Gabriel (
trickntreats) wrote in
caveofsapphires2012-04-10 06:45 pm
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suddenly my eyes are open [open]
WHO: Gabriel (Sylvester Wilton) and [OPEN]
WHAT: Gabriel got taken in for a memory-modification. Now he's a little bit weirded out.
WHERE: Sleeping quarters, Bakery, Bar, Temple, streets in-between.
WHEN: Tuesday 10 to Saturday 21 April 2012.
This was one Hell of an elaborate prank. Except that Gabriel was starting to doubt that it was a prank, exactly. Dad wouldn't have thrown him into a place where the inhabitants drilled into his skull. Or experimented on him. Or ... did something Gabriel wasn't quite aware of but which must have happened, because going off to the clinic and then waking up in his quarters without knowing the in-between kind of indicated something happened in the in-between. All at once he remembered the 'dancing alien' prank he'd pulled and wondered if this was in any way similar. Maybe Lucifer had done it, except that Gabriel was fairly sure even Lucifer had no idea where archangels went after they died or how to capture them before they went there.
Maybe this was some kind of archangel's afterlife. If so, Gabriel's only hope was that Luci's turned out worse in the end.
With a groan Gabriel rubbed his temples, trying to wish away the ... it wasn't a throb, exactly. More like a hollow ache. He'd tried to snap it away, naturally, but that had only made the headache worse, so he'd stopped.
"Note to self," he told his reflection in the mirror. "This ain't a game anymore, and pushing the line results in ... in ... something. Just because you've already died apparently doesn't mean it can't happen again. I mean, look at the Winchesters."
With that pep-talk, he staggered to his feet and out the door.
The next five days were, in a word, weird. He still had no idea how to bake, but when he walked into the bakery on Tuesday he found himself automatically pulling out the ingredients for icing and had finished making a multi-tier wedding cake before he realised what he was doing. (Of course, then he had get rid of the excess icing. The cake wasn't actually saleable either, but Gabriel figured he deserved a reward for actually doing some baking and not having it completely burn.)
Tuesday night and Wednesday morning he discovered that powerless archangels in human bodies could, indeed, get sick from eating too much sugar. He made it to work--for a little while--he just didn't get much work done. (Instead he spent most of it looking green and slumped on a chair near the cash-register, with neither the appetite for sweets nor the energy to bake.)
On Thursday after work he went to the bar. If he could get sick, maybe he could get drunk too, and then he could get rid of this niggling uneasiness (fear) that Something Was Wrong. He succeeded in getting drunk quite well, and for a happily oblivious night completely forgot what the hell he was meant to be uneasy about, if anything.
He just didn't make it to work on Friday and spent the day in bed, groaning over the hangover, yelling at anyone who made too much noise and then going back to bed to groan some more.
On Saturday he found the Temple, a tiny little hole in the wall whose only two seats were cut into stone and whose altar sported a couple of thick candles. There was another worshipper, but he left when Gabriel told him to skedaddle, and then the archangel had a very unproductive one-sided conversation with the candles. Anyone passing by might have heard the final rather frustrated and faintly echoing refrain of, "Dad, if you can hear me, get me out of here!"
By Sunday morning something had settled in his mind and he finally became aware that he, in fact, had an extra memory that had been hiding by pretending it belonged there. A memory of baking a multi-tier wedding cake, colour-coordinated with the wedding party, with the mother-in-law hovering over his shoulder. The realisation it was there made him shiver.
He imagined it lurking and giggling, and named it Marie.
WHAT: Gabriel got taken in for a memory-modification. Now he's a little bit weirded out.
WHERE: Sleeping quarters, Bakery, Bar, Temple, streets in-between.
WHEN: Tuesday 10 to Saturday 21 April 2012.
This was one Hell of an elaborate prank. Except that Gabriel was starting to doubt that it was a prank, exactly. Dad wouldn't have thrown him into a place where the inhabitants drilled into his skull. Or experimented on him. Or ... did something Gabriel wasn't quite aware of but which must have happened, because going off to the clinic and then waking up in his quarters without knowing the in-between kind of indicated something happened in the in-between. All at once he remembered the 'dancing alien' prank he'd pulled and wondered if this was in any way similar. Maybe Lucifer had done it, except that Gabriel was fairly sure even Lucifer had no idea where archangels went after they died or how to capture them before they went there.
