Gabriel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
trickntreats) wrote2012-06-26 01:06 pm
trickntreats) wrote2012-06-26 01:06 pm
Entry tags:
headcanon flashbacks
Before the Fall, before humanity, before any fights or conflict and there was only family. Pride was a sin, but Gabriel felt it anyway, for the song he'd written.
"That was beautiful, little brother. Did Father give it to you?"
Michael. Gabriel dimmed a little, drew in, protective but not wary. "No. I wrote it myself, for Father. It was Lucifer's idea."
Surprise and uncertainty flickered in Michael's Grace. "... Well. Father seemed to like it."
He flew through Heaven, darting between the lines of Creation, sometimes just a little too fast not to leave ripples in his wake. He couldn't stop; they were about to catch up. Why, oh why, had Father given him this mission?
Abruptly he collided with Lucifer's Grace as the older archangel gripped him tight and brought him to a halt. "Gabriel! You're disrupting the cosmos!"
He panicked and then had a flash of inspiration, and let his Grace ripple with a command to those pursuing him. 'Lucifer wants a hug!'
Only the cupids would ever even dream of mobbing one archangel at the behest of another. Then again, they always did what Gabriel said anyway. That was probably what Father intended when he gave them to Gabriel to train as messengers.
There were tiny little messenger angels everywhere, almost all still fledglings but given to Gabriel to train. These were the siblings that delighted in enthusiasm, in passion, in love. Gabriel flicked his wings and sent one spinning into the middle of a sun, and a moment later the smaller angel burst out of it again with a corkscrew, his Grace radiating delight and glee and his body trailing wreathing streamers of gas and heat after him. Another two darted in close to Gabriel's wings, radiating the 'me! me! me!' demand so strongly they didn't even need words. Broadcasting amusement, Gabriel cupped them both and tossed them into another sun.
He felt Raphael approaching long before the other Archangel's shock radiated through space. Most of the younger angels faltered, hiding in the sun and in amongst Gabriel's wings. Those that didn't still stopped uncertainly, hovering behind Gabriel. "What are you doing?!"
Lazily Gabriel catapulted a half-dozen of his siblings into the nearest sun, turning to broadcast bright, innocent amusement at his older brother. "We're making space-paintings," he answered guilelessly, and with a sweep of his wings scattered dust and particles all around the area. With a flick of another set he picked up Anachiel. "Go on, show your elder brother!"
With a ripple of his Grace that was the equivalant of taking a deep breath, Anachiel let himself be thrown into a sun. A moment later he burst out of it with chunks of plasma and gas cupped in his wings, and as he spun, rippling delight and laughter, he flung it all outward as if scattering it on the black canvas on space.
"Isn't it beautiful, Raphael?" Gabriel asked, and hid his laughter as he felt his older brother's Grace waver between acknowledgement of that undeniable fact and the chastising them for leaving sun-particles scattered everywhere. Gabriel spread his wings, whispering, unheard by Raphael, to his siblings still hidden within them; then he said cheekily, "Want to give it a try, big brother?"
He didn't really get a chance to answer. Fledglings exploded from all over Gabriel, mobbing a startled and rather alarmed Raphael all at once. With a thrust of his wings, his Grace humming with amusement, Gabriel helped them shove Raphael into the sun behind him. It flared brighter than anything the cherubs could produce and each of them shot out of it in all directions, followed by swirling trails of heat and gas, and calling joyfully to one another on ripples of their Grace alone.
The star dimmed as Raphael hauled himself out of its centre, his wings dragging particles after him, and Gabriel laughed again, long and loud, at the irritation in his brother's Grace. With flicks of his wings Raphael tried to get rid of the clinging gas, but he was still well-covered by the time two more angels swelled out from Heaven into the space.
This time there wasn't a single one of the cherubs which didn't hide, pressing up against Gabriel so closely it was hard to tell where he ended and they began. His wings rustled reassuringly along them.
"Gabriel," Michael said, his tone and Grace filled with passive but fond exasperation as he watched Raphael gather his Grace and apply it with more force to the particles still on him, causing them to slide off easily. "If I recall, it was Father's order that you train our younger brothers. Not ... what are you doing?"
"Space-painting," Gabriel said promptly, just as innocently as before. Beside Michael, Lucifer wasn't even trying to hide his own amusement as he regarded Raphael, though he didn't say anything. At least, not out loud; but Gabriel felt a tendril of his brother's Grace reach out with a silent suggestion.
'Have you considered that Michael may deserve a similar bathing?'
The nearest of Gabriel's wings curled tight to his central body in hidden mirth. 'As a matter of fact, brother, I have.'
"How were you to know Father didn't have anything planned for this solar system?" Michael asked patiently.
"I asked?" Gabriel suggested, deliberately making it a question, and then abruptly both he and Lucifer flipped their wings and sent their eldest brother into the second and larger of the two suns in the solar system. The sun exploded; Michael erupted from it with a roar, dripping plasma and gas, and sending a wave of it back on a spluttering Raphael. The two un-bathed Archangels fled, cherubs cupped protectively in the younger's wings. Gabriel's Voice boomed laughter all over the cosmos while Lucifer held his amusement tightly close, tempered to a blinding edge which only fed his younger brother's mirth.
Gabriel found Lucifer on the far edge of the universe, contemplating the spin of a trio of neutron stars; the older Archangel was gathered beside them in the nature of one who seemed relaxed but held themselves close and absent. Gabriel spilled himself abruptly into the same plane, sinking down against Lucifer sort-of like someone slouching over another's shoulder, and broadcast something similar to a pout when Lucifer only greeted him with unsurprised fondness.
"I'll surprise you one day," he complained.
"Continue your attempt, then, little brother," Lucifer replied with comfortable amusement, and Gabriel let himself sprawl over his brother's Grace.
"I believe some of our younger brothers need a slap upside the wings," he said, and with a rustle of his wings and Grace showed Lucifer a flicker of images of said younger siblings. "Perhaps we should get them lost in one of the nebula? There's a few in the centre which could keep them lost for years, if we're lucky."
"I don't think so," Lucifer said, and there was a softness in his voice and Grace which made Gabriel's wings flutter with sudden unease. Things had been tense lately, it was true. Very tense. Lucifer had withdrawn from nearly everyone but Gabriel and a select few of his other favourite siblings. But that was why playing a prank was a good idea--it would help Lucifer feel better.
"Oh, come on. I'll take the blame so Michael doesn't start shouting at you again."
"I'm leaving, Gabriel."
Gabriel had been blindsided before. He'd had Michael knock him across the Grace with his wings, he'd had Lucifer snatch him out of one metaphysical plane or another as he zipped past, he'd had Raphael suffuse him with sudden Grace because he'd been just a little too careless while he was weaving through an obstacle course including a supernova.
None of those had been like this. For an instant it felt like his Grace was unravelling, and he felt the presence of his brighter brothers on the other side of the cosmos before he managed to bring himself back under control. The younger Archangel gathered himself around Lucifer, and where he had been casual before, now he was focussed to a honed point of disbelief and disconcert. There was no way he could hide it, so he didn't; Lucifer's own Grace was quietly resigned. He'd been expecting the reaction.
"What! Leave home?! Lucifer--you can't!"
"Why?" Lucifer asked bluntly, and Gabriel recoiled a bit in confusion and dread.
"It's home," he said, because that was the only answer he had. They could visit the physical and frequently did, but home was the lines between it, the planes unseen, and he couldn't comprehend the idea of just going. Where would Lucifer go to?
It was only then Lucifer moved, wrapping his wings around the younger Archangel, bringing him closer again. "I have to, Gabriel. Michael and I--our arguments are getting worse, not better. And Father ..." Lucifer's voice was threaded with bitterness. "Father refuses to mediate."
"I'll do it," Gabriel said at once. "I can do it. I've done it before--"
Lucifer's Grace rippled with weary fondness, and his wings cupped Gabriel briefly in an angelic hug. Gabriel let him, even bent into him, pressing up against his brother's Grace. "I know, little brother, and you humble me every time you do. But you shouldn't have to. It's time for me to go--I and some of the others."
"Others?" For a moment Gabriel's Grace turned electric and dipped into the physical space. He tried to pull away, but Lucifer held him firm.
"You know some of our brothers agree with me, Gabriel. Do you think Michael would just let them be if I left and they didn't?"
Yes, Gabriel wanted to say, but he knew it would be a lie, and after a moment he let his wings furl, ceasing his attempt to pull back. He felt numb, almost, his Grace vibrating with confusion and hurt and disbelief.
'What about me?' he asked without words, because there were no words he'd invented which would properly convey his desperation and love and dread at the idea of not seeing Lucifer constantly, of not having his bright presence suffusing Heaven. Lucifer held him close, and he didn't speak so much as let his intent bloom between them.
'I want you to come with me.'
Gabriel went still. Leave Heaven? With Lucifer? Go out and--and experience without having Michael or Raphael hanging across their wings? For a moment the visions of potential futures were so bright that the younger Archangel vibrated with them, so much so that Lucifer had to speak to be heard.
"Come with me, Gabriel. No more obedience, no more being enslaved to lesser beings. We can make our own choices. I want you to share it, little brother. Come with me."
Lucifer's voice was soft, not exactly urgent but persuasive, almost desperate. He folded his wings across Gabriel's, fewer but larger, and for a time they shared the same imaginings--of angels roaming the cosmos, playing a veritable hide-and-seek from their brothers, experiencing all they wanted and never having to return to that single, tiny planet in a medium-sized galaxy and limit themselves there like the rest of their family.
The rest of their family. Gabriel's wings quivered. The rest of their family. What about them? What about their brothers they left behind? Most of them were younger, and Gabriel had so many messengers under his command. Neither Michael nor Raphael would know how to handle them. Raphael was gentle enough, but he didn't see the need in play or fun. And Michael, lately, was patient and calm but stern.
Lucifer felt his Grace shifting and was already pulling away, but still Gabriel spoke, and his voice was small. "I can't." He reached out, gripped Lucifer tighter, and the elder Archangel stopped, waited, but didn't return the closeness. "I can't leave Father. And our younger brothers. What would Michael and Raphael do with all of them if two of us left?"
Lucifer had been the only other one of the four even willing to indulge, mostly at Gabriel's behest. But at least he had. Desperately the younger Archangel began, "Even you shouldn't--"
"You won't convince me to stay, Gabriel," Lucifer said sternly, keeping himself aloft. "Stop trying."
The supernova in which Gabriel had been caught had been sharp and sudden, its heat so great that it had seared his wings, careless as he had been. Lucifer's words struck Gabriel with a force far greater. His wings and Grace rustled and for a moment he couldn't find the words, his Grace almost transparent with his grief and desire for this to not be happening. And yet he could feel in his brother that Lucifer wasn't lying. He had made his choice.
