caveofsapphires | suddenly my eyes are open [open]

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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.

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"I don't - " Aziraphale frowned. "I don't know that He would do such a thing for no reason."

That was the whole point, of course; he didn't know. He'd been all right - more than all right - with that once, but lately it had been more and more difficult to reconcile with what he felt was right. He certainly didn't see God as a creator capable of toying with his creations for sport, but, well. If not that, then what? And if it was an accident, would it be rectified? That was fine for him, but what about Gabriel?

He rubbed his temple and waved someone over. "Another, please," he muttered, and watched distantly as another glass of the same was fetched. He couldn't think about this sober for much longer.

"Did I say 'no reason'?" Gabriel asked innocently. Entertainment was a reason unto itself, after all, even though Gabriel, deep down, didn't truly believe Dad would use such a frivolous excuse. "Who knows what He's thinking? I don't. Hardly ever have, even when I was still being a good son."

Which was probably why there'd been a few, er, incidents during his tenure. Well, how was he meant to know the three wise men would lose their way if he left them to have a bit of downtime while on Earth? They were meant to be wise men. He would've thought it was obvious you don't go announcing to a king that a new king just got born in his own country.

Philosophers. They never stopped to think things through. (... To a relative degree, of course.)

He drained the rest of his beer and held up his hand before the server could escape. "Me too!"

Frown deepening, Aziraphale leaned forward on his elbows, his gaze intent and focused. This was not a conversation he'd been able to have with anyone before, not even Crowley, because that have been terribly insensitive. Now that he had the opportunity, he was not going to let it go. "Why," he asked, "does being a good son mean not asking questions? And, and staying distant from Creation. And never having ideas. That's barely existence."

As he said it, he realized, in a more concrete way than he ever had before, and, remarkably, without any urge to tamp the realization down, that he had disobeyed in spirit long before Armageddon, before the Arrangement. It had begun with Eden and the gift of fire, but it had evolved over millennia into an engagement with humanity and history and Earth that he hadn't even been conscious of.

Barreling forward recklessly, he spread one hand wide, knuckles of the other going white on the edge of the table. "And stupidly black-and-white thinking, and no interest in anything, and being dull. Why do we have free will if not to use it?"

Never having ideas. Staying distant. No free will. Gabriel froze a little, amusement dropping off his face as he stared after the server. And because he'd been thinking back anyway, he couldn't quite stop some of the memories he had consciously avoided in the last two thousand years.

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.

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.

Gabriel blinked and took a sharp breath, and when he looked back at Aziraphale there was an angel's lifetime of bitterness in his eyes. "I don't know how it went where you're from," he said, "but in my universe? After the Fall, all Michael was interested in was smiting things. Raphael was Raphael and wouldn't know an original thought if it bit him. So take a guess who had to keep the family together, keep our brothers happy. That whole shtick with Herod and making the Son flee to Egypt? That was me. That was because I took a joyride in someone on the other side of the world to get away for a while and trusted wise men to be able to find their way and keep their mouths shut. It almost ruined everything. And Dad never said a word. Not one word."

He gave the other angel a brittle smile. "So you're asking the wrong angel, Aziraphale. Forget about not having room to make my own choices. I would have given anything for just a little more fucking guidance."

They were so different.

Aziraphale sat back in his seat, slowly letting go of the edge of the table, one finger at a time. He looked at Gabriel, not curious, not prying, not even pitying - but absorbing.

For the first time he realized the strange amount of freedom that had come with being unimportant. He'd had one big job in Eden, and after that he'd had field duty for thousands of years. He'd been watched, but not closely. If there had been a . . . paternal absence, he hadn't noticed it firsthand, only watched the effects ripple out into the world.

Had he gotten off easily? In his time he'd always been content with an ineffable God as gospel, as it were. He had never had to confront the Lord. He had never even contemplated the possibility of doing so. He had been able to hide within a sense of harmlessness and become more real, more human than the Host of his world, who were more of Gabriel's Michael and Raphael than Aziraphale could articulate.