Maybe this was some kind of archangel's afterlife. If so, Gabriel's only hope was that Luci's turned out worse in the end.
With a groan Gabriel rubbed his temples, trying to wish away the ... it wasn't a throb, exactly. More like a hollow ache. He'd tried to snap it away, naturally, but that had only made the headache worse, so he'd stopped.
"Note to self," he told his reflection in the mirror. "This ain't a game anymore, and pushing the line results in ... in ... something. Just because you've already died apparently doesn't mean it can't happen again. I mean, look at the Winchesters."
With that pep-talk, he staggered to his feet and out the door.
The next five days were, in a word, weird. He still had no idea how to bake, but when he walked into the bakery on Tuesday he found himself automatically pulling out the ingredients for icing and had finished making a multi-tier wedding cake before he realised what he was doing. (Of course, then he had get rid of the excess icing. The cake wasn't actually saleable either, but Gabriel figured he deserved a reward for actually doing some baking and not having it completely burn.)
Tuesday night and Wednesday morning he discovered that powerless archangels in human bodies could, indeed, get sick from eating too much sugar. He made it to work--for a little while--he just didn't get much work done. (Instead he spent most of it looking green and slumped on a chair near the cash-register, with neither the appetite for sweets nor the energy to bake.)
On Thursday after work he went to the bar. If he could get sick, maybe he could get drunk too, and then he could get rid of this niggling uneasiness (fear) that Something Was Wrong. He succeeded in getting drunk quite well, and for a happily oblivious night completely forgot what the hell he was meant to be uneasy about, if anything.
He just didn't make it to work on Friday and spent the day in bed, groaning over the hangover, yelling at anyone who made too much noise and then going back to bed to groan some more.
On Saturday he found the Temple, a tiny little hole in the wall whose only two seats were cut into stone and whose altar sported a couple of thick candles. There was another worshipper, but he left when Gabriel told him to skedaddle, and then the archangel had a very unproductive one-sided conversation with the candles. Anyone passing by might have heard the final rather frustrated and faintly echoing refrain of, "Dad, if you can hear me, get me out of here!"
By Sunday morning something had settled in his mind and he finally became aware that he, in fact, had an extra memory that had been hiding by pretending it belonged there. A memory of baking a multi-tier wedding cake, colour-coordinated with the wedding party, with the mother-in-law hovering over his shoulder. The realisation it was there made him shiver.
He imagined it lurking and giggling, and named it Marie.
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He watched the streets, slotting them into his mental map with an equally mental grumble. "Soooo apparently you're a drinker."
It was a prod and a question and an amusement all at once. Not many angels espoused not getting drunk as 'missing out on things'.
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Once upon a time he hadn't known what style was.
"I'm afraid to ask," he sighed, pushing the door open.
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He slid inside after his brother, clapping his hands together once. "Ah, I have fond memories of this place," he said with a grin. "Just not the morning afterward."
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Best to start with wine, though. It was comforting and reminded him of home.
"Hangovers are unpleasant," he agreed, glancing up at Gabriel and wincing at the memory of Thursday morning. "Incidentally, you may not vomit on me tonight."
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In point of fact: he hadn't. He'd managed to avoid throwing up after eating too much cake, but that had been something of a surprising given after he got drunk. It was an experience he never wanted to repeat. Now if only he could figure out how to cheat ...
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He noticed Gabriel scanning the room and wondered if he was looking for anyone in particular. "Pick something," he said, ignoring it for the moment.
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He wasn’t looking for anyone specifically—it was just that ‘off’ feeling that had been following him all week and the fact that they had been somewhat open in their walk down the road. May as well take a look and see if there was anyone who might be liable to spy—especially as they started to get drunk enough not to care about censoring themselves.
“I should start with a beer,” he said, and then glanced over and grinned just a bit wickedly, remembering his conversation with the bartender from the other night. “But I’ll probably go for something hard-and-fast later.”
