Luciel's Children

Jon's hand on her shoulder brought her back to reality, and she looked around to see his expression, pain and loss there too.

"Come on, Ness, there's nothing we can do; we have to leave him, those are the rules."

Ness held hands with her brother as they slipped back into the house to watch the remnants of their family have dinner and share, however vicariously, in whatever family togetherness was left to them. The love that night was, as it was after every visit to the cemetery, subdued, toned down, less a celebration of their life after death and more a remembrance of things past, but there was an edge to it, a certain lack from Nessa.

Jon knew, without knowing how he knew, that her attempt to reach their father was preying on her mind, and he could see certain questions beginning to bubble to the surface, questions she'd so far been unaware she should have been asking, and memories awakening that she'd been compelled to forget.

They finally fell asleep, but it was a restless, fitful sleep, the disquiet in their minds touching each other's mind, until finally Jon woke in the dead of night, to see Nessa already wide awake, looking calculatingly at him.

"Can't sleep, Princess?" he whispered, and Nessa nodded, chewing her lip distractedly.

"Tell me about it, maybe I can help..." he offered, knowing it was probably a really bad idea, but the time had to come one day when she'd ask; now was as good a time as any.

Nessa looked closely at him, her eyes boring all the way into his, seeking out his innermost thoughts.

"This morning, you said something I never really paid attention to, but now I can't get it out of my mind; you said there were laws stopping daddy coming home, that he wasn't allowed to see us, that it was 'decided' after what he did. What did he do? Who decided? I didn't. I know he never meant to hurt us, I saw the look on his face when the gun went off, I looked into his eyes and there was nothing there but horror, no anger, no hate, even though he caught us...doing what we were doing. It was a mistake, a silly, stupid, meaningless accident, like a car-crash, yet he's trapped out there, and I can't get to him, and I want to, I want to go to him so badly, just so I can hear him once more, and tell him I know it wasn't his fault, and that I love him. What's stopping me going to him, Jonny, why can't I reach him, you know, don't you?"

Jon listened in dismay as she asked the questions he really didn't want to answer, the questions he'd specifically requested she never be curious about, and now she'd asked them, and there was nothing he could do except answer them, and hope she could weather the guilt and horror that went with those answers, the way he'd had to for the last ten years. Jon realised he needed some help here, that this was something he needed guidance on.

"You called?" said a suave, urbane voice, and Jon whirled around, to see a tall, slender man in a stylish black suit, a crisp white shirt, and a black bootlace tie with a silver enamel clasp, his jet-black hair slicked-back and glossy, and his hands nonchalantly shoved in his pockets as he lounged elegantly against the wall. He looked young, until you saw his eyes, and then the realisation came that something from beyond time itself was staring back at you.

"Well, aren't you going to say hello?" he smiled sardonically, and Jon relaxed; the voice was different, the face and look ditto, but there was no mistaking that tone of amused tolerance.

"Uriel!" he breathed, and the Archangel grinned, bowing theatrically, almost mockingly.

"As I live and breathe...or perhaps not; take your pick. Don't bother telling me what's happened, I already know, and now I have to ask; what are you going to do about it? If you remember, when I offered you the choice, I made a few conditions, and in return, as I also remember, you made a couple as well; one of them was that I cloud Vanessa's memories of everything after you were...transitioned...to this life, such as it is, including knowledge of what your father did, and what his fate had to be. Now she's beginning to put it all back together; she always was a smart girl. I suggest you come clean; if she's savvy enough to ask the questions, she deserves at least the truth, no matter how much it hurts; this is the price you agreed to pay, both of you, and I made no guarantees about what you learned along the way."

He paused to examine his perfectly manicured nails curiously, like he'd never seen anything like them before.

"Odd things, these, I wonder if you people will ever work out why you really have them?" he mused, lost for a second or two, then grinned at Jon.

"But back to our problem here; both of you chose to remain earthbound, to live in an eternal 'now', in order to remain with your family until the last of your blood has departed, and I can only guess how that must hurt, but it was your choice. I thought it was wrong at the time when I clouded Nessa's memories, and her knowledge of...certain things; perhaps now is the time to redress that wrong; when you made this choice, it was one of the sorrows I think you guessed you would be heir to."

