Owner	Pose
Caitlin Fairchild	After being unceremoniously stripped of the angelic powers, and snatched away to safety by Gabriel himself, Caitlin had awoken in Brooklyn. Rather than go to her own apartment, or return to Titan's Tower, she instead limped her away through alleys and over rooftops to get to the safest place she could think of: her brother's house. Upon arriving she had collapsed in his arms, cried, ate everything in the house plus everything Alex could order, and then collapsed into a fragile, nightmare-plagued sleep for most of ten hours. Upon waking she donned clothes considerately left out for her overnight; a pink tracksuit with white racing stripes, the yoga pants and light hoodie part of the same set. Dressed, and with her hair pushed mostly in one direction, Caitlin starts shuffling towards the kitchen with a bleary look. Heavy bags darken her eyes as she starts the hunt for the coffee machine. So exhausted is she that the voices in the room don't even process for her at first-- until she looks up, to see Donna and Alex breaking off their conversation to look at her. Caitlin's jaw slacks for a moment and she stares daggers at Alex. "I hate you," she informs him, and turns towards the blessed caffeine god to be dispensed her wake-up juice.
Donna Troy	There are a lot of places Caitlin could have been. Donna had known what had happened almost as soon as it had happened -- she may have been sitting the battles out, but she had been paying close attention to them, and the network of Gozer boxes had provided excellent battlefield monitoring. She hadn't known where Caitlin had gone after the battle though.     Not at the Tower, not at the embassy, not at St. Patrick's, not answering calls. Possibly not wanting to be found, but probably not trying very hard. Uriel had told Donna that Caitlin was safe, which as far as Donna was concerned just goes to show that Angels make poor psychologists.     The answer had come via a text message from Alex. Caitlin's brother had mercifully let her get her crying out of the way and a good night's sleep before asking Donna to come over, but he knew that food, tears and sleep weren't going to be enough, and he knew he was out of his depth.     She's his kid sister. For all that his kid sister can punch buildings to rubble, it's his kid sister who he adores and is adorably if somewhat ridiculously protective of. His kid sister, who despite towering over him, he still calls 'Peanut'. But what do you do when your kid sister comes home after an apparent falling out with the archangel Michael?     Donna suspects that she's out of her depth too, but she's got to try. She's a Titan, and Donna would always be there for a Titan. She's an Amazon, and Donna couldn't bear to let an Amazon down. She'd Donna's best friend.     She's Caitlin.     Alex and Donna had been filling each other in on what they knew while Caitlin slept the last half hour or so of her sleep. Coffee is already made and they've both got cups of it already -- Donna on her second. Caitlin's sleep-laden shuffle into the kitchen where they stand talking kills the conversation and for a few moments the pair of them simply look at her in silence until Caitlin breaks that silence. Alex gives Donna a shrug.     "Hey Cait," Donna says.
Caitlin Fairchild	Caitlin mumbles something unintelligible under her breath and starts pouring coffee into the cup. Alex makes a show of trying to catch it, leaning forward and cocking an ear at her. "Hmm? What's that? 'Oh thank you so much for being here, Donna, I'm in my hour of need?'" he quips, imitating Cait's voice. "You know everyone's been goin' nuts looking for you?" "Yeah, and I told you I didn't wanna talk to anyone," Caitlin says, and glowers over her shoulder at Alex. He rolls his eyes skywards and flaps his hands once in exasperation and looks over at Donna. "Can -you- talk to her? She don't listen to me when she's in this kinda mood." "I am standing -right- here, please do not talk about me like I'm not in the room," Caitlin seethes. "Right, right. You said, you didn't want to talk to anyone," Alex agrees. A beat. "And that being a stupid idea, I've gone ahead and overridden it," Alex informs Caitlin. He shifts on his bar stool, hands curling around his coffee. Even at the early hour Alex is awake, clean-shaven, and sharply attired in a tan suit that matches his natty sense of personal style. "I don't have time for this, I gotta... I gotta figure out how to get across town, get to the Cathedral. Michael... I screwed up, I know I can make this right, I just-- I just need to--" a spoon tumbles out of tired, quivering fingers and clatters on the counter. Caitlin's palms press to the marble, back to Donna and Alex, and she hangs her head between shoulders slumping in a gesture of total defeat.
