Part 19

“Leah! Leah, wake up. Please be alright. Wake up.” A faintly familiar voice speaks worriedly, and I wake up to soft shaking.

I feel numb all over, as if I am meant to hurt all over my body, but I don’t feel the pain. The tingling feeling feels weird, but what is weirder is the fact that everything is all white around me again.

I blinked, and I suddenly take in the sight of the man –correction, angel –kneeling at my side, looking down at me worriedly. His black wings are still contrast against the white background, and I take a long moment to stare and appreciate his presence.

“Leah, are you okay?” He asks when he deems me too silent for too long. Even angels are worried about me now? I must be so much of a VIP.

I threw my arms around his neck and pulled him down, glad that I could feel the body I was hugging, glad that I could feel warmth coming from him instead of numbness.

“Azazel! You don’t know how happy I am to see you!” I cried out in joy, and I must have taken him by surprise, because he takes some time to react and push me back, standing up.

“I am glad to see you safe and sound too, Leah. I reclaimed your soul fast enough.” My favorite angel took a step back as if to make sure I didn’t try hugging him again, brushing his white robe as if there were any imaginary dirt there.

“Reclaimed my soul?” Confusion was very obviously in my tone as I picked myself up to my feet, surprised to find myself in the same white robe as Azazel. Strange; it didn’t even feel like I was wearing anything at all. I tried to grasp at the almost-non-existent material, finding almost a silk-like feel to the floaty cloth.

“Back in the physical world, in Limbo, Lily Sparda has taken over. You were about to be erased.” Azazel said calmly, his face betraying nothing as I stared.

“What do you mean by ‘erased’? You mean I could have died?”

He seemed to consider his next sentence, before an expression that would be best described as the ‘heck it’-expression came on.

“No two conflicting nature can exist in the same body. Human and demon, you cannot exist unless you were born that way –like Vergil or Dante. But given your situation, your demonic side was made fully demon, your human side fully human. Both conflicting nature are at war –Lily as your demon, Leah as the human. When Leah takes over, Lily barely survives within you. But when Lily takes over your body, Leah is trapped. No human can remain trapped the same way Lily was trapped. If I had left you further in your own body while Lily was set free; you would have lost yourself. Your soul would morph entirely to belong to Lily. Simply, Leah will cease to exist.”

Deafening silence stretched out as my jaw dropped.

“You could have said this earlier!” I was beginning to forget my gratitude at seeing him again, reminded by how much of an asshole he was. I was getting a refresher of how annoying this angel could be when it came to important information.

“I am not in the position to tell you everything, Leah. I have already tried my best to impart the best information to you. You have completed part of your mission, and I am proud of you.” He replied evenly, waving his hand over an empty space in a majestic movement. Almost immediately, a comfortable-looking armchair appeared in reality, and he gestured me to it while I gaped at it.

All serious things aside, that trick was totally neat.

“Sit, Leah. We will discuss things and I will make things clear to you.” He ordered when the gesturing didn’t get through to me, and I snapped back from my gaping to force myself to the seat. It was like sitting on a cloud. Damned, but the angels up here in the heavens totally knew how to live in comfort, didn’t they?

I watched as Azazel did his neat trick again, and soon he was sitting comfortably beside me, his black wings folded back.

“You said I completed part of my mission. Does it mean I can go home?” I asked, even though I wasn’t even sure which part of my mission I had completed. I didn’t remember doing anything to Dante, except make him go to work a few rare times.

“Not yet. You need to be there to bring an end to Mundus’s hold over Limbo. Till then, you cannot return.” He replies seriously, but the hardness in his eyes softened suddenly. “But take heart, it will end soon.”

“Well, that wasn’t hard at all, right? Just answering my questions up front; it isn’t hard at all, right?” I replied sarcastically. “Because you really seemed to have lots of problem telling me what to do before. What happened to ‘I will do my best to help’ or something like that? You just left me alone!”

I know it was long overdue, and I totally shouldn’t be getting angry at an angel who had just saved me from a certain ‘erasing’, but I was still pissed off. He promised to guide me in my mission, and didn't he just left me to flounder? I wasn’t even sure what I’d accomplished that he had deemed a success of a part of my mission. I was just glad that half of it was over, damn it.

“I helped.” He said evenly, giving me a look as if he was trying to tell me that he was being generous by not being pissed off at my outburst. “I left you clues, and I might have tweaked a few external incidents to help you on your mission.”

“What clues? All I knew was that you dumped me in Vergil’s room after that last time. And that was when he was still pissed off with me!” There was no trying to hide it from the angel that Vergil and I were now very much in love, but it didn’t change the fact that Vergil used to not tolerate me well.

“That fact that you missed my clues entirely is not my fault. When you first arrived in Limbo, I tweaked for Vergil to be the one who would discover you first. I sent you to Vergil’s room the second time, in hopes that you would realize that the one you should target was Vergil, not Dante. You completely missed my clues. I had to send Leon meeting you to bring you closer to Vergil’s personal life. I might have staged the accident that Sasha was caught in to bring you closer to Leon.” Azazel pointed out coolly, but I was beginning to lose patience. All those incidents I thought were coincidences were actually just Azazel’s doing?

