As We Know It
Chapter 16There weren't a lot of places in the city that Zac particularly liked, but there was one place he felt drawn to. He found that, if you went far enough to the outskirts of the city, there was a nice little park, with a manmade pond at the center of it, where he and his brothers used to come and spend their lazy summer afternoons. The scenery wasn't quire as nostalgic as he had hoped for, but there was something about being there, surrounded by people - by families and children, and everything - that made him reluctant to leave.
Sometimes, people amazed him.
He could feel the angel's presence before his figure even started to approach him, and he understood who and what he was. He didn't need to look, or even think about it - it simply came to him, like knowledge he already had stored away.
"What do you want from me?" Zac asked, though by the same means, he already understood that as well. He made no motion to move, or to stop him. Zac had come here for one reason: to die.
"I'm awfully sorry about this," Micah said, and Zac looked at him for the first time, standing before him, unsure of himself. "I've never had to do anything like this before."
In the angel's hand he could see a dagger, silver and ornate - it seemed far too beautiful, too valuable, to be soiled like that.
Still, he made no effort to move.
"I apologize if this stings a little bit," Micah said, beginning to lift the dagger to strike.
"I don't wanna do it," Zac said blankly, not sure if it was going to help anything. "So if you're going to kill me, let's make it humane, okay?"
Micah faltered slightly.
"You're trying to trick me," he said stubbornly. "I've dealt with more than enough of your kind to know it when I see it - look at the naïve, innocent angel, let's make him take pity on our poor, tortured souls!"
"I didn't.. wait, what do you mean by ‘your kind'? I'm still a human being, you know."
"If you think you can still call yourself that," Micah said, his dagger-yielding arm relaxing just slightly. "Do you even realize what you started?"
"Nothing, I didn't start a damn thing," Zac said, the tone in his voice taking a sharp, annoyed incline. "Trouble seems to keep finding me, and really, I just want the whole mess to be over with - one way or another. I don't need this fucking responsibility."
"Then I'll end it now." Micah raised his arm again, but he had visibly lost some of his momentum. Zac closed his eyes, not wanting to watch him strike.
"If he's not a human, then I don't know what he is, because he's the poorest excuse for a demon that I've ever met," Lilly's voice came into his mind, and for a moment, Zac thought that he must already be dead. He opened his eyes into a squint, peering out at the two of them - the angel and Lilly - and saw that they were now facing each other, and not him.
"What are you doing here?" Zac asked.
"Stopping you from being a moron and getting yourself killed," she said, equal parts annoyance and affection in her voice.
"You should just let me get myself killed, I'm not going to do it. You'd be better of just letting it happen this way."
"Yeah, here's the thing - I'm the second poorest excuse for a demon that I've ever seen. But I don't have being human to fall back on, so I'm going ot have to settle for this."
In an instant, she had taken Micah to the ground in a tackle. There were no flashes of light, or thunder, or even a dark cloud or two hovering above them. For a fight between two powerful, cosmic beings, it looked more like a bar brawl. People were beginning to watch them, and Zac was feeling slightly embarrassed by the attention.
Zac felt his phone buzzing in his pocket and turned away from the spectacle, his eyes glancing at Taylor's name with some anxiety.
"Hey," he said into his phone.
"Thank god. Are you ok?"
"I kind of have a headache, but I'm all right."
"Zac, please, whatever you're thinking of doing, you don't have to. Just please reconsider it."
Zac listened to Taylor's pleading, distraught voice and watched as Lilly pinned Micah down to the ground.
"I'm way past that point by now, Taylor."
"Just please... where are you now?"
"I'm at the park, but it doesn't matter, I'm getting out of here."
"Stay where you are, I'll be there soon."
Before Zac could answer, the line went dead, and he sighed, shoving the phone back into his pocket, moody and annoyed. He walked over to a bench a few feet away and sat down, turning back to Lilly and Micah just in time to see him take a hit to the jaw.
"That's my girl," Zac said fondly.
Taylor had apparently already had the same thought in his mind when he had called Zac, because before very long had passed, Zac could see him in the distance, looking around and visibly frantic. Taylor spotted him after a moment, his eye drawn more to the fight taking place than Zac himself, and quickly jogged over to where Zac was, both of them exchanging an awkward, perplexed look. Zac sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets and looking down at the ground as he cleared his throat to speak.
"I'm sorry about earlier, about... you know. I didn't mean to."
"I know. I shouldn't have said... well, what I said."
"Are we going to talk about this at all?"
"It's probably better that we don't," Taylor muttered. There was a brief moment of silence, and Zac figured that was as much of a moment as they were going to have. Taylor looked up at Zac, his eyes widening in concern.
"Where's Ike?"
"Oh. He's... I think he'll be okay, actually."
They glanced over to where Lilly and Micah were still fighting.
"How about them?"
"All right, I guess I should do something about this, but it's the last time. I'm going into retirement after this."
"Fair enough."
Zac approached them, then looked to where the dagger had been knocked out of Micah's hands and onto the ground. He sighed.
"Guys, stop that already, I've had enough violence for one day."
The two pulled apart instantly, like some invisible force had pushed itself between them. They looked at each other, Micah a little baffled and Lilly more than a little pissed off. Zac turned back to Taylor.
"Hey, are you hungry?"
"I could eat."
"Wanna go get a burger?"
"Absolutely."
Lilly and Micah looked to have given up on killing one another and were glaring at each other by now; people who had noticed them earlier were calling security over, and Zac looked at Taylor before they took a few discreet steps in the other direction.
"So, I pulled off the coolest thing ever earlier," Taylor started to say as they walked peacefully away from the crowd.