By Chuckg and Maurice Lane

"I need your advice. With something vitally important."

David looked back at Laurence, expressionless. He nodded, slowly.

Terse as ever. "It concerns... well, you've known them both longer than almost anyone else in Heaven. More to the point, your have the friendship of them both... the only Archangel other than myself who does. And I don't know what to do about them. So I came to you."

David nodded again.

Well, at least he's listening. Laurence sighed. "This... dispute... has lasted too long. It is a tribute to the professionalism of them both that there can be that much animosity between two such important positions in the Host's structure and yet neither of them destructively interferes with the other. But that is no longer good enough. The War is reaching a critical juncture, and I need... I must have a united Host, one that doesn't just function adequately, but superbly. And while the conflict between the Peace and War factions may be irresolvable, the very least I must have is no ongoing divisions within the War faction. Yet I see no way to even begin to resolve it. Do you have a plan?"

"Yes."

"But I won't help you do it."

Gulp.

------------

Lord God, give me strength... please, thought Laurence, closing his eyes briefly as the full-force glares of two Seraph Archangels made fit to wither both him and each other into a cinder.

"Look, I've got a lot of important things that need doing, and..."

"I highly doubt that this crudely staged confrontation will yield any produc..."

Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, Laurence projected his "Master Of The Armies of God" voice with all of the force he could muster.

"ENOUGH!", he cried, slamming his hand flat on his desk.

Michael and Dominic both fell silent at once.

I don't believe that it actually worked. "Listen. To. Me." Laurence said with an iron in his voice that he

didn't actually feel. "It's very simple. None of us will leave this office until after you two have worked out some type of modus vivendi that's a significant improvement over the cold war you have running now. So you will form one. Period."

"At the rate we've been going, kid, Hell would freeze over first," Michael said cynically.

"Then you'd better start multitasking some additional manifestations, Firstborn, because you're going to be stuck here until it does. And you too, Most Just," Laurence said, staring back at them both and letting them read the Truth of his statement.

Michael blinked. So did Dominic.

"So what do you propose, Lord Commander?" said Dominic.

Here it comes, thought Laurence. This is *really* going to hurt.

"Attention to orders."

Laurence stared at them until both Michael and Dominic had assumed the position of attention.

"Since you Seraphs will respond to nothing but the naked Truth, then that's precisely what you're going to give to each other. And you are going to give it until it hurts. For centuries, the two of you have been refusing to speak to each other about whatever it is that has driven you away from each other... so you are going to have those centuries' worth of catch-up all at once, right now."

"Michael? Begin."

------------

"Stop," Laurence said, using his Voice again.

Michael drew to a halt.

"A repetition of every petty old grievance was not what I had in mind. We all have excellent memories, we can remember the lot without prompting."

"You said that you wanted the truth... Lord Commander. That's it."

"But not all of it. And not the root of it. Telling the trivial in order to avoid having to speak of the significant is one of the oldest strategies for Seraphic evasion. So start where it's the most important, not the least."

Michael sat silently, his expression set in resigned determination, and visibly prepared to wait for Armageddon to arrive first.

"You will not retreat from this challenge, Michael. Do it."

"You want the Truth?", Michael said with a quiet rage held barely in check. "You got it." Michael turned to look straight into Dominic's hood and said evenly.

"The truth? The truth is, Hyena -- that you're a cruel and heartless bastard."

Laurence turned red with anger.

Dominic replied evenly, with tones of resigned expectation. "How eloquent of you. And how expected. Still holding that pointless old grudge over your Pride..."

Michael smiled grimly and continued speaking. "Wrong answer, Hyena! It isn't... it hasn't ever been about that!"

Dominic slowly ripple-blinked in surprise, hearing the Truth of the Symphony in Michael's words... and Laurence, unable to hear, nodded anyway, knowing as he did that the First Seraph would not lie.

Michael continued. "For the love of God, think about it. THINK! Why would I hold any grudge against YOU for that trial? You lost! I'd beaten you! I was Right, you were Wrong, and God himself saw that so clearly that he sent one of the only two clear communications he'd ever done since the Fall to set you straight on it! And you thought I was 'holding a grudge' for that? What, did you think you'd won? Only if you've really been kidding yourself!"

"If not that, then why?", spat out a severely unsettled Dominic.

"Gabriel."

"Gabriel? She is mad. There must be a judging. She must be held to account."

"And you're the reason she's mad, yet nobody will ever hold you to account for it... not until after it's too late for her!"

"You blame her madness on me? Her Word-friction with Belial..."

"... had existed continually since the Fall! Over twenty thousand years of the two of them grating on each other's souls across the Symphony... yet Gabriel remained! Only after your damned Inquisition got into the act did she go over the edge! The Word-friction may have been the cause, but it would never have actually gotten her without you and your persecution as the catalyst!"

