caveofsapphires | smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

WHO: EVERYONE. All PCs thus far will be in this log, through active tagging or implication.
WHAT: THRILLS. SPILLS. Hiking trip toward the Diamond City.
WHERE: The Overworld.
WHEN: Forward-dated to May 1st (Tuesday) through May 7th (Monday).
WARNINGS: May contain violence or other mentions of physical harm. This is not summer camp.
NOTES: More information can be found on the OOC post here. Please read it!

Gathered in the morning haze, Sleepers were brought to the mouth of the Cave with plenty of supplies and equipment. Compasses that would point them toward the City. Backpacks full of clothes and food, medical kits, tents and even weapons. Stun rifles and knives — to fight off any unwanted company, they said. ("Watch out for their bite," Ryan had commented. "Those fuckers are downright feral.") The straight and narrow path would get them there in six days if they kept a good clip. They were sent off just like that. Refusals to leave were met with a wall of guard force officers blocking the entrance back into the cave city. No way to go but forward, unless someone was particularly stalwart about remaining.

From the exterminator's station near the mouth, leaving the Cave was as simple as a short hike upward into the fresh air of the Overworld. Dust and an uncomfortable sort of heat pervaded the atmosphere, light winds stirring up the sand and teasing the meager bits of vegetation that had grown. No matter what direction you looked... it was all wasteland, cracked ground and desolate emptiness. Jutting up from scarred ground were boulders and small spires made entirely of glass and patches of stone; instead of reflecting the harsh sunlight, they seemed to absorb it and only add to the muted loneliness of the atmosphere. As far as the eye could see, there was no life to be found.

With no other option, the Sleepers eventually made their way onward.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The old Doctor had refused the weapons. Really, he was an old man (even if by Gallifreyan standards he could still be considered a youth), how would he even manage a knife? It was too big and unweildy for him to trust himself with it for smaller things. The gun would've been easier, but he remained firm in his refusal until they gave in. The rest he took, slinging the pack over his shoulder. At least they didn't expect him to carry a tent; he was already concerned with his ability to keep up with the rest of the group with what he did have to carry.

He followed the others out of the cave, toying with the compass and, once the sun hit, was glad of his tendancy to dress more conservatively. Once he caught a proper view of the terrain, well. He'd seen similar, and simply shrugged off the desolation, getting his bearings easily enough with that compass. "This will come in handy, won't it?" he commented to himself, a smug smile forming across his lips.

Hearing Gabriel's comment, the Doctor glanced over and approached the man, brow quirked with obvious curiosity. Gabriel wasn't one for books, so unless the man had caught pictures of the place elsewhere... "How is it supposed to look?" he asked.

Gabriel waved a hand vaguely but emphatically at the landscape, struggling for words. "Not like this," he finished at last, irritable and strangely unnerved. "Green. Foresty. Fieldsy. And okay, with the occasional scrap of desert. Even that was nothing like this. There's nothing here. No life."

Just desolation. The archangel realised just how disconcerted he'd sounded and checked himself. It took him a moment, frowning, to realise it wasn't just the memory of what should have been here that was making him feel like this. It was the desolation, period. The scar on the land. It had been a long, long time since he'd done much with the land itself instead of with those populating it, but he still remembered what the world had been like back then.

Wild. Open. Lush. Dangerous, yes, but dangerous because of the sheer amount of life in it. And beautiful for all that danger. This ... this made his human heart clench with the thought of everything his Father had made that had been destroyed. He hadn't been expecting that reaction.

"But at least we won't have any trouble cooking meals," he added with an attempt at levity, trying to rearrange his expression into something more upbeat and cheerful. He didn't quite make it; couldn't quite help the hurt in his eyes as he looked out over the landscape.

"Hmm, yes. I imagine there should be more flora, but this does give me some theories as to the possible nature of the disaster." The Doctor glanced about as he spoke, but returned his attention to Gabriel fairly quickly, brows furrowed with a bit of a squint. "You sound as though you've seen it first-hand," he commented, matter-of-factly. Did it really bother this man that the land was so devastated? That seemed... surprising, from one such as this, but everyone had their surprises, and the Doctor had to admit he barely knew Gabriel.

The joke at least got a soft chuckle out of the Doctor. "Yes, the heat may become an issue." And the sun. At least they'd included some sunblock, hah.

"So do I," Gabriel said darkly. Communication. Dreams. The idea, and transmitting it. He'd used to do all that, once. He'd always had a soft spot for great inventors because of that. And he knew, very well, just what sorts of things humanity could invent that could do this kind of thing.

"Though I have to admit the glass is a surprise," he added, glancing at one particular spike and cocking his eyebrow at it. Then he looked back at the Doctor with a blink. "I ... have."

