Warning: I'd suggest not reading this if you're easily offended about religion, or if you're homophobic.

A/N: (You can skip this bit if you want to...)

Just in case you've failed to read the warning: This story is (at least partially) about religion. I am not actively trying to offend people, although I am certainly subverting ideas from the monotheistic religions for my own purposes, so I'd suggest not reading if you can't cope with that. Also, if your homophobic, because m/m relationships are definitely on the cards for later chapters.

Why isn't this in the Bible section? Quite a few reasons, really. Firstly, I'm not setting out to offend people, and although not all those who read the Bible section are easily offended Christians, by posting it here I hope to avoid needless flames. Secondly, and most importantly, it's not in the Bible section because it's NOT a Bible fanfiction. It's not based on any particular Bible story or any other specific aspect of the Bible. I've never actually read the Bible, not all the way through anyway, and so calling this Bible fanfiction would be, putting it bluntly, lying. In fact, it's been more inspired by Paradise Lost, Dogma, Good Omens and probably a few other things that I've forgotten, but it's not fanfic of any of them, either, because all the characters and ideas are original.

In case anyone's interested, a quick overview on my own religious beliefs: I'm approximately Jewish, although I basically think that all religions are equally valid or flawed metaphors for and ways of acknowledging the same universal truths.

One last thing, if anyone can come up with a better, less clichéd title for this, I'd be eternally grateful.

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Where Angels Fear To Tread

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A person's room can say a lot about them. Michael's room was small, uncluttered and perfectly square, the four walls an unblemished, glaring white, like a television studio for an advert, where, if you aren't looking too carefully, and the lighting is good, the floor merges with the walls, and the walls into the ceiling, giving an optical illusion of an infinite space. The impression of infinity was augmented by the mirrors: there were two of them and they were on opposite walls, unframed, wide enough for a person to view themselves comfortably, and stretching from floor to ceiling, each reflecting the other's reflection, so that anyone looking into them would see themselves reflected over and over again along a corridor of formless white, stretching on forever. The only other furniture in the room was a perfectly made bed, with crisp white sheets pulled back over an immaculate white duvet, two plump, white pillows, and, oddly enough, a fat, fluffy, teddy bear with a crimson
bow around its neck. It too was white.

A casual observer in the room would not have been hard pressed to notice two out of its three unusual features: firstly the sparseness of its furnishings- no wardrobe, no bedside cabinet, no visible lights (although the room was not dark, and had no windows); in fact, no furniture at all except the bed and the mirrors, and a closer look would have shown that the mirrors were in fact not furniture at all, but merely part of the walls. Secondly, its colour- the room was white. Unstained and untarnished, not magenta, nor tinged with blue or pink, but purely, wholly white.

The third unusual thing about the room was more subtle. Our observer would almost certainly not have noticed it straight away, in fact might not have noticed it at all unless they were forced to stay in the room for any length of time, and then it would have eaten away at them, driving them slowly but surely insane.

The room had no discernible door.

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Michael gazed at his reflection in one of the two mirrors, trying not to be distracted by the uncomfortable feeling that if he took a step forward, he would bump into himself coming back the other way. He was not dissatisfied with what he saw. Looking back at him was an encouragingly average young man, slim and somewhat pale, with slightly shaggy, dark brown hair falling across his eyes, which were an unusual shade of green. He wore faded jeans, old but not shabby, and he had not yet put on the black polo neck jumper, which was neatly folded on the bed. The skin on his arms and chest was pleasantly smooth; he stared at it impassively, scrutinizing his hands most of all, clenching and unclenching them, noticing the blue veins beneath the skin, pausing to examine with his eyes the silver ring on the smallest finger of his left hand, before moving on to view the creases and lines on his palm and the short, clean finger nails. He only stopped staring when he realised how cold he
had become, he rubbed his arms vigorously to warm them, and hurriedly pulled on his jumper. Beneath the jumper, his silver pendant felt cold and unnatural against his skin; he reached in with one hand and pulled it out. It glowed against the black, and he cupped it in his hands, staring at that too. It was a tiny, perfectly detailed feather.

He had to sit down on the bed to pull on his boots, they were black, and had probably once been shiny, but were now slightly on the scuffed side. When he had finished struggling with the laces, he picked up a bag from the floor by his bed, and checked through it one last time. There was not much in it, a change of clothing, a leather-bound notebook, an ancient, battered and much read copy of Milton's Paradise Lost, which was his favourite book, and five shining white feathers, each several inches in length, each a slightly different colour.

Michael removed the notebook from his bag and ripped two pages from it, took a fountain pen from his trouser pocket, and began to write a letter. He had been composing it in his head for some time, but he still found it difficult to write. There was so much to say, and most of it would have been better said face to face, or not said at all. For a while, he sat sucking on the pen and gazing at the paper. Then he wrote:

I'm sorry. Never think that I have Fallen. I love you, I love you all, more than I can ever say, and I always will. I love Him too, with all my heart, never think that I don't - but I still believe that he is *wrong*. It's as simple as that. Leaving here is the hardest thing that I have ever had to do. But I can't live like this anymore. It's not just Him, or our argument, although that is of course the greatest factor. But also... I feel trapped. There are things I've never seen and things I've never done, things I'll never be able to do if I stay here and never question. You may think that it is not my place to question. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just me- maybe I'm in the wrong. But I have a consciousness, and I have a conscience, and I believe that in some things, at least, I deserve the right to choose my own course. I believe that I- that we, all of us- have *earned* our right to free will. I know that you have heard me say this before. I know that if I did not
convince you then, I will not convince you now. I don't think I'm trying to convince you anymore. I think I'm trying to convince myself.