Donna Troy	Donna can't quite hide her smirk and the brother-sister dynamic at play, sipping her coffee while Alex and Caitlin have their back-and-forth. She arches an eyebrow at Alex and gives him a shrug. "I can try, Alex. I can try. No guarantees she listens to me either though." She rests a hand on Alex's arm a moment before giving him a patting-the-air gesture to encourage him to bring it down a notch.     She takes a sip of her coffee and watches as Caitlin goes through her outburst of determination followed by defeat, and leaves her time to take a few breaths like that before speaking. "The Cathedral's closed off at the moment," she says finally. "SHIELD, I think. No doubt some vain hope they can recover something useful from the site. The angels have all gone, Cait. There's really no point going to the cathedral, and honestly probably the best place for you right now is right here, until you feel up to coming back to the tower."     She takes another sip of coffee. "I've managed to keep people from wrecking the kitchen in your absence," she adds. "But if I'm completely honest, people have kind of got out of the habit of putting money in the swear jar. There has been quite a bit of swearing, what with angels in New York and Wonderland nonsense still going on in Metropolis. It's not often that /Gotham/ is the quiet one."
Caitlin Fairchild	"But I need to -know-," Caitlin says, still looking at the marble under her fingers. "I gotta-- I gotta know why Michael hurt me. Howcome he took back all the... all the angel super-mojo." Hands turn over and she examines the back of her muscles, then the subtle calluses on her palms. "I did what he said. I followed orders. I did what I was /destined/ to do. Michael said so. I don't--" her voice breaks and she rolls her head back, wiping away an unseen tear. "I prayed so hard and so much, I was always looking for help and-- how did I screw this /up/?" she wonders aloud, again. "I had my doubts, my... worries, but I never imagined..."
Donna Troy	Donna takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly in something approximating a sigh. "Purpose," she says. "Michael is very focused on purpose. Or rather Purpose, with a capital 'P'. He has some odd ideas about it, but I suspect that's something that's built in, if you're an angel. That's why he called on you, too. To serve a purpose. I guess that was just his way of telling you that you'd served your purpose and he no longer needed you."     She turns to glance at Alex before turning her attention back to Caitlin. "Not the most polite way of letting you know, that's for sure. I have to admit that surprised me, but... maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. Michael is a very complicated being. I had a good long chat with him a few days ago, and he was quite polite to me. Showed me some very interesting things, had an interesting talk. I'm not entirely sure why he was so willing to talk. The way he put it was simply that of course he would find time to answer a few questions for a friend of his champion, so I guess he was still being polite to you then. I guess the situation changed. Maybe in his eyes you no longer had a purpose, so he no longer felt a need to be polite."     Donna falls silent a few moments and rolls her neck and shifts her weight in her seat. The legs of the stool creak slightly in the silence of the kitchen. "Apparently he's currently off somewhere torturing Sims. I wouldn't call that terribly polite either. Sims agreed to surrender to him so that Michael could get retribution for his injured wing, but apparently Michael will be letting him go after three days. It's... very complicated."
