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Description

There was a stigma, Kato found, to considering oneself Fallen.
It was fucking nonsensical, of course. They all were fucking Fallen: Why else would they be awakening here, on this puny, brittle ledge of a world hovering above the yawning maw of Hell? Cast an existence down from Heaven with no word from God?
They were Fallen, all of them: Thrown out and abandoned as easily as the Humans surrounding them cast out unwanted pets.

The Placed didn’t see it that way, of course. They kept the faith; they had a Destiny, they said, God would speak again. They weren’t Fallen: They’d been Placed. Or so they believed.

It had been a Placed who’d first found Kato after he’d hit earth, nameless and not understanding where all he'd known had gone: The ultraviolet rays kissing the rims of clouds, the white expanse of free skies, the thousand suns and the golden air shimmering over the marble streets; the hovering springs whose water fell, pure and clear, into the nether.
No, he’d woken up, dirty and minuscule, in a form too small for his truth, blood matting the side of his head instead of ichor. He’d shaken some dark object from his stiff fingers and staggered down and out of the building he’d found himself in—a stinking, ramshackle Human hive—and ended up repeatedly walking past a dark window beneath a streetlight because if the light caught him at just the right angle, he saw his reflection’s eyes burn white-gold and his wings silhouetted behind him, casting off runes and verse as sparks; the only reassurance that anything familiar yet remained.

“Are you a new one?” a female voice had asked, suddenly, and her eyes had briefly gone brilliant too as she stepped out of a nearby alley. “Ohhh, your vessel did some damage to itself, didn’t it?”

Kato, then null, had been confused by the comment until he realized indeed his vessel had only been freely occupiable because of the blood matting its hair and the crumpled piece of metal which he abruptly discovered in his mouth and spat out into his palm. In doing so, he found the vessel’s wrists were marked; scarred. He’d been thrown from Heaven to wear the shell of a tortured being, it seemed, and the unfairness of it all bubbled up in his chest. This Human had been abandoned long before he himself had been; was he meant to here glimpse his own fate? Was he mortal, now? What the hell had he done to deserve such cruelty?

“Why were we cast down?!” he demanded, angrily throwing the bullet into the gutter. The other angel winced, then turned up her nose.
“Cast down? We were Placed. Surely you’re not a Fallen?” she asked, so haughtily that he had the urge to say he was without yet knowing what it meant to be such.
“What’s a Fallen?”
“Those who awaken with such weak Faith that they turn their backs on God simply because He hasn’t spoken to us of our Purpose yet. I know He must have a plan. The Fallens choose to ally themselves below, at least in name...Fallen angels, as Lucifer was...Disgusting, isn’t it? Anyway—what’s your name?”

He was rankled by her tone but tried not to show it, she being the only tie to information and his old existence yet offered to him. He struggled to swallow his simmering dislike, and frowned: He had no name to give her, and no amount of internal digging yielded his identity to him.
“I...I don’t remember...”
“Ooh, you’re that new! You choose one, of course. I've never met anyone who’s remembered.”

‘Of course.’ Of course there’s an army of angels down here, abandoned to this half-hell and unable to recall their identities. Of course.

“...I guess I’ll get around to it,” he said. “What’s your name? How did you awaken here?”
“Oh, it wasn’t here: I woke up floating on my back in the ocean on some beach in Florida. Assumed I’d somehow found where the springs let out, but had no idea who I was anymore. I finally decided on the name Chanel. Pretty, isn’t it? It means ‘Channel.’ I’m certain we’re meant to channel God’s will back into this poor, sin-ridden place.”

Waking up in the embrace of a tropical ocean... Nice work if you can get it, he thought irritably to himself. The fast-drying blood clinging to his hair was beginning to itch.

