What do you mean when you say I am supposed to be the devil: chapter 9: Icarus

It felt like waking up from a dream and realizing it had been a waiting nightmare all along. Like slipping from one illusion into another, only to find the second one carried the shape of a cage. The kind you built yourself. The kind you whispered into being with hope and fear in equal measure.

I thought it would last.

I thought we were safe.

I lied.

Not to Michael. Not to Father. To myself. Over and over, until the lie grew teeth and curled beneath my ribs like a sleeping animal. This eace is forever, I told it. Happiness is real, and permanent, and earned. You’re different from the original Helel, the one you took the place of. You’ve changed the story. You won't fall. You won’t lose them. This time—this life—ends with joy. You can have your happy ending.

But the nightmare knew better.

And it waited.

This is what I feel now.

This is what coils beneath every breath, every heartbeat that echoes in the hollow of my immortal chest.

Because… how could that God be my Father?

The one from the holy books. From the scriptures. From the words I once read beneath a blanket with shaking hands when I had been younger than ten in my first life, by the flickering light of a dying laptop battery. The God who drowned the world in a flood. Who rained fire on cities. Who built Hell itself. The God who cast down the Morning Star, the beautiful one, the one named Helel. Me.

That God should not be my Father.

He couldn't be.

He wasn't.

That was the story I clung to. A different version, I told myself. An alternate branch. My reincarnation at the very beginning of creation itself had to mean something—it had to change the outcome. Either I had been reborn in another reality, a separate song in the choir of the multiverse… or my very presence had altered the melody. Maybe I’d changed Him. Maybe He had changed, seeing me.

I favored the second theory for a time. It felt... poetic. Like something from a redemption arc.

But now?

Now I didn’t know.

Because when the primordial thing dared breach our sanctuary, our home, when it slithered its ancient malice into the place Father built for us, the man who baked us pastries out of light and wonder responded with divine wrath. Not anger. Not grief.

Wrath.

And in that wrath, He created Hell.

The Hell.

The very one where I’m meant to end up after my rebellion.

The pit of fire. The prison of damnation.

The destination.

My destination.

Maybe.

I want to laugh. I do. Because this should be meaningless. I haven’t rebelled. I haven’t raised my hand or voice or soul against Him. I’ve done everything I could to love Him, to serve Him, to remain beside Him and Michael. To choose light. Every moment. Every breath.

So what if He created Hell?

So what?

But I can’t stop the shiver. The tremble that blooms in the silence after His fury. The echo of that voice—“Hell.” Not a word. A verdict.

Some would say I worry too much.

That as long as I don’t fall, as long as I try, nothing bad will happen. That this is the price of freedom: doubt.

And maybe they’re right.

But…

He created Hell.

He created a place to contain things He deemed wrong. Things that violated the order of things. And He made it because they encroached upon us. His children. His treasures.

Isn’t that love?

Isn’t that what parents do?

But the thought won’t leave me.

If He could look at that monster with such fury, such judgment—what if… one day… He looks at me that way?

What if one day, I slip?

What if He sees me not as a son, but as a threat?

What if I never fall—and it doesn’t matter?

What if the story wins?

What if I was always meant to fall, and this life is just a prettier path to the same grave?

The thought is stupid.

But it won’t leave.

Nothing’s changed since that day. Not really. Our training, sure. The lessons Father gives us are deeper now—etched with meaning, filled with the weight of consequence. He teaches not like a craftsman shaping clay but like a general sharpening swords. And yet, He still cooks. He still laughs. He still lets Michael and I climb His shoulders and play tag across the cradle of stars.

We paint. We run. We tease and are teased. We sit in the palm of a God who spoils us rotten.

It’s still perfect.

It’s still paradise.

And yet—

Each time I look at Him, I wonder.

Each time His eyes fall on me, I flinch—not with my body, but somewhere deeper. Somewhere hidden behind fourteen blazing wings and all the strength I’ve gathered. Somewhere still afraid.

Because what if one day, He doesn’t see me?

What if He sees… the thing the stories said I would become?

I sigh and open my eyes.

The star I’m lying on hums beneath me, like a heartbeat slowed by peace. Its blue surface radiates a heat most species would call annihilation. To me, it’s a sauna. A soft embrace. The kind of warmth you curl into when sleep whispers through your feathers.

