caveofsapphires | (no subject)

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WHO: Balthazar (Alexander Wilton), open
WHAT: A sarcastic, cynical ~~angel~~ lush enters a place of worship. Stop me if you've heard this one before.
WHERE: The Temple
WHEN: Monday, April 16th
WARNINGS: most likely religious references.......?

It was like being home, he guessed. Well, if home had a creepier, stepford vibe, where everyone had to live their lives like nothing was wrong, and God was playing the role of an enigmatic puppeteer who guaranteed a good life if only you obeyed his laws. ...Wait, let's start over.

Balthazar was always good at avoiding people. Hell, he had managed to stay hidden from an angry archangel and the rest of Heaven for an age and a half. It was only natural that he would abuse this skill the moment he had woken up in this nightmare, staying quiet and unnoticeable amongst the others who had woken up like him. Maybe in a nother life he might have made an effort to appear civil, but that was the thing. He was alive again. This was disturbing because there shouldn't have been an 'again' tackd onto the end of that sentence, it should only be 'he was alive.' The whole nasty business of him dying wasn't exactly what upset him; he had been a soldier once upon a time, and he never fooled himself into believing he'd be around forever. Dying wasn't what had him in such a mess. It was the way it had gone down that had him currently emitting the 'unsociable prick' aura. He wasn't mopey by nature, in fact he was rather a dry cynic with a hint a humor, but he guessed he was allowed to sul when his best friend had gone crazy and killed him.

It was easy for him to follow the rules and play nice with whatever world he had been thrust into when he was like this; doing-everything-i-say-or-else-faceless-dictator? Sure, why the hell not, he was an angel, wasn't he? That was pretty much in the job description. Although, he had to admit, the whole memory-plant thing was kind of making him scratch his head a little. What they had told him about his fake life, it seemed like something he'd do. It was pretty much what he had did with Heaven. In quieter moments, he almost didn't seem to mind that he was given a chance at another, (somewhat) normal life. It was, overall, so much better than his real life, but then he remembered who he was, what he was, what he had done.

Despite wanting to do nothing more than rebel, rebel, rebel, being oh-so-very-much-more cynical about life in general these days, he knew he had to just play the game. He knew how to act like nothing was wrong, that he had everything under control (granted, the last time he had played with this skill a little too hard and fast, it had gotten him killed), so that was what he was going to do. Bide his time. Think of how to reconnect with his lost Grace and give Castiel the beating of his life.

He found it almost ironic coming into the temple to get away from the world around him and just be alone with his thoughts. Back on the Earth he had known, he had always looked at 'houses of The Lord' from a distance, amused when he thought of how many would cross its threshold waiting to find his Father's spirit waiting for them. Too bad they'd never find it. During those moments, though, inside a strange building, in a strange realm, he wished for nothing more than for everything to return to what it had been before.

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"I am awed and inspired by your generosity." Despite his sarcasm, Balthazar was thankful that he didn't have to go digging up his untimely demise all over again. It was really the only thing he had thought about the first couple of days awake; he didn't need anymore repeats. He knew, out of anybody in the universe, Gabriel would understand the most, but Lucifer had already been a complete, evil dick when he had faced off against the tricky archangel. Castiel was...

Well, never mind.

"Says you. Your problem was you actually cared for our family as a whole, despite your impromptu leave. I generally cared less and less as the years went on. Being far away was a blessing."

Lucifer had been a dick, but Gabriel still remembered what he had been, once. His favourite older brother. The one who taught him all his tricks. The protector. Everyone always focused on the dynamic between Michael and Lucifer, and forgot about the other angels; Dean's asking Gabriel to kill Lucifer was like asking Sam to kill Dean, and the most irritating part was that Dean had never seen it.

Whatever the differences between that and this, they didn't make the betrayal that Lucifer would actually do it any less sharp.

