Keep telling me it gets better

‘’please don’t call me good. It doesn’t go with the whole ‘blood witch’-theme,’’ she sighed, looking at him with a little crooked smile. a smile that faded as he said that he would grant her one thing she wished for. She shook her head, before she looked back at him. ‘’Don’t you remember? Wishes shared don’t come true. I would never share my deepest prayers with you, dear Michael. I am far to superstitious to do that,’’ she said. However, she still smiled a miniscule smile. ‘’I appreciate your offer no less,’’ she then said, before she looked at the street-lamps.
She nodded as he explained that he didn’t wanted to talk about it. It had been some rough years for her - he had been through much worse than her, no doubt. If she shouldn’t be forced to tell about herself, then neither should he. ‘’A witch and an Archangel. What a story to tell,’’ she sighed to herself, as he had told her to trust an archangel’s word. She never truly would, though. Those holy bird-people never suited her taste.
‘’In honesty, Edinburg was a shithole. I’m glad that I got away,’’ she said. She was raised in a poverty-plague neighborhood, leaving herself rather marked by that childhood. She didn’t like Scotland for anything but it’s open fields and beautiful nature. Even her Scottish accent, she didn’t really care much for. In her world, everyone sounded the same back there; drunk. Maybe it had been because she had grown up with drunk stepfathers - maybe not. That part was not to be determined for certain.
Then, for a moment, things turned to him again. His origin. She chuckled lightly. ‘’Are you telling that there were humans when God created the world on six days? - I know it’s seven, but didn’t he take Sunday off or something?’’ she asked, rather jokingly. ‘’or, is the book of genesis in reality just some juju?’’ she asked, winking at him as they walked. Then, back to her - making her look down for a moment, as her feet quite mechanical continued their stroll.
‘’I was in the mafia until a few days ago.’’ She sighed, before she looked up at him. ‘’The Don used me as his own little plaything, but it was the only thing I had. Didn’t make it better when Tidus found out about it… His father was the Don.’’ She said, stuffing her hands as far down in her pockets as they could go. ‘’I never killed for them. Though, I did collect depts. Mostly paid in severed limbs.’’ She admitted. She didn’t look at Michael for a moment. ‘’I cursed the Don and got myself kidnapped, tortured and raped as punishment. Now, the mafia is ruled by his son instead, and I’m on my way to Bali to leave all this shit behind for a while,’’ she sighed, shaking her head. Sharing the story in such a bleak manner was easier for her than to go into details. Things he would surely know even by looking at her. She would never recover completely from the beatings and the damages done to her body. She had accepted that, although she felt hideous right now, with her black eye, beaten face and crooked fingers from when they had been broken.

He gave her a long look when she told him not to call her good, but just nodded and looked away. He could only hope that the darkness of performing blood-magic wouldn’t consume her and take away the goodness. “I guess we will have to see about that,” he said with a smile on his lips, it wasn’t as much an offer to him as it was a promise to grant it. No matter what she said. He nodded when she said it would be quite the story to tell. Of course, it was controversial, but it only made the story more interesting. “I see,” he said. He assumed she’d had bad experiences in the city, so there was no reason to ask more about it.

He smiled at the way she talked about the Genesis. He knew it would be a long explanation, but he didn’t mind explaining things about Christianity. “The Genesis is not juju… you need to know that it was written in Hebrew. The Hebrew language uses fewer words than English, bringing greater ambiguity. The word ‘day’, which is ‘yom’ in Hebrew, can mean: a 24-hour day, today, forever, continually, or an undetermined amount of time. So, the 'sixth day' should be read as ‘the sixth time period’. Neither does 'evening and morning' mean 24-hours. ‘Evening and morning’ is an idiomatic expression in Semitic languages. Like all idioms, its meaning is nonliteral," he explained. He didn't know how long she'd existed or if she knew much about other languages, but it was the real reason many misunderstood the tale of the creation. “The point is, God's sense of time is quite different from how humans define it. For this reason, Heaven and Earth could still be created before humans according to the book,” he ended, thinking that she'd probably find it boring from a non-christian perspective, but at least he'd given her a factual explanation as he knew she wouldn't blindly trust his word.

He listened when she talked about her former job in the mafia, looking at her with a sad expression as she went over everything. He'd known that something bad had happened to her, but now he understood the severity of it. “My God... I-I’m so sorry,” he said in a low voice, about to grab her hand as a comfort when he noticed they were in her pockets. “You did the right thing,” he assured her, not blaming her for what she'd done to the Don. He’d probably done worse if the situation was reversed. “And I think going to Bali will be great,” he added, understanding her need to get away from here. “If anyone needs a chance of a new life, it’s you,” he said, looking towards some windows where the light was still on before he looked ahead of them. “Are you safe where you’re staying now? From the people who harmed you,” he asked.

