constantine | saligia
Constantine | gen | 3400 words | beta'd by nekopyo and penllyne. Originally posted 10/07.
Check tags for warnings. Dedicated to raihu, complete with ugly header. Thanks to nekopyo and penllyne for the beta.
Saligia
“Saligia sunt septem littere a quibus incipiunt nomina septem capitalium vitiorum: Superbia, Avarita, Luxuria, Indivia, Gula, Ira, et Acedia.”
-St. Antoninus; Summa Major1
[x] Superbia
The first time he saw the angel after their little incident, he'd been making a house call, stopping by to see how Johnny was faring - to look after his investment, really; reminiscence about yonder days, maybe smoke a fag or two just to be obnoxious. Not that he was a smoker - nothing more deplorable than an early grave - but when needs must, you know, and he really needed to see the boy squirm on occasion.
(Baby hadn't been too pleased to see him, rumpled and hungover and spitting utterly fetching profanities from between the sheets, but it was all in a day's work and sort of cute besides, so he left him a kiss and a cigarette burn and stepped outside whistling. Abstinence was the best human invention since corporeal punishment; it was simply divine what a whiff of smoke could do in the right set of lungs.)
He’d walked around the corner and there was Gabriel in the mouth of the alleyway, muddy and twisted as the old rubbish bins hulking in the dark. No wings, of course, and the white outfit had definitely seen better days; on the other hand, not many humans looked like they’d just stepped out of a Caravaggio painting, and Gabriel never needed a halo in order to shine.
No more flaming sword. No more Spear of Destiny. He stared into the caryatid face, disquietingly still, and the question seemed to ask itself.
“God’s first general - surely you’re better than this?”
For a moment, something flickered in Gabriel’s eyes, wild and furious; he seemed about to agree - but he turned away at the last minute, head bowed low, though his voice could have splintered metal.
“That's not for me to decide. You of all people should know - the higher you are, the harder you fall. ”
[x] Avarita
He was still musing upon their first encounter when the second came along. This time they met in a homeless shelter, near the old city train tracks, soot and corrosion lying thick upon their skin.
Gabriel looked resplendent in an old tattered trenchcoat and hoodie, stretched right across his wing-stumps and making him hunchbacked; grey fingerless gloves; a brilliant gap-toothed smile. It was Constantine's parting gift, or so he heard: the first time the angel must have felt real, physical pain as a human being.
Lucifer licked his lips. What an intoxicating thought.
He walked up to Gabriel, standing in line for the regular hand-out of diseased rat soup or whatever it was the city gave hobos from the kindness of its twisted little gutter heart, and smiled.
"Faring well, I hope?"
Gabriel spared his immaculate white suit a glance, and did not look pleased by what he saw. "What are you doing here?"
"I'd say recruiting, but it makes the whole thing sound so needlessly militant." Lucifer smiled beatifically. "We prefer a more wholesome approach. I call it befriending."
The statement went over just as badly as expected. "I'm not your friend, hellbeast," Gabriel spat. "Get out of my sight."
"Enjoying your… sustenance?" Lucifer tapped the tin bowl with a long finger, sleekly bypassing that last remark. "It's a far cry from manna and honeyed milk, I'll give you that. Oh, was that an eyeball bobbing to the surface just there?"
"Go away," said Gabriel, though he seemed slightly less vehement than before. Apparently he'd seen the eyeball, too.
"You fell hard, didn't you?" The non-sequitur was worth it, to see the look Gabriel shot him. "And just like you said, I should know. I do know. But I also know you can climb back up twice as high."
"What are you talk - no, no; I don't care."
"That which does not kill, strengthens," he purred. "You stay here, wallowing in this - this filth - blind and deaf to pleasure, feeding yourself dissected cat innards. These beggars around you - they don't know any better. But you do: you've been there. You know what this world has to offer." He could see Gabriel's eyes, wide and bright like temple fires; leaned in closer, teeth bared. "Don't you want it? Don't you want it back?"
Gabriel's rosepetal lips moved silently, he saw the breath in his lungs, ready to form the words yes, yes, yes. He saw the images dancing in Gabriel's mind, gold and silver and awash in holy light-
A baby started bawling, at the far end of the line. Gabriel started, and shook his head violently, as if to scare away an afterimage. "I know my place in creation," he said, sounding like he didn't really; "it is here, helping others. That is the true pleasure of life, by the word of the Lord and his holy prophets. I don't need to believe it, I know." Then, against all logic, he turned and walked away and gave his soup to the mother of the crying child.