I am going to *live*. Maybe I will return eventually, when things are different, or when I am different. I hope to see you all again, some day, but I make no promises I cannot keep, so it will remain just that. A hope. If you love me, do not come looking for me. I will return to you in my own time, if I can.

Please try to understand. Please don't think any less of me, I am still and I will always be,

Yours forever,

Michael

By the time he came to sign the letter, Michael was sobbing uncontrollably. He folded it carefully, and wrote on the outside: `To my Brothers'; managing to keep his tears from smudging the writing was an achievement. He then hid his head in his hands and wept. Inside his mind, the faces of his brothers stared at him accusingly and in pain, and there was nothing he could do to console them.

It took him a good few minutes to regain his self-control, but when he did, his resolve was stiffened. He turned his attention to the second piece of paper. Although the message was shorter, it was even more difficult to write than the first.

Father,

I have made a *choice*.

Your faithful servant,

Michael

For a few moments he was stunned by the sheer audacity of it. Then he smiled grimly to himself, folded it with infinite care and tenderness, and placed inside the first note. There was no need to address it. It was clear who it was for. He left both letters on the bed; there was no other surface to leave them on.

Michael stood, stretched, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He picked up the bag, replaced the notebook, and was about to do up the zip, when his eye lighted on the teddy bear. It looked at him reproachfully. Feeling foolish, he picked it up carefully and placed it into the bag. He took the floor-length black coat down from its hook by the bed, and swung it around his shoulders. He hoisted his bag, which was surprisingly heavy, and took a final look around his bare room. Catching sight of his slightly shabby reflection in the mirror, he thought with a burst of something that was a mixture of pride, sorrow, fear and triumph: `I don't belong in this room anymore. I don't fit.'

Michael smiled, took the pen from his pocket once more and, with the utmost care, began to draw the outline of a door onto one of the immaculate white walls. He drew in the frame and the panelling, the grain of the wood and the cast of the shadows, shading it all carefully so that it looked... not just real. Three dimensional. Solid. And all the while he pictured in his head the place on the other side of the door, fixing it with his mind. It took him the best part of an hour to complete the drawing, each line perfect and each detail included. Finally, when all else was finished, he drew in the key hole, working at it tirelessly until it was perfect. At last, it was done. He pulled a large silver key from his coat pocket, and carefully, carefully opened the door.

On the other side: a busy London tube station. People. Noise. He walked through without once looking back, his bag across his shoulder, his long coat swirling satisfactorily in the sudden rush of air. He did not need to close the door, it slammed shut behind him of its own accord, and he felt a momentary rush of panic. But it quickly subsided. He *had* made a choice. A choice that mattered.

The Angel Michael smiled to himself, though his heart was heavy, as he allowed himself to be swept away by the rush hour crowd, out into the cold, polluted London air.

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It was raining. The pavement shone damp and slippery, and the people huddled deeper into their coats, or hid beneath their umbrellas. Michael tried to stand still outside Oxford Circus station, marvelling at the rain, and trying to find his bearings, but people jostled him impatiently and swore, forcing him to move on. The city had changed a great deal in the time since his last visit, and he could see fairly quickly that there was no hope of him finding his way around it still after all those years. He did not have a clue where he was, or where he was going. The air was thick with exhaust fumes that set his eyes watering and made his lungs burn. The street was noisy, and crowded with anonymous, hurrying people; the mass of bodies propelled him, driving him off the pavement and almost into the path of an oncoming bus. It came to a halt with its breaks screaming in protest and its horn blaring angrily. Michael stepped back onto the pavement, thinking morbidly about the
frailty of human flesh and the ease with which the steel frame of that bus would have crushed him in his current mortal form. Shaken, bewildered, confused and a little intimidated, Michael wandered aimlessly down Regents Street in the direction of Piccadilly Circus. An endless stream of buses screeched and rumbled down the road, and he watched them nervously, looking more lost even than a tourist. In the background, he could hear the dull roar of London's rush hour traffic, punctuated by the shrill, discordant tooting of many horns, and occasionally by the insistent wail of emergency sirens. Michael thought about stopping to ask directions, but he did not know where he was trying to get. Somewhere less crowded... for now, anywhere would do.

The flashing lights of Piccadilly Circus reminded him of the radiant brilliance of angel's wings until he looked more closely and realised that every single one was an advert. Feeling thirsty and wondering what all the fuss was about, he bought a can of Coca-Cola; it was sweet beyond belief, and fizzy and it tasted of chemicals and artificial cinnamon. He was unable to decide whether he liked the taste or not, but its stickiness and cloying sweetness left his thirst unquenched.

Leicester Square was, if anything, even more full of people then Piccadilly Circus, but had the immense advantage of being traffic free. It also had a small, fenced off green section in the centre, where a few trees struggled on valiantly, despite the litter. Michael stopped to listen to a busker, a young woman playing the saxophone. A lazy, improvised melody swirled up through the air; it sounded as though she was not so much creating the music as setting it free.

`Jazz,' thought Michael, `epitomises all that is good about Free Will. It's spontaneous. It's beautiful. It's meaningful. It's formless.'

He left a pound coin for the musician, and wandered on, feeling soothed. It was some minutes before he noticed that the rain had stopped, but when he did, his heart leapt. With the sun shining faintly through the clouds, and the beautiful freedom of the music swirling skywards to meet it, mortality did not feel like such a terrible thing.

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