“So you think my life is like your video game? Because you don’t like the way I am going, you just send things my way and make me go the way you like it?” I fumed, but the angel is totally unfazed. Damned that handsome face, I just wanted to slap it hard right now.

“If I hadn’t, you would be stuck with Dante. You would never have released Vergil’s inner demon and completed part of your mission.” He pointed out, and it struck through me like a lightning bolt.

 That was why he said I had completed part of my mission. My mission had been to help release Vergil’s demonic side!

“You finally understand me now.” Azazel observed while my mind began connecting the painful dots. No wonder Azazel kept leading me on towards Vergil! No wonder I kept bumping into Vergil, and no wonder I was the lucky girl to meet Vergil’s ‘secret family’!

And then I realized; my matchmaker was Azazel himself.

“Now that we are clear with that, will you listen to me?” Azazel asked, and I flushed a little with embarrassment. Okay, I had totally made a fool out of myself by blaming Azazel. Perhaps I shouldn’t be thinking the worst of this angel. Maybe he really meant well. Maybe he really cared for me; just that he was kind of like Vergil in the sense that he wasn’t good at showing his care for others.

“Okay… I’m sorry.” I apologized sheepishly, hoping that in our weird relationship, he wasn’t an angel that was hung up much on manners or something. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have lost my top on him, but it didn’t help that he was a secretive bastard over information.

He settled himself comfortably in his chair, holding firm eye contact that had me wondering if this was some sort of interview or something.

“We start with a little background knowledge. You seem to be murky around the edges about the existence of the parallel worlds despite being already here for up to five months.” He started the ball rolling, but I heard a slight judgmental tone there. Hey, angels weren’t supposed to judge people!

“It isn’t exactly flashed out in news down in Limbo, so bite me.” I challenged quickly back, ready to defend myself, but he simply raised a hand, as if he knew what I was thinking –which totally reminded me that he had mind-reading skills.

“Quite some time ago, there was only one world, one hell and one heaven. Our Creator made us angels, and we inhabit the heavens. Demons and devils were made in Hell, and the one Middleground in between housed the humans. Demons and angels often took the Middleground for a battlefield, and humans ended up the victims. Some humans sought to protect themselves while others argued that they should find their own place in the world, where angels and demons could not touch. Middleground soon became a battleground for more than angels and demons; it became a field of war between ideologies. Those who supported the empowerment of humans against demons and angels called themselves people of Limbo. Extreme fighting broke out throughout Middleground, to the extent that demons and angels stopped to stare at the ferocity of a human heart.” Azazel began to narrate, and as he waved his hand though the air, it seemed as a magical television screen had appeared out of nowhere.

Grainy black and white pictures followed after one another, showing ancient weapons stuck in the ground that I assumed was red with blood. Bodies piled upon one another, and still people continued to fight. In one of the pictures, it captured a few angels standing by, watching. There were some demons at the sidelines too.

“This fighting drew dreadful concern of the Heavens. If the fighting continued, Hell would gain more new souls. We returned to our Lord to report.” Azazel continued, while I watched the pictures move along with his stories. In picture-book style now, drawings of angels flying up to the gates of heaven, and kneeling before a large ‘empty’ throne followed the words as Azazel spoke.

“Enraged, He declared that Middleground did not deserve to be a battlefield. He called down a strike of lightning, and in the middle of Middleground, He split the worlds apart.” The picture showed the lightning striking down in the earth, the cracking running lateral throughout the entire plain.

“Men were given one choice. Stay with Limbo, or create their own world, where they would never be invaded by angels and demons. And so the people chose their sides. Over time, these two worlds exist side by side to one another, under the same heaven, above the same hell. You belong in the Human World, Leah. I brought you into heaven, and cast you down in Limbo. To return to your world, you need to come back here again.”

With that, Azazel waved his hand through the magical floating television screen, and the mist dissipated, bringing my eye contact back to him again.

“Does that mean that if I want to go home now, I just have to find some way to drop back to my Human World?”

“It is not that easy. When our Creator separated the worlds, He tasked angels with the new role of being transporters. We transport souls between the worlds to heavens, and we act as protectors to the souls we are attached to. That’s where stories of ‘guardian angels’ in your world came about. We are, by long shot, your personal guardian angels.”

I stifled a giggle behind my hands that were pressed against my lips.

“And you are my guardian angel, Azazel?” That would explain the many unfortunate and unlucky situations that I’ve been in, because my ‘guardian angel’ seemed like one who didn’t even bother.

“I was.” He corrected, deliberately ignoring my giggle. “But I am no longer.”

“But how can you ditch your job? Surely you can’t choose your own soul to be attached to?”

“When a new angel was made, your soul was given in attachment to her. I was given another reshuffle of souls.”

“Do you guys have some sort of administration? I mean my world itself is pretty big, and you guys have to man two worlds?”

He simply waves my innocent question away.

“We are angels; we get through these pesky things easily.” He replied in an ‘I-am-better-than-your-kind’ tone, but I guess I couldn’t be insulted, because he was an angel. “That is not what I am here to tell you about.”

