caveofsapphires | goddamn your confusion, he's got pretty persuasion [closed]

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goddamn your confusion, he's got pretty persuasion [closed]

WHO: Aziraphale, Gabriel, Re-l [closed]
WHAT: Aziraphale discovers his persuasive powers via the obnoxious catalyst of Gabriel and Re-l in his bidness.
WHERE: Gates's, the outer ring, Diamond City.
WHEN: May 15, late afternoon.
WARNINGS: Possible mild violence. ~~Gabriel.~~

-

The first few days, when he wasn't exploring, Aziraphale was sleeping. There was a great deal that he had to do to make his - John's - home livable again, primarily dusting, but he was still trying to acclimatize to the fact that he'd have to do it all by hand. As a result, he didn't even start until the Tuesday morning after they'd arrived.

It was fortunate that John's shop was not similar enough to Aziraphale's own in London to make him nostalgic. In layout it was not terribly different - the large front room full of shelves crammed with things, the small back room with a squeaky old door, the bedroom and kitchen upstairs, and, of course, the layers of dust on everything - but in every other respect, from the technology to the well-worn cookware in the kitchen, it was different enough that he could convince himself he'd had nothing to do with the creation of it. The smell unnerved him, though, he had to admit. He felt that a shop full of knowledge in whatever form should smell like paper and binding and glue, but the metal shelves and the assortment of differently-sized consoles behind the plywood desk made the whole place smell like the mobile shop Crowley had made him go to once. Even the Library in the Cave had smelled more right.

The back room had been a nice surprise, of course. There wasn't anything by way of paper books in the front of the shop - presumably they hadn't been profitable for John, assuming John had actually existed - but there was a small shelf in the back room absolutely stuffed with paper books. He hadn't recognized any of the titles, of course, although he'd spent a mad moment looking through the shelf for a copy of Lyrical Ballads, or The Picture of Dorian Grey, or a Bible.

That was impossible. Nor were any of these first editions. Still, some of them looked interesting, at the very least, and he made a note of several possible starting points. If he had books, he had some sort of familiar ground, and he was da-- bloody well going to take advantage of any he could find.

Another lay upstairs, sitting on the stove as if waiting for him: a kettle. He smiled to himself when he saw that before filling it up, putting it on to boil, and locating with great ease a bag of looseleaf Earl Grey in the cabinet by the sink. He found and washed a tea infuser, pot, and mug just as the kettle whistled, poured it in, and sat in relaxed silence as it steeped. No hope for milk, of course, but there was sugar.

He'd get to cleaning, he thought as he took the first sip of what was really the best tea he could hope for under the circumstances. He really would. Eventually.

Later, he would be very angry with himself for leaving the front door unlocked. Very angry indeed.

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For one brief moment Gabriel considered not calling Re-l off, but it was fleeting. Aziraphale just didn't know how to lie, didn't know how to be anything but earnest. That didn't mean that Gabriel wasn't still angry. Sure, Gabriel himself had done some pretty bad things, but only to people who deserved it.

Re-l hadn't deserved it. And Gabriel was family.

"Let him up, Re-l," the archangel said tersely. "I don't think it was deliberate. Aziraphale toes the line too much for that." Then he looked Aziraphale full in the face and added with a slow smile that made his amber eyes harden and glint dangerously, "Besides, if anyone's going to be smiting my brothers it'll be me."

There was a finality, a weight, to Gabriel's last statement which lingered in the closeness of the shop; the way the archangel stood was with a kind of wired ease that only the powerful attained, the sort that radiated presence. Not that he intended to do any smiting at all, because he didn't have the brothers to spare, but there was a point to be made here.

Gabriel's order made Re-l want to refuse, to show that she could disobey, but Aziraphale's own apology had been honest, and that counted for something. She took her arm away and sheathed the knife, but looked into his eyes to make one last point.

