FicWad

"Well, I'm gonna get changed." Claude hopped off the couch and made his way to his room. It wasn't until he had actually shut the door behind him that he realized Grey had followed him.

"Christ!" Claude jumped back, startled, and glared at his brother. "Damn! You couldn't have made just a little noise so I knew you were behind me?!"

Grey smiled faintly, leaning with lazy elegance against the door. "Sorry. Force of habit."

"Whatever." Claude pulled his shirt over his head and dropped the dripping cloth straight on his bed, bending over to hunt through an enormous pile of disorganized clothes for a new one. Grey tsked and picked it up again, folding it neatly and setting it on his brother's dresser.

"So . . ." he began casually, absentmindedly tidying up the mess on Claude's bedside table. "Can I see your wings?"

Claude froze for a moment, glancing suspiciously over his shoulder. Grey’s expression betrayed nothing, but the Fallen angel knew his beloved twin well enough to realize something was up. "Nah. I don't feel like changing back right now," he finally replied, deliberately faking the same level of faux-indifference.

"Claude, show them to me." All false ease had disappeared from Grey's voice. He leaned forward slightly, concern flickering over his features. "It's that bad?" he whispered anxiously.

"See? If I show my true form to you, you'll freak," Claude snapped. "It's not a big deal. I never use them anyway.

"Claude, show me."

"No."

"Claude . . . here, I'll change, too." Grey closed his eyes and let his human body melt away, leaving in its place a radiant angel. Light seemed to emanate directly from his body, illuminating the entire room - if Joan had turned around at that moment, she would have seen a flash of light under the door. Luckily, she was once again absorbed in her sketchpad. In his true form, Grey was beyond magnificent. His hair now looked more silvery-white than blonde, and it was free of the constrictive ponytail he wore it in as a human. His wings were enormous, and almost spanned the entire room. He floated a few inches above the ground, watching his brother expectantly. "There. It's not so bad, right?" His voice was even more comforting than it had been before, resonant and beautiful.

"Jeez, are you trying to show me up or something? Fine," his twin hissed. Sighing, Claude allowed himself to shift back into his true, unstifled angel form. He heard his twin inhale sharply. "I told you," he muttered.

Claude was nowhere near as magnificent as his brother. Alone, he would have been at least impressive, but in the shadow of Grey's form he simply seemed pathetic. His wings were ragged and limp, and his beauty - supernatural as it was - wasn't magnified to a tenth of the degree Grey's was. He shrugged noncommittally and changed back, frowning slightly. Grey did the same, slipping back into his human form with a bit more difficulty than his brother.

"You're still glowing," Claude pointed out sullenly. Grey chuckled uneasily and fixed himself, trying to tone down his divine beauty to a realistic level.

"I'm sorry, Claude. I'm not trying to make you feel bad," Grey murmured. He moved forward to touch Claude's shoulder, but his brother shrugged him off angrily. "Can you still fly?" he asked quietly.

Claude pulled on a black button-down shirt, staring intently at the small buttons as he spoke. "I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I haven't tried."

Grey grabbed his shoulders and turned him around, searching his brother’s face worriedly. "You haven't flown for all this time?"

"Nope." Claude broke free of his grasp and yanked a pair of pants out of his closet, sending all the clothes on top of it tumbling out onto the floor. "No reason to. Plus, what if someone saw me?"

"That's not the point." Grey sighed and suddenly pulled his brother into a tight hug. "What have you been doing, Claude? Have you been tormenting yourself this whole time?"

"Get off me!" Claude snapped. "You know I don't like - well, you know, all this - this cuddly shit! And I . . . I haven't been . . . well, not ]tormenting myself," he muttered. "But I deserve it. I deserve every damned day I have to spend in this hellhole for what I did." He lifted his onyx eyes to his twin's pearly ones. "Do you even know the whole story, Grey? Do you really understand what I did? My sin . . . it was more than you thought it was. And it was infinitely more evil than you thought it was."

Grey let him go and took a step back, his eyes searching for some kind of explanation. "I don't understand."

"Why do you think I Fell, Grey?" Claude asked quietly.

"Because . . . because you became too attached to your charges," Grey replied slowly. "You became upset when it was decided that they were to die."

"That's only half the story," Claude muttered.

"Claude, what did you do?" The bewilderment in Grey's voice was slowly becoming more apparent. "Wasn't that it? Wasn't that your only sin - disobedience?"

"I tried to break the System." Claude turned away, staring at the blank wall rather than his twin's face. "I tried to . . . erase Death. She was . . . pissed."

"Death? You tried to kill Death?" Grey repeated incredulously. "But, Claude, I . . . wouldn't I have known, if you were planning something like that?"

"We're connected, Grey, but I can hide things from you if I really want to." Because he was facing away, Claude couldn't see the pain this remark caused his twin. "Like I said, She was pissed. She had the right to be, I guess. She told the Boss, but They decided to keep it quiet. Just so nobody would get any ideas." His voice hardened as he continued. "They were afraid I'd be a 'bad influence.' She said - They both said, actually - that I had 'dangerous thoughts,' and I was unfit to be an angel."

"You didn't tell me." Grey seemed to be fixated on that one idea, though he had been listening to the rest of his brother's bitter confession. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You would've stopped me."

"You could've been destroyed."

"I wouldn't have cared, Grey!" he suddenly cried, turning around to face him again. "I screwed everything up! James is still dead, and he has been for three hundred and fifty years! I'm Fallen, and you're constantly worried about me! Anything would be better than this!"

"James?" Grey repeated softly. Claude reddened, suddenly realizing his slip of the tongue. "So that was his name?"

"It . . . I mean, it wasn't just him. I'd watched so many of my charges die, Grey. I . . . I loved him," he admitted. His voice was strained, and the agony was clear even though he was trying his hardest to hide it. Claude leaned against the wall again, running his fingers through his hair and sighing. "I think that may have tipped the scales, too. The Boss and Death might've let me off with a warning if I wasn't-"

"There's nothing wrong with the way you are," Grey interrupted sharply. "That had nothing to do with it, Claude."

"Oh, yeah? Why don't you ask the Boss about that, huh?" Claude snapped. "Like, seriously, walk up to Him and ask how He feels about gays. He'll give you a nice little speech on immorality and eternal damnation."

"Claude, the Authority isn't like that," Grey insisted. "Maybe that's how some humans perceive him, but you know he doesn't judge us."

"If he didn't judge us, I wouldn't be rotting in this hellhole," Claude countered. "He judges, Grey. And he judged that I wasn't good enough. It was my fault, anyway."

"Claude -" Grey watched helplessly as Claude stormed out of the room, charging past a bewildered Joan out into the hallway, slamming the door behind him.

Joan turned her wide eyes to Grey, slightly shaken by Claude's dramatic exit. "He . . . he needs another cigarette, doesn't he?"