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k_a_webb“Which wasn’t a bad thing,” Uriel said, sounding as though he understood, almost better than Caitlyn had at the time.
“No, it wasn’t. I had no issues with it, while we were together, and then when he died I realised what it was that I’d been missing my whole life, but it wasn’t something I had a chance to think about before. Maybe if I had, if I hadn’t been busying raising our children and looking after him, then I wouldn’t have been as content as I was. When he died I felt old, even though I wasn’t, so I didn’t think about looking for someone else, for that relationship I’d missed out on, because I believed even then that I would be reincarnated.” Caitlyn looked around the office, smiling. “Of course that isn’t something that’s going to happen any time soon, but in time I will live another life, even though, as you said, I’ve stepped onto a different path now.”
“And, of course, you have your time here.” Their eyes met. “It isn’t unusual for two spirits who have never met each other on Earth to meet here and fall in love.”
Caitlyn bit her lip. “You’re talking about Richard.”
Uriel nodded, smiling. “If something does happen between you it’s not something you have to be embarrassed about. Even though I haven’t spent much time with him I like him and he was the right choice. That doesn’t make being Death any easier, it doesn’t make the spirits here any friendlier, but it does mean that he won’t spend as much of his time fighting what he’s become, the way a couple of them have before.”
“Samael walking away made things harder.”
“Yes, it did, and the Council did the best job they could, but they were missing his expertise. He has this ability to be able to look at a spirit and know that they’re meant to be Death.” Uriel sighed. “I do understand why he made the choice he did. Saying goodbye isn’t easy. I’ve done it enough times to know that it doesn’t get any easier, no matter how many times you do it, and Sam’s problem was that he’d get close to a spirit, really close, before they moved on to their next life.”
“Richard said that being Death doesn’t change his path in the same way that being a spirit guide changes mine.”
“You learn much more than Richard will about life during your time as a guide. Being Death he spends most of his time guiding those who weren’t ready to die back here and not much else, because of the position he has been given, as well as looking after the places of death, but none of that is anywhere near as in depth as what you do.” Uriel shrugged. “It’s hard to explain, Caitlyn. He has a job to do, one I know is the hardest in the afterlife, that means he doesn’t spend much time around the other spirits. They’re uncomfortable with him, due to what he is, and I’ve never known a spirit to willingly become friends with Death before – but I think that’s just another sign that you were meant to be a guide. You didn’t see him as his position. You saw him as a person.”
“He is a person.”
“I know that and you know that, but the other spirits don’t seem to think that way. Well the majority of them don’t, even the other guides, although I think part of that is because Richard isn’t exactly approachable when he isn’t working. I think, after Charis left, he promised himself he wasn’t going to get close to someone that might end up leaving behind, and I have no idea how you managed to break through the shields that he threw up around himself.”
“As well as the lies he told me when we first met, when he was trying to get me to walk away.” Caitlyn couldn’t help smiling. “He didn’t want me to try to get close to him, he didn’t want a friend, but I was determined, when he told me he didn’t have anyone, that I was going to be, at the very least, an irritation, until he was forced to give me a chance. Which he did, in the end, even though I think the reason he did was because he wanted to get rid of me. I don’t think he expected to want to become friends with me.”
“From what Sam said Richard didn’t expect to become friends with him either, so it all happened unexpectedly, and yet I still don’t think Richard trusts Sam not to walk away. It doesn’t matter what Sam says, as Richard’s read the journals.”
“Richard told me that Sam’s choice really affected the Death that he walked away from and, honestly, I’m not surprised that Richard is wary. I would be too, if I’d read about how damaging it was to lose the person that Death thought of as his only true friend, especially as Richard already went through that pain when Charis left.” Caitlyn sighed. “When I finally convinced him to tell me about Charis…” She shook her head. “For the first time I could understand why Richard didn’t want to get close to me. I think he was glad when I told him that I’d been asked to become a spirit guide, because it meant that I wouldn’t leave him, even though he did his best to convince me that it wasn’t a job I wanted. He kept reminding me, over and over, that becoming a guide would change everything, for both of us, in such a way that I realised he was scared that if I did take this job I’d walk away, because I’d suddenly realise what he was. As though I didn’t already know that he was Death.”
“Did becoming a spirit guide change the way you saw him?”
“No, not in the slightest. He was my friend long before I was asked to become a guide and nothing anyone here could say would change the way I viewed him, as I already knew how hard it was for him to be Death. They all see Death when they look at him. I see my Richard, a man I care about and feel the irritating urge to look after, even though he keeps trying to convince me that he doesn’t need looking after. Yet he know I’ve seen him when he’s returned from a particularly difficult extraction, so I have an idea of how hard it is for him to bring the spirits back where they belong.”
Uriel smiled. “I went with Sam and Death once, a long time ago, to view an extraction. They were trying to bring a particularly nasty poltergeist here, so he could be… fixed, I guess, although I’m not certain exactly what happens to them once they’ve been handed over to the Council.”
“There’s a group of spirits who work to emotionally ground the spirit, so it can let go of all the anger it felt at being dead, before either being handed over to some specially trained guides who’ll help it to move on to another life or given the waters of Lethe so that it can begin again.”
“You know that because you’re a guide?”