Lucifer nearly spit in disgust. Goddamn angels. And the trouble was, he really did know, the little shit.
[x] Luxuria
First time is chance; second is serendipity; third time enemy action. And Lucifer, he was the Devil: the greatest enemy there was.
He cornered Gabriel one freezing night in the red district; both their faces bleached neon-bright in the stuttering light of strip clubs. Gabriel, he was there because of Johnny - who was on one sort of job or another, Lucifer mentally snickered - and what better place to talk to an angel than in the town square of Sodom and Gomorrah?
"Nice place, isn't it?" He could be sneaky when he wanted to, and Gabriel startled. "Not exactly your ideal environment, though. Baby got lost?"
"I'm here because of John." Gabriel snapped, wing-stumps flexing in his back. "Trust me, I'd really rather be elsewhere."
"Wonder what Johnny-boy's doing in this side of town?" Lucifer made it sound obscene, though to be fair, it probably was anyway. "Nothing sinful, I hope." He let that sink in. "Uh-oh. Looks like score one for my team."
"I'm not going to dignify that with a response." Gabriel said - and oh, yes, there was that special brand of retarded self-contradiction only Heaven knew how to pull off. Mind, he really did look lost: wide-eyed and huddled in his coat, calloused fingers curling nervously. Lucifer noticed the way he stood with legs pressed together, and tried not to grin.
"I wonder," he said, "this is your first time here, but will it be your last?"
"I should be so lucky," Gabriel grimaced. "Doubtless John will come here again."
"Oh, but baby's all grown up now. Surely you don't need an escort."
The look Gabriel gave him could have shriveled masonry. "I would never."
"Never is such a binding word, wouldn't you say?" Lucifer breathed against his ear, warm and damp; Gabriel shivered and jerked away. Not too far away, though. "Angels don't know what they're missing, but you can find out anytime. Sooner or later…" His lips ghosted from Gabriel's ear to his cheek, and further down; the angel seemed rooted to the spot, like a small animal caught in headlights. The air was cold and heady with the smell of strip club sex, and Gabriel looked… affected.
"We're not too different, you and I," Lucifer murmured, and kissed him.
It felt very, very good - until, to his immense shock, Gabriel slapped him and leapt back. "How dare you compare," he hissed, eyes flashing, "I said, I would never." Then he turned and ran into the night, Constantine be damned.
Lucifer sucked in a breath and rubbed at his cheek, annoyed. It had been a compliment.
[x] Indivia
Perhaps, upon reflection, assaulting his virtue had not been the best way to introduce Gabriel into the new world. And that's what he was trying to do, really - that, and maybe a bit more, because Gabriel was satin-white even under all the grime and those were dreadfully good cheekbones. But anyway, it was time for a new tactic.
Gabriel was in the alley again, trenchcoat hanging off his shoulders in sharp folds; he'd finally given up and just made holes in the back for the wing stumps. They look like the branches of a tree after a fire: black, twisted, jagged as bones. Familiar sight, that.
"So I hear Michael is the new general," he said by way of greeting, and Gabriel stiffened as if he'd just been penetrated with a fire hydrant.
"God bless him," he gritted out, and went back to being saintly and bandaging an old hobo's arm. Lucifer refrained from pointing out that the limb, swollen and ulcerated, was infected with gangrene and would have to be amputated. Gabriel was familiar with the concept of goodwill, less so with its execution.
"You sound jealous." He said instead, sounding maybe just a wee bit pleased himself. "Are you-? Of Michael? That's a new low. Then again, they did replace you awfully fast."
Gabriel yanked on the linen knot, ignoring the hobo's groan of pain, and twisted to his feet. Anger was etched in the set of his mouth; his jaw; his clenched fists - fury, homesickness, shame, envy-
"Oh, I didn't mean it like that-" except he totally did - but Gabriel was already gone, leaving behind the nothing but the inelegant pieces of his kindness and a fever of professional jealousy.
[x] Gula
Days passed in urban tedium, reverberating with techno beats and low-grade cruelty. It was pleasing, but repetitive: he could watch only so many old ladies get lynched.
The morning after Johnny went to Midnite's on an empty stomach - and what a brilliant idea it was; much more entertaining than old ladies - he had a stroke of genius.
Time may heal all wounds, but alcohol holds their head down in the toilet and flushes.