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Nodding, he said, "Be right back," and headed to the bar. He got whatever was on tap for Gabriel - something hoppy, apparently, though he didn't know beer from Adam, so to speak - and the same dry red as before for himself. Heading back to the table, he placed the beer in front of Gabriel before sitting back down.
He probably could have called someone over, but honestly, he thought that a few seconds of breathing room from Gabriel wouldn't do him any harm. The man was . . . slightly overwhelming.
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At any rate, Gabriel needed a few moments alone himself. He propped one leg up on the table, palms together almost as if in prayer, except that he rested them against his mouth. So then. He had a little brother here with him. A dead little brother? That would indicate afterlife or not. Possibly a construct too, seeing as how they were all human. An angel’s memories could be duplicated more easily than their physical form. And if not either of those then … Well, then Dad was playing with them or wanted them to learn something, probably.
None of it still made sense, but Gabriel got the sense there was a vague sort of shape to it behind the curtains. He just needed to know more. And that would come in time, seeing as how Dad was the most likely culprit.
When Aziraphale returned Gabriel looked up at him almost absently, his eyes intense from looking into the distance he could no longer see. A moment later his focus snapped together and his serious expression rearranged itself effortlessly into a mocking grin. “And here I was beginning to think you were going to abandon me.”
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He raised one eyebrow just so when he saw Gabriel staring off into space, then the other as well when his tight focus returned. Oh, masks. He was a bit tired of them. "That would be rude," was all he said, sliding the beer across the table and sitting with his wine.
Avoiding Gabriel's eyes for a moment, he looked into the depths of his wineglass. Well. "Human, then," he said under his breath, and toasted nothing in particular, then swallowed too much wine in one go. It might have been a challenge, if he'd been someone else.
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"You need to learn to break out of the mould a little more." Not that his actually leaving would have been any good, because Gabriel would have hunted him down again, but a little bit of spirit in his brothers, please!
... Other than stopping the Apocalypse. Why was it that the ones who wanted to do that were the ones who were all work and no play?
The archangel smiled sardonically and raised his beer. "Humanity." He leaned back in his chair and actively chose not to take that challenge. For all his teasing, he hadn't been kidding when he said he didn't plan to drink to excess. "So tell me, bro. Adopted bro. Whatever. What shoved you off the cliff in your dream?"
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Sighing, Aziraphale took a slightly more sedate sip of wine and shook his head, just barely. "Nothing shoved me off any cliff. Please give me some credit. I didn't die, I simply . . . arrived here."
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That hadn't been the question Gabriel had been asking (off the cliff, away from Heaven, toward humanity), but it still answered one he'd been wondering. Scratch the afterlife idea, then. "No one shoved you out the door to any exclusive clubs?" he asked, caught between exasperation and humour, and then he waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, of course; you didn't dream about falling."
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With a sigh, he rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Oh. That." Squinting up at Gabriel through his fingers, he let his hand fall softly to the table. "As I've said, I didn't Fall. I . . . " Changed? Shifted? "Adjusted?" he said hesitantly. "Over a period of time. I never rebelled. Or questioned."
No, wait, that was a lie. His mouth twisted into odd shapes for a moment, and then "Mostly" spilled out and he let his eyes fall shut. Wine. He drank, and felt better.
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He grinned wickedly. At least the man hadn't died or anything. Just ... regretted a few of his recent actions.
Ah, now. That was a look Gabriel recognised. His smile might have been sympathetic if it weren't so wry. "There's nothing wrong with questioning once in a while. It's something humanity does all the time, and they don't get smote for it. Sometimes they even manage to work things out for the better." He paused, the rim of his glass at his lips. "When they don't screw things up totally, that is."
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Shrugging, he tried to articulate what he meant without explaining the situation entirely, and ended up just stuttering. It was too complicated. He looked towards the ceiling helplessly, then back at Gabriel.
He was tired of this. He was used to being able to do and say more or less what he wanted under Adam's protection. Tapping the bowl of his wineglass with a fingernail irritably, he frowned and said, "Well, I didn't question until everything started falling down around my ears, you know. Not really. Not big questions. But I didn't want the world to end." He paused and added perfunctorily, "It was a very good dream."