Caitlin Fairchild	Caitlin turns to listen to Donna. Still slump-shouldered, still defeated; eyes flickering up between the princess and a spot on the floor while she listens. When Donna mentions torture Caitlin's eyes go wide with aghast shock, and she covers her mouth. "Oh, my God," she says, and the strangled words are more prayer than oath. She crosses herself and interlaces her fingers under her chin, head bowing in pure consternation. "I didn't-- I told--" She presses her lips into a thin line. "I didn't like a lot of what the angels did. I made them help civilians, or at least avoid them. I know... I know I couldn't stop them from ... killing, but at least-- I mean, I thought, at least..." Remorse strikes across her brooding features, undercut by a great amount of personal sorrow and shame. Alex shakes his head at Caitlin. "They're angels," he tells her. "Not humans. I don't think they actually think like us. The way we do. And maybe that's kinda where things went off the rails," he suggests with a gentle tone. "You-- we-- trusted them. It's no great sin to expect literal angels to be..." fingers flex in the air, trying to catch an ephermal idea on the tip of his tongue. "Y'know. Angels."
Donna Troy	Donna nods her head in agreement with Alex. "They don't think like us, you're right. Some of them don't really think at all. The Archangels... they think something like us. Close enough that you can recognize some very human drives and attitudes in them. But there are differences. There are things angels just don't seem to be able to do. They're not flexible. Almost programmed. That's how that trick with the Lego bricks worked, you know. Honestly, they came across as being kind of insect-like to me. A hive-mind. Drones. Workers."     She places her coffee down on the counter-top beside her, turning her stool with a scrape across the floor to face Caitlin more directly. "Except the archangels. They're different. I could see a lot of Michael's logic. There was things he said that seemed very familiar. In an odd way, he... I... I could see aspects of my own thinking in him. Things we have in common. But even there, some strange, unhuman differences. Things that make sense to him, to his structured perspective, to his sense of Purpose, but just don't make sense to our perspectives."     "He said.... I tried to talk him out of what he was doing, Cait. Suggested he find a different path to achieve what he was trying to achieve. You know what he said? I think... I think he found my arguments persuasive, but even though he found them persuasive, he wouldn't be persuaded by them. He said that he thought that if I was one of his siblings, I might have persuaded him. Can you imagine thinking like that? That it's not the argument, the logic of what is being said, that is is persuasive - but the nature of the person saying it? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, huh?"     Donna leans her elbows back on the counter-top behind her, carefully nudging her coffee cup to the side with one elbow to move it out of the way without risking knocking it over. "You were fighting on the side of the angels," she says to Caitlin, no hint of admonishment in her tone. "The other side was bringing demons and unholy weapons to battle against you. You made that very point to me a month back. I couldn't argue with it then, I can't argue with it now. I wasn't happy with the tactics Sims and his people adopted. Said so quite firmly. One or two of them took it to heart, but not all of them."     "On the other hand, they were desperate. Desperation makes people do dangerous things. They were so scared of Michael's plans that they were reluctant to put aside any weapon they could find to try to stop him."
Caitlin Fairchild	Caitlin's nodding slowly along with Donna as she offers her countering opinion, and forces herself to straighten her slouching shoulders with a small grimace of discomfort. "I don't-- I didn't blame Sims personally. I know he's desperate. Probably unwell, too. Raven's the toughest person I know and even she gets pretty down on herself if she's been doing a lotta magic. What Sims was doing, whatever it was, it-- that kinda thing can't be good for him." "But torture..." Cait's face goes flinty. "That's not OK. It's war, I know that... that sometimes bad things happen to people with good intentions, but torture is deliberate. It's wrong." A haunted look shadows her eyes as she contemplates what horrors Michael could be inflicting on his captive. If nothing else, Sims doesn't seem a madman-- and there's a core of empathy there that mirrors Caitlin's own sentiments. "We could grab an angel and waterboard 'em," Alex offers. He blinks at the withering glare from both the Amazons, rolls his hands, and flaps his hands once in a mea culpa. "Sorry. Just brainstorming ideas," he grumbles.