"Out where?" Gabriel wouldn't even look at him, still sparking like a half-lit explosive, all gold and red and orange-white under the street lamps. Sunset was leaking into the city with arsonist intent, a low drip of benzene over rooftops and coffee shops and slow-moving cars. Lucifer basked.
"Just out," he said, aiming for contrition and probably falling short. Gabriel had flared up like an exploded alchemy lab after their last meeting, and Lucifer knew enough about timing to stay the hell away; he'd watched from a distance as Gabriel burned himself up, raging and weeping and calling out to the Man, his spawn, their winged minions, anyone, please-
Nobody answered, and eventually - helplessly - he came down again, settling like ashes after a fire. Lucifer watched his eyes, now bruise-dark and red-rimmed and hopeless: the opportune time was now or never.
"Come on," he smiled. "I'm doing this out of the goodness of my whatever. It works for humans, you know."
Gabriel belatedly caught on. "Drinking? " he asked, sounding like Lucifer had implied they do it with cat urine instead of booze.
"No need to sound so scandalized." Gabriel actually looked affronted at that. "You'll like it. Promise. And the Devil keeps his word, unlike some."
"Not if you can help it," Gabriel shot back, but he looked tempted, wavering on the knife-edge of fatigue and grief and a million other things which two dainty clumps of feathers had protected him from for the last five millennia. Shit, but angels were so sheltered. "It's a disgusting habit."
"Alcoholism isn't a sin," Lucifer pointed out. "Wasn't it your boy who turned water into wine? And Lot was a hideous drunkard."
"One thing leads to another." Gabriel shook his head. "I've seen it happen often enough. Excess is forbidden."
"Who said anything about excess?" He stretched the last syllable into a hiss, faintly annoyed. Upstairs logic; it made no sense at all. "Humans have been doing it for ages. Time you caught up with the herd."
"Abstinence." Gabriel countered, and turned away coldly. "I don't drink, especially not with your kind. And you should know better than to ask, Shaitan."
"Throwing out pejoratives now?" he said nastily, but Gabriel just tipped a cup of brackish water to his lips and swallowed. The conversation was over.
[x] Ira
Baby ticked like clockwork, with hours and minutes and mood swings from hell. Lucifer knew this, and he knew that Gabriel was like a coal mine: dark, unfathomable, severely lacking in interior décor - but drop a match inside, and boom.
He fucking loved playing with matches. Heaven had a no-smoking policy, but then, they weren't in Heaven anymore.
This time he actively went to seek out Gabriel, wandering the gutter streets and sending rats skittering away from his silhouette. It was slow going, because downtown was smelly and labyrinthine and big, but eventually he spotted that golden crown of hair right on the fringes of dystopia - sitting on a concrete ledge like a bird on a wire, overlooking an enormous channel of sewage water which roared away into the industrial district.
This was probably where the charity soup had come from, he thought, and materialized in a stylish coruscant of black water.
"Don't you hate me?" he asked cheerfully, as Gabriel nearly pitched head-first into the torrent.
"Holy - ye-" Gabriel flailed, but then steadied himself and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Wait. Why?"
Cagey bastards, the lot of them. "Why? Why not? Seems to be in keeping with your saintly character."
Gabriel crouched in front of him, back hunched, resolutely not turning around. "You disgust me. It doesn't mean I hate you."
"But you do, don't you? I can feel it. On your mouth, on your skin. In the air you breathe." Gabriel had visibly stiffened, staring into the piss-river silently. "Who dismantled your halo, set your pretty little wings on fire? Don't tell me you forgot."
"I." He was so pretty like that, knees drawn up and head at crotch level, hunkering down as if the words were shrapnel. Lucifer knew that if he turned around now, Gabriel would push him off the ledge. "You're just riling me."
"You need to be riled?" Lucifer brushed the top of Gabriel's head, felt him flinch away violently. "Could've fooled me, the way you talked about Michael. Baby needs to wash his mouth out with soap, mm?"
"Be silent, you poisonous snake." Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut, and began a litany of prayer. "Our Father which art in Heaven…"
"Praying to whom, boy? Once you were the one who heard their prayers; isn't that funny, what a stray punch can bring about?"
"Hallowed be thy name…"
"Of course, ultimately, you were the instigator, otherwise why all this? But that's what being the Devil is all about: making other people act in your stead. And I'm very good at what I do, baby; you know it best of all."
"L-Lead us not into temptation…"
"I think we both know nobody up there is listening - not to us, anyway. Looks like you're stuck here with me and the rest of the imperfect flock, eh?"