He pushed himself away from the wall and stood up straight, shrugging his immaculate suit coat into place as he continued.

"Much as I wanted to give you a good kick for insisting on it, I complied, because, hey, I'm the Angel Of Death, and until you move on, I'm stuck with you, seeing as you're definitely not alive, and you're not exactly dead, are you? I like to think of you as more 'differently alive' than actually walking dead; the truly living can't see you, but you can't walk through walls and rattle chains and go 'whoo-whoo' in dark cellars, and you both feel real and alive to each other, but you're here, between the truly dead and the not dead yet, so you're my headache. Having said that, if it would have eased your sojourn here, then I would have helped you, and giving Nessa that grace was something she needed then. You really should have moved on, you know; the Thrones would have welcomed you, and made you ready for what comes next, whatever that is; that's something I can't know. Now it's come to this; she needs to know everything, so you need to tell her."

Jon looked at Nessa, suddenly aware she hadn't moved throughout the whole exchange, and the air in the room had a dead and lifeless feel to it.

"What's wrong with her, why is she frozen? What have you..." he began, but Uriel waved him to silence.

"Calm down, Jonny, she's fine; we're somewhere in the million billion spaces between one instant and the next, in that place where the universe remakes itself to form the next instant; nothing happens here, there's no time for it to happen in, we can talk all night, or whatever, and she won't even notice, so shut up and pay attention."

He stepped forward to take Jon by the arm and pilot him over to the window, to look out at the curiously reddish sky, and the dark shape of his father standing his eternal vigil outside the fence.

"You can't do anything about that; it can't be undone, except...no, forget it, you or I can't undo it, but equally, you didn't do that to him, and Nessa needs to understand and accept that; if she feels sorrow, anger, anguish, regret, or guilt, then she will, but she cannot be allowed to take this upon herself; I suggest you lead her slowly into that part. I know that him catching the pair of you going at it like a pair of mink set him off, but you didn't put that gun in his hand; he chose to pick it up, and while what he did to you was a tragic accident, the fact remains, he then chose to use it on himself, and that is the only real, unforgivable sin."

He looked pensive, almost wistful, his voice lowered, as he continued.

"You, all of you, the children of Adam, were most favoured, always, even with some of the stunts you've managed to pull over time, and for all of you, the mercy from above is infinite, there for the asking; to cast it back in the face of The Eternal like that, well, that's just asking for trouble."

He patted Jon on the arm and smiled that sardonic, tolerant smile again.

"Just tell her, tell her everything, then, when she calms down, and if you need some back-up, get her to call me. And now I have to go; you're not the only walking dead, you know!"

And then the air in the room was alive again, and Nessa was moving again.

"...can't I reach him, you know, don't you?" she finished, and Jon nodded, watching her eyes widen at the sudden realisation that things had happened without her knowledge, things that concerned her.

Jon took her hand, sitting her down on the bed while he searched for the right words as he put everything in order in his mind.

"First off, Ness, what do you remember immediately after, you know, dad...?"

Nessa looked puzzled, then once again her eyes widened as memory showed her where something had happened, something significant, and yet she had no memory of it, just the gaps where those things should be.

"I remember the noise, the look on daddy's face, then...then seeing you, covered in blood, and me, but we were standing to one side and daddy was crying, then...the funeral, and mummy wearing my St. Christopher medal and putting it on the coffin...my coffin! After that we came home, and I knew that I was allowed to stay because you were allowed to stay, to be with mummy and Jemma until...until something happens, and I don't know what. Why don't I know?"

Jon sighed; this was going to be even harder than he'd feared.

"Okay Princess, this is what happened. After dad...did what he did, a...a person came to us, and asked what we wanted to do next; he said we were innocent of any real sins, and we could move on, or we could stay with the family, be with them until they'd all moved on, then we could take the next step. We chose to remain, but I asked the...person to remove some of your memories..."

Nessa stared at him in consternation.

"What person, why would you do something like that, Jonny, after all we were, all the things we promised, why would you do that to me?"

Jon took her hands in his.

"I had to do it, because of what happened to dad, because of what he did..."

