Heaven Must be Missing an Angel Part three Pythia

"Aaah!"

Some distance away, deep in a sea washed cave beneath the weathered cliffs of Agiori, a man staggered back from the surface of a shimmering mirror, his hands pressed reactively to the flare of pain which had consumed his eye. The sound of his cry echoed and re-echoed around him, reflected back by distant walls and bouncing off the tumbled remains of ancient pillars.

The cavern was dark and dank, despite its looming size. There were only two sources of light; one was the soft flicker of a pair of torch flames, their restlessness caught and magnified by the surface of the mirror, and the other was the low gleam of daylight which barely squeezed in under the low seaward entrance to the cave. As the sound of the exclamation faded away, the soft susurration of tidal waters slowly rose to replace it ; some thirty feet below the jutting spar of rock which supported both the man and the mirror the ocean surged backwards and forwards, slowly eating away at the foot of the hidden cliff, just as it had done for centuries.

{I warned you …} a voice hissed, soft and menacing as it rippled out into the cold air. {Little flies can sting.}

"So deep?" the man questioned, slowly uncurling from his hunched stance to stare, one eyed into the depths of the mirror. It was a vast and beautiful piece, supported on an ornate frame and rimmed with intricate carvings. Beneath its silvered surface something moved, a shadowy figure that drifted and wavered like half seen smoke.

{Yesss.} The voice was as insubstantial as the image which produced it. {Your will and my power can reach far - but cold iron can hurt us.}

"Hurt me, you mean." The man took a step back towards the mirror, his hand still pressed protectively over his eye. He was a tall and imposing figure, dressed in a richly embroidered robe. The gold threads stitched through the white silk gleamed warmly in the torchlight, as did the soft silver of his hair. "I had them, Carnivean. Almost in the palm of my hand. Those ruffians were nothing. But that one man …"

{That one man will bring us what we most desire.} For a moment the shadowed image swirled into almost recognisable form. {I know him - or of him, at least. No-one but the son of Zeus could stand against us for so long.}

"Hercules?" A thoughtful smile touched patrician features. "Of course. Such strength …"

{His strength will be his undoing.} The creature in the mirror pressed a long fingered hand up against the silver surface of its prison. {We will use it against him.}

"You think he'll come here?"

{Of course.} There was a hint of laughter underlying the words. {He is a compassionate man. He will bring your lost lambs home, Brennus. Bring them straight to you. Straight to us…}

The man slowly peeled his hand away from his face. The movement revealed the trickle of scarlet that oozed from beneath his tight shut eyelid like a ruby tear. Just as slowly, he reached to place his palm over its mirror image and the half seen figure writhed towards the contact as the blood seeped in through the glass. "Patience, Carnivean," the man murmured. "If you're right, it will not be long before you have the feast I promised."

{That and more,} the shadows whispered. {I hunger …}

"Hercules is half god," Brennus laughed. "What will you give me if I offer you that, mm?"

{Power,} came the seductive answer. {Water and Earth you have. Air and fire remain …}

"Of course," the man breathed, stroking the mirror's surface. "With such power at my command, not even the gods could touch me." He lifted his hand away, once again pressing the palm over his injured eye. "Ahh," he hissed, wincing with pain. "Hercules will be yours, Carnivean. I swear it. But that bothersome little fly? He's mine…"

The sandstorm died away as quickly as it had arisen. Iolaus climbed carefully to his feet and quickly began to shake out his bruised wings, snatching a moment to flex and stretch them one at a time to make sure he'd not taken any serious damage before he put them away. He hadn't, although everything hurt and probably would for some time to come. He knew better than to squander his energy healing his own scrapes and bruises. He'd learnt that lesson early on; while he had no hope of avoiding the depressing emptiness that inevitably followed his moments of angelic rapture, he had no intention of facing it with a pounding headache. Besides - there was still the little matter of protecting two small children that some unknown sorcerer had considered worth expending a great deal of energy to find. It might be a while before they could be delivered into safe hands, and until they were he was going to need to conserve the rest of his strength.
Just in case …

Clouds of fine sand were still drifting across the strand like ugly patches of fog, so it was hard to see anything more than a few feet away. When Hercules suddenly materialised out of one such cloud at a run, Iolaus' heart leapt with decided relief. "Hey, Herc!" he called, completely forgetting, as he did so, that he was still poised in front of the cliff face like a statue of an Assyrian sphinx - with one wing up and the other down. "Over here!"

