The Reaper's Touch

59. The Angel I'd Met Long Ago .

Ezra's POV

"You've looked better, old man."

A wheezy chuckle was quickly covered in coughs. "I'd have to agree with you there, my boy." The Scribe turned his head up to look at me, barely able to move it as it slid across the floor.

Gabriel may have been an Archangel, but that didn't particularly imply that he did not have a mean streak.

I aided the old angel from off the floor, carrying him over to a nearby futon of sorts.

"You've still a compassionate heart under your tough exterior, Azrael."

"Not that compassionate. It's Ezra now."

"You will always be Azrael to me. Can you remember your first day coming to me?" He coughed. "Ah, I can. It doesn't seem so long ago to me now. Uriel couldn't wait until I received you, she knew you would be something special."

"I'd come to you well over a thousand years ago." I recalled, wincing slightly at the mention of yet another long lost friend.

Archangel Uriel had been the one to find me, just as Michael had been the one to find Ember. Though unlike him, she never had any ill intentions. Just.. an annoying abundance of optimism and light-though nothing of Ember's kind.

She possessed her own type of light.

And whenever that light was, it had been out of my life after the first year of training to be what I was now. She was there one minute and simply.. gone the next.

Just as they all seem to do..

"But does that mean you have forgotten?" He questioned, pulling me from the memories I hadn't realized I'd suppressed so long ago. Memories that had confused me, that still do.

Memories that hurt.

Of course not.

He continued when I didn't answer aloud. "I remember when Azrael Yrth came to me. A married man with a young boy. Do you remember your wife, Azrael?"

How could I forget her? I would never. I couldn't if I tried.

It was what I'd like to think of as the life God never wanted me to forget.

"Or your boy? Oh, how he was the spitting image of you."

"Will your dying words be of me and mine or you, old man?"

"A great deal of me is you, my son. I had almost forgotten what it was like to be a man, a father. That was until I was sent you. My mortal life is foggy now, maybe because it's been many years.. maybe because I lay dying now.. but what I can and always will remember is you, Azrael."

"Feeling nostalgic, are we?"

He chuckled weakly. "I remember the confidence in your eyes. The eyes of a fighter, a survivor.. even in death, becoming Death. You still wear it now."

His aged eyes focused on the ceiling. "I remember how much you yearned for the touch of your wife and the laughter of your son."

I felt a strange feeling rile up inside of me, though it wasn't anger. I took a seat beside the old mattress he lay on.

"Oh, how you wished to give anything to be with your family again." He coughed and a strange substance came out. "I remember not long after," He could barely lift his arm to wipe his mouth, "Receiving your best fellow, Gavriell, and him easing some of your pain."

"..until you took him from me too."

"Too?" His eyes shifted uneasily to me.

"Just because you're on your deathbed, old man, doesn't mean you're crass. You know exactly who I'm referring to."