“My Lord, I feel terribly disturbed of late”, Grace addressed her boss, the Angel of Death. “I see no reason for it. I have been progressing quite nicely under your tutorship, and have been praying to God to lead me to my husband so that I could have a true friend to love God with, of the kind you have in Lady Hypatia”

“Have you been distressed by something you have seen treating the deceased?”, Azrael tried to understand.

“Of course I have, like everybody else. But this is different. It feels like something ominous and personal, and I can’t for the life of me understand what”.

Having worked with Grace since the fall of Rome, Azrael knew this had to be serious. She was a very level-headed, calm and dedicated person, and he owed her quite a long list of favours. If she had a problem, it wasn’t business. It was personal, as Grace was family. Also, it had priority over everything else.

“Come, let’s get help”.

…

“So, you’re saying something happened, that is making you feel terribly distressed, and you don’t know what it is?”, Lord Vishnu raised an eyebrow.

“I know it sounds vague, my Lord, but Grace is an incredibly reliable person, and I personally vouch for her. If she’s saying it’s a problem, then it most certainly is”, Azrael spoke in a most serious tone.

Vishnu took his wife’s hand. “My love, I will need your help here, as this seems to be exactly the kind of a problem you excel at solving”.

“You mean, matters of fate, fortune and other kinds of karmic path intersections?”, she smiled. “I’m on it”. She took Grace’s hand and turned her sight inwards, as if searching. Then she froze, and lost colour.

Vishnu immediately made her a chair to sit in, alarmed by the sight.

“What’s wrong?”

“You prayed to God recently to find you a husband, yes?”, Lakshmi stuttered.

“I have”, Grace nodded.

“God indeed lit up a path for both of you to meet soon”, a tear fell down Goddess’ face. “Your karmic paths intersected and he should have been here already, as he left his physical body, but he never arrived”

“What do you mean?”, Grace was confused, but the ominous feeling increased and her hand twitched reflexively.

“Sanat Kumar played a trick on him. I don’t see the details, but there was a desperate situation he was put in, and Satan offered him to resolve it if he swore allegiance to him and gave him his soul. Carol, as that was his name, felt alone and desperate at the time. He was alone for a long time, prayed to God to lead him to his wife, but it seemed that nothing came of it, except for a long series of disasters. He felt his life was a failure, and this looked like something he could do for others, if his own fate was a dead end…”, Lakshmi couldn’t finish, looking at the other woman.

Reality itself shook, as Grace mouthed a wordless “no”, and dropped to her knees.

A dark blue lightning cracked through Creation, as her immortal angelic heart shattered… forever.

…

“Can we do anything?”, Lakshmi asked her husband, who looked half dead from shock.

“They were a true couple”, Shakti whispered. “I can heal her, but her soul will break again. It’s not an injury one can recover from. Imagine your husband dying. That would have been you”.

“He killed both of them by not waiting, by not having faith”, Vishnu whispered. “He didn’t think he mattered”.

“Can we fix this?”, Shiva asked his wife. “I know, free will, he made his choice. But he didn’t choose evil. He just stopped hoping”.

“Free will”, she waved her head. “This is exactly the kind of a choice we are not allowed to interfere with”.

“We had too many happy endings lately. Too many things worked out. Fates that connected. People who waited for each other through untold centuries, who had faith. It mattered so much because that outcome wasn’t guaranteed. They all could have made a fatal error somewhere. Decided God doesn’t care. Decided they don’t matter. Decided their ideal partner is a figment of their imagination, and not something real, or God’s promise. Carol had a terrible feeling before he made his decision to sell his soul to Satan. He felt horrible wrongness, but he did it anyway, because he gave up on hope, on faith, on God, on himself. And with it, he killed both himself and his beautiful, innocent, wonderful wife”, Lakshmi wept. “There’s nothing we can do. They were a destiny-bound couple. There could never be anyone else for either of them”.

“Fuck”, Shiva whispered.