caveofsapphires | hurt myself again today

Entry tags:

hurt myself again today

WHO: Gabriel (Sylvester Wilton), [OPEN]
WHAT: Power discovery goes very, very wrong.
WHERE: Syl's caravan, the Cave, anywhere else it's conceivable to him to be
WHEN: 2 June - 9 June 2012
WARNINGS: None yet
NOTES: Looking for nummy new CR, or call-backs to earlier CR he hasn't spoken to for a while, especially for the initial helping-hand thread, please. :3 Multiple threads with the same character throughout the week are welcome. Also, Gabe will not be able to see peoples' souls for the duration.

Actionspam also welcome if that's better for people!

It was the conversation with the Doctor which had planted the thought in Gabriel's head. Well, the conversation with the Doctor and that little hole Re-l had discovered in the back of the wardrobe. The fact was that his constructs were, technically, a reality-warp. They used the fabric of reality to create something out of nothing ... well, nothing that could be seen, anyway.

And if he could do that, then maybe he could take things a step further into doing something else. Like actual reality manipulation.

Which was why he was staring contemplatively at the wall of Syl's caravan, ratta-tapping the counter. A small pocket to start with, he decided. A little safe in the wall. He could cover it with a painting, or something. It wasn't like anyone would assume there would be anything behind it, given the tininess of the caravan.

In the past he'd found that as long as he kept a detailed image of an object in mind, he shouldn't think too hard about the creation in order for it to work. As long as he knew how it was built, that seemed to be all he needed. Well, he knew how these reality manipulations went. So once he had a structured image of the little hidey-hole in mind, he lifted his hand and snapped his fingers.

The ensuing flash of light and shockwave which rattled the caravan was visible from blocks away. Gabriel pushed himself up onto his elbows, his head ringing and back aching as if he'd just been thrown against the far wall--which he had. He moved gingerly, pushing himself up against the wall that opened, breathing hard and blinking, and trying not to be sick. The nauseous feeling passed after a few minutes and the ringing in his head dulled to a slight throb.

His vision faded from the white turn of dizziness into steady blackness, and the archangel's stomach flipped over with dread. "Oh, no."

* * *

The next week was ... well, it was something close to Hell. Gabriel couldn't tell whether his screw-up had permenantly messed with his sight or not, and every time he opened his eyes and saw nothing it twisted his gut to such a degree that he felt sick.

Blind. Not just blind the way his brothers were still blind, but completely. He couldn't even move the caravan far, because he couldn't see the streets; there was an autopilot installed on the driver's booth, because Syl had referenced it in his notes, but the archangel couldn't see to program it in the first place. The archangel was forced to walk if he ever wanted to go anywhere, one hand planted firmly on a wall just so he could make sure he was going the right way.

And no angel radar meant he got lost. Frequently. There were few things as terrifying as having no wall, no concept as to where the wall was, and no idea if he was on the right street.

He managed to find his way to the train back to the Cave, once, on the 7th, with some intention of seeing the doctors there. Then some part of him had spoken up, told him he couldn't very well just give in like that, and he hadn't wound up going to see them at all. Instead he'd wandered, lost, through the Cave until he'd found his way back to the metro and returned to the City with his pride intact and his sanity shot.

The day he woke up to find his sight had returned, blurry at first, he was about ready to weep with relief.

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Just like that he had a sprawling, meowing mass of fur in his arms. The Archangel fumbled and just barely managed not to drop the poor thing, cradling it against his chest. It rumbled, either purring or with discontent; he couldn't tell. Gabriel laughed, quietly and shortly and with something approaching amusement. "Can't believe you actually got yourself a freakin' kitty."

Shaking his head, he turned slowly on the step, using his foot to find the next, and made his careful way up it. Once he'd found the door, he shuffled inside, using his toes to find his way. His mouth opened, then closed again before he finally said resignedly, "So do I. My family's back there. And from what I've heard, things go south really fast not long after I got stabbed."

He shrugged a little. If he had the chance to change it, how could he not?

"It's a good animal," Re-l said. "It kept me warm when I was coming home." A good thing, too, after all the trouble she'd gone to to get it.

She left the tea to brew and went over to Gabriel, guiding him over to the stool and pushing him down on it. She gave the kitten a scratch between the ears and it settled into his lap, purring like a train.

"I'm glad you see things the same way," she said. "It makes it simpler."

She handed him his tea and went to look for a dustpan and brush.

"Pushy woman," Gabriel grumbled, but there was relief in his voice as he submitted to the direction, reaching out to make sure the stool was actually under him. The weight of the kitten sprawled across his lap was strangely comforting; at least stroking a cat wasn't exactly difficult.