Now he was forcing Gabriel to make one too. He didn't say it. He couldn't say it. But it resounded in his Grace. 'I can't leave.'
For a long time they hung, suspended, not quite touching but not quite apart; Gabriel resonating with a hollow sort of disbelief and Lucifer with a solid kind of acceptance. Then, at last, it was the Morningstar who moved, who wrapped his younger brother in his wings and held him close. Gabriel flung himself at the other Archangel, pressing his Grace to Lucifer's and threading their wings together. He was vibrating under the force of his emotions, so much so that they touched the physical as gravity and tugged one of the stars off course.
Lucifer sent out soothing pulses of Grace, smoothing Gabriel's wings like he had when they were younger and it was only the four of them. "Then just promise me you won't tell Michael," he asked quietly. "He would try to stop us if he knew."
"Lucifer--" Gabriel's voice was broken and he had to stop, because it had never betrayed him in such a way before. It didn't matter. He radiated his responding plea for Lucifer not to leave. Lucifer withdrew, just the slightest, not out of anger but because of the grief Gabriel sensed for a moment before Lucifer hid it under his stern request.
"Promise me, Gabriel. Promise me you won't tell Michael."
"Alright!" The word came out as a burst of energy, and the stars rolled under the force of it; Lucifer reached out, calmed the wave. "Alright, fine. Just--" Please don't do this! his Grace cried, and Lucifer's wings smoothed down the ripples in it. "--please promise me no one will be hurt out of this. When you--leave. That you won't try to snipe at Michael again when you do. And make sure the gate guardians won't get in trouble."
He spoke because he had to, because otherwise there was no way he'd get his Grace under control, no way he would be able to resist Lucifer if Lucifer asked him again. The least he could do was make sure that none of his younger brothers were blamed by Michael for what was going to happen, for the loss of--of how many brothers? Gabriel didn't know.
The relief in Lucifer's Grace was hot, so much as that it almost burned away all of Gabriel's grief. The younger Archangel pressed himself into it, let it overwhelm him, hiding his Grace away in that certainty that this was the right thing to do. Lucifer let him, hugged him, his wings twining with Gabriel's. "Thank you, little brother. Thank you. I promise. No one will be hurt."
Gabriel couldn't speak, so he didn't. He just clutched at his brother, let the feel of Lucifer's comforting presence surround him, and tried to pretend, for just this moment, that he wasn't about to lose it.
Gabriel's Grace flared to cut through the sounds of angels screaming, the ripples of their Grace which punched through into the physical and left the destruction of stars and planets in their wake. The battle between the two archangels had already destroyed a whole galaxy. Another was soon to follow.
The youngest of them shot through the individual fights, his wings wrapped around him, so fast that he slipped through into the universe himself; light bent around him, caught on the dust, and left the trails of a nebula behind him. He had to go fast. He had to escape thought, escape emotion, to deliver his Father's message. He had to Obey.
The backlashes of Michael and Lucifer's blows felt hot on his Grace. He gathered it to him and then released it, all at once; his Voice boomed through the cosmos, resonating on a level that made particles tremble and would be heard by every angel, everywhere, all at once.
"THROW THEM DOWN!"
Lucifer's Grace faltered. Michael's flared. The warrior roared and his sword cleaved a rent in space, and in Lucifer's moment of startle the eldest of the Host hurled the traitor into the void.
"MICHAEL!" Lucifer screamed, wrath and horror making his Grace twist. He reached out, clutching at the very fabric of Heaven. It bucked under his grasp, Michael struck him with sword and Grace, and Lucifer Fell, his Grace sucked away from Heaven like the outward-rush of the tide. Every angel marked by his influence was dragged down with it in a surge of light so brilliant that, in the moment just after its absence, every star in the universe went dim.
"It's not your fault, Michael." Half a lie. It was half Michael's fault, half Lucifer's, but Gabriel was tired of fighting. He just wanted reassurance, even if he had to give it himself.
Michael's wings and Grace ruffled, and a sun flared. "I don't blame myself, little brother. Tell me you didn't know he planned to leave and I won't blame you either." Gabriel couldn't answer, but his Grace rippled with surprise and guilt, and Michael's presence closed off to him as the other archangel turned away. "That's what I thought."
Gabriel was fuming as he separated himself from the metaphysical lines of Heaven, sinking just a little faster than necessary through Earth's atmosphere (fast enough to cause some upper-clouds to curl in on themselves and rumble with thunder) and down toward Israel. It took a lot of effort not to air the uncharitable thought that he wished Zachariah had Fallen.
Michael's orders, indeed. Those cherubs are mine, the bastard, he growled internally, deep within his Grace where no one would be able to read it, and didn't even feel guilty. Gabriel, too busy to give orders to his own messengers? Only because Michael and Raphael weren't doing anything themselves.
It was lucky for Zachariah Dad had Called him, then, or his little brother would've found himself on the other side of the cosmos. It had been a long time since Dad had asked Gabriel for anything, and for that, the archangel was willing to curb his ire. Even still, he was irritated enough that when he zipped across the desert his Grace breached into the physical world and tossed up a few minor sandstorms. He came to Nazareth and slowed, his wings stilling, letting his being sink into the town so he could look for--
One of his many wings brushed something that tingled against his Grace like static, and he was so startled that a whirl of sand briefly gusted across the outside of the town. He gathered himself to where it was, making himself as compact as possible, and saw ... her.
Mary. Physically she was a tiny slip of a girl, with long tumbling hair under her veil and the sun-burned complexion of a people who lived in the desert. His accidental gust of wind obliged her and her friends to gather their veils tight to them to hide from the dust, and when it had passed they shook off the sand and laughed at one another, and continued down the road with their baskets in their hands.
That wasn't what Gabriel was seeing. It was her soul; her soul was so bright as to eclipse all that. There was belief there, and certainty, and the strange kind of gentleness that came from both. Staring at her wasn't like looking into a sun or a comet; they were just dust and gas and heat. It was like looking into the fabric of Creation, where Dad sat. Pure white light. Mesmerised, Gabriel stretched forward one wing to brush her again, to compare the two, and against the frustration still in his Grace Mary's soul was the brighter. She jumped and looked around self-consciously and he drew back again.
This was the woman who'd bear Dad's Son, and she was one of the most beautiful things Gabriel had ever seen.
Egypt. Egypt and he'd screwed up because the wise men couldn't follow directions, and Dad hadn't said anything at all. Gabriel wasn't sure what he was meant to do about it, but the burning resentment in him bade him do something. Which was why he was here, right now, because even though these two people were the ones he'd nearly failed the most at least he could be there in case something happened. Egypt didn't have a good history, after all.
He sank into the fabric of their tiny house, little more than a hole in the wall of a bigger dwelling. The Enochian wards imbued into it on the metaphysical plane still glowed strong; he let them be and peered into the room.
Mary and Joseph's souls were different than they used to be, when Gabriel had first gone to them in their dreams, but they were older now, and had experienced a lot. Before, they had been wild with possibility and joy. Now, they were tempered--like light placed on a forge. More compact, but all the brighter and hotter for it.
They were talking. For a moment Gabriel debated eavesdropping and between letting them talk, and then decided, with a self-bitter twist in his Grace, that he had better just in case something had happened, because Dad wasn't giving him explicit instructions. He phased just enough into the physical to catch the sound waves.
"--should stay home," Joseph was saying, glancing through the sole window and trailing after Mary as she cleaned the tiny home, carrying a sleeping Jesus against his shoulder, one absent hand on the little boy's back. The Son of God was so bright that Gabriel's own gaze skirted around Him. "It isn't safe. Egypt ... isn't safe."
"I'll be all right, Joseph," Mary said. "Gabriel will be watching over us. He warned us to flee here, didn't he?"
"Yes," Joseph admitted, and Gabriel saw the tightness in his soul relax, felt the thrum between their souls and his own Grace that was their faith. In him. The one who'd made it necessary for them to flee at all.
He recoiled from the house so fast that sand gusted down the streets around it, his guilt so sharp it was almost physical. With a few wings he softened the breeze he'd caused, and then made to leave. And hesitated, glancing again at the house below him, the one whose walls were vibrating with light not caused by him or his wards but the purity of those inside. Of people who trusted him.
They shouldn't. They have no idea.
Yet the archangel settled back down again and turned his gaze outward, his many wings closing protectively over the house.
Later. Much, much later, after the Fall, after everything had gone bad. After Lucifer was imprisoned, Michael thought only about the day he'd be able to kill his own brother, Raphael still refused to have an original thought and Gabriel was left to try and keep their family together. He was returning from his mission on Earth to usher in his Father's Son, irritable and embarrassed and too far gone to even bother caring about the hints of shame.
Wise men. Hah.
Heaven was actually heavens, now, and despite the perception of his Father with a throneroom it wasn't anything so ostentatious. And yet it was more spacious than any actual 'room' could be. Gabriel sank into the fabric between the heavens, the foundation of Creation, where his Father infused every inch of time and space. It opened up before him, inside him, and he felt his Father pull him close in His embrace.
"They're in Egypt," he reported, and explained what had happened with Herod's decree. Not exactly with words. It was never with words, with Father, not even to the half-point the angels used among themselves to supplement their communication through Grace. He just already knew.
He didn't explain how Herod had known. How Gabriel had left the philosophers to their own devices for just a little too long to slip into a willing human and indulge in some of those amazing herbs they had on another continent. But he knew Father knew. Part of him was afraid Father would say something, chastise him, smite him--
The rest wanted Him to, dared Him to. Say something! Do something!
Not a word. He never said a word about Gabriel's transgression, and when Gabriel left Him to seep back into the universe, he felt angry and relieved and strangely disappointed. Thirty-three Earth years later, after the Son had returned to Heaven, Gabriel was gone from it.
"Behind you!" Gabriel whirled and jumped away, dodging the snap of the pricolici's jaws. The wolf's eyes almost glowed even in his physical sight, he fancied, and then thrust his sword forward into its throat as it shot past. Fighting in a vessel was nothing like fighting as an angel, but there was something intoxicating about it if he let himself feel his vessel's physical reactions. The adrenaline. The pound of his heart, the throb in his veins--the way the body worked. Like art.
Still. If he was missing things behind him, he was revelling too much. He extended his Grace enough to feel the wash of action around him, dropping and rolling to avoid the wolf that tried to leap at him. A moment later no less than three arrows impacted its side and drove it into the ground. When he rose he glanced around and saw that the fight was almost over; the bodies of the pricolici pack were scattered around the clearing where the Dacians had ambushed it. Hunters were beginning to relax, to take bets on how long it would take for the last of them to be dispatched.