“How long have you been here?” he asked instead of bitching, though unable to keep the edge he was on from creeping into his tone; “How long has the oldest angel you've known been here?”
Chanel bristled like an alley-cat, her pale eyes briefly going aglow; there was the sense of ruffled feathers behind her.
“What kind of question is that?” she all but spat.
He looked shrewdly back at her. “...I’m asking if we’re forsaken.”
“We’re not!” Chanel gasped, affronted despite having clearly seen through him before he’d even spoken; “How dare you question God!”
“I’m questioning you.”
Chanel hmphed and turned away, crossing her arms. “God's understanding of decades passing is very different from our own, on this little, faraway planet, I’m sure,” she said, that frustrating holier-than-thou current returning to her tone.
“So it’s been decades.” There was a sharp, consonental sound at the back of his throat that he couldn’t place until Chanel asked him his name again, stiffly, just as ready as he was for the conversation to be over:
“Yes. Anyway. Have you decided on a name yet?”
“...It’s Kato.”
She furrowed her brow. “‘Kato?’ What’s it mean? I’ve never heard it before.”
Kato shrugged. “I don’t know. Neither have I.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away, only pausing to pick up the crumpled bullet he’d spat out earlier. It was quite a memento.

Months passed there, in the Grey. That’s what he called the city. No one else did, but that was its dominant color and it echoed the ever-present storm-clouds in his head so Kato considered that to be where his new existence was spent: The Grey. So maybe it was the name of his life and not the city.
He didn’t adjust, or not in how he was “meant” to. If he was Placed then surely he’d search for meaning; would pray and pilgrim like the rest of them. But he was Fallen. Fallen and bitter and disenchanted and his Vessel had come with a well-worn path for navigating such feelings that he finally took to following; ripping open old wounds just to see if this time he’d bleed ichor; threatening God to leave the body he’d been assigned empty once again.

His wings were only tangible when his head and heart were at an emotional fever-pitch: When he was so angry that his vision flickered; so abandoned that dizziness and nausea brought him to his knees. And that was when he’d be able to feel their weight on his back; when feathers would curl into the edges of his wavering vision. He ripped at them like a caged bird, furious and trapped, with nothing to tear apart but itself. He wrenched flight feathers out by the handful and stained his floor with blood.

It was after one such night when he woke up with a blinding headache, the blood on his floor still there, but accompanied by ash instead of scattered feathers; his back aching and wingless by morning. He forced himself the short walk to the nearest coffee shop, having found caffeine to be one of the few pleasures of an existence so far from Heaven.
The place was packed with Humans—as it always was—but as he turned from the counter with his coffee, eyes, verse, and gold glinted off his reflection in the baked-goods display case...and the same flashed from the reflection of a young, dark-skinned woman sitting at the window, who locked eyes with Kato and beckoned him over.

He approached, warily cupping his drink. He’d met enough Placeds in the city to know better than to expect a productive interaction, and tried to guess her inclination by studying her face. She had fire-lit, amber eyes, but despite their liveliness, they offered no concrete answers.

“And who are you, stranger?” she asked, smiling. She gestured for him to sit. Slowly, he did; his evident distrust seemed only to amuse her.
“...Kato. You are?”
“Αθηνά,” she said without batting an eye, lifting her coffee cup to her upturned lips.
“Taking on the name of a long-vanquished deity? A bit blasphemous, isn’t it?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Sure, but what isn’t these days?”
“...You talk like a Fallen,” Kato said slowly, narrowing his eyes, knowing such words weren’t often taken lightly.
“And you look like one,” Athena replied. “There’s no point in the division. We’re all here regardless of how we think we got here.”
“Sure. But which do you think is true? Apparently that’s all that matters to anyone.”
Athena grinned and shrugged. “Welcome to a whole new world view, then, Kato: Ambivalence.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DogeDays asked for an Angel!AU and how could I refuse???
This is only like...half of it as it is so far?? Athena introduces K-O to everyone else and this AU is where I'm finally letting poly Anarchy/Chey/Kato happen and I kind of totally adore it. Expect more art + writing ((eyes emoji))

I stole aspects of this AU from an existing story of mine involving two angels called κενός and εὔνοια so im like...doing fanfic of one of my stories in the setting/theme of a different one of my stories??? Incredible. the ouroboros of authorship

Feel weirdly self-conscious abt this but idk why so im just gonna hit submit whoop

Description

There was a stigma, Kato found, to considering oneself Fallen.
It was fucking nonsensical, of course. They all were fucking Fallen: Why else would they be awakening here, on this puny, brittle ledge of a world hovering above the yawning maw of Hell? Cast an existence down from Heaven with no word from God?
They were Fallen, all of them: Thrown out and abandoned as easily as the Humans surrounding them cast out unwanted pets.