"Simpler how?" he asked as he steadied his grip on the mug and brought it close. Somehow, he thought he could probably guess.

Re-l swept up the broken china and dumped it into the bin, then grabbed her cup of tea and ambled over to Gabriel.

"Well, if we have a common goal it makes guessing how you'll respond in various situations that much easier. It clarifies things."

Re-l took a swig of her tea and sighed.

"I know you probably don't want to do this, but we need to talk about what happened to you. There are various things to consider, but let's start with the most basic. How long have you been blind, and do you have any indication that your vision will or won't come back?"

Not what he'd been expecting, and somehow the fact she didn't seem to be thinking of it as 'simpler to part ways' filled him with relief. He'd known that his position was trouble. Known it, just like he'd known it was stupidity to get close to humans again and again. He'd never been able to help it.

Just like he couldn't now.

Gabriel sipped at his tea and then stiffened. It took him a moment to answer. "Since yesterday," he said after a moment. "And I don't know." He looked up toward her voice, even though there was nothing to see, and his mouth twisted with sardonic bitterness. "I was making a reality-pocket. It backlashed. My reality changed."

His expressions worried her. The blindness was eating away at him, just as would have eaten away at her, if she was so unlucky. He needed something to hold onto.

She knelt in front of the stool so that their heads were more or less level. It wasn't the most comfortable position for her, but she'd been in worse. She took his hand - the hand not petting the kitten, and brought it to her face.

"I know you can't see me, but if you keep your hand here you should be able to get an idea of my expressions. We can work out something more permanent later."

She took her hand away and used it to count off a list.

"Now, I wouldn't be so quick to assume you know the reason for your blindness. It strikes me that there are three possibilities. The first, as you seem to be implying, is that your use of power overloaded your body in some way, permanently taking away your power. I consider that the least likely. There's no obvious medical reason for your blindness, though I suppose there could be a severed nerve in your brain. Still, it's a stretch. The second possibility is that what you were trying to do took too much power. Your body compensated by draining power from a source, in this case your eyes. If the second possibility is correct, then your eyes will recover at some point in the future, relative to how much power you've used." She frowned sharply and then continued. "The third possibility is more complicated. None of the superhuman beings I've met here have had access to all their power, where as I am just as strong as I was in Romdeau. I've thought for a while that this suggests a limiter imposed on powers. If what you've said about souls is right, it was probably imposed on us when we were brought here. It would make sense, because if the world is gathering souls from many different universes, it has to equalise the field somehow. In this scenario, there would be a punishment for anyone who tried to step outside the boundary of the limiter. Removing eyesight is one of the most effective punishments, too. I'm not sure yet how they would impose this on you, but the advantage is that they probably wouldn't do it for too long. If I'm right, this blindness should wear off in a fortnight or so."

She stopped speaking and looked at him to make sure he had followed her.

Her taking that hand obliged her to take the mug away from him, and Gabriel let her without objection. He swallowed hard at the feel of her cheek under his fingers, unable to keep them from trembling slightly. It wasn't that he didn't need the touch; it was grounding. It was all he had nowadays. But there was an intimacy to the action which surprised him, both that she was allowing it and that he was aware of it and cared.

There were two parts of the face that were the most expressive--the area around the eyes and the area around the mouth. If he touched the former, he'd only block her own sight, and that was just stupid. Instead the Archangel let his fingers drop to her lips to rest there while she spoke.

"Possibility four," he said quietly. "I messed up the execution and the backlash warped things in a way they shouldn't be. I wasn't overdrawn, Re-l. I know what that feels like. What I was trying to do with reality is like--like playing with playdough. I dropped the ball and got some bits in my eyes. The limits I have now make my skills more difficult, not impossible. And they make it so the things I can do don't last."

That was the part he was clinging to. He didn't know for sure, but if his constructs weren't permanent unless he put extra into them, maybe this wouldn't be either. He hadn't gone for a very big reality-warp, after all.

"I don't believe they have that much power over us," he added firmly. "They're only human themselves. Probably." He had to believe that. Had to believe it, despite the power they'd already shown just in catching them. If they could limit powers, why give it back to them at all? Why not just keep them vulnerable? It didn't make sense.

"They pulled me out of my world and brought me here," Re-l said, "soul only, if you're to be believed. I'm not sure anything is beyond them." She sighed. "But it doesn't matter. Whether we pick your solution or mine, it seems like your blindness isn't permanent. So we simply need some contingency plans until it goes away."