"It was the Inquisition's clear duty to..."

"Our first duty is not to our Words, but to our Lord! Do you truly serve God well when you take a brave and noble Archangel, one who is suffering and needs help and support, and give her a push over the edge instead? When Word-friction is gnawing at someone's soul, do you really think you help by doubting them so publicly that you increase their doubt of themselves? For somebody who makes such a specialty of using guilt and shame as weapons, you seem curiously unaware of how deeply those weapons can wound!"

"You presume to speak for God? You know his will so directly, then?"

"Let's just say that I don't remember hearing the Voice Of God say 'Dominic, go forth and harry your fellow angels until your public lack of faith in them hurts them worse than any demon possibly could.'"

"Of course you would see it that way. But..."

"But nothing! You were too quick to judge! You had convinced yourself of her guilt before she'd even set foot in the chamber!"

"Too... too quick to judge?!? You accuse me of that?!? I never have and never will pass sentence without incontrovertible evidence of guilt first!!!"

"Sentence, no! But censure?!? You do that just by hauling angels up in front of God, the Council, and everybody to be 'questioned in the first place! As you did with both me and Gabriel. You call that just? Whatever happened to investigating discreetly first? When you 'make an example' like that, even if the verdict is for innocence, the initial shame still remains."

"You feel qualified to tell me about my Word?!?"

"I feel qualified to tell you that you aren't infallible. Because nobody is, except God himself. Yes, including me. And definitely including you!!! Hell-fire, name a single Archangel you've tried where your sentence hasn't needed overruling!"

"Song."

"You didn't sentence her, you sentenced her entire Choir and she merely got caught within the blanket proscription regardless of her individual guilt or innocence. A prime example of your 'fairness'."

Dominic had no answer for this, so the two Seraphs fell silent glaring at each other.

Laurence waited briefly, and then spoke up flatly. "I think that's enough for an opening. Dominic? Your turn."

"What do you wish to hear about first?"

"Use your judgement."

Dominic paused for a long while, trying to gather his thoughts. Michael waited, masking his continuing anger with a pose of stoic indifference.

------------

"Very well."

Dominic had been sitting throughout Michael's accusations with what seemed to be perfect stillness; however, the opportunity to reply seemed to be slightly more daunting to the Archangel. At least, that was one explanation as to why the cloaked figure seemed to feel the need to get up and glide to the window. Both Laurence and Michael could feel his surface attention to the eternally-happy scenes outside - an attention that belied deep ruminations. It did not seem contrived, or pompous: it was simply that Dominic was visibly working out the next thing that he wanted to say, and was ready to take as much time as it needed to do so.

Finally, the Archangel of Judgement spoke, his gaze never leaving the window.

"When it comes down to it, the simplest answer is that I cannot trust you."

The temperature in the room got noticeably cooler. Michael's face flickered for a moment; Laurence noted uneasily that the Archangel of War's face had acquired an expression last seen during the Legion War. Michael's voice matched the expression - cold, taut and under inhuman control - as he responded, "You do not trust anyone, Hyena."

Dominic nodded. "Quite right: I do not. I do not fully trust any human, reliever, angel or Archangel. I do not fully trust my closest advisors, I do not fully trust the Commander of the Host: indeed, I do not fully trust Yves - or myself. I especially do not fully trust myself.

"But that is not what I said: I said that I cannot trust you." Still looking through the window, Dominic's voice grew musing. "You see, when I say that 'I do not trust someone', I mean that I recognize their weaknesses. Every entity in the universe has the one temptation that could cause him, her or it to falter; they may surmount it, but usually at terrible cost. I have known this for millennia, through my own bitter experience, and nothing I have seen has ever refuted this simple fact." The Archangel of Judgement's baritone voice went low for a moment. "No matter how hard I have looked.

"But I know how I cannot trust almost any given entity. I can compensate for their own weaknesses - and my own - and continue to function. But I do not know how to not trust you, Archangel of War... and so, I cannot trust you in anything." Dominic finally turned as he looked Michael straight in the eye. "So, now we come to it. Now we come to the place where we find out how you are not to be trusted.

"What did he offer you, Michael?"

All noise stopped in the room, even the 'white noise' that rushes in to deny the lesser silences. Laurence leaned back in his chair, grimly certain that he knew whom Dominic was referring to. Yet, the question must be asked...

"'He,' Dominic?"