"You're a lucky man, my friend," Cotiso told him with a laugh as he unstrung his bow, and Gabriel turned and grinned, breathing deeply and pulling back into his vessel now that the danger was over, curling around the sleeping soul of the man who had let him in. Cotiso, the hunter who had first introduced Gabriel to the life. The archangel had known they were out there, of course. He just hadn't really intersected with them until Cotiso had intercepted a moroi hunting him while the archangel was still getting used to being in a vessel for such an extended period of time. The man had cursed at him and his obvious amusement, his 'inability' to accept he'd been in danger, and promptly taken Gabriel under his wing, so to speak.
"Jealousy is a fault," he shot back, wiping down his blade.
"Of you? You jest." Cotiso laughed and then kicked the wolf at their feet, spitting. "May they rot in Hell." The archer turned and tossed Gabriel a wineskin. "Here--it's better than the piss you drink."
"My piss is quality," Gabriel said with great dignity, and then laughed, uncorking the bottle with his teeth and swigging the wine down. Cotiso's soul wasn't as pure as Joseph's, but it was bright with a fierce love of life--red and gold and burning. It had been five years. Gabriel kept telling himself it was time to move on. He hadn't, yet.
"If you call that quality, then--"
It happened suddenly. One moment Cotiso was just talking, and the next there was a howl and a flash of movement, and Cotiso was on the ground. With a flash Gabriel's recently cleaned sword was again bloodied. The wolf collapsed and Gabriel staggered toward them, hearing startled shouts behind him; the archangel's heart was pounding so fast it made him feel ill, his throat closing, his limbs trembling. He dropped his sword and separated himself from his vessel so he wasn't so close to its physical reactions, so close that he hadn't even sensed the wolf--
Gabriel dropped by Cotiso, his horrified eyes, both sets, watching as the hunter's soul began to peel away from his body; the archangel was surprised by the feel of tears on his cheeks. He looked up to see a reaper standing by, its eyes wide, and with a snarl he reached out and smote it. It burst into little particles of nothing before it could even consider escape.
Gabriel didn't really think. He just laid his angelic hand on Cotiso's soul, pushed it back into its body, and healed the wounds, all in the one or two seconds before the rest of the hunting group had managed to fully comprehend what was happening. Cotiso's eyes snapped open and Gabriel almost sagged with relief--right up until Cotiso looked at him and pulled away.
"What happened?" one of the hunters demanded, already over Gabriel's shoulder. "Is he alive?"
"It rolled him," Gabriel said, and his vessel's voice was shaken. "He's unhurt."
But from the sudden way Cotiso's soul had banked, was threaded with sputters, with the way the man was looking at him, Gabriel suddenly wasn't so sure about himself.
"Leave."
Gabriel blinked in surprise, but Cotiso gave no ground, standing in the doorway with his arms on the frame as if to keep Gabriel out. For a moment the archangel watched the tremble in him with fascination, so slight that he would have missed it if he was human. It was easier to look at that then the way Cotiso's soul was ashy with fear and betrayal and a weird sort of grief.
"Cotiso--"
"I don't know what you are," Cotiso hissed. "Or what you did. You shouldn't have done it, whatever it was. But I know that you're no man. Leave!"
The door slammed shut and Gabriel was left standing numb on his once-friend's doorstep. For some long minutes he couldn't comprehend what had just happened. He'd saved Cotiso. His friend. Saved his life. Literally! Yet now Cotiso was nothing but afraid of him, just because he'd shown a bit of power.
His vessel felt numb. Gabriel kept himself inside it to take advantage, to throw off the tremor in his Grace that threatened to explode into the sort of emotions he didn't think he could handle just now, and then he turned and walked away from Cotiso's door. Very well. Lesson learned, and not mistake he was going to make again.
"Will it hurt? When you enter me?"
If Gabriel had had a physical body he would have smirked, but since he didn't, he just let his wings rustle and Grace thread with amusement. The young man, brown-haired, only average height and utterly nondescript, sitting against the wall under him, laughed at the feel of it. 'No. It won't hurt.'
Not anymore. Gabriel had inhabited many vessels by now, had learned the soft touch needed to keep their souls safe and even, sometimes, aware so they could watch what was going on outside. But he needed a vessel. Now. Soon. There was no way he'd be able to keep up his recently-begun pretence as Loki if he didn't have a body, and it was getting more difficult to find them. His brothers were letting his vessels' bloodlines lapse.
"Alright. I agree." Koisis looked up at the sky as if he'd be able to see Gabriel at all, when in fact he could see nothing. Not even the sky. And he smiled.
It was the smile that made Gabriel have to hide the ripple of guilt through his Grace, but then he reached out to touch the man's soul, to align themselves together using Koisis's consent as the catalyst. The soul almost seemed to reach for him, but Gabriel managed to keep his startle under control, wrapping himself around it and sinking into Koisis' body with such ease that it was almost frightening.
For several moments he sat against the wall, adjusting to his new body. He closed their eyes and then opened them again, and heard Koisis' delighted exclamation at what, for him, was an explosion of new sights. Gabriel exhaled slowly and with something like wonder.
'I found you', he said at last, directly to the soul he held gathered in his wings. His one true vessel. The one who could hold him without breaking. Koisis' soul was almost vibrating with eagerness and glee.
'You said you'd take me to Rome. I'd like to go pay Senator Camillus a visit.'
Gabriel laughed out loud, long and hard. 'My very thoughts exactly.'
'What do you think?' Gabriel asked his vessel in the privacy of themselves, eyeing the British Navy lieutenant who was, currently, making eyes at a lady in a bar while his wife was waiting for him at home. They were in the same city, for God's sake, and he was still betraying her.
'I think he's a fool who deserves everything that's coming to him,' said Koisis promptly, with a stir of anger. The once-blind Gaul had always considered the bond between two lovers to be sacrosanct. Early on, once he'd properly heard the poetry in Koisis' soul, Gabriel had regretted taking him as a vessel, but by that point they had known each other well enough that Koisis had reassured him. After all, he had said with surprisingly little bitterness, it wasn't likely anyone would have wanted a blind husband. There had been a reason he'd been sitting by that wall waiting for people to pass by, after all. Gabriel had spared him that.
'I agree.' Gabriel took a gulp of his drink, separating himself and bringing Koisis forward on a pair of wings so that the man's soul could enjoy the taste of it too. They looked older, now. Gabriel had let them age; initially Koisis had been young enough for his age to put a stopper on a number of forays. 'It's the "how" that I was wondering about. Any suggestions?'
In truth Koisis had been worrying him. Quieter. Less inclined to offer advice, more inclined to watch. That was why Gabriel had sought out this particular lieutenant. For a long moment Koisis didn't answer, and something in Gabriel's Grace clenched. 'Koisis?'
'Gabriel.' The name in Koisis' soul was soft, but the ripple of it was foreboding. Accepting, and sorry, and gentle. Gabriel's wings curled. 'I think it's time for me to go.'
For a moment Gabriel didn't say anything at all, staring numbly into his beer, but he knew his vessel--his friend could feel the shock in his Grace, the sort that one feels when they've had something they were trying to deny confirmed. 'Isn't this fun for you anymore? Maybe we've fallen into a rut,' he acknowledged with a weird sort of panic. 'We'll come up with something really original for this one.'
Koisis' soul shifted. It wasn't a hug, because it was hard for metaphysical beings to hug when one was a soul and the other was an archangel bigger than a palace, but it was close. 'No, Gabriel. I'm--tired. Men weren't meant to live this long.'
With a beat of his wings Gabriel sent them out of the pub and somewhere else--anywhere else. He didn't care where. They wound up on the beach, somewhere there were no clouds and the stars were so bright Gabriel could almost see them. And he didn't say anything for a long time, because he didn't know what he was meant to say. 'I don't want you to leave' was obvious, but not something Gabriel needed to articulate even in the semi-speech they used between souls. And yet that was really the main reason. After the first novel century of being free of Heaven, he had gotten lonely, very fast. While Koisis was with him, he wasn't alone. And Koisis had been with him for nearly fifteen-hundred years.
'They'll know,' he said finally, resignation making every fibre of his Grace tremble. 'If I send you on to Heaven, they'll know.'
A thread of amusement. 'You're saying the great Trickster can't put me somewhere they won't find and interrogate me?'
It had been, Gabriel had to admit, a really bad excuse. He looked up at the stars and they both watched the sky until the horizon began to lighten. It bathed the far side of the ocean with a line of green, and then brilliant pinks and purples and golds.
'... I'll build you a palace in the sky.' The archangel's wings shuffled as he moved, passing Koisis' soul from limb to limb until he could reach in to pick him up. The man's gratitude was so deep he almost hummed with it.
'Keep my body, Gabriel,' Koisis told him as he cradled the man's soul in his arms--his metaphysical, his physical. 'It's yours. It's always been yours. Without you, I would have been trapped.'
'Thank you,' Gabriel whispered, and spread all his wings. A moment later, the surf lapped up on an empty beach.
"Samuel Colt, eh?" Gabriel looked at the man speculatively over his cards, letting his voice drawl with the appropriate Midwestern accent. "Heard of you. They say you're re-inventing a few things around here."
The man across from him laughed. "Or maybe just plain inventing the impossible, eh?" He leaned forward, his eyes sparkling, unaware that his cards had dipped enough for Gabriel to see them. "But that's what it's about. Everyone says it can't be done, so why not try and do it? No one can say what is or isn't impossible until they've made the attempt."
The archangel tried to ignore the way the man's soul whirled with enthusiasm, not for killing or revenge, but the pure desire to create something deemed impossible. The desire to face that challenge, and mount it, and tame it. It thrummed against Gabriel's Grace, their wavelengths aligning, and Gabriel deliberately looked away and took a gulp of his whiskey to try and shake it off. He had come here expecting someone to teach a lesson, not ... this. "Yeah? Well, you're out of luck getting me to pay for it." He laid his cards on the table. "Heart flush."
Colt just grinned, dropping his cards and pushing the pot over to Gabriel. "Give me time and I'll have you seeing things my way."
Damn. Damn, damn damn. Gabriel looked around the burning ruins of Samuel's house, stretching his wings and Grace and searching for a soul--any soul. The one he found he almost wished he hadn't, but a moment later he was near enough to pretend he'd seen the man and make a noise approaching. Samuel sat on a charred log outside the property, ash on his clothes and skin. He didn't look up.
"I couldn't--" he started, but his voice broke and he stopped. He was shaking, Gabriel saw. And his soul ... his soul. In it Gabriel saw the whirling images of his wife and child burning alive, and inhaled sharply. "I couldn't save them."
"Sammy ..." Gabriel didn't know what to say. He wanted to gather Samuel into his wings and get rid of that awful, black grief. He wanted to wade into the flames and bring Colt's family back to life, but he couldn't do that either. Not after the last few times. They never took it well and Raphael had almost caught him last time, when their souls were snatched out of Heaven. Gabriel had sworn not to do it again.