Re-l was uncomfortably aware of Gabriel's fingers by her mouth. She tried not to pay any attention to it, focusing on the problems he was facing and the best solutions to them, but it took effort. The logical, dispassionate part of herself was aware that this was desire, and she held herself back. It didn't matter what she felt. She wasn't going to get involved. Her worry for Gabriel she could explain as pragmatism, but if she let it go any further she would just create regrets, and there was no point in doing that.

"Probably the best solution would be for you to move in with someone who can look after you until your sight comes back. If you think it's going to take longer than a month, we can teach you basic skills to manage your life, but any less and it's not worth it. Aziraphale seems like he would be a good choice. I can't claim to know anything about him, but he's family, and family is meant to help in situations like this, as I understand the term. If you want to stay at home, someone could drop food by once a day, something like that." A thought occurred to her. "You have been to see the doctor, I take it?"

"They could've brought your whole body along for the ride," Gabriel said with a smirk that was only a shadow of his usual fare. "They could've done a lot of things they haven't. Soul-handling is pretty simple, if you know how to do it."

Simple, but sometimes difficult.

For a moment the Archangel was silent. The thing was that he didn't want to move. It would mean relearning a new area, for one, and he already knew the caravan. For another, even though it was Syl's lately it had started to feel an awful lot like his, and he didn't want to leave it. He twitched, both at the mention of Aziraphale and the Doctor. "I'd rather not get my brothers involved," he said in a very controlled tone. "And if I left the caravan I'd only wind up knocking more things over."

Then his face tightened, and he looked away, and his fingers trembled again. "The Doctor's gone. Vanished."

Re-l didn't bother to argue with him on souls. She didn't know enough, and it was ultimately immaterial to her goals.

She was still watching him very closely. He was definitely bitter and angry, but she could understand that. She would have felt the same way. And he didn't show any signs of doing something drastic or irreparable, so it was probably safe to let him stay. Then he mentioned the Doctor, and something in her stomach curled up. She'd liked the old man a lot. He was sensible, practical and he didn't wave his emotions around on a flag. But she couldn't afford sentimentality. Whoever he was, he was no longer in her life.

"I wonder if he found a way home," Re-l said. "It's a bad thing that he's gone, but it's not our main priority. And I didn't mean him. I meant the doctor you mentioned to me earlier." She'd met him herself, on the journey, though they hadn't talked much.

"It should be fine for you to stay here," she said, rubbing the kitten's ears, "and I can see why you want to, but I think not telling your brother about this is a mistake. Learning how to manage your life without sight, however temporarily, means having someone here to teach you, and I'm not the right person to do that." She almost laughed, but stopped herself. "I'm too impatient and too irritable. Aziraphale would do a much better job."

"Doubt it," Gabriel said flatly. "He wouldn't have left without letting someone know." Even if it wasn't Gabriel, given their last conversation. The Time Lord was too smart for that. If he didn't know Re-l had a habit of pretending not to care, he would have felt angry by her matter-of-factness; as it was, his stomach still turned over and his mouth tightened a little.

But he didn't say anything. It wasn't something he particularly wanted to think about. "No," he admitted. "I forgot about him. Sounded like a quack." Not that it was his fault, of course, but it was true. "He admitted he barely knew anything about medicine, let alone metaphysics."

Again the Archangel's mouth tightened, his stomach turned over, and he looked away. He wasn't sure how to explain it to her. The idea of telling Aziraphale frankly filled Gabriel with a nervous anxiety he hadn't felt before in a human body. The worry the other angel was going to spill all over him; Re-l was at least calm and practical about the issue. The idea, not of having to trust Aziraphale, but of not being able to be the older brother Aziraphale had clearly wanted to rely on when he came for help about Pollution.

The idea of relying on Aziraphale even more than Gabriel already was, and having him vanish like the Doctor had.

"I can't."

"I don't think that's true. If I had one chance to leave, and saying goodbye to anyone would cost me that chance, I wouldn't look back. Or maybe it's a one-way trip. Find the path out and you have to take it." She smiled a little, and then stretched it to make sure he could tell. "I can't comment on the doctor, but he was helpful when I hurt my arm fighting the cats. Not this week. On the pilgrimage."

Re-l was beginning to find kneeling uncomfortable, but she ignored the ache in her joints. No point in moving until the conversation was done. Her head tilted forward slightly, though, and her hair brushed against Gabriel's hand.

"I think you're making a mistake," she said, "but I have no interest in forcing you to do anything. But you're going to have to accept support of some kind, at least for the first few days. And if you don't want Aziraphale's help, is there anyone who would suit better?"

That ... actually kind of hurt. Because when Gabriel thought of Aziraphale, and Balthazar, and the others here, and thought of leaving them behind without warning--like he already had with Heaven--something in him rebelled. "I would," he said quietly, and changed the subject.

