loving, older brother role. Then the whole thing with the humans started and it had all gone to shit. True, it was Lucifer who divided Heaven in the first place, and Balthazar held hin accountable for it, but all the blame could be traced back to their Father. After all, if He was truly omnipotent, onniscient, and overall, the Being they had belived he was, then he would have never brought the humans about in the first place. He would have never made off into the night like a bandit, leaving Heaven without guidance and letting his brothers tear at each other's throats.

But, anyway... "I'm not quite sure how your offices were run over there, but perhaps it was for the best you didn't have to deal with the political side of it all." Lord knows Balthazar had his fill of it.

"Is it?" Aziraphale said mildly. "I would call it factual. Although I'm sure there are differences between our Fathers' histories." He wasn't. Not to mention the fact that it was ridiculous to act as if there were two Gods. There was something absurd about the entire concept of disparate Heavens, and Aziraphale truly wished he had evidence to contradict it, but at this point he couldn't present a more reasonable theory.

With a sigh, he shrugged, letting his legs stretch out as much as he could; his muscles were tensing up. "I was never asked to. I wasn't particularly important. But it would have been - frustrating. Difficult." He thought, too, that it might have changed him, or rather kept him the same. He had been happy on Earth, more or less, and he'd never met a happy angel in Heaven, because happiness was not a concept that had meaning in Heaven. Nor contentment. Just . . . existence, and service.

Service was all well and good, of course, but there had to be something more to it all than that.

"Well, then, I suppose our homes have more in common than I thought." Being in Heaven had always been frustrating in some way or another, but in earlier days, it had been a good frustration. When they were new and the world was new, there was frustration because of Gabriel and Lucifer's pranks, frustration because they were still learning of their Father's universe. Despite that, Balthazar had never imagined that one day he would be fed up with it all. In fact, to think of such a thing would have been ludicrous, something laughed off.

But now Heaven was so clinical, so militaristic, so...cult-like. It became frustrating in all-new, infuriating ways. Ways Balthazar became disgusted to think about. Once he had been a loyal soldier; loyal to his Garrison, loving of his brothers and Father. Now he was a thief. A drunk. "You're lucky; you're not brainwashed like the rest."

"No." Despite himself, Aziraphale smiled, a bit wistfully, at nothing very much. "I suppose I'm not, anymore. Purely by virtue of never being in Heaven." Not to mention unsavory acquaintances.

Turning to Balthazar, he added, a touch of curiosity in his voice, "But nor are you." It had been in the back of his mind since that vague night at the bar with the other two angels. Neither of them were anything like the angels he'd known back home, but Balthazar was miles more bitter than even that brief glimpse Gabriel had shown him, and he wore it on his sleeve. It was fascinating, in an incredibly morbid way.

"I was, a long time ago." And happy about it, he failed to mention, but then everybody had been in those days. Now everyone was some measure of bitter about everything, even those who had sided with Raphael, the angel who went over the cuckoo's nest. "But then I saw how absolutely insane my family is." Michael had been the first to catch the crazy, which then just trickled downward. He remembered the first time an angel had been submitted to 'Re-education,' how he had become disgusted with everything to the very core of his Grace.

But, even now, he couldn't decided whether leaving Heaven like he had, had been a good decision or not.

Aziraphale sometimes wondered at the fact that his questioning had not been a more conscious process. Perhaps it was due to a general passivity, or to fear, or simply to a lack of observation - but he had questioned more or less without realizing it over years and years, and only truly discovered how distant his views were from Heaven's on that day when he'd phoned up the Host and discovered that the Apocalypse was to progress as planned, no matter what.

He didn't really have a good response. He looked at Balthazar, though, and nodded slightly before letting his head fall back against the stone. That, at least, made sense, the tremendous discomfort and shock of realizing that you and your fellow creations, your brothers, were on entirely different planes of understanding.

"Hard to know what to do, really," he mused. "After all that time."

"You're thinking too hard about it." Why do anything? Why feel like you had to do anything? If Balthazar knew anything about Heaven after all this time, it would be the more things changed up there, the more they stayed the same. His family would never change. Hell, even his dear, naive brother Castiel, the one who had ripped all the pages out of the book, burned them, and then stomped on them, had ended up back in the same routine.

It was a little depressing. Too bad there wasn't any alcohol around from him to help chase away the thoughts. "Leave it all be."

His head rolled sideways again so that he could see Balthazar out of the corner of his eye. Exhaustion swept suddenly through his bones, and he slumped further down the wall, probably the least upright he'd been in centuries. He just wanted to sleep and not think about this sort of thing for a while.

"Given the fact that we're trapped in a hole in the rock hiding from a sandstorm, yes, maybe I am," he admitted, and closed his eyes, breathing out slowly.

"Yes, I think so," he finished. This was probably the most he had talked about the family or home in such a long time, and it didn't bring good memories with it. Sure, he had some (he thinks) warm thoughts about Heaven, but the bad so much outweighed the good that it was absolutely exhausting to think about it.

Best to just leave it be, as was his mantra, and get a bit of shut-eye.

smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

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