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There were a lot of things there that Gabriel could say, and most of them he didn't want to. Most of them included talking about how he'd left Heaven because he didn't want to fight, but hadn't actually questioned, until about five minutes before his death. At least, he hadn't let himself. Part of him had been for a while; that was the part he'd spent two thousand years ignoring.
He settled for muttering, "The world's a better place than most of the family liked to believe," an unintentional wistful note in his tone. A better place than a lot of humans even liked to believe. There were good things about Heaven, but most of the things that had been good about it had degraded badly by the time he'd left, let alone by the time of Armageddon.
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Crowley, for example, had not asked to Fall. He hadn't particularly wanted to Fall. He had, as it were, hung out with the wrong crowd. Crowley wasn't much of a demon at all. And then you had the Metatron, who was cruel while at the same time being entirely boring, and he was the height of holiness. Somewhere on this same spectrum was Aziraphale, who had uncharitable thoughts, who had doubted, who had (though he was loath to admit it) sinned, who was now human - being punished or rewarded or simply having fallen off the radar by accident, he had no way of knowing - and he was an angel, more or less.
What was fair about that?
"They are a tremendously stupid bunch, overall," he said, frowning and not really listening to himself. "They never paid attention. I understand Hell is quite the same. Just a clutch of the Fallen with the same single-minded dedication to . . . the end of everything." He glanced up at Gabriel then, and his expression of polite puzzlement was simultaneously the most and least angelic ever found on a human body. "The world is lovely, though, I don't know why they don't see it."
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Well, excuse him for having issues. That didn't mean the archangel was going to answer seriously, of course. Couldn't give up his reputation just like that!
"There's too much light in their eyes," he said with a smirk. "It blinds them from seeing any of the good stuff. You know, like television, pizza, pudding and sex."
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Still, he leaned forward, steepling his fingers. A serious expression settled on his face. "My main confusion," he said, carefully leaving out the part where he had not come to it independently - the idea had been Crowley's, the idea was always Crowley's - "is in the concept that, even if a creation far surpasses its intentions, Plans can't be changed. As if they're set in stone - well, I suppose they are literally set in stone somewhere - but the point is - "
He struggled to find a point. "The point is," he managed at last, "it's not worth it. All the light at the expense of being able to - to learn."
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"Plans can always change," Gabriel said with a roll of his eyes, tilting up his bottle to take a drink. "Or so I've heard, anyway. Our family's just not very good at working on the fly. It's probably that blindness syndrome."
He rapped the table surface thoughtfully. "I wonder if we'd gone better if I'd made it a compulsory field-trip for angels to be human for a lifetime. Anael went native and it worked well for her, up until she got her Grace back." Sure, his family would object strenuously to losing their Grace, however temporarily, but it was a thought. Part of him wished he'd had it sooner, before he'd had to tell the Winchesters how to throw Lucifer back into his cage.
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With a quick look at Gabriel - an ancient, cynical look that might have surprised those who'd known him before - he added, "But it would never work. There's pride at stake, after all." Just because pride was a sin did not preclude the Host from feeling its influence. Quite the opposite, in his experience. In fact, the version of Gabriel he was familiar with had been quite prideful indeed (although in that respect he was not yet convinced that this other Gabriel was much different).
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Come to think of it, he didn't know just what had happened to Anael. He knew that she's gotten her Grace back, but otherwise all he knew was that she was still avoiding being dragged back to Heaven. "Of course then you'd need to keep an eye on them for the rest of their lives," he added with a longsuffering sigh. "And if their childhoods suck, humanity is still doomed. But still."
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i see those feels gabe.
you're seeing things, duh.
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this will end in tears
he's too drunk to think it through
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how many shots have they even had each, i feel like it's zillions
it probably has been, Gabe is probably waaay past his limit XD
watch your livers, children
livers, what is this foreign object?
idk!! same thing as a lung or a kidney probs!! 8U
i'll go with that!
why is this cute
because drunken angelfeels