"Iolaus?" Hercules' response was both immediate and anxious. "Are you crazy? What were you thinking … Gods ..." His voice trailed off; he arrived three paces from his friend's side, skidded to a halt and stared. Just stared.

Iolaus stared back in puzzlement for a moment - then realised what he was staring at. "Ah," he reacted, glancing away with an embarrassed wince. "Oops."

"You're - " Hercules struggled with the realisation. "You've got - wings?"

"Er - yeah," Iolaus agreed with a second 'how do I explain this' wince. His heart had sunk straight to his boots. This was not the way he'd wanted his friend to find out. "They - ah - kinda come with the job description ..."

"Job description?" The echo was one of bewilderment. "What job description?"

The third wince was even more embarrassed. "Would you believe - Guardian Angel?" The son of Zeus frowned.

"Guardian Angel?" The frown became total confusion. "Iolaus - since when have you been a Guardian Angel, and - who exactly are you supposed to be guarding, anyway?"

"Uh - " Iolaus drew a deep breath, his face screwing up into lines of wary mortification. "You," he admitted reluctantly, hunching a little into his shoulders and backing the word with an embarrassed grin.

"What?"

The angel shrugged apologetically, the movement dramatically emphasised by the resulting shift of his wings. "Umm - you heard," he said, spreading his hands wide as he did so. "I - ah - oh, gods." He let his shoulders slump, and his pinions with them, so that his primary feathers brushed the sand. "I should have told you. I should have told you when it happened, but - I just - I didn't know how."

Hercules was still staring at him, his expression bemused and his eyes filled with questions. "Tell me -what?" he requested, taking up a studied stance and folding his arms in front of him. It was a pose that demanded truth and demanded it now. Iolaus sighed. Heavily.

"Well - " he began, studying his friend's face and wondering how best to deal with this. He should have told him. Because he'd been the one going one about how they were supposed to trust each other - and all of a sudden he'd realised that by keeping this a secret he'd not just threatened that trust, but had come dangerously close to destroying it. Hercules still carried scars from all the lies and deceptions that Dahok had woven around him; a demon wearing the face of his best friend. How could he possibly be expected to go on having faith in that same best friend - when the one thing he'd consistently failed to mention was the fact that he wasn't exactly mortal anymore.

This doesn't change anything, Herc. I swear …

"You remember - when I came back? Umm - all that stuff Michael said, about atonement and paying for my betrayal and - and that?"

The son of Zeus nodded warily. "I remember."

"And - and you know how I thought that meant - that I was mortal again, and you and I - yeah. Well. I was wrong. Oh boy, was I wrong."

Hercules said nothing. Just went on looking with that patient 'you are going to explain this' look on his face. Iolaus took another determined breath.

"Michael - came back. That night. You were asleep and - well - uh - oh gods." His eyes went skywards even though he knew he'd get no help from that quarter. "He told me that - making me mortal again would have been a reward, not a punishment, and that this way …" He grimaced, knowing that the full account was going to take a lot of explanation about the celestial orders and the nature of angels and what the beth-el was - and that they probably didn't have time for all that right there and then. "He promoted me, okay? Into the ranks of the Aeon. Made me one of the guardians of earth. Specifically your guardian. Which means - the next time the two of us get to stand in front of that throne I'm going to get judged by their standards. Which are - pretty tough," he muttered, beginning to wonder if he'd already failed the test. "This," he gestured towards the curve of his wings where they still rose above his shoulders, "is my punishment, Herc. Don't you get it? I may still have some of the gifts the Light gave me - but I'm an exile now. Cast out - but not down," he added hurriedly, just in case that was misconstrued. "I have to live like this - either a mortal with a heavenly gift, or a heavenly creature trapped in the mortal world. Guess it doesn't matter which. Works either way."