“Then what am I here to hear about?”

“Patience.” He said, now in an ‘I-am-older-than-you’ tone, and I sighed inwardly, before I realized he probably could hear my internal sigh. So I sighed again, physically this time to emphasize the point.

“In case you don’t notice, I’m not an ageless angel and I’m not getting any younger by the minute.” I reminded, and he only smirks and snorts a very un-angel-like snort.

“What makes you think that time works the same way here as it does in Human or Limbo?”

“You mean it doesn’t?”

“No, we have no time here. Perhaps this was why being an angel was the best deal we could make with Eva.”

It embarrassed me that I only remembered about Vergil’s mother only now. Azazel had made it clear that Eva was now an angel, and after hearing the sacrifice that she made for Lily, I really wanted to see her now, and hug her, and tell her that she was the world’s best mother, although not my mother. Well, indirectly she was my mother, but she had my soul delivered over to another world, so my mother didn’t turn out to be her.

Wow, this was starting to get really confusing.

“Is she here? Can I see her?” I asked eagerly, looking around as if I expected her to suddenly appear.

“Not yet.” He cuts off any more questions quickly, then lets uncomfortable silence drag out between us.

Then, all of a sudden, he opens his mouth and speaks again, as if he never cut of any imminent conversation topic.

“I am sure you are aware of the conditions in which Eva made the deal with us? The demon Refalnivial has told you how Lily came to be the situation she is at the moment, has he not?”

I nodded unsurely, willing to let his awkward pause in the conversation pass just to see where he was now heading to with the new conversation topic. “I don’t exactly see why you guys came in where you did, but I’m just glad that you saved Eva.”

“I came in, Leah, because you were my ward. I sensed that Mundus had interrupted with your rightful life, and that you would never come fully to existence if Mundus had his way. Desperate, I went up to my Lord, and begged for something to be done. He relented, for He had heard of Eva’s pure heart. In return, He told for me to take your soul and leave you in the Human World, where you would escape Mundus’s reach forever. It was once said that Sparda’s children would be the ones who could defeat Mundus, and you became the secret key. Should a dire need of Mundus to be rid, we would call you back into Limbo.”

“Which is exactly what you guys did to me.” I wrapped up the storytelling for Azazel’s sake.

Now I knew exactly what happened, and what transpired my being here in Limbo, my frequent travelling to and from Heavens, as well as my apparent ‘solidarity’ with the angel of death.

“You understand fully what is expected of you, Leah Katherine Cartlier? Your true Mission is to rid Limbo of Mundus alongside your brothers.”

He could have just said that right off from the start, which would have saved me a shitload of crap that I’d been receiving all this while.

“My lover and Dante.” I corrected. “Lily’s brothers are Vergil and Dante, but Vergil remains my lover.”

He only smirks. “In Limbo, you are rightfully Lily. But don’t bother with debating. I understand that you love Vergil. I shall not judge.”

I had a suspicion that he was still judging me silently on the inside.

“How am I supposed to get rid of Mundus? I’m not exactly a half-devil, half-human like Vergil and Dante, and I certainly don’t know much about killing or fighting. All I’ve got all this while is just better-than-normal reflexes, speed and strength.”

Azazel doesn’t answer for quite some time, and I turn curiously to see his eyes far away, as if he was seeing something else entirely. A little worried at the long-drawn silence and the apparent suddenly stoning of the angel of death, I got up and waved my hand in front of his eyes, trying to get some sort of reaction.

“Sit, Leah.” He orders absently, his eyes closing as if he was trying his best to ignore my presence.

Since there were a billion and one things the angel of death could do to me at the moment, I obediently sat my ass back in my chair and watched his tight expression. It seemed like he was concentrating on something, but I couldn’t fathom –for the life of me –what he was trying to concentrate on. Maybe it was an angel thing. Maybe they had some sort of angelic telepathic telephone with each other?

He finally opens his eyes, and suddenly, the grey eyes aren’t so grey. Actually, it looked red, and for a moment, it scares me since it reminds me of… well, monsters in general.

“You have awoken Lily. When you go back, you will control her power and her abilities. You have her strength and speed, her body of improved recovery. You will have demonic power, and you must use it. When Vergil and Dante arrives, let them release their demonic halves. Combine your power and bring the chains to hold Mundus forever to where he belongs. Do you understand me?” Azazel jumps to his feet, grabbing my wrist, pulling me up and walking us away from the chairs as he spoke.

It seemed like he was suddenly in a great hurry, and I shuffled to keep up behind him, trying to understand the sudden change in him.

“Um… no.” I said, but he didn’t even give time to repeat himself.

“You have to trust yourself. Vergil and Dante will do anything for you. The entire Sparda family is counting on you.” Azazel stops suddenly, spinning around and taking me firmly by the shoulders, looking at me straight in the eyes.

Dumbly, I nod.

Something softens in his eyes and facial expression while I stare.

“I’m counting on you. Don’t disappoint me. Don’t disappoint Eva. Your mother believes in you.”

I do not even have the time to open my mouth to ask before he shoves me roughly backwards.

I fall through the clouds again, screaming…