Donna Troy	"Is there enough coffee in the pot to pour over his head?" Donna asks Cait with a grin before rolling her eyes at Alex. She picks up her cup, causing him to flinch slightly, but apparently her only intent is to drink it.     "A lot of the power Sims was channeling wasn't his own you know," she tells Cait. "Just like you got extra mojo from Michael, he was granted a power-up from Gaea. That was part of the deal that Uriel struck between Michael and Gaea. That they would both pick champions. That's the real suffering you know, not the magic use. The fear."     Donna puts her cup back down and leans forwards, hands resting on her knees. "Think about it, Caitlin. A few months back he a was a minor sorcerer. Some kind of priest of the Egyptian gods. A scholar. Then suddenly one day he's in so far over his neck he can't even imagine getting his head above water again. Suddenly he's being told that the entire universe, the trillion trillion souls that live on every single world out there -- they are all relying on him. That the choices he makes would determine whether the universe would be destroyed or not. He's not just desperate, he's /terrified/, Cait. "     She looks past Caitlin, out the window and the endless sky beyond. "I was able to talk to him a few times. Tried to give him a bit of a reality check on a few things, but also a bit of comfort. When I said most of them didn't listen but some did, he was one of the ones who did. I made him watch that report of the first battle you sent back to us, when you talked about that void energy attack. He swore to stop using it after seeing that. Ordered his people not to. He gave the order for no killing any of your mortal followers. Also that nobody was to try to kill you."     She glances back at Caitlin, grinning slightly. "I think he regretted that promise a couple of times, but only briefly, and only after your broke some of his ribs. But mostly... well after I talked to him about you... he hopes that one day you and he could be friends. Strange as that sounds."     "He's a good man, Cait." Her eyes go back to the window. "Sure he consorts with some dubious types sometimes, but then we've been consorting with a half-demon for years. Me more than you. A little misguided I think, but a good man. Michael's rather more misguided, but he's also a good man at heart. It's a tragedy that he has got himself so twisted up with incorrect ideas. That meaningless, defunct ideas that define who he is created this anachronism of a conflict. You know what Michael told me? That he hopes Jon Sims would win."
Caitlin Fairchild	Caitlin slumps a little at Donna's conclusions, shaking her head in utter bafflement at it all. "I don't understand," she admits, finally. "I don't understand any of it. I don't understand why Jon. Why me. Why /us/. Why the gods and goddesses and the archangels and the saints and angels, it's-- it's just--" her voice cracks, and it takes her a second to get her aplomb in hand. "All these people hurt. Lives destroyed and upended. And Michael didn't actually want to win? How could *I* want to win more than him? How did I fall for all his preaching?" she says, frustration evident in her rhetorical question. She rubs her face in her palms. "I don't know what to do," she admits, finally. "I don't know if I -can- do anything. Or if I even should." Her face gets a bleak, haunted expression. "Maybe I need to leave for a while. Even if Tony doesn't fire me, the PR department probably will make him. I'll get transferred to some gasket factory back west." Alex turns at that comment, pausing at the coffee machine to wiggle his mug at Caitlin. "I am /not/ moving back to Iowa," he tells her. "I have a rule about living in any state that doesn't have a pro ball franchise."
Donna Troy	Donna gets up and hands her cup to Alex for a refill, using the opportunity to move around behind Caitlin and wrap her arms around her friend's shoulders. "I can't give you the answers, but I can tell you my best guess. Michael wanted Jon to win, because he recognized that Gaea's solution was better than his own. But he had to go his own way anyway, because... because that's what he is. Or what he thinks he is."     "About fourteen billion years ago, the being I'd call the /Hypsiston/ and you'd call /God/ unleashed the energy of creation into the /apeiron/. It created beings to shape that energy into the infinite universes of reality. In our particular universe, he gave the task of this shaping of matter to two beings who you would call Michael and Lucifer. Once they had completed their task, the being you'd call Lucifer looked on its work with pride and declared the creation its own. The stonemason denying the architect. Michael wen to war with him for his pride. Whether that was a task given to him by God or a task he took onto himself I do not know, but he redefined himself. No longer the Great Builder, he became the Great Warrior. But in time it became clear that the work they had done was flawed. Even though Michael had won his war, he blamed Lucifer for the flaw, so by his logic, his purpose to defeat Lucifer is not completed while the flaw remains. Because his grand purpose was to war against Lucifer, he had no choice but to try to mend the flaw in the universe through war."     She sighs, gives Caitlin's shoulders a squeeze and lets her go. "Michael built this universe, but what good is a universe without life? Michael cannot create life. That is a job given to the Great Mother. And so a solution to this problem that comes through the living is Gaea's solution, and a solution that comes through war is Michael's solution. The irony is, I've got good reason to think that Michael is simply wrong. That he's trying to fight a war that was won fourteen billion years ago, and the flaw in the universe is nothing to do with Lucifer. He has stuck with a purpose that is no longer his purpose."