"There was something ..." Samuel's voice was shattered, but there was something strange in his tone. Something like dread. "Their eyes. They were black. Completely black. And they didn't--they just laughed at me. They didn't die until the smoke left them. I don't--"
"Demons," Gabriel said quietly, his Grace and back prickling. Colt flinched and shifted to look up at him. Gabriel looked down and knew his face was hard. He didn't need to read Colt's soul to know the silent question. "You weren't imagining it."
"They didn't die," Colt repeated, a hysterical note in his voice, and then he just collapsed bonelessly, his breaths becoming sobs. Gabriel caught him, crouched by him, let him lean against him. The man spoke through his tears, speaking to Gabriel, to himself, to the air around them. "I couldn't save them. Couldn't do anything. How can a man fight creatures like that? They didn't die."
For a long time he cried. Gabriel's Grace ached with shared grief so sharp it was physical; he felt the tears on his cheeks and didn't bother to wipe them away. And yet somewhere inside him, anger burned. Samuel was a brilliant man. A friend. Those demonic bastards had hurt his friend.
"Samuel," he said in a low voice, "what would you say if I told you I could help you build a gun that could kill them? That could kill--anything?"
Samuel's breaths were ragged and for several long moments he didn't answer. Then he lifted his head, his eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed, and filled with a manic fury. "I'd say 'when do we start?'"
"I heard you handled some vampires down south," Gabriel was saying as soon as he threw open Samuel's door, leaning on the jamb and grinning. "Nice work." Samuel's homes lately were far less than they had been, once, but they were functional. The homes of a hunter, plain and wooden and filled with notes and books. This one was bare; Samuel was about to move on. The hunter didn't even look up at Gabriel's entrance; he just finished the last of his scotch and stood up.
It had been a long time since Gabriel had bothered to really look at Samuel's soul. He'd gotten used to watching through his human eyes. So it wasn't until he saw the tension in the man's frame that he realised something might be wrong and opened his angelic eyes to see--
"Thank you," Samuel said coldly, and lifted his prized Colt, the gun with the magic bullets, on the archangel who had helped him build it.
The archangel stood frozen, staring at the swirl of betrayal in his friend's soul, once so bright with genius. He laughed brittlely, with disbelief and a growing dread directly related to what he knew perfectly well was happening. "Sam? What the Hell?"
"I just want to know one thing before I kill you," Samuel said, and his voice was thick with rage and grief and the tears Gabriel suddenly saw the man had already shed. "Did you kill my family? Did you set up their deaths?!"
The words may as well have been angelic blows. Gabriel actually flinched and his Grace recoiled, and knew the blood drained from his face, and felt his breath catch. "What?! Nuh--no! Why the Hell would you--"
And then something in the hunter's soul parted and he saw it, and stopped, his Grace tingled with disbelief and dread and utter blind grief. Not again. Not this--again.
"You're not even human, are you?" Samuel said, his voice cracking, and he pulled the gun's hammer. "I didn't know what you were at first, but now I know. Trickster. Liar."
"Samu--"
That was all Gabriel got out before Samuel fired. The bullet hit Gabriel point-blank in the forehead; its magic radiated out from the point, burning through Gabriel's Grace like he was made of gunpowder, so sharp that he couldn't even scream. Just as well, or that would have drawn the wrong kind of attention. It flared and he lost control of his vessel, felt it collapse to the floor. Through the haze of pain he saw Samuel lower the Colt with a shaking hand, saw the man turn away, walk toward the door.
That bastard. He had actually--he actually believed--that bastard. After everything Gabriel had done for him--not once had he pulled a trick on Samuel, not once; the archangel had never given Colt to believe he would do something like that. That he could.
The pain eased and on wings of fury Gabriel shot back into his vessel, his presence healing the wound in an instant. He coughed, gasped, snarled, "You son of a bitch."
The archangel heard more than saw Samu--Colt whirl around, and levered himself up onto his elbows, then his knees, pushing himself upright. The windows cracked and the house-beams shook under the force of his rage, even while he tried to keep his Grace under control. He was breathing hard, his vessel thrumming with adrenaline, and whatever look he had on his face made Colt pale and step back. Gabriel bared his teeth in a humourless smile. "You think I'm going to put myself on the list of things that gun can kill?"
He rose to his feet and reached up to wipe the blood off his face, and for a moment Samuel just stood there in disbelief. Then he turned on his heel and ran, and as Gabriel came to the door, still staggering a little, he saw the man throw himself into a horse's saddle and yank it around to the road. "Run fast, Colt!" he roared, the air booming with the sound of his voice. "Run fast, because when I'm through every demon on Earth will know you have that gun!"
His voice cracked on the last word and he was left to watch as his former friend vanished in a cloud of dust on the horizon, shaking with rage and the need to smite something. Maybe himself. He never learned. Why could he never learn?! "Never again," he snarled in Enochian. "Never again!"
Even as he said it he knew it was a lie.
One of his constructs was facing Lucifer. Gabriel's Grace was tingling with anticipation and dread and longing and love and a million other things too complicated to describe. He was facing Lucifer. His brother. The first time he'd seen him in too long for Gabriel to count.
Part of him wanted to throw himself at his brother, embrace him, weep and beg him to give all this up or at least take him back. But it was too late for that. Way too late. Lucifer was his brother, but Gabriel had made his choice, and he felt freer even than he had on that day when he'd turned his back on Heaven. He had refused Lucifer, once, because of the weight of responsibility. Now he was being responsible again--but this time, it was a responsibility he chose.
Lucifer spoke, patient, longsuffering. "Gabriel, if you're doing this for Michael--"
"Screw him," snapped the construct. "If he were standing here, I'd shiv his ass too." No holding back. The construct was an honest one, filled with all the certainty in his choice Gabriel held. Even the sudden tension in Lucifer's vessel, the step forward, didn't really make him flinch.
"You disloyal--"
Disloyal. The word hit like a blow, and Gabriel almost uncoiled his Grace. Disloyal. The worst accusation Lucifer could make. The construct cut him off, and Gabriel almost laughed with a sort of hysteria. Oh, he was pulled out all the stops, wasn't he? Interrupting his brother. "Oh, I'm loyal. To them!"
"Who? These, so called gods?" Lucifer demanded, incredulity in his voice and his Grace. He filled the room; it was all Gabriel could do not to reach out instinctively and so alert Lucifer as to his position.
His construct's voice was quiet, but it thrummed with the certainty Lucifer's presence was causing to waver in Gabriel himself. The younger Archangel let that resonance seep through the Grace imbuing the construct and into himself, and his resolve steadied as his other self spoke. "To people, Lucifer. People."
Lucifer's Grace rose, opened up, and for a startling moment Gabriel felt all his shocked disbelief, nearly crossing over into anguish. "So you're willing to die, for a pile of cockroaches. Why?"
"Because Dad was right," said the construct, and this time it was almost as much the real Gabriel who said it, feeding the words through their connection and almost revelling in the relief that filled him at his own admission. "They are better than us."
Rage. Not enough rage to shake the walls, because it was tempered by disbelief; Gabriel let his brother's anger break on his wings and cast it off. "They are broken. Flawed! Abortions."
"Damn right they're flawed. But a lot of them try. To do better, to forgive." Like their family couldn't. Like their family never had. Like they perhaps could have, if only some of them had done something differently. As if sensing the ripple of grief in Gabriel's Grace, the construct added quickly to cover for it, "And you should see the Spearmint Rhino!"
Gabriel almost laughed again, but it could equally have come out a sob. If only. If only he could have shown Lucifer that world. But it was too late, now. "I've been riding the pine a long time. But I'm in the game now, and I'm not on your side, or Michael's." A breath from the construct. Gabriel straightened, rose silently to step out behind Lucifer, his Grace shrouded and earthly body almost vibrating with adrenaline and the grief he was hiding deep inside. The construct spoke with quiet certainty. "I'm on theirs."
On theirs. Because this was the right thing to do. Because humanity had earned it. Because, however much Gabriel loved him, Lucifer was wrong.
A wave of anguish washed over him from Lucifer's Grace, and Gabriel almost faltered. Then he gathered himself and pressed on, folding his wings and twisting his wards so he cut through it like a ship through water. The feel of it made his Grace tingle; not tainted, exactly, but like static electricity with madness. If Gabriel hadn't been a step aside from his vessel, he would have thrown up. As it was, the feel of it made his celestial body shudder and recoil from it, before he let it wash away his hesitations, his emotions, and moved forward on a raft of numbness.
"Brother, don't make me do this."
"No one makes us do anything," Gabriel's construct responded. They never had. Not even Dad. Free will--the catchphrase of the universe. And now Gabriel was finally getting in on it properly, instead of all passive-aggressively as he had when he left Heaven.
And despite his position right here and now, that fact felt good.
"I know you think you're doing the right thing, Gabriel," Lucifer said, and now it was his tone that held the quiet plea, the resignation. Gabriel felt the gather of his Grace, and knew it had to be now, if he was going to make a move at all. "But I know where your heart truly lies."
Now. The younger Archangel lunged, too caught up in his plan and his brother's Grace to think, too lost to see the twist before it was too late. Lucifer whirled, his wings whipping, catching his arm and twisting it. Gabriel's own blade entered his earthly vessel and pierced the place just to the side of his true self's heart with a white-hot burst of pain that cast a shockwave all through him and left numbness in its wake. Numbness and disbelief that Lucifer would actually--had actually followed through on his words.
"Here," Lucifer whispered, his face so close that Gabriel could see his angelic eyes even through his earthly ones. His brother's tone was almost conversational and he held his Grace away; Gabriel couldn't move to reach for him, to try and divine what he was feeling. For a moment they hung, suspended, as they had once so long ago--one in pain and the other with certainty. "Amateur hocus pocus. Don't forget; you learned all your tricks from me, little brother."
He jerked the blade and this time agony flared all through Gabriel as the sword cut through him, his very essence. Gabriel bucked inside his vessel; his earthly hand clutched at Lucifer's sleeve instinctively, his earthly eyes already dimming. But now the younger Archangel could move, even as he felt his Grace beginning to unravel; he spread his wings and reached for Lucifer, his Grace radiating with why and please and--
Gently Lucifer bent over him, threaded their wings together, brought their Graces close. If he'd had the control of his vessel Gabriel would have cried at the feel of his brother's grief, sharp enough that Gabriel could still feel it even through the pain which wracked him.
'If you'd used your own talents, Gabriel,' Lucifer whispered, 'perhaps then you would have won.'
Except they both knew it would never have happened, because Gabriel could never have killed his older brother; because he had, consciously or subconsciously, chosen the methods he had knowing that he would be rescued from that action. And Lucifer's love for him wasn't enough to save him.