Nessa stared at him, her lips two thin lines, outrage in every line of her body.

"You had no right, this was me, Jonny, what was so awful, what happened that you had to take my memories away? And what did daddy do? Tell me!"

Jon hung his head, sorrow leaping anew as the guilt raged once more in him.

"Dad...dad, when he saw what he'd done, he was so horrified, he took the shotgun, and...oh Nessa, I'm so sorry! Dad...he put the barrel in his mouth; Ness, he killed himself!"

Nessa keened with grief as his words unlocked something inside her, and now she remembered, and now she knew why he was forever locked out of their existence, unaware of them, alone outside the fence forever.

"Jon, we did that to him, if it wasn't for us...oh God, Jonny, what have we done?" she quavered, almost hysterical with mingled grief and guilt, and burgeoning horror as the full realisation of his punishment hit her; for Richard Stewart, because of what he'd done, there would be an eternity of loneliness and rejection.

Jon held her close as she wept, muttering soothing words as he stroked her hair, eventually calming her enough to talk calmly once more.

"When dad killed himself, you were like this, I thought you were going to lose your mind, so I asked Uriel to step in and help you; the only thing he could do was blunt your memories, and hide some of them completely. Now you remember. If you need to talk with him, just call out to him; he's always listening."

Nessa looked curiously at him.

"Who's Uriel, and why can he do things like that?"

Jon pulled her a little closer.

"Uriel's an Archangel; he's the Angel of Death, and now that we're 'dead', or something like it, until we move on, we're kind of his responsibility. He watches over us; he and I talked earlier, and so he restored your memories. I'm so sorry, Ness; I was trying to protect you, I swear!"

Nessa sat rigidly as all Jon had told her echoed and tumbled inside her; this was her fault, if she hadn't given in to her urges that day, if she'd only, for once in her life, done the smart thing, none of this would have happened, and dad wouldn't be where he was now, trapped in a place where no amount of grief or repentance would atone for what he'd done to himself. In his grief, he'd committed the blackest sin, and now he was lost forever.

Vaguely, Nessa felt Jon move her around so she didn't have to look out of the window at that lonely figure silhouetted against the dawning sky, but her thoughts weren't on Jon, or herself, or the choice they'd made; instead she was thinking about how daddy had taught her to swim, and how he'd held her when she learned to ride her bike, how she'd followed his finger as it moved along the page, the letters slowly coming together to form words and sentences, and last thing at night, how he'd stood and waited for her to say her simple prayers and scramble into bed so he could make sure there was nothing under the bed waiting to grab and claw at her.

For the first time in this twilight existence of hers she knowingly cried for her father, for the wrong they'd done him, and the wrong they'd driven him to do.

Jon watched Nessa closely that day, watched sadly as she drew slowly but inexorably away from him; it was obvious she blamed him now; she blamed him for not allowing her to understand the consequences of their actions, for removing the memories she should have been allowed to keep, for not denying her that on fateful day. She kept her distance from him, and her mood seemed to communicate itself to June and Jemma; both their mother and sister were quiet, seeking comfort in their own company, drawing away from each other even as Nessa was drawing away from him.

That night, Jon waited for her, waited for her soft footsteps as she came to him, but they never came. When he looked in her room, she was gazing out of the window at the lone figure and gave no sign she'd heard him.

The next day was the same, and the next night: Nessa enclosed in a shell of guilt and rejection, and Jon alone with his memories and his own regrets. Night after night, and day after day this continued, days stretching into weeks, becoming months; every day, more and more of what they'd once shared slipped away; they could both sense it happening, and still Nessa did nothing to try and alleviate it, and Jon didn't know where to start; all he could do was suffer the torture of being a prisoner in this house, with his Nessa, but apart from her now, trapped here by his own wishes so long ago.

Summer melted away and Jemma finally left for Edinburgh and medical school, and now their mother was alone in the house, depressed and lonely, still caught up in the throes of her dead children's grief and anger as the hostility continued.

As the arc of their self-destruction spiralled ever tighter, Jon began to consider that perhaps the time to move on was approaching; his reason for staying was simple; Nessa: she was the sum total of all his reasons to be here, and with her slipping further away with every moment that passed, his need to remain was slowly dying away too.