Hercules was still looking at him, his expression unchanged. Iolaus sighed and stared unhappily down at the beach, stirring at the sand with the sea soaked toe of his boot. He's never going trust me again. Gods. Why didn't I find some way to tell him?

His shoulders slumped even further and his wings drooped right along with them; he'd get more sand in his primaries, but right then he didn't care …

"Punishment, huh?"

"Yeah."

"My guardian angel?"

"Yeah."

"And you had - those - when you jumped over that balcony in Egypt?"

"Uh - yeah." Iolaus risked a glance in his friend's direction. The stern consideration had become a thoughtful frown. "Hey - I was still expecting you to catch me, you know? I - uh - think of these as a last resort. Like - just now?" He grimaced uncomfortably as he realised what he was saying. He'd let his best friend believe he was simply mortal again - and by doing so, had allowed all that determined protectiveness to go unchecked. No wonder Hercules was frowning at him; he'd hurtled across the beach in the horrified expectation that he'd find a shattered corpse lying among the rocks. Instead of which he'd found - well, an angel. One manifest in glory; as much glory as Iolaus had, that was. Which wasn't that much, but was still going to look pretty unnerving when you weren't expecting to see it.

"Uhuh." The nod was a distracted one. "Well, at least I now know why you were only stunned by that magical attack …" Hercules went on studying his comrade for a moment longer, the frown deepening into lines of bemused irritation. He was clearly upset, and Iolaus didn't blame him. He should have told him; should have explained right away, when the news was fresh and the revelation still part of the events that had brought them back together. "Anything else I ought to know?"

The words had a brittle, suspicious ring to them. Even to mortal sensitivities they'd have sounded accusatory; to a creature forged in heavenly fire they felt like a physical blow.

Where do I begin? he wondered, a sense of discomforted guilt keeping his eyes lowered to the ground. He didn't dare look his partner directly in the eye; he had the distinct feeling he might never recover from the look that he'd find there. "There's - some stuff," he admitted, the reluctance in his voice more about not having the words rather than not wanting to speak them. "I haven't - figured it all out yet. Herc - " His voice broke on the name; the man was radiating anger and disappointment in equal measure and - for all his current state of glory - the angel felt about two feet tall. "I'm sorry, okay? I should have told you, but I didn't know how, and the last thing I wanted to happen was for you to find out like this …"

"Right," Hercules acknowledged bitterly. "So when were you going to tell me? The next time you died - and didn't?"

Ouch. The accusation was a low blow; Iolaus grimaced inwardly, taking the emotional punch and knowing he probably deserved it. "Herc - I -" He didn't know what to say. "I said I was sorry. I -"

"You lied to me, Iolaus. All these weeks - thinking I'd got you back, hardly wanting to believe it but - all the time, you were - this?" The hurt and the disbelief were almost tangible things; they spurred the guilt stricken hunter into agitated self defense.

"Yeah," he retorted, forgetting for a moment that his friend had no idea what 'this' actually meant; no way of comprehending the agony and the ecstasy that packaged the whole deal. "All the time. Living like this. Living with this. I didn't ask for it." He finally glanced up, meeting steel blue eyes filled with a turmoil as great as his own. "What's the big deal here, huh?" he demanded, stung by the look - by the way his friend was staring at him as if he were suddenly a stranger. "You're Hercules, I'm Iolaus. So what if you're the son of Zeus and I'm now one of the Aeon? What difference does it make to us?"

"I don't know," Hercules answered slowly, his eyes sweeping across the curve of golden wings and focusing on the flutter of wind ruffled feathers. "You tell me."