Gabriel shook, clutching his brother close as if that would rescue him from the pounding, dizzying agony through his chest and wings and--
'Lucif--'
White light.
"That was beautiful, little brother. Did Father give it to you?"
Michael. Gabriel dimmed a little, drew in, protective but not wary. "No. I wrote it myself, for Father. It was Lucifer's idea."
Surprise and uncertainty flickered in Michael's Grace. "... Well. Father seemed to like it."
He flew through Heaven, darting between the lines of Creation, sometimes just a little too fast not to leave ripples in his wake. He couldn't stop; they were about to catch up. Why, oh why, had Father given him this mission?
Abruptly he collided with Lucifer's Grace as the older archangel gripped him tight and brought him to a halt. "Gabriel! You're disrupting the cosmos!"
He panicked and then had a flash of inspiration, and let his Grace ripple with a command to those pursuing him. 'Lucifer wants a hug!'
Only the cupids would ever even dream of mobbing one archangel at the behest of another. Then again, they always did what Gabriel said anyway. That was probably what Father intended when he gave them to Gabriel to train as messengers.
There were tiny little messenger angels everywhere, almost all still fledglings but given to Gabriel to train. These were the siblings that delighted in enthusiasm, in passion, in love. Gabriel flicked his wings and sent one spinning into the middle of a sun, and a moment later the smaller angel burst out of it again with a corkscrew, his Grace radiating delight and glee and his body trailing wreathing streamers of gas and heat after him. Another two darted in close to Gabriel's wings, radiating the 'me! me! me!' demand so strongly they didn't even need words. Broadcasting amusement, Gabriel cupped them both and tossed them into another sun.
He felt Raphael approaching long before the other Archangel's shock radiated through space. Most of the younger angels faltered, hiding in the sun and in amongst Gabriel's wings. Those that didn't still stopped uncertainly, hovering behind Gabriel. "What are you doing?!"
Lazily Gabriel catapulted a half-dozen of his siblings into the nearest sun, turning to broadcast bright, innocent amusement at his older brother. "We're making space-paintings," he answered guilelessly, and with a sweep of his wings scattered dust and particles all around the area. With a flick of another set he picked up Anachiel. "Go on, show your elder brother!"
With a ripple of his Grace that was the equivalant of taking a deep breath, Anachiel let himself be thrown into a sun. A moment later he burst out of it with chunks of plasma and gas cupped in his wings, and as he spun, rippling delight and laughter, he flung it all outward as if scattering it on the black canvas on space.
"Isn't it beautiful, Raphael?" Gabriel asked, and hid his laughter as he felt his older brother's Grace waver between acknowledgement of that undeniable fact and the chastising them for leaving sun-particles scattered everywhere. Gabriel spread his wings, whispering, unheard by Raphael, to his siblings still hidden within them; then he said cheekily, "Want to give it a try, big brother?"
He didn't really get a chance to answer. Fledglings exploded from all over Gabriel, mobbing a startled and rather alarmed Raphael all at once. With a thrust of his wings, his Grace humming with amusement, Gabriel helped them shove Raphael into the sun behind him. It flared brighter than anything the cherubs could produce and each of them shot out of it in all directions, followed by swirling trails of heat and gas, and calling joyfully to one another on ripples of their Grace alone.
The star dimmed as Raphael hauled himself out of its centre, his wings dragging particles after him, and Gabriel laughed again, long and loud, at the irritation in his brother's Grace. With flicks of his wings Raphael tried to get rid of the clinging gas, but he was still well-covered by the time two more angels swelled out from Heaven into the space.
This time there wasn't a single one of the cherubs which didn't hide, pressing up against Gabriel so closely it was hard to tell where he ended and they began. His wings rustled reassuringly along them.
"Gabriel," Michael said, his tone and Grace filled with passive but fond exasperation as he watched Raphael gather his Grace and apply it with more force to the particles still on him, causing them to slide off easily. "If I recall, it was Father's order that you train our younger brothers. Not ... what are you doing?"
"Space-painting," Gabriel said promptly, just as innocently as before. Beside Michael, Lucifer wasn't even trying to hide his own amusement as he regarded Raphael, though he didn't say anything. At least, not out loud; but Gabriel felt a tendril of his brother's Grace reach out with a silent suggestion.
'Have you considered that Michael may deserve a similar bathing?'
The nearest of Gabriel's wings curled tight to his central body in hidden mirth. 'As a matter of fact, brother, I have.'
"How were you to know Father didn't have anything planned for this solar system?" Michael asked patiently.
"I asked?" Gabriel suggested, deliberately making it a question, and then abruptly both he and Lucifer flipped their wings and sent their eldest brother into the second and larger of the two suns in the solar system. The sun exploded; Michael erupted from it with a roar, dripping plasma and gas, and sending a wave of it back on a spluttering Raphael. The two un-bathed Archangels fled, cherubs cupped protectively in the younger's wings. Gabriel's Voice boomed laughter all over the cosmos while Lucifer held his amusement tightly close, tempered to a blinding edge which only fed his younger brother's mirth.
Gabriel found Lucifer on the far edge of the universe, contemplating the spin of a trio of neutron stars; the older Archangel was gathered beside them in the nature of one who seemed relaxed but held themselves close and absent. Gabriel spilled himself abruptly into the same plane, sinking down against Lucifer sort-of like someone slouching over another's shoulder, and broadcast something similar to a pout when Lucifer only greeted him with unsurprised fondness.
"I'll surprise you one day," he complained.
"Continue your attempt, then, little brother," Lucifer replied with comfortable amusement, and Gabriel let himself sprawl over his brother's Grace.
"I believe some of our younger brothers need a slap upside the wings," he said, and with a rustle of his wings and Grace showed Lucifer a flicker of images of said younger siblings. "Perhaps we should get them lost in one of the nebula? There's a few in the centre which could keep them lost for years, if we're lucky."
"I don't think so," Lucifer said, and there was a softness in his voice and Grace which made Gabriel's wings flutter with sudden unease. Things had been tense lately, it was true. Very tense. Lucifer had withdrawn from nearly everyone but Gabriel and a select few of his other favourite siblings. But that was why playing a prank was a good idea--it would help Lucifer feel better.
"Oh, come on. I'll take the blame so Michael doesn't start shouting at you again."
"I'm leaving, Gabriel."
Gabriel had been blindsided before. He'd had Michael knock him across the Grace with his wings, he'd had Lucifer snatch him out of one metaphysical plane or another as he zipped past, he'd had Raphael suffuse him with sudden Grace because he'd been just a little too careless while he was weaving through an obstacle course including a supernova.
None of those had been like this. For an instant it felt like his Grace was unravelling, and he felt the presence of his brighter brothers on the other side of the cosmos before he managed to bring himself back under control. The younger Archangel gathered himself around Lucifer, and where he had been casual before, now he was focussed to a honed point of disbelief and disconcert. There was no way he could hide it, so he didn't; Lucifer's own Grace was quietly resigned. He'd been expecting the reaction.
"What! Leave home?! Lucifer--you can't!"
"Why?" Lucifer asked bluntly, and Gabriel recoiled a bit in confusion and dread.
"It's home," he said, because that was the only answer he had. They could visit the physical and frequently did, but home was the lines between it, the planes unseen, and he couldn't comprehend the idea of just going. Where would Lucifer go to?
It was only then Lucifer moved, wrapping his wings around the younger Archangel, bringing him closer again. "I have to, Gabriel. Michael and I--our arguments are getting worse, not better. And Father ..." Lucifer's voice was threaded with bitterness. "Father refuses to mediate."
"I'll do it," Gabriel said at once. "I can do it. I've done it before--"
Lucifer's Grace rippled with weary fondness, and his wings cupped Gabriel briefly in an angelic hug. Gabriel let him, even bent into him, pressing up against his brother's Grace. "I know, little brother, and you humble me every time you do. But you shouldn't have to. It's time for me to go--I and some of the others."
"Others?" For a moment Gabriel's Grace turned electric and dipped into the physical space. He tried to pull away, but Lucifer held him firm.
"You know some of our brothers agree with me, Gabriel. Do you think Michael would just let them be if I left and they didn't?"
Yes, Gabriel wanted to say, but he knew it would be a lie, and after a moment he let his wings furl, ceasing his attempt to pull back. He felt numb, almost, his Grace vibrating with confusion and hurt and disbelief.
'What about me?' he asked without words, because there were no words he'd invented which would properly convey his desperation and love and dread at the idea of not seeing Lucifer constantly, of not having his bright presence suffusing Heaven. Lucifer held him close, and he didn't speak so much as let his intent bloom between them.
'I want you to come with me.'
Gabriel went still. Leave Heaven? With Lucifer? Go out and--and experience without having Michael or Raphael hanging across their wings? For a moment the visions of potential futures were so bright that the younger Archangel vibrated with them, so much so that Lucifer had to speak to be heard.
"Come with me, Gabriel. No more obedience, no more being enslaved to lesser beings. We can make our own choices. I want you to share it, little brother. Come with me."
Lucifer's voice was soft, not exactly urgent but persuasive, almost desperate. He folded his wings across Gabriel's, fewer but larger, and for a time they shared the same imaginings--of angels roaming the cosmos, playing a veritable hide-and-seek from their brothers, experiencing all they wanted and never having to return to that single, tiny planet in a medium-sized galaxy and limit themselves there like the rest of their family.
The rest of their family. Gabriel's wings quivered. The rest of their family. What about them? What about their brothers they left behind? Most of them were younger, and Gabriel had so many messengers under his command. Neither Michael nor Raphael would know how to handle them. Raphael was gentle enough, but he didn't see the need in play or fun. And Michael, lately, was patient and calm but stern.
Lucifer felt his Grace shifting and was already pulling away, but still Gabriel spoke, and his voice was small. "I can't." He reached out, gripped Lucifer tighter, and the elder Archangel stopped, waited, but didn't return the closeness. "I can't leave Father. And our younger brothers. What would Michael and Raphael do with all of them if two of us left?"
Lucifer had been the only other one of the four even willing to indulge, mostly at Gabriel's behest. But at least he had. Desperately the younger Archangel began, "Even you shouldn't--"
"You won't convince me to stay, Gabriel," Lucifer said sternly, keeping himself aloft. "Stop trying."
The supernova in which Gabriel had been caught had been sharp and sudden, its heat so great that it had seared his wings, careless as he had been. Lucifer's words struck Gabriel with a force far greater. His wings and Grace rustled and for a moment he couldn't find the words, his Grace almost transparent with his grief and desire for this to not be happening. And yet he could feel in his brother that Lucifer wasn't lying. He had made his choice.
Now he was forcing Gabriel to make one too. He didn't say it. He couldn't say it. But it resounded in his Grace. 'I can't leave.'