Nessa in turn flitted around the house and gardens, always avoiding contact with him, her glances reproachful and unforgiving. Silence between them grew to be a habit, so when one day they passed each other, Jon with his eyes averted, as usual, he was startled to feel her hand on his arm. He looked up, to see her eyes soft and almost normal again, not the hard, unforgiving emeralds they'd been for so long.

"Ness...?" he whispered, and was rewarded with a slight upward bowing of her lips.

"Jonny, we need to talk, properly; can we?" she murmured, and his heart leaped at the prospect of finally communicating with her again; months had passed, lonely and alone, the year was turning to Winter, and his need to hear her soft voice once more, to touch her smooth skin, and to feel the brush of her hair against his hands and lips was almost overpowering.

He wordlessly took her hand and led her to the rose arbour, now just bare branches, the roses and leaves long departed,

"I always feel sad at this time of year when I sit here," she observed. "It always seems so dead and blighted; but look, if you touch them, you can feel the life waiting just under the bark."

Jonny dutifully stroked the bare twigs, and grinned as he felt what she was feeling. Nessa smiled back at him.

"It kind of gives you hope for tomorrow, doesn't it? All seems so dead, but now you know it will all be back again one day, as beautiful as ever."

Jon turned to look at her, and took her hand. Nessa didn't pull away, which he took as a good sign.

"And us, will we be back again one day, as beautiful as ever?" he whispered.

Nessa looked in his eyes, her eyes luminous with unshed tears.

"I'm sorry I was so angry, Jonny. I love you so much, and you hurt me and lied to me. I had to be alone; I had to work out how to love you once more after what you did. I know you meant well, but remember what mummy always said? The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. You hurt me, and I think for a while I hated you for hurting me so much, but now I understand why you did what you did. If I ask you now, will you love me again? I'm done with being alone, with chewing on what you did; more and more I think about what we had, what brought us here, and how we felt about each other, and I want that back. Can we get that back, my darling Jon-boy?"

Jonny's heart swelled until he thought it would burst even as he gathered her into him, a weight and a great burden dropping away as he held her once again. They kissed, naturally, no fumbling or hesitation, the patterns of their past once more falling into place around them, and so they kissed tenderly, hungrily, that chill distance between them vanishing as though it had never been.

It seemed just a heartbeat and they were back in Jon's old room, Nessa in his arms as they kissed wildly, hungrily, trying to make up for lost time. When Nessa reached for his belt, Jonny groaned softly, the feel of her hands on him almost unbearable after so long, and when his hands tightened on her bottom, she ground against him almost desperately, eagerness and longing plain in every line and gesture.

"Make love to me, Jonny, please, make it like it was before!" she whispered fiercely, spurring him on. They almost tore each other's clothes off in their haste to reconnect, long months of need betraying them as they grappled together, foregoing foreplay in their rush to once more couple.

"Ooohh God, yes...!" gasped Nessa as Jon's engorged member slid into her once more, stretching her open again the way she loved it.

"Oh God, Ness, I can't hold it for long...!" gasped Jon, months of enforced abstinence taking their toll. Nessa reached down and jabbed her fingernail into his perineum, the only thing that would back him off when he was on the verge.

"Thanks Sis..." he muttered, slipping his arms under the small of her back to raise her sweet nipples up to where he could suckle on them as he pounded himself into her.

"Oh yess, oh yes, like that, oh yesss..." murmured Nessa, lifting her hips in time to meet his thrusts, her lips searching for his as they coupled with varying cadence; now slow, languid, savouring the sweetness of their reconciliation, and then fast, hard, hammering at each other as excitement built and patience lost out to need, until:

"Ooohh Jonny, yesss, yesss YESSS!" she shrieked, her pussy contracting around him, immobilising him as her orgasm crashed and surged through her, wave after wave. Jon wasn't immune to the moment, and cried out, a hoarse, guttural, wordless shout of fulfilment as his own climax took him, his seed blasting out of him and into her depths, white hot and soul-wracking in its intensity, again and again, until he finally had no more to give, and his body trembled and twitched from the intensity of his climax.