"Even if you didn't do it on purpose, that was a total violation of who I am." She spoke low but clear. "I don't care if I'm walking off a cliff and you could save me. I don't care if not doing it would destroy the world. If you ever take control of my mind again, you will die."

She turned to Gabriel.

"As for you, I don't think you have the right to say anything. Not when you can peer into people's soul and paw at their memories. From where I'm standing, it's hard to even see the difference between you."

She swung herself back over the counter, and walked to the exit.

"I'll leave you two to each other's company." She caught Aziraphale's eye and nodded. "I'll come back when I've read the books."

He nodded at Re-l, guilt clawing at him. Watching her move toward the door, he was sure she'd never trust him. The death threat was far less troubling. He had liked her, honestly, before she'd started bickering with Gabriel; she seemed sensible and driven, and there were worse qualities to have. There were few enough of them here that isolation wasn't likely to help anyone.

What she said to Gabriel was most troubling of all. Aziraphale's gaze shifted to the archangel's face, clear and attentive and, above all, sharp. Their meeting at the caravan made much more sense with this information. That long stare, the request for details . . . What had Gabriel seen in his memories? What had he learned, and what had he assumed?

Edited 2012-05-22 14:00 (UTC)

Re-l's accusation made Gabriel stiffen. With everything he'd done to people, of all the things he had come up with, mind-control was the absolute last thing he would have chosen. It was the one thing, the one trick, that Lucifer had taught him which he'd never used. Part of it was because it had been so much more satisfying watching those who deserved punishment walk into their just desserts on their own. Another part, because there was more power in consent than not. It was how souls became owned.

Denying humanity free will? Controlling them, without owning their souls? Sure, it was possible. But that was what Lucifer had wanted. That was what Michael would have seen done. That was what Raphael would have let happen.

Gabriel was not Michael. He was not Raphael. He was not Lucifer.

"I see what people are," he snapped, his body tense, hands twitching slightly. "The sum of their choices, their vices, their virtues." Then he looked at her, and if his gaze at Aziraphale had been cold, this one was icy. If he'd still had his wings, they would have filled the room; as it was, the tension in his body made him seem so much larger than he should've been. "I do not rob them of their free will. Ever."

Re-l looked away from him and opened the door. Some part of her felt a little guilty, because he had been kind to her before, that part was small and ineffective. She was angry on many different levels, embarrassed about the weaknesses she'd already revealed and still haunted somewhere by the fear of what her soul could show. She didn't have the strength to apologise.

"No," she said. "You just judge them from a distance, thinking that you're better than they are, because you understand them, because you can make them play your little games and watch them when they fail." It was a shot in the dark, but not an unwarranted one. "But I don't see the difference between moving the pieces yourself, and setting up the game so only you can win."

Which was what all the Proxies had done. She was proof of that control herself.

She opened the door and stepped out into the light, outlined for a moment as a black shadow. And then the door slammed and she was gone.

Despite his anger, he felt another stab of guilt at the archangel's words. I do not rob them of their free will. Because it was not the right thing to do, and because it was dangerous, and because it was the sort of thing that his superiors would have done. Most of all, though, because it was precisely this that Adam had resisted his very nature to avoid. That was the very worst of it.

He sensed on some level, perhaps psychological, surely not supernatural, Gabriel's mental presence. This was the wrath of an archangel in miniature, but while Aziraphale felt pressure, he did not feel fear. Instead, he looked at Gabriel calmly, with as much opacity as he could manage, although he was sure some of his anger leaked through.

He'd thought he was human. It had, in a very strange way, been a relief. Now he was some combination of human and angel and had no way of predicting who or what he was answerable to. If Gabriel presumed to judge him now - well. It would not be a nice conversation.

Re-l's words were cutting and they made Gabriel's face tighten. He wanted to argue, but even if she hadn't already been gone, he wasn't sure he could have. Just like he couldn't have at Dean's parting shot, even though his lack of a response then had been as much a matter of near-blinding, choking rage at the hunter's utter hypocrisy.