For a long time they hung, suspended, not quite touching but not quite apart; Gabriel resonating with a hollow sort of disbelief and Lucifer with a solid kind of acceptance. Then, at last, it was the Morningstar who moved, who wrapped his younger brother in his wings and held him close. Gabriel flung himself at the other Archangel, pressing his Grace to Lucifer's and threading their wings together. He was vibrating under the force of his emotions, so much so that they touched the physical as gravity and tugged one of the stars off course.
Lucifer sent out soothing pulses of Grace, smoothing Gabriel's wings like he had when they were younger and it was only the four of them. "Then just promise me you won't tell Michael," he asked quietly. "He would try to stop us if he knew."
"Lucifer--" Gabriel's voice was broken and he had to stop, because it had never betrayed him in such a way before. It didn't matter. He radiated his responding plea for Lucifer not to leave. Lucifer withdrew, just the slightest, not out of anger but because of the grief Gabriel sensed for a moment before Lucifer hid it under his stern request.
"Promise me, Gabriel. Promise me you won't tell Michael."
"Alright!" The word came out as a burst of energy, and the stars rolled under the force of it; Lucifer reached out, calmed the wave. "Alright, fine. Just--" Please don't do this! his Grace cried, and Lucifer's wings smoothed down the ripples in it. "--please promise me no one will be hurt out of this. When you--leave. That you won't try to snipe at Michael again when you do. And make sure the gate guardians won't get in trouble."
He spoke because he had to, because otherwise there was no way he'd get his Grace under control, no way he would be able to resist Lucifer if Lucifer asked him again. The least he could do was make sure that none of his younger brothers were blamed by Michael for what was going to happen, for the loss of--of how many brothers? Gabriel didn't know.
The relief in Lucifer's Grace was hot, so much as that it almost burned away all of Gabriel's grief. The younger Archangel pressed himself into it, let it overwhelm him, hiding his Grace away in that certainty that this was the right thing to do. Lucifer let him, hugged him, his wings twining with Gabriel's. "Thank you, little brother. Thank you. I promise. No one will be hurt."
Gabriel couldn't speak, so he didn't. He just clutched at his brother, let the feel of Lucifer's comforting presence surround him, and tried to pretend, for just this moment, that he wasn't about to lose it.
Gabriel's Grace flared to cut through the sounds of angels screaming, the ripples of their Grace which punched through into the physical and left the destruction of stars and planets in their wake. The battle between the two archangels had already destroyed a whole galaxy. Another was soon to follow.
The youngest of them shot through the individual fights, his wings wrapped around him, so fast that he slipped through into the universe himself; light bent around him, caught on the dust, and left the trails of a nebula behind him. He had to go fast. He had to escape thought, escape emotion, to deliver his Father's message. He had to Obey.
The backlashes of Michael and Lucifer's blows felt hot on his Grace. He gathered it to him and then released it, all at once; his Voice boomed through the cosmos, resonating on a level that made particles tremble and would be heard by every angel, everywhere, all at once.
"THROW THEM DOWN!"
Lucifer's Grace faltered. Michael's flared. The warrior roared and his sword cleaved a rent in space, and in Lucifer's moment of startle the eldest of the Host hurled the traitor into the void.
"MICHAEL!" Lucifer screamed, wrath and horror making his Grace twist. He reached out, clutching at the very fabric of Heaven. It bucked under his grasp, Michael struck him with sword and Grace, and Lucifer Fell, his Grace sucked away from Heaven like the outward-rush of the tide. Every angel marked by his influence was dragged down with it in a surge of light so brilliant that, in the moment just after its absence, every star in the universe went dim.
"It's not your fault, Michael." Half a lie. It was half Michael's fault, half Lucifer's, but Gabriel was tired of fighting. He just wanted reassurance, even if he had to give it himself.
Michael's wings and Grace ruffled, and a sun flared. "I don't blame myself, little brother. Tell me you didn't know he planned to leave and I won't blame you either." Gabriel couldn't answer, but his Grace rippled with surprise and guilt, and Michael's presence closed off to him as the other archangel turned away. "That's what I thought."
Gabriel was fuming as he separated himself from the metaphysical lines of Heaven, sinking just a little faster than necessary through Earth's atmosphere (fast enough to cause some upper-clouds to curl in on themselves and rumble with thunder) and down toward Israel. It took a lot of effort not to air the uncharitable thought that he wished Zachariah had Fallen.
Michael's orders, indeed. Those cherubs are mine, the bastard, he growled internally, deep within his Grace where no one would be able to read it, and didn't even feel guilty. Gabriel, too busy to give orders to his own messengers? Only because Michael and Raphael weren't doing anything themselves.
It was lucky for Zachariah Dad had Called him, then, or his little brother would've found himself on the other side of the cosmos. It had been a long time since Dad had asked Gabriel for anything, and for that, the archangel was willing to curb his ire. Even still, he was irritated enough that when he zipped across the desert his Grace breached into the physical world and tossed up a few minor sandstorms. He came to Nazareth and slowed, his wings stilling, letting his being sink into the town so he could look for--
One of his many wings brushed something that tingled against his Grace like static, and he was so startled that a whirl of sand briefly gusted across the outside of the town. He gathered himself to where it was, making himself as compact as possible, and saw ... her.
Mary. Physically she was a tiny slip of a girl, with long tumbling hair under her veil and the sun-burned complexion of a people who lived in the desert. His accidental gust of wind obliged her and her friends to gather their veils tight to them to hide from the dust, and when it had passed they shook off the sand and laughed at one another, and continued down the road with their baskets in their hands.
That wasn't what Gabriel was seeing. It was her soul; her soul was so bright as to eclipse all that. There was belief there, and certainty, and the strange kind of gentleness that came from both. Staring at her wasn't like looking into a sun or a comet; they were just dust and gas and heat. It was like looking into the fabric of Creation, where Dad sat. Pure white light. Mesmerised, Gabriel stretched forward one wing to brush her again, to compare the two, and against the frustration still in his Grace Mary's soul was the brighter. She jumped and looked around self-consciously and he drew back again.
This was the woman who'd bear Dad's Son, and she was one of the most beautiful things Gabriel had ever seen.
Egypt. Egypt and he'd screwed up because the wise men couldn't follow directions, and Dad hadn't said anything at all. Gabriel wasn't sure what he was meant to do about it, but the burning resentment in him bade him do something. Which was why he was here, right now, because even though these two people were the ones he'd nearly failed the most at least he could be there in case something happened. Egypt didn't have a good history, after all.
He sank into the fabric of their tiny house, little more than a hole in the wall of a bigger dwelling. The Enochian wards imbued into it on the metaphysical plane still glowed strong; he let them be and peered into the room.
Mary and Joseph's souls were different than they used to be, when Gabriel had first gone to them in their dreams, but they were older now, and had experienced a lot. Before, they had been wild with possibility and joy. Now, they were tempered--like light placed on a forge. More compact, but all the brighter and hotter for it.
They were talking. For a moment Gabriel debated eavesdropping and between letting them talk, and then decided, with a self-bitter twist in his Grace, that he had better just in case something had happened, because Dad wasn't giving him explicit instructions. He phased just enough into the physical to catch the sound waves.
"--should stay home," Joseph was saying, glancing through the sole window and trailing after Mary as she cleaned the tiny home, carrying a sleeping Jesus against his shoulder, one absent hand on the little boy's back. The Son of God was so bright that Gabriel's own gaze skirted around Him. "It isn't safe. Egypt ... isn't safe."
"I'll be all right, Joseph," Mary said. "Gabriel will be watching over us. He warned us to flee here, didn't he?"
"Yes," Joseph admitted, and Gabriel saw the tightness in his soul relax, felt the thrum between their souls and his own Grace that was their faith. In him. The one who'd made it necessary for them to flee at all.
He recoiled from the house so fast that sand gusted down the streets around it, his guilt so sharp it was almost physical. With a few wings he softened the breeze he'd caused, and then made to leave. And hesitated, glancing again at the house below him, the one whose walls were vibrating with light not caused by him or his wards but the purity of those inside. Of people who trusted him.
They shouldn't. They have no idea.
Yet the archangel settled back down again and turned his gaze outward, his many wings closing protectively over the house.
Later. Much, much later, after the Fall, after everything had gone bad. After Lucifer was imprisoned, Michael thought only about the day he'd be able to kill his own brother, Raphael still refused to have an original thought and Gabriel was left to try and keep their family together. He was returning from his mission on Earth to usher in his Father's Son, irritable and embarrassed and too far gone to even bother caring about the hints of shame.
Wise men. Hah.
Heaven was actually heavens, now, and despite the perception of his Father with a throneroom it wasn't anything so ostentatious. And yet it was more spacious than any actual 'room' could be. Gabriel sank into the fabric between the heavens, the foundation of Creation, where his Father infused every inch of time and space. It opened up before him, inside him, and he felt his Father pull him close in His embrace.
"They're in Egypt," he reported, and explained what had happened with Herod's decree. Not exactly with words. It was never with words, with Father, not even to the half-point the angels used among themselves to supplement their communication through Grace. He just already knew.
He didn't explain how Herod had known. How Gabriel had left the philosophers to their own devices for just a little too long to slip into a willing human and indulge in some of those amazing herbs they had on another continent. But he knew Father knew. Part of him was afraid Father would say something, chastise him, smite him--
The rest wanted Him to, dared Him to. Say something! Do something!
Not a word. He never said a word about Gabriel's transgression, and when Gabriel left Him to seep back into the universe, he felt angry and relieved and strangely disappointed. Thirty-three Earth years later, after the Son had returned to Heaven, Gabriel was gone from it.
"Behind you!" Gabriel whirled and jumped away, dodging the snap of the pricolici's jaws. The wolf's eyes almost glowed even in his physical sight, he fancied, and then thrust his sword forward into its throat as it shot past. Fighting in a vessel was nothing like fighting as an angel, but there was something intoxicating about it if he let himself feel his vessel's physical reactions. The adrenaline. The pound of his heart, the throb in his veins--the way the body worked. Like art.
Still. If he was missing things behind him, he was revelling too much. He extended his Grace enough to feel the wash of action around him, dropping and rolling to avoid the wolf that tried to leap at him. A moment later no less than three arrows impacted its side and drove it into the ground. When he rose he glanced around and saw that the fight was almost over; the bodies of the pricolici pack were scattered around the clearing where the Dacians had ambushed it. Hunters were beginning to relax, to take bets on how long it would take for the last of them to be dispatched.