"Deliver us from… God." Gabriel curled in on himself, hands fisted in his coat, breathing ragged. "Just leave me alone. Just go."
"No." Lucifer stuck his hands in his pockets; licked his lips. "Of course I won't. I never just go."
He was like a metal spring, wound up so tight, right on the breaking point - just one more twist and it'd all be over; he could feel it in his bones.
"No Spear of Destiny," he quipped, "but I reckon pushing me in would just about do the job."
Gabriel whirled to look at him, twisting up with a snarl; water boomed and sprayed around him, a rising wave - deafening - blinding - sound and fury-
And he jumped.
[x] Acedia
Lucifer gaped at the swirling water, drowning the last glimmers of gold in savage whirlpools of grey-brown.
This was not in the script.
He followed the aqueduct outside the city and into the artificial reservoir, where it swirled and festered and got pumped back into the bathroom facets of its previous users only hours after it had been expelled. The drain pipe gushed and sluiced and finally threw up the tattered remnants of what had once been the Archangel Gabriel, First General of the Heavenly Host and All-Round Crazy Psycho.
A few minutes later, he washed up on the shore. Lucifer looked on in morbid fascination as Gabriel choked and hacked and coughed out something that looked revoltingly like a bezoar. He vomited some river water, then flopped back down in the mud and closed his eyes.
"Nice." Lucifer circled him, filth and excrement squelching under his shoes. "Oh, well. Consider it a mercy killing."
Gabriel didn't reply: just breathed in, breathed out, sick and rasping. He looked ready to give up, to just lie down and die - but after a moment, his eyes fluttered open, and in what had to be the most laborious feat in the history of mankind, he raised himself on his elbows.
Lucifer couldn't believe it. "Wh - you're getting up? But why?" Gabriel didn't seem to hear him, just struggled upwards, smeared in mud and offal, chest heaving and one kneecap broken. He looked determined, and that - that just made no sense.
"Oh, for fuck's sake." Gabriel was trying to get to his feet, slipping on the ground, arms straining, white-faced from the pain. His hair looked like it had died underwater and was clinging on from sheer bloody-mindedness. "Stay down, you stupid boy. What have you got that's worth getting up for?"
One of Gabriel's legs slipped; he crashed down again, emitting a horrible half-scream as the shattered bone came in contact with the ground. Finally, Lucifer thought, but after a moment he stirred - and the whole painstaking process began anew, only with more dirt.
"Will you just stop, Gabriel? It's so much easier. Shit is for wallowing in, and you're hip-deep already. Lie down and close your eyes, it'll do you a world of good."
"No." Gabriel breathed, finally creaking to a halt sitting up. Nothing golden about him - he was the exact color of the water, and smelling even worse. "No, it won't."
"How do you know?"
"Life's not for lying down in." He took a ragged breath, and then tried, very carefully, to stand up. Lucifer nearly kicked him down again out of spite, but refrained. "Got to get up. Keep walking. Got to."
"You can't walk with that kneecap." Lucifer sneered. "And where will you walk to? There's nothing here."
"Away." Gabriel tried to steady himself on Lucifer's shoulder, and nearly fell when he slipped away. By sheer luck, Gabriel managed to retain his lopsided footing. "Just, away. I don't know."
"It pains me to see you like this, baby." Lucifer crooned as Gabriel took a first tottering step. "Let me put you out of your misery. All you have to do is ask; I'll take care of the rest. And I promise you won't feel a thing."
"Move." Gabriel looked up at him, straight in the eye. "Get out of my way. Now."
Lucifer snorted. "Unlikely."
"Okay." He blinked. Gabriel ignored him; took one step forward, and then another, and another. He was going at an impossibly slow pace, but seemed unfazed by it. In fact, he seemed unfazed, period - a trait not normally associated with people freshly spat out from a raging sewage drain.
"What did you say?"
"I don't hate you." Gabriel kept looking straight ahead, quiet but dignified. "I don't feel anything towards you. I don't think about you at all."
"Pull the other one." Lucifer snorted. "I'm the Devil. I'm the reason you're in this mess to begin with. Your entire existence is centered on the fact that 5000 years ago, I slapped your mommy in the face."
"Not anymore," Gabriel looked perfectly serene. "See, there's something." He limped another step forward, paused for breath. "No more sins, no virtues, no holy sacraments." Another step. "I'm not an angel anymore. I'm human."
And then he just kept walking.
1 "SALIGIA are the seven letters by which to evoke the seven cardinal sins: Pride, Avarice, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Sloth."
