Holding Pens - Samandriel and Mitchell
The scars on his back pulled tight, dark pink and freshly healed. It had been weeks in what passed for a slave infirmary while his back healed and he dedicated himself to maintaining his silence. He wasn't Duma to have been set over such a thing in heaven. During his time there getting poked and prodded, bandages sometimes so hastily changed that they ripped the skin open anew, he wondered perhaps if his brother was showing him some kind of angelic kindness in allowing him to hold to it. Not a word. Not a scream or a hiss or a whimper.
And now, here he was in the chaos of the holding pens. The smell was no worse than it was where he'd been tended to. He was well used to the way it tried to overwhelm his senses. The screams and shouting were worse. They tugged at all of his tenderhearted angelic instincts. Humans were so much less than, yes, but that didn't mean anyone should suffer like this.
He'd been labeled as willful, disobedient and set with an insultingly low price. None of that was the reason he'd been set aside in a cage by himself. The words that kept him away from the other slaves were so simple: violent and rebellious. Samandriel had been set apart so that he wouldn't somehow infect the rest of the stock. He might not have really paid attention to the slave trade while he was an angel, but that didn't mean he didn't know what message all of that was sending. No one was going to take him, he was sure of it. There was no reason to. He was broken. His kin had told him as much with cold anger in their eyes.
There was barely room in the solitary cage to move. There was enough to stand and enough to curl into a loose variant of the fetal position, and to sit, but none of it comfortably. The former angel chose to stand, feet shoulder width apart on the cold, hard ground. He kept his head bowed and his hands behind his back, one clasped around the other's wrist. This was what his life was going to look like for a very long while. Samandriel was sure of it. Perhaps if someone wanted him, he could be better. He could dare to earn some sliver of himself back at least in his own eyes.
But no. His name was 'Alfie' now. And Alfie bore scars for the trouble he'd caused and damning labels to see him into whatever his future was. There was no more Samandriel. Not unless someone asked. He doubted anyone ever would.