"Then you should have left earlier, like I did," Gabriel pointed out, pulling the container back with a shrug and finishing the cake himself. Despite the lightness of his voice there was an undertone--not a warning, not bitterness, but something dark. Balthazar had stopped caring, had he? Gee, Gabriel wondered what had happened to others who went the same route.

"Should have, would have, could have." The truth of the matter was, leaving Heaven had never been a thought until recently. He had been perfectly content to stay in his broken home, watching as humanity burned itself out and the world ended around them. In fact, he probably would've continued to stay neutral throughout the entire Apocalypse conflict had the scenario been different.

Balthazar crossed his arms, not daring to go any further down that road.

"That's neither here nor there. We have to put ourselves in the present. Whatever this all is, it requires our full attention."

The archangel spread his hands, his smile twisted. "Such as it is?" Their attention lacking their perception, ability to see souls, their Grace? If he didn't actually like humanity so much, Gabriel might have thought it was meant to teach him humility. Same for Aziraphale.

Maybe not so much for Balthazar.

"All I know is that it's one Hell of an alternate reality construct." He smirked a little at the double meaning of the word, and then lost it. "We've got another member of the family here, but from another universe entirely. He's not dead and he's got just a little too much spirit to be a construct of one of our family, so I'm fairly sure this isn't just my afterlife."

"Hmm, really? Another of us." And from a whole other reality, at that. Maybe this angel would prove to be slightly intelligent and useful. Maybe they too wouldn't be loyal, brainwashed soldiers. And maybe Balthazar might start dancing and stop drinking.

Still, even if he wasn't very sure about this other angel, one could still hope. It was something to mull over, at least; just one more piece in the game to figure out.

But, wait, afterlife? "What's to say it is the afterlife, as you have so colorfully put it?"

Intelligent, certainly. Loyal, also certainly. Brainwashed? Aziraphale seemed about half and half. He was stuffy and serious, but had enough of a sense of humor that Gabriel had hope for him. The fact he'd actually disobeyed orders, actually questioned, was what sealed the deal, as it were. Aziraphale was a brother Gabriel could invest in.

Though maybe not in ways Balthazar was thinking.

The archangel snorted. "Well, let's see, bro: I was killed by Lucifer and then I woke up here. The linearity of time indicates something coming after your life has ended is called an afterlife."

"Then by your reasoning, everyone else here should also be dead," he continued. Which, honestly, wouldn't surprise him, and what an...interesting afterlife this would be. So much for not having to worry about anything anymore, but it was much better than purgatory or, gasp, nothing at all. "Have you heard of anyone else kicking the bucket after you woke up here?"

"Actually, I'd been wondering if you were all constructs to occupy me," Gabriel said with a shrug. "It's be just my luck to wind up dead and then with universe full of people who aren't actually real. Where's the fun in that?"

Sure, he created them all the time, but he couldn't live in a world of them. Even TV-Land had only really been fun because of the element of realness--in that case, Sam and Dean.

"Doesn't sound like much of an afterlife to me." But then again, Balthazar had never given it much thought. Thinking about where angels go when they die was a subject that was really best thought about when completely hammered, and despite his boozing tendency, it wasn't something that happened him.

"It sounds more like a punishment."

Gabriel gave him an ironic look. "Uh, yeah. Duh." That's what he'd feared, at first. Sure the mystery was intriguing, but in general, the idea of everything around him being a construct? Not fun.

So maybe it was horrible, but he was thankful that, chances were, the people around him were actually real. And he didn't really care if it was horrible or not. Loneliness sucked. "But to answer your question: as far as I know I'm the only one who has."

"I'm sorry; you think you're being punished, why? Because you ran away to Earth and charaded as a pagan god? I'm sure if Daddy wanted to punish you, he would've done it sooner rather than later." And who knew if dear Daddy was even around to doll out punishment anymore? If Balthazar recalled, Lucifer was the only one who had ever received a spanking while their Father was still around.

"Well, I can assure you I'm real, at the very least. I'm positive the others are too, the poor bastards."