All characters © their respective owners; I claim no right nor profit.
Check tags for warnings. Dedicated to raihu, complete with ugly header. Thanks to nekopyo and penllyne for the beta.
Saligia
“Saligia sunt septem littere a quibus incipiunt nomina septem capitalium vitiorum: Superbia, Avarita, Luxuria, Indivia, Gula, Ira, et Acedia.”
-St. Antoninus; Summa Major1
[x] Superbia
The first time he saw the angel after their little incident, he'd been making a house call, stopping by to see how Johnny was faring - to look after his investment, really; reminiscence about yonder days, maybe smoke a fag or two just to be obnoxious. Not that he was a smoker - nothing more deplorable than an early grave - but when needs must, you know, and he really needed to see the boy squirm on occasion.
(Baby hadn't been too pleased to see him, rumpled and hungover and spitting utterly fetching profanities from between the sheets, but it was all in a day's work and sort of cute besides, so he left him a kiss and a cigarette burn and stepped outside whistling. Abstinence was the best human invention since corporeal punishment; it was simply divine what a whiff of smoke could do in the right set of lungs.)
He’d walked around the corner and there was Gabriel in the mouth of the alleyway, muddy and twisted as the old rubbish bins hulking in the dark. No wings, of course, and the white outfit had definitely seen better days; on the other hand, not many humans looked like they’d just stepped out of a Caravaggio painting, and Gabriel never needed a halo in order to shine.
No more flaming sword. No more Spear of Destiny. He stared into the caryatid face, disquietingly still, and the question seemed to ask itself.
“God’s first general - surely you’re better than this?”
For a moment, something flickered in Gabriel’s eyes, wild and furious; he seemed about to agree - but he turned away at the last minute, head bowed low, though his voice could have splintered metal.
“That's not for me to decide. You of all people should know - the higher you are, the harder you fall. ”
[x] Avarita
He was still musing upon their first encounter when the second came along. This time they met in a homeless shelter, near the old city train tracks, soot and corrosion lying thick upon their skin.
Gabriel looked resplendent in an old tattered trenchcoat and hoodie, stretched right across his wing-stumps and making him hunchbacked; grey fingerless gloves; a brilliant gap-toothed smile. It was Constantine's parting gift, or so he heard: the first time the angel must have felt real, physical pain as a human being.
Lucifer licked his lips. What an intoxicating thought.
He walked up to Gabriel, standing in line for the regular hand-out of diseased rat soup or whatever it was the city gave hobos from the kindness of its twisted little gutter heart, and smiled.
"Faring well, I hope?"
Gabriel spared his immaculate white suit a glance, and did not look pleased by what he saw. "What are you doing here?"
"I'd say recruiting, but it makes the whole thing sound so needlessly militant." Lucifer smiled beatifically. "We prefer a more wholesome approach. I call it befriending."
The statement went over just as badly as expected. "I'm not your friend, hellbeast," Gabriel spat. "Get out of my sight."
"Enjoying your… sustenance?" Lucifer tapped the tin bowl with a long finger, sleekly bypassing that last remark. "It's a far cry from manna and honeyed milk, I'll give you that. Oh, was that an eyeball bobbing to the surface just there?"
"Go away," said Gabriel, though he seemed slightly less vehement than before. Apparently he'd seen the eyeball, too.
"You fell hard, didn't you?" The non-sequitur was worth it, to see the look Gabriel shot him. "And just like you said, I should know. I do know. But I also know you can climb back up twice as high."
"What are you talk - no, no; I don't care."
"That which does not kill, strengthens," he purred. "You stay here, wallowing in this - this filth - blind and deaf to pleasure, feeding yourself dissected cat innards. These beggars around you - they don't know any better. But you do: you've been there. You know what this world has to offer." He could see Gabriel's eyes, wide and bright like temple fires; leaned in closer, teeth bared. "Don't you want it? Don't you want it back?"
Gabriel's rosepetal lips moved silently, he saw the breath in his lungs, ready to form the words yes, yes, yes. He saw the images dancing in Gabriel's mind, gold and silver and awash in holy light-
A baby started bawling, at the far end of the line. Gabriel started, and shook his head violently, as if to scare away an afterimage. "I know my place in creation," he said, sounding like he didn't really; "it is here, helping others. That is the true pleasure of life, by the word of the Lord and his holy prophets. I don't need to believe it, I know." Then, against all logic, he turned and walked away and gave his soup to the mother of the crying child.