He couldn't help wondering whether he, in the archangel's place, might have followed a similar path, left their Father and become a powerful, bitter something else wandering the world and pretending not to be what he was created to be. Or, perhaps more likely, would he have never questioned at all, turned his face to the light and pretended his doubts into nothingness?

His stomach gave a twinge. All that responsibility. All that pressure, for a Father who seemed not to care. Whether that perception was true or not did not, Aziraphale realized, matter very much at this moment. What mattered was that he had caused Gabriel pain, and he had no idea how to make it go away. If it had been Crowley, he would have - well. He would have come up with something in the spur of the moment, a hand on his shoulder, a smile, a walk, an entire bottle of wine - but all the masks Gabriel had put up, his time as a pagan god, for the love of someone, made Aziraphale hesitate, hands curling into fists on his lap.

Gradually, far too slowly, as the seconds stretched out, he came up with a list of things not to say. Sorry was one of them. Do you want to talk about it he tossed out immediately. He chewed the inside of his cheek and realized he was still staring at Gabriel and had to think of something to say or the archangel might get up and leave, which would make him feel even worse.

"There's got to be a middle ground," he said, "somewhere," and rubbed his temple. It was weak and unhelpful and he still felt compelled to apologize, but if Gabriel wanted to pretend as though none of that had just happened - well. He had the space.

It was only a second or two after his heated words that Gabriel realised just what he'd said and looked away, his face tight while he tried to get a handle on all those memories, all the things he'd been avoiding for so long.

The silence stretched on and the archangel managed to put a lid on his anger and frustration. The weariness was harder. He didn't turn his head as Aziraphale spoke, watching the server come back with their drinks, but he did take the beer and down half of it in one go.

Next round he was breaking out the hard liquor.

Finally Gabriel looked around again, and this time his gaze was tired. "If there is, I've jumped over it so many times I wouldn't have a clue where it is. That, or Dad keeps moving the line."

Or maybe He had never marked it in the first place, and it wasn't anywhere near where everyone thought it was. Gabriel could see Dad doing that--making them work for the knowledge.

Watching Gabriel drink, Aziraphale decided he had the right idea. By the time the other man put his bottle down, Aziraphale's wine was mostly gone. It was a shame to waste such a good vintage - wherever it had come from, which was a serious question now that he thought of it - but he needed scotch, or something. Never mind that he wouldn't be able to sober up. He actually didn't care very much.

"Maybe we're meant to create the line for ourselves," he said quietly, unconsciously echoing Gabriel's thoughts. "I think I - I almost had, before. Or created the illusion of it, anyway."

The illusion, that was, of humanity. And remembering the Downs allowed him to slide away from Gabriel's slip, his mind drifting to his last moments of peace and familiar company.

If they were, Gabriel wasn't entirely sure he'd passed that test. If it was a test. He'd joined the fight just a little too late--late enough to ensure his own death, no matter what. If he'd been earlier, maybe he could've done more and stayed alive in the bargain.

Which was annoying. He'd known that going in, but it wasn't like he'd expected to be able to regret the choice afterward.

"Well? Don't hold me in suspense, here," the archangel said with a deprecating smile. "How'd you manage that and what did it look like?"

And there was the trouble with honesty and talking to people, staring him right in the face. His face fell slightly, and he finished his wine before answering, to give himself time to fill the obvious gaps. Just because Gabriel was - what was the term - 'laid back' did not mean he would understand.

"You won't be impressed," he said at last. "But . . . I lived in London for a time. Ah, centuries, actually. I had a little shop and I did my job, I did God's will, but I also lived." Tilting his glass towards himself, he thought longingly of his routine. "Habits were so important," he said thoughtfully. "And . . . after everything I moved to the shore. I had a little cottage. Habits, again. But after the Apocalypse I wasn't so afraid of the repercussions."

Saying 'I' instead of 'we' was throwing him off. He waved over the nearest server and ordered a scotch, then glanced questioning at Gabriel.

"Azzy, if you survived London for centuries, that's impressive," Gabriel said with a snort. His humour was mostly feigned, for now, but he needed some lightening up and hopefully it would catch on.