Caitlin Fairchild	Alex dutifully tops off Donna's mug. There's anything and everything he'd do for Caitlin, but his ego isn't so great as to intervene when Donna's speaking. He can recognize Donna's innate empathy as the right way to approach Caitlin. Instead he lends his comforting, familiar presence to the room, sitting quietly and smiling encouragingly at Caitlin as needed. The redhead leans against Donna with a forlorn little slump. "Great, so... the Bible -did- get a bunch of stuff wrong," she mumbles. "Gonna be a lot of catechism needs revising if the Vatican gets wind of it." Her featuers darken. "If they all knew about this already, I'm gonna be /really/ peeved." She waves that line of thought off. "So... Michael literally can't change his mind. Gae-- the Mother, she wants to see us thrive. And she's who was empowering Jon." Caitlin winces. "Oh, crabapples," she mutters. "I remember reading about her. The Mother of the Theoi. So I've been going right up against what Athena and the others would want me to do." She passes a palm over her forehead in consternation. "Boy, I am just batting a thousand here," she mutters.
Donna Troy	"We missed the bit about the two angels," Donna tells Caitlin with a rueful grin. "But I guess between your religion and mine combined we got pretty close, huh? Never mind Cait, you were never a real biblical literalist. It's the message that counts, right? Not the way the message is framed."     She lets one hand rest gently on Caitlin's shoulder, standing by her old friend to support her lean. "Athena... could have told you to do something if she had wanted to. But where's the good in that? She is a goddess of wisdom, and I'm pretty sure any goddess of wisdom knows that wisdom is something you need to learn. Who can guess how beings like her, or beings like Michael really think? Even when you ask them the answers are confusing at best. Maybe she wanted you to do what you did, because it was an experience that you'd learn from."     Donna reaches a hand into the pocket and pulls out a small broach, which she places carefully down on the table in front of Caitlin. It's a silver pin, colorfully enameled with a rainbow rising above a bed of clouds. Picked out in tiny lettering on the rainbow is the inscription 'Gen 9:13'.     "Normally I'd have got one of the master craftwomen in Themyscira to make something for you if I wanted to give you a gift like this, but things have been a little crazy the last few weeks. Picked this up in a store in Metropolis instead. I thought it would be apt."
Caitlin Fairchild	Caitlin picks up the broach, examining it in silence. The shadows fall from her face. Still a little haggard and worn, but there's a moment of calm introspection that comes over her as she examines the broach. "'I establish my covenant with you; never again will there be a flood to destroy the Earth'." Caitlin's ability to memorize and recall information makes her a particularly quick student of Biblical literature. She examines the broach again, then turns to Donna and smiles. It's a flickering, wan expression, but there's some viviacity returning to her pale cheeks. The verse seems to have inspired her to start moving forward again. Donna's gathered in a tight, grateful hug, and Caitlin rests her cheek on Donna's head. "Thanks. I don't know what I'd do without you." There's a beat, then an a-HEM, and some coughing, from Alex. "No, don't mind me, I'm just glad I could be here so you can eat me out of house and home, and drink all my expensive imported coffee," he announces. Caitlin rolls her eyes and steps over to Alex to hug him (albeit much less firmly) and lifts him an inch off the ground. "Dumb jock," she tells him. "Nerd," Alex counters-- and taps her arm to be set on his feet. "If we're all done with the hippy love-in, I have places to be and a small country to raid for food." He ruffles Caitlin's hair, provoking a defensive squawk from her. "Go get cleaned up, and go do your thing," he tells her. Alex moves to give Donna a fraternal, affectionate hug as well. "Keep Caitybug out of trouble, okay?" he says, wiggling a thumb at her. "She's not old enough to really take care of herself yet." Alex ducks a well-aimed sponge hurled from the sink and leaves the room, snickering under his breath.