Lucifer nearly spit in disgust. Goddamn angels. And the trouble was, he really did know, the little shit.
[x] Luxuria
First time is chance; second is serendipity; third time enemy action. And Lucifer, he was the Devil: the greatest enemy there was.
He cornered Gabriel one freezing night in the red district; both their faces bleached neon-bright in the stuttering light of strip clubs. Gabriel, he was there because of Johnny - who was on one sort of job or another, Lucifer mentally snickered - and what better place to talk to an angel than in the town square of Sodom and Gomorrah?
"Nice place, isn't it?" He could be sneaky when he wanted to, and Gabriel startled. "Not exactly your ideal environment, though. Baby got lost?"
"I'm here because of John." Gabriel snapped, wing-stumps flexing in his back. "Trust me, I'd really rather be elsewhere."
"Wonder what Johnny-boy's doing in this side of town?" Lucifer made it sound obscene, though to be fair, it probably was anyway. "Nothing sinful, I hope." He let that sink in. "Uh-oh. Looks like score one for my team."
"I'm not going to dignify that with a response." Gabriel said - and oh, yes, there was that special brand of retarded self-contradiction only Heaven knew how to pull off. Mind, he really did look lost: wide-eyed and huddled in his coat, calloused fingers curling nervously. Lucifer noticed the way he stood with legs pressed together, and tried not to grin.
"I wonder," he said, "this is your first time here, but will it be your last?"
"I should be so lucky," Gabriel grimaced. "Doubtless John will come here again."
"Oh, but baby's all grown up now. Surely you don't need an escort."
The look Gabriel gave him could have shriveled masonry. "I would never."
"Never is such a binding word, wouldn't you say?" Lucifer breathed against his ear, warm and damp; Gabriel shivered and jerked away. Not too far away, though. "Angels don't know what they're missing, but you can find out anytime. Sooner or later…" His lips ghosted from Gabriel's ear to his cheek, and further down; the angel seemed rooted to the spot, like a small animal caught in headlights. The air was cold and heady with the smell of strip club sex, and Gabriel looked… affected.
"We're not too different, you and I," Lucifer murmured, and kissed him.
It felt very, very good - until, to his immense shock, Gabriel slapped him and leapt back. "How dare you compare," he hissed, eyes flashing, "I said, I would never." Then he turned and ran into the night, Constantine be damned.
Lucifer sucked in a breath and rubbed at his cheek, annoyed. It had been a compliment.
[x] Indivia
Perhaps, upon reflection, assaulting his virtue had not been the best way to introduce Gabriel into the new world. And that's what he was trying to do, really - that, and maybe a bit more, because Gabriel was satin-white even under all the grime and those were dreadfully good cheekbones. But anyway, it was time for a new tactic.
Gabriel was in the alley again, trenchcoat hanging off his shoulders in sharp folds; he'd finally given up and just made holes in the back for the wing stumps. They look like the branches of a tree after a fire: black, twisted, jagged as bones. Familiar sight, that.
"So I hear Michael is the new general," he said by way of greeting, and Gabriel stiffened as if he'd just been penetrated with a fire hydrant.
"God bless him," he gritted out, and went back to being saintly and bandaging an old hobo's arm. Lucifer refrained from pointing out that the limb, swollen and ulcerated, was infected with gangrene and would have to be amputated. Gabriel was familiar with the concept of goodwill, less so with its execution.
"You sound jealous." He said instead, sounding maybe just a wee bit pleased himself. "Are you-? Of Michael? That's a new low. Then again, they did replace you awfully fast."
Gabriel yanked on the linen knot, ignoring the hobo's groan of pain, and twisted to his feet. Anger was etched in the set of his mouth; his jaw; his clenched fists - fury, homesickness, shame, envy-
"Oh, I didn't mean it like that-" except he totally did - but Gabriel was already gone, leaving behind the nothing but the inelegant pieces of his kindness and a fever of professional jealousy.
[x] Gula
Days passed in urban tedium, reverberating with techno beats and low-grade cruelty. It was pleasing, but repetitive: he could watch only so many old ladies get lynched.
The morning after Johnny went to Midnite's on an empty stomach - and what a brilliant idea it was; much more entertaining than old ladies - he had a stroke of genius.
Time may heal all wounds, but alcohol holds their head down in the toilet and flushes.
"Out where?" Gabriel wouldn't even look at him, still sparking like a half-lit explosive, all gold and red and orange-white under the street lamps. Sunset was leaking into the city with arsonist intent, a low drip of benzene over rooftops and coffee shops and slow-moving cars. Lucifer basked.