His hand twitched at the sudden brush against it, but then resettled. "I'll manage," he said, and then summoned a falsely bright smile. "Hey, I managed not to trip over myself and break my neck for two thousand years, what's a few days?"

Re-l found his defensiveness irritating - as though he were better than her because he'd allowed himself to become even more entangled in this stupid world than she was - but she pushed the feeling away. Gabriel was suffering, and that made people say things they didn't mean.

She wondered how long that excuse would last.

"Of course you would pick the option that allowed for the most life-endangering stupidity. But that's fine. If you want to be left alone, you only have to say."

She stood up, and the kitten scrambled after her, pinning its claws into her coat and climbing up her back to coil around her neck.

Her movement dragged his hand down past her shoulder, down her side. That and the sudden loss of purring weight in his lap made panic flutter in his gut and and reflexively the Archangel's fingers tightened on her coat.

"I didn't say I wanted to be left alone," he said, and some part of him cursed at the plea in his voice.

His voice made her stop, and she looked back at him. Sitting alone on his stool, clinging to her coat, he was alarmingly vulnerable. It was an attitude she hated in others as much as she hated it in herself. But it wasn't his fault. And she knew well enough how often she'd been helped without realising it. She couldn't leave him.

"If you don't want me to help and you don't want me to go, what do you want?" she said, offering her hand to him in place of his grip on her coat.

The Archangel took her hand, and even though there was a part of him that shouted echoed Re-l's own thoughts--that he was getting too close, showing too much--he couldn't help it. He didn't want to be alone. He couldn't tell Aziraphale or Balthazar.

"How about just some company?" he suggested, striving for casual playfulness with the almost-suggestive lift-lower of his eyebrows.

Company? Re-l didn't know whether to feel flattered or uncomfortable, and settled for feeling wary. But there was no point in running away now. And it was only a relationship of convenience for both of them.

"Let's go outside, then," she said. Somehow his blindness seemed less claustrophobic outside. In here it was too obvious how limited he was by his lack of vision.

She tugged on his arm and pulled him to his feet. There was a moment, as she moved, when his weight caught on her arm, and the pain in her ribs blazed sharply. Re-l smothered her grimace, but a gasp escaped her.

The sudden tug upward made Gabriel grope for the counter at his back, and he steadied the both of them. He was blind, but not deaf, and not unaware of Re-l's presence next to him.

"What's wrong?" he asked, alerted by the instinctive cringe in her body and the sound of her gasp.

"It's nothing serious," Re-l said firmly. "I fractured a couple of ribs, that's all."

She kept hold of his hand and headed out the door and down the steps.

"Nothing serious, she says," Gabriel squawked, submitting to the direction only because he couldn't do anything else; he couldn't see to pull away. One hand patted the air, searching for the doorjamb so he didn't walk into it, and then he slowed on the steps, feeling with each foot as he moved down them. "How'd that happen, pray tell?"

Re-l waited until he was down the steps and then dropped his hand, sitting down slowly on the grass.

"I fell over the edge of a waterfall," she said. "It was only about ten feet. I had just found the kitten, and its family were chasing me, so I swam out to a log in the middle of the river. I was hoping it would hide my scent. Which it did."

"It's a good thing they can't sue you for kidnapping," Gabriel told her with a snort of semi-amusement, sinking carefully to the ground and finding the steps behind him so he could lean back on them. He patted the air, found her arm, the furry body of the cat around her shoulders and finally its head. "Good thing it likes you. What's he-she called, anyways?"

"Even if they were capable of conscious thought, they have lots of kittens. They won't miss one."

She shrugged, and the kitten mewed in protest.

"It's female, as far as I can tell. I didn't give it a name." It hadn't seemed necessary, out in the wild. It occurred to her that Gabriel had no idea what the kitten looked like, and she added, "It's spotted black on brown, and it has a heavy crest of fur down its back. Its ears are tufted, and its tail is rounded at the tip."

"The fact that they chased you kinda says otherwise," said the Archangel dryly, stroking down the ruff around the kitten's neck, tracing her head up to her ears. Her tail was too far to feel without leaning across Re-l, and Gabriel opted not to do that because he was likely to fall into her.

Right now, that was not a thing that he was comfortable having happen.

"Don't name her after a goddess," Gabriel said at once, with a wave of his hand. "That's just boring, everyone does that." He grinned suddenly and wickedly. "I know. Bombalurina! It's perfect!" If only because she'd been a kitty sexpot in the versions of the Cats musical he'd seen--the sort that were maybe less-than-fit for public viewing.

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