adiva_calandia

Title: Heaven
Rating: PG
Fandom: Angels in America/His Dark Materials
Note: This meeting couldn't happen; I checked the dates. I considered writing it set in Milliways to get around it, and decided the setting didn't quite work. So. Bear with me as I tie time into knots?

It's August, blistering New York summer, and the sun is beating down on Bethesda Terrace, but it doesn't seem to make any difference to how cold Prior feels. Big surprise -- he's never really warm these days, especially his hands and feet -- but at least the sun is hot enough that he doesn't have to bundle up in too many layers.

Water is running out from under the angel's feet and splashing down into the pool as he walks down the terrace steps, pausing on one of the landings to catch his breath.

"Can I give you a hand?" asks a warm English voice beside him. He turns, shaking his head automatically, and pauses. The speaker is a young man with straight black eyebrows and a solemn, if friendly, expression. He's beautiful, like a Rennaisance sculpture.

"I'm fine," Prior tells him, "thanks."

The boy -- man, Prior corrects, he carries too much age to be called a boy -- nods, and asks, "Are you from around here?"

"What, New York? Yes. Where are you in from?"

"Oxford." He points towards the fountain. "I was wondering if you could tell me anything about her? She's beautiful."

Prior can't help smiling at that. "She is. The Angel of Bethesda, the Angel of the Waters. She made a healing spring flow in Jerusalem." He leans on his cane, looking at the foutain. "I'd have to say she's my favorite angel, of any I've seen."

The young man puts his hands in his pockets, following Prior's gaze. "She's like no angel I've ever seen."

Prior looks over at him. "You've seen a lot?"

The young man looks back. "Have you?"

". . . Hm." He starts forward again, and the young man keeps pace, and Prior feels very stiff and sick for a moment next to him. "So what brings you from Oxford to New York?"

"Work, sort of. It takes me all over."

"What do you do?"

He seems about to answer, as they reach the bottom level of the terrace, when he's interrupted by a black cat padding up and twining around his legs. Prior notices the way his face lights up as he bends and picks the cat up; the cat gives Prior a look of unusual intelligence and curiosity.

"Is that yours?" Prior asks, surprised.

The young man laughs. "She's mine about as much as I'm hers," he answers, stroking the cat.

"Huh. Okay."

The cat jumps back down to the ground, and the two men follow her over to a bench. The young man gives Prior a hand sitting down, and asks quietly, "You're sick, aren't you?"

Prior rolls his eyes. "It's not considered good manners to point it out."

"I know." He sits down next to Prior, putting a hand on the cat. "What do you have?"

"The plague." He looks at the other man. "AIDS."

"Oh." The cat creeps into his lap. "I'm sorry."

"Me too." Prior shakes his head, looking up at the fountain. "You never answered my question."

"Which one?"

"What do you do? What's your work that takes you all over?"

"Oh," again. The young man smiles. "I'm building the Republic of Heaven."

That gets Prior's attention, and he looks over sharply. "You're what?"

The young man smiles, knowing that he heard perfectly well. Prior snorts. "Heaven's overrated."

"What makes you say that?"

"Personal experience." He looks back at the angel, hands folded on top of his cane. "Full of beaurocrats trying to organize what can't be organized, suggesting solutions that are worse than the problems."

The young man follows his gaze, and Prior hears another voice from beside him, pitched higher but coming from lower. "That's why we have to build a new one."

Another sharp look. "What did you say?"

"We have to build a new one," the young man says, and Prior is sure that wasn't his voice a moment ago, except that it was, threshold of revelation, "one where we are, not somewhere remote and alien."

There is no Zion save where you are.

Prior's staring, he knows he is. The young man looks over, raises those straight eyebrows, and asks, "And what do you do, that you have so much personal experience with Heaven?"

"I'm a prophet," Prior says after a moment. "Semi-retired."

"Semi-retired?"

"I didn't like the prophecy I was supposed to prophesy." He shrugs. "So I gave it back."

"Are prophets allowed to do that?"

"I didn't really care. It was obsolete."

The young man nods. "Did you find a new one?"

Prior considers that. "I think maybe I did."

The young man smiles, looks down at his cat, up at the angel, and Prior feels no need to break the silence.

After a while, the young man stands, cat in his arms. "Thank you for telling me about the angel. I ought to be going."

"Wait."

He stops, looking down at Prior, still seated. Prior looks up at him through his thick glasses and asks, "Are you really rebuilding Heaven?"

"Yes."

Prior's heard certainty and purpose like that before -- that was how the Angel spoke, how Hannah speaks sometimes.

"C'mere," he says, holding up a hand, palm towards the other man. The young man moves a little closer, and Prior touches his forehead.

"More Life," he breathes, and sits back. "I don't know if it's my blessing to give, but there it is."

The young man closes his eyes as Prior's hand touches his head, and then smiles.

"Thank you."

He turns and walks away. The cat peeks over his shoulder at Prior, and Prior is certain -- certain to his bones -- that he hears the cat turn to the man and say, "He really was a prophet, wasn't he?" But then they're out of earshot, off across the terrace, and Prior is alone on the terrace again.

"Huh," he murmurs.

He thinks the other man might have been a prophet, too. It's the threshold of revelation. And they're building -- what was it? "The Republic of Heaven," he says, tasting the words.

Heaven where we are. Maybe that's a sign of the coming Millennium.

And the sun feels warmer for a while, as he watches the angel hover over the waters.

I'm kinda sad that that meeting couldn't ever happen.