"Just out," he said, aiming for contrition and probably falling short. Gabriel had flared up like an exploded alchemy lab after their last meeting, and Lucifer knew enough about timing to stay the hell away; he'd watched from a distance as Gabriel burned himself up, raging and weeping and calling out to the Man, his spawn, their winged minions, anyone, please-
Nobody answered, and eventually - helplessly - he came down again, settling like ashes after a fire. Lucifer watched his eyes, now bruise-dark and red-rimmed and hopeless: the opportune time was now or never.
"Come on," he smiled. "I'm doing this out of the goodness of my whatever. It works for humans, you know."
Gabriel belatedly caught on. "Drinking? " he asked, sounding like Lucifer had implied they do it with cat urine instead of booze.
"No need to sound so scandalized." Gabriel actually looked affronted at that. "You'll like it. Promise. And the Devil keeps his word, unlike some."
"Not if you can help it," Gabriel shot back, but he looked tempted, wavering on the knife-edge of fatigue and grief and a million other things which two dainty clumps of feathers had protected him from for the last five millennia. Shit, but angels were so sheltered. "It's a disgusting habit."
"Alcoholism isn't a sin," Lucifer pointed out. "Wasn't it your boy who turned water into wine? And Lot was a hideous drunkard."
"One thing leads to another." Gabriel shook his head. "I've seen it happen often enough. Excess is forbidden."
"Who said anything about excess?" He stretched the last syllable into a hiss, faintly annoyed. Upstairs logic; it made no sense at all. "Humans have been doing it for ages. Time you caught up with the herd."
"Abstinence." Gabriel countered, and turned away coldly. "I don't drink, especially not with your kind. And you should know better than to ask, Shaitan."
"Throwing out pejoratives now?" he said nastily, but Gabriel just tipped a cup of brackish water to his lips and swallowed. The conversation was over.
[x] Ira
Baby ticked like clockwork, with hours and minutes and mood swings from hell. Lucifer knew this, and he knew that Gabriel was like a coal mine: dark, unfathomable, severely lacking in interior décor - but drop a match inside, and boom.
He fucking loved playing with matches. Heaven had a no-smoking policy, but then, they weren't in Heaven anymore.
This time he actively went to seek out Gabriel, wandering the gutter streets and sending rats skittering away from his silhouette. It was slow going, because downtown was smelly and labyrinthine and big, but eventually he spotted that golden crown of hair right on the fringes of dystopia - sitting on a concrete ledge like a bird on a wire, overlooking an enormous channel of sewage water which roared away into the industrial district.
This was probably where the charity soup had come from, he thought, and materialized in a stylish coruscant of black water.
"Don't you hate me?" he asked cheerfully, as Gabriel nearly pitched head-first into the torrent.
"Holy - ye-" Gabriel flailed, but then steadied himself and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Wait. Why?"
Cagey bastards, the lot of them. "Why? Why not? Seems to be in keeping with your saintly character."
Gabriel crouched in front of him, back hunched, resolutely not turning around. "You disgust me. It doesn't mean I hate you."
"But you do, don't you? I can feel it. On your mouth, on your skin. In the air you breathe." Gabriel had visibly stiffened, staring into the piss-river silently. "Who dismantled your halo, set your pretty little wings on fire? Don't tell me you forgot."
"I." He was so pretty like that, knees drawn up and head at crotch level, hunkering down as if the words were shrapnel. Lucifer knew that if he turned around now, Gabriel would push him off the ledge. "You're just riling me."
"You need to be riled?" Lucifer brushed the top of Gabriel's head, felt him flinch away violently. "Could've fooled me, the way you talked about Michael. Baby needs to wash his mouth out with soap, mm?"
"Be silent, you poisonous snake." Gabriel squeezed his eyes shut, and began a litany of prayer. "Our Father which art in Heaven…"
"Praying to whom, boy? Once you were the one who heard their prayers; isn't that funny, what a stray punch can bring about?"
"Hallowed be thy name…"
"Of course, ultimately, you were the instigator, otherwise why all this? But that's what being the Devil is all about: making other people act in your stead. And I'm very good at what I do, baby; you know it best of all."
"L-Lead us not into temptation…"
"I think we both know nobody up there is listening - not to us, anyway. Looks like you're stuck here with me and the rest of the imperfect flock, eh?"
