Egads- the "last chapter"! ("Last" in quotes because, after this, I am most definitely writing a sequel... maybe two.)

Epilogue: Verdict

The table they sat around was granite, a pitch-black block of stone carved into a workable slab and then traced with jade flower designs. There were six seated around the massive piece of furniture, with one on a beautiful throne at the head of it and a seventh member standing beside her.

A golden-haired woman rose from her throne and slammed her palms on the table’s surface, interrupting the murmurings between the others.

“Milady,” King murmured, rolling his unseeing eyes. “Refrain from breaking things, at all costs.”

“Well?” she asked the seated five, ignoring her caretaker’s directions. “Does anyone else care about Raphael? Does anyone else care about the girl he brought here?”

Gabriel was the first to respond, tone already laden with derision. “Even if we did care, what could we do?”

“We can do whatever we want,” Charity answered, grinning down the table at him. When he returned her smile with a downcast sneer, she amended, “You can do whatever we want.”

“Not true,” Celeste sighed, sinking back into her chair.

“Milady’s right; there’s only so much here for us to decide.”

“You’re fucking God!” Silver eyes flashed dangerously as Cameron pounded a fist into the granite. “And you three! You three are fucking angels! King,” he said, spinning to his right, “You’re a high power, too! I mean, Charity’s useless, but I can help a little—there must be something we can—”

Charity leaned forward, glaring at the boy across from her. “What’s this about being useless?”

“He’s got a point,” Gabriel added in, just before Celeste slammed a hand down again.

“Enough,” she declared, shaking her head. “You five—well, six, if we’re counting King—are the ones who know the situation and have anything to do with it. So, this is the group that has to decide that pair’s fate.”

“That’s a bit of an oxymoron,” Uriel added in, jadedly preening the feathers on the joint of his wing. “You can’t decide fate. Fate is what happens naturally.”

“He’s got a point,” Gabriel laughed again.

“Will you two—”

“I have an idea,” Charity interrupted. “Why can’t we leave them both alone? If something happens, it happens. If not, nothing.”

Cameron’s mouth twisted down into a frown, blatantly objecting the idea. “I’d rather ‘something’ not happen. Raven might get hurt.”

“Or she might not,” Gabriel answered. “So we may as well tell both, and do as the useless one over there said: sit and do nothing.”

“I am not usele—”

“No!” Cameron shoved his chair back, rising to his feet, beginning to walk anxiously around the room. “I mean, first of all, Raven would probably get killed by Jason. Secondly—”

“His name is Raphael, actually,” King said.

“No, he’s still Jason,” Celeste murmured, wincing at the informal name. “But he’s the pre-girl—”

“Her name is Raven.”

“—pre-Raven Jason. He won’t remember her, he still hates Cameron and if I’m analyzing him correctly, he hasn’t received kindness to a point of being nearly-insane.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Cameron hissed a quiet, “What are you talking about?”

“She means,” King answered, “this ‘Raven’ was like a stream of light into Raphael’s darkness. His past and what he is makes him quite literally insane; he can’t handle all of his anger and sorrow, which is why the Raphael part of his personality has been forced to become such a violent, twisted, unforgiving thing.”

Tears rimmed Charity’s eyes in the seconds it took the red-haired man to explain. “I was kind to him!” she stammered, voice shaky. “Didn’t he even notice—”

“Quiet, you faker,” Celeste snapped. “You probably threatened him more than you were kind to him. Either that or you tried to sleep with him again.”

“God, one. Useless girl, zero.”

“Gabriel, I am not useless, unlike—”

“So Jason’s ‘Raphael’-brand craziness should make it even more imperative to keep him from remembering,” Cameron said quietly as he emerged from thought. “He’s already a killer, and he regrets it—that messed him up. Let’s let him be, at least!”

Celeste nodded. “But we should tell her, or at least use indirect signs to warn her. Raphael’s mind heals fast, compared to a human’s case of amnesia; he’ll remember everything within a short period of time.”

“Assuming,” came a low voice, from the dark-winged angel seated across from Uriel, “of course, that his memories still exist within him.” He slowly traced the edge of his wineglass with his index finger, bringing a steady, high-pitched ring from the object. “You’ll find that if the Phoenix Process occurred normally, he’d still have memories intact. But this wasn’t a normal Process by any means; he was interrupted in the middle of his lifespan and underwent severe cleansing to rid him of Angel’s Death. And that incantation, the one the demon-girl recited, probably also had some effect.”

“That was for my benefit and had nothing to do with Raphael,” Celeste amended.

“Well, then, it may actually have some healing effect on his mind. I don’t know the inner workings of such a thing.”

Cameron spoke when the pitch-haired archangel fell silent. “Didn’t any of you check his memory? Isn’t there some Zaphemel of Memory, or something?”