He frowned. Huh. So that's what they must've planted in his head this time around. It felt ... right. Real. Like the last one, except it was in a way both more unnerving and less. His last memory hadn't belonged to any part of him; once its intensity had worn off, it had been almost amusing how anachronistic the memory had truly been. Amusing, but frightening because of how little it fit and how well they had made it fit.

This was different. Two thousand years spent wandering the Earth different. Before then, countless millennia flying over it, passing out messages and--before humanity--dwelling in Dad's creation. This kind of memory, knowing the landscape, the world his Father had made ... it was his. Gabriel's. And that it belonged to Sylvester too made him uncomfortable on a totally different level.

"I got taken in a few days ago," he said, a little absently because he was sorting through his impressions of the surface and what it ought to be.

"It's not so surprising. Rocks high in silicates that melt due to extreme temperatures and cool rapidly form into glass, much like these," he explained, his hand motioning towards that spike. It was interesting to see, but the ideas he had of what may have caused it made him uneasy. All he could do was hope it had been the humans who'd done it to themselves, and not of extraterestrial origin, which would mean the threat could still be out there.

But he was letting his thoughts get away from him.

Again, his attention turned back to focus on Gabriel. "Taken in?" he asked, clearly confused, but after a few moments of thought, his expression turned to a mix of concern and annoyance. Gabriel had seen it, this world, before the disaster. The Doctor doubted it had been through time travel. "Memory manipulation?"

"Huh." He probably should've known that, but what could he say? It'd been a while. The information got sorted and the list of weapons humanity could possibly have used to fuck themselves over got shorter. Aliens? Eh, it was possible. Supernaturals? Ditto. Especially if there were angels involved.

Gabriel kinda hoped not.

He snorted, throwing the Doctor an amused glance, because it was either that or keep on being depressed and-or bitter, and they wouldn't want that, would they? No. "You actually sound disappointed there, bucko."

Okay, so the 'not sounding bitter' thing didn't really work. Damn.

"Oh, but I am," the Doctor retorted, tone harsher than he'd intended in response to the bitterness. His expression, and tone, softened quickly and he shook his head. "Not with you, I assure you. With a society that thinks this sort of thing is acceptable. I'd heard of it, certainly, but I hadn't seen it in action." Not knowingly, at any rate, and that thought only worried him more.

"Is it distinguishable? From your real memories?" Whatever pretenses he'd held in the cave of their memories being dreams was gone, with the guard force not around to do anything about it, and he really was concerned about how these new memories affected people.

Gabriel decided, there and then, that it would probably be a bad idea to bring up the fact angels could mess with peoples' memories. Gabriel hadn't usually done it because he wanted people to remember what he did to them, but that kind of mental manipulation was still pretty easy.

The irony that it was now happening to him wasn't lost on him. It did start to make him wonder, again, if this was a construct specifically for him.

"No," the archangel admitted grimly after a moment. He knew it was there in some objective fashion because, unlike his first rehab, he knew what it was the rehab did; not only that, but the Doctor had explicitly called him on the dissonance of his knowing the landscape from a time when, according to his real memories, he shouldn't have been able to know anything about. But he couldn't see the memory's edges. It blended so seamlessly in with the rest of him that it took effort to even maintain the knowledge that, yes, it had to be false.

That, of course, made things even worse. The fact that anyone he came across could have had memories planted and not realize it, could confuse their past with whatever these people wanted them to believe... They seemed to be unsupervized for the trip to the city, but what about when they got there? Would these things continue? Or had anyone even gone ahead of them in the first place? "Do you recall any part of the, ah, the procedure they used? To give you these memories?"

The sun was strong, though, and he lifted a hand to his brow after asking the question, paused, and patted Gabriel on the shoulder, uttering, "Come, let's find some shade." There weren't many options, but one of the taller spires had enough for the two of them to get some protection while the group sorted itself out to make the long trek.

It was extremely worrying, especially given what Gabriel had been. Of course, he no longer was, but the fact that they'd managed to somehow take his Grace and make him human, let alone revive him ... Well, there was a reason Gabriel believed God was involved.

The archangel gave the old man an exasperated look, but submitted to the direction, making for one of the spires. There, he spun on his heel, his hands raised in an emphatic gesture of wry frustration. "If I remembered any of it, d'you think I'd forget that the memory isn't real? Nuh-uh. I'd be able to trace it for sure."

He was ... pretty sure.

Giving the man a calm smile, the Doctor shook his head gently. "It's possible. If the memory fits so well, how would you know which one had been added?" He could be understanding when the situation required it, and, well, Gabriel's frustration was certainly understandable. The Doctor would be equally frustrated to discover memories that shouldn't be there! "Either they've removed the memory of the ordeal or you've somehow blocked it off due to trauma," he commented. Both were viable.