Donna Troy	Donna accepts both hugs happily, though Caitlin's is returned with rather more force than Alex's. The pair really do have to go easy on him, dumb jock or not.     "Don't you worry about her," Donna tells Alex, ruffling /his/ hair in a revenge-assault on Caitlin's behalf. "She'll be fine. And you should come to the tower some day soon and get revenge by eating all her food. Just make sure you check with someone you're drinking the right expensive imported coffee, Raven tends to delete people from reality if they touch hers without permission."     She watches Alex leave the room, shaking her head after him before turning back to Caitlin, smiling a sad half-smile at her friend. "I'm not sure you'd be any more lost without me than I've been lost without you these last few weeks, Cait. We're a team. I just... I feel like things go easier when we're on the /same/ side, you know?" Her lips rise up into a wider smile, and she looks down at the floor.     "If it's any consolation, I don't think anyone's come out of this situation with a whole lot of credit so far. I mean I really had to point out to a few people that if they thought they were on Gaea's side they need to stop using death magic. Almost nobody on the other side has given a more than a moment's thought to the fact that Michael was trying to find a solution to a broken universe and that disapproving of his solution doesn't mean you can just pretend the problem isn't there. And as for me... well without you around, I've been trying to do /science/. Can you imagine?"     The smile turns into a grin and she wraps an arm around Caitlin's shoulders. "Cait... there's still time to figure this out and /fix/ this. Maybe... maybe you did have a destiny in all this, but maybe it hasn't played out yet. Something Michael said to me... he said that he expected us Amazons to be trouble, but he hadn't guessed how. He meant me asking difficult questions, but maybe it's not me, maybe it's you. And maybe that's why Athena didn't say anything. Maybe this was something you had to go through before you, before /anyone/ could figure out the proper solution to all this. Because you know what? Jon's Gaea's champion. But she only picked a champion because Uriel presented a challenge between Michael and Gaea as a compromise for getting Michael to give a /chance/ to a solution that didn't involve breaking that covenant. It's a game to Michael, and now he's put you aside, you're no longer bound by the rules. Screw the rules. Screw divine entities playing games. And no, there's no swear jar in Alex's apartment, and 'screw' doesn't count anyway."     Donna gives Caitlin's shoulder a squeeze. "Come back to the tower. Just... relax a couple of days. Talk to Sims when he's back, but for now... just relax, recover. I promise not to even involve you in any of the Wonderland nonsense. But come back to the Tower Cait? Please? Be a Titan again. I need you."
Caitlin Fairchild	Caitlin hesitates at the question. "I... okay," she hedges. "But I can't stay for long. I owe it to Sims to try and help him. I don't know how, I-- I don't even know if I can do anything to find him," she confesses. "Let alone stop Michael. I got the feeling that scary Lady Death gal was only winning because he was deliberately limiting himself. Being around that kinda power, Donna, it's--" Caitlin shivers. "It's like standing next to a volcano. You just watch it go and go and hope no one gets hurt." She takes a breath and squares her shoulders. "But that doesn't matter. I'm gonna try to find Sims and if I can, help him. I gave him to Michael. The least I can do is help get him loose." She smiles lopsidedly at Donna. "But I'm not gonna go galloping in all directions at once, anyway. I can help with the Wonderland stuff. At this point, chaotic and incomprehensible is starting to become kinda comfortable," she admits wryly. "My sense of relativity is absolutely shot."