Because Loki wasn't exactly a benign pagan god. Because he'd spent so long pretending to be something he wasn't that he couldn't be anything else any more. Because he should have tried harder to convince Michael to let it go. Because he abandoned his family.

Because he did nothing to help humanity, those who mattered and suffered most, until it was almost too late.

"There's reasons," he said with a dismissive shrug. "I debunked that theory a while back. Right now I'm just running with an alternate reality, but it's too seamless to be Lucifer's doing. I know how he builds things, and this isn't his style. Not exactly, anyway. And Michael doesn't have the imagination."

Therefore, left unsaid, there was only one.

"Hm." It was all he could say, could think to say. He honestly didn't believe their Father had anything to do with this. And why would he? To punish them? Balthazar scoffed at the very thought. Their Father had technically been punishing all of Heaven ever since he popped out of existence, leaving everything in Michael's and Raphael's psychotic hands.

But for whatever reason, they were here. It was better to focus on this than all the crap they had left at home.

"For the record, I sincerely doubt Daddy sent us here. Anyway, we could argue this for this rest of the century. We should just leave it be."

"Yeah? And who else has that power?" Gabriel lifted his eyebrows at his brother, but then waved a hand as if to do away with the subject. "So, forget the who, just deal with the how, the why and the getting out of here, huh?" It made sense. It was practical, removed one consideration, and yet ... Gabriel huffed, half a sigh and half a deprecating laugh. "I can't do that."

He'd spent too long just 'leaving things be'. He'd only just stepped out of that mentality, and he still didn't quite know at what cost (even if that cost wasn't the world). There was no way he could step, willingly, back into it. If it was Dad behind this, he had to know why--why He'd left, why He was subjecting Gabriel to this now after years of nothing.

Obviously, Balthazar had turned into the only angel with any common sense anymore. Gabriel wouldn't let the subject to and there was nothing he could say to make him. He could be annoyed, would be, but there were things he couldn't let go either and wasn't going to even try, so he supposed there was little he could retaliate with.

"Shall I leave you to clogging Father's answering machine, then?" As it was, Balthazar was quite happy to leave things just be. He knew the consequences of getting too involved with something.

Gabriel glanced toward the altar and then shook his head with a deprecating smile, shoving himself to his feet with a quick, loose movement. "Ah, forget it; somehow I don't think I'm gonna have any luck today, and I already got more answers than I was expecting. But, little bro." He lifted an eyebrow and snapped his fingers at Balthazar. "If you're so hot on staying out of it, then just what are you doing here in Dad's phone box?"

What a wonderful question, unfortunately, not one Balthazar could fully answer. Maybe because it felt the most like home, maybe because despite his aloof attitude this place left him the most comfortable, or maybe he was just a masochist. Instead of answering right away, the blond stood in a controlled way, simply shrugging one of his shoulders in a nonchalant manner.

"Funny how you can't get anything straight out of the old man, but He still manages to get answers to you, anyway." Whatever he had been looking, Balthazar found he was satisfied in his search now. The need to be here had dwindled and now he would be happy to leave. "Do keep out of trouble, Gabriel. I know you're not very good at that."

"Sure, it's hilarious," Gabriel said with a snort. Absolutely hilarious, how Dad apparently didn't actually need any of them and you could never tell when he was around. Even when it was your job to know where the answers were going.

"Hey, I'm great at keeping out of trouble," the archangel protested, and then smirked. "I'm just a specialist at putting others in it. You're my brother, so you get a warning: you just got put on my list."

"I'm quivering in fear, Gabriel." There may have been the faintest of smirks on his face, his eyebrows raised in an incredulous way at the fact that he was on the archangel's list. He made his way towards the door, though. He couldn't possibly let Gabriel think he was actually funny.

"Give me time and you will be," Gabriel called after him as the other angel left, amusement written all over his face. As long as Balthazar didn't look back, the amusement would drop a moment later.

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