“I passed the information on to Richard and he’s put it in his journal. He thinks it’s important that we record as much as we can for the other Deaths, even though he promised Charis he would stay on to train his successor, because he isn’t certain that the Council will let him. Now that I know about Samael I can’t help wondering if he thinks the Council will expect the angel to train them instead of Death.”
“Sam used to, before he walked away, and when that happened things changed, more than he expected them to. He seemed to think that the Council would ask the Death to stay on, in order to train his successor, but it didn’t happen. That Death, the one that Sam found himself getting too close to, chose to move on as soon as the next Death was chosen, because he couldn’t stay in the afterlife any longer. I’m not certain why Sam was surprised, as the Death had felt the same way he had, and I wish I’d have known what was going through Sam’s head, because I would have told him that it didn’t matter to us that he was falling in love with one of the spirits of the afterlife.” Uriel shook his head. “I actually think it scared him when he realised how he felt and that fear gave him a reason to take a step back, at the very least, but once he did he seemed to get this idea in his head that we were all judging him.”
“Were you?”
“No, and there were only two of us that realised what the issue was. Even though they’re my siblings we’re not really all that close. Sam spent most of his time with the Deaths, so I only really saw him when he occasionally returned to talk to Mikhael, which didn’t happen as often as Mikhael would have liked. He realised quite early on that Sam shouldn’t have been so focused on the Deaths, but needed to have other people there to support him, and if he’d have listened things might have been very different, especially as Mikhael tried to tell him more than once that the angels didn’t care if he’d fallen in love with one of the Deaths.”
“How did you find out?”
“Mikhael and I talked about it when Sam locked himself in his room for a week, because we both knew that something had gone very wrong then, but Sam had never been the sort of person to open up about what he was feeling. Especially not as he was certain that nothing he said would be right. He didn’t understand that we empathised with him. I can’t help wondering if he wanted us to be angry with him, to give him another reason to stay away, and if he didn’t say anything he could keep believing that he was right about us.” Uriel shrugged. “We may be angels, Caitlyn, but we all have our own problems, and the last thing we are is perfect, even though that seems to be how we’re viewed.”
“Even if you’d have known why you woke I could understand you having issues, because you’re immortal, some of you chose to connect with the spirits of the afterlife, and, no matter how much you want to be perfect, I can’t imagine that being in your position makes it easy.” Caitlyn smiled. “Not knowing makes things harder, as you’re always guessing. There is no one there to tell you what you should be doing, if the choices you made in the early years are were right, and I think that is going to make it easier for me to think of you as a friend, Uriel. If I’d have always thought of you as one of the angels I read about, as one of God’s messengers, it would have been much harder.”
“What makes you think I want a friend?”
“Everyone wants a friend. They may not always act like they do, they may do everything they can to convince themselves and everyone around them that they’re fine alone, but everyone wants someone they can talk to, someone they can trust with their secrets, and someone they can really open up to when they’re having a particularly bad day.”
“I have that in Hades.”
For a moment Caitlyn wasn’t sure what to say. “You’re friends with Hades?”
“Since the day I wandered into the Greek afterlife.” Uriel grinned. “Hades is a good person. He’s just very busy and keeps telling me that I need other friends. Even though he does his best to be there for me he has a wife, and children, and races to help guide.”
“Races?” Caitlyn bit her lip. “Is that something I should ignore, Uriel, considering what I am?”
Uriel shook his head. “No, not considering that. If it was anyone other than you I think they’d be better off not knowing, but you’re special, and I think you’re going to learn more than you really need to know about the multiverse.” He reached out and took hold of her hand, gently squeezing. “It isn’t often that I come across someone like you, someone I really feel I can talk to about anything at all and I felt that from the moment I first appeared, but I was half expecting it. After I was asked to watch you, by the other spirit guides and by the Council, I realised that you were different from the others, and then you proved that by becoming friends with Death.” He shook his head. “I don’t think I’m making a lot of sense. Every single spirit guide is special, otherwise they wouldn’t be asked to do the job. This was your third chance – if something had happened to make the Council think that you shouldn’t become a guide this time then it would never have happened.
“When I first saw you I knew that you were the right choice. I understood that you had made a difficult decision when you married Nathan, one that was based on both fear and logic, and if you could do that, during your incarnation on Earth, then it was your time to be a guide. Even though you wanted love you chose stability, knowing that love isn’t always the answer.”
Caitlyn shook her head. “I’m not so sure that I knew that. Not even when Nate died I’m not sure I understood why I’d gone for stability when I could have…” She thought of the man she had been certain she had loved, the one who had made bad choices more than once, the one she’d known was not the right person for her to marry no matter what she felt for him. “For a little while I thought I’d chosen Nate because I was grieving, but I wasn’t. That was something I’d already done, because I’d already known what I was going to do before the accident happened, and that meant I’d already gone through the process of saying goodbye to the man I loved. He was too like my father for me to seriously think about anything more than a fling, if I was the sort of person to have a fling, but I wasn’t, so I moved on. I knew that Nate, even if I didn’t love him, was someone I could love in the future, and right then stability was much more important to me than love. Would I have made a different choice if I knew in the future I would regret not choosing love?”
“No, you wouldn’t.” Uriel’s certainty surprised her. “Marriage, for you, was never about love.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.
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Date: 2014-03-25 04:22 am (UTC)