"You're a lucky man, my friend," Cotiso told him with a laugh as he unstrung his bow, and Gabriel turned and grinned, breathing deeply and pulling back into his vessel now that the danger was over, curling around the sleeping soul of the man who had let him in. Cotiso, the hunter who had first introduced Gabriel to the life. The archangel had known they were out there, of course. He just hadn't really intersected with them until Cotiso had intercepted a moroi hunting him while the archangel was still getting used to being in a vessel for such an extended period of time. The man had cursed at him and his obvious amusement, his 'inability' to accept he'd been in danger, and promptly taken Gabriel under his wing, so to speak.
"Jealousy is a fault," he shot back, wiping down his blade.
"Of you? You jest." Cotiso laughed and then kicked the wolf at their feet, spitting. "May they rot in Hell." The archer turned and tossed Gabriel a wineskin. "Here--it's better than the piss you drink."
"My piss is quality," Gabriel said with great dignity, and then laughed, uncorking the bottle with his teeth and swigging the wine down. Cotiso's soul wasn't as pure as Joseph's, but it was bright with a fierce love of life--red and gold and burning. It had been five years. Gabriel kept telling himself it was time to move on. He hadn't, yet.
"If you call that quality, then--"
It happened suddenly. One moment Cotiso was just talking, and the next there was a howl and a flash of movement, and Cotiso was on the ground. With a flash Gabriel's recently cleaned sword was again bloodied. The wolf collapsed and Gabriel staggered toward them, hearing startled shouts behind him; the archangel's heart was pounding so fast it made him feel ill, his throat closing, his limbs trembling. He dropped his sword and separated himself from his vessel so he wasn't so close to its physical reactions, so close that he hadn't even sensed the wolf--
Gabriel dropped by Cotiso, his horrified eyes, both sets, watching as the hunter's soul began to peel away from his body; the archangel was surprised by the feel of tears on his cheeks. He looked up to see a reaper standing by, its eyes wide, and with a snarl he reached out and smote it. It burst into little particles of nothing before it could even consider escape.
Gabriel didn't really think. He just laid his angelic hand on Cotiso's soul, pushed it back into its body, and healed the wounds, all in the one or two seconds before the rest of the hunting group had managed to fully comprehend what was happening. Cotiso's eyes snapped open and Gabriel almost sagged with relief--right up until Cotiso looked at him and pulled away.
"What happened?" one of the hunters demanded, already over Gabriel's shoulder. "Is he alive?"
"It rolled him," Gabriel said, and his vessel's voice was shaken. "He's unhurt."
But from the sudden way Cotiso's soul had banked, was threaded with sputters, with the way the man was looking at him, Gabriel suddenly wasn't so sure about himself.
"Leave."
Gabriel blinked in surprise, but Cotiso gave no ground, standing in the doorway with his arms on the frame as if to keep Gabriel out. For a moment the archangel watched the tremble in him with fascination, so slight that he would have missed it if he was human. It was easier to look at that then the way Cotiso's soul was ashy with fear and betrayal and a weird sort of grief.
"Cotiso--"
"I don't know what you are," Cotiso hissed. "Or what you did. You shouldn't have done it, whatever it was. But I know that you're no man. Leave!"
The door slammed shut and Gabriel was left standing numb on his once-friend's doorstep. For some long minutes he couldn't comprehend what had just happened. He'd saved Cotiso. His friend. Saved his life. Literally! Yet now Cotiso was nothing but afraid of him, just because he'd shown a bit of power.
His vessel felt numb. Gabriel kept himself inside it to take advantage, to throw off the tremor in his Grace that threatened to explode into the sort of emotions he didn't think he could handle just now, and then he turned and walked away from Cotiso's door. Very well. Lesson learned, and not mistake he was going to make again.
"Will it hurt? When you enter me?"
If Gabriel had had a physical body he would have smirked, but since he didn't, he just let his wings rustle and Grace thread with amusement. The young man, brown-haired, only average height and utterly nondescript, sitting against the wall under him, laughed at the feel of it. 'No. It won't hurt.'
Not anymore. Gabriel had inhabited many vessels by now, had learned the soft touch needed to keep their souls safe and even, sometimes, aware so they could watch what was going on outside. But he needed a vessel. Now. Soon. There was no way he'd be able to keep up his recently-begun pretence as Loki if he didn't have a body, and it was getting more difficult to find them. His brothers were letting his vessels' bloodlines lapse.
"Alright. I agree." Koisis looked up at the sky as if he'd be able to see Gabriel at all, when in fact he could see nothing. Not even the sky. And he smiled.
It was the smile that made Gabriel have to hide the ripple of guilt through his Grace, but then he reached out to touch the man's soul, to align themselves together using Koisis's consent as the catalyst. The soul almost seemed to reach for him, but Gabriel managed to keep his startle under control, wrapping himself around it and sinking into Koisis' body with such ease that it was almost frightening.
For several moments he sat against the wall, adjusting to his new body. He closed their eyes and then opened them again, and heard Koisis' delighted exclamation at what, for him, was an explosion of new sights. Gabriel exhaled slowly and with something like wonder.
'I found you', he said at last, directly to the soul he held gathered in his wings. His one true vessel. The one who could hold him without breaking. Koisis' soul was almost vibrating with eagerness and glee.
'You said you'd take me to Rome. I'd like to go pay Senator Camillus a visit.'
Gabriel laughed out loud, long and hard. 'My very thoughts exactly.'
'What do you think?' Gabriel asked his vessel in the privacy of themselves, eyeing the British Navy lieutenant who was, currently, making eyes at a lady in a bar while his wife was waiting for him at home. They were in the same city, for God's sake, and he was still betraying her.
'I think he's a fool who deserves everything that's coming to him,' said Koisis promptly, with a stir of anger. The once-blind Gaul had always considered the bond between two lovers to be sacrosanct. Early on, once he'd properly heard the poetry in Koisis' soul, Gabriel had regretted taking him as a vessel, but by that point they had known each other well enough that Koisis had reassured him. After all, he had said with surprisingly little bitterness, it wasn't likely anyone would have wanted a blind husband. There had been a reason he'd been sitting by that wall waiting for people to pass by, after all. Gabriel had spared him that.
'I agree.' Gabriel took a gulp of his drink, separating himself and bringing Koisis forward on a pair of wings so that the man's soul could enjoy the taste of it too. They looked older, now. Gabriel had let them age; initially Koisis had been young enough for his age to put a stopper on a number of forays. 'It's the "how" that I was wondering about. Any suggestions?'
In truth Koisis had been worrying him. Quieter. Less inclined to offer advice, more inclined to watch. That was why Gabriel had sought out this particular lieutenant. For a long moment Koisis didn't answer, and something in Gabriel's Grace clenched. 'Koisis?'
'Gabriel.' The name in Koisis' soul was soft, but the ripple of it was foreboding. Accepting, and sorry, and gentle. Gabriel's wings curled. 'I think it's time for me to go.'
For a moment Gabriel didn't say anything at all, staring numbly into his beer, but he knew his vessel--his friend could feel the shock in his Grace, the sort that one feels when they've had something they were trying to deny confirmed. 'Isn't this fun for you anymore? Maybe we've fallen into a rut,' he acknowledged with a weird sort of panic. 'We'll come up with something really original for this one.'
Koisis' soul shifted. It wasn't a hug, because it was hard for metaphysical beings to hug when one was a soul and the other was an archangel bigger than a palace, but it was close. 'No, Gabriel. I'm--tired. Men weren't meant to live this long.'
With a beat of his wings Gabriel sent them out of the pub and somewhere else--anywhere else. He didn't care where. They wound up on the beach, somewhere there were no clouds and the stars were so bright Gabriel could almost see them. And he didn't say anything for a long time, because he didn't know what he was meant to say. 'I don't want you to leave' was obvious, but not something Gabriel needed to articulate even in the semi-speech they used between souls. And yet that was really the main reason. After the first novel century of being free of Heaven, he had gotten lonely, very fast. While Koisis was with him, he wasn't alone. And Koisis had been with him for nearly fifteen-hundred years.
'They'll know,' he said finally, resignation making every fibre of his Grace tremble. 'If I send you on to Heaven, they'll know.'
A thread of amusement. 'You're saying the great Trickster can't put me somewhere they won't find and interrogate me?'
It had been, Gabriel had to admit, a really bad excuse. He looked up at the stars and they both watched the sky until the horizon began to lighten. It bathed the far side of the ocean with a line of green, and then brilliant pinks and purples and golds.
'... I'll build you a palace in the sky.' The archangel's wings shuffled as he moved, passing Koisis' soul from limb to limb until he could reach in to pick him up. The man's gratitude was so deep he almost hummed with it.
'Keep my body, Gabriel,' Koisis told him as he cradled the man's soul in his arms--his metaphysical, his physical. 'It's yours. It's always been yours. Without you, I would have been trapped.'
'Thank you,' Gabriel whispered, and spread all his wings. A moment later, the surf lapped up on an empty beach.
"Samuel Colt, eh?" Gabriel looked at the man speculatively over his cards, letting his voice drawl with the appropriate Midwestern accent. "Heard of you. They say you're re-inventing a few things around here."
The man across from him laughed. "Or maybe just plain inventing the impossible, eh?" He leaned forward, his eyes sparkling, unaware that his cards had dipped enough for Gabriel to see them. "But that's what it's about. Everyone says it can't be done, so why not try and do it? No one can say what is or isn't impossible until they've made the attempt."
The archangel tried to ignore the way the man's soul whirled with enthusiasm, not for killing or revenge, but the pure desire to create something deemed impossible. The desire to face that challenge, and mount it, and tame it. It thrummed against Gabriel's Grace, their wavelengths aligning, and Gabriel deliberately looked away and took a gulp of his whiskey to try and shake it off. He had come here expecting someone to teach a lesson, not ... this. "Yeah? Well, you're out of luck getting me to pay for it." He laid his cards on the table. "Heart flush."
Colt just grinned, dropping his cards and pushing the pot over to Gabriel. "Give me time and I'll have you seeing things my way."
Damn. Damn, damn damn. Gabriel looked around the burning ruins of Samuel's house, stretching his wings and Grace and searching for a soul--any soul. The one he found he almost wished he hadn't, but a moment later he was near enough to pretend he'd seen the man and make a noise approaching. Samuel sat on a charred log outside the property, ash on his clothes and skin. He didn't look up.
"I couldn't--" he started, but his voice broke and he stopped. He was shaking, Gabriel saw. And his soul ... his soul. In it Gabriel saw the whirling images of his wife and child burning alive, and inhaled sharply. "I couldn't save them."
"Sammy ..." Gabriel didn't know what to say. He wanted to gather Samuel into his wings and get rid of that awful, black grief. He wanted to wade into the flames and bring Colt's family back to life, but he couldn't do that either. Not after the last few times. They never took it well and Raphael had almost caught him last time, when their souls were snatched out of Heaven. Gabriel had sworn not to do it again.