"Deliver us from… God." Gabriel curled in on himself, hands fisted in his coat, breathing ragged. "Just leave me alone. Just go."
"No." Lucifer stuck his hands in his pockets; licked his lips. "Of course I won't. I never just go."
He was like a metal spring, wound up so tight, right on the breaking point - just one more twist and it'd all be over; he could feel it in his bones.
"No Spear of Destiny," he quipped, "but I reckon pushing me in would just about do the job."
Gabriel whirled to look at him, twisting up with a snarl; water boomed and sprayed around him, a rising wave - deafening - blinding - sound and fury-
And he jumped.
[x] Acedia
Lucifer gaped at the swirling water, drowning the last glimmers of gold in savage whirlpools of grey-brown.
This was not in the script.
He followed the aqueduct outside the city and into the artificial reservoir, where it swirled and festered and got pumped back into the bathroom facets of its previous users only hours after it had been expelled. The drain pipe gushed and sluiced and finally threw up the tattered remnants of what had once been the Archangel Gabriel, First General of the Heavenly Host and All-Round Crazy Psycho.
A few minutes later, he washed up on the shore. Lucifer looked on in morbid fascination as Gabriel choked and hacked and coughed out something that looked revoltingly like a bezoar. He vomited some river water, then flopped back down in the mud and closed his eyes.
"Nice." Lucifer circled him, filth and excrement squelching under his shoes. "Oh, well. Consider it a mercy killing."
Gabriel didn't reply: just breathed in, breathed out, sick and rasping. He looked ready to give up, to just lie down and die - but after a moment, his eyes fluttered open, and in what had to be the most laborious feat in the history of mankind, he raised himself on his elbows.
Lucifer couldn't believe it. "Wh - you're getting up? But why?" Gabriel didn't seem to hear him, just struggled upwards, smeared in mud and offal, chest heaving and one kneecap broken. He looked determined, and that - that just made no sense.
"Oh, for fuck's sake." Gabriel was trying to get to his feet, slipping on the ground, arms straining, white-faced from the pain. His hair looked like it had died underwater and was clinging on from sheer bloody-mindedness. "Stay down, you stupid boy. What have you got that's worth getting up for?"
One of Gabriel's legs slipped; he crashed down again, emitting a horrible half-scream as the shattered bone came in contact with the ground. Finally, Lucifer thought, but after a moment he stirred - and the whole painstaking process began anew, only with more dirt.
"Will you just stop, Gabriel? It's so much easier. Shit is for wallowing in, and you're hip-deep already. Lie down and close your eyes, it'll do you a world of good."
"No." Gabriel breathed, finally creaking to a halt sitting up. Nothing golden about him - he was the exact color of the water, and smelling even worse. "No, it won't."
"How do you know?"
"Life's not for lying down in." He took a ragged breath, and then tried, very carefully, to stand up. Lucifer nearly kicked him down again out of spite, but refrained. "Got to get up. Keep walking. Got to."
"You can't walk with that kneecap." Lucifer sneered. "And where will you walk to? There's nothing here."
"Away." Gabriel tried to steady himself on Lucifer's shoulder, and nearly fell when he slipped away. By sheer luck, Gabriel managed to retain his lopsided footing. "Just, away. I don't know."
"It pains me to see you like this, baby." Lucifer crooned as Gabriel took a first tottering step. "Let me put you out of your misery. All you have to do is ask; I'll take care of the rest. And I promise you won't feel a thing."
"Move." Gabriel looked up at him, straight in the eye. "Get out of my way. Now."
Lucifer snorted. "Unlikely."
"Okay." He blinked. Gabriel ignored him; took one step forward, and then another, and another. He was going at an impossibly slow pace, but seemed unfazed by it. In fact, he seemed unfazed, period - a trait not normally associated with people freshly spat out from a raging sewage drain.
"What did you say?"
"I don't hate you." Gabriel kept looking straight ahead, quiet but dignified. "I don't feel anything towards you. I don't think about you at all."
"Pull the other one." Lucifer snorted. "I'm the Devil. I'm the reason you're in this mess to begin with. Your entire existence is centered on the fact that 5000 years ago, I slapped your mommy in the face."
"Not anymore," Gabriel looked perfectly serene. "See, there's something." He limped another step forward, paused for breath. "No more sins, no virtues, no holy sacraments." Another step. "I'm not an angel anymore. I'm human."
And then he just kept walking.
1 "SALIGIA are the seven letters by which to evoke the seven cardinal sins: Pride, Avarice, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Sloth."
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