The Placed didn’t see it that way, of course. They kept the faith; they had a Destiny, they said, God would speak again. They weren’t Fallen: They’d been Placed. Or so they believed.

It had been a Placed who’d first found Kato after he’d hit earth, nameless and not understanding where all he'd known had gone: The ultraviolet rays kissing the rims of clouds, the white expanse of free skies, the thousand suns and the golden air shimmering over the marble streets; the hovering springs whose water fell, pure and clear, into the nether.
No, he’d woken up, dirty and minuscule, in a form too small for his truth, blood matting the side of his head instead of ichor. He’d shaken some dark object from his stiff fingers and staggered down and out of the building he’d found himself in—a stinking, ramshackle Human hive—and ended up repeatedly walking past a dark window beneath a streetlight because if the light caught him at just the right angle, he saw his reflection’s eyes burn white-gold and his wings silhouetted behind him, casting off runes and verse as sparks; the only reassurance that anything familiar yet remained.

“Are you a new one?” a female voice had asked, suddenly, and her eyes had briefly gone brilliant too as she stepped out of a nearby alley. “Ohhh, your vessel did some damage to itself, didn’t it?”

Kato, then null, had been confused by the comment until he realized indeed his vessel had only been freely occupiable because of the blood matting its hair and the crumpled piece of metal which he abruptly discovered in his mouth and spat out into his palm. In doing so, he found the vessel’s wrists were marked; scarred. He’d been thrown from Heaven to wear the shell of a tortured being, it seemed, and the unfairness of it all bubbled up in his chest. This Human had been abandoned long before he himself had been; was he meant to here glimpse his own fate? Was he mortal, now? What the hell had he done to deserve such cruelty?

“Why were we cast down?!” he demanded, angrily throwing the bullet into the gutter. The other angel winced, then turned up her nose.
“Cast down? We were Placed. Surely you’re not a Fallen?” she asked, so haughtily that he had the urge to say he was without yet knowing what it meant to be such.
“What’s a Fallen?”
“Those who awaken with such weak Faith that they turn their backs on God simply because He hasn’t spoken to us of our Purpose yet. I know He must have a plan. The Fallens choose to ally themselves below, at least in name...Fallen angels, as Lucifer was...Disgusting, isn’t it? Anyway—what’s your name?”

He was rankled by her tone but tried not to show it, she being the only tie to information and his old existence yet offered to him. He struggled to swallow his simmering dislike, and frowned: He had no name to give her, and no amount of internal digging yielded his identity to him.
“I...I don’t remember...”
“Ooh, you’re that new! You choose one, of course. I've never met anyone who’s remembered.”

‘Of course.’ Of course there’s an army of angels down here, abandoned to this half-hell and unable to recall their identities. Of course.

“...I guess I’ll get around to it,” he said. “What’s your name? How did you awaken here?”
“Oh, it wasn’t here: I woke up floating on my back in the ocean on some beach in Florida. Assumed I’d somehow found where the springs let out, but had no idea who I was anymore. I finally decided on the name Chanel. Pretty, isn’t it? It means ‘Channel.’ I’m certain we’re meant to channel God’s will back into this poor, sin-ridden place.”

Waking up in the embrace of a tropical ocean... Nice work if you can get it, he thought irritably to himself. The fast-drying blood clinging to his hair was beginning to itch.