"Is there anything... any other memories you think are out of place?" Probably a long shot, since the memories would have to come up for him to recognize them for what they were.

"If I had a lead I could track it down no matter how well it fit," Gabriel snapped, but his tone lacked energy. It made sense--if he could only remember just what they'd done, he'd have an origin for the whole shebang. And yet.

With a sound somewhere between a grunt and a snort he leaned back against the spire, hissing a bit at the heat and looking down at his singed fingers with a frown. "There's the one they gave me before. The one with the wedding cake. I didn't know that one wasn't real until after a few days had passed."

But he'd known what the rehab did, now. He'd known and he still hadn't found it. With a sigh he rubbed his face and looked out over the landscape, and in that moment his amber eyes looked ancient. "This kind of thing isn't supposed to be able to happen to me."

The wedding cake, the one Gabriel had mentioned when they'd first met. The Doctor frowned. If he'd known the man more before their first encounter, that might have read as something off. As it was, he hadn't picked up on it being so unusual for Gabriel. How many of his encounters had had something wrong with them and he'd not noticed?

The Doctor paid attention to the wording of that statement. Most would say things like 'this can't happen to me', a surprised expression when something that always happened to someone else suddenly happened to you. But Gabriel spoke as though, even if it could happen to him, it wouldn't have worked. "Why is that, then?" he asked with a half-smile.

At first Gabriel didn't say anything. He hadn't really advertised what he was, except once when he was drunk to that British guy. And of course advertising it to his brothers didn't count.

He could say that he'd been a pagan god. He could keep that cover; only his brothers knew the difference. But pagan gods weren't actually all that powerful ... well, in comparison to angels, anyway. Still, the Doctor wouldn't know the difference. It wasn't like Gabriel had forgotten how to be the Trickster in a month.

"I taught you all your tricks."

Lies. Just more lies, on top of the ones the Caretaker was forcing on them, on top of the ones Gabriel had lived with for too long. He exhaled a long, weary sigh. "Because that kind of thing isn't possible to do to an archangel."

"An archangel?" the Doctor repeated, a hint of surprise in his voice. Perhaps a species who planted themselves in human society, relying on their beliefs to give themselves a suitable position of power. Or, perhaps he truly believed he was an archangel. Who was the Doctor to argue? What it meant was that either this man was delusional, or that he wasn't human, and that this sort of thing had never happened to him before, and in the Doctor's experiences, the latter was more likely.

As curious as he was about Gabriel's abilities, the fellow was clearly not in a state to start inquiring. "Let us hope these memories fade on our trip, hmm? We still have no idea what the city holds for us. Could be we'll be the first to arrive." Which would mean there wouldn't be any facilities in place for further memory manipulation.

Gabriel gave him a sidelong glance and an ironic smile. "You don't believe me." Of course he didn't. The Doctor was a scientist, and even though angels were actually eminently metaphysical they were considered to be the realm of religion and belief more than something real. He shrugged. "Can't say you're the first. Luckily it's not like my existence depends on it."

Not that it mattered right now anyway either, since his Grace was gone, his wings torn out, his powers vanished. He glanced toward the sky, unaware of the momentary longing that flashed across his face. He'd managed not to think too hard about his wings. "They'll fade," he said, his tone lackluster. "Like the other one. After a few days it settled in and I could see it."

"I believe it's possible for you to believe you are one," the Doctor explained. "And it's certainly possible for you to have abilities that would make that belief, well, believable. I've seen many strange things in my travels, my good man." He couldn't even begin to describe them all, and he was still young! There was so much more to see! Oh how he hoped to get his ship back...

"That's good! It still lingers, though, does it?" False memories that stuck around didn't seem very appealing to the Doctor. He couldn't imagine them being comfortable for anyone else, either.

That was a definite 'no', then, if the old man would prefer to believe it was a farce or a delusion instead of even considering the possibility of the truth. Gabriel shook his head, amused and wry and a bit weary. "You know, that kind of attitude is what I used to prank people for. Just call a spade a spade, already."

Usually he didn't much care whether people believed in him or not, but sometimes ... sometimes it was infuriating. It only reminded him of how much Dad hadn't done when he could have. "They stick around," he confirmed. "They're just not so ninja."

"What may appear to be a spade is not always a spade," the Doctor retorted. "I mean no disrespect, you understand. I've come across many things that were not as they appeared. If you truly believe yourself to be the archangel Gabriel, then I will concede the point." If only to prevent an argument over it. It was certainly possible, as out there as it was, and he liked the man too much to believe he'd lie about it, especially given the circumstances.

It did make him laugh, though. He'd never thought to find himself face-to-face with an archangel, least of all in a place like this.