Sunbathing.

And I mean that literally. Lying on the skin of a star. Arms behind my head. Legs stretched. Letting thermonuclear fusion wash over me like bathwater. No pain. No burn. No redness. Not even a lingering trace when I stand.

Divinity has perks.

I blink slowly, adjusting my awareness outward. Not with eyes, but with… presence. A sense that isn’t quite sense. I sweep across our home—a place the size of everything and yet no larger than needed.

Michael.

I feel him.

Six galaxies away, shaping beauty like breath.

He’s painting again. Not with brush or pigment. With gravity. With birth and mass and fusion. He’s sculpting systems. Rearranging stars to make constellations sing. His mind touches mine—a brush of silk. Just enough to let me know he knows I’m watching.

Then, a question—no words, just a feeling: You okay?

I respond the same way. A pulse of warmth. Of ease. Of I’m here.

He sends back the psychic equivalent of a nod.

And then keeps painting.

As if nothing’s wrong.

As if he doesn’t know that I know that he had felt, seen the  dredges of doubt curled under my wings even if I tried to hide. Our Father had said it, by being twin whether I wanted or not, we were connected in a way so deep even our Father’s connection to him was lesser.

He does, of course. But he lets me be. He always does.

Father is here too.

Same place as me.

I sit up slightly, turn toward the presence that has always felt like home wrapped in infinite.

“You’ve finally noticed me, kiddo,” His voice says—light teasing laced with something gentler than breath.

I turn my head fully.

He’s beside me.

A shape like mine. Like Michael’s.

But… not.

A figure in my image—twin-like, but blank. Featureless. Not hollow. Just waiting. A white silhouette of presence, like the universe left unfinished. Not unsettling, not frightening. Just strange. Like looking into the idea of yourself before you were born.

I grumble, childishly. “I didn’t even feel you. You let me miss you, didn’t you?”

He ruffles my hair.

Of course He does.

He always does this those days.

“You’ll get there,” He says, confident and clear. “Michael and you—my pride, remember?”

And then I’m blushing.

Which is ridiculous.

I’m a divine being. Immortal. Beyond biology. Blushing should be impossible.

Yet here I am.

Skin tingling. Face hot. Wings twitching with embarrassment.

I bet it’s His doing. Somehow.

He’s smiling.

Just watching me. Like I’m a sunrise He never tires of seeing.

“Is something wrong?” I ask, voice low.

His smile doesn’t fade. “No. Nothing wrong. I’m just glad to see you… unburdened.”

“Unburdened?” I blink. Confused.

He turns His gaze upward—toward the spread of creation arched above us like the slow breath of God.

“It’s been five million years,” He says softly. “Since you felt like this. Since the weight slipped. Since the corruption was purged. Five million years since you looked at me without a shadow behind your eyes.”

He sighs.

Then turns to me, face gentle.

“Tell me the truth, Helel.”

His voice softens, almost uncertain.

“Am I a bad father?”

The words hit harder than any judgment ever could.

“I limit my omniscience,” He says, “when it comes to Michael and you. I chose to. At the beginning, the plan was to know. Every step. Every outcome. Every path. But that would’ve made me a puppeteer, not a parent.”

I stare.

Then, quietly: “Why didn’t you?”

He smiles again. Fainter. Sadder.

“Because of you, Helel.”

He said it like it hurt to say. Not pain in the human sense—no wound or injury—but something more divine. The ache of admitting vulnerability aloud. The ache of a Father admitting he hadn’t planned for a child to matter this much.

“You were more than I anticipated,” He continued. “More than my sight could thread into certainty. I thought I was crafting a star, and instead I woke to find a new law of light. Something novel. Unmapped.”

He didn’t say it with arrogance. Not even pride. He said it like a confession. Like someone who’d tried to write a song and accidentally given birth to something that sang back.

“I could path every step with Michael,” He said, “but not with you. You were unpredictable. You broke the model. And in that break, I saw the first real possibility for parenthood. Not a maker and his design. A father and his sons.”

My breath caught.

“I had planned more of you. Dozens. Hundreds. A chorus of divine children to sing creation whole. But then I met you. You and Michael. And it was… enough.”