The Archangel of Judgement spoke a Name that had only been uttered thrice since the Rebellion. Not because it had become as base as its former holder; hardly that. It was a Name full of glory and nobility and love and the Light that washes away darkness and cleanses the soul. It was the most beautiful Name, the most beautiful word in Ancient Angelic - and that was why it was never, ever spoken. No angel could bear to hear the Name without weeping over what had been so terribly lost. No Archangel could, either.

When their mutual grief had passed, the Archangel of Judgement turned to Laurence. "We never could ask, you understand. The question itself was too hard to bear for the longest time - none of us were proud of how he could so easily find our weakest points - and, by the time that I could, it was too late. You" - his cloaked head had turned to Michael - "had put a shell around it, never spoke of it, never acknowledged that the question even existed. The trial was my last hope of getting you to admit to whatever unique attack had gotten through your defenses: but, when God overruled me, I ... gave up. God had Judged me quite as thoroughly as He Judged you, that day - but I cannot help but suspect that I have learned my lesson better than you had learned yours. God did not exonerate you, Michael. He simply pardoned you, as I would have."

The Archangel of War's expression had retreated ever so slightly from cold fury, but was not by any means amicable. "As you would pardon Gabriel? Or Eli, for that matter?"

Somehow, Laurence knew that Dominic's eyes were flinty. "If I knew what the final Judgement would be for either Archangel's trial, there would be no reason for me to bother with actually conducting either. At any rate, it is not your place to decide who or what is subject to my Word." The Archangel held up one arm to forestall Michael's angry retort. "It is not. You forget yourself, Archangel of War: I serve my Word no less diligently than do you, and if it is intolerable for me to interfere with your duties, be rest assured that it is no less intolerable for you to interfere with mine.

"But we go far from the original question. What did he offer you?"

Michael was absolutely silent; Laurence noted this, glumly certain that one particular myth of Heaven was about to be punctured. Might as well move this along... "It has been said, mind, that Michael had never been given such an offer in the first place..."

Dominic snorted. "Said, yes, but never by me - or Michael. Forgive me for saying this, Laurence, but this is Truly a case of 'you had to have been there' to understand what the situation was like before the Fall. Our departed brother had talked to everybody before the end, from Archangel to reliever. None of us quite realized what he was doing, of course: it was his job, after all. He was our facilitator, the one who could tell us what we needed, even when we didn't even know what we needed. It was all part of his Word: he Illuminated what was in our Hearts, and none realized that he was calling to the dark places in each of us until the Metatron was dead at his feet." Dominic's voice grew wistful. "I would very much like to believe that he had not intended for such a thing to happen; Pride is the curse of our Choir, and has led each of us to do some extremely lunatic things in its pursuit. Me, him, Michael... and Uriel."

Now it was Laurence's turn to grow cold. It is not wise to remind the son of Uriel that the First Malakite only fully chose the side of God at the very moment of the Rebellion - or that those that followed his lead on that dark day seemed to have a disproportionate number of vacillators and fence-sitters among them. It is not wise at all - but Dominic seemed to have no interest in soothing ruffled feathers as he pointed a finger at Michael, his voice rising in anger for the first time.

"Do not continue to evade the question, Michael. I saw the blackness spreading across one of your wings as you battled the Enemy. I felt the same blackness inside me, as did every other angel of the Host: we all felt it, because to our shame we had all listened, if only for a moment, to his honeyed, poisonous blandishments." The Archangel of Judgement threw back the hood of his cloak, the better to fix his fierce gaze upon the Archangel of War. "So, I ask you for the third and final time, what did Lucifer offer you?"

Dominic spread his hands in a pleading gesture. "Please, Michael. Just say it. Just say it, once and for all, in front of your peers and your brothers. Just say what it was that tempted you. Just say in what way that you cannot be trusted, so that I can finally learn in what ways that you can be. We are none of us perfect, and you know that - so show us your own imperfection, and thus confound the Lightbringer and his lies."

Michael - brooded. Laurence and Dominic did not fidget, of course: but, as the moments passed and as the Archangel of War continued to remain silent, the former began to look fairly anxious and the latter began to look wearily resigned. Eventually, the Archangel of Judgement shrugged and turned back to look through the window again.

As if that motion had been a signal, Michael reluctantly spoke. "He offered me command."

Dominic turned. "I beg your pardon?"

The Archangel of War's fist destroyed a table as it slammed down. "You heard me, Dominic! He offered me command! Are you happy, now?" Dominic shook his head in negation.

"Happy? No. Relieved that you have finally admitted it? Yes."

At this point, Laurence felt the urge to rejoin the conversation. "A moment, please. I am obviously not catching whatever subtext is going on, here - Michael, are you saying that the Enemy offered to give you the position that Baal has now? If so, I cannot imagine why such an offer would be so distressing to you..."