Gods … Iolaus let the anger go as quickly as it had come. He'd brought this on himself - and now he had to find a way to fix it. Before the friendship that he had chosen over the bliss of the Reverie became as shattered as the trust that his silence had betrayed. He closed his eyes for a moment, drew in a deep breath - and folded his wings away into nothingness, resuming the cloak of mortality which hid his true nature and armored his soul against the loss it constantly endured.

"No difference," he breathed, making the words both apology and promise. "I swear. I'm still me, Herc. Nothing that matters has changed."

Hercules' eyes had narrowed as he'd watched the transformation take place; the look he leveled at the anxious hunter held both wary doubt and angry challenge. "Yeah?" he began to question. An anxious call from further down the beach interrupted him. His head swung towards the sound; a frown of irritation creased his already furrowed features and he heaved a heavy sigh. "Well," he concluded tightly, glancing back just the once before starting to stride away. "We'll see."

There was no time to talk further, and no words that Hercules could have found to continue the conversation, even if there had been; as he spun on his heel and stalked away down the beach, his heart and mind were in total turmoil. He wasn't sure that he believed what he'd just seen - wasn't even sure that he'd actually seen it. There had been a moment - a heart stopping, 'oh gods, not again', kind of moment - when, stumbling out of the sandstorm of the elemental's collapse and searching desperately for some sight of his partner, he'd been halfway convinced that the man was already dead. He knew the situation had been desperate. Getting himself caught up inside the elemental had not been a good move for several reasons, - not least of which had been his inability to fight free of it again. Iolaus' method of dealing with the situation had been both typically brave and utterly reckless; a determined self sacrifice, offered up without a moments thought in an attempt to free his beleaguered friend. At least - that's what it had looked like at the time. Hindsight was busy questioning both the reasons for the action and the swirl of emotions it had inspired. Questioning, in fact, the whole of the past few weeks - the events, the words and the feelings that had filled them.

Because - instead of a sprawled corpse, or a shattered, dying man - that frantic search had located a figure rimmed with light; one that had been busy folding down a pair of gleaming, but decidedly sturdy wings. Wings that spanned the man's height and more; the feathers on them had been ruffling in the remnants of the wind.

For a moment, I thought …

He didn't know what he'd thought. But the apparition had been the very last thing he'd been expecting. Especially when the figure had turned out to be the man he was looking for.

He lied to me.

That was the easiest thought to grasp, in among the whirling confusion with which his mind now wrestled. It wasn't, strictly speaking, true - but it was close enough to allow him to latch onto it, to give all those doubts and fears a platform on which they could build and multiply.

He lied to me.

The fantasy he'd been living those past few weeks lay shattered across the sands of the beach behind him. The man - or whatever sort of creature it was - that followed in his footsteps ground the shards into irretrievable dust with every step. What kind of fool had he been, to think that the Fates would just hand him back his friend, without conditions, as if the whole cursed events of recent years had never even happened?

Gods, he shuddered inwardly, pausing in his step to glance back with a sudden sense of yawning terror. What if he isn't my friend at all?

Dahok had tried to deceive him. Dahok had taunted him and teased him, pretending to be something he wasn't, something he could never be. Dahok had fooled practically everybody …

"Herc - " The offer of his name held anxious apology, something he wasn't ready to deal with right there and then. He found he couldn't meet the look in those haunted eyes.

"Not now, Iolaus," he snapped, resuming his forward stride with a frown of determination. He had the answer to his first question at least; the demon which had stolen his friend's soul may have made his body cry out in terror and pain, may have used his voice to plead and his eyes to entreat for the release of death, but - however much he tried - Dahok had never been quite convincing enough to persuade him that destroying his best friend was the only possible way to set his tortured soul free.

There was no way that any demon, dark creature or conniving god would be able to imitate the look of utterly dejected guilt that currently occupied those familiar features. It was an expression only Iolaus could possibly master; a look that managed to offer abject apology, pained comprehension and contrite remorse all at once. An honest look, admitting a mistake and begging forgiveness for having made it. Alcmene had never been able to resist it; Hercules wasn't entirely sure he could either.