His gaze drifted outward, tracing the shapes of galaxies, his words barely above a whisper.

“More than enough.”

There was something infinitely soft in his voice when he said it. Not frailty—he was still God, still more than language—but the soft that came with truth. The kind of truth that doesn’t need volume to shake the sky.

“I don’t want a reality without the two of you.”

And that’s when it really hit me.

Not just the words.

The weight of them.

The loneliness behind them.

All this time, He’d been holding this. Quietly. Lovingly. Painfully. And I hadn’t seen it. I hadn’t let myself see it.

“And when you called me,” He said—voice sharpening like glass under pressure—“when I felt your fear while I was gone, and realized that one of those things—”

He hissed the word. Not as sound, but as verdict.

“One of them dared to target the only two real things I hold dear… in our home… when I wasn’t there…”

His fists clenched—no, not fists. Not hands. Something far vaster. Like the gravity of stars concentrating.

“I felt wrath. Wrath like I didn’t know I had. A justice older than language. I didn’t build Hell out of cruelty. I built it because they needed to be taught. To suffer. To be broken. Until wrongness craves holiness.”

He looked down at me.

“But now when you look at me, Helel… it feels different.”

My wings tucked a little tighter without me realizing.

“It feels… apprehensive.”

The word was soft.

Too soft.

“It feels like you want to fly away. Like I’ve become something frightening. Like you’re afraid I’ll look at you one day… and see a threat.”

His voice, so often full of laughter and impossible joy, broke on the next breath.

“That’s why I’m asking,” He whispered. “Am I a bad father?”

The universe stood still.

Even the star beneath me dimmed.

It wasn’t His question that broke me.

It was the quiet beneath it.

The heartbreak of an immortal being who loved too deeply and, for five million years, had wondered if that love had been enough.

And the horror was—

It was me.

I had done this.

Not by hating Him. Not by failing. But by fearing Him.

I didn’t answer right away. What could I say to that?

‘

The silence was alive. Not heavy. Not light.

Just waiting.

I didn’t let it last.

“I’m sorry.”

It came out too quiet.

But He heard it.

“For what?” He asked, voice gentle.

“For making you wonder. For making you doubt. For making you ask that.”

I stepped closer.

“I was scared. I thought—” My voice caught. “I thought one day you’d look at me the way you looked at that thing. Like I was no longer yours.”

He stilled.

“I promise you, Helel—”

“No,” I said. I closed the distance and wrapped my arms around Him. “You don’t need to promise.”

And this time, I spoke clearly.

“I believe you.”

His arms enveloped me. A warmth that filled in every crack. Not just of my body, but of my being. I sank into it, wings folding against Him, and for a moment, I let myself be. Not Helel the firstborn. Not the morning star. Not the one destined to fall or rewrite fate.

Just me.

His son.

And then something strange happened.

Sleep.

A yawn curled somewhere inside me—impossible, absurd. I hadn’t yawned in eons. Angels didn’t need sleep. I didn’t even breathe in the biological sense. But it was real.

The kind of sleep that doesn’t come from exhaustion.

The kind that only arrives when you feel truly, completely safe.

I felt my body sink deeper into His embrace. My wings tucked in. My thoughts slowed.

It was like diving into still water. Perfectly still. Without bottom. Without fear.

Maybe I had been right to be scared, maybe I wasn’t wrong and nothing that I would do would stop me from ending in hell with the rest of the things he deems wrong and abject but I think that I am tired of worrying, tired of being scared, of tired of being a little bitch about it.

It was kinda like a Greek prophecy. If I were right, no matter what, I would end in hell so what was the point of worrying? The only thing I could do was do what I found right, what I wanted to do instead of what I would do because I was scared. Whether this story, my story could have a fixed or not fixed ending, I didn't care anymore. Whatever will happen will happen and I won’t let my fear of the future paralyse me from loving, living in the present.

It is said that Icarus’ fall could have been stopped but had anyone wondered if the fall wasn't the point? If maybe, the things that had been the most important for Icarus hadn't been the fall but closeness to the sun.

“I love you, Dad,” I murmured, the words crumbling into drowsiness.

And then, barely audible, like a prayer from the rain:

“I love you too, my child.”