That didn't mean he missed the initial hesitation or the way Aziraphale's face fell. He was a terrible liar, and was equally obviously hiding something. The archangel looked down at his beer, drained the rest of it, and ordered bourbon.

"That's nice," he said calmly as he set the bottle aside, his eyes glittering. "So now you can tell me what you're holding back. Tit for tat and all that." He'd spilled on Aziraphale and embarrassed himself. It was just fairness that Aziraphale did the same.

The small smile that had come to his face at Gabriel's joke drained away very quickly indeed. He hadn't enough practice lying. He wasn't good at putting walls back up once they'd been taken down, which, tonight, he'd allowed. And yet he couldn't tell Gabriel the truth. In the event that Crowley was here, somewhere, it could compromise his safety. No matter the differences between the Gabriel he'd known and the Gabriel sitting in front of him, the man was still an archangel, and telling the truth was simply too dangerous for everyone concerned.

Now if only he had a decent cover story, and knew how to lie without giving himself away.

"I associated with humans," he said, as the waiter returned with their drinks. "Human. He knew who I was. He - helped, at the end of the world. He helped me, in general." For a moment he felt fragile and uncomfortable, because it was true, except for the human part. "He was my friend."

The tumbler of scotch was solid in his hand as he raised it to his lips and drank. When he lowered it to the table again, it made a subdued thunk, and brought him back to himself just enough for him to add, "But it's probably better that he's not here, all things considered."

Now it was just a matter of hoping Gabriel believed him. Aziraphale glanced away into the crowd, looking again for that odd glimmer of sick familiarity to be found in Famine's presence, and, on not seeing him, turned back to Gabriel and the table and his scotch with a sigh.

There was something there. Something off. Gabriel hadn't made any secret that he liked humanity so much, so why would Aziraphale want to hide that unless it was a cover for something else? But the archangel couldn't peg what, exactly, it was a cover for. (The idea of a demon didn't occur to him, simply because ... well, it just didn't. Demons were demons. The only angels who associated with them were the truly Fallen, which Aziraphale wasn't.) So Gabriel let it go. Maybe he'd look into it later, when things were less raw.

Which wasn't now.

"You had a soft spot," the archangel said with a twisted smile that said he understood completely. Two thousand years on Earth? There had been one or two humans in Gabriel's time. He'd always said 'never again' afterward--after they died or discovered he was supernatural and inevitably tried to kill him--and never been able to stick with the vow. Somehow he just always wound up with some idiot chucklehead who triggered whatever protective instincts he had left and channelled into revenge.

Which was why he hadn't approved of Castiel getting too involved with the Winchesters. Gabriel's last had been a hunter too, had been too recent, by angelic standards, and had blown up badly. The archangel could only wonder how the Castiel-Winchester parade was going to end.

A soft spot. Wasn't that such an understatement. Still, Aziraphale crooked his lips in a tired smile and nodded. "I suppose you could say that." Really, though, he had never articulated, or even tried to articulate, to another being the importance of Crowley's presence, the comfort in knowing that he was nearby or at least on the same physical plane. Crowley had, in an odd way, been a physical manifestation of hope, a snidely optimistic, occasionally tiresome, secretly kind creature that Aziraphale had never understood the way he thought he might understand a human, but without whom he was, he had to admit, drifting a bit.

Still. He'd heard of it happening, with humans, and from Gabriel's expression he had personal experience, so that was the story he would stick to for the moment.

"They have a bad habit of doing that," Gabriel told him sardonically, then shrugged and took a gulp of his drink. "Dad, we got depressing. Tell me something, Azzy: first thing you did when you got to Earth which you didn't understand jack shit about, but your idiot insisted you had to try."

Aziraphale laughed under his breath. What had it been? Crowley'd tried tempting him to bigger things, back when they first knew each other, before the Arrangement, but the first thing that had been successful . . .

He pushed his tumbler forward about an inch, raised an eyebrow, then pulled it back and drank. "Did you honestly think I took to drink of my own volition?" he asked, grinning a bit, and let it fall back to the table with a clunk.