“How long have you been here?” he asked instead of bitching, though unable to keep the edge he was on from creeping into his tone; “How long has the oldest angel you've known been here?”
Chanel bristled like an alley-cat, her pale eyes briefly going aglow; there was the sense of ruffled feathers behind her.
“What kind of question is that?” she all but spat.
He looked shrewdly back at her. “...I’m asking if we’re forsaken.”
“We’re not!” Chanel gasped, affronted despite having clearly seen through him before he’d even spoken; “How dare you question God!”
“I’m questioning you.”
Chanel hmphed and turned away, crossing her arms. “God's understanding of decades passing is very different from our own, on this little, faraway planet, I’m sure,” she said, that frustrating holier-than-thou current returning to her tone.
“So it’s been decades.” There was a sharp, consonental sound at the back of his throat that he couldn’t place until Chanel asked him his name again, stiffly, just as ready as he was for the conversation to be over:
“Yes. Anyway. Have you decided on a name yet?”
“...It’s Kato.”
She furrowed her brow. “‘Kato?’ What’s it mean? I’ve never heard it before.”
Kato shrugged. “I don’t know. Neither have I.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away, only pausing to pick up the crumpled bullet he’d spat out earlier. It was quite a memento.

Months passed there, in the Grey. That’s what he called the city. No one else did, but that was its dominant color and it echoed the ever-present storm-clouds in his head so Kato considered that to be where his new existence was spent: The Grey. So maybe it was the name of his life and not the city.
He didn’t adjust, or not in how he was “meant” to. If he was Placed then surely he’d search for meaning; would pray and pilgrim like the rest of them. But he was Fallen. Fallen and bitter and disenchanted and his Vessel had come with a well-worn path for navigating such feelings that he finally took to following; ripping open old wounds just to see if this time he’d bleed ichor; threatening God to leave the body he’d been assigned empty once again.

His wings were only tangible when his head and heart were at an emotional fever-pitch: When he was so angry that his vision flickered; so abandoned that dizziness and nausea brought him to his knees. And that was when he’d be able to feel their weight on his back; when feathers would curl into the edges of his wavering vision. He ripped at them like a caged bird, furious and trapped, with nothing to tear apart but itself. He wrenched flight feathers out by the handful and stained his floor with blood.

It was after one such night when he woke up with a blinding headache, the blood on his floor still there, but accompanied by ash instead of scattered feathers; his back aching and wingless by morning. He forced himself the short walk to the nearest coffee shop, having found caffeine to be one of the few pleasures of an existence so far from Heaven.
The place was packed with Humans—as it always was—but as he turned from the counter with his coffee, eyes, verse, and gold glinted off his reflection in the baked-goods display case...and the same flashed from the reflection of a young, dark-skinned woman sitting at the window, who locked eyes with Kato and beckoned him over.

He approached, warily cupping his drink. He’d met enough Placeds in the city to know better than to expect a productive interaction, and tried to guess her inclination by studying her face. She had fire-lit, amber eyes, but despite their liveliness, they offered no concrete answers.

“And who are you, stranger?” she asked, smiling. She gestured for him to sit. Slowly, he did; his evident distrust seemed only to amuse her.
“...Kato. You are?”
“Αθηνά,” she said without batting an eye, lifting her coffee cup to her upturned lips.
“Taking on the name of a long-vanquished deity? A bit blasphemous, isn’t it?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Sure, but what isn’t these days?”
“...You talk like a Fallen,” Kato said slowly, narrowing his eyes, knowing such words weren’t often taken lightly.
“And you look like one,” Athena replied. “There’s no point in the division. We’re all here regardless of how we think we got here.”
“Sure. But which do you think is true? Apparently that’s all that matters to anyone.”
Athena grinned and shrugged. “Welcome to a whole new world view, then, Kato: Ambivalence.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DogeDays asked for an Angel!AU and how could I refuse???
This is only like...half of it as it is so far?? Athena introduces K-O to everyone else and this AU is where I'm finally letting poly Anarchy/Chey/Kato happen and I kind of totally adore it. Expect more art + writing ((eyes emoji))

I stole aspects of this AU from an existing story of mine involving two angels called κενός and εὔνοια so im like...doing fanfic of one of my stories in the setting/theme of a different one of my stories??? Incredible. the ouroboros of authorship

Feel weirdly self-conscious abt this but idk why so im just gonna hit submit whoop