“Zaphemel?” Charity snorted, brow quirked.

Uriel lightly touched her arm, leaving her silent, and looked at Celeste. “Has anyone checked his mind?”

“I haven’t allowed anyone near him,” she sighed, massaging the bridge of her nose. “I thought it might yank up some deep-rooted memories, and I didn’t want to do that until we discussed things.”

“Cameron,” King said, and turned toward the boy beside him. “You know Raphael’s ‘human’ personality better than us all. What would he agree to?”

The silver gaze dropped to the table, thinking, weighing the question significantly in his mind. “As long as Raven’s safe, he’d be happy. I think… I think he’d want us to tell her directly. No signs, no indirect warnings. She’d be able to pick up on them, I’m sure, but then she might get the wrong idea…” He nodded conclusively, meeting the eyes of the council of higher powers. “Let’s tell her, and soon.”

Celeste smiled back at him. “And if she does remember, the willing release of information from us will keep her from prying.”

“Why would she pry if she remembers?”

Hazel eyes rolled blatantly beside the speaker. “Charity, seriously, if you’re going to be stupid then please get out of this—”

“Shut it, Gabriel, I’m confu—”

“She will pry,” Celeste began, loudly enough to break their conversation but quickly becoming quiet. “And she will do it because no one around her remembers what she remembers. Her teammates may think she’s delusional if she tells them. And, by the odd chance that she wrote a diary of some sort, her own writing will be gone, the memories forgotten.”

“Injuries?”

“She won’t have sustained them.”

“Hold on a moment,” Uriel said quietly, finally interested in the subject. “You say she won’t pry if she finds out what she believes is truth. And what if she’s forgotten everything? Won’t telling her confuse her more? Are we going to answer all her questions?”

“Even if we do answer them all, will that satisfy her need for knowledge?” Gabriel rocked back in his chair, kicking his booted feet up onto the table. “Personally, if some superhuman being came down and told me about a forgotten love I had forged with some archangel who now wanted to kill me, I’d be curious.”

“Can you put your feet on the floor, like a normal person?” Charity asked.

“Oh, hush, you useless mutt. No offense,” he grinned at Uriel, who gave an apathetic shake of the head. “Anyway, all I’m saying is that you can answer all the questions you want, and she’ll still want to see this supposed ‘love’ of hers.”

Before anyone else could speak, Uriel jumped in, a strange look of horror on his face. “They were in love?”

Gabriel shrugged.

His metallic eyes widened almost comically. “I heard she contracted Angel’s Death, but… I thought…”

“They slept together?” Charity screeched, launching herself forward in her chair, looking both angry and extremely amused.

“No. Maybe. I don’t think so, at least,” Gabriel chuckled. “Raven got Angel’s Death because Raphael attacked her, and then bit her. She had black wings for a while—they were cool.”

“I told you, wings make everyone look ‘cool,’” Celeste muttered; King threw her a reproving glance.

“Black?” The dark-haired man looked up from tracing his glass’s rim. “I share wings with a demon?”

Uriel smirked. “Michael, yours are more speckled, really.”

“Only if you look closely! Are they gone? Hers are gone, right?”

Nodding, Cameron brought back the earlier topic. “So are we telling her or not?”

“If we tell her, she may or may not interfere. If we don’t tell her, we get the same outcome.” Celeste shook her head, golden curls flying in all directions. “I don’t see how we get a win-win situation.”

“I still think we should leave them both alone…”

“Shut up, useless.”

“Actually, Gabriel,” Celeste continued, “that may be best. It requires the least action from us, which is beneficial to keeping things ‘normal’ for Raphael. If he notices a change in our behavior, he’ll become suspicious, even without an intact memory.”

“But—”

“It gives the same result,” she said again. “Cameron, it really might be best… even if you can’t see our side of the argument.”

“But if she starts to pry on her own, what’ll we do?”

Michael cleared his throat, making the boy’s next statement fade on his tongue. “If the demon begins to meddle,” he said, resolute, “we will stop her, and inform her that she is correct in memory. But we will ask her to stay away, as much for her benefit as it is for her beloved Jason’s. Now, if she doesn’t begin to meddle, we will leave her alone.”

There was silence for a few seconds, and then a majority of the attendance nodded in agreement. Cameron, however, shook his head, still unsatisfied.

“So that takes of Raven, but what about Jason?”

“We will do the same for him,” Michael sighed, taking to tracing his glass again.

“Which personality will remember, though?” Celeste folded her arms on the table, laying her head sideways on her forearms. “Will he still love her? Or will he still hate her for ‘breaking’ Jason?”

“Hatred over love, probably,” Uriel answered her, lips pursed. “Raphael has never gotten along with demons, metaphorical or literal, and his past reincarnations have simply added onto that spite.”