But right then he was more than angry enough to try …

I don't have time for this, he decided, pushing away the swirling confusion of his thoughts to concentrate on more immediate matters. There were two small children running up the beach towards him; lost and frightened children who needed his help. That, at least, was a situation he could cope with. The rest would just have to wait.

"Hey," he offered gently, dropping down on one knee and holding out reassuring arms. The movement reminded him of how much damage he'd taken in the elemental's stomach. He was bruised all over, his lungs ached and he suspected he'd broken at least one rib; hardly life threatening injuries, but enough to slow him down a little, should further trouble loom into sight. There'd been a time once when he'd not even have noticed; back in the days when he was young and he'd naively thought that being right made him invincible. He'd taken a lot of knocks since then. Enough to let him know that he'd been wrong on both counts. He wasn't invincible and he wasn't always right.

And things were never quite what they seemed …

Twin weights of warmth scrambled into his arms before he could think that particular thought through. Young hands clasped at him with heartfelt relief, expressing thanks and demanding reassurance. He accepted one and returned the other as best he could, hugging them in and ignoring the protest of damaged ribs as he did so. "It's all right. You're safe now," he murmured, glancing over their shoulders to make sure it was true. The pirate's ship had tacked out of the bay and was heading for the far horizon at full sail. It didn't look as if they'd be back in a hurry.

"Please," the little girl said, looking at him with wide and anxious eyes. "Go home now?"

"Sure," Hercules answered, standing up and lifting them both up with him. It was an oddly comforting feeling, to be holding a child in each arm again, as if they belonged there. His own children, had they lived, would have long grown past such paternal comforts, but his heart - shaken by the unexpected revelation it had just witnessed and did not yet comprehend - found solace in the substitute. "You'll be back where you belong before you know it."

"Sounds like a plan …"

Iolaus' words weren't so much spoken as delivered with a heavy sigh. They lacked both the enthusiasm and conviction Hercules might have expected to hear - and in other circumstances he'd have questioned that with decided concern. As it was, the dismal note in his friend's voice only served to stir his confusion into hostility.

"You got a problem with that?" he demanded, throwing the man an irritated look.

Iolaus was busy staring out to sea; he turned his head and returned the look with a defensive one of his own. "No," he denied. "It's a plan. Actually, it's a good plan. A very good plan." His words tumbled out one after another, words seemingly offered to make conversation rather than sense. "We got a problem, we need a plan. That's a plan."

Hercules' eyes narrowed dangerously. Iolaus went on babbling.

"As plans go, it's an okay kind of plan and - well, we don't have any other plan, so - " He'd finally caught the slow burn with which he was being transfixed, and his voice trailed off into a pained silence. "Shut up, Iolaus," he muttered, looking down at his feet with a decided wince.

Thank you …

The tension between them was almost a physical thing; Hercules held the beat a moment longer, glaring at his companion with tight and unforgiving eyes. Iolaus didn't look any different - and maybe that was the problem. He knew now that that compact, slightly disheveled, intimately familiar figure was nothing more than a façade, a cloak of mortality assumed with the ease of long accustomed use. It concealed - concealed what?

Hercules didn't know.

And that was what was scaring him the most …

"Agiori's that way," he pointed out, tipping his head in the relevant direction. Blond locks acknowledged both the implied order and the underlying warning with an unhappy nod; Iolaus turned and began to trudge back up the beach with heavy steps, his shoulders slumped as if carrying the weight of the world. Hercules settled the children so that they were comfortably tucked in against each hip, found them both an encouraging smile from somewhere, sighed, and followed him.

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'Heaven Must be Missing an Angel'- Chapter Three. Disclaimer:This story has been written for love rather than profit and is not intended to violate any copyrights held by Universal, Pacific Rennaisance, or any other holders of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys trademarks or copyrights.
© 2001. Written by Pythia. Reproduced by Penelope Hill