"There was something ..." Samuel's voice was shattered, but there was something strange in his tone. Something like dread. "Their eyes. They were black. Completely black. And they didn't--they just laughed at me. They didn't die until the smoke left them. I don't--"
"Demons," Gabriel said quietly, his Grace and back prickling. Colt flinched and shifted to look up at him. Gabriel looked down and knew his face was hard. He didn't need to read Colt's soul to know the silent question. "You weren't imagining it."
"They didn't die," Colt repeated, a hysterical note in his voice, and then he just collapsed bonelessly, his breaths becoming sobs. Gabriel caught him, crouched by him, let him lean against him. The man spoke through his tears, speaking to Gabriel, to himself, to the air around them. "I couldn't save them. Couldn't do anything. How can a man fight creatures like that? They didn't die."
For a long time he cried. Gabriel's Grace ached with shared grief so sharp it was physical; he felt the tears on his cheeks and didn't bother to wipe them away. And yet somewhere inside him, anger burned. Samuel was a brilliant man. A friend. Those demonic bastards had hurt his friend.
"Samuel," he said in a low voice, "what would you say if I told you I could help you build a gun that could kill them? That could kill--anything?"
Samuel's breaths were ragged and for several long moments he didn't answer. Then he lifted his head, his eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed, and filled with a manic fury. "I'd say 'when do we start?'"
"I heard you handled some vampires down south," Gabriel was saying as soon as he threw open Samuel's door, leaning on the jamb and grinning. "Nice work." Samuel's homes lately were far less than they had been, once, but they were functional. The homes of a hunter, plain and wooden and filled with notes and books. This one was bare; Samuel was about to move on. The hunter didn't even look up at Gabriel's entrance; he just finished the last of his scotch and stood up.
It had been a long time since Gabriel had bothered to really look at Samuel's soul. He'd gotten used to watching through his human eyes. So it wasn't until he saw the tension in the man's frame that he realised something might be wrong and opened his angelic eyes to see--
"Thank you," Samuel said coldly, and lifted his prized Colt, the gun with the magic bullets, on the archangel who had helped him build it.
The archangel stood frozen, staring at the swirl of betrayal in his friend's soul, once so bright with genius. He laughed brittlely, with disbelief and a growing dread directly related to what he knew perfectly well was happening. "Sam? What the Hell?"
"I just want to know one thing before I kill you," Samuel said, and his voice was thick with rage and grief and the tears Gabriel suddenly saw the man had already shed. "Did you kill my family? Did you set up their deaths?!"
The words may as well have been angelic blows. Gabriel actually flinched and his Grace recoiled, and knew the blood drained from his face, and felt his breath catch. "What?! Nuh--no! Why the Hell would you--"
And then something in the hunter's soul parted and he saw it, and stopped, his Grace tingled with disbelief and dread and utter blind grief. Not again. Not this--again.
"You're not even human, are you?" Samuel said, his voice cracking, and he pulled the gun's hammer. "I didn't know what you were at first, but now I know. Trickster. Liar."
"Samu--"
That was all Gabriel got out before Samuel fired. The bullet hit Gabriel point-blank in the forehead; its magic radiated out from the point, burning through Gabriel's Grace like he was made of gunpowder, so sharp that he couldn't even scream. Just as well, or that would have drawn the wrong kind of attention. It flared and he lost control of his vessel, felt it collapse to the floor. Through the haze of pain he saw Samuel lower the Colt with a shaking hand, saw the man turn away, walk toward the door.
That bastard. He had actually--he actually believed--that bastard. After everything Gabriel had done for him--not once had he pulled a trick on Samuel, not once; the archangel had never given Colt to believe he would do something like that. That he could.
The pain eased and on wings of fury Gabriel shot back into his vessel, his presence healing the wound in an instant. He coughed, gasped, snarled, "You son of a bitch."
The archangel heard more than saw Samu--Colt whirl around, and levered himself up onto his elbows, then his knees, pushing himself upright. The windows cracked and the house-beams shook under the force of his rage, even while he tried to keep his Grace under control. He was breathing hard, his vessel thrumming with adrenaline, and whatever look he had on his face made Colt pale and step back. Gabriel bared his teeth in a humourless smile. "You think I'm going to put myself on the list of things that gun can kill?"
He rose to his feet and reached up to wipe the blood off his face, and for a moment Samuel just stood there in disbelief. Then he turned on his heel and ran, and as Gabriel came to the door, still staggering a little, he saw the man throw himself into a horse's saddle and yank it around to the road. "Run fast, Colt!" he roared, the air booming with the sound of his voice. "Run fast, because when I'm through every demon on Earth will know you have that gun!"
His voice cracked on the last word and he was left to watch as his former friend vanished in a cloud of dust on the horizon, shaking with rage and the need to smite something. Maybe himself. He never learned. Why could he never learn?! "Never again," he snarled in Enochian. "Never again!"
Even as he said it he knew it was a lie.
One of his constructs was facing Lucifer. Gabriel's Grace was tingling with anticipation and dread and longing and love and a million other things too complicated to describe. He was facing Lucifer. His brother. The first time he'd seen him in too long for Gabriel to count.
Part of him wanted to throw himself at his brother, embrace him, weep and beg him to give all this up or at least take him back. But it was too late for that. Way too late. Lucifer was his brother, but Gabriel had made his choice, and he felt freer even than he had on that day when he'd turned his back on Heaven. He had refused Lucifer, once, because of the weight of responsibility. Now he was being responsible again--but this time, it was a responsibility he chose.
Lucifer spoke, patient, longsuffering. "Gabriel, if you're doing this for Michael--"
"Screw him," snapped the construct. "If he were standing here, I'd shiv his ass too." No holding back. The construct was an honest one, filled with all the certainty in his choice Gabriel held. Even the sudden tension in Lucifer's vessel, the step forward, didn't really make him flinch.
"You disloyal--"
Disloyal. The word hit like a blow, and Gabriel almost uncoiled his Grace. Disloyal. The worst accusation Lucifer could make. The construct cut him off, and Gabriel almost laughed with a sort of hysteria. Oh, he was pulled out all the stops, wasn't he? Interrupting his brother. "Oh, I'm loyal. To them!"
"Who? These, so called gods?" Lucifer demanded, incredulity in his voice and his Grace. He filled the room; it was all Gabriel could do not to reach out instinctively and so alert Lucifer as to his position.
His construct's voice was quiet, but it thrummed with the certainty Lucifer's presence was causing to waver in Gabriel himself. The younger Archangel let that resonance seep through the Grace imbuing the construct and into himself, and his resolve steadied as his other self spoke. "To people, Lucifer. People."
Lucifer's Grace rose, opened up, and for a startling moment Gabriel felt all his shocked disbelief, nearly crossing over into anguish. "So you're willing to die, for a pile of cockroaches. Why?"
"Because Dad was right," said the construct, and this time it was almost as much the real Gabriel who said it, feeding the words through their connection and almost revelling in the relief that filled him at his own admission. "They are better than us."
Rage. Not enough rage to shake the walls, because it was tempered by disbelief; Gabriel let his brother's anger break on his wings and cast it off. "They are broken. Flawed! Abortions."
"Damn right they're flawed. But a lot of them try. To do better, to forgive." Like their family couldn't. Like their family never had. Like they perhaps could have, if only some of them had done something differently. As if sensing the ripple of grief in Gabriel's Grace, the construct added quickly to cover for it, "And you should see the Spearmint Rhino!"
Gabriel almost laughed again, but it could equally have come out a sob. If only. If only he could have shown Lucifer that world. But it was too late, now. "I've been riding the pine a long time. But I'm in the game now, and I'm not on your side, or Michael's." A breath from the construct. Gabriel straightened, rose silently to step out behind Lucifer, his Grace shrouded and earthly body almost vibrating with adrenaline and the grief he was hiding deep inside. The construct spoke with quiet certainty. "I'm on theirs."
On theirs. Because this was the right thing to do. Because humanity had earned it. Because, however much Gabriel loved him, Lucifer was wrong.
A wave of anguish washed over him from Lucifer's Grace, and Gabriel almost faltered. Then he gathered himself and pressed on, folding his wings and twisting his wards so he cut through it like a ship through water. The feel of it made his Grace tingle; not tainted, exactly, but like static electricity with madness. If Gabriel hadn't been a step aside from his vessel, he would have thrown up. As it was, the feel of it made his celestial body shudder and recoil from it, before he let it wash away his hesitations, his emotions, and moved forward on a raft of numbness.
"Brother, don't make me do this."
"No one makes us do anything," Gabriel's construct responded. They never had. Not even Dad. Free will--the catchphrase of the universe. And now Gabriel was finally getting in on it properly, instead of all passive-aggressively as he had when he left Heaven.
And despite his position right here and now, that fact felt good.
"I know you think you're doing the right thing, Gabriel," Lucifer said, and now it was his tone that held the quiet plea, the resignation. Gabriel felt the gather of his Grace, and knew it had to be now, if he was going to make a move at all. "But I know where your heart truly lies."
Now. The younger Archangel lunged, too caught up in his plan and his brother's Grace to think, too lost to see the twist before it was too late. Lucifer whirled, his wings whipping, catching his arm and twisting it. Gabriel's own blade entered his earthly vessel and pierced the place just to the side of his true self's heart with a white-hot burst of pain that cast a shockwave all through him and left numbness in its wake. Numbness and disbelief that Lucifer would actually--had actually followed through on his words.
"Here," Lucifer whispered, his face so close that Gabriel could see his angelic eyes even through his earthly ones. His brother's tone was almost conversational and he held his Grace away; Gabriel couldn't move to reach for him, to try and divine what he was feeling. For a moment they hung, suspended, as they had once so long ago--one in pain and the other with certainty. "Amateur hocus pocus. Don't forget; you learned all your tricks from me, little brother."
He jerked the blade and this time agony flared all through Gabriel as the sword cut through him, his very essence. Gabriel bucked inside his vessel; his earthly hand clutched at Lucifer's sleeve instinctively, his earthly eyes already dimming. But now the younger Archangel could move, even as he felt his Grace beginning to unravel; he spread his wings and reached for Lucifer, his Grace radiating with why and please and--
Gently Lucifer bent over him, threaded their wings together, brought their Graces close. If he'd had the control of his vessel Gabriel would have cried at the feel of his brother's grief, sharp enough that Gabriel could still feel it even through the pain which wracked him.
'If you'd used your own talents, Gabriel,' Lucifer whispered, 'perhaps then you would have won.'
Except they both knew it would never have happened, because Gabriel could never have killed his older brother; because he had, consciously or subconsciously, chosen the methods he had knowing that he would be rescued from that action. And Lucifer's love for him wasn't enough to save him.
Gabriel shook, clutching his brother close as if that would rescue him from the pounding, dizzying agony through his chest and wings and--
'Lucif--'
White light.