Shaking his head, he patted Gabriel's arm. "If my understanding is correct, then, you found yourself here, with none of your abilities, able to be manipulated much like any other being..." A frown formed. "That certainly says something for the power these people hold..."

The borderline condescension was exasperating and amusing at once, but if only because the Doctor did the 'old man' shtick so well, Gabriel wasn't going to argue. Well, that and because he already felt too tired for it. And he didn't actually care that much at this point. Maybe later.

At that comment his lips twisted a bit with ironic humour. "There were extenuating circumstances. I'd just been killed by my own damned brother. First archangel to die, for the record, so it's entirely possible I got shoved through into another universe without the people here needing to do much at all except snatch me up in their fishing net."

Both brows shot up. "Killed?" the Doctor repeated, surprised. What even happened to... well, archangels after they died? If Gabriel had been the first, he supposed the man wouldn't know. If, somehow, they did wind up finding themselves in another universe... Of course, the idea of this being a parallel universe hadn't really come to the Doctor before, and now that it had been suggested, he did think it made some sense. Snatching people from other universes, bringing them here, and not just the living but the dead as well. That really did give the Doctor an idea of just how powerful whomever was responsible could be, and he didn't like it.

These thoughts he kept to himself, however. At least for the time being. But it was obvious the Doctor was doing some serious thinking by the solemn expression on his face, and after a moment, he shrugged it off and offered Gabriel a smile. "It certainly seems like we may have our work cut out for us, doesn't it? Figuring out what's happened, how we got here... And, of course, how to get home."

"Got my own blade through the chest," Gabriel said with a cheerfulness that didn't quite reach the level actually required to be called 'cheerful'. "It kinda sucks, so I really wouldn't recommend it."

Only thing that could kill an archangel--an archangel's blade. And now he thought about it, what he'd just been saying made a lot of sense. Archangels weren't exactly bound by time and space, or at least not to the extent of lesser beings. Though his mind shied away from the memory of the overwhelming pain of his Grace failing, if there was any part of an angel akin to a soul--and there was; Anael had had a soul as Anna, and Gabriel, Balthazar and Aziraphale certainly had to have souls now--it made a lot of sense if that part of him had been shunted away through a rip in universes.

Though that did, still, beg the question of how Balthazar and Aziraphale had gotten here, at least it did imply that nothing had happened to Gabriel himself but natural forces. The people here had just taken advantage of them, knowingly or unknowingly.

Gabriel's answering grin was sketchy and a bit twisted. "I'd like to see that, now. Especially as, thanks to some of my idiotic brothers, I'm not even sure 'home' still exists."

The Doctor put a hand to his chest. "Yes, I imagine that would be quite painful." After a brief pause, he canted his head curiously. "You remember it? Dying?" Time Lord memory of death tended to vary, and since the Doctor hadn't actually died yet... Not that that was an experience he looked forward to, or he would have regenerated long before.

The latter comment had him ever more curious. There were other archangels floating around, were there? And if Gabriel was the first to die, had they died after, or had they been brought here without dying?

But it was the part about 'home' that had him most curious. "How do you mean?"

Any trace of amusement fled Gabriel's face and his hand automatically came up in a mimicry of the Doctor's, touching the place where Lucifer had stabbed him. "Yeah," he said quietly, "I remember."

In truth, the betrayal had been as sharp as the pain of actually dying. Up until that moment some part of him, the part of him that had loved Lucifer, had wept for him, had refused to side against him for so long, still hadn't quite believed Lucifer would kill him.

The Doctor's voice dragged him forcibly out of the recollection, but the archangel's gaze was still distant as he looked at the other man. Then he seemed to shake himself and his expression closed down into an grim smile. "It was Armageddon. Coupla knuckleheads and one of my younger brothers managed to stop it with some help from yours truly, but apparently one of my other older brothers objected. There's an angelic civil war raging back home. Only know about it because of Balthazar over there."

He jerked his head in the direction of the group and the tall, greying angel sort-of visible. "He's from a time a ways after me. And it ain't going so well. There might not be anything left by the time we figure anything out."

The Doctor felt a hint of guilt for making Gabriel remember it so. Everyone had moments they didn't want to dwell on, didn't want to remember, and here he was, bringing up probably the worst moment of Gabriel's life - considering it had been the end of it. And it had been with his own blade, which had the Doctor curious as to what had happened, but perhaps he should ask about that another time. The two weren't exactly close.

His gaze followed towards the group, though it was difficult to pick out just who Gabriel was indicating. It wasn't all that important, at any rate. He'd keep the name in mind should he come across anyone by it, however. Turning his gaze back to Gabriel, the Doctor offered a weak smile. "Perhaps when you return, you'll return to your own time. That might be enough to change how things go." Who really knew with these things?

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