All of a sudden, she felt like they once more had gauged a big valley between them; making it hard for any of them to come across as anything but either vexed, crossed or displeased. As he spoke of the Genesis and how the Hebrew language had differed from the way semantics worked today, she listened with only half an ear. She knew all this, taking into account that her father spoke draconian; a language she had practiced for a while. She wasn’t sure, however, if she spoke it well enough to use it. She had decided to spend some time on that while she was away; getting back to her roots.
‘’I see,’’ she said, as he finished his little speech about the Genesis being real. ‘’I wasn’t trying to be rude,’’ she then explained, as she looked at him with a slightly apologetic look on her face.
She felt the pity before she even had looked back at him after the explanation of what had happened. Had the angel touched her, he might even had seen the whole thing himself, due to her talent of sharing memories without control. ‘’I actually cared for him… My boss. I never loved him - love doesn’t come easy to me. But I cared for him. I tend to do that, I guess.’’ She looked at the angel, only to find the compassion and sadness in his eyes far more reminiscing of those of her ‘brother’. She looked up at the sky for a moment. ‘’I never told anyone this. If he had asked me to rat out anyone else but Tidus… I would have done it.’’ She sighed. She felt horrible for admitting it - but if she didn’t admit to herself, then she wouldn’t be able to move on from it. She looked back at the archangel, as the walk back continued.
‘’I don’t think I’ll ever be safe,’’ she said, as they walked. The truth was that although they had taken over the mafia and sought to reform it, Jasper would have connections that sought both her and Tidus destroyed. She would never feel safe again; that was her own punishment. ‘’But if I live in fear, he will win that battle as well. I don’t want that.’’ She said, as she looked shortly at the archangel. ‘’I’m not leaving the mafia, though. Tidus is the new Don, and a man I would follow to Hell and beyond,’’ she said, before she looked straight ahead for a moment, as the hotel grew closer by each step.

He didn’t think she’d been rude, so he just smiled and shook his head at her statement. He’d already come to terms with the fact that she wouldn’t follow his religion - at least not for a while, but he had a habit of talking for a long time regarding it. He listened to her when she explained her relationship to her boss. It sounded like a complicated relationship, thinking about the way he’d treated her. It told him a lot about her, that she still cared for him despite that. “But it’s all in the past now, right? He’s gone?” he asked carefully, as he didn’t know exactly what had happened other than she’d cursed him.

He didn’t want anyone to feel unsafe, but he suppose it was a consequence of what she’d done to the Don. The only reason he asked was in case she needed someone to stay with her, but he had a feeling that she didn't want more of his company tonight. “It’s good you look at it that way,” he said. It was never a good thing to live in fear, because in the end the anxiety would just get worse. It took courage to admit the things she had done as well.
Then she revealed she wasn’t leaving the mafia, which made him frown a bit in confusion. He’d assumed she’d left the mafia to never return, but then again, perhaps it was all she knew. Either way, he wasn’t going to blame her for staying there, despite his own opinion, it was her decision. “If that’s what you think is best… but just know that I help the police in fighting criminal organizations, so don't do anything too stupid,” he said. It wasn't as much a warning as it was to let her know that he was against mafias, but she should've already known that before telling him. “And trust me, hell is not a place you’d want to go for anyone… I did that mistake once,” he admitted, even though he knew it was just a figure of speech. He stopped at the entrance of the hotel that she’d been walking towards. He looked at the sign for a moment before he returned his eyes to her. “Goodbye, Cassandra… I really hope your life turns out for the better,” he said with a sincere voice, looking at her with a warm gaze. Normally, he wouldn’t have spent all this time with a witch, let alone someone who was a member of a mafia, but he enjoyed her company despite that. It was refreshing in a sense. He stepped back onto the street before he revealed his wings behind him.

‘’The former Don is yet to be confirmed dead,’’ she said, as an answer to his question. ‘’The last I saw of him was when he was strung up and I crushed his balls with my bare hands, before leaving him in agony.’’ She said, not remotely embarrassed about her way of handling the man that had tortured and raped her. The Jasper she had cared for was not the Jasper that had molested her. She knew how to tell those two parts of him from one another, even though they grew closer and closer each day, up until he had tried to kill his son.
‘’I guess it is,’’ she said, with a tiny smile on her lips. Although she felt no more safe in the hotel room than she did the headquarters, she only had a few more nights in Gaia before she was on a plane heading for Bali. As he frowned by her revelation that she wasn’t leaving the mafia for good, she smiled kindly at him; perhaps the first kind expression she had been able to express during their encounter. ‘’If anything, you’ll find me buried in books, receipts and budgets,’’ she said, assuring him that her days as a criminal was limited. ‘’As the new Don reforms what used to be a mafia, I’m going to make sure the numbers add up. Nothing more - nothing less,’’ she then said, winking at him.
As they finally arrived at the hotel, the archangel seemed hesitant for a moment. Then, with his eyes fixated on her, he said his farewell. Of course, he had to through a blessing in there for good measure; a blessing she doubted would ever come true. Then, he stepped back onto the street, before revealing his wings. ‘’Farewell, archangel. May our paths never cross again,’’ she said, crossing her arms with a smile on her lips, as she surely didn’t mean what she said. Who knew? Perhaps he would be mentioned in her next prayer.
With that, she turned around and entered the hotel lobby, leaving Michael outside on the street. The lobby was dead quiet, as most already seemed to have gone to bed. Without much hesitation, besides her turning around to see if the archangel had left or not, she walked to the stairs, to go to her rented room and just pass out for the night. Confronting someone she had never trusted on the existence of could really drain her energy.

//out?