“Meaning, what?”

“Meaning, Cameron,” Charity answered for him, “that he’ll remember the hatred first, or at least lean towards it more when both are realized.”

“So he’ll go after her,” Gabriel mused, staring at the ceiling.

“Yes, unfortunately.”

“But… but we can stop him…” Cameron began pacing again, teething his lower lip. “Right? I mean, Jason—”

“—isn’t going to be in control when he wakes.”

Celeste met Charity’s eyes and nodded as best she could without sitting upright. “She’s right, Cameron. Raphael is going to be in control, and whatever hits him strongest will be his motive.”

Cameron’s eyes softened, his paces slowed. “Can’t we stop him?”

“It would cause a massive imbalance in the astral powers to even attempt it,” King said, hand moving absently to touch Celeste’s bowed head.

“That’s a big no-no,” Gabriel clarified with a barking, humorless laugh. “It might be fun; you know, a challenge.”

Charity smirked. “Only for you.”

“Seriously,” Celeste muttered. “What’s our decision? There isn’t time to listen to banter.”

Uriel spoke first. “We know we can’t stop him if he remembers. But there’s a massive ‘if’ there—assuming all goes well, he won’t remember, and if we keep from revealing things or acting strangely he won’t receive memory triggers, or even begin to seek them out.”

“And if he remembers, Raven will just die?” Cameron spun toward the table, indignant.

“Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”

“And if it does?”

King met his silver gaze, steady and firm. “Then yes, the girl will die.”

Instantly, he clenched his fists, taking steps toward the red-haired man. “Where the fuck do you get off—”

Michael’s arm lashed out, grabbing the back of the boy’s shirt and yanking. His wings spread in warning, snapping open with a sharp crack before the shoved-away chair clattered into the wall. “You will stay even-tempered,” he said, smoldering eyes challenging him to argue. “Or else, your opinion will not be considered. Do you want the girl to die?”

Cameron glared at him; “No.”

“Then sit.”

As soon as Cameron obeyed, he turned again to King, anger in his eyes gone. “Don’t begin to think I’m agreeing with you.”

“For once,” Gabriel spoke up, “I’ll also disagree with your leave-it-to-fate opinion. It’s unacceptable, to leave her open and vulnerable. And other people will get hurt; her teammates, her city’s civilians, her—”

“He has no grudge against Starfire,” Uriel smiled.

His hazel-eyed equal flushed slightly, opening and closing his mouth, trying to think of something to throw back.

“Who’s Starfire?” came Michael’s taunting chuckle. “And where did you come across a girl that you actually care about?”

Clearing her throat, Celeste sat up in her throne. “If the situation arises where Raphael goes after Raven, we’ll go against him as much as we can.”

“Which isn’t much,” Charity added; a smirk widened across her face at Cameron’s contorted expression.

“We’re going to avoid him, then?” Gabriel asked.

King nodded. “As much as possible. He’ll expect very little contact, a slight courtesy after a Waking. The Woken are always disoriented at first.”

“Speaking of, Cameron,” Celeste interrupted, shifting in her seat, “if you want to be with your brother before the ceremony, I’d suggest you go now. If we’re trying to avoid suspicion, you must be distant and bitter for a while. After all, you never made up, not even slightly.”

“So, what? That’s it? We’re just leaving them both alone until she remembers or he becomes homicidal?”

Charity grinned at him again. “Yup.”

“I’ll keep watch over them both when I can—it’s my fault for Angel’s Death in the first place,” Uriel admitted. “As to merely repay them for causing this dilemma, I’d like to at least have some role in their protection.”

“As much protection as possible,” Celeste sighed. “And it still won’t—can’t—be much.”

“But…!”

“Cameron… this is all we can do. Please,” she said, leaning closer to him, laying a hand over his. “Let us take care of things.”

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Thank you to everyone who reviewed, everyone who read this, and everyone who put this/me on Alert because of it. An especially big thank-you to those who read and critiqued... I hope I've improved since chapter one.

Closing thoughts? Er, hm, let's see... Well, this has taken 2 and a half years to write (I think?)... Celeste is named after a cow in 'Harvest Moon,' if you count that as a 'closing thought.' (Heh.) It's more of a 'fun fact,' I guess. Oh, Cameron probably thinks King is smexy... xD (I write SpAqua, what do you expect?!) Besides that... Oh!

If you tune into the sequel(s)... Michael (the dark-haired/winged/eyed archangel) will be a star in "WHC II." There will be a few love triangles as well... "Will Raven fall for a healing companion, or will Jason get to her in time?" (...cue announcer voice fade-out...)

Again, thank you for reading, and tune in next time to When He Comes: The Sequel!