Gabriel snorted. "Oh, so you've been working on this vice for that long? Me, it was--" He stopped, hesitated, because his had been the plants he'd been smoking when the philosophers got lost, and then segued sort-of smoothly into something else. "Sex." He leered a little, leaning back in his chair, arm propped up, glass raised. "What can I say? I was curious. And a voyeur."

"It's a . . . vice that deserves a lot of attention," he allows, and then poorly conceals his reaction to the sex thing, which was just going to keep coming up, no matter what he did, wasn't it? To his credit, he did not flush, or at least not any more than could be blamed on the liquor.

He tried out various responses in his head and finally settled on, "Oh," which, he was quite sure, was not the right one. At least he hadn't spilled his drink this time. He was improving? Sort of?

It really wasn't the right one. But for him, not for Gabriel. The archangel's grin broadened and became genuine. "'Oh'? Why, Azzy, don't tell me that's a vice you've never indulged in before."

He tutted. "Your idiot needs to work harder, obviously."

"My idiot - no," the angel stuttered, sitting back in his seat and glaring righteously at Gabriel. "No, he very much doesn't. That's not - no. And it's none of your business whether - oh, and that's answered your question."

He huffed and looked away. It would just keep happening no matter what. This was absurd. Why everyone was so fixated on their genitals he absolutely couldn't fathom.

That hadn't actually been what Gabriel meant, but at Aziraphale's reaction the archangel threw back his head and laughed and laughed.

"Thanks, bro, I needed that. I was actually thinking he should introduce you to some strippers or something, but, hey, if that's what works for you why the Hell not?" He grinned and winked, and lifted his glass to drain it.

Oh Somebody, this was horrifying.

"Well, I'm glad I've provided you with some comic relief!" Aziraphale said sharply, and took a breath, finished his scotch, and waved over a server again impatiently. Politeness was all well and good, but he hadn't had nearly enough to drink for this stupid conversation.

"Do you always badger people about their sexual histories?" he said. "Or am I just very special?"

He would not dignify the bit about the - young ladies with any sort of response. It didn't deserve it.

"Nope, not always," Gabriel said innocently, and then added with so much lasciviousness it was a surprise there was any left for anyone else: "Usually I'm the one to contribute my history."

He ordered another bourbon when the server arrived and then pointed sharply at Aziraphale. "But since we're already on yours, please tell me you've at least seen a strip-show. I mean, come on. You've been to Caligula's parties. You've gotta have seen something."

"I've seen enough," Aziraphale said, words pulled from between gritted teeth - because 'enough' was a subjective measure so perhaps he could get away with it - "but there's a major difference between seeing and deriving any sort of - enjoyment from it. And my time with Caligula was not recreational, believe you me." He shuddered delicately. "I was trying to save lives. Thwart evil, and things. Sometimes work took me less than savory places."

There had been a few times, a few people with the Lord in their souls, whom he'd attempted to help (in the most bumbling and accidentally judgmental way possible) get out of the trade. Generally they hadn't been receptive. Then again, he never really had any money to offer and the job market in Caligula's time in particular had been grim. Obviously. Still, he'd tried. While studiously avoiding eye contact. It really wasn't his place, it was a human thing.

Cognitive dissonance being what it was, he had temporarily forgotten that he was human now, and would likely continue to have selective amnesia on that front.

"If you haven't hit the point of deriving enjoyment, you haven't seen nearly enough, bro," Gabriel told him, still with a broad grin and not even trying to hide his enjoyment of the other angel's discomfort. "What's the point in getting a meatsuit if you can't roadtest it once in a while?" He did a little, suggestive wriggle in his seat.

Aziraphale sighed. "Your definition of 'roadtest' is remarkably specific," he managed, and refused to look directly at Gabriel. He wished the archangel would sit still. Also stop talking, ideally, but of course that wasn't going to happen.

Rubbing his temple as the server approached, he took his refreshed scotch and held it close like a child or a lifeline, then swallowed half of it in one gulp. He still wouldn't look at Gabriel as he said, "I've never seen the appeal, honestly. It just seems - messy. Unnecessary. Base. Not really a tempting prospect."

Edited 2012-05-13 22:27 (UTC)

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