Michael, however, was shaking his head. "No, Laurence. He didn't offer me a subordinate role. He offered me command. Of the whole Rebellion."

Laurence's eyes widened as the Archangel of War's voice grew heavy with remembrance. "He very nearly didn't approach me at all - in fact, you could say that I approached him. You were right, Dominic - Lucifer never intended to destroy Metatron. I know this, because I found him weeping over the body.

"Lucifer... God, he was beautiful back then; beautiful, and wise, and powerful, and loving - but the problem with him was that he knew it. He spent so much time knowing it that he never realized where it was taking him until it was too late. He was always right, never opposed - so, when he turned out to be wrong, and ended up in dispute with the one peer who would not indulge his whims, Lucifer couldn't handle it. He ended up not handling it so badly that he killed the Voice of God in some mad attempt to make it as if it had never been. We know where that leads, now - but we didn't, then.

"And so, I found him. He was cradling Metatron's broken body in his arms, pleading with her to come back to us - and don't ask me how I knew that she was Metatron. I just knew. I also knew that we had all come to a place that nobody among us would have ever thought that we would see in Heaven. I could smell the smoke and the blood to come, even then. We were about to start doing horrible things to each other.

"And then Lucifer looked up.

"I remember that Lucifer took the time to put Metatron down, gently - I'll always remember that, no matter what else he has done, does and will do - and I remember that he begged me, literally on his knees, to fix things. He admitted that he had failed us - although what he meant by 'failure' was something else than what I would have meant. He kept saying, 'I did it for us, I did it for us'. I told him to get up. He wouldn't. I grabbed him and pulled him roughly to his feet.

"It was then that he tempted me. He told me that he knew that we had to convince God that we didn't deserve to be subordinated to humanity. He told me that he couldn't bear to see his brothers and sisters to be so degraded. He told me that he realized, now, that he wasn't strong enough or convincing enough to change God's mind. And then he told me that I could. He told me that he would give up his position, give up his own life - just so long as God put things back the way that they were. He told me that I was the only hope for those who wanted to keep to the old ways, and that he and his followers would gladly obey me if I would only carry on his fight.

"And, God help us all, every word he said about his willingness to serve me was the Truth. In a strange sort of way, I had witnessed the last selfless act of Lucifer's existence: despite his arrogance, he had placed a higher value on his cause than on his own life. Or so I thought, at the time: perhaps he had already Fallen by then..." Michael caught Dominic's sardonic expression at that, and sighed. "No, he hadn't. He was still Seraphic, although not for much longer.

"And so, I was tempted. How long? Was it a second, a minute, an hour or an eternity? It doesn't matter: what does matter was that I had seriously considered placing my own desires above those of God's. Even a microsecond would have been for too long: you see, Lucifer saw that I would not succumb a bare moment before I fully realized it, and took the opportunity to break free and flee. If I had not had that moment of weakness, he would never have had the chance, and we might have ended the Rebellion right then and there." The Archangel of War leaned back into his chair, his face weary.

"So, now you know."

There didn't seem much else to say at this point.

------------

"Did it work?"

Laurence looked at David. "Yes... more or less. Dominic has not given up on his crusade to question either Gabriel or Eli, Michael still declines to admit that there are aspects of the War where his personal attention is neither needed or desired - but they seem to have both acquired a bit of catharsis. Certainly the general level of hostility has died down." The Archangel of the Sword sighed. "The Lord alone knows whether this will be a permanent adjustment, but I have my hopes."

David grunted, nodded jerkily and turned to the entrance of the Catacombs. Laurence raised his voice.

"There was just one more thing, Archangel of Stone."

Slowly David turned, his agate gaze calm as he regarded Laurence.

"There was really no need to have me present. The two of them were looking for an opportunity where they could be 'forced' into airing out their differences. Any Archangel could have provided them with an excuse: 'zounds, even my mother could have cheerfully annoyed them into clearing the air. Yet you declined, and in such a way that I felt honor-bound to personally handle matters. Why?"

The Archangel of Stone thought for a moment or twenty. He held up two fingers.

"One. They wouldn't listen to me. This," - he indicated his own obsidian wings - "has a story behind it. They know the story. It would have gotten in the way."

"Two..." David fell silent. Laurence patiently waited until the Archangel continued.

"Two. It was your problem to fix. Your father tried; he failed. He had a story getting in the way, too. You didn't. You succeeded." David went back into his Cathedral. Laurence narrowed his eyes, ostentatiously scuffled his feet in the gravel for a moment, then became silent.

From the cave came a distant, rogue mutter. "He handled that all right." A second or so later came a second mutter: "But I could have handled it better."

"I heard that," muttered the Archangel of the Sword in his turn, still trying to decide whether to frown or grin.