He felt rage now. And he couldn't argue, because she was right. He always gave his targets the chance to escape, but it had been a long time since he'd chosen targets who may have actually used those exits. Everyone he'd picked in the last few centuries had been to punish, not to teach. The people who would always fall, no matter how many loopholes he left for them, because he had stopped being a guide a long time ago.

It filled him with an odd sort of heat and tension. Rage, in a human body. Helplessness, because the emotion felt much too big for this puny body of flesh and bones. With a jerk his head snapped around so he looked at Aziraphale instead, his eyes hard with restraint. Images flashed past in the swirl of the other angel's soul.

Crowley. Adam. Light. People. A fiery sword.

He looked his brother in the eye, and wordlessly dared Aziraphale to deny him his right to see with angelic eyes.

Aziraphale did not look away.

It wasn't a matter of not wanting Gabriel to see. Aziraphale would not have denied him, not when he'd already decided to tell Gabriel what he knew. It was a matter of honesty. And perhaps it was hypocritical when Aziraphale had lied to him once, but they'd only just met and Gabriel had been an unknown quantity and it was Crowley, for whom he would lie to anyone but God.

"You should have said," he told Gabriel, rough and furious. "I wouldn't have minded if you'd said."

"There wasn't any point," Gabriel snapped. "You were already telling me anything I've been seeing. It would have just complicated things."

And maybe he'd been afraid Aziraphale would ask him not to look, like Balthazar had, and the archangel would have felt obliged to not. Putting limits on his eyes. Wearing blinkers. His felt for his brothers, that they were blind, but he couldn't, wouldn't, limit his own.

He was still waiting for Aziraphale to tell him to look away, still waiting to be rejected by yet another member of his family. Michael and Raphael had taken him for granted; his younger brothers hadn't even known there was any more of a problem than the gaping void Lucifer had left; his own Father refused him guidance; even Castiel, half-fallen, looked at him with nothing other than disdain.

The last brother who had asked for him, who had wanted him around, had been Lucifer himself.

"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."

"... I can't."

"Complicated things." Disdain dripped from Aziraphale's lips. "Funny, I would think the fact that I trust you is an excellent reason to tell the truth. And instead you let me talk myself hoarse about things you already knew."

That was the infuriating thing. He felt foolish - and helpless, again, a feeling that was quickly sliding to the bottom of his 'enjoyable emotions' list. If he'd been at full strength he would have trusted himself, both his corporeal and metaphysical forms, but now he didn't know what he could and couldn't do, and apparently even talking was dangerous. And Gabriel had taken advantage of that.

His pride, which he refused to admit he had, could not stand for that. He wanted an apology. He'd given his, and he'd give it again and again if it was desired, but he wanted Gabriel to say that he was wrong.

Still, he did not look away. He wanted the archangel to see that he was angry and that he'd done something wrong, but for some reason looking away felt . . . wrong. As if, should he break their eye contact, something would shatter irreparably. A cruel voice in the back of his head told him to pull away and let him go - for all the things he must have pulled out of his head, for the lie and for the hypocrisy of the condemnation in his eyes, for making a fool of him, and for knowing what might be too much - but he ignored it.

He wasn't looking away. Everyone else who'd found out he could see souls, even Balthazar, his brother from his own universe, had been unnerved, afraid. They had all looked away.

Aziraphale wasn't. The angel's soul wheeled under Gabriel's eyes, the images he could pick out through the tones of yellow and brown repeating over and over. Crowley. Adam. A bright light. A flaming sword. The apocalypse factory. Bookshelves. A cottage. Wine, indulgence, the Ritz.

And people. Always people.

'Funny, I would think the fact that I trust you is an excellent reason to tell the truth.'

Gabriel broke their stare, his jaw working, taking deep breaths to try and stabilise himself. It wasn't anger he felt, now. It was just shame. Funny, how his little brothers kept on humbling him. First Castiel. Now Aziraphale. They were so much alike, in some very important ways. Suddenly Gabriel wished he knew what had become of the Aziraphale from his own universe.

"I'm sorry," he said, and the words felt like they came from a great distance, but with quiet sincerity. The archangel couldn't remember the last time he'd apologised for anything.

This time, it felt right.

He'd wanted an apology, but he hadn't expected one. When Gabriel looked away and actually said it - no beating around the bush, no fake bravado - Aziraphale was frankly stunned. He backed up slightly and watched the archangel with some concern, unsure how to respond.

"Thank you," he said after a moment, studying the floorboards very seriously. "As am I. It won't happen again."

This was so odd. Standing here in a human body with an archangel. Nothing in his existence thus far had prepared him for such an experience. It was bizarre. He felt a very strong urge for his abandoned cup of tea, to flee from the uncomfortable honesty on Gabriel's face, but forced himself to stay, fingers curling against the cool metal of the shelf at his back.

Edited 2012-05-22 15:39 (UTC)

"You don't know that," Gabriel pointed out, studying the front of the shop with far more intensity than it required. He snorted a little with helpless, bitter laughter. "Hell, you didn't know you could still do it until just now, did you? What's to say you won't do it again by accident?"

Frankly, the thought was frightening. The sensation of--Gabriel hadn't even been able to tell where the influence had begun or ended. With the words, of course, and yet he hadn't actually felt it come upon him at all.

And it scared him. He was an archangel, and the potential in his little brother's power scared him.

Gabriel looked back at Aziraphale, but just a little to the side. He'd seen all of Aziraphale's soul that he possibly could with his angel-eyes in the state they were, and yet now, with the brazen honesty with which Aziraphale had let him look upon him, Gabriel found he didn't have the heart to do so again. "Is there anything else you've gotten back, or was this the first?"

"I do know that," Aziraphale told him, as patiently as he could manage, "because now I know that I can. I know what the consequences are. And I know I don't have the wisdom or the right to make decisions for anyone. Whatever I have to do to control it, I will do."

He wasn't sure what that would entail, as yet. He obviously couldn't practice on other people, but when he'd done it before, when he'd had full control over himself and wasn't dependent on the whims of someone or something he had no faith in, there had been a way to pitch the voice, a hint of the language that the angels spoke, language before language, or without language. It had conferred a sense of power, and perhaps there was his problem: it had been substituted for adrenaline. Strong emotion. In this case, wrath.

Well, he'd simply have to control himself better.

His gaze softening at the sight of Gabriel's obvious discomfort, he shook his head slightly. "It was the first. Hopefully not the only." He didn't want to use it, couldn't think of a situation in which he'd use it willingly. He'd been perfectly happy not to have it. His lips curved unsteadily into something that might have seen as a smile, if a very, very bad one. "It would be ironic if you regained the morally unambiguous talent and I only got . . . this."

There was the additional point that, if he'd regained something else, he would have told Gabriel, but to bring that up seemed a bit like rubbing it all in. The archangel seemed unsteady enough as it was.

Gabriel wanted to argue, wanted to tell Aziraphale that he couldn't possibly, but the firmness in the other angel's voice stopped him. It had been a long time, such a long time, since Gabriel had been able to trust one of his brothers. Since he'd wanted to trust one of his brothers.

That was the difference between Aziraphale and Castiel. Castiel had judged him. Aziraphale wasn't. And it made Gabriel want to help Aziraphale in a way he hadn't wanted to help Castiel, because Castiel was an idiot who would never listen and make the same mistakes Gabriel himself had. Aziraphale might not listen.

But he wouldn't judge.

All of a sudden the archangel felt a pang of homesickness so sharp and deep that it took his breath away. Gabriel turned on his heel and meandered, suddenly all motion where he had before been so still, his hands flying up to motion in the air. "Yeah, well, you're ahead of our mutual brother there," he said with a smirk, trying to yank his trickster mask back up. It was getting harder every time. "He's been left in the dust so far, the poor idiot. I'd suggest you send out notices, except I'd hate to see a little brother cry."

It would be cruel to comment on the sudden switch in mood, the obvious attempt at levity, so Aziraphale simply smiled, a touch knowingly, and allowed Gabriel the refuge of that mask. He was somewhat ashamed to find that he was comforted by the unintentional and clearly painful show of vulnerability. It meant that he was not the only one who was struggling.

Crowley would have had a lot to say about that thought, but oddly enough it was Adam who came to the forefront of his mind. Adam, whom he'd met in person all of once, who would have been, oh, sixteen when Aziraphale woke up in the Cave, if it was safe to say that he still existed at all. Adam, whom Aziraphale sometimes thought of and pitied, because as isolated as he and Crowley were, Adam was completely alone.

He wondered how Adam would have felt about Gabriel, if he would have understood the layers and complexities of him better than Aziraphale could, and if he could have unpacked all of him at a glance the way he'd done to the two of them at the cusp of the end of the world. There were no definitive answers, but he thought that Adam might have been able to get him to hold still and give him peace, even if just for a moment.

"He'll catch up." Aziraphale sighed, feeling suddenly exhausted. "Soon enough." Hoisting a smile onto his face, he added, "Which reminds me - on the topic of tears - I ought to change into clothes that are slightly less . . . this." He gestured to the kilt and then, impulsively: "Do you like tea? I'll put the kettle on."

The archangel turned around again and snorted with laughter. He didn't quite let himself go, because he suspected the sound might turn somewhat more hysterical than he intended, but he smirked and tutted and shook his head.

"Nope, don't know what I was thinking. That pattern really doesn't suit you." Gabriel turned again and with a casual snap of his fingers, deliberately as if in afterthought, he turned Aziraphale's kilt back into slacks.

He probably should've said no, he had to leave, or something. Something to avoid the possibility of more awkwardness. Instead he stretched, wandering toward the stairs, and called over his shoulder, "Please tell me your tea-set doesn't have a little old lady's floral pattern. I might just have to smite it if it does."

He felt a brief flash of irritation at Gabriel's ability to control his wardrobe - he was certain this would not be the last time that particular power would be abused in that way - but followed him up the stairs anyway. The door to the kitchen at the top of the stairs was unlocked, and the room was small but clean enough, with a round table and two chairs.

Aziraphale wondered briefly who the second chair had originally been intended for. He didn't remember being told anything about John having friends or close family. Perhaps it had come as part of a set, or perhaps there was something about the man he had yet to discover.

"Don't smite my tea things, please," he said mildly. "And no. They're blue. I hope that's not too terribly offensive."

Not offensive, exactly, but not a colour Gabriel particularly liked at this moment (if only because it had been his). "Just blue?" he asked, turning on his heel and giving Aziraphale a mock-appalled face. Somehow he managed to hop backward up the stairs without tripping. "Boring, plain blue? Please. They need some pattern. Just not a grandma's flowers. D'you know how evil those are?"

With a theatrical shudder the archangel turned again, took the last step and pushed open the door with a flourish. Rather than wandering the room, picking things up and looking around in ways that would inevitably annoy Aziraphale, he flopped down into one of the chairs and stretched.

"They're not mine." Aziraphale sighed as he filled the kettle and put it on. "They're his, and I imagine he got what appealed to him." In truth, he'd have preferred what he'd had at the cottage: proper china. From China, several centuries ago. Adam had saved them from the fire, for some reason, so he'd kept them for what he'd said were sentimental reasons. Crowley had claimed he was a pack rat and complained about how unstreamlined the cottage would be with all his stuff popping out of every cabinet.

"What do you have against old ladies?" he added, poking about in the cabinet for something interesting. There was quite a collection in there, mostly looseleaf which was comforting and disconcerting at once. He didn't like all this sameness. The fact that the tea was still fresh was also worrisome. Still, he washed the infuser and filled it with Darjeeling.

There was a tiny smile on his face, concealed from Gabriel as he bustled about the kitchen. The conversation had veered back into ordinary territory, the sort of comfortably absurd discussion that he was already used to having with the archangel.

Well, there was that. And because Sylvester's caravan was Sylvester's caravan and not Gabriel's, the archangel chose to let that part of the conversation drop. Instead he indicated wildly in the air with his hands. "What are you kidding? A little old lady puts her kettle on and her teapot out and you just know you're gonna be stuck there for hours without any escape while she talks your ear off!"

Gabriel may not have been prowling the room, but his gazewas busy taking it in nonetheless, following Aziraphale's progress and peering into the cupboards past the other angel. He wasn't even really trying to be discreet.

There wasn't much to look at. The room was small, dingy, and dark, all the furnishings clearly second-hand and not particularly homey. All the dishes came in twos, which Aziraphale hadn't quite understood, and there was a mismatched collection of flatware in the drawer to the left of the stove. The cupboards were mostly empty, with several mismatched glasses. What food there was was impeccably organized.

"I can't really imagine that you would put up with that sort of thing," Aziraphale said absently, "and certainly not out of politeness. You could just turn her into a frog and go on your merry way." There were, of course, certain elderly women who would not have put up with that sort of silliness if a conversation was supposed to happen, but Aziraphale had no desire to get into an explanation of the metaphysics of Agnes Nutter at this moment. Anyway. She'd have just turned him into a frog in return, most likely.

When the kettle whistled, he poured it to steep and set out the (two, for Someone's sake, why) blue mugs. He did not sit, however, leaving his hand on the quickly warming handle of the teapot, leaning against the stove. The guilt was coming back, now that he wasn't actively being threatened. Shaking his head, he tried to tamp it down and sat across from Gabriel, placing the teapot on the pale unfinished wood of the table.

It was pretty clear that John Gates didn't live nearly as well as Sylvester did, and that was saying something given that Sylvester lived in a caravan. That wasn't the point, though. The caravan was ingenious, well-built, well-maintained and above all homey. Its size was eminently misleading.

"Karma hates people who turn little old ladies into frogs," Gabriel said with a shrug. Okay, so maybe once he did do it, way back when. He was a manipulator of realities; he knew what coincidences looked like! There was no way that all the coincidental bad luck that had fallen on him in the following week had been actually coincidental.

He looked critically at the teapot and made a face, then snapped his fingers. The paint shimmered and turned the blue-green of the ocean, with a school of bright red-and-orange fish swimming around the handle. "There. That's better. And I even made it tasteful for you."

Leaving aside the naked blond merman sitting on a rock on the far side, of course. Sure, there weren't exactly any assets for the merman to show, but the way he was sitting and the coy smirk on his face made it obvious what the picture was. (Gabriel had to resist the urge to make it look like Aziraphale's knuckleheaded fallen brother. That would have been a bit of a give-away.)

Sometimes Aziraphale was amazed by the mutability of emotions - for example, how quickly guilt could turn to irritation at one simple action. His face barely flickered at the shift in color, although once the image registered he did flush slightly. With a calmness that belied his embarrassment and annoyance, he placed his thumb and forefinger on the top of the teapot and turned it so that the picture was facing Gabriel, the unglazed ceramic bottom skidding on the table.

"You're welcome in my home," he said lightly, tilting his chin up at Gabriel with a tense smile. "But please control yourself while you're here." He looked at nothing very much for a moment, and then conceded, "I'll admit the color is nice."

Irritation was better than guilt. Gabriel only laughed, and with a snap of his fingers turned the merman into a maid so at least he had something to look at. (He'd fix it later, before he left.)

"But I am controlling myself, Azzy," he said with a grin, and waggled his eyebrows. "Want me to do worse? I can do worse." He lifted his hand in half a threat and half a tease.

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goddamn your